[ale] [OT] Psychology of Denial about Climate Change

[Greg Freemyer]

On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 12:50 AM, drifter <drifter at oppositelock.org> wrote:
> <SNIP>
>
> That  said, I have some questions relative to the MWP.
<snip>

> So my first question:
> Is it warm enough today to grow wheat 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle
> on the coast of Greenland?

There is a yahoo group - "climate sceptics".  Many of the participants
are PHDs in related fields.  (Many are not.)

It might be a good place to ask.

>
> And my second question:
> When those Norse were living on the shores of Greenland, what was the
> status of the northern ice sheets? And the polar bears? :)

I doubt anyone knows, but if so "climate sceptics" again.

> We know that over the past several decades the ice caps on Mars have been
> shrinking.  The only obvious cause is increased solar activity.
>
> So my third question:
> What amount of increase in solar radiation is needed to cause the observed
> effects on Mars? And how would that increase in solar radiation affect the
> earth's climate?  I suspect this has been covered in "Peer Reviewed"
> journals, but I have missed the reports.

>From what I've read the variation in solar intensity is very minor and
is not likely to be a major player in global warming by itself.

OTOH, on Earth, unlike Mars, we have a cloud formation process that is
related to aerosols in the air.  Decreases in cosmic ray counts have
recently been shown(1) to be tied to aerosol density I believe, and in
turn to the amount of water vapor in the air.  Water vapor is a much
stronger greenhouse gas than CO2.  The major climate models have not
incorporated this finding into them.  (They may be waiting for more
confirmation of the finding or maybe the finding is too new.)

(1) See <http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL038429.shtml> for
the peer reviewed article discussing the above.  (I assume it is peer
reviewed.)

> All of which gets around to what in the Global Warming debate has been
> getting to me:
>
<snip>
>
> E. A Failure to admit that China is now the 600 pound gorilla in the room.
> Given the rate that China is increasing its CO2 output, all out efforts on
> the part of  Europe and the U.S. to reduce emissions of these gases will
> not stem the overall increase for the planet. China seems totally
> uninterested in reducing its carbon footprint.

You may find this very recent NASA article (12.14.09) interesting.  It
finds that soot from India and China is also a major cause of heating
in the Himalayas.

Again, soot is not in the major models (yet?) and at least in the
Himalayas it appears to be having a much larger impact than CO2.
(Clearly this is a brand new report, but it is clearly one more
example of a parameter the major models are missing.)

<http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/himalayan-warming.html>

I quote:

"Over areas of the Himalayas, the rate of warming is more than five
times faster than warming globally," said William Lau, head of
atmospheric sciences at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in
Greenbelt, Md. "Based on the differences it’s not difficult to
conclude that greenhouse gases are not the sole agents of change in
this region. There’s a localized phenomenon at play."

Greg