Kicking the Climate Change Cat Further Down the Road... 43

[ewh]

What is the reputation of the NIPCC (Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, a organization of 50 "top" scientists) in the engineering community? I really don't know how reliable they are, but a study (Climate Change Reconsidered II) produced by them and published by the Heartland Institute (an organization which espouses other ideas I disagree with) claims to be "double peer reviewed" and presents a seemingly well-founded arguement that AGW is a political red herring.
I am not a climate scientist, but thought that this was a good example of one side of the differing dogmas surrounding the issue. Just how is a layman supposed to make sense of these opposing arguments?

http://climatechangereconsidered.org/

or the summary

http://heartland.org/media-library/pdfs/CCR-II/Summary-for-Policymakers.pdf

“Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively.”
-Dalai Lama XIV

 

[GregLocock]

You obviously don't read my notes with any more attention than i pay to yours. Yes, i agree, and am puzzled by, the extra CO2 content in the atmosphere since the start of the industrial revolution is, to within 50% say, equal to the CO2 from the fossil fuels we have burnt. That astonishes me, but I accept it. Therefore IF this economic miracle takes place (I have my doubts) I'd expect the CO2 to rise accordingly. That doesn't bother me in the slightest as the knobs on my mental model are set to 100% reality, not 300%, and the knobs the IPCC don't bother with are waiting to get fired up when the science gets there.

I don't quite see why the rest of the world should be forced into a century long recession because a corrupt and complacent state authority allowed 1500 people to die reasonably predictably. If you seriously think your country couldn't cope with the rather small changes in weather you'll see by 2100 then I guess we'll just have to agree to differ. A nation that irrigates a desert the size of a small country in 30 years is probably capable of building a 1 ft seawall in 100 years.





Cheers

Greg Locock


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[CajunCenturion]

==> so you’re saying that “they” have been poor in their response to “adaptation” measure thus far. That just furthers my point that “adaptation” alone
Actually, it shows that you're thinking is limited. Don't change the goal of adaptation - change the "they", and their priorities.

Further, if you look at the chart posted by GregLocock on 21 Apr 14 21:05, you'll see that the Americas and Europe are already moving in the right direction. So, why do you want to impose further taxes and penalties on groups that are already moving in a positive direction? The obvious answer is because they're the only groups that you can impose dictates. That tells me that you're not going after the people you need to in order to solve the problem, you're going after the people from which you can forcibly take money.

Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[2dye4]

Gregs chart would be much more informative if it were in per capita emissions.

Anybody know where one can be found ?

 

[beej67]

Superimpose the population curve on it if you want, I don’t care. Population started to rise around 1000 AD, when temperatures started to fall until around 1920.

Then why'd the sea level rise?

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[KENAT]

Whale hunting or lack there of obviously.

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[GregLocock]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...rom_fuel_combustion_between_1971_and_2009.png

so china is almost up with europe, middle east is higher than europe, the Indian living standards revolution is still yet to start, it'll be as big as China.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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[rb1957]

"non-OECD Europe and Eurasia" = the old eastern bloc and Russia ... the collapse of communism seems to align with a significant drop is emissions (and living standard?)
the dip in US in '74 would align with the oil embargo, and concurrent price increase.

this graph says (to me at least) devloped economics use a lot of energy. China's emissions will continue to increase, US will continue to decline slowly. the 28M tonnes (annual total) will increase.

Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati

 

[beej67]

So according to that chart, per capita carbon emissions are only increasing significantly in China and the Middle East.

Hrmm.

Sounds like any solution that doesn't merely include them, but is driven by them, won't work, presuming of course that the science is right about it being an only CO2 issue.

Personally, as an environmentalist and hydrologist, I'm much more concerned about the really pressing problems we're going to face in the next 100 years. Mass extinction is a real problem, and it's not because of a half degree Celsius, it's because of habitat depletion and increased vectors for disease and invasive species. The other real problem is what happens when certain areas of the world deplete their historic aquifers and folks start getting into wars over water. Syria and the Dust Bowl are good examples of places where water resources are going to disappear in our lifetimes, and nobody's moving to do anything about it.

The thing that annoys me the most about climate science is that it's hijacked the entire environmental movement, largely through rhetoric, obstructing real, effective conservation. Nowadays the activism is all towards carbon trading, when they should be towards habitat restoration and green building initiatives, which are things we can actually do, and which will also have a measurable and verifiable impact on microclimate.

Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -

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[zdas04]

I've recently been involved in studying the GHG numbers that the Oil & Gas industry reported in the 2013 GHG inventory. Specifically, I've been looking at the contributions of pneumatic devices to the inventory (28% of the total reported volume from this industry). My assessment of this process (which has been submitted to a peer-reviewed journal for publication) is that this portion was overstated by at least an order of magnitude and more likely by a factor of 20. The other components were overstated by about the same amount according to the people doing the reviews for those areas. Because of the X25 multiplier for methane, Oil & Gas has been credited with 20% of the US GHG inventory.

So, if 20% of the US GHG inventory should be reduced by at least an order of magnitude, if every other industry is doing a similar job of reporting this stuff then the graphs should look really different. It looks to me like everyone is terrified of a low baseline that would cause them to have to purchase credits in the future so they are being ultra conservative in their assessment of emissions (since there isn't any dounside to reporting a large volume right now). I didn't see any obvious fabrications, but I saw a bunch of people who delayed plans to replace (high emitting) continuous bleed controllers with (low emitting) intermittent vent controllers. Making this change is good for the bottom line (I wrote an SPE paper on this in 2000, you can find it at One-Petro if you're interested) since it is better to sell the gas than to exhaust it to atmosphere, but it isn't a huge IRR project and will have better economics if Cap & Trade happens. This is a case where uncertainty and rhetoric are delaying one of the few projects that both have positive economics and accomplish an environmental goal.

Beej67,
I couldn't agree more with you statement:

The thing that annoys me the most about climate science is that it's hijacked the entire environmental movement, largely through rhetoric, obstructing real, effective conservation. Nowadays the activism is all towards carbon trading, when they should be towards habitat restoration and green building initiatives, which are things we can actually do, and which will also have a measurable and verifiable impact on microclimate.

I keep seeing real innovation stifled by proscriptive regulations that allow exactly one solution to a problem. For example the current version of the New Source Prevention Standard (NSPS) Subpart OOOO prohibits wet seals on centrifugal compressors and requires dry seals. If they had said "emissions from compressor seals must be monitored and cannot exceed xxx tonnes/year of VOC" then if some clever guy figures out a better, cheaper, lower emission technique to contain emissions from centrifugal compressor seals it could be implemented without a change in the law--as the regulation is written, there is no incentive to do that research.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle of injustice Frédéric Bastiat

 

[rconnor]

Everyone’s talking about emission reductions in the US near the end of the graphs as if it’s people, on their own accord, reducing their consumption. That is likely a very minor factor in the decrease. For the major factor, look at the date of the decline. I wonder what happened to the US in 2008….

rb1957, that’s a very interesting insight with regards to the collapse of the USSR. I’m intrigued as to why there would be such a sharp decline. It could be that they were eating the seed corn, so to speak, right before the collapse in a desperate attempt to keep up with the US. Then, when they finally had to disband, the papier-mâché superpower gave way and the system fell back to a more reasonable level.

With regards to the oil embargo, I think that you are right. I also believe that it suggests that people DO respond, significantly, to price changes.

Beej67, I’ve yet to meet any environmentalist concerned about CO2 emissions but apathetic towards deforestation, loss of habitat, etc. As I’ve continually said to you, the issue is about consumption, both how much we consume (far too much) and how we consume (powered by fossil fuels). I’m in agreement with you that (even if it were practical) we can’t simply replace all coal plants with wind farms and continue to rapidly increase our consumption. We’ll never completely wean ourselves of fossil fuels, so the trick is to reduce our consumption as much as we can. Furthermore, keeping CO2 concentrations at a safe level means we need to reduce deforestation (loss of habitat) and increase reforestation. Both have the co-benefit of helping with the climate change and other environmental concerns. We are not in disagreement here. No one concerned about the environment is.

The thing that you need to understand is that reducing our CO2 emissions will help with all the environmental issues you have. Controlling and regulating consumption growth leads to…less deforestation (and less CO2), less over fishing (and less CO2), less urban sprawl (and less CO2), less fertilizer/pesticide runoff (and less CO2), lower building energy costs (and less CO2). And, frankly and unfortunately, most people and all companies need some financial or safety reason to be more environmental conscious and the future effects of climate change are the wakeup call that they need. So, sure climate change science may have taken over as the flag barrier for the environmental movement but it does so with good reason.

With regards to Syria, the conflicts there are largely tied to a persistent drought. According to projections, these sorts of events are likely to get more frequent and more severe in that area with climate change. The effects of climate change aren’t just infrastructure damages from hurricanes and such, they include the resource conflicts you speak of as well. They aren’t included in the “no mitigation” costs assumed above.

