coreview2

That is just another dodge to the point made.

Read slowly for comprehension. No I'm saying that the claim that the New Ice Age scare can not be dismissed as non-existent because some who prefer to cover it up and pretend it didn't exist saying it was just due to an article in Newsweek. It was first rooted in new findings in paleoclimate history and then passed on to anyone who studied planetary history and found its way into popular media, scifi and even Hollywood. The left was fond of the concept. Even Robert Altman made a bad movie about it. (Can you guess what that movie was without resorting to Google?)

They also said the perceived cooling was man made a long with a great deal more. However, the point is, of which those examples were but a couple of the crisis junkie set, that there was in deed quite a lot of concern for a new ice age among those cognizant of such things and it wasn't centered on an article in Newsweek. The growing field of paleoclimatology was the main contributor, but the usual suspects had their fun too.

It's not so much an "assertion" as a matter of personal experience since I wasn't born yesterday and am not dependent on second hand reports like the absurd contention that the fear of a new ice age was derived from an article in Newsweek. The paleoclimate cycle of ice ages was well know and the modern art of dating proxies and ice cores was developing rapidly feeding a lot of speculation as to when the next ice age would come. It doesn't take Newsweek to help one notice that the cycle of ice ages and interglacial warmings is rather repetitive. Of course in the 1960's and '70's there weren't a 1000 TV stations and many thousands of Internet sites devoted to the topic since there were few stations and no World Wide Web as we know it today so attention was more limited to the scientifically curious, scifi and of course the crisis junkies every generation produces. "There is a finite possibility that a serious worldwide cooling could befall the Earth within the next 100 years." US National Academy of Sciences (1970) Stephen H. Schneider (born c. 1945) is Professor of Environmental Biology and Global Change (Professor by Courtesy in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering) at Stanford University, a Co-Director at the Center for Environment Science and Policy of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and a Senior Fellow in the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. He studied the role of greenhouse gases and suspended particulate material on climate as a postdoctoral fellow at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. In 1971 Schneider was second author on a Science paper with S. I. Rasool titled "Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols: Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate" (Science 173, 138–141). This paper used a 1-d radiative climate model to examine the competing effects of cooling from aerosols and warming from CO2. The paper concluded: However, it is projected that man's potential to pollute will increase 6 to 8-fold in the next 50 years. If this increased rate of injection... should raise the present background opacity by a factor of 4, our calculations suggest a decrease in global temperature by as much as 3.5 °C. Such a large decrease in the average temperature of Earth, sustained over a period of few years, is believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age. However, by that time, nuclear power may have largely replaced fossil fuels as a means of energy production. `Ice Age' book of the time - (Ponte, Lowell. "The Cooling", Prentice Hall, N.J., USA, 1976) (with rave testimonial by Schneider) Schneider published a book titled "The Genesis Strategy" in 1976, warning of the coming glaciation. You can still get it on Amazon for $0.75 (used). It was quite the vogue if you were there to see it though it is a bit of an embarrassment to some former advocates. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Hydrogen is certainly not a choice fuel for combustion, but it certainly is efficient in fuel cells. Water vapor does often become rain, but likewise, surface water evaporates and become vapor just as quickly. Anyone who has lived in the semi-tropics or tropics gets to see a lot of this process in the real world. I'm rather fond of then new generation of pebble-bed reactors using ceramic coated pebbles. They are meltdown proof, are much higher efficiency, produce very little waste and have none of the other risks of light water reactors. http://gt-mhr.ga.com/

Lol. I guess you were too young to actually be there and know the context and actual sources. In reality, the paleoclimate history of recurring ice ages revealed in ice cores and other proxies inspired the fears, not some article in Newsweek. The die-off of half of Europe's population in the Little Ice Age played its role in underscoring the reality of the threat an ice age poses. The skepticalscience.com and the UK Guardian's RealClimate.org are being disingenuous, shallow or more than a bit silly in dismissing fears of a potential new ice age as the result of an article in Newsweek. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedI was looking around to see what might explain the fact that CO2 concentration lags temperature in climate history. However, I couldn't find anything that even approached credible information as to why CO2 is not primarily driven by temperature and why it should not be considered a bit player based on real world paleoclimate data. Seems there is a lot of cork-screw logic mixed with very thin speculation to explain it, but most of it just looks like arm waving and smoke blowing.

I'm curious as to where you get "the amount of energy produced in the earths interior is only 44TW?" Everything I've read on the heat of Earth's core seems to be very much speculative.

