What Do We Think About Climate Change

and in some cases - - - - need to watch again, and again, and again.... and still the connection fails to be understood....?

It is still worth another watch though........ !! and try this for an idea? http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=zORv8wwiadQ&feature=channel - - - OK so he admits the case "has holes" but the rest clarify the situation - - keep on viewing... It is worth the effort.....

 

At least Australia is doing its bit for population growth. Our so-called fertility rate was below replacement if you did not count immigration. Successive governments have stimulated our population growth with the baby bonus:
http://www.theage.com.au/national/biological-clock-beats-baby-bonus-20080805-3qj4.html

Did hear about the Frankston woman (you probably need to know Frankston) who has twelve kids. To keep her life simple she named them all Lee. You know "Lee its time for school" or "Lee; dinner time". When asked how she singled out one particular child she replied that it was easy - she used their sir name.

Rick W

 

I know Frankston...

Population is one thing Rick however we also insist on economic growth which requires more and more use of finite resources. We actually need to stop growing now and make everything recyclable using renewable energy. This system (earth) is a closed loop, we are very near the point (past?) at which we must adopt a sustainable model or run out of "loop"... One more doubling period is all we could have left (its certianly less for some key resources like oil) attach your own number to that.... at 1% growth its about 70 years. I think we are doing better than 1% ---> so its not that long really.

 

Canada's at that point too. Indeed, most of the "first world" nations are now fairly close to population stability, or even to very slow decline, if immigration is neglected. The same can't be said for China, India, and most of the African nations.

So true, and I'm still amazed mainstream economics/politics has such a hard time grasping this concept. Economic growth, as we currently define it, consists of using resources at an ever faster rate. The faster we dig up copper, iron, oil, limestone, etc. and the faster we cut down trees, catch fish.... the better the "economic growth" figures look. But we don't have infinite supplies of any of that stuff. If we don't over-harvest, trees and fish become renewable resources, but right now we're using up both faster than they can regenerate. Perhaps our current definition of "economic growth" is too narrow?

Ultimately, if we want our society to still be around when all the accessible metals have been mined, all the available oil pumped out, etc., then we will have to start recycling everything we use, whether by nature's systems or our own technology, and we'll have to get used to relying on the sun, wind and water for our energy demands. We're making baby steps now, but there's a long way to go.

 

I have a lunch time walk each work day. Next week is hard rubbish collection week and the piles are starting to form. The observation yesterday was the number of perfectly sound TV sets piled up.

You see in Australia we are on the cusp of digital TV and all the old sets will become obsolete in a year or so unless you buy a DTV tuner. Most people, including me, need another box and remote like a hole in the head so we opt for a new LCD TV with the in-built tuner.

I wonder where all those obsolete TVs will end up. Highly likely to become landfill now with commodities on the rocks. Will not pay to be sorted. Does seem wasteful. But then the big new LCDs are very nice.

Rick W

 

I think the main point of that video is just how rapidly you get from 50% resource usage to the end. It demonstrates beautifully why the Easter Islanders met their demise... the end of their resource was a lot closer than they realised and at 50% usage no doubt they thought they had heaps left. The exponential curve deceives us, we think in straight lines... this concept of "the doubling time" or rule of 70 really means we need to take this seriously well before its really apparent that we need to take it seriously.

Thats not light at the end of the tunnel, its a train!

 

The realisation of the globe's burden is growing amongst the populations but the polies need growth to survive.

The resource industry is interesting. If you go back to the 70s you see huge growth in iron ore production. It stabilised once Japan and a few other countries like Korea built modern infrastructure. A lot of the big miners based production plans on exponential growth but it topped out in the 80s. They ended up with underutilised capacity right up till 6 years ago.

In 2002 China and India became significant users of iron ore. Again predictions of exponential growth and huge increase in production capacity. Basically expand at any cost. Think about 11% annualised growth and the 70 factor. Fortunately not all the construction plans got put in motion. As it there is huge overcapacity right now. This points out how poor the memories are and how businesses are geared to growth - all is good when growth is rampant.

Look how slow the US car industry has been in responding to what I consider obvious resource constraints.

There are significant discretionary use of resources that can be reigned in and that is happening right now.

You have to wonder when things like Grand Prix and Indy events, in their current form, are considered completely anti-social. Can you admire someone who uses this toy:
http://www.ssqq.com/archive/vinlin24.htm
Is that an acceptable use of Earth's resources?

Oil shortages have put the brakes on growth and the realisation has hit. The collective response will be interesting to see unfold.

Rick W

 

Ohhhhhh shhhiit......

Gonna take up golf when they accept it as a contact sport.....

