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Climate Change / Global Warming Discussion
- Thread starter Raffy.Roma
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Oceans warming
With reference to this diagram (post #744) I wish to point out that actually the CO2 concentration curve precedes the temperature curve of some centuries. Maybe that this is not visible on the diagram because the time scale is too small.
From a physical point ov view this means that the rising of the Earth temperature is preceded from the Oceans warming.
With reference to this diagram (post #744) I wish to point out that actually the CO2 concentration curve precedes the temperature curve of some centuries. Maybe that this is not visible on the diagram because the time scale is too small.
From a physical point ov view this means that the rising of the Earth temperature is preceded from the Oceans warming.
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SwedishAdvocate
Active Member
And which sane person gives a *bleep* about what the former *bleeping* *bleep* prime minister of Australia thinks?
I certainly do not!
*bleep* *bleep* *bleep*!
I would like to invite all TMC Members posting in this thread to report, as much as it is possible of course. only scientific and technical arguments and data because it's my opinion that posts focused on political matters don't give contribution to the Climate Change/Global Warming discussion.
Says who? I don't consider him a hero. Mind you I'm not a disciple either.
He does deserve some credit for raising awareness. Should also point out he was an ex-politician at the time.
SwedishAdvocate
Active Member
According to 97% of the worlds climate scientists Al Gore happens to be right on Man Made Climate Change! And that happens to be what this thread is about!
Source:
Is there a scientific consensus on global warming? | skepticalscience.com
John Howard on the other hand clearly does not know ANYTHING. Here are his own words from the PDF you posted:
Those words are dated November 5, 2013, 7 pm London, UK!
The man clearly does not understand the following:
What has global warming done since 1998? | skepticalscience.com
We haven't hit the global warming pause button | Dana Nuccitelli | Environment | theguardian.com
It is really unbelievably tragic that John Howard was the elected prime minster of Australia. It's beyond words. But I guess that’s what happens when you have the man behind Fox News – Rupert Murdoch – owning what percentage of that nation state’s media?
Your turn Kaivball…
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Where does the post you are referring to mention anything else than Man Made Climate Change?
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For the record:
According to Wikipedia, these are the votes in the 2000 POTUS election:
In any proportionately representative democracy Gore would have won!
Just stating a fact.
Source:
United States presidential election, 2000 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Howard notes that politicians make policies, and scientists use the scientific method to gather and assess data. The problem is when the politicians refuse to accept the conclusions of the scientists and craft policy as though the scientific consensus did not exist.
I don't understand your question. I only meant that IMO people reading this thread would be interested in it if we gave them elements making them understand the importance of the Climate Change/Global Warming issue. On the contrary people reading a political debate on this thread would get the impression that actually the Climate Change/Global Warming matter is not an issue at all.
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Agree 100%.
Agreed but we have to remember that we put them there. It's our responsibility to vet these people, and I for one want scientifically literate congressman. One congressman from my state said that the big bang and evolution were "lies from the pit of hell". It's not that statement that irritates me, it's the fact that someone in a position of power would make it painfully obvious that he doesn't have a evidence-based view of the world. There are some efforts to change that like sciencedebate.org. However that's another topic of discussion.
Kaivball said:
If you understood how weak/childish your arguments are, you'd be embarrassed of yourself. Climate science has been researched for decades before Gore was even born, as far back as the 19th century. Al Gore only presents information that has been researched by others. He's just a presenter/messenger of scientific research that is publically and easily accessible. If you actually make the effort to do the research yourself. What do you expect to happen Kaivball? Do you think that within the entire scientific community is about to come out and say that climate change has been a hoax/scam this whole time? It's not going to happen. Time to get over it.
wcalvin
Member
Climate notes 1.0
What to do? The current focus on emissions misses the point entirely, however appropriate it might have been in the 1970s. A “carbon diet” is now unlikely to succeed in time.
In the continental U.S., it now lookshttps://d.docs.live.net/5661aeda4e86e984/Documents/A Futurist Look at Climate Prospects.docx#_edn1 as if we are going to overheat 2°C (3.6°F) by 2028. Remember that year. It’s when today’s toddlers finish high school and contemplate their future—or lack thereof.
Before we reach that 2°C (3.6°F) frontier, we will have many more extreme weather events than in recent years. Relocation and costly infrastructure repairs will loom large in budget discussions.
Miraculously converting to low emissions tomorrow, worldwide, would only delay the U.S. reaching that 2°C frontier by nine years[SUP]1[/SUP], to 2037. At our current level of effort, we’ll be lucky to get an extra nine weeks.
There is a hazard to long-term thinking. To reap long-term benefits, you first have to survive the short-term risks–and they often require a different approach than prevention does.
Suppose that you went to the dentist with a toothache. But instead of filling the cavity, the dentist merely told you to brush your teeth more often.
Without a repair, a tooth not only hurts: it won’t survive long enough to benefit from better brushing. Once you’ve got a problem, what you need is a quick fix, then a redoubling of preventive measures.
Prevention is no longer the appropriate way to look at the climate problem, not when we’ve already accumulated a 43 percent excess of carbon dioxide in the air. The overheating from it has been exaggerating the usual causes of extreme weather episodes.
Our current approach to global warming is all prevention and no fix. We persist in framing the climate problem in the same way as we did before 1976, which is when major climate shifts began.
But we’re doing something about it, right? Wrong. Reducing emissions from tailpipes and smokestacks does not reduce the carbon dioxide accumulation, not any more than a drop in the annual budget deficit will reduce the national debt. And it's the carbon dioxide accumulation over the past hundred years, not this current year’s additional CO2, which causes overheating and extreme weather.
Substituting the annual rate of CO2 additions (emissions) for the century’s accumulation is a familiar error. A step in the right direction is not, alas, a retreat that backs out of the undesirable situation. No experienced military commander would make such a mistake. So why is it so common in discussions about climate?
I am not referring to the “blowing smoke” attempts to confuse everyone. Even climate analysts who have grown immune to the disinformation campaigns seem to have trouble focusing on the need to reduce the excess accumulation faster than natural processes can do so. They seldom mention that emissions reduction takes far too long to help us with the looming short-term climate events facing us before mid-century.
https://d.docs.live.net/5661aeda4e8...urist Look at Climate Prospects.docx#_ednref1 Joshi M, Hawkins E, Sutton E, Lowe J, Frame D (2011). Projections of when temperature change will exceed 2°C above pre-industrial levels. Nature Climate Change 1:407-412, fig. 2. doi:10.1038/nclimate1261
Thanks for the prod, Raffy. I will begin posting some short pieces that I've written for other purposes. See http://WilliamCalvin.org
What to do? The current focus on emissions misses the point entirely, however appropriate it might have been in the 1970s. A “carbon diet” is now unlikely to succeed in time.
In the continental U.S., it now lookshttps://d.docs.live.net/5661aeda4e86e984/Documents/A Futurist Look at Climate Prospects.docx#_edn1 as if we are going to overheat 2°C (3.6°F) by 2028. Remember that year. It’s when today’s toddlers finish high school and contemplate their future—or lack thereof.
Before we reach that 2°C (3.6°F) frontier, we will have many more extreme weather events than in recent years. Relocation and costly infrastructure repairs will loom large in budget discussions.
Miraculously converting to low emissions tomorrow, worldwide, would only delay the U.S. reaching that 2°C frontier by nine years[SUP]1[/SUP], to 2037. At our current level of effort, we’ll be lucky to get an extra nine weeks.
There is a hazard to long-term thinking. To reap long-term benefits, you first have to survive the short-term risks–and they often require a different approach than prevention does.
Suppose that you went to the dentist with a toothache. But instead of filling the cavity, the dentist merely told you to brush your teeth more often.
Without a repair, a tooth not only hurts: it won’t survive long enough to benefit from better brushing. Once you’ve got a problem, what you need is a quick fix, then a redoubling of preventive measures.
Prevention is no longer the appropriate way to look at the climate problem, not when we’ve already accumulated a 43 percent excess of carbon dioxide in the air. The overheating from it has been exaggerating the usual causes of extreme weather episodes.
Our current approach to global warming is all prevention and no fix. We persist in framing the climate problem in the same way as we did before 1976, which is when major climate shifts began.
But we’re doing something about it, right? Wrong. Reducing emissions from tailpipes and smokestacks does not reduce the carbon dioxide accumulation, not any more than a drop in the annual budget deficit will reduce the national debt. And it's the carbon dioxide accumulation over the past hundred years, not this current year’s additional CO2, which causes overheating and extreme weather.
Substituting the annual rate of CO2 additions (emissions) for the century’s accumulation is a familiar error. A step in the right direction is not, alas, a retreat that backs out of the undesirable situation. No experienced military commander would make such a mistake. So why is it so common in discussions about climate?
I am not referring to the “blowing smoke” attempts to confuse everyone. Even climate analysts who have grown immune to the disinformation campaigns seem to have trouble focusing on the need to reduce the excess accumulation faster than natural processes can do so. They seldom mention that emissions reduction takes far too long to help us with the looming short-term climate events facing us before mid-century.
https://d.docs.live.net/5661aeda4e8...urist Look at Climate Prospects.docx#_ednref1 Joshi M, Hawkins E, Sutton E, Lowe J, Frame D (2011). Projections of when temperature change will exceed 2°C above pre-industrial levels. Nature Climate Change 1:407-412, fig. 2. doi:10.1038/nclimate1261
@wcalvin: While I can agree with the principle and theoretical conclusion of your article, I'm not aware of any technology that can remove existing GHGs at anything like the scale required. It's not merely the problem that such tech is extraordinarily costly -- although it is, e.g. CCS on coal-plants (which isn't reducing carbon, merely slowly the rate of increase, is astronomically high -- it's that we don't have any tool in the arsenal at any price. There have been suggestions, such as iron-seeding the ocean or introducing micro-mirrors into the upper atmosphere, but each carries substantial risks of creating an unintended ecological disaster.
So, what did you have in mind to effect this "CO2 retreat"?
So, what did you have in mind to effect this "CO2 retreat"?
@Robert
If I understand well the thought of Professor Calvin he is not giving us the technique to remove GHGs but he is warning us, and I think he is right, that we should not only consider how to reduce CO2 emissions but we should also focus on ways to remove GHGs from the atmosphere. In fact the CO2 stock in the atmosphere is too big and reducing CO2 emissions wouldn't be effective not only to avoid an anomalous increase of the Earth temperature but IMO mainly to work out the Ocean Acidification issue.
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To this concern I would like to add that from my studies I came to the conclusion that if we want to work out the Ocean Acidification issue we should reduce the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere to 350 ppm and if we only try to reduce CO2 emission in 2050 we will have (in the best case) a CO2 concentration of 450 ppm. Of course this doesn't mean that we should stop our efforts to reduce CO2 emissions. We should always keep working to reduce CO2 emissions. But I agree with Professor Calvin that we should also try to find ways to remove GHGs from the atmosphere to get the target of 350 ppm for CO2 concentration.
If I understand well the thought of Professor Calvin he is not giving us the technique to remove GHGs but he is warning us, and I think he is right, that we should not only consider how to reduce CO2 emissions but we should also focus on ways to remove GHGs from the atmosphere. In fact the CO2 stock in the atmosphere is too big and reducing CO2 emissions wouldn't be effective not only to avoid an anomalous increase of the Earth temperature but IMO mainly to work out the Ocean Acidification issue.
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To this concern I would like to add that from my studies I came to the conclusion that if we want to work out the Ocean Acidification issue we should reduce the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere to 350 ppm and if we only try to reduce CO2 emission in 2050 we will have (in the best case) a CO2 concentration of 450 ppm. Of course this doesn't mean that we should stop our efforts to reduce CO2 emissions. We should always keep working to reduce CO2 emissions. But I agree with Professor Calvin that we should also try to find ways to remove GHGs from the atmosphere to get the target of 350 ppm for CO2 concentration.
Actually Professor Calvin wrote a book concerning the matter of GHGs removal from the atmosphere titled:
However, our escape route is not yet closed off. We can still do the equivalent of plowing under a cover crop, using perhaps one percent of the ocean surface for the next twenty years. A sustained bloom of algae is fertilized by pumping up seawater from the depths—whereupon another wind-driven pump flushes the surface water back into even deeper depths before its new biomass becomes CO2 again. When the sunken biomass does decompose, its CO2 is smeared out over 6,000 years. Such a slow return of excess CO2 can be countered by forestry practices.
Putting current and past emissions back into secure storage would lower the global overheating, relieve deluge and drought, reverse ocean acidification, reverse half of sea level rise as the oceans cool, and reduce the chance of abrupt climate shifts. The plankton plantations could then be kept in readiness for cooling the planet in a methane emergency.
The Great CO2 Cleanup: Backing Out of the Danger Zon
Book Description
Most of our climate problems could be repaired by cleaning up the excess CO2 in the air and so cooling things off. However, because of abrupt climate flips, the cleanup must be big, quick, and secure. Doubling all forests might satisfy the first two but it would be quite insecure—currently even rain forests are burning and rotting, releasing additional CO2.However, our escape route is not yet closed off. We can still do the equivalent of plowing under a cover crop, using perhaps one percent of the ocean surface for the next twenty years. A sustained bloom of algae is fertilized by pumping up seawater from the depths—whereupon another wind-driven pump flushes the surface water back into even deeper depths before its new biomass becomes CO2 again. When the sunken biomass does decompose, its CO2 is smeared out over 6,000 years. Such a slow return of excess CO2 can be countered by forestry practices.
