Global Warming Debate

[PBzeer]

Ermmm Stu? Scientists are human as well as anyone else. To grant them some form of infalliblity simply because of their profession fails to take this in to consideration. Many have just as much invested in man-made climate change as any industry does in opposing it. Not only that, the UN papers on climate change are written, not by the scientists, but by politicans.

[sailaway21]

Stu,
It's the "simple physics" part where you've got a problem, is it chicken or egg with the elevated CO2?

And you can answer that later, 'cause a cold front is moving your way and tomorrow isn't going to be nearly as nice as today-snow on the ground this a.m. in Michigan. Git sailin'!

[camaraderie]

Stu-
I'd be very interested in seeing some of those peer reviewed papers "on the other side". I have a very strong suspicion that you may be referring to "journals" set up by organizations like AEI and ExxonMobil in an attempt to fool the public."

Have no fear...only "name brands" will be used to from my opinions! But like Mr. Hansen's little data rigging algorythm that he would not disclose until under intense pressure over at GISS...I don't necessarily believe everything I read from "trustworthy sources" either...some of the journals have their own biases!

I lived in Smithtown during the Shoreham debacle and agree entirely with your analysis of what happened there...which is one reason I am so down on the possibility of building a lot of nuke plants in this country. So much politics and obstructionism and Nimby's.
Your comments on re-processing fuel are VERY interesting and I think unknown to the general public and present a most hopeful possibility if it can be "sold" effectively by some enlightened political leader. (JFK said..."we will go to the moon." Who will say..."We will build safe nuclear power for complete energy independence and reduced pollution." ?? (g))

Anyway...it looks like there is a better environment for planning new nuke facilities...but given the Shoreham experience...I ain't holding my reath till they come on line. When do you think me might actually get one new one on at full power in the USA??

[camaraderie]

On the lighter side:

Time magazine, November 26, 2007 (Michael Grunwald):

[Georgia's] drought was a natural event transformed into a natural disaster by human folly. And while it's still hard to say whether global warming caused any particular drought or flood or fire, it's going to cause more of all of them.

Time magazine, June 24, 1974:

In Africa, drought continues for the sixth consecutive year, adding terribly to the toll of famine victims... Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.

[merttan]

Originally Posted by PBzeer

merttan - don't confuse skepticism of the alarmists, with meaning total disregard for human contributions to the pollution of the planet. Nor should you willy-nilly assume any one else's actions. For instance, yes, it would be much harder to lower my emissions since my only contributions are a 13hp diesel and a Honda 2000w generator. I have no car. I heat no house, nor cool one. I dispose of all waste in a proper manner and can not even empty my holding tank except by pumpout.

If you choose to believe those that say the sky is falling, that's your privilege. That doesn't mean though, that you can assume any one who doesn't, wants to destroy the planet.

Well then you have nothing to worry about giving up... Your emmissions are below what we are asking to be lowered...
I'm talking about SUVs (Vehicles with 6-8 people capacity) is on the road driven by one person and there are so many of them. I have a 98 Jeep GCheeroke and I'm dying to change the car. Emissions aside, the gas mileage is a killer... But I carpool whenever possible and try to use my wife's Prius as if it's the only car we have... The jeep sits in the garage unless there is a winterstorm or I really need to go somewhere and my wife is not home. I keep my heat at 69 at winter, and 79 in summer. We use the dishwasher and laundry after 9PM when the peak hours are passed. I changed my light bulbs with spiral flourecents. Turn the lights off when I leave the room. I recycle glass,plastic, and aluminum...
All those little things I do lowers my electricity and fuel-oil needs. If many more people can do the same, We wouldn't need extra power plants and maybe having natural powered energy plants can handle our needs...
And what I do helps my pocket too! Our annual savings through those actions are over $10,000...
Industrial factories can do the same thing to lower their needs... They are so good at lowering human power when they want to cut budgets, yet they don't care much about saving energy...
Building smaller engined cars, relying on public transportation, using railroads instead of big trucks, trying to consume local produce more, and many other little actions would help both our emissions and economy...
Next time you are sitting in the traffic look around you and count how many SUVs, V8s, and V6s around you... Then count how many people are in the car... I find it really ridicilous... And open your window to breath that fresh air! I hope you won't choke...
You may not accept the human contibution to the global warming, many didn't acknowledge the same thing for ozone layer ripping...
All I'm asking is that to explain me why it would be so hard for those really contributing cannot cut their emmissions?
Granted, if you are living on a small diesel engine and a generator you don't have anything to cut... But I'm not talking about that... I'm talking about those family of 4, each driving a gas gozzler... Those stores you walk in and feel as if you walked into a freezer... Lights are on 24/7... All those increase our needs for power and the cheapest way to make power is the coal-plants... The major contributor to CO2 emissions...
We only have one planet... And, honestly, I don't want to take a chance of debate... For that many friends of mine has little children and the responsibility to those kids is important to me...
I'll say we lower our emissions doesn't matter what...

