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Author Topic: Climate Change: Science and Issues  (Read 121766 times)

Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Climate Change: Science and Issues
« Reply #360 on: December 01, 2017, 08:06:09 pm »

... the last few berries sold for astronomical sums... But everyone died anyways, because the winter was very long, and very cold.

Wait, isn't it supposed to get warm, very warm? With plenty of fresh, juicy berries? ;)

LesPalenik

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Re: Climate Change: Science and Issues
« Reply #361 on: December 01, 2017, 08:54:47 pm »

Wait, isn't it supposed to get warm, very warm? With plenty of fresh, juicy berries? ;)
Lot of hot air in Washington and getting hotter.
 
https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2017/08/washington-dc-is-hot-and-getting-hotter/
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Alan Klein

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Re: Climate Change: Science and Issues
« Reply #362 on: December 01, 2017, 11:22:43 pm »

It is still going up, but less then some other models predict. The paper was published in a scientific journal, so it will be discussed in the scientific community but not by Daily Caller, who has no interest to publish anything that goes against their opinion. Hell, they're known to buy witnesses to make false statements and allegations. There's biased media on the right/conservative side as well it seems.  ;)

Btw, the paper was interesting since it also explains some of the difficulties to make accurate and representative temperature measurements of the atmosphere's temperature and at first blush (granted I'm not an expert) it seems they seem to have done a good job of that aspect.
You didn't answer my question.  If the temps aren't going up at the same rate. why not?  If there are other factors that we haven't yet discovered or fully understand, it would be important to understand them thoroughly. Otherwise all the models and predictions could turn out wrong. 

Ray

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Re: Climate Change: Science and Issues
« Reply #363 on: December 01, 2017, 11:39:34 pm »

http://dailycaller.com/2017/11/29/study-satellites-show-no-acceleration-in-global-warming-for-23-years/

Thanks for that, Slobodan. Here's an extract from the article which I think gets to the crux of the matter.

"Two major volcanoes — El Chichon in 1982 and Pinatubo in 1991 — caused global average temperature to dip as a result of volcanic ash, soot and debris reflecting sunlight back into space.

Those eruptions meant there was more subsequent warming in the following years, making the rate of warming appear to be rising as a result of man-made emissions or other factors, Christy said.

While volcanic eruptions are natural events, it was the timing of these that had such a noticeable effect on the trend. If the same eruptions had happened near the more recent end of the dataset, they could have pushed the overall trend into negative numbers, or a long-term cooling,” Christy said."


It's clear from the historical and geological record that certain regions of the planet have undergone warming and cooling trends in the recent past, during this period we could call the 'Anthropocene'.  ;)

For example, it was rather cold during the Iron Age, from around 900 BC to 300 BC; then it was rather warm during the period in which the Roman Empire flourished, from around 250 BC to 400 AD; then it was rather cold again during the period known as the Dark Ages, which were really miserable.

The Medieval Warm Period started around 900 AD and resulted in favourable conditions in Greenland for the migration of the Vikings from Iceland. However, those warm conditions in Greenland began to change around 1300 AD putting great stress on agriculture and causing the Vikings to abandon their home, (although it probably wasn't the only cause. There are always numerous contributing causes to just about everything.)

The Medieval Warm Period was followed by the Little Ice Age, broadly from around 1350 AD to 1850 AD.
However, all these sucessively warm and cool periods are not consistently warm or cool during the whole period. There are often variations within each period. The Little Ice Age appears to have had at least 3 short, particularly cold periods within the longer, generally cold period. According to the NASA Earth Observatory, one began about 1650, another about 1770, and the last in 1850, all separated by intervals of slight or relative warming.

Our current warm period, often estimated as a rise of approximately 1 degree C during the past 150 years, is in relation to this particularly cold period which began in 1850 and peaked around 1910. The following NOAA temperature graph shows a global warming of 0.95 degrees C since the year 1870 which is already within (at least the beginning of) this particularly cold period, so one might reasonably ask why is the year 1870 considered to be an ideal and natural temperature which is representative of the baseline in the graph, ie. 0 degrees C.

If the base line is taken as the year 1910, one could claim the temperature has risen 1.4 degrees C in the past 100 years, which is more alarming than 0.95 degrees C during the past 146 years. If one uses the base line of 1944 as zero, the temperature rise becomes 0.65 degrees C during the past 72 years, and during the period of the most significant emissions of CO2 when industrialization and the world population really took off.

