Scientists wrong on Greenhouse Warming, Again.

[Dava]

1) Buy a more efficient car. Over 20% of the US's carbon emissions come from light to medium vehicles (Jackson and Schlessinger, PNAS [2004]) with an average fuel economy of under 20 mpg (EPA [2006]). An average European car does about 35 mpg, a Toyota Prius gets 55 mpg.

2) Use low energy lighting. About the only place in my house I want the light to come on in an instant is in the john; everywhere else I could live with 30 seconds of half light while a compact fluorescent tube warms up. That's an 11W bulb for every 60, an 18W for every 100, multiplied by a trillion hours of bulb use in the US each year.

3a) Stick a solar panel on your roof. No seriously, the acreage of land that sits facing the sun all day on the tops of buildings is mind-bending. Just one average-sized photovoltaic panel on your roof would probably provide at least half the electricity needed to run your A/C. Multiplied by the (around) 50 million individual homes, that's a lot of carbon that isn't being emitted.

3b) Paint your roof white and halve the amount of work your A/C has to do.

4) Recycle metal. Massive amounts of petrol are saved by recycling metal, which benefits both the environment and industry. And, for the conservatives in the audience, metal recycling is inherently profitable and requires no government subsidies to continue.

 

[Pidge]

On the solar panel front - put up a solar water heater panel. That saves a whopping amount of electrical energy.

 

[Dark Jaguar]

All good ideas, but there's practicality to consider. A lot of people live in apartments, and modifying the roofs of those is simply not an option. A lot of people can't afford to buy a new car just like that, even if it will save them money in the long run, paying for it in the short run is still too expensive.

Here's something that must be remembered. Payoff is meaningless if you can't afford initial investment.

That said, many people can afford it and it would be advisable for them to do such things.

One other thing: I've been meaning to switch to longer lasting easy on the energy bulbs myself, but I'll only cut back to a certain point. If it takes 30 seconds to fully start up, it's an annoyance . Fortunatly, I've seen decent ones that start up nearly as quickly as normal light bulbs so it's not like it's an all or nothing proposal here.

 

[Bruce]

1) Buy a more efficient car. Over 20% of the US's carbon emissions come from light to medium vehicles (Jackson and Schlessinger, PNAS [2004]) with an average fuel economy of under 20 mpg (EPA [2006]). An average European car does about 35 mpg, a Toyota Prius gets 55 mpg.

2) Use low energy lighting. About the only place in my house I want the light to come on in an instant is in the john; everywhere else I could live with 30 seconds of half light while a compact fluorescent tube warms up. That's an 11W bulb for every 60, an 18W for every 100, multiplied by a trillion hours of bulb use in the US each year.

3a) Stick a solar panel on your roof. No seriously, the acreage of land that sits facing the sun all day on the tops of buildings is mind-bending. Just one average-sized photovoltaic panel on your roof would probably provide at least half the electricity needed to run your A/C. Multiplied by the (around) 50 million individual homes, that's a lot of carbon that isn't being emitted.

3b) Paint your roof white and halve the amount of work your A/C has to do.

1) If you want to feel good about yourself, go ahead and buy a more efficient car. It may slow the rate of total world carbon dioxide emissions by an infinitismally small fraction of a percent, but it will not remove the carbon dioxide that is already in the atmosphere and causing the glaciers to melt, weather to become more severe, and sea levels to rise. Yes, now that you own a Hybrid, you can put the blame for the doom of the earth squarely on everyone else.

2) See 1)

3 a and b) See 1)

4 (Dava)) Where on earth do you get the idea that recycling metal saves on petrol? To recycle the metal, you have to melt it down. Melting metal requires energy, which comes mostly from power plants that burn coal. How is melting metal any more energy efficient than smelting ore?

Despite all these cute little energy saving tips, there is still the matter of the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere being considerably higher than it has been in eons. Now you can go plant a tree if you want to feel better about yourself and say its the Republicans' fault that we're all doomed, but the only way to remove all that carbon dioxide from the atmosphere would be to plant a significant number of carbon dioxide absorbing vegetation.

By the calculations that I've just pulled from my rectum, we would need to increase the vegetation on the planet to match that of the early Paleozoic era, and it would take approximately 400 million years to reduce the atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to where they were before the Republicans ruined the planet.

We could do all that, or we could just move to a higher elevation, plan higher insurance costs into the yearly budget, buy a boat, plant some crops on the new soil that has been exposed in Greenland, and get used to the fact that the world is changing wether its our fault or not.

 

[a_unique_person]

1)

We could do all that, or we could just move to a higher elevation, plan higher insurance costs into the yearly budget, buy a boat, plant some crops on the new soil that has been exposed in Greenland, and get used to the fact that the world is changing wether its our fault or not.

It's too hard too stop it, but it's surprisingly easy to cope with it?

 

[DeviousB]

All good ideas, but there's practicality to consider. A lot of people live in apartments, and modifying the roofs of those is simply not an option.

50 million (of the 85 million total) homes are single unit housing (i.e. individual homes), according to HUD's 2001 RFS.

A lot of people can't afford to buy a new car just like that, even if it will save them money in the long run, paying for it in the short run is still too expensive.

Tax breaks for greener cars. Republicans like cutting taxes, democrats like greener cars, and voters like paying less tax. Everybody wins!

Apart from a lot of single point generalizing, it's the "we can't do anything" whines that really get up my nose. Nothing I suggested needs fancy new technology, the building of a vast infrastructure or anything but the mildest change in behaviour.

Just one of them, universally applied, would have allowed the US to meet what would have been required of it under Kyoto.

 

[a_unique_person]

We could do all that, or we could just move to a higher elevation, plan higher insurance costs into the yearly budget, buy a boat, plant some crops on the new soil that has been exposed in Greenland, and get used to the fact that the world is changing wether its our fault or not.

Also note: ice core investigations show that for 800.000 years, this is the highest concentration, that is, natural variations will now be amplified by AGW. Also, natural variations in carbon dioxide only happen at 1/100th the rate that manmade carbon is increasing. That is, the rapidity of man made change is going to make change that much more traumatic and harder to adapt to.

 

[DeviousB]

1) If you want to feel good about yourself, go ahead and buy a more efficient car. It may slow the rate of total world carbon dioxide emissions by an infinitismally small fraction of a percent, but it will not remove the carbon dioxide that is already in the atmosphere and causing the glaciers to melt, weather to become more severe, and sea levels to rise. Yes, now that you own a Hybrid, you can put the blame for the doom of the earth squarely on everyone else.

The US puts out about 2M tons of carbon emissions per year (one quarter of the world's total), one fifth of that comes from vehicles, and two fifths of that is due primarily to unecessarily poor engine efficiency. That's one whole percent of the world's output. Hardly 'infinitessimally small'!

Not being able to do everything is hardly a good argument to do nothing. Anything we do to reduce the rate of increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is a positive step.

By the calculations that I've just pulled from my rectum, we would need to increase the vegetation on the planet to match that of the early Paleozoic era, and it would take approximately 400 million years to reduce the atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to where they were before the Republicans ruined the planet.

So when your bath gets close to overflowing do you start bailing, or turn off the faucet? Personally, I would guess that your ass is wrong, and there's no way we could sequester atmospheric carbon fast enough to outstrip the rate at which we are pumping it up there.

 

[Bruce]

The US puts out about 2M tons of carbon emissions per year

Give me the total volume of the earth's atmosphere AND the total volume of carbon dioxide that is removed from the atmosphere by vegetation and other sources, and maybe your figure will actually mean something.

 

[Bruce]

Not being able to do everything is hardly a good argument to do nothing.

Who says we should do nothing? I gave some realistic suggestions in my last paragraph on things to do.

You have not yet provided evidence that your suggested preventative measures will have a measurable impact on global warming. Without providing the total volume of atmosphere, 2M tons of carbon sounds like a lot, but is it?

Let's say a comet is heading toward earth and someone suggests that everyone on the planet gather together and each hold an electric fan up to the sky to slow the comet's descent. Is that a reasonable suggestion? I mean, wow. Think about the wind power generaged by 6 billion fans! Surely that will at least slow the comet down a little bit? Or would it be more reasonable to accept the fact that the comet is going to smack into our planet no matter what and focus on reactionary plans rather than pie in the sky preventative plans?

You have no measure of the projected impact of your suggestions, nor do you have any way to verify that global industrial/commerical emissions of greenhouse gases is the guilty source of global warming and not one of the many possible other natural sources.

Someone suggested behavioral changes? Hmmm. Christians are always suggesting behavioral changes to prevent the possibility of God sending you to hell, though they have no evidence that these behavioral changes will please God, nor do they have evidence that God or hell even exists, but one thing is for sure: money is going to end up on someone's collection plate that wasn't there before. Hmmm. I might call that a straw man if there weren't such a direct correlary.

 

[DeviousB]

Give me the total volume of the earth's atmosphere AND the total volume of carbon dioxide that is removed from the atmosphere by vegetation and other sources, and maybe your figure will actually mean something.

Well the volume of the Earth's atmosphere isn't so clear cut, as it depends where you want to draw the line and say "the atmosphere ends here". But to the mesopause the volume is approx. 44 billion cubic km.

The total amount of anthropogenic carbon removed from the atmosphere by various sinks (not sources) is estimated to be about 4-5 billion tons per year. I.e. just over half.

So a 50% cut in emissions would mean that the sink rate would finally overcome the source rate and anthropogenic greenhouse gases would start to decline. A 40% cut would roughly strike a balance; although the ocean lag would mean that many of the consequences predicted by climate scientists would still occur, we'd have at least stopped marching deeper into the minefield. A 30% cut can be achieved now, without cutting edge tech, super scientific discoveries or drastic changes in lifestyle.

Apparently, though, when marching into a minefield some people think the best course of action is to make sure their medical insurance is paid up and they've put a downpayment on a wheelchair.

 

[Bruce]

I don't know for certain that buying a Hybrid will have any impact on global warming, but I do know for certain that those who buy a Hybrid because they think they are saving the planet have a smug sense of superiority over soccer moms and people like me who can't afford Hybrids.

South Park reference:
"Hey, you're driving a Hybrid. Good for you!" (closes eyes and smiles)
(closes eyes and smiles)"Thanks. I bought it because I actually CARE about the environment, unlike some people."

 

[Bruce]

Apparently, though, when marching into a minefield some people think the best course of action is to make sure their medical insurance is paid up and they've put a downpayment on a wheelchair.

That might be a good comparison to the global warming issue if you had a measure of how big the mine field is, and a reasonable estimate of how many mines are in that field.

If your field is the size of Australia, and the estimate is that there might be one mine in the field, is it still reasonable for every citizen to walk around with a mine detector just in case?

 

[DeviousB]

That might be a good comparison to the global warming issue if you had a measure of how big the mine field is, and a reasonable estimate of how many mines are in that field.

We do. It is available from the IPCC web-site.

 

[kevin]

The people at the real climate website talk about the recent report showing a lowering of ocean warming here:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/08/ocean-heat-content-latest-numbers/

Basically they say: we need to check the data (always a good skeptical stance), could be dominated by local weather affects (same point used during increased hurricanes last year), it's contradicted by continuing sea level rise (although that could be explained if ice caps are melting faster than predictions).

They then assume the report is accurate and discuss possible reasons including ocean current changes, or something allowing more heat to be transferred back to the atmosphere or space.

 

[Bruce]

The total amount of anthropogenic carbon removed from the atmosphere by various sinks (not sources) is estimated to be about 4-5 billion tons per year. I.e. just over half.

Ok, so let's plug in your numbers. That's 2 millions tons per year out of 5 billion tons per year, so we are adding roughly 0.04% load on top of what the carbon sinks are currently handling.

What would be a resonable reduction in carbon emission? Dropping it to 0 would be impossible unless you want us all to stop breathing. I doubt even if everyone following your behavior suggestions that we could drop the carbon emissions down to under 1.5 million tons per year, so let's use that figure.

So we have a 25% reduction in carbon emissions. That puts us at 1.5 million tons per year, or 0.03% on top of what the carbon sinks are currently handling.

Do you really think a 0.01% decrease in the current carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere is going to stop global warming?

 

[DeviousB]

You have not yet provided evidence that your suggested preventative measures will have a measurable impact on global warming. Without providing the total volume of atmosphere, 2M tons of carbon sounds like a lot, but is it?

Yes, it is (or would be if I had not mistakenly typed 2M tons when I meant 2B tons). The scientific consensus is that approximately 7B tons of carbon enters the atmosphere each year from anthropogenic sources, and a similar amount from natural ones. The sinkage rate is estimated at 10.5B tons/year, resulting in a net annual emission of 3.5B tons/year.

