That’s exactly my point … we know everything effects everything else, but we don’t know to what degree … and I would add to your list of feedbacks the ones yet to be discovered … taken as a whole, the hysteria has no basis, these projections of catastrophe so common in the news are unwarranted seeing how little we actual know … it’s fake news and because we like hearing it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight it …
Absolute humidity has come up a few times here in this thread, so if you’ll excuse a slight hijack … how this increases cloudiness is a simple application of the conservation of mass, and this wold be a negative feedback … most of the extra water vapor at the surface will become ice crystals at altitude, with it’s 0.9 albedo … I’m curious why anyone would think this wouldn’t happen … the only thing I can think of is much much higher temperature aloft and I don’t think I’ve ever seen that as a proposed effect of global warming …
Back to the subject at hand … it’s interesting to discuss the other causes of global warming and how one factor effects another … but at the end of the day we can only control the CO[sub]2[/sub] we emit … and fixing that problem fixes a bunch more … there’s some really great reasons to cut back our burning of fossil fuels, the atmosphere isn’t the only thing we’re using as a sewer …
There is a non-zero probability the solar constant will change … then all our calculations are out the window anyway … just saying …
Just saying here that claiming that the “hysteria has no basis” is wrong anyhow. (nor it is hysteria, in reality you are showing that you are relying here on the deniers talking points by implying that sensible warnings that the scientists are telling us are the same as misguided alarmist popular press articles)
When we consider that you yourself mentioned how warm in the deep past the earth was warmer, the overweening reason behind why it was warmer was the accumulation of global warming gases that also caused ocean acidification. (causing global extinctions, but never mind that huh?)
Point being that while we can discuss about how in the current time feedbacks can affect the rate of warming, the sad reality is that paleoclimate already showed what is the end result of increasing CO2 and other warming gases into the atmosphere. So drop that “no basis” silly point.
What may be “common in the news” is not relevant here. What is relevant is scientific evidence and consensus. Many of your comments suggest you are poorly informed about such evidence with regard to the major issues of climate change.
You need to stop making these nonsensical “simple” conclusions that are just flat-out wrong. This is the second time you’ve done that in this thread, the first being when you declared the relationship between CO2 concentrations and temperature to be “simple”, whereas in fact it’s probably the single most complex and important problem in all of climate science.
As the IPCC concludes in the AR5 WG1 report (bolding mine): “Different climate models produce different projections of how clouds will change in a warmer climate. Based on all available evidence, it seems likely that the net cloud–climate feedback amplifies global warming. If so, the strength of this amplification remains uncertain.”.
There is no a priori reason to believe that global warming will result in increased cloud formation. Indeed, the climate skeptic Richard Lindzen once proposed a theory he called the “iris effect” whereby warming sea surface temperatures would reduce cirrus cloud formation in the tropics, and thereby reduce warming because high-altitude cold clouds (ice clouds) are actually a positive climate feedback (the iris theory was later discredited). So even if increased absolute humidity led to more ice clouds as you claim, it would lead to an increase in warming because it’s a positive and not a negative feedback as you claim. Such clouds have minimal effect on solar insolation but larger effects on blocking outgoing LW radiation.
There is some evidence that GHG-induced global warming will actually decrease, not increase, low and mid-level clouds which produce negative feedback, and there is also strong evidence that global warming is driving up the altitude of thin cirrus ice clouds, which would tend to create positive feedbacks.
So basically (a) the effect of GHG warming on cloud formation is very complex and not even remotely “simple”, and (b) the claims you’ve made are exactly backwards.
We’re in the process of switching over to natural gas because of an abundance of it and price. We’re also close to switching over to electric cars because they’re close to replacing ice cars. If by some miracle the electrical grid keeps pace with things we are going to reduce co2 without any outside interference.
wolfpup has already said very eloquently much of what I was thinking of saying. I’ll only add a few points:
(1) Just to amplify what he said about Lindzen: Lindzen is not only an AGW skeptic, but probably the most notable and accomplished atmospheric scientist in the skeptic camp. And, the fact is that not only did he not think what you described wouldn’t happen, he thought exactly the opposite would happen (for high-altitude clouds in the tropics).
