Soot Is Warming the World — a Lot

sciencehabit writes "Soot is bad stuff all around, whether you're breathing it into your lungs or it's heating the atmosphere by absorbing more of the sun's energy. But a new 4-year, 232-page assessment (PDF) of soot's role in climate finds that the combustion product could be warming the world twice as much as previously thought. The study points policymakers toward the best targets for reducing climate-warming soot emissions while at the same time improving the health of billions of people."

Comments

Reminds me of a cartoon

[SirGarlon]

This reminds me of a cartoon. Caption: "What if global warming is a hoax and we create a better world for nothing?"

The reason that occurred to me is, here's a case where it makes sense to reduce a pollutant (soot) for public health reasons, even setting the global warming issue aside.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[s.petry]

What you present is the argument that neither side want's to hear. Trust me, I tried. The arguments for curing global warming are identical to cleaning up pollution. In the 70s, there was a huge push on cleaning up pollution. The "clean" campaigns were all silenced in favor of high profit for a select few.

While I agree with you, good luck getting anyone in current argument crowd discussing anything as logical as pollution.

Basically we have 2 fronts: Big Oil and Money people saying "We are not doing anything wrong", and the other half saying "Humans are a plague on the planet." Anyone else is ignored, ridiculed, or drown out in noise.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[oic0]

If they support that notion they weaken the argument against their prime target, CO2, since it has no ill health effects until you have enough of it around you to displace the oxygen you need.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[OakDragon]

"What if global warming is a hoax and we create a better world for nothing?"

I'm thinking the real question is, "What if global warming is true (and it seems to be), but we spend trillions of dollars - presumably to the
detriment of other beneficial things - to obtain only a marginally better outcome?"

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[MightyMartian]

The argument is also identical to pre-emptive moves to prepare the world economy for the end of cheap oil. It's irrelevant to Big Oil's cheerleaders, and seemingly by the general public, who want to believe, no matter how foolish it is, that fossil fuels cause only limited (if any) climate change and are of infinite supply.

And you'll find that the actual climatology community doesn't have a lot of "humans are a plague" types. While there are some extreme green types out there, that everyone who accepts AGW is some crazed tree hugging lunatic is a pretty huge strawman.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[LordLimecat]

Whether or not it is a hoax, or to what degree it is sensationalized, would impact the kinds of measures you were willing to take, however.

If for example you could create a compelling case that "unless we stop burning all coal by February 1, the world will implode", I imagine people would be willing to take pretty drastic measures, and it might even come down to armed conflict.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[Dodgy G33za]

Using your logic dousing myself in lighter fluid every day would also be fine because it won't be the direct chemical effects of the fluid that will harm me.

CO2 increases the ability of the atmosphere to retain heat. A hotter planet is not good for human health.

The effect of restricting CO2 emissions will be to restrict its emissions to the most cost effective forms. Which will almost certainly see petrol cars replaced by electric ones, especially in the city. In addition to limiting warming this will have massive benefits to air quality, as well as reduce traffic noise which should lower stress in the population.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[Jane Q. Public]

"... to prepare the world economy for the end of cheap oil."

We saw the end of "cheap" oil years ago. I think you mean "necessary" oil.

It will still be necessary, of course, for lots of things. Just not powering automobiles.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[jbengt]

[CO2] has no ill health effects until you have enough of it around you to displace the oxygen you need.

No. If CO2 levels go up about 10 or 15 times what they are today, there would be a people feeling respiratory symptoms from it. If the levels went up about 100 to 120 times current concentrations, it would be considered an immediate threat to health and life, and if all of that added CO2 were to displace O2 in the air, the amount of oxygen per unit volume would go down only about 20%. That would be the same reduction in oxygen as going from sea level to about 6,000 or 7,000 ft elevation.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[hairyfeet]

The problem is NOT a case of "creating a better world for nothing" as many of us that are currently against AGW would think that would be great, wonderful, all for it. the problem that many of us have against AGW is the current "solutions" are a scam set up by the same groups that gave us credit default swaps and all the other lovely scams in the real estate bubble which We, The People, are still being handed bills for.

Take Mr "inconvenient truth" Rev Al Gore, not only has he not said a word about tariffs on China who has said they won't play the carbon game (hint, he makes crazy money there), not only has he set himself up to make billions on the carbon scam but he has the diamond plated balls to say puttering around in his Lear Jet and driving his SUV makes him "carbon neutral" because he pays HIMSELF carbon credits from his OWN COMPANY which then hands him the money back as capital gains which he doesn't have to pay taxes on! It would be like moving money from your left pocket to your right and getting a tax break for doing it!

So you want to make the world cleaner? All for it, add huge tariffs to Chinese goods, we can pick up their fricking pollution on the west coast so if you want cleaner air there is a good start, tell the NIMBYs to fuck off and start building new nuclear reactors, tell the DoD to fuck off and allow reprocessing to deal with the waste, and invest in a people's car that runs on diesel, gets at least 40MPG and costs less than 20K. Give tax breaks and a huge "cash for clunkers" to the poor to get rid of all the old used cars on the road...tada! Wow I just solved a good portion of the problems right there, aren't I a genius? Why isn't this being done? Answer is obvious, its because the scammers can't leech more money with a sensible system that actually makes things better which is why the ONLY "solution" you'll hear from the AGW is carbon credits.

Oh and FYI but what EXACTLY do you think will happen to what few American factories are left if they have zero penalty for moving to China? Duh, they'll just move where they don't pay for carbon crap and make more money! Of course Rev Al won't say shit about that, he and his buddies make mad monies on cheap Chinese labor don't cha know? What a fucking scam, and what saddens me is how many "greenies" are buying the bullshit. This will do about as much to clean up the place as throwing all your garbage in the closet. Sure you won't see it but its still there and it will get worse until it spills out all over the place.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[Jane Q. Public]

"What if global warming is true ... but we spend trillions of dollars - presumably to the detriment of other beneficial things - to obtain only a marginally better outcome?"

I don't know if it's true (and I do have my doubts) but I think this is really the essential point.

Even if you dismiss economist Bjorn Lomborg as an "anti-warmist", nobody has really refuted his calculations: that the cost of reducing CO2 warming by 1 degree C over the course of 100 years is about the same that it would cost to completely end world hunger... and that's taking changed conditions and population into account.

Which is more important?

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[s.petry]

On the surface, I agree. A bit further, I don't. When is the last time we hard how damaging Oil and Coal are to Humans or the environment? The simple answer is, that we don't. There are numerous studies that show how damaging frack mining is, yet you have to go out of your way to find information. So it's not just about the financial aspect (cheap vs. expensive). It's also that you won't hear how harmful the products and byproducts are. That information is getting buried as fast as it can be created.

Same with the other side. Al Gore and his type are played in media. Nothing else gets media attention or time.

To be clear, it's not that the majority of people actually believe humans are a plague but rather you get no air time if you have a more rational point of view.

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[tmosley]

It's not the same. When you drive up the costs of using fossil fuels, commodity agriculture products get more expensive, and people in the third world starve and riot, creating misery.

If the AGW people would focus their efforts on expanding use of nuclear energy, especially new, safe designs, then there wouldn't be a problem. But they don't want to do that. They want carbon taxes and increased government intervention on every front.

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[tmosley]

Oil is priced the same as its 50 year average. Well, priced in non-inflating gold, that is.

Oil only seems expensive because governments around the world are destroying the value of their currencies.

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[denis-The-menace]

Sell it this way:

If you want to keep your private island from sinking in the ocean, stop the planet from warming up.

It doesn't matter how the planet is warming up.
If we know we can prevent some or most of the damage by not use using dirty combustion methods,
Why wouldn't we?

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[TapeCutter]

That's my favorite political cartoon, glad to see others spreading it. :)

As for TFA, twice the forcing from soot is within the previous error bars. Studies like this don't really tell us anything new, but they are important if you want to shrink those pesky error bars. As can be seen from the graph, forcing from soot is still dwarfed by the forcing from CO2.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[swillden]

If we know we can prevent some or most of the damage by not use using dirty combustion methods, Why wouldn't we?

That's an easy one. We wouldn't because the alternatives to those dirty combustion methods are more expensive. Note that "more expensive" doesn't mean "requires more money" because money isn't a real thing, it's just a placeholder. it means that the alternatives require more resources, whether they be raw materials, labor, etc., resources that could be applied to solving other problems like, perhaps, the aforementioned world hunger.

In fact, world hunger isn't a problem of insufficient production, it's a problem of transportation and distribution, and more expensive transportation will therefore (likely) directly result in more hunger.

It's all connected, and you can't push on one piece without moving some others. So it's never a question of "if we can just do this why don't we?". That's not to say that it might not be worth doing, but you can't simply ignore all of the other potential effects.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[LordLucless]

This reminds me of a cartoon [about.com]. Caption: "What if global warming is a hoax and we create a better world for nothing?"

The false assumption there is that the cost of "creating a better world" is zero. It also implies that, for some reason, a world with less CO2 emissions is a good thing, even if turns out CO2 emissions don't do anything bad. Looking at the measures countries are taking with AGW, it looks like the "better world" will consist of one where power producers are taxed more, and household power bills increase. Um, yay?

It's likely that, if global warming turns out to be a non-issue, the measures taken to combat it will have created a worse world due to the impacts they've had on economics, diplomacy, diverting resources away from other problems, etc. This case is actually an example - focus is so much on CO2 as a greenhouse gas (which, other than that, is largely harmless) that we're ignoring other pollutants that are not only also greenhouse gasses but impact human health as well.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider that curbing the production of pollution comes at a real economic cost. It translates to fewer jobs, fewer offerings, and higher prices.

So, a less-polluted world isn't automatically a better world. If we clean up a lot of harmless pollution, we actually make the world worse for ourselves.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[MarioMax]

If they support that notion they weaken the argument against their prime target, CO2, since it has no ill health effects until you have enough of it around you to displace the oxygen you need.

Actually, CO2 is toxic at concentrations above 1%, and can cause suffocation and blood poisoning when concentrations are around 10%, and not just because it displaces oxygen. That's exactly what happened on Apollo 13: Carbon dioxide concentrations were too high, despite Oxygen levels remaining normal.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[mbkennel]

"at the cost of reducing CO2 warming by 1 degree C over the course of 100 years is about the same that it would cost to completely end world hunger."
That's actually pretty small. The cost of not reducing CO2 will of course include substantial destruction of highly economically valuable coastal infrastructure which supplies jobs and creates wealth, as well as lowering agricultural productiivty and increasing food costs.

The error is computing the "cost of hunger" using today's data.

1 degree C is huge as a long-term global average (including all seasons, latitudes, and the 70% of the planet which is ocean, the common way to calculate it).
The problem with world hunger is lack of money in hungry people---since we aren't giving them money now we won't be doing so in the future.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[Jane Q. Public]

"Oil only seems expensive because governments around the world are destroying the value of their currencies."

You have a point. But when you adjust for new sources, it still reflects unhealthy inflation due to scarcity. Despite government rhetoric to the contrary, in a healthy market, prices don't inflate, they go down. Look at electronics for example, and computers specifically.

History is chock full of examples of deflation in healthy markets. Despite what "mainstream" economists say, inflation is bad news. But oil is a limited resource, so the more used, the scarcer it gets.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[Jane Q. Public]

"The error is computing the "cost of hunger" using today's data."

No, it's not, and it's not small, either.

Note that I stated he already took into account the changed conditions (like projected crop failures and desertification due to warming), and increased population. His calculations were based on the worst-case IPCC predictions of the time.

Of course, the upcoming IPCC report retracts many of those predictions, and discusses far less severe consequences than it had projected before.

