Global Warming & Climate Change Discussion

[Ahhzz]

You made those statements as a contrasting argument. You were insinuating that it doesn't matter the means, because their goal was to promote a bunch of good things, thereby also insinuating that one should accept the means if the ends are acceptable. I was simply pointing out that this is not the case. You directly said "How are these ideas bad?" That insinuates that you believe that one who disagrees with the means also believes that these ideas are bad. As I've pointed out again, that's simply not the case. That's what we call a false dichotomy. You may have never outright said so, but what you said had a clear implication.

Nope. I meant those in the exact way they were phrased. Ford took them that way, and answered most of my points. I don't agree with all of his responses (for instance the response to coal; I would counter with the newly opened mines in PA, AL, et al), but he did answer. I did mean to imply that things that we can do to reduce pollution should be closely examined for weighing the negatives vs the positives. Unfortunately, far too often I feel, the "negative" of "Not enough cash in my fat wallet!!" is over-weighted.

 

[Papahyooie]

Nope. I meant those in the exact way they were phrased. Ford took them that way, and answered most of my points. I don't agree with all of his responses (for instance the response to coal; I would counter with the newly opened mines in PA, AL, et al), but he did answer. I did mean to imply that things that we can do to reduce pollution should be closely examined for weighing the negatives vs the positives. Unfortunately, far too often I feel, the "negative" of "Not enough cash in my fat wallet!!" is over-weighted.

Your post that I quoted was in direct response to Ford talking about Cook et al. You made the assertion in that context that the contents of Cook et al were justified because their goal was to do good things.

I'm sorry if that's not what you meant, but if so, then you apparently quoted the wrong post. The post I'm referring to has nothing to do with coal.

 

[Ahhzz]

Your post that I quoted was in direct response to Ford talking about Cook et al. You made the assertion in that context that the contents of Cook et al were justified because their goal was to do good things.

I'm sorry if that's not what you meant, but if so, then you apparently quoted the wrong post. The post I'm referring to has nothing to do with coal.

Sorry, too many pronouns in a post I was saying that I disagreed with Ford's response about coal, not yours.

I did quote Ford's post about Cook with my question, but it did start out with : "Putting aside the question of "Global Warming, True or HG Wells?" ", intending to step aside from the main argument of the moment, and ask a tangential, but pertinent question.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Global_Warming_Swindle#Ofcom_investigation_of_complaints

In an 8400-word official judgement issued on 21 July 2008 the British media regulator Ofcom declared that the final part of the film dealing with the politics of climate change had broken rules on "due impartiality on matters of major political and industrial controversy and major matters relating to current public policy".

"The final part of the film" was about a hospital in Kenya that had the WHO install two solar panels, lights, and a small refrigerator. The hospital could only run one or the other, not both, because there isn't enough installed capacity to do both. It went on to talk about Kenyans burning coal in their houses to cook, poisoning the air they breathe, and without a reliable, surplus of electricity, they can never modernize. It went on to say that proponents of climate change/environmentalists want Kenyans to suffer as they do indefinitely. They're not allowed to build coal power plants (what they have plenty of fuel to power) because international regulators won't let them. What's good for the planet is bad for them.

Those statements may have broken media regulation policy but that doesn't mean they're false.

However, the regulator said that because "the link between human activity and global warming... became settled before March 2007", in parts 1–4 the audience was not "materially misled so as to cause harm or offence".

Science is never "settled."

Remember when you reminded us that Cook is not a climate scientist? Neither is Reiter.

Never claimed he was. Syun-Ichi Akasofu, John Christy, Ian Clark, Richard Lindzen, Patrick Michaels, Nir Shaviv, Frederick Singer, and Bert Bolin are.

I'm not sure how linking to a page about Alaska's mosquitoes counts as proof of anything.

Corroborating evidence that the IPCC is a political organization with an agenda contrary to the evidence.

That would be a game-changer if it works; the fact that I haven't heard anything more about it since the announcement more than a year ago makes me skeptical. (Also for some reason I can't get to army.mil, maybe it's detecting that I'm from a s**thole country and blocking me? For anyone with the same problem: https://www.newscientist.com/articl...m-offers-fuel-cells-on-demand-just-add-water/)

I haven't either. I think it falls under national security so any movement on the subject is strictly under the purview of the US Department of Defense. US DOD has a *lot* of interest in hydrogen fuel cells because it will revolutionize how the military operates.

I don't agree with all of his responses (for instance the response to coal; I would counter with the newly opened mines in PA, AL, et al), but he did answer.

Because there's still a lot of operating coal power plants that need to be fed.

For reference, natural gas:

The dwindling number of nuclear power plants:

Wind:

 

[remixedcat]

Why would you care though ?

In the end we pay for nonsense policies that only increase prices of goods.

 

[Vya Domus]

In the end we pay for nonsense policies that only increase prices of goods.

There are deeper problems than that, such as the lie that we have been told in the last decade or so that we are basically on the brink of finishing our oil reserves , which is absolute bollocks. That's the sort of thing that causes mass panic and seriously fucks up things globally.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

US and EU have actually already hit peak oil...

...but not because of a lack of supply, but because of a reduction in demand.

 

[Papahyooie]

If you say the "science is settled" then you do not understand science. Full stop. "Settled Science" is directly contradictory to the scientific method, and dangerous to it. Dogma has no place in science. And I automatically, INSTANTLY distrust any scientist who claims that anything is "settled science" because that simply means he or she is trying to leverage his or her position of authority to make you believe something. And if they're doing that, it probably means they have a motive to fool you.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

To be fair, it wasn't a scientific organization that said that, it was Ofcom (Office of Communications), British government regulators.

---------------------------------------------------------------

"The Great Global Warming Swindle" was a 2008 production. It mentioned cosmic ray influence on cloud formation which got me curious. I did a search and found a 2017 article on that very subject: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02082-2

Also a slightly older 2016 article:
https://phys.org/news/2016-08-solar-impact-earth-cloud.html

That article has an interesting quote:

The solar eruptions are known to shield Earth's atmosphere from cosmic rays. However the new study, published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, shows that the global cloud cover is simultaneously reduced, supporting the idea that cosmic rays are important for cloud formation. The eruptions cause a reduction in cloud fraction of about 2 percent corresponding to roughly a billion tonnes of liquid water disappearing from the atmosphere.

That'd explain the observed, rapid warming.

I was trying to find the old articles I saw a few years ago about cloud research at NASA. I instead found this (do not know how new or old it is):
https://isccp.giss.nasa.gov/role.html

Clouds affect the climate but changes in the climate, in turn, affect the clouds. This relationship creates a complicated system of climate feedbacks, in which clouds modulate Earth's radiation and water balances.

For example, if Earth's climate should warm due to the greenhouse effect, the weather patterns and the associated clouds would change; but it is not known whether the resulting cloud changes would diminish the warming (a negative feedback) or enhance the warming (a positive feedback).

Investigators now realize that traditional computer models of global climate have taken a rather simple view of clouds and their effects, partly because detailed global descriptions of clouds have been lacking, and partly because in the past the focus has been on short-term regional weather prediction rather than on long-term global climate prediction. To address today's concerns, we need to accumulate and analyze more and better data to improve our understanding of cloud processes and to increase the accuracy of our weather and climate models.

Thus it is ironic that when it comes to forecasting the climate several decades ahead, clouds mainly obscure our vision.

The ways that clouds respond to changes in the climate are so complex that it is hard to determine their net effect on the energy and water balances and to determine how much climate might change.

Right now, we do not know how important the cloud-radiative or cloud-precipitation effects are and can not predict possible climate changes accurately.

In looking at that, I remembered who ran the cloud research before: NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (yeah, I know, doesn't make any sense) and found this article not two months old:
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7244
No fantastic direct quotes here but the data does show that modeling cloud formation is incredibly complex, even when just looking at human-sourced pollutants.

JPL is in California. That's not right either because the cloud study was being done at a facility in or near Boulder, Colorado...

