Thursday, December 15, 2011


1. Bringing Global Warming into a Lab


Imagine a basin containing four liters of water at zero deg C, in which a block of ice having a mass of 1 Kg is floating. Let’s light a fire under the basin and assume that water in the basin is absorbing heat at the rate of 2000 calories / minute. The process is assumed to be adiabatic so that we don’t have to deal with the slippery nature of heat, and we also assume that heat is transferred instantaneously to the water and ice (to make calculations simpler).

It so happens, that just before the start of our experiment, two Lilliputians friends (of Gulliver’s travel fame), one a global warming believer and another a sceptic take a wager regarding warming of the water; the sceptic offers to spend a night on the ice and measure the temperature of the water and prove that no warming is taking place. The global warming believer rows the sceptic to the ice block, leaves him there and rows back.


After measuring the temperature for fifteen minutes, where the thermometer refuses to nudge beyond the zero degree C reading, the sceptic curses the global warming crowd and falls asleep in his thermal sleeping bag. He is rudely awakened twenty minutes after he fell asleep to find that he is soaking wet and that the ice has practically disappeared. He starts the long swim to the shore and is saved from hypothermia by the gradually warming water; by the time he gets out of the water however he is badly scalded by the hot water – however happy to be alive. What happened?
Our lab thermometer shows that the temperature of the water increased as follows: (Time in minutes – Temp in degree C) 1-0, 5-0, 10-0, 30-0, 40-0, … 50-4, 60-8, 70-12, 90-20, 110-28, 130-36, 150-44, 170-52.

(Moral of the story: in such matters we cannot go by temperature readings alone )



The strongest proof that global warming is taking place is the disappearance of ice cover over the Arctic Ocean; since this fact is not in disputed, it is better that we concentrates on this issue. The laborious tabulation of temperatures worldwide to obtain global mean temperatures is important for scientific research, but not the most important proof of global warming.
from Pakistan: Kaghan loses four glaciers in twenty years:


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(2) Assessing Risk



Is the global warming scare the greatest delusion in history?

To grasp the almost suicidal state of unreality our Government has been driven into by the obsession with global warming, it is necessary to put together the two sides to an overall picture – each vividly highlighted by events of recent days.
On one hand there is the utterly lamentable state of the science which underpins it all, illuminated yet again by “Climategate 2.0”, the latest release of emails between the leading scientists who for years have been at the heart of the warming scare (which I return to below). On the other hand, we see the damage done by the political consequences of this scare, which will directly impinge, in various ways, on all our lives.

Global warming may not be as severe as predicted


The authors of the National Science Foundation-funded study say there's no doubt that globalwarming is real, and that increases in atmospheric CO2 will have multiple serious impacts.
However, their data suggests that a doubling of CO2 wouldn't increase the rate of global warming by as much as the worst estimates of some previous studies – or even than projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report in 2007.

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Should we accept the above write ups at face value? How good are we at risk assessment? What metrics must the public evolve to make an independent assessment of risk, free from the bias of interested parties?

1) First, how much credibility do our scientists, engineers, leaders and the media have?
It is good to keep in mind that even as the above actors were making themselves hoarse trying to convince us that we must cultivate a scientific spirit, they themselves were the main players in:
- - Over populating our planet.
- - Nearly completely destroying the natural environment that supports life.
- - Taking our economy beyond its sustainability limit
In short, these actors have no idea about risk, and it would be unwise to trust them fully.

2) Do our scientists in particular have the ability to assess risks?
- The second paper above says it all. Scientists will confuse one another so that all action gets delayed. Since they are highly dependent on supercomputers, it is not possible for them to visualise anything simple. This paper tries to derive wisdom from a time when a large part of North America was covered in ice. It is puzzling how this model can throw light on a situation when temperature is increasing and there is every possibility of a tipping event taking place, with uncontrolled release of methane and co2 locked in permafrost.

3) So, how should we ordinary folks react to all this creative confusion created by interested parties. After all, our lives will be on the line eventually?
- Let’s keep our mental model simple. I have been trying to understand the problem of ‘posture’, and I have a simple mental model; the x rays in Fig 6 of www.humanposture.com says it all; it provides 80% of the argument, that something is seriously wrong. (It is interesting to note that the Medical profession is still to even acknowledge that a problem exists!)
- Coming to the problem of global warming, we need to simplify our reasoning and not be diverted by each new media report put out by interested parties. My mental model for Global Warming is the melting of ice in the Arctic and the Antarctic….