[StuMyers]

Last I had read, TVA last summer had approved one new (nuclear) plant to come online in 2013, and in Texas two new plants were approved for construction, to come online in 2014.

As for chicken-egg questions, I had addressed this in an earlier post. When talking about time scales less than a million years (i.e. on a timescale where the continent positions remain relatively constant in their current configuration) the interglacial periods are kicked off by Milankovich cycles (line-ups of orbital obliquity and eccentricity that make a series of 'super-summers' in the northern hemisphere). These periods warm large areas of permafrost, releasing large amounts of carbon dioxide. This additional carbon dioxide then keeps the earth warmer until it is slowly re-absorbed over the next few thousand years. This is why climate on this time scale looks like a saw-tooth. Abrupt warming, followed by a gradual cooling until the next abrupt warming. Before the industrial (or agrarian, it's not clear) revolution we were past the last interglacial peak temperature, sliding towards the next glacial period. We've clearly reversed that natural trend.

Now again, this isn't a harbinger for the end of life as we know it. Carbon dioxide's greenhouse effect is logarithmic, meaning that slight additions will cause an increase of a few degrees, but for a few more, you need twice (or whatever the factor, don't know off the top of my head) as much carbon as before, and so on. What it is a harbinger for, is a shift in climate zones. Much infrastructure is dependent on the local climates (i.e. irrigation) and shifting those climate zones will require the construction of new infrastructure. There is a difference in whether this takes 50 years or 250 years, in terms of expense. It is far more expensive to do these projects quickly, and it will represent a large opportunity cost that could have otherwise been used for other things (like curing malaria).

Now, the globe has been warming, and the sea rising, since at least the start of the industrial revolution (though the RATE is increasing). We've just been too busy with things like world wars to really notice, or even care (world wars were far more destructive than the climate shifts).

I don't believe that the opportunity cost represented by replacing coal and natural gas (and again, much of petroleum indirectly) with nuclear fission exceeds that of the projected climate shifts in the next 100 years. Especially since we're going to need them anyway, to meet our future (greatly) expanding power needs. Coal can meet our short-term future needs only (700 years supply at 2007 consumption rates), while nuclear fission (Uranium and Thorium) can realistically meet our expected power needs for thousands if not millions of years (in effect, forever).

[PBzeer]

Here's an example of the rush to impose "restrictions", for the sake of style over substance. Coming from people who seem to think we should live in caves in the first place, I find it both ironic, and a glaring example of the foolishiness exhibited on the whole subject.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl.../EDNKTDK1S.DTL

merttan - I would suggest you ask that question of the Great Global Warming Messiah, Al Gore. Whilst preaching the need for change, he goes on living a profligate life, leaving a carbon footprint many times over what he thinks others should have. All while raking in the bucks preaching, and selling "carbon offsets" (and how ridiculous is that as a "cure"?)

[StuMyers]

Again, the only people worth listening to on the subject are working, publishing climate scientists. Here's a good resource for questions;

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?cat=10

[merttan]

Here are some paragraphs from NASA-GISS research... NASA is government funded... They don't have much interest on political outcomes of their research... The source is at the end of the post if you'd like to read the full version...
What do you have to say now?

