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Global Warming Update
GLOBAL WARMING UPDATE....What with financial Armageddon crashing down on our heads as we speak, it's hard to believe that the worst news of the week was actually buried on page A2 of the Washington Post. But it was:
In 2007, carbon released from burning fossil fuels and producing cement increased 2.9 percent over that released in 2006, to a total of 8.47 gigatons....This output is at the very high end of scenarios outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and could translate into a global temperature rise of more than 11 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century, according to the panel's estimates.
We are so screwed.
unless global warming is a hoax
or, the Atlantic conveyor shuts down after the Greenland ice cap melts and turns Canada and Europe into subdivisions of the North Pole.
Quick, somebody tell Tina Fey, I mean Sarah Palin.
Well, since global warming is not a hoax, and since the consensus of the professionals is that shutting down the Atlantic conveyor is very hard, and wouldn't plunge Europe into an ice box even if it happened....
we are, indeed, so screwed.
So this is the worse news, but you aren't pushing us to sell off another 7 months in Iraq.
Guess it's really not a big deal compared to letting Goldman Sacks have an unhappy Christmas.
If global warming isn't man-made, does that mean it's all god's fault?
h
FWIW, concrete absorbs an amount of CO2 similar to amount of CO2 created during cement production during the concrete's lifespan, including after demolition. The CO2 created by burning fuel (~40% of the production total in a quick web search) to heat the limestone is not recovered though.
Damn Kevin, it's not like you to be so forceful and apocalyptic.. it's.. refreshing, I suppose, to see you roused from your 'slumbers'.
If there's an upside to all of this, it seems like the problems are fairly easily solved, even if the solutions aren't exactly easily implementable. We know that we need to use less energy and use energy from cleaner sources when we do use it.
For those who are familiar with the scientific literature, if this problem was essentially reversed in a year or two, how much of a difference would that make?
We are so screwed.
*WE* are not screwed. We will be dead. What happens at the end of this century is totally irrelevant.
Yeah. This guy says our grandchildren will starve to death and we probably won't have great grandchildren.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock
And he is probably correct.
It's hard to take these worries seriously, when they come from someone who DRIVES TO THE GROCERY STORE.
y81: It's hard to take these worries seriously, when they come from someone who DRIVES TO THE GROCERY STORE.
Fair enough, I suppose, though I'm not sure it's logical to say "because the person telling me about the problem is part of the problem, it can't really be a problem."
But if these same warnings came from a person that lives in a cabin and grows his own food, would you sneer at him and call him a Luddite? You personally might not, but lots of people would.
Thers, I think y81's point is sharp and I hope he keeps it away from me.
You're right in your analysis, but I think y81 is saying that Kevin (and many of us who believe this) have yet to make any sort of real commitment to changing our end.
Why does everyone shy away from the obvious? The Earth cannot sustain 6 1/2 billion human beings for any extended period of time given their munching, burning and defecating. Like lemmings that outfecund the available food supply in the Arctic, humanity is rushing toward the Malthusian cliff. Whether its a disease, or starvation, or warfare over food and fuel, the culling of the human herd is coming on fast. I guess the trick is to avoid the backsplash when it happens. After the population is down to a reasonable level, say a couple of hundred million, and the CO2 gets absorbed in a few thousand years, our descendants can resume the ancient cro-magnon existence in the cave of your descendants' choice. OR, do something dire about global warming now. Thats about the choice we are facing for our grandchildren. The primitive Christians seem to insist on a cull; I hope rationality prevails but my hopes are low. Seen Mad Max lately?
To say that you won't believe in global warming if the person telling you about it hasn't changed his lifestyle is just about the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
Daryl,
Yeah that's up there for me as well. How about this one: rejecting people's calls for increased taxes by saying that the tax proponents can voluntarily make contributions to the US Treasury if they have a guilty conscience.
The Earth cannot sustain 6 1/2 billion human beings for any extended period of time given their munching, burning and defecating.
I, for one, have stopped defecating. Ya ya, I've been told I've been full of shit before.
I find this hard to believe. Bush promised me that emissions would go down as a result of his refusal to regulate polluting industries. You must be mistaken. *cough*
Obviously we must devote more energy, attention and resources to rearranging the deck chairs.
SecAn wins the thread. Although if the problem could be solved with snark we'd all be f#cking heroes, wouldn't we?
You forgot to mention the somewhat alarming increase in methane bubbling out of newly defrosted tundra. In case your behind, methane is some twenty times more effective a greenhouse molecule than carbon dioxide.
I think that we're all doomed, but I don't really blame humans. Humans are just animals, after all. Human reasoning ability may seem amazing compared with that of other animals, but ultimately it's just a trick to give us an edge at surviving to live another year. It's nearly useless at big-picture, long-run planning.
