Apparently "Global warming" and "climate change" are not mutually exclusive concepts.
This is what happens when you have NASA scientists for friends...I posted this Luckovich cartoon on FB, and got this response from one of my school mates from Florida daze...
Tim: To pick a nit, here's my 0.02
Because of changes in the ratios of greenhouse gases, the earth receives round about one watt per square meter more energy from the sun than it emits back to space. That imbalance in earth's energy budget means the average temperature of earth must rise (and/or heat is used to melt ice). That's global warming.
The response of earth's atmosphere to that energy imbalance is climate change. It's more than semantics. GW and CC are related, but not equivalent. They describe different effects.
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8 hours ago via mobile · Like · 3
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Rob: Duly nitted...er, noted.
2 hours ago via mobile · Like
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Tim: It's all down to whiskey. And a guy called Joseph Black. He was curious why the sun didn't melt all the snow in Scotland. So he put a pan of ice-cold water and a pan of ice in his lab and measured the temperature every hour until both were room temperature.
The problem he was trying to solve was why it took so much water to condense the vapor in a whiskey distillery. He found that all the heat went into melting all the ice before the water temperature began to rise. Then he did the same thing with boiling water and realized that you sort of got all that heat (he named it latent heat) back in the steam, explaining why steam scalded so.
As an aside, at the university where he worked a model atmospheric engine broke and Black discussed how it worked with the mechanic charged with repairing it. The mechanic realized a crucial shortcoming - the engine only had a single vessel in which to boil water and condense steam, making it inefficient. So Black's friend added a second vessel and his modification improved the efficiency so much that you probably were taught that this guy, James Watt, invented the steam engine.
about an hour ago via mobile · Unlike · 1
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Tim: As a further aside, in my college teaching days I began my lecture on global warming with a cheap shot - video of that half-witted Michelle Bachmann chirping about how there isn't a single study that shows CO2 is harmful. The beauty of a statement like that is I only need to find one. When CO2 was first described they would put a mouse in a jar full of it and it DIED. The guy who described it? Joseph Black. Those were the days when Scotland was relevant in world affairs.
about an hour ago via mobile · Unlike · 1
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Christel: The media could not even read that off of a teleprompter. I really like having Tim as a friend!
32 minutes ago · Unlike · 1
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(I included Christel's comment just because she is a wonderful person, a brilliant and dedicated school teacher, and just got inducted into the Surfing Hall of Fame last weekend! I run in interesting circles! Surfers and scientists. LOL!)
= new reply since forum marked as read
He thought more CO2 warming Earth would be a good thing.
Can't say I blame him - as a Swede that would be understandable.
