Star Trek

More thoughts on why warming may some times precede CO2 spikes. Actually, it occurred to me in part because of Cynic's earlier comment regarding global warming and forest fires. Cynic quite properly pointed out that fuel build up is an important factor in the intensity and frequency of forest fires. Still, higher temperatures are also an important cause. The reason was recently explained to me by an employee of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. She indicated that moisture content of plants is also an important factor in fire behavior. High temperatures combined with dry weather conditions thus can be seen as preceding major forest fires because in combination they have an important impact on the moisture content of plants. If this is the case, then I wonder if global warming caused by other sources might affect both precipitation patterns and, more importantly, summer temperatures in a way that leads to more extensive forest fires. Such forest fires would in turn release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Now this is speculative on my part, and I don't know if any work trying to quantify that possible relationship has occurred. If there is some truth to it, then I think it is just one more example of feedbacks that occur in the enviroment. In one sense that does complicate the picture. You have a discharge of carbon dioxide into the atmsophere but you also have smoke in the air that is also going to impact upon the situation: reflecting the sun's rays and possibly further trapping warmth, in the short term, radiating from the planet. Food for thought.

Also, regarding the Medieval Warming period: it is true that such a period occurred and there is controversy about how warm it actually was during that period. What shouold be of great concern is that carbon dioxide levels have now equalled or exceeded levels reached during that period. This should be of great concern because presently the trend due to human activities is for carbon dioxide levels to continue to increase at a fairly dramatic rate. That means that within a few decades, if that trend is not addressed, carbon dioxide levels will be much greater than during the Medieval Warming period. All other things being equal, it would be logical to conclude that such higher greenhouse gas levels will result in temperatures that will be significantly higher than those temperatures reached during that Medieval period. To me that is a very alarming prospect. Now, I understand that the Medieval Warming period is cited as evidence that perhaps global warming is a result of natural causes. I think that such warming has occurred in the past due to natural causes. It is just that I now believe, based on the testimony of scientists and the evidence that they present, that anthropogenc (i.e. man made) forces of warming are now at work.

As to Steve's point about my scientific training. I will stipulate that he may have more formal training in physics than I do. Still, I would also point out that I have work related experience in dealing with the following scientifically trained professionals: geohydrologists, engineers, air pollution control regulators, forestry management personnel, and wastewater treatment plant operators. In a sense though, I think that is really irrelevant. This is a forum for people interested in science. There are no requirements for people to be credentialed in this forum. If people have superior training to others in any of the scientific fields touched upon in this forum, then they should be able to explain and articulate why others are mistaken in their opinions concerning scientific matters. Bragging about credentials and intelligence without demonstrating that knowledge in one's presentation is a waste of time.

The thing which makes me 'uncertain' about the validity, or not, of 'Man Made Global Warming' is how it is fast becoming 'Politicised'.

The media tend to 'spout', thats a technical term, things relating to global warming, man made that is, as its 100% fact, without informing the listener that it may not be.

Only the other day we had an article on 'Obesity', and the person putting the report forward, a Politician, made the claim that 'Obesity in the UK is more of a danger than...wait for it, Man Made Global Warming!'

I ask you.

Something else..

Recently, the government has imposed a 15pence charge on every flourescent light tube or bulb that people buy. This is supposedly to cover recycling costs, yet it still costs you to recycle the tube/bulb at a cost of about 50p.

This is just a tax, in all but name.

Quote (caltrek @ Oct. 13 2007, 9:38 pm)