"The notion that humans could override nature and force the globe to warm intrigued Hansen. "It had been known for more than a century that increasing carbon dioxide could have an effect on global temperature," Hansen said (referring to the pioneering work of John Tyndall and Svante Arrhenius in the 1800s). "

"The model demonstrated that both human and natural activities could force climate to change. But Hansen knew that natural forcings, like volcanic eruptions or changes in the Sun's activity, tend to go up and down over a long period of time whereas the human forcing from greenhouse gas emissions was steadily increasing."

"To questions about whether this warming is natural or just a fluctuation, the answer has become clear: the world is getting warmer," Hansen stated. "This fact agrees so well with what we calculate with our global climate model that I am confident we are looking at warming that is mainly due to increasing human-made greenhouse gases."

"Hansen's team "cleans" the weather station data by finding and filtering out flawed data entries. Specifically, they apply a computer algorithm that checks each data point for temperature readings that are very significantly higher or lower than average for a given location at that time of year. Whenever such an anomaly is flagged, the algorithm compares those data to data from nearby stations to see if they show a similar anomaly. If so, then the data in question are kept; if not, or if there are no nearby stations for comparison, then the data are thrown away."

"For much of the twentieth century, both types of human emissions were on nearly equal footing, and aerosols were able to compete with greenhouse gases," Hansen said. But that balance has tilted increasingly in favor of greenhouse gases in the last 30 years. Today, Hansen's team estimates the human forcing from greenhouse gases to be about 3 watts per square meter (warming) and the forcing from aerosols to be about minus 1.5 watts per square meter (cooling). Hansen sees these trends as very likely to lead to what he calls "dangerous human interference" with the climate system."

"I think action [to reduce greenhouse gas emissions] is needed urgently, because we are on the precipice of a climate system 'tipping point'," Hansen concluded. "I believe the evidence shows with reasonable clarity that the level of additional global warming that would put us into dangerous territory is at most 1°C."

"If we follow a 'business-as-usual' course, Hansen predicts, then at the end of the twenty-first century we will find a planet that is 2-3°C warmer than today, which is a temperature Earth hasn't experienced since the middle Pliocene Epoch about three million years ago, when sea level was roughly 25 meters higher than it is today."



Source: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/features/temptracker/

[merttan]

"From a combination of climate models, satellite data, and paleoclimate records the scientists conclude that the West Antarctic ice sheet, Arctic ice cover, and regions providing fresh water sources and species habitat are under threat from continued global warming."

"The researchers used data on earlier warm periods in Earth's history to estimate climate impacts as a function of global temperature, climate models to simulate global warming, and satellite data to verify ongoing changes. Lead author James Hansen, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, concludes: "If global emissions of carbon dioxide continue to rise at the rate of the past decade, this research shows that there will be disastrous effects, including increasingly rapid sea level rise, increased frequency of droughts and floods, and increased stress on wildlife and plants due to rapidly shifting climate zones.""

"A computer model developed by the Goddard Institute was used to simulate climate from 1880 through today. The model included a more comprehensive set of natural and human-made climate forcings than previous studies, including changes in solar radiation, volcanic particles, human-made greenhouse gases, fine particles such as soot, the effect of the particles on clouds and land use. Extensive evaluation of the model's ability to simulate climate change is contained in a companion paper to be published in Climate Dynamics."
"The authors use the model for climate simulations of the 21st century using both "business-as-usual" growth of greenhouse gas emissions and an "alternative scenario" in which emissions decrease slowly in the next few decades and then rapidly to achieve stabilization of atmospheric CO2 amount by the end of the century. Climate changes are so large with "business-as-usual", with additional global warming of 2-3°C (3.6-5.4°F) that Hansen concludes "'business-as-usual' would be a guarantee of global and regional disasters."

"However, the study finds much less severe climate change — one-quarter to one-third that of the "business-as-usual" scenario — when greenhouse gas emissions follow the alternative scenario. "Climate effects may still be substantial in the 'alternative scenario', but there is a better chance to adapt to the changes and find other ways to further reduce the climate change," said Sato.

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20070530/