The reason why the year 1870 is chosen as the base line is because this is the period when the thermometer was developed as a reliable instrument, and instrumental temperature records began.

Imagine if we had reasonably accurate instrumental records going back a thousand years or more. Depending on which year or decade was chosen as a base line one could probably describe our current decade as representative of a significant warming, or a slight warming, or an insignificant warming, or zero warming, or a slight cooling.

This is the problem that "hockeystick' Michael Mann faced. He didn't of course have any instrumental records of global temperatures around a thousand years ago, during the Medieval Warm Period, nor sufficient proxy records such as tree rings, fossil pollen, corals, lake and ocean sediments, covering a global scale, in order to assess global average temperatures, so to produce a graph which mixed up modern 19th and 20th century instrumental records with a complete lack of instrumental data during the Medieval Warm Period, to show that the MWP didn't exist at a global level, was considered by certain less biased and more honest scientists to be scientific fraud.

Another part of the problem is that global changes in climate are never completely synchronous. The timing of the MWP and the LIA that occurred in Europe and the North West generally, would not have been identical with similar warming and cooling periods in China, or New Zealand, but there would have been an overlap, as recent studies show, so these events can be considered global.

An average global temperature is a human construct. It doesn't apply to any specific region, except by chance. According to the global map below, again from NOAA, there are actually regions on the planet that have shown no warming during the past century. There are other larger regions which have shown only very slight warming, of less than 1 degree F (not C).

There are even larger regions for which there is no data, specifically, but not only, around the polar regions. In fact, if we add the regions for which there is no data to the regions where there is no warming, to the regions where there is only very slight warming, that covers the majority of the surface of the planet.

Hope you can all now sleep soundly in the knowledge of the certainty.....of the uncertainty about climate change.  ;D
« Last Edit: December 01, 2017, 11:45:50 pm by Ray »
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pegelli

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Re: Climate Change: Science and Issues
« Reply #364 on: December 02, 2017, 03:40:38 am »

You didn't answer my question.  If the temps aren't going up at the same rate. why not?  If there are other factors that we haven't yet discovered or fully understand, it would be important to understand them thoroughly. Otherwise all the models and predictions could turn out wrong.
You made a wrong statement and asked a wrong question. First you said the temperatures were not going up, but they still are. Lastly you asked why it doesn't get discussed where in actual fact you have no idea what's being discussed between scientist.
My position on it is that when the paper is a fraud it will be debunked, when it is true the models will be adjusted over time. I'm not a climate or atmosphere scientist so I can't judge the real merits of the paper nor answer the question why it's going up at a lower pace vs. what was previously claimed. I have faith there are enough ethical scientists out there that it will be sorted over time.
« Last Edit: December 02, 2017, 03:46:33 am by pegelli »
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pieter, aka pegelli

Alan Goldhammer

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Re: Climate Change: Science and Issues
« Reply #365 on: December 03, 2017, 08:37:56 am »

Nice piece in the New York Times today on the need for more sustainable agricultural practices so that the soil absorbs more CO2.  I think Ray has mentioned this before.
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Ray

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Re: Climate Change: Science and Issues
« Reply #366 on: December 03, 2017, 07:03:24 pm »

Nice piece in the New York Times today on the need for more sustainable agricultural practices so that the soil absorbs more CO2.  I think Ray has mentioned this before.

Alan,
I agree with the points in your linked article. Here's the summary:

"Because of carbon’s climate change connection, we’ve been conditioned to think of it as the enemy, when in fact it’s as vital to life as water. The way to make amends is to put it back in the soil, where it belongs."

You're right. I did mention this issue before. As a result of my interest in Permaculture I became more aware of the importance of the natural biological processes occuring below the surface of the soil, which tend to be out of sight and therefore out of mind.

The reality seems to be that the total quantity of life below the soil surface is greater than the total quantity of life above the surface, if we include all the roots and fine roots of all plants and trees, and all microbes, bacteria, insects, worms, and so on.

http://www.soils4teachers.org/biology-life-soil?noSSO=1

"Only 5% of what is produced by green plants is consumed by animals, but the 95% is consumed by microorganisms. One gram of fertile soil can contain up to one billion bacteria."

https://ecomyths.org/2010/10/05/are-there-more-creatures-above-ground-than-below/

"What do we know?  We know that there are thousands of creatures beneath our feet.  The majority of all terrestrial insects live in the soil for at least some part of their lives.  We know that they are very important for natural areas, agriculture, horticulture, and sustaining all of life on earth.