"Mr. Norman wanted his yacht to be practical in addition to comfortable. When visiting tropical islands and scuba locations, he wanted everyone to have as much mobility as possible. To get the people out to those choice dive spots or maybe to visit a deserted beach for a splash in the warm water, the following additional "small" boats are kept onboard:

A 42-Foot Custom Built "Game Fisher" can be launched and retrieved from the deck. Perfect for a 4-person overnight fishing expedition. Has a gourmet galley for cooking up the catch while it's still fresh.

There is a 22-Foot Novurania Equator with a meager 800 horsepower so you can get to the best diving sites ahead of everyone else. It has beach landing capability as well.

Two 18-Foot Hewes Bonerfishers for those special occasions when Norman and his friends wish to maneuver over the sand flats in Key West, Florida.

Plus a 30-Foot SeeVee for afternoon fishing.

Plus a 13-Foot Narwhal Rescue Boat in case someone falls off one of those other boats.

Plus 4 Yamaha Waverunners!!! Good grief already! Where do they store it all? Watching all those boats emerge reminds of a Russian Matryoshka Doll where the little dolls just keep coming out of the bigger ones!"​

Ok, lemme check the bank......

 

This link graphically depicts how hard the brakes have been applied by the shortage of oil and rising credit issues.
http://www.kitcometals.com/charts/lmewarehouse.html

Question is will the reduced demand for oil enable a steady recovery and shift to more sustainable energy; will we just go back to the old ways now that oil price is low or will there be a long drawn out bottoming as people aim to reduce debt and murder consumption.

Rick W

 

In my opinion; True....
(And the longer we hesitate, the less democratic will the needed actions be).

I recently mentioned to someone here in Norway, about one political party, the political statement: "only 3% of the total CO2 release are caused by humans" (hence; we will not use efforts/ money to the environmental issue, as long as schools/ elderly people/ health issues/ less tax is considered more important)...

Well; 1,03 % ONLY 1,03 % (= Relax man...)
Doesn't sound too bad does it?
If you take 1,03 x 1,03 x 1,03 x 1,03 etc and does that for some 30-50 years, it probably can make an impact to something, to what extent is uncertain, but I feel pretty (uncomfortable) certain that it can cause some change. Unwanted change.

I mean;
1,03 in addition to natural releases for 30 years = 2,4 times...
1,03 in addition to natural releases for 50 years = 4,4 times...

The same political party will strengthen the math/ physics in the schools, about time, I say....

(Ok, some (probably quite a lot actually) WILL be handled by buffer effects in the nature, but then, at some point, we may flip over some "tripping" points, don't feel too comfortable about that either, as long as the position of the "tripping" points are uncertain...).

I also have realized, that what I once learned (close to 4 decades ago..) about the CO2 level in the atmosphere isn't valid any longer, the books were probably old too, that dino feeling is just getting closer...

 

Even the idea that humans produce or are responsible for that 3% is not really a fact, as there is only a circumstantial case for this. Several reputable scientists say that ALL the increase we see is the result of natural processes, namely changes to the natural source/flux balance and that 'incidental' CO2 (anthropogenic CO2) has nothing whatsoever to do with those observed increases. The multi-decade spike of 390-450 ppm in the 19th century is another example of such an increase. The story of the suppression of this bit of info is also quite telling. Seems the spike has been known for years; it has showed up in several recent studies,same place and magnitude. Each time the researchers considered it an 'anomaly' and tossed the data. Imagine that, an 'anomaly' that shows up in each independent data set in the same place with the same magnitude. Golly, what a coinkidink

Jimbo

 

Do we take up coal and oil from below our feet and burn this off?

Will the Hydrocarbon during this process chemically react with O2?

Is this chemical reaction a process that can be considered in addition to the normal processes that's been going on the last couple 100 000 of years? (Read this as a fairly "new" / unknown process for this earth)?

Do you still consider this circumstantial?

 

It's TOTALLY circumstantial in that ALL the increase may well be due to a natural change in the 'set point' of CO2 in the atmosphere, which is determined by the natural source/flux balance (mostly due to warming oceans). Even when the isotopic signature of nascent CO2 is considered, the increase in CO2 observed since the 1950's does not match well with what we should expect if the increase were due to burning of 'fossil' fuels.

The fact that humans are a 'new' source of incidental CO2 has no particular meaning; it's only the quantity that might count for something. But the natural systems trade in quantities of CO2 that are orders of magnitude larger than anthropogenic CO2. Furthermore, there is NO EVIDENCE that CO2 is a long-lived gas in earth's atmosphere. All the peer reviewed studies on this have shown that; the majority show less than 10 years, not the hundreds of years proposed by warmers. The warmers toss the '200 year life' around as if it were proven fact when actually there is NOT ONE study that found such claims to be factual.

The only thing we KNOW is that humans release some CO2 and that atmospheric CO2 is increasing. This is a purely circumstantial case. We cannot prove that the anthropogenic CO2 is the cause of the increase. There are other much larger sources that come into play.

Again, the 390-450 ppm mutli-decadal spike in the middle of the 19th century shows that this is highly possible.

Jimbo

 

1.000.000.000.000 barrels of oil burnt so far. Coal? must be meaningful too.

How many hectares of dense forest have we replaced wit shabby banana/coconut palm forest (fraction off mass compared to rainforest) or agriculture land.

Maps of the world have changed from green to yellow in many areas within our lifetime.

But none of this has any impact on environment - rather optimistic I say.

 

Rather optimistic in my view too....

Just me theorizing a bit, again….

It is generally accepted that is you take a lot of quartz sand, from below your feet, makes a lot of 5 mm windowpanes, assemble that again above your head to be a greenhouse, and you’re in business. Now there’s a lot of reasons why this becomes hot, radiation is trapped, mechanical transfer of heat energy is restricted etc, but the general idea is they do their job.

Next, if we take some other chemical components, hydrocarbons, work our magic with those again, use some O2, in return we get some water and some CO2. Okay, we’re only assuming that what we do is a fraction of what the nature already does. 3%, but for some years.

If we assume (numbers taken out of the “air”…. here) that the amount of CO2 gas in the atmosphere is equal to 2 m3 on each 1m2 of earth surface, and that that increases only 50% and if none of CO2 is not taken up by plants, sea or other of nature’s buffer effects. (as stated above, but we need to admit it; we do not know the position/ levels of the saturation points). We’ll only need 15 years to add 50 % CO2.

One tiny extra 1m3 of CO2, taken from below our feet to above our head.

If we have a gas, remove some, replace or even add gas with some other value for thermal conductivity, We’ll end up with a mixed gas that have other properties. We cannot add an extra gas, or alter the composition without expecting a change in the properties) This is NOT circumstantial (IF I understand that word correctly… remember I’m Norwegian, this ain’t my native language…), It can be measured, controlled, verified.

You probably understand where I try to end up? CO2 will insulate both ways, but heat loss will be all of this earth’s surface, while heat input from the sun will hammer into approx 60-80% of the surface covered in the daytime, so daytime, the sun’s the winner.
A balance in input/ versus loss = stable temperature.

I like to simplify; ok argue that this is a too complex matter, we have other way of heat transfer long band rays, mechanical, infrared, whatever…

But; IF, right?

Assume that the temperature to be insulated from is -20 degC (high altitude) and + 20 deg C (here).(dT =40 C).

The thermal conductivity for co2 for 0 degC is 0,105 W/mK
(http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/carbon-dioxide-d_1000.html)

We have one extra cu m of co2, right? (15 years, no buffers).

What can this do? I mean; it’s just a gas, for crying out loud…., but we have some basic formulas to follow (the easy ones):

Q = k A dT/s

(http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/conductive-heat-transfer-d_428.html)

Q= 0,105 x 1x 1 x 40/ 1 = 4,2 Watt

It will not be correct to use this at the full surface of this earth, without considering a lot of other factors, but there have been an increase in CO2, and it can be considered to be at least in that level, if I recall correctly.

But keep it simple yes:

How much glass over our head equals that to?

Thermal conductivity of glass varies highly, but there’s a value for it here:
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/thermal-conductivity-d_429.html
1,05 W/mK.

Hey….. That’s an equivalent of a glasshouse with 10 m thick windows…. Sorry folks, not kidding…..

Ok, assume that simplification is totally wrong, by let’s say 90%? (Still leaves 1 m thick glass….). But then again… We’ve been burning oil/ coal for close to 150-200 years, at least… not 15 years either.

Can we safely assume that a change in the level of CO2 is not inflicted to any number at all by human activities? Even only a fraction of 3 % added to the natural cycle will over a period add (ehhhrr; multiply…) up to something that can be measured.

Regards KnutS


PS: I tend to not consider mechanical properties that can be checked/ verified as circumstantial (If I understand that word correctly to something close to theoretical/ not proven).

PPS: CO2 is considered as a good gas to use for insulation purposes, therefore I believe it pretty certain that it also can act as a greenhouse gas, Ok; I’m probably jumping on the bandwagon.

PPPS: They use pretty certain methods to assume the life span in the CO2 cycle in the atmosphere, I’ve heard 100 years, not hundreds of years.

PPPPS:”The only thing we KNOW is that humans release some CO2 and that atmospheric CO2 is increasing. This is a purely circumstantial case. We cannot prove that the anthropogenic CO2 is the cause of the increase. There are other much larger sources that come into play.” Well, if hundreds of animals are pissing in a well, Its still safe to assume that I’ll not improve the water quality by pissing in that same well….

PPPPPS: Only 3 %......(2% or 5 % will also add up to something, that’s why we conservatives put the money in the bank).