Re: Warming - Cooling - Climate will change

jonathan wrote:
"Jo Schaper" <jo345sch765aper@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:N96dnXsJ0t-1y9HVnZ2dnUVZ_tajnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Jo Schaper wrote:
jonathan wrote:
>
And then, in the early eighties, the rate of increase of C02 /doubled/ from
about 1% a year, to 2% more Co2 each year. And today Co2 levels
are about .....FORTY PERCENT HIGHER... then in 1980.
You need to learn to do fractions, jonathan.


And I should be clearer about the numbers. My memory
is not always so great. I seem to have mixed up increases
in emissions, which are up 40%, and increased concentrations
which are up 15%. But you're forgetting this fact.....

I don't believe your unsupported stat about emissions. Why?
a) You don't say emissions of what.
b) without defining what the emissions are, no one can say what effect they are having on the atmosphere
c) Do some research on coal emissions from steam locomotives, factories and home heating in the late 19th and early 20th Century in England and the industrial cities of the US. Any thought given to why the Victorian age Sherlock Holmes stories in London are always in grimly smoggy surroundings? As I understand it, coal smog was so bad about 1910 in St. Louis (which has this thermal inversion problem, being down in the armpit beneath the confluence of the Missouri/Mississippi) that the gaslights had to be lit at noon to see for a period of several weeks. It took until the 1960s for them to outlaw home coal furnaces entirely, but they did eventually. You're not likely old enough to remember coal powered steam locomotives which lasted here again into the 1960s. Talk about emissions-- you could taste the steely gritty cinders in the air. I remember when a lead smelter in my home county rained white sulfurous soot every night, that ate the finish off of cars in that city.

We've come light-years from those days. China and India may be burning coal, and may have problems, but, hey the technology is here if they only choose to use it.




According to the huge IPCC international study

":During the past 50 years, the sum of solar and volcanic forcings
would likely have produced cooling."

Human activities have turned a cooling period into a warming one


According to the IPCC, the total increase since 1970, not 80, of
GHG emissions increased 39%.
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf

I find it interesting that pro-global warming people usually only cite the IPCC. They have issued a number of reports over the years, but they are by no means the only people investigating this field. Which year's study are you citing? They have not always reached the same conclusions.
They also have a vested interested in there being a problem -- if there were no problem they would go out of existence, unlike the astronomers watching solar output, vulcanologists studying a number of aspects of volcanoes, the CO2 counters on Mauna Kea etc.


Anyone that believes a forty percent increase in greenhouse gasses in just
a couple of decades would NOT warm the planet is in ...denial... big time.
Not to mention each year that figure jumps another couple percent.
In twenty five years that'll be another 40% increase. Assuming of
course countries like China and India don't turn to coal, which
emits twice as much C02.

Your logic fails here. Which greenhouse gasses are increasing? What are their relative potencies vs amounts? "emits twice as much CO2" as what? I'm not in denial. You just aren't citing any facts with sense on them.




We can argue the numbers all you want, but the latest, largest and
most comprehensive study shows the trend is clear.

Or, in short, "My mind is made up. Don't confuse me with the facts."

The question should be "what are we going to do about it?"

Adapt or die.


The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

"Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is
now evident from observations of increases in global
average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting
of snow and ice and rising global average sea level
Eleven of the last twelve years (1995-2006) rank among
the twelve warmest years in the instrumental record of global
surface temperature (since 1850)."
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf
http://www.ipcc.ch/press/index.htm

The warmest year in the US on record is still 1934. A 10-year trend is a weather trend, not a climate change. We actually had a snowy, cool to cold winter last year, similar to those of my youth. Maybe there is a new trend out there. Climate is not about weather. Weather is supposed to have variability. So does climate.


What I'm screaming about is the trends.

Fossil fuels have been cheap and easy, but over time, they
increasingly harming the biosphere, they are becoming
ever shorter in supply and much more expensive. The trend
is clearly towards a bleak future if we continue to deny
the problem with relying on fossil fuels.

No, the problem isn't in using fossil fuels. It is in being wasteful with them (and other resources). They are a finite resource by human time frames. Some people are just discovering that. I've known that since I was a kid.


But if we were to collectively decide to find a new and
clean energy source, such as Space Solar Power or
some equivelent, we can establish a different trend.

I have posted before, a fuel efficiency equivalency of 1 Ford Expedition = 2 Explorers = 3 Escorts = 4 gas-electrics in equivalent fuel use. That means using the same amount of fuel, you can move one family in an Expedition, or 4 families in a Prius.

BTW "clean energy" doesn't exist. Even solar generates all sorts of nasty heavy metal pollution in it's manufacture. We can strive for the highest efficiencies (people scream about the energy used to make cement, but the smokestack emissions have to clear .9999 or .999999 nothing to keep operating.

Where at first, solar power is expensive and difficult.

No it is not. We run on solar power while camping,and it's quite simple and a solar panel to recharge a car battery is even affordable by midewesterners.

We cannot embark on such a long term grand solution unless
we accept there is a problem.

People can do stuff just because it is cheaper. The oil cos. are working on forcing us to do it for that reason, nothing more altruistic.

