Re: OT: interesting global warming quote found elsewhwere

In article <yF1nk.591$xv.272@trnddc02>, James Arthur wrote:
Eeyore wrote:

Martin Brown wrote:

Eeyore wrote:
bill.sloman@xxxxxxxx wrote:
James Arthur <bogusabd...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The "scientific [AGW] data" existed in 1992 ? Doubtful,
no matter how you view it today.
http://www.edf.org/documents/381_FactSheet_globalwarming_timeline.pdf
Incidentally that fact *** misses off Hogboms contribution. ISTR He
was the first to estimate the industrial CO2 contribution to the
atmosphere as 0.1% in 1896 (hence he reckonned about 1000 years at that
rate to double the concentration)
I can't find a trustworthy primary source for this recollection online.
Yes, and if you dig into the historical records you'll find ~ 350 ppm of CO2 in
the atmosphere recorded in parts of Europe in the 1800s.
Generally downwind of coal burning cities and heavy industry.

Well, I recall one instance in Britain's Lake District which hardly falls into that
category.

Graham


What was the historical carbon burn rate? Medieval Europe chopped down
and burned their trees, plus loads of coal. Sounds like a question
for Super Don (Klipstein). ;-)

There weren't as many of them, but they were tremendously energy
inefficient. Third worlders' lighting today is like <1% efficient,
and lighting accounts for 1/3rd of U.S. electrical usage.

What was the carbon pulse to the atmosphere like
back then?, and maybe they saved us from universal ice?

As it turns out, lighting accounts for a lot less than 1/3 of electric
energy consumption in the USA. I have less tracking of national total
here than of a strong memory for a residential figure that lighting
accounts for about 9% of USA residential electricity consumption.
I suspect that the figure for percentage of USA's residential electric
bills for lighting will be much higher than 9%, since homes in areas with
cheaper hydropower will have more electric heating.

It does appear to me that around 70% of USA electricity consumption is
for motors in refrigeration and climate control devices. Sorry, I will
need to do some work to get a more refined and citable figure.

Meanwhile, a widespread replacement of incandescent lamps with CFLs
where CFLs can replace incandescents will result in national electricity
consumption being a couple to a few percent less than otherwise. That
will also reduce electricity consumption for air conditioning by a few
tenths of a percent of the total. Although this sounds small, such a
change will eliminate necessity of construction of several generating
stations.

As for AGW saving us from an otherwise soon-to-come ice age - I think
that has been done and is good to do.
However, I believe we need to avoid if possible warming to an extent
that melts down Greenland's icecap, since that would raise sea levels
enough to force a lot of people to move and also move farming regions to
an extent causing considerable economic upheaval. Of course I expect our
species to survive this, but we could be forced to reduce our global
population by a couple billion people.

So far, the Greenland and Antarctica icecaps have had increased snowfall
in their centers to an extent mostly offsetting erosion of the edges of
these icecaps. Debate on existence of recent sea level rise has been down
to mere millimeters. What to worry about is if we get the world to
temperatures up to where they were in the previous interglacial period -
when Greenland's icecap had a major but not complete meltdown. It appears
to me that this event occurred as a result of centuries to maybe millennia
of global temperatures 2, maybe 3 degrees C warmer than the 1961-1990
average with a spike on the decades-to-a-couple-centuries scale to about
4, maybe 5 degrees C warmer than the 1961-1990 average.

Cheers, James Arthur

- Don Klipstein (don@xxxxxxxxx)
.

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