And if you don't want to put up with "coastal destruction", don't live there. Even according to the worst projections from officialdom that we've seen, there are 100 years to prepare for changes of that magnitude.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[sjames]

More like the alternatives have a greater up-front expense.

A number of them could work out much cheaper once in place.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[SourceFrog]

Unfortunately that oversimplified cartoon is also a great example of why we don't generally let cartoonists determine public policy. How do you define "better": Is a "better world" one in which poor people have less to eat, and poor people have less access to the benefits of technologies like lighting and refrigeration? Is that "better"?

See, the core of the problem is that the competing energy technologies that you just described as "better" (as if that's simply a given) are actually still literally prohibitively expensive, because technologies like solar just aren't that advanced yet. We're talking more expensive by a factor of 4 or 5 over coal.

So what happens in reality is that we must have either a trade-off between affordability of energy and the negative effects of pollution, or we must sacrifice some of the benefits in exchange for cleaner air.

There is no unilateral "better", it's a trade-off. When we impose cleaner technologies on rich countries, the main effect is the difference, say, between some middle class person perhaps being able to afford fewer luxuries at home, in exchange for cleaner air. For the poor people in rich countries, the difference is being pushed deeper into poverty.

For many people in developing countries, forcing cleaner but far more expensive technologies literally is "make or break" in the sense that it pushes thousands or even millions more people below the breadline. Where on coal these poor people might be able to afford basic lighting and refrigeration, on more expensive technologies the compromise is that they're reduced to having, say, no lighting or refrigeration. Food spoils more, and so they go hungry more, and food becomes more expensive to produce, because energy is required across the distribution chain.

So in real life it's not a case of just 'creating a better world for nothing'. Poorer people may well (and rightfully) object that they would prefer to be able to afford to eat and have the basics in life, for example.

I'm not a climate skeptic, I think we are warming the climate, and there are negative consequences. But the mature discussion is not the over-simplistic view, it's rather a discussion firstly of how and where to draw the line in terms of what the "compromise points" are - i.e. how much of X do we sacrifice for Y - as well as how to do that in a moral manner.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[Jarik C-Bol]

Thats what I was saying before! My position on Global Warming is something along the lines of: Yes, global temperature averages are up. No, I am not convinced that humans are entirely the cause. (anthro centric global warming). However, that being said, I am ENTIRELY FOR any action that reduces the human impact on the environment, WITHOUT the potential to further damage it. (Examples of bad plans that have been floated in the past 5 or so years include iron oxide in the oceans, mylar bags of C02 anchored to the bottom of the oceans, genetically re-engineering both cows and kangaroos(?) to not produce so much methane when they pass gas, and the list goes on.)

We need something like the Hippocratic oath for the environment when it comes to fixing what we may (or may not) have caused. Any by that I mean, anything we do to correct the global climate, MUST not be able to cause a runaway cooling effect if we are incorrect about our involvement in climate trends, or cause any other lasting negative effect to the environment as a whole (the way seeding the oceans with iron oxide may have negative long term effects on sea life).

filtering soot from our emissions is something we can do, that does not have a downside to the environment, and should be at the forefront of our efforts to better our planet.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[Jarik C-Bol]

The problem is, the crazed tree hugging lunatics who think humans are a plague are very loud, and get a lot of attention.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[GameboyRMH]

In fact it would be best to downplay the global warming aspect as much as possible, you'll still get environmentalist support but without the climate denialists' opposition.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[Rockoon]

Sell it this way:

If the plain truth doesn't convince enough people to support your policy, then the problem is your policy.

Stop being dishonest fucks.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[khallow]

But when you adjust for new sources, it still reflects unhealthy inflation due to scarcity.

There's no such thing as "inflation due to scarcity" because inflation is a drop in the value of currency (typically through creation of such currency in large amounts, but possibly also through faster transaction speeds, also called "velocity of money").

Here, the currency maintains its value, but the good rises in price because the supply drops. The good becomes more valuable because there's only enough of it to cover the more valuable uses of the good. This is standard supply and demand. It's a healthy increase in price which means that only those who really want the good at the current price buy it.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[khallow]

A number of them could work out much cheaper once in place.

There are a variety of sayings on wishing that cover this situation. In practice, whacking on an economy with a mallet breaks things.

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[tragedy]

Can you define "non-inflating gold" for us? How is this gold different from the regular inflating type that's risen around 300% in the last ten years? Is "non-inflating" gold a short hand for gold value adjusted for the current position in the gold boom-bust cycle?

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[jbburks]

Most of the Co2 crowd isn't really interested in reducing Co2 globally, or curing the problem. They're more interested in redistributing $trillions to the third-world and China. China has become the largest emitter of Co2 in the world. But most of the activists focus on the per-capita emission of the US and Western Europe. If China gets anywhere close to the West, it won't be AGW that bothers us - we will smother in Co2. China is building a coal-powered electric plant every week. The schemes for a carbon tax don't include China or India. Therefore, all the Western industry will move there and continue to export to the West. Then there's the transfer payments. The 1% won't see a difference if food and transportation (oil) go up 10x. The proposed transfer payments will take care of the very poor. China and India get a pass. The only ones cutting back are Americans and Europeans. No way.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[jbburks]

BS. If they were cheaper, industry would be doing them in a massive fashion.

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[drinkypoo]

BS. If they were cheaper, industry would be doing them in a massive fashion.

You act like there is a free market. The way it works is that the guy with the gold makes the rules, and they're going to ride this horse until it dies because as long as there's money to be made doing the same old shit, why take a chance on doing something new? Since they write the laws, they can prevent anyone else from doing anything new either, or slow down the rate of progress to something they can manage in every sense.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[MarioMax]

So long as the partial pressure of oxygen remains above 16kPa (in Earth's atmosphere at STP the PP of oxygen is about 21kPa) you generally aren't at risk of hypoxia. Coincidentally, the PP of oxygen doesn't drop below 16kPa until about 10,000 ft.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[Daniel Klugh]

"Co2 crowd"? What does Cobalt have to do with anything?

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[Jane Q. Public]

"There's no such thing as "inflation due to scarcity" because inflation is a drop in the value of currency (typically through creation of such currency in large amounts, but possibly also through faster transaction speeds, also called "velocity of money")."

Yes, technically you are correct, and I should have been more clear. I wasn't referring to actual inflation of currency, but inflation or deflation of the price of the commodity.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[The_Noid]

It's not the same. When you drive up the costs of using fossil fuels, commodity agriculture products get more expensive, and people in the third world starve and riot, creating misery.

Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if the opposite where true.
Small-scale farming as happens in the third world is not nearly as dependant on fossil fuels as our first-world large-scale farming. That means a higher oil price will make local farming more competitive, and local farmers can actually compete with the imported western produce. This in turn means more locally produced food, and less dependence on imported stuff, which is good for the local economy.

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[silentcoder]

So your ENTIRE resistance is an ad hominem attack ? "There are scam artists cashing in on AGW - therefore I refuse to listen to the concerned scientists or give credence to the theory".

There are scam artists in everything. There were scam artists in the Y2K days - but that doesn't mean the crisis wasn't real. Some of the money spent averting that crisis went to scam artists, but if we hadn't spent ANY money we would NOT have averted the crisis and it would have been disastrous.
Now you're saying that because some scam artists exists in the energy world, we should not spend any money on solving the identified problem.

That's ... a batshit insane conclusion.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[deimtee]

Just curious, but why is the "add iron oxide to the oceans" a bad plan?
Large areas of ocean are basically lifeless deserts due to a lack of iron.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[riverat1]

Most of the Co2 crowd isn't really interested in reducing Co2 globally, or curing the problem. They're more interested in redistributing $trillions to the third-world and China.

Bullshit! Just bullshit!

CO2 is the issue and it's just about the only issue worth worrying about until we get it under control. Then we can move on to the lesser things.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[riverat1]

Don't forget to include the raw materials in the form of fossil fuels that you have to continuously feed a FF power plant to keep it going.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[silentcoder]

>Looking at the measures countries are taking with AGW, it looks like the "better world" will consist of one where power producers are taxed more, and household power bills increase. Um, yay?

Firstly - that's bullshit, the money saved on healthcare costs alone will be far larger than what is spent on additional energy costs even if you were right.
To get the TRUE price of fossil fuels we would have to demand they run with zero-pollution, only then are we internalizing the costs that pollution is exerting on the consumer. Do you really think coal power plants would still cost so little if they had to filter every pollutant out and store it safely instead of pumping it into the air and making us pay for the results ?
But even though it would cost a fortune more to have clean coal, it would STILL cost LESS than we ALREADY spend on healthcare caused by pollution.

And then your basic assumptions is false anyway:

*More green energy would cost LESS to produce in the medium because fuel is not having to be paid for - in fact, many of them are cheaper even in the short term.
*In Australia there is already measure being proposed to tax people who generate some of their power off-grid from solar. The massive reductions in their power bills from doing so is causing a major price depression on the power plants. So much so that the crony-capitalism of the power generators are trying to demand people can only get HALF the power they generate themselves off their bill !

So who is trying to prevent normal market operations now ?
The REAL truth is that investment in green energy even on the SMALL scale of "my house during daylight hours while using grid at night" is already adding competition that drives down prices for consumers. More green energy on the large scale will only increase this.

No my friend - fossil energy companies are battling AGW measures because that is their excuse to prevent anybody from investing in renewable energy. They don't want people investing in renewable energy because they don't want the competition. Competition drives down prices - which is good for consumers, but bad for incumbents. The entire anti-AGW campaign is nothing but classic monopolist behaviour by an incumbent industry trying all in their power to prevent the rise of competing products that can and will consistently undercut it and will only be able to undercut it FURTHER over time as initial investments are paid off and production is scaled up.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[riverat1]

Of course, the upcoming IPCC report retracts many of those predictions, and discusses far less severe consequences than it had projected before.

Don't count on it. My understanding is that it won't be that much different than the previous one and many of the differences will show worse effects than before.

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[riverat1]

I see a lot of political statements in your post including the implicit assumption that climate scientists positions are political in nature. What if they are not?

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[Jarik C-Bol]

The problem is the plans are rather indiscriminate about how they would go at it, as (obviously) not all the ocean is as you describe and the long term effects of the algae blooms they intend to cause are not particularly well known. We already know that huge algae blooms can have negative effects on other sea life ie red tide. While on the short term, it looks like it may be a viable plan, I personally think that alternatives that do not ADD yet another contaminant to the ecosystem would be far more ideal. (yes, I am aware that iron oxide fertilizes the algae, but if it was not present in that part of the ocean to begin with, we may not want to be fooling with that ecosystem.)

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[jbburks]

If CO2 IS the issue then it's incumbent on EVERY producer, including China to cap and reduce emissions. All of the proposals I've seen put forward, including Kyoto and everything since, gives China and India a free pass to continue building coal plants, more automobiles and essentially outsourcing all the West's carbon-heavy production. I'm not saying the grass roots (you) aren't interested in reducing CO2 - just that all the proposals put forward ignore the physics that CO2 is a global problem, and needs a universal solution.

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[AmiMoJo]

They're more interested in redistributing $trillions to the third-world and China.

Bollocks.

China has become the largest emitter of Co2 in the world. But most of the activists focus on the per-capita emission of the US and Western Europe.

Yes, because we have to lead the way. We had the benefit of massive pollution and CO2 emission right from the industrial revolution up to the 90s, and naturally other countries don't see why they should be denied the same economic benefits and standard of living. We have to change our lifestyles and economies to not only reduce the damage we are doing, but to demonstrate that there is a better way. As an added bonus we then get to sell that tech around the world.

