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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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