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Educated" opinions on climate change - Part 5 11

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NomLaser said:
BTW, we haven't doubled the atmosphere's CO2 levels. From 1884 to now it has went from 0.0284% to 0.0384% in 2007. That's less than 1/2% of the atmosphere is CO2, even a small fraction of that CO2 is actually anthropogenic. Do you realize how ridiculous man-made warming sounds when you put it in actual percentages of the atmosphere that CO2 composes?
Click to expand...

Careful, we now account for 5 percent of annual CO2 emissions. That is not an insignificant number. Those percentages sound small until you consider that .0384 percent accounts for at least ten degrees of radiative warming on this planet. Also, we account for nearly 100 percent of that increase if I understand the research correctly. However, since this is a closed loop I am not sure we have a handle on where we are going to end up. Our excess emissions are integrative. Yet, it won't keep increasing the amount of CO2 forever even at our current rates. It will simply settle at a new equilibrium. I also remember something about our land use effecting the sink process. Does anyone have any data on this?

You are right about the doubling comment. I keep getting a head of myself on that one. The projections have China's explosive increase in coal driving us 550 ppm significantly faster.
 
So how much has the planting, or protection of forrests reduced the increase of CO2?

Any numbers?

If I recall that was the sticking point with the last climate treaty.

And could you consiter wood furniture as a carbon capture stratigy? (At least it provides more jobs, vs plastic and steel).

 
cranky108 - Good question on wood furniture. I suppose as long as it was chopped, whittled, and pegged, it would count as a positive capture. The opportunities for global warming to take us back a couple of hundred years are manifold.

HAZOP at
 
As I posted earlier this month, if we have to spend lots of money dealing with global warming, let us spend it wisely, so that if there is no impact of anthropogenic CO2 on the climate, we will still have made good decisions. With lots of help from various contributors our list of sensible ways to provide enough energy to limit and perhaps reverse global warming, in my opinion, has reduced to three.

Conservation efforts like insulation and mass transit just make sense. Nuclear could see us through until the uranium runs out. Coal gasification with CO2 capture could keep the USAF in the air, and possibly evolve to be a big part of a solution.

The rest are at best, bit players, and at worst a tremendous waste of resource. Their main role is to route government funds to marginal constituencies. These bit players include, again in my opinion, geothermal, solar, tidal, wind, and good old bio- just about anything.

HAZOP at
 
nice idea, but the comon ground is very small.

take CO2 scrubbers ... a complete waste of time, money IMHO, but no doubt well worth it if you want to reduce CO2.

take hybrids (please, take them for a long drive off a short pier) ... of course they get 60 mpg 'cause they obtain a significant amount of their energy from the grid ... possibly worthwhile if you're trying to reduce consumption (waste of time IMHO, though i like the idea of regenerative brakes).

that leaves improving efficiency, which i think is a good thing, but i'm willing to bet that others will think it's not enough, that consumption and emission will carry on regardless (as i expect they will).

then there's carbon trading ... what a way to scam money from folks. i tell ya, someone's getting rich out of this and it ain't me (i'm not smart enough).

off soapbox ...
 
RB1957, you mean plug in hybrids? Current run of the mill hybrids don't get any energy from the Grid unless I'm missing something, do they?

However, I agree with the sentiment of concentrating effort in areas that are of some kind of beneffit even if it turns out the human role in climate change is very limited.

For instance, things that reduce known pollutants other than CO2 (you'll excuse my imlication that CO2 is a pollutant), or that have other environmental benefits such as less mining/resource extraction in arguably 'vulnerable areas', or improve balance of payments/energy freedom or whatever you choose to call it.

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RB1957 is confusing PHEVs and HEVs (ie Prius and such, where the battery is too small to be worth charging overnight). I think reducing oil usage is probably a good idea, but the way the world works all that does at the moment is to reduce the price of oil, rather than reduce the usage.





Cheers

Greg Locock

SIG:please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.
 
Consiter this, electric cars would bring the auto repair people to a new place. 1. Because they would have to be retrained. 2. Because they would not be as difficult to work on.

1. problem. 2. good for consumers.

This has no bearing on what I think of GW, but more about the problems I'm having with my car.
 
i accept i don't know much about hybrids. i was thinking of prius type cars. i know they only use their petrol motor occassionally, so are basically electrically powered; thought they plugged in to recharge. though they can recover some energy with regenerative braking (i wasn't sure they used this tech.)

guess i'm off to the toyota site to learn about hybrids.

cranky, hear your pain brother ... last week the wife (bless here cheery heart, she'll never read this) did in the volvo front end, last night it was the 3rd car's transmission; sigh.
 
In my case it sounds like the transmission has a problem (3rd in 2 years).
However, if it was the engine, I'm not sure I can find it through all the smog stuff.
And would't it be nice if the computer would tell us the owner what is wrong.

And just maybe that's the whole irritating issue with GW, that we are being talked down to, and not lissened to. We aren't stupid, although the "name a group" treats us like we are. (come to think of it, that's why I changed jobs).

 
rb1957, off the shelf Prius (or any other current hybrid I'm aware of) doesn't plug in. The efficency gains are primarily from the regenerative breaking.

I wonder how many other people have this or similar confusion and how it further muddies the water.

Posting guidelines faq731-376 (probably not aimed specifically at you)
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"At present, the Danish government has allocated approx. US$ 62 million on the government budget to COP (Convention on Climate Change) activities, but it is possible that the final amount will exceed this figure."
"When 192 countries meet in Copenhagen next month, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warns it won't result in a Kyoto successor."
So we will spend a lot of money avoiding a climate change agreement. Is this good news or bad news?

HAZOP at
 
and that's only the very tip of the iceberg ... think of how much the other 191 countries are spending on this boon-doddle, all on the backs of us tax-payers !
 
And how much were the utility companys in the US forced to spend for a nucular depository? And when will it be open?

Many of the problems are caused because people have ideas, but don't become involved until the last moment. This increases costs and wastes time on many projects, and kills some outright.

So if we sign this climate treaty, and China dosen't, how is that going to reduce anything? It simply makes buying from China cheeper, while reducing jobs here. They get richer, we get poorer, and no reduction result.
 

In North America we pollute more per capita than China (in GHG emissions for example).

If am not mistaken we also use more energy per capita than anywhere else in the world.

So as the biggest polluter and energy consumer per capita in the world we should be in the table of any international treaty.
 
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