Putting current and past emissions back into secure storage would lower the global overheating, relieve deluge and drought, reverse ocean acidification, reverse half of sea level rise as the oceans cool, and reduce the chance of abrupt climate shifts. The plankton plantations could then be kept in readiness for cooling the planet in a methane emergency.
I would like to point out these sentences took by the above linked article.
As the administration's backers consistently point out, America has cut its own carbon emissions by 12 percent in the past five years, and we may meet our announced national goal of a 17 percent reduction by decade's end.
True problem IMO is that, like Professor Calvin pointed out, we cannot pretend to work out the issue of CO2 emissions simply by reducing the combustion of fossil fuels. In fact our societies are too much fossil fuels dependant and even by doing maximum efforts to reduce CO2 emissions we will not work out the issue of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. IMO we are forced to parallel our efforts to reduce CO2 emissions to a commitment to clean uo CO2 from the atmosphere.
Yes but it's a good justification. It means, as I said in my previous post, that reducing CO2 emissions is not enough to work out the issue of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.
wcalvin
Member
Climate Notes 2.0 (an op-ed that wasn't)
Why Tesla Is Not Enough
William H. Calvin
There are many reasons to like Tesla Motors’ new aerodynamic sedan without a tailpipe, in production for the last year. Consumer Reports called it the best car they have ever tested, electric or not. “Filling up” my Model S overnight after driving 250 miles costs less than $10 for electricity, whereas my trade-in required $60 for gasoline.
Most electric vehicles are mere modifications of an existing car model; take out some machinery under the hood, fit in some new. But the Model S shows what a fresh start can do. The floor is the rigid compartment housing 7,000 small batteries. The quiet electric motor is between the rear wheels. This makes for a low center of gravity and excellent stability.
The government crash tests turned out, as Tesla’s designers had predicted, to be five star as well–indeed, a best ever. What’s under the hood is a well-designed crumple zone, with no heavy machinery to threaten front seat occupants. It’s used as the second trunk. (To see any machinery, one must crawl under the car.)
The Tesla itself may have zero emissions but the electricity has to come from somewhere. Here in Seattle, 98 percent of our electricity comes from sun-powered renewables: hydroelectric, photoelectric, and wind. Switzerland also has 98 percent clean electricity, half from hydro and half from nuclear.
But most places get their electricity from some less guilt-free mix of clean and traditional. If I recharge while driving through Wyoming, nearly all of the electricity will come from burning the most damaging fossil fuel of all, coal. And until the environmental cost of producing its batteries comes down (Panasonic uses Japan’s electricity mix, now very heavy on fossil fuels), the emissions from manufacturing a Tesla are higher than for a hybrid. That will change as new battery factories are built in the clean energy regions that supply Tesla with aluminum for the rest of the car.
Celebrating Tesla’s potential environmental success does, however, miss the Big Picture on climate. Many people still confuse carbon dioxide emissions (a yearly rate) with the accumulation over decades (an amount)–which is like confusing miles per hour with miles traveled. Our extreme weather episodes mostly come from the accumulation of past emissions in the circulating air, not from this year’s additions. Fixing emissions does not even fix the current climate problems, let alone what's in the pipeline.
We have already added 43 percent more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than was there 200 years ago. Natural processes are going to be slow to remove it; even after a few centuries, one-fourth would remain. That is not quick enough to affect our alarming trend towards more extreme heat waves, drought, deluge, sea level rise, and ocean acidification. All it took to set up most past civilizations for a human population crash was just one of them, prolonged regional drought.
Reducing fossil fuel use is only an emissions reduction strategy, putting Tesla’s green aspect in the same class as efficiency improvements, smokestack capture of some of the carbon dioxide emissions, and substituting the less obnoxious natural gas for coal.
Note that mere reductions in yearly emissions still allow the accumulation to grow and the climate to worsen. However much zero emissions worldwide could have prevented our menacing climate problem if they had started forty years ago, it cannot fix it now.
Emissions reduction is a preventative measure, rather like brushing your teeth. Once you have a toothache, however, the solution is not more brushing. You need a repair job to make sure that the tooth survives long enough to enjoy the benefits of better prevention.
So we now need climate repair in addition to prevention measures. But how? Shading us a little by generating a high haze has been proposed but cooling from an uneven application of the haze can detour the moisture-bearing winds, a classic setup for even more drought and deluge.