Let's say a comet is heading toward earth and someone suggests that everyone on the planet gather together and each hold an electric fan up to the sky to slow the comet's descent. Is that a reasonable suggestion? I mean, wow. Think about the wind power generaged by 6 billion fans! Surely that will at least slow the comet down a little bit? Or would it be more reasonable to accept the fact that the comet is going to smack into our planet no matter what and focus on reactionary plans rather than pie in the sky preventative plans?

Well we usually say that prevention is better than a cure. But as your example shows, sometimes prevention just isn't possible and we should be devoting our efforts to finding the best cure going. Sure, I'll buy that for a dollar. Only...

Where's your evidence?

Come to think of it, have you provided a single fact that you haven't (by your own admission) pulled out of your rectum.

You have no measure of the projected impact of your suggestions, nor do you have any way to verify that global industrial/commerical emissions of greenhouse gases is the guilty source of global warming and not one of the many possible other natural sources.

IPCC.

Someone suggested behavioral changes?

Yes. It was you.

Apparently, if we reforest the surface of the world then all go and live in our private little Waldens on the hilltops everything can be just fine. Unless you happen to be Grizzly Adams, that's a pretty big change in behaviour.

There is plenty of legitimate, scientific debate on climate change, its magnitude, its rate, the proportion of it that is anthropogenic, its consequences, what we can/might do about it. But the scientific consensus is clear, (a) confidence in the ability of these models to provide useful projections of future climate has improved due to their demonstrated performance on a range of space and time-scales, and (b)the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate (IPCC [2001]).

The woo-woo arguments about 'missing links' between CO2 and warming, or man and CO2 levels have long since been settled.

 

[DeviousB]

Ok, so let's plug in your numbers. That's 2 millions tons per year out of 5 billion tons per year, so we are adding roughly 0.04% load on top of what the carbon sinks are currently handling.

Don't skim read. The 4-5 billion was said to be about half the world output (i.e. 8-9 billion), yet the 2 million US contribution was claimed to be a quarter of the world output. Ergo, either the billion or the million is a mistake. Two seconds on google could have told you which (what, you're not even checking my figures?).

Yup, the 2M should have been 2B. In fact I typed 2N, (half way between B and M), noticed the mistake in preview and corrected it the wrong way.

Besides using the wrong number to start with (my bad!), I think you also conflated US output with world output, so the rest of the calculation was as confusing as hell. For the record, current estimates are that total carbon emission for all sources contributes 3.5 billion tons more carbon to the atmosphere each year that the total amont removed by all carbon sinks. Roughly 7 billion tons of anthropogenic carbon is emitted each year, forming approximately half all carbon emissions. So a 25% reduction in US carbon emission (0.5 billion tons) is a 7% reduction in total anthropogenic carbon emission, a 3.5% reduction is carbon emission from all sources, and a 14% reduction in the net contribution of carbon to the atmosphere.

 

[DeviousB]

Do you really think a 0.01% decrease in the current carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere is going to stop global warming?

Actually, if we neglect ocean lag, albedo effects and other greenhouse gasses, a 0.01% decrease in the CO2 level will stop global warming.

A 0.01% decrease in the rate of increase of CO2 won't stop global warming, no. Neither will a 14% decrease, or a 90% decrease, or a 99% decrease. As long as the CO2 concentration rises, the Earth will continue to warm. Include ocean lag and it will continue to warm even after CO2 levels begin to fall, include albedo changes (or other changes in Earth's radiative charactistics like sulphur-dioxide seeding, giant space toupes, etc.) and you have to run the calculations again to see the outcome, ditto including the rest of the 'greenhouse gang'.

It's not an easy problem, but fortunately 1000s of scientists the world over are working on it. They recommend reducing our CO2 emissions by 60-70%.

 

[Ziggurat]

It's not an easy problem, but fortunately 1000s of scientists the world over are working on it. They recommend reducing our CO2 emissions by 60-70%.

What would be required to actually do this, and what would be the cost? That's something climate scientists aren't actually well positioned to answer. But let me just point out one thing: the cost wouldn't just be in dollars, it would be in lives too. Not only is it difficult to figure out exactly what's happening with global warming, it's much more difficult to figure out what the propper response really is.