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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."
Thank goodness that "global warming" is bullshit.
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.
Yeah every time I get too much carbon dioxide in my lungs, I start to feel like my chest is going to explode.
Then I exhale.
The models indicate there is supposed to be a lag. But so far for previous rises the heat did show up.
Last summer some dolt tried to convince me it was 40C outside. I pointed to my drink, which was sitting on the table at a lovely 4C, as evidence it couldn't be that warm, or my drink would be warm too. He got all huffy and mumbled about ice-cubes moderating the temperature, but it was obvious he was just making that shit up.
I finished my drink 5 minutes later, and it was cool and refreshing to the last drop.
I can't tell if you're trolling, or if you're actually that fucking ignorant.
Likewise, climate models are designed to simulate the physicsof the global ecosystem, and not just perform statistical regressions.
Perhaps next time you might consider having the slightest fucking clue of what you're talking about before joining a discussion with adults?
No comment.
> CO2 outpaces worst-case scenarios yet the heat doesn't show up.
Heat lags CO2. Just like the middle of winter is not Dec 21 and the middle of summer is not June 21.
The earth is warming up a little more each year. Please learn a little before making wrong headed statements.
Adding heat to the oceans takes a long time. Think boiling water. Adding 1 or 2 degrees to the entire oceans takes an awful lot of energy accumulation. The heat we have added so far has just started to turn over the ocean currents.
I'm leaving ...
The models are off because up until 2009/2010-ish were actually experiencing a natural cooling trend, which masked our artificial warming trend and came out as a wash. Now that the cooling trend has subsided, warming is expected to spike in the coming decade.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/03/AR2009090302199.html
Or we could just jump to convenient conclusions given a tiny dataset.
If our elected representatives no longer represent us, do we still live in a Democracy?
The IPCC figured people someone would actually listen to them and start to make cuts, when they made their worst case predictions. They were wrong.
Actually that's not necessarily true. I don't know whether you remember your introductory differential equations class where you did basic modeling, but essentially a model starts with a few observations being converted into hypothesis. Not all facits of a model are explicitly known prior to generating the result data.
"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.
Currently 1998 is the hottest year on record. Two combined land and sea surface temperature records from Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and the US National Climatic Data Centre (NCDC) both calculate that the first six months of 2010 were the hottest on record. According to GISS, four of the six months also individually showed record highs.
At the time the article was written, the first six months of 2010 were hotter than the corresponding months in 1998. Unfortunately that trend continued, and this year NOAA announced that 2010 had tied with 2005 for the hottest year on record. (2005 was hotter than 1998; the guardian got that fact wrong).
Source: http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2011/20110112_globalstats.html
Stop throwing all these other confusing details at me; I'm still cowering in fear of global cooling!
It looks like you're in a discussion related to the climate. Would you like help?
No comment.
Here's actual data for CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/global.html
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.
There is a finite amount of fossile fuels underground, the worst case scenario is that we develop a way to extract and burn most of it, wich would raise global temperatures by about 6 degrees, regardless of speed.
At 6 degrees we are all dead.
Hypocapnia is when you don't have enough CO2 in your blood.
I have a bookmark for a .co.uk medical gas supplier on another computer. They have PDFs of their products' Material Safety Data Sheets. As I recally, they have Oxygen, Oxygen +5% CO2, Plain Air + 5% CO2, straight CO2 (for anesthesia), etc.
But I did find a printout of this page: Hyperoxia-Induced Hypocapnia. The practical implication of this piece is that every old person who has been prescribed oxygen by their doctor is also being poisoned. This creates more things to treat, so it's good for the medical system, but not so good for the patient.
If you're going to be on oxygen, 5% CO2 should always be blended in...
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
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.
Appeal to authority works in the other direction too, you know. Especially when the source in question was just reporting on the release as published by NASA.
Yeah, whatever. NASA's just part of the leftist lamestream media, amirite?
No comment.
