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Majid_S
Mountain climber
Bay Area
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Topic Author's Original Post - May 2, 2007 - 01:57pm PT
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Climate Change Is Clear Atop Mauna Loa
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9885767
Day to Day, May 1, 2007 · In the documentary An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore shows a graph of rising carbon-dioxide levels during the past several decades. The image is a striking illustration of how one greenhouse gas has poured into the world's atmosphere.
Watching the film, you might get the impression that the research behind that graph came from Roger Revelle, an eminent scientist who studied global warming. In fact, the work sprang from a brash young colleague named Charles David Keeling, and Revelle initially opposed his method.
Bucking the established scientific wisdom, Keeling wanted to set up his carbon-dioxide monitoring station in just one place, where he could get the cleanest air possible: on top of Hawaii's Mauna Loa volcano.
Despite a lack of enthusiasm from Revelle, Keeling began sampling the air at Mauna Loa in 1958. A few years after the data started coming in, Revelle conceded that his young protege was right — and that the data proved fossil fuels were causing global warming.
The Keeling Curve, as it came to be known, is the cornerstone of global-warming science today. Keeling died in 2005 — but other scientists, including his son Ralph, are continuing his research.
The Keeling Curve is dense, full of dips and spikes. But its visual impact — a steady upward line showing the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide — is simple and stark.
"You can look at [the curve] as a beautiful scientific record," says Ralph Keeling, "or you can look at it as an alarm bell." To many observers, it is both.
Ps
I personally know The Keeling family for more than 25 years and lived with them for few years in Del Mar, California. They are one of the greatest people I have ever known in my life, also great mountaineers as well. I remember once in summer of 1984, Dr. Keeling took me to his personal lab in Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla to show me his work and once I arrived, there were glass containers all over the place with labels saying “South pole”, “Kenya”, “Fiji Islands” etc. I asked Dr.Keeling why he had all these empty glass containers in his lab?.
He replied,” Majid,they are not empty, they are full of air samples, earth is heating up every day”.
Majid
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Thanks for posting that, Majid. And here it is, a view of the Keeling Curve.
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G_Gnome
Trad climber
Knob Central
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Why is it such a perfect squiggle only recording a rise every 3? years?
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Summers higher, winters lower. Each squiggle is a year.
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sonne
Trad climber
CA
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CO2 levels: summers are lower (plants use up CO2 in atmosphere for photosynthesis), winters are higher (most plants aren't photosynthetically active during the winter; plant CO2 respiration predominates)
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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sonne's explanation is correct. Mauna Loa CO2 readings tend to be highest in late spring (~June), and lowest at the end of the northern-hemisphere growing season in early fall (~September). So those squiggles fall more steeply than they rise.
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kelly slater
climber
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cnn 7pm 9 eastern tonight they have a show about global warming
hopefully these guys do it right
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hobo_dan
Trad climber
Minnesota
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The Keeling curve is considered the most important set of scientific data in the history of the world.
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L
climber
NoName City and It Don't Look Pretty
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Dang...this makes good old Al Gore look pretty spiffy, doesn't it?
I guess Glen Beck, Jody, TGT, Chaz, LEB and Mimi will just have to gnash their teeth while the program is on. Or better yet: Don't watch! Wouldn't want you to step into a reality paradox.
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TradIsGood
Happy and Healthy climber
the Gunks end of the country
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Gee, I wonder what that curve would look like if the x-axis were the world population?
Folks should definitely go read "The Logic of Failure - Recognizing and Avoiding Error in Complex Situations, by Dietrich Dorner."
The thesis is that real world problems are systems that are very complex and non-linear; that they are very hard to understand; that people who attempt to solve them have a hard time doing so because of the inter-relationships between variables. Further those who think that they understand the systems best are often the worst at solving the problems. That focusing on single components of a system often leads to solutions that seem dramatically better in the short term, leading up to unpredictable catastrophic failure.
BTW. Graphs should be used to present data in an analog fashion. Truncating the y-axis exaggerates the change. It makes it appear that CO2 levels are multiples higher in 50 years rather than just a small percentage higher. This lets you see the little seasonality effects, (how many measurements / year?), but distorts the perception of change (Makes the elephant look like a mouse - geologists usually photograph rocks with a hammer so view can scale.)
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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TIG, you have no idea.
Meanwhile, here's the view from the South Pole.
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TradIsGood
Happy and Healthy climber
the Gunks end of the country
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Quack!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
The world population has more than doubled (219%) since 1960, yet the CO2 concentration has risen a mere 19% (119%) from these graphs.
(The numbers look nearly the same. - Are they?)
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Read some real science. You'll learn things.
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Kartch
climber
belgrade, mt
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That's pretty cool for his son to carry on the research. BTW I wonder how a son of an enviromental scientist rebels, do they buy big SUV's and refuse to recycle?
Also I'm no scientist but that graph seems pretty linear, I would have thought it would be exponential. Are annual adjustments applied to the graph or am I scientifically illiterate?
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TradIsGood
Happy and Healthy climber
the Gunks end of the country
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Chiloe, I have read a ton of "real science", and not just physics. The problem with real science may stem with the incredible successes of the last 3 centuries of physics, chemistry, and math. We all begin to get familiar with it from about middle school. Many, like I, even take it to the graduate level. The problem is that those successes tend to lead us to believe that all science works so perfectly.
Unfortunately, where in physics we have wonderful isolated laboratories with beautifully repeatable experiments, once we move into the global lab, we lose our laboratory. No repeatable tests of theory. It is almost like we are analyzing the stock market. We create a theory that matches the past and test it against the future. Worse still, we lose all control over the standard scientific methods of control variables and experimental variables. We have living populations to deal with, governments and cultures, economics, natural resource distributions, technological change, changing solar flux, chaotic / stochastic effects, boundary conditions that may or may not be actually measured, and so on.
After you have read the book, which I trust you will like, come back and say that all we need to know is science, and that we are measuring and accounting for all of the important variables and our models work perfectly now, and that the decisions that we make serially can all be anticipated today.
BTW, there is a great account of Chernobyl in there. Part of the cause for the disaster, ironically, is that a very select crew of technicians were operating the plant. They had selected the plant for experiments based upon the proven expertise of the operational staff. Human error was the sole cause of the failure.
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Wild Bill
climber
Ca
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TIG,
What in the world are you talking about?
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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TIG:
Chiloe, I have read a ton of "real science", and not just physics.
You most often address climate topics from a right-wing political perspective. Which ton of real science have you read on these topics?
Your comment about graphs and geologists was funny. Read it again and think of three reasons why.
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TradIsGood
Happy and Healthy climber
the Gunks end of the country
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Kartch, you would be better off expecting the graph to be "oscillatory" because the atmosphere is part of a system with a number of feedback mechanisms. If CO2 gets "too high" animals die, which might likely allow plants to grow more, which would then lead to a decrease in the CO2 percentage and increase in O2.
If you take a little tiny chunk of an oscillatory system - like say 50 years - it might look linear, or parabolic or whatever. If you took a few millions of years, it might look like a bumpy flat line.
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TradIsGood
Happy and Healthy climber
the Gunks end of the country
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Chiloe, you read in politics, for some reason. I have very low regard for the types of people who are politicians - that includes both of our popular idiots, Gore and Bush. Both have single focus mentalities that will do little to help solve problems like this.
Further, of course, they and our country have very little control, over the solution, for better or worse.
So tell me that there are repeatable global experiments that we can perform to verify our theories and models. Tell me that the projections of these models 50 to 100 years out will be anywhere near current predictions. If you do, I will refer you to a classic book on disruptive advances in technology.
WTF is right-wing science?
WB - read that the day it came out. You can no more prove it than disprove it.
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Wild Bill
climber
Ca
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TIG, your obstreperous obfuscations lead me to believe you do not believe human-caused global warming is real.
Is this the case? Are you a doubter? If so, upon what do you base your beliefs?
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stevep
Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
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So TIG, let's agree that human population is going up. No one disputes that. Let's also agree that CO2 is going up as well as global average sea and air temps. Not much disagreement on that. We're left with two questions.
First, is this natural blip, or something out of the ordinary?
Second, if it's out of the ordinary, are humans causing it?
I'd say that a majority of the experts in the field would answer yes to both questions. Maybe I'd go so far as to say not just a majority, but most experts in this field.
But really it doesn't matter. If CO2 and temps are going up, regardless of the cause, we could be in for some bad impacts. What are we going to do about it?
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TradIsGood
Happy and Healthy climber
the Gunks end of the country
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Wild Bill, I suspect that there is a human induced component of global warming, but I am not totally convinced - much like the IPCC, I suppose.
But I am firmly convinced that entirely too much attention is being paid to the measurements, and too little to the system. Why is that? Because most people are unable to understand more than one thing at once. (Read the book.) You can't explain a system in a sound bite. You could try in a feature length movie, but you would likely fail, because the movie needs to be summarizable in a sound bite to be "successful".
If there were only two classes of humans, "scientists", who could solve the simple problems of high school physics and score 90 or better, and "politicians", the remainder, who had to rely on deciding who to follow rather than working it out for themselves, which would you be?
Doesn't much matter. If our 6 billion population were to consume the same amount of energy plus or minus 10 percent, would we be better of generating it entirely from burning wood? Could the earth support 6 billions wood-burning humans? How about 100% nuclear fission, capturing the heat and generating electricity and storing energy for transportation in electrochemical cells called batteries or fuel cells? How about 100% solar instead of nuclear? Can you tell me how much that is?
Could man have gotten to either without burning wood first? Tell me what will come next, for energy generation and storage - say 50 years from now?
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Dropline
Mountain climber
Somewhere Up There
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I campaigned and voted for Ralph Nader in 96, Gore in 2000, and Kerry in 2004. To me, this isn't a partisan, left vs. right, liberal vs. conservative issue. Further, I have a graduate level ivy degree in an environmental science field although I don't work in academia. In my opinion, what is going on now in both the scientific community and in the general population is political hysteria and TIG has presented what I believe to be the most reasonable and articulate view of the issue on this board to date.
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HighDesertDJ
Trad climber
Arid-zona
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TIG I'd be more willing to entertain your skepticism if you weren't so clearly out to prove human attributed climate change laughable at all costs.
So to rephrase your jackassery in a more probing manner:
Chiloe: Why is the CO2 increase and population increase disproportionate over the same time period?
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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HighDesertDJ:
Chiloe: Why is the CO2 increase and population increase disproportionate over the same time period?
CO2 release is a function of fuels burned, which is related to but not a linear function of population. Fossil fuel burning has in fact released more additional CO2 than can be found in the atmosphere (that is, atmosphere CO2 "should" have risen faster than the Mauna Loa/South Pole records show). That presented a mystery at first, but they've found much of the missing CO2 in the oceans (which are becoming more acidic as a result, that's another story).
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/305/5682/367
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smear campaign
Trad climber
honaunau, hawaii
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Aloha Majid and company,
I live on Hawaii Island and last week was at both the NOAA stations at Cape Kumukahi (sea level) and Mauna Loa Observatory which is just above the cloud inversion, at 11,000 feet. We were taking some background radiation counts around the island including at volcanic fume sources and around a military live fire range where maneuvers are going on.
There is a current budget CO2 sequestration from photosynthesis of which trees do half. There is fizzy CO2 in the oceans that off gasses in warm weather---or maybe not eh? Can we see that seasonal curve and its sharp dropoff a little more please. If you say June-September is interesting I want to see the blowup to check the actual peak and shoulders of the curve against sea temperature.
Secondly Chiloe can you get me the atmospheric data from 1985-present for all radionuclides from Mauna Loa Observatory? I would send you cam for the bother as we need this data for a study about radiation in Hawaii now going on. I am looking for something like the Aldermaston data for all elements in that category, year by year.
Mahalo,
Doug Fox
Honaunau,Hawaii
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TradIsGood
Happy and Healthy climber
the Gunks end of the country
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Dropline, thanks. Since school I have branched out in a number of other disciplines. Math, game theory, finance, management, biology, though not much, etc. purely amateur.
HDDJ - There is nothing laughable about it. The question is what / whether we should / can do anything about it?
As much data as we have collected, we really can't say that we understand this complex system completely. Humans impact the environment, and it, us in turn. Even if we should and can, it is not clear to me what the correct response is. It might very well be that optimally we should be consuming fuel like crazy, filling corporate coffers to fund research budgets. Selling energy is profitable. Would you want to own a patent on the disruptive technology that would allow us to recharge an electric car for 250-300 more miles in 120-180 seconds. You can't do that today. Would you like to find the commercially viable PV cell that was 40% efficient?
