"Educated" opinions on climate change - Part 3 42

[jmw]

At 273 posts I guess the time has come to request the old thread archived and continue in a new thread and it is in this thread that I think the latest news has its proper place.

The world has never seen such freezing heat

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/11/16/do1610.xml

Oh dear,
just what do you have to do to lose the last shreds of credibility?

Tell me honestly folks, how many engineers would still have a job with a track record like Hansen?
Actually, perhaps we'd better not answer that because I suspect the answer is that in any profession there are complete f***-ups who will never be brought to book simply because the credibility of the people who have believed them for so long is also at risk and once one goes then the domino effect comes into being.

I guess that it is only when NASA closes that we will see and end to the career of this fine purveyor of temperature data but we can be sure he will turn up in some other role on the IPCC or as an acolyte of Nobel Laureate, Al Gore.

Success, it seems, depends not on getting it right but on notoriety and why else would so many deadly politicians earn so much on the speaking circuit once they have finally left office and while their dark deeds are still fresh in everyone's mind?


You know I can't help wondering, if it weren't for those "Chads" I wonder what sort of a condition the world would be in now? And, if we are in dire financial straits now, what kind of position would we otherwise be in?



JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[owg]

I came across a statement the other day regarding the amount of fuel that a Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) uses. "1 litre of fuel burned in a VLCC transports 1 tonne of cargo (crude oil) 1736 miles." So based on that I figured that a VLCC shipping Light Arabian crude from the Gulf to New York Harbor (about 13,800 statute miles,14 knots, 36 days) would burn the equivalent of 0.48% of its cargo. This is relevant when comparing the carbon footprint of crude from Canada's oil sands versus crude from the Middle East. I suppose the VLCC burns marine diesel, that is why I used the word "equivalent". I have no basis on which to check this estimate. Any comments?

HAZOP at

http://www.curryhydrocarbons.ca

 

[jmw]

VLCCs often burn recovered volatiles i.e. part of the cargo that used to get lost.
Now whether they mean 1 litre of fuel purchased or 1 litre of fuel in addition to recovered volatiles...

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[owg]

Good point jmw, I will need to check that out. So the number could go up whether they burn recovered volatiles or just let them vent to atmosphere. In the latter case the relevant number would be fuel plus cargo shrinkage. And it would be better to capture and burn for at least two reasons.

HAZOP at

http://www.curryhydrocarbons.ca

 

[owg]

It looks like recovery of VOCs is fairly recent, maybe not yet throughout the fleet. Industry estimates are for 0.15 to 0.25% of the cargo lost without recovery equipment. The article I checked said they re-absorb the VOC into crude from the bottom of the tanks. So I guess its a wash. Of course absorption is not free, there are pumps involved. So fuel is likely about 0.48% of cargo plus say 0.2% loss if no recovery. But I will check my initial reference if I can find it.

HAZOP at

http://www.curryhydrocarbons.ca

 

[owg]

The link for the source of "1 litre, 1 tonne, 1736 miles" is shown below. From the context it looks like it is for fuel not fuel plus recovered VOCs.


HAZOP at www.curryhydrocarbons.ca

 

[jmw]

Tunguska 1908 and Primorye 1947.

If we check the catalogue of "things that could happen and will be bad for you" we can see not just earthquakes and volcanoes, but meteor impacts.
These are things we know have happened and can happen again, indeed, will happen again.
Anyone living along or near the San Andreas fault knows the "big one" is coming, we just don't know when. and Yellowstone is a giant caldera waiting to go bang.
But meteor strikes?
The last big one that had a significant impact was probabl;y the Yucatan Peninsular strike alleged to have possibly ended the reign of the dinosaurs.
However, we should consider that we are increasingly more vulnerable to smaller and smaller impacts. SO while we might suppose that much of the available material to cause damage has already been significantly depleted there still remains a lot of material floating around the solar system just waiting its time.
The thing is we are now a much more dependent society than ever before. We live in a JIT society with very few reserves. We depend on manufacture matching demand with minimal reserves of food or energy and our supplies are increasingly fragile and thus, probably, more vulnerable to the lesser impacts than ever before. We don't need a climate changing event to cause us harm.
Even a minor event such as the two that happened last century might be expected to have a more significant impact if they happened this century... simply because we have more assets spread around for a meteor to impact on.
The too there are significantly more people spread out over the target.
The thing is, whatever the rate of depletion, however long it has been going on, there is still enough dangerous material out there to give us some nasty moments.

So, how many events this century and what scale? How much impact would the last centuries impact have if they happened this century or they struck somewhere else than Siberia? or into the sea? Actually, suppose they had impacted on the sea and not the land? what would have been the effect? or if they impacted either polar region?

We cannot assume we won't have such impacts this century.
We cannot assume they will be smaller. We cannot assume there won't be more of them.

OK, so there is now a study of near earth orbit objects and some are concerned about comets. But have we found them all? And what will we do if we find one headed for earth?

A good primer is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_event

Now OK, how do we weigh this in the balance?
Suppose we detect a largish lump of space rubble headed our way. How much time would we have to do something and what would we do?

Suppose we now have a recession and no money because we spent it all on windmills.
Triaging the potential problems, I'd say we need to be ready and able to sort out rogue meteors and comets. We need to be able to evacuate significant parts of the planet, if we know in time, when earthquakes and volcanoes threaten (which requires we continue to invest in the science of predicting such events) and we need to invest in the means to move people and continue to feed the planet.
I'd spend money here before I'd even think of worrying about a few degrees temperature change with progressive effects not necessarily harmful.

So,
I ask you:
What are the events we should prioritise?
What are the problems we should anticipate?
How should we address them?

What have we forgotten?




JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[Unotec]

I can certainly answer the last question: we've forgotten common sense favouring tabloids and scandals

<<A good friend will bail you out of jail, but a true friend
will be sitting beside you saying ” Damn that was fun!” - Unknown>>

 

[cranky108]

So what if we knew when the big one was coming. Would we not expect the same reaction as New Orlens?
So why isen't the same thing happening with the climate change? Or maybe it is. But then again it isen't big storm cloud.

Our leaders don't seem to look at real world facts, they react to people's fears. (Sort of like driving by looking at the passangers face).
And the problem is the majorty of people calling for climate change legesation, really aren't that bright. How else can some one explain the ease it was to have these people sign up to ban Di-hydro mono-oxide, that chemical used by so many power companies.

 

[jmw]

Cranky,
did you miss the point or did I misunderstand when you said:

So why isen't the same thing happening with the climate change? Or maybe it is. But then again it isen't big storm cloud.

.
I sincerely would like there not to be a big investment on cliamte change but some investment in other things: not on "climate" change because there is no clarity on
(a) what the cause is; or
(b) if we can do anything sensible; if
(c) a bit of warming is/is not harmful.
On (c) many would argue that we are better off with a warmer more CO2 rich environment.
On (b) there is some debate about whether or not reducing CO2 will do any good and many now suggest that geo-engineering is the best solution.

But when it comes to (a) that is what the debate is about. Is it well enough understood? Are the computer models to be relied upon? Is the original data reliable? (the change is smaller than the manipulations, the source data is increasingly suspect and so on).

Plus, no matter what they say, we are being offered something that is progressive, a trend to which we can adapt if we must: we have demonstrably survived a range of climate changes far more severe than promised by doing absolutely nothing (except maybe migrating a bit and wiping out Mammoths - over hunting is said to have been the cause of their final demise).

When I mention earthquakes, volcanoes, and meteor/comet/asteroid impacts we are talking about things that have happened, where we didn't do too well out of them and they will happen again.

Now tell me, can we afford to do something about all these things? If not, where should our current priorities lie?

If we just consider meteor strikes, then we should know that probability and incidence are two different things. It may be that we only expect one ELE every couple of million years on average but we cannot say we will have another couple of million before the next event, it might be tomorrow. Indeed, there are many smaller objects for which the probabilities are grater that can do very serious damage but about which we probably could do something.
At the moment some near misses have come about with very little warning indeed.

And yes, New Orleans is a good example of where money could and should have been spent to do something but wasn't. Now it may be it wasn't for political reasons etc but when it happens again and someone then says "we had no budget for levee improvements" what then?



JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[owg]

jmw - I think we need to do better than just survive as a species. Perhaps we need to start developing scenarios including, do nothing and maybe lose a few million or tens of millions, try to hold CO2 around ?? and just get poorer, lose say a million folks, knock CO2 back down to say 1940 level and maybe get very poor for quite a while, and lose only thousands. I am undecided on global warming as a function of CO2 concentration but we need to know the likely outcomes from various strategies.

HAZOP at

http://www.curryhydrocarbons.ca

 

[Unotec]

owg, in my opinion we are one of the species that has adapted the best so far.

I do agree with jmw: stop wasting money away in an improbable problem with a consequence much more dire than its assumed damage.

We can adapt to a different climate.

An extended disease (pesticides) famine (bio-fuels, destroying forests, imbalancing many species) and waste of resources in a pro-green action will cost more lives in the end than global warming (name it, wars, terror, whatever you can envision if the resources in a global scale are allocated wrong).

Talk about natural selection where only the wealthy will survive.

<<A good friend will bail you out of jail, but a true friend
will be sitting beside you saying ” Damn that was fun!” - Unknown>>

 

[LCruiser]

Population growth combined with decreasing arable land area is a prescription for disaster many times bigger than "lose only thousands". Until we get population growth under control, nothing else is important. It may be that the enhancement of crop growth due to increased CO2 will give us a few decades reprieve.

I don't think anyone with any ability to comprehend the big picture would refute that the shock to the economy of $4 gas and $5 diesel is what kicked us into this recession/depression (we don't even know how low it will go yet).

Unless we get population growth under control, we are in for a calamity with repercussions no one can predict. Homo sapiens' ability to scrounge resources portends a truly tragic scenario for the biosphere.

"Global Warming" not only is the least of our problems, it may be a blessing in disguise.

 

[cranky108]

No I agree we should not be spending much on GW. My question is: Why are we treeting this apperent disaster any different than say New Orleans. We seem to be good at sticking our head in the sand. So what is the difference?
The difference is a this global agenda to apperently hog tie the American economy.

If the desire here is the survival of the species, then why aren't we looking at deversify our living areas. Why aren't we living on the moon, mars and beyond?

And if GW really is a problem, why isen't nucular power part of the solution. Also some of the simple things like painting roof's white to reflect the sun light.

Simply, this can't be a real problem, or we would be looking at the simple solutions first.

This is not to say some solar and some wind isen't good, but then again there is a stability limit.

 

[jmw]

Further up is the link to painting things white.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[jmw]

The Leipzig declaration and signatories can be found here:

http://www.sepp.org/policy declarations/leipzig.html

Follow the link at the bottom for the list of signatories.

http://www.sepp.org/policy declarations/statment.html

from the same site is a list of atmospheric scientists also not willing to be lumped into the "consensus".

Same site: the report of the NIPCC:

http://www.sepp.org/publications/NIPCC_final.pdf

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[jmw]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/en...l-Gore-World-will-agree-new-climate-deal.html

I sincerely hope not!

(and do I hate celebrity endorsements.... what does Will Smith know that I should consider his utterances as "authoritative"? or Ted Danson's, etc. etc. I wish celebs would stick to doing their jobs. Celebs are near as bad as hackers, botherders, spammers, phishers et al when they move outside their box)

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[jmw]

On the other hand, Al Gore may just be trying to talk it up if we believe this comment on a minority report:

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index....ecord_id=fc6818d6-802a-23ad-4803-b2ed231c1d7d

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[jmw]

It isn't just me that wants celebs back in the box.
Coincidentally I find this comment in the opening:

A lot has changed over the past six years since I started to speak out against the likes of Al Gore, the United Nations, and the Hollywood elite.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[jack256]

I don’t have time to read this entire thread, so forgive me if I’m reinventing the wheel here. I do have a few comments:

(1) Using biomass or sugar to make and burn fuel or produce goods does not increase emissions. A mass balance (the first thing you learn as a cheme) would tell you that using carbon on the surface of the earth doesn’t not increase the total carbon in the system. Bringing carbon up from under the earth (oil, coal, exc) does increase the total carbon in the system. There is lag time, of course, between being its release as CO2 and being fixed back as plant material.

(2) Using biomass a fuel will not deplete our food supply. Or at least the market has to be evened out before we know what the true cost is - specifically the federal government favoring/supplementing big US agriculture while putting crushing tariffs on foreign sugar (a possible fuel supply) has to be taken out of play before we can really prove that corn ethanol will the inflated price of food.

(3) I would argue that it’s impossible to predict with any certainty what our actions are doing to the planet. Short term data indicates an alarming rise in things like CO2 but we all know Al Gore’s correlations don’t separate cause from effect (i.e. does an inc in T cause inc CO2 or visa versa?). On the long term, our “alarming” data looks like a joke – the planet whips around from one extreme to the next without any apparent periodicity… Looking back far enough we see that the planet might be going into an ice age and our greenhouse stimulating may actually save us. But because our existence (or pollution input) has happened on such a small time-scale and because our system (the earth) has never seen this before, we can’t say anything about exactly what will happen. We’ll never know because we’ll all be dead when the facts come in.

(4) We can’t be certain we are changing the climate but we can be certain that are polluting and dependent on an outdated energy source that is not sustainable. Add to that, the fact that energy is also sold to us by countries that don’t have our best interest at heart - more specifically countries that despise our way of living and would rather see us dead. Biofuels from corn offer an immediate solution, which sets up the infrastructure and industry to move away from petroleum and even eventually away from corn to second generation cellulosics. That and any other sustainable energy source – wind, tide, hydro, nuclear, whatever is better than business-as-usual.

 

[cranky108]

Increasing the production of biofuels will increase prices somewhere. Food cost, lumber cost, etc. Because of the shift in production of land. Unless you increase the amount of land in production, or concerate on the use of waste products.
On the other hand, the acceptance of other fuels will depend on the simularities they have to existing fuels.
Example, the use of wood pellets for heat. The acceptance has been slow because of the cost of the equipment to handle and use the pellets.
Or example ethonol mixed with gasolene, the acceptance has happened rather quickly as it seemingly has no added cost to use.