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malamuddy at 13:08 PM on 22 March 2011Preventing Misinformation
Please delete this if my maths is wrong,but the denialist figure of a "mere 0.004 of 1%" always worries me. Surely 0.004 of 1% is the same as .00004%. But 400 ppm carbon dioxide (which is probably the source of the figure) is .04%. If we were talking blood alcohol, we would be talking almost illegal quantities. -
topquark at 13:02 PM on 22 March 2011Preventing Misinformation
Thompson said:It is a natural gas that is clear, tasteless and odourless.
Hey, just like carbon monoxide! P.S. "principle errors" should be "principal errors". -
dana1981 at 12:07 PM on 22 March 2011Pre-1940 Warming Causes and Logic
Gilles - your claim that the hockey stick rise is almost purely pre-1960 is pure nonsense -
Bern at 12:02 PM on 22 March 2011Zero Carbon Australia: We can do it
ranyl @ 70: Sorry, no, you're not quite right. The natural sinks of CO2 don't care about where the CO2 is coming from - all they care about is the atmospheric concentration. If atmospheric concentrations of CO2 are higher than the equilibrium point, the sinks absorb more of it. Period. So CBDunkerson's comment that the sinks would continue to absorb 17 gigatons per year is correct. You seem to have missed the point, though, that this rate is by no means constant - it will decrease as the atmospheric concentration decreases, and will logarithmically approach equilibrium (i.e. it will take centuries to get there). You are correct, though, that some current sinks will turn to sources - e.g. as atmospheric levels drop, CO2 dissolved in the oceans will start to come back out. This is one of the factors that greatly extends the time to reach equilibrium, especially as the oceans seem to be absorbing the vast majority of human emissions. -
Bern at 11:53 AM on 22 March 2011The True Cost of Coal Power
Gilles, you're forgetting the golden rule (well, one of them, anyway): Correlation does not equal Causation Personally, my income level is by no means tied to my consumption of fossil fuels. Why, I managed to reduce our fossil fuel consumption by at least 20% just by putting a solar hot water system on the roof, and, gosh, my pay hasn't gone down in the three years since... Has your employer told you that they'll cut your paypacket if you start using biofuels, or solar electricity? If so, that's certainly in breach of all manner of employment laws, at least here in Australia... -
Bern at 11:45 AM on 22 March 2011Preventing Misinformation
cloa513 - no, they talk about global mean temperature anomalies, which are by no means scientific nonsense. If you don't understand the difference, let me see if I can explain it simply for you (and any other readers who might be swayed by your words): If it's 1.3ºC warmer than average in Nairobi, and 1.3ºC warmer than average in Oslo, does that tell you something useful & meaningful? Even though it might be 35ºC in Nairobi but only 13ºC in Oslo? Obviously, you want to take more than just the values for any given day, to get a broader picture, and avoid "noise" in your data. That's done by averaging the values both geographically and over time. Otherwise, you'd be putting even more significance on things like a town in northern Canada having temperatures 30ºC above average back in January... (no, that is not a typo!) -
scaddenp at 11:29 AM on 22 March 2011Preventing Misinformation
cloa513, you seem to be trying hard to make this same point in the wrong place. How about posting this in temp record is unreliable, but be sure to read the resources there first. Especially, you should read the papers on how global temperature is determined. Its not done the way you seem to think it is and the methodology actually used is backed by a lot of actual research. Tamino's article pointed to there, can be found here (link in article broken).Moderator Response: [DB] I've just updated the Tamino links in the article you link to. Thank you for pointing out the bad links. -
adelady at 11:29 AM on 22 March 2011Preventing Misinformation
cloa513, I'm sure we've had this conversation before. Statistical averages are useful in many, many contexts. Number of children per family changing from 4.1 to 2.7 does not mean we've found a way to create fractional children. Reducing needed doses of a medication from 8.3 to 6.1 of a standard dose tablet does not mean that lots of people waste endless hours precision cutting tablets. Reducing the amount of land needed to produce a standard quantity of grain does not mean farmers are shaving slices off paddocks. But numbers like these do tell us really useful things about societies or medical practices or agriculture. Same for average global temperature. It's a useful indicator, it's not a detailed diagram of any particular thing.Moderator Response: [DB] You have a good eye and sharp memory. Checking, cloa513 has made 12 comments here at Skeptical Science on various threads. All 12 are variations on "we-can't-know-anything-it's-not-us-temps-are-unreliable-yadayadayada..." memes. Gold to adelady; Silver to scaddenp. :) -
ahaynes at 11:27 AM on 22 March 2011One-line rebuttals now available as flashcards for study or play
I updated the flashcards to use the new short URLs (link). But unfortunately (when you're Studying them online) you still can't click on the URL for the relevant SkS page, or even drag over the URL to copy it. A feature, say the flashcard folks; a bug, say I. -
Marcus at 11:14 AM on 22 March 2011Pre-1940 Warming Causes and Logic
HR, the warming rate for 1910-1940 was less than +0.12 degrees per decade. The warming rate for 1980-2010 was almost +0.17 degrees per decade. I'd call that a pretty stark difference in warming rates-especially when we consider the major factor driving the 1910-1940 warming-namely rising solar irradiance-were *absent* during the 1980-2010 warming phase. -
cloa513 at 11:13 AM on 22 March 2011Preventing Misinformation
So called scientists keep introducing the Global Mean Temperature even using basic physics its quite easy to show its a scientific nonsense- its maths without context. -
Gilles at 11:01 AM on 22 March 2011The True Cost of Coal Power
well, marcus, I have no idea of what you're calling "false" correlation.The correlation is mathematical and historical, and is plenty justified by physical laws. You said you have a dvd player, a cell phone and other toys. Do they grow naturally on trees in Australia ? don't you travel across your country or abroad (if not, I think you have a relatively low level of consumption, and may be of income - which wouldn't contradict the correlation of course). BTW, the cost of solar panel is not everything , of course - you have the obvious problem of intermittency, or the supplementary cost to mitigate it. -
villabolo at 10:58 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
"So how do Libertarians deal with the problem of climate change? I believe it was the late Milton Friedman who once said that externalizing business costs (which he justified) could be compared to the following. A coal burning power plant releases soot into the atmosphere and it dirties your white shirt. You have to clean your shirt more often. Even though it is the coal company's fault that your shirt is dirty, they do not pay the price of taking it to the dry cleaner's. Since the corporation, in his view, does not have any social responsibility but only the responsibility to itself of maximizing profits, they could "externalize" their costs all they want. All hail the Libertarian prophet! -
scaddenp at 10:57 AM on 22 March 2011Latest GRACE data: record ice loss in 2010
Henry, you wouldnt have to post questions like that if you simply bothered to read the papers. -
scaddenp at 10:55 AM on 22 March 2011The Climate Show Episode 9: Nuclear power and hot spots
And warmer nights/winters etc etc. -
Gilles at 10:53 AM on 22 March 2011Pre-1940 Warming Causes and Logic
so again dana : how do you interpret the "hockey stick" shape of proxy reconstruction, whose rise is almost entirely observed BEFORE 1960 ? is it mainly anthropogenic or natural? you said that anthropogenic component does not exceed 0.2 °C before 1960, but that is well inside the natural variation, so what happened to produce the "hockey stick" shape of proxies reconstruction (barring the instrumental records) ?Moderator Response: [DB] Please, no more all-caps (cf. Comments Policy). -
neilrieck at 10:49 AM on 22 March 2011Preventing Misinformation
In a court of law, the jury is presented with "factual evidence" and it is the job of the prosecution or defense to discredit it with expert testimony. When one side attempts to reintroduce previously debunked evidence, the other side can object, then is is up to the judge to sustain or overrule the objection in order that the case may proceed. In some instances the judge will address the jury directly telling them they must forget something just presented. But climate science is being debated "in the court of public opinion" rather than "a court of law" and it seems to me that that many non-science people feel the need to reintroduce the same non-sense debunked yesterday. They do this because there is no professional immediately available to raise an objection, or any judge to recognize what is going on then admonishing the participants in order to move things along. I fear that I.Q. levels on planet Earth have just dropped 20 points in the past 20 years and humanity will continue to go round-and-around on the climate warming issue until some wise Solomon steps in a makes a paternalistic decision for us. p.s. this constant rehashing not only happens in the field of climate science, I am told that patent clerks still get thousands of submissions each year for what one would commonly called "a perpetual motion machine" from poor sods with no understanding of the first and second laws of thermodynamics. -
scaddenp at 10:40 AM on 22 March 2011Those who contribute the least greenhouse gases will be most impacted by climate change
Yeah, self-evident "facts" like reducing carbon emissions will destroy the world economy and bring in a new dark age. I think everyone here has duty to ensure Gilles assertions are backed with data.Moderator Response: [muoncounter] A worthy goal; however, some commenters, especially those who tend to be prolific, resist substantiation of their opinions at all costs. Makes it all that much harder for the fact-based community. -
dana1981 at 10:27 AM on 22 March 2011Pre-1940 Warming Causes and Logic
HR #26 - you managed to fit a whole lot of strawmen into one comment there."You write an article that says roughly half the warming is from solar"
Sorry, where did I say that? I'm pretty sure what I actually said is that if the TSI increase was 1 W/m2, then the temperature increase due to solar effects was roughly on par with the increase due to CO2."What was the magnitude of warming from 1910-1940, you didn't state it?"
I said the trend was 1.3°C/century, which gives a magnitude of about 0.4°C over the 30 years."I'm assuming you think it's 0.3oC (half from CO2, half from solar)
You really shouldn't make assumptions. If I believed it was half CO2 and half solar, I wouldn't have also mentioned oceanic cycles, volcanoes, aerosols, etc."Are you assuming the earth came to equillibrium in this period?"
No, I most certainly am not."Is past articles you have suggested that we may have only realised 33% of the warming associated with the post-1950 forcing...Can you explain this discrepancy?"
Yes, the discrepancy is due to the fact that I never said that. We've actually realized about 60% of the warming associated with the post-industrial forcing. -
scaddenp at 10:26 AM on 22 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Tom, before you waste too much time on damorbel, you might like to look at page 5,6 etc. Also, note my post here. It seems that damorbel is not willing to be persuaded by experimental evidence on those terms. -
mothincarnate at 10:21 AM on 22 March 2011Preventing Misinformation
Ever feel like you're bashing on the same points, over and over again, only to hear the same irrational rejection of information? At this point, the AGW deniers still refuting the above simply don't care for evidence as far as I'm concerned. -
Paul D at 10:15 AM on 22 March 2011Zero Carbon Australia: We can do it
Ken Lambert: "I trust is taken into account in all Wind power comparisons with coal, nuclear & geothermal." Despite the relatively low load factors for wind turbines, the energy payback is usually as good as or better than other sources. If you look at life time data: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf11.html then you see that the worst case input energy for wind turbines is 16.7% of total energy output, the best case is just 1.3%. For coal, the worst case is 14% and the best is 2.9% For gas, the worst is 17.9% the best is 3.8% It should be pointed out that most nuclear power stations are just as inefficient as fossil fuel power stations, the efficiency is some 30% to 40%. The issue is even worse for coal since most of the embedded energy is wasted. -
HumanityRules at 10:11 AM on 22 March 2011Pre-1940 Warming Causes and Logic
17 dana1981 "HR and Kooti - it's entirely possible that less than 0.15°C of the early 20th century warming is due to solar effects. I don't see that as problematic" That seems a little cavalier. Do you accept that what Kooiti says is accurate? As he points out those estimates of solar variability you are using are already out of date even ignoring the new paper I pointed out. You write an article that says roughly half the warming is from solar then suggest even if this is not true it really doesn't matter. I don't get that. I've got a few separate technical questions. 1) What was the magnitude of warming from 1910-1940, you didn't state it? I'm assuming you think it's 0.3oC (half from CO2, half from solar) but this graph, from the climate graphics page, puts it around 0.5oC. Maybe those extra 0.2oC don't really matter as well?
2) Are you assuming the earth came to equillibrium in this period? Is past articles you have suggested that we may have only realised 33% of the warming associated with the post-1950 forcing. Yet here all warming has been accounted for from the forcing in these 40 short years. Can you explain this discrepancy?
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siglerj at 10:06 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
Thanks Moderator for the good response.........a shock to the system explains it Another question....who knows how much heat man is adding to the atmosphere via electricity? And does wave and hydro electric technology actually remove heat when it converts wave and head pressure energy into electricity? I would think wind and solar does.Moderator Response: [DB] The CO2 cost of generated electricity is already factored into tracked emissions. The only way to remove heat from the system is for it to escape to space in the form of radiation (thermal). Until the radiative balance is restored, outgoing energy will remain less than incoming energy. -
grypo at 09:54 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
@siglerj You make a fair point about me grouping *all* corporations into this. It's not really my objective. In fact, Koch Industries is a private business and they started CATO and other type organizations. The main point is that people/ corporations/ private business who profit directly in some way from an unregulated market are funding think tanks. These think tanks are using the libertarian ideology, of which they may have some values in common, to further their goals that are not inherent to the libertarian principles. -
Rob Honeycutt at 09:52 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
HuggyPopsBear... "mankind has been on this planet for 10 million years or more" I beg to differ on that point. Homo sapiens have been here maybe about 200k years. Human agriculture has been around for maybe 10k. Modern society about 150 years. And the Apple iPad has only been out a little over a year (of course, that being the latest major advance in human-technology interface). ;-) -
adelady at 09:46 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
siglerj - maybe none, maybe it will release rather than absorb CO2. Exposed soil allows the carbon content of that soil to be oxidised and become CO2 in the atmosphere. The reason why bad farming practices release CO2. If the ice/snow had been covering bare rock, it depends on what kinds of minerals the rocks are made of. If olivine or serpentine, then natural gradual weathering will make absolutely no difference on the decadal time scale, but will contribute a little to sequestration over millennia. The only real chance for absorbing carbon is if trees will grow. Grasses just become part of the carbon cycle. Trees, especially their roots, can accumulate carbon over time if growing conditions are favourable. -
HumanityRules at 09:44 AM on 22 March 2011Pre-1940 Warming Causes and Logic
12 Marcus The point is the peer-reviewed work (GRL I think) not that it shows up on WUWT, deal with it on that basis. 13 IanC The point would be that changes in TSI do seem to be too small to account for climate variability in the way we seem to understand it. What can I say, I'm trying to look at the science. There has been a constant revision of our understanding of TSI variation. Somebody can correct this if inaccurate, estimates of changes in TSI from MM to present have undergone constant revision. 3-6 W/M2 in the late 1990's. 1-2 W/M2 more recently. And now this paper is suggesting it's ~1/3 of that amount (0.33-0.66 W/M2). I think if your going to use the word speculative then you should put it into context. The short history of this science is one of constant revision as I've outlined, I don't see that this is any more speculative than the other. I think the unique approach is to say magnetitic variation is the sourse of other solar variations, I guess we have to wait and see whether that is accepted. "Now I am curious to see where you are going with this. Are you arguing that neither CO2 nor the sun drives our climate?" It does seem curious. I don't think one has to jump all the way to the idea that CO2 or the sun don't drive our climate but I think it's worth considering that of our understanding of the subject is missing something important. Ian if that work is accurate how would you interpret it? -
From Peru at 09:42 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
I'm sorry if I am off-topic, but the use given to the term "libertarian" causes my stomach to turn awfully bad. The term "libertarian" was hijacked by the far-right to mean an ideology based on an unregulated, totally free-market economy/society. But the original meaning was politically quite the opposite. It originated from the anarchism, particularly from the COMMUNIST variant, "libertarian communism", or "anarchocommunism/anarchosindicalism". The term was particularly popular in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) by anarchists, where the libertarian communism of the CNT/FAI (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo/Federación Anarquista Ibérica)
and the POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista)
was opposed to the authoritharian Stalinists of the PCE (Spain Communist Party) that finally took over the Republic in 1937-1938.
How a term so identified with the far-Left, totally hostile to capitalism, popped up in the free-market capitalism Right, is a mistery to me.
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Marcus at 09:38 AM on 22 March 2011The True Cost of Coal Power
Again, Gilles, you haven't proven their extrapolations are *undue*-& they certainly provide a much more iron-clad case for their extrapolations than you provide to "prove" your false correlation between Fossil Fuel Consumption & Wealth. -
Rob Honeycutt at 09:38 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
HuggyPopsBear... Not a contraction in terms at all. Government is not the same as elected officials. -
siglerj at 09:37 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
Maybe someone can help me with this......when more ground is available after more ice and snow pack deteriorates, how much CO2 will the new land/plant area absorb? Is there an estimate of how much CO2 an acre or square mile of prarie absorbs?Moderator Response: [DB] Evidence tells us that the thawing Arctic is emitting methane and CO2 right now & increasing those emissions. By 2100, a thawing Arctic permafrost threatens to add about as much GHG to the atmosphere as mankind has. So don't count on that newly uncovered surface to be a carbon sink anytime soon. -
HuggyPopsBear at 09:27 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
Rob Honeycutt #3 Markets are fantastic and dealing with solutions, today. But it's the government that must set up the proper incentives that drive the solutions today to solve the problems of tomorrow. This is a contradiction in terms, first you state governments are limited by office and then make the statement above. One of the biggest problems with climate change is man himself, science and the many bantered ideologies. When I say man himself, I do not mean by his contribution to the atmosphere. Increase population without controls on ANY pollution is going to cause a variance in some structures. It will not undo the full process of mother nature and mans natural evolution within himself and technology will make new changes and advances and probably create another scenario further down the track. CO2 is cyclic as is precipitation, mankind has been on this planet for 10 million years or more, the last 150 years is but a mere second in time in comparison and will not reveal through scientific modelling what this planet has seen and whats more what has happened and is to come again. You don't have to be a scientist with degrees and phd's. Open your eyes and take a good hard natural look at nature There is nothing new under the sun my son.Moderator Response: [DB] You were doing so well, too, up until your last paragraph. You really need to read the Newcomers, Start Here thread and the Big Picture thread. We know much more than models can tell us. Such as you're wrong about CO2 being cyclical in its upward driving of temperatures in this interglacial. Mankind, in your 10 million existence ascribed to them, has never been a factor in the carbon cycle before. Until now. So that IS something new under the sun (yes, Ecclesiastes is a fav of mine), my son. -
siglerj at 09:26 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
Where did the carbon in the ground come from?Moderator Response: [DB] Carbon is naturally present in the Earth's biosphere (land+air+water), existing in many forms. There is a natural flux of carbon into and out of the atmosphere (see here, both versions). Mankind has upset that natural carbon balance by adding a huge bolus of long-sequestered carbon back into it (like adding more players to one team while keeping the other team's numbers the same), unbalancing the cycle. The net result is that the system is seeking to get back to that balance, which involves the biosphere retaining energy in the form of heat. -
Marcus at 09:25 AM on 22 March 2011Zero Carbon Australia: We can do it
Ah Ken, good to see you preaching from the same hymn-book as Gilles. It might not have made headline news (you know, what with all the property damage, deaths & evacuations), but news of load shedding & black-outs during the Queensland floods can be found in the print media *if* you're prepared to go digging. The closure of many of Queensland's coal mine during the crisis was, however, considered worthy of front-page news. Of course my whole point was to illustrate that, in such extreme weather events as these, loss of power is going to be the *last* thing on victim's minds-so represents nothing but a straw-man argument. It is worth noting, though, that the large, centralized nature of coal power station, as well as their reliance on a constant fuel supply that needs to be mined, does make it especially vulnerable to extreme events like these. Even in the absence of such events, coal power stations are horribly inflexible in their power output & lose significant amounts of generated electricity over the distances they're required to transmit over (between 10%-15% of electricity generated gets lost during Transmission & Distribution). Your claims re: Wind Turbines also sounds horribly out of date. My reading of current technology is that most modern wind turbines are designed to operate effectively under a wide range of wind conditions-something which has allowed improvements in Capacity from barely 20% to more than 30% in the last decade. Of course, with good siting & decent storage, many of the remaining issues with wind power can be largely iron out-and eliminated completely if you also have a good source of landfill gas. -
siglerj at 09:23 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
@ grypo You make it sound like an organized conspiracy. Corporations are everywhere and in everything, including the green movement. Identifying CATO as being the face of corporations is an underhanded method to rally the fools who think all corporations are like ENRON and Skank of America. Yes some corporations believe in capitalism, but if a handout, bailout, subsidy or tax credit exists they'll gladly take the welfare or uncompetitive advantage, just like anybody else. -
Rob Honeycutt at 09:18 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
siglerj said... "Personally, I think Geo Engineering is the best solution until efficient green energy can become a reality." Great! Then we are there. Remove all subsidies from fossil fuel industries. Pull in the external costs of carbon on human health and the environment. At that point wind and solar beat oil, gas and coal hands down. And renewables are in the process of getting even cheaper. If Libertarians would agree to this then we have solved the world's problems. -
Marcus at 09:13 AM on 22 March 2011Preventing Misinformation
Climate Watcher, your claims are demonstrably *false*. I've got the GISSTemp data right in front of me, & the warming rates I get are as follows: 1910-1945=+0.125 degrees per decade; 1975-2010=+0.176 per decade. So the current warming is already unprecedented compared to the warming of the first half of the 20th century. Of course, it's even *more* unprecedented when you consider the fact that 1910-1945 was against the backdrop of rising Sunspot numbers, whereas 1975-2011 has been against a backdrop of *falling* sunspot numbers. Epic *fail* there Climate Watcher. -
grypo at 09:13 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
@siglerj This article should help you understand why the carbon in the ground is the important carbon, not the carbon already in the cycle -
Rob Honeycutt at 09:13 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
siglerj... Virtually every pollutant occurs naturally as well as being man-made. Are you suggesting that we can't regulate ANY forms of pollution because they also occur naturally? -
siglerj at 09:10 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
Personally, I think Geo Engineering is the best solution until efficient green energy can become a reality. -
robert way at 09:09 AM on 22 March 2011Preventing Misinformation
ClimateWatcher at 03:17 AM on 22 March, 2011 "2. Global warming is 'unprecedented' The period from 1910 to 1945 ( thirty five years ) had the same surface temperature trends ( CRU and GISS ) as the period since 1979." Prove it. Do note that I am the author of the following post which disproves your argument. Unless you can show me where I calculated the differences in warming rates wrong then your argument is null. http://www.skepticalscience.com/Monckton-Myth-2-Temperature-records-trends-El-Nino.html -
dana1981 at 09:06 AM on 22 March 2011Preventing Misinformation
Good point Tom. That was very northern hemisphere-centric of me! -
grypo at 09:06 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
@siglerj "Corporations are in favor of capitalism, only in the competitors dreams." Corporations fund CATO and CATO does not want a tax on carbon emissions using utilitarian arguments under the auspice of libertarian principles. Perhaps you are discussing nanny-state conservatism? Crony capitalism? What does this have to do what I wrote? -
siglerj at 09:01 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
If CO2 is considered a pollutant you can't discriminate what creates it as being bad or good. If an owner is responsible for some CO2, how can they not be responsible for all their owned emissions? -
ranyl at 08:48 AM on 22 March 2011Zero Carbon Australia: We can do it
"If our CO2 emissions dropped to zero the carbon sinks would continue sequestering about 17 gigatons per year (17/7.81 = 2.18 ppm decrease per year)... there is no logical reason that this would change radically right away" CBD66 These acute excess sinks don't continue to take CO2 out of the atmosphere, they take ~50% of the extra excess CO2 added to the atmosphere be that from volcanoes, land use change or human burning of fossil fuels, but that is it, they soak up the excess, they don't actively remove carbon atmosphere if no excess is added. Basically with no emissions at all the rate of CO2 change in the atmopshere reverts back to the underlying balance between volcanic source and geological removal which is very slow. Then as this very slow (no where near 2ppm at year) causes atmospheric CO2 concentration to fall the sinks re-release the 50% of the excess they took up and why Cao et al (from previous post), found that to get CO2 concentrations to actually fall it is necessary to take all the extra CO2 that was actually added to the atmosphere and the CO2 that has been temporarily stored in the acute excess sinks. Also all the excess sinks capacity are now shrinking as per the papers in the previous post. Therefore 450ppm peak does mean ~450ppm for a long time unless active measures can be deployed to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Also as mentioned when the earth warms CO2 always rises at about 7-40ppm per 1C, depending on different estimates although 7-14ppm most likely, but still rises and there is already another 0.6C to come due to lags in the system. Also the Pliocene was still 3-5C hotter at 350ppm or 1.8C-2.4C by 2100, 450ppm means more! Also all the pollution over China and India is causing a large haze cloud that is cooling those regions surface, therefore stopping burning fossil fuels in Asia will be another accelerant to global warming. "Stopping emissions will yield positive results / we are not yet 'locked in' to devastating climate change." Yes stopping all emissions from fossil fuels is essential and a strong positive first step, but the world is already locked into a significant period of global warming that needs urgent adaptation (including removing large quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere) measures so that despite the coming climatic changes human actions can bring about a fullfilling sustainable eco-system enhancing carbon sequestering future and a general increase in human well being through mutual co-operation, at governmental, institutional and individual levels or the clear and obvious is ignored, CO2 emissions continue to be spent chasing excessive energy demand dreams and humankind lets climate change be an event that is devastating to human well being for no other reason than keeping far too many lights on. -
damorbel at 08:47 AM on 22 March 20112nd law of thermodynamics contradicts greenhouse theory
Re #615 Tom Curtis you wrote:- "Do you also agree with me that this simple model does not violate any laws of thermodynamics? " Perhaps not. But what it doesn't do is model the atmosphere or RW1's model in #613 In #619 L.J. Ryan shows the flaw in your model - adding the same energy twice! It doesn't model the atmosphere because GHGs do not reflect light, they absorb and, to a certain extent, re-radiate it. When a photon is reflected its energy remains the same e.g. mirrors do not change the colour of light. When photons are absorbed they may cause re-radiation but this is not necessarily so, e.g. if a chemical change is induced by the absorption of a photon. If the absorbing material does re-radiate photons this may well occur at a much longer i.e. 'without limit' longer wavelength. What cannot happen (2nd Law again) is for a photon to be emitted at a shorter wavelength. More exactly, in a single photon process, a photon more energetic than the incoming photon cannot be emitted. But there are two (or more) photon events that result in the emission of single photons of higher energy than either of the input photons, but the total energy is still conserved. There is no law of conservation for photons, they start with an emission and end with an absorption, even if they travel light years between the two events. Re #616, les your box is just fine, it is what J J Fourier described - it just doesn't describe the atmosphere - as Fourier himself noticed 'the air is not held still in the atmosphere' Re #677 Tom Curtis your box has a major flaw; the energy source is outside the box but once inside it is reflected 100% this doesn't happen, the walls that reflect inside the box must also reflect 100% light coming from outside, there are no one-way mirrors in physics. Further, if you put a lamp inside with N Watts power and the walls were 100% reflecting (thus 100% insulating) the temperature would rise until something was destroyed! But consider, how would you get the N Watts power in? Heat conduction in metals in largely a function of electrons in the conduction band thus the wires would carry much of the heat inside back out to the generator (or battery) where the energy came from in the first place. The wires may get hot in the process but have you ever dealt with high power lights enclosed in a projector? Everything gets terrifyingly hot! -
Rob Honeycutt at 08:42 AM on 22 March 2011The Libertarian Climate Conundrum
siglerj... "... you have to measure all carbon emissions then if that is the pollutant you are targeting, even the emissions exhaled by humans and the animals they own." How do you come about this assumption? It would seem to me that natural processes in the carbon cycle are not the problem. It's the excess introductions to the atmosphere by industry. -
Tom Curtis at 08:38 AM on 22 March 2011Preventing Misinformation
Dana, is it possible to get a graph whih resolves the NH winter temperatures and the SH winter temperatures. The one you show only resolves temperatures by months, and of course the NH winter is the SH summer.
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Rob Honeycutt at 08:35 AM on 22 March 2011The Climate Show Episode 9: Nuclear power and hot spots
ClimateWatcher... I would add that what you seem to be overlooking in the diagrams that you provided is the very clear fingerprint of AGW which is stratospheric cooling.
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