A lot are, but quite a number intersect with land too, like Iceland. It's also not too hard to drill through water. A few years back a rather underfunded academic group drilled down to magma to explore the academic nature of the geology. While a very large percentage of the crust is within drilling range, a significant amount is within easy drilling range. The 99% of Earth that is above 1000C is a source of energy that dwarfs nuclear, solar, hydro, wave, fossil fuels and wind power. Well, at least until "Mr. Fusion" from BACK TO THE FUTURE becomes reality.

Fusion would be a wonderful thing, especially for space craft. The one concept that is commonly overlooked is Earth's own heat. 99% of our planet is above 1000C and a very large part of that heat is within contemporary drilling range. http://earthquake.usgs.gov/research/structure/crust/crust.php There are vast areas of Earth's crust that are less than 10KM thick. The energy there is pure high grade heat (via a binary system often used in geothermal plants). In this case, it produces no emissions, no pollution, and no waste.

One of the big problems I have with anyone's chart that "loses" the Medieval Warming and much of the magnitude of the Little Ice Age is that there is so much recorded history of these events in all manners of human documentation. Something is fundamentally wrong when an extremely well documented set of historical events in such a wide array of recorded sources gets lost in a fog of numbers. Perhaps we need someone to specialize in paleoclimatology and human recorded history so we don't get lost in the trees.

Since I was in college in the late 1960's, the "strawman" notion looks to me like something you have read from RealClimate.com or something from some other site. Certainly it would be truthful to say that fear of an impending new ice age didn't have the kind of strum and drang that goes on today over "antropogenic global warming," but for those curious and interested a new ice age coming was a concern. Of course there were all those paleoclimate studies coming from ice cores then to feed the presumptions. I still favor the real history of paleoclimate which shows that a great deal of Earth's history has been spent in ice ages over that which people in labs with computer models and imperfect knowledge can cook up. Computer models look like reading tea-leaves to see the future as compared to paleoclimate history itself. I can't help but notice that there have been much hotter times in climate and that they were fecund in life while ice ages brought real death, famine and massive population declines (no drum beating or scary scenarios needed).

The problem I have with this presumption is that water to water vapor to clouds to rain is a continuous cycle. It's not like evaporating molecules have to stand in line and wait for cycle part 5 of another molecule to finish before evaporation starts. That a given H2O molecule is said to stay in the atmosphere an average of 7 days says nothing of significance about overall and constant presence of water vapor. It is the constant effect of overall humidity that matters not a day or week in the life an individual H2O molecule. I've wondered on a real world experience on trips to the desert in New Mexico in contrast to times in Florida about how quickly that very dry arid air gets so cold at night. Certainly CO2 doesn't vanish at night, but it would be interesting to know how much of the day's heat it keeps in relative to Florida with its very frequent days and nights of 90 - 98% relative humidity.

I've followed this hypothesis in some depth for over 20 years now and the New Ice Age before that. Fortunately beyond the political scientists, journalists and crisis junkies, when I dig into the real background papers and studies, I find a lot of very healthy skepticism even among most of those whose field it is and who support the AWG theory. As an old semi-famous rocker once said, "When I was 17 it was so easy to know, but not it is not so easy."

The modeling also ignores that "minor correlation" between warm climate and long growing season. Remember about 4,000 Vikings were farming on Greenland during the Medieval Warm Period. There is a reason that we get fruits and vegetables from Florida and Calif all year 'round rather than Canada. Presuming that plants don't respond to a broader range of warm weather (CO2 or not), is a gross error in presumption.

I said there are a lot of unknowns, presumptions and unknowables within the realm of contemporary knowledge. You seem to think that all the presumptions are based on sound and proven scientific theory. Climate modeling as it exists today is at best a an art form pretending to be a science.

Why does Mars not have much of an atmosphere? Is it because it is 1/3 the size of Earth and with 1/3 the gravity it can keep only heavier gases? I noted that Earth's gravity is not strong enough to keep free hydrogen and helium from floating off into space, but how many gases would Mars lose with so much less gravity? Just curious.

There are many significant dynamics and variables that are simply not known, barely understood, filled in with presumption and theory and then spewed out as simple fact. Scientists are only human and are certainly not of like mind on a thousand thousand points within the picture these computer models try to project. It is time to get beyond the Fossil Fuel Age in any event, and that belief is based on something far more compelling than global warming computer models.

http://gm-volt.com/ A fleet average for normal American drivers is project to come in at about 150 mpg of liquid fuel (plus the 85 cents it takes to charge it for the first 40 miles). With a heavy push towards the new nanotech line of batteries, the initial charge range could top out at 400 miles.