Quote on a 600,000 year scale we're several hundred to several thousand years late in beginning a new round of normal global warming, I wonder if the Gaia hypothesis could account for that in that elevated oxygen levels and other such non-greenhouse gases were in greater supply than in previous eras. ?Recall Lovelock's daisy world - homeostatic devices at work that can actually help to cool the planet even as solar radiation increases. Human activity has of course changed all that. Quote Some uncertainty remains about the role of natural variations in causing climate change. Solar variability certainly plays a minor role, but it looks like only a quarter of the recent variations can be attributed to the Sun. At most. During the initial discovery period of global warming, the magnitude of the influence of increased activity on the Sun was not well determined. Solar irradiance changes have been measured reliably by satellites for only 30 years. These precise observations show changes of a few tenths of a percent that depend on the level of activity in the 11-year solar cycle. Changes over longer periods must be inferred from other sources. Estimates of earlier variations are important for calibrating the climate models. While a component of recent global warming may have been caused by the increased solar activity of the last solar cycle, that component was very small compared to the effects of additional greenhouse gases. According to a NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) press release, "...the solar increases do not have the ability to cause large global temperature increases...greenhouse gases are indeed playing the dominant role..." The Sun is once again less bright as we approach solar minimum, yet global warming continues. Stanford Solar Center Quote Water vapor is a natural greenhouse gas which, of all greenhouse gases, accounts for the largest percentage of the greenhouse effect. Water vapor levels fluctuate regionally, but in general humans do not produce a direct forcing of water vapor levels. In climate models an increase in atmospheric temperature caused by the greenhouse effect due to anthropogenic gases will in turn lead to an increase in the water vapor content of the troposphere, with approximately constant relative humidity. This in turn leads to an increase in the greenhouse effect and thus a further increase in temperature, and thus an increase in water vapor, until equilibrium is reached. Thus water vapor acts as a positive feedback (but not a runaway feedback) to the forcing provided by human-released greenhouse gases such as CO2. Changes in the water vapour may also have indirect effects via cloud formation. Most scientists agree that the overall effect of the direct and indirect feedbacks caused by increased water vapour content of the atmosphere significantly enhances the initial warming that caused the increase - that is, it is a strong positive feedback.([5], see B7). Water vapor is a definite part of the greenhouse gas equation even though not under direct human control: IPCC TAR chapter lead author Michael Mann considers citing "the role of water vapor as a greenhouse gas" to be "extremely misleading" as water vapor can not be controlled by humans [6]; see also [7] and [8]. The IPCC discuss the water vapor feedback [9]. It is not really possible to assert that such-and-such a gas causes a certain percentage of the greenhouse effect (GHE), because the influences of the various gases are not additive. The 1990 IPCC report says "If H2O were the only GHG [greenhouse gas] present, then the GHE of a clear-sky midlatitude atmosphere... would be about 60-70% of the value with all gases included; by contrast, if CO2 alone was present, the corresponding value would be about 25%". NatExaminer

Sorry for the delay in response. Been quite busy.

As I understand the Daisyworld construct; life forms, by their everyday activities/states of being, help change or adapat a planets ecology towards optimum for said life forms.

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That variable has already been controlled:

?RE:SOLAR ACTIVITY

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Again, a variable that has been accounted for in the models that scientists construct:

RE: H20-vapor ACCOUNTING

Let's see:

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Water vapor is a natural greenhouse gas which, of all greenhouse gases, accounts for the largest percentage of the greenhouse effect.

And then consider this quote-which directly contradicts it, not two paragraphs later:

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Michael Mann considers citing "the role of water vapor as a greenhouse gas" to be "extremely misleading" as water vapor can not be controlled by humans

If a greenhouse gas cannot be controlled by humans...it is irrelevant? Or is it simply inconvienent to the 'agenda' . WHY must a greenhouse gas be controllable by humans in order to 'not be misleading' ?

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Also, regarding the Medieval Warming period: it is true that such a period occurred and there is controversy about how warm it actually was during that period. What shouold be of great concern is that carbon dioxide levels have now equalled or exceeded levels reached during that period. This should be of great concern because presently the trend due to human activities is for carbon dioxide levels to continue to increase at a fairly dramatic rate. That means that within a few decades, if that trend is not addressed, carbon dioxide levels will be much greater than during the Medieval Warming period. All other things being equal, it would be logical to conclude that such higher greenhouse gas levels will result in temperatures that will be significantly higher than those temperatures reached during that Medieval period.

"All other things being equal" may not be the case. *ponders Yellowstone, asteroids/meteors, and biased scientists chasing funding*

*Also ponders why CO2 levels were so high during a pre-industrial age and the causes*

Well, for the benefit of those who did not read the 9/11 thread in Ten Forward, I specifically asked Cynic to comment on my response regarding forest fires, so a big thank you for answering my invitation.

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It doesn't look like a 'controlled variable' to me. It looks like supposition, guesswork, and a far to small sampling of data points. How in God's name is this 'science' ? It's pure conjecture.

I think it is a little bit more than just "guess work" when these variables are cranked into computer models and these models are then compared to actual historical behavior. These models are also used to make predictions which are then checked for accuracy at some future point. This seems "scientific" to me in that computer models are produced that can then be verified as accurate or inaccurate by real world behavior. Moreover such computer models do not input a tiny number of "data points". On the contrary, as I understand it, they involve thousands, if not millions of "data point."  So they can be used to give variables their proper weight and, in my terminology, "control" those variables.

