Global warming discussion IV

[Trakar]

The reality is until a cheaper energy source is available, carbon will be the norm

Fossil carbon is cheap because its recovery, processing, distribution and sales has been and yet is subsidized by what is cumulatively several trillions of dollars of public tax dollars over the last couple hundred years or so (probably closer to 120 years or so for serious exploitation).
Why not let a portion of the profits from fossil carbon fuels "prime the pump' for a cleaner more sustainable set of replacement fuels as well as paying for the cleanup and of the damage caused because of that subsidization which made fossil carbon a cheap and profitable fuel?

So what, warmer is better.

Why is air conditioning so popular?
A little warmer is better for organisms already adapted to warmer conditions.

Are you talking about wetter and warmer, drier and warmer. How much warmer? how fast, for how long? These are all conditional qualifications missing from your unsupported assertion.

No we're not, you're guessing

The isotopic ratios, and corporate paperwork recording amounts recovered, processed, distributed and profited from, is pretty compelling evidence.

According to you

According to almost all reasonable and serious analyses.

We cannot make it warmer, therefor, we cannot make it colder.

That assertion is simply incorrect.

Those easy fixes would be?

non-existent, at this time, it is too late for easy and cheap. If Carter, or perhaps even Reagan, had known and began a solid steady national plan to not just correct the problem, but to lead the world in the new technologies that would have allowed us to side-step the problems we now face into the foreseeable future,...but, crying over spilt milk resolves nothing, the piper is collecting his due.

 

[Warmer1]

So what, warmer is better.

No we're not, you're guessing

According to you

This is a great example of your misunderstandings of science. This is not "according to" MacDoc and this is exactly what you cannot seem to comprehend. You do not yet realize that our global collective understandings of science is not a matter of personal opinion.

Please present peer-reviewed science that supports your assertion that "warmer is better" given the amount of warming that is predicted past the year 2100. It will be a good exercise to help you understand what accepted science really is.

 

[macdoc]

There are no easy fixes ....the FIRST step is acknowledge the problem ....the majority of the planet and the US is there ....you aren't

Those easy fixes would be?

Reading challenged as well..not surprised.

Nothing is "according to me".....it's according to strongly supported peer reviewed evidence..something you are patently unfamiliar with and refuse to under take mental effort and time to understand.

Carbon use is already dropping despite energy use rising. Renewables are the fastest growing sector of energy and coal is for all purposes dead.

Oil will be around a while longer but even now supply greatly exceeds demand so it rapidly becomes unviable.

you really should try and stay current with what's occurring on your only planet.

 

[Warmer1]

So what, warmer is better.

There was a United Nations conference in Paris where the world's leaders and countries delegates gathered to discuss the dangers of climate change.
http://www.cop21paris.org/about/cop21

The list of speakers from almost every country is here on this United Nations page

"Statements made at the Leaders Event in alphabetical order"
http://unfccc.int/meetings/paris_nov_2015/items/9331.php

logger, can you share with us what thoughts go through your mind when you clearly see that world leaders are gathering to discuss that dangers of climate change when you believe that "warmer is better"

How does your mind reconcile that most of the world's leaders are meeting to discuss climate change when "warmer is better"? What processes and ideas go on in your mind? Can you please take us into your world for a brief moment.

 

[beelzebub]

Logger,


Macdoc said "It's getting warmer"
You replied "So what, warmer is better."

...So you accept that the Earth is getting warmer - question is, what is forcing this warming?

Could it be the Sun? Well, we've been monitoring the Sun for a long time, and its output has been falling for several decades (Note that the variations in energy output over the sunspot cycle are no where near enough to account for even a fraction of the warming that has been measured).

Could it be cosmic rays? It was an interesting idea, but cosmic ray flux just doesn't account for the observed warming.

Could it be volcanoes? No, volcanoes release less than 1% of that released by us (approx 230MT vs 30GT).

Could it be the Earth's orbit/tilt? Again, no - these influences are (very) slowly pushing us towards the next glacial period, due in approximately 15-20,000 years time.

So, Logger, what do you attribute the observed warming to?


Macdoc said "We're responsible"
You replied "No we're not, you're guessing"

...Actually, we're not guessing!
We can measure relative CO₂ isotope levels to determine the ratios of natural carbon emissions due to the carbon cycle, to fossil carbon and volcanic emissions.
We can also calculate the amount of fossil carbon released as a result of burning the oil, coal and gas we extract from the ground - guess what? They tally!
We can also measure the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere - if you burn carbon, you reduce the amount of oxygen in the air, and this is exactly what we find, over and above that due to land use changes.

