Global Warming

Global Warming

The subject of global warming is controversial. A report published by the UK government is outlined in the BBC NEWS site in an article on 30 January, 2006.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4660938.stm
In it

Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett said the report's conclusions would be a shock to many people.
"The thing that is perhaps not so familiar to members of the public... is this notion that we could come to a tipping point where change could be irreversible," she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"We're not talking about it happening over five minutes, of course, maybe over a thousand years, but it's the irreversibility that I think brings it home to people.

Given the timespan of a thousand or so years, the likelihood of common action is questionable. The Bush administration has already demurred on a national plan and other countries have fudged.
While it is easy to focus in on that bad news, the likelihood of China, India and other rapidly developing nations to adopt stringent regulations is slim.

What do we do?
............................
Outcomes of the 2005 report are available at:
http://www.stabilisation2005.com/outcomes.html

Originally posted by OakdaleFTL:

Jaybro, don't be obtuse…

As I suggested earlier, the best place to go for definitive information is a blog. It's particularly definitive if it has only one entry.

Definitive? No, I wouldn't say so. The poster is (my best guess:) an undergrad economics major at Oglethorpe University… Maybe because he didn't rote it, it's wrong? Ah, where's an educationalist when ya need one. These questions are important!

Originally posted by OakdaleFTL:

Oh, and someone please nudge schapel…? (He's stated that he's ignoring me. ) That is to say, if his professed concern for evidence is sincere, he'd want to know about this.

I don't see how what did or did not happen hundreds of years ago is relevant to what is happening now. How is evidence about the Medieval warm period supposed to be evidence that AGW is not happening now? To show that AGW is not happening, one would need to show that the warming predicted by AGW is not happening now, or would have to show some other reason for the recent warming and why AGW will not cause the predicted warming.

schapel, please note: If current warming and projected warming are no higher than fairly recent historical values (i.e., MWP), then whence the urgency? In other words, wouldn't IPCC assessments fall far short of credible if no consensus could be shown for the cause(s) of the MWP (and LIA)?

Originally posted by OakdaleFTL:

If current warming and projected warming are no higher than fairly recent historical values (i.e., MWP), then whence the urgency?

If a plane can safely descend from 30,000ft in several minutes, whence the urgency if it tries to do it in seconds?

@johnnysaucepn: And the evidence that the rates you mention are analogous is…?

Metaphor, analog...

Originally posted by OakdaleFTL:

schapel, please note: If current warming and projected warming are no higher than fairly recent historical values (i.e., MWP), then whence the urgency?

I was able to get by in college with my job as a fry cook at Sam's Greasy Eats. Back then, I shared a small dorm room with a roommate, ate ramen three times a day, had no health insurance and no car. Today, I am married with two kids. We have a house and two cars, all of which I'm still paying off. I just lost my six-figure job as an executive, but I have no worries. I can always get my job as a fry cook back. If I was able to get by in college on the job, what would be the problem now?

The current economic and geopolitical situation is altogether different today than it was in Medieval times. We will have about 10 billion people on the planet this century, as opposed to under 1 billion in Medieval times. We have a world economy, so economic instability in one part of the world affects all others. Political instability in one part of the world affects all others.

We do not know what the effects of doubling the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will be. As far as we know, however, the economic cost of avoiding that scenario is cheaper than the cost of letting it happen and dealing with the effects.

Originally posted by OakdaleFTL:

In other words, wouldn't IPCC assessments fall far short of credible if no consensus could be shown for the cause(s) of the MWP (and LIA)?

I don't see why. The AGW hypothesis predicted the warming we've observed before we observed it. It predicts further warming in the future. If that warming doesn't occur as predicted, great, but in the meantime our best information shows that it's worth reducing carbon dioxide emissions now.

Originally posted by OakdaleFTL:

@johnnysaucepn: And the evidence that the rates you mention are analogous is…?

About equal to yours.

Originally posted by OakdaleFTL:

If current warming and projected warming are no higher than fairly recent historical values (i.e., MWP), then whence the urgency? In other words, wouldn't IPCC assessments fall far short of credible if no consensus could be shown for the cause(s) of the MWP (and LIA)?

Projected warming is higher than the MWP, I would note. But ignoring that, and ignoring that MWP is generally considered a regional rather than global phenomenon, the answer is because the effect of it will cause problems. Worse, problems that will mostly effect groups of people that had no hand in the cause.

Originally posted by schapel:

We do not know what the effects of doubling the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will be. As far as we know, however, the economic cost of avoiding that scenario is cheaper than the cost of letting it happen and dealing with the effects.

I will add to this, as well. Most of the cost of prevention will need to be spent anyway, as oil and gas reserves run low and become more difficult to extract.
Apart from that, savings from energy efficiency and efficient energy distribution methods will pay for themselves anyway, over time.

Originally posted by schapel:

The AGW hypothesis predicted the warming we've observed before we observed it. It predicts further warming in the future. If that warming doesn't occur as predicted, great, but in the meantime our best information shows that it's worth reducing carbon dioxide emissions now.

In other words, if the AGW hypothesis is (substantially) wrong, we should still act as if it were right? Why?

I understand your 'storied' fry-cook's dilemma. (I do hope that was a fanciful example!) Forgive my hard-heartedness but if a college-educated experienced executive can't make a better living than a fry-cook, then he'd do as well buying lottery tickets; he has neither the drive nor the ability to do more than rely on luck.

In terms of world politics and economics, things will change – regardless. Utopia and the Golden Age (or some semblance of a comfy present, unchanging, if you will ) are, as goals for socioeconomic organization, synonymous: Figments of timid imaginations.
We won't likely lose our technology, nor our ability to adapt to exigent circumstances.

@johnnysaucepn: About the rates of warming/cooling connected with the MWP/LIA, shouldn't we try to gauge those by the best, most complete proxies and methods available?

Originally posted by OakdaleFTL:

Originally posted by schapel:

The AGW hypothesis predicted the warming we've observed before we observed it. It predicts further warming in the future. If that warming doesn't occur as predicted, great, but in the meantime our best information shows that it's worth reducing carbon dioxide emissions now.

In other words, if the AGW hypothesis is (substantially) wrong, we should still act as if it were right? Why?

Because if we wait until we're 100% sure, it's too late to avoid the costly consequences. Many times when I'm driving, and I get the impression that the circumstances are unsafe, I slow down. I don't wait until I'm 100% sure I need to slam on the brakes to avoid a crash. That would be a sure way to get into lots of crashes.

The evidence so far suggests that AGW is happening, will continue to happen, and will have negative consequences that outweigh the costs of minimizing the problem. All we can do is go by the best available information we have at any time.

Originally posted by johnnysaucepn:

Natural cycles have an effect on the overall climate. The problem that we're seeing is that the natural cycles are being accelerated by the greenhouse effect. A temperature change that, based on what historical data we have, would normally take hundreds of years, is happening faster

On CO2 alone, the pre-industrial natural cycle was balanced, CO2 out, CO2 in. As industrialism ramped up, the additional CO2 is exceeds what used to be absorbed. Heating increases as a result.

Originally posted by Jaybro:

Originally posted by OakdaleFTL:

Jaybro, don't be obtuse…

Nice user image.

Originally posted by OakdaleFTL:

In other words, if the AGW hypothesis is (substantially) wrong, we should still act as if it were right? Why?

Because it is the best available prediction, supported by the greatest number of authoritative scholars in the subject field.
Even if you have your doubts, why should we act as if it were wrong?

44 pages, 2165 replies, 40773 views.
That means two things:
1. Jaybro's ability to create discussion
2. We aren't discussing the subject, only insisting in arm wrestling.

It's my second post here, I believe, and I would like to get another approach to the subject:
One way or another, those who don't accept scientific evidence, and that's their right, will have to change. A fossil combustible energy based production, in a limited resource model, isn't able do delivery the huge amount of energy our civilization needs.
We need an unlimited resource model. We have to move to renewable sources of energy. And they are CO2 free.
And fossil combustibles are finishing.

What's the point of trying to deny climatic changes, that the very same science and method who allows that we are discussing here demonstrate it, if we just have to change?

Stone age didn't finish because all the world agreed with that. It finished because people where forced to move to better solutions.

Originally posted by Belfrager:

And fossil combustibles are finishing.

Not for a good while here in the US.
We have enough places that we can drill in for at least another 75 to 100 years.

Originally posted by thedawgfan:

Originally posted by Belfrager:

And fossil combustibles are finishing.

Not for a good while here in the US.
We have enough places that we can drill in for at least another 75 to 100 years.

That gives a bit of time to come up with a replacement. However, this is one point I agree with some of our friends on. There are finite supplies of petroleum, regardless of where we drill for it. If we are not to go back to days of rising and going to bed with the sun and heating our homes with wood exclusively, we need to use what time we have to come up with a better plan.

Originally posted by mjmsprt40:

we need to use what time we have to come up with a better plan.

I agree.
I was simply pointing out to Belfrager that our Oil was not at an end yet. Far from it really.
But yeah, instead of carrying on pointless Empirical Wars, that money could be spent on researching alternative fuels.

With just about everyone wanting to jump on the bandwagon about what man is doing regarding carbon emissions this report via Bristol University makes interesting discussion.

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL040613.shtml#

Originally posted by rjhowie:

With just about everyone wanting to jump on the bandwagon about what man is doing regarding carbon emissions this report via Bristol University makes interesting discussion.

Nice to see you finally work out how to post links. Shame you didn't seem to understand the content!

Originally posted by rjhowie:

With just about everyone wanting to jump on the bandwagon about what man is doing regarding carbon emissions this report via Bristol University makes interesting discussion.

It's mildly interesting, but it doesn't change anything. Even if the fraction of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions that remains in the atmosphere stays at a constant 40%, we still have to greatly reduce carbon dioxide emissions to keep the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere under the 450 or 550 ppm goal that we will set. As others point out, we will have to reduce carbon dioxide emissions anyway, because fossil fuels will not last forever. Man will have no choice but to reduce carbon dioxide emissions; we can choose to do it voluntarily now, or have it forced upon us later as fossil fuel supplies dwindle.

yeah, you are right

Now there is no choice for the man , he will have to reduce carbon dioxide emissions

because that is the only way to control it to some extend

Originally posted by schapel:

We do not know what the effects of doubling the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will be. As far as we know, however, the economic cost of avoiding that scenario is cheaper than the cost of letting it happen and dealing with the effects.

That's the part I love to hear. We don't know what will happen but it will be more expensive than what we suggest.

Originally posted by Redem:

I will add to this, as well. Most of the cost of prevention will need to be spent anyway, as oil and gas reserves run low and become more difficult to extract.
Apart from that, savings from energy efficiency and efficient energy distribution methods will pay for themselves anyway, over time.

It's always a question of who exactly pays and when. Apart from things like time value of money, which makes paying later more attractive, CO2 reduction measures are a growth inhibitor, which is fine for EU but may be not very welcome in poorer places.

Originally posted by Belfrager:

Stone age didn't finish because all the world agreed with that. It finished because people where forced to move to better solutions.

Endangered Tortoises Snarl Solar-Energy Plans

Updated: 2 days 16 hours ago
..........
Oakland, Calif.-based BrightSource Energy has been pushing for more than two years for permission to erect 400,000 mirrors on the site to gather the sun's energy. It could become the first project of its kind on U.S. Bureau of Land Management property, leaving a footprint for others to follow on vast stretches of public land across the West.

The construction would come with a cost: Government scientists have concluded that more than 6 square miles of habitat for the federally threatened desert tortoise would be permanently lost.
..........
http://www.sphere.com/nation/article/two-dozen-rare-desert-tortoises-snarl-plans-for-solar-energy-complex/19300679
.........................................
.........................................
Latest obstacle to rural solar plants a tiny toad

By Stephanie Tavares (contact)

Friday, Sept. 11, 2009 | 2 a.m.
..........
As solar companies’ applications for leases on federal lands finally move into the environmental review stages, developers are seeing a new potential snag: federally protected species.
..........
The impact of thousands of acres of solar arrays could be huge, said Rob Mrowka, an ecologist and conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the organizations that petitions Fish and Wildlife to analyze the threat to the toad.
..........
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/sep/11/toad-could-stand-way-solar-development/

Any questions?
Do your part for renewable energy. Have a toad for lunch.

Originally posted by vangrieg:

That's the part I love to hear. We don't know what will happen but it will be more expensive than what we suggest.

That's what the current research says. Do you have evidence that dealing with the effects of AGW will cost less than avoiding them? If not, I don't see your point. You're trying to argue without data if that's the case.

Originally posted by schapel:

That's what the current research says. Do you have evidence that dealing with the effects of AGW will cost less than avoiding them? If not, I don't see your point. You're trying to argue without data if that's the case.

How is it different from preparing for any sort of change in the climate, Anthropogenic or not?

IMO we are more unprepared for colder stints of climate than warmer. Where I live, there hasn't been that much snow over the last 20 years, however over the last year and a bit its started to pick up more, but authorities are completely unprepared for this being the lack of gritting, and the AGW camp telling us that winters will be less snowy but wetter,simply clouds the idea of trying to adapt to the climate instead of fighting it.

Originally posted by shoust:

IMO we are more unprepared for colder stints of climate than warmer.

"We" meaning the Netherlands and the UK. Look at Illinois or Canada on the other hand...

Originally posted by shoust:

How is it different from preparing for any sort of change in the climate, Anthropogenic or not?

You can prevent it if you're the cause, by stopping whatever is causing it.

Originally posted by vangrieg:

That's the part I love to hear. We don't know what will happen but it will be more expensive than what we suggest.

Some remedies will make sense with very moderate climate change, even with no climate change at all. Others would hardly make sense even in the most desperate cataclysmic scenarios. Assigning a probability and cost to the different scenarios, and a cost and effectiveness to the remedies, we could fairly easily say that we know some courses of action will be a good investment now, and other courses of action may be a good investment pending further investigation.

Originally posted by jax:

Some remedies will make sense with very moderate climate change, even with no climate change at all. Others would hardly make sense even in the most desperate cataclysmic scenarios.

Absolutely. Yet, like I said earlier, it's a matter of who pays how much and when. The devil in the details, as usual.

Originally posted by Frenzie:

Look at Illinois or Canada on the other hand...

Well, living in Moscow for the past 5 years I must say I'm completely unprepared for cold sunless summers and freezing below -25 every damn winter.

It seems the winter has enveloped most of the North this time, including China. (This picture is from Harbin, which kind of explains everything, the legend states "Temperature of nine degrees below the freezing point in Beijing makes such a warm day for people living in the Northeast. In this picture, Harbin folks were playing a ball game with only swimsuits and Santa Claus hats. What’s the temperature there? Minus 32 to minus 16 Celsius degree. I wonder how Harbin people define ‘cold beer’.")

Originally posted by vangrieg:

Well, living in Moscow for the past 5 years I must say I'm completely unprepared for cold sunless summers and freezing below -25 every damn winter.

All is not lost, vangrieg.

Originally posted by Belfrager:

44 pages, 2165 replies, 40773 views.
That means two things:
1. Jaybro's ability to create discussion
2. We aren't discussing the subject, only insisting in arm wrestling.

I don't think you can pin global warming on Jaybro. Here are some of the <a href="http://my.opera.com/community/forums/findpost.pl?id=2481473">other global warming threads</a>. Still not decided which of the two current "global warming" threads to close.

Originally posted by jax:

I don't think you can pin global warming on Jaybro.

No, I can't. Just honoring he's ability to "fuel" discussion

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/6958093/Climate-change-the-true-price-of-the-warmists-folly-is-becoming-clear.html
"Impeccable was the timing of that announcement that directors of the Met Office were last year given pay rises of up to 33 per cent, putting its £200,000-a-year chief executive into a higher pay bracket than the Prime Minister. As Britain shivered through Arctic cold and its heaviest snowfalls for decades, our global-warming-obsessed Government machine was caught out in all directions.

For a start, we saw Met Office spokesmen trying to explain why it had got its seasonal forecasts hopelessly wrong for three cold winters and three cool summers in a row. The current cold snap, we were told with the aid of the BBC – itself facing an inquiry into its relentless obsession with “global warming” – was just a “regional” phenomenon, due to “natural” factors. No attempt was made to explain why the same freezing weather is affecting much of the northern hemisphere (with 1,200 places in the US alone last week reporting record snow and low temperatures). And this is the body on which, through its Hadley Centre for Climate Change and the discredited Climatic Research Unit, the world’s politicians rely for weather forecasting 100 years ahead.

Then, as councils across Britain ran out of salt for frozen roads, we had the Transport Minister, Lord Adonis, admitting that we entered this cold spell with only six days’ supply of grit. No mention of the fact that the Highways Agency and councils had been advised that there was no need for them to stockpile any more – let alone that many councils now have more “climate change officials” than gritters.

Then, with the leasing out of sites for nine giant offshore wind farms, there was Gordon Brown’s equally timely relaunch of his “£100 billion green revolution”, designed, in compliance with EU targets, to meet a third of Britain’s electricity needs. This coincided with windless days when Ofgem was showing that our 2,300 existing turbines were providing barely 1/200th of our power. In fact, 80 per cent of the electricity we used last week came either from coal-fired power stations, six of which are before long to be closed under an EU anti-pollution directive, or from gas, of which we only have less than two weeks’ stored supply and 80 per cent of which we will soon have to import on a fast-rising world market.

In every way, Mr Brown’s boast was fantasy. There is no way we could hope to install two giant £4 million offshore turbines every day between now and 2020, let alone that they could meet more than a fraction of our electricity needs. But the cost of whatever does get built will be paid by all of us through our already soaring electricity bills – which a new study last week predicted will quadruple during this decade to an average of £5,000 a year. This would drive well over half the households in Britain into “fuel poverty”, defined as those forced to spend more than 10 per cent of their income on energy.

Finally, following Mr Brown’s earlier boast that his “green revolution” will create “400,000 green jobs”, there was the revelation that more than 90 per cent of the £2 billion cost of Britain’s largest offshore wind farm project to date, the Thames Array, will go to companies abroad, because Britain has virtually no manufacturing capacity.

At last, in all directions, we are beginning to see the terrifying cost of that obsession with “global warming” and “green energy” which for nearly 20 years has had all our main political parties in its grip. For years governments, including the EU, have been shovelling millions of pounds into the coffers of “green” lobby groups, such as Friends of the Earth and the WWF, allowing them in return virtually to dictate our energy policy. Not for nothing is a former head of WWF-UK now chairman of the Met Office.

The bills for such follies are coming in thick and fast. Last winter’s abnormal cold pushed Britain’s death rate up to 40,000 above the average, more than the 35,000 deaths across Europe that warmists love to attribute to the heatwave of 2003. Heaven knows what this winter will bring. And remember that the cost of the Climate Change Act alone has been estimated by our Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband at £18 billion every year until 2050 – a law that only three MPs in this Rotten Parliament dared oppose. Truly have they all gone off their heads."


I will be quite happy when that bungling one-eyed Scottish idiot is out of office. Inflation, here we come.
Long may the EU rot.

Originally posted by jax:

I don't think you can pin global warming on Jaybro.

He is god

BritishEmpire, that is quite the most nonsensical grab-bag of unrelated and incomplete factoids and half-assed conclusions I could possibly imagine. Thank you for spotting it for me.

Originally posted by BritishEmpire:

As Britain shivered through Arctic cold and its heaviest snowfalls for decades, our global-warming-obsessed Government machine was caught out in all directions.

You have no idea how insane this article is. The cause of the freezing cold is that the man-made climate change has caused arctic winds to reach new areas of the globe. Overall, the planet is warmer than before.

http://climateprogress.org/2010/01/08/science-met-office-cold-weather-global-warming-el-nino-hottest-year/

For a start, we saw Met Office spokesmen trying to explain why it had got its seasonal forecasts hopelessly wrong for three cold winters and three cool summers in a row.

They clearly explain how probable their forecasts are. It's called being "intellectually honest", something AGW deniers have no concept of. The fact is that the UK Met Office has one of the best track records there is. But all forecasts are not equal. And that is why you need to listen to what they are actually saying instead of spewing lies about it.

And this is the body on which, through its Hadley Centre for Climate Change and the discredited Climatic Research Unit, the world’s politicians rely for weather forecasting 100 years ahead.

The sheer idiocy of the article is becoming clearer and clearer.

Originally posted by Purdi:

The fact is that the UK Met Office has one of the best track records there is.

The shame of it is that the public only remembers the misses, not the hits. Never mind that people rely day-to-day on those weather reports that have been generally accurate - when there's a BIG mistake, people remember them for years.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqBrwo81iaU TheAntiTerrorist on global warming part 1-3.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY_foLWHJwM TheAntiTerrorist on global warming part 2-3.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwkqdCN66W0 TheAntiTerrorist on global warming part 3-3.

The person has made quite an informative set of videos regarding current events and built up quite a few solid arguments too despite the anonymity , of course its not coming from a man of science so take it as you will.

Can you summarise the best arguments in text, please? I don't have time to watch those at the moment.

Originally posted by Redem:

Can you summarise the best arguments in text, please? I don't have time to watch those at the moment.

A quick look leads me to this summary: No arguments, just a bunch of paranoid nonsense. Insane conspiracy theories. Just the same old denialist lies that have been mindlessly parroted already, and of course debunked over and over again.

This complete moron claims that "the subject of global warming has only been around for the past 15 years". He is clearly deeply ignorant, and probably mentally ill.

This guy seems to be connected to the "9/11 Truth" movement... Paranoid morons without the ability to think a single rational thought.

Originally posted by johnnysaucepn:

The shame of it is that the public only remembers the misses, not the hits. Never mind that people rely day-to-day on those weather reports that have been generally accurate - when there's a BIG mistake, people remember them for years.

Ask your average man on the street if he knows what gravity is—-most likely he will say, "Of course! Everyone knows what gravity is. That's what keeps my feet on the ground!"
..........
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/antigravityworldgrid/ciencia_antigravityworldgrid01.htm

Is gravity real? If it wasn't for gravity we wouldn't have rain.

Originally posted by string:

Is gravity real? If it wasn't for gravity we wouldn't have rain.

True enough. And without water we'd have no gravity. At least, I think so.

The rain in Spain hovers mainly over the plain.