Climate Feedbacks

Discussion in 'Science' started by yguy, Feb 18, 2018.

  1. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    That's what we do in economics, law enforcement, healthcare policy, and everything else.

    NO public policy is made on some sort of absolute truth. We don't even know AFTER the fact whether we were right. How much did TARP get us? We don't know. etc.

    For some reason, you're just deciding to ask for an entirely different level of understanding.

    But in point of fact, we have results from science on climate that come complete with error bars showing that warming is absolutely happening along with what's causing it.

    Your attempt to mix belief in the the results of science with some concept you have of popular social policy is just plain weird. I don't feel compelled to try to unscramble that. Let's be serious. Nobody in America is interested in an open borders policy. NOBODY!

    If it warms, it takes more water vapor to produce clouds. Climatologists state that warming exacerbates warming - it does not slow warming. One catch is that solar radiation will not be attenuated as much as reflected heat will be attenuated. They aren't the same kind of radiation. Suggesting NOAA and NASA don't know about this is just not true. It's true that this is an area where more study would be good, but there is NO evidence that there is a negative feedback loop that could moderate warming - in fact, it's to the contrary.


    A place we agree is that we don't see much effort going into figuring out what changes could be made to help us live with it.

    We know of specific serious problems. Water is a big one. And, it's a growing problem even if you ignore warming. Today, many nations depend on rivers that come from other countries. Iraq's major rivers are outside Iraq and the water they receive is getting more polluted by fertilizer salts and other materials. It's becoming hard to use. Bangladesh has a major river that comes from China. China has diverted a major tributary from feeding that river so THEY can use the water. It's not totally clear if that is an immediate disaster. Long term, these are going to be of growing importance.

    People say more of the arctic will be arable. But, nobody lives there, and the food problem is one of distribution more than quantity. How many millions of immigrants is Canada going to want from, say, India or Iraq or Bangladesh - where desperately hungry people are trying to cross the wall India built against them.
     
  2. yguy

    yguy Well-Known Member

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    Gee, I wonder why. :roll:

    Dunno how the hell you can talk intelligently about cloud formation without taking about short term temp swings.

    More to the point, by your reckoning, it posits that warming happens from the bottom up.

    Evidently the phrase as you employ it has no great attachment to accuracy. How very...odd.

    Not explicitly, no.

    What I'm saying is precisely what I said.

    :yawn:
     
  3. iamanonman

    iamanonman Well-Known Member

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    We can talk about it you want. Let me reiterate my point. It's not just WV that is increasing. The temperature increases too. I'm talking about the global mean WV mixing ratio and the global mean temperature averaged over long periods of time. Under that regime you wouldn't expect more or less clouds unless you have more information to go by. The diurnal temperature change doesn't magically erase the decades of warming every night as if someone is pressing a big reset button. In fact, most of the warming is apparent during the night. So can you clarify your comment "Sure, until it comes down within 24 hours" in that context?

    AGW posits that the troposphere will warm and the stratosphere will cool. Observations confirm this prediction. I'm okay with people saying the atmosphere will warm bottom up as long as they are using the statement to describe the steepening the vertical temperature profile. Of course, when you say "bottom-up" some people may think (incorrectly) that "up" also warms which is neither a prediction of AGW nor an observation.
     
    Last edited: Feb 23, 2018
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  4. iamanonman

    iamanonman Well-Known Member

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    Another interesting feedback that clearly wasn't handled perfectly by models is that of albedo. As more sea ice melts in the Arctic the more the temperature of the ocean and air will increase which reinforces more melting. Models have underestimated the ice melt rates. If these melt rates continue then the 2050 consensus on the first ice free Arctic year are going to be way off.
     
    Last edited: Feb 23, 2018
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  5. yguy

    yguy Well-Known Member

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    :roll:

    I take it to mean the average lapse rate increases, so that the temp increase at sea level, where the overwhelming majority of WV is generated, is greater than that at higher altitudes where clouds form.
     
  6. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    I'l limit to the last there, as at least that isn't laced with innuendo and ridiculous supposition.

    The catch with your "real problem" is, that warming means more water vapor. Scientists say the result is that arriving radiation from the sun is impeded less than is earth's radiation of heat to space.

    In other words, you got it backwards.
     
  7. yguy

    yguy Well-Known Member

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    So what am I, the first guy on the planet to think of this possibility?
     
  8. GrayMan

    GrayMan Well-Known Member

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    It isnt just water vapor but also other interactions needed to form clouds.
     
  9. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    As I remember, lapse rate for saturated air is actually slower than for dry air, because any condensation that occurs along the way up releases heat, keeping the air mass warmer.

    My assumption has been that in the end, warm air holds more water vapor and the lapse rate is slower. That is, for every 1,000 feet of altitude the air cools less than if it were dry. I don't know what happens at the higher altitudes, as my info is somewhat limited to flight training.
     
  10. yguy

    yguy Well-Known Member

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    I think most of us are aware of that, thanks anyway.

    Lapse rate doesn't include a time element, so let's not confuse the issue with sloppy diction.

    And from that you deduce what, exactly, that's relevant to what you quoted?

    Sure you do: neglecting the occasional inversion here and there, the higher that parcel of moist air gets, the more likely the WV is to condense and contribute to cloud formation.
     
  11. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    Lapse rate is expressed as a rate of change.

    The rate (as expressed as degrees of temperature per 1,000' of altitude for example) is slower with moist air.
     
  12. yguy

    yguy Well-Known Member

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    You don't say. :roll:

    No it isn't, because time doesn't have a damn thing to do with it.
     
  13. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    "Lower lapse rate" is probably more correct than "slower lapse rate".

    As a pilot I need to stay away from the dew point in moist air at altitude. Private pilots in light aircraft die trying to get enough temperature-dew point spread by thinking they can produce enough vertical speed to outclimb the lapse rate during the time of ability to climb.

    One is thinking about lapse rate in terms of degrees per minute at a particular climb rate.
     
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  14. Bowerbird

    Bowerbird Well-Known Member

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    WTF??

    I love people who make statements like this without researching BASIC information
     
  15. One Mind

    One Mind Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    SO, steer me to the evidence of a call for worldwide land management to add flora. Steer me to how the world rallied to stop rain forest deforestation. If you cannot do that, your snide attitude is unwelcome. We used to have public service announcements from smokey the bear, and do not litter advertisements. When is the last time you saw an advertisement to fight climate change by planting a tree?

    I have seen nothing. So the media seem to be crickets. Silence is golden. All that I see from the media is ridiculing man made climate change deniers.

    I parroted why Dyson said. And he is right. We do not know if there will be more postives than negatives, and anyone who says he does know is a damned liar.
     

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