Climate change - an oil based question.

[Gabe]

Originally Posted By: Danno

According to a jimmy hansen paper - you know the former NASA activist - CO2 plays a minor role in GW .. cough .. climate change:

"we argue that rapid warming in recent decades has been driven mainly by non-CO2 greenhouse gases (GHGs), such as chlorofluorocarbons, CH4, and N2O, not by the products of fossil fuel burning, CO2 and aerosols..

If sources of CH4 and O3 precursors were reduced in the future, the change in climate forcing by non-CO2 GHGs in the next 50 years could be near zero. Combined with a reduction of black carbon emissions and plausible success in slowing CO2 emissions, this reduction of non-CO2 GHGs could lead to a decline in the rate of global warming, reducing the danger of dramatic climate change"

http://www.webcitation.org/688csIkJI


Not all greenhouse gases are the same. More stable molecules - like CO2 - reflect significantly less radiation than a less stable molecule - like CO. This is why catalytic converts are important or why you see a very large flame burning near landfills and mines. But because of the higher concentration CO2 is reflecting more radiation than CO.

The author is discussing the need to cut some of the most damaging greenhouse gases. Some countries still use freon as a propellant in aerosol cans.

 

[IndyIan]

Originally Posted By: Cristobal
It depends on how much carbon in the ecosystem there is, in the form of carbon dioxide. The carbon is all here, in one form or another. Either it is in the air or it is sitting on the shelf, so to speak. CO2 production is balanced out against the forces that sequester carbon, like oil production. There were, it seems, five or six events in the Earth's past (in the Mesozoic) where there was so much CO2 that the average temperature at the North Pole was about 72 degrees Fahrenheit. These were set off by massive volcanic activity and CO2 production. The tipping point is about at 1000 parts per million in the atmosphere. Ocean current circulation greatly slowed, the deep seas below about 100 meters became anoxic, and the deep sea ecosystem went extinct & was replaced by hydrogen-sulfide producing bacteria like we have in the Black Sea today. The lower waters were lifeless except for such bacteria. The top oceanic layers still teemed with life. Eventually the accumulation of buried dead matter on raining downon the global sea floor took the CO2 out, and the world returned to normal. It took hundreds of thousands of years. This made for the petroleum, kerogen, natural gas, we use today. The deep sea animal life, like today's cod and giant squid, had to evolve all over again, and previous forms were replaced.

We could set off another such cycle if we keep going down this path and keep releasing carbon into the atmosphere, but it would not go runaway for several centuries. Humans would survive, but the world would become hot, humid, stinky, and miserable to humans, and some regions would be too hot and humid to be habitable by people. At the same time, such a world would be very productive of life, but will be profoundly different from the world we live in today. There is feedback that can slow this process down, like plant production.

Ironically, some scientists think that about 600 million years from now, so much carbon will wind up sequestered again in the Earth's crust that almost all plant life, and therefore animal life, will be finally extinct.

Interesting, only 1000ppm of CO2 is estimated to have caused all that... We are at 400ppm now with an exponentially growing increase per year...
I can't find an equation for the actual measured increase CO2 now, but I'd guess we'll be at 1000ppm in less than 100 years.
Any plan hold carbon emissions that might affect "the economy" is a hard sell, but if we wait until its very obvious the climate is heating up too much, "the economy" will not matter anymore.

 

[rshaw125]

Remember climate change is like a religion. Some believe it regardless of what actually occurs.
More hurricanes and tornadoes? Actually we're experiencing fewer.

 

[A_Harman]

Originally Posted By: Doog
Originally Posted By: Cristobal

Ironically, some scientists think that about 600 million years from now, so much carbon will wind up sequestered again in the Earth's crust that almost all plant life, and therefore animal life, will be finally extinct.


In a mere 600 million years...but the real question is what will happen to BITOG...will it be Bob is the Carbon Guy

Maybe, but the thick versus thin debate will still be raging.

 

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted By: GreeCguy
By using oil products, we're not introducing anything new to our world, but merely releasing something that was there a long time ago which, over time and in whatever way, has been trapped.


The point is, if you believe in man made climate change (whether it is really global and warming is up to the person), human civilization is not going to survive well in the world "a long time ago" with all the CO2 in the atmosphere.

Mainly, if sea level rise, a lot of today's land would be submerged, and a lot of the edible sea creatures would be extinct, and we would have a lot of massive agricultural challenges so we couldn't easily feed ourselves.

 

[GreeCguy]

Thank you all for the very interesting responses.

Yes, I had not taken into account the time factor.