The soil below one square yard of woodland could contain over 200 species of arthropods (such as insects, crayfish, and spiders) and up to 1000 species of soil animals in total.

There are up to 7,700lbs of bacteria in one acre of soil."
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Alan Klein

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Re: Climate Change: Science and Issues
« Reply #367 on: December 04, 2017, 12:30:54 am »

Curious of there is a practical limit on CO2 increasing? The increase in carbon being captured by animals, plants and other natural processes increases to offset the increase in CO2.  In other words, the earth balancing itself out naturally. 

Bart_van_der_Wolf

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Re: Climate Change: Science and Issues
« Reply #368 on: December 04, 2017, 06:08:45 am »

Curious of there is a practical limit on CO2 increasing? The increase in carbon being captured by animals, plants and other natural processes increases to offset the increase in CO2.  In other words, the earth balancing itself out naturally.

Only if we stop adding more CO2 to the system than it can deal with. That means that we need to reduce the current emissions. If we succeed in doing that in line with the Paris agreements, we may limit the temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels. Á new equilibrium will not yet be achieved by the end of the century. It's a slowdown that's required to limit the rise to 2 degrees, rather than a plateau being reached.  But it will already be hard enough to reach the 2 degree Celsius goal (let alone the 1.5-degree ambition).

The worry is that we may trigger irreversible effects that make things spiral out of 'control', so it's wise to not gamble with the only home we have. Because CO2 remains in the atmosphere for a long time, much longer than more potent greenhouse gasses like methane, it can take decades for our current emissions to be absorbed by the system (e.g. oceans absorb some 40% of the carbon in CO2, as can be seen from the rate of acidification).

Climate processes are slow on our timescale, and today's emissions will have a lasting effect for decades to come.

Scientists are excited by the quality of results they get from the new recently launched ESA Sentinel-5P satellite, part of the EC Copernicus environmental monitoring programme. Sentinel-5P carries the most advanced sensor of its type to date: Tropomi, which now enables to see very detailed images of all sorts of emissions/pollutions, at a resolution that was not available before. That will make it easier to identify the hot spots and focus attention on resolving the issues.

Cheers,
Bart

P.S. In addition, the current trend is still accelerating instead of slowing to a new plateau/equilibrium.
« Last Edit: December 04, 2017, 07:03:35 am by BartvanderWolf »
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LesPalenik

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Re: Climate Change: Science and Issues
« Reply #369 on: December 04, 2017, 07:25:04 am »

Quote
Over the past decade, billions of dollars have been spent on carbon-capture projects that have not materialized. The most recent failure was the $7.5 billion Kemper Project in Mississippi, whose owners earlier this year announced that instead of finishing the planned low-emissions coal plant, they would just turn it into a natural-gas plant.

But there’s a fix, carbon capture is both vital and viable.
Have a look at the interesting and quite extensive article published by Quartz (qz.com) below. Over the next two weeks, Quartz will publish a series of articles exploring carbon-capture technologies from China to California, showcasing an important but poorly understood part of the world’s race to zero emissions. These are stories of staunch environmentalists who take a different approach to solving the biggest global threat humanity has ever faced, and of a new breed of energy entrepreneur trying to convert carbon dioxide from a liability to an asset.

Quote
One solution can be found at the Hellisheidi geothermal power plant, Iceland’s largest, just outside the capital Reykjavik. Since 2014, the plant has been extracting heat from underground, capturing the carbon dioxide released in the process, mixing it with water, and injecting it back down beneath the earth, about 700 meters (2,300 ft) deep. The carbon dioxide in the water reacts with the minerals at that depth to form rock, where it stays trapped. In other words, Hellisheidi is now a zero-emissions plant that turns a greenhouse gas to stone.

