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Unexplained Leap In CO2 Levels
Cally writes "The Guardian is reporting that atmospheric CO2 concentrations have leapt by 4.5 ppm in the last two years. This raises the ugly possibility that the capacity of a large carbon sink (possibly the oceans) has been exceeded, and the worst-case scenario is that a tipping point has been reached and a runaway warming scenario is in progress. Quote from Dr. Piers Foster of Reading University: 'If this is a rate change, of course it will be very significant. It will be of enormous concern, because it will imply that all our global warming predictions for the next hundred years or so will have to be redone.'"
Disclaimer: I work for a company, but I don't speak for them.
Peat Bogs outburn Western Europe New Scientist 18 Oct 1997
PEAT bogs in Indonesia that have been set alight by the country's raging forest fires could release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over the next six months than all the power stations and car engines of Western Europe emit in a year. The finding backs up claims that the fires could have a significant impact on global warming.
Sometimes there is very little that we can do to stop the production of CO2 into our atmosphere. Natural causes, like breathing put tonnes of CO2 into the air. Why haven't we begun a program using iron oxide spread on the ocean to trap and remove CO2? It's viability was proved years ago?. Why are environmentalist opposed to a scientific solution?
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
Remember that talking about Global Warming is very unpatriotic in the US!
Just ask a "sponsored" (read: lobbied) politican.
Then ask a "censored" (read: cut off from money because of non compliant research) scientist.
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
There is no question that human activity has resulted in increased carbon dioxide levels.
Of course, we don't emit as much CO2 now as was done in the mid-12th century (aka "the Little Ice Age"); over a period of about 50 years, it got so cold that about 75% of the Black Forest was cut down, reducing it to smaller than its current size. All of that went up in smoke.
And we don't emit as much in a year as a good size active volcano can do in a week. But we do emit enough to cause CO2 levels to rise.
Of course, the link to changes in _climate_ from increased CO2 levels isn't really clear. Global warming is the common concern, but the opposite has just as much evidence, and there's even a lot to show that any effect either way will simply cause a negative feedback loop to stop it. Nobody really knows, because climate studies are a real bitch to figure out.
Of the two, an iceage is probably more likely than warming, anyway; we're overdue for one, and the sun appears to be going into another contraction cycle (which means less heat coming in). And frankly, the Earth spends most of its time as a snowball; the nice weather we get these days is purely an aberation that will correct itself over time.
"Software is too expensive to build cheaply"
Supposing that Earth was operating in a Gaia-ish fashion and needed to "lighten the load", 30000 human death just wouldn't cut it. The human population of Earth is 4.5 billion. Assuming an earth-average pop growth rate of 0.25% (I *know* that pop growth is *negative* in US, China, Japan, Britian, and parts of Africa, but Earth average is positive still) that means 11,250,000 new people on the planet every year (at a minimum). For just summer that would be 2,812,500, and *that* is just to break even. For a healthy die back for the planet, it has to exceed that value. 30,000 doesn't even begin to cut it. Earth needs a major (NON nuclear) war to break out between two large populations, inflicting heavy civilian casulaties. Hmmm... better not give it any ideas...
"Easy, man like many silly people, he is mistaking the cause and the effect."
I'm just miffed that the only block of people on the planet arguing that there is no problem appear to be American. The EU has already issued warnings and the UK in particular has been engaged on sorting the Co2 output for _ten years_.
"Nearly all of this research shows global warming which makes people complain that it is an industry."
Meanwhile, Rome burns.
Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.
I saw a story on (I think) PBS about this. A guy, many years ago (5-8 years) marked off some plots in various locations. Once a year he goes and samples the soil from these plots. His finding was that carbon (CO2) is being depleated from the soil. In turn, the the warming planet will increase the rate of CO2 release from the soil. IIRC, from his test plots, the carbon levels present in his plots were down something like 5x what they were when he started his experiment.
His conclusion that the warming of the planet will greatly accelerate the release of carbon from the soil, which in turn, will warm the planet, which in turn will release more carbon from the soil. As you can see, he predicts a nasty spiral.
Perhaps someone here saw this story too and can offer the name of it? Perhaps it was a Nova show? I must admit, I did not see the whole show, nor did I pay a lot of attention to it? So, perhaps I missed some details. At any rate, hopefully someone will provide more details.
If there was proof, he wouldn't be saying if the tipping point has been reached, would he? Too busy doing statistics to do logic?
... When he began, ... 315 parts per million by volume (ppm); today ... 376ppm."
Anyway, that article might not specifiy the levels before, but this one does.
The key parts: "measurements that have been made since 1958
"Across all 46 years of Dr Keeling's measurements, the average annual CO2 rise has been 1.3ppm, although in recent decades it has gone up to about 1.6ppm.
There have been several peaks, all associated with El Niño"
[...]
"Throughout the series those peaks have been followed by troughs, and there has been no annual increase in CO2 above 2ppm that has been sustained for more than a year. Until now.
