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

lfalen lfalen at turbonet.com
Tue Apr 15 10:58:49 PDT 2008


Ted
I would agree with your last paragraph
Roger
-----Original message-----
From: "Ted Moffett" starbliss at gmail.com
Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 16:15:00 -0700
To: "Paul Rumelhart" godshatter at yahoo.com
Subject: [Vision2020] Earth's Energy Out of Balance: NASA at GeophysicalUnion 2007

> 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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