Yes, I had never heard before of the "peat bogs releasing CO2" thinking before - makes sense to me.

Yes, I agree that tornados and hurricanes are not as frequent as they were years ago. My Dad, born in 1919 and having lived in Florida his entire life, (basically within a two mile radius) still says we don't get the storms we used to get. What has happened, (the reason we see them on television so much) is that population has increased. When he was born, Orlando was a little bitty town of about 5,000 people. Now, the greater Orlando area has over a million people living there.

All of this makes me think of another oil related question which I believe should be on another post.

Thanks for the replies - a lot of food for thought.

 

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted By: Doog
Originally Posted By: Gabe


Trying to deny the problem isn't helping.



Trying to create a "problem" when one doesn't exist is simply foolishness compounded by free grant money.


And trying to convince each other while the correct answer is "we don't know for sure one way or the other" is?

 

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted By: expat
I DO see an advantage (worldwide) to become LESS dependent on Fossil Fuels, and adopt more 'sustainable' ways of providing for ourselves.


With the rest of the world (China, India in particular) starting to consume fossil fuel like the developed world do, we BETTER become less dependent on fossil fuel even if they do not cause climate change or if we could pump them out of the ground much faster than before. The price would be bid so high that we couldn't afford them for long.

 

[Gabe]

Originally Posted By: rshaw125
Remember climate change is like a religion. Some believe it regardless of what actually occurs.
More hurricanes and tornadoes? Actually we're experiencing fewer.


Children ice skating on the river Thames used to be a common winter sight in London, and Tuscany used to be famous for olives.

Despite being a huge part of our life, fossil fuel still carries a black magic stigma. After giving money to the cashier, we deal very little with it. We don't see anything coming from the pump; we don't see anything coming out the tail pipe.

 

[Clevy]

If the powers that be really wanted to make a difference they would have a tesla coil powering everything that needs electricity.
Simple.
But no one makes money when power is free. Utility companies don't need umpteen miles of copper for powerlines,they don't need coal fired power plants. They don't have a meter outside that needs to be read and you get a bill every month.
Yes,if government really wanted to reduce their carbon footprint a tesla coil is a start.
He invented a great many things when it comes to harnessing energy,but his methods didn't require a monthly bill. So off his ideas went into obscurity.

 

[Tempest]

Originally Posted By: Gabe

Not all greenhouse gases are the same. More stable molecules - like CO2 - reflect significantly less radiation than a less stable molecule - like CO. This is why catalytic converts are important or why you see a very large flame burning near landfills and mines. But because of the higher concentration CO2 is reflecting more radiation than CO.

The author is discussing the need to cut some of the most damaging greenhouse gases. Some countries still use freon as a propellant in aerosol cans.

And what exactly is the rate at which heat leaves the atmosphere into space, not a fixture in a laboratory? NO ONE knows this and ALL of the models have been wrong.


Mankind's contribution to heat + natural (base line) heat = actual temperature.


Please fill in the blanks. If one can't, then there can be no case made for AGW.

If one looks at the nitty gritty ways temperature and other things are measured, it is very clear that there isn't one single shred of evidence exists that points to AGW.

As I recall, 25% of ALL of the CO2 man has ever realeased was released in the LAST 10 YEARS. And yet no warming.

As others have said, AGW is a complete scam.

 

[Kiwi_ME]

A civilized conversation about climate change on the conservative BITOG? I think I'm on an alternate internet! Well, at least until Clevy mentioned perpetual motion.

Global warming as a name was changed to climate change because it more accurately reflects what is happening. It doesn't just mean the weather will get warmer, it will be more unpredictable as well.

Yes, we (man) are perfectly capable of changing atmospheric conditions that cause climate change. The reason life thrives (or not) is due to the delicate balance of CO2 between the ocean and atmosphere and by releasing CO2 from fossil fuels we are changing it extremely fast on a geological time scale. The Earth has seen this many times before but it takes many tens of thousands of years to settle down after a disturbance. We don't really want to go there.

Our biggest mistake during our time on this planet was discovering fossil fuels and then becoming totally dependent on them, despite the fun we have burning them. We need to move away from that ASAP or alternatively (and more realistically) migrate away from coastal regions over the next century and learn to live with it.

It seems most people deny this is happening because they don't want their toys taken away from them, or want to be blamed for something that will cause future generations pain and suffering. Get over it, it's real and it's happening right now.

 

[Tempest]

Quote:
Get over it, it's real and it's happening right now.


Mankind's contribution to heat + natural (base line) heat = actual temperature.

Please fill in the blanks.