 

[beej67]

Check the graph again. It shows per capita carbon emissions going down every year but one since 2004 in OECD America. Can't hang that on the recession.

The thing you're missing again, rconnor, is correlation/causality. I'm fine with reducing CO2 levels in the atmosphere by efforts to expand and restore habitat, but I don't pretend that carbon credits are going to cause reforestation to suddenly occur, nor do I pretend that carbon credits are going to slow AGW while we still promote urban sprawl. I also don't pretend that carbon credits are going to come close to arresting the causes of the global mass extinction that's going on right now, because that mass extinction is NOT due to a one degree rise in temperature. It's due to loss of habitat, real (poisonous) pollutants, and the increased vectors for invasive species and disease. Those are the causes. Them. Not a degree Celsius. We can do a lot more good for our planet by spending the amount of effort we're currently spending arguing about CO2, and applying that effort towards real conservation.

The one verifiable connection between increased CO2 in the atmosphere and our ongoing mass extinction is the coral reefs dissolving due to increases in levels of carbonic acid in the oceans. And the environmentalist are so focused on GW that they've pretty much ignored even that until very recently.

Syria's on a dead aquifer. They'd run out of water regardless, unless something happens to the climate to change it, supercharging the hydrologic cycle in their region of the world. GW may or may not do that - most models have GW producing more rain in some places and less in others, but all properly built models show an increase in the amount of water that moves through the cycle on the whole. That's what heat does. It moves water through the cycle. It's entirely possible that Syria's only hope to rescue them from a very serious and life threatening water supply crisis in the upcoming century is, in fact, global warming. But proving that (or disproving it) would take some complex climate modeling, that we simply don't have the ability to do.

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[rb1957]

cooments like "mass extinction is the coral reefs" are like "the glaciers are melting"; i think both respond to their local conditions.

I thought it'd be interesting, since this thread started with NIPCC to see what they had to say. search for "coral reefs" and the top hit says ...
"In light of their several significant findings, Rodolfo-Metalpa et al. conclude that "the conventional belief that calcification rates will be affected by ocean acidification may not be widespread in temperate corals." In this regard, for example, they note that Ries et al. (2009) have reported that the calcification rate of the temperate coral Oculina arbuscula is also unaffected by an increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration of up to 840 ppm, and that a large decrease in calcification was only found at a CO2 concentration in excess of 2200 ppm." ... i'm not sure if "Biogeosciences" is peer reviewed (and FWIW IMHO i don't care)

Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati

 

[CajunCenturion]

==> For the major factor, look at the date of the decline. I wonder what happened to the US in 2008….
Actually, in both the total emissions chart and the per-capita chart, the clearly noticeable decline began with events in 2005 and 2007, aided by the effects of the recession during those years.
Further details can be found in this document: U.S. Carbon Dioxide Emissions Down 11 Percent Since 2007
From that article,

Emissions shrank rapidly during the recession, then bounced back slightly as the economy recovered. But shifting market conditions, pollution regulations, and changing behaviors are also behind the decline.

and

emissions from oil climbed steadily until 2005, when they peaked at 715 million tons of carbon. Since then, these emissions have fallen by 14 percent,

emphasis mine. Additionally,

Average fuel efficiency, which had been deteriorating for years in the United States, started to increase in 2005 and keeps getting better.

again,emphasis mine, and

U.S. carbon emissions from coal have fallen 20 percent from their peak in 2005.

Clearly, 2005 was a significant year.

U.S. wind power capacity has more than tripled since 2007

So while the charts don't reflect the realized benefits until 2008 and beyond, the actions causing those effects aren't related to anything that happened in 2008.

Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[rconnor]

GrandpaDave,

Worth a read. The line “within a few years it is predicted that due to the ice melt the sea will rise and make most coastal cities uninhabitable” was a fabrication. So the “twisting of the truth” looks to be by “skeptics” to trick other “skeptics” into the conclusion that the doomsday-sayers having been wrong about their predictions since the 1922. No such prediction was ever made in that article.

I certainly don’t blame you, you’re a victim of this sort of distortion (or in this case, flat out fabrication) common in places like GWPF (who used the fake quote in a piece to reach the conclusion stated above). However, this is just another example of why people need to be (truly) skeptical of their sources. Which goes back to the original post and this bizarre inversion in the standards of sources of evidences. Blogs and mass forward emails = truth. NASA, NOAA, reputable peer-reviewed journals and 197 National Academy of Sciences = liars and truth spinners.