Fear the data, denier: * every year since 1992 has been warmer than 1992; * the ten hottest years on record occurred in the last 15; * every year since 1976 has been warmer than 1976; * the 20 hottest years on record occurred in the last 25; * every year since 1956 has been warmer than 1956; and * every year since 1917 has been warmer than 1917. The two most reputable globally and seasonally averaged temperature trend analyses are the NASA GISS direct surface temperature analysis and the CRU direct surface temperature analysis. Both trends are definitely and significantly up.
Please have respect for people with different abilities, especially children.
The models are off because up until 2009/2010-ish were actually experiencing a natural cooling trend, which masked our artificial warming trend and came out as a wash. Now that the cooling trend has subsided, warming is expected to spike in the coming decade.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/03/AR2009090302199.html
Or we could just jump to convenient conclusions given a tiny dataset.
There is a warming/dry trend alternating with a cooling/wet trend every 7-10 years or so. It's called El Nino/La Nina.
No one talks about it much anymore, but my personal experiences over the last 20 years support that cycle very well. Right now we're in a La Nina phase, meaning more cool & more precipitation (hey would you look at that, unprecedented snow in October in the U.S. this year).
One thing that everyone needs to keep in mind is WEATHER IS NOT CLIMATE. In fact, one of the most agreed upon results of climate change is more VIOLENT weather, not merely "hotter" weather.
When the climate balance is upset, all hell breaks loose in the weather, it doesn't just "get hotter." As a result you see things like that massive snow in Washington D.C. a year or two ago, snow in Texas a year or three ago, while simultaneously having the hottest summers on record.
It's not rocket science.
> The models don't indicate that there is supposed to be lag, the models were /programmed/ to /assume/ that there will be lag
What the models are programmed with are basic PDE's describing what we know about fluid motion, thermodynamics, mass continuity, etc. In this case there will also be code modeling the known interactions of the CO2 molecule with solar and terrestrial radiation. What the programmers are assuming (not programmers really, but the guys running the model) is how much CO2 there is in the atmosphere. The model equations will handle how a number concentration of CO2 ends up being a warming (radiative transfer would be a good class to have had for this), and the rest of your equation set will move that warming around the system.
You should download some model code (lots of it is open source!) and look at it sometime. Convince yourself its just an iterative march to grind on some PDE's and not a collection of "if CO2, wait 2 years, then T+=4K" type things.
But the assumption that people will do something about it shouldn't be made for a "worst case" scenario. I'm a little more okay with it being a matter of missing data, but to use the phrase "worst case scenario" implies that you're throwing out any remaining naivete and, you know, expecting the worst. To do otherwise is both misleading and incompetent.
Is it weird that I want phrases to consistently mean something?
We as a nation are outsourcing production to China, etc. We can do our part by only outsourcing to places that actually have some semblance of environmental controls in place.
And the last 10 days actually warmed, so CO2 must not be heating the atmosphere at all! Great argument!
Your "10 years" number is actually a couple years out of date and no longer true. About 12 years ago there was one extremely hot year, so in 2009 you could use the "10 years" argument and show a flat average line. Of course, even then 12 years or 8 years would both show warming. But now here we are in 2011 and warming has continued, so the trend line for the last 10 years actually shows significant warming.
E pluribus unum
They are chtorrforming our planet to make it more suitable for their form of life!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
The problem is that EU wants to do the RIGHT thing, America does not want to get burned, and China wants to trash the west at any and all costs.
If America was smart, we would drop the cap-n-trade and put a tax on ALL GOODS based on where the final assembly and the primary sub component come from. In addition, it would be done as a percentage based on CO2 emissions per sq km. That way, it can be easily checked from the sky via sat. In addition, by doing it this way, it discourages nations from allowing high growth rates, as well as does not punish the vast majority of 3rd world nations.
Best of all, it tells EVERY NATION that they must partake. If they emit a load of CO2 per sq km, then they will have a tax put on their goods. If the lower it, and then later when succesful (see China), then they will have a larger tax put on them. This has a nice feedback to prevent successful nations from skipping the CO2 controls.
