Where Have the Hurricanes Gone?

[Odin]

The 1970 global average temperature was established as the arbitrary 0 point back in the 70's, IIRC.

[Odin]

Oh, and I found this chart from Wiki interesting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_of_recent_climate_change

Basically the warming between 1910 and 1940 is about half the result of the sun and half the result of greenhouse gases. Starting around 1940 global dimming caused by increasing atmospheric pollution (sulfates) caused the warming to level out untill 1976, when increasing CO2 levels overwhelm the cooling influence of the atmospheric sulfates and increasingly becomes the dominate influence.

[Drake Tungsten]

So we need to pump more sulfates into the atmosphere?

[Odin]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
So we need to pump more sulfates into the atmosphere?

Christ, no, that will cause more acid rain! There's got to be some way to remove CO2 out of the atmosphere. Nanotech? fertilizing the oceans with iron?

[Berzerker]

Dr. Gray needs to stay in meteorology, climatology is aparently out of his league. His argument is basically one huge conspiracy theory with no basis in fact.

Didn't sound like one huge conspiracy theory, much of it was devoted to describing how bureaucracy works.

It doesn't matter to me if global warming is fact, fiction, or half truth. Until I see evidence that a warmer globe, nay, a perpetually warmer world, is bad, why worry? Seems to me warm is better that cold, and judging by the extent of prior ice sheets into the northern hemisphere, we're going to gain land, especially arable land with a warmer world. Sea levels will rise and people will have to keep migrating inland, but I dont see why we cant reduce that problem by pumping water into purifying plants. It'll have to be done on a large scale of course, but we need to get that water inland to all those farms created by a warmer world anyway. Sure beats a mile high ice sheet from NYC to Seattle, and an even longer one covering much of northern Eurasia.

Anyway, the ice advances are tied to orbital cycles and astronomers have identified a ~100,000 cycle for ice ages and they have identified an inter-glacial period 400,000 that lasted for 28,000 years matching up nicely with our current orbital status. If they're right we should see another 14,000 years or so of warmer weather before the orbital charcteristics of the planet start favoring an ice age. We'll be lucky if we can moderate the severity of the next ice age by artificially warming the world with our pollution.

[Berzerker]

chegitz

In order for the moon to be much closer then, it had to exist, ergo, you wrote that the moon existed when Earth got hit. See, this is where you keep getting in to trouble. You write one thing. People call you on it. Then you start arguing that you never wrote that in the first place and that we're wrong for calling you on it. You're even going to argue that you didn't write what I just quoted.

I dont want to bother going to the last page for the full quote, but you cut the sentence off in which I mention the moon. But there's enough in what you did quote.

4 billion years ago after the "Earth" got smacked by an object almost large enough to destroy the planet. Because the collision was a glancing blow the Earth started spinning faster with a tilt (seasons), too fast for life to get far. The moon was much closer then

I was giving a brief chronology of earth history and life, "too fast for life to get far" precedes "the moon was much closer then", ergo life did exist but could not get far. In the sentence you cut off in that quote I go on to explain why the moon helped inhibit the expansion of life. So yeah, I didn't write the Moon existed before the collision...

[Berzerker]

Another documentary explained why life as we know it took so long to evolve when life began almost 4 billion years ago after the "Earth" got smacked by an object almost large enough to destroy the planet. Because the collision was a glancing blow the Earth started spinning faster with a tilt (seasons), too fast for life to get far. The moon was much closer then and the tides were enormous, seismic activity would have been far worse, and the winds were far too strong for life to get a foothold on land. By a 1/2 billion years ago the Earth had slowed enough and the moon drifted away to allow for the development of animal life and conquest of the land.

damn che, after re-reading that how in the hell did you conclude I was saying the moon existed before the collision? The whole paragraph is about life appearing soon after the collision and why life was stalled from taking to the land, not what existed before the collision. You're making nasty accusations based on that? F U

[Dinner]

What's causing the decline in sulfates? Is it less human pollution or is there a natural cause?

[Odin]

Originally posted by Oerdin
What's causing the decline in sulfates? Is it less human pollution or is there a natural cause?

You're interpreting the chart wrong, sulfates are the cause of global dimming and therfore have a cooling effect, the sulfate's downward trend means there is MORE sulfate and therfore more cooling. There seems to have been a drop in sulfate levels because of reduced industrial output during the Great Depression, then sulfate levels began to increase rapidly during WW2 and the post-war boom and then leveled out in the '80s. Volcanic eruptions also seem to increase sulfate levels (which makes sense).

[Eli]

What's the predictive value of the "modeled" line? It correlates quite impressively with the real results, but I'd bet that the model was devised after looking on the results, not before.

[Odin]

Originally posted by Eli
What's the predictive value of the "modeled" line? It correlates quite impressively with the real results, but I'd bet that the model was devised after looking on the results, not before.

The "Modeled' line is to check to see if theory matches reality. The data about solar activity, volcanic eruptions, pollution (troposheric ozone and sulfate), and greenhous gases are fed into the climate computer model and the results came close to the real temperature record, which means the model is reasonable accurate.

[Odin]

Here's an nice chart I found showing the temperature trends of the last 1800 years:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/mann2003b/mann2003b.html

Why the hell is the southern hemisphere way more variable then the northern hemisphere? El Nino?

[Kuciwalker]

That chart doesn't really help your cause very much.

[Odin]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
That chart doesn't really help your cause very much.

/me points to the last 100 years of the graph...

Anyone who thinks the warming in the last 100 years is in any way all or mostly natural is kidding themselves.

[Drake Tungsten]

A chart showing temperature changes over the last 100,000 years would be a lot more useful...