Re: global warming: is it us, or is it the sun?

From: jjustwwondering (jwasilewsky_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 07/26/04 

Date: 26 Jul 2004 16:30:09 -0700

freddo411@yahoo.com (Fred K.) wrote in message news:<a3485e71.0407242022.57dd0565@posting.google.com>...
> henry@spsystems.net (Henry Spencer) wrote in message news:<I1Bs4B.A6H@spsystems.net>...
[...]
> > There is some room to argue about the relative sizes of the effects now.
> > But there's little room for doubt that if our CO2 emissions keep rising
> > along current trend curves, they *will* rapidly become the dominant
> > effect. Debate about the source of *today's* warming is an unimportant
> > side issue. Whether or not you believe that modest amounts of artificial
> > global warming are already present, there is no reasonable doubt that
> > adding tens of terawatts of fossil-fuel power will produce very large
> > amounts of it.

> What are the effects of putting X amount of CO2 into the atmosphere?
> I don't think this is well established.

There will be *some* extra CO2 in the atmosphere -
but quite certainly *not X*.
At present, something like half X is retained.
 
Nobody has properly accounted for the difference -
but the reasonable assumption is that
most of it is swallowed by the ocean,
but some (and an increasing amount) is bound by
land vegetation.

The ocean's capacity to sequester CO2 is, in principle,
immense and more than sufficient - it already contains dozens
of times more of it than the atmosphere does, and is very
far from saturation. CO2 concentration in the surface water layer
has increased - but deeper down, it is still
at the pre-industrial level. The problem is, how fast will
it get there? That depends on the ocean "carbon cycle",
which nobody really understands; the various
models in use include arbitrary assumptions and parameters.

Another unknown is how much extra CO2 will be
bound by enhanced plant photosynthesis; some
certainly will.

Fortunately, we could (if we wanted!) enhance both
of these CO2 sinks, by planting trees, or by dumping
nutrients into the water, or by directly pumping
liquid CO2 deep into the ocean.
(http://www.ieagreen.org.uk/ocean.htm)

> More CO2 will lead to
> warming, other things being equal, I suspect, but how much warming?

Again, nobody knows - it depends on secondary effects such
as cloud formation and cloud albedo that cannot be predicted
as yet. The final result *might*, paradocically,
even be global cooling...
(see http://www.dinosauria.com/jdp/news/freeze.html).
 
> It is not clear to me that warming is "bad".

The combined effect on the world agriculture of extra CO2 *and*
the warming been extremely beneficial.

It seems clear that the CO2 does play a role in that; maybe
the warming does, too.
But we *could* have the one without the other, depending
on what happens in the sun, and on what else is emitted
into the atmosphere...

> Sea level rises could be
> disruptive to coastal communities, but a lot will depend upon the
> magnitudes and the time frames involved. A slow rise over a century
> is something that humans can adapt to.

It seems likely that a climatic change will harm *some*
areas and *some* interests, and benefit *others*.

It is understandable therefore that those who expect to lose
by almost any change (e.g., Western Europeans with their
uniquely benign climate) would prefer to prevent it.

This could, however, be done in many different ways - out of which,
curbing industrial emissions of CO2 appears to be the one most
harmful to economic progress.

The magnitude and intensity of the worldwide movement stubbornly
insisting on doing *just that* can only be
explained by ideology, not by any rational motivation.

--------------------
||"Oh! let us never, never doubt
|| What nobody is sure about!"
|| (H. Belloc)

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