Quote
Just outside Houston, Texas, spread over an area of 4,300 acres (more than 3,500 soccer fields), is the WA Parish Generating Station. It comprises four natural gas-fired units and four coal-fired units, producing 3,700 MW of power, enough to meet the energy needs of 3 million US households. The power plant is so big it has its own train station, where, two to three times a day, dozens of carriages unload 15,000 metric tons of coal from the Powder River Basin of Wyoming.
One of the coal units, which produces about 240 MW of power (enough for 200,000 households), was recently retrofitted with state-of-the-art carbon-capture technology. The project, operated by two energy companies, the US’s NRG and Japan’s JX Nippon, was christened “Petra Nova,” which means “new oil” in Latin. When it started operating earlier this year, it became—and remains—the world’s largest coal power plant with carbon-capture technology, with the capacity to capture more than 90% of its emissions, about 1.6 million metric tons of carbon emissions each year. It cost $1 billion to build, $190 million of which came from the US government.
Among a string of failures, Petra Nova stands tall as a carbon-capture project completed on time and within budget. Its success is partly attributable to its use of off-the-shelf technologies that had been tested and proven. The failed Kemper Project, on the other hand, tried to build its own set of technologies to convert coal into gas before doing carbon capture. The main causes for its failure, however, had to do more with reasons beyond technology innovation, such as an unanticipated drop in natural-gas prices.
The idea of capturing and burying emissions is simple, but executing it at scale is complex, NRG spokesperson David Knox warned me before we began the tour. “Petra Nova is really five projects in one,” he said. Petra Nova does all five steps of carbon capture and storage (CCS): generating carbon dioxide, capturing the emissions (which is a two-part process), transporting it to where it will be stored, and injecting it deep underground and then monitoring it.

https://qz.com/1144298/humanitys-fight-against-climate-change-is-failing-one-technology-can-change-that/
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Alan Klein

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Re: Climate Change: Science and Issues
« Reply #370 on: December 06, 2017, 03:49:39 pm »

I was watching a NatGeo nature TV show that showed how disappearing ice in the Arctic is changing animal behavior and distribution.  Narwahls are losing out to killer whales as the latter expand their territory into warming and ice freer areas.  Fish like cod are moving up from the south filling in warmer seas of the north.  Kodiak bears are switching to berries that arrive earlier in spring so the bears are abandoning salmon runs getting their carbs from the berries.https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/08/170823121333.htm 

In the TV movie, polar bears who used to hunt seals now have shifted to salmon, something left to their grizzly cousins before. Apparently, polar bears never hunted salmon before but seem to be adapting quite nicely to other prey.

The point of all this is rather than warming being a constant foreboding situation, all that's happening is that species are adapting; some are winning more than others, but life goes on.

I've been complaining in these forums that there's not been enough of honest shows showing the advantages of a warming climate.  So I was quite pleased when I viewed this show today.  Interesting that it was originally produced in 2014.  Where has it been for the last three years? 

Alan Klein

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Re: Climate Change: Science and Issues
« Reply #371 on: December 06, 2017, 04:56:01 pm »

Cleaning up the environment; reducing CO2. VW exec in US sentenced to 7 years in jail. 
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-06/vw-executive-sentenced-to-7-years-in-prison-for-diesel-role

LesPalenik

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Re: Climate Change: Science and Issues
« Reply #372 on: December 07, 2017, 06:59:27 am »

Cleaning up the environment; reducing CO2. VW exec in US sentenced to 7 years in jail. 
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-06/vw-executive-sentenced-to-7-years-in-prison-for-diesel-role

In the meantime, there are no complaints about the methane pollution. Methane is a greenhouse gas like carbon dioxide (CO2), but the negative effect on the climate of methane is 23 times higher than the effect of CO2.

The largest farm in the world (in terms of acreage) is the Mudanjiang City Mega Farm in Heilongjiang, China which has around 100,000 cows on 22,500,000 acres.  For reference, that is 50 times bigger than the largest dairy farm in Europe. Considering that an average cow releases around 100 kg of methane per year, just this one farm produces 10,000 metric tons of methane per year.

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thierrylegros396

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Re: Climate Change: Science and Issues
« Reply #373 on: December 07, 2017, 08:10:26 am »

In the meantime, there are no complaints about the methane pollution. Methane is a greenhouse gas like carbon dioxide (CO2), but the negative effect on the climate of methane is 23 times higher than the effect of CO2.

The largest farm in the world (in terms of acreage) is the Mudanjiang City Mega Farm in Heilongjiang, China which has around 100,000 cows on 22,500,000 acres.  For reference, that is 50 times bigger than the largest dairy farm in Europe. Considering that an average cow releases around 100 kg of methane per year, just this one farm produces 10,000 metric tons of methane per year.