No, but I do deny he is a scientist.

Does the word 'activist' mean anything? In politics, some dramatic license
is considered fair play. It's up to the other side to balance the emotional
appeal.

"Emotional appeals" don't pay the bills. Results do.

Since Katrina, since Gore, public opinion on global warming has
shifted enormously. The debate has shifted from is there a problem
to what to do about it. The debate has been won on global
warming, but not about the long term solution.

No, it has not. Otherwise, I wouldn't be typing this.

If he were really sincere about his efforts, he would
go back to the US Senate, and get some legislation passed.

He's not an elected official anymore. And I believe he's using
ratherclever ways of getting out a message in an effective way.

You can't have it both ways. Either he is a politician or he is not.
Politicians belong in governments in order to maximize their potential.

Activists gravitate to the public spotlight.
I ignore, as much as possible, anyone who claims to be an activist.



At the end of 1998 it dipped briefly below $10 a barrel.
Like I said, in activism some dramatic license is fair play~
http://futures.tradingcharts.com/hist_CO.html

Go back and look at your own chart. It dipped to $12/bbl, never leaving the double digits. And only for one day. Hardly a trend.

But look at this chart, any trader will recognize that pattern
in a hearbeat. It's called a bubble, as classic as they come.
Such an economic bubble is in fact evidence that......

>

Really, what has happened to the planets biodiversity in the
last century or two? The rate of extinction is orders of magnitude
greater than natural. That's not overwhelming?

No. Again, you have no citations for your supposed data.


If we get close, we're gonna get
bitten.

Has happened to every species so far, so why should we be any
different?

Because intelligence is a far more powerful adaptation than
any that has come before, and by leaps and bounds.
We have the ability to control our environment, not just
react to it.

No it isn't and our control over our environment is temporary at best.




Humans have transformed the face of the planet
in terms of the diversity of life, geology and the biosphere at rates
of change that far outstrip natural evolution.
Humans have not yet caused extinction of 90% of all life on earth (Nature has,
several times.)


Yes Nature has 'bubbled' several times. And we are about to
witness first hand a man made bubble concerning the primary
resource that currently sustains us.

And yet you argue for patience, and proof and let nature take
it course. While I'll rail at the sky that time is running out.

Why do you refuse to err on the side of caution....on the side
of humanity?


Explain to me how we've affected geological processes.


Have you flown in an airplane recently? It's hard to find a place
on the surface that has not been dramatically altered by human
activity.

Scientific American article from a couple of months ago.

March 25, 2008
China's Three Gorges Dam: An Environmental Catastrophe?

"Surveys show that the Three Gorges region may be next.
Chinese Academy of Engineering scholar Li Wangping
reports on the CTGPC's Web site that the area registered
822 tremors in the seven months after the September 2006
reservoir-level increase. So far, none have been severe
enough to cause serious damage. But by 2009, the dam's
water level is set to be raised to its full 575-foot capacity
and then lowered about 100 feet (30 meters) during flood
season. That increase in water pressure, in water fluctuation
and in land covered by the reservoir, Fan says, makes
for a "very large possibility" that the situation will worsen"
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=chinas-three-gorges-dam-disaster


Reservoir-induced Seismicity in China (pdf)
LINYUE CHEN1 and PRADEEP TALWANI1

Abstract-A review of case histories of reservoir-induced seismicity (RIS)
in China shows that it mainly occurs in granitic and karst terranes.
Seismicity in granitic terranes is mainly associated with pore
pressure diffusion whereas in karst terranes the chemical effect of water
appears to play a major role in triggering RIS. In view of the characteristic
features of RIS in China, we can expect moderate earthquakes to be induced
by the construction of the Three Gorges Project on the Yangtze River.
http://scsn.seis.sc.edu/Publications/pageoph98/pageoph98.pdf




We can
mimic certain processes (trigger earthquakes, make diamonds and concrete,
etc., but we've not yet come up with any new geologic process that I know of.
Ditto weather.
We can temporarily restrain some processes (like floods) but
without vigilance, nature takes over once again.


And someday evolved intelligence will be able to create and destoy
entire planets. Hell, we're not that far away from being able
to prevent those rare impacts that have so terriblyculled life in the
past. Intelligence is the greater force. At least in the short term
view, I would agree thought that in geologic time nature wins.

But the thing is, life is more important than anything else.

You are trying to tell a geologist that life is the ultimate good in the universe? That is a belief, not a fact. If we were all that smart, we'd have this thing figured out by now. We don't.

We must not be afraid to let our imagination loose.
And see where it takes us.

Ah,yes, imagination. Imaginary gardens with real toads in them. -- Marianne Moore.


Oh ya, and about Al Gore.....


"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and
Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. were awarded of the Nobel
Peace Prize "for their efforts to build up and disseminate
greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and
to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed
to counteract such change".


As activism goes, that's kinda like winning the Super Bowl~

The money for the Nobel's came from the inventor of dynamite. I don't think Planet Al has done anything for real peace. Maybe the IPCC deserves it for at least trying to do the right thing. But all I can see is the whole debate has created more strife than good will and done nothing towards being able to go to sleep assuming the world will still be there in the morning.
.

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