Climate Change is a Hoax

[+Noteverythingisaconspiracy]

1 hour ago, Doug1o29 said:

Vast amounts?

That carbon sequestration study I mentioned in the previous post was spent before I got the project.  I have no money at all to work with.  If I need to do field work, I will have to pay for it myself; although, they'll give me paid time to do it.

My $460,000 grant proposal was rejected, at least for this year.  But I think a few papers from the shortleaf data will smooth some ruffled feathers and maybe I'll get partial funding next year.  The grant would go for a field crew (three men, full time) for about a year, their travel and mileage, supplies and equipment.  Equipment would include new increment borers ($300 ea.), laser hypsometers and sonic range finders, plus the usual inventory equipment - D-tapes, surveyor's tapes, compasses, vests, snake leggings, etc.  We'll also have to rent a truck for a year and a chipper and scales to weigh trees - whole trees.  And chain saws, chains and maintenance gear, plus visits to the shop for larger repairs.

That's the kind of thing forsters spend grant money on.  Forestry Suppliers has fallen in love with me.

Doug

I was being sarcastic. I see a lot of climate change deniers imply that its all a scam to make money, so by that logic you should be a wealthy man.

I know its not the case in the real world.

[Doug1029]

14 hours ago, AnchorSteam said:

The problem is, where are the Govt-funded sites or the large-scale private efforts that offer a counter-point?

Valid counter-points are offered in research journals.  If you're not seeing your point-of-view being represented, maybe it's because it doesn't pass scientific muster.

Doug

P.S.:  Maybe it's also becuase you haven't dug deep enough.  Scientific journals use a lot of technical language and if you don't put it into your search engine, you won't find the articles.

Doug

Edited September 23, 2018 by Doug1029

[AnchorSteam]

6 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

P.S.:  Maybe it's also becuase you haven't dug deep enough. ...

And there lies the rub. When you are only getting one day off a week, it never really seems to be a day you can relax, does it?

 

Alright, I have to keep my mind open (its not like I'm a Socialist) and you seem to be the answer guy when it comes to this. Specifically; CO2.

I don't understand the focus on that simple compound, and the emphasis on that one item is the foundation of about 40% of my skepticism. It is a light compound that does not seem to be able to store much heat. Water vapor, on the other hand, does.

And things like that can be measured as a % of the atmosphere in a whole number.

CO2 registers in parts per million, and its not a very big number. 

Another thing is that CO2 appears to be a lagging indicator. Going by those ice-core samples it spikes after the highs, and the highs have been much higher than they are now even in relatively recent times. That may be beside the point, but what I am getting at is this CO2 does not seem to be physically capable of causing anything but plant growth, especially at the low levels it is at today.

This isn't time for links or equations with more letters than numbers, I'm just trying to get the basics ironed out. 

[ChrLzs]

2 hours ago, AnchorSteam said:

And there lies the rub. When you are only getting one day off a week, it never really seems to be a day you can relax, does it?

So you're now trying to drive Doug into the ground?  I sense a conspiracy.

Quote

Alright, I have to keep my mind open (its not like I'm a Socialist) and you seem to be the answer guy when it comes to this. Specifically; CO2.

Or you could Google stuff.. eg "Why is CO2 so important for global warming" gives many, many results.  Allow me to pick one (from a potentially biased source, so do feel free to dig much deeper):

https://climate.nasa.gov/causes/

I think you really should be looking up that sort of thing yourself before bothering Doug - if we all did that the poor guy might vanish and I think he's a rather valuable resource...

Quote

I don't understand the focus on that simple compound, and the emphasis on that one item is the foundation of about 40% of my skepticism. It is a light compound that does not seem to be able to store much heat. Water vapor, on the other hand, does.

(the rest snipped)

Given that is all covered (admittedly in quite light detail) in the very first link my Googling gave.... I don't really understand why you think that climate scientists are not aware of all these sort of issues, and also have a pretty good grasp of the relative weightings and interactions.  They have studied this stuff for years, and vast majority think.... well, you fill in the gaps.

Edited September 24, 2018 by ChrLzs

[Doug1029]

10 hours ago, AnchorSteam said:

Alright, I have to keep my mind open (its not like I'm a Socialist) and you seem to be the answer guy when it comes to this. Specifically; CO2.

A lot of research scientists are socialists, especially European ones.  And I could say much the same thing about capitalists and their greed.

