Greenhouse Warming joins Al Gore's "Pro-Snow" Movement

                                                      Al Gore jogging in Boston, Winter 2015


Al Gore is a hero of the environmental movement---his heart is definitely in the right place.  Unfortunately, Al Gore doesn't always get the facts right about global warming, and sometimes his mis-statements and exaggerations about aspects of global warming make it too easy for for climate change skeptics to ridicule the whole idea of global climate change.

A case in point is Al Gore's "pro-snow" initiative, outlined on his "Climate Reality" website.  The premise of the "pro-snow" idea is that global warming will lead to less snow and warmer winters, so all the folks who enjoy skiing and other winter sports should join Al Gore's "pro-snow" initiative now before its too late.

Al Gore's web site states:  

Ski seasons are getting shorter.  Winters are getting warmer.  And we'll all see fewer powder days unless we stand up to climate disruption.

Its a nice and simple idea, but it just doesn't fit with the facts.  Global Warming does not uniformly turn up the thermostat on the globe.  The snow won't stop falling at every ski areas in the world at the same time.  Global warming does not mean that every winter will be milder and shorter then preceding one.

This year's winter shows how complicated the earth's response to global warming actually is.  The earth is at or very near record warm temperatures this winter, and while the winter was indeed very warm in the Sierra Nevada and the Cascades, with many ski areas hurt badly, the winter was long, cold and snowy in New England, with ski areas there having the most snow and most powder days during their longest season in many years.  In Europe the Alps began the ski season with a very low snowpack  but by the end of the ski season the ski resorts were in pretty good shape, and in Japan the ski resorts had an unusually good snow year, with the snowpack running about 20% higher then last winter.

The big story this winter has been the record snow year in New England.   You could hardly blame the people in Boston and the rest of Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine for rolling their eyes in derision at Al Gore's predictions of less snow and warmer winters and you can hardly blame climate skeptics for seizing on Al Gore's prediction of less snow for a round of mockery.

The harsh winter we've seen this year in New England is due to increases in the sinuosity of the jet stream bringing more cold Arctic air south to meet moisture-rich air from the warmer-then-usual Atlantic Ocean, producing heavy snow.    This is a complex interaction that is actually quite consistent with global warming.  

It would help more people understand the true nature of global warming if Al Gore would use his unique access to the media to introduce people to the idea that climate change is complex and even unpredictable, and less time making oversimplified predictions about global warming that all too often have turned out to be wrong.

50 Million Elvis Fans Can't be Wrong About Global Warming

                                                              50 Million Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong

The "Argumentum ad Populum" (appeal to the people) is the contention that something must be true because lots of other people believe it.    Most people logically know that just because lots of people believe something doesn't make it true, but there is a human tendency to think that if so many people agree on something, then maybe they actually know something about it.

Advertisers often assume that humans are like lemmings----they can be convinced to all buy the same clothes and use the same phones and eat the same things if they think everyone else is doing it.   For instance,  Elvis's "greatest hits" album was marketed on the  basis that since 50 million people have already bought Elvis records, everybody else should just get with the program.  

A new twist on the "Argumentum ad Populum" is the idea that there is "wisdom" in crowds, and the best way to determine what the best thing to do is at any time is find out what the crowd is doing and then do it too.   This variation on the "Argumentum ad Populum" was recently applied to the question of global warming by Forbes magazine.  You might expect that Forbes would've been impressed by the fact that 97% of scientists believe that CO2 pollution of the atmosphere is causing Global Warming, but evidently Forbes believes it is reasonable to ignore the opinions of scientists when it comes to the science of Greenhouse Warming.   

What really impressed the folks at Forbes was the fact that almost 40% of the earth's population lives near the seacoast.  That means about 3 billion people live near the coast, and who in their right mind would live near the coast, reasons Forbes, if there was a risk that global warming would cause sea level rise?  Therefore, because so many people ignore the risk of sea level rise----Forbes contends that it must be true that there is no risk from sea level rise.    

One can only assume that the guy who wrote the opinion piece then put on a jacket insulated with asbestos, got into his Corvair, lit up a cigarette, and after drinking a bottle of whiskey, drove off to the local brothel to have unprotected sex.  After all, lots of people do those things, so they must be totally safe.