I think it might have been NOAA's G-Rad project which is orchestrated from Boulder. It is a huge, multifaceted project (which is ongoing) attempting to understand Earth's total solar radition budget:
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/grad/

What is the sum of all of this data above? Honestly, we don't know. At least not yet. This begs the question: how can the proponents of CO2-induced "climate change" be so certain of themselves when, in the grand scheme of climate, it's such a minute thing? All language on CO2 and "climate change" should be prefaced with "to the best of our current knowledge." Yes, it's rising. Yes, the temperature is rising. There is a correlation but that doesn't imply causation. Perhaps contributation, yes, but causation? That's a stretch. We need to be able to accurately forecast weather before we can accurately forecast climate. The two are intrinsically linked. The climate models are incomplete.


CO2 is one carbon element joined by two oxygen elements. Carbon is the foundation of all life on Earth. Oxygen is an essential element for most surface animals. CO2 is not a pollutant; CO2 is essential for plant photosynthesis. Demonizing CO2 is ridiculous.

 

[R-T-B]

CO2 is one carbon element joined by two oxygen elements. Carbon is the foundation of all life on Earth. Oxygen is an essential element for most surface animals. CO2 is not a pollutant; CO2 is essential for plant photosynthesis. Demonizing CO2 is ridiculous.

We are not demonizing CO2. The carbon cycle existed long before man yes and CO2 is part of it. But it IS being seriously changed by adding tons of burried carbon to the atmosphere in gas form. I mean when you think about it, how could it not be? What this disruption does is most likely, warming because co2 is a well established greenhouse gas. No we can't prove it, but it's a pretty damn good bet.

Also, the idea that because elements do good things in certain environments they can't be bad when compounded in any form has me thinking someone spent too much time huffing ozone (what? Just oxygen man.. ) or something...

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Here is the chart that proponents love to reference:

Here's the full picture:

What's really the elephant in the room? Just because water vapor is difficult to model doesn't mean it isn't responsible for the change in temperature. A simple increase or decrease or change in type of cloud cover can easily be the cause.

Another chart often referenced:

Why was there a boom during WWII? Could it be because of bomber exhaust seeding high altitude clouds that trap heat in the Earth? Yes. Why did it fall off post WWII? Maybe because commercial aviation couldn't keep up producing as many clouds as the bombers did... until the late 1960s when commercial aviation boomed thanks to the Boeing 707, it fell off in the 1970s because of the fuel crisis, then boomed in the 1980s to today because aviation grew in popularity.

Then we have an annomaly in 2001 when the attack on 9/11 caused almost all flights to be grounded. What happened? Temperature fell 2 F (1.1 C).

Aircraft emissions are wrapping the northern hemisphere is a blanket of high altitude cirrus clouds (they appear bright white to the naked eye) that let solar radiation in but not out.

I have a theory: ground all of the flights globally for a week and watch the temperature plummet to "normal."


The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is infinitesimal.

 

[R-T-B]

Surely you have some data that isn't tagged by some blogger? "Woody.typepad.com" watermark gives me some kind of bad science vibe...

That certainly is an interesting theory, though, if the data is accurate.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

How about NOAA? The problem is that most sources don't graph water vapor because doing so belittles their argument in favor of the minor gases.

Water Vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, which is why it is addressed here first. However, changes in its concentration is also considered to be a result of climate feedbacks related to the warming of the atmosphere rather than a direct result of industrialization. The feedback loop in which water is involved is critically important to projecting future climate change, but as yet is still fairly poorly measured and understood.

Here's an educational source that breaks down the percents:
http://tornado.sfsu.edu/geosciences/classes/m201/Atmosphere/AtmosphericComposition.html
They don't provide graphs so I made these from the data (assuming 4% water vapor):

Water vapor can be as low as 0% in deserts and polar regions.

 

[R-T-B]

Thanks. I'm just paranoid of random bloggers... with reason.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Even that first picture I linked is misleading because that's *only* human contributions. When you take the same data set as above and eliminate water vapor, it looks like this:

Human activity is only a small part of that. How small? No academic source bothers to do the math because that means their funding would be cut so here's a non academic source:
https://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html

The vast majority of carbon dioxide comes from plant decay in the fall that is reabsorbed in the fall:

If humanity really, really, really wanted to reduce the amount of CO2 in the air, all we would have to do it grow a season of crop (especially field corn because it's a hungry bastard), chop it, and bury it. Bam! All of that carbon is removed from the cycle! Why is no one suggesting doing that? Because they *know* CO2 isn't a problem.

 

[R-T-B]

It's not the raw amount, it's that it's an addition the carbon cycle is not set up to deal with. Like the tipping of a scale.

All the same I will admit the effects of water vapor should be better studied.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

I did some searching and noticed temperature graphs post 2013 were sparse. I think I found out why...
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2018/02/uah-global-temperature-update-for-january-2018-0-26-deg-c/

...we're cooling down despite CO2 still increasing.

Sunspotless Days...
http://spaceweather.com/

Compare that to Spencer's temperature chart and you'll see a clear connection between cooling and long periods of no sun spots.

Why is that? Because we're getting bombarded by cosmic radiation (from outside of the solar system) in those periods. Theses cosmic rays seem to contribute to an increase in cloud cover/precipitation (water vapor) in leu of our own sun not doing it due to being so close to a solar minimum (2019-2020):
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/12/06/nasa-radiation-from-space-is-increasing-weak-sun-to-blame/

Strange how the 2010 and 2016 spikes both land on ~40 sunspotless days. It's almost like that's point neither the sun nor the cosmic rays are enough to produce clouds so Earth bakes.

 

[MrGenius]

 

[R-T-B]

I think we need to take a step away from the politics of this and recognize the common ground we can all acknowledge:

1.) investing in carbon based fuel is still ultimately flawed due to it being a finite resource.

2.) Burning carbon based fuel produces pollution inevitably. Pollution is furthermore inevitably bad, regardless of climate. No one wants more atmospheric polution.

As such, in first world nations like the US, it makes little sense not to push for non-carbon based energy...

 

[bug]

I think we need to take a step away from the politics of this and recognize the common ground we can all acknowledge:

1.) investing in carbon based fuel is still ultimately flawed due to it being a finite resource.

2.) Burning carbon based fuel produces pollution inevitably. Pollution is furthermore inevitably bad, regardless of climate. No one wants more atmospheric polution.

As such, in first world nations like the US, it makes little sense not to push for non-carbon based energy...

That's the sensible thing to do, as long as you don't go overboard trying to switch in the blink of an eye.
I mean, today we could make solar/wind/whatever dirt cheap, these sources are still not steady and we still haven't figured out batteries to get us through the night/no wind/whatever.

Also, carbon based fuel isn't actually a finite resource, but we consume it faster than the nature will produce it

 

[R-T-B]

Also, carbon based fuel isn't actually a finite resource, but we consume it faster than the nature will produce it

Fair point... our dead aren't quite "aged to perfection" yet lol.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

I think we need to take a step away from the politics of this and recognize the common ground we can all acknowledge:

1.) investing in carbon based fuel is still ultimately flawed due to it being a finite resource.

2.) Burning carbon based fuel produces pollution inevitably. Pollution is furthermore inevitably bad, regardless of climate. No one wants more atmospheric polution.

As such, in first world nations like the US, it makes little sense not to push for non-carbon based energy...

Except that carbon isn't a pollutant. Not burning coal is a good idea because the fumes have dozens of carcinogens in them--not because of CO2.

 

[bug]

Except that carbon isn't a pollutant.

That is a fine line. Carbon does occur naturally, however large concentrations can be defined as pollutants. I mean, cyanide occurs naturally, yet when you dump a truckload into a river, that's pollution. Oil occurs naturally, yet when a tanker sinks... you get my drift.
Of course, what I haven't seen is a limit where we can start calling carbon a pollutant. Thus everyone calls it as it suits their point of view.
For bonus points, the gas having the most pronounced greenhouse effect is water vapour. And I don;t think there's any limit where one would start calling that a pollutant.

I mean, with so many terms up in the air, it's no wonder having a meaningful conversation on the subject is pretty much impossible.

Not burning coal is a good idea because the fumes have dozens of carcinogens in them--not because of CO2.

That too.

 

[R-T-B]

Except that carbon isn't a pollutant. Not burning coal is a good idea because the fumes have dozens of carcinogens in them--not because of CO2.

Didn't say a thing about co2. That was intentional.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

"Carbon based fuel." Fuel implies burning. What is the result of burning carbon? Carbon oxides, including carbon dioxide.

Carbon dioxide is about 0.04% of the air. Even if it reached 0.2% it's not really going to change much.