In addition, this same approach should be used for pollution controls. One nation in particular emits more than 1/2 of all mercury that man has ever emitted. That has to be stopped.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Look pal, pseudo-skepticism only works if you blindly repeat Heartland Institute talking points. There is absolutely no room for actually knowing a fucking thing about AGW.
Now get back in your Ferrari, you cock-smoking teabagging super-rich scientist with your big house and your ten 18 year old girlfriends and your seven digit bank account, and leave those poor wittle oil companies alone.
Fucking climatological bully.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It is NOT people. It is the economy. If it was ppl then those areas with large amounts of ppl would have some of the highest emissions. That is not the case. It is the developed economies that emit the most.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
As a child, I would go to Mammoth Mountain with my family to camp and fish. I loved the trees there. One year, as an adult, I took my girl friend to see how beautiful it was. I took her to heart lake and all around I saw that the trees were dead. I asked a park ranger, "wtf?" He told me that the volcano was producing so much carbon dioxide that it was killing the trees. I said, "wtf? CO2 is food for trees". He said, "you're right. But in this case it's too much of a good thing."
I'm not on board with the whole "man-made climate change" guys and I post this simply to educate. I personally believe if there is warming, it's because we're at the end of an ice age (thanks for the mod down).
But here's a link to the issues at Mammoth Mountain. http://pubs.usgs.gov/dds/dds-81/Intro/facts-sheet/GasKillingTrees.html
We show geeks how to get their dream girl at EyesOfOdessa.com
The data is here. You can see that 2009 and 2010 are extrapolations, not actual data.
See here for actual CO2 levels in the atmosphere, up 1 or 2 parts-per-million per year for the last 5 years, as actually measured.
source:
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/20100728_stateoftheclimate.html
What's your source on say there has been no temperature increase in the last 10 years?
-The art of programming is the pursuit of absolute simplicity.
Check the short post and graphics here (http://www.grinzo.com/energy/2011/11/07/more-on-those-record-carbon-emissions/) including one in the comments.
Bottom line: We're way over our carbon budget and sprinting in the wrong direction. It's the worst possible form of deficit spending, one that our kids, grandkids, etc. will have to deal with for generations to come.
The people who think (due to myopia) that their economic interests will be harmed by anti-warming measures rush to insist the apparent warming may not be man's fault, and as such balk at any attempt to do anything about it. I would like to point something out, and you're all free to repeat this message. Take it and run with it. The right-wingers in this country (US) insistence that we shouldn't be so hasty to stop global warming (fearing it will hurt their portfolios) because it may or may not be our fault are like people clutching fire-extinguishers inside a burning building, claiming that until it can be proven beyond all doubt that the fire in the building is NOT due to natural causes, they are not going to let anyone force them to incur the expense of recharging or replacing the fire extinguishers by USING THEM TO PUT THE FIRE OUT. A really moronic position to hold, when you think about it. WHO CARES WHO STARTED THE DAMNED FIRE?!? LET'S PUT IT OUT BEFORE THE BUILDING GOES UP AND WE GO UP WITH IT!!!
*(You may feel free to use a boat with no life-rafts, etc., in shark-infested waters as a metaphor instead of a building... just as bad, but with even less of anywhere to go once you have no more boat... a good analogy for our planet.)
I'd like to add that if you don't all want to have to switch to Soylent Green, you might want to give a bit more thought to the environment. Most people don't realize we are not APPROACHING the carrying capacity of this planet, we have been, by definition, living AT the carrying capacity since times immemorial. As our population increases, we either edge out competing consumers (other animals, etc.,) or we adjust the carrying capacity by finding new ways to farm, however... the limit, (in the policy sense and in the geophysical sense,) of how many mouths can be fed is based on the rule of 10 (or 100 if you like meat) and the number of watts of light the sun sheds upon the Earth. We exceed that, get ready for some yummy Soylent Green! Either that, or watch ever increasing numbers of people starve... watch biodiversity plummet and all THAT entails, (think domino effect or chain-reaction crash) and if you think people are ready at the drop of a hat to fight to the death over their disagreeing with each other over what name to call their 'god'(s) or how many times a day to praise him/her/it/them, just wait until there is less food available than needed to give every person (on average) his/her daily needs even in the so-called 1st world countries... then you'll see some REAL fighting. People fight easily over trivialities like their made-up gods, but when you're holding a piece of chicken, and chickens are near extinction... they'll kill you, eat the chicken, THEN YOU.
