'Educated' opinions on climate change part 2 40

[PSE]

There are plenty of people willing to weigh in on both sides of the climate change issue. My personal view is that climate change has shown to be inevitable on a geologic timescale. Whether or not mankind's activities has had a significant role in recent changes I am not convinced of either way.

Regardless, as an engineer, (and I think this is a part of our calling regardless of specialty), I want to be efficient in how I do things as it tends to minimalize adverse impact all around. None of us really have the gift of foresight that will tell us the impact of current choices on future events. To utilize a phrase from the stock market. "Past performance is not an indicator of future results". Try to find the win/win situations and go after them (preserve or improve quality of life while lessening potential environmental impact).

Regards,

 

[moltenmetal]

garrettk: yes, I strayed into hyperbole there for a moment to make a point. That's been done amply on the other side of this debate too, so I don't feel so bad.

People thought that the Rockies would act as an effective barrier against the spread of the pine beetle, but the winds fixed that. Storms carried swarms of the insects high over the peaks. Beetles DID literally rain from the skies, to the point that they sounded like rain on the tin roofs of buildings down-wind.

If you read the rest of my post, you'll see that I acknowledge other factors as exascerbating the infestation. But what permitted the spread was the winters without protracted cold spells.

civilperson: Yep, trees are a solar-powered, self-propagating CO2 removal system if you use and dispose of the wood the right way. There is some trouble in terms of sustainability from the fact that wood doesn't just consist of CO2 and water, and that stuff will be "permanently fixed" too, hence it will be mined from the soils. In the natural world, the process of permanently fixing carbon is pretty slow (on the human timescale), since the biosphere recycles most of its carbon.

lcruiser: it seems you're confused about equilibrium processes. The half-life of water vapour in the atmosphere is even shorter, but that doesn't affect the equilibrium concentration of water vapour in the atmosphere. Once the CO2 is in the atmosphere, removing it again and fixing it for storage means fighting an entropic battle of enormous proportions. Fixing it at source, where it's concentrated, is expensive enough in energetic terms to make people wonder whether or not it's worthwhile.

 

[LCruiser]

moltenmetal, I'm not confused. You seem to be ignorant of the fact that over half of all emissions sink to either flora or the ocean, base on the fact that CO2 concentration only goes up half as fast as it would if all emissions stay in the atmosphere. It's pretty well established that sink is proportional to the distance from equilibrium - look it up. It's called Henry's Law. If all excess emissions stopped right now, excess concentration would go to half in about 40 years, one quarter in 80, etc. at teh current rate. That's worst case - flora is spreading so it continues to take in CO2 at an increasing rate.

 

[RossABQ]

Having lived through the "impending catastrophes" predicted throughout the '60's and '70's, I notice one past topic has not been raised during the present controversy. It is one of the simplest of the solutions, and wholly within our control. That is population control. Less people times current GHG per person is a bigger reduction than an incremental improvement in power generation, cars, etc. Less food is needed, so pressure on farmland is reduced. Fewer forests cut down, etc etc. Why has this topic been completely ignorecd this time around?? Politically distasteful?

Not everything needs a technological solution.

 

[jmw]

Er, unless you mean in the popular press i.e. outside this forum, good question but we've covered it, or at least recognised the inherent dangers in trying to promote population control, here.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[josephv]

Here is an interesting study.

Published May 2008, the Synthesis and Assessment Product 4.3 (SAP 4.3): The Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture, Land Resources, Water Resources, and Biodiversity in the United States is the most extensive examination of the impacts of climate change on important U.S. ecosystems undertaken to date.

http://www.sap43.ucar.edu/

Here are some major findings (there are more in the above link, you can also find there the entire study).

- Grain and oilseed crops will mature more rapidly, but increasing temperatures will increase the risk of crop failures, particularly if precipitation decreases or becomes more variable.
- Higher temperatures will negatively affect livestock. Warmer winters will reduce mortality but this will be more than offset by greater mortality in hotter summers. Hotter temperatures will also result in reduced productivity of livestock and dairy animals.
- Weeds grow more rapidly under elevated atmospheric CO2. Under projections reported in the assessment, weeds migrate northward and are less sensitive to herbicide applications.

 

[KENAT]

RossABQ, population control has been brought up a number of times and usually ends up getting red-flagged and the relevant posts deleted.

As to why it's not brought up more outside of this forum, I suspect for the same reasons it raises temperatures here.

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...

 

[jmw]

And rising temperatures is the very problem we are concerned about.
ouch! ouch! ouch!

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[LCruiser]

josephv -

I wouldn't put too much credence in that report. If you read it carefully they make some rash assumptions. For example, they say the temperature rise in the next 30 years will be 2 deg F, based on IPCC projections.

If you look at Figure TS.32 here:

http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_TS.pdf

then you can see here:

http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/public/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.2

that we are already out of the error bars.

 

[josephv]

According to the report "even under the most optimistic CO2 emission scenarios" several problems appear. The exact quote is below.

Note that the report is sponsored by the US Department of Energy and NASA, I would doubt that they would sponsor something that was unrealistic. Further to this, believing that increased CO2 has only positive effects and no negative effects, sounds rather unrealistic.

"Even under the most optimistic CO2 emission scenarios, important changes in sea level, regional and super-regional temperatures, and precipitation patterns will have profound effects. Management of water resources will become more challenging. Increased incidence of disturbances such as forest fires, insect outbreaks, severe storms, and drought will command public attention and place increasing demands on management resources. Ecosystems are likely to be pushed increasingly into alternate states with the possible breakdown of traditional species relationships, such as pollinator/plant and predator/prey interactions, adding additional stresses and potential for system failures. Some agricultural and forest systems may experience near-term productivity increases, but over the long term, many such systems are likely to experience overall decreases in productivity that could result in economic losses, diminished ecosystem services, and the need for new, and in many cases significant, changes to management regimes."

 

[LCruiser]

The NASA climate program is led by James Hansen, the Chief Chicken Little who has made a million dollars from "grants" by people who could benefit from brokering energy. So, don't think they wouldn't sponsor some unrealistic.

Consider, carefully, the first sentence of your quote:
"Even under the most optimistic CO2 emission scenarios, important changes in sea level, regional and super-regional temperatures, and precipitation patterns will have profound effects."

Certainly in any change there will be both winners and losers, but you have to remember the effect of doubling CO2, all other things being constant (which of course they aren't, evidenced by the fact "global warming" has stopped for 10 years now) will warm the planet by from 1 to 2 deg C.

"*will* have profound?"?? There is so much uncertainty with respect to convection that they cannot possibly know that. It's a religion, it's not science. A religion complete with "Original Sin".

 

[josephv]

- "The NASA climate program is led by James Hansen, the Chief Chicken Little who has made a million dollars from "grants" by people who could benefit from brokering energy."

That is quite an accusation, do you have some information to back that up? Not just a smear blog, but real evidence.

- "global warming" has stopped for 10 years now

Do you have some scientific papers to back this up, not just graphs but actual papers that come to this conclusion?

I posted this before, according to the National Academies of Science, "9 of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred during the past decade."

http://dels.nas.edu/dels/rpt_briefs/climate_change_2008_final.pdf

Best regards,

 

[rb1957]

i've seen several posts to the effect that the IPCC "scientists" have said that the warming trend appears to be delayed by "external factors", but they expect it to resume soon. sorry, i don't have formal references for this.

similarly, i thought that "they" had reviewed (revised) the data and made several years in the 30's the warmest on record. but then remember, the "record" is only a blink in geological timescales.

and yes, i beleive that even scientists in NASA and the like have their careers to protect, their grants to gather, and so are not adverse to interpreting their results in a particular light. how else can you explain Mann (of the "hockey stick" fame, or infamity) ?

 

[LCruiser]

josephv -

Hansen received $720k from Soros et al, and $250k from Teresa Heinz. That's only two groups.

So, you don't like graphs? That's funny, since this is an engineering board. Do you not trust them or what?

As far as your NAS link, it uses GISS, which is Hansens's baby, so it has no credibilty. Not that NAS itself never has any credibility, but it's a bunch of people and the ones who did this are obviously not objective. You can see that in figure 12, which although it's a 2008 publication, is such that reality is outside the error band.

Speaking of error bands, what makes them think they have any right to even use them in this application?

 

[josephv]

Thanks, LCruiser

Many research organizations get grants. For example, am pretty sure Soros also donates to cancer research, is this hard proof that doctors doing cancer research lack credibility?

If you look at my post I wrote, "not just graphs". Graphs are great, and send them if you can, but what I am looking for is scientific papers that make the conclusion that you stated:
i.e. that "global warming" has stopped for 10 years now
Can you send us scientific papers that concludes this?

cheers,

 

[GregLocock]

Peer reviewed article in Nature

Nature 453, 84-88 (1 May 2008) | doi:10.1038/nature06921; Received 25 June 2007; Accepted 14 March 2008; Corrected 8 May 2008

Advancing decadal-scale climate prediction in the North Atlantic sector
N. S. Keenlyside1, M. Latif1, J. Jungclaus2, L. Kornblueh2 & E. Roeckner2

Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences, Düsternbrooker Weg 20, D-24105 Kiel, Germany
Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Bundesstrae 53, 20146 Hamburg, Germany


You may be able to get it here

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/320/5876/595

More generally readable

http://www.newstatesman.com/scitech/2007/12/global-warming-temperature

http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Goldstein_Lorrie/2008/05/04/5466976-sun.php

Cheers

Greg Locock

SIGlease see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[LCruiser]

Perfect Greg -

Apocalypsis interruptus...

 

[zdas04]

Now I remember why I stopped reading this thread before--I can't find a single instance where anyone has changed their opinion regardless of the outstanding arguments on both sides.

I guess when the data is inconsistent and/or ambiguous, well-meaning people are required to resort to "faith" (defined as "acceptance of a concept in the absence of data"). I think I'll stop playing "my imaginary friend can beat up your imaginary friend"

It's been fun.

David

 

[LCruiser]

David -

You're right - sort of. On the one hand are the religious zealots who march, lockstep, with Al Gore. On the other are the people who will deny it all. Then, in the middle, are those of us who see that Al Gore et al don't quite have it down in the logic department, but have only faith to lean on. Such it is with josephv - he "believes" and will not look at the reality of the situation.

Earth needs to have some serious changes in responses to ghg's in order to follow in line with the alarmists' siren calls. Right now "it just ain't happenin'". Not that it won't in the future, and the penalty for failure on both sides is large, but when you drill down into the science it just is not there.

So do we all start walking around barefoot? I think not - many more than half would die of starvation, not to mention that "green" really is a product of CO2 anyway - that's the strange thing about all this...

 

[rb1957]

i couldn't have said it any better ...
however, climate change is real and i think we, as engineers, need to develop solutions for the anticipated problems.

if the ocean high tide level were to increase 1m what would be the consequences ? what is the likelihood of this happening ? what is the cost of the different solutions ? then the politicians (and the people who vote for them) decide what to do.

right now the politicans have decided to act on what i consider to be a red herring, and IMHO very expensive proposals will have negligible effect.