  

Greenhouse Warming and Cyclone Pam in Vanatu

                                                                     Heat map of Cyclone Pam (NOAA)

Cyclone Pam just hit Vanuatu. By any measure Cyclone Pam is one of the largest and strongest storms ever seen. A NOAA estimate of atmospheric pressures produced by Cyclone Pam was as low as 879 millibars, a value lower then any Atlantic Hurricane every measured. If the 879 millibar number holds up it would make Cyclone Pam the fifth strongest Cyclone ever seen on Earth.

In theory global warming should produce more intense tropical storms. Warmer conditions should result in more evaporation and greater amounts of water in the storm cloud. The warmer ocean conditions should allow more energy to be transferred to the storm cloud and produce larger and more intense storms with very low atmospheric pressures.

By any measure these conditions are fulfilled now. The year 2014 was the warmest since instrumental records began, and now an El Nino has started in early 2015, warming the waters of the western equatorial Pacific even more. Cyclone Pam is clearly a product of global warming, just as the record global temperatures seen in 2014 are a product of global warming.

One of the ironies of the fact that increasing amounts of CO2 in the air are warming the planet is the CO2 is largely being emitted by people who live large wealthy industrialized nations like China, the US, the nations of the EU, etc., but the impacts of global warming are being felt by poor people who don't drive cars, live simply, grow their own food and catch their own fish, and emit very little carbon but just happen to live in vulnerable places like Vanuatu.   

Green Geoengineering Using Smallpox, Bubonic Plague, The Mongol Hordes, etc.

                                                    Conquerer, Destroyer and Pumper Downer of CO2
                   

The inadvertent introduction of smallpox and other Old World diseases into the New World by the Spanish Conquistadors apparently produced so many deaths among native Americans that populations locally collapsed and agricultural activity dramatically decreased  in some areas.  Native American farming often occurred in small clearings within the forest, and as these clearings became revegetated enough trees grew to pump down global atmospheric CO2 by ca.  seven parts per million by the year 1610, an event that has recently been been named the "Orbis Spike".  The Orbis Spike is defined as something that happened in the year 1610, but when the last 1000 years of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are examined, its clear that the decline in CO2 was not restricted just to the year 1610, but instead was a more prolonged event that began about 1550 and lasted until ca. 1700.   

 Human activities caused two brief episodes of lower CO2 during the last 800 years

A similar short-lived period of decreasing CO2 began about the year 1300 and continued until 1450, which approximates the timing of the Mongol conquest of much of Asia and the introduction of the  Bubonic Plague into Europe and Asia.

Prof. Nate Ruddiman first suggested that the introduction of Old World diseases into the Americas in the 16th century and the spread of the Bubonic Plague across Asia and Europe by the Mongols in the 13th century were responsible for the two small downward excursions in CO2 between the years 1300-1450 and 1550-1700.  If this linkage is valid, then these two events constitute useful tests of the "Green" Geoengineering idea that it is possible to fix the Greenhouse Warming problem by planting trees to pump down CO2 from the atmosphere.  

Prior to the earlier drop in CO2, Genghis Khan conquered much of Asia and easternmost Europe. China reportedly suffered a drastic decline in population during the 13th and 14th centuries. Before the Mongol invasion, Chinese dynasties reportedly had approximately 120 million inhabitants; after the conquest was completed in 1279, the 1300 census reported roughly 60 million people. Historians record the complete destruction of at least 92 Chinese cities and the massacre of all their inhabitants, accounting for loss of ca. 45 million people. The total population of Persia may have dropped from 2,500,000 to 250,000 following the Mongol invasion there. About half the population of Ukraine and Hungary were killed. Similar devastation occurred through the Moslem Caliphate centered in Baghdad, which was sacked and the population massacred in 1258. At the same time as the Mongol invasion, the Bubonic plague spread widely in Asia and Europe, including to areas not invaded by the Mongols. The double whammy of the Mongol invasion and Bubonic plague so decimated the population of Europe and Asia that agricultural work diminished and fields from China to Hungary were abandoned and reoccupied by native forests.  This inadvertent "Green Geoengineering" reduced atmosphere CO2 by about 4-5 ppm.

In the later event, the Spanish conquered and destroyed the Aztec and Inca Empires in the 16th century, and the inadvertent introduction of Old World diseases like smallpox, typhus, measles, influenza, bubonic plague, cholera, malaria, tuberculosis, mumps, yellow fever, and whooping cough produced devastation and mass loss of life across much of the rest of the Americas. While population numbers in the Americas prior to contact with Europe are very poorly known, the population may have been about 50 million, falling to ca. 10 million about 150 years. This hemispheric devastation may've produced a CO2 drop of ca. 7 ppm.

The decreases in atmospheric CO2 of 4-7 ppm seen in these two events should be considered upper limits, as other factors like solar variability and volcanic eruptions are also thought to have influenced atmospheric CO2 content during these episodes. Nonetheless, they constitute useful tests of the effectiveness of the "Green Engineering" concept that planting trees can reduce atmospheric CO2 content. The historical record suggests that even with massive population declines and concomitant hemisphere-wide increases in tree growth, a maximum 4-7 ppm of CO2 reduction is all that can be accomplished by this Green Engineering method.

The Anthropocene started on July 14 at 2 in the afternoon, 1610

                  The Dawning of the Age of the Anthropocene

Several British scientists have published a paper in the journal Nature proposing that the Anthropocene started on July 14 at 2 in the afternoon, in the year 1610.  They suggest that this is the precise moment when humans caused irreversible damage to the earth, and a new geologic age ---named the Anthropocene----got its start.

They picked the year 1610 because Columbus discovered America in 1492.  Another reason for picking the year 1610 was that after the year 1492 new kinds of crops were exchanged between Europe and the Americas.  For instance corn was brought from the Americas to Spain and Portugal in the 1500s.  Tomatoes, Potatoes, Manioc and other foods also came from the Americas to Europe during the 1500s.  Diseases were also exchanged between the old war and the new, with Smallpox being introduced by the Spanish into Hispaniola in 1509, and then to the mainland in Mexico by 1520.  Yellow Fever came from Africa to the Americas, and some evidence suggest syphillis travelled from the Americas to Europe.  Finally, the British scientists claim that 1610 marks the end of the Little Ice Age and the last global cold interval, even though most scientists believe the Little Ice Age actually lasted another 240 years, ending only in 1850. 

Dr. Simon Lewis, one of authors of the report, said

'In a hundred thousand years scientists will look at the environmental record and know something remarkable happened in the second half of the second millennium.  They will be in no doubt that these global changes to Earth were caused by their own species.  Today we can say when those changes began and why."

So apparently we can say with confidence that even though nothing specifically happened on July 14 at 2 in the afternoon in the year 1610, that definitively marks the beginning of the Anthropocene. Absolutely positively. No doubt about it.

Marine Ice Sheet Retreat Rates and the Coulomb Friction Model

                                                        The Coulomb Friction Model Triumphs Again!

In a brilliant new scientific paper, Prof. Victor Tsai of the California Institute of Technology has shown that ice sheets change the way they flow when they enter the sea, making them more susceptible to collapse due to Greenhouse Warming.  

Its long been known that ice sheets are much thicker and steeper on land then they are in coastal areas where the margins off the ice sheet are grounded in the sea.  Nonetheless, glaciologists have tended to assume that the flow mechanisms were similar through the glacier, i.e. the glacier was everywhere sliding across bedrock.  

About 25 years ago a few scientists suggested that in some places  ice sheets were resting on a layers of sediment and glacial till rather than on bedrock,  the rheology of the basal sediments, which can be described using the Coulomb Friction Model, was playing an important role in the flow of the glacier.*   More recently drilling and seismic studies in Antarctica and Greenland have proved that a weak layer of till underlies fast-flowing ice streams and outlet glaciers at the coast.  

Victor Tsai in his paper shows that a transition in the flow mechanism of the Antarctic Ice Sheet occurs near the coast where ice sheets flow into the sea.  Flow of the main part of the ice sheet obeys a power law, but  the  flow of the grounded marine portion of the ice sheets around the margin of the Ice Sheet reflects the presence of sediment under the glacier and is governed by the Coulomb Friction Model rather then by a power law tied solely to ice thickness.    The Coulomb Friction model was developed by Charles-Augustin de Coulomb and first published in 1785.

  Coulomb's model takes the form
:

where

•  is the force of friction exerted by each surface on the other. It is parallel to the surface, in a direction opposite to the net applied force.
•  is the coefficient of friction, which is an empirical property of the contacting materials,
•  is the normal force exerted by each surface on the other, directed perpendicular (normal) to the surface.

The margin of much of the the Antarctic Ice Sheet consists of grounded marine ice sheets that rest on slopes that dip inward toward the center of Antarctica. The implication of Tsai's model is that as calving progresses inward around the margins of the ice sheet, the velocity of calving will increase. This will occur because while is a function of the basal sediment and so is essentially constant, ecomes larger and larger as the calving line moves into the glacier, and the product of becomes greater and greater then , resulting in progressively higher ice velocities and higher calving rates.

Higher calving rates from the Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets mean more rapid global sea level rise. More rapid sea level rise means the dislocation of millions of people living on deltas in India, China and Pakistan will occur sooner then previously thought, and the abandonment of the low lying portions of many great coastal cities of the world---New York, Washington DC, London, Barcelona, San Francisco, and Nome....will come sooner then previously projected.

*I wrote two of the early papers using the Coulomb Friction model derived from the characteristics of basalt till---one paper showed that the southern Laurentide Ice Sheet was very thin in marginal areas because it was flowing across deforming till, and a second showed that the same conditions existed at the northwest margin of the Laurentide Ice Sheet as it flowed across the McKenzie Delta area of Arctic Canada, and I linked the rapid retreat of the NW Laurentide Ice Sheet at the end of the last Ice Age to its low profile. I must confess I am delighted to see these ideas expanded to Antarctica.

Misrepresentation of facts on Geoengineering by Dr. Guy McPherson

                           Dr. McPherson attempts to tar all geoengineering methods with the same brush

Dr. Guy McPherson is a scientific advocate for the Near Term Human Extinction movement (NTHE), a group of people who believe that global warming will soon result in the extinction of humanity.  Part of the belief system of this group is that humans are incapable of taking steps to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere to mitigate global climate change.   The NTHE movement utterly rejects the idea that Geoengineering can help mitigate future climate change because it is inconsistent with their belief that human extinction is imminent.

Dr. Guy McPherson's website includes an interesting document about climate change entitled the Climate Change Summary and Update.  As the name implies, Dr. McPherson frequently updates his document to reflect current scientific research on climate change.  However, as an advocate for the NTHE movement, Dr. McPherson sometimes spins the data and even misrepresents facts about climate change in ways that promote his belief in NTHE.

For instance, in his discussion of Geoengineering in the "Climate Change Summary", Dr. McPherson cites a paper a paper by Kleider and Renner that uses a simple energy balance model to show that one geoengineering proposal that calls for loading the upper atmosphere with aerosols to reduce sunlight and cool the planet would not precisely counterbalance the warming effects of the extra CO2 added to the atmosphere by human combustion of fossil fuels.  So far so good.  But then Dr. McPherson goes on to conclude that 

"geoengineering may succeed in cooling the earth, it would also disrupt precipitation patterns around the world." 

Dr. McPherson here engages in the classic "tar them all with the same brush" ploy.  Yes, problems exist with the proposal to cool the planet by adding aerosols to the upper atmosphere.  But Dr. McPherson wants to pretend that a problem with one geoengineering proposal means that ALL geoengineering proposals share the same flaw.  By lumping all geoengineering proposals together, Dr. McPherson does a disservice to his readers by not accurately reflecting the wide variety of different geoengineering approaches that have been proposed.  In particular, Dr. McPherson hides from his readers the existence of geoengineering methods that would remove CO2 from the atmosphere.   

Dr. McPherson's claim that "geoengineering ...... would disrupt precipitation patterns around the world" is nonsense.  It is the build-up of CO2 in the atmosphere and global warming that is disrupting precipitation patterns around the world.  Major droughts are occurring right now in the western US, Australia, the Middle East and South America, mostly likely BECAUSE of global warming.   Geoengineering concepts that are designed to remove the CO2 from the atmosphere* would REDUCE the current disruption of precipitation patterns around the globe, exactly the opposite of what Dr. McPherson suggests.  

*My CO2 Antarctic Pumpdown Geoengineering Concept is one several the geoengineering concepts designed to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.