Climate Science Round-Up: Global Warming = Global Weirding

Why does global warming mean global weirding? Why is everything supposed to get worse in a warmer world -- more droughts and more storms? Isn't anything supposed to get better?

Here's the bottom line:

CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Because of the actual physical size and shape of a molecule of CO2, it's just the right size to interact with energy of a certain wavelength -- infrared radiation, more commonly known as heat. When this infrared radiation (heat) encounters a molecule of CO2, the CO2 first absorbs the radiation (heat) and then puts it back out in all directions - it re-emits it.

Because there's CO2 all through our atmosphere and there are millions and millions of these little CO2 guys absorbing and re-emitting heat in every direction, the overall effect is for most of that heat to be kept within the atmosphere. Some does get put out into space, but most of it gets trapped inside our atmosphere, which means that heat sticks around, making our planet warm.

So, the more CO2 we've got in the atmosphere, the greater the chance that this heat that's coming off the Earth's surface will encounter a molecule (or lots of molecules) of CO2 on its way up (heat rises, right?) and eventually end up getting trapped inside the atmosphere.

More CO2 = more heat trapped!

Heat is just one form of energy. So having more heat in system means having more energy in the system. And energy is what's needed to DO STUFF. Like evaporate water or melt ice or warm up air or water. So, that's what it gets used for - doing all those things: evaporating more water and making a "typical" storm bigger. Or a "typical" drought drier. Or a "typical" heat wave hotter.

You could think of having all that extra energy available as sort of like having extra money lying around. You could stash it away in the bank to use later, but most people would probably want to spend it and put that money to work - a faster, flashier car, a bigger house, more fancy gadgets and appliances.

So just like you can go into a neighborhood with lots of big, fancy houses and you know that means there's a lot of money there, when you see a really big storm / wild fire / heat wave / drought, you know that means there's a lot more energy there than a smaller such event.

This is why global warming means global weirding. All this extra heat / energy gets used to wreak havoc on our climate system and therefore on all of us, too.

So... can any of this extra heat be a good thing? Like a superhero who decides to use his powers for good, not evil?

I looked through the latest IPCC report to find what it said about possible positive outcomes of climate change...

... there weren't a lot to be found, sadly, and those I did find were almost always couched with a caveat of a negative consequence that balanced out the positive. Here are a couple, though:

- A longer growing season in mid-high latitudes means an increase in crop productivity for some areas, including North America. However, this is only the case up to about 1-3ºC warming (2-5ºF). Above that, crop productivity is supposed to go back down. Boo...

- Commercial timber production is also expected to increase a little in the near-term, because of more CO2 for those trees to use, but it's expected to decrease in the long-term because it just gets too hot.

- "Climate change is projected to bring some benefits, such as fewer deaths from cold exposure. Overall it is expected that these benefits will be outweighed by the negative health effects of rising temperatures world-wide, especially in developing countries." (IPCC 2007)

A couple other benefits are reduced heating costs in cold parts of the world and the opening up of the fabled Northwest Passage over Canada. In both these cases, though, it's not hard to come up with the down-sides to these situations:

For every home that doesn't spend as much money on heating, there will be several more that will be spending more money (and energy) on cooling. And although opening up the Northwest Passage might be a great thing in terms of shipping, it brings with it a whole lot of other problems as well, as the almost uninhabited northern border of Canada gets developed. (This is where Baffin Island is, where I did my research for my Master's, so I can tell you that there really isn't a lot up there right now. It's desolate, isolated, untouched and incredibly beautiful!) (Read here for an interesting, but dated - 2005 - NY Times article on the opening of the Northwest Passage.)

So, sadly, any of the benefits of global warming look like they're going to be far outweighed by the negative impacts - especially in the long term. We ourselves might not have to face them, but our children and our grandchildren will.

 

Follow Rebecca Anderson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/climateed

Comments

[nellre]

01:02 PM on 11/24/2010

"So, sadly, any of the benefits of global warming look like they're going to be far outweighed by the negative impacts - especially in the long term. We ourselves might not have to face them, but our children and our grandchildren will. "

Tell that to the 20 million Pakistanis affected by the floods this summer
Tell that to the thousands of Chinese affected by heavy rains and mudslides this summer
Or the folks killed in the flash floods in the Midwest this summer
Tell that to the Polar bears and walrus who's survival depends on disappearing sea ice
Did you know that lake Mead is at its lowest level since 1937?

Lets get real here. The impacts are being felt now, and they're getting worse at an accelerating pace. We need to feel a sense of urgency along with our hopes

[Style Doggie 2]

02:13 AM on 11/29/2010

Floods, heavy rain, mudslides, flash floods have always occurred. Without a definition of a severe or unusual weather event, no one can count them to say if they're increasing or decreasing. How many of these unusual events were there in 1958? Or 1931? Are you aware of any study that attempts to support your assertion? What is the rate at which these events are increasing? How do you *know* they are increasing, by reading the newspaper? Not very persuasive. Walruses and Polar Bears have survived ice ages and the drastic changes brought about at then end of each ice age - they can survive the 1/2 degree C the earth has warmed in the last 50 years. Lake Mead's level is anecdotal. Are the levels in all the lakes of the globe getting lower?

These are the types of chicken little, unscientific, hysterical claims that typical of this issue. Ho hum.

[angryangel]

05:49 AM on 11/24/2010

Even more of the MOST RECENT mathematical science that shows the skeptics wrong:

"Lakes are warming across the globe"
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/66448/title/Lakes_are_warming_across_the_globe
"The observations, published November 24 in Geophysical Research Letters, represent "a new independent data source for assessing the impact of climate change throughout the world," according to the study's authors, NASA scientists Philipp Schneider and Simon Hook of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech."

