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World Emissions of Carbon Dioxide Outpace Worst-Case Scenario
Layzej writes "The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumped by the biggest amount on record in 2010, the U.S. Department of Energy calculated. A chart accompanying the study shows the breakdown by country. The new figures mean that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago. It is a 'monster' increase that is unheard of, said Gregg Marland, a professor of geology at Appalachian State University, who has helped calculate Department of Energy figures in the past. The question now among scientists is whether the future is the IPCC's worst case scenario or something more extreme."
Hansen predicted doom unless we cut back on CO2 years ago:
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/1988_hansen20.gif
What happened? No significant cuts yet 20 years later we are still well under his best case models.
Do they really know what is going on? Shouldn't models somewhat capture trends of the data?
In short, the scenario outlined by Ben Bova's near-future Grand Tour series of books.
Think of a pile of thermite, and how it's basically harmless even when red hot... until some part finally gets past the tipping point, and suddenly you've got a river of artificial lava sputtering out drops of molten iron. An example scenario would be the "sudden" shutdown of the Atlantic part of the oceanic conveyor current. In the longer term, ongoing ocean acidification will kick the bottom out from under the entire oceanic food chain.
I hope you've found the act of shitting in the same place you sleep profitable, humans.
"The people creating those models can be biased in their beliefs and in analysis of the data the models are based on."
It's biased by things like the heat capacity of the ocean, for example.
"The models don't indicate that there is supposed to be lag, the models were /programmed/ to /assume/ that there will be lag, that's how computer models work."
The models are not arbitrary statistical models, they are models of known physics and observed facts of the world.
Skeptics welcome scientific evidence. It is the obstructionist pseudoskeptics (deniers) that will never be convinced until their ulterior motive is fulfilled.
Still won't shut up skeptics.
Yes, you'd love to silence all debate, wouldn't you?
Real science welcomes skeptics, thanks for letting us know you'd rather side with a cult that brooks no disbelief, just waiting for the noodly tentacles of the Great Warming Spaghetti Monster to wrap us all in a suffocating layer of warmth.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Is that scientists, on average, are not crazed alarmists. They work in a field full of cut-throat peer review where the one who truly, verifiably disproves the most long-standing stuff gets the recognition and the spoils. Their language is conservative, a wide range of speculation must be admitted for consideration but they're going to err on the side of caution.
There's nothing in nature short of a major mass extinction event to match what we're creating. I can't fathom why anyone's having kids. The kids we have already are truly screwed.
They were all talking about differential equations, just some of you don't know it. Global circulation models are a collection of coupled atmosphere, ocean, etc models. Each of these models contain a core set of differential equations, which are either discretized to be integrated forward in time in physical space, or decomposed into spectral space, which has certain benefits for non-linear terms in the Navier-Stokes equation. There are a number of parameterizations to handle sub grid-scale processes so their effects taken into account at the resolved grid scale*. In essence you have a bunch of differential equations and a closure to give yourself a closed system for each component of the GCM, which you then use to force other components, and you integrate it all forward in time.
And the gp was right about observations. If you recall your ODE/PDE class, you'll be interested to know this is a boundary-value problem and you need to specify initial and boundary conditions. Initial conditions are your observations, or whatever your assumptions about the current state are. Often the GCM models are initialized in the year 1800 or 1900, giving them 100+ years of simulation time to equilibrate and match known observations before they are really forecasting the future. As for boundary conditions, the model is global, so the boundaries wrap around and you dont need to worry about them.
* An example of this is convection. When moist air rises and condensation occurs (to form cloud drops, rain, ice, etc), energy is released into the surrounding system (enthalpy of vaporization, deposition, fusion, etc). This translates into warming of the surrounding air, and helps drive convection and represents a transport of warming from the surface to the middle and upper atmosphere. The condensation process happens on a much smaller scale than a GCM can resolve, so the equations being integrated cannot represent this process. The process does however have an effect on temperature at the resolved scale. To handle this, parameterizations are employed that make certain assumptions about these processes and then make adjustments to the resolved scale. It would be better to just resolve these effects directly, but when you try to work at the molecular scale globally, realtime moves faster than the model does.
Sorry, nuclear is no longer "green". The public won't accept it. Instead, solar sails beaming microwaves to the ground.
The scientists, even in their worst imaginings, weren't expecting the stunning level of willful ignorance of consequences, and the sheer magntitude of selfish @ssh0lishness which we collectively have displayed in our consumption increase pattern.
Also, they had to tone it down because their political masters wanted a cover-up of the scale of the problem, so the editorial committee of IPCC low-balled the severity in their reporting.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
China surpassed US both in absolute amount and in relative amount, by the way.
What do you mean by relative amount? That graph shows China 15-20% above US. China has a population ~4.3 times the size of the US. Relatively speaking, that puts the US at about 360% of China's CO2 production.
Nobody wants to cut back on emissions in any meaningful way because it will mean literal death for large numbers of people unable to be supported by non-oil-based agricultural methods
Your argument displays at least two logical fallacies. Firstly you imply that reductions in carbon emissions must necessarily involve an abandonment of fossil fuel use in agriculture. Emissions can be substantially reduced by living closer to where we work, by using more efficient transportation, and by designing our buildings more efficiently. This is an example of an all or nothing fallacy. Secondly, you implicitly misrepresent the views of more reasonable environmentalists, which is the strawman fallacy.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
I read an article in Science about how many tree species are not adapting to AGW-driven changes and how much forest land is going to become savannah or desert way ahead of previous predictions
I don't know what tree species that was referring to, but an increase in temperature doesn't necessarily lead to desertification. People in temperate zones (especially those in Cs climates, which are rare outside California and southern Europe) may associate 'hot weather' with 'dry', but in the tropics, summer tends to be the rain season. During the exceptionally warm 90's and early 2000's, the deserts actually receded in Northern Africa. Now after a cooler than usual summer, drought is causing crops to fail again.
By very far the major reason for the disappearance of forest land is the growing population cutting or burning it down to make farm land.
He also misrepresents the entire process of modern agriculture - namely, none of the inputs are implicitly dependent on the active production of more CO2. All of them could be done more efficiently, or utilizing alternative power sources. Of course, he's also not covering the rather considerable issue that high-energy-driven intensive farming is doing a lot of long term damage to arable lands all over the world, and actively reducing their productive capacity. Changes to more sustainable farming methods would reduce the dependence of fertilizers and follow effects on marine ecosystems from run-off.
But there's no sense letting any of that get in the way of trying to co-opt global hunger as a perverse argument *against* doing anything about climate change.
Why are they surprised? NOBODY that can do anything about this is interested in doing anything about this. We've known about the greenhouse effect (as it was known before it became the world religion of Global Warming) since the early seventies.
Goverments have pretended that they believe it is a threat since at least the early nineties. Holding ridiculously expensive conferences every few years where they go out of their way to show that they can't care less.
But, like all religions, most people in that religion pay it lip service and do little else. Now they are surprised.
It is time they either wake up and do something about this threat, or simply stop pretending they really believe it is a threat.
That feels far safer, indeed. :P
No worries, a good chunk of that land won't be arable once the climate shift really gets going!
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Nobody wants to cut back on emissions in any meaningful way because it will mean literal death for large numbers of people unable to be supported by non-oil-based agricultural methods, and it will also mean a reduction in the standard of living for everyone else.
That is bullshit. Insulating your house increases your living standard and reduces costs (less heating/cooling required). How does that "kill" the economy? It should even allow for cheaper oil (less demand). If you can save money and get better comfort, how is this bad?
Look at BMW and Mercedes. You think they compromised on power or comfort with their new line of fuel efficient cars? When you don't lose as much time at the gas station and reduce toxins how is this bad?
Household appliances use less power. This means I can now use both the washer and dryer simultaneously on the same circuit without losing the circuit breaker. When you can do more with less. How is this bad?
CPUs and other electronics use less power for the same amount of processing capacity in each generation. Higher efficiency means longer battery life, smaller/lighter components as less cooling is required, ...
