I wish to apologize for the tone of my recent remarks on this thread. I was under the assumption that a particular post that I made some time ago was simply being ignored and I was irritated that the same issues were brought up over and over again with no acknowledgement of what I had written.

I just went through the thread and I couldn't find the post, although I know I made it. From time to time this site seizes up and posts I make never appear. It's probably happened a dozen times or so over the years and I suspect that it happened to my post.

Being now aware that nobody (e.g. Semo) could never have seen my post. I now can see that I must have been coming across as a loon, making references to a non existant post about vents. So I have constructed a post here than say what I had already thought I said.
*************************************
From Savage Earth

In a single year, earthquakes alone release 10^26 ergs of energy, or the energy of 100,000 Hiroshima-sized nuclear bombs. And that is just one percent of the total amount of energy that reaches the surface from Earth's innards.

From this I infer that the Earth generated 10^28 ergs (250,000 megatons) of energy annually.

This energy reaches the Earth’s surface through thermal conduction and radiative heat transfer through the crust and by convection (movement of hot fluids from the Earth’s interior to the surface). The third is most import and represents what most of us think of as volcanism. A lot of this energy is released at the oceanic ridges, where the crust is thinnest. Here I will assume ALL the energy is transmitted by convection and ALL of it comes up through the ridges. That is, 250,000 megatons of energy is released along the 80,000 km of oceanic ridge.

The length of the Gakkel ridge is 1800 km, so I allocate 2.25% (=1800/80000) of the annual total energy of 250,000 megatons to get a value of 5600 megatons annually for volcanic energy potentially available for Arctic warming.

I now apply this energy (from the bottom) to 500,000 square miles of ocean 4000 meters deep to see how much warming this energy will produce. The answer is 0.001 degrees C per year.

Now lets apply a 1 watt/sq meter greenhouse forcing (from the top) to the surface waters (10 m deep) over 500000 square miles of ocean plus the atmosphere above it. The heat capacity of the atmosphere is quite small, equivalent to a 2.6 meter depth of seawater. Thus, the thermal mass being warmed by the forcing is equivalent to a 12.6 m depth of water.

The amount of warming produced by this forcing is 0.6 degrees C per year, 600 times greater than the volcanic warming.

In other words, energy coming from the Earth’s interior exerts an impact 600 times smaller than greenhouse forcings. And this assumes all of the Earth's energy gets delivered out through the ridges, which is not the case. In other words I give every break to the idea that volcanic heat could play a signficant role in melting ice. It cannot.

The reason for this is because of where the energy is applied. The volcanic energy is applied at the bottom of the ocean. To have an effect on surface ice, it has to warm up an enormous mass of seawater having a very large heat capacity. Climate forcings like the greenhouse effect or aerosols are applied to the top of the ocean. The only thing between these forcings and and the surface is a rather tenuous atmosphere, which holds as much energy as 2.6 meter depth of ocean. The thermal inertia provided by the ocean is some 1500 times bigger than that provided by the atmosphere.

The SAME energy applied as a forcing is 1500 times more effective at warming the surface (or melting surface ice). This simply follows from the unalterable fact that the ocean is deep. You cannot get around the deep ocean compared to the shallow atmosphere. Volcanic phenomenon at the bottom of the ocean cannot have much effect on the surface, unless the amount of energy released is really really large, so large as to overcome the enormous thermal inertia of all that water.

But it so happens that there is a mechanism through which this energy can be saved up and then released all at once--a volcanic eruption. So while it is true that the ongoing thermal effects of volcanism at the bottom of the ocean are some 600 times weaker than the forcing effects at the ocean's surface, if you stored up the volcanic energy over 3000 years and then released it over a year, the volcanic effect would be five times bigger than the forcing.

Storing up this energy is what a volcano does. Such a volcano would indeed be a big ole volcano as the Rani suggested. And this is the only way volcanic energy could get around the thermal inertia of the ocean to actually affect the melting ice. Such an energy release would be enormous, however. It would kill lots of people. In other words it would have to be noticed. And since it has not been, it hasn't happened.

