[ExI] Fwd: 98% hoax

[John Clark]

On Sun, Sep 4, 2016 at 8:48 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

​> ​
> Here’s one idea: we know the input from the sun, we know the greenhouse
> value of CO2, we can estimate if all else is equal, how much the increasing
> CO2 level should be increasing temperature.  But all else is unequal, for
> the observed warming is lower than would be expected if we use only that
> one term.  So we start to refine our model.  We can add in a term for
> increasing surface temperature causing increased evaporation from the sea,
> which absorbs energy and increases clouds which scatters incoming solar
> energy into space and traps heat down at the surface.  That term is net
> negative (would cause global cooling.)  Then we work in a term for reduced
> albedo from increased plantgrowth (from higher CO2 levels and calculate a
> theoretical impact of that.  Then add in the impact on albedo of increased
> rainfall or decreased rainfall (in some cases) add in a term for increased
> alpha T^4 from Stefan-Boltzmann’s law, and estimate the impact of increased
> wind, which seems to me like would increase evaporation off the surface of
> the sea, and increased albedo from higher snowfall from increased
> evaporation in some places and lower snowfall in other places from higher
> temperatures, increased this and decreased that and unknown effect of the
> other.
>
>
​It's even more complicated than that because ​w
ater vapor is a far more
​important​
 greenhouse gas than CO2
​,​
and unlike CO2 it undergoes phase changes at earthly temperatures, it can
be a solid a liquid or a
​ ​
gas which makes it much more complicated than CO2 which is always just a gas,
at least on this planet.

​We don't even know if the world's temperature increases it will that c
​ause​
more clouds or fewer clouds. It's a very simple question with profound
consequences because clouds regulate the amount of solar energy that runs
the entire climate show. Increased temperature means more water evaporates
from the sea, but it also means the atmosphere can hold more water before
it is forced to form clouds. So who wins this tug of war? Nobody knows, its
too complicated.

And then there is the important issue of global dimming, the world may be
getting warmer but it is also getting dimmer. For reasons that are not
clearly understood in the daytime at any given temperature it takes longer
now for water on the earth's surface to evaporate now than it did 50 years
ago.

There are 2 important questions that are seldom asked in discussions global
warming:

1) On the whole is global warming a bad thing?

2) If it is a bad thing do environmentalists have a cure that isn't worse
than the disease?

The answers are maybe and no.

John K Clark








>
>
> Pretty soon you come to the same conclusion I did: human activity does
> cause global warming, but we don’t know what fraction of global warming is
> human caused.  Estimates vary wildly and can even go negative in some
> models (human activity causes global cooling or slows natural global
> warming) and can go over 100 percent (the planet would be cooling naturally
> but human activity is causing it to warm.)
>
>
>
> With that, we get the odd situation we now see: denial of any impact by
> human activity is one simple extreme.  The other is assuming all observed
> global warming is human caused, which is a perennial political favorite
> (perhaps because it is simple.)  But that assumes the planet’s climate
> never changes without human activity, which we know is not the case, and
> invites comparison to Mars which is currently thought to be warming
> presumably without human intervention.
>
>
>
> So what happens if we generally agree that human activity causes global
> warming but no really one knows how much?
>
>
>
> spike
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20160904/f50d2f01/attachment.html>