"Cloud Modelling Suggests Greater Global Warming"
http://planetsave.com/2010/11/24/cloud-modelling-suggests-greater-global-warming/
"If our model results prove to be representative of the real global climate," co-author Kevin Hamilton concludes, "then climate is actually more sensitive to perturbations by greenhouse gases than current global models predict, and even the highest warming predictions would underestimate the real change we could see."

[Orkneygal]

01:50 AM on 11/24/2010

According to IPCC AR4 Section 9.2.2 figure 9.1.f, the theory of AGW, caused by greenhouse gas release, has a particular signature in the atmospheric temperature profile.

http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter9.pdf

One important aspect of this temperature profile is commonly called the "Tropical Tropospheric Hotspot".

According to the IPCC, if the currently warming is caused by greenhouse gas release, there must be evidence of it through the "Tropical Tropospheric Hotspot".

The difficulty for the true believers is that the "Tropical Tropospheric Hotspot" cannot be found.

Radiosonde data does not show it. Satellite data does not reveal it, even when tortured by the Hockey Team.

An attempt to "prove" that it is really there, but hidden using some hocus, pocus about wind shear has been recently debunked and falsified.

Since the signature that the IPCC claims their theory says must be there, there are only a few alternatives-

1. IPCC climate theory is fundamentally wrong.
2. To the extent that IPCC climate theory is correct in predicting a hotspot due to extra carbon dioxide, we know that carbon emissions did not cause the recent global warming.


More information-

http://joannenova.com.au/2008/10/the-missing-hotspot/

http://www.sciencespeak.com/MissingSignature.pdf

[angryangel]

08:06 PM on 11/23/2010

Greenhouses gases are the key to global warming, as the MOST RECENT mathematical science says - Google with quotation marks these reports on the MOST RECENT mathematical science: --------- "Carbon Dioxide Controls Earth's Temperature" (2010) [Greenhouse gases and NOT [as skeptics claim] water vapor and clouds are the key to global warming and to acting as a global temperature thermostat.] --------- "Sun's Impact on Climate Change Overestimated?" (2010) --------- "Earth more sensitive to carbon dioxide than previously thought" (2009) --------- "Global Temperatures Could Rise More Than Expected, New Study Shows" (2009) --------- "Changes In The Sun Are Not Causing Global Warming, New Study Shows" (2009) --------- "Climate Change Is Not Caused By Cosmic Rays, According To New Research" (2008) --------- "Cosmic Rays Do Not Explain Global Warming, Study Finds" (2008) --------- "Changes In Solar Brightness Too Weak To Explain Global Warming" (2006)

[angryangel]

08:00 PM on 11/23/2010

Here's a long-term negative that may happen within a few centuries if humanity doesn't stop it: Google search with quotation marks these three reports and the study itself, 2010 published by the National Academy of Sciences itself: "Global Warming: Future Temperatures Could Exceed Livable Limits, Researchers Find" and "Report: Climate change could render much of world uninhabitable" and "The Health Effects of Hotter Days and Nights" and the study itself, published by the National Academy of Sciences, being "An adaptability limit to climate change due to heat stress" --------- They for the first time tested the limits of habitability.....Earth may see the return of WET BULB temperatures (NOT standard temperatures) of at least 95 degrees F, covering AT LEAST the tropics and subtropics, not seen for 50 million years. The study's author said, "The wet-bulb temperatures we are talking about would have a feels-like, or heat-index, temperature of between 170 to 196 degrees Fahrenheit." --------- Warm-blooded life evolved to inhabit hotter parts of Earth only after it cooled from where it was 50 million years ago. Daytime summertime heat-index temperatures of at least almost 200 degrees covering AT LEAST the tropics and subtropics means the killing of almost all warm-blooded wildlife and via sufficient food chain destruction almost all wildlife everywhere, period, and it means the killing of human civilization (what land can be inhabited then can support only a drastically reduced human population - stop and think of what that means).

[fumes]

07:40 PM on 11/23/2010

''The main statement publicized after the last IPCC Scientific Assessment two years ago was that it was likely that most of the warming since 1957 (a point of anomalous cold) was due to man. This claim was based on the weak argument that the current models used by the IPCC couldn't reproduce the warming from about 1978 to 1998 without some forcing, and that the only forcing that they could think of was man. Even this argument assumes that these models adequately deal with natural internal variability—that is, such naturally occurring cycles as El Nino, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, etc. The notion that the earth's climate is dominated by positive feedbacks is intuitively implausible, and the history of the earth's climate offers some guidance on this matter. About 2.5 billion years ago, the sun was 20%-30% less bright than now and yet the evidence is that the oceans were unfrozen at the time, and that temperatures might not have been very different from today's. Carl Sagan in the 1970s referred to this as the "Early Faint Sun Paradox." For more than 30 years there have been attempts to resolve the paradox with greenhouse gases. Some have suggested CO2—but the amount needed was thousands of times greater than present levels and incompatible with geological evidence. Methane also proved unlikely. It turns out that increased thin cirrus cloud coverage in the tropics readily resolves the paradox.'' http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703939404574567423917025400.html#printMode

[SoCalHotOne]

05:53 PM on 11/23/2010

It really is global weirding. Every weird thing on planet earth can be attributed to global warming.

http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm

[fumes]

07:55 PM on 11/23/2010

say socal..

my sucky putting is no where on that list!

am i to assume that it's me now and not dlr from CO2?