China may be the biggest emitter of CO2, but they are also the biggest investor in green energy. That's because we created demand for it, we created a world in which green issues matter and where any self-respecting country wants to be seen to make an effort to clean up.

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[speedlaw]

I don't get it. I have a diesel car that gets 40 mpg, wasn't quite 20k. In Europe, most cars, big or small, have a 2 liter turbodiesel, getting you that 40 mpg even with euro speed limits. The same boring Chrysler minivan in front of your school with a 3 liter v6 and 18 mpg is in front of a school in the EU right now with a turbodiesel and 35 mpg. Solar cells and windmills are all over Europe, too.

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[Svartalf]

It's not that it's toxic- it becomes an asphyxiant. The partial pressures of CO2 become such that you can't get it out of your blood at those levels.

Toxic is where it quickly attacks your system instead of suffocating you- CO is toxic.

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[Svartalf]

Actually, the only non-renewable "fossil" fuel is Coal- which actually IS a fossil fuel. What do you think happens with all the dead matter on the bottom of the ocean when it's subducted with the plates at the trenches? It's subjected to pyrolysis and converted into...wait for it...

Natural gas and oil.

You see the process done up in miniature with a Thermal Depolymerization setup.

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[Svartalf]

The moment you use the term "denialists", you've converted the discussion from science into religion.

There's a reason why some deny it- it's because of crap like what you just spouted. Right or wrong, it's not hard science like you're claiming it is- you've made it your faith and you'll not listen to ANY reasonable discussion on the subject.

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[deimtee]

Nasty algae blooms seem like they should be fairly easy to avoid. Take it slow with the first iron additions, measure the response and calibrate from there.
A major looming problem that doesn't get enough attention (imho) is the impending collapse of wild ocean fisheries. Realistically there is no way to stop the current over-fishing in international waters, and giving the eco-system a boost seems the best way to mitigate the damage.

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[Svartalf]

The alternatives are actually cheaper

Really?

Windmills cause climate change

That's just ONE example. Electric vehicles require Lithium or NiMH batteries in large quantites which cause worse pollution than the internal combustion engines that you're replacing them with- and hybrids tend to be the worst of both worlds. In the case of EV's you have the pollution of the POWER PLANT charging the things- which at this time is a coal or gas fired plant in most cases, or a problematic just post-WWII era nuclear reactor design, none of which are "clean" or "cheap" in the sense you seem to be using. Wind power doing it? Look at the link and weep. Solar power? Right now, it's the most expensive in terms of net power consumption to get to power production and it's the least efficient- not to mention that the cheapest designs combust in sunlight if you have a failure of the encapsulation of the cells (Look up "Abound Solar" and "burning"... We won't do liquid salt Thorium reactors or Pebble Bed reactors so nuclear power's currently more dangerous and potentially polluting than the other options. (Now, if you'd say we do that for electricity, you'd be starting in the right direction...a bit...)

Saying that they're actually cheaper is being ignorant of everything and listening to the feel-good arguments that're full of appeals to emotion and devoid of the reality of things. This isn't to say that we shouldn't be working on things in that direction- but to claim it's cheaper or actually better right at the moment...you're lying to everyone about it...including yourself.

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[Svartalf]

Heh... All you need to do to understand that you might be on to something is look at who Al Gore sold his media company to last year. It was those "polluters" that were part of an "Inconvienient Truth".

The real inconvienent truth is that he did more polluting in the name of "cleaning things up" by all that speaking tour on the subject than any single one of us here combined. Each and every one of those jet trips he did provided that. Then he sold the media company to Al Jazeera.

I don't buy for a moment any of this stuff because it's empty appeals to emotion. Seriously.

Should we be concerned about what we're doing to the environment? Yes. Should be we be doing a chicken little? No. Are we doing one right now? YES.

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[AmiMoJo]

Ending world hunger would require massive changes in lifestyle and a vast reduction of the population. There just isn't enough available farm land to allow everyone on earth to eat the way people in 1st world countries do. People won't accept it.

We can fix climate change without major changes to our lifestyles and while improving our quality of life. Things will get significantly better for the majority of people in all parts of the world. People are more than willing to accept that.

The problem with fixing climate change is the high initial cost of getting started, but fortunately we are nearly past that now and soon being green will actually be cheaper.

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[squiggleslash]

There's no such thing as "inflation due to scarcity" because inflation is a drop in the value of currency (typically through creation of such currency in large amounts, but possibly also through faster transaction speeds, also called "velocity of money").

No, inflation is a straightforward case of things costing more than they did, which can be due to scarcity and/or increased demand.

The monetary base has increased dramatically over the past five years (as in several fold), but other than a few hysterics you won't find many people claiming that we've seen hyperinflation - prices are slightly higher than a few years ago, not orders of magnitude greater.

The "Inflation is defined by the monetary base not the cost of goods" thing is a meme in certain circles. It's wrong. There may be a tiny number of pseudo-economists who use the term that way, but the vast majority of people, economists and lay-people alike, use it to mean rises in prices. If psuedo-economists were ever able to redefine the term that way, we'd need a new word to describe rises in prices, because that's what we're interested in, not whether the Fed has punched another zero into its computer.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[squiggleslash]

tl;dr version: Global warming is a myth because Al Gore is fat.

Got it.

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[AmiMoJo]

the problem that many of us have against AGW is the current "solutions" are a scam set up by the same groups that gave us credit default swaps and all the other lovely scams in the real estate bubble which We, The People, are still being handed bills for.

That's an ad hominem attack. Just because the same woman is involved in both credit default swaps and carbon derivatives doesn't mean that they are no good. You have to judge them on their merits, not her's.

Take Mr "inconvenient truth" Rev Al Gore

And another ad hominem attack.

China who has said they won't play the carbon game

The US wouldn't play either for the longest time, but eventually we got you guys to clean up your act a bit. Your attitude of "one guy isn't playing, let's give up" is why we are in this mess in the first place. People said the same thing about ROHS, but now China pretty complies with it on a wide variety of products because they want to sell them to Europe. Similarly the Chinese will be forced to clean up if they want to pick up outsourced manufacturing from countries that do trade CO2.

tell the NIMBYs to fuck off and start building new nuclear reactors, tell the DoD to fuck off and allow reprocessing to deal with the waste, and invest in a people's car that runs on diesel, gets at least 40MPG and costs less than 20K. Give tax breaks and a huge "cash for clunkers" to the poor to get rid of all the old used cars on the road...tada! Wow I just solved a good portion of the problems right there, aren't I a genius? Why isn't this being done? Answer is obvious, its because the scammers can't leech more money with a sensible system that actually makes things better which is why the ONLY "solution" you'll hear from the AGW is carbon credits.

A lot of environmentalists would love to see that happen, although some might replace nuclear plants and diesel with other greener forms of energy. We want progress to be made as much as anyone, but oil companies have strong opposition to anything that might reduce use of their product. Even car manufacturers don't want to move to hybrids and EVs too quickly because they will have to invest money developing those technologies or license expensive patents to keep up.

The other problem is that no everyone wants the same thing. You want nuclear, others want wind farms, the argument rages on with each side blaming the other and nothing gets built. It doesn't help that the US in particular equates energy consumption with quality of life, so any attempt to be more energy efficient or promote smaller vehicles is seen as an attack on freedom and the anti-American.

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[interkin3tic]

Even if you dismiss economist Bjorn Lomborg as an "anti-warmist", nobody has really refuted his calculations: that the cost of reducing CO2 warming by 1 degree C over the course of 100 years is about the same that it would cost to completely end world hunger... and that's taking changed conditions and population into account. Which is more important?

ARE we going to end world hunger if we don't spend the money preventing climate change? Because if it's just going to be frittered away on slightly cheaper electricity, shipping parts overseas to be assembled and then shipped back to be sold a few days faster, not using public transit, and slightly more hamburgers, then I'd say preventing climate change is more important.

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[interkin3tic]

So you acknowledge it's a problem, but don't like any of the solutions, and will be ripped off no matter which way you go?

Sounds like... virtually every other real world problem. When my car breaks down, I grit my teeth and prepare to be screwed over. I don't protest and let the consequences of leaving my car broken happen (like losing my job.)

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[Snodgrass]

I've never understood why we got stuck on this 'climate change' issue in the first place.

Smog/soot/crappy air is something everybody can see. Nobody is happy about dirty air, but the things that cause it are largely the same things that are blamed for causing the climate to change.

Frame the issue around the pollution and people will get behind it, because they can see it. It has an obvious and personal effect on them. Frame it around something that happens over decades, and that _may_ affect their grandchildren and you end up with a bunch of deniers and heel-diggers.

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[swillden]

That only counts to the extent that the fossil fuels and the other resources used to extract and deliver them, and to operate the plant, have alternative uses. On balance the value of fossil fuels as energy sources is much, much higher than their value as raw materials for other products, and the resources used to extract, deliver and convert them to usable energy are relatively small.

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[swillden]

For example? (Proven, ready-to-deploy examples only, please... paper designs are always cheaper and more reliable.)

Also, I never said that the alternatives weren't cheaper... I just explained why we wouldn't "just do that". If the alternatives actually make sense economically, meaning it requires less total resources to produce and deliver the same energy to the places that need it at the times they need it, then we should "just do that". And barring artificial barriers imposed by regulatory agencies, we will "just do that", if it's really viable. Energy is a commodity and that's exactly what markets are best at.

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[khallow]

No, inflation is a straightforward case of things costing more than they did, which can be due to scarcity and/or increased demand.

No, that's an increase in price. As I noted, inflation is a devaluing of the currency, not a good which became more valuable due to scarcity.

The "Inflation is defined by the monetary base not the cost of goods" thing is a meme in certain circles. It's wrong. There may be a tiny number of pseudo-economists who use the term that way, but the vast majority of people, economists and lay-people alike, use it to mean rises in prices. If psuedo-economists were ever able to redefine the term that way, we'd need a new word to describe rises in prices, because that's what we're interested in, not whether the Fed has punched another zero into its computer.

Of course not. In real economics, one also has to include velocity of money in discussions of inflation. If monetary base increases a bunch, but inflation does not, then look at where the money is being trapped. For example, a bunch of that created money is probably being put into reducing leverage at banks and investment funds.

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[The Iso]

The idea is that the value of gold is very stable, with its price only climbing because of the ever-falling value of fiat currency, so pricing goods in a quantity of gold will give an idea of the real value. You often hear such things from people who want to return to the gold standard. For example, "the stock market might have gone up 200% in nominal terms, but if you price it in gold, it's still just one-eighth of an ounce."

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[tragedy]

Generally, when we talk about renewable fuels, we're talking about fuels that are renewed at a rate at least as high as they are used. As for fossil fuels, it generally means fuel from ancient dead things preserved in the ground. So oil and natural gas count as well. "dead matter on the bottom of the ocean" sounds like the precursor to fossil fuels to me. There also isn't enough dead stuff on the bottom of the ocean actually ending up as oil to keep up with the rate we're using it. Maybe if we were harvesting the algae directly, but I doubt even a tenth of a percent of it actually ends up as recoverable oil. So, from where I'm standing, oil, coal and natural gas are all non-renewable fossil fuels.

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[Jarik C-Bol]

the thing is, algae blooms are the whole point of iron oxide in the oceans. the algae bloom, due to the iron being a fertilizer to it. Being plants, they grow, and absorb carbon. The algae eventually reach a critical stage, and die off, and sink to the bottom, sequestering carbon on the sea floor. At least, that is the plan. Only a little testing has been done with this, but you would run the (in my mind, considerable) risk of accidentally starting a red tide bloom, and causing a lot of havoc.

