If you like having your blood pressure raised...

[Blue heaven]

Lets throw some nails into the works. The climate is changing. However it has forever been changing. Antarctica was once tropical. The whole of North America was buried under an ice sheet. Sure maybe it has changed a bit faster in the last century, but even that “fact” is not settled. Maybe a 1-1.5 degree warming in a century? IF it is anthropogenic, then likely it is related to the over abundance of a single species which is multiplying at an ever increasing rate, especially during the same century in question, and the solution is to restrict that species or even cull. (Shock/horror). Matter can be neither created nor destroyed. A basic law of physics. What CO2 is around has always been around. So it needs to be locked up again. How? Plants, especially trees, and specifically long lived trees, not eucalypts and the like. The chief scientist has pointed out that there is no way on this earth that renewables can reliably power the grid. So, the options, unless one is happy to retreat back into the Stone Age, AND totally trash the economy, is nuclear coal and gas, with some renewable contribution. Some increased co2 helps plants to grow faster-fact. Co2+sunlight+water and trace nutrients = O2 and food (sugars of various types). Admittedly, too much CO2 will at some point become toxic to plants, but not for a long long time and very much higher levels. The climate is not going to be taxed into submission. The chief scientist also said that even if ALL Australia’s emissions were stopped today, the most the contribution would make would be about 1.3 - 1.5% reduction in global CO2 emissions. Was in Shanghai not too long ago. A city with the population of the WHOLE of Australia, 24 million. The amount of pollution there is astounding. Makes a total mockery of ANY attempt at emission reduction in Australia . Totally futile.
Now, cars. Love my TESLA, and I have panels (6kw) and a TESLA battery, but I don’t kid myself this makes a jot of difference to the planet. What it does is reduce local smog, reduce my electricity bill, and gives me the pure pleasure of instant torque. (Just rented an outlander for a week while on hols- whew, what lack of power - not fun to drive).
What government should be doing is taking the luxury car tax off EV’s, simply as a matter of equity. The high price is not due to luxury but rather the cost of the fuel tank, and the myriad of other taxes imposed by state and federal governments. I do agree that the future of transport is electric in one form or another be it hydrogen or fuel cell or battery electric. Fact is, petroleum is a finite resource. We are going to need base load power and lots of it and RELIABLE base load, to drive the electric future.

An interesting statement from you below, maybe we should start by culling the greedy western populations that use more than 5 times the worlds resources than the average human, because everyone has the right to be part of humanity, no one has the right to make a pig of themselves.

"IF it is anthropogenic, then likely it is related to the over abundance of a single species which is multiplying at an ever increasing rate, especially during the same century in question, and the solution is to restrict that species or even cull. (Shock/horror)."

 

[Dborn]

You’re begging for rampant abuse with your opening paragraphs.....

To the car though, sure your panels and car are making a small difference, but if every car on the planet was electric and had panels the difference would be massive. Cities would no longer have so much pollution. Health costs would reduce, wars would decrease and trees could be absorbing other co2 instead. Hot exhausts wouldn’t be starting grass fires. Just so many advantages.

Beijing and Shanghai, the only cities I’ve been to where I felt better on the aircraft afterward with ‘fresh air’.
Shanghai is incredible though.

You know, the smog and resultant health aspect is entirely my view of the benefits at this time. Fires? Well, yeah. Obviously. But the hysteria, the rampant child abuse like the Thunbergs of this world (her parents should be in jail for child abuse), giving her a Nobel prize for spouting vested interests well crafted speeches written for her? Don’t think so. An Oscar for perfect delivery perhaps.

 

[Dborn]

TLDR - there are too many people on the planet

you would like to gain understanding of and insight into this complex subject, please keep reading.
“However, at the end of all of this effort, I came to a disturbing conclusion.
Global warming is not the problem; even if it exists as the warmists say it exists, it is a symptom of a much larger problem. It is the fever caused by a viral infection. By attacking global warming, we are treating the symptom and not the disease. The viral infection is overpopulation by humans and the overconsumption of resources by those humans.”
Yep pretty much what I said.

