Educated" opinions on climate change - Part 5 11

[GregLocock]

jmw sure- interest in climate change has dropped by 29% in the last 2 years in Australia

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/10/13/2712203.htm

Cheers

Greg Locock

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

 

[jmw]

Interesting article, Greg.
The actual survey appears to be about climate change as a foreign policy goal.
Concern has slipped.
The article postulates all sorts of reasons that weren't tested in the survey.

The survey doesn't actually say "loss of interest" but how it ranked as foreign policy.

Does it mean people no longer believe in it?
Don't see it as something we can do anything about?
Think something is being done?
Or what?

You'd think, given how much commitment most politicians have to climate change and how close their green gurus stick to them, that they'd really want to know the answers.

Sometimes, just sometimes, the electors do punish politicians for bad decisions.
Of course, politicians leaving office could care less what electors think so long as they are making money... like Blair.
So, as long as there is a pile of greens coming their way from "eco" or AGW funding maybe these guys could care less. But if any of these bozos has any intention of a long term political career, and not just the way onto to the gravy train of luncheon speaking, you'd think they'd want to know exactly what people think and why.

The downside of term limited presidencies is that the incumbent has nought to lose by adopting duff policies the electors don't agree with - and how bad does a US president have to be to not get his second term?
As we have seen in the UK, given the option between repaying expenses and standing down at the next election, quite a few seem to favour hanging on to the cash.

I think the real problem is that politicians aren't frightened enough of the electorate.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[jmw]

Greens leader Bob Brown does not think Australians are any less keen to tackle climate change than two years ago.

He thinks the Lowy Institute poll shows that most Australians now see the reduction of greenhouse gases as an urgent domestic concern.

Of course, it shows nothing of the sort because it didn't seek to establish that.

If true, then they must be sophisticated people, the Australians. I doubt UK voters would be able to discriminate between it being a foreign policy issue and a domestic policy issue; if asked about climate change at all and with whatever qualifiers, they'll respond about climate change foreign or domestic or not stated.

The survey seems badly constructed (or very cleverly constructed) leaving lots of wriggle room.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[mauricestoker]

I don't think much on the subject of global warming, as spending much time debating doesn't seem to go beyond the "Ginger or Marianne" level. As an aside, Ginger or Marianne? Too bad the professor isn't around to invent something with coconut shells and spare boat parts. I guess that was my motivation to go into engineering (Ginger or Marianne).

I am a big Arthur Clarke fan, and what was quoted is dead on. How else can the Jerry Springer Show and pet rocks be explained?

I wonder why we don't hear about killer trees or need to put diapers on cows as their flatulence was supposed to be blsitering a hole in the ozone back in the 70's?

Rnewable is great. I've been heating with wood for four years, almost have my land cleared, clear other people's property, and feed the clippings to my animals. That doesn't mean I believe in what I see on TV, it just means I'm painfully cheap.

Through the door
Women come and go
Speaking of
Michelangelo.

 

[moltenmetal]

jmw said: "The precautionary principal I believe in is not fixing things that ain't broke."

If that's truly your attitude, I quite simply do not want you to design anything that myself or my family members ever come into contact with. That's not an ad hominem attack- that's a simple assumption that this attitude on your part is not hypocritical and hence extends to the rest of your engineering practice.

Risk mitigation is part of engineering. We no longer find it satisfactory to wait until things blow up a few times to establish causality before we take protective, preventative action. This is no less true with human effects on the climate than with any other human endeavor. This is especially true when the preventative, precautionary measures (conserving fossil fuels) are both reversible AND of tremendous secondary benefit.

What's comical is that you apply this precautionary principle you apparently loathe to the economy, but not to the environment.

As to the discussion about the differences between water and CO2- I'm done. Arguments about the size of the natural CO2 flux etc. and continued inaccurate analogies to water that have been made, demonstrate either ignorance or a willingness to put aside a basic knowledge of thermodynamics or physical chemistry in order to justify your position.

 

[YoungTurk]

Clearly this thread is not a discussion - its a lecture.

CO2 concentrations are out of equilibrium due to human emissions. If you don't believe this look here:

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/

Now answer this - what is the impact of applying a continuously increasing force to a damped oscillating system?

BTW, what straw man said CO2 is a poison?

What difference does it make that a single researcher won't publicize their algorithms? What does a short term cooling trend tell us about the century time scales we're concerned about? What proof is there that changing away from a fossil fuel economy will bring hardship and not growth? What does interest in climate change have to do with the science?

Nothing. Except that with all these straw arguments you can't see the forest for the tree rings.

 

[mauricestoker]

If you can't see the forest, it's because I burned it in my fireplace.

Ginger or Marianne?

 

[rb1957]

from your link ... "The Mauna Loa data are being obtained at an altitude of 3400 m in the northern subtropics, and may not be the same as the globally averaged CO2 concentration at the surface."

the data you present doesn't support your assertion.

 

[mauricestoker]

This looks like a hole with no bottom. After 40 years of deliberating, I'm going with Marianne.

 

[rb1957]

... in your dreams !

 

[mauricestoker]

Okay, I see. Not many answers.

How about:

"the Skipper or Gilligan?"

 

[jmw]

Risk mitigation is part of engineering. We no longer find it satisfactory to wait until things blow up a few times to establish causality before we take protective, preventative action.

I said nothing about this.... what we have is a working system.
It has worked pretty damn well for quite some time.

Fixing things that aren't broken is not good practise.
A major aircraft manufacturer reported that 80-90% of failures were caused by "preventative maintenance" doing things when they didn't need doing.
There is a big move away from preventative or predictive maintenance to Condition Based Monitoring.

For example. Most people change their car engine oil at the recommended intervals whether it needs it or not.
The point at which the oil will actually need changing depends on different conditions, different driving styles etc.

SO the manufacturer plots the mileage interval against quality over a number of vehicles. He gets a normal/bell curve type distribution.
He now has to pick a safe interval at which to recommend an oil change.

This is conservative. Of course it is.
Very few people will actually be at the lifetime limit of their oil when it is changed.

So Condition Based Monitoring means you start to measure oil quality and decide when to replace the oil based on when it needs changing. This extends the interval significantly and saves resources and money.

So now let's look at our system the climate. WE don't know that it is broken. We are not even close to knowing that.

The intervention here is about replacing oil, or simple maintenance, the intervention is to actively intervene in the climate and change it.
This isn't a "maybe we're affecting the climate, maybe we're not" type of intervention, it is an intervention designed to substantially alter the environment. But if we act to cool the climate and it is actually already cooling, then that intervention is damned stupid and dangerous. Similarly if we act to heat it up when it is heating, it is stupid and dangerous.

There isn't a third way that says Heh, if the climate is heating, this will cool it and if it is cooling, this same action will heat it.

Now according to some, the climate is actually in a cooling phase that will continue till around 2030. This is just an interruption of warming, say some warmers... others, no doubt deny it is happening.

So OK, if it is cooling , lets use the grace period to improve the knowledge and science so we can say with some degree of confidence we know what the heck we are talking about.

Please don't pretend that the Smiley face from JosephP's link represents the true situation. It doesn't.
I happen to think there is far more danger in tinkering with high powered machinery we don't know anything about than in leaving well alone.

The trouble is not just that we make achieve the desired effects of intervention but that the law of unintended consequences adds a further worrying dimension to it.
Man's history of intervention in the environment, even (or especially) with he best intentions has a very poor track record and nothing suggests to me that it would be any better with the sort of intervention proposed to correct a problem not everyone agrees is a problem.

Risk mitigation?
The planet's fine, reasonably well adjusted and reasonably well self regulating. Until you can prove absolutely what is happening and that it is harmful, leave the controls well alone.







JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[mauricestoker]

RB1957,

You're tight, in my dreams. Since they're my dreams, I say "Marianne and Ginger". Should have thought of that when I was young.

 

[imcjoek]

After careful review of this thread I have concluded...

Jeannie > Marianne > Ginger

 

[mauricestoker]

If Jeanie granted you three wishes, would they all be the same?

 

[YoungTurk]

rb-

The MaunaLoa data is presented first but global average sea level data is given on the same page if you scroll down. The trend is identical. There is no doubt that CO2 levels are steadily increasing.

What is the effect of this forcing on the climate system?

jmw-

"...leave the control well alone." Completely agree. Step away from the gas pedal.

