One difference between "weather" and "climate" is the timeframes involved. If you were to only look back at the last 5 or 6 years, you possibly could draw the incorrect conclusion that that arctic sea ice coverage is rebounding and just very volatile. In fact, if you look at it from a longer time scale -- decades, required for understanding climate -- you'd realize that, even though last year was higher than the last couple of years, it's still MUCH lower than historical levels. That degree of change, or the downward slope of that line, is crazy steep. Good for shipping companies in the short run, bad for everyone in the long run.
Originally shared by The Elon Musk Fan Club
Elon Musk @elonmusk
The graph that really matters
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/506573584890724352
No, You Can't Claim Arctic Ice is "Recovering"
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/09/01/global_warming_denial_claims_of_arctic_ice_recovering_are_exaggerated.html?wpsrc=fol_tw
What's Really Going On With Arctic Sea Ice?
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/09/20/arctic_sea_ice_what_s_really_going_on.html
Media survives as a 'Short Attention Span Theater'
ReplyDeleteIn climate terms, 30 years is no more than an eyeblink. Things like this have cycles that run into the centuries.
ReplyDeleteHugh Tauerner It used to be an eyeblink, but humans have ratcheted up the rate of change to unprecedented levels.
ReplyDeleteNope. We've suddenly begun to take measurements.
ReplyDeleteHugh Tauerner
ReplyDeleteThere is a blindness encountered when a person fails to realize that the extraction of 'stored energy' from below the surface (coal and oil) - That is then, in turn, converted into heat that goes into our environment / atmosphere, at the rate our race is now operating at...
Along with the associated particulates that accompany that conversion of stored energy.
Without spending time in the specifically applicable formula as it pertains to the Boltzmann equation as it relates to Thermochemical analysis. There it is worked out with joules.. (I'll let you look that one up - But if you don't have a strong physics background... You wont like it)
A calorie (0.004184 joules) is the unit of energy it takes to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water, one degree Celsius.
Anyway - For perspective.
A gallon of gasoline (about 4 liters) contains about 31,000,000 calories.
Diesel oil (for instance) is a bit more calorie dense at about 35,000,000 calories
Some tricky math leads to some impressive numbers - Lets proceed...
A barrel of oil is about (6.1*10^6) joules (about 1.5 billion calories)
(6.1*10^6)/.004184
Lets stick with oil... We have used about 135 billion barrels of oil since 1870... At 42 U.S gallons per barrel.
135,000,000,000 x 42 gallons
((6.1*10^6)*(135,000,000,000*42))/.004184) = 8.2664914e+21
That's 8,266,491,400,000,000,000,000 calories and remember - A calorie (0.004184 is the unit of energy it takes to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water, one degree Celsius.