 

[OzVic]

Sheesh! And here I was going along with the 99.5% of scientists that say it's because we're burning megatonnes of fossil fuels & releasing megatonnes of CO2 from fossil fuels that have been buried deep inside of the earth for millions of years. ie. That normally wouldn't be released .. it would just stay there stored.

Me.. IT guy with no degrees / or is truck driver / or taxi driver / or lawyer / or even welfare recipient. ie. A guy with no environmental degrees is smarter and knows better than 99.5% of degree achieving, smart, high IQ, scientifically-driven, evidence-based scientists. I know better than all of them!

/s

 

[Vostok]

The climate is changing. However it has forever been changing

Yes, but the rate of change is unprecedented and not driven by “natural” forces. Climate change deniers always conveniently omit talking about the rates of change, because that’s where their “normal” thesis falls to bits.

Sure maybe it has changed a bit faster in the last century, but even that “fact” is not settled. Maybe a 1-1.5 degree warming in a century?

Well, it is settled, even if you choose to ignore an entire body of science.

Over the past 800k years, the "normal" or “natural” annual rate of change of CO2 has lay between -46 and +49 ppb/yr (parts per billion per year) and this change has been fairly symmetrical around a zero mean. But this started to change from the start of the industrial revolution.

From the late 1700s to 1940, the rate of change in atmospheric CO2 occasionally went negative but often went up to 100 ppb/year - double the historical 99.7% (three standard deviations) peak rate of +49 ppb/year.

The last time there was an annual reduction in atmospheric CO2 levels was in 1946. Since then it has only increased, from 100 ppb/yr to now increasing between 2000 ppb/yr and 3000 ppb/yr.

Conclusion? Atmospheric CO2 is now increasing at a rate 50 times faster than it has ever done in the past 800,000 years. Fifty times. That is not “a bit”. That is a lot.

An extremely well developed body of scientific knowledge, research and evidence has concluded the cause for this is humans burning fossil fuels. The evidence is so strong that it has reached what is called “gold standard” - it is almost as close to “certain” as it is scientifically possible to prove. There is no other plausible explanation backed up with an evidentiary body of knowledge and data.

Since you are challenging the science, what is your explanation as to why atmospheric CO2 is now increasing at a rate fifty times faster than it has ever done in the past 800,000 years? I genuinely want to know what your explanation is.

IF it is anthropogenic, then likely it is related to the over abundance of a single species which is multiplying at an ever increasing rate

And guess what? Fossil fuel use since the industrial revolution has scaled with population. See a connection?

Yes humans consume and exploit lots of the earth’s resources. If we never burned fossil fuels, we would still have other problems to deal with - land degradation, clean water supplies, food production, other pollution etc. But we would not have an escalating CO2 problem resulting in global warming, magnifying and escalating the other ecosystem problems we face. The challenges would be far less confronting and daunting.

Matter can be neither created nor destroyed. A basic law of physics. What CO2 is around has always been around.

And this proves you do not understand the problem, and this is likely the source for all subsequent misunderstanding.

The billions of tons of ‘incremental’ CO2 in the atmosphere now was not there before the 1700s. It was created by oxidizing carbon atoms - namely burning fossil fuels, turning carbon (C) into carbon dioxide (CO2) which then stays in the atmosphere for thousands of years, trapping additional heat. So this extra CO2 around now has not “always been around”.

Matter is not being created or destroyed, but its form can be changed through chemical reactions. The earth has lost carbon (C) atoms from under the ground, and a corresponding amount of oxygen (O) atoms that were formerly in the atmosphere unbound, to create new CO2 molecules that were not there before. The total amount of matter is the same, but the molecular composition of that matter has changed.

Happy to address the rest of your post, but with such a factual and basic misunderstanding, I should stop there to see if you are prepared to learn something.

 

[BirdOfPrey]

I don't agree with the "99.5% of scientists" argument since it employs a demagogue technique - application of authority. Majority of *people* can be wrong and there were plenty of examples for that in our history. People are easily subverted, can be bribed, are often afraid to speak up against the consensus, so "majority of scientists say" is pretty far from being an axiom in my view.

Data obtained by scientific method, on the other hand, doesn't lie. It's objective and unbiased. Data IS science. Proper scientific method should protect it from being doctored. Anyone can analyse it and draw conclusions - and based on that data the outlook doesn't look good for us.

BTW, thanks for an excellent post, Vostok!

 

[Shock-On-T]

restrict that species or even cull

Restrict is a good idea, especially if done without force, eg. educating women, reducing poverty, changing religious prohibitions on contraception. I'm sure you're joking about culling.

Matter can be neither created nor destroyed.

No but it can be restructured. There can be C on the ground and O2 in the air, rather than CO2 in the air.

What CO2 is around has always been around.

Not quite. What C is around has always been around, and what O is around has always been around.

The chief scientist also said that even if ALL Australia’s emissions were stopped today, the most the contribution would make would be about 1.3 - 1.5% reduction in global CO2 emissions.

That's an example of the economic concept "The tragedy of the commons", aka "I might as well eat the last rabbit on the commons, because if I don't someone else will". The solution to that problem is not resigning oneself to inevitable starvation, but rather regulation of the commons. Reducing carbon emissions is probably the hardest regulatory problem humanity has ever had to solve, but we have a surprisingly good track record of cooperation and large scale regulation so I'm optimistic.

 

[Shock-On-T]

We should just take the advice of the experts and act accordingly. None of us is remotely qualified to argue the science, despite how knowledgable we all think we are. It's like arguing with your oncologist because you saw a facebook ad that said blueberries cure cancer.

 

[Vostok]

We should just take the advice of the experts and act accordingly. None of us is remotely qualified to argue the science, despite how knowledgable we all think we are. It's like arguing with your oncologist because you saw a facebook ad that said blueberries cure cancer.

Exactly! Spot on. I, or anyone else, who is not challenging the science can freely talk about their understanding of the science, or repost the scientific conclusions. I am more than happy to cite the sources of the data I am referring to, because I am not the person who did the science.

But challenging the science is totally different. The onus is on the person doing the challenging to explain how, and why, the science is wrong, and what their expertise and qualifications are that places them in a position to challenge it and have any credibility doing so. If a person is relying on the conclusion of the (few) dissenting scientists, then they also have to accept their position is in the minority and highly likely to be wrong. But you rarely, if ever, have climate change deniers acknowledging the possibility they might be wrong. Their complete and utter certainty in their position is the giveaway. Scientists, in contrast, always recognise that possibility. That’s how science works.

The analogy I use is that one doesn’t need to be a doctor to accept the advice of a doctor, but you have to be a doctor to challenge the advice of a doctor.

 

[Shock-On-T]

The onus is on the person doing the challenging to explain how, and why, the science is wrong, and what their expertise and qualification are that places them in a position to challenge it

I'd go further and say that the person doing the challenging is wasting everyone's time unless they are an expert on climate science.

 

[Techno-phile]

Congratulations David, by purchasing an EV, Solar and Home battery, you have done more than most individuals in battling Climate Change. You along with many others on this forum have invested in new technologies, allowing the increase of economies of scale, reducing their prices and making these technologies available to more people with fewer resources than yourself.
I know we are unlikely to convince you of the Anthropogenic causes of Climate Change, but that no longer matters as particularly in the energy sector renewable energy is now the lowest cost source and money will drive their revolution far more than any political opinions. However we got to this place by good policy such as the Renewable Energy Target and many other overseas policies. It’s just a pity the RET has come to an end and the current people in charge have, it seems to me, no plan at all.
On the EV front, the same policy vacuum exists here, despite significant policy support overseas. We are in danger of being unprepared for the change to EVs here when overseas manufacturers no longer produce the ICE vehicles that Joshua Dowling seems wedded to. In the meantime this same policy vacuum results in Australia becoming the dumping ground for cars and trucks that don’t comply with overseas emission requirements resulting in worse local pollution that you are rightly concerned about.

I don't believe Dborn was denying Anthropogenic causes of Climate Change.
I agree with all his comments and accept humans are causing climate change, and this is because there are too many of us all wanting a comfortable lifestyle.
Individually we are all doing what we can by driving EVs, generating our own Solar PV etc, and by trying to persuade others to do the same.
But I agree the battle to reduce CO2 is lost (because China has only offered to reduce emissions after 2030, and Africa hasn't even started increasing yet). The only hope is to control human population growth (eg womens' emancipation and education), and technological solutions to reduce warming, and I think more government effort should be directed this way.

And I fully support Elon Musk's plan to colonise Mars, so that the knowledge our species has discovered will not be lost, if the earth becomes unfit for human habitation. The earth will survive (as will Plants as Dborn points out) but we may not.

 

[Shock-On-T]

I don't believe Dborn was denying Anthropogenic causes of Climate Change.
I agree with all his comments and accept humans are causing climate change, and this is because there are too many of us all wanting a comfortable lifestyle.
Individually we are all doing what we can by driving EVs, generating our own Solar PV etc, and by trying to persuade others to do the same.
But I agree the battle to reduce CO2 is lost (because China has only offered to reduce emissions after 2030, and Africa hasn't even started increasing yet). The only hope is to control human population growth (eg womens' emancipation and education), and technological solutions to reduce warming, and I think more government effort should be directed this way.

And I fully support Elon Musk's plan to colonise Mars, so that the knowledge our species has discovered will not be lost, if the earth becomes unfit for human habitation. The earth will survive (as will Plants as Dborn points out) but we may not.

Agree the hope is to limit population and improve technology.
I wouldn't say the battle is lost, it's a long battle and China's targets are part of a 1.5C limit plan, which we will achieve if we all stick to that plan.
It's annoying to me that the whole process is dragged down by a handful of fossil energy companies trying to string out the profits just a little bit longer by misinforming people and lobbying our governments.

 

[paulp]

You know, the smog and resultant health aspect is entirely my view of the benefits at this time. Fires? Well, yeah. Obviously. But the hysteria, the rampant child abuse like the Thunbergs of this world (her parents should be in jail for child abuse), giving her a Nobel prize for spouting vested interests well crafted speeches written for her? Don’t think so. An Oscar for perfect delivery perhaps.

Yes agree. That girls parents have caused her to sprout off and miss school and absolutely nothing has changed from her actions other than we have a new 3 word quote.

 

[paulp]

I don't agree with the "99.5% of scientists" argument since it employs a demagogue technique - application of authority. Majority of *people* can be wrong and there were plenty of examples for that in our history. People are easily subverted, can be bribed, are often afraid to speak up against the consensus, so "majority of scientists say" is pretty far from being an axiom in my view.

Data obtained by scientific method, on the other hand, doesn't lie. It's objective and unbiased. Data IS science. Proper scientific method should protect it from being doctored. Anyone can analyse it and draw conclusions - and based on that data the outlook doesn't look good for us.

BTW, thanks for an excellent post, Vostok!

Didn’t scientists once conclusively agree with evidence that the earth was flat?
Please don’t take that comment to suggest they are wrong about climate change, just saying there have been plenty of times in history where large educated groups have been wrong.
How many computer geeks joined Bill Gates in questioning the point of this new internet thingy?
How many car manufacturing ceo’s openly questioned the point of tesla developing an electric car. They already knew it would be slow, with limited range, and frightfully expensive.

 

[Dborn]

Yes, but the rate of change is unprecedented and not driven by “natural” forces. Climate change deniers always conveniently omit talking about the rates of change, because that’s where their “normal” thesis falls to bits.


