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Testimony on Climate Change to the US Supreme Court


parmenides3

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Posted
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......
  • Weather Preferences: Hot & Sunny, Cold & Snowy
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......
If this were a debate about crop rotation, or what colour to paint the Town Hall, it really wouldn't matter, these things are easily reversible. The worry I have here is that the longer we wait to take decisive action, the less chance that action has of making worthwhile difference: yes, I know that none of the warming might be anthropogenic, but until the fateful night when the Herald of Free Enterprise sank leaving port with the bow door open had never caused a problem either. The analogue is a swimmer determined to swim as far out to sea as (s)he can, but eventually reaching a point where they have insufficient strength to return to shore. At what point is enough evidence enough?

Now America has shown her hand, as it were, in a firm belief that technology will fix our problems you can see why a certain amount of filibustering could be being generated from her shores. If it were as tacky as purely the petro-carbon lobby you could stand a chance of facing them but when it's the biggest financial clout on the planet defending their shameful unwillingness to act (because all will be full of praise when her scientists 'find a cure' ) then that is different and leads to genuine inaction on a global scale.

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Posted
  • Location: Sunny Southsea
  • Location: Sunny Southsea
Lots to do today, so I may not make it online for the rest of the day, but here's a quick thought. If Benny Peiser's presence on The Scientific Alliance offers them no mitigation then I would say we have run into a bit of a problem, namely that we two cannot seem to agree on reliable sources of information. I propose, therefore, that henceforth we argue facts and details without making reference to the source of the claims. This may seem stupid at first, I agree, but if the information we present is accurate then it should withstand scrutiny regardless of its source. No more should we dismiss an article because it comes from a "notably unreliable source". It should be dismissed on its inaccuracies, not on its origins.

If the source is unreliable and distorts facts then those facts should be easy to refute (in theory!).

Does this seem like a reasonable proposal to you? If you agree then, in return, I will not dismiss a paper by, for example, Michael Mann out of hand but rather compare it to other studies. Next chance I get I will have a closer look at temperature histories from various sources (including Mann) and see where the investigation takes me. Deal? :)

C-Bob

I'm willing to give it a try, Cap'n; I'm fairly confident that, even if I don't have the scientific knowhow, I can find a reference which does.

Does the source matter? In one sense, you are right, it should be the argument, not the arguer, which is at issue, but one of the big problems that you and many others have identified is that a lot of what looks like science is actually bunkum - and that goes in all directions. Sometimes it can be hard to tell without knowing what the context of the evidence presented is. Still, worth a try.

:)P

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Posted
  • Location: Co.Tyrone
  • Location: Co.Tyrone

Came across this on the BBC website - thought it might be of interest to this debate:

Big ice shelf's disappearing act

By Kim Griggs

The drill rig is near New Zealand and US bases on Ross Island (Image: Cliff Atkins)

Sediments extracted from the Antarctic seafloor show the world's largest ice shelf has disintegrated and reappeared many times in the past.

Fluctuations in the Ross Ice Shelf are revealed by an early look at cores drilled from the seabed underneath the giant ice slab.

The investigation is being carried out by scientists drilling near the US and New Zealand bases on Ross Island.

The team wants to link the data to what is already known about past climate.

These are dramatic fluctuations

Tim Naish, Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences

The long-term aim of the scientists is to find out what the Ross Ice Shelf - a floating slab of ice the size of France - and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet have been doing over the past 10 million years.

The researchers are part of the first team to drill as part of the international Andrill project to investigate the geological history of Antarctica.

"We're seeing numerous cycles of the ice shelf or ice sheet being present at the site and then being absent," said Dr Tim Naish, a palaeoclimatologist at New Zealand's Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences and one of the chief scientists for the Antarctica Geological Drilling project (Andrill).

"These are dramatic fluctuations."

"The big question is how stable is this enormous ice shelf, the Ross Ice Shelf, which is being fed by the West Antarctic Ice Sheet," said Dr Naish.

Early signs

Already, just weeks into the project and more than 600m into the seafloor off Antarctica, they've been able to show that this part of the icy continent has at earlier times been open water, and at times, has been covered by an ice sheet.

The team has drilled more than 600m down (Image: Tim Naish)

"When the ice sheet is there, the sediments you get under it are very rubbly. They are the sort of sediments that you would see at the front of [glaciers]," explains Naish.

"When the ice lifts a bit, so water can flow underneath, and it becomes an ice shelf, you still get those rubbly bits but you also get sediments that tell you water was around, that water was flowing back and forth.

"When the ice shelf disappears and you've got completely open water, then you've got a completely different situation where you have high biological productivity and a lot of microfossils preserved."

The scientists also want to determine, by dating the sediments, just when the ice disappeared in order to link that information to what is known about the climate back then.