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[Jane Q. Public]

I would tend to agree with you about the lithium batteries but I am skeptical about NiMH.

Certainly, many environmental "solutions" carry problems of their own. I don't dispute that.

But NiMH batteries are not the same as NiCd; they don't generally contain toxic substances as the lithium ion and cadmium-based batteries do, and they are largely recyclable.

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[hairyfeet]

Wow way for so many to miss the point? is there a meta WHOOSH that can cover a dozen people? the point is this is a classic case of being told to do SOMETHING even if that SOMETHING doesn't actually solve a damned thing. the reason why we are being told we MUST do this something is that leeches like Goldman Sachs and Al Gore have already set up the insider trades to make themselves more billions by reverse robin hooding the poor, yet the AGWers don't seem to give a shit because "We'll be doing SOMETHING herpa de derpa de derp!"

Like I said I'm all for SOLUTIONS THAT WORK, like getting rid of coal fired plants, huge tariffs on polluting nations, and if I come off a little coarse its because i'm fucking sick of being told "Its okay if the SOMETHING doesn't make a lick of sense or solve shit, we have to do SOMETHING because rev Al Gore is smart dammit! Herpa derpa derp" which is fucking STUPID. If I said "I can solve global warming, just pay me $100k for each American so they can have this carbon sucking rock to stick under their pillow" would you REALLY give me $100K for every American? Because that is EXACTLY what the AGWers are suggesting, buying billion dollar snake oil that even the slightest bit of common sense would see that it won't do shit!

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[Jane Q. Public]

"Don't count on it. My understanding is that it won't be that much different than the previous one and many of the differences will show worse effects than before."

Probably not, if they base it on the scientific papers that have already been chosen for the report. Examples:

Recent paper from Ken Briffa and T. Melvin of University of East Anglia shows a Medieval Warm Period again... and no hockey stick. (Remember that UAE and CRU were the same folks Michael Mann was working with.)

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/28/manns-hockey-stick-disappears-and-crus-briffa-helps-make-the-mwp-live-again-by-pointing-out-bias-in-ther-data/

(Yes, people can complain if they like that it's the WUWT site... but it's BRIFFA's paper!)

Another AR5 reviewer (Forrest M. Mims, a man I respect), speaks out about what he saw in the AR5 draft paper:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/14/another-ipcc-ar5-reviewer-speaks-out-no-trend-in-global-water-vapor/

(Also the WUWT site... but he's an actual IPCC reviewer. I would ask people to read his words, and not argue about irrelevancies like where they were published.)

And so on. There are also statements in the draft AR5 report that hurricanes and other such storms (annual cyclonic activity) is NOT expected to go up significantly as a result of global warming. That is a significant departure from IPCC's earlier claims.

This isn't definitive, of course, but this and other information strongly hint that the AR5 report -- if it reports the science accurately, which remains to be seen -- will be greatly toned down from what we have seen from them before.

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[LordLucless]

Firstly - that's bullshit, the money saved on healthcare costs alone will be far larger than what is spent on additional energy costs even if you were right.

What exactly are the health care costs of carbon dioxide?

To get the TRUE price of fossil fuels we would have to demand they run with zero-pollution, only then are we internalizing the costs that pollution is exerting on the consumer. Do you really think coal power plants would still cost so little if they had to filter every pollutant out and store it safely instead of pumping it into the air and making us pay for the results ?

The GP wasn't talking about pollution - he was talking specifically about global warming. There are plenty of unhealthy pollutants that do not contribute to global warming, and plenty of contributors that do not have health consequences (like CO2). This, in fact, is one of the points I was making. If you spend all your efforts ensuring CO2 is minimized, you have a greater chance at letting the unhealthy non-warming agents slip through due to monomania.

In Australia there is already measure being proposed to tax people who generate some of their power off-grid from solar.

I live in Australia, and I have solar panels. All other things being equal, it's still not a very good investment. The thing that tips it over is government subsidy. When I got my panels, the government pretty much paid for the first 1.5kw, and I paid around $2500 for the remaining half a kilowatt I got. The government also guaranteed that they'd pay 60c per kilowatt hour, roughly three times the market value, for 7 years. They've since dropped it to 20c because they realised they were being insanely over-generous. My solar panels paid for themselves in under a year. If I'd had to pay full price for the panels, and I was being given market rates for the generated power they'd take around 20 years to pay for themselves.

So, I'd really like to see that bill that you say is going to tax solar generators, as it'll affect me. I'm not aware of it though - the only measures I've heard were about the government trying to renege on it's 60c rate guarantee because the people not on solar were pissed off at subsidising people who are on solar.

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[silentcoder]

>What exactly are the health care costs of carbon dioxide?

Hard to calculate since it's an externality, and hard to prove. The kid in Cape Town who gets asthma could be getting it due to pollution in China !
But you can probably take at least the vast majority of respiratory illnesses.

>and plenty of contributors that do not have health consequences (like CO2).
This statement is false. CO2 is toxic at fairly low levels actually.

>So, I'd really like to see that bill that you say is going to tax solar generators, as it'll affect me. I'm not aware of it though - the only measures I've heard were about the government trying to renege on it's 60c rate guarantee because the people not on solar were pissed off at subsidising people who are on solar.

I read about it on theregister.co.uk - look it up yourself.
Either way - the subsidies you're claiming is "overgenerous" is far less than the subsidies on fossil fuels already.
I'd be quite happy to say "let the market sort it out" but then it must be JUST the market, no subsidies for ANY energy at all AND externalized costs (which includes AGW) internalized by making all air-pollution outright illegal.

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[riverat1]

The Briffa/Melvin/Grudd paper is specific to the Torneträsk region of northern Sweden. It's a mistake to try an extrapolate it to global temperatures. It's just another datum in the accumulating pile of data and does nothing to refute Mann's work.

Watts is so eager to find something to disprove AGW that he often reads more into something that appears to support his position than it warrants.

The fact that Forrest Mims is an AR5 reviewer doesn't impress me. After all Lord Monckton was able to sign on as a reviewer. If we had wanted to you and I could have probably signed on too.

Mims is saying that the IPCC-AR5 should cite the recent NVAP-M work and quoted a statement from them thusly:

“Therefore, at this time, we can neither prove nor disprove a robust trend in the global water vapor data.”

But he didn't include the whole paragraph:

"The results of Figures 1 and 4 have not been subjected to detailed global or regional trend analyses, which will be a topic for a forthcoming paper. Such analyses must account for the changes in satellite sampling discussed in the auxiliary material. Therefore, at this time, we can neither prove nor disprove a robust trend in the global water vapor data."

In other words they're saying they haven't completed their work and done enough analysis yet to say anything about global water vapor trends. It would be premature to cite it in the AR5 since at this point it does nothing to confirm or refute other water vapor datasets. Here is the NVAP Statement on Using Existing NVAP Dataset (1988-2001) for Trends.

To quote the IPCC AR4 report:

Based on a range of models, it is likely that future tropical cyclones (typhoons and hurricanes) will become more intense, with larger peak wind speeds and more heavy precipitation associated with ongoing increases of tropical sea surface temperatures. There is less confidence in projections of a global decrease in numbers of tropical cyclones. The apparent increase in the proportion of very intense storms since 1970 in some regions is much larger than simulated by current models for that period.

We'll see what the AR5 says about it but recent Atlantic hurricane seasons have mostly been more active than average.

Thanks, I had fun tracking down the stuff on NVAP and learned something. But I got side tracked several times and spent way too much time on it.

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[LordLucless]

Hard to calculate since it's an externality, and hard to prove. The kid in Cape Town who gets asthma could be getting it due to pollution in China ! But you can probably take at least the vast majority of respiratory illnesses.

Except, again, CO2 doesn't cause respiratory illness.

This statement is false. CO2 is toxic at fairly low levels actually.

Any source to back this up? The conventional wisdom appears to say otherwise.

I read about it on theregister.co.uk - look it up yourself.

Yeah, right, I'm supposed to exert effort to dig up articles defending your position? If you can't be bothered to provide details, I can't be bothered arguing against it.

Either way - the subsidies you're claiming is "overgenerous" is far less than the subsidies on fossil fuels already. I'd be quite happy to say "let the market sort it out" but then it must be JUST the market, no subsidies for ANY energy at all

I'd be happy with this too, as long as the money that used to go to subsidizing energy companies was instead refunded to tax-payers as a tax cut - otherwise you'd just be bumping up the cost of energy for households, and letting the politicians add a bucket of money to their slush fund.

AND externalized costs (which includes AGW) internalized by making all air-pollution outright illegal.

You consider CO2 to be a pollutant, and you want to make all pollution "outright illegal". You do realise this would outlaw breathing, right?

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[randyleepublic]

The cost of reducing CO2 emissions is the cost of building enough breeder reactors to replace fossil fuels. It's not cheap, but here's the kicker, ONCE THEY ARE BUILT, the cost of energy drops to nearly nothing. That's when the party starts.

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[silentcoder]

>Except, again, CO2 doesn't cause respiratory illness.

It does how-ever trigger attacks in those who have congenital respiratory illnesses or caught it from another cause - attacks cost money to heal.

>Any source to back this up? The conventional wisdom appears to say otherwise

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercapnia
http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/idlh/124389.html

There is some growing evidence that CO2 has long term effects and exposure can cause illnesses over time. People who suffered smoke inhalation often have lifelong breathing problems for example.
Furthermore - everything that produces CO2 also produces CO - cars in fact produce MOSTLY CO - which is much more toxic (CO1 is unstable and converts into CO2 in the atmosphere over time - and thus has the same AGW problem)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_monoxide_poisoning

Now let's really bake your noodle - just to clarify the impact. There is no DOUBT that organisms (and much simpler and stupider ones than us) can affect the atmosphere through their activities. Until plants evolved the earth had only about 5% oxygen in the atmosphere, plants pushed it to it's current level of about 21% - and killed every other living creature on the planet, an entire new type of animal had to evolve to live in this new atmosphere - and then those animals (which are our ancestors) were dependent on it.
If we reduce the oxygen levels in the atmosphere by just 1% the results would already be catastrophic for ourselves.

How likely is this ? Well let's do the math. CO2 is one carbon atom and 2 oxygen atoms. That scales up directly - so if we burn one ton of coal, we reduce the atmospheric oxygen by 2 tonnes and increase the atmospheric CO2 by 3 tonnes.

That's an exponential equation - if it was a software program it would be running at O(n^3) - which is bloody insane !
>I'd be happy with this too, as long as the money that used to go to subsidizing energy companies was instead refunded to tax-payers as a tax cut - otherwise you'd just be bumping up the cost of energy for households, and letting the politicians add a bucket of money to their slush fund.

What they do with the money is not really relevant to my prediction that in a truly free energy market - renewables would win, in our un-free market they need help - but the advantage may be that they will win much sooner if they get that help. That's not a bad thing (it may have bad side effects, I don't dispute that but again - they are not relevant to my point).
So if you want the subsidies refunded - sure. Of course being more of a leftist, I would argue they could better spend that money aleviating hunger, topping up welfare and pension plans and such - which IS refunding it to the citizens, but instead of just giving it back - spending it on those who need it most (the entire POINT of a progressive tax system).

>You consider CO2 to be a pollutant, and you want to make all pollution "outright illegal". You do realise this would outlaw breathing, right?

