Global Warming explained - "inconvenient" or otherwise!

[SkepticLance]

KLB said :

 

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.

 

Actually that is wrong. Temperature increase in the high arctic is about 5 times that in the tropics. If temperatures grow 10 C in Greenland, say, it will grow about 2 C in the tropics. This is basic greenhouse theory, and observed fact.

 

And your 'logic' relating methane in melting permafrost is short term logic. If we look at a period of decades rather than years (which we have to) then plant growth in areas previously devoid of such plant growth, can become lush. As the plants grow, not only do they build carbon into the biomass of their tissues, but they add humus to soils. Long term, warming leads to more carbon tied up in soil - not less.

 

1veedo said

 

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.

 

That may be correct. However, over the last couple of decades, levels have fallen again. Not by much to be sure. The point is that it is not rising. Hence it is not driving warming.

 

A comment to KLB. You appear to have a bit of a 'downer' on burning fossil oil. You should realise that oil and natural gas are not the problem. Both will essentially run out in 30 to 60 years, and will contribute only about 20 ppm in CO2 increase over that time. Whatever any of us do, that oil and gas is gonna be extracted and burned. If not by us, then by China and India. You can be absolutely sure that the nations who own the oil are not gonna refuse to sell it!

 

The real problem is coal. There is enough in the ground to raise atmospheric CO2 by 1000 ppm. If you want to attack a fossil fuel, attack coal. There is a very real possibility that nations like the USA and China, who need vast amounts of liquid fuel, will simply build coal to liquid fuel plants and make enormous amounts of fuel that way - continuing to increase CO2 long after the oil runs out. The USA already has its first coal to diesel plant - making 5000 barrels a day.

 

I regard the 30 to 60 years oil is available as a 'breathing space ' - a time in which humans can develop biofuel or hydrogen to power our vehicles etc afterwards. Since the oil is gonna burn regardless, I feel no guilt about driving my car or flying in an airplane.

[1veedo]

Lol I don't know if this makes me a hypocrite but I don't really do much to "help" the environment. I do recycle, my house is energy efficient, and my car gets good mpg, but none of this is really "out of my way" and I'd probably be doing all these things even if it weren't for the environment (for instance I have no plans to donate $1000 to a save-the-earth foundation).

 

Saving the environment has never been the issue for me about global warming. Especially when you consider that if we stopped polluting today, the temperature would still continue to rise, more then a degree©, in the next century. I'll be it, that's an entire degree lower then what's expected, but the little bit of conservation that is possible really cannot lower temperatures by any beneficial amount.

 

It's just the outright denial from people who don't know what they're talking about that I don't like. You can drive around your hummers all you want for what I care. It's just the blatant in your face "global warming aint real and you can't convince me" that I don't like.

 

It's the same thing with evolution. I don't much care about proving that God doesn't exist or that genesis/the Bible is wrong. It's your religion, you can do whatever the hell you want with it. But evolution is real, like it or not, and you're just downright stupid if you don't accept this (and in the end I think most Christians will tell you that it's perfectly ok to accept evolution AND believe in God).

[Dak]

Saving the environment has never been the issue for me about global warming. Especially when you consider that if we stopped polluting today, the temperature would still continue to rise, more then a degree©, in the next century. I'll be it, that's an entire degree lower then what's expected, but the little bit of conservation that is possible really cannot lower temperatures by any beneficial amount.

 

isn't it the case that, even if we did everything we could to stop GW, there'll be a lag till we see any effect? so, if we do nothing we'll go up by 2C in the next century, then go up by more after that (possibly at an increasing rate), whereas if we sort the problem now we'll just go up by 1C in the next century and then remain stable/recover? so, long term, it's more worth it that the 1C/century saving would suggest?

 

p.s.: albeit

[Icemelt]

1veedo, there's nothing sacred about any politically funded organization, including the IPCC. When you try to turn a criticism of the IPCC into a conspiracy theory, and brand the critic as a heretic, then the whole World knows you are preaching propaganda and not science. Unlike you, I'm not on an ego trip and have no desire to get anywhere on the forum, as you put it. (You sound as if you consider yourself to have some position of authority, which cuts no ice with me) My objective is to maintain the focus on science, which is all about questioning and not blindly accepting dogma at face value, with the threat of being made an outcast for having the temerity to doubt. You cannot just railroad other contributors into accepting your views, whilst totally discarding the basic, simple, obvious, widely available evidence, and then trying to turn it into something you hope most people won’t understand. Now that really is a conspiracy !

 

When I first started out as a research chemist nearly 40 years ago, I was encouraged to question everything. That is what science is about. Blind acceptance of pontificator’s mumbo jumbo is propaganda which will result in zero progress.

 

Professor Philip Stott Dept of Biogeography University of London

“The IPCC like any UN body is political, the final conclusions are politically driven”

 

For some reason, even though the IPCC agree there are inconsistencies between surface, tropospheric and global warming, you still refuse to accept this, and continue to cling to the inconclusive misinterpretations surrounding CO2 concentrations. I’m interested to learn why you expect others to accept your less than flexible approach, when even the IPCC admit their climate model predictions are “at best, inconclusive”

 

“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.

[1veedo]

Well the thing is, the IPCC is not the only organization that has came to the same conclusions. I don't know why everyone always wants to attack the IPCC because it does you very little good (and most arguments are ad hominem, which is even worse for your position!). I think I read about one section that a few scientists think could have been done better, which is what most people use to argue against the IPCC, but I don't have a problem with this. The issue is that there is some more recent research that the IPCC didn't include, so they think it's one-sided. At the same time, however, these scientists applaud the IPCC for the rest of the paper! (and this particular section had nothing to do with humans being the primary cause of global warming!)

 

So just ignoring the IPCC completely, do you have any problems with the National Academy of Science( http://www.nap.edu/collections/global_warming/index.html ), NASA ( http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2005/ ), The National Center for Atmospheric Research ( http://eo.ucar.edu/ ), The Environmental Protection Agency ( http://epa.gov/climatechange/index.html ), or the American Meteorological Society ( http://www.ametsoc.org/POLICY/climatechangeresearch_2003.html )?

 

And I also have no problem accepting the discrepancy between tropospheric and lower atmospheric temperature change -- you're just putting words in my mouth. I believe I've made a couple posts addressing this, with the main thesis being, "Maybe we're missing something but this doesn't change the fact that climate models are still accurate in making predictions." Yes, the troposphere is a problem, but what you're ignoring is everything that we do know, which is the same tactic that Big Tobacco used and Holocaust deniers still use today.

 

At least we're getting somewhere though, because you have not contradicted any of my points in my above post (don't think you can change the subject and get away with it!)

 

We've established that

1) The idea of the IPCC using only 29000 out of 80000 isn't that big of a deal

2) The current climate trend is opposite what is expected to be happening

3) You still havn't addressed this, and I want to know what your answer is:

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

 

edit--

Brw Dak you do have a good argument. And thanks for clarifying "albeit" I guess it's cliche but I really don't think we, as individuals, can do much to mitigate global warming, with the exception of political activism. I do think we should try to mitigate global warming, I just don't think there's all that much we can do -- shy of sucking CO2 directly from the atmosphere.

[foodchain]

edit--

Brw Dak you do have a good argument. And thanks for clarifying "albeit" I guess it's cliche but I really don't think we, as individuals, can do much to mitigate global warming, with the exception of political activism. I do think we should try to mitigate global warming, I just don't think there's all that much we can do -- shy of sucking CO2 directly from the atmosphere.

 

There is a lot people can do. Personally if the only car available on the market was the Toyota Prius things would start to look up. Now most people will say that’s bad, and I agree at some point with that argument. The problem being I don’t know what economies will look like if natural happens to collapse on us. Such as if Americans for instance had to take the role of what everything nature currently does for us, I don’t think it would be a very pretty picture, but again that’s a point not brought up very much in debates like this.

 

There is a lot of "green" technology on the market, its getting such technology to be the norm that’s happens to be the real obstacle in my opinion. The funny part is such technology could offer the same standard of life in time, such as the evolution of the gas powered engine for instance, and I would but the shift in better technology would be many more time rapid due to current infrastructure, but the reality is our current infrastructure and that of many nations happens to be build on fossil fuel.

[KLB]

Actually that is wrong. Temperature increase in the high arctic is about 5 times that in the tropics. If temperatures grow 10 C in Greenland, say, it will grow about 2 C in the tropics. This is basic greenhouse theory, and observed fact.

Please provide some references.

 

And your 'logic' relating methane in melting permafrost is short term logic. If we look at a period of decades rather than years (which we have to) then plant growth in areas previously devoid of such plant growth, can become lush. As the plants grow, not only do they build carbon into the biomass of their tissues, but they add humus to soils. Long term, warming leads to more carbon tied up in soil - not less.

Tell you what, go move to a sub-arctic region for a few years and take some time to explore continuous and discontinuous permafrost zones. As you travel north towards the arctic, you will go from land that is completely unfrozen for part of the year (e.g. ground freezes and thaws with the seasons) to a discontinuous permafrost zone where patches of land are frozen year round and patches are only frozen in the winter per normal. From discontinuous permafrost zones you would travel to continuous permafrost zones where the land has been permanently frozen since the last major ice age.

 

The discontinuous permafrost zone is important to your statement because land in this zone cycles through periods of being frozen year round to cycles of thawing in the summer back to being frozen year round. This is all dependent upon the vegetation.

 

In the discontinuous zone it isn't so much that the frozen ground totally disappears as much as it the frozen layer simply recedes deep into the earth. Remember that ground temperature is a function of average temperatures, the deeper you go into the earth the longer the period of time the average is based on. Of course at some depth the warming of the mantle starts to overwhelm the affects of climate temperatures on the temperature of the ground. Because of how long the last major ice age was, this frozen zone can go to hundreds of feet beneath the earth's surface.

 

As I said, at the surface of the earth in a discontinuous permafrost zone there is a cycle to the freeze thaw cycle, which can take hundreds of years and is dependent in part on the vegetation. In patches of land that are frozen to very close to the surface, the vegetation is true tundra with very small hardy plants that do not need deep roots and can endure very cold soil temps and very short summers. As these plants are very small they provide very little shade and the power of the sun is able penetrate to the soil. Over many years the sun will slowly make progress during the summer months and melt more of the ground than gets refrozen in the winter. In time this will create a swampy/boggy area where the darkness of the water will absorb the sun's energy even more efficiently. Eventually the frozen ground will retreat deep enough into the earth that more temperate vegetation can gain a foothold. In time the short brushes and shrubs will give way to deciduous trees like birches. As the patch becomes forested, the trees shade the earth and the frozen ground begins to work its way back to the surface over a hundred years or so. As the ground gets colder the birches can not tolerate the colder soil temperatures and give way to black spruce. The black spruce is one of the heartiest of all trees on this planet. Black spruce, however, have one weakness, they grow a central tap root and can only grow as tall as their tap root can grow into the earth. As the frozen earth comes closer and closer to the earth taller black spruce give way to shorter black spruce until the patch of land once again gives way to tundra.

 

Now what is important about this is that at no time does the ground become warm enough to support robust vegetation growth of enough substance to sequester significant amounts of carbon. Even at the southern end of the discontinuous permafrost zones one does not see the quantities of vegetation necessary to sequester the amount of carbon that we are talking about and any sequestering would take hundreds of years. Also keep in mind that as plants die, most of the carbon gets released back into the environment as the plant decays. Most plant carbon that gets sequestered does so in environments devoid of oxygen like at the bottom of certain types of swamps or deep in the oceans.

 

What is important to understand about the whole melting of the permafrost issue is that as the earth warms, the zone of discontinuous permafrost is pushed northward eating into pure permafrost and melting the earth deeper and deeper in the discontinuous permafrost zone. Both of these factors expose vast quantities of sequestered organic material to decay which in turn releases the locked carbon in the form of CO2.

 

If you have not had to live with permafrost, tundra and taiga forests first hand, you really can not appreciate how delicately balanced these systems are and just how slowly more vigorous plants can take to move into areas that have melted. You also can not begin to appreciate the sheer quantity of dead organic material that is locked up in the permafrost.

 

You are fooling yourself if you believe that more vigorous plants will move into melting permafrost zones to offset the amount of carbon that is being released by the decaying plant matter. By the time said plants begin to really soak up all the CO2 that was released, the damage will have been done and all of us and our children will be dead from old age.

 

A comment to KLB. You appear to have a bit of a 'downer' on burning fossil oil. You should realise that oil and natural gas are not the problem. Both will essentially run out in 30 to 60 years, and will contribute only about 20 ppm in CO2 increase over that time.

No I have a bit of a "downer", as you call it, on people who refuse the countless different reasons we should be conserving our energy resources as much as possible. We need to use the remaining oil and natural gas as efficiently as possible, not just to slow the release of CO2, but so that this energy source will last for as long as possible and give us a real chance to shift to new energy sources with a smooth and peaceful transition and without significant economic hardships.

 

Whatever any of us do, that oil and gas is gonna be extracted and burned. If not by us, then by China and India. You can be absolutely sure that the nations who own the oil are not gonna refuse to sell it!

Right and if all of us on this planet don't take energy conservation seriously and seriously work to wean ourselves off of oil and gas, we will be in a world of hurt. We must look to the future and we must realize that some processes just won't shift from oil and gas as easily as others. We all need to use this limited resource more wisely and to stop wasting it frivolously. I'm sorry, but a Hummer is a frivolous waste of a very limited resource. What is sad is that of the industrialized nations, the United States ranks dead last for the fuel efficiency of our cars and trucks. What is even sadder is that our vehicle fuel efficiency standards are even lower than China's and as a result American car makers can not sell their cars in China because they are too inefficient (I saw this on Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth, but I'm sure you could verify it elsewhere). No wonder Toyota is eating GM's lunch.

 

The real problem is coal. There is enough in the ground to raise atmospheric CO2 by 1000 ppm. If you want to attack a fossil fuel, attack coal.

You are absolutely right about coal being the bigger problem of the two.

 

There is a very real possibility that nations like the USA and China, who need vast amounts of liquid fuel, will simply build coal to liquid fuel plants and make enormous amounts of fuel that way - continuing to increase CO2 long after the oil runs out. The USA already has its first coal to diesel plant - making 5000 barrels a day.

And I wonder how much more total CO2 is released by oil derived from coal than from normal oil (burning the coal oil plus the energy required to convert coal into oil)?

 

I regard the 30 to 60 years oil is available as a 'breathing space ' - a time in which humans can develop biofuel or hydrogen to power our vehicles etc afterwards. Since the oil is gonna burn regardless, I feel no guilt about driving my car or flying in an airplane.

The less oil we waste and the more efficiently we use it, the slower we will release this source of CO2 into the environment and the longer this energy source will last giving us just that much more breathing space.

 

Lol I don't know if this makes me a hypocrite but I don't really do much to "help" the environment. I do recycle, my house is energy efficient, and my car gets good mpg, but none of this is really "out of my way" and I'd probably be doing all these things even if it weren't for the environment (for instance I have no plans to donate $1000 to a save-the-earth foundation).

Do you realize how much less CO2 would be released and how much non-renewable energy would be saved if everyone took the simple steps that you are talking about? I personally don't expect people to park their cars and jump on a bus tomorrow (unless you live in Oakland CA ;-) ), however, if people would simply take measures to reduce their impact they could save massive amounts of energy and save lots of money without crimping their lifestyle. This would be a significant step in the right direction.

 

It's just the outright denial from people who don't know what they're talking about that I don't like. You can drive around your hummers all you want for what I care. It's just the blatant in your face "global warming aint real and you can't convince me" that I don't like.

Here, here. But the way I look at it is that maybe the best way to get these types of people to change their ways is to convince them that it is good for their wallets and thus give them a selfish motivation for saving energy. Even big business is starting to realize that there is lots of money to be saved (which increases profits) by going green and making their operations as efficient as possible.

 

It's the same thing with evolution. I don't much care about proving that God doesn't exist or that genesis/the Bible is wrong. It's your religion, you can do whatever the hell you want with it. But evolution is real, like it or not, and you're just downright stupid if you don't accept this (and in the end I think most Christians will tell you that it's perfectly ok to accept evolution AND believe in God).

I'll leave that for a different forum.

 

There is a lot people can do. Personally if the only car available on the market was the Toyota Prius things would start to look up.

Interestingly enough, the total "cradle to grave" life cycle of the Prius might actually make it more polluting than some of its more traditional brethren. A student in one of my environmental classes (community college) is actually doing a report on the life cycle of a Prius and I can't wait to see what they find and review their sources. If the paper is good enough, I'll offer to publish the article on my website. The one aspect that has interested me about hybrids is exactly what their total environmental impact is in comparison to regular cars. Don't forget you have a mess of lithium ion batteries that will have to be replaced during the car's life cycle and there are lots of other factors that drive up the environmental costs of producing hybrids compared to other cars.

 

The problem being I don’t know what economies will look like if natural happens to collapse on us. Such as if Americans for instance had to take the role of what everything nature currently does for us, I don’t think it would be a very pretty picture, but again that’s a point not brought up very much in debates like this.

I share your concern. Constantly say we need to do what we can to protect the environment and reduce our impact on the environment because it is in our own long term self interest. If you don't care about polar bears or pandas, fine, but care about your children and grandchildren.

 

There is a lot of "green" technology on the market, its getting such technology to be the norm that’s happens to be the real obstacle in my opinion.

Again I'll agree with you. I'm very happy to see companies like Walmart and Home Depot bringing green technologies to the consumers and actively promoting them. Home Depot even gave away 1,000,000 60 watt equivalent CFLs on Earth Day. And Walmart has been going nuts as of late promoting environmentally friendly products. Considering I've always considered Walmart to be part of the Axis of Evil, I'm really confused by their green side.

[SkepticLance]

To KLB

 

Permafrost and plant growth. It has all happened before. At the end of the last glacial period. And guess what. Plant growth took over. Plants are more vigorous and robust than you are prepared to accept. With warming they will expand, as they did before.

 

On burning fossil oil. I think you glossed over the point. That is; the need to focus on coal. Trying to cut down on Humvees or air travel aint gonna help. Developing non fossil alterantives for the future and stopping the development of coal will.

[KLB]

Permafrost and plant growth. It has all happened before. At the end of the last glacial period. And guess what. Plant growth took over. Plants are more vigorous and robust than you are prepared to accept. With warming they will expand, as they did before.

 

You are missing the point. Because of how cold the ground is this plant growth IS NOT going to happen quickly enough to sequester the carbon for hundreds if not thousands of years. This would be way too late to resolve the current global warming problem before our children have to suffer the consequences of our inaction.

 

 

On burning fossil oil. I think you glossed over the point. That is; the need to focus on coal. Trying to cut down on Humvees or air travel aint gonna help. Developing non fossil alterantives for the future and stopping the development of coal will.

I have not glossed over anything. While coal is a significant concern, so is air travel and Humvees. You have admitted it yourself that oil is a finite resource. This means we must conserve said resource. Besides, which every gallon of oil that is not wasted in a Humvee is a gallon of oil that could be used to power a power plant or some industrial process that would otherwise be powered by coal. We need to make oil last as long as we can because we are so dependent upon it and there are some processes that simply can't easily use other sources of energy. While a car might do just fine on electric power (via batteries or fuel cells), I don't think solar powered air planes will be that viable.

 

If we shift those processes that we can off of oil (e.g. cars/trucks) and make all oil burning processes as efficient as possible (e.g. scrap personal vehicles that get simply awful fuel economy), we can save the oil for processes that can't as easily do without oil. Even the Chinese realize this. They have been scrapping tens of thousands of their most inefficient taxis and buses and implementing some of the strictest fuel economy standards for cars and trucks in the world (Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth). Europe also understands this and their fuel efficiency standards are very strict. Quite simply, the United States has some of the most lax fuel efficiency standards in the industrialized world.

 

Just because coal is an important thing we need to focus on, doesn't mean we don't also address oil consumption. Wasting oil needlessly in inefficient vehicles simply means we have to burn more coal to power other processes because the oil is not available for those processes.

[SkepticLance]

KLB said :

 

Because of how cold the ground is this plant growth IS NOT going to happen quickly enough to sequester the carbon for hundreds if not thousands of years.

 

This point would be true if warming was slow. However, in the high Arctic, it is about 3 times the global average. If the IPCC is correct, the global average warming will be about 3 C in 100 years, which translates into 9 Celsius in Greenland. That is ample to stimulate very substantial plant growth.

 

In addition, the warming will accelerate plant growth in slightly warmer countries, such as Canada, and northern USA.

 

Just because coal is an important thing we need to focus on, doesn't mean we don't also address oil consumption.

 

I do not think we will agree on this. My view is that burning oil and natural gas is not something that can, practically speaking, be reigned in, and is probably not worth the effort, bearing in mind that it is gonna happen anyway, in spite of the best efforts anyone can wield. If one country conserves, another will waste.

 

More important are :

 

1. Stop the mining and burning of coal.

2. Find alternatives, other than coal to liquid conversion.

 

China is opening a new coal burning power station every week. One month of new development is equivalent to the sum total of all power plants Australia built to burn coal, over the last 100 years. China should be going nuclear big time, instead. So should the USA, Europe and Eastern Europe.

Wind power is fine, but limited.

 

Air travel can be continued with suitable liquid fuel alternatives. Hydrocarbons can be synthesized, or obtained from modified biofuels, and used as jet fuel. There is a lot of development required to give us these technologies. This is where the big effort needs to be put in.

[foodchain]

Interestingly enough, the total "cradle to grave" life cycle of the Prius might actually make it more polluting than some of its more traditional brethren. A student in one of my environmental classes (community college) is actually doing a report on the life cycle of a Prius and I can't wait to see what they find and review their sources. If the paper is good enough, I'll offer to publish the article on my website. The one aspect that has interested me about hybrids is exactly what their total environmental impact is in comparison to regular cars. Don't forget you have a mess of lithium ion batteries that will have to be replaced during the car's life cycle and there are lots of other factors that drive up the environmental costs of producing hybrids compared to other cars.

 

I understand where you are going with the argument, and what I have to say is that hybrid technology really has no had a solid push for development up until now. Some car companies sell hybrids that push 19mpg, which is a joke compared to the prius with over 50mpg typically. The technology will increase only on regular demand of such a product though. If cars in general only used fractions of what modern day cars used in regards to fossil fuels it would be a large plus for the environment really from the perspective of CO2 really. I think a common ground really needs to be made with the people and the environment, showing that a healthy and fit lifestyle that is available today can also be available with green technology would be nice.

[waitforufo]

Since this topic is turning into another rehash of info found in other global warming threads found in this forum, I would like to return to the starting post of this topic quoted below.

 

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.

 

With regard to

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

I have one point of confusion.

 

The above points out that nature has been trapping atmospheric CO2 for a very long time. (Much longer than several centuries but lets not quibble, we all get the point.) Paraphrasing the above, this CO2 was until recently trapped in the earths crust as fossil fuels. Then along comes man, and in his ignorance, he finds and burns the fossil fuels returning the CO2 to the atmosphere causing global warming. (How well did I do with my paraphrasing?)

 

My point of confusion? After all those years of nature locking up CO2, why was there any left in the atmosphere? Sounds like nature was plenty busy locking it up. Not just in fossil fuels by the way. Nature also made plenty of calcium carbonate. Just look at the white cliffs of Dover. Also, plenty of you have shown historical graphs of CO2, but none of them show a constant decline from some early proto-earth.

[KLB]

This point would be true if warming was slow. However, in the high Arctic, it is about 3 times the global average. If the IPCC is correct, the global average warming will be about 3 C in 100 years, which translates into 9 Celsius in Greenland. That is ample to stimulate very substantial plant growth.

Tell you what, move from warm New Zealand to the arctic/sub-arctic region for a few years and see for yourself how poorly you understand this issue and just how wrong you are. You are assuming that the ground will be warmed enough deep enough to support the more robustly growing plants, this just isn't going to happen. There is a big difference between going from simply melting the permafrost to the ground warming up enough in the summer to support the quantity of plants necessary to sequester the amount carbon that is being released by the plant matter that is decaying.

 

Also you are assuming that the growing plants are actually sequestering the carbon and not decaying themselves. If buried organic material is decaying and releasing its carbon into the atmosphere as CO2, why would surface dying plants not also decay? Conversely, if surface living plants die and get immediately buried such that they do not decay, then why would the buried dead plants be decaying so rapidly that they pose a serious concern? Don't you see, you can't be decaying buried plants while at the same time be burying the surface plants before they decay? Even suggesting this would happen doesn't pass any type of straight face test.

 

In addition, the warming will accelerate plant growth in slightly warmer countries, such as Canada, and northern USA.

Do some honest to goodness reading on this subject and you will realize the permafrost carbon issue is too big for some wishful thinking.

 

I do not think we will agree on this. My view is that burning oil and natural gas is not something that can, practically speaking, be reigned in, and is probably not worth the effort, bearing in mind that it is gonna happen anyway, in spite of the best efforts anyone can wield. If one country conserves, another will waste.

I'm not saying we would stop burning oil and gas, I'm simply saying that if we used it more efficiently (e.g. better fuel economy in vehicles) we could use more of it for purposes that coal is being used for. Don't forget that oil is an important fuel source for many electrical generation plants. In addition, many of those "other" countries are already using oil and gas more efficiently than the U.S. and a few other industrialized countries. Besides those "other" countries are going to do what they do regardless of our actions. As such our conserving oil wouldn't have any impact on how other countries use said oil. Basically saying we should waste before the others waste is a very selfish and shortsighted attitude.

 

China is opening a new coal burning power station every week.

In fact the Chinese are shutting down 50 gigawatts of their most inefficient coal fired powerplants AND slowing their opening of new coal fired power plants. In addition they have pledged to cut their CO2 emissions per GDP unit by 80% by 2050 (http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0426/p01s04-woap.html). The only way they could do this is make all of their processes more efficient and reduce their dependence on fossil fuels.

 

One month of new development is equivalent to the sum total of all power plants Australia built to burn coal, over the last 100 years.

And what is the population difference between China and Australia? A more accurate way to look at this is CO2 produced per person per annum. I think you will find that both Australia and certainly the United States release way more CO2 per person per year than does China. In fact, China produces less than 1/4 of the CO2 per person than does the United States. Here's how I figured this: 1) The United States is the world's number one producer of CO2 and China is number two (thus China produces less CO2 than the U.S.). As the population of the United States is 300,000,000 and China's population is 1.3 billion (300 million divided by 1.3 billion equals 0.23).

 

China should be going nuclear big time, instead.

China is finalizing a deal to buy four third-generation nuclear power plants from Westinghouse Electric. In addition, the deal will provide China with the technological know-how to build more nuclear power plants in the future. By 2020 China plans to be producing 40 gigawatts of power. (see: http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0426/p01s04-woap.html the same link as above)

 

Air travel can be continued with suitable liquid fuel alternatives. Hydrocarbons can be synthesized, or obtained from modified biofuels, and used as jet fuel. There is a lot of development required to give us these technologies.

These are important technologies to develop, but we must not focus on one technology. Instead we need to spread our efforts across wide ranges of technologies as China is doing.

[KLB]

I understand where you are going with the argument, and what I have to say is that hybrid technology really has no had a solid push for development up until now.

Yes I do realize that it is a developing technology. By buying a hybrid, one isn't really helping the environment today, but investing in the development of a technology that will be part of real solutions tomorrow.

[Icemelt]

1vedoo

 

Items addressed from your previous post

 

1) I don't accept that we should base our judgements on a third of the results. With an issue is as important as global warming, it is vital that all the evidence is submitted. When you go to court, a sound judgement requires that all the evidence is made available, and you swear to tell the whole truth and not just the bit that supports your argument.

 

3) What would I consider to be proof that anthropogenic influences are driving global warming ? Wow I would like to be able to answer that one. Please understand that I have no doubt that we are not helping the situation, and I'm very much in favour of cleaning up our act with electric cars and stopping the use of coal etc. I don't really require, and will probably never get proof, but I think I might be more easily convinced if it weren't for the significant number of leading scientists and university professors who have serious doubts, and/or actually disagree with many of the conclusions. One problem is that there is too much "worst case" propaganda mixed in with the results giving rise to sometimes ridiculous predictions. There are just too many unjustifiable assumptions being made and, quite honestly, anyone can make a computer model to fit their predictions. This is a basic principle used in computer aided manufacture, you just reverse engineer the product to get the computer to learn and then recreate it. So with climate models you just start with the prediction and work backwards to present day climate, finishing up with your climate model. It’s all made to look very much cleverer than it actually is, and is of course completely false and to many of us very unconvincing. Hence the IPCC comment “climate model predictions are at best, inconclusive”.

 

2) I remain unconvinced that, as you put it, "The current climate trend is opposite to what is expected to be happening" and I believe we are misguided when making long term predictions based on very short term fluctuations.

 

Here’s just a little example of what I mean.

 

The IPCC report states:

 

"Global average sea level rose at an average rate of 1.8 mm p.a. from 1961-2003. From 1993-2003 the rate was faster, about 3.1 mm p.a. For 1993-2003, the sum of the estimated contributions from climate change (including contributions from losses from the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica) is consistent with the observed sea level rise"

 

OK, let’s take this as fact, since somebody has presumably verified the measurements. But what should we conclude from this ?

 

The Global Warming Brigade would have us believe that anthropogenic CO2 is causing a temperature increase, which in turn is melting the ice and causing the oceans to expand, thereby causing a pattern of sea level rise in excess of what we would normally anticipate. On the face of it this sounds pretty reasonable and very convincing, but there is a quantum leap buried in the above which is totally unjustified.

 

Let’s step back, take a deep breath and put it all into proper perspective. Where is the justification for saying that the sea level is rising faster than we would normally expect ? This is totally untrue and has resulted in us reaching the wrong conclusion.

 

It's very unlikely that all the ice on Earth would melt, but nevertheless the total potential contribution to sea levels from ice would be to the order of 80m, if it all melted. From the evidence provided above, at the current rate of melting this would take the next 80/0.0031=28,600 years, assuming the process remained uninterrupted.

 

However the process will of course be interrupted by a return to the next glacial period. Based on previous cycles, this will quite probably occur within the next 2,000 years, which at the current melting rate would be sufficient time for the sea level to rise by only 6m. By a strange coincidence, this is precisely the level achieved at the end of the previous interglacial cycle 125,000 YBP without any anthropogenic or greenhouse encouragement.

 

So, with this wider perspective, it seems that the current rise in sea level is bang on target to achieve exactly the same pattern as our previous transition from an interglacial to a glacial period 125,000 years ago. We must therefore conclude that anthropogenic CO2 has had no effect at all on the current rate of rise in sea level !

[natureboy]

There are alot of active minds on the forum here. But let me ask a serious question. Do we really have to prove that humans are causing global warming before we take action? People much smarter than us have been ringing the sirens since I was born in the 80's. We didn't do anything then because people were saying it couldn't be proven, and look at the mess we are in now. It baffles me that people are still arguing this point. Are we living on the same planet?

 

James Lovelock has said that we don't even have more than 30 years before the effects of global warming will destroy our way of life. It doesn't seem like long, but just think about our delicate our society is. Do you think people can change their habits and stop global warming? Do you think the human race will survive?

[SkepticLance]

KLB said ;

 

you are assuming that the growing plants are actually sequestering the carbon and not decaying themselves. If buried organic material is decaying and releasing its carbon into the atmosphere as CO2, why would surface dying plants not also decay? Conversely, if surface living plants die and get immediately buried such that they do not decay, then why would the buried dead plants be decaying so rapidly that they pose a serious concern? Don't you see, you can't be decaying buried plants while at the same time be burying the surface plants before they decay?

 

This is kind of weird 'logic'. The build up of carbonaceous material in soils is happening all over the planet. Anywhere plants grow without being disturbed by humans, organic matter drops to the ground and gets incorporated into the soil as humus. If the soil is cold and waterlogged, which is what we are talking about when we discuss recently melted permafrost, the rate of decay is very slow indeed.

 

However, with warming and more humus and more plant growth, the degree of waterlogging gets less and the soil becomes more hospitable to plants.

 

Your picture of melted permafrost emitting CO2 and methane only applies over a limited temperature range. And we are told that Arctic regions will warm very quickly.

 

In relation to warmer but still cold countries, I am not indulging in wishful thinking. It is basic biology. The warmer the climate, the faster the plant growth. Cold (but not permafrost) parts of Canada and Russia will also warm rapidly, if the IPCC picture is correct. They will thus stimulate a massive increase in plant growth.

[KLB]

This is kind of weird 'logic'. The build up of carbonaceous material in soils is happening all over the planet. Anywhere plants grow without being disturbed by humans, organic matter drops to the ground and gets incorporated into the soil as humus.

Those plant mostly decay and/or gets used by other plants and thus is kept active in the ecosystems. Only under very specific circumstances do plants actually get buried and their carbon sequestered before decaying. As such only a very, very small percentage of plant materials actually remove carbon from the environment on a "permanent" basis.

 

If the soil is cold and waterlogged, which is what we are talking about when we discuss recently melted permafrost, the rate of decay is very slow indeed.

Surprisingly this is not true. A year or two ago I saw a PBS (public television) special (I think either Nova, Frontline or Now) where they were interviewing a scientist who was researching this exact thing and he had been able to carefully document just how much CO2 was getting released as the result of melting permafrost. It was extremely disturbing. I have subsequently done some reading on this subject and seen other reliable news reports on this issue by other researchers who were finding the same disturbing trend.

 

I really don't think you appreciate the scale of the arctic and sub-arctic regions of Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Siberia. We are talking about phenomenally large masses of land.

 

However, with warming and more humus and more plant growth, the degree of waterlogging gets less and the soil becomes more hospitable to plants.

Maybe, but again too slowly to be of any aid in our lifetime or the lifetime of our children. You really can not understand the size of the arctic and sub-arctic regions or the nature and length of the cycle of permafrost melting and more robust plants colonizing the land. You need to forget everything you think you know about this region, because it isn't correct.

 

Your picture of melted permafrost emitting CO2 and methane only applies over a limited temperature range. And we are told that Arctic regions will warm very quickly.

Again because of the sheer thermal mass of the permafrost itself, and the sheer depth that it goes to, while the warming climate is able to melt the permafrost, it doesn't change the ground temperature that much. It just happens that the ground is so close to the melting point that very small changes in ground temperature can shift the ground from being frozen to melting. Even with massive temperature swings you are not going to warm the soil enough to shift from slow growing tundra type vegetation to rapidly growing temperate or tropical vegetation in our lifetime.

 

In relation to warmer but still cold countries, I am not indulging in wishful thinking. It is basic biology. The warmer the climate, the faster the plant growth. Cold (but not permafrost) parts of Canada and Russia will also warm rapidly, if the IPCC picture is correct. They will thus stimulate a massive increase in plant growth.

No this warming will not stimulate a rapid increase in plant growth, at least not as measured by human lifetimes for the reasons stated above.

 

Yes in time earth will adapt and plants will again sequester the fossil CO2 that we are releasing, but this will happen over generations, not years or decades. By the time nature can adjust to what we are doing and undo the changes we are causing the damage will have been done and human society will have been seriously harmed.

[jackson33]

There are alot of active minds on the forum here. But let me ask a serious question. Do we really have to prove that humans are causing global warming before we take action? People much smarter than us have been ringing the sirens since I was born in the 80's. We didn't do anything then because people were saying it couldn't be proven, and look at the mess we are in now. It baffles me that people are still arguing this point. Are we living on the same planet?

 

James Lovelock has said that we don't even have more than 30 years before the effects of global warming will destroy our way of life. It doesn't seem like long, but just think about our delicate our society is. Do you think people can change their habits and stop global warming? Do you think the human race will survive?

 

many folks, having taken the time to study cycles, are well aware of what goes on if given time. the planet has warmed and cooled many time, in some cases 10 or 15 degrees above or below our current. in a few lessor cases man has been present, adapted and gone on to todays levels.

 

an increase of 10 degree for earths mean temperatures, by these records took hundreds of thousand of years, if not millions. there are some that feel we on on a gradual increase or tropical planet and some that feel the opposite, but all agree the the road to either will be very long. the last time however, the temperatures were warmer, life on the planet really began to come alive. mammals, primates and much of the plant life evolved to limits we now can see. there is more of all, now on the planet than at any other point.

its said over 200+ families and they expect to list 1.75 million species when those doing the job, finish in a few years. likewise with plants and the acreage alone that is planted each year for foods has increased, along with the forestry around the world.

 

many, including myself, feel the hysteria promoted by the Al Gore types are motivated for other reasons. especially when you bring in the United Nations and the promotion of an agenda. Gore, just a has been political figure has found new life along with many others that have lost influence in many other fields. additionally documents like Kyoto are filled with a simple political agenda.

 

no one, with any view says progress should be slowed or stopped toward a more efficient society. no one is opposed to all the things extreme elements project as motive. the reasons and causes along with immediate remedies are questioned and argued. clean water, cool fresh water streams, good air and all the things associated with most of the movements are desired by 99% of all people in all countries.

[SkepticLance]

Natureboy said :

 

James Lovelock has said that we don't even have more than 30 years before the effects of global warming will destroy our way of life. It doesn't seem like long, but just think about our delicate our society is.

 

You need to be a bit careful quoting Lovelock in this subject. He has made some extreme statements without any data to back them up. The truth is that the data does not support the '30 years to disaster' idea.

 

Temperature rise as global average is 0.16 C per decade. 30 years means average increase of 0.48 C. Say half a degree.

 

Sea level as global average rise is 3 mm per year, or 90 mm in 30 years. Say a little under 4 inches. Neither statistic suggests our way of life being destroyed.

 

 

KLB said :

 

Only under very specific circumstances do plants actually get buried and their carbon sequestered before decaying. As such only a very, very small percentage of plant materials actually remove carbon from the environment on a "permanent" basis.

 

Sorry, but this is simply not correct. Over most of the world, the build up of organic matter in soils from plant material is normal. It is not a rare event, or else we would not have those wonderful organic rich soils. Have you not done biology? Even at school, kids are taught about earthworms (and sometimes other organisms) carrying plant material into the soil, building up humus.

 

In fact, the biggest source of carbon sequestration world wide is organic matter in soils. This is why those worrying about CO2 increases in the atmosphere are concerned about plowing. Plowing increases oxidation of humus, thus increasing atmospheric CO2.

 

I really don't think you appreciate the scale of the arctic and sub-arctic regions of Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Siberia. We are talking about phenomenally large masses of land.

 

It is my very real appreciation of that fact that contributes to my relative optimism about global warming. In Canada, Alaska, and Russia, there are immense tracts of land that are currently very cold and support only slow plant growth. The IPCC and others say that these areas will warm at 3 times the global average rate. Thus, if the world average increases 3 C which is the IPCC prediction for this century, then these areas will warm 9 C. This translates into an enormous amount of extra plant growth, which will soak up massive CO2. It will also, as already discussed, add immense amounts of carbon into soils.

 

You may notice that there is very little said in Russia about global warming. I suspect that the Russians are rubbing their hands in glee in anticipation. If warming goes as the IPCC predicts, they will be big winners.

 

Even with massive temperature swings you are not going to warm the soil enough to shift from slow growing tundra type vegetation to rapidly growing temperate or tropical vegetation in our lifetime.

 

You cannot have it both ways. Either the region will warm enough to melt permafrost and release the CO2 and methane you are worried about, or it won't. If it melts permafrost, (and assuming the 9 C increase the IPCC predicts) there will be massive increase in plant growth.

[KLB]

SkepticLance, I've noticed a trend in your posts, you make claims and attack others statements, but NEVER provide any supporting documentation. At least others are providing references. I think it is time that you provide some supporting documentation for your claims.

[SkepticLance]

To KLB

 

What supporting documentation do you need?

 

The statements I have made about plant growth with increased warming is just basic biology, while the information about the degree of warming predicted by the IPCC for global average and for high Arctic is in their latest report.

 

Is there anything else needed?

[KLB]

To KLB

 

What supporting documentation do you need?

 

The statements I have made about plant growth with increased warming is just basic biology, while the information about the degree of warming predicted by the IPCC for global average and for high Arctic is in their latest report.

 

Is there anything else needed?

 

You could start by providing links to references for your last post before my complaint.

[Icemelt]

Do we really have to prove that humans are causing global warming before we take action?

 

Well it really is rather important that we take the correct action and fully understand the implications of what we are doing. For instance there is a school of thought that deforestation will increase the reflected energy from the Earth and cause cooling. And then of course we have the global dimming issue, where particulate pollution is actually helping to cool the planet. A panic reaction might therefore be to cut down all the trees and pump as much coal dust into the air as we can. I imagine we’ll all agree that this might not be the best of ideas. Panic reaction could cause other economic and environmental changes, with equal or even worse results.

 

Surely it is vital that we first establish that we actually have a problem. Are we causing global warming, or is the Earth just moving through a natural cycle. Certainly my post yesterday on rising sea levels might indicate the latter.

 

First we need to establish that the current global warming isn’t just a natural cycle well within nature’s grasp and not out of control. There are many who say that CO2 has reached unprecedented levels in recent history, and therefore we are not in a natural cycle, but it remains unproven that CO2 is the global warming driving force. In fact even the IPCC admit their climate model predictions are “at best, inconclusive”

 

Next, when or if we can establish that we have stepped out of the Earth’s natural cycle, we need to establish how and why before we take any action. Whilst we have recently made an effort to seriously research these issues, we are a long way from a conclusion. The latest predictions are really based on just a few decades of weather fluctuations which are so small they don’t even cause a blip on the geological charts. I can remember only a few years back that our main concern was that we were slipping into the next glacial period. This seems to me to be a much more likely scenario.

[SkepticLance]

Also to KLB.

 

For your information, my degree is in chemistry and microbiology. However, I have second year university courses in biology and in ecology. When I discuss matters relating to biology, it is from sound knowledge, and not something speculative.