Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

Climate models predict that the build up of greenhouse gases should warm the lower layer of the atmosphere, called the troposphere, and cool the layer above it, the stratosphere. Greenhouse gases accumulate in the troposphere where they absorb energy radiated from the Earth and re-emit energy back to the surface. Because the gases trap heat in the lower parts of the atmosphere, the stratosphere cools down. This pattern of warming in the lower atmosphere and cooling in the stratosphere is a hallmark of greenhouse gas warming in global climate models.

These images show temperature trends in two thick layers of the atmosphere as measured by a series of satellite-based instruments between January 1979 and December 2005. The top image shows temperatures in the middle troposphere, centered around 5 kilometers above the surface. The lower image shows temperatures in the lower stratosphere, centered around 18 kilometers above the surface. Oranges and yellows dominate the troposphere image, indicating that the air nearest the Earth's surface warmed during the period. The stratosphere image is dominated by blues and greens, indicating cooling.

Globally, the troposphere warmed, and the stratosphere cooled during this period. Local trends varied. The greatest tropospheric warming was in the Arctic, where warming is amplified as snow and ice melt. The Antarctic, on the other hand, showed no warming, probably because it is surrounded by a large ocean that moderates warming and because snow and ice cover haven't changed as much as they have in the North. The ozone hole over Antarctica may also contribute to the localized cooling because the loss of ozone allows slightly more infrared (heat) energy than usual to escape into space.

In the stratosphere, two warm spots over Antarctica and the Arctic appear to defy the overall cooling trend. These warm spots occur because polar stratospheric temperatures can fluctuate widely. (The poles experience periodic events known as sudden stratospheric warmings, during which the vortex of winds that circles the poles breaks down. When this happens, the stratosphere can warm several tens of degrees Celsius in a few days.) The dramatic temperature fluctuations mask the true cooling trend in this image. The cooling trend in the stratosphere was probably not solely due to greenhouse gas warming at lower altitudes; loss of ozone also cools the stratosphere.

The measurements were taken by Microwave Sounding Units and Advanced Microwave Sounding Units flying on a series of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) weather satellites. The instruments record microwave energy emitted from oxygen molecules in the atmosphere. Warmer molecules release more energy than cooler molecules, so scientists can measure the temperature of the atmosphere by recording the amount of microwave energy being emitted. Early analyses of these measurements showed little or no warming in the troposphere, where models predicted that warming should be occurring. For a time, these measurements caused some people to question the validity of global climate models and greenhouse gas warming. Scientists discovered, however, that the satellites carrying the microwave instruments had drifted in their orbits over time, so that more recent measurements were taken at a different time of day than older measurements. Once scientists accounted for this bias and other differences between the individual instruments, the measurements showed a warming trend in the troposphere, consistent with surface observations of rising global temperature.

Re-analysis of the satellite measurements answered one of the frequently asked questions about global warming: why didn't the early satellite data show warming in the lower layer of the atmosphere? To read more on this topic, see Global Warming Questions & Answers, which addresses this and other common questions about global warming.

Further reading
Global Warming Questions & Answers on the Earth Observatory.
Global Warming, a fact sheet published on the Earth Observatory.
Karl, T. R., Hassol, S. J., Miller, C. D., and Murray, W. L., editors. (2006). Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere: Steps for Understanding and Reconciling Differences. A Report by the Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research, Washington, DC. Accessed June 8, 2007.

Ramaswamy, V., Schwarzkopf, M.D., Randel, W.J., Santer, B.D., Soden, B.J., Stenchikov, G.L. (2006, Feb 24). Anthropogenic and natural influences in the evolution of lower stratospheric cooling. Science, 311, 1138-1141.
Remote Sensing Systems. (2007, June 12). Description of MSU and AMSU Data Products. Accessed July 5, 2007.

NASA image created by Jesse Allen, using data provided courtesy of Remote Sensing Systems

Caption information courtesy Carl Mears, Remote Sensing Systems, and Paul Newman and Joel Susskind NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. [/b]

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Recycling also has environmental impacts associated with it, such as energy use, transportation, etc., that varies with whatever you are recylcing. You have to think in terms of more than one dimension

Mining and harvesting new materials also has environmental impacts, such as energy use, transportation etc. I've seen little compelling evidence that the environmental impact of recycling is generally higher then of collecting new materials; you certainly haven't provided any.

You are arguing off of shoddy logic. It isn't 'always' anything, ever.

Cycloptichorn

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Quote:

Recycling also has environmental impacts associated with it, such as energy use, transportation, etc., that varies with whatever you are recylcing. You have to think in terms of more than one dimension

Mining and harvesting new materials also has environmental impacts, such as energy use, transportation etc. I've seen little compelling evidence that the environmental impact of recycling is generally higher then of collecting new materials; you certainly haven't provided any.

You are arguing off of shoddy logic. It isn't 'always' anything, ever.

Cycloptichorn

I am fully aware of all of your arguments, cyclops, which is beside the point of the question. The task at hand is can you bring yourself to answer "yes" or "no?" Is recycling always more efficient? What is your answer to the simple question? May I respectfully ask you to quit dodging the question.

Professor Lindzen is a dynamical meteorologist with interests in the broad topics of climate, planetary waves, monsoon meteorology, planetary atmospheres, and hydrodynamic instability. His research involves studies of the role of the tropics in mid-latitude weather and global heat transport, the moisture budget and its role in global change, the origins of ice ages, seasonal effects in atmospheric transport, stratospheric waves, and the observational determination of climate sensitivity. He has made major contributions to the development of the current theory for the Hadley Circulation, which dominates the atmospheric transport of heat and momentum from the tropics to higher latitudes, and has advanced the understanding of the role of small scale gravity waves in producing the reversal of global temperature gradients at the mesopause. He pioneered the study of how ozone photochemistry, radiative transfer and dynamics interact with each other. He is currently studying the ways in which unstable eddies determine the pole to equator temperature difference, and the nonlinear equilibration of baroclinic instability and the contribution of such instabilities to global heat transport. He has also been developing a new approach to air-sea interaction in the tropics, and is actively involved in parameterizing the role of cumulus convection in heating and drying the atmosphere. Prof. Lindzen has developed models for the Earth's climate with specific concern for the stability of the ice caps, the sensitivity to increases in CO2, the origin of the 100,000 year cycle in glaciation, and the maintenance of regional variations in climate. In cooperation with colleagues and students, he is developing a sophisticated, but computationally simple, climate model to test whether the proper treatment of cumulus convection will significantly reduce climate sensitivity to the increase of greenhouse gases. Prof. Lindzen is a recipient of the American Meteorological Society's Meisinger, and Charney Awards, and American Geophysical Union's Macelwane Medal. He is a corresponding member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences Committee on Human Rights, a member of the U.S. National Research Council Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a consultant to the Global Modeling and Simulation Group at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and a Distinguished Visiting Scientist at California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. (Ph.D., '64, S.M., '61, A.B., '60, Harvard University) [email protected]

You have to admit that okie has a point.

old europe wrote:

High Seas wrote:

Walter Hinteler wrote:

The favourite resource of many here, the highly paid consultant for the energy industry, MIT-professor of atmospheric science, Richard Lindzen is [
"[......................]
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune

Nonsense - at best.
Checking a source more reliable than the foregoing:

Quote:

Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research has always been funded exclusively by the U.S. government. He receives no funding from any energy companies.

© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17997788/site/newsweek/

So? You realize that he can be a highly paid consultant for the energy industry, while never receiving any research funding from energy companies?

Old Europe - are you at liberty to disclose the jurisdiction which awarded your LL.D.?

Not a single one in "Old Europe" will fail to construe the deliberate insertion of words in a text which is subsequently presented as a verbatim quote from the original as fraud.

Dr Lindzen himself, his research is publicly funded, but Dr Lindzen makes, as he told me, $2,500 a day consulting with fossil fuel interests, and that includes his consulting with OPEC, his consulting with the Australian coal industry, his consulting with the US coal industry and so forth.

Iron, for example, is tough to recycle - it's a lot easier to make more than to de-rust and re-forge the old stuff.

The point of my question is extremely important, and that is to try to find people that are capable of analyzing issues based on the realities of various factors as pertains to economic efficiencies rather than simply forming beliefs based on emotion.

Avatar ADV wrote:

Iron, for example, is tough to recycle - it's a lot easier to make more than to de-rust and re-forge the old stuff.

Uh, nothing could be farther from the truth. You simply melt it, skim off the slag, and pour... If you are talking steel, rather than iron, the process is more involved but still at least as efficient to recycle the old as to mine and process ore... I used to recycle 100 TONS of iron a day. Too bad the USA and the EPA decided it would be better for Americans to flip burgers than to "flip" scrap iron.

Quote:

The point of my question is extremely important, and that is to try to find people that are capable of analyzing issues based on the realities of various factors as pertains to economic efficiencies rather than simply forming beliefs based on emotion.

Okie, stop being silly. You knew what my answer to your unfair question was long ago.

I'll make you a deal - I'll answer any question you like, if you answer this simple yes or no question for me first: Have you stopped beating your wife?

Cycloptichorn

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Quote:

The point of my question is extremely important, and that is to try to find people that are capable of analyzing issues based on the realities of various factors as pertains to economic efficiencies rather than simply forming beliefs based on emotion.

Okie, stop being silly. You knew what my answer to your unfair question was long ago.

I'll make you a deal - I'll answer any question you like, if you answer this simple yes or no question for me first: Have you stopped beating your wife?

Cycloptichorn

Whos being silly? Your question implies I have been beating my wife. My question implies nothing except what is in the question which asked whether we can always assume recycling is more efficient regardless of what is to be recycled. My question is no more ambiguous than if I asked you if gasoline is the most efficient fuel in all applications, yes or no. I find it preposterous that anyone could find simple technical questions so difficult.

cjhsa wrote:

Avatar ADV wrote:

Iron, for example, is tough to recycle - it's a lot easier to make more than to de-rust and re-forge the old stuff.

Uh, nothing could be farther from the truth. You simply melt it, skim off the slag, and pour... If you are talking steel, rather than iron, the process is more involved but still at least as efficient to recycle the old as to mine and process ore... I used to recycle 100 TONS of iron a day. Too bad the USA and the EPA decided it would be better for Americans to flip burgers than to "flip" scrap iron.

I can't think of a recyclable metal that would be less efficient then mining ore. You have to mine thousands of tons of rock to extract the metal, that has to be less efficient or at the very least as efficient as recycling. And obviously recycling has the added benefit of reducing landfill.

"De-rust" iron....funny stuff Avatar.

To explain something that should be totally obvious here, and I fail to understand why some very simple principles are not obvious to you guys, if it takes 2 gallons of fuel to recycle a product, as compared to one gallon of fuel to manufacture something from scratch, then can we assume we need to balance the benefit of conserving the material vs the fuel, and balance the rarity of each?

okie wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Quote:

The point of my question is extremely important, and that is to try to find people that are capable of analyzing issues based on the realities of various factors as pertains to economic efficiencies rather than simply forming beliefs based on emotion.

Okie, stop being silly. You knew what my answer to your unfair question was long ago.

I'll make you a deal - I'll answer any question you like, if you answer this simple yes or no question for me first: Have you stopped beating your wife?

Cycloptichorn

Whos being silly? Your question implies I have been beating my wife. My question implies nothing except what is in the question which asked whether we can always assume recycling is more efficient regardless of what is to be recycled. My question is no more ambiguous than if I asked you if gasoline is the most efficient fuel in all applications, yes or no. I find it preposterous that anyone could find simple technical questions so difficult.

It's a simple question, but it's an unfair one and a strawman, as nothing is ever 'always,' as I said earlier. It isn't always more efficient to recycle then it is to grab new stuff out of the ground. But in the overwhelming number of cases it is more efficient to do so for exactly the reasons I have outlined earlier.

I posted the other question as an example of what it's like to be asked an unfair question - which is what you've been doing. It's not designed to move the conversation forward, but instead to provide you with a 'gotcha' moment: you will say 'well at least I got you to admit that it isn't always, and somehow this proves my position.' It doesn't prove your position. It's just an unfair question.

Here's another one for you: is the US always morally correct in its' actions?

Cycloptichorn

I'm not ready to move to your question about the moral correctness, for which the answer is obviously no, but your arguments in the past about recycling always took the arrogant position that it was virtually always more efficient, and you are unwilling to even look at the issues beyond an emotional belief that you have.

Now that the answer is established as "no," my next question, which will totally flummox you, is if the efficiency is an open question for each commodity, how do you determine the efficiency and who determines it, cyclops? Do you just take a look at the commodity and make a gut reaction based on some preconceived feel good idea, or just how do you decide this, and who decides it?

I knew where this was headed, and apparently you did too. You would rather put your faith in some politburo or central planning to tell all the rest of us whether something is efficient or not. You are ignoring some very important lessons taught us by history. Not only does central planning fail for economic reasons, but also for environmental reasons.

I fail to see how mining has been so detrimental to us, and in fact without it, we would all be still living in mud huts. Maybe you would prefer that, yes or no?