I am not a socialist per se, but they do have some good ideas.  We should look at those ideas objectively and adopt the ones that work for us.  We can have the best of both worlds.  The function of govt is supposed to be the greatest good for the greatest number, not all the good for just one person.

Also, we are going to need those big companies, especially the energy companies, if we are going to do anything about warming.  The govt is pretty-much impotent due to politics.  The carbon fee system requires a free market and a lot of competing products so people can choose which products to buy.  A single govt-sponsored product doesn't allow for competition.

And it's the big companies who are leading the conversion to wind power.  They're doing it because they see a chance for a profit (and because they are afraid of not having enough coal), but they're still doing it.

It was Teddy Roosevelt who attacked timber companies for destroying the country's forests.  That alienated them.  They were the only ones with the equipment, know-how and motive to properly manage forests.  His bad attitude set us back a generation.  We're all in this boat together.  Sinking it won't do anybody any good.

Doug

[Doug1029]

10 hours ago, AnchorSteam said:

Specifically; CO2.

I don't understand the focus on that simple compound, and the emphasis on that one item is the foundation of about 40% of my skepticism. It is a light compound that does not seem to be able to store much heat. Water vapor, on the other hand, does.

And things like that can be measured as a % of the atmosphere in a whole number.

CO2 registers in parts per million, and its not a very big number. 

Another thing is that CO2 appears to be a lagging indicator. Going by those ice-core samples it spikes after the highs, and the highs have been much higher than they are now even in relatively recent times. That may be beside the point, but what I am getting at is this CO2 does not seem to be physically capable of causing anything but plant growth, especially at the low levels it is at today.

This isn't time for links or equations with more letters than numbers, I'm just trying to get the basics ironed out. 

CO2 is a greenhouse gas.  This has been known for about 150 years.  Its concentration in the atmosphere is rising along what is currently, an exponential curve.  Temperature has also been rising along a more-or-less exponential curve.  This is circumstantial information against CO2.

CO2 does not store heat energy, at least not for more than a second or two.  It absorbs energy and re-radiates it at a different wave-length.  That new (heat) wavelength can't escape into space as easily as the incoming (light) energy.  So the difference builds up in the lower atmosphere and oceans (The troposphere has been cooling - OH!  No!  The sky is falling!).  That energy is moved around by winds and ocean currents.  That's why the interest in things like the global conveyor system.

The sky really is falling.  As the troposphere cools, it contracts, drawing the upper limits of the atmosphere closer to earth.  I don't see this as a significant threat to anything.  Just one of those useless facts.

My big concern is that we'll see a new evaporation basin develop in the North Pacific.  Evaporation concentrates the salt, making water heavier.  It sinks, drawing warmer, less salty, water northward to replace it.  That warmer water transfers its heat to the air, which carries it inland., warming the continental interior.  We could see sudden temperature rise as much as 15 to 20 degrees in the Arctic in very little time.  At the end of the Younger Dryas (the "official" end of the Ice Age), the climate changed to interglacial conditions in 40 years - the snowfall shifted to interglacial conditions in just two years.  In 1976/77 a new evaporation basin opened in the Drake Passage - global temps rose 0.75 degrees in 21 years.  Heat buildup in surface waters in the western Pacific stopped the rise, but we have seen another 0.39 degrees added to surface temps since then.

We talk about temperatures, mostly because of the name - "warming," but the Dai Palmer Drought Stress Index is probably a better measure of what the ecosystem is responding to.  On average, it's not doing much of anything, but in local areas it is showing significant changes.  Unfortunately, our current records for it only go back to 1585, just missing the biggest drought of the last millennium.

Under natural conditions, CO2 lags temperature by about 300 years.  Warm water can't hold as much CO2 as cold water, so when the oceans warm up, they release CO2 to the atmosphere.  It takes 300 years for circulation to bring it back to the surface.  But we are releasing CO2 directly to the air, mostly by burning fossil fuels, so we are short-circuiting the process.  There are other sources of atmospheric carbon than just us.  Bogs emit methane.  So does melting permafrost.  And clathrates on the ocean bottoms.  Methane is a potent greenhouse gas all by itself, but it oxidizes with a half-life of about ten years, so it rapidly disappears, leaving CO2 behind.  Land clearing for agriculture destroys plants that store carbon in their root systems.  That carbon decomposes to CO2, so there we have another route for CO2 to reach the air.  And cutting trees also reduces soil carbon by the same process.  And that's why I'm doubtful that forests can store very much carbon.

How do we know the increase in atmospheric CO2 comes from people?  The earth's carbon is mostly in the form of three isotopes - C12, C13 and C14.  C14 is the form the religious fundamentalists hate because it gives the lie to their 6000-year old earth idea.  But here, we're not using it to determine age.  C12 is the earth's primordial carbon.  It has been here since forever.  Most carbon on earth is C12.  It doesn't change its isotopic structure.  C14 is created in the atmosphere when cosmic rays strike nitrogen.  It is radioactive and decays to C13 with a half-life of about 5200 years.

Coal deposits are millions of years old.  Any C14 they had as living plants decayed to C13 long ago.  But permafrost, peat, wood and other repositories of carbon are much younger and still contain higher ratios of C14 to C13.  If you burn something, the carbon it contains is released to the air.  So all we have to do is take air samples and check to see how much C13 and C14 is in them.  If the C13 concentration is going up, but C14 is not, the culprit is coal.  If C14 goes up, too, the CO2 is coming from a younger source, like maybe bogs.  So the increase in carbon is coming from coal.  How does carbon from coal get into the air?

Doug

 

[Doug1029]

9 hours ago, ChrLzs said:

So you're now trying to drive Doug into the ground?

He doesn't have time to learn about global warming and I don't have time to teach him.  So where does that leave us?

Doug

[AnchorSteam]

11 hours ago, ChrLzs said:

So you're now trying to drive Doug into the ground?  I sense a conspiracy.

After dozens or posts from him in this thread, suddenly asking a specific question of limited scope is driving him into the ground? I must have hit a very sensitive nerve there.

Don't you guys have a single issue where rhetoric isn't your first, last and only weapon?

Quote

Or you could Google stuff..

A source proven to be politically biased? No thanks.

Quote

 

Given that is all covered (admittedly in quite light detail) 

Point made

Edited September 24, 2018 by AnchorSteam

[+Noteverythingisaconspiracy]

2 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

CO2 is a greenhouse gas.  This has been known for about 150 years.  Its concentration in the atmosphere is rising along what is currently, an exponential curve.  Temperature has also been rising along a more-or-less exponential curve.  This is circumstantial information against CO2.

CO2 does not store heat energy, at least not for more than a second or two.  It absorbs energy and re-radiates it at a different wave-length.  That new (heat) wavelength can't escape into space as easily as the incoming (light) energy.  So the difference builds up in the lower atmosphere and oceans (The troposphere has been cooling - OH!  No!  The sky is falling!).  That energy is moved around by winds and ocean currents.  That's why the interest in things like the global conveyor system.

The sky really is falling.  As the troposphere cools, it contracts, drawing the upper limits of the atmosphere closer to earth.  I don't see this as a significant threat to anything.  Just one of those useless facts.

My big concern is that we'll see a new evaporation basin develop in the North Pacific.  Evaporation concentrates the salt, making water heavier.  It sinks, drawing warmer, less salty, water northward to replace it.  That warmer water transfers its heat to the air, which carries it inland., warming the continental interior.  We could see sudden temperature rise as much as 15 to 20 degrees in the Arctic in very little time.  At the end of the Younger Dryas (the "official" end of the Ice Age), the climate changed to interglacial conditions in 40 years - the snowfall shifted to interglacial conditions in just two years.  In 1976/77 a new evaporation basin opened in the Drake Passage - global temps rose 0.75 degrees in 21 years.  Heat buildup in surface waters in the western Pacific stopped the rise, but we have seen another 0.39 degrees added to surface temps since then.

We talk about temperatures, mostly because of the name - "warming," but the Dai Palmer Drought Stress Index is probably a better measure of what the ecosystem is responding to.  On average, it's not doing much of anything, but in local areas it is showing significant changes.  Unfortunately, our current records for it only go back to 1585, just missing the biggest drought of the last millennium.

Under natural conditions, CO2 lags temperature by about 300 years.  Warm water can't hold as much CO2 as cold water, so when the oceans warm up, they release CO2 to the atmosphere.  It takes 300 years for circulation to bring it back to the surface.  But we are releasing CO2 directly to the air, mostly by burning fossil fuels, so we are short-circuiting the process.  There are other sources of atmospheric carbon than just us.  Bogs emit methane.  So does melting permafrost.  And clathrates on the ocean bottoms.  Methane is a potent greenhouse gas all by itself, but it oxidizes with a half-life of about ten years, so it rapidly disappears, leaving CO2 behind.  Land clearing for agriculture destroys plants that store carbon in their root systems.  That carbon decomposes to CO2, so there we have another route for CO2 to reach the air.  And cutting trees also reduces soil carbon by the same process.  And that's why I'm doubtful that forests can store very much carbon.

How do we know the increase in atmospheric CO2 comes from people?  The earth's carbon is mostly in the form of three isotopes - C12, C13 and C14.  C14 is the form the religious fundamentalists hate because it gives the lie to their 6000-year old earth idea.  But here, we're not using it to determine age.  C12 is the earth's primordial carbon.  It has been here since forever.  Most carbon on earth is C12.  It doesn't change its isotopic structure.  C14 is created in the atmosphere when cosmic rays strike nitrogen.  It is radioactive and decays to C13 with a half-life of about 5200 years.

Coal deposits are millions of years old.  Any C14 they had as living plants decayed to C13 long ago.  But permafrost, peat, wood and other repositories of carbon are much younger and still contain higher ratios of C14 to C13.  If you burn something, the carbon it contains is released to the air.  So all we have to do is take air samples and check to see how much C13 and C14 is in them.  If the C13 concentration is going up, but C14 is not, the culprit is coal.  If C14 goes up, too, the CO2 is coming from a younger source, like maybe bogs.  So the increase in carbon is coming from coal.  How does carbon from coal get into the air?

Doug

 

This post should be required reading ahead of any discussion about man made climate change. 

People, on both sides of the issue, tend to only look at the headlines and fail to see how complex it is.

I stress "on both sides of the issue" because people who blows the conseques of climate change out of all proportion are not helping. 

[AnchorSteam]

2 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

CO2 is a greenhouse gas.  This has been known for about 150 years.  Its concentration in the atmosphere is rising along what is currently, an exponential curve.  Temperature has also been rising along a more-or-less exponential curve.  This is circumstantial information against CO2.

 

2 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

...Under natural conditions, CO2 lags temperature by about 300 years.  Warm water can't hold as much CO2 as cold water, so when the oceans warm up, they release CO2 to the atmosphere.  It takes 300 years for circulation to bring it back to the surface.  But we are releasing CO2 directly to the air, mostly by burning fossil fuels, so we are short-circuiting the process.  There are other sources of atmospheric carbon than just us.  Bogs emit methane.  So does melting permafrost.  And clathrates on the ocean bottoms.  Methane is a potent greenhouse gas all by itself, but it oxidizes with a half-life of about ten years, so it rapidly disappears, leaving CO2 behind.  Land clearing for agriculture destroys plants that store carbon in their root systems.  That carbon decomposes to CO2, so there we have another route for CO2 to reach the air.  And cutting trees also reduces soil carbon by the same process.  And that's why I'm doubtful that forests can store very much carbon.

All very solid info, I have no argument with this.  However, it does not refute my contention that CO2 is such a tiny part of the atmosphere (0.045%) that its actual effects are being blown out of proportion by theoretical projections. Since none of the theoretical projections have turned out to be true so far, I'm just shaking my head here.... more below.

BTW- the changes in heat from the Sun is an exact match for the changes in the Earth's temperature. I kinda doubt we can control theSun...

2 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

... How does carbon from coal get into the air?

We burn it, mostly in China, but all over the rest of the world also. 

What I see here is a massive focus on the one "greenhouse gas" that can be attributed to Human Industry (if we skip the Gang Green loons who want to kill all the Cows because they fart methane) and therefore subject to regulation. Regulation means money for the Government, restrictions on what ordinary people can do (the rich are unaffected if they shell out a few more bucks here and there) and functions as a rally-point for the short attention-span crowd who want something to protest against.

And I can't get past how damaging that is.

Controlling pollution was a necessary and terrific thing, in the 1960s and 70s. It was resisted, but all the people opposed to pollution control were proven wrong in the end (compare the US to Russia at the turn of the last century) ... even before a river delta feeding into Lake Erie famously caught fire. However, there were a lot of radicals involved in that, and agreeing with a Radical only empowers them to become ever more radical. They only demand more, without regard to the principle of diminishing returns. 

It is as if they won't be happy until we are all riding bicycles.

The Luddites have also latched onto this issue, their fear of technology driving them to support anything that retards human progress.

And then there are the folks who fear an overly prosperous public, and have spent generations trying to shame anyone that enjoys life more than they do themselves; "There's too much consuming going on out there!"

You see where I am going with this now; the other 40% of my skepticism; the Political aspect of this. 

 

Okay, lets say you convinced me, lets say that CO2 will cause something that the Planet.

What exact measures are to be mandated for us all (and I do mean ALL the world's people, not just the 5% in the US) to follow? What will it cost, and what is the upper limit of what will be demanded of us so that the various panels and symposiums can be empowered to save the world?

I know I will be hammered for daring to ask, but I do want something specific regarding what we would be liable for if we agree to all this.

[Doug1029]

2 hours ago, AnchorSteam said:

A source proven to be politically biased? No thanks.

Use Google Scholar.  You'll get mostly research articles.  UNLESS:  you've picked a topic they don't have anything on.  Then you might get anything.

Another good site for research material is SCOPUS.  NOAA and NASA also have some good sites that are scientifically accurate, but are not research sites.  NCDC is OK, but it's mostly just datasets.

Doug

[Doug1029]

1 hour ago, Noteverythingisaconspiracy said:

I stress "on both sides of the issue" because people who blows the conseques of climate change out of all proportion are not helping. 

Articles dating from twenty years ago predicted much more dire consequences than are being predicted today.  That's mostly because research is narrowing the range of what's possible.  But it's also making what is possible that much more likely to happen.

Doug

[Doug1029]

1 hour ago, AnchorSteam said:

All very solid info, I have no argument with this.  However, it does not refute my contention that CO2 is such a tiny part of the atmosphere (0.045%) that its actual effects are being blown out of proportion by theoretical projections. Since none of the theoretical projections have turned out to be true so far, I'm just shaking my head here.... more below.

Warming to date matches that predicted by equations modelling CO2 emissions (c. 1.8 degrees C since the 1820s).

We aren't quite that high with CO2 yet, but we're getting close.

Potassium cyanide will kill half the people exposed to it at a concentration of 5mg/kg.  That's 1/82 less concentrated than CO2 in the air.  So how can such a tiny dose be so deadly?  Same question you're asking about CO2.

Of the IPCC's four predictions in the First Assessment Report, one happened and three didn't.  The IPCC made a range of predictions to cover the range of possibilities, knowing that at least three would be wrong.  They have done that with each assessment report since with the same results.  In 1998 James Hansen used his own climate model to predict temperature rise.  It was right on for 2010.  And climate models are now reaching the point where they can make useful predictions.  Claims from the right about them not being accurate appear to be from decades ago when they weren't so accurate.

And one needs to remember that climate models are not weather models.  They can't tell you whether it's going to rain tomorrow or how much.  But they can tell what the worst storm of the next 30 years is likely to produce - they just can't tell you when.  One problem here is that climate models are based on the climate of the past, so they tend to be conservative about future conditions.  This has been especially noted in their flood predictions.

Also, convection rainstorms tend to be random, rather than systematic and are thus harder to predict.  I'm wondering why they're bothering with convection rainstorms at all.  Just use the 30-year running average and a corresponding distribution model.  That would still be conservative, but at least would update itself every year.  And/or include a correction coefficient that would estimate the annual increase/decrease in rainfall.  But that's just me working on one problem.  Somehow I'd have to relate that to CO2 and I haven't figured out that model, yet.  And in any case, my approach is not a climate model.

Doug

[Doug1029]

2 hours ago, AnchorSteam said:

BTW- the changes in heat from the Sun is an exact match for the changes in the Earth's temperature. I kinda doubt we can control theSun...

Average global temps do go up and down in concert with the solar cycle.  But the amplitude is only 0.30 degrees C.  For comparison, the average diurnal temperature run in Oklahoma City is about 22 degrees C.  So even if we get no sunspots at all, the cooling effect won't be much more than 0.3 degrees.  Yes.  The cooling effect is there, but it doesn't amount to much.

Doug

[Doug1029]

2 hours ago, AnchorSteam said:

What I see here is a massive focus on the one "greenhouse gas" that can be attributed to Human Industry (if we skip the Gang Green loons who want to kill all the Cows because they fart methane) and therefore subject to regulation. Regulation means money for the Government, restrictions on what ordinary people can do (the rich are unaffected if they shell out a few more bucks here and there) and functions as a rally-point for the short attention-span crowd who want something to protest against.

That cow methane story is hilarious.  It all started with what was supposed to be a wisecrack in an EPA report.  But one of those self-proclaimed "ecology" groups decided that if it was in a govt report, the govt should investigate it.  So they sued.  EPA conducted a study that included cows wearing devices to catch their "emissions."  That study found no problems.  But that didn't make the the plaintiffs happy.  So they sued again.  So EPA conducted another test that produced opposite results.  Anyway, after eight or ten lawsuits, they finally figured out that the real emission problem is the feedlots.  If cow manure is spread out, it drys and decays to CO2, but if concentrated it decomposes anaerobically to produce methane.

Sewage systems for feedlots is not a bad idea anyway.  It doesn't really matter whether its human sewage or cattle or pig sewage, it's still sewage.  So EPA has mandated sewage systems for feedlots.

 

Some people don't like the US appetite for beef - one pound of beef takes 22 pounds of grain to produce.  We could be feeding that grain to people.  But they recon without price supports.  To prevent over-production of grain, which would bankrupt most farms, the US govt allows a farmer to sell only so much, based on his allotment.  He can grow any amount, but he can only sell what his allotment calls for.  So many farmers grow grain and feed it to cattle and hogs and sell them instead.  There's no restriction on meat.  And that's what keeps feedlots in business.  USDA could put most feedlots out of business simply by increasing allotments, or abolishing them altogether.  But they don't, so EPA regulates their sewage.  Go figure.

 

You seem to see regulation as a bad thing.  But without regulation, big corporate farms would soon put the small family farmers out of business.  J. R. Reynolds would own all the little tobacco patches.  Without limits on grain production, a lot of farmers would go into bankruptcy with a corresponding effect on the banking and agricultural support businesses.

That happened at Groundhog near Norwood, Colorado where all the farmers put their land into the Soil Bank.  The businesses that supplied them and bought their products went belly up.  When the Soil Bank ended, the needed infrastructure wasn't there.  That land is now mostly huge cattle ranches.  It's beautiful country, but the small family farms that used to be there are gone.  One little country store is all that is left of Groundhog - and they are only open during the summer to supply tourists.

Doug

[Doug1029]

2 hours ago, AnchorSteam said:

Controlling pollution was a necessary and terrific thing, in the 1960s and 70s. It was resisted, but all the people opposed to pollution control were proven wrong in the end (compare the US to Russia at the turn of the last century) ... even before a river delta feeding into Lake Erie famously caught fire. However, there were a lot of radicals involved in that, and agreeing with a Radical only empowers them to become ever more radical. They only demand more, without regard to the principle of diminishing returns. 

It is as if they won't be happy until we are all riding bicycles.

The Luddites have also latched onto this issue, their fear of technology driving them to support anything that retards human progress.

And then there are the folks who fear an overly prosperous public, and have spent generations trying to shame anyone that enjoys life more than they do themselves; "There's too much consuming going on out there!"

You see where I am going with this now; the other 40% of my skepticism; the Political aspect of this. 

You seem to have scrambled a whole lot of different groups and issues into one omelet.

 

The EPA passed in 1972.  It was a Republican-sponsored bill and has done a lot of good.  Since then, Republicans seem to have lost their minds.

There was a lot of opposition from industry and crying about lost jobs, etc. etc.  In the end, there weren't any job losses at no plants closed.  After years of saying they couldn't reduce automobile pollution, Detroit got busy and did it.

At any rate, some of our activists aren't doing any good and are getting in the way of progress, provoking a backlash.  But without them, we probably wouldn't have made the progress we have.  Who knows?

Doug

[Doug1029]

2 hours ago, AnchorSteam said:

Okay, lets say you convinced me, lets say that CO2 will cause something that the Planet.

What exact measures are to be mandated for us all (and I do mean ALL the world's people, not just the 5% in the US) to follow? What will it cost, and what is the upper limit of what will be demanded of us so that the various panels and symposiums can be empowered to save the world?

I know I will be hammered for daring to ask, but I do want something specific regarding what we would be liable for if we agree to all this.

We need to convert to renewable energy sources.  That is already being done.  Wind energy is the cheapest form of electricity and solar is rapidly catching up with oil.  In five years, solar may be cheaper than wind.  I wouldn't mandate it, but if you re-roof your house in about ten years, consider installing perovskite shingles and generating your own electricity - be cheaper than buying it.

I don't think we'll need to mandate clean energy.  The market will do that.  Cleaner is cheaper.  And we'll invent ways to make it cheaper still.

Once clean electricity is available, we can switch private transportation to electricity.  Not all of it - diesel will still be used for long-distance.  People will do that themselves because it's cheaper and more convenient than gas stations - just don't forget to plug in the car.  Next will be home heating.  We'll have to install bigger trunk lines to carry the load, but if demand is there, the utilities will do it so they can sell more electricity.

We can tap the profit motive to do this.  Indeed, industry may not wait for us.

All this will happen gradually as old systems wear out and are replaced by new, more-efficient ones.  Governments may decide to get into the act with cost-sharing programs and/or low-interest loans.

Other than anti-pollution regulations, I don't see much need for regulation.

Doug

[Nnicolette]

Hmm... we just came out of an ice age.. everything melted and then bam 10,000 years later everyone is suddenly talking about the world getting warmer like its a sudden suprise. Those fluctiuations run on 26000 year cycles.

Edited September 24, 2018 by Nnicolette

[Doug1029]

1 hour ago, Doug1o29 said:

Potassium cyanide will kill half the people exposed to it at a concentration of 5mg/kg.  That's 1/82 less concentrated than CO2 in the air.  So how can such a tiny dose be so deadly?  Same question you're asking about CO2.

OR:  How do plants conduct photosynthesis on such a small amount of CO2?  Tests have shown some plants able to survive down to 60 ppm.

There are three types of photosynthesis.  In C3 photosynthesis, each cell is on its own to collect its own CO2 and use it to produce food for itself and the plant.  All of the world's plants use this type.  But other types are used by some groups.  C4 is mostly used by summer grasses.  In it, some cells concentrate on collecting CO2, then feed it to other cells which concentrate on making food with it.  In the crassulacean acid method, mostly used by desert succulents, stomates (pores) open at night to admit CO2.  By collecting CO2 at night when it is cooler, less water is lost to evaporation.  During the day, the pores close and the plants make their food.

I'm not sure what this has to do with global warming, but I find it interesting.

Doug

[Doug1029]

17 minutes ago, NicoletteS said:

Hmm... we just came out of an ice age.. everything melted and then bam 10,000 years later everyone is suddenly talking about the world getting warmer like its a sudden suprise. Those fluctiuations run on 26000 year cycles.

That's one of the Milankovitch Cycles.  The others are about 8000 years long and the longest is over 100,000 years.  They control ice ages.

The last ice age (Wisconsinan) officially ended about 10,500 years ago, but earth had already been enjoying modern temps for about 4000-5000 years, with a few minor interruptions.  At that time, ice still stood at Girard, New York and ancestral Lake Erie butted right up against the glacier.  Things were relatively warm until about 12,500 YBP when a Cold Period hit, the Younger Dryas.  That ended about 10,500 YPB and was followed by another cold period, the 8200 BP Cold Period.  That was the last major Cold Period.  BUT:  there is still a tiny remnant of the great Laurentide Ice Sheet on Baffin Island, but if you want to see it, you'd better hurry - it's melting fast.  Whether it blew warm or cold, until about 3000 YBP ocean levels were still rising, indicating that somewhere, ice was still melting (Most of the world's beaches are about 3000 years old.)..  The all-time ocean high stand occurred during the Roman Warm Period between 250 and 400 AD.  After that, ice quit melting, so sea level rise stopped.  For around 1500 years sea levels were stable.

The Little Ice Age was triggered by a series of volcanic eruptions.  That, plus a "cool sun" and feedback loops related to albedo kept things cool until about 1841.  Sometime between then and 1855, temps again reached what they were before the Little Ice Age.  They trended slowly upward until about 1910 when they started to rise dramatically.  There is a "hiatus from" 1952 to 1969 when things started warming up again.  Then in 1977 temps took off for the stratosphere, rising 0.30 degrees by 1998.  They topped out and trended down until 2005.  Since then they have risen another 0.39 degrees with the all-time record being set in 2014.

The cycles we are dealing with are decadal and centennial fluctuations.  One, the Bond Cycle, is about 1500 years long, so there are lots of minro ups and downs.  The shortest one I know of is the Chandler Wobble, a wobble in the earth's rotation that has a seven-year period and somehow-or-other affects weather.

We are now about 1.8 degrees abvoe what the temps would be without human intervention.

Doug

[ChrLzs]

4 hours ago, AnchorSteam said:

After dozens or posts from him in this thread, suddenly asking a specific question of limited scope is driving him into the ground? I must have hit a very sensitive nerve there.

Humourless, at all?  There was a smilie there to hint at my tongue in cheekness......

4 hours ago, AnchorSteam said:

Point made

Indeed.

[ChrLzs]

6 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

He doesn't have time to learn about global warming and I don't have time to teach him.  So where does that leave us?

Doug

In that time you don't have, Doug, you are doing an amazing job - I've learnt much from your posts and I thank you for citing properly and as necessary.  