OTTAWA — The current rate of sea ice loss in the Arctic is a change without precedent for 1,450 years, a paper published on Thursday by Nature concludes.
Scientists from Canada and the United States reconstructed the Arctic sea ice cover back to the year 561 using a variety of factors including ice core samples, tree ring counts and lake sediment analysis and, where available, ice observation records.
The scientists conclude that warmer air temperatures, most likely caused by climate change, are responsible for the decline of the multiyear sea ice at a rate of 8.6 percent a decade and “may soon result in an ice-free Arctic Ocean.” Other periods of Arctic sea ice loss were, by contrast, caused by shifts in the directions of warm ocean currents. The scientists said that both the magnitude and the duration of the current ice melt is without precedent.

- When ice melts, it does so silently, absorbing in the process 80 cal of heat for every gram of ice, even as the temperature remains constant at zero degrees C. Eighty cal is an enormous amount of heat; applied to a gram of water at zero degrees C, it would take the temperature of water to a sizzling 80 degrees. So, this talk of whether the atmosphere is actually heating up or not, and by how much, is misleading. We should be far more worried about the fact that so much ice is melting .
- Please visit my blog: http://warmingofglobe.blogspot.com/

4) Can the nations of the world afford to delay actions to reduce the release of CO2 into the atmosphere?
- The answer is No. In engineering terms, the margin of safety we are working with is too low; in terms of (1) Our ability to properly model the phenomenon of global warming (2) Deploy resources to combat it (with severe constraint on resources looming over the horizon, the more we delay, the less resources we will eventually have to combat the problem – and the more resources we would have wasted on useless activities).

Selvaraj

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Bringing Global Warming into a Lab



Imagine a basin containing four liters of water at zero deg C, in which a block of ice having a mass of 1 Kg is floating. Let’s light a fire under the basin and assume that water in the basin is absorbing heat at the rate of 2000 calories / minute. The process is assumed to be adiabatic so that we don’t have to deal with the slippery nature of heat, and we also assume that heat is transferred instantaneously to the water and ice (to make calculations simpler).

It so happens, that just before the start of our experiment, two Lilliputians friends (of Gulliver’s travel fame), one a global warming believer and another a sceptic take a wager regarding warming of the water; the sceptic offers to spend a night on the ice and measure the temperature of the water and prove that no warming is taking place. The global warming believer rows the sceptic to the ice block, leaves him there and rows back.


After measuring the temperature for fifteen minutes, where the thermometer refuses to nudge beyond the zero degree C reading, the sceptic curses the global warming crowd and falls asleep in his thermal sleeping bag. He is rudely awakened twenty minutes after he fell asleep to find that he is soaking wet and that the ice has practically disappeared. He starts the long swim to the shore and is saved from hypothermia by the gradually warming water; by the time he gets out of the water however he is badly scalded by the hot water – however happy to be alive. What happened?
Our lab thermometer shows that the temperature of the water increased as follows: (Time in minutes – Temp in degree C) 1-0, 5-0, 10-0, 30-0, 40-0, … 50-4, 60-8, 70-12, 90-20, 110-28, 130-36, 150-44, 170-52.

(Moral of the story: in such matters we cannot go by temperature readings alone )


The strongest proof that global warming is taking place is the disappearance of ice cover over the Arctic Ocean; since this fact is not in disputed, it is better that we concentrates on this issue. The laborious tabulation of temperatures worldwide to obtain global mean temperatures is important for scientific research, but not the most important proof of global warming.
from Pakistan: Kaghan loses four glaciers in twenty years:

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FROM THE WEB:

1) The long history of the science of Global Warming.

2) Climate change and the insurance industry.

3) Himalayan meltdown.

4) Time lapse proof of extreme ice loss.


5) Why climate change skeptics remain skeptical


1) The long history of the science of Global Warming ..... 30 Jun 2011

THE science behind the climate change controversy - despite recent hysterical attacks on scientific integrity - is robust, and not particularly recent. And yet, despite the heat (without depth) of the controversy about the proposed carbon tax, politicians on both sides fail to address the scientific evidence for human contribution to climate change. They say ''I believe'' or ''I reject'' without examination or analysis. There has been a spectacular failure to distinguish between genuine expertise and strongly held opinions, and an excessive deference to vested interests.