Whats all this talk about "actively intervene"? Is this what you're concerned with? There is no mainstream support for actively altering the climate. The question is all about controlling CO2 emissions.

 

[moltenmetal]

My answer to the other question is "Given it's MY fantasy, I'd prefer Eliza Dushku to either, thanks."

 

[owg]

Here is a more user friendly shot at the "silly" list. I have serious doubts abut AGW but this train has left the station, is heading down hill, and has no brakes. I suggest that our time would be well spent, assembling and discussing a list of "Strategic Potential", "Role Player Only", and "Questionable" developments. If the "Strategic" list could gain traction, then governments could quietly move resources from the not so hot projects to the strategic projects. Government subsidies are rendering silly projects economic. First let's try to get the table correct. This is my first shot at a table on Eng-Tips so be patient as I try to get it right.

HAZOP at

http://www.curryhydrocarbons.ca

 

[rb1957]

i think it's a case of TV mimicing real life, but i remember the West Wing episode where they were trying to subsidise renewables. they had advocates for each flavour of renewable (solar, wind, etc) in the room and all they could agree on was individually each was right and the others were pretenders. IMHO creating a table of what we think is sensible is pointless. back to the earlier posts, different regions develop different solutions in part to the local environment (what's available, what's expensive) and of course what's politically acceptable. you can't say solar is sensible,'cause there are places where it obvoiusly isn't (take the UK as an example). i guess you can say orbiting SPS are sensible (but who cares).

 

[jmw]

Young Turk,
Let's ignore that CO2 is disputed as a cause of global warming and accept it as true.

Even among those who believe we are warming, there are those who believe that even if we do reduce CO2 the effects will be negligible and definitely less effective than if the money were spent on other projects so even if CO2 reduction were effective they'd still argue that environmental engineering is quicker, cheaper and more effective.

There are various schemes proposed as able to provide a "quick fix".

One such is to seed the atmosphere with Sulphur oxides.

This is a scheme proposed initially by Nobel Prize winning scientist Professor Paul Crutzen from the Max Planck Institute (

http://www.livescience.com/environment/060727_inject_sulfur.html)

whose ideas has morphed into creating artificial volcanoes (

http://volcanism.wordpress.com/2008/06/06/artificial-volcanoes-a-solution-to-global-warming/).

This is just one example.

There are a variety of such schemes.

There is always a risk that any commitment to "doing something" will lead to a desire for a radical "quick fix", especially if more affordable (tax payer tolerable).

Whatever solution is proposed and adopted, the question that has to be answered first is, are we cooling or warming? The change in rhetoric from Global Warming to Climate Change to Arupt Climate change appears to admit that both scenarios are possible.

The announcement of Global Chilling was co-opted by the AGW camp as meaning that the worst effects of Global Warming were being "masked" by global chilling. So even good news is bad news in their books and the underlying trend is warming. That predisposes them to act against warming.

(incidentally, a Google for Global Chilling brings this interesting nugget to the surface:

http://dangoldfinch.wordpress.com/2007/09/22/global-chilling-what-is-this/)

But we now have a growing body of evidence that we are now in a cooling cycle and will remain so till 2030.

Again, this is "just a temporary" respite and Global Warming will return.... well, naturally it will... but will it ever be able to produce the dire consequences predicted for us or will some other cooling cycle moderate it back again.... changes in the ocean currents again?

Let us assume that CO2 is a very powerful influence over temperature, as the AGW camp believe, and we act to reduce CO2 sufficiently to correct for all the effects predicted by the warmists... but we are not warming at the time but cooling.. (Of course, the warmers could or most likely will claim this is the best time to act because the effect will be amplified).
20 years of cooling cycle and we are effectively, very effectively if CO2 is as potent as believed, providing added cooling also. This could result in a very poor outcome.

Even if we believe in CO2 and Temperature, though it doesn't matter what measure you apply, applying the wrong corrective at the wrong time could have disastrous consequences.

Our best hope is that Warmers reduce CO2 and it has no effect on the climate - when we are cooling. It will cost a lot but do no harm to the planet. It may do a lot of harm to society.

Worst case is that the appeal of a quick fix will win out and be applied at the wrong time.



JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com