You think we would have smartphones and iPads if components were as energy efficient as they were in the 60s? 70s? 80s? 90s? 2000s (P4 anyone?)? When you can have things which could not exist before, how is this bad?
I am not saying this is true for all branches of the economy, but get your head out of the sand.
Recycling (= renewable resources) is an increasing branch in our economy and we could no longer live without as we simply do not have access to cheap resources and the same will be true for energy.
A lot of our devices and habits are VERY inefficient. Every house wastes energy for generating heat (heating, cooking) and cooling (airco, fridge) at the same time. Increasing the efficiency means cutting back on costs and emissions while standards of living increases for everyone. Did you hear about passive houses? They use residual heat from appliances to heat the house.
How great would it be if each building was self sufficient and would have "the grid" only as a fall-back option? How cool would it be if you could drive to the store on the cooking grease of the previous meal? How much better would it be if you did not need to drive to work at all (work from home)?
We are now using resources which took millions of years to form. You think we can keep this pace for another 500 years? 300 years? 100 years (this may be in the lifetime of my daughter which is 3 years old now)? 50 years (this may still be in my lifetime)? Who are we to use up all the resources for our enjoyment now and leave nothing for future generations? Our current habits are UNSUSTAINABLE and HAVE to change.
Either we make changes ourselves or something cataclysmic will happen before 2150. We are at a crossroad between the responsible and the irresponsible way. Changing habits (responsible) takes effort but could preserve prosperity. The irresponsible road leads to destruction.
You remember the days when we had acid rain?
You remember the days when the hole in the ozone layer was growing?
You remember the days when nuclear waste was dumped in the oceans?
Economies and standards of living today dependent too much on cheap energy and cheap credit. Both will crumble eventually. Better prepare yourself or get wiped out and as we saw with the credit crunch (credit went away briefly), it can happen VERY fast and incur irreparable damage.
Energy efficiency (aka reduction in emissions) is essential to our way of life (short term < 70 years) and even survival (long term > 300 years).
I'm driving to Las Vegas from Virginia in March, and there are no electric cars that will do that in the timeframe my WRX will.
Waaaa. Waaaa. I'm entitled to luxuries that no one in the entire history of humanity had outside of the last 70 years. Waaaa.
The reality is our lifestyles are going to radically change over the next few decades. You might not like it, but, the physical realities of oil production and vehicle design being what they are, you'll just have to suck it up.
More trains over land, more ship travel over sea, less personal automotive and passenger flight. That's the reality we're heading towards. Get over yourself.
Right, because simple neo-liberal economics *always* works when once-in-a-century events happen. If the market was really free, OPEC members would be allowed to massively cut production to keep oil in the ground (and would be run by long-term thinkers, not populists trying to please the both US overlords, and the mobs with AKs).
The danger is, there can be a long lead time on "nuclear, solar, wind, hamsters on wheels, and all that other green jazz". Trying to change the whole world's fuel source in a short time period could be catastrophic. Maybe not for everyone, but if energy prices double then food prices in poor countries will go through the roof.
People *are* looking into alternatives, but there's no serious funding. Everyone knows that the groundbreaking discoveries will go down in the history books, but not make a mint. Someone will then copy the technology, sidestep IP rights (through work-arounds, or lawyering, or some emergency degree annulling energy patents), find a way to make it 1/2 the price, and roll it out everywhere.
There's no point doing research, if commercial applications won't be there for decades. The patents will expire, and the technological advantage will fade. Industry needs price signals, which are being suppressed by governments who want to burn up as much of our finite resources as possible before they have to run for re-election.
You've succeeded in a country rich in infrastructure and a well educated populace, both supported by public tax dollars. You can afford the fossil fuels necessary for such a trip in part because they are subsidized by further tax dollars, both in the form of direct subsidies and in military spending to guarantee us access to said resources. And you plan to take this drive on a public highway system which was built as part of one of the largest socialist economic stimulus projects in the history of the world. Congratulations. You're an asshole libertarian in the middle of a collective, and you've accomplished nothing on your own except being a giant self-deluded tool.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie