Global Warming explained - "inconvenient" or otherwise!

[Govind]

WHY...my big questions is...."WHY is it difficult to understand....that it is indeed us humans who have accelerated the global warming....and still contributing to it?"

 

One of the threads asked for a scientific opinion..so being a budding environmental scientist...let me just try explaining.

 

There are several ways in which we humans have (and are still) contributing to the global climate change (a.k.a global warming).

 

But...lemme just explain one...

 

Now I hope all here accept the fact that Carbon...in most of its form..is a greenhouse gas...and that the more it is in the atmosphere...greater will be the warming.

 

Nature has been, over a period of several centuries...been trapping the atmospheric CO2 and has put it...deep under the earth's crust! This, it has been doing for ages....in the form of green plants...that nature stores in the earth's crust......and decreases the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere and of the environment.

 

Now...man, in the last few years...has discovered this dumped away CO2.....found their use as "fossil fuels"...and has been burning it like hell....in the process....returning all of the CO2 back to the atmoshphere.

 

Clearly...man is undoing nature's work of sequestring away Carbon......which is now entering back into the environment at a HUGE rate......and thus the accelerated Global Warming.

 

Now..which part of this did not make sense to anyone...plz point out.

 

Also..this is just one of the ways in which human interference is accelerating the warming.

[KLB]

Someone brought to my attention an article at Telegraph.co.uk that tried to put the blame for global warming onto changes in the sun and was suggesting that as the sun was a significant culprit we didn't need to do anything about global warming. When one actually read into the article, it admits that humans are partially responsible for global warming, but down plays our role.

 

My general contention is that who cares how responsible we are, we are at least partially responsible AND we can do something about our part of global warming.

 

Forget all the warm and fuzzy save the polar bear stuff; there is a much bigger reason why we should be concerned about slowing global warming regardless of the cause. Our own self preservation depends upon it. Humans society depends upon a stable climate. Global warming means changes in weather patterns, which in turn means a redistribution of life sustaining precipitation. This will result in droughts in traditionally arable places and excessive rains in other areas. Furthermore, raising global temperatures will cause the disappearance of glaciers that provide critical fresh water supplies to river systems that humans depend upon. Melting polar caps will raise ocean levels flooding low laying lands where millions of people live. In short hundreds of millions of people will be displaced because of the loss of land, a lack of water and the failure of crops that can not grown in the changed climates.

 

Even IF humans aren't the primary cause of global warming, we need to stop it for our own self preservation. If we do not do everything we can to slow or stop global warming, planet earth could become a less hospitable place for humans way too fast for human society to adapt.

[bascule]

Your description is an adequate summarization of man's impact carbon cycle and the effects of releasing sequestered carbon back into the atmosphere en masse.

[jackson33]

if CO2 is the primary problem, then at any given time .03 to .046% of the total atmosphere is your point. of this man contributes 5% of this total.

if your a tree or any form of plant life, then yes, you should expect a little more surplus if you expect the massive forest and agriculture farms to be maintained.

[KLB]

Jackson33, would you please restate your comment. I don't understand what you are trying to say.

[Sisyphus]

I think he's making the obviously fallacious argument that since CO2 is already part of the atmosphere, adding more of it can't possibly hurt. Combined with the "plants need it, so there's no such thing as too much." Just a couple of non-sequitors, really.

[jackson33]

Jackson33, would you please restate your comment. I don't understand what you are trying to say.

 

there is no reason to feel CO2, as produced by mankind, is a problem. the total CO2 in all the atmosphere that man produces is apx. .0023 of all there is at any given point. all animal life is dwarfed by plant life which requires CO2 and the real victim of a potential over reaction. there is no point, just some facts which i rarely see in any of these discussions. keep in mind as a world society, we produce the food, which all humans require. this has increased in total growths for this one sole purpose, several hundred %, since 1900.

[insane_alien]

well, the atmosphere is a chaotic system. even the smallest changes can have massive reprocussions.

 

 

a 5% difference in a certain value can cause convergent(stable) systems to become divergent(unstable) and thats in relatively simple scenarios like a chemical plant.

[KLB]

all animal life is dwarfed by plant life which requires CO2 and the real victim of a potential over reaction.

Okay, have you been spending time reading "studies" produced by the Greening Earth Society"?

 

As has been pointed out, minuet changes in a large and complex system can have profound effects on said system.

 

Now it is known beyond any shadow of a doubt that CO2 along with methane and other gases are greenhouse gases and that the more abundant these gases are in the atmosphere the more energy that is trapped in our climate system and the warmer our world becomes. In climate systems like the sub-arctic regions a 1/2 degree shift in average annual temperatures is enough to shift a mostly frozen discontinuous permafrost zone into a permafrost free zone. In turn the organic material that had been trapped in frozen peat moss type conditions for hundreds of thousands of years will begin to rapidly decompose releasing vast quantities of CO2 and methane into the environment compounding the global warming situation.

 

Think of man's contribution of CO2 to the atmosphere as a wrist cracking a bull whip. A small movement of the wrist causes a rapid movement of the knot at the end of the whip. The exact same thing is happening here. Our contribution of fossil CO2 (CO2 from carbon that had been sequestered for millions of years as fossil fuels) is flicking the wrist, that is raising temperatures in hypersensitive zones just enough to cause those zones to start to dump billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which will in turn speed up global warming.