No politician is going to invent these. They can't legislate them either. It will take discovery, work and some luck. Driven by urgency, perhaps - that we do not have today. That is the "optimistic" picture. The "pessimistic" picture might be that the only solution is a catastrophic war, or a really virulent and deadly virus or uncontrollable event.
About the only thing politicians can sell is "fear". Fear sells easily, whether it is fear of Liberals, Neocons, Jews, Nazis, terrorists, and the list goes on. In exchange, the politician, if "successful" gets elected - yay - woot woot. On the plus side, perhaps the fear actually causes behavioral change. That change might be good, or it might simply be that the available fuel finds its way into the atmosphere from a different country. Perhaps that country advances because of higher economic activity, sends its best and brightest to get educated here and then they return to their now richer homeland to invent the disruptive technology we need.
Do you get the picture yet? It is really much more complicated than whether the average air temp goes up by 0.02 degrees per year, which who in their right mind would expect that to be linear for the next 50? Or whether the ocean rises an inch, or even a foot. They have been there before. But not under today's conditions, and not when we were around.
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TradIsGood
Happy and Healthy climber
the Gunks end of the country
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BTW. Check out the latest IPCC finding...
Rice paddies and methane.
Just saw it in newspaper.
Linkin' loggers, chime in here. g'night.
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elcapfool
Big Wall climber
hiding in plain sight
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Ahh, hate to rain on your parade, but if global warming is NOT anthropogenic, that is even worse news, because it means there is absolutely nothing we can do about it.
I'm glad your "Trad" is good, because your logic sucks.
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TradIsGood
Happy and Healthy climber
the Gunks end of the country
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elcap. Your logic is flawed. Just like we can log Brazil, we could make changes to our environment. We could burn wood, coal, like it would never end. We could eliminate large populations of humans as well as other organisms. These would make big changes locally and at least temporarily.
The more important question is, assuming that warming exists and is anthropogenic, can we do anything about it [over the long term]?! Further can we know a priori, the results?
But beyond that, try to lose the over-intense focus on the tiny bit of the big picture. Read the book that I mentioned above. It has a description of some actual experiments in which people like you and I tried to improve the lot of an African community with incredibly mixed results. What is important is why intelligent people - that apparently some of us nearly revere - can fail so miserably.
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bachar
Trad climber
Mammoth Lakes, CA
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I watched some of Glenn Beck's regular show last night on CNN about global warming. I was able to ignore his annoying style for the most part and listen to some of the scientists he brought on.
Anyway, a couple of the scientists that were interviewed stated that global warming causes CO2 levels to rise and not the other way around (rising CO2 levels cause global warming). What's the real scoop on this or does anybody really know for sure?
Another interesting thing brought up (which Tradisgood mentioned) is the rise in methane being a possible cause of global warming - more so than CO2. What's the consensus on this being a causing factor in global warming?
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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John, there's no question that greenhouse gasses, notably CO2 and methane, create a heat trap that raises the earth's temperature. That's basic physics, I don't think any scientists disagree.
Also, there's no disagreement that CO2, methane and other greenhouse gas concentrations in our atmosphere are rising steeply as a result of human activities such as burning fossil fuels. CO2 currently exceeds levels seen over the past 400,000 years and probably longer. Much of that increase has come in the past 100 years.
And of course, we have very broad evidence (probably including your own eyes) that the climate system is changing, as might be expected.
The CO2/temperature connection is not a simple one-way causality, however. Temperature can vary for other reasons such as solar or orbital variations. When ocean-atmosphere temperatures rise (for whatever initial reason) this tends to release more CO2 to the atmosphere, which then becomes a positive feedback that can drive further warming. For example, a great deal of carbon is currently frozen in permafrost at high latitudes. Warming temperatures allow decay that can release this carbon to the atmosphere, contributing to further warming. So the warmer it gets, the warmer it gets -- hence the researchers' concern that "the sting is in the tail" of climate change.
Solar, orbital, volcanic and other non-human impacts on climate have been intensively studied. When scientists conclude that current changes are anthropogenic, they do so after factoring all the other known causes out.
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sonne
Trad climber
CA
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Yes, CH4 has a larger positive radiative forcing value (per molecule) compared to CO2... but methane isn't nearly as abundant in the atmosphere as CO2 is. Surprisingly, methane abundance in the atmosphere is leveling off. No one really knows why. Nitrous oxide has an even greater radiative forcing value per molecule... but is least abundant of all three. Keep fertilizing your lawns and that might change.
I didn't get to watch the cnn special, 'someone' was waching the laker game. Did they cover thermohaline circulation?
S
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bachar
Trad climber
Mammoth Lakes, CA
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Interesting info here - thanks TIG,Chiloe, dropline, smear campaign, and others...
To me the whole argument about whether or not or how much we may be accelerating global warming is largely besides the point. Regardless of whether we're contributing to global warming or not, it is obviously NOT a good idea to keep polluting and pouring all this garbage into the atmosphere and environment. Unfortunately, until the oceans start rising or someone invents new viable (i.e. profitable) clean energy systems, it seems like none of this will change.
Dropline said, "what is going on now in both the scientific community and in the general population is political hysteria".... I think I gotta agree with that too. Peace, jb
Edit: sonne, I watched the CNN thing and I don't recall anything being said about thermohaline circulation
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TradIsGood
Happy and Healthy climber
the Gunks end of the country
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When you get a little sore throat, do you go to the doctor right away? Most do not, because from experience, they know that it is too early to know anything, and not too late yet. The doctor would just say drink fluids and call back if it gets any worse.
So we got a little pain. Will it get worse. We think so. But we are not so good at guessing. So we wait.
It gets worse. We go to the doctor. He says it is a virus. Will go away in a few days. It does. Or he gives us an antibiotic, because we are one of those patients who will otherwise switch doctors. It does not do anything except make us feel like he did something to help. It helped (him keep us as patients).
But sometimes we really are sick and we really can be helped. Or sometimes it is terminal, incurable at this time.
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cintune
climber
Penn's Woods
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I'll be there in June. Should I pack some O2 tanks?
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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smear_campaign:
Secondly Chiloe can you get me the atmospheric data from 1985-present for all radionuclides from Mauna Loa Observatory?
Sorry, I don't have those data! Have you contacted the Observatory directly?
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Splater
climber
Grey Matter
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TIG wrote:
"It might very well be that optimally we should be consuming fuel like crazy, filling corporate coffers to fund research budgets. Selling energy is profitable. Would you want to own a patent on the disruptive technology that would allow us to recharge an electric car for 250-300 more miles in 120-180 seconds. You can't do that today. Would you like to find the commercially viable PV cell that was 40% efficient?
No politician is going to invent these. They can't legislate them either. It will take discovery, work and some luck. Driven by urgency, perhaps - that we do not have today"
Basically WRONG.
Politicians can INCENTIVIZE invention.
Huge research is going into solar power and hybrid car batteries and motors because Politicians have jumpstarted these markets through tax credits and deductions.
High efficiency PV panels are only needed on spacecraft.
What most of us need for PV is supercheap standard efficiency panels. Several companies are making huge strides on such panels today, apparently driven by markets in places like Germany and California where subsidies have been implemented by POLITICIANS.
In 1982 or so cars in the US were much lighter and got better gas mileage than cars today. But in the Reagan era, the US made materialism the national religion. By not increasing CAFE, keeping gas prices low for 25 years, and providing a huge loophole for trucks, suvs, and vans, Politicians drove the car market to Large vehicles.
even smallish cars: 1983 VW GTI: 2100 lbs 2007: 3250 lbs.
Local Politicians (developers) subsidized sprawl wherever possible.
Over the past 50 years, politicians have spent 100 times as much subsidizing nuclear, coal, and oil as on clean energy.
Had we shifted even a tenth of that into sensible policies, our energy system would be far different today.
Oil companies generally have spent far more in marketing campaigns to change their image than the pittance they have ever spent on actual research. As an industry, they spend the least on R&D, and the most on lobbying Politicians. (Except now in the Bush oilogopoly & Cheney's secret meetings, the lobbyists are running the government.) New technology is usually brought by new companies, not status quo leeches like the oil companies.
Coal mines and uranium mines have been forgiven by Politicians from having to clean up their messes.
Coal burning power plants have not been asked by Politicians to clean up the damage done by acid rain and mercury (toxic waters and fish)
Politicians have spent many hundreds of billions trying to control world oil, and more than that on free roads, resulting in Huge subsidies for oil users.
etc. etc. etc.
Politicians have allowed competition to disappear in various markets, through mergers, predatory schemes, and PUC giveaways.
