[Vision2020] Earth's Energy Out of Balance: NASA at Geophysical Union 2007

Sun Apr 13 16:15:00 PDT 2008

Paul et. al.

Though I could not yet locate the entire presentation of the scientists at
the Dec. 2007 American Geophysical Union on the subject of "Earth's Tipping
Points," I did find this info on the Earth's energy radiation as viewed from
space put into the context of an incoming/outgoing energy imbalance,
so perhaps the very measurments you were inquiring about exist:

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/tipping_points_hiresmulti.html
-------------
However, you offer no references to refute the reliability of NOAA average
annual global temperature data as measured on Earth's surface (land and
ocean), given NOAA's published data on this subject.  If you offered a
credible reference published in a well respected peer reviewed scientific
journal enforcing your doubts, this would be helpful.

Skepticism is a necessary antidote to authoritarianism, and resulting
mindless conformism, involving government, religion and science.  But when
the scientific evidence is compelling that human behavior impacting climate
is placing the future livability of the Earth in danger, contrarian
skepticism can be an impediment to motivating the personal, political,
technological and economic changes needed to address the climate crisis.
And there is an alarming amount of rather poorly researched and reasoned
contrarian skepticism, regarding anthropogenic climate change, being
presented to the public, that is impeding efforts to shift our economy away
from dominant dependence on CO2 emitting fossil fuels.

People can vote with their wallets as well as in the voting booth to
influence action to address climate change; but when the public thinks human
impacts on climate are a highly doubtful propostion, they have less reason
to take the issue seriously.

Even without CO2 pollution causing potentially dangerous climate change (and
even without CO2 induced atmospheric warming, human CO2 emissions are
acidifying the oceans, a serious environmental problem), fossil fuel
depletion and growing global energy demands alone are enough reason to
immediately take radical measures to shift to an alternative energy economy,
to ensure a sustainable economic future and as a national security issue.

Hopefully, the next president and US Congress can take substantive action
to more quickly facilitate the inevitable transition to the new alternative
energy economy.  The energy corporations (even the state controlled oil in
Saudi Arabia, Venezuela et. al.) dominating oil, coal and natural gas
resources and energy delivery have too much money to make, in the short
term, off the existing energy extraction and delivery system, to find an
economic motivation to quickly transition to an alternative energy economy,
given the current USA taxation and government subsidy system, with quarterly
profits dominating stock holder meetings.  We need to start paying now for
the future impacts of carbon emissions, which will promote the roll out of
low carbon emission energy technologies in the marketplace.

It has occured to me that even if the science indicating anthropogenic
climate change is a serious problem eventually is shown to be fundamentally
flawed, that if action to address this problem results in a quicker
transition away from fossil fuels, the scientists warning of a "climate
crisis" will still have done some good, by providing some of the motivation
to implement an alternative energy economy, before fossil fuel depletion
induces an economic crisis of major proportions.

Ted Moffett

On 4/5/08, Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com> wrote:

> How do they come up with an average global temperature, anyway?  Do they
> just sum up all the readings of all the measurements and average them?  Do
> they take into account the relative areas involved?  How do they get so
> precise that they can say whether or not the average global temperature has
> risen by as little as half a degree?
>
> In my ignorance, I would expect that if you had a computer reading all the
> networked weather stations and averaging on the fly that the values would
> fluctuate greatly.  Doesn't each thermometer vary on a minute-to-minute
> basis?  If you doubled the number of measuring sites that currently exists,
> I imagine the numbers would be different, especially if you placed more of
> them on the oceans.
>
> What are we measuring, exactly, anyway?  Air temperature?  Wouldn't it be
> more scientific to measure ground temperature (i.e. the actual temperature
> of the earth)?  What about water temperature in the oceans?
>
> Shouldn't they be trying to get to some kind of measurement of the actual
> energy absorbed by the Earth as a system?  It seems like they  should have
> spacecraft measuring the amount of infrared rays escaping from the Earth,
> and comparing that to what is going in, preferably from far enough away from
> the Earth to get a good single reading.
>
> Measuring the progress of global warming using measurements from weather
> stations seems silly because of the sheer amount of data coming in.  You get
> lost in all the numbers.  Readings like that would go a long way towards
> answering the skeptics (which I'm sure you're lumping me in with).
>
> Paul
>
> Ted Moffett wrote:
>
> > As our recent cooler than normal weather on the Palouse led some local
> > residents to rejoice that indeed anthropogenic global warming is a hoax,
> > let's hope they are correct!  Because down under they have been experiencing
> > a record breaking heat wave, at the beginning of what is their Fall season
> > in March.  Read these temperature data carefully, because this is a way
> > serious heat wave, over a large area, over a period of weeks.  Of course,
> > this does not prove, any more than our local cold weather recently
> > disproved, the theory of long term global warming from human sourced CO2
> > emissions.  It does, however, perhaps put into perspective that it is the
> > global average temperature over decades that reveals or refutes climate
> > change, not local seasonal variations, some of which are predicted to
> > potentially be cooler than in the past, even in a warming global climate.
> >  This March, 2008 heat wave in Australia to some extent cancels out the cool
> > weather locally, and some of the cooler global average temperatures during
> > January and February 2008 (NOAA ranks climatological winter (Dec. Jan. Feb.)
> > 2007-8 as the 16th warmest globally, land and sea combined, since record
> > keeping started in the 1800s), in the yearly global average temperature that
> > will be figured for 2008:
> >  http://www.bom.gov.au/announcements/media_releases/ho/20080320.shtml
> >  http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2008/20080313_coolest.html
> >  Adelaide had 15 consecutive days above 35 °C and 13 consecutive days
> > above 37.8 °C (100°F), breaking the previous records of 8 and 7 days
> > respectively. These represent new records for any Australian capital city.
> > Also breaking consecutive day records were Ceduna which had 12 days over
> > 35°C, Mildura which had 14 days over 35 °C, and Kyancutta which had 13 days
> > over 40°C.
> >
> > In addition to the prolonged heat wave conditions, a number of record
> > high temperatures for March were set, both for daily maximum and overnight
> > minimums.
> >
> > In Tasmania, Hobart reached 37.3 °C on 14 March which matched the record
> > March high temperature from 13 March in 1940. At nearby Campania, the
> > temperature reached 38.0 °C – the highest March temperature ever recorded in
> > Tasmania.
> >
> > In Western Australia, Eyre set a new all-time Australian record for the
> > range of temperatures observed in one day. The overnight minimum of 6.8°C
> > warmed to a maximum of a 44.2°C on 5 March, setting a new record single-day
> > temperature range of 37.4 C.
> >
> > Not only were the days hot, but warm nights also made sleep
> > uncomfortable for many. Records for the hottest March nights were set in
> > both Adelaide (30.2°C overnight on 13/14 March) and Melbourne (26.9°C
> > overnight on 17/18 March.)
> >
> > Mean maximum temperatures for the period 1 – 17 March are running far
> > above average, with some locations in South Australia 12°C or more above
> > their normal March value.
> >
> > -----------------------------------------
> >
> > Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
> >
> >
>
>
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