From 2001 to 2002, the increase was 2.08ppm (from 371.02 to 373.10); and from 2002 to 2003 the increase was 2.54ppm (from 373.10 to 375.64). Neither of these were El Niño years, and there has been no sudden leap in emissions."
rant
The "other side" tends to be people like me - informed scientists who recognize that the surface temperature of the planet, and the patterns of those temperatures, have naturally fluxuated since the beginning of time, long before human involvement. While human-created CO2 may well be causing global warming (if there is a warming trend), it might also be the natural warming trend that started at the end of the last ice age.
We need to understand that climates change, always have and always will. We like our current climates, but they won't be here forever, even if we reduce the atmospheric CO2 levels.
I can imagine you fruitcakes at the end of the ice age: "The glaciers will be *gone* if we don't act now!!!!"
Well, they're gone.
Do you have ESP?
We know that humans have slightly increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere, but hard evidence linking that to temperature rises is minimal.
You can't get lots of hard evidence until it's too late to avoid massive costs, financial and humanitarian. Demanding hard eveidence when the experiment more or less puts your existence at stake is meaningless. Informed estimates and simulations are all we have to go on.
Industry uses risk analyses on analogous problems all the time, and even if the probability of the human-caused global warming scenario was very low (which it is not), the potential cost is unbelievably huge. If this was a company-internal issue, a standard risk analysis would flag it so red, no sane management would ignore it the way governments (even the ones who have signed up for kyoto) are now doing.
From the media you get the impression either that scientists are roughly equally divided about the issue, or that there are just a few flakes still whining about global warming. The truth is that the "no need to worry" camp are a completely marginal fringe within the field.
The only reason they get heard is because people have heard the warnings for ages, many have grown up with them, so it isn't news and doesn't "sell", wheras the critics go "against the grain", say what people like to hear, and gives the outlets a fake veneer of "balancedness", so the masses lap it up.
'Global Warming' is a multi-billion dollar a year industry
What you're basically saying is all research is bogus if the scientists get paid. How do you propose to generate any real information?
sudo ergo sum
Convieniently you forget that 'your' side is also afflicted by special interest. How useful is a climat researcher (appearantly anyone who has ever seen an uni from the inside) that tells the government that there is nothing to do? It is beyond doubt that anyone on the government payroll strives from problems, the bigger and the longer to resolve the better. Sucessfull 'programs' always get dismantelt after a set goal is archieved. For the people that get paid for solving the problems this obviously generates a conflict of interest. The research budget for 2000 climate researchers in the US has been 2 billion$ in 2002. When do you think that the budget is increased? The need for generating a problem to justify ones income clearly biases scientists on government payroll. Or why else do you think that the 'industry' is mainly concerned with churning out solutions while the government immediatly jumps unto any scare-train that runs past? Examples are numerous, the murderous scandal regarding DDT quite a ways ahead. Just to think that malaria was on the verge of disappearing and now, after the swift prohibition of DDT because some birds eggs might have fragile shells (utterly debunked claim by the way), it afflicts 500 million people. Incredible.
The effects of acting upon the fear of global warming, despite conflicting evidence (like the NASA satelite meassurement of global temperature), would be even worse. Civilization strives on energy. Restricting the use of affordable energy sources in the draconian manner that computer models would require will bring about widespread un-civilitation: poverty, hunger, diseases etc. For all people already living on the verge of civilitation this will be certain death. The cost of kyoto alone run into the hundred billion range depending on the actual country. The $150 billion predicted for germany amount to be 5% of the GDP. This is a huge dent for the productivity of an economy and by extension for the wealth of its participants. The extra cost inflicted on industries can have only one consequence: The companies that are already producing 'on the margin' (meaning that any slight increase in costs will convert profits to losses) will have to move somewhere else (presumably somewhere where the kyoto protocol is not in effect) or go broke. The consequential stagnation of tax revenue coupled with the increase in entitlement to government aid (the unemployed) will futher diminish the states chances of implementing necessary wellfare reforms an thereby bringing it closer to the point of 'state-default' with all the really scary effects this can have (see germany in the 1930ies)
But kyoto alone will hardly do anything if you believe the models that predict the catastrophic climate change.
___
No power in the 'verse can stop me
The fact is that it's not a fact that temperatures are rising. Or do you global warmers still ignore the satellite record of the last 2+ decades?
* SNIP *
And the fact that they haven't risen in the 2+ decades that we've had a truly accurate global measure of temperature is also significant.
The very thesis of the Global Warming Theory is that less energy is radiated outward because of greenhouse gases. The observation that sattelite measurements do not show a rise in radiated energy (the only kind you can measure from space) only support this thesis.
I imported the data from the table that you linked into a spreadsheet and calculated each of the absolute month to month differences.
There were no month to month variations greater than 2.53 ppm, let alone 4!
Where did you come up with the data that "4 ppm would be a normal monthly swing?"
Summary:
Over 500 months of valid data.