To safely back out of our precarious position, we must instead reduce the excess carbon dioxide in the air, where unevenness is prevented by the usual atmospheric mixing within two years.
Climate repair thus means recapturing the excess carbon dioxide from the air, not merely the smokestack, then stashing it safely for millennia. But by now the cleanup problem has become so large that only the oceans are big enough to do the job within 20 years via more photosynthesis–and then only if the new green stuff is piped down into the ocean depths before it can revert to carbon dioxide.
We have to subtract carbon dioxide, not merely reduce what we add, and that takes a new approach. We need to quickly re-think our approach to the climate problem, just as Tesla re-thought its approach to car design.
Why Tesla Is Not Enough
William H. Calvin
There are many reasons to like Tesla Motors’ new aerodynamic sedan without a tailpipe, in production for the last year. Consumer Reports called it the best car they have ever tested, electric or not. “Filling up” my Model S overnight after driving 250 miles costs less than $10 for electricity, whereas my trade-in required $60 for gasoline.
Most electric vehicles are mere modifications of an existing car model; take out some machinery under the hood, fit in some new. But the Model S shows what a fresh start can do. The floor is the rigid compartment housing 7,000 small batteries. The quiet electric motor is between the rear wheels. This makes for a low center of gravity and excellent stability.
The government crash tests turned out, as Tesla’s designers had predicted, to be five star as well–indeed, a best ever. What’s under the hood is a well-designed crumple zone, with no heavy machinery to threaten front seat occupants. It’s used as the second trunk. (To see any machinery, one must crawl under the car.)
The Tesla itself may have zero emissions but the electricity has to come from somewhere. Here in Seattle, 98 percent of our electricity comes from sun-powered renewables: hydroelectric, photoelectric, and wind. Switzerland also has 98 percent clean electricity, half from hydro and half from nuclear.
But most places get their electricity from some less guilt-free mix of clean and traditional. If I recharge while driving through Wyoming, nearly all of the electricity will come from burning the most damaging fossil fuel of all, coal. And until the environmental cost of producing its batteries comes down (Panasonic uses Japan’s electricity mix, now very heavy on fossil fuels), the emissions from manufacturing a Tesla are higher than for a hybrid. That will change as new battery factories are built in the clean energy regions that supply Tesla with aluminum for the rest of the car.
Celebrating Tesla’s potential environmental success does, however, miss the Big Picture on climate. Many people still confuse carbon dioxide emissions (a yearly rate) with the accumulation over decades (an amount)–which is like confusing miles per hour with miles traveled. Our extreme weather episodes mostly come from the accumulation of past emissions in the circulating air, not from this year’s additions. Fixing emissions does not even fix the current climate problems, let alone what's in the pipeline.
We have already added 43 percent more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than was there 200 years ago. Natural processes are going to be slow to remove it; even after a few centuries, one-fourth would remain. That is not quick enough to affect our alarming trend towards more extreme heat waves, drought, deluge, sea level rise, and ocean acidification. All it took to set up most past civilizations for a human population crash was just one of them, prolonged regional drought.
Reducing fossil fuel use is only an emissions reduction strategy, putting Tesla’s green aspect in the same class as efficiency improvements, smokestack capture of some of the carbon dioxide emissions, and substituting the less obnoxious natural gas for coal.
Note that mere reductions in yearly emissions still allow the accumulation to grow and the climate to worsen. However much zero emissions worldwide could have prevented our menacing climate problem if they had started forty years ago, it cannot fix it now.
Emissions reduction is a preventative measure, rather like brushing your teeth. Once you have a toothache, however, the solution is not more brushing. You need a repair job to make sure that the tooth survives long enough to enjoy the benefits of better prevention.
So we now need climate repair in addition to prevention measures. But how? Shading us a little by generating a high haze has been proposed but cooling from an uneven application of the haze can detour the moisture-bearing winds, a classic setup for even more drought and deluge.
To safely back out of our precarious position, we must instead reduce the excess carbon dioxide in the air, where unevenness is prevented by the usual atmospheric mixing within two years.
Climate repair thus means recapturing the excess carbon dioxide from the air, not merely the smokestack, then stashing it safely for millennia. But by now the cleanup problem has become so large that only the oceans are big enough to do the job within 20 years via more photosynthesis–and then only if the new green stuff is piped down into the ocean depths before it can revert to carbon dioxide.
We have to subtract carbon dioxide, not merely reduce what we add, and that takes a new approach. We need to quickly re-think our approach to the climate problem, just as Tesla re-thought its approach to car design.
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