 

[rb1957]

IMHO that's ignoring the undisputed fact that the 1922 article notes very little arctic ice. the article reprint in the link doesn't include the entire article, possibly they had predictions about the future of the arctic ?

i think the point is that in 1922 there was very little arctic ice, inbetween years there was more, and now there's less again ... so what ! in the future there will be more or less than there is today.

maybe the 1922 article didn't extrapolate the current trend into future predictions ... maybe they were smarter (and more honestscientific) than we are today ?

Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati

 

[rconnor]

Cajun,
Thanks for looking into the numbers. However, the wording in you final point fringes on being untrue and is not supported by the previous quotes. Although events in 2008 had nothing to do with wind power tripling in 2007, you cannot conclude that events in 2008 had nothing to do with reductions in emissions per capita in 2008 and beyond. The recession most certainly did play a part in the reduction, as noted in your first quote. That being said, my comment did under represent the impact of emission reduction measures currently taking place and I appreciate you bringing in the numbers to demonstrate that.

Demonstrating that emission reduction measures have been effective at reducing emission is not an argument against my stance. It is likely that the increase in awareness of climate change is pushing some of the public and, subsequently, some of the government to act in a more environmental conscious manner. As I said before, if emissions can continue to drop in the US without the use of more stringent measures, then I’d be all for it. The best way to promote the reduction of emissions without the need for taxes or other such measures is to properly educate the public on climate change science (cough, cough). However, emissions need to continue to drop at a faster rate and this is not likely to happen on its own, especially within the commercial/industrial sector.


rb1957,
I don’t believe you read the Real Climate article. If you did, you’d clearly see the discussion on what actually happened with arctic ice in 1922. It was indeed lower than normal (for the time) but the reduction was spatially isolated. Furthermore, it has dropped to a much lower extent and at a much faster rate recently.
[image

http://www.realclimate.org/images/WGI_AR5_Fig4-3.jpg

]

[ul]
[li]The point that the original article was trying to make in 1922 was that ice in that region was lower than normal. This was true.[/li]
[li]The point that SNOPES was trying to make was that the ACTUAL article (not including the fabricated line) was true and that “it isn’t substantive evidence either for or against the concept of anthropogenic global warming[/b]. This is true[/li]
[li]The point “skeptics” were trying to make by fabricating the article to include the extra line at the end was that claims made by scientists where wrong back then and are therefore wrong today. This is untrue. The quote was a fabrication. The extension to anything relevant to today is a non-sequitar (even if the quote wasn’t a fabrication).[/li]
[li]The point you are trying to make is that ice levels decrease and increase and therefore there’s nothing unusual about the recent decline. This is untrue. Levels have been flat for ~80 years up to 1970 when they started to drop at a rapid rate (I’ll also note that long-term solar cycles peaked around 1950 and have been in decline ever since).[/li]
[li]The point I’m trying to make is that “skeptics” fabricated the quote to make a stupid argument. This is true. It’s not just trash, it’s not just dishonest trash, it’s dishonest trash that is so stupid that would STILL be trash even if it were honest. So when GWPF uses such trash as a premise for an article or when CFACT tweets about it, you need to seriously question the validity of their work. This is also true.[/li][/ul]

 

[CajunCenturion]

==> you cannot conclude that events in 2008 had nothing to do with reductions in emissions per capita in 2008 and beyond.
What I'm claiming, along with presenting facts to support that claim, is that significant events leading to both overall reductions and per capita reductions starting taking place years before 2008 - as early as 2005. And you can see, no only in the data, but in both charts as well, that the declines began prior to 2008.

What I'm not claiming is that, and I quote,

For the major factor, look at the date of the decline. I wonder what happened to the US in 2008….

I'm not claiming there is "the major factor". In fact, the data shows several contributing factors. And despite what you may WANT to be true with respect to 2008, the date of the decline, seen both the in raw data and on the charts, is evident as early as 2005.

Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[rb1957]

2008 = GFC ??

Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati

 

[rconnor]

Cajun, if all you are concluding is that the recession wasn’t the “major factor” in the drop in emissions then I don’t disagree with you. I admitted that I underestimated the effects of other emission reduction measures taking place prior to 2008. My quote that the recession was “the major factor” appears to be incorrect. I made that statement based off eye-balling the graph and a verbal theory, not statistics. You have demonstrated that nicely by providing hard evidence and I thank you for it.

I merely wanted to clarify that the recession was at least part of the reduction in emissions because your wording made it sound (to me) like you were saying it wasn’t at all. We’re all clear now and I’m in agreement with you.

 

[zdas04]

GFC = Global Financial Crises.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle of injustice Frédéric Bastiat