Only 35 months >= 2.0 ppm month to month variation.
Only 2 months > 2.5 ppm month to month variation.
Top ten greatest month to month variations (in ppm):
aug-sep 1983 2.53
jul-aug 2002 2.53
jul-aug 1995 2.44
jul-aug 1965 2.34
jul-aug 1999 2.33
aug-sep 1997 2.32
aug-sep 1999 2.31
jul-aug 1960 2.27
jul-aug 1982 2.24
jul-aug 1989 2.23
jul-aug 2003 2.12
And as you tread the halls of sanity, You feel so glad to be, Unable to go beyond. I have a message, From another time..
"Come on guys, your liberalism is showing."
Not everything is political. There is a consistent record of increasing concentrations of CO2 over time. This increase corresponds to an increase in the production of CO2 by humans (coal, oil, etc.); the predicted increase is twice the observed increase, possibly because the oceans have acted as CO2 sinks. The record on CO2 concentrations goes back about 800,000 years (also interesting). I assume that any reasonable person can accept this information (i.e. this is not political).
The next question is what is the impact this increasing concentration of CO2 (and other "greenhouse" gasses) on the climate. No one has a completely correct answer. A variety of mathematical models have been used and the predictions of these models have been tested in various ways (e.g. comparison with existing recoreds). None of these models is perfect. However, the majority of scientists who study climate questions, using a variety of techniques, conclude that the increased concentration of greenhouse gasses has contributed and will contribute to a warming of the earth's atmosphere. No one knows exactly how great will be this increase and this is a subject of great interest.
I understand that China is keenly interested in HYBRID vehicles being given entry priority.
I have harped away off and on over the past 2 or so years, as if I have a Chinese Officials audience, with, essentially, these points for China:
China, PLEASE, PLEASE, for your domestic consumption, national security, and local and global pollution concerns:
--don't let in ANY foreign vehicles which don't offer hybrid or Honda ULEV (ultra low emission vehicle) standards
--don't let your nation have hundreds of thousands or millions of new drivers monthly taking to the roads in pollution-belching, smog-assisting vehicles. If Ford, Chevy, Dodge, Chrysler, GM, and the rest of them drag ass/drag feet and don't want to DO what they technically CAN and KNOW how to do, then to heck with them. Honda and Toyota can give you what you and the world needs: Cleaner vehicles
--DON'T let your nation become more addicted to oil for all those new vehicles coming ashore. If you do, you could find yourself in the position of being AT THE MERCY of the US, should the US decided to grab the oil fields you and Japan and the rest of Asia need to remain opened and unfettered. If you face being starved by the US, it could force your hand and make you precipitate a war, war which no on needs
--Lighter vehicles, particulary the non-allowance of SUVs, would allow your roads to last longer, requiring lest tar, asphalt, cement and other materials which also exude chemicals under harsh sunlight, and material which is worn off and sent into drains or into the air
I rattled on with more details, but these are the salient points. Besides, if more cars are produced locally there, and are cleaner, less maritime/marine fuel would be used shipping all over the place.
So, to me, it seems China WANTS to publicly, if not actually, do a nice part. We'll see, though, in a few years, based on satellite imagery.
The time is NOW for automakers to get off their oil-shackled asses and start mass-producing hybrids and lower-horsepower vehicles so that economies of scale will forever shut down the squealing, lying-assed manufacturers garbage about "we're losing money on hybrids".
First of all, they're outright lying to maintain their comfort zone.
Second, they're being manipulated from within and without to dupe the public into not pressuring them as much.
Third, NO, I repeat NO average citizen joe or jane deserves or has any RIGHT to drive a recklessly irresponsible, gas-swilling vehicle high-horsepower. Why should civilian vehicles (other than the weak argument of allowing citizenry to "blow off steam on occasion) have over 150 horsepower? WHY? Just to pass up somebody? Show off some status? Evade or speed away from a stalker? BS excuses, and poor, weak states of mind, I think.
Horsepower, necessitated by heavier, show-off vehicles, and coupled with mindless demand for ever-increasing "POWER and SPEED" contribute to the production of major gulpers of fuel.
The ONLY I repeat ONLY entities entitled to drive powerful vehicles should be:
-law enforcement
-heavy construction
-product transportation
-mass transit
-fire, medical, and rescue teams
-agriculture
-SOME, but not all, individuals who demonstrate a need to be securely transported from point A to B
and similar.
Individuals who THINK they need a gas-swilling vehicle need to rethink their options, and change their habits. If they think this piece of my mind is an encroachment upon "their rights" then maybe THEY should play chicken in the road to earthmovers that can crush them; maybe THEY should be put into rooms hooked to CO2 and other exhaust by products; maybe THEY should have a greatly higher property tax or use tax on road-wearing, air-heating, intimidation-exuding vehicles.
I don't expect "perfection", but dammit, the progress towards cleaner combustion or pure electric with reduced horsepower needs to be sped up.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"