We really must tend our garden, as they say. We're precariously perched in a place where we have enough food, plus surplus, but what happens if we have a few years really bad weather, or a tanker truck spills something contaminating an aquifer, in turn contaminating hundreds or thousands of miles of farmland, destroying the crops growing there.
Anyway, have fun.
The influence of the US is bound to the strength of its economy, the strength of its economy is bound (currently) to its use of fossil fuels. So if the US acts preemptively, it loses its power to influence others to do the same, it drives up costs for itself while driving down fossil fuel costs for others, so their economy and thus influence increases. Yet, if (in the terms of A Beautiful Mind) "If everybody goes for the blond, nobody gets laid", which is to say if consumption can't be curbed, everybody is doomed.
But the problem, when you said: "tells EVERY NATION that they must partake" You have to ask "who does that?" The bottom line is the US doesn't have an enforcement capability in China, Russia or the rest. They are sovereign nations. In fact there is no world power which can make FORCE every country to do things, especially when their is so much benefit in them defecting.
So the politics actually look incredibly grim. The best hope here is something that can fundamentally alter the equation above, so that there is positive rewards for nations going green. That something would necessarily come from the best and brightest of science and business. An example would be an efficient fossil fuel combustion process that turns an engine while sequestering carbon into a valuable industrial product like carbon fiber... Something like that is more profitable to use than not use, making the transition natural.
I guess my point is, I think its a really good time for techies to start thinking way outside the box on this problem...
-The art of programming is the pursuit of absolute simplicity.
Hansen's 1988 projections used a climate sensitivity of 4.2 C which wasn't an unreasonable value to use at the time. Current estimates put the value from 2 - 4.5 C with the value most likely around 3 C. Using a sensitivity of 3 C in Hansen's 1988 model would put his projections, particularly using Scenario B, more in line with what actually happened. At the bottom of this post they discuss Hansen's 1988 model in light of the data up to 2010 and here they give a more detailed discussion of Hansen's model specifically.
I can say that on Slashdot can't I? I mean I may (will?) be modded down because of my content but swearing isn't automatically penalized right?
Anyway, years ago my brother gave me Michael Chrichton's anti-global warming book to show me what HE (and my brother) thought about global warming. I didn't get into a big argument because I (unfortunately) knew that the effects would be visible in our lifetime. And if I was wrong, I'd be more than happy to buy a new SUX 6000 with 9mpg (except that would mean I'm buying oil from countries that finance terrorism and hate our guts; but that's another story).
So now it appears as if we really are headed to disaster; if global warming was a myth then how come the projections keep getting WORSE not better? If it was all a short term blip or fabrication we should be seeing things going back to normal shouldn't we?
Of course not, because man-made global warming is real. So i expect the Republicans amongst us will change:
Global Warming isn't real - TO - Man Made Global Warming isn't real. -THEN - There isn't anything we can do about it anyway
which will go along with:
Evolution is just a theory (against 95% of biologists) - AND - The constitution really doesnt state the separation of Church and Govt. (against 99% of historians) - TO - Stimulus spending doesn't boost the GDP (against 85% of economists.)*
When did the Republican party become the party of ignorance? Why do people like Rupert Murdoch keep at it even when someone like Steve Jobs (I know, I know) warns him to be mindful of his legacy? I mean when future generations look back upon what this group of people did to our country and planet, you've got to wonder what they're going to write in the history books. Do they not care?
So yes, we are so fucked
*By the way, do Republicans believe that vaccines cause autism?
You aren't suppose to extrapolate. Good engineering understands that your model is only good in the set of data you collected. Even then you make the assumption that the change between the points is not significantly more then it has to be. All these models are extrapolating at some point. We simply don't know how the world is going to react to how it is changing. There could easily be some mediating factor that isn't seen in the model that is now becoming more significant.
