Oil and NASA's mission statement change

This discussion has been very fruitful, because it opened me up to Climate change worries. This got me looking around and I came across a set of papers that have got me worried and looking harder. The long pause since the last post has thus been very pregnant.

I'd been assuming, since becoming aware of the CLAW [Charlson, Lovelock, Andreae and Warren, 1987] hypothesis, that this cloud cycle was very robust, but am now finding that it may not be, as you'll find if you too Google on: "earth system" DMS decrease.

Even a small possibility that the CLAW DMS negative feedback system might fail under increasing CO2 levels is very alarming, which some scientists are worried about, because it raises the awesome idea of a Venus-like boiling off of our oceans.

Silvia Kloster¡¯s words in the middle of the last paragraph of the first item (after Googling: "earth system" DMS decrease) are what I find most alarming:

¡° the [DMS] response to global warming is largely driven by changes in the ocean dynamics, such as an enhanced ocean stratification causing a reduction in marine net primary production and a decrease in the DMS production in the ocean. The DMS burden in the atmosphere is reduced by 3% . . . The simulated decrease in the DMS emission and atmospheric DMS concentrations in a warmer climate is in contrast to the proposed negative feedback in the CLAW hypothesis.¡±

Earth's climate is a chaotic system. This means that even though we know a few things about how the outputs (plural) vary with changes to the inputs, this knowledge tells us approxiomately nothing about how the outputs will vary when the inputs drift away from values we are familliar with.

We know that at least part of the problem is caused by increased output from the sum. But even something as simple as "turning the sun down" by putting a bunch of mirrors in orbit and diverting a portion of the incomming energy (being careful to keep the attenuation evenly distributed across the whole planet) might not do what we think it should do. But it is the approach most likely to be controllable, and when our survival is at stake control is a good thing.

In the end it doesn't matter if the climate goes off the graph because of something we did or because of something nature did. The planet will survive, but we won't care. Whomever the culprit is, we can probably fix it if we don't wait too long.

The real problem in climate change is faulty models and arogant guys who think mankind is more of an influence on events than she is. Who ever came up with the idea that CO2 causes the Earth to warm up should get an award for best fiction of the century. And why does anyone believe this?

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Jim</i><br />The real problem in climate change is faulty models and arogant guys who think mankind is more of an influence on events than she is. Who ever came up with the idea that CO2 causes the Earth to warm up should get an award for best fiction of the century. And why does anyone believe this?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Thank you Jim, it seems that you have knowledge about how a Greenhouse really works.
thebobgy

A greenhouse insulates a space from the wind and solar energy is then trapped. But, in the biosphere that can't really happen because wind and water still freely move energy around. Greenhouse Theory is quite another thing since no real forces are involved only the idea and what people make of it. This is a lot like any fiction that captures to imagination of many people and it is a very interesting process. Basically its the old sky is falling idea and it seems to always work on some level. I think a lot of good can come out of it however, if the environment gets cleaned up and better energy and manufacturing systems are developed as a result of pushing the theory.