Merged Global Warming Discussion II: Heated Conversation

[aleCcowaN]

ETA:I see you've joined the Ignored by Dinwar club.

Dinwar's Club. Membership has its privileges. Or was it American?

Hopefully, the next post will be finally on topic.

 

[tsig]

You're going on "Ignore" for a while. I simply don't have the patience to deal with your posting style. (ETA: to be clear, it's the "I have the information, but you have to dance to my tune" nonsense that I find insufferale. You know perfectly well that conversations meander. This is the natural state of conversations. To object to it is overly pedantic and authoritarian, things I find abhorent in scientists.)

I was very precise about what I will not debate: I will not debate whether or not warming is occurring, nor will I debate the ecological outcomes of any climate shift. I will gladly debate issues such as the carbon footprint of wind turbiens. In this case, I simply refuse to allow aleCcowaN to dictate how the conversation will go. I don't let anyone else do it, why should I let aleCcowaN? If s/he knows something that can contribute to this conversation, s/he should post it. If not, don't. I have no respect for anyone who will enter in to a scientific debate with "I know the information, but refuse to provide it."

This is simply a lie. There's no other word for it. I said the following:



I'm not ignoring the carbon footprint of coal operations. I meant EXACTLY what I said earlier--that I simply don't know, and no one has been able to tell me, the carbon footprint of a wind turbine ("I know but won't tell you" translates to "I can't tell you" in the real world). I know the carbon footprint of coal power plants, so there's no reason to get into that. You don't ask questions to get data you already have; the concept is nonsensical.

Now, can we please shift this discussion away from being about me, and back onto the actually interesting topics at hand? While I think I'm interesting, I'm simply baffled by your habit of making discussions about me no matter the original topic.

I think I've hilited the reason for the underlined.

When you get personal it gets personal.

 

[Dinwar]

Okay. So the topic has shifted to Dinwar, and away from the topic in the OP. I will bow out before it gets any worse.

 

[CapelDodger]

This particular sidetrack started when I pointed out that the current warming doesn't match what climate models based on global warming theory predict.

But it does (as I myself have told you before).

This was declared wrong, so I asked what the predictions of global warming theory were. As in, what do you say is predicted to happen?

Global warming.

What do you think is predicted to happen?

What is your source? (you meaning everyone who is participating here)

Practically a lifetime's interest in science and the weather. Some of us follow these things, and it's hardly difficult to look it up. http://www.skepticalscience.com/ is an excellent source, for instance.

I would bet you can't even see the problem.

If you tell us what you think should be happening but isn't then we'll have a better idea of what your problem is. As things stand we're left to make our own inferences, which is far from ideal.

Let's discuss the emerging evidence and why we have such divergent interpretations of it.

 

[Trakar]

So humans are unnatural?

LOL, not unnatural (generally), just a specific causative as opposed to other natural factors, thus "anthropogenic."

 

[Trakar]

I've been trying to find this out for 10 years now: What is the CO2 footprint of a windmill?

Lower than coal's even if we ignore the carbon released when coal is burned to produce power.

 

[Trakar]

I would say yes, except for one thing: the environmentalists I've encountered (and I'll certainly accept that my sample may be biased) have had those facts ready at hand. So when I ask those questions, the answer is easy to find. In contrast, the information on the carbon footprints of wind turbines is essentially unavailable. I've even read through a few EIR/EIS documents and couldn't find it...

http://srren.ipcc-wg3.de/report/IPCC_SRREN_Annex_II.pdf

Note, this assumes fossil fuelled energy for everything from mineral recovery, refinement, equipment production, transportation and emplacement (IIRC).

 

[CapelDodger]

We can't change our behaviour and we won't. All creatures presented with abundant food (in our case, fossil fuels) will eat it and reproduce until it is all gone. Humans are not as different from other animals as we might like to think.

Still pretty different though. Add family planning, a secure old-age, and other entertainments to abundant food and a human population stops even replacing itself. Malthus didn't foresee that.

One more Malthusian crisis and we'll be over the hump, I reckon.

 

[CapelDodger]

Apparently the "man made co2" is from ancient coal, and has a different carbon isotope ratio.

Seems the basic question is whether a natural rise in temp is releasing CO2 from the ocean, or whether man's co2 is causing the rise in temp.

Fossil-fuel burning creates more than twice the CO₂ accumulating in the atmosphere; most of the rest is thought to be absorbed, not released, by the oceans. If it isn't going there - and indeed more is coming from it - the question of where all that CO₂ really is going comes front and centre.

Though I never looked too deep, seems to me CO2 is fungible, and that having 'new' kinds in the air wouldn't necessarily mean that all the increase is from the newest addition.

Perusal of atmospheric CO₂ levels prior to the Industrial Revolution suggest there was no substantial variation for thousands of years, and certainly nothing like a 40% increase in two centuries. Any addition other than the new one would itself be new.

Some might suggest land-use change but that really isn't new. So burning fossil-fuels it is. Rather obviously.

 

[JihadJane]

Maybe ... but that was like saying that, by their own nature, humans who are presented pot and moonshine -which are indeed food, unlike fossil fuels- are bound to smoke and drink until all of them is gone.

Some of them will do that (or drive a AWD vehicle by a well paved boulevard), but not "the species". So let's be a little less deterministic.

Food isn't a drug.

There is no indication that humanity, as a species, is moving away from consuming ever increasing amounts of fossil fuels.

I've been trying to find this out for 10 years now: What is the CO2 footprint of a windmill?

I'm currently helping construct a wind farm. I can assure you, it isn't 0. The number of pieces of heavy construction equipment is astounding, as is the amount of earth being moved. Sure, it's probably not comperable to the CO2 output of a coal power plant, but still.

Secondly, the amount of terrain destroyed in the making of a wind farm is simply stupendous. Global warming is one thing; habitat fragmentation and the proliferation of edge habitat is another, as is the destruction of endangered species due to the construction of new routes into their territory (check out an EIR/EIS of any turbine farm in California for a full discussion).

This is far from true. The biological reality is that any species will increase in population until it reaches carrying capacity, as determined by the presence of one or more limiting factors. Food is certainly a big one, but it's not the only one. Sea urchins, for example, are in some cases limited by the presence of predators. So ignoring the emotionally charged questions, your argument is wrong from a biological perspective.

Fossil fuels have allowed humans to overshoot carrying capacity. It seems that catastrophic climate change is to be our limiting factor, via extinction.

 

[CapelDodger]

So humans are unnatural?

Humans are natural : what they have wrought is artificial. Artifice comes naturally to us (and to a few other tool-makers).

ETA : Judgement, on the other hand, is not so common.

 

[CapelDodger]

Fossil fuels have allowed humans to overshoot carrying capacity. It seems that catastrophic climate change is to be our limiting factor, via extinction.

Populations have overshot carrying capacity by consuming wood and have survived the crash, admittedly on regional scales. I see no reason why it'll be different on a global scale. Extinction isn't on the cards, even if the last few hundred million live under domes.

 

[CapelDodger]

He might be both. But I'm certain he's an AGW denier.

It's not he I care to persuade; it is the audience.

Spot on. The persuaded are lost, or already in the choir.

More importantly though I'm attempting to show how people in general and this one in particular ignore and twist for their own position and benefit data they don't like.

Which is, of course, what scientists are accused of doing to the data before it gets released. If he starts appealing to data try to keep him on that track until he appeals to the data-tampering device and catch him in the conundrum.

Here's a look at one post of his. He himself has never defined the categories listed below yet expects me to. I suspect his plot is this. If I can't explain this red herring he's setup then climate change is not real.

His condescension is not appealing, which is good for you. I suggest a matter-of-fact but slightly puzzled style when responding (warming imeans warming, global is global, anthropogenic means man-made) but then get back to some point you've made that he's avoiding. Pin the buggers down is my advice. Make them look shifty and blustering, and best of all get them to go apedoodle.

Always preview, and remember the Delete key is your friend .

 

[aleCcowaN]

Food isn't a drug.

No ****, Sherlock!

There is no indication that humanity, as a species, is moving away from consuming ever increasing amounts of fossil fuels.

It depends on what you think you wrote there. An absence of indication -according to you- would be an indication of absence -according to you-? I don't think so. And tell me how do you calculate the second and third derivatives of fossil fuels consumption to conclude that "humanity is not moving away from consuming ever increasing amounts" of it.

Thank you for replying my post, but I wrote it simply to tell that you were going off-topic with a deterministic declaration that looked good but was logically broken. It's fossil fuels which are not food, nor powering human societies is atavically linked to feeding instincts. Maybe departing from the Pleasure principle you may find a more viable explanation in the realm of instincts and biological forces.

Anyway, what did have your posts to do with the specific topic of this thread, that is, the way to spot climate change occurring naturally from one caused by human actions?

 

[macdoc]

Originally Posted by JihadJane
There is no indication that humanity, as a species, is moving away from consuming ever increasing amounts of fossil fuels.

Yes there is but you won't look.
Try Sweden for a start

Sweden Prepares to Lead EU on Climate | Worldwatch Institute
www.worldwatch.org/node/6039‎
Kalmar has become a model for what all of Sweden hopes to achieve. The Nordic country plans to be carbon neutral - releasing zero net carbon emissions - by .

and Ontario as a second place to look - 25% coal use to zero in a decade,

Ontario Will Be First North American Jurisdiction To Eliminate Coal ...
cleantechnica.com/.../ontario-will-be-first-north-american-jurisdiction-to-...‎
Jan 15, 2013 - Ontario will virtually eliminate coal power by the end of 2013, marking the first time a North American government has shut down an entire coal ...

Try Portland Oregon as the greenest city every year, and California getting lower emissions every year

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-q10YgSI-U

- but wilful ignorance of progress....can't do much about that.

The developing world is outweighing the progress in the developed world and we have no moral argument against them building their wealth on the same basis as the first world did.....cheap fossil energy.

Despite that China's progress on reducing fossil fuel use is admirable under the circumstances...
http://www.theguardian.com/environm...g/14/china-investment-energy-saving-pollution
...but you have to look instead of handwringing.

 

[lomiller]

In geological and climate terms, the current change is unusually rapid, even though in human terms, it's going to be a few generations and apparently 'slow'.

Yup, current warming is extraordinarily fast

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/341/6145/486

Inertia toward continued emissions creates potential 21st-century global warming that is comparable in magnitude to that of the largest global changes in the past 65 million years but is orders of magnitude more rapid.

Even if we just look at temperature and not the rate at which it's changing there hasn't been a warmer period in the time human civilization has been on the planet, on likely hasn't been a warmer period in the time fully modern humans have been on the planet.

The last period we can clearly say was warmer goes back 125 000 years, and we will be approaching that by the end of this century. Sea levels at that time were as much as 6m or ~20 feet higher than they are today

 

[lomiller]

The trend line isn't an accurate representation of what's going on. The issue is that BOTH views of the graph are misrepresentations. The first view (blue lines) represent a moving average that divides the time into arbitrary chunks. The red line represents a simple trend line that ignores the substantial variation in the system. When I see that much variation my first question is whether a trend line is even viable, long before I ask if a simple trend like the red is appropriate. Neither represent an accurate view of temperature through time.

Instead of "just asking questions" why not do the math and find out the answer?

If you don't want to do the math yourself there are plenty of people who have already calculated which trend lines are statistically significant and which are not, but as a rule of thumb you need a minimum 20 - 30 years worth of global temperature data to arrive at a statistically significant trend. Trends longer than 50-60 years start to run into issues with a linear fit no longer being appropriate because warming has accelerated.

 

[lomiller]

Depends on the highlighted word. I'm not convinced that enough work has been done on volcanic contributions to make that claim, for example. I'm not arguing, nor am I going to argue, one way or another on this;

You being convinced is irrelevant. It's a well researched subject, and your "concerns" are completely unfounded. Even without the research, common sense would tell that volcanism must be in equilibrium with permanent sequestration of CO2 else CO2 levels in the atmosphere would rise continuously.

I'm not arguing, nor am I going to argue, one way or another on this

If you do chose to present something indefeasible "I'm not arguing one way or the other" doesn't get you off the hook for it.

 

[lomiller]

I was very precise about what I will not debate: I will not debate whether or not warming is occurring, nor will I debate the ecological outcomes of any climate shift. I will gladly debate issues such as the carbon footprint of wind turbiens. In this case, I simply refuse to allow aleCcowaN to dictate how the conversation will go.

I think he's well within his rights to tell you that if you don't want to discuss the topic of this thread go start one on the topic you do want to discuss and stop crapping in this one.

 

[a_unique_person]

Lower than coal's even if we ignore the carbon released when coal is burned to produce power.

Global solar panel production has now overtaken the initial carbon cost of producing them in the first place. From now on, it's 'footprint' positive, and just getting more positive.