 

[itguy08]

Originally Posted By: Kiwi_ME

It seems most people deny this is happening because they don't want their toys taken away from them, or want to be blamed for something that will cause future generations pain and suffering. Get over it, it's real and it's happening right now.


Except it's not happening right now. One of the podcasts I listen to is NPR's This American Life. They did a show a few weeks ago on Climate Change. Had a climatologist from Colorado on that said for every weather event happening in the past 20 or so years in CO, he can find the exact pattern at some point in history. Drought, hot, cold, floods, you name it. But he has been "forced" to accept climate change.

The Earth has been changing since it's been created - even without man. Continents have shifted, climate has changed. Using the past 200 years that we have sketchy records for to predict climate is a little niave. Given that the Earth is millions of years old.

CO2 can be tamed by the feedback loop - plants and the ocean. The oceans make up a large carbon sink thanks to the algae and other plants. The plants should be growing better as CO2 is increasing.

And places are that coastline today may not be tomorrow - happens all the time throughout Earth's history. Same as places that are fertile now becoming barren. To suggest we alone (or even we have a hand in it) is a huge leap.

 

[A_Harman]

Originally Posted By: Clevy
If the powers that be really wanted to make a difference they would have a tesla coil powering everything that needs electricity.
Simple.
But no one makes money when power is free. Utility companies don't need umpteen miles of copper for powerlines,they don't need coal fired power plants. They don't have a meter outside that needs to be read and you get a bill every month.
Yes,if government really wanted to reduce their carbon footprint a tesla coil is a start.
He invented a great many things when it comes to harnessing energy,but his methods didn't require a monthly bill. So off his ideas went into obscurity.


A Tesla coil is a transformer, not a generator. It does not generate electricity, it only converts low-voltage, high-current power to high-voltage, low-current power. The electricity still needs to be generated by some evil mechanical contrivance controlled by the power company.

 

[SteveSRT8]

Originally Posted By: Kiwi_ME
Well, at least until Clevy mentioned perpetual motion.


He said absolutely nothing about perpetual motion.

Tempest reduced it nicely. Simply fill in the blanks and there's your answer.

As stated ad nauseum here prior, GW is a fraud. Then they changed the name. it's still baloney.

There is no argument that the climate is changing. It is. But there is no proof anywhere that mankind is responsible.

 

[surfstar]

Jet Contrails can affect weather.

Proof:
http://facstaff.uww.edu/travisd/pdf/jetcontrailsrecentresearch.pdf
http://facstaff.uww.edu/travisd/pdf/climatepapermar04.pdf


http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Bri...on-temperatures
"Initially, scientists thought that contrails, like the naturally occurring cirrus clouds they resemble and sometimes seed, had an overall warming effect. Although contrails clearly reflected incoming sunlight, they also trapped heat from below that would otherwise escape into space. Scientists therefore thought contrails had a net warming effect.

Then Sept. 11, 2001 presented a unique opportunity to study what the sky looked like without airplanes and contrails. In the wake of the 9-11 terrorist attacks, the FAA prohibited commercial aviation over the United States for three days. That's when David Travis, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater, thought to look at how temperatures might differ at temperature stations around the country.

He found that [PDF], for those three days, the average range between highs and lows at more than 4,000 weather stations across the US was 1 degree C wider than normal. In other words, contrails seemed to raise nighttime temperatures and lower daytimes ones."


A small part of what mankind does (airtravel) can impact daily temperatures.

 

[threeputtpar]

GreeCguy, you drop this bomb in the off topic section and only post one response? Do you know that global warming is an unofficial banned topic here? And the title you gave this topic doesn't make it any better.

People will think you are a troll if you keep posting things like this and running for the hills!

 

[SteveSRT8]

That is amazingly irrelevant to a GLOBAL issue. 3 days? I am amazed that you would offer that up as any proof of anything.

And scientists were wrong. Indeed, they were, and they could also be just as wrong about GW, eh?

(Slurp), Aaaaah, tasty sweet colored sugary beverage served here...

 

[surfstar]

Originally Posted By: SteveSRT8
That is amazingly irrelevant to a GLOBAL issue. 3 days? I am amazed that you would offer that up as any proof of anything.

And scientists were wrong. Indeed, they were, and they could also be just as wrong about GW, eh?

(Slurp), Aaaaah, tasty sweet colored sugary beverage served here...


Last I checked, airplanes flew around the globe.

3 days - yes. Do you think the FAA would kindly ground air traffic for longer to conduct a follow-up study? It was a unique opportunity (when was the last time there were 4,000 weather stations with data available and no air traffic?) and resulted in an interesting observation.