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China's Coal Power Plants Mask Climate Change
Hugh Pickens writes "The Guardian reports on new research revealing that the huge increase in coal-fired power stations in China, up from just over 10 gigawatts (GW) in 2002 to over 80GW in 2006, has masked the impact of global warming in the last decade because of the cooling effect of their sulphur emissions. But scientists warn that rapid warming is likely to resume when the short-lived sulphur pollution – which also causes acid rain – is cleaned up and the full heating effect of long-lived carbon dioxide is felt. 'Reductions in carbon emissions will be more important as China installs scrubbers [on its coal-fired power stations], which reduce sulphur emissions,' says Dr. Robert Kaufman. 'This, and solar insolation increasing as part of the normal solar cycle, [will mean] temperature is likely to increase faster.' The effect also explains the lack of global temperature rise seen between 1940 and 1970 as the effect of the sulphur emissions from increased coal burning outpaced that of carbon emissions, until acid rain controls were introduced, after which temperature rose quickly. 'Warming due to the CO2 released by Chinese industrialization has been partially masked by cooling due to reflection of solar radiation by sulphur emissions,' says Prof Joanna Haigh. 'On longer timescales, with cleaner emissions, the warming effect will be more marked.'"
I'm all for them continually trying to figure it out. You're absolutely right it's incredibly complex, and I postulate we may never fully comprehend it or be able to simulate or predict it to any level of accuracy. That said, It would be nice if (while figuring it out) the grand claims weren't made. We have a very small history of good temperature data, a very questionable network of sensors for collecting a certain quantity of temperature readings, and very little data (comparatively) on the suns impact. I love science and scientists, but they need to continue to be skeptics. If the system is too big to actually figure out, they should be able to always admit that.
You know, it's funny. 40 years ago, prior to all this regulation, the average CEO made about ten times as much as the average worker in his company. Today, post regulation, the average CEO makes some 40+ times as much (it's rising so fast I can't keep up) as the average worker. This is American companies with American workers.
In other words, your post ignores not only cause and effect, but correlation as well. Total ignorance of reality. The fact is that the more regulations imposed by the government, the rich CEOs get, because the corporations own the government, and use those regulations to squelch competition. This drives new industry abroad.
But it's not the corporations who are to blame. Hate the game, not the player. More specifically, hate the system, and those who created it, and made the rules. This means Republicans and Democrats.
You want to fix this? Get rid of these two parties, and bring in a third, fourth, fifth, sixth, etc. Don't settle for the choice between a turd burger and a shit sandwich.
"Earth's climate swings hotter-colder-hotter-colder."
Yes. Yes it does. It does so seasonally. It does so on El Nino / La Nina decadal scale. It does so on ~100k glacial/interglacial scale. It does so on ~250Ma "Icehouse/Greenhouse" scale. The question is, what cyclic process accounts for the average temperature increase of the last century or two? That's not clear at all. Furthermore, we can see secular, long-term changes that are pretty unique over geological time, such as the dramatic changes in the isotopic composition of the CO2 in the atmosphere that are caused by introducing so much "old" carbon into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels.
And, no, humans do not put out less CO2 than one volcano. There are various estimates of human CO2 output, but it is more than 30 000 Mt/year and increasing. Total output from volcanoes is tougher to estimate, but is about 300 Mt/year on land [PDF]. Estimates for total output inclusive of underwater volcanism vary widely because of the uncertainties, but those totals are all less than 500 Mt/year [PDF], and some are less than 200Mt/year. Any way you slice it, this is far less than human input, let alone the comparatively minuscule amount from a *single* typical volcanic eruption. Even if you take some of the biggest eruptions in deep geological history, far in excess of eruptions that have occurred in historical times, humans still rank highly or on par with them. These sorts of "supereruptions" are rare things -- once in 100000 to million-year events. Think "Yellowstone Caldera" scale, which erupted about 2 million years ago. In effect, it's as if we're pumping CO2 into the atmosphere on the scale of some of these "biggest eruptions in Earth history" every single year, but without the mitigating effect of as much airborne ash or sulphate particles. An insightful calculation in the second article above is to use the well-studied, second-largest eruption of the last century as a measure -- the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991 in the Philippines. It produced ~50 Mt of CO2 output. The equivalent of human CO2 output would be more than 600 Pinatubos a year (conservatively -- the article uses more realistic numbers and gets 700 Pinatubos/year).
You're promoting a "volcanoes produce more CO2 than humans" myth that has been shown to be wrong many times. It's not even in the ballpark. It's several orders of magnitude wrong. This does not inspire confidence.
I did manage to find one situation where your statement might be considered correct -- for a period of a few hours in a major volcanic eruption the output may be on par or greater than human CO2 output. It's explained in more detail in the second article above. But that's only briefly during the peak eruption. It's not sustained day-in, day-out, every hour over years like human outputs are. It would be pretty misleading to refer to that momentary comparison as if it was relevant in any general sense. Averaged over a year, those momentary volcanic spikes in CO2 output are pretty irrelevant.
Consider the Beer-Lambert law. CO2 is transparent to visible light (like oxygen and nitrogen). When light hits the earth, it heats up the surface. Hotter surfaces radiate IR radiation. CO2 happens to be absorbing IR in those ranges (while oxygen and nitrogen don't). So, CO2 absorbs it and starts to vibrate more. Other air molecules bump into CO2 and pick up the energy. Result: The air gets warmer.
Water is indeed a greenhouse gas. That's good. We need it to keep the planet at the desired temperature. Doesn't matter whether the IR radiation gets absorbed by water of CO2. That is the good news. However, the absorption spectra and absorption constants (at various wavelengths) of CO2 and water are NOT identical. So, CO2 can have an effect that water alone doesn't have. Because CO2 doesn't do politics, it does. You can debate the amount of the effect, not the effect. The effect is pure physics.
It is not that hard to understand. Actually, I think that just about any scientist should be able to come up with this by him/herself. In any case, people I'm looking to hire should be able to figure out the relevant parameters and how this works by themselves.
And as to your statement that water fluctuates 100x as much as the total rise of CO2, try to figure that one out yourself.
Bert
So, indeed, heat capacity has nothing to do with it