Official Global Warming thread (merged)

[VolsNSkinsFan]

I would imagine BP is in favor of this since it would hit coal harder and favor natural gas which I presume they provide.

A carbon tax and reduction in total carbon doesn't necessarily hurt BP; might even help them.

They have big acreage in every decent shale gas play in the U.S. They also dominate deep water GOM. The rigs they have in the GOM will be operating for the next 50 years. The CEO has made it very clear that NatGas will be the bridge fuel and "BP has never turned a profit with solar energy"

 

[volinbham]

I may have missed this earlier in this thread but is there any chance in hell this could happen?

CO2 emissions must be zero by 2070 to prevent climate disaster, UN says | Environment | The Guardian

Zero? We could "capture" enough to counter act all sources of CO2? Seriously?

This gives me real faith

All scenarios in the Unep report now require some degree of ‘negative CO2 emissions’ in the second half of the century, through technologies such as carbon capture and storage or, possibly, controversial, planetary wide engineering of the climate known as geoengineering.

Gee, what could go wrong? We'll just make the climate whatever we want and everyone will agree that it is perfect where they are...There's no way man could F-up the climate by intentionally trying to manage it on a planet-wide scale amirite?

 

[Sandvol]

We have much better spectrometers nowadays and the point remains, CO2 does contribute significantly to the greenhouse effect. And back to the original point
Atmospheric water vapor depends on temperature, which is why it’s considered a feedback (and not a forcing). Nobody forgot water vapor except you.

You're the one who keeps bringing up Tyndall not me. C02 obviously doesn't contribute significantly. In your worst cast scenario temperature has increased 0.7C and CO2 has increased more than 50%. And, apparently for the last 17 years it has done nothing.

You’re splitting hairs on the ocean ocidification article. It’s funny that you poopoo this research because it uses remote sensing, yet tout Spencer and Christy and their satellite temperature records…

:question:

Splitting hairs? Making a leap from correlating thermal imagery with temperatures which is very difficult and has to be reconciled by using different sources and data sets and then several degrees of separation using thermal imagery (both infrared and microwave) to use temperature and salinity mapping to accurately determine pH? To what? 0.01? That's splitting hairs? Your ilk claims that in the past 200 years ocean surface pH has changed by 0.1 pH unit. So now they are going to use thermal imagery to detect pH changes? 0.1 in 200 years? I say BS.

 

[VolsNSkinsFan]

Lots of reports of Icequakes in Tennessee last night

 

[Sandvol]

Don't ask how something is scientific to me if you aren't looking for an answer.

I told you, the satellite is looking at temperature and salinity to infer acidity. This is possible because of the known relationship between those variables. Further, this is ground-tested with data from ships, buoys, etc. This phenomenon isn't new, this method of data collection is. This isn't "based on thermal imagery" exclusively. Don't blame me for being condescending when you are refusing to accept the information.

You said you wanted information on pH affecting fisheries. I thought pH affecting fish was self-evident, and provided an example article from 30 years ago and reminded you that a big part of any home aquarium is managing the pH, which seems to indicate pH does in fact matter. Condescending? Maybe, but I assumed from what you said you just didn't know.

You want sources specifically for oceans? Okay. Somehow I doubt that is really going to make you say, "oh, I didn't know that. Thanks." I think perhaps you're just a contrarian who has no interest in knowing what the facts are if they don't jive with your world view. Only one way to find out:

Anticipating ocean acidification's economic consequences for commercial fisheries - IOPscience

Potential impacts of future ocean acidification on marine ecosystems and fisheries: current knowledge and recommendations for future research

Impacts of ocean acidification on marine fauna and ecosystem processes

This isn't me making conclusions. You've clearly never looked into this before.