If you are breathing supplemental oxygen for medical purposes you aren't breathing pure oxygen. Lifetime smoker types who need a bit more oxygen than available in garden variety air (aprox 20% O2) are given nasal cannula (prongs) that add 4 - 8% more oxygen for a whopping total of less than 30%. Plenty of room for CO2 to be 'blended in' by room air.
There are conditions where even relatively low concentrations of added oxygen are problematic, that's what your link talks about it. It isn't true of everyone, basically people with smoking induced lung damage.
Just pulling out citations from the literature without understanding them doesn't get you far.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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?
"The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumped by the biggest amount on record in 2010, the U.S. Department of Energy calculated.
No other pollutant is being discussed.
Oh god dammit. CO2 = released by burning shit (imagine a coal-fired electrical power plant). Some other pollutants with more immediate health effects = also released by burning shit. GP was asking why focus on just one. That no other pollutant was being discussed was precisely what he was questioning and it's foolish to point it out as if he didn't realize it.
... This kind of legalistic "tee hee I'm just going to be dense and give you a hard time by never, ever inferring anything on my own" bullshit is why we can't have nice things. It's a douchebag thing to do. I know you don't mean it, but still. Most of the time the thing this mentality complains about is also the most certain indication that it misunderstood the post (something GP tried to tell you incidentally).
Now I could answer that question in a variety of ways, such as pointing out that studying just this one thing in isolation (levels of CO2 vs. predicted levels) is probably complex enough without incorporating other concerns into the study, etc, but that's not my point.
My point is
Can we all just quit patting ourselves on the back for a second and realize that this single mistake keeps getting repeated over and over, that it's really a veil for the belief that you're so smart and the other guy is so stupid, and I don't know, maybe we can see how optional it really is? Is that too much to ask?
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
You are correct that i am simplifying the matter. In truth, the east/west boundaries would be considered periodic, so that essentially the grid points on opposite edges of the domain are actually the same point. The north/south boundary gets interesting :). For spectral models, which require periodicity in the wave solution, the 'wraparound' zonally provides this, guaranteeing periodicity around a latitude circle. My personal modeling experience is cloud scale and regional modeling (CM1 and WRF, primarily), so I dont deal with global grids in physical or spectral space, or climate models for that matter.
Also there is still a need for upper and lower BC's, which in a very simple model might employ a no slip condition on the bottom and a radiative boundary at the top with a sponge layer to minimize energy reflecting off the top. Tthe lower boundaries will also have forcings from ocean and vegetation models/parameterizations (for moisture fluxes, sensible heat fluxes, roughness lengths, albedo, etc).
erm... source?
Climate science is considerably more complex than rocket engines, ballistics, and even the fluid dynamics of re-entry. So I guess you are correct, it's not rocket science.
I suspect you're a troll, but some idiots will end up agreeing with you if they ever read your post, so we'll just refute the idiocy right now.
"Volcanoes release more than humans" = wrong. Volcanic activity releases on average 65-319 mln tonnes/year, fossil fuels release 29 bln tonnes/year (EIA 2007).
"Humans breathe more".. well there's a ton of sites just doing the simple math, but in my lazy search I found this. It indicates human emissions via respiratory system is 1-2 bln tonnes/year. 2 / 29 = ~7% of all fossil fuel burned, so that is also not correct.
Honestly, I don't really feel like continuing anymore than this. I really hope you were a troll, and that you don't procreate.
1998 is the hottest year in the CRU record. Both the GISS and NOAA records have 2010 and 2005 tied for the hottest year. Of course the CRU group is headed up by Phil Jones so how can you trust it?
A recent paper by Ben Santer et. al. found it takes at least 17 year of data to be sure the climate signal has overridden the noise of weather so you need to go back to at least1993.
Just something to keep in mind -
We can't measure carbon dioxide output.
We can measure carbon dioxide levels, in the atmosphere. We cannot measure how much carbon dioxide is being released into the atmosphere, or being extracted from it.