You cannot simply dismiss the thermal inertia of all that water with a wave of your hand by invoking unknowables. Doing so means one is not serious. But since I actually hadn't posted this, there was no way readers could have known that they were doing this.

(snipped for space considerations)

Originally Posted by Semo '75

That should give you a general idea of the kinds of things that I favor.

I don't know if these suggestions are "politically correct", in the sense that they'll make you less suspicious of my motives or whatever, but there they are. And I don't know if they involve the kind of government involvement that you want, but each of them is achievable in the short-term.

Nobody talks about the things we might do about the problem beyond a few regulations here or some punitive rhetoric there because the debate has been hijacked by apocalypse junkies in love with their fantasies and people who deny that there's any kind of problem at all. This leads to all or nothing formulations which aren't really going to get us anywhere.

I wasn't interested in political correctness, only whether you would be willing and able to give me a direct and honest response.

I got it. Thank you very much. I will consider your ideas carefully.

In the long-term, the bigger problem is really outside of our borders. If it's true that global warming is the result of human activity, then approximately 1/5th of the world managed to screw things up pretty badly. The other 4/5ths (aka "the developing world") is well on its way to exacerbating the problem. And it's going to be really hard for the United States and the West to tell them they can't have what we have because it'll screw up the planet.

It may be that we'll have to share some our green technologies with them, and the hell with things like patents and profits.

Originally Posted by Semo '75

If it's true that global warming is the result of human activity, then approximately 1/5th of the world managed to screw things up pretty badly. The other 4/5ths (aka "the developing world") is well on its way to exacerbating the problem. And it's going to be really hard for the United States and the West to tell them they can't have what we have because it'll screw up the planet.

But why do you think they want to have exactly what we have? Consider, how many developing countries are investing in extensive land-line telephony (like we in the US have) as opposed to cell phones? My understanding is none-- they are going with cell phones instead. In other words, they will never have what we have (land lines and crappy cell phones), and they won't care.

A lot of people focus on the cost of changing to new energy technologies as if it were a bad thing. Cost is seen as a bad thing. Yet consider, how much does a typical household (say your household) spend on IT goods and services a year compared to what a typical household spent 25 years ago?

Today you have PC and other hardware costs, software costs, internet services, support costs etc. Most households 25-30 years ago had little or none of this. Have these added costs been a burden? Compare the 1920 industrial worker who walked from his urban tenement to the factory each day to the 1970 industrial worker who drove from his suburban home to the factory every day. The 1970 worker paid a substantial transportation cost (car payments, insurance, gas, oil, repairs etc) that the 1920 worker did not. Were these costs a burden?

Were they even perceived as costs?

Moving to an alternate energy source is no different. Sure it will impose "costs" just as the development of the automobile and the PC/internet imposed costs, but the economic growth associated with their implementation will more than offset the "cost"--if done correctly.

Originally Posted by The Rani

"If done correctly" ... who gets to decide what this means, us or them?

Done correctly means a big net gain. Done less correctly means a correspondingly smaller net gain or even a net loss. It's the outcome that determines the correctness of the policy.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

I wish to apologize for the tone of my recent remarks on this thread. I was under the assumption that a particular post that I made some time ago was simply being ignored and I was irritated that the same issues were brought up over and over again with no acknowledgement of what I had written.

I just went through the thread and I couldn't find the post, although I know I made it. From time to time this site seizes up and posts I make never appear. It's probably happened a dozen times or so over the years and I suspect that it happened to my post.

I have seen it before Mike, I know Sujatha has too because she participated in the argument. Maybe it's in another thread. She knows exactly what she's doing. Chris, I don't know.

Originally Posted by Zarathustra

Chris, I don't know.

He gave a thoughtful response to my question. If we can get some consensus on the subject of energy usage and reducing C02 emissions, we're already better off.

Originally Posted by The Rani

"If done correctly" ... who gets to decide what this means, us or them?

Let's put it this way: investment creates wealth, income, and jobs. Importing for consumption drains away wealth, reduces income, and causes jobs to disappear.

Let's suppose that we revive the rails, one of the means at the same time easiest and fastest, and least dependent upon technological miracles, to reduce petroleum consumption. More freight goes onto rails and more people abandon cars and airplanes to take reasonably swift rides for moderate distances. Petroleum use goes down, and so do imports. Americans have more of their income staying within the US, and jobs increase. But even during the time of investment, even before the trains have become really efficient and swift means of travel and transport, we get lots of construction jobs. Steel and concrete use increases. So does coal (essential to making steel). Those are of course made in America. Steel workers are among the best-paid industrial workers, not that they don't deserve it (it's dangerous work).

It would make sense to separate passenger and freight rail; it rarely matters that coal or lumber travel at 15 mph, but at that rate one might as well use a horse. Face it -- all those nice roads that we made for cars will be great conduits for horse-drawn vehicles should oil prices compel many Americans to return to horse-powered travel. No, that won't result from mass conversions to the Old Order Amish faith.

That's before we rely upon nuclear power (which will take years to go on line), people put up windmills to supplement their household power use, and solar panels to cut into household heating and water heating.

That's essentially Economics 101, in case you missed it or slept through it.

No country has ever gotten rich by importing necessities and luxuries.

Originally Posted by Zarathustra

Chris, I don't know.

That makes two of us, buddy. I mean, let's face it -- he is a pretty crafty character, after all. Who knows what his secret motivations really are? Who can tell what he'll do next? He says that he never saw Mike's post, but maybe, just maybe, that's part of his grand scheme to confuse everybody so that they're moved to do nothing at all about global warming.

Me? I don't trust him as far as I can throw him

But like they say: "Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer." That's why he and I are so tight.

Originally Posted by The Rani

The article mentioned "hundreds" of volcanoes. What makes you so sure threat they weren't big enough?

There is only so much energy available from the Earth's interior, and a lot of thermal inertia to overcome in the ocean. The later outweighs the former making it impossible for volcanic energy to affect the ice significantly, with the possible exception of a very very large volcano. See earlier post for details.

I had written on this before, but the post didn't go through apparently. This time I know that it has gone through.

I would appreciate an acknowledgment that you have read and understand the post I made that explains how oceanic thermal inertia makes possible geothermal melting an untenable proposition.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Let's put it this way: investment creates wealth, income, and jobs. Importing for consumption drains away wealth, reduces income, and causes jobs to disappear.

(snip)

Face it -- all those nice roads that we made for cars will be great conduits for horse-drawn vehicles should oil prices compel many Americans to return to horse-powered travel. No, that won't result from mass conversions to the Old Order Amish faith.

(snip)

No country has ever gotten rich by importing necessities and luxuries.

A friend of mine pointed out that you can reduce the cost of running your vehicle by keeping it in the garage, but you have to feed and care for the horse whether you're using him or not. Just a thought - and how are prices for horse feed looking these days?

Originally Posted by The Grey Badger

A friend of mine pointed out that you can reduce the cost of running your vehicle by keeping it in the garage, but you have to feed and care for the horse whether you're using him or not. Just a thought - and how are prices for horse feed looking these days?

I don't know. I'm not a horse person.

I'm not so sure that horses remain a good way to travel; their time ended in the 1920s. Horses consume great quantities of food, and one of the reasons for the increase in agricultural productivity in the 20th century was the replacement of horses with tractors. Land once dedicated to hay for horses became available for other crops. Horses could never pull the gigantic farm equipment that we now have, equipment that allows huge economies of scale for planting and harvesting -- equipment that still needs fossil fuels. Human populations grew dramatically in the transition from horses to motor vehicles (including cars and tractors).

Horses are expensive -- but they have their virtues. It's NOT safety; people were thrown under them and trampled all the time; people fell off horses all the time, which likely offset the fewer collisions (horses weren't going to collide into each other). There's an intimacy possible between Man and Horse that one can't develop between Man and Cat or even Man and Dog, and if you have ever noticed the difference between people who have horses and people who don't -- it's huge. One can bring dogs or cats into a household, but not a horse; one must go into the stable to take care of the horse. One can never get any affection from an automobile or an aircraft.