Warmer world

The aim, said Dr Naish, is provide from this sedimentary snapshot an analogue for what might happen in the warmer climate the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts.

The IPCC, the body responsible for collating and analysing climate data for the global community, predicts average global temperatures will rise by between 1.4C and 5.8C by 2100.

Tim Naish wants to find out how stable the ice shelf is (Image: Megan Berg)

"If we drill back in time, we can get a record of how [the Ross Ice Shelf] behaved, during times, certainly in the last million years, when we know the temperatures from the ice cores suggest that the planet was two to three degrees warmer," the Andrill project member explained.

Scientists know ice shelves are the most vulnerable part of the Antarctic. On the Antarctic Peninsula, where temperatures have risen 2.5C in the past 50 years, there have been spectacular collapses such as the demise in 2002 of the Larsen B shelf.

The collapse of an ice shelf can lead to further loss of ice from the Antarctic continent itself.

Dr Naish explained: "One of the things we've learnt from the collapse of the ice shelves around the Antarctic Peninsula is that once the ice shelf goes, the glaciers feeding it speed up and you start to lose ice mass off the continent much faster because the ice shelves essentially buttress the glaciers that are feeding them."

Shifting ice

If the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and its northern counterpart on Greenland, were both to melt, sea levels around the world would rise about 10 to 12m. And there is some evidence, says Dr Naish, that the West Antarctic Ice sheet - and not just the Ross Ice Shelf - has also disappeared during warmer periods in the past.

Previous drilling has showed that ice sheets were quite dynamic, collapsing and reforming in line with the Earth's Milankovitch cycles. These are small "wobbles" in the Earth's orbit that are known to happen roughly every 20,000, 40,000 and 100,000 years.

But said Dr Naish, "during all those natural cycles, carbon dioxide never got above 300 parts per million. So in the last 200 years, we've had this geologically unprecedented increase in CO2 - it's 30% higher than it has been over the last several million years and it's occurred at a rate we've never seen geologically."

To understand more, the Andrill team will study exhaustively the core extracted from beneath the Ross Ice Shelf. So far, the team has drilled more than 600m and expects eventually to reach 1200m beneath the seafloor.

But already, the evidence in the sediments of what happened to the Ross Ice Shelf and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is significant.

Dr Naish muses: "If they collapsed in the past without the present level of CO2 and the Earth was two to three degrees warmer, what's going to happen with the doubling of CO2 and potentially much higher temperatures?"

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Posted
  • Location: A small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Guildford, Surrey
  • Location: A small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Guildford, Surrey

Thanks for weighing in, everybody - it's nice to get a wider spread of opinion. :)

To SF, you ask when is enough evidence enough. As you say earlier in your post, "There is just too much scope for reasonable challenge, even before all the unreasonable scepticism which is then heaped on for a variety of reasons." I would argue that as long as there are any significant reasonable challenges left, we don't have enough evidence. (As this thread concerns a court case it is not inappropriate to say that the "defense" currently has Reasonable Doubt on their side.)

To Gray-Wolf, a lot of blame is being placed (not wholly without reason) on America for their unwillingness to join Kyoto and similar international treaties. However there are other, greater, "threats" to climate than them (e.g. China...). The US may not be setting a very good example, but the greatest polluters are unlikely to succumb to international pressure even if the US were to sign up. Going back to SF's post, the US seems to think that there is sufficient reason to not worry too much about climate change, at least not to the extent that would warrant potentially messing up their economy. At the end of the day, it seems the most worrying thing about Kyoto is its economic implications - perhaps this is why so many of the "Anti-GW" sites have economists on theirs Boards (and I believe that at least one of the authors of the paper challenging the MBH Hockey-stick graph was an economist - is that right?).

To P3, I'm glad you're willing to go for it! ;) I was starting to worry that this debate would end up just being a tennis match between the two of us trying to find sources we could both accept without ever actually addressing any of the issues!

And finally to Tyrone, thanks for that post - another interesting avenue to look down. It will be interesting to see where that research goes in future. :lol:

And now I must away!

TTFN

C-Bob

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Posted
  • Location: Sunny Southsea
  • Location: Sunny Southsea

Interestingly, the 'defence' in the case (the EPA), is using the 'uncertainty argument' in its own evidence. This is similar to some of the ideas posted above. the main idea being that, until we have all of the facts, or at least, more certainty, policy decisions or action should be delayed. This is a strategy which is familiar to the arguments in the USA, as it has formed a cornerstone of Republican response to climate change for some time.