But, you gave me an example of some goofy experiment where they don't even properly label data. Then you again provide alarmist articles that have no basis in fact. Are there any environmental causes you are skeptical about? Ocean water pH according to the texts has a fairly broad pH range. The Ocean acidification alarmists claim that ocean pH has dropped 0.1 in the last 200 years based on one study and that by the year 2100 it will drop another 0.5 pH units. Are these the same alarmists who said the polar ice caps would be gone by 2020 or are they different alarmists? I think the CO2 caused global warming scare is starting to look a bit shaky so they are shifting their attention to ocean acidification-you know save Flipper and Shamu. Bart and his ilk's modus operandi are well understood by now.

 

[Mtntrout]

I may have missed this earlier in this thread but is there any chance in hell this could happen?

CO2 emissions must be zero by 2070 to prevent climate disaster, UN says | Environment | The Guardian

Zero? We could "capture" enough to counter act all sources of CO2? Seriously?

This gives me real faith



Gee, what could go wrong? We'll just make the climate whatever we want and everyone will agree that it is perfect where they are...There's no way man could F-up the climate by intentionally trying to manage it on a planet-wide scale amirite?

I don't want it to get to this point, but what do you think geoengineering will look like? Don't you think we're already geoengineering now, just without a plan? Hell, the main argument I've been seeing in this thread is that we can't affect the climate despite pumping out all of this extra CO2. If so, what's the worry about us taking it out, or putting sulphates in the upper troposphere? We can't change the climate, right?

 

[Mtntrout]

You're the one who keeps bringing up Tyndall not me. C02 obviously doesn't contribute significantly. In your worst cast scenario temperature has increased 0.7C and CO2 has increased more than 50%. And, apparently for the last 17 years it has done nothing.

The shortest day of the year was December 22. Why is it colder today? Why in the summer is the hottest time of day the late afternoon, and not right at noon when the sign is highest? The Earth system has lag times for everything because of the huge scale of the system as well as the many feedbacks.

Splitting hairs? Making a leap from correlating thermal imagery with temperatures which is very difficult and has to be reconciled by using different sources and data sets and then several degrees of separation using thermal imagery (both infrared and microwave) to use temperature and salinity mapping to accurately determine pH? To what? 0.01? That's splitting hairs? Your ilk claims that in the past 200 years ocean surface pH has changed by 0.1 pH unit. So now they are going to use thermal imagery to detect pH changes? 0.1 in 200 years? I say BS.

You can say BS. It doesn't make you anything but ignorant. You are contributing information or providing alternative methods, you're just attacking and criticizing methods and metrics you don't fully understand in a very juvenile way.

 

[Sandvol]

The shortest day of the year was December 22. Why is it colder today? Why in the summer is the hottest time of day the late afternoon, and not right at noon when the sign is highest? The Earth system has lag times for everything because of the huge scale of the system as well as the many feedbacks.



You can say BS. It doesn't make you anything but ignorant. You are contributing information or providing alternative methods, you're just attacking and criticizing methods and metrics you don't fully understand in a very juvenile way.

What was the CO2 level in the atmosphere during the Carboniferous Period?

 

[MG1968]

What was the CO2 level in the atmosphere during the Carboniferous Period?

that was a different kind of CO2, the CO2 that's being pumped into the atmosphere is different now, at least according to Bart and others. :loco:

 

[Mtntrout]

But, you gave me an example of some goofy experiment where they don't even properly label data. Then you again provide alarmist articles that have no basis in fact. Are there any environmental causes you are skeptical about? Ocean water pH according to the texts has a fairly broad pH range. The Ocean acidification alarmists claim that ocean pH has dropped 0.1 in the last 200 years based on one study and that by the year 2100 it will drop another 0.5 pH units. Are these the same alarmists who said the polar ice caps would be gone by 2020 or are they different alarmists? I think the CO2 caused global warming scare is starting to look a bit shaky so they are shifting their attention to ocean acidification-you know save Flipper and Shamu. Bart and his ilk's modus operandi are well understood by now.

Ocean acidification alarmists... That's one I haven't heard. I'm skeptical of everything, and look at the data. I assure you no one is shifting attention, just like no one changed the name "global warming" to "global climate change." These are just things people who only know about issues from blog posts and posters come to think.

 

[Mtntrout]

What was the CO2 level in the atmosphere during the Carboniferous Period?

In the early Carboniferous, it was around 1500 ppm. It was also much warmer than present in the early Carboniferous than it is today. Towards the end of the Carboniferous, CO2 levels decreased to about what they are at present, as did temperature. This despite there being a dimmer sun (The Sun's Evolution) and a very different atmosphere, with oxygen making up as much as 35 % of the atmosphere and making 3 foot long dragon flies and giant terrestrial amphibians possible due to the hyperoxic conditions.

The cooling trend of the late Carboniferous was also influenced by positive feedbacks of cooling as Gondwanaland moved poleward and allowed permanent ice caps to form. As Pangaea came together and continents once again shifted equatorward, temperatures again increased. Heck, a day was only 22 and half hours long then too. It was essentially a different planet. There is more to global temperature than CO2. That's just the variable we are rapidly affecting.

Keep going, pull another out of the denialists' bag of tricks.

 

[govols/cc]

In the early Carboniferous, it was around 1500 ppm. It was also much warmer than present in the early Carboniferous than it is today. Towards the end of the Carboniferous, CO2 levels decreased to about what they are at present, as did temperature. This despite there being a dimmer sun (The Sun's Evolution) and a very different atmosphere, with oxygen making up as much as 35 % of the atmosphere and making 3 foot long dragon flies and giant terrestrial amphibians possible due to the hyperoxic conditions.

The cooling trend of the late Carboniferous was also influenced by positive feedbacks of cooling as Gondwanaland moved poleward and allowed permanent ice caps to form. As Pangaea came together and continents once again shifted equatorward, temperatures again increased. Heck, a day was only 22 and half hours long then too. It was essentially a different planet. There is more to global temperature than CO2. That's just the variable we are rapidly affecting.

Keep going, pull another out of the denialists' bag of tricks.

I'm more impressed with time travel.

 

[Sandvol]

In the early Carboniferous, it was around 1500 ppm. It was also much warmer than present in the early Carboniferous than it is today. Towards the end of the Carboniferous, CO2 levels decreased to about what they are at present, as did temperature. This despite there being a dimmer sun (The Sun's Evolution) and a very different atmosphere, with oxygen making up as much as 35 % of the atmosphere and making 3 foot long dragon flies and giant terrestrial amphibians possible due to the hyperoxic conditions.

The cooling trend of the late Carboniferous was also influenced by positive feedbacks of cooling as Gondwanaland moved poleward and allowed permanent ice caps to form. As Pangaea came together and continents once again shifted equatorward, temperatures again increased. Heck, a day was only 22 and half hours long then too. It was essentially a different planet. There is more to global temperature than CO2. That's just the variable we are rapidly affecting.

Keep going, pull another out of the denialists' bag of tricks.

Then keep going. What were the CO2 levels in the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous?

 

[Mtntrout]

Then keep going. What were the CO2 levels in the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous?

Are you making me do your homework or something?

I don't think you're getting the point of what I was saying about the Carboniferous: it might as well have been another planet. There were no trees. No grass. No flowers. Nothing we'd recognize as a fish for most of it. No mammals. No reptiles. No birds. Way more oxygen. Continents were completely different. It is the same with these other periods.

The time period that is analogous to us now would be the Quaternary. Talking about Deep Time as some sort of argument against the present is really silly. 300 million years ago, with a different atmosphere, different ocean, and different planet. C'mon.

EVEN STILL- how much permanent surface ice was there in the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous? None. We are creatures of the Ice Age. We didn't exist as a species until well into the Pleistocene. Human agriculture and civilization didn't take place until the Holocene, our current interglacial. The resolution of paleo data is not very robust for hundreds of millions of years ago, but it is for the Quaternary. And it paints a convincing picture that we are experiencing an anomaly that is not in our best interests. It is all a matter of scale. One can argue that the Earth is far cooler than it was 300 million or 100 million years ago. One could argue it is much warmer than it was 20,000 years ago. Neither is very relevant to what we are experiencing right now, because in this instance the driver is human-induced.