(2) Yes, it is expected that there will be warming aloft (at least through the troposphere; there is expected to be cooling in the stratosphere). In fact, studies (such as this one) have found that the prediction of climate models is that in the upper troposphere the increase in absolute humidity and temperature would be such that RELATIVE humidity would, in the global average, remain approximately constant (although it’s not predicted to remain constant everywhere, with some places of increase and some of decrease).
We know with absolute, 100% certainty that climate change is sufficient to cause calamity, because it already has. Millions of deaths have already been caused by climate change, and more will be in the future. What we do now will determine how many more it will be, and so we have a responsibility to make good choices now.
Thank you for this answer … your cite only claims a doubling of water vapor aloft, that not very much mass compared to a 20% increase at the surface … but then again we won’t see 3ºC temperature increase at the surface since so much of the average increase will be aloft …
If you’ll excuse another silly question … for the same amount of cloudiness, wouldn’t we see the same amount of precipitation? …
The Sahel … cut down the trees and the rains stop … replant the trees and the rains return … my citation in post #7 only addressed the carbon load added to the atmosphere from deforestation … there’s also transpiration that adds water vapor load which condenses back into more rain …
It is estimated to be 10,800 F which is hotter than the surface of the Sun, and scientists are not exactly sure why. They believe it is combination of heat from when the Earth first formed, frictional heat, and the decay of radioactive material. Temperatures in the Earth’s crust can be as high as 1800 F. The deepest anyone has ever drilled into the Earth is 7.5 miles while the distance to the core is 4000.
How much does it affect Earth’s climate? I don’t know, but I think it should be considered.
It’d be really nice if you didn’t tell other posters what they can and cannot post. Refute the post, certainly. But the other gets to a line I don’t think we want to cross.
Huh. How big is that compared to the atmospheric energy imbalance? Same order of magnitude, but any effect on global warming would have to come from it’s variability, which can’t be very high.
Czarcasm nailed that one, but for a better explanation one should go to Skeptical Science to see if that chestnut was not used and explained before… And it was, it is right now myth #195 in their list: “Underground temperatures control climate” uh, no, “The amount of heat energy coming out of the Earth is too small to even be worth considering.”
Evidence and citations in the link.
One should go always to the myths explained at Skeptical Science to avoid the erroneous arguments coming from certifiable dubious sources, this item was put forward earlier than 2011 and replied to then.
I do not believe this to be settled science like peak oil which was debunked. I believe in being open minded to all possibilities that may cause climate change. Recently, they recalculauted the Earth’s core to be much hotter than previously estimated, and I also read that there may be a massive deposit of water inside the Earth greater than all the oceans combined. There is much to learn.
Aaaand, no cite about how that increases the heath coming to the surface, the answer is simple: it does not, it just only showed that the internal heath is higher than calculated before thanks to new improvements in X-ray techniques.
IOW you needed a cite to show that the heat detected coming to the surface did change, that was not it.
Indeed, please check good sources. There is even less of a reason to bring that up when the issue is about how much heath is coming out from inside the earth. Or to be more specific: some sources spin things like that as if it discredited what scientists are doing. Not really, the heath coming from inside the earth has been measured before and continues to be, the items inside the earth do affect the heath that finally reaches the surface of the earth, but until there is a measured significant change on the temperature **reaching the surface **what is inside is not really important for the current increase of heath in our atmosphere.
Peak oil was not debunked. In fact, peak oil is such a simple mathematical concept that it’s hard to see how it even could be debunked. Estimates of when peak oil will be reached, or under what circumstances, might turn out to be incorrect, but it’s absolutely 100% guaranteed to happen eventually, and it’s even possible that it’s already happened.
The total heat flux from the interior of the Earth to it’s surface is about 0.09 W/m^2. This is to be compared to the solar heat flux that averages about 240 W/m^2…and the radiative forcing due to a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere, which is about 4 W/m^2.
So, the heat flux from the interior (let alone any changes in this flux, as Chronos noted) are significantly smaller than the effect of the anthropogenic increases in greenhouse gases.
The main thing is the Earth’s interior got all the energy she will ever have back 4.7 billions years ago … as recently as 1 billion years ago there wasn’t enough energy output to keep the oceans from freezing over, possibly even at the equator, ye ol’ snow-ball Earth theory … and that this energy release is constant, at least in as measured in 100 million year intervals …