Andrew Dessler has some interesting observations on this on: http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/11/29/214437/27 . I knew about the Luntz memo, but the link on this page allows you to read the original for yourself: it is an advisory document for Republicans on how to deal with issues of note; the portions relevant to climate change only are included. The main advice is to 'obfuscate' - emphasise uncertainty over economic or other arguments, as Americans will respond better if they believe that there is still doubt about the science. The underlying assumption of the advice is, of course, that there is in fact very little real uncertainty about the principles, so emphasis needs to be placed on using science/scientists, where possible, to cast doubt on the principles underlying CC.

So, how much uncertainty (reasonable doubt) is there really, about AGW? And where are the areas of uncertainty which have an impact on policy decisions or action? My argument, to start with, is that, as far as whether CO2 causes the atmosphere to warm, the case, both theoretically and experimentally, has been proven. The lag of CO2 behind temperature in the ice core record is not relevant, because at that time, there was no artificial enhancement of CO2 levels to kick-start the process; this is the fundamental difference in the present situation from the past which explains, unlike any other process, the changes in global temperatures in the christmas pudding. The physics is compatible with both the theory and the observations.

What, then, constitutes a 'significant reasonable challenge' to the claim that, by emitting CO2 in ever-increasing quantities, we are contributing to a change in the World's climate over which we will have little or no control? We can argue about the amount of warming expected, or the forecasts of sea-level rise, or, in particular, about what to do about it, but where is the evidence, or even theory, which seriously challenges the main principle? The Baliunas and Soon paper, for example, which attempted to show that recent changes in climate could be attributed to natural forcings, was ultimately rejected not because it was 'anti-GW', but because the science was flawed, the results did not follow from the data, and the conclusions were unproven. I have no doubt that, should someone come up with a well-founded challenge to our current understanding of likely future climate changes, it will be embraced [if not without challenges] by climate scientists and adjustments made to the theory. In the meantime, what we have fits the evidence, is explained by a well-founded theory, has been tested and proven by experiment and is [largely] supported both by the historical record and by powerful, carefully programmed, computer models. Add to this the observation that, with every new development in research, modelling and understanding of historical changes, the picture becomes clearer, not muddier, and it seems to me that we are already at the stage where both the likely future warming trend and AGW can be accepted as real phenomena, and that therefore action of some kind should be taken.

enough for now.

:)P

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Re point 1 - I was under the impression that the 17,000 scientists thing was effectively a petition, not a survey - a "read this and sign at the bottom if you agree" kind of thing. The wording may have been "misleading" (as I have read elsewhere) with regards to how the petition was to be used, but surely the fact that anyone signed shows some degree of dissent in the ranks. Or are you saying that the petition was never even circulated, and that the 17,000 names were put on without the consent of the scientists in question (or are the names all made up too?).

On to point 3 (I'll return to point 2 at a later date), why do the GCMs show the same, broad warming for the future? Perhaps because one of the assumptions is that the climate will continue to warm? Or that the data taken as input is faulty? Or the models themselves are missing something? I'm not saying that this is the case necessarily, but there are plausible reasons for the GCMs throwing up the same things. I don't know enough about climate models to be able to pinpoint specific inaccuracies in them, I confess - a point for future research, me thinks.

Point 4 - this is more of a political/media thing to my mind, but the general viewpoint among politicians and journalists does seem to be "Climate Change is happening because the IPCC says it is". If the IPCC haven't actually proven anything then it is wrong for the politicians and journalists to act as though they have.

Point 5 - Dependent on where you live? In what respect? Granted it might (possibly) be impractical or inconvenient to live in coastal regions, but the "modest amount" of GW they are referring to is the amount that would make vegetation more lush and more widespread, which has legitimate positive knock-on effects for the Earth's whole ecosystem. As the degree of future warming is unknown, it is not irrelevant to consider the positive effects of modest temperature increase.

Point 6 -

What is the basis for this statement? How much of an impact is, say, 10 years going to have? In 10 years you would expect climate science to have come on in leaps and bounds, making any conclusions more accurate and reliable. How much of a difference will 10 years make considering that China, and others, won't agree to Kyoto anyway? How much of a difference will 10 years make, especially if the "No Regrets" strategy is implemented post haste?

More later :unsure:

C-Bob

In point 4 - "..legitimate positive knock-on effects for the Earth's whole ecosystem?"

Pull the other one Bobski! ?Ask any marine biologist about the effect of a one degree rise on plankton distribution or on corals, or in fact the whole marine ecosystem. Find out about the likely effects on the Amazon basin rainfall, and subsequently the whole rainforest, or about any one of a myriad of downsides to GW for global ecosystems. We have been so hung up about whether WE could cope with any relatively rapid change in global climate, that we often forget about the catastrophe it could cause to many other species of animals and plants. From polar bears to corals - it's far from being a "positive" for them. Those who talk about "no regrets" are blowing smoke from a place where they shouldn't!!

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Posted
  • Location: A small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Guildford, Surrey
  • Location: A small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Guildford, Surrey
In point 4 - "..legitimate positive knock-on effects for the Earth's whole ecosystem?"

Pull the other one Bobski! ?Ask any marine biologist about the effect of a one degree rise on plankton distribution or on corals, or in fact the whole marine ecosystem. Find out about the likely effects on the Amazon basin rainfall, and subsequently the whole rainforest, or about any one of a myriad of downsides to GW for global ecosystems. We have been so hung up about whether WE could cope with any relatively rapid change in global climate, that we often forget about the catastrophe it could cause to many other species of animals and plants. From polar bears to corals - it's far from being a "positive" for them. Those who talk about "no regrets" are blowing smoke from a place where they shouldn't!!

Hi Flash, and welcome to the boards. I'm going to try and squeeze in a reply before my internet connection conks out, which it has been doing a lot the past few days :doh:

You say "Ask any marine biologist about the effect of a one degree rise on plankton distribution or on corals, or in fact the whole marine ecosystem", but a one degree rise in atmospheric temperature does not equate to a one degree rise in sea temperature, and since the 20th century showed approximately a 0.6 degree rise in atmospheric temperature then the plankton, I think, are safe (for now).

Interestingly one of the main effects of climate change in corals has been to make them lose their colouration. The corals are still, in many places, apparently quite healthy, but have lost their colour. Perhaps their colouration is not a vital aspect of their survival but merely a side-effect of particular conditions. (I may have a look into this at some point.)

As for Amazonian rainfall, the issue of precipitation is a complicated one. I still read articles talking about GW causing the deserts to spread, particularly the Sahara, but the evidence doesn't bear this out. The Sahara is actually shrinking, and it is shrinking most noticably in the Southern regions.

The polar bear population figures show that most groups are actually increasing in number at present (not massively, but not dying out either), so I wouldn't count them in the endangered species list yet.

"No Regrets" basically takes the stance that we should be looking at putting money into research and technologies that will have long-term benefits, rather than throwing far more money into a project that has little gain (either long term or short term) as a knee-jerk reaction. If we end up throwing enough money at Kyoto and similar treaties, we could find ourselves in a situation where we simply don't have the resources to advance ourselves as a culture. The No Regrets concept is cautious, I grant you, but the limited understanding of climate that we have is not enough to allow us to throw caution to the wind.

To P3, perhaps we're getting away from the court-case style of debate we were thinking of pursuing. I accept that the Republicans' remit is to cloud the issue (and I think the Democrats would probably do the same under the circumstances, despite what they may say to the contrary) - this is an example of a government politicising science for its own ends. But don't you think that a pro-GW government would do exactly the same thing, but talking up the relevant points rather than talking them down? Of course they would - politicians tell us what they want us to hear for their own ends. This is why politics should have no place in science. It still seems wrong to be making political decisions based on inconclusive science, and if the only "conclusive" science is that which they have "paid for", then what makes them any more reliable or trustworthy than ExxonMobil or any other industrial or corporate body?

The lag of CO2 behind temperature in the ice core record is not relevant, because at that time, there was no artificial enhancement of CO2 levels to kick-start the process; this is the fundamental difference in the present situation from the past which explains, unlike any other process, the changes in global temperatures in the christmas pudding. The physics is compatible with both the theory and the observations.
The lag is still relevant - of course it is relevant! It has always been presumed that increased CO2 leads to increased temperature, but the data don't bear that out. Suddenly the relevant theories are adapted to embrace this change, based largely on an argument of "that's how it starts, but..." when, in fact, there is no need (as I have said before) to invoke this idea that CO2 suddenly takes the lead at some later time.

You say there was no "artifical enhancement of CO2" in the past. Well, that depends on what you mean by "artificial". Basically, what we do as humans is burn stuff. That's where CO2 comes from. We burn all sorts of things in factories, but the second a forest fire or a bush fire breaks out, our fire crews are there to thwart the blaze. In the past, particularly during warmer times, there were almost certainly a lot more fires of this type, and due to the much greater coverage of plantlife they were probably much bigger and lasted much longer. (No scientific proof to back this up, but it is clearly a logical progression.) That's a lot of CO2 billowing into the atmosphere, along with a lot of soot, ash and "black carbon". Possibly this wasn't as much as mankind makes, but it is clearly wrong to state that there was no artifical enhancement...

by emitting CO2 in ever-increasing quantities, we are contributing to a change in the World's climate over which we will have little or no control

Surely if we have little or no control then adaptation and the "No Regrets" policy are sensible ways to proceed? Why waste trillions of dollars trying to alter something over which we have little or no control?

