Thread: Climate Change - Need Ideas

Hi, I am writing a report on climate change, I could do with some ideas, plz help.

Very broad subject area. Some ideas:

-Scientific Discovery of climate change
-Man-made climate change
-Climate change effect on man for past or future
-What causes climate changes

You could also narrow the scope to something like what your hometown looked like in the distant past or what will happen in the future based on climate change.



There's lot of things you could do.

This would also be a good story:

So we have a greenhouse hypothesis, we have the math and then the good old scientific method testing the hypothesis.

That was done here:

http://smsc.cnes.fr/documentation/IA...ons/LBL_EX.pdf

But there was a problem:

...This result suggests that most of the discrepancies with measurements are not due to the particular code mechanics but to insufficient knowledge in basic spectroscopy...

More problems were found here by Douglass et al
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/DOUGLASPAPER.pdf

Models did not match reality in the tropical troposphere. It may be well known that this paper was subject to a sickening blog war and I'm really looking forward to exposing the mud throwing, should anybody challenge it.

So yet another paper emerged, telling the same story for Antarctica:

http://polarmet.mps.ohio-state.edu/P...07GL032630.pdf

However, 20th century (1880–1999) annual Antarctic near-surface air temperature trends in the GCMs are about 2.5-to-5 times larger-than observed, possibly due to the radiative impact of unrealistic increases in water vapor

What's wrong with the greenhouse? That's what Ferenc Miskolsczi must have thought after publisihing that first study and he came up with this:

http://met.hu/doc/idojaras/vol111001_01.pdf

Some quotes:

....The new equation proves that the classic solution significantly overestimates the sensitivity of greenhouse forcing to optical depth perturbations....

...In the radiation scheme of Eq. (10) the runaway greenhouse effect is impossible,..

...On local scale the regulatory role of the water vapor is apparent. On
global scale, however, there can not be any direct water vapor feedback
mechanism, working against the total energy balance requirement of the
system....

Anyway a lot of people have sunk their teeth in the tough stuff of Miskolsczi, for instance, David Stockwell:

http://landshape.org/enm/modeling-global-warming/

The energy of the surface/atmosphere system cannot continue increasing as energy inputs and outputs must remain the same to keep the energy of the system in balance. So the temperature of the atmosphere must remain fairly constant, as confirmed by the observed trends for the troposphere shown on the Douglass figure above (blue lines).

In practice, the observed 5 % increase in CO2 can be compensated with ~0.005 prcm decrease in the global H2O content. This amount is so small it cannot be measured or monitored.

This means that in the long run the Earth has a saturated greenhouse effect with fixed optical depth, with profound consequences for global warming. As long as we have an atmosphere with a virtually infinite water reservoir, neither nature nor humans can influence the greenhouse effect.

So the global warming frenzy has to go on with completely refuted science, but no doubt that it will survive that too after the bogus explanation of the cold spell since December last year.

I doubt Manadude2 had such technical topic in mind--especially when your post pulls their conclusions wildly out of context. Miskolsczi's flux work for example is rather interesting because it's relatively simple to understand but have limited application to counter Global models because it examine flux considering the atmosphere a 1-D slab model. The entire point of global warming is lower atmosphere warms while the upper atmosphere contracts and cools, both of which are being observed and still be consistent with Miskolsczi's flux work.

Manadude has a rich set of targets about climate change even without getting into the science of man-made climate change.

As Lynx_Fox says, climate change is a very big subject. You should probably focus on one aspect of it. This http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.html is an excellent resource that should give you lots of ideas.

One suggestion to add to Lynx_Fox's list:

Glaciers - what is happening to them, and what might be causing it?

Good luck.

You might consider focusing on the loss of carbon sinks on the planet, rather than increase in carbon emissions. Two examples are deforestation and approaching saturation of CO2 in ocean waters. Acidification of the ocean is an interesting tangent to the discussion as well.

Another issue that has little to do directly with emissions but that affects climate is lowered albedo (loss of ice caps), and there are surely others.

Originally Posted by manadude2

Hi, I am writing a report on climate change, I could do with some ideas, plz help.

Not knowing what level your going to write a report on, I'll guess its at the college level...

If I had the time, one I would like to do; Rather that involving any GW issue, which can be argued in either direction and a good many people are just bored of hearing...Go back through the history of the planet. From what climates were thought to have been, even briefly back to the planets formation on to the 'snow ball' planet of 760k and 240k years ago, where complex life seems to started. Mentioning the different changes in atmosphere content, ocean make up and thought climate changes which contributed to life that existed and thrived during each period. If your honest in relaying your finds, my guess is the outline would indicate just how much change has occurred and that life formed/evolved from those changes.

'snow ball' planet of 760k and 240k years ago

Did you mean to say million rather than k?

In any case, I believe the snowball Earth hypothesis has been undermined by geological evidence. There also seems to be no theory to explain how a snowball planet, having a very high albedo, could ever recover from that condition.

Yes, should be Million...

One theory for the 'snow ball planet' involves our trip around the galaxy core, which takes about 250 million years, where dust blocked the solar effects. Why wouldn't the return of solar energy correct the problem. Other theory suggest, our planets natural core heat and plate tectonics combined for the correction. There would be no concrete evidence, for pre-life earth, but the planets evolutionary extremes to todays rather consistent or minimal extremes would show up...I have no way of justifying, but have wondered if 'magnetic field' shifts could have played a role. there is a time line link.

Originally Posted by Bunbury

'snow ball' planet of 760k and 240k years ago

Did you mean to say million rather than k?

In any case, I believe the snowball Earth hypothesis has been undermined by geological evidence. There also seems to be no theory to explain how a snowball planet, having a very high albedo, could ever recover from that condition.

The theory for escape includes accumulating CO2 from volcanic activity (no life, no carbon sink) --> increasing temp via greenhouse effect.

If the theory had been discarded I had not heard of it --- Can you point me towards some references?

What Bunbury was suggesting is that solar reflection off a snow ball planet, may not allow for a warming. There is some evidence of that.

Even contributors to Wikipedia 'Ice Ages' claim CO2 from volcano activity would not have caused the 'greenhouse effect' to end an ice age, though do say its possible. On the dust angle, some feel on a 100k (mean K) the planet may be encountering a solar system dust cloud to begin these ice ages and when passed, the reverse happens or warming.

one of the chappies who originally suggested the snowball earth gave a talk some few years ago to our group and indicated that volcanic activity contributed to escape. Other details for possible re-warming escape me. It seems that tectonic events could contribute.

Scholar indicates that snowball earth is not debunked (948 articles returned written after 2005.) Scanning these articles, it appears that oxygen reduction (which occurs as plants die off on a cooling planet) is coupled to increased remineralisation of organic carbon (ie organic carbon is more easily converted to CO2 when oxygen levels decrease) which presumably contributes to a greenhouse event.

No doubt there was some life around pre-snow ball theory #1 apx 750 mya, but any massive plant life or complex life would have had come from the then oceans. Then quite a bit more during/after near snow ball #2- 240 MYA. Most or many formats suggest complex plant life moved onto land about 400-500 mya. Then after #2, which was shorter lived, our current oxygen/nitrogen based atmosphere became close to todays allowing life to then evolve. Grass/weeds or underground rooting plant life is said to be about 50-60 myo and allowed mammals to thrive.

As for the theory being debunked, I agree that it seems to be accepted by most today and would suggest geological/archeology evidence supports the idea.

My suggestion to the author of the thread, was to lay out the events which contributed to climate change, then to what these changes meant to life forms, per his/her analysis. IMO, there is a distinct line between weather patterns, evolution of life that follows these changes. Even if the intent is justify GW (man caused/ or not), the extremes from the formation of Earth to todays, should show the reason we exist and in particular to our recent species explosion. If I were he/she, this would be very interesting to the audience, I believe it is intended for...

No time to respond right now - I have contractors trying to destroy my house. I think I hired the Three Stooges.

Free radical wrote

If the theory had been discarded I had not heard of it --- Can you point me towards some references?

I said undermined, not discarded, which to me means its foundations may be a bit shaky, but the house hasn't fallen down yet.

Here's one reference that says:

Analyses of glacial sedimentary rocks in Oman, published online in Geology, have produced clear evidence of hot-cold cycles in the Cryogenian period, roughly 850-544 million years ago. The UK-Swiss team claims that this evidence undermines hypotheses of an ice age so severe that Earth's oceans completely froze over.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0323104746.htm

thanks everyone for your ideas. i have already written 4 pages on the subject. the level of writing is GCSE

Sorry for the late reply, my router broke and I could not access internet, thanks for all of your help, much appreciated, I have also written a bibliography at the end of the report with everyone's nicknames on it.