... Peak Oil, if a reality, is going to be a really nasty time -- one that does for people much what tractors and autos did to horses -- especially if political and economic leadership commits even more fully to fossil fuels as could be the temptation (bribery). Any reversion to the horse era is not going to be pretty.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

I would appreciate an acknowledgment that you have read and understand the post I made that explains how oceanic thermal inertia makes possible geothermal melting an untenable proposition.

I couldn't believe that anyone could conclude that undersea volcanoes in the Arctic Ocean could cause melting of the oceanic ice layer. After all, the ice sheets have copious insulation (thousands of meters of water) to separate them from any volcanic eruptions. Water has huge heat capacity (ability to absorb heat without warming appreciably). Shallow-water volcanism might do the trick -- except that the Arctic basin is a geologically stable region. The Pacific Ring of Fire has the Bering Sea as its southern -- not northern border, and Mount McKinley, which isn't even a volcano, is in the closest range of the Pacific Ring of Fire. The Alaska Range has no active volcanoes.

The only way in which Arctic ice could melt is if the air above the Arctic basin is getting warmer. The Greenland ice cap is shrinking, and it is now thermodynamically unstable (that is, it would not re-form under existing circumstances). Global warming portends further melting of at the least the Greenland ice sheet. That is very different from the melting of sea ice (melting of Arctic sea ice itself would not cause any increase in sea level -- but the disappearance of the Greenland ice cap portends major changes in the climates of western Europe and North America. At worst, sudden surges of glacial melt water could disrupt the system of undersea currents that make possible the transmission of warm water across the north Atlantic and ruin agriculture in Europe. The slow melting of the Greenland ice cap might cause the weakening of winters in the central US and southeastern Canada.

Deniers of global warming grasp at straws to protect their beliefs, much as do deniers of evolution.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

I would appreciate an acknowledgment that you have read and understand the post I made that explains how oceanic thermal inertia makes possible geothermal melting an untenable proposition.

I have read it and I understand it. However, as I've said before, the position you've attributed to me, which is that volcanic activity directly melted large quantities of arctic sea ice, was never my position. I believed that it wasn't The Rani's position either, but I was apparently wrong on that point.

While I appreciate the time you've taken to address the issue and the apology that you've offered for getting angry at me for not having read what you thought you had posted, my position remains unchanged: I am still unwilling to rule out the possibility that the volcanic activity at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean may have had an impact on the melting of the arctic ice.

Beyond that, I'm only going to repeat that I'm quite comfortable with agreeing to disagree with you on this point and I'm disinterested in continuing this discussion with you.

Originally Posted by Semo '75

While I appreciate the time you've taken to address the issue and the apology that you've offered for getting angry at me for not having read what you thought you had posted, my position remains unchanged: I am still unwilling to rule out the possibility that the volcanic activity at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean may have had an impact on the melting of the arctic ice.

That's fine. I'm not ruling it out either, but I don't think that means that we should just sit around on our collective rears waiting for definitive proof one way or another. I think it's more likely that human activity is contributing to the problem, and your suggestions about how we might address it are a hell of a lot more useful than arguing small percentages.

This might be worth a view, too.

On the practical side, I'm hoping to purchase a new water heater this year, which should help reduce my energy consumption, and save me money in the long run.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

I don't know. I'm not a horse person.

I'm not so sure that horses remain a good way to travel; their time ended in the 1920s. Horses consume great quantities of food, and one of the reasons for the increase in agricultural productivity in the 20th century was the replacement of horses with tractors. Land once dedicated to hay for horses became available for other crops. Horses could never pull the gigantic farm equipment that we now have, equipment that allows huge economies of scale for planting and harvesting -- equipment that still needs fossil fuels. Human populations grew dramatically in the transition from horses to motor vehicles (including cars and tractors).

Horses are expensive -- but they have their virtues. It's NOT safety; people were thrown under them and trampled all the time; people fell off horses all the time, which likely offset the fewer collisions (horses weren't going to collide into each other). There's an intimacy possible between Man and Horse that one can't develop between Man and Cat or even Man and Dog, and if you have ever noticed the difference between people who have horses and people who don't -- it's huge. One can bring dogs or cats into a household, but not a horse; one must go into the stable to take care of the horse. One can never get any affection from an automobile or an aircraft.

Mirrors what I was thinking about horses as transportation. Plus they were pretty dirty, they produced a lot of s*** which littered the streets, no really.

Once motorized vehicles replaced horses as the main form of transportation a lot of land was stopped being farmed and returned back to wild vegetation.

Originally Posted by Child of Socrates

That's fine. I'm not ruling it out either, but I don't think that means that we should just sit around on our collective rears waiting for definitive proof one way or another. I think it's more likely that human activity is contributing to the problem, and your suggestions about how we might address it are a hell of a lot more useful than arguing small percentages.

Yes and no.

If the current trend continues, enough of the arctic ice will be cleared each year to allow the establishment of new trade routes through the newly formed arctic passage. These trade routes will be shorter than existing trade routes, which means that less fuel will be used. As a result, goods will be cheaper and greenhouse gas emissions will be reduced.

Sounds pretty good, right? As the arctic sea ice melts, you will almost certainly hear this argument as corporations negotiate passage through the Arctic Ocean, and it's a fairly persuasive argument.

The problem is that NASA's Goddard Space Science Center has done research that indicates that soot has a significant and measurable impact on the melting of land ice in the arctic. Under normal circumstances, the snow that falls during the other months of the year creates a cover over the ice that reflects solar energy. But soot from all around the world (most of which is from human sources, although a significant amount is from natural sources) ends up mixing with the snow that falls, which reduces the snow's reflectivity. This increases temperatures, which melts the snow more quickly and exposes the darker ice and land underneath, which increases temperatures further, which melts the ice, which exposes the darker land underneath, and so on. In short, soot creates a feedback loop which melts the ice more quickly. Although the effect of soot on sea ice wasn't studied, the basic mechanism would be the same, so it's almost certain that the effect would be pretty much the same.

Basically, what the scientists discovered is that, pound for pound, soot is about three times more effective at melting ice than greenhouse gases. If we allow trade routes through the arctic, then we could conceivably create a lot of soot in an area where we don't need it. If a passage through the arctic remains open as late as spring when the snow falls most relevant to the summer melt take place, then the arctic icepack could (and almost certainly would) melt even faster even though our carbon emissions would be reduced.

Fortunately, we know about this effect so it can play a role in policy formation. However, we know about it because a particularly group of scientists (not "scientists" as some rarified aggregate group) asked a particular line of questions about how and why the arctic snow melts. The important thing is that these scientists didn't assume that "the science" (which, again, is not a rarified aggregate) was settled.

Right now, the very existence of a large number of volcanos at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean is brand new information -- the WHOI team released its findings within the last two weeks. So if scientists are going to ask questions about the impact of those volcanos, this is really their first opportunity to do so. And, if there are reasonable questions to ask, those questions should be asked, even if it means "arguing small percentages". Science represents a philosophy and a methodology, not an outcome.

Originally Posted by Child of Socrates

This might be worth a view, too.

Nice find. I'll likely send it around.

Originally Posted by Child of Socrates

On the practical side, I'm hoping to purchase a new water heater this year, which should help reduce my energy consumption, and save me money in the long run.

Good stuff. And that points to one of the things that works in our advantage when it comes to "greening" -- in practical terms, it often comes down to power consumption, so it's usually cheaper (at least in the long run) to do it.

Originally Posted by The Rani

Chris and I are the same person. MWA HA HA HA HA!!!

Actually, you're my brother. Well, at least you share the same debate style as him, which is probably why it doesn't bother me at all. (And these guys think it's rough having someone who argues like you as a fellow member on a message forum... I mean, not for nothin', but bunk beds don't offer much of an "Ignore" function.)

Interestingly, and perhaps not coincidentally, the two of you were born a few years off. (EDIT: Originally said same year.)

Originally Posted by Semo '75

Basically, what the scientists discovered is that, pound for pound, soot is about three times more effective at melting ice than greenhouse gases.

Umm.... You do know that the net effect of soot is cooling, not warming? While soot on the ice does make it darker, thus absorbs more light, thus helps melt the ice, soot in the air supports the formation of clouds, blocks light, and allows less energy to reach the surface of the planet. The net effect of more soot is cooling. The classic example of this is "The Year Without a Summer." Big volcanic eruptions emit lots of soot. For the next several years after such eruptions, one gets sharply cooler weather.

Not that I think rerouting a few ships is going to have any significant overall trend. I would think the effect of any slightly darker ice would be dwarfed by many square miles of dark water being exposed.

Global dimming caused by soot and global warming caused by greenhouse gasses fight one another. Both factories and volcanoes release both soot and greenhouse gasses. One has to be somewhat aware of the ratios, whether a given source contributes more to dimming or warming. The sooty volcanoes are generally net coolers, at least in the short term. Factories are net warmers, especially modern factories, whose stacks are generally equipped with scrubbers to subdue soot emissions. Factories in the developing world (notably those in India and China) generally are not so well equipped with scrubbers, thus are more sooty, thus the soot emissions partially nullifies the CO2 emissions. However, the health effects of the soot emissions are becoming so significant that India, China and similar countries are starting to push stack scrubbers. It is anticipated that soot release is going to go sharply down in the next few decades as more scrubbers are installed in poorer countries.

On the other hand, no soot got into the atmosphere from the newly discovered arctic submarine volcanoes. They were too deep. The sea also would have absorbed a good deal (if not all) of the CO2 emissions volcanoes typically release. This is not entirely good news, as ocean CO2 absorption contributes to making the oceans a bit more acid. Still, acid seas seem not so much a concern as global warming, or at least they are not yet so much in the public eye.

Originally Posted by Semo '75

If we allow trade routes through the arctic, then we could conceivably create a lot of soot in an area where we don't need it...

It is good that people become aware of how complex the interactions are. There is a lot going on pulling natural systems in various directions. I am bothered that smaller factors are sometimes used as a distraction to deflect attention away from the major trends.

This is why I'll often ask for numbers. What percentage of the global burning of fossil fuels will be saved by rerouting ships through the arctic? What will be the net effect on the dimming/warming balance of burning less fuel closer to the arctic ice as opposed to more fuel further away? My gut instinct suggests such a change would be fairly negligible. My gut instinct (and Mike's numbers) say the amount of direct thermal energy by the newly discovered volcanoes could not heat that big an ocean or melt that much ice. To really know, however, one must track all the various factors. One must build a complex computer model. This is a job for professionals. Such models are tools unavailable to the casual internet blogger. That, and bloggers that don't like what a given model suggests simply declare that models are not good tools, as if broad hand waving is a good tool.

I'm not going to totally disparage 'small percentages.' Let us remain aware. I'm just dubious about celebrating negligible effects. Americans are tending somewhat to give up smoking. Cigarettes release CO2. Before we too much celebrate how banning cigarettes in major cities will save the Arctic ice cap, let's run a few numbers and see if burning cigarettes is a significant factor in the net CO2 picture?

Originally Posted by Semo '75

That makes two of us, buddy. I mean, let's face it -- he is a pretty crafty character, after all. Who knows what his secret motivations really are? Who can tell what he'll do next? He says that he never saw Mike's post, but maybe, just maybe, that's part of his grand scheme to confuse everybody so that they're moved to do nothing at all about global warming.

Me? I don't trust him as far as I can throw him

But like they say: "Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer." That's why he and I are so tight.

Do you talk to him? Does he answer back?

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

Umm.... You do know that the net effect of soot is cooling, not warming? While soot on the ice does make it darker, thus absorbs more light, thus helps melt the ice, soot in the air supports the formation of clouds, blocks light, and allows less energy to reach the surface of the planet. The net effect of more soot is cooling. The classic example of this is "The Year Without a Summer." Big volcanic eruptions emit lots of soot. For the next several years after such eruptions, one gets sharply cooler weather.

The problem is that actual research that has been performed suggests that soot contributes to melting. Whether the net effect is cooling or not, the effect on the arctic is increased temperatures and increased melting.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

Not that I think rerouting a few ships is going to have any significant overall trend. I would think the effect of any slightly darker ice would be dwarfed by many square miles of dark water being exposed.

The amount of tonnage that will go through a new arctic passage is more than "a few ships". And, of course, the localized impact of soot in the immediate environment would increase the amount of ice melted.