In 1824, the French mathematician Joseph Fourier anticipated what we came to call ''the greenhouse effect'', arguing that surface heat on Earth was maintained by the atmosphere - otherwise the planet's orbit was too remote from the sun for a temperature that could support life.
In 1859, the Irish physicist John Tyndall identified the role of water vapour, atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) as key factors in maintaining temperature despite their tiny percentage of the total atmosphere.
In 1896, the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius named ''the greenhouse effect'' and calculated the relationship between changes in CO2 levels and atmospheric temperature with astonishing accuracy.
In 1925, the prodigious American statistician Alfred James Lotka (1880-1949) described what we now call ''anthropogenic climate change'', a century after Fourier's work....
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/climate-debate-deserves-more-than-hysteria-fear-and-populism-20110630-1gsuj.html#ixzz1Qlut7jAv


2) Climate change and the insurance industry .... 29 Jun 2011


Warm air holds more water. More evaporation generates more energy, intensifying storms, droughts and floods. Pumping more greenhouse gases into our atmosphere is likely to tweak events such as the La Nina phenomenon, linked to very dry weather in Western Europe, which follows an exceptionally chilly winter, the coldest in Britain for 300 years. The past year has seen weather extremes in Australia (floods), Russia (drought), Latin America (floods), China (drought, and now floods), and New Zealand (floods), to name a few.
"We are getting into very risky territory," says Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The price of doing nothing, she says, could be US$1 trillion a year to mitigate the effects of climate change.
For those in the risk management business, simply denying climate change is not an option. Increasingly, the insurance industry is showing the way forward. It involves tough calls to protect the bottom line: dumping customers with properties on floodplains, or in hurricane-prone areas, while insuring "green" technologies that offer the best chance of slowing warming and protecting investments.

3) Himalayan meltdown ... 28 Jun 2011


When people talk about global warming and its impact on the world, we generally think about rising sea levels - and the threat that may pose to coastal areas or low-lying cities, such as Bangkok.
It depends where you live, of course. People in mountainous areas, such as the Himalayas, face a very different challenge: a higher snowline, plus ice-caps and glaciers melting at a quicker rate than ever before.
Faster-melting glaciers - and bigger glacial lakes with the potential to burst their banks and sweep away any number of villages downstream - are a problem faced by communities in various countries.
This phenomenon is the subject of a fascinating new documentary that's a co-production of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Arrowhead Films.
"Revealed: The Himalayan Meltdown" examines the shrinking glaciers of the Himalayas and the effects they have on the lives of people in five countries - Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India and Nepal.

4) Time lapse proof of extreme ice loss.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjeIpjhAqsM


Most of the time, art and science stare at each other across a gulf of mutual incomprehension. There is great confusion when the two look at each other. Art, of course, looks at the world through the psyche, the emotions - even the unconscious at times - and of course the aesthetic. Science tends to look at the world through the rational, the quantitative - things that can be measured and described - but it gives art a terrific context for [knowledge and] understanding.
In the Extreme Ice Survey, we're dedicated to bringing those two parts of human understanding together, merging art and science to the end of helping us understand nature and humanity's relationship with nature better. Specifically, as a person who's been a professional nature photographer my whole adult life, I am firmly of the belief that photography, video and film have tremendous power to help us understand, and shape the way we think about nature and about ourselves in relationship to nature…

5) Why climate change skeptics remain skeptical
All climate models rely heavily on temperature records from thousands of recording stations around the world; if the stations are inaccurate, they can skew the results. In fact, it was Muller's concern that past climate studies might rely on too much erroneous temperature data that led him to found BEST. Statisticians on his team employed complex error analysis, averaging methods, and clever data filtering to minimize uncertainty in their set of 1.6 billion temperature reports; the team also separately analyzed a subset of the data coming from only the highest quality stations.
Though they ended up finding the same 1 degree C of warming since the 1950s that past climate studies found, they reduced the statistical uncertainty in that result nearly to zero.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57329755/why-climate-change-skeptics-remain-skeptical/
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