[lost_shaman]

On 9/22/2018 at 12:07 PM, Doug1o29 said:

I find it hard to believe that monarchs could so weight down a pecan that limbs would break.

The Trees in question were not Pecan. Some type of Mulberry. They would fruit and you could eat the fruit, they looked like small 'blackberries' are were fairly tasty if you caught them at the right time but no-one would ever harvest them or anything. 

[lost_shaman]

On 9/22/2018 at 12:48 PM, Doug1o29 said:

So tell us why this is a bad thing.  Why don't you agree with it?

The assumption that old equals right and new equals wrong is a biblical assumption, not one science can use.  So far all you have done about answering this question is to post some rants.  How about explaining yourself?

Doug

I did explain. The Raw U.S. data doesn't show a warming trend in the U.S. from the Dust Bowl to the present (See Hansen 1999a, Figure 6), the 'Adjusted' data that is using an algorithm that cools past years and warms recent years has been employed over and over until the the past years are shown to be so much cooler than recent years to show a warming trend that just is not there in the Raw data. None of this has been explained adequately while this was being done and now the Raw data files that used to be publicly available have been dropped off the servers so that it's hard to find. i.e. there is a lack of transparency here. 

Then as Gavin Schmidt said, there are so many stations in the U.S. that they could drop 50% of more of these stations and still end up with the same results. Many stations have dropped off in recent years but instead of doing what Schmidt said they could do, they are using their algorithm to 'infill' the lost data! Basically taking some nearby station data (probably the warmest) and duplicating it for the dropped off Stations. It doesn't take a Rocket scientist to see how this might easily inflate averages in recent years after a station drops off. 

Then in 2012 (  Menne et al 2010, Venema et al. 2012) they dropped the Surface temperature data as a stand alone product and combined it with Ocean temperature data and now they needed to 'homogenize' this with past Surface Data which further inflated recent years and further cooled past years. Of course no-one lives on the Oceans, we live on the Land but it now allows then to say the recent decades were warmer than the past decades and again on Land the Raw data does not support that in the U.S.. The U.S. data is now hard to find if you can find it, they have moved to reporting Northern Hemisphere data. 

Also in 2010 (Hansen et al. 2010) they changed from using Population data to using Night light data to classify Urban Stations. So forget Rooftops, Driveways, Streets, Parking Lots, Air Conditioners, etc, in high population areas, we are now only concerned with incorporated Towns and Cities who chose to use Street lights or Not on a local arbitrary basis! This has the result of dropping many Urban areas into the Rural Classification. i.e. any Urban adjustments for UHI effect are negated if any City or Town or their out laying populations are not arbitrary being lit up by Street lights. Every Population center uses this type of lighting in different ways and even uses different types of lighting, some are much brighter than others and this does not reflect the Population or its Heat Island effects. 

Works cited:

Venema et al. 2012 Clim. Past, 8, 89-115, 2012 https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-8-89-2012

Matthew J. Menne Claude N. Williams Jr. Michael A. Palecki First published: 08 June 2010 https://doi.org/10.1029/2009JD013094

Hansen, J., R. Ruedy, J. Glascoe, and M. Sato, 1999: GISS analysis of surface temperature change. J. Geophys. Res., 104, 30997-31022, doi:10.1029/1999JD900835.

Hansen, J., R. Ruedy, M. Sato, and K. Lo, 2010: Global surface temperature change. Rev. Geophys., 48, RG4004, doi:10.1029/2010RG000345.

Edited September 25, 2018 by lost_shaman

[Tatetopa]

13 hours ago, Doug1o29 said:

It was Teddy Roosevelt who attacked timber companies for destroying the country's forests.  That alienated them.  They were the only ones with the equipment, know-how and motive to properly manage forests.

Doug, I have a bit of disagreement with this.  Timber companies of the Roosevelt era were cut and run, from the East Coast to Michigan to the West Coast.  They were not into management of government land.  It was only when the way west was finished and timber companies started buying their own land that any idea of managing a valuable resource came about.  Under Roosevelt, the Forest Service was formed under Gifford Pinchot.  A feature of that era was the beginning of the fire lookout towers.    The foresters employed by the timber companies of that time were scalers and markers.  They knew little about the lives of trees or the health of forests. Also Doug, National Parks took hold in that time.  The government was actually trying to do the greatest good for the greatest number.  If they had not, my bet is that most of the sequoias would have ended up as shingles in San Francisco Victorian gingerbread houses.