Free residential trash pickup (here in San Diego) is a subsidy to prevent recycling.
Direct subsidies & taxes are not the only way Politicians can change Markets (and invention).
PZEV and ZEV car rules are one example, as is low sulfer diesel, and clean diesel engines.
Rules against inefficient appliances and lightbulbs and dirty lawnmowers are another.
In many places, rules against fireplaces and primitive wood stoves have caused people to buy efficient and clean wood stoves.
More heat pumps are bought when electric resistor heat is disincentivized.
Some other rules have so far been uneffective.
Today car makers respond to a rule that allows them to claim their cars as green because they can burn alcohol, even though that fuel is not often available. Bush went to Brazil to appear to be jumping on the alcohol bandwagon, but had no intention of dropping our limits on imports of sugar & alcohol. Politicians might need to incentive fueling supply & stations to really achieve anything.
The gist of it is that we already have an energy policy, only it's about as effective as our immigration policy for the needs of today, and often acts against our goals. But that still proves that Politicians and society do make a huge difference, not just certain individuals. Which came first: Bill Gates or computers?
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Mimi
climber
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This just in, the real cause of global warming. I'll try to get a copy of the data that backs it up.
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raymond phule
climber
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"Chiloe, I have read a ton of "real science", and not just physics."
But you doesn't seem to have any understanding of a single subject you have written about on supertopo. What is the reason for this?
"Dropline, thanks. Since school I have branched out in a number of other disciplines. Math, game theory, finance, management, biology, though not much, etc. purely amateur."
Where do you read about science? Wall street Journal, propaganda sites like junksciense.com and articles from the cato institute? I forget forget fiction writtings from Crichton (where do you think I can by a radio that atracts ligthning by the way). Your arguments are atleast the same as the arguments given in those sources.
Read any peer reviewed articles? Read any books that are used in universities or are considered important by scientists in the field? My guess is no.
I have read and answered enough of your posts to feel pretty confident that my impression of your knoweledge are correct.
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raymond phule
climber
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"TIG has presented what I believe to be the most reasonable and articulate view of the issue on this board to date. "
Are you serious? You like TIG's uninformed posts better Chiloe's informed posts? Chiloe actually has some knoweledge about the subject, TIG hasn't.
But of course everything is in the public debate is retorics, the truth doesn't matter. It is possibly to find a website that explain every view on a every subject. How many sites exist that claim that the earth is 6000 years old for example? Smoking doesn't couse cancer (because the tobaco industry says so) etc.
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raymond phule
climber
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"But beyond that, try to lose the over-intense focus on the tiny bit of the big picture. Read the book that I mentioned above. It has a description of some actual experiments in which people like you and I tried to improve the lot of an African community with incredibly mixed results. What is important is why intelligent people - that apparently some of us nearly revere - can fail so miserably."
Seems like an interesting book that I might read some day but I dont really understand the connection with global warming.
We burn fossil fuels and the result of this is the undisputed fact (Milloey might dispute it but I doubt it, he seems to just ignore it) that the CO_2 level in the atmosphere rise.
Thus we mess with a complicated system. The book seems to suggest that we shouldn't mess with a complicated system and the conclusion should be that we should stop burning fossil fuels (and shouldn't have started at all) because we dont know the results.
You seem to try to use it in a way something like, the climate is complicated so we shouldn't change our policies now. The best to do is to continoue burning fossil fuels (you like nuclear so you probably want more nuclear though).
We dont know what could happen so let us continue on our path. This approach taken by many sceptics. It is something very wrong about this thinking in my opinion.
I know that you think that the population growth is the main problem. Do you have any solution to this? Do you suggest that money should go to solve this problem instead of global warming? Are you naive like some people that claim that money spend on global warming should be better spent in africa? That a fixed amount of maney exist and we need to choose between africa and global warming? When the truth is that the money goes to completely other stuff like wars.
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johnboy
Trad climber
Can't get here from there
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Why are the ripples (yearly up and down on the graph) the same since the 50's when we have less and less trees and plants each year to obsorb the co2?
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TradIsGood
Happy and Healthy climber
the Gunks end of the country
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The book seems to suggest that we shouldn't mess with a complicated system...
Remarkable conclusion, Ray, since you said you didn't read it but might some day.
