
Ice That Took 1,600 Years to Form in Peru’s Andes Melted in Only 25 - theoutlander
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/world/americas/1600-years-of-ice-in-perus-andes-melted-in-25-years-scientists-say.html?_r=0
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graycat
Yup, the NYT is at one of their favorite, continuing 'stories' again. And,
again, it's 'global warming'. Again, it's measure temperature not with
thermometers in degrees F, C, or K but with pictures of glaciers.

Yes, it's a morality play, human sin, this time via CO2.

And it's a trilogy -- transgression, retribution, and redemption. The
transgression is the CO2 from human sin. The retribution is over heating the
planet, as in glaciers melting. And the redemption? Sure, sacrifice, this
time, a carbon tax to reverse much of the industrial revolution.

So, it's the old methods of fiction, e.g., morality plays, going back at least
1000 years. The NYT is good at writing morality plays.

Of course, one of the NYT people on this bandwagon is their Tom Friedman. On a
talk show, he explained his view of the problem of CO2: He said that it
absorbs light from the sun and, thus, heats the atmosphere.

Okay, let's check: Let's exhale, look at the little cloud of air with the
extra CO2, and see if we can see any sunlight absorbed? Or, let's get some CO2
from some other sources and see if it looks darker because of the light it
absorbs instead of transmits. Nope, we don't see anything. So, right, CO2
doesn't absorb sunlight.

So, what does CO2 absorb? It absorbs in three narrow frequency bands out in
the infrared, one band for each of bending, twisting, and stretching of the
molecule.

So, how, then, is CO2 a 'green house' gas? Because light from the sun is
absorbed by the surface of the earth which, then, radiates roughly as a Planck
'black body' and, thus, radiates mostly in the infrared, and CO2 in the
atmosphere absorbs some of the infrared, in those three narrow bands, instead
of just letting it continue to radiate outward and be absorbed by water vapor,
methane, or something else or just escape into space.

But there is CO2 in the atmosphere even without the human 'sin' of the
industrial revolution, and it's not clear that more CO2 in the atmosphere will
absorb more in those three narrow bands than now -- that is, it may be that
all the infrared that CO2 can absorb is being absorbed now.

Someday, maybe, we will have news sources better informed than the NYT and,
then, using expository techniques 1000 years closer to the present, from the
20th century and maybe even the 21st century.

From an article like this, I would cancel my subscription to the NYT but I
can't: I've never subscribed to the NYT, rarely read it on-line, and have
never read it on-line since their 'pay-wall'. They used to call me and ask me
to subscribe, but I told them that my kitty cats prefer kitty litter or the
bushes in the back yard and that I don't have any dead fish to wrap.

The NYT may be on the way out of business. I don't really want to see that and
would hope that, instead, they would move forward 1000 years or so into at
least the 20th century, but I'm not holding my breath waiting for that.

~~~
anodari
I'm afraid of what might happen, because in the scenario of a rapid climate
change, the consequences are unpredictable. For example, today there are many
people living with the meltwater, and they would return to the stone age.

Currently I see this as a problem of garbage. Polluting industries, such as
batteries and tires, are already required to collect their waste. I think the
rich oil industry should also be required to collect the garbage of co2 that
is generated by their product.

I do not want to create a flamewar, just want to express my opinion and sorry
my bad english.

~~~
theoutlander
Lately, I feel that our species has come to an end....

