This is one of my problems with the Global Warming Crowd. How can they generate computer models with any accuracy when they have not had the information with which to do it? You know the old saying, “garbage in, garbage out”.
A new discovery has been announced regarding the global ocean currents.
“The new discovery focuses on the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC), which picks up and cools water that descends from warmer latitudes in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans.” http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21704750-1702,00.html
I had heard about this a few weeks ago but until today had not had the time to look into it. I had hoped one of you Man-Induced Global Warming Believer would have mentioned it but I should have guessed you would not since it poses itself as a major problem for your models or as good intellectuals you are all waiting patiently for the updated research to be published.
These deep sea movers of water absorb CO2 out of the atmosphere and deposit it in the depths of the oceans from what I can gather. This new one seems to account for absorbing a third of all the CO2 taken in by Earths oceans. It was discovered by using a natural plume of Helium released by an undersea volcano as a tracer to see where it ended up. (I have to question what else is released by these underwater volcanoes, more Carbon Dioxide and other natural occurring greenhouse gases?)
The real story here is not the discovery of this one enormous mover of water and absorber of CO2, the real story is that it has just been discovered. Even if it has been theorized about it does not appear to have been put into the computer models as an active member of the great planetary machine. So again I point out, garbage in garbage out. Every time another computer model is created based on the very latest understanding of our planets systems as a whole it is only as good as our current understanding. This discovery should indicate to the scientific community looking into Man-Induced Global Warming that they need to throw out all previous data and start from scratch. This information will no doubt change everything we know about the globes ocean currents. From where the cold arctic fresh water is actually coming from, much of which will likely be changed, to the amount of CO2 absorbed by the ocean itself, where it goes and what becomes of it.
Some of it comes back to the surface, some gets eaten by algae while some more of it probably gets trapped in bottom sediment where it more than likely is a catalyst for some other mechanism we know little about.
MIC and I have had this debate many times. He can correct me if I am wrong, but I believe I understand his point on this as being let’s move forward with the information we have until such time as the information changes. A Boy Scout approach of always being prepared and working off the best we have at the time. Well now we (well not we, you) are confronted with a set of new mathematical equations, some of which you will need to work up from scratch others of which you will simply have to tweak that points us to a new and quite possibly better understanding of the planets ability to deal with the so called pressures of man’s very being here.
I would like to point out that these computer models that are sighted by Al Gore and a host of other environmentalist (as if we all don’t need this planet to survive) are based on worst case scenarios and these same people rarely if ever point to data that questions the now political and monetarily motivated desire for changes based incomplete data fed to a computer.
I can not question the facts. The earth is warming. This is true. But I can ask the questions that the scientist should be asking. Is it based on mankind’s use of fossil fuels or could it be more of what this planet has already proven to us? We have proof beyond a shadow of a doubt that the earth is a cyclical entity, warming and cooling based on many factors over the century, most of which occurred before the industrial revolution and most of which happened before man was doing any more than making a fire to cook his Mammoth meat. These are facts and are beyond reproach.
What is not a fact that can be upheld by the planetary record is that man has not been the catalyst for these changes in the past 6 billion years. Even the past 1000 can not be pinned on mankind. But for some reason there is a desire to place the blame for the current rise in temperature which by historic standards is minimal at best at the foot of man, American man in particular.
Even when the research is done again, there will still be most of which we don’t know about this planet and I say most and not much because we really don’t understand most of what our planet does or how it does it. We have explored 3% of the ocean floor and know more about deep space than we do about the deep oceans ability to deal with what is thrown at it. Don’t get me wrong, we need to do the research and we need to continue to try to figure it out, and it is a good idea to try to get us off of energy that can be mandated by any foreign power. These are just common sense things that need to be dealt with. What we don’t need to do it go chicken little on the American people and try to scare them into doing something that may not cause a single ioda of difference should this all be part of planet Earth’s regular cycle of heating and cooling.
All I am asking is for you al to think about it without the hysteria that tomorrow we will awaken to a planet unsuitable for human life. We have been through far worse and survived and we did that with far less understanding of the planet than the miniscule understanding we have now and we didn’t even know we were surviving change at the time.
But what would I know: I’m just an Average American.
"Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge"--Carl Sagan







del.icio.us
Digg It!


I have not read about this Antarctic Circumpolar Current, so I profess my ignorance as to if and to what extent the ACC would affect present models. Regardless of the effect, the existence of such a current would not require scientists to throw out their data and computer models; their models will have to be updated to take this current into account, and the simulations redone. Could that spell the death of anthropogenic global warming theories? Perhaps, but I think it more likely that the new current will have a moderating effect at best. We will see. Refining scientific models with new information, as it becomes available, is what science does. Does that mean we shouldn't try to rely on science to understand the problems at hand?
One thing I neglected to point out when I previously discussed the sheer volume of human CO2 emissions, is that it's not just that we have been releasing large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution began, and more rapidly so in the last 50 years. It is also what our activities have done to destroy the natural emissions of 02 into the air: we have lost 50% of our planet's trees through human deforestation over the last 100 years according to the United Nations Pilot Analysis of Global Ecosystems. It's not hard to understand how CO2 in the atmosphere has risen from 290 ppm (stable over the last 600,000 years) to nearly 380 ppm over the last 50 years, when we have removed half of our planet's carbon scrubbers. I am not "desiring" to put the blame for global warming on mankind, AA. No one is gunning for American man in particular either. It just so happens that by the climatological mechanisms we are aware of, the factors that appear to perturb global temperatures the most seem to be tied to industrial activity and consumption of natural resources most closely; and the U.S. is the undisputed leader in these activities by far.
Anyway, good article. I'll read up more on the ACC and get back to you.
P.S. The IPCC projections state both worst case and best case projections with associated degrees of confidence. The doomsday predictions are based on the middle of the road projections. I know of no peer reviewed climate studies that rely on worst case scenarios only.
Report Abuse