Totally wrong. Want to play again? LMAO
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nutjob
Trad climber
San Jose, CA
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In environmental debates, there's three things going on:
1) What are supportable facts
2) What are scientifically sound conclusions that can be drawn from the facts
3) people with agendas on either side of the issue twisting or mis-representing the facts or conclusions to support their agenda
Citing a record of 50 years CO2 data is far from conclusive about the impact of human activity on the rise of CO2 levels. Now if this increase is compared to ice core samples that show 400,000 years worth of data, then that would be insightful that the current rate of increase is faster than during historical times that include several ice ages. On the other hand, a 50-year sample might be less than the resolution of years in a 400k year ice core sample, in which case meaningful comparisons of rate of change are difficult to make. But I'm not familiar with the physics of CO2 getting trapped in ice, or of ice core measurement technologies, so YMMV.
In general, media reports would do more justice to the environmental causes (or any cause) if they related conclusions that can logically be drawn from measurements. When this terrain is left behind, the debate becomes "their word vs. mine" and it opens the door for unreasonable speculation or hopeful thinking to be granted the same level of consideration as solid science.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Citing a record of 50 years CO2 data is far from conclusive about the impact of human activity on the rise of CO2 levels. Now if this increase is compared to ice core samples that show 400,000 years worth of data, then that would be insightful that the current rate of increase is faster than during historical times that include several ice ages. On the other hand, a 50-year sample might be less than the resolution of years in a 400k year ice core sample, in which case meaningful comparisons of rate of change are difficult to make. But I'm not familiar with the physics of CO2 getting trapped in ice, or of ice core measurement technologies, so YMMV.
There are a lot of seriously smart, hardworking scientists who focus their observations, analysis and thinking on exactly these questions, and meet often to synthesize their findings with others just as smart who hold other parts of the puzzle. Individually and collectively they're explaining quite clearly what they see, speaking and writing in many different public as well as science forums. Unfortunately, as seen daily on Supertopo, much of the public won't listen. The ideas are too hard and folks already know what to believe.
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bvb
Social climber
flagstaff arizona
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if you really want to get your mind blown check out "the visual display of quantitative information" by this guy. best graphs EVAR.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Right on BVB, Tufte is brilliant. I've got all his books, cite him every chance I get in my work.
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Wild Bill
climber
Ca
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I try to emulate Tufte when the rare opportunity comes up. It helps in understanding concepts, and adds a visual 'third dimension' when you can pull it off.
Now back to science . . .
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Hey, Tufte's a scientist. Also a sculptor. And a guru who can fill a ballroom with brainy strivers paying $300 each just to see his graphical show.
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hobo_dan
Trad climber
Minnesota
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Tradisgood the telling point in the inconvenient truth was when Gore brings up the Tobacco industry and their main product was not tobacco but Doubt- you are falling for the same thing-you look for minor discrepancies and cling to them in the hope that what your eyes are telling you is false.
Climate change is happening and if you realy care about that then what you are obligated to do is to do less-find some way- any way to decrease your carbon footprint.
I have just finished planting 225 trees for this spring. I am not carbon negative but I am trying to decrease my fuel usage. Americans don't like to be told to do things But WE are the main problem
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raymond phule
climber
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Sorry, shouldn't talked about a book I haven't read. I still dont really understand the connection with your posts though except in the way I mentioned.
What books or articles do you base your knoweledge on?
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TradIsGood
Happy and Healthy climber
the Gunks end of the country
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Raymond, perhaps you put way too much faith in "peer review".
For example, Enrico Fermi was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1938, in part for his "discovery of transuranic elements" which he claimed to have discovered in a 1934 paper. The ultimate peer review, I would say.
It turns out that he was wrong, but worse than wrong, he missed what could have been an even more important discovery. The experiment, rather than creating elements with atomic numbers 93 and 94 which he claimed, in fact might have been the first demonstration of nuclear fission! But he flat out missed it. And when his error was pointed out to him by Lisa Meitner who claimed that what he saw was radioactivity from Barium one of the fission products, he simply dismissed it - after all, he was the self-acclaimed Pope of physics.
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raymond phule
climber
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TIG, yes we should probably pay more attention to fiction writers like Crichton and wall street journal...
Have you read a single peer reviewed paper in your whole life?
Have you read anything about global warming and related topics except in news papers and Crichton?
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