 

The earth is warming, there is no question about that, how much man is responsible people are still debating. HOWEVER, I will contend that how much man is responsible is irrelevant. This warming WILL and IS changing weather patterns and IS raising sea levels. I have seen several articles on different news programs about how quickly how quickly some South Pacific Island nations are shrinking due to the fact they are barely above sea level. As weather patterns change, areas that historically received sufficient precipitation so support agriculture will suffer significant long term droughts, which will cause large scale crop failures and famines. As glaciers melt and disappear because of global warming the river systems they feed will cease to supply enough water for the human populations that depend upon those rivers.

 

Raising ocean levels of even a couple of feet will displace millions of people. Failed crops will cause mass starvation creating millions more environmental refugees. Insufficient water flow in rivers will also cause the failure of crops that feed millions. Combine these together and we could see phenomenal pressures upon societies and governments, which would result in wars over arable land and water resources and the deaths of hundreds of millions of people.

 

Since global warming is impart or whole caused by the increase of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and since Man is contributing vast quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, this is the one part of the global warming issue that we can address. Maybe we can't directly stop melting permafrost from releasing vast quantities of greenhouse gases, but we can reduce and eliminate the greenhouse gases that we release. In time as technological solutions become available, we may also be able to "scrub" the atmosphere of greenhouse gases and sequester these gases in the earth permanently (or at least until we need to release them generations from now to offset some global cooling event).

 

Our purpose for trying to stop global warming isn't because we want to save the polar bears, we need to do it to save ourselves and our civilizations. It just happens that animals like the polar bears are good indicators as to how good of a job we are doing of protecting the environment so that this planet remains hospitable for humans.

 

If this planet is to remain hospitable to humans we must do what we can now to reduce our impact on it. This means reducing our emission of CO2 as much as possible while we also work on ways to sequester sufficient amounts of CO2 such that we can stop or reverse global warming regardless of the "true" source of said CO2.

[jackson33]

well, the atmosphere is a chaotic system. even the smallest changes can have massive reprocussions.

 

a 5% difference in a certain value can cause convergent(stable) systems to become divergent(unstable) and thats in relatively simple scenarios like a chemical plant.

 

yes, i agree, a 5% increase or decrease, would have catastrophic effects. the problem is, the total man made CO2 (.0023) and natures (.045) is less than that 5%. we can't control nature, so why not let nature do its thing and not give additional problems. were not going to change a cycle, no matter what we do. ironically in my reverse argument, plant life would die off as levels of CO2 decrease, causing additional CO2...

[jackson33]

Okay, have you been spending time reading "studies" produced by the Greening Earth Society"?

 

REPLY;

no KBL, these are my opinions based on what i have seen and studied for a very long time. first in Global Cooling, now Warming. i will however, look up GES, and look for new arguments....thx

 

As has been pointed out, minuet changes in a large and complex system can have profound effects on said system.

 

REPLY; as i have said, i agree with this premise to a degree. you mention several elements which are barely traces and CO2 which is negligible, but required by the very source of our oxygen.

 

Now it is known beyond any shadow of a doubt that CO2 along with methane and other gases are greenhouse gases and that the more abundant these gases are in the atmosphere the more energy that is trapped in our climate system and the warmer our world becomes. In climate systems like the sub-arctic regions a 1/2 degree shift in average annual temperatures is enough to shift a mostly frozen discontinuous permafrost zone into a permafrost free zone. In turn the organic material that had been trapped in frozen peat moss type conditions for hundreds of thousands of years will begin to rapidly decompose releasing vast quantities of CO2 and methane into the environment compounding the global warming situation.

 

REPLY; if what you fear is probable, then mans total efforts will change nothing. i am not sure about this frozen peat moss idea. if you feel the total pounds of this item equals the death of all life hundreds of square miles around Mt. St. Helen's in a matter of minutes with all the other happenings then i suggest were already doomed. but it would need to be at least ten times in quantity to cause a major problem.

 

Think of man's contribution of CO2 to the atmosphere as a wrist cracking a bull whip. A small movement of the wrist causes a rapid movement of the knot at the end of the whip. The exact same thing is happening here. Our contribution of fossil CO2 (CO2 from carbon that had been sequestered for millions of years as fossil fuels) is flicking the wrist, that is raising temperatures in hypersensitive zones just enough to cause those zones to start to dump billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which will in turn speed up global warming.

 

REPLY; one rain storm clears more atmosphere, than all mankind can create in a day or so. think we have somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 per day world wide, and many try to blame these storm on GW. just as foolish IMO, since they also reflect the heat they claim is held. if your claiming the said

.0023 of mans efforts are billions of tons, please give an estimate of the tonnage its being dumped into, which is 77%Nitrogen and 22%oxygen.

 

The earth is warming, there is no question about that, how much man is responsible people are still debating. HOWEVER, I will contend that how much man is responsible is irrelevant. This warming WILL and IS changing weather patterns and IS raising sea levels. I have seen several articles on different news programs about how quickly how quickly some South Pacific Island nations are shrinking due to the fact they are barely above sea level. As weather patterns change, areas that historically received sufficient precipitation so support agriculture will suffer significant long term droughts, which will cause large scale crop failures and famines. As glaciers melt and disappear because of global warming the river systems they feed will cease to supply enough water for the human populations that depend upon those rivers.