Well, it is settled, even if you choose to ignore an entire body of science.

Over the past 800k years, the "normal" or “natural” annual rate of change of CO2 has lay between -46 and +49 ppb/yr (parts per billion per year) and this change has been fairly symmetrical around a zero mean. But this started to change from the start of the industrial revolution.

From the late 1700s to 1940, the rate of change in atmospheric CO2 occasionally went negative but often went up to 100 ppb/year - double the historical 99.7% (three standard deviations) peak rate of +49 ppb/year.

The last time there was an annual reduction in atmospheric CO2 levels was in 1946. Since then it has only increased, from 100 ppb/yr to now increasing between 2000 ppb/yr and 3000 ppb/yr.

Conclusion? Atmospheric CO2 is now increasing at a rate 50 times faster than it has ever done in the past 800,000 years. Fifty times. That is not “a bit”. That is a lot.

An extremely well developed body of scientific knowledge, research and evidence has concluded the cause for this is humans burning fossil fuels. The evidence is so strong that it has reached what is called “gold standard” - it is almost as close to “certain” as it is scientifically possible to prove. There is no other plausible explanation backed up with an evidentiary body of knowledge and data.

Since you are challenging the science, what is your explanation as to why atmospheric CO2 is now increasing at a rate fifty times faster than it has ever done in the past 800,000 years? I genuinely want to know what your explanation is.


And guess what? Fossil fuel use since the industrial revolution has scaled with population. See a connection?

Yes humans consume and exploit lots of the earth’s resources. If we never burned fossil fuels, we would still have other problems to deal with - land degradation, clean water supplies, food production, other pollution etc. But we would not have an escalating CO2 problem resulting in global warming, magnifying and escalating the other ecosystem problems we face. The challenges would be far less confronting and daunting.


And this proves you do not understand the problem, and this is likely the source for all subsequent misunderstanding.

The billions of tons of ‘incremental’ CO2 in the atmosphere now was not there before the 1700s. It was created by oxidizing carbon atoms - namely burning fossil fuels, turning carbon (C) into carbon dioxide (CO2) which then stays in the atmosphere for thousands of years, trapping additional heat. So this extra CO2 around now has not “always been around”.

Matter is not being created or destroyed, but its form can be changed through chemical reactions. The earth has lost carbon (C) atoms from under the ground, and a corresponding amount of oxygen (O) atoms that were formerly in the atmosphere unbound, to create new CO2 molecules that were not there before. The total amount of matter is the same, but the molecular composition of that matter has changed.

Happy to address the rest of your post, but with such a factual and basic misunderstanding, I should stop there to see if you are prepared to learn something.

Volcanoes spew out billions of tons of greenhouse gasses. Continuously. Not just the explosive volcanoes either. There are literally hundreds of active volcanoes. On land and under the ocean. Chemical reactions such as the conversion of co2 to sugars also goes on. That’s how the co2 was bound up underground in the first place. Just as the calculations you quote can show one conclusion, it is possible to calculate how much reafforestation it would take to mop up ongoing co2 production and reach a status quo or negative production. Human destruction of entire rainforests like the amazon would be having major effects. The hysteria over farting cows amazes me. In fact the entire hysteria and pseudo religion over this climate warming debate astounds me. Calm down people. When you have folk saying they wont bring kids into the world because they are scared, that’s when we have a left inspired problem. On the other hand, that is probably a step in the right direction because it controls population growth! I repeat, the problem is too many humans. Absent control of the world population, nothing at all is going to make a jot of difference.

 

[Darmie]

Has Greta been there yet?


Maybe there is still hope.

 

[Dborn]

Has Greta been there yet?
View attachment 510805

Maybe there is still hope.

Been where? She should be in school, not parrot spouting some very crafty peoples slant. Shame on her parents.

 

[Vostok]

Didn’t scientists once conclusively agree with evidence that the earth was flat?