I'm more worried about the intellectual contamination of political science intruding on empirical science while pushing an agenda. Global warming is too often a social movement and not a scientific fact. When climate change is understood as well as a set of simple chemical reactions, I'll believe the results. However, nobody but nobody understands all of the complex interactions that amount to climate and many, many significant variables are merely presumptions and belief so anyone who pretends have faith in the current generation of climate models has a God complex that they didn't earn.

Actually, in this case the sealed bag was filled with hot air and not an open hot air container. Of course, it did expand quite a bit, and I guess it can be looked at as if the expanded air in its entirety was part of the "structure" that displaced .13 of an atmosphere. Ten pounds of air displacing 11.3 pounds of air and it floats no matter how you capture or contain it. The real question is what would it take to make the vacuum version work? Any practical ideas anyone?

I certainly agree that the cause, should it be proven to be CO2, should be addressed, but there are options in the short term that would appear to be viable that our species never before had. These options do give us a little breathing room should CO2 turn into a driver uncharacteristic of its history. I'm all for getting beyond the Fossil Fuel Age as soon as possible for reasons far more concrete than the global warming hypothesis though I think that the only real solution is to find better and cleaner energy sources. As the saying goes: We didn't leave the Stone Age because we ran out of rocks. Now there's a fundamental law of Internet debate if ever there was one!

Actually, since we are talking about fuel for cars, the coming generation of hybrids are going to be primarily electric with a gas powered generator. The GM volt and its competitors will initially deliver 40 miles on battery alone (about 160 hp worth) and a full range of 400 or so miles using the gas powered generator. Between 60 and 70% of American driving is done in trips of less than 40 miles per day which translates into average gas use requiring only about one gallon per 150 miles. The advent of nano-tech batteries is the next step which is projected to greatly increase the battery range. Electric power to charge costs about one cent per mile as fuel (depending on the cost of electricity). The good news for power generating capacity is that most of the normal charging should take place as night during non-peak power generation hours which will ease the need for new power plants.

The atmosphere is still pressing in on the expanded and lighter air is it not? Because we can swim to a depth or 30 or 300 feet it does not mean that the pressure is not there only that our bodies are made mostly of water contained in a sack of skin rendering the water as part of the structure (of course it takes about 10 times the amount of air to fill our lungs at 300 feet). I loved building hot air balloons as a kid!

In that regard, remember that NYC's location was under 4,000 feet of ice a mere 12,000 years ago. Central Park was carved by glaciers. In reality, our species is has a number of means of reversing global warming if the level of C02 does in deed cause things to get too warm. The combination of access to space, the upper atmosphere, world wide communication and organization makes a concerted effort entirely possible. Some things that can be done on short order: 1. painting the world white or at least significant parts of it. 2. seeding the upper atmosphere with heat reflective particles (bio-degradable please). 3. deep space solar shades (maybe a cure for powerful hurricanes too) 4. biological means of reducing CO2 (seeding the oceans with iron for example) 5. ideas, suggestions 6. 7. I worry more about an ice age.

It had to displace about 1.3 pounds of air in order to lift off somewhere around 1/10th of an atmosphere worth given the expanded size, so I'd say yes the hot expanded air was pushing outward and upward at a pressure greater than that of the negative pressure when the sticks broke. I'd guess that the big difference is that the hot air was itself part of the structure. It was a fun project. A real working negative pressure blimp would have great utility in high altitude research. Besides, it would have been a first.

I don't have much faith in the models as they exist now. As far as I can see there are too many unknowns filled in with guesses, presumptions and assumptions. That being said, I think modeling climate is important work for our species future that has been politically contaminated with a lot more hyperbole than hypothesis. The most depressing part of the entire global warming movement is the nature of the non-solutions offered. In reality, the threat of a new ice age is far more frightening because in the real world when the Vikings were farming on Greenland, it was a golden era and time of plenty. When the Little Ice Age came along, half the population of Europe died off. Assessments that don't account for positive benefits are not science, but political manipulations otherwise known as propaganda. My funniest experience with the global warming craze was in the NYTimes a few years back. They had a long article on a young scientist who studied years of satellite maps of the Chesapeake basin and tracked the amount of reflectivity as an indication of sea level rise. His conclusion was global warming caused sea level raise which resulted in a significant increase in reflectivity. The same day there was another report in the NYTimes about the big Nutria rodent population problem in the Chesapeake basin's marsh lands. It seems this species was imported for fur farms but escaped decades ago and the population exploded causing devastation on a wide scale for marsh land because they eat the roots of marsh grasses and plants denuding the environment. To keep things in perspective, it is important to note that NYC was under 4,000 of ice around 12,000 years ago.