 

REPLY: you have mentioned nothing that has not happened before or WILL happen again. we can slow or reduce some effects, but this is from the technology you seem to dislike. that moss you mentioned, was not frozen at some point back. my car or way of life wasn't around so what cause that...

 

Raising ocean levels of even a couple of feet will displace millions of people. Failed crops will cause mass starvation creating millions more environmental refugees. Insufficient water flow in rivers will also cause the failure of crops that feed millions. Combine these together and we could see phenomenal pressures upon societies and governments, which would result in wars over arable land and water resources and the deaths of hundreds of millions of people.

 

Since global warming is impart or whole caused by the increase of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and since Man is contributing vast quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, this is the one part of the global warming issue that we can address. Maybe we can't directly stop melting permafrost from releasing vast quantities of greenhouse gases, but we can reduce and eliminate the greenhouse gases that we release. In time as technological solutions become available, we may also be able to "scrub" the atmosphere of greenhouse gases and sequester these gases in the earth permanently (or at least until we need to release them generations from now to offset some global cooling event).

REPLY; this scares me; trying to control nature will never be possible. in time we may alter some weather patterns or cause rain, but all that goes on to make up that 95% of bad things, you think, will never be controlled. just what or who do you suggest makes the decisions for any actions, Al Gore???

 

Our purpose for trying to stop global warming isn't because we want to save the polar bears, we need to do it to save ourselves and our civilizations. It just happens that animals like the polar bears are good indicators as to how good of a job we are doing of protecting the environment so that this planet remains hospitable for humans.

 

REPLY: seems to me Polar Bears are in a self destructive mode anyway. they won't migrate south or anyplace, wait around for food or eat there young. its a wonder they have doubled in 50 years. i have no sympathy for the cute Panda's either. certainly no animal is so dumb that a food must be one item.

saving ourselves from what? we have been around awhile and for much of time were not a reasoning species. we live in mean temperatures from -30 to well over 100 and in very dry climate or wet. we may die off some from a virus or a solar flare, even a meteor. we may not be able to live near the ocean or on an island or in death valley but nothing in cycle changes will effect the human race for thousands of years.

 

REPLY FOR BELOW...we have reduced CO2 emissions. about 75% for the average car. trucks about 50% and most industry emits nothing compared to the 40's, 50's and 60's. we even cleaned up the roadways and a thousand other things. in most cases w/o being told what to do. efficiency levels are also much better and increasing yearly. if i understood, what was suitable for you i could list a place like that in each of the 1k years previous periods, or guess where that condition will be in several future period. people will adjust or move, simple as that. be a panda or polar bear and just sit there is not an answer...

 

If this planet is to remain hospitable to humans we must do what we can now to reduce our impact on it. This means reducing our emission of CO2 as much as possible while we also work on ways to sequester sufficient amounts of CO2 such that we can stop or reverse global warming regardless of the "true" source of said CO2.

 

...................

[KLB]

Jackson33,

 

If you wrap the individual comments you want to quote in the "quote" tags you see when you quote a message, it becomes much easier to read. For instance:

Bla bla bla bla.....

yada yada yada

[1veedo]

yes, i agree, a 5% increase or decrease, would have catastrophic effects. the problem is, the total man made CO2 (.0023) and natures (.045) is less than that 5%. we can't control nature, so why not let nature do its thing and not give additional problems. were not going to change a cycle, no matter what we do. ironically in my reverse argument, plant life would die off as levels of CO2 decrease, causing additional CO2...

This is factually not true. Right around 99% of the total increase of CO2 in the atmosphere sense 1750 has been caused by human activities. It's an increase of at least 79ppm from 300ppm (I'm not sure how high the running average for 1750 was, but the natural variation of CO2 in the atmosphere is between 300 and 180ppm) which is a total percentage of 20.844 to 52.507 (and I would wager it's closer to 50% because CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has been decreasing for roughly 8 thousand years).

 

But regardless of the actual percentage of CO2 that we've contributed, human activities are actually causing over 90% of the total increase in temperature. Humans are also responsible for 100% of the total increase in CO2 above the 650,000 year natural range for CO2. (Climate Change 2007: The Scientific Basis)

 

btw what's up w/ pst 11 where you're just quoting KLB's entire post?

[KLB]

REPLY; if what you fear is probable, then mans total efforts will change nothing. i am not sure about this frozen peat moss idea. if you feel the total pounds of this item equals the death of all life hundreds of square miles around Mt. St. Helen's in a matter of minutes with all the other happenings then i suggest were already doomed. but it would need to be at least ten times in quantity to cause a major problem.

 

To bring you up to speed on peat moss and the melting tundra, here are two good articles:

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/06/16/MNGKKJFD5M1.DTL

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/06/060615-global-warming.html

 

If you do some digging you will find countless more articles on this subject and I've seen some good PBS Nova type documentaries on TV about this issue in the last year.

 

REPLY: you have mentioned nothing that has not happened before or WILL happen again. we can slow or reduce some effects, but this is from the technology you seem to dislike. that moss you mentioned, was not frozen at some point back. my car or way of life wasn't around so what cause that...

Obviously the peat moss and other organic material that is currently sequestered in the arctic was living at some point in the past and it is well known that millions of years ago the climate was much warmer. Man, however, has only been roaming this planet for the past what 20,000 – 50,000 years? Also it is only in the past hundred years that our population has exploded. Quite simply our civilization is dependant upon maintaining the status quo in regards to the ecosystem. We don't want a raise in global temperatures anymore than we want a cooling of global temperatures because either one would have devastating effects on our ability to sustain ourselves.

 

I'm not sure what your comment is about me being against technology. I'm not against technology, I'm against pollution. We will depend upon new technologies to help us reduce the amount we pollute and to help us undo what we have already done. By the way, for every gallon of gas you burn in your car, you are releasing 20 lbs of CO2 into the atmosphere that had been sequestered away for hundreds of millions of years (gasoline after all comes from dead dinosaurs). See http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/co2.shtml

 

REPLY; this scares me; trying to control nature will never be possible.

Wrong, man has been altering nature for millennia now, but not always realizing it. Maybe we can't alter weather systems directly, but by slowing the increase in CO2 into the atmosphere we can slow global warming. Eventually we could even get to the point where we can reduce the total CO2 in the atmosphere and thus reverse global warming or at least stop it. Things are only not possible if you don't try.

 

REPLY: seems to me Polar Bears are in a self destructive mode anyway. they won't migrate south or anyplace, wait around for food or eat there young. its a wonder they have doubled in 50 years. i have no sympathy for the cute Panda's either. certainly no animal is so dumb that a food must be one item.

I'll consider this as troll bait and not give it any further comment.

 

REPLY FOR BELOW...we have reduced CO2 emissions. about 75% for the average car. trucks about 50% and most industry emits nothing compared to the 40's, 50's and 60's.

Good lord, if we hadn't of reduced our per car/factory pollution levels from what they were in the 40s through 60s, we'd be worse off than China is right now for forms of pollution other than CO2.

 

efficiency levels are also much better and increasing yearly.

How about providing some documentation to support this? I think you will find that fuel efficiency of our vehicles has not improved significantly in at least 20 years. Even China has higher fuel efficiency requirements for vehicles than the U.S. Also there were a heck of a lot less cars, trucks, factories and people in the world sixty years ago. So even if the per item pollution has gone down our net pollution has gone up tremendously.

 

Look for all those naysayer's out there who don't think we should do anything about global warming I say this. If we don't do anything and it is a problem, we are in serious trouble. If we do take action to significantly reduce our carbon footprint and it turns out humans aren't the cause of global warming, what is the worst that happens? We have a more efficient society that is less dependant upon fossil fuels for our energy. This would mean that the Middle East would become less of a concern and we wouldn't be spending so much time fighting wars over oil. Furthermore our air would be cleaner and as such we would have fewer pollution caused health problems. We might also find that as a society we would be spending a lot less of our wealth on energy, leaving more money for other things.

 

How much money would you save each year if your vehicle was twice as fuel efficient? How much money would you save if your house consumed 1/4 of the electricity it does today? How much money would you save if your home required half as much fuel to heat it? In the long run, going "green" saves lots of that green stuff you like to put into your wallet. The only ones who gain from us not trying to find ways to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels and thus reduce our carbon footprint are those companies who make billions of dollars a year mining or pumping fossil energy out of the ground.

[Icemelt]

Let's ditch the hysteria and get things in perspective.

There might be some very minor fluctuations in temperature over a few decades, but there is clearly no evidence of a dramatic departure from the norm over the past 10,000 years ?

Here are the basic facts on temperature change.

Don’t just accept the propaganda, draw your own conclusions !

(Time is plotted on a log scale to emphasise more recent data)

 

And what about Carbon Dioxide ?

The IPCC report Apr 2007 still confirms there is no evidence of the troposphere heating up faster than the planet surface, which indicates that greenhouse gases are therefore not the cause of the current warming trend. However, even if for a moment we disregard the fact that there is no conclusive evidence that CO2 is driving, or has ever driven climate change in the past, where is the evidence of the supposed catastrophic CO2 level now ?

Here are the basic facts on carbon dioxide change.

Don’t just accept the propaganda, draw your own conclusions !

 

Finally let's look at sea levels.

In the past 8,000 years the situation has been remarkably stable, displaying no evidence of an anthropogenic impact on sea levels. There has been a very substantial 98% slowing of the rise in sea level over the past 12,000 years, which resulted in an increase of just 0.9m in the past 4,000 years, which is only 1/17th of the 15m rise experienced in the previous 4,000 years from 4,000 to 8,000 YBP, and 1/50th of the 47m rise measured in the period 8,000 to 12,000 YBP.

Here are the basic facts on sea level change.

Don’t just accept the propaganda, draw your own conclusions !

[1veedo]

There might be some very minor fluctuations in temperature over a few decades, but there is clearly no evidence of a dramatic departure from the norm over the past 10,000 years ?

Actually, there is.

 

 

The ice age (ahem, glacial period) is at the far right and the present the far left. The temperature has been decreasing for roughly 8000 years, as you can clearly see. When we hit the industrial revolution, this several thousand year trend ceased and started moving in reverse. The data obviously shows that current warming is a dramatic departure from the norm over the past 10,000 years.

 

But why should we stop at 10,000? Why don't we look at the previous 650,000 years where CO2 has always been between 180 and 300ppm and today it's over 379ppm?

 

Previous "natural cycles" indicate that right now the Earth should be cooling -- going into another ice age, and this is exactly what we saw from the graph of the Holocene. But when you look at today's changes you can see that the jump in temperature is very sudden and unexpected.