These numbers are estimates, based on thousands of different point measurements, processed according to whatever number-mangling process that the folks who wrote the report have decided best accumulates the totals.
So in my mind, before anyone even starts to discuss these numbers as if they were real, they should have access to 1. the raw data, and 2., the specific programs used to process the raw data into the reported estimates. And not only for this year, but for the prior years that the report is comparing with.
Absent complete disclosure, this should not be treated as a scientific report.
When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl.
Sorry but that is wrong. From the 2001 AR3 report, specifically WG1 Chapter 9: Projections of Future Climate Change. "The temperature change for the 30-year average 2021 to 2050 compared with 1961 to 1990 is +1.3C with a range of +0.8 to +1.7C...". That is a far cry from 2.5 degrees (C or F?) in 2010-2015.
CO2(ppm) Warming
340 1K
430 2K
540 3K
670 4K
840 5K
1000 6K
2000 9K
Note that there are massive error bars associated with the concentrations, and the scenarios are merely likely. It may take hundred of years to equilibrate to the new higher global average.
Source
Allegedly? There are quite fisherman out of work because of of the algae blooms they cause. What's great for some parts of nature is very bad for other parts. How about we just agree to classify pollutants in economics terms: Any emission which creates a negative externality for another person is a pollutant. If someone ELSE has to bare the cost for YOUR actions, then you are polluting.
Your raw sewage leaks into the river, lowering downstream property values? Well you just polluted there, buddy.
Fisherman are struggling because of nitrates that run off of farms? Well then those nitrates are a pollutant.
Sulfur Dioxide from coal burning reduces crop yields for local farmers by way of acid rain? Well then its a pollutant.
I think a pretty solid case can be made for carbon dioxide emissions creating some financial losses around the world. Of course, we are all emitters to one degree or another, but clearly some more than others. So those who emit MORE than their fair share are polluters.
I just don't see what's unreasonable about asking people to bare the burden for their OWN actions. d
But CO2 is great for plants.
Honestly, it's time to admit that we don't have a handle on all the variables. And guess what? That's OK.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Apparently it's also explained in detail in Peter Ward's Under a Green Sky.
If the earth starts to warm, for any reason, to the point that it threatens the civilized world, countries will rise up and nuke each other out of frustration, which will cause a nuclear winter. Did I mention that billions will die, too? Problem solved. I'm not kidding.
Today, Australia's government implemented a "Carbon Tax". Funnily enough, the ultra-right-wing opposition fearmongerers have been explaining the devistation to australia if we implement such a tax. (Coal companies will lose profits! Gasp!)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-11-08/carbon-tax-passes-senate/3652438/?site=newcastle
So you're saying the IPCC changed their report to please their political masters? And you expect us to trust any of these people?
I can't believe personal attacks on Al Gore count as "arguments" with some mods.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Well at least it's not brain surgery
Here's the graph of the Berkeley data you're talking about:
https://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/berk4.jpg
Blue line is a linear interpolation of pre-1998 data.
Green line is an extrapolation of that same line.
Red line is interpolation of post-1998 data.
I don't see any evidence the trend has stopped. Do you ?
There is a warming/dry trend alternating with a cooling/wet trend every 7-10 years or so. It's called El Nino/La Nina.
No one talks about it much anymore, but my personal experiences over the last 20 years support that cycle very well.
So 3 observations make it a cycle?
Sorry, you are mistaken. Neither El Nino nor El Nina are truely cycles. The used to be pretty 'random' events occuring roughly every 15 to 20 years, sometimes even more rarely. The slight temperature increase over the last 30 years however makes especially the El Nino events more common.
So global warming is causing more El Nino events than we had lets say 100 years ago and less El Nina events. Both don't realy come alternating. You can have several El Ninos in a row intermixed with "normal" phases.
Your analysis regarding violent weather versus hotter is correct. "Global warming" results in the first place in _more energy_ in the air/atmosphere, hence more wind.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Yeah, middle of winter is probably earlier than June 21st and middle of summer is definitely after December 21st...
(What? Some of us do live below the equator!)