Yes, because I'm that fucking stupid. Such a law would apply only to non-organic processes. Animals are evolved to emit a certain amount of CO2 - which is always less than the amount of oxygen they breathed in, in the first place (because we don't burn ALL the oxygen we breath) - nature has had millions of years to adapt to breathing animals and the systems of weather can cope quite well with it. I don't give much creedence to the extremists who think overpopulation means we breath too much now - there are billions more incects than humans on the planet who breathe out far more CO2 every day than all the mammals combined. There is some evidence to support that our farming has increased OTHER biological gasses like methane but even that would be much more manageable without industrial pollution.
A human being in his entire lifetime breathes out less CO2 than coal power-plant emits in a day.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[LordLucless]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercapnia [wikipedia.org]

Look at the causes. Hypercapnia is not caused by atmospheric CO2. Even if the AGW guys are right, you're still off by orders of magnitude before that even became a problem.

http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/idlh/124389.html [cdc.gov]

http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/idlh/10028156.html. Oh no! Better get rid of all that atmospheric ozone as well! CO2 composes ~400ppm of the atmosphere. That fact sheet lists toxicity at 40000ppm. Scare-mongering much?

People who suffered smoke inhalation often have lifelong breathing problems for example.

Yeah - but not because they've ingested CO2. It's usually due to lung damage from the particulates they inhaled.

Furthermore - everything that produces CO2 also produces CO - cars in fact produce MOSTLY CO - which is much more toxic

Yeah - and when's the last time you heard someone complain about carbon monoxide emissions? Not lately I'll, because everyone's fixated on CO2.

If we reduce the oxygen levels in the atmosphere by just 1% the results would already be catastrophic for ourselves...How likely is this ? Well let's do the math. CO2 is one carbon atom and 2 oxygen atoms. That scales up directly - so if we burn one ton of coal, we reduce the atmospheric oxygen by 2 tonnes and increase the atmospheric CO2 by 3 tonnes. That's an exponential equation - if it was a software program it would be running at O(n^3) - which is bloody insane !

There's around 1.2 quadrillion metric tonnes of oxygen in the atmosphere. At the current rate, that'd take around a few thousand years to make a 1% difference in atmospheric oxygen. Not that that's relevant, because we'll run out of crap to burn long before that point. And it's not an exponential rate, it's geometric. It has a constant ratio of 1:2.

Yes, because I'm that fucking stupid.

Well, what you said was that fucking stupid, and there are plenty of people who have said that or something similar. Even with your addendum, it's still stupid. Outlaw any emission of fossil-fuel derived CO2? Civilization would shut down. Maybe in a couple of decades if we ramped up nuke production. Maybe in a century when we've had time to increase the efficiency of our renewable technologies and developed decent storage technology. But in the near future? If it were enforced worldwide, that would cause more damage than AGW is predicted to.

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[silentcoder]

>Yeah - and when's the last time you heard someone complain about carbon monoxide emissions? Not lately I'll, because everyone's fixated on CO2.

I addressed that in my original post. Firstly because CO emissions come from the SAME sources as CO2 emissions so solving one will solve the other anyway - and secondly because when it comes specifically to the climate issue they are the same thing because CO is unstable and absorbs oxygen in the atmosphere to BECOME CO2 - this takes on average less than a day so the CO2 levels added to atmosphere are in fact the sum of CO and CO2 emissions.

But that day is more than enough to breathed in by people and make some people sick.

Furthermore addressing the major sources of industrial CO2 would ALSO address the major sources of most other pollutants - including those with more serious and immediate consequences such as the article's soot (which is in fact highly toxic and is harmful even in trace amounts) , methane and even acid rain producing compounds like SO2.

>And it's not an exponential rate, it's geometric. It has a constant ratio of 1:2.
You can't count - it's 1:3 - one tonne of carbon uses 2 tonnes of oxygen and produces 3 tonnes of CO2

>Well, what you said was that fucking stupid, and there are plenty of people who have said that or something similar. Even with your addendum, it's still stupid. Outlaw any emission of fossil-fuel derived CO2? Civilization would shut down. Maybe in a couple of decades if we ramped up nuke production. Maybe in a century when we've had time to increase the efficiency of our renewable technologies and developed decent storage technology. But in the near future? If it were enforced worldwide, that would cause more damage than AGW is predicted to.

I never suggested that we outlaw all industrial processes that produce CO2 - I suggested merely outlawing the emissions. That is to say - if you can build an airfilter that captures all the gasses you produce in your coal plant and store them safely instead of pumping them into the air - then you will be completely within the law. If this is prohibitively expensive then coal itself IS prohibitively expensive - it's just that we're making innocent third parties pay the cost instead of the people who actually DO the burning.

My argument is that we cannot avoid the cost of pollution - we can either pay it at the source (through the cost of prevention) or have billions of innocent people (and animals and planst) pay the bill instead - but the bill is there anyway and it's NOT a free market when you get to offshoot your largest expense on third parties who have no involvement in your contract without their consent or agreement.
It would be quite fair to make every coal plant and car-maker pay every person on earth a fee for polluting their air, but this seems rather impractical - much more so than "filter out until you produce clean are or shut down".

This is not a radical idea, I'm just surprized we haven't properly enforced it on air pollution -we already enforce this idea as the basis of law on industries that produce liquid pollution or polluted water ("if you put any water back into a river or into the ground - you have to COMPLETELY purify it first, if you can't purify it you have to store it safely you can NOT add it to the water source).

We do this there because we saw the outcome of not doing it repeatedly going right back to the undrinkable Thames created by the industrial revolution. We do it because most of Europe STILL cannot drink their tap-water because of not doing it for too long.

How about we do it with air-pollution BEFORE most of the earth can't breath our air ? You may argue that this would take a very long time - after all, we have much more atmosphere than water right ? But that was EXACTLY what we used to think about fresh water, it's what many still thinks about the oceans and this is why there is an island of garbage the size of Texas in the middle of the Pacific ocean. Meantime maritime food stocks are dwin

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[Jane Q. Public]

"The Briffa/Melvin/Grudd paper is specific to the TornetrÃsk region of northern Sweden."

You make a good point. I was reading the part of the paper about using Regional Curve Standardization and mistakenly thought they were adjusting to match larger data sets. But it says right there that they are not.

"The fact that Forrest Mims is an AR5 reviewer doesn't impress me. After all Lord Monckton was able to sign on as a reviewer. If we had wanted to you and I could have probably signed on too."

If it doesn't impress you, then it should not impress you that Michael Mann was a reviewer, either. At least Mims is not trying to claim, as Mann has, that he won a Nobel prize for his reviewing.

But really, you made an old point for me: just about anybody can be a reviewer. And often has been. Thank you for acknowledging that. It puts the old "2500 scientists" claim (which is still often repeated) in better -- more realistic -- perspective.

"In other words they're saying they haven't completed their work and done enough analysis yet to say anything about global water vapor trends. It would be premature to cite it in the AR5 since at this point it does nothing to confirm or refute other water vapor datasets. Here is the NVAP Statement on Using Existing NVAP Dataset (1988-2001) for Trends."

I read the statement, and also the IPCC's publication of Mims' review. I was unaware that the old data analysis was considered inadequate, which does change the context a little. Nevertheless, the new paper (which, strangely, cannot be accessed right now on the Geophysical Union's website) is by the same authors as that 2-year-old statement, and in fact constitutes the very re-analysis that the statement mentions was upcoming.

Given that there was plenty of warning that this re-analysis was coming, and that this is a 10+ year body of work, and consists of just exactly the kind of data that the IPCC is supposed to be seeking, I have to agree with Mims that the IPCC has been remiss in not waiting for it, and not even mentioning it. Especially considering the study's likely impact.

"We'll see what the AR5 says about it but recent Atlantic hurricane seasons have mostly been more active than average."

As I mentioned, we already know what they will say about it, if the current draft report is any reflection of the final report. It is possible that it is not, but I think that is unlikely. And Atlantic hurricane activity over the past year or so has been accompanied by lower activity elsewhere, so it is not representative of a global phenomenon. The fact that storms happened to hit a few populated regions this year does not make them "worse", in a climate context, than storms that did not. Also, as AGW enthusiasts are fond of saying: the occurrences of one or a few years is not "climate".

"Thanks, I had fun tracking down the stuff on NVAP and learned something."

Thanks in return for your input. I looked into it more thoroughly and learned a few things as well. I'd sure like to see the original paper, though. I'll try to remember to check the AGU website for it again later.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[Jane Q. Public]

Just a couple of additional details:

"Based on a range of models, it is likely that future tropical cyclones (typhoons and hurricanes) will become more intense..."

According to a number of studies, total global cyclonic energy over the last few years has been among the lowest in 30 years.

And I would like to quote an excerpt from Mims' review (from the IPCC transcript), which I think is relevant and significant:

"ON THE SIGNIFICANCE OF INCLUDING MENTION OF THE NVAP-M PAPER AND ITS FIG. 4C IN AR5: Positive feedback of water vapor (enhanced evaporation due to warming induced by GHGs) is key to GCMs. This key fact is why the new NVAP-M paper should be discussed and cited in AR5. While the original NVAP work was criticized, this should be considered in light of published problems with all the major global water studies (see, for example, Trenberth, K. E.; Fusillo, J; Smith, L. Trends and variability in column-integrated water vapor. Climate Dynamics 2005, 24 (7-8), 741â"758). The 2012 NVAP-M study is a significant improvement and expansion over the original study. It is also the most comprehensive, multi- sourced atmospheric water vapor study to date, for NVAP-M uses data from quality-controlled upper air radiosonde soundings; SSM/I, HIRS, AIRS satellite soundings; and GPS stations. Note that HIRS retrieves the vertical profile of water vapor over land. A timeline of instruments used for the 2012 NVAP-M paper is at ftp://ftp.agu.org/apend/gl/2012GL052094. In conclusion, the initial 2012 NVAP-M paper well deserves discussion and citation in AR5. The citation is: Thomas H. Vonder Haar, Janice L. Bytheway and John M. Forsythe. Weather and climate analyses using improved global water vapor observations. GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 39, L15802, 6 PP., 2012. doi:10.1029/2012GL052094. Disclaimer: I do not know and have never met any of the NVAP team. I received one brief e-mail from a member of the team in response to a question about when the 2012 paper would be published."

This paper was published in early 2012, while some of the other papers cited in AR5 have not even been published yet. So any claim that they have not had time to evaluate it is not very credible.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[riverat1]

I don't know that Michael Mann is a reviewer for the AR5. I don't think they're going to list all of the reviewers until they publish the final report. He may well have decided to sit this one out due to the heat that gets attached to his name. There are others in the field to take up the slack. However, Mann does have the credentials to speak on the subject and over the years no one has yet done more than nitpick some minor errors in his work. He still has tremendous respect from others in the field.

I don't know where you got thee "2500 scientists" thing but if 2500 scientists with credentials in a field get together to say something I'm going to pay attention.

The cut off date for submissions to the AR5 was July 31, 2012. The fact that the NVAP report came out just barely before that and that in effect they're saying they haven't done enough analysis yet to present any findings means that it isn't very useful for this report. Should they hold up the AR5 just for this, especially when it's not clear when the reanalysis results will be ready?

The IPCC reports are always a little behind. For example by the time the AR4 came out its projections of sea level rise were already considered to be way behind current understanding. It's just the nature of the process.

The fact that some years tropical cyclones do not hit populated areas with any ferocity doesn't necessarily make them better than other years either. If and when they hit land is a matter of natural variability. I made my statement based on the number of named storms, nothing else.