The IPCC report Apr 2007 still confirms there is no evidence of the troposphere heating up faster than the planet surface, which indicates that greenhouse gases are therefore not the cause of the current warming trend.

Actually,

 

"New analyses of balloon-borne and satellite measurements of lower- and mid-tropospheric temperature show warming rates that are similar to those of the surface temperature record and are consistent within their respective uncertainties, largely reconciling a discrepancy noted in the TAR. {3.2, 3.4}"

 

"Warming of the climate system has been detected in changes of surface and atmospheric temperatures, temperatures in the upper several hundred metres of the ocean and in contributions to sea level rise. Attribution studies have established anthropogenic contributions to all of these changes. The observed pattern of tropospheric warming and stratospheric cooling is very likely due to the combined influences of greenhouse gas increases and stratospheric ozone depletion. {3.2, 3.4, 9.4, 9.5}"

However, even if for a moment we disregard the fact that there is no conclusive evidence that CO2 is driving, or has ever driven climate change in the past, where is the evidence of the supposed catastrophic CO2 level now ?

Well what we have is a climate model that combines all of the different relevant factors to make predictions about what the climate should be doing. These models have proven to be extremely accurate. We even have one climate model started in 1988 by Columbia University and the Goddard Institute for Space studies of NASA that, still today, is "right on the money."

 

So I ask you, despite the fact that climate science is consistent with mountains of data, what exactly is your criteria for "evidence?" Sense when was empirical evidence not good enough (do we even have a for of evidence that is better)?

Finally let's look at sea levels.

In the past 8,000 years the situation has been remarkably stable, displaying no evidence of an anthropogenic impact on sea levels. There has been a very substantial 98% slowing of the rise in sea level over the past 12,000 years, which resulted in an increase of just 0.9m in the past 4,000 years, which is only 1/17th of the 15m rise experienced in the previous 4,000 years from 4,000 to 8,000 YBP, and 1/50th of the 47m rise measured in the period 8,000 to 12,000 YBP.

Here are the basic facts on sea level change.

Don’t just accept the propaganda, draw your own conclusions !

Sea levels are in fact rising for two reasons.

 

1) Warmer water temperatures cause expansion of the ocean.

2) Melting polar ice caps are adding to the total mass of the ocean.

[SkepticLance]

icemelt.

 

Very nice graphs. I think, though, that the CO2 graph is made somewhat less helpful by the timescale. We need a scale of, say, 1750 AD to the present to see the current situation clearly.

 

The sea level rise graph, though, puts the current situation into perspective nicely. We currently have a rise of 3 mm per year. In the past, as Icemelt shows so well, it has been drastically worse.

 

I would like to comment on the statements about melting permafrost. I believe there is a serious fallacy there.

 

When the last glacial period was at its peak, Britain was covered by ice right down to south England. Most of the UK was under ice. Then the ice melted. Within a short time (in terms of glaciation time) the whole of Britain was covered with climax forest.

 

When snow melts on a mountain with the coming of Spring, it takes only 3 weeks before that area is covered with herbaceous plants in a thick carpet. Later, woody plants start to grow. If the ice does not come again, in time trees will grow.

 

If we are talking about permanent melting of the permafrost, it will be replaced by plants in the short term, and forest in the medium term. This is a CO2 sequestering effect. The idea that melting permafrost will increase

CO2 and methane is just plain wrong.

[KLB]

I would like to comment on the statements about melting permafrost. I believe there is a serious fallacy there.

Do some research on this, I provided a starting point.

 

If we are talking about permanent melting of the permafrost, it will be replaced by plants in the short term, and forest in the medium term. This is a CO2 sequestering effect. The idea that melting permafrost will increase CO2 and methane is just plain wrong.

You obviously are not speaking from knowledge on this. There are melting swamps in Siberia that are belching methane at such high volumes that one can actually light the gas as it bubbles to the surface (I've seen this on TV). Read more at: http://www.livescience.com/environment/060906_methane_bubbles.html

 

Basically for plant life to grow as rapidly as would be necessary to sequester the amount of CO2 being release in sub-arctic regions would require a jungle like warm climate where plants can grow rapidly. In sub-arctic regions NOTHING grows rapidly. Remember we are talking about raising the average annual temperature a half of a degree from just below freezing to just above freezing to trigger this effect. An average year round temp of just above 32 degrees F is hardly warm enough to spark a massive plant bloom.

 

Furthermore the plants would be doing nothing to sequester the methane that is being released, which is a much more effective greenhouse gas than CO2.

 

For the record, I used to live in Fairbanks Alaska and attended the University of Alaska Fairbanks, whose scientists are referenced in some of the articles one will find on this subject. I have seen first hand areas of discontinuous permafrost that were melting and let me assure you there was no massive explosion of plant life from all that CO2 that was being released. There was just lots and lots of boggy, swampy tundra swarming with enough mosquitoes to suck your blood dry if you had the misfortune of getting stuck out in tundra.

 

In time will plants eventually balance things out and sequester the CO2 that we are releasing either directly or indirectly by helping to precipitate global warming? Yes they will, but not before the damage is done. Oh and in regards to how warm it was 10,000, 100,000 or even 10,000,000 years ago; who cares? What affects human civilization is how the climate has been doing over the past few hundred years and what it will do in the next fifty years.

 

It took human populations over 20,000 years to reach one billion persons, yet in the last one-hundred years our population has exploded to over five billion. Millions if not hundreds of millions of people live at or very near sea levels in impoverished countries like India and Bangladesh. These are peoples that depend upon oceans remaining at currently levels or at least raising slowly enough that populations can adapt without massive displacement of populations. Even the oceans raising just five feet will wipe out entire nations like Tuvalu, which is one of the lowest laying countries in the world.

 

See the following for what climate change will mean:

http://uk.reuters.com/article/homepageCrisis/idUK117673227958._CH_.242020070416

 

Yes there were times in our past when CO2 concentrations and ocean levels were higher, but human civilization didn't exist during those times. Again, we aren't talking about trying to head off global warming for some noble goal of protecting endangered ecosystems, we are talking about heading off global warming and at least reducing our contribution to it to protect our own civilizations. Unless we find ways to head off global warming we could very well see poorer nations descend into endless cycles ecologically driven wars and we could see millions if not hundreds of millions of ecological refugees simply looking for some place where they can survive.

 

Given the potential ramifications of global warming when there the potential that we are partially or wholly to blame for global warming; then we must take action. This is especially true when many of those actions aren't that hard and can in the long run have significant benefits beyond the global warming issue (e.g. less dependence on Middle Eastern Oil or pollution spewing coal and saved money).

 

Here is some further reading as to the affects of global warming on civilization:

http://www.unescap.org/mced2000/pacific/background/climate.htm

http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=303756&area=/insight/insight__international/

[SkepticLance]

KLB said

 

You obviously are not speaking from knowledge on this. There are melting swamps in Siberia that are belching methane at such high volumes that one can actually light the gas as it bubbles to the surface

 

Methane levels in the atmosphere are currently falling and have been for several decades - not by much, but definitely falling. Methane is not a persistent material. It oxidises to CO2 and water, with a half life of 12 months. There is no current evidence that methane is likely to increase in the future, and without increase it cannot cause warming.

 

Basically for plant life to grow as rapidly as would be necessary to sequester the amount of CO2 being release in sub-arctic regions would require a jungle like warm climate where plants can grow rapidly. In sub-arctic regions NOTHING grows rapidly. Remember we are talking about raising the average annual temperature a half of a degree from just below freezing to just above freezing to trigger this effect.

 

Your knowledge of biology is lacking. Plants will, indeed, grow at 1 Celsius. Admittedly, the growth is slow, and forests will take a long, long time. However, the global warming catastrophists are talking long term warming, and temperature increases of 10 C or more in the areas where permafrost currently reigns. If they are correct, we will see massive plant growth.

 

Millions if not hundreds of millions of people live at or very near sea levels in impoverished countries like India and Bangladesh. These are peoples that depend upon oceans remaining at currently levels or at least raising slowly enough that populations can adapt without massive displacement of populations. Even the oceans raising just five feet will wipe out entire nations like Tuvalu, which is one of the lowest laying countries in the world.

 

Most of the above paragraph is dogma, not science. For example, Tuvalu is in a rather special place where sea levels are actually falling. Sea level rise is currently at a global average of 3 mm per year. This means that over 100 years, the average rise is 300 mm - not much longer than your foot. This is not the stuff of global catastrophe. There are other places where the sea level rise fallacy is supposed to happen. There are islands off Papua New Guinea for example, that are experiencing serious problems. However, they are in a tectonically active zone, and the land mass is falling. Sea level rise there is only 3 mm per year as everywhere else.

 

The problem with the whole global warming debate is that people get polarised views. They take up extremist denial ideas, or (as bad) extremist catastrophist views. If you manage to sort out one from the other, and rely on the data, not the theory, you see a picture that falls more in the middle of those polarised and often ridiculous opinions.

[KLB]

Your knowledge of biology is lacking. Plants will, indeed, grow at 1 Celsius. Admittedly, the growth is slow, and forests will take a long, long time. However, the global warming catastrophists are talking long term warming, and temperature increases of 10 C or more in the areas where permafrost currently reigns. If they are correct, we will see massive plant growth.

Of course plants grow at 1 Celsius, I never said they didn't. I lived in those climates, I saw first hand at what temperatures plants would grow, I also saw how fast they would grow. Have you ever walked on a tundra? Have you ever walked through a Taiga Forest? I have and I can tell you flora grow extremely slowly in these climates. Damage a bush and you can set its growth back ten or twenty years. The point is that now through the burning of fossil fuels we are releasing carbon that took millions of years to be sequestered by nature. Add to this the melting of the permafrost and the release of CO2 from those areas and we are talking about vast quantities of carbon that were sequestered over tens of thousands to millions of years. Maybe in a thousand years nature could sequester all of this carbon once again IF we stopped releasing new carbon into the atmosphere, but it is not going to happen quickly enough to negate our carbon impact in the short run.

 

Also if we see temperature increases in the sub-arctic regions of 10C to simulate plant growth, all of the most extreme predictions will have come true and the damage will have already been done. We really don't want to see a 10C rise in temperatures at the sub-arctic because this would mean devastating temperature changes in the equatorial regions where so much of humanity lives.

 

The problem with the whole global warming debate is that people get polarised views. They take up extremist denial ideas, or (as bad) extremist catastrophist views. If you manage to sort out one from the other, and rely on the data, not the theory, you see a picture that falls more in the middle of those polarised and often ridiculous opinions.

This may be true, but we still can not afford the risk of doing nothing. We know that CO2 is a greenhouse gas; we know that climate temperatures are rising; and we know that we are a significant contributer to the increase in CO2 in our atmosphere. Given the negative effects of global warming if we do nothing vs. the cost of doing something, prudence dictates that we do what we can to eliminate or at least reduce our release of fossil carbon into the atmosphere.

 

Do we really want to wait and see if the doomsday believers are right? Do we really want to wait and see if global warming is serious concern until it is too late to do anything? Or do we start to take actions now while we can take actions and the cost of doing something is frequently outweighed by the direct economic benefit?

 

How much fossil carbon would not be put into the atmosphere if the average fuel efficiency of personal vehicles was doubled? How much fossil carbon would not be put into the air if we reduced our consumption of electricity by 40%? How much fossil carbon would not be put into the air if we increased the energy efficiency of homes by 20%? I don't know the exact figures as to how much we would reduce carbon emissions, but it would be a heck of a lot and all of these reductions are realistic given immediately available and near term technologies.

 

Now, what would be the other benefits of the afore mentioned energy saving measures? That is really easy to answer, a lot less non-CO2 related noxious emissions, a lot lower energy costs for the average consumer, a lot less dependence upon oil from conflict ridden regions of the world AND a lot more energy independence for nations like the U.S. In short it could help cut our dependence upon "blood oil". Just think how much extra money would be in your wallet if you could personally reduce your energy consumption by the afore mentioned amounts.

 

Personally speaking as an American, simply being able to reduce our oil consumption enough to end our dependence on Middle Eastern oil is more than enough reason to undertake the afore mentioned energy saving measures, cutting carbon emissions to slow global warming just makes the justification that much more compelling.

 

The direct economic costs of tackling our dependence upon fossil fuels and the amount of fossil fuels we consume is far outweighed by the economic benefit of the money we could save by improving the overall energy efficiency of our lives.

[Pangloss]

I think I fixed all the quote tags in jackson33's post #11 above. Please let me know if I missed anything.

[KLB]

I think I fixed all the quote tags in jackson33's post #11 above. Please let me know if I missed anything.

 

It looks right to me. That will make life easier for readers, thank you.

[Icemelt]

1veedo – Back with that old chart of yours again !

 

1) You might be pleased to learn that I made a special effort to include the data from your chart into my more comprehensive version, but the temperature movement in your chart is so insignificant in the overall picture that it just doesn't feature.

 

2) Your claim that warming rates of the troposphere are similar to the surface just doesn’t cut any ice, if you'll forgive the pun, since the warming of the troposphere has to be significantly greater than at the surface for GHGs to be the cause of global warming. In any event - - -

 

"The chart in the Apr 2007 report, showing surface temperature, indicates little or no change in surface temperature in the tropics, yet this is precisely the area in which the February 2007 report, from which this data was taken, showed remarkable and inexplicable discrepancies. When reporting on the expected faster warming of the troposphere than that at the surface, which is crucial to the greenhouse gas blame argument, it stated "Tropical Temperature Results (20°S to 20°N) Although the majority of observational data sets show more warming at the surface than in the troposphere, some observational data sets show the opposite behavior.”

 

“The broad conclusion is that the multi-decadal global climate models are unable to accurately simulate the linear trends of surface and tropospheric temperatures for the 1979-1999 time period on the regional and tropical zonally-averaged spatial scale. Their ability to skilfully simulate the global averages surface and tropospheric temperature trend on this time scale is, at best, inconclusive.”

 

3) Yep, it doesn't take a genius to realise that warming of the oceans will cause the sea level to rise, but this was destined to happen anyway, with or without mankind. It has always happened in the past and will continue to happen in the future. This has absolutely nothing to do anthropological influence.

 

The charts say it all mate, and no amount of hysterical hype will change the facts. The IPCC interpretations of carefully selected and censored data is fast becoming nothing short of political and media propaganda, and the public are just beginning to realise that they are being taken for a ride. It seems to be a not very subtle way to slide in another range of justifiable taxes and an excuse to create a billion dollar industry achieving little more than providing jobs for the non-productive.

 

Worrying comments are buried in footnotes, instead of being prominently displayed. They would seem to indicate that predictions are based on a very selective set of results, over an equally selective period, to suite the current argument. And when, as is the case with CO2 concentration, a less dramatic result is predicted than is desired, there seems to be unjustified arbitrary doubling of CO2 concentration figures !

 

Working Group II Contribution to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report April 2007

Page 2 Footnote 7

"A subset of about 29,000 data series was selected from about 80,000 data series from 577 studies. These met the following criteria: (1) Ending in 1990 or later; (2) spanning a period of at least 20 years; and (3) showing a significant change in either direction, as assessed in individual studies"

 

What do they take us for ?

We all know that periods as short as 20 years are meaningless and merely reflect fluctuations in weather, not climate. And if they’ve only used 29,000 out of 80,000 datasets, one wonders what the other 51,000 contributions revealed !

 

Contribution of Working Group I to the IPCC Fourth Assessment April 2007

Page 9

“The equilibrium climate sensitivity is a measure of the climate system response to sustained radiative forcing. It is not a projection but is defined as the global average surface warming following a doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations.”