So, again Logger, what do you attribute the observed warming to?

 

[Mikemcc]

Logger,


Macdoc said "It's getting warmer"
You replied "So what, warmer is better."

...So you accept that the Earth is getting warmer - question is, what is forcing this warming?

Could it be the Sun? Well, we've been monitoring the Sun for a long time, and its output has been falling for several decades (Note that the variations in energy output over the sunspot cycle are no where near enough to account for even a fraction of the warming that has been measured).

Could it be cosmic rays? It was an interesting idea, but cosmic ray flux just doesn't account for the observed warming.

Could it be volcanoes? No, volcanoes release less than 1% of that released by us (approx 230MT vs 30GT).

Could it be the Earth's orbit/tilt? Again, no - these influences are (very) slowly pushing us towards the next glacial period, due in approximately 15-20,000 years time.

So, Logger, what do you attribute the observed warming to?


Macdoc said "We're responsible"
You replied "No we're not, you're guessing"

...Actually, we're not guessing!
We can measure relative CO₂ isotope levels to determine the ratios of natural carbon emissions due to the carbon cycle, to fossil carbon and volcanic emissions.
We can also calculate the amount of fossil carbon released as a result of burning the oil, coal and gas we extract from the ground - guess what? They tally!
We can also measure the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere - if you burn carbon, you reduce the amount of oxygen in the air, and this is exactly what we find, over and above that due to land use changes.

So, again Logger, what do you attribute the observed warming to?

The blogger ATTP refers to this as the consilience of evidence. That multiple lines of enquiry lead to results that support each other.

https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2015/12/13/consilience-of-the-evidence/

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

 

[macdoc]

Investment in renewables was double that of coal and gas in 2015

A record amount of $286 billion was invested in renewables globally last year.
In 2015, more than twice as much went into new capacity to generate electricity with renewables like solar and wind than into power stations burning fossil fuels, according to a study by the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management for the UN Environment Programme.

“Renewables are becoming ever more central to our low-carbon lifestyles,” said UNEP director Achim Steiner.

Over the past decade, cheaper solar panels and wind turbines have cut the cost of renewable electricity – in some places by up to 80 per cent. Now, green energy is often no more expensive than fossil fuels.
And it is no longer chiefly the preserve of developed countries either. Last year developing countries invested $156 billion in renewables, which for the first time exceeded the $130 billion investment made by high-income countries.

Developing world takes the lead
China led the way. In its efforts to fight smog, it is mothballing coal plants and replacing them with some of the world’s largest solar and wind farms. China was responsible for two-thirds of the renewables investment in the developing world last year, and 36 per cent of the global total.

“China is the biggest investor right now, but increases in other countries are also strong,” Moslener says.

India increased its investment in renewables by 22 per cent last year, to $10 billion. Brazil, South Africa, Mexico, Chile, Morocco, Turkey and Uruguay each stumped up more than a billion dollars.

But while the US upped its investment by 19 per cent, the picture was different in Europe. Once a trailblazer in this area, the continent’s investment in renewables fell by 21 per cent in 2015, to less than half as much as China.

Keeping carbon at bay
The good news is that the trillions spent are starting to have an impact on climate change. The International Energy Agency earlier this month identified the growth of renewables as the main reason why global CO2 emissions from energy have been unchanged for two years, despite 6-per-cent economic growth.

The growth of renewables is in part because power companies have invested more than $2 trillion in harvesting green energy over the past 12 years (and these figures exclude large hydroelectric dams).t

more
https://www.newscientist.com/articl...bles-was-double-that-of-coal-and-gas-in-2015/

The transition is underway..despite some living in fantasy land.

 

[Ambrosia]

So what, warmer is better.

Why?

 

[foophil]

Would you like to throw the % out? I so desperately want to see you post it.

It is very important for people to know this.

It looks like Volcanoes may be the wild card with your opinion. The Earth does seem to handle those quite well.

It seems others here have beaten me to the answers. Let us know if you have further questions or have any peer reviewed scientific studies that refute this.

 

[Trakar]

Oh yeah, somewhere back upthread, I mentioned adaptions to warmer conditions...kinda sorta:

Global warming and neurodegenerative disorders: speculations on their linkage
Habibi et al., BioImpacts, 2014, 4(4), 167-170
doi: 10.15171/bi.2014.013
http://bi.tbzmed.ac.ir/

Summary

Climate change is having considerable impact on biological systems. Eras of ice ages and warming shaped the contemporary earth and origin of creatures including humans. Warming forces stress conditions on cells. Therefore, cells evolved elaborate defense mechanisms, such as creation of heat shock proteins, to combat heat stress. Global warming is becoming a crisis and this process would yield an undefined increasing rate of neurodegenerative disorders in future decades. Since heat stress is known to have a degenerative effects on neurons and, conversely, cold conditions have protective effect on these cells, we hypothesize that persistent heat stress forced by global warming might play a crucial role in increasing neurodegenerative disorders.

There's gonna be a heat wave, ...a tropical heat wave

 

[Trakar]

Human-driven carbon release rate unprecedented in past 66 million years

http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=137908

...New research published today in the journal Nature Geoscience by geoscientist Richard Zeebe of the University of Hawai'i at Manoa and colleagues looks at changes in Earth's temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) since the end of the age of the dinosaurs. The evidence is in sediment cores retrieved from beneath the seafloor by geologists working aboard the ocean drillship JOIDES Resolution.

"In studying one of the most dramatic episodes of global change since the dinosaurs, the researchers show that we are currently in uncharted territory in the rate carbon is being released into the atmosphere and oceans," said Candace Major, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Ocean Sciences, which funded the research.

The findings suggest that humans are responsible for releasing carbon about 10 times faster than during any time in the past 66 million years...

The new method allowed them to extract rates of change from a sediment record.

Applied to the PETM, they calculated how fast the carbon was released, how fast Earth's surface warmed, and what constrained the time scale of the onset, which was across 4,000 years.

The rate of carbon release during the PETM was much smaller than the current input of carbon to the atmosphere from human activities.

Carbon release rates from human sources reached a record high in 2014 of about 37 billion metric tons of CO2. The researchers estimated that the maximum sustained carbon release rate during the PETM was less than four billion metric tons of CO2 per year -- about one-tenth the current rate.

"Because our carbon release rate is unprecedented over such a long time period in Earth's history, it also means that we have effectively entered a 'no-analogue' state," said Zeebe. "This represents a big challenge for projecting future climate change because we have no good comparison from the past."

Whereas large climate transitions in the past may have been relatively smooth, there is no guarantee for the future, the scientists said. The climate system is non-linear, which means that its response to inputs, such as CO2 emissions, is a complex process involving multiple components.

"If you kick a system very fast, it usually responds differently than if you nudge it slowly but steadily," Zeebe said. "It is likely that future disruptions of ecosystems will exceed the relatively limited extinctions observed at the PETM."

The PETM suggests that the consequences of our massive burning of fossil fuels will have much longer-lasting effects, said Zeebe.

"Everyone is focused on what happens by 2100, but that's only two generations from today," he said. "It's very clear that over a longer time scale there will be much bigger changes."...

All of which is in line with the vast majority of paleoclimate understandings.

 

[Fair Witness]

Degree of Precision in Paleoclimate Data

Does anyone know the degree of precision of the paleoclimate data with respect to specific years in history? For example, is it generally accurate to the year, decade, century, eon, etc? I recognize that depending on the proxy data being used, that the date accuracy can be more or less precise and more likely to be precise in modern times when the year of specific events-- such as volcanoes-- are known, so, I'm not expecting one degree of precision that applies across the paleoclimate record. I'm looking for what is used as the general rule of thumb such as "accurate to the decade in the last few eons, but only accurate to the century or greater going further back".

Also, is there a recognized margin of error? (for example, +/- 0.1 degrees centigrade). And, again, that margin of error might increase depending on the proxy data, so I'm just looking for what is used as the general rule of thumb.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

Does anyone know the degree of precision of the paleoclimate data with respect to specific years in history? For example, is it generally accurate to the year, decade, century, eon, etc?

It depends on the proxy. Tree rings, shallow ice cores, coral and sediments have an annual cycle and so are 'accurate' to the year. Deep ice cores and boreholes are dated by depth (whose relationship to years is not 'precise'). Other proxies such as pollen grains may be dated by their proximity to something else which has a known age.

But 'precision' or 'accuracy' is not the only reason to average data over a longer period. Even if insanely accurate, Year-to-year temperature variations are not usually interesting. If you are looking at eons, you probably don't want to know what the exact temperature was in one particular year.

that margin of error might increase depending on the proxy data, so I'm just looking for what is used as the general rule of thumb.

Different proxies have different margins of error. Even different datasets of the same proxy have different margins of error. So what do you think? There is no 'general rule of thumb' for picking an error margin - each one is what it is.

Note: 'Precision' is how finely an instrument can make a measurement. 'Accuracy' is how close the measurement is to reality. You could use a ruler and micrometer to measure the length of an ice core with a precision of +-0.001mm, but that doesn't mean your measurement is that accurate.

 

[Warmer1]

Does anyone know the degree of precision of the paleoclimate data with respect to specific years in history?

You may start here to look into the reconstructions to get a sense of the various methods used and accuracy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_...0_years#CITEREFOverpeckHughenHardyBradley1997

"Quantitative reconstructions have consistently shown earlier temperatures below the temperature levels reached in the late 20th century. This pattern as seen in Mann, Bradley & Hughes 1999 was dubbed the hockey stick graph, and as of 2010 this broad conclusion was supported by more than two dozen reconstructions, using various statistical methods and combinations of proxy records, with variations in how flat the pre-20th century "shaft" appears."

The list of reconstructions includes

-List of reconstructions in order of publication
-Cited in IPCC TAR, IPCC AR4, AR5
- and Further reconstructions

Also mentioned in the above list

Most Comprehensive Paleoclimate Reconstruction Confirms Hockey Stick

"78 researchers from 24 countries, together with many other colleagues, worked for seven years in the PAGES 2k project on the new climate reconstruction."

http://climatestate.com/2013/07/08/...climate-reconstruction-confirms-hockey-stick/

 

[Reality Check]

Well then Reality Check, you shouldn't be getting so upset about it.

I am not upset, logger. If you want to cite obvious climate change deniers that is your business. My business is to record just how deluded or paranoid or lying the sources are. So far you have used Steven Goddard:

• 10 March 2016 logger: Steven Goddard joined two different sets of radiosonde data to create the illusion of "NOAA Radiosonde Data Shows No Warming For 58 Years" !
• 24 March 2016 logger: The climate change denial at "Who Is Steven Goddard?"
• 24 March 2016 logger: 5 more Goddard articles full of ignorance, paranoia and lies about climate.

 

[Reality Check]

It looks like Volcanoes may be the wild card with your opinion. The Earth does seem to handle those quite well.

Well Duh, logger: volcanoes and increases in CO2 are well handled by the Earth changing its temperature !
We see that in the records of global surface temperatures over the last 100 years or so - a increase in temperatures consistent with an increase in CO2 + occasional dips corresponding to large eruptions.

 

[Reality Check]

I love how you cannot resist the personal attacks, it is a huge reason you're losing public opinion, and of course people don't want to live in tents.

logger, public opinion will not stop the world from warming !
There is no personal attack.
You have displayed symptoms of "someone drowning in Koch Koolaid" by citing an obvious climate change denier.
You have displayed little knowledge of climate science, e.g. even the basic fact of the greenhouse effect seems to have escaped you.
You have not replied to posted containing climate science with any science.

The reality is that we will have to accept the costs of emitting CO2 while we implement global warming mitigation. These costs will not be small, e.g. it is likely that we will lose the Great Barrier Reef, extreme weather events will increase in frequency, kill people and cost billions of dollars, etc.
This is according to the climate science that you are either ignorant about or in denial of.

 

[Reality Check]

So what, warmer is better.

So nations drowned by rising sea levels is better than what, logger?
Climate myth #3 - its not bad. Positives and negatives of global warming

The consequences of climate change become increasingly bad after each additional degree of warming, with the consequences of 2°C being quite damaging and the consequences of 4°C being potentially catastrophic.

Current evidence is that we will hit at least 2°C.

 

[Garrette]

Question for the experts here since my Googling is failing. I am in a discussion with an acquaintance who is an AGW denier. He linked to this article about finding the bodies of WWI soldiers as glaciers retreat. He is claiming that the bodies are being found where they died during WWI when there was less CO2, and since there was less CO2 but the glaciers were the same, smaller, size that they have now receded back to, it means that CO2 isn't an issue.

I can speculate on some rebuttals but would rather have the input of those better informed. Help, please?

 

[macdoc]

Current evidence is that we will hit at least 2°C.

and more likely 3-4 C.
Exxon thinks more is inevitable...

ExxonMobil Warns of ‘Catastrophic’ 9°F to 12°F Global Warming Without Government Action

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/12/07/3728921/exxonmobil-warns-catastrophic-global-warming/

••••
Fair Witness...

This gives a decent visual of "some" of the various proxies

with quite a variation even in century long chunks of time but the overall trend is clear and AFAIK there are now 78 fields of inquiry supporting the trend.

It's getting warmer quickly
We're responsible.

••

Garrette - don't even bother ...the article implies nothing ...just an observation that the glaciers began to shrink significantly since 2004 revealing the bodies.
Glaciers are a very dynamic and varying set of beasts....some are growing even now as there is more moisture in the air.

Just point him to this and move on.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/start-here/

Anyone in denial of AGW at this point is delusional and nothing you say is ever likely to change them.