 

[Mtntrout]

I'm more impressed with time travel.

I missed your snarky response to Sand bringing up the Carboniferous, since you don't think anyone could know about it. Could you link it for me?

Oh, he's on your team and you don't actually have a logical or intellectual position you are burdened with maintaining, just being contrary. Right.

 

[Sandvol]

Are you making me do your homework or something?

I don't think you're getting the point of what I was saying about the Carboniferous: it might as well have been another planet. There were no trees. No grass. No flowers. Nothing we'd recognize as a fish for most of it. No mammals. No reptiles. No birds. Way more oxygen. Continents were completely different. It is the same with these other periods.

The time period that is analogous to us now would be the Quaternary. Talking about Deep Time as some sort of argument against the present is really silly. 300 million years ago, with a different atmosphere, different ocean, and different planet. C'mon.

EVEN STILL- how much permanent surface ice was there in the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous? None. We are creatures of the Ice Age. We didn't exist as a species until well into the Pleistocene. Human agriculture and civilization didn't take place until the Holocene, our current interglacial. The resolution of paleo data is not very robust for hundreds of millions of years ago, but it is for the Quaternary. And it paints a convincing picture that we are experiencing an anomaly that is not in our best interests. It is all a matter of scale. One can argue that the Earth is far cooler than it was 300 million or 100 million years ago. One could argue it is much warmer than it was 20,000 years ago. Neither is very relevant to what we are experiencing right now, because in this instance the driver is human-induced.

So, my question is how are we going to stop all this natural fluctuation of CO2 and climate that has occurred through the eons and will continue to occur in the future?

 

[govols/cc]

I missed your snarky response to Sand bringing up the Carboniferous, since you don't think anyone could know about it. Could you link it for me?

Oh, he's on your team and you don't actually have a logical or intellectual position you are burdened with maintaining, just being contrary. Right.

I can make up all the intellect you want, like you. Or throw out some memes like your buddies.

 

[Mtntrout]

So, my question is how are we going to stop all this natural fluctuation of CO2 and climate that has occurred through the eons and will continue to occur in the future?

I'm not worried about the natural trends on the scale of thousands to millions of years. I am worried about the trends over the next 5 to 15 decades. Whatever fluctuations will occur, they will be enhanced because the extra carbon being put into the atmosphere by combusting fossil fuels and releasing CO2. I mean, are you worried about the glacial period we are due for in a few thousand years, or the one experienced until about 12,000 years ago? I'm not. I'm worried about the time I and my children and grand children will live in.

 

[volinbham]

I don't want it to get to this point, but what do you think geoengineering will look like? Don't you think we're already geoengineering now, just without a plan? Hell, the main argument I've been seeing in this thread is that we can't affect the climate despite pumping out all of this extra CO2. If so, what's the worry about us taking it out, or putting sulphates in the upper troposphere? We can't change the climate, right?

Don't lump me in with the man doesn't impact the climate crowd.

Impacting the climate via our actions and managing the climate are two entirely different things.

I'm not saying we couldn't impact the climate however:

1) given the complexity of the system and then of the systems impacted I find it highly unlikely and utterly frightening that we would attempt to manage the climate with some grand, planetary system. The chances for negative externalities are mindblowing.

2) a planetary climate management system would depend on universal buy in on what the "right" climate is. Given climate impacts weather and that climate and weather become conflated we would constantly be blaming/fighting over how the system managed at the planetary level is resulting in bad conditions in "x" area at "y" time (whether the climate management system is the cause or not).

3) a system of this kind would have enormous power and such power could be exploited or coveted causing any number of additional frictions globally.

I think it's folly to believe we could manage the climate to our liking. Further I think it's folly to imagine global cooperation (and ultimately surrender of sovereign control to some central authority) on the magnitude it could require even if we could manage it.

 

[Mtntrout]

I think it's folly to believe we could manage the climate to our liking. Further I think it's folly to imagine global cooperation (and ultimately surrender of sovereign control to some central authority) on the magnitude it could require even if we could manage it.

I 100% agree, and think the overwhelming majority of educated and reasonable people would agree, but we are backing ourselves into a corner where to some extent that will have to happen.

I will point out that the Montreal Protocol set a precedent for doing such a thing, and has been pretty successful (banning of ozone-depleting substances).

 

[volinbham]

I 100% agree, and think the overwhelming majority of educated and reasonable people would agree, but we are backing ourselves into a corner where to some extent that will have to happen.

I will point out that the Montreal Protocol set a precedent for doing such a thing, and has been pretty successful (banning of ozone-depleting substances).

There were alternatives for the CFCs and I wouldn't consider banning some substances as managing the climate.

Given CO2 is a product of living, let alone something we cannot eliminate from our energy needs in the next 55 years we will clearly be producing it in spades when 2070 comes along.

Imagining some capture mechanism to bring the net to zero doesn't seem possible and given one of our largest capture systems (the ocean) suffers from capturing more and more I'd think any natural system is likely to have it's own new problems.

I also object to this type of rationale

The world must cut CO2 emissions to zero by 2070 at the latest to keep global warming below dangerous levels and prevent a global catastrophe, the UN warns.

Guess what? We will not be at net zero in 2070 so global catastrophe it is.

 

[Sandvol]

I'm not worried about the natural trends on the scale of thousands to millions of years. I am worried about the trends over the next 5 to 15 decades. Whatever fluctuations will occur, they will be enhanced because the extra carbon being put into the atmosphere by combusting fossil fuels and releasing CO2. I mean, are you worried about the glacial period we are due for in a few thousand years, or the one experienced until about 12,000 years ago? I'm not. I'm worried about the time I and my children and grand children will live in.

I believe the natural trends are what we are dealing with and man's contribution is minimal. But, if your premise is correct and man made CO2 is causing warming then is your solution to tax and let bureaucrats in Washington pick the winners and losers?

 

[Mtntrout]

There were alternatives for the CFCs and I wouldn't consider banning some substances as managing the climate.

Given CO2 is a product of living, let alone something we cannot eliminate from our energy needs in the next 55 years we will clearly be producing it in spades when 2070 comes along.

Imagining some capture mechanism to bring the net to zero doesn't seem possible and given one of our largest capture systems (the ocean) suffers from capturing more and more I'd think any natural system is likely to have it's own new problems.

I also object to this type of rationale



Guess what? We will not be at net zero in 2070 so global catastrophe it is.

Tend to agree that "global catastrophe it is" unless something really changes the game. I imagine that if things get bad enough, there will be interest and money put into pursuing carbon sequestration technology, and there is no reason to believe we couldn't come up with something if there was some way to make it compatible with capitalism.

 

[Mtntrout]

I believe the natural trends are what we are dealing with and man's contribution is minimal. But, if your premise is correct and man made CO2 is causing warming then is your solution to tax and let bureaucrats in Washington pick the winners and losers?

No. So is your objection political rather than scientific? If so, that is a scary 1984esque precedent.

 

[volinbham]

Tend to agree that "global catastrophe it is" unless something really changes the game. I imagine that if things get bad enough, there will be interest and money put into pursuing carbon sequestration technology, and there is no reason to believe we couldn't come up with something if there was some way to make it compatible with capitalism.

We agree that we won't meet the goal but we differ on the characterization of "global catastrophe" I would presume.

On the latter point, capitalism isn't a miracle worker. There are going to be real limits to how well sequestration can be accomplished so it's more than a matter of market demand.

Fossil fuels and all the other net carbon contributors will be in use well into the target date. The developed world would have to virtually eliminate emissions (without sequestration) to account for the emissions coming from the developing and under developed worlds. Sequestration would have it's hand full just dealing with that.