 

Need I say more !

Perhaps just one final comment

 

Margaret Thatcher thought the global warming bandwagon was a great idea. She desperately needed to ensure that the traditional coal miners’ strikes couldn’t bring down her government, and this little bit of hysterical nonsense gave her the excuse to embark on a nuclear power programme, enabling the closure of most of the UK mines and securing her powerbase.

[1veedo]

Methane levels in the atmosphere are currently falling and have been for several decades - not by much' date=' but definitely falling. Methane is not a persistent material. It oxidises to CO2 and water, with a half life of 12 months. There is no current evidence that methane is likely to increase in the future, and without increase it cannot cause warming.[/quote']:baffled:

 

Methane has increased by a much larger percent then CO2 has! Natural methane levels are 715ppb and today it's risen all the way up to 1732! We're talking over a 100% increase compared to a 20~50% increase of CO2.

1) You might be pleased to learn that I made a special effort to include the data from your chart into my more comprehensive version, but the temperature movement in your chart is so insignificant in the overall picture that it just doesn't feature.

The historical trend in relation to our position in a very well-defined pattern indicates an average decrease in temperature. This pattern has been going on for at least five million years. What is expected to happen has not been occurring, and this is why scientists noticed it in the first place.

3) Yep, it doesn't take a genius to realise that warming of the oceans will cause the sea level to rise, but this was destined to happen anyway, with or without mankind. It has always happened in the past and will continue to happen in the future. This has absolutely nothing to do anthropological influence.

I asked you earlier what you consider proof of [anthropogenic] global warming. Technically speaking there is no such thing as proof in science, all we have is what's known as the "balance of evidence."

 

What we find in climate science is a mountain of evidence supporting global warming, and very little that seems to contradict it. The accuracy of climate models to predict climate trends is outstanding, and this in and of itself is proof enough that it works (I mean, on a matter of fact basis, they work). These models work so well because they include human factors into the equation. Without human factors, you see a very poor correlation between temperature and projected temperature. But when you add in human factors, it correlates very well.

 

Climate science is one of the most successful sciences we have. Few theories are more successful in terms of making accurate predictions. Outside of physics and related fields such as cosmology, I'd say evolution is the only science that has more evidence ("proof") then climate science.

 

The problem with saying, "well the climate has changed in the past so we shouldn't expect that humans are causing ti today," is that the past tells us that the climate should not be acting in the manner that it is. The climate doesn't just change randomly for no reason. Most large changes in temperature have been caused by solar cycles, and they are very predictable. Glacial periods historical come in a pattern every 25, 40, and 100 thousand years, coinciding with our orbit around the sun. Scientists don't just label these patterns as "natural" and move on; this would be bad science.

So scientists didn't just look at current warming and conclude that the temperature is rising for no apparent reason. They asked why the Earth is getting warmer, and found out that the reasons are almost entirely anthropogenic. The largest driver for global warming is, of course, a greenhouse gas known as CO2. Because of human activities, CO2 and other greenhouse gases are significantly higher today then they have ever been for over 650,000 years

The charts say it all mate, and no amount of hysterical hype will change the facts. The IPCC interpretations of carefully selected and censored data is fast becoming nothing short of political and media propaganda, and the public are just beginning to realise that they are being taken for a ride. It seems to be a not very subtle way to slide in another range of justifiable taxes and an excuse to create a billion dollar industry achieving little more than providing jobs for the non-productive.

I think you'll find that conspiracy theories don't get you anywhere on these forums. We tend to like facts and explanations, not conspiracies, and this does more to discredit yourself then it does to discredit the IPCC.

What do they take us for ?

We all know that periods as short as 20 years are meaningless and merely reflect fluctuations in weather, not climate. And if they’ve only used 29,000 out of 80,000 datasets, one wonders what the other 51,000 contributions revealed !

There are many studies that have nothing to do with climate change, for instance studies under 20 years. The nature of many of these studies in and of themselves do not lend to be useful.

 

And on top of this, we're talking about 80,000 studies, which would require a lot of work to go through. I'm not saying that it's perfect, but in statistics, 29000/80000 is extraordinarily good. Most (probably all) population studies rely on a much smaller portion of the population then this (we're talking orders of magnitude here). The entire science of sociology, even, is based on statistics that survey smaller portions of the population.

[foodchain]

People ignored so much or simply committed actions in ignorance and now we are basically attempting to play catch up with action/reaction really. I try to envision basically a system, the earth for instance, in real time down to tiny increments of time to very long increments of time all entangled in interaction leading to the system of earth. Humans popped on the horizon and in time became a variable that has sway on the system, yet for what its worth people really don’t understand at any factual or fundamental level the total reality of it all. I am sure if we persist at some point environment issues will arise in the solar system and transporting matter will change orbits or what not and of course you will have planet hugger being a word juxtaposed with tree hugger even while basically its just an attempt to derail very bad things from taking place, business tends to speak louder which probably has a very human reason, then again I am sure some medieval warming period fallacy again will probably come into play on some level. Now we have all sorts of information about what’s occurring on the planet and in conflict with it is typically groups that simply happen to be scared of losing position in the economy because of required change, and even going so far as to saying massive environmental change will be of benefit to life in general, as if that has held true in the past at some point that did not involve massive extinctions, which of course wont effect people at all because we happen to be magical unicorns separated from reality or nature.