My belief in Global Warming is getting shaky

[Eclipse Now]

Yep, cause this is the conversation the world really has to have.

[Zythryn]

Moontanman, my understanding of the underlined part of your post is a 4 degree celsius drop over several weeks - have I understood correctly ? perhaps a typeing error ?

 

No, I believe you did not understand correctly. I believe (and hope Moontanman will correct me if I am wrong) that he meant a drop to a temp of 4C.

[Eclipse Now]

In the meantime, why is Venus so much hotter than the Earth? Closer to the sun? OK then... why is it so much hotter than Mercury!? :)

[questor]

So now we know that mankind is warming up the planet, what do we do about it? Lets' say we ( the USA ) cuts emissions by 50%, but China and India

continue their modernization? Lets' say the world population doubles to 12 billion in 100 years, what then? What is the GAME PLAN?

[Michaelangelica]

I am just reading "Climate Wars" by Gwynne Dyer (Welcome Scribe Publications)

Some interesting and some very alarming information

Including that both US and British defence forces have global warming scenarios and their implications for defence.

 

She gives a reason for deserts being in roughly the same areas of the planet which was news to me.(25 Lat. N.& S.). this is caused by the "Halley Cells"

Warm moist air is continuously rising at the equator, it rises cools and rains. Above the equatorial regions therefore there is a constantly replenished layer of chilled, recently dried air. This is then pushed to the north and the south by the warm air rising from the equator.

This cold, dry air comes back down to the Earth's surface some 2,500 to3,500 K away from the equator as it descends it heats up (due to 'adiabatic heating' ?)When it hits the surface, it is both hot and dry. This is what causes the world's deserts

(p52)

She also makes the point that IPCC is a science/government consortium and being 'government" their predictions tend to be conservative in the "policy relevant' conclusions; for governments do not want reports that force them into major unanticipated expenditures.

She also makes the point that IPCC research data is at least 3 years old possibly double that when finally considered. So the 2007 conference was looking at research from 2000-2005 (at the latest)

[pgrmdave]

So now we know that mankind is warming up the planet, what do we do about it? Lets' say we ( the USA ) cuts emissions by 50%, but China and India

continue their modernization? Lets' say the world population doubles to 12 billion in 100 years, what then? What is the GAME PLAN?

 

Good question - but I think that the real comparison is this:

 

Assume first that the US's choice has no effect on the other players' choices.

 

In all scenarios, China and India continue modernization, increasing pollutants and population.

 

Scenario 1: The US lowers greenhouse emissions and other pollutants and conserves resources. Let's go worst case, and assume this harms our economy, and we're in a period of slow growth. We end up with more people on welfare for a while, until we're able to fully transition to a service economy. We never quite gain back our old manufacturing economy, but due to the increase conservation, we're able to increase our tourism (the cheap dollar helps here too) and in 150 years, the world becomes too polluted from China and India, the earth's temperatures rise to unbearable points, and we all die.

 

Scenario 2: The US lowers regulations, and this helps boost our economy. We have a thriving manufacturing sector, unemployment is at an all time low, and the dollar is strong. In 75 years, the world becomes too polluted form China, India, and the US. The earth's temperatures rise to unbearable points, and we all die.

 

Now, these are definite exaggerations, with numbers pulled from thin air (like yours), but I think that they define the problem better.

 

Really, I see global warming as a game (as in Game Theory, not a fun diversion). Ideally, rather than simply choosing to be rational, we can decide to be 'superrational', and assume that whatever we decide to do, everybody else, applying the same logic, will decide to do. With superrationality, we can reasonably lower our emissions, knowing that other nations will do the same, because cooperating helps everybody more.

[Little Bang]

The game plan (which will never happen) would be to reduce the population on this planet by 99.9%. You do this by allowing every woman to have only one child in her life time.

[Essay]

Really, I see global warming as a game (as in Game Theory, not a fun diversion). Ideally, rather than simply choosing to be rational, we can decide to be 'superrational', and assume that whatever we decide to do, everybody else, applying the same logic, will decide to do. With superrationality, we can reasonably lower our emissions, knowing that other nations will do the same, because cooperating helps everybody more.

Sorry to repeat this, but (I think) for Questor's benefit....

===

 

There is an option where more people ...live happily ever after....

 

Our planet normally exchanges over 100 Gigatonnes/yr. of CO2 --naturally, without man's contributions-- within the soils and oceans, by mostly one-celled biomass (and the above ground flora & fauna).

 

We could alter our sowing & harvesting procedures, accomodate 9 billion people, and shift the natural CO2 exchange to absorb more (CO2 sequestration) by five to ten percent; thereby reversing the buildup of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

 

Currently (in addition to our emissions) our agricultural and other resource harvesting methods are shifting the balance so that each year, the lands and oceans absorb less carbon dioxide by several percent (of that 100 Gt/yr).

Changing our resource management practices would effectively speed up the CO2 turnover rate; instead of slowing it down, as our current practices continue to slow the turnover rate.

===

In its Second Assessment Report the IPCC, 1996 estimated that it might be possible, over the next 50 to 100 years, to sequester 40-80 Gt of C in cropland soils (Cole et al., 1996; Paustian et al., 1998; Rosenberg et al., 1998).

 

...agricultural soils alone could capture enough Carbon to offset any further increase in the atmospheric inventory for a period lasting between 12 and 24 years.

 

...there is also a very large potential for Carbon storage in the soils of degraded and desertified lands.

 

Soil Carbon sequestration alone could make up the difference between expected emissions and the desired trajectory in the first three or four decades of the 21st century, buying time for development of the new technological advances...[emission reduction/recycling].

40-80 Billion Tonnes of Carbon (just in cropland soils) + even larger potential sequestration by restoring "the soils of degraded and desertified lands" would be enough to return CO2 to pre-industrial levels within a few decades.

...and there's also the oceans!

 

Why isn't this solution being implemented?

This mitigation option was set-aside in the Kyoto negotiations ostensibly because of the perceived difficulty and cost of verifying that Carbon is actually being sequestered and maintained in soils.

**Storing Carbon in Agricultural Soils: A Multi-purpose Environmental Strategy

Edited by:

Norman J. Rosenberg and Roberto C. Izaurralde

Reprinted from Climatic Change, Vol.51, no.1, 2001

Kluwer Academic Publishers

ISBN 0-7923-7149-6

 

...and this isn't the high-cost, high-tech "carbon capture" CO2 sequestration schemes that energy companies are researching.

 

It's very low cost, requiring mainly organization and a change in culture and behaviour.

 

Probably we should not even wait for governments to act (acting on only emissions will not help us now), and should just start at the grass-roots level (pun intended), spreading the good word to gardening clubs, nurseries, hardware stores, churchs, local governments, planning commissions and zoning boards.

 

:) ...see also: Terra Preta Soils (to enhance natural sequestration).

[Eclipse Now]

Hi Essay,

I'm so glad you're talking about soil! Tim Flannery, author of "Weather Makers", says we need to get into a zero emission civilization ASAP (combination of solar thermal, geothermal, wind, wave, micro-hydro etc efficiency), and then draw down the 200 gigatons excess by using Biochar soil amendments. It seems economically essential to do this in a post-peak oil scenario anyway. He estimates that we could sequester 6 gigatons a year. Once we achieve a ZERO emissions world, biochar could take us "Beyond Zero emissions" (hence the name of that global warming activist group, a coalition of Victorian and Australian climate warriors).

 

If the world adopted an ambitious Al Gore style emergency economy,

* it would create domestic job security as nations harvested their own ELECTRIC energy from wind, waves, solar thermal, geothermal, micro-hydro, and some limited biomass.

* create an ELECTRIC public transport system that New Urbanism could spring up around (such as trains, trams, and trolley buses)

* facilitate walking distance communities

* stop America and other Western nations funding people who don't like them very much

* stabilise the American economy, currently losing 700 BILLION dollars a year importing oil

* then assuming we are in a ZERO emissions economy by 2020 after running an EMERGENCY WAR ON OUR ADDICTION TO FOSSIL FUELS (and I know this won't happen, but just for argument's sake), then...

* 2020 ZERO EMISSIONS, 200 gigatons / 6 gigatons a year = 33 years

* This means biochar could, in combination with a war-time effort to get off fossil fuels, store all the Co2 in our atmosphere since the industrial revolution back in our soils by 2053!

* We have to get off the fossil fuels anyway as oil is at peak, gas follows a few years later, and then coal peaks sometime in a few decades. Just burning the remaining dirty oil will catapult us past various tipping points and we'll have runaway global warming beyond anything the modern world has ever seen, let alone all the gas and coal. But my point is those economies that wean off the fossil fuels first will be the most prepared and prosperous when oil hits $400 a barrel and gas and eventually coal all start to triple in price as well!

 

(Assuming we can also simultaneously create a worldwide demographic transition that solves population growth.)

 

As Scientific American just wrote, and as the Australian Federal Senate has concluded, and as I've been writing for 4 years now...

 

The second alternative, equally important, is a gradual reconfiguration of city life, to reduce our dependence on automobiles and raise our reliance on walking, cycling and public transport. We’ve learned that sprawl is not good for energy dependence, air quality, biodiversity, human health or quality of life, including commuting time. We’ve also learned that despite free-market ideological presumptions, urban sprawl is at least as much a function of zoning and the provision of public infrastructure (for example, roads versus light rail) as it is of individual lifestyle choices.

 

The current energy crisis will most likely worsen before it gets better. It threatens to create a prolonged period of stagflation, increased oil skirmishes and even oil wars, and further marginalization of the poor, who will find themselves priced out of transport and perhaps even out of food if the U.S. keeps up its dangerous policy of converting corn to ethanol fuel. Yet it could also be the critical spur to action, prompting vital changes in technologies and lifestyles. It’s not too late to take the more productive path, but time is running out.

 

Why the Oil Crisis Will Persist [Extended Version]: Scientific American

 

http://podcast.beyondzeroemissions.org/08jan11-tim-flannery-beyondzero.mp3

 

However, population growth, political fearmongering, FUD spread by big oil and King coal, international economic competition instead of co-operation and sceptics like FB all threaten progress on this important issue.

[Moontanman]

Moontanman, my understanding of the underlined part of your post is a 4 degree celsius drop over several weeks - have I understood correctly ? perhaps a typeing error ?

 

The ISA surface temp (thats where we humans live) is about 15C International Standard Atmosphere - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Oh No, I am talking average low temps globally, inland the temps would fall to well below freezing within a few days to weeks. The 4C is the actual average temp due to the oceans resisting freezing as they radiate stored heat. Not a 4c drop but actual average surface temp. Once the oceans were frozen over temps would plummet fast. Within a couple of years all you would have as gas at the surface would be traces of helium and hydrogen.

[Moontanman]

In the meantime, why is Venus so much hotter than the Earth? Closer to the sun? OK then... why is it so much hotter than Mercury!? :)

 

Venus is so hot mainly because of it's atmosphere of CO2, the air pressure on Venus is around 1350 psi, the Earth's is a little less than 15 psi. The super greenhouse effect of all that CO2 is why Venus is around 900 degrees F or around 480 C. The Earth will one day be the twin of Venus with a similar temperature and pressure.

[Turtle]

Give a hoot, don't pollute! :) ;) Anyway, here's another little glitch on the problems with the climate models. :)

 

Solar Wind Loses Power, Hits 50-year Low

...

The solar wind isn't inflating the heliosphere as much as it used to," says McComas. "That means less shielding against cosmic rays."

 

In addition to weakened solar wind, "Ulysses also finds that the sun's underlying magnetic field has weakened by more than 30% since the mid-1990s," says Posner. "This reduces natural shielding even more."

...

These extra particles pose no threat to people on Earth's surface. Our thick atmosphere and planetary magnetic field provide additional layers of protection that keep us safe.

 

But any extra cosmic rays can have consequences. If the trend continues, astronauts on the Moon or en route to Mars would get a higher dose of space radiation. Robotic space probes and satellites in high Earth orbit face an increased risk of instrument malfunctions and reboots due to cosmic ray strikes. Also, there are controversial studies linking cosmic ray fluxes to cloudiness and climate change on Earth. That link may be tested in the years ahead.

NASA - Solar Wind Loses Power, Hits 50-year Low

[Eclipse Now]

"Controversial studies"? Do you mean, 'not peer reviewed or accepted by the authorities'? Come on, this is straight out of Martin Durkin's "Great Global Warming Swindle". :)

 

Pffffffft. That movie was just another example of Durkin jerkin his gherkin.

 

If you want the latest on the Solar Variation Theory try the wiki which highlights the apparent initial links between solar and climate variations... and then more thorough studies differentiating and accounting for the actual percentages of influence (somewhere between 15% to 20% depending on what else is happening in the climate that year).

 

Solar variation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

You've basically added nothing new here, and just recycled one of the 26 common myths being recycled and reused and respun all over the net. It's debunked here.

Climate myths: Global warming is down to the Sun, not humans - climate-change - 16 May 2007 - New Scientist Environment

 

and here

Climate myths: It’s all down to cosmic rays - climate-change - 16 May 2007 - New Scientist Environment

 

and here are the rest of it's 26 friends — if you're going to quote one, you may as well bring the rest along and have a party.:)

Climate change: A guide for the perplexed - earth - 16 May 2007 - New Scientist Environment

[modest]

Give a hoot, don't pollute! :) ;) Anyway, here's another little glitch on the problems with the climate models. :)

 

 

NASA - Solar Wind Loses Power, Hits 50-year Low

 

I think we need to better-understand the relationship between the sun's magnetic field and solar irradiance.

 

Sunspots have been cataloged for a long time,

 

 

wikipedia comments on this data saying,

 

On longer time scales, the sun has shown considerable variability, including the long Maunder Minimum when almost no sunspots were observed, the less severe Dalton Minimum, and increased sunspot activity during the last fifty years, known as the Modern Maximum. The causes for these variations are not well understood, but because sunspots and associated faculae affect the brightness of the sun, solar luminosity is lower during periods of low sunspot activity. It is widely believed that the low solar activity during the Maunder Minimum and earlier periods may be among the principal causes of the Little Ice Age.

 

So, it's generally acknowledged that less sunspots means less solar irradiance and tends toward a colder climate. But, there is also a slight discord between data involving total solar irradiance:

 

 

http://www.warwickhughes.com/agri/Solar_Arch_NY_Mar2_08.pdf

 

and sunspot number:

 

 

In post 290 the correlation between irradiance and temperature was discounted by virtue of sunspot numbers lagging temperature change while irradiance preceded it. But, I think this is something we need to better understand. Why exactly does the sun's magnetic field affect Earth's climate so and are sunspots really a good indication of solar activity?

 

Hopefully craft like Ulysses can give us a better understanding of these relationships over the next few years. That kind of data can be put directly into climate models giving ever-more accurate results. There can be no doubt that accurate solar forecasting would greatly improve climate models. I'm not sure I'd call our inability to do so now a "glitch", even a "little glitch", but it is an area that needs improving upon. It's a potential vulnerability.

 

~modest :D (reading about the sun's magnetic field)

[Michaelangelica]

China is doing a LOT more than USA to curb GHG emissions than USA at the moment.

 

What is the US (the biggest polluter and source of CO2) doing?

[Turtle]

I think we need to better-understand the relationship between the sun's magnetic field and solar irradiance.

 

... Why exactly does the sun's magnetic field affect Earth's climate so and are sunspots really a good indication of solar activity?

 

Hopefully craft like Ulysses can give us a better understanding of these relationships over the next few years. That kind of data can be put directly into climate models giving ever-more accurate results. There can be no doubt that accurate solar forecasting would greatly improve climate models. I'm not sure I'd call our inability to do so now a "glitch", even a "little glitch", but it is an area that needs improving upon. It's a potential vulnerability.

 

~modest :D (reading about the sun's magnetic field)

 

None of those graphs you gave plot the feature the article from NASA is talking about, which is the pressure of the solar wind.

"The average pressure of the solar wind has dropped more than 20% since the mid-1990s," says Dave McComas of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. "This is the weakest it's been since we began monitoring solar wind almost 50 years ago."

 

Let's not get into the trend malarky again, so here's the way they plot the solar wind pressure decrease. http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/images/solarwind/276531main_McComas-2ndImage-full.jpg

 

 

You say "ever-more accurate results', I say ever less error ridden. ;) :) Room to improve is our common fulcrum. Since this is new data, then it obviously is no part of any recent climate model, and complex systems being sensitive to initial conditions, a missing data point is a good as a bad data point. GIGO

 

China is doing a LOT more than USA to curb GHG emissions than USA at the moment.

 

What is the US (the biggest polluter and source of CO2) doing?

 

Practicing democracy & trying to elect Barack Oboma who has a reasoned plan to get us doing what we have always done better than any y'all who have saw fit to mimic our constitution since we writ it, and that is invent, baby, invent. China's doing a LOT more to run folks over with tanks than we are too, but hey, who cares about that? :)

[Eclipse Now]

You say "ever-more accurate results', I say ever less error ridden. Room to improve is our common fulcrum. Since this is new data, then it obviously is no part of any recent climate model, and complex systems being sensitive to initial conditions, a missing data point is a good as a bad data point. GIGO

Even if it is a new forcing that we need to reckon with it still has to fit around what we KNOW about spectroscopy and Co2. So your second sentence is an exaggeration. We know that, all things being equal, temperature would rise commensurate with Co2. We know this from testable, repeatable science in a lab. If anything, you may have found another forcing, but this theory has already been disproved many times. It's just not a contender.