Dr. Kerry Emanuel whose field of study is tropical cyclones is quoted in Wikipedia about them:

"Records of hurricane activity worldwide show an upswing of both the maximum wind speed in and the duration of hurricanes. The energy released by the average hurricane (again considering all hurricanes worldwide) seems to have increased by around 70% in the past 30 years or so, corresponding to about a 15% increase in the maximum wind speed and a 60% increase in storm lifetime.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[riverat1]

Mims is awful eager to get the NVAP study in the IPCC AR5 but it's not clear to me that it has anything to offer yet. If they had had anything substantial to say before the cutoff date I'm sure it would have been included. Analysis and evaluation don't necessarily fit anyone's timetable.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[Magius_AR]

China may be the biggest emitter of CO2, but they are also the biggest investor in green energy.

How ironic then that their per-capita-emissions have been spiking to obscene levels for the past decade. The US, on the other hand, has seen substantial cuts.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[Magius_AR]

You act like there is a free market. The way it works is that the guy with the gold makes the rules, and they're going to ride this horse until it dies because as long as there's money to be made doing the same old shit, why take a chance on doing something new? Since they write the laws, they can prevent anyone else from doing anything new either, or slow down the rate of progress to something they can manage in every sense.

Fraking proves you wrong. You think 'Big Coal"/"Big Oil" wanted a cheaper energy competitor to emerge? Yet natural gas has _decimated_ coal's share of the the US energy market in but a few years. And the free market is exactly the cause: new tech caused natural gas supply to skyrocket, which lowered costs of said gas, which then gained a substantial cost edge, which caused rapid adoption. You'll blind if you don't think this kind of thing happens every day. Big companies may attempt to slow down the rate of progress, but they _never_ stop it. You think Microsoft is still running the show the way they were 10 years ago? Innovation happens, and giants fall.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[Magius_AR]

Since when are respiratory illnesses rampant or even a major expense? Last I looked, they're not even on the top 10. Link heart disease to CO2 and maybe you'd have a case.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[Magius_AR]

What they do with the money is not really relevant to my prediction that in a truly free energy market - renewables would win, in our un-free market they need help - but the advantage may be that they will win much sooner if they get that help.

Now I know you're smoking something -- you think renewables can compete on their own merit, without subsidies? Straight up in the free market? With plentiful coal? (and now, natural gas)? Please show me the numbers.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[silentcoder]

http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/109/21/2655.full
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120605121700.htm

Have I got a case yet ?

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[silentcoder]

>Now I know you're smoking something -- you think renewables can compete on their own merit, without subsidies? Straight up in the free market? With plentiful coal? (and now, natural gas)? Please show me the numbers.

I stated two caveats to that, not mentioning them is what we call a strawman attack:
1) Coal and fossil fuels must internalize the cost of pollution - that is eradicate it entirely, imagine the cost of those air filters to burn them without any pollution
2) That this will happen over the medium to long term as most renewables are more expensive ot build initially - but has ZERO running fuel cost. Coal may be plentiful and cheap but last I checked nothing still cost less than "something plentiful"

Furthermore - as more and more investors are pulling out of natural gas it's become clear that it's a bubble about to burst - most geologists now sincerely doubt that any of the USA's current natural gas fracked wells will last for another 5 years even.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[Magius_AR]

http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/109/21/2655.full http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120605121700.htm Have I got a case yet ?

A better one, ya. I appreciate the links.
Though I'd still be curious to know if CO2 is the relevant cause. These links discuss airborne pollutants, like particulates. And that's a case less people are prone to question.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[Magius_AR]

I stated two caveats to that, not mentioning them is what we call a strawman attack:

Well this wasn't mentioned in the post I responded to.

1) Coal and fossil fuels must internalize the cost of pollution - that is eradicate it entirely, imagine the cost of those air filters to burn them without any pollution

Those externalities are near impossible to equate and by definition would not be realized in a "free market". Only in a regulated market would that be a relevant cost factor.

That this will happen over the medium to long term as most renewables are more expensive ot build initially - but has ZERO running fuel cost.

Except that running fuel cost isn't the only cost. The total cost is the sum total of build cost, maintenance cost, and running cost. Back in the day (I'm not sure where they are now), photovoltaics in residential use had an investment turnaround time of 30+ years, and that was in "good solar" areas near the equator. And they only had a shelf life of about 15-20 years before repairs or replacements had to occur. They simply weren't cost feasible. Look at current home modification -- a person isn't going to invest in an energy improvement on a home unless they can get a net turnaround in 5 years, 10 years _tops_. Luckily, we've come a long way since then and solar is finally nearing the point of competition. But adopting a tech before its time is foolhardy.

Furthermore - as more and more investors are pulling out of natural gas it's become clear that it's a bubble about to burst - most geologists now sincerely doubt that any of the USA's current natural gas fracked wells will last for another 5 years even.

The markets I've been watching say the opposite. LNG is going absolutely nuts. The LNG export market will be the "next big thing" -- foreign countries are chomping at the bit to get ahold of US natural gas. Regarding the supplies, that's a harder case to make because there's way too many question marks. We've barely scratched the surface on natural gas exploration and many companies have flat out abandoned attempts to find new resources because it's so damn plentiful already. 5 years is just silly.15-20 years would be a reasonable naysayer estimate. But personally, I think we have way more available than we even know is there (when factoring in offshore supply).

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[silentcoder]

Does it matter - the same arguments apply to both by any practical measure. Solve pollution - that's the goal, climate-change is a side-issue but the point stands that every reduction in pollution has massive savings for millions of people as a result because it internalizes an externality.

Re:Reminds me of a cartoon

[Magius_AR]

Does it matter - the same arguments apply to both by any practical measure. Solve pollution

But particulates are a far easier problem to solve than stemming all CO2 emission. Hell, a good HEPA filter can handle particulates.

Global Dimming

[paysonwelch]

Everyone hears about global warming, but did you know there is also something called global dimming? Although there are many probable causes, soot falls into this category as well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming

Re:Global Dimming

[paysonwelch]

Everyone says everyone fudges the results, how can you prove it?

Re:Global Dimming

[auLucifer]

I think the AC was being sarcastic by saying the same that anti-warming people have said.

Re:Global Dimming

[fredrated]

Only to a complete, unmitigated moron.

Re:Global Dimming

[tranquillity]

Yes, look at Beijing these days. Not much sun rays coming down. No blue sky either.

Re:Global Dimming

[fbumg]

Because they were produced by Livestrong.

Re:Global Dimming

[xenobyte]

Global Warming cause it to be warmer - I'm all for that! (I absolutely hate winter and cold weather!)
Global Dimming cause it to be colder... STOP IT IMMEDIATELY!!! (we need it to be warmer, not colder!)

Actually I believe in Dimming more than Warming as it again this year (3rd time in the last 4 years) is much colder than normal all over Europe...

How does it affect models?

[Anonymous Coward]

I find it surprising that this study is so late to the global warming game. I wonder how this affects the existing climate models. For, if as the study says, the exisitng affects of soot have been understated by a factor of 100%, does that not mean that the existing warming models are overstating the effect of CO2?

Re:How does it affect models?

[ArsonSmith]

Can i get a refund on my carbon credits then?

Re:How does it affect models?

[phantomfive]

I find it surprising that this study is so late to the global warming game.

It's actually really depressing how much we don't know about the climate system (or exciting, if you're the guy embarking into a new world to discover).

Re:How does it affect models?

[Anonymous Coward]

If true, it implies that the two dozen or so models, which have all already consistently overpredicted the amount of temperature rise due to CO2, are even more wrong and that the government's economically destructive CO2 mitigation attempts, costing billions of dollars are even more stupid.

Re:How does it affect models?

[evendiagram]

There are still people actively working on studying how soot, dust, and debris affect CC but from the sounds of it, the models would be rough if particulate data was included at all.

"The distance particulates travel depends on their size, how long they can stay in the atmosphere – gravity comes into play here. For example, soot is a relatively small particulate; it can travel quite far. A fire in Canada can cause soot to travel to Greenland's ice sheet. Scientists suspect that changes to the amount and frequency of forest fires might be affecting how much soot is traveling to glaciers. [...] Similarly, with climate change, dryness is becoming more prevalent and as a result, there's more dust. One study documented increased dust transported to glaciers in the Swiss Alps, which in turn was increasing glacier melt rates." http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/glacier-debris.html

Re:How does it affect models?

[SourceFrog]

The article indirectly touches on that:

By drawing on observations to better understand the behavior of climate models, Bond and her colleagues concluded that atmospheric soot particles 100 nanometers or so in diameter are absorbing enough solar energy to warm the atmosphere with about 1.1 watts per square meter—twice as large a driver of warming as most researchers had estimated. That makes it the second largest humanmade contributor to global warming behind the dominant driver: carbon dioxide. "If we did everything we could to reduce these emissions," said co-author Piers Forster of the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom in a statement, "we could buy ourselves up to half a degree (Celsius) less warming—or a couple of decades of respite."

Re:How does it affect models?

[jIyajbe]

Here you go.

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2011JCLI4083.1/

Re:How does it affect models?

[khallow]

"we could buy ourselves up to half a degree (Celsius) less warmingâ"or a couple of decades of respite."

Or a century of respite. even if this research is true, the above statement depends on those models being accurate. Half a degree C is at least a third of all warming since the industrial age, including both man-made and not. That may mean that greenhouse gas induced warming is far less severe than predicted and that would in turn result in future warming being much lower than predicted.

Re:How does it affect models?

[riverat1]

It won't effect climate models that much. They already include aerosols in their calculations. There will just be some adjustments for the increased knowledge of that part of the aerosol calculations. I don't expect to see drastic changes in their output.

Re:And here I thought it was the cars

[Trepidity]

The article just says that the contribution of soot to global warming is higher than previously thought. It doesn't say that soot is now the sole or even the main cause of global warming (the linked article ranks it #2, behind CO2).

And...

[taz346]

Of course now we can all eagerly await the responses from the Heartland Institute and others touting the health and economic benefits of soot.

Wooh! Good times ahead!

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you, soot!

- From Frozen Hell (AKA. Finland) with love!

Re:And here I thought it was the cars

[CanHasDIY]

So it's not the cars causing global warming?

Strawman - nowhere do the articles or summary make that statement.

I'm confused. Oh wait, I'm not, it's the scientist who are.

No, sorry, it's just you.

Seems you did it to yourself, even...

They know nothing, they just guess, and then say they need more money to study it!

Um... you do know the definition of "hypothesis" is "an educated guess," right? As in, all scientists "just guess," albeit with a much better understanding of the topic than you or I.

Also worth noting: the statement is "the combustion product could be warming the world twice as much as previously thought."

"could be" != "is"

Some Corrections

[eldavojohn]

So it's not the cars causing global warming? Or is this just a way to garner more research funds?

This is about the contributions soot has to global warming and the magnitude of those contributions. This is, by no means, an attempt to isolate global warming down to one factor. It is a complex situation and your logical fallacy is to prey upon that complexity in order to disprove any additional information people try to publish on it.

Also, the paper had a very helpful executive summary. Had you bothered to read even that small fraction of it, one of the opening sentences states:

Sources whose emissions are rich in black carbon (‘BC-rich’) can be grouped into a small number of categories, broadly described as diesel engines, industry, residential solid fuel and open burning.

So, yes, according to the paper in the Americas and Europe diesel engines are some of the biggest contributors whereas in Africa and Asia the biggest contributors are coal and biomass burning operations.

I'm confused.

I know -- it's quite evident. I'm here to help.

Re:Some Corrections

[riverat1]

Volcanoes don't release all that much soot. What they do release is SO2 and fine rock ash which do have a cooling effect that can last for a few years before it washes out of the atmosphere.

Re:That's it!! I've had it!!

[Anonymous Coward]

as long as coal powers the turbines that make the electricity, that's exactly what those things are.

Nucular power!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear power is clean and quite safe. The historical disasters are presented without a sense of scale and have people frightened for no reason.