There was certainly a time when that was the popular view, but it wasn’t evidence based, apart from looking at the horizon and thinking it looked pretty flat. The lack of a process at the time of designing repeatable experiments to test hypotheses, and the inability to measure physical phenomena accurately with unbiased instrumentation means conclusions at time the earth was flat was not really “science” but faith.

 

[Vostok]

I don't believe Dborn was denying Anthropogenic causes of Climate Change.

He said “IF it is anthropogenic”... followed by lots of “reasons” as to why, even if the climate is changing, and even if it is human-related, it is due to reasons other than the burning fossil fuels. Looks like denial to me, dressed up as begrudging open-mindedness.

But I agree the battle to reduce CO2 is lost (because China has only offered to reduce emissions after 2030, and Africa hasn't even started increasing yet).

It will be if individually and globally we take such a defeatist view. We can hardly berate China for ongoing increases in emissions when our own are still increasing. Also when China is the world’s largest investor and builder of renewable generation capacity and arguably doing more to turn its huge ship around than many other big countries (in population terms or economic scale).

It makes a mockery of the Government’s line that “other countries should do more” when those other countries use us an an excuse, and say “well you’re not decreasing your emissions, so who are you to lecture us?”.

If the Government truly believes that “other countries should do more” then what diplomatic, trade, and other representations has the Government made with those counties to take them to task? Has the government, for example, publicly rebuked the USA for withdrawing from the Paris Climate agreement and engaged its diplomatic channels to warn of trade or other consequences if it does not change course? Same with China? Has the Government proposed ceasing coal sales to China to encourage it to “do more”? No? If the government says “other countries should do more” but then does absolutely nothing to put that sentiment into any sort of practical effect, then those words mean nothing and the Government doesn’t believe what it said.

The only hope is to control human population growth (eg womens' emancipation and education), and technological solutions to reduce warming, and I think more government effort should be directed this way.

Or we could phase out fossil fuel use as rapidly as possible (the root cause of the problem), since that can be done much faster than changing the global profile of population growth.

And I fully support Elon Musk's plan to colonise Mars, so that the knowledge our species has discovered will not be lost, if the earth becomes unfit for human habitation

So having trashed one planet we should have a crack at trashing a second?

 

[Vostok]

Volcanoes spew out billions of tons of greenhouse gasses. Continuously. Not just the explosive volcanoes either. There are literally hundreds of active volcanoes. On land and under the ocean.

Volcanic eruptions are responsible for less that 1 percent of all CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions generated by human activity.

Volcanoes (both on land and undersea): 200 million tons of CO2 annually
Automotive and industrial activities: 24 billion tons of CO2 annually.

Are Volcanoes or Humans Harder on the Atmosphere?
Do volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans?

Just as the calculations you quote can show one conclusion, it is possible to calculate how much reafforestation it would take to mop up ongoing co2 production and reach a status quo or negative production.

The calculations have been done, and it’s highly unlikely to be possible to plant enough trees (and keep them alive with sufficient water, stop them from ever being cut down in the future, and not use arable land also required for agriculture to keep people alive) to absorb all the CO2 from burning fossil fuels. And to keep planting them at a sufficient rate to continually offset emissions growth:

Examining the Viability of Planting Trees to Help Mitigate Climate Change – Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet
We Can’t Just Plant Billions of Trees to Stop Climate Change

If you think planting trees is a good solution, I assume you are a bit of an eco-warrior when it comes to land clearing activities and are always out there agitating for every existing tree to be protected forevermore?

Stopping any further land clearing and increasing reforestation efforts is very important, but it won’t solve the problem by itself.

In fact the entire hysteria and pseudo religion over this climate warming debate astounds me.

I’ve rebutted every single “fact” you have posted with referenced science. You have cited no sources in return, only beliefs and talking points you’ve picked up from who knows where. I’ve asked you where your science is, and you’ve provided nothing. I’ll leave it to others to decide who is being religious and who is being scientific.