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If a greenhouse gas cannot be controlled by humans...it is irrelevant? Or is it simply inconvienent to the 'agenda' . WHY must a greenhouse gas be controllable by humans in order to 'not be misleading' ?

I did not write that passage, but my interpretation was that it was misleading in that many were trying to divert the perception of the causes of global warming away from carbon dioxide toward water vapor. Unless such an assertion is accompanied by the kind of discussion and context that we are supplying, mentioning it can be misleading by those who want to cause some mischief on this issue.

Having said that, of course water vapor is important. Yet, as mentioned earlier, water vapor levels are also linked to carbon dioxide levels. Moreover, it is this link in which human activity has (possibly) the greatest impact on water vapor levels. I think it is pretty clear that there are many anthropogenic related discharges of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

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Also ponders why CO2 levels were so high during a pre-industrial age and the causes

Well, I think volcanic activity was certainly and important variable. Also, the amount of conversion from carbon dioxide to oxygen and carbon sequestering plant material would have been another important variable in establishing the oxygen carbon dioxide mixture ratio. Especially when one considers the cummulative affect through time of such conversion processes.

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The media tend to 'spout', thats a technical term, things relating to global warming, man made that is, as its 100% fact, without informing the listener that it may not be.

Well, that may be the case in the British media. A least until recently, I think there was a lot of recruitment of unqualified commentators and oil lobby financed scientists in the U.S. media to give an impression of great scientific dispute about issues where global warming skeptics were, in fact, in a relatively small minority of the scientific community.

I'm sorry to make you wait for a response Cal, but it'll take more time to do your post justice than I have right now.

I'll get back during the weekend or the beginning part of next week.

Apologies.

Not to make this a laughing matter, but it be that remnants of the first bio-life responsible for life on this planet may have found some way of evovling into humanoid form and is now determined to return the planet to it's former state of an oxygen-less  planet in order to be the master of the planet?

Would make for a very interesting storyline. I think X-files already covered this story line.

I have considered that natural selection it self cannot actively adapt changes in environment, but is limited to random permutation.  Under this consideration the ability for life to adapt to any change in environment is dangerously limited.
The theory that life is capable of making some concious decision to adapt in a perticular way to its environment allows for a much more stable capacity to survive change.  The issue as I see it is that gaia is some form of conscious decision capacity for life to actively adapt to changes in the environment.
There is one possible theory, though not very popular, that biofeedback from thought in the brain does have an effect on reproduction.  This means that the experience a life form has in its lfe effects its reproduction through biofeedback, allowing for subsequent generations to have a consciously active adaptation to environment - expecially over three or four generations.
So a possible embodiment of gaia may be a conscious component to reproduction, through biofeedback, for integration of conscious desision in natural selection.
The postulated biofeedback mechanism in this process is not so far removed from modern theories in biofeedback, though I am sure you will meet allot of resistence to the idea.

The Gaia hypothesis does not depend upon any supposition of intent on the part of nature. Feedback mechanisms that stablilize aspects of nature are an emerging property that can be explained through the blind forces of evolution.

The idea of consciousness and how it factors into all of this is intriguing. The consciosness that Gaia has produced is nothing less than our own. The French theologian Tielhard de Chadrin coined the word noosphere to describe what humans have brought to the planet. This noosphere is the knowledge that humans have accumulated through shared experience and research. It is the knowledge sphere that covers the surface of the planet. Chadrin developed his ideas well before the advent of the internet, so his observation seems to have even more validity today that ever before. Bringing together the Gaia hypothesis and Chadrin's writings is truly a mind blowing experience. It raises serious questions and provides some partial answers to many questions that are raised. Chadrin himself was optimistic about what this meant for individual human freedom and potential, but it is also possible to fear a darker future than what Chadrin had in mind.

The global weather crisis that is upon us is especially important in this regard. It is essential that the problem be addressed with a maximum amount of freedom preserved for all. To do this two things may very well be required: 1) that we find and implement society wide voluntaristic methods of overcoming the problem; 2) that we address the problem as early as possible so that the costs associated with the worsening crisis are kept to a minimum. This may very well be a kind of test for our species. Pass it and the visions of a Gene Rodenberry may some day come to pass (within the limits of ordinary physics). Fail it, and the apocalyptic visions contained in parts of the Bible may manifest themselves in a reality that may truly be horrific.

Some will say that this is an overly alarmist approach to the matter, yet the most recent evidence is beginning to indicate that scientists did not overestimate the scope of the problem, but that in their caution not to appear as extremists, they have actually underestimated that scope. It is important to choose correctly now that we still have the power to make a choice.