Many more square miles of dark water are exposed when the ice above that water melts. Pristine white snow reflects more solar energy than sooty darker snow. As a result, the snow will melt faster. When this line of defense goes away, many squares miles of darker ice are exposed, and this ice reflects even less solar energy than even the sooty snow does. This causes the ice to melt faster. This exposes the even darker water or land underneath the ice, which causes additional melting. (The mechanism at play here is localized warming.)

To say that the effect of the darker snow is dwarfed by the conditions that it helps to create misses the point. If a house catches on fire due to a cigarette dropped onto a bed, it makes no sense to argue that the effects of the cigarette are dwarfed by the effects of the burning house.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

Global dimming caused by soot and global warming caused by greenhouse gasses fight one another. Both factories and volcanoes release both soot and greenhouse gasses. One has to be somewhat aware of the ratios, whether a given source contributes more to dimming or warming. The sooty volcanoes are generally net coolers, at least in the short term. Factories are net warmers, especially modern factories, whose stacks are generally equipped with scrubbers to subdue soot emissions. Factories in the developing world (notably those in India and China) generally are not so well equipped with scrubbers, thus are more sooty, thus the soot emissions partially nullifies the CO2 emissions. However, the health effects of the soot emissions are becoming so significant that India, China and similar countries are starting to push stack scrubbers. It is anticipated that soot release is going to go sharply down in the next few decades as more scrubbers are installed in poorer countries.

In the case of the arctic melt, it would seem that these two effects contribute to each other. At least according to the University of New York and the NASA Goddard Space Science Center.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

On the other hand, no soot got into the atmosphere from the newly discovered arctic submarine volcanoes. They were too deep. The sea also would have absorbed a good deal (if not all) of the CO2 emissions volcanoes typically release. This is not entirely good news, as ocean CO2 absorption contributes to making the oceans a bit more acid. Still, acid seas seem not so much a concern as global warming, or at least they are not yet so much in the public eye.

I wasn't saying that the submarine volcanos produced soot. I said, in an earlier portion of the argument that I wasn't willing to rule out the possibility that the volcanos might have had an effect on the melting of the arctic ice. The soot example was intended as a complement to this position, and was a way of illustrating something about the way "science" (which has been thrown around in this discussion as a sort of token) actually works.

Whether acidic seawater are as much of a concern as global warming is irrelevant to the discussion, because the issue here isn't "concern". If it is eventually demonstrated that acidic seawater is a factor in the increased arctic melt, then it doesn't really matter whether anybody's actually concerned about it or not; it will have contributed to the increased melt anyway.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

It is good that people become aware of how complex the interactions are. There is a lot going on pulling natural systems in various directions. I am bothered that smaller factors are sometimes used as a distraction to deflect attention away from the major trends.

This is why I'll often ask for numbers. What percentage of the global burning of fossil fuels will be saved by rerouting ships through the arctic? What will be the net effect on the dimming/warming balance of burning less fuel closer to the arctic ice as opposed to more fuel further away? My gut instinct suggests such a change would be fairly negligible. My gut instinct (and Mike's numbers) say the amount of direct thermal energy by the newly discovered volcanoes could not heat that big an ocean or melt that much ice. To really know, however, one must track all the various factors. One must build a complex computer model. This is a job for professionals. Such models are tools unavailable to the casual internet blogger. That, and bloggers that don't like what a given model suggests simply declare that models are not good tools, as if broad hand waving is a good tool.

In this case, I'm going with the scientists who performed the research into soot. One was noted as specifically pointing out the danger of ships passing through the arctic during spring, when the snow cover most relevant to the summer melt falls. Since I can appreciate that the raw tonnage that would be shipped through the arctic passage would be immense, his concerns seem quite reasonable. And since I know that corporations are already planning to lobby world governments to negotiate passage through the arctic, I know that people want to send ships through there.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

I'm not going to totally disparage 'small percentages.' Let us remain aware. I'm just dubious about celebrating negligible effects. Americans are tending somewhat to give up smoking. Cigarettes release CO2. Before we too much celebrate how banning cigarettes in major cities will save the Arctic ice cap, let's run a few numbers and see if burning cigarettes is a significant factor in the net CO2 picture?

Who's celebrating anything? I mean, let's get something straight right now: the reason that anyone is involved in this discussion is because they're getting something out of it -- either they're entertained by some aspect of it, they hope to learn something from it, or something else. The idea that we shouldn't talk about something because it might "celebrate" the wrong things or "distract" us from more serious work is kind of silly.

This thread had been dead as a doornail for a while before The Rani posted the link to that news article about the submarine volcanos. It wasn't like there was serious climate research going on here, or that people were using the thread as an arena to discuss the implications of potential or actual policy changes.

If you're currently doing some really important work on global warming and you feel that this discussion is distracting you, by all means go right ahead and continue with that work. I won't be offended in the slightest if you blow me off, and I can pretty much guarantee that whatever you're doing will drown out my reservations about writing off the possible impact of submarine volcanos on the melting ice.

Originally Posted by Zarathustra

Do you talk to him? Does he answer back?

The answer to both questions is, of course, yes.

From Salon.com.

[quote]
Our world, our old world that we have inhabited for the last 12,000 years, has ended, even if no newspaper in North America or Europe has yet printed its scientific obituary.

This February, while cranes were hoisting cladding to the 141st floor of the Burj Dubai tower (which will soon be twice the height of the Empire State Building), the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London was adding the newest and highest story to the geological column.


The London Society is the world's oldest association of Earth scientists, founded in 1807, and its Commission acts as a college of cardinals in the adjudication of the geological time-scale. Stratigraphers slice up Earth's history as preserved in sedimentary strata into hierarchies of eons, eras, periods, and epochs marked by the "golden spikes" of mass extinctions, speciation events, and abrupt changes in atmospheric chemistry.

In geology, as in biology or history, periodization is a complex, controversial art and the most bitter feud in nineteenth-century British science -- still known as the "Great Devonian Controversy" -- was fought over competing interpretations of homely Welsh Graywackes and English Old Red Sandstone. More recently, geologists have feuded over how to stratigraphically demarcate ice age oscillations over the last 2.8 million years. Some have never accepted that the most recent inter-glacial warm interval -- the Holocene -- should be distinguished as an "epoch" in its own right just because it encompasses the history of civilization.


As a result, contemporary stratigraphers have set extraordinarily rigorous standards for the beatification of any new geological divisions. Although the idea of the "Anthropocene" -- an Earth epoch defined by the emergence of urban-industrial society as a geological force -- has been long debated, stratigraphers have refused to acknowledge compelling evidence for its advent.

At least for the London Society, that position has now been revised.
To the question "Are we now living in the Anthropocene?" the 21 members of the Commission unanimously answer "yes." They adduce robust evidence that the Holocene epoch -- the interglacial span of unusually stable climate that has allowed the rapid evolution of agriculture and urban civilization -- has ended and that the Earth has entered "a stratigraphic interval without close parallel in the last several million years." In addition to the buildup of greenhouse gases, the stratigraphers cite human landscape transformation which "now exceeds [annual] natural sediment production by an order of magnitude," the ominous acidification of the oceans, and the relentless destruction of biota.

This new age, they explain, is defined both by the heating trend (whose closest analogue may be the catastrophe known as the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum, 56 million years ago) and by the radical instability expected of future environments. In somber prose, they warn that "the combination of extinctions, global species migrations and the widespread replacement of natural vegetation with agricultural monocultures is producing a distinctive contemporary biostratigraphic signal. These effects are permanent, as future evolution will take place from surviving (and frequently anthropogenically relocated) stocks." Evolution itself, in other words, has been forced into a new trajectory.

Originally Posted by The Rani

I'm sure he does, but we're talking about melting, not warming. Two different things.

The research that I'm referring to suggests that the amount of soot is a contributing factor to increased localized temperatures, which is more relevant to the melting ice than, say, the average global temperature.

While it's important not to miss the forest for the trees, which seems to be Bob's general criticism, I think that it's equally important not to miss the trees for the forest.

Good god is this thread still going on?

Sounds like the opening of a bad joke:

How many amateur historians does it take to understand climate science?