Reactors built according to modern standards, and properly maintained, are quite safe and produce power that is squeaky-clean compared to the alternatives.

Really?

[Sparticus789]

Whenever I see or touch soot, it is ambient temperature. Not sure how inert particles in the air make the air warm

"/sarcasm"

Re:17 years of no warming

[squiggleslash]

Oh this crap again?

Phil Plait says it better than I can: http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/01/14/no_global_warming_for_16_years_debunking_climate_change_denial.html

Re:And here I thought it was the cars

[Anonymous Coward]

>(the linked article ranks it #2, behind CO2).

That's ridiculous, because water vapor is a tremendously more important greenhouse gas than 1/3000th of our atmosphere (CO2) that has a self-limiting (logarithmic) saturation effect in its ability to absorb certain frequencies of light.

One of the reasons war warms the world

[Stirling Newberry]

War results in a great deal more soot than would be expected from either its expenditures, or its fuel use. In 2005, I pointed out the the data from World War II, and from Iraq, both pointed to a soot factor. Since large particulate matter falls out of the atmosphere more quickly than CO2, this effect would show a short term increase in warming, which would then tail off rapidly. Large particulate combustion products have a low CO2 equivalence over the long term, but in the short term produce the same amount of greenhouse forcing. This is also true of slash and burn agriculture, and other incomplete combustion processes. The linked to study is important because it confirms what was theoretically predicted.

Climate science wins again.

Now THERE's a reversal.

[Troyusrex]

It was less that two years ago that they said that the reason warming is lower than forecasts is because of pollution in China Global warming lull down to China's coal growth. While I certainly believe the earth has warmed and humans have some blame I'm HIGHLY skeptical of the media's representation of Climate Change for reasons like this.

Re:Now THERE's a reversal.

[BergZ]

So here we have a dilemma.
An Anonymous Coward on Slashdot says the IPCC predictions are a dismal failure.
On the other hand David J. Frame & Dáithí A. Stone compared the IPCC model predictions against the observed temperatures and found the predictions to be accurate (source).

So I guess the question is who am I going to believe:
The unsubstantiated claims of an Anonymous Coward on Slashdot -OR- the detailed research of scientists that has passed the peer-review process?
Tough call!

Re:Now THERE's a reversal.

[MightyMartian]

Except your wrong.

http://news.discovery.com/earth/global-warming/no-global-warming-hasnt-stopped-121017.htm

AGW deniers are like evolution deniers. No matter how often a pseudo-skeptic claim is debunked, it will just be retold.

Re:Now THERE's a reversal.

[dthx1138]

It was less that two years ago that they said that the reason warming is lower than forecasts is because of pollution in China

RTFA. Your point was directly addressed in the story:

"Diesel engines can spew mostly soot, but coal burning puts out both climate-warming soot and sulfur that goes on to cool the climate by reflecting solar energy back into space."

In other words, no reversal whatsoever. The researchers simply realized that the impact of soot is much larger than previously estimated, so much so that it outweighs the potential cooling impact of sulfur emissions.

Re:Now THERE's a reversal.

[SourceFrog]

It was less that two years ago that they said that the reason warming is lower than forecasts is because of pollution

Stop right there, what are you talking about: Warming has not been lower than forecast (what stinking place did you pull that from?) - Actually, one of the biggest recent meta-studies to come out on climate science showed that warming over the last 20 years has been very close to the average consensus forecasts over the last 20 years.

Re:Now THERE's a reversal.

[radtea]

Actually, one of the biggest recent meta-studies to come out on climate science showed that warming over the last 20 years has been very close to the average consensus forecasts over the last 20 years.

Then why does every single story on new work in this area appear beneath a headline announcing how badly previous work underestimated the effects?

The answer, of course, is that the public debate about AGW has nothing to do with the science of AGW.

The sole policy prescription the pro-AGW side have is, "Reduce CO2 emissions by any means necessary except investment in nuclear power, even if a back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that it is infeasible to the point of causing hundreds of millions of premature deaths."

The anti-AGW side say, "Yew kin take ma coal when yew pry it outta ma cold dead hands." As near as I can tell, they have a deep emotional connection to soot.

Neither side is interested in rational policy responses to the problem (Not quite true: there are a few lonely voices on the pro-AGW side that have attempted to have a science-based policy debate, but they are marginalized by the mainstream IPCC process and the sensationalist, anti-scientific press. Just ask Christopher Landsea.)

Re:Now THERE's a reversal.

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, if the IPCC models are as accurate as you think they are:
1. This Slashdot article is bullshit and soot is no more of a problem than was previously believed and accounted for in IPCC models.
2. The IPCC models already accounted for soot playing more part in climate change as was previously believed, but hid that fact from the world until now.
3. The IPCC models included a bunch of guesses and/or over-estimations without knowing why, and they just got lucky that it still fits when this extra soot factor is considered.
4. The IPCC models are vague and/or numerous enough that they were bound to be right eventually, à la horoscopes and psychics.

Re:Now THERE's a reversal.

[g4sy]

If that document says what you're telling me it says ... it goes against all the latest information on temperatures. Either way, if NASA is able to observe current sunspot activity correctly (here's a hint... they have the technology) , then we will see pretty soon. I'm willing to wager that it will be proven that solar activity is what has actually driven all recent changes. Anthropomorphic causes are secondary, in fact completely minor and probably irrelevant.

Since you probably have access to that document or you wouldn't have been citing it... can you explain what "In the end, the greenhouse-gas-induced warming is largely overwhelming the other forcings, which are only of secondary importance on the 20-year timescale." ... Are they actually saying that solar activity is of secondary importance???

Re:Now THERE's a reversal.

[hsthompson69]

NOAA in 2008 wrote than any observed period of statistically insignificant warming greater than 15 years was excluded by their models at the 95% confidence level.

We've seen 16 of those years now. By NOAA's own words, their model only has a 5% chance of being right anymore.

And of course, Trenberth - "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't"

In fact, the Met Office just downgraded their decadal prediction - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2261577/Global-warming-stopped-16-years-ago-Met-Office-report-reveals-MoS-got-right-warming--deniers-now.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

Of course, saying that the observation of a lack of statistically significant warming over the past 16 years is very close to the "average consensus forecasts" is like saying that your personality is very close to the "average consensus horoscopes" of the last 16 years - there's no falsifiability there.

Come back and play the science game when you get some :)

Re:Now THERE's a reversal.

[Troyusrex]

Warming has not been lower than forecast (what stinking place did you pull that from?)

I pulled them from a VERY stinking place, some place most people never go, the actual data. Take a look at the IPCC forecasts from 1999 IPCC now take a look at actual data from 1999 to 2012 at NOAA (or Hadley CRUT).

It clearly shows that while there has been warming it has been lower than the low forecast.

If you don't want to sift through the data (although I encourage you to do so and see for yourself), here's an article from an anti-denier site showing Hansen's 1988 predictions similarly being low. Note that this site is in the business of proving that global warming is real, their bias is strong and their data is suspect but even they clearly admit that actual temperatures are below the forecast.

These aren't cherry picked examples either, take most past temperature predictions and chart them against actual and you'll see that the rise is less than predicted. Or check the IPCC predictions from edition to edition and you'll see that they are slowly moving down in the near term (although often have global warming shift into high gear a few decades hence).

To be clear, I'm not a denialist. I do think global warming is real and a problem. But I think Climate Science is a lot like economics, they have a pretty good idea what's going on and you'd be foolish to ignore them, but you'd also be foolish to think that they have everything fully figured out or that they aren't missing some really big and important factors in their analysis.

Re:Now THERE's a reversal.

[MightyMartian]

I've read plenty. The claim is bullshit. It's cherry picked data and it's quite wrong.

Re:Is anyone else sick of...

[MightyMartian]

Do you think the universe gives a flying fuck about politics? If the climate is changing (and just about every active researcher in the field says it is), then it does not matter what fucking little bit whether you find it political. Nature is not bound by any ideology, or by politics, or by your distaste for either.

Grow the fuck up. What are you, eight years old, that your reaction to this sort of thing is to shove your fingers in your ears and declare you don't want to hear about it?

Re:That's it!! I've had it!!

[cod3r_]

natural gas is the future.. embrace it.

Re:17 years of no warming

[Time_Ngler]

Here is what the Dr. Hansen did: http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2012/12/03/climate_change_deniers_write_another_fact_free_op_ed.html

Yea, no cherry picking there..

Diesel - bah

[tranquillity]

I am worrying about the rising number of diesel cars. Much more soot is coming of their exhaust, and about 20% more CO_2 compared to traditional engine.

Re:Diesel - bah

[iusty]

I am worrying about the rising number of diesel cars. Much more soot is coming of their exhaust, and about 20% more CO_2 compared to traditional engine.

Soot and NOx yes, but AFAIK diesel engines produce less CO_2 than gas/petrol.

Re:That's it!! I've had it!!

[ericloewe]

Nuclear is the future... Embrace it.

Re:17 years of no warming

[tmosley]

*In the US, which is only the entire world when convenient.

Re:Is anyone else sick of...

[tmosley]

Fascism is socialism, but socialism is not necessarily fascism, FYI.

And yes, we have fascism, and it is failing as fascism always does (contrary to the myth that the Nazis "fixed" the German economy--they were just squished as they were collapsing under the weight of their own inefficiency). Look to the economy of Spain under Marco to see the long term effects of full-on fascism.

Re:Is anyone else sick of...

[brkello]

It is only political in American where people love to be willfully ignorant of facts and science. This has been accepted everywhere else in the world. Time to grow up.

Re:That's it!! I've had it!!

[Dishevel]

The cheapest is the present. Embrace it.

Good.

[UltraZelda64]

Northeastern Ohio winter weather is often too damn cold anyway. If such a "global warming" tames winter weather and extends the growing season, then I'll be the last one to complain.

Re:That's it!! I've had it!!

[Zorpheus]

Soot can be filtered from the fumes of coal power plants.
There is a German wikipedia article about flue gas cleaning (Translation). I wonder why this is only in German and Swedish. These aren't the only countries doing this, are they?

Re:That's it!! I've had it!!

[sjames]

Not really, it's only cheaper if we carefully ignore all of the external costs.

Re:That's it!! I've had it!!

[Zalbik]

WTF does this stupid argument keep coming up?

Natural gas is the future...
Wind is the future...
Geothermal is the future
Solar is the future...
Nuclear (fission) is the future...
Nuclear (fusion) is the future...
Embrace all of the above.

This is a zombie problem, not a werewolf problem.

i.e. We need a shotgun approach, not a silver bullet.

Re:That's it!! I've had it!!

[kelemvor4]

WTF does this stupid argument keep coming up?

Natural gas is the future... Wind is the future... Geothermal is the future Solar is the future... Nuclear (fission) is the future... Nuclear (fusion) is the future... Embrace all of the above.

This is a zombie problem, not a werewolf problem.

i.e. We need a shotgun approach, not a silver bullet.

pssh... shotguns don't kill zombies unless you hit them in the head. A silver bullet would work just the same.

Re:That's it!! I've had it!!

[flayzernax]

I would disagree. I believe its only the cheapest monetarily to those producing and distributing power.

Re:And here I thought it was the cars

[phantomfive]

For comparison, the article states that soot has a radiative forcing of 1.1 W/m^2.
CO2 has a radiative forcing of ~1.7 W/m^2.

You can see a handy chart on Wikipedia (taken from the IPCC report, I believe soot is mixed in with aerosols there).

Re:And here I thought it was the cars

[phantomfive]

because water vapor is a tremendously more important greenhouse gas than 1/3000th of our atmosphere (CO2) that has a self-limiting (logarithmic) saturation effect in its ability to absorb certain frequencies of light

This is an example of a statement that is both true and pointless, because while it is true that water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas, it is also true that adding CO2 to the atmosphere can have an effect.

And that effect, including its magnitude, is entirely the question.

Re:That's it!! I've had it!!

[wakeboarder]

Turns out that this is very easy to remove from the smoke of coal, at my local plant they've been doing it for years and it get's a lot of it ou. One thing is for sure, as we move more of our manufacturing to China we are essentially 'Sooting' our planet because regulations are much less strict there. I wouldn't be surprised if they just send it straight up in the air. If you've ever been in the western united states and seen the haze, most of it is from China.

Re:And here I thought it was the cars

[Rockoon]

This is an example of a statement that is both true and pointless, because while it is true that water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas, it is also true that adding CO2 to the atmosphere can have an effect.

Except his statement was in response to a statement claiming that CO2 was the #1 atmospheric greenhouse component.

It seems to me that you ignored the false statement, and instead felt that you just had to go after the true statement.

The problem here is two fold. First is your motivation, and we can guess what that is in a moment. Second is your pretense to be standing up for some form of higher honesty.

If the second part were true, you would have (at least) also gone after the lie, but you didn't.. you only went after the statements pointing out the lie. This tells us what your motivation really are, and they have nothing to do with truth and honesty.

There is a reason people keep having to explain that CO2 is not the #1 atmospheric greenhouse component, and that isn't just because it is often claimed that it is, its because that claim is done so in such a way that the mere fact that its "number one" is supposed to carry some weight.. ie, its dishonesty combined with marketing tactics.. a big fucking pile of dishonesty.

...but you ride in to the rescue and attack the people pointing out the dishonesty.. what does that make you? Doesnt that make you a defender of liars?

Re:And here I thought it was the cars

[phantomfive]

Except his statement was in response to a statement claiming that CO2 was the #1 atmospheric greenhouse component.

If you're talking about anthropogenic effects, it is.

I honestly have no idea what you were talking about in the rest of your post.

Re:That's it!! I've had it!!

[neyla]

Of course we do ! Any savings from cheaper power goes directly into your pocket, while the extenal costs are shared with 7 billion people.

That's the problem with externalities. If I can make a deal that is a win of $10 million for me -- but that cauces a loss of $0.05 for every human being on the planet, then it's a huge win for me, so barring laws stopping me, I'll likely say yes. Meanwhile, the deal creates $10M of value, and does $350M worth of damage, thus for humanity as a whole, the deal is a huge loss.

Externalities is one of the biggest problems with capitalism. It explains why rational players can end up making decisions that are a net loss overall.

Re:That's it!! I've had it!!

[sjames]

Even moreso, with each actor doing that, in the end, each and every actor can lose personally as well as the collective loss.

Of course, more often the vast majority lose personally while a few at the top come out ahead.

Re:How can something that blocks out the sun

[jo_ham]

How can something that blocks out the sun make it hotter?? Wouldn't it make it cooler? Thats what they say is going to happen if a super volcano erupts it will block out the sun and make it much cooler and making very hard to grow stuff with less sun. Ya ask me its all the roads that have been build and building with dark roofs making it much hotter on the surface of the earth. The reason cities are much warmer then the burbs. Soot moves around and it cleaned out by rain our natural air filter.

You answered your own question.

It absorbs IR and UV, and reradiates it - that's how CO2 (and all of the other greenhouse gasses like water vapour) work. If it's thick enough to block incoming UV then that energy from the sun never reaches the ground. This is what happens during a super volcano eruption.

If it's finely dispersed in the atmosphere then it acts like CO2, absorbing the returning IR from the surface of the earth and warming the atmosphere.

It's all about concentration.

Re:That's it!! I've had it!!

[xenobyte]

No. Denmark is also doing it - of course we border on both Germany and Sweden...

It is possible to clean the exhaust from coal and natural gas powered plants (almost) completely (99.9%), but the stuff in the filters... Let's just say that it is handled in ways similar to nuclear waste... it's ultra-toxic and extremely hard to handle safely. It can be disposed of, but the process is complicated and very expensive, but we do it as opposed to storing the waste which is much less expensive - and much less safe in the long run.

Re:And here I thought it was the cars

[riverat1]

And the level of water vapor is totally dependent on temperature so is can't drive temperatures. The level of water vapor is dependent on other things that drive temperature (like CO2). CO2 is nowhere near being completely saturated.

Re:And here I thought it was the cars

[silentcoder]

>I honestly have no idea what you were talking about in the rest of your post.

Me neither. I was going to pass his post through google translate but they still don't support moronese.

Re:And here I thought it was the cars

[riverat1]

Except his statement was in response to a statement claiming that CO2 was the #1 atmospheric greenhouse component.

I think if you read the original paper what they actually said is that CO2 is the #1 forcing agent of greenhouse warming. Water vapor is strictly a feedback effect.

Re:That's it!! I've had it!!

[neyla]

What gets me, is that this has been known "forever", aslong as there's been a solid theory of capitalism, atleast.

The solution, of course, is to set a fair price on the externalities. What that price is, and how to practically evaluate, collect and distribute that money, is a difficult problem, however notice that even if the money is collected in a highly inefficient manner, it is still frequently better than the alternative.

If you want to do something that gains you $50M while costing every human being $0.05 - then the overall loss is $300M. If there was a tax on your pollution to the tune of $250M, then you'd conclude it's not worth it since the taxes are higher than your gains.

In this case, no taxes are collected, and no deal is made - but nevertheless the tax-code was useful: it prevented $300M worth of harm from taking place.

Notice that even mostly-squandered taxes is a win from the perspective of everyone-but-you.

Let's say instead you want to do something that gains you $100M, while costing the rest of humanity $25M. We tax your activity at $50M, and the inefficiency of bureacracy means half of the collected taxes are completely wasted.

End result: With the tax you gain $50M and everyone else breaks even. Without the tax, you gain $100M, and everyone else is down $25M. -- thus the tax, despite being 50% wasteful, is a net-gain for everyone except you.

Re:That's it!! I've had it!!

[ericloewe]

Ok, as long as you removed the damned gas from that list.

Re:17 years of no warming

[riverat1]

The ozone hole is still there. We've just reduced the emissions that exacerbated it enough so that it's quite getting worse and is on the way to returning to normal in 50 or 60 years.

Re:Is anyone else sick of...

[riverat1]

This article is about climate change science. That the discussion devolves into politics is not the fault of the article.

Re:Really?!?!

[riverat1]

I don't understand this assumption that volcanoes emit soot (or more properly black carbon). There is very little soot in volcanic eruptions compared to the other aerosols such as SO2 and volcanic ash.

Hello Captain Obvious

[DaMattster]

Okay, I'm going to say it. Soot is thick particulate matter so I'm not surprised ....

Re:That's it!! I've had it!!

[Svartalf]

Hint: It's pretty easy to get a headshot with a shotgun at close to medium range. Wave the gun in the general direction and pull the trigger- and it's a hell of a lot cheaper (and looks more cool...) than the silver bullet approach... (Not to mention you can load a shotshell with a bunch of little silver bullets and be best of both worlds... Hey, funny that...that list IS a bunch of little ineffective ones by themselves...)

Re:That's it!! I've had it!!

[Sockatume]

Unfortunately we've only got funding for one bullet, so until the people holding the purse strings realise they need a shotgun, people are going to have to compete against one another as the One True Energy Source That We Should Fund.

Re:That's it!! I've had it!!

[jellomizer]

More to the point, Ideas such as Cap and Trade is useless,
If Soot is a bigger problem than CO2 then we mess up Cap and Trade laws, because a lot of organization may be using Wood Burning Energy as it is more CO2 friendly than other energy. So either you constantly revamp Cap and Trade, (Creating a chaotic economic system, where chaos is just BAD for economies) or you keep it (And reduce it usefulness)

CO2 Causes Global Warming.
Soot Causes Global Warming.
Extra Water Vapor Causes Global Warming (Do you think people using underground wells putting more H2O in the atmosphere isn't a problem either)

The only thing is clear, is Global Warming is our fault, but we do not know what the accurate makeup of it is yet. Right now there is so much reacting and not enough funding for real science. Making stupid feel good rules, so we can say oh we are better than that other country who isn't doing this. But in reality not solving any real problems.

Re:That's it!! I've had it!!

[interkin3tic]

I don't think any of those, or ericloewe's post, are "arguments." They're unsupported statement of opinions at best. Bumper sticker wisdom or advertisements at worst.

Sadly, that's what we're stuck with in terms of discussion. "TELL OBAMA TO NOT CUT COAL JOBS!!!!" is pretty much the dialogue that's going on. And that's a best case scenario. Worst case, it's "Oh, see, we have magic clean coal. Here's some campaign contributions!"

Re:That's it!! I've had it!!

[interkin3tic]

Or if we consider it from a worldwide perspective and not, say, the coal plant owner's pocketbook.

Re:Read the Stern Report.

[khayman80]

Looks like the concept of "Dark Energy" that many physicists have been so fond of, is dead. bit.ly/S7dwQv [Lonny Eachus]

No, Lonny. The gizmag article you linked just shows that one type of dark energy (the cosmological constant) is more consistent with long-term observations showing that the proton to electron mass ratio (PEMR) has remained roughly constant over billions of years. Even wikipedia makes it clear that the cosmological constant is a type of dark energy:

In the standard model of cosmology, dark energy currently accounts for 73% of the total mass–energy of the universe.[2] Two proposed forms for dark energy are the cosmological constant, a constant energy density filling space homogeneously,[3] and scalar fields such as quintessence or moduli, dynamic quantities whose energy density can vary in time and space.

Because dynamic types of dark energy like quintessence tend to imply changes in the PEMR over billions of years, these observations suggest that physicists now have enough evidence to prefer a static type of dark energy- the cosmological constant. So why is Lonny once again wrongly claiming that dark energy is dead?

One reason might be these curious sentences in that gizmag article:

The concept of "dark energy" with a negative pressure was introduced to describe this acceleration. ... Dark energy must have a negative pressure to produce the observed acceleration in the standard cosmological model, a rather bizarre notion meaning that space repels itself.

A casual reader might conclude that dark energy's negative pressure distinguishes it from a cosmological constant, but both types of dark energy have negative pressure. In fact, I've explained to Jane Q. Public that "vacuum energy has pressure equal and opposite to its energy density" which is why its equation of state is w = -1. I continued, explaining why the universe's expansion accelerates for any w < -1/3.

Because -1 < -1/3, the cosmological constant's negative pressure accelerates the expansion of the universe. It is a type of dark energy, which accounts for roughly 3/4 of all the mass-energy in the universe.

Re:That's it!! I've had it!!

[lsatenstein]

as long as coal powers the turbines that make the electricity, that's exactly what those things are.

Time to put scrubbers and better filters on the chimnenies. Trap the soot before it goes into the air.
And if we could do the same for vehicles. Wow

Re:That's it!! I've had it!!

[whitroth]

Wrong. Salt kills zombies. Silver bullets are for werewolves and vampires.

And for a certain, well-known horseman who wears a mask....

              mark

Global Dimming Offset

[daniel_l_mills]

Yes, but before its was soot it was airborne particulates that reflect sunlight back into space and avoid their energy deposition into our atmosphere. So, there's a offest to the warming effect.

Re:Is anyone else sick of...

[OneAhead]

Bzzzt. This appears to be a persistent myth among people who were schooled in the US. The "National Socialists" (NAZIs for short) were about as socialist as the democratic republic of Korea is democratic.