You forgot to add, higher temperatures means less permafrost, and also more methane release, so higher temperatures, up to the trigger point which Bart talk about.

Thierry
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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: Climate Change: Science and Issues
« Reply #374 on: December 07, 2017, 10:09:23 am »

Phew, Les, that makes me feel so much better! I mean, blaming the Chinese felt so xenophobic, racist almost... blaming Chinese cows, however... 😉

pegelli

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Re: Climate Change: Science and Issues
« Reply #375 on: December 07, 2017, 10:39:27 am »

Phew, Les, that makes me feel so much better! I mean, blaming the Chinese felt so xenophobic, racist almost... blaming Chinese cows, however... 😉
Well, according to Beef2Live the number of cows per capita is much higher in the US vs. China ;)
Here we really need to point our xenophobic finger at the cows in India, wether they are sacred, holy or not  :P
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pieter, aka pegelli

LesPalenik

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Re: Climate Change: Science and Issues
« Reply #376 on: December 07, 2017, 12:45:12 pm »

Phew, Les, that makes me feel so much better! I mean, blaming the Chinese felt so xenophobic, racist almost... blaming Chinese cows, however... 😉

To make you feel even better it might help to know that in addition to "Grown In China" cows,  they import also a lot of beef from US. What this import means is that the Chinese get the steaks and the Americans the methane, plus a lot of nitrogen and ammonia in the soil and freshwater streams.

https://www.drovers.com/article/chinese-suppliers-race-order-us-beef
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1012668109662

Some time ago, I paddled down on the Guadalupe river near Austin which starts flowing as a clear cold stream from the Canyon Lake dam through nice meadows and pretty cattle pastures.  Unfortunately, with every mile, the river gets warmer and murkier as a result of all the runoffs from the farms on both river shores.
 
« Last Edit: December 07, 2017, 02:08:37 pm by LesPalenik »
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LesPalenik

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Re: Climate Change: Science and Issues
« Reply #377 on: December 07, 2017, 01:00:45 pm »

Well, according to Beef2Live the number of cows per capita is much higher in the US vs. China ;)
Here we really need to point our xenophobic finger at the cows in India, wether they are sacred, holy or not  :P

In other words, although USA has the 4th largest cattle inventory in the world, that constitutes only 10% of the world's cattle population (based on 998,000 cattle in the beef2Live table).
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Ray

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Re: Climate Change: Science and Issues
« Reply #378 on: December 07, 2017, 03:44:20 pm »

Methane is a greenhouse gas like carbon dioxide (CO2), but the negative effect on the climate of methane is 23 times higher than the effect of CO2.

Excellent example of a confused and misleading statement, Les. Well done!  ;D

Whilst Methane is claimed to have a much more significant greenhouse effect than CO2, this greater effect is per molecule, not per quantity of the gas in the atmosphere.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Methane accounts for only 10% of the greenhouse effect, compared with 82% for CO2. Refer attached image.

However, even this comparison from an apparently reliable source is misleading because it completely excludes what is by far the most significant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, and that is 'water vapour'.

Calculating the precise greenhouse effect of water vapour is impossible because the amount varies so greatly from region to region and within short periods of time. Estimates of the proportion of the greenhouse effect due to water vapour seem to vary from around 65% to 95%.

Taking water vapour into consideration reduces that claimed 10% contribution of Methane to probably less than 3%.
Of course, the alarmists will tend to jump in at this point and claim that warming due to CO2 and Methane increases the amount of water vapour which in turn amplifies the warming effect. This is another excellent example of alarmism because it ignores the counteractive albedo effect of clouds which reflect a portion of the heat from the sun to outer space. More water vapour translates to more clouds which in turn translates to more reflection of heat from the sun which is a counterbalancing cooling effect.

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Alan Klein

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Re: Climate Change: Science and Issues
« Reply #379 on: December 09, 2017, 09:58:34 am »

More fake news using some old dying polar bear to blame climate change.  The continuously biased presentations of these things are what convinces deniers that it's a hoax.  As long as false presentations are done about the real truth, the whole science of climate change becomes suspect.  They have to stop twisting the reality of these things to fit their preconceived agenda.  People know when they're being had.
https://www.livescience.com/61151-starving-polar-bear-captured-on-video.html
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