What Do We Think About Climate Change

Well said.

I seen DOE numbers which represent global liquid fuel supplies following a upward trend out to 2030 with slow decline to follow. I need to find that page again and post. I have not overlain these numbers with the predicted demand.

The 35% increase in atmospheric CO2 by mans activities represent levels which have not been seen for at least 800,000.00 years. This increase has occurred at a rate of 200 time faster than any rate observed over this same time frame. That rate is further increasing. Recent numbers are higher and it is postulated that the natural sinks are reaching saturation and are showing a diminishing ability to absorb the access CO2 we are releasing into the environment. The accelerated rate of fossil fuel consumption will no doubt compound this issue.

I have no means of knowing or accessing how important this change is to our atmospheric physics. I believe however that a valid assessment of this issue should acknowledge that these changes have occurred.

 

This is one of the most tragically ironic parts of the whole debate. I agree that we are headed for a liquid fuel crunch. I DISagree that it will result in a net lowering of carbon output, for two reasons.

Take the US as an example. The US is basically carbon neutral RIGHT NOW, in that our forests consume all the carbon we release. If we were to stop using liquid fuel, either by artificial mandate or because it just gets too expensive, then people will begin to burn wood (forests!) in order to heat during the winter and to cook. Just look at the poor underdeveloped countries where liquid fuels are unaffordable. Look at Haiti, Vietnam, Cambodia, Sub-Saharan Africa and a long list of others. This is exactly what they do. So they get the double whammy of burning wood to make heat (which is dirty and has poor btu/units carbon output) AND cutting down the forests that consume the carbon!

Do the green wackos care about this? Well, take a look at what they think of other issues: GM crops could save MILLIONS from starvation, yet they are adamantly opposed. Limited use of DDT could save MILLIONS from malaria, yet they are adamantly opposed. Their stated long term goal is to reduce world population by half. So the answer is most emphatically: NO, THEY DO NOT CARE!

Jimbo

 

Thomas,

CO2 was on the same trend BEFORE the industrial revolution, hundreds of years before in fact. We can't really say with any certainty that the increase we see is the result of human activity. All we know is we are releasing CO2, and CO2 is increasing in the atmosphere. But because of the many factors such as fluxes, ocean solubility (some reputable scientists say the ENTIRE increase in CO2 we have seen is due to the changes in oceanic solubility), there is no verifiable 1+1=2 to be demonstrated between anthropogenic releases and atmospheric concentrations. We actually covered this in the 2006 thread and you asked (and I answered) the same question. I provided an answer from an AGW alarmist scientists, who nevertheless had to admit that we can't prove if all, or even ANY of the observed increase in atmospheric CO2 is due to anthropogenic releases and not entirely natural.

Jimbo

 

Sure sure...


care to put some numbers on your ideals?

 

Of the some 8000 million metric tons of CO2 released in the US each year some 11 percent is sequestered in house.

Carbon neutral we are not.

 

Thomas,

The chart you posted is a clear example of blatant 'graphsmanship'. Note the time intervals. The first notch backward from the present day is 50,000 years. Now how in the hell are you going to take a detailed look at CO2 concentrations from 150 or 200 or even 500 years ago from that chart??!!! YOU CAN'T!!

The propaganda site that you took that chart from clearly does not want to burden you with the possibly contradictory information that CO2 concentrations were already on the rise a few hundred years ago because then you would question how in the world human activity could be responsible for this trend in the first place!



This is really just another variation of the "The industrial revolution has caused a dramatic rise in CO2 concentrations" propaganda line that the AGW alarmists continue to spew. How can you explain how the industrial revolution, which started circa 1850, caused the notable rise in atmospheric CO2 levels also circa 1850, when climatologically significant releases began 100 years later, circa 1950? Time travel?? Loose Quarks?? Wormholes??



Humans cannot possibly be responsible for the rise in CO2 from circa 1830 onward; it had to be a natural phenomena, the same phenomena that brought us out of the 'Little Ice Age'. If you must admit that, then how do you know that all of the increase isn't natural? (Now someone will pipe up with the carbon isotope data, which is supposed to prove the origin of the more 'recent' CO2 in the atmosphere, which it does not, because it is based on more false assumptions. More detail if you want it.)

C'mon, Thomas! You can do better that this!

Jimbo

 

This is not true. The AGW alarmists have purposefully underestimated the amount of carbon forests absorb by subtracting the amount of released carbon (when the plant mass dies and decomposes) from the amount that it actually, measurably consumes, in order to produce a 'worst case' scenario. But this involves a lot of speculation on the life of the biomass, how quickly the stored carbon is re-released, and etc. Anyway, the subtraction is approximately 90% of the consumed carbon, thus your "11%" figure. Note this is another area where the alarmists take the worst case scenario as fact.

Even if they are right, it STILL means that RIGHT NOW the US is carbon neutral, even if over the next century our (natural) carbon output will climb due to increased rotting of plant biomass (by far the largest terrestrial source of CO2).

But alas, it looks like they were wrong-AGAIN!

http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2008/09/24/surprise-old-growth-forests-soak-up-co2/

As this article suggest, the reason the AGW alarmists use this *bogus* way of accounting the CO2 re-absorption of forests is to force countries (especially the US) into draconian carbon cutting measures by preventing them from "taking credit for doing nothing" as we tried to do at the original Kyoto negotiations. And now this silly accounting trick is taken as gospel

As I've said several times in this thread and the others, it's far easier to increase fluxes, like committing re-forestation, than to cut emissions. And there's no downside whatsoever-oh yeah, except there's no huge change in the political power structure needed to implement it.

Jimbo

 

BTW- the chart does not represent concentration- can you provide the data which reflects the current rate of change in some prior period?

You keep mentioning the hundreds of years of rise.... care to demonstrate this?

1950 reflects: "when climatologically significant releases began 100 years later, circa 1950"

Care to explain this in real numbers with citations which fully support this thesis?

"Humans cannot possibly be responsible for the rise in CO2 from circa 1830 onward; it had to be a natural phenomena"

Care to prove this?

 

Btw

Eagles don't suffer reproductive damage from egg shell thinning...



This sort of source kills me:

http://www.albionmonitor.com/0609a/co2at800kyearhigh.html

try to find the cited work........ and when you do it is $30 bucks to get more than the abstract...

Whats a "skimmer and scanner of science" supposed to do?

Forget all the last bits above

I just find it interesting to try to get to the science on this.

 

From here:


"The Vostok core showed that atmospheric carbon dioxide increased by approximately 80 ppm over a span of 10,000 years, between the Last Glacial Maximum and the pre-industrial times of the Holocene. In the past 200 years the atmospheric carbon dioxide has again increased by 80 ppm to the present 360 ppm, most of the increase in the past 50 years. "What is new is the rate of increase," Mysak emphasized. Adding that the scientific uncertainties regarding climate change are not limited to the physical processes, Mysak commented, "How robust are ecosystems in handling this carbon dioxide? We don't know."

Italics, Mine

(1) Lorius, C.; Jouzel, J.; Raynaud, D.; Hansen, J.; Le Treut, H. Nature 1990, 347, 139-145.
(2) Jouzel, J., et al. Clim. Dyn. 1996, 12, 513-521.
(3) Dansgaard, W.; Johnsen, S. J.; Clausen, H. B.; Dahl-Jensen, D.; Gundestrup, N. S.; Hammer, D. U.; Hvidberg, C. S.; Steffensen, J. P.; Sveinbjörnsdottir, J. J.; Bond, G. Nature 1993, 364, 218-220.
(4) Mayewski, P. A., et al. Science 1994, 263, 1747-1751.
(5) Broecker, W. GSA Today 1997, 7(5), 1-7.
(6) Bjornsson, H.; Mysak, L. A.; Schmidt, G. A. J. Clim. 1997, 10, 2412-2430.
(7) Broecker, W. Nature 1994, 372, 421-424.
(8) Manabe, S.; Stouffer, R. J. Nature 1995, 378, 165-167.
(9) Maslanik, J. A.; Serreze, M. C.; Barry, R. G. Geophys. Res. Lett. 1996 23, 1677-1680.
(10) Stocker, T. F. Science 1998, 282, 61-62.
(11) Stocker, T. F.; Schmittner, A. Nature 1997, 388, 862-865.

The cited article shows that this CYCLE has happened in the past, completely without human interventions. Sorry, no chart.

Jimbo

 

Thomas,

We still use pesticides just as deadly, and with the same bioactivity mechanisms as DDT, by the TON every day! So why are there so many eagle around??!! Could it be that DDT was never the Eagle's problem? Could it be that eagles were already rebounding BEFORE the DDT ban? Do some digging and see if I'm right about these questions!

Jimbo

 

I was just teasing you- you missed this back then I kept waiting to have and defend the point.

DDT- I am done

As to the above- thanks for supporting my position- you might want to read your 'evidence' more carefully.

While you are arguing against your own position...
From the same paper:

"Stocker, as well, underlines the significance of the rate of increase in greenhouse gas concentrations. He and colleague Andreas Schmittner looked at the problem through experiments with a simple, coupled atmosphere-ocean climate model in which a final carbon dioxide concentration of 750 ppm was attained over different time spans. They found that the thermohaline circulation weakens when the increase in carbon dioxide to 750 ppm is relatively slow, spanning several centuries or more. However, when the rate of increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases (expressed as CO2) is similar to today's rate of growth (1% per year)--or the concentration of 750 ppm is reached in 100 years--the thermohaline circulation permanently shuts down (11). The quantitative results are dependent on model parameters and their associated uncertainties. Nonetheless, the lesson from the modeling experiments is that the climate is sensitive not only to the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but also to the rate at which this level is attained. This is relevant to policy decisions concerning the timing of reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, noted Stocker. "It demonstrates that early reductions of emissions make sense."

 

Yeah, CO2 rising for the last 200 years, that's a pretty safe position to support, given the Vostok data. It's just a bit dicey to try to pin it on the "Industrial Revolution" since it hadn't actually happened yet

Jimbo

 

So .......
A client was explaining to me the how low on funds they are.
Seems that the 3m house sold on Nantucket plus the inheritance is not quite enough to sail about for the rest of their natural lives.... poor folk you know?
So this watermaker install I am doing should be bid at a reduced rate... Christ.
I don't know that I give a care about AGW either way- could be fun to see some houses on Nantucket go under with the sea level rise and all that.
I like the science- I try to stick to it as this is a "what do I think" sort of deal...

work up those answers yet?
gonna graph the "hundreds of years of rising...."?

 

Thomas,

Have you ever checked out the Jeffrey Glassman page? You'll need to take some time to read but it's very intriguing that ALL increases in CO2 are likely caused by oceanic solubility changes.


Note that I often cite works where the authors disagree with what I'm saying even though the evidence for what I (and others) am asserting is right there in the data.