That's understandable from an evolutionary point of view. It's to an individual's advantage to let someone else make the big sacrifices for the good of us all. The fact that everyone doing what's best for himself dooms us all is basically the prisoner's dilemma.
A question about applied mass psychology that I would like to know the answer to: Is it possible to get the entire human race to engage in a generation-long (or longer) sacrifice for the mutual benefit of the whole human race? If so, how?
I think that if we were being invaded by hostile extraterrestrials intent on enslaving or exterminating the human race, we would all pull together (assuming that the ETs didn't attempt to make a deal with half the human race to pit them against the other half).
But what about a threat that was less immediate? For example, an asteroid heading for the Earth that will destroy the Earth in 50 years? Unless we all start living at subsistence level and devote the savings to building a fleet of rockets to divert the asteroid, we are all doomed. Would we rise to the challenge? I doubt it.
What would happen is that some politicians would give boring speeches about "We all must make sacrifices for the good of humanity", while other politicians would promise taxcuts and accuse the first group of being alarmists and doomsayers. The second group would have considerable support, up until the moment that people could see the asteroid with their naked eyes, a menacing sphere as large as the moon. At that point, the support for denialist politicians would dry up, but much too late.
(assuming that the ETs didn't attempt to make a deal with half the human race to pit them against the other half).
A sober reading of the history of colonialism the world over speaks to that assumption, and it's not a pleasant answer.
There is only one complete and exact computer of global climate and that is the planet itself. By definition it complies with all laws of nature including physics and quantum mechanics. Einstein said "no number of tests can prove I'm right but only one is needed to prove I'm wrong". That one test, that proves to be wrong the theory that added atmospheric carbon dioxide causes global warming, was run on the planet computer and the results are archived in the Vostok and EPICA ice cores and other proxies. They show that, repeatedly, a temperature increasing trend changed to a decreasing trend with the carbon dioxide level higher than it had been when the temperature was increasing. For those who understand how feedback works, this trend direction change proves that there is no significant net positive feedback. All that is needed to determine if there is net positive feedback is a temperature trace for a long enough time to average out cyclic variation from random noise and other factors. The temperature trace does not even need to be correct in absolute terms just reasonably accurate in relative terms time-wise.
While determination of the magnitude and even the sign of feedback in climate is difficult using climatology, it is trivial, as described above, for someone who understands feedback to deduce from the temperature record that net positive feedback does not exist. Many climatologists apparently don't know how feedback works so they don't realize this. Unaware of their ignorance, they impose significant net positive feedback in their GCMs which causes them to predict substantial warming from carbon dioxide increase. Without significant net positive feedback, the GCMs do not predict significant Global Warming.
The upside to global warming is that when everyone is dead, the 700 trillion dollar debit doesn't have to get paid.
enviro414: I can use my car as a computer to prove that there is no long-term acceleration. If I drive it off a cliff, at some point the trend toward greater velocity will be reversed. I might not enjoy the process, because the that little detail of magnitude, but there is no disputing that the acceleration will be reversed.
thersites,
Your comment reminds me of the people who argue against Malthus by saying that exponential growth is never observed in nature, so there is no need to worry about population growth. It's true---exponential population growth always corrects itself, but we may not like the mechanism it uses.
Just to make it clear to enviro414, his argument makes sense if, and only if, C02 is the main driver of climate change during transitions from glacial to interglacial epochs. Since no one is arguing that this is the case, the argument is pointless. Also, he should probably stay away from real climatologists if he wants to keep his little fantasy world alive.
because the that
I can also use my brain as a computer to prove that at some point my grasp of the English language will be reversed.
enviro414 is wrong, and clearly doesn't understand climate at even the simple conceptual level.
During the past glacial/interglacial transitions, climate change was triggered by the Milankovich cycles, and CO2 responded as a feedback that amplified the original forcing. This pattern works in both directions: when the orbital geometry favors warming, CO2 increases and contributes to further warming. Likewise, when the Earth's orbital geometry promotes cooling, CO2 decreases (the feedback) and the lower level of CO2 in the atmosphere further cools the planet.
In other words, for the glacial/interglacial cycle, CO2 simply amplifies the warming or cooling that is originally triggered by the Earth's axial tilt, orbital ellipticity, etc.
WHat's happening today is slightly different; we're introducing CO2 directly, as a climate forcing. Once it's in the atmosphere, though, CO2 behaves in the same way -- it absorbs outgoing long-wave radiation, warming the lower troposphere and changing our climate.
For anyone who's interested in this, and wants to know more, I'd recommend Bill Ruddiman's textbook "Earth's Climate: Past and Future".
I feel so lonely, apparently being the only person in America who isn't an expert on climate and doesn't know without a doubt what's going to happen (or won't happen) in the future.
Jen f:
In your 'analogy', after you go over the cliff the car accelerates down, that is a RESPONSE to gravity. When you hit the ground, that is a huge RESPONSE to the resistance of the ground. Feedback is not involved. Well, on second thought, as you speed up, aerodynamic drag increases. That would be a negative feedback since the drag force increases with the square of the speed. If the cliff was really really high the car would approach a steady state speed (terminal velocity) do to this negative feedback.
Daryl M:
The trend reversals during the last and previous glaciations prove that there is no significant net positive feedback. As an example, see the change from uptrend to downtrend 50,000 ybp (graphs are readily available). For those who understand how feedback works, this trend direction change proves that there is no significant net positive feedback.
Thersites:
Actually, the observation that the temperature stops increasing as it did at the end of the run up at the beginning of the Holocene proves that there is no significant net positive feedback. Also, at the 50,000 ybp transition mentioned above, the trends are each about 5000 yr long and other trends have various lengths. The shortest Milankovitch cycle is about 23000 yr. Milankovitch can have no significant influence on the direction changes of these trends. Besides, the direction changes go both ways.
Without significant net positive feedback, the GCMs do not predict significant Global Warming.
enviro414:
the analogy you attribute to Jen F. was written by thersites
the comment you attribute to Daryl M was written by Ethan
the comment you attribute to thersites was written by J
Using your method of reading the words "Posted By," you will attribute this comment to your own self. I could take advantage of this situation, but I choose not to.
C.L.
Note that the IPCC's estimates are labeled as estimates, and the predictions are couched in terms of "could." Nobody claims to know with certainty, but here's the question: given the probabilities, how foolish are we if we take no action at all?
There is actually a way to virtually eliminate anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions by the middle of the century. Check out my web site for details. Before you dismiss the very idea, note that some pretty heavy hitters vouch for this, including Dr. James Hansen. You can read the intro and first chapter of my new book free online via the link at my site.
Brian J wrote:
For those who are familiar with the scientific literature, if this problem was essentially reversed in a year or two, how much of a difference would that make?
What does "essentially reversed" mean? Due to lag effects, things are gonna keep heating up for awhile, even if we were to stop burning hydro-carbons NOW. And do you really think that humanoids are going to leave oil in the ground and not use it? I don't think so!
If a humongous asteroid were to crash into the planet, or a huge-ass volcano were to blow its top, that would throw up enough junk in the air to cause "global dimming," which would have a cooling effect. But that doesn't mean that greenhouse gas accumulation doesn't have a net postive feedback response. It just means that over geological timescales, other factors influence the climate. Those catastrophic factors tend to be inimicable to human life, even as they negate the positive feedback response of increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. However, some lazy-brainers take these factors as an indication that there really isn't any positive feedback. Here's a simple one: increased CO2 in the atmosphere causes a slight temperature increase, which allows the air to hold more water vapor, which in turn causes a temperature increase. Got that?
Those commentors who are glibly cavalier on the topic of global warming do not understand the problem. Global Warming is an early label pertaining to the cause of the problem. But for civilization, the REAL problem is Wild Weather. Wild Weather that you have never seen before. Cat 5 and Cat 6 Tornados on a regular basis. Bigger droughts and bigger rainstorms and more unsettled seasons. Hail the size of basketballs. The weather is likely to get so wild by the end of the next decade that civilization will be unable to live on the surface of the planet with its current engineering systems. You will probably still be alive and you will suffer greatly. Really--do a little research. You have been seriously misinformed.
I'm not a AGW denier at all, I just get frustrated at all the dogmatism on both sides of this issue. What it all boils down to is that reducing CO2 is a good idea no matter what, but between doomsday scenarios and blissful ignorance that message seems to get lost.
Regarding the discussion glacial/interglacial transitions.
The idea of CO2 amplification is correct, but there is still the other mechanism that causes the sudden shift from glacial to interglacial.
There is a tipping point and non-linear transition which one can see by the very sudden transition at the top. The transition is too sudden to be caused but CO2 changes alone.
What makes this epoch interesting is that the transition tried to occur some 10,000 years ago, but failed (Younger-Dryus event). Looking back, the failed attempt at transition occurred exactly where is should have, almost perfectly aligned with the previous glacial transition. We had a partial equilibrium, and hence forth, whatever causes the tipping point did not have the energy to push it through.
Nobody said that there aren't any positive feedbacks. Certainly, as you noted, water vapor increase from increased temperature is a positive feedback. But there are also negative feedbacks such as Lindzen's iris effect. What matters is the NET feedback which is the combined effect of all the feedbacks, known and unknown. The temperature trend direction changes that are archived in the ice cores prove to those who understand feedback that significant net positive feedback does not exist. Without significant net positive feedback, the GCMs do not predict significant Global Warming.
Suppose that you are right, that catastrophic factors cause the temperature trend reversals (Although I can think of no credible catastrophe that could change a down trend to an uptrend). Either way, the GCMs with significant net positive feedback imposed by their users are invalidated as temperature predictors.