What OP means, is that it is quite obvious that something is changing. I remember seasons being a lot more regular than they are now. And my grandparents even more so. Spring (weather) started March 21, give or take a day or two. Now, it's give or take two months, perhaps even more random in other places.
You can argue that it's natural, that it's some sort of natural cycle. Other people argue that it's god punishing us. The fact remains that the climate is changing, and therefore so is the weather, becoming more and more unpredictable and with more and more extreme phenomena happening all around the world. It doesn't take rocket science, ballistics or fluid dynamics to figure out the consequences to agriculture worldwide.
Not that I have a problem with your jocose pedantry, but OP is the one that should have 5, Insightful.
Several more reasons why this couldn't be true:
a) Ocean acidity is increasing, which indicated CO2 is absorbed, rather than released.
b) Carbon isotopes of atmospheric CO2 indicate that there has been in increase in very old carbon, which matches the signature of carbon stored in fossil fuels.
c) Oxygen levels in the atmosphere have decreased slightly in the last century, consistent with increase CO2 from burning.
d) If you add up all the carbon from all the fossil fuel we've burned, the number is about twice as big as the increase of carbon in the atmosphere. So, if the atmospheric CO2 is coming from some "natural" source like the oceans, where did all the CO2 from burning fossil fuels go ?
Just 15 of the world's biggest ships may now emit as much pollution as all the world's 760m cars.
Making more of an effort to produce items more locally is sort of the same as "living closer to where we work", but it has benefits far beyond a shorter commute. Additionally, where most of us live we probably have stricter environmental controls, which would mean that what IS produced is produced more cleanly. This would likely drive up the costs of goods, forcing us to buy fewer items of higher quality and own them longer, which would provide further environmental (and, dare I say, social) benefits. Overall, it seems like a good plan.
www.clarke.ca
Real science comes from the love of truth. Loving truth requires asking questions. Asking questions requires not just believing the first set of answers anyone presents. That includes especially the first set of answers you think of yourself. Real science requires that you take the proposed answers, when possible, and test them. Sometimes you can test them directly. Other times the test comes indirectly, when you use them to generate more questions, and find that some of them are testable. That's where we are currently, for example, with string theory. The immediate questions it raises can't be tested. But there are questions which follow from the answers its models suggest which can be.
Climate prediction is something like that. We don't have a lot of spare planets to test the answers on that we've come up with through our questions. The main question is: We know from physics that added carbon concentrations in an atmosphere of a planet circling a hot sun should heat the planet up. Does this answer apply in our circumstance, or do other factors negate the effect? We do need to question this. That's how science proceeds, asking more questions. And then we need to look at candidate answers and, when we cannot answer those directly, use them to generate further questions, in the hope that we can test those.
That's all very proper science. You man call it "skepticism" if you want. What's not proper science is to say, "Oh look, there are more questions we can raise. So let's just ignore the initial question. Because the most likely candidate answer - that the planet will warm - would cause prudent people to revise their business plans. And the set of business plans we have now, we're just not smart enough to come up with anything else."
I'm skeptical about that. Are we really so stupid, in the golden age of capitalism, just two decades after the main competing economic system fell, that our businesses can't flexibly adapt to changing circumstances and novel risks? That's a question that invites answers, which in turn invite further questions. It can itself be addressed scientifically, and "skeptically" if you will. If the people running our business believe that we can't adapt and prosper while facing fresh challenges, I'm skeptical that we have the right people running our businesses. How did we put such unimaginative people in charge? Why are they incapable of facing big questions with innovative answers, in the manner of our best scientists and engineers? What were they taught at those high-priced MBA mills? Obviously not science, nor the productive use of "skeptical" questioning to advance us farther towards both truth and the prosperity which a better grasp of truth can leverage.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Let's focus on Germany. They have increased GDP and increased renewable energy (20% of German kWh in the first 6 months of 2011 were non-emitting) while shrinking their CO2 emissions for the past 20 years.
It's nothing but a giant strawman built on him. It's cute how you pretend to dislike the kind of emotional argumentation that you use as an attack vector.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.