I have no doubt that, should someone come up with a well-founded challenge to our current understanding of likely future climate changes, it will be embraced [if not without challenges]by climate scientists and adjustments made to the theory

I doubt it will be embraced willingly, and I suspect that it would take an exceptionally long time to win people over to it. The first thing that would happen is the GW scientists would attempt to make the results of any such paper fit in with their theory. This is what happens when you are obsessed with an idea. (A good example is the Steady-State Theory vs the Big Bang Theory - even today, with the masses of evidence for the Big Bang, there are people who cling to the Steady State Theory and spend their whole lives trying to incorporate the new evidence into their belief. Of course, then there's the question of who's right in that argument, since you can say that it is only the "Concensus" who agree with the Big Bang...)

In the meantime, what we have fits the evidence, is explained by a well-founded theory, has been tested and proven by experiment and is [largely]supported both by the historical record and by powerful, carefully programmed, computer models

Where is the proof by experiment? I'm not being facetious, I seriously would like to find a paper that shows a climate model being run from some point in the past up to the present with confirmations of accuracy. I haven't yet found one, so if you have a link I'd be grateful.

However, it doesn't matter how powerful or carefully programmed a computer program is if the principles it is based on a wrong. A computer simulation is just a computer simulation.

Since my internet connection seems to still be hanging on, I'll try this one last comment:

Add to this the observation that, with every new development in research, modelling and understanding of historical changes, the picture becomes clearer, not muddier, and it seems to me that we are already at the stage where both the likely future warming trend and AGW can be accepted as real phenomena, and that therefore action of some kind should be taken

Once again I would have to disagree. Aspects of the picture may become clearer, but then other issues crop up, other uncertainties, other processes that had not been previously considered. I suspect the waters will remain muddy for quite some time to come - I agree that it seems likely (but by no menas certain) that there will be a continued warming trend, but whether or not AGW can be accepted as a real phenomenon is a different issue.

This may not be a great analogy, but let me say this: if an old car has problems, do you throw colossal amounts of money at fixing the problem, or do you just get a new car? Should we throw huge amounts of money at the problem of GW, or should we develop a new approach to the problem?

Ciao for now!!

:unsure:

C-Bob

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Posted
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......
  • Weather Preferences: Hot & Sunny, Cold & Snowy
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......

I know from my years on the bikes that it is easier to recognise you have a problem than it is to isolate and then fix the problem (lets not enter into intermittent electrical faults here) You have many differing theories and each one ,at the time ,seems to fit the 'observable fact' and you think you've 'nailed it' only to effect the 'repair' to find the problem is still there.

This is ,I feel, where we are in climate change. We know there is a problem but each time we think we can explain it the problem seems to somehow remain inadequately explained (hence the models not showing, historically ,what they should).

I feel that we still do not fully appreciate the external 'forcing' on the system never mind our own inputs (which I feel is a significant 'forcing'!)

What to do? Keep on keeping on I would think. Certainly we shouldn't be doing nothing!

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Posted
  • Location: Sunny Southsea
  • Location: Sunny Southsea

C-Bob & Flash. Temperatures have risen in the oceans over the last thirty years, but recent research has shown a great deal more variability than was expected, especially in the sub-surface layers of the World's oceans. Some parts of the ocean are warming faster than others, some appear to have cooled in the last two years, but, overall, the trend is upward. The NCDC 'State of the Climate' reports contain monthly summaries of current measurements and display the relevant rend graphs. Similar material is available via the CRU website. Again, most of the worry is about what direction the trend is likely to take in the near future, rather than the current (excuse the pun) situation, but there is plenty of evidence, from Alaska to the Tropics, of changes to marine ecosystems at all levels which are consistent with a warming of the ocean overall.

I would tend to separate the 'government paid' scientists and the governments which employ them. No doubt there is some diplomatic choice of research topic, but few scientists would choose to jeopardise their career or credentials by 'fudging' the facts to fit the political inclination; look what happens to individuals who have done this recently. I would also tend to think that some of us on NW are at least as well, if not more, informed about the real science of CC than many or most politicians (there may be some notable exceptions).

One of the problems is that science is by tradition an academic pursuit, whereas politics is (at least in theory) a pragmatic one. In the case of the climate, two quite different 'worlds' are colliding, with the scientists only just starting to address the problems caused them by misinterpretation, misrepresentation and misunderstanding of their work and their conclusions. Though it is no doubt an imperfect instrument, this is why the IPCC (and similar bodies) exist; to make the science accessible to all, but in particular, to policy makers.

On the reliability of 'government paid' science compared to 'corporate sponsored' science, the difference does not lie in the science, but in the intentions of the principals. There is no particular reason why global warming is a cause to pursue for governments, whereas there is a vested interest for Exxon, for example, in giving willing employees/contractors briefs which demand and interpretation of the data which favours a negative response to fossil-fuel-induced warming, and a search for alternative hypotheses, especially if these create doubt in the minds of politicians or the public about the results which demonstrably show a correlation between temperature change and fossil-fuel burning. Given the contents of the Luntz memo, it should be clear that Exxon have been well aware for some time that the CO2-temperature correlation is robust, so they are adopting a policy of 'disinformation' to muddy the waters.

On the key issue of CO2 and temperature, I found this, thanks to Coby Beck: http://www.espere.net/Unitedkingdom/water/...pgreenhouse.htm

The experiment seems to demonstrate clearly the 'greenhouse' properties of CO2; hopefully, this will help.

As far as widlfires are concerned, I was interested to find out that an estimated 2.3 GtC (gigatonnes of Carbon) has been emitted by wildfires this year. This is about 25% of the total global contribution to CO2 in the atmosphere (~6.8 GtC from human activity), and a huge proportion of any potential increase in GHGs. Some [mostly environmentalists] argue that the wildfire problem will only increase with GW, but this is not clear as things currently stand; it is plausible, but not necessarily true. Do wildfires count as 'artificial' enhancement? Strictly, no; there have always been and always will be wildfires. One can think of two main causal agents in prehistoric times; lightning and volcanic activity. In periods of high volcanic activity, more CO2 could have been emitted due to widlfires. This is factored into paleo studies of climate, as well as into the GCM models of recent and future climate scenarios. For this reason, they count as 'natural' enhancements, rather than 'artificial' ones.

On rainfall and drought, I recommend the November 2006 Hadley centre brochure COP12 {the effects of climate change in developing countries, or something like that]. It's a 12 page pdf which summarises the recent increases in the PDSI (Palmer drought severity Index) and the projected increases under a 'business as usual' scenario. In essence, with a baseline of 20% of the World in drought conditions at any one time, the current index shows an increase to 25% (on average), since the 1980s, and a projected increase to 50% (half the planet), by 2100. There's nothing as such on desertification, but I thought this would do as a suitable substitute. NOAA/NCDC keeps up-to-date info on the PDSI.

Surely, the point about emissions policies is that, whilst we can't change what damage has already been done, we could prevent further, and more extreme damage 'down the line', by acting to reduce emissions immediately. One of the problems with climate policy is that there is no immediately visible 'cause and effect' relationship, so it is hard for people to see the benefits of policy changes now; we really do have to think ahead fifty or a hundred years to consider what impacts the decisions we make now are going to have. For this reason if no other, 'No regrets' in an inadequate response. I am not advocating a policy panic, but I am horrified by the news that both in the UK and the USA, climate research instititions are due to have their budgets cut next year by their respective governments. Does this sound like a policy to ensure a safer future for our children? I sthis a responsible reaction to the need for a better understanding of our climate?

It is easy enough to find a climate model with the kind of match you are looking for: I'll try to post something later. On your last point: if a new finding did not raise new questions, it would be of little value, but this does not mean that the understanding of the science becomes less clear; as each 'aspect' is analysed and reanalysed, and each new question put to the test, we are able increasingly to see what assumptions we have got right, which are wrong or imperfect, and what we need to do to make both the analysis and the GCMs better.

I hope some of this post helps to make the waters a little less muddy.

:)P

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Posted
  • Location: A small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Guildford, Surrey
  • Location: A small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Guildford, Surrey

Hi there :lol:

There is no particular reason why global warming is a cause to pursue for governments

I beg to differ - there are two very good reasons for governments being interested in "promoting" global warming. Firstly, it gives them the ability to increase taxes exhorbitantly for no reason other than to rake in more cash, but it gives them the excuse that they are being "eco-friendly" (one of the most irritating phrases ever to be coined) and trying to deter people from using "bad" fuels. It is this kind of false concern that allows the government to slap colossal taxes on cigarettes which, if you look at it one way, is a terrible oppression of a specific minority group. However, they get away with it because of the "health related issues". Of course, if everyone were to stop using fossil fuels and stop smoking cigarettes then you could kiss your economy goodbye, but the government relies on the fact that this is extremely unlikely to happen (certainly with fossil fuels, at any rate).

The second reason is that global warming scares the population. I know many people will leap on this statement as being directly out of State of Fear, but I use it regardless. It is true. A scared population is an easy-to-control population, a population which will let you get away with just about anything if they think you can make the big bad wolf go away. I am no conspiracy theorist - conspiracy theories, by and large, are utter bobbins - but the two things governments need are Money and Power, and with global warming they have easy access to both.

Good link on the CO2 experiment, but I know the principle. I am aware that increased CO2 in the atmosphere increases air temperatures, in theory. The problem is that the experiment as shown is entirely dissimilar to the climate of Earth. The basic principle is sound, but the Earth's ecosystem complicates the issue enormously. If the Earth were like the experiment then you would have a runaway temperature increase (due to heat-induced release of CO2 from various sources, which are distinctly lacking in the experiment :lol: ), which would have started millions of years ago and this planet would now be uninhabitable. The experiment has a static equilibrium, whereas the Earth has a dynamic equilibrium.

Do wildfires count as 'artificial' enhancement? Strictly, no; there have always been and always will be wildfires. One can think of two main causal agents in prehistoric times; lightning and volcanic activity. In periods of high volcanic activity, more CO2 could have been emitted due to widlfires.

Why do wildfires not count as "artificial"? Surely it's just "burning stuff", which is what mankind does? There are at least two other causal agents you have missed off your list - 1) phosphorus buildup from decaying matter, which can lead to an exothermic reaction. 2) Heat. Bushfires in Australia are often sparked off by nothing more than ground and air temperatures - the air's hot, the ground dries out, the ground gets hotter, dry vegetation starts to smoulder upon contact with the ground, the vegetation finally catches light and, before you know it, acres of bush are cinders. There are other causal agents, too, but those are two major ones. If wildfires now contribute 25% of CO2 then could they not have contributed the equivalent of today's 100% when there was that much more vegetation in the past? I would argue that they could (or that it is at least worth looking into).

Finally, I think it is not wise to spend a large fraction of our available resources on something like Kyoto when the money would be far better spent investing in new technologies that could make the whole "lowering carbon emissions" argument redundant in a hundred years. If you're talking about long-term gain then technological investment is the way forward. To use another analogy, if someone cuts their leg off do you try to put a bandage on it or do you try to reattach the leg? The latter surely has the greater long-term benefits, even though the former does address the immediate issue. Taking it one step further, if you can only afford to do one or the other, which do you do?

More later ;)

C-Bob

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Posted
  • Location: New Romney, Kent
  • Location: New Romney, Kent
Why do wildfires not count as "artificial"? Surely it's just "burning stuff", which is what mankind does?

I always understood there to be a big difference between returning CO2 to the atmosphere from recent or currently growing plants, and releasing it by burning fossil fuels.

The majority of the CO2 which comes from a forest or other wildfire burning today will have been extracted from the atmosphere by plants in the last year or so, or at most during the last few decades, so its release would have no overall effect on background CO2 levels and is part of the 'natural' carbon cycle.

On the other hand, the CO2 that humanity is responsible for releasing via the burning of fossil fuels has been accumulating in the earths crust over tens if not hundreds of millions of years, so it's release is significant in atmospheric terms. Now although this material would have been released at some point anyway, via natural geological processes, this would have been over a much longer timescale than humankind has done it in. It would also have been largely balanced by the continuing processes that bound the carbon into the earths crust in the first place ie limestone deposition, peat formation etc etc.

Anyway, its cold, so I'm off to throw another log on the woodburner :unsure:

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Not wishing to intrude too much into your discussions but I'll don't see too many chances to ask a question I would like answering. Capt'n Bobski, I'm asking you since you seem to be one of the less "excitable" proponents of the theory below:

Hi there :unsure:

I beg to differ - there are two very good reasons for governments being interested in "promoting" global warming. Firstly, it gives them the ability to increase taxes exhorbitantly for no reason other than to rake in more cash, but it gives them the excuse that they are being "eco-friendly" (one of the most irritating phrases ever to be coined) and trying to deter people from using "bad" fuels. It is this kind of false concern that allows the government to slap colossal taxes on cigarettes which, if you look at it one way, is a terrible oppression of a specific minority group. However, they get away with it because of the "health related issues". Of course, if everyone were to stop using fossil fuels and stop smoking cigarettes then you could kiss your economy goodbye, but the government relies on the fact that this is extremely unlikely to happen (certainly with fossil fuels, at any rate).

What I would like to know is what is your opinion on this http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,17...2493206,00.html ? Specifically "One well-placed government source told The Times that Mr Brown had to be persuaded within the Treasury even to take the steps he did, such was his lack of enthusiasm for green taxes."

Of course I do agree with the point that if we all stopped smoking and drinking (and using so much petrol) then there would be major economic problems.

To use another analogy, if someone cuts their leg off do you try to put a bandage on it or do you try to reattach the leg? The latter surely has the greater long-term benefits, even though the former does address the immediate issue. Taking it one step further, if you can only afford to do one or the other, which do you do?

IMO, your analogy doesn't show demonstrate what you claim. Starting from the premise that one can either can put a bandage on it now or try to reattach the leg later. If one does nothing until the leg reattachment is attempted then it will be likely that the patient will have bleed to death or the leg/foot cannot be attached due to decay of the leg or healing of the stump. Thus if you wish to make an attempt at leg reattachment some intermediate steps are required (reduce blood flow, refrigerate leg etc). I would suggest that we could take a similar approach to reducing our CO2 levels - ie take as many "cheap" steps as we can whilst looking for a long term solution.

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Posted
  • Location: A small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Guildford, Surrey
  • Location: A small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Guildford, Surrey

Hi PK2, welcome to the boards! Don't worry, you're not intruding in the slightest - on the contrary, it is always nice when others put in their views as it helps to stop a discussion from stagnating!

In response to your question:

What I would like to know is what is your opinion on this: "One well-placed government source told The Times that Mr Brown had to be persuaded within the Treasury even to take the steps he did, such was his lack of enthusiasm for green taxes."

Thanks for the link - interesting article (it doesn't help me much that I don't read newspapers...too depressing...). I wonder whether Mr Brown was actually that hard to convince, or whether he was just putting on a show for the sake of "spin". Here's another line from the article (with the relevant line italicised by me):

But his stark warnings of overwhelming evidence of global warming highlighted differences between Mr Brown — who wanted to avoid unpopular tax rises — and David Miliband, the Environment Secretary, who pressed for green taxes, including a big rise in tax on gas-guzzling vehicles.

Note the use of the word "Unpopular", as if environmental issues were a popularity contest... We have had tax hikes on petrol in the past few years which have been described as being for environmental reasons. The London Congestion Charges were introduced to discourage people from driving in London at peak times, again ostensibly for environmental reasons. In fact, this government (and, to be fair, governments in general) rarely needs an excuse to raise taxes, and what better reason than to "protect the environment"? Also, the Times was told of Mr Brown's reluctance to impose such taxes by a "well-placed government source" - my gut feeling is that this information has been put out specifically to quell people's anger at the imposed tax hike. (I think I'm becoming more cynical by the day!)

IMO, your analogy doesn't show demonstrate what you claim. Starting from the premise that one can either can put a bandage on it now or try to reattach the leg later. If one does nothing until the leg reattachment is attempted then it will be likely that the patient will have bleed to death or the leg/foot cannot be attached due to decay of the leg or healing of the stump. Thus if you wish to make an attempt at leg reattachment some intermediate steps are required (reduce blood flow, refrigerate leg etc). I would suggest that we could take a similar approach to reducing our CO2 levels - ie take as many "cheap" steps as we can whilst looking for a long term solution.

I confess that the analogy wasn't great, although I did try to make it a little more relevant by adding "Taking it one step further, if you can only afford to do one or the other, which do you do?" Obviously it was a metaphor that doesn't stand up to extension! I agree that it makes sense to make as many "cheap" steps as we can whilst looking for a long term solution, but international treaties such as Kyoto don't come cheap. I honestly don't understand why there is so much venom spewed forth at the "No Regrets" policy - it is a measured, non-alarmist, non-kneejerk response to climate change which clearly does not suggest that we do nothing!!!! The analogy was intended to reflect this difference between Kyoto and "No Regrets". Failed miserably, though! :unsure:

To Neville, I see your point that there is something of a difference between burning of fossil fuels and burning living vegetation. A good point well made. I think there is some blurring of the line between artificial and non-artificial, though - after all, coal is basically fossilised wood which means that, give or take a few million years, burning coal is much like burning logs. Not that much difference. Similarly, gas and oil are decayed living organisms (plants and animals) which can contribute to forest fires as much as anything (as mentioned in my previous post). Maybe I'm being pedantic. but I was arguing with P3 that "Things Burning Now" is much the same as "Things Burning Then", if you see what I mean.

Let me know what you think. :D

C-Bob

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Hi PK2, welcome to the boards! Don't worry, you're not intruding in the slightest - on the contrary, it is always nice when others put in their views as it helps to stop a discussion from stagnating!

Thanks. I have been a "lurker" for a long time but haven't felt the "need" to post. It seems to me that most discussion on this subject could be compared to some form of "trench warfare" where there is never any real change in position but a lot of venom (hmmm mixed metaphors) flung around.

In response to your question:

Thanks for the link - interesting article (it doesn't help me much that I don't read newspapers...too depressing...). I wonder whether Mr Brown was actually that hard to convince, or whether he was just putting on a show for the sake of "spin".

Good question. The thought had occurred to me. I've not noticed this government having too much of a problem increasing revenue even before the "green" issue became popular. I see a great synergy in the policies; reduce travel by car to - reduce congestion, reduce pollution of all types (no judgment made on C02 in this regard), reduce obesity (assuming more people walk/cycle), reduce dependence on imported energy, individuals save money... All good things...

To me the "no regrets" policy could be read as an attempt to gain what freedoms "big business" have always wanted from the government by using climate change as an excuse. And you thought you were cynical...

I thought I could "embrace and extend" your analogy to my own ends... Apologies for that, however I think as extended its quite good, though I do say so myself.

Perhaps they could reduce the cost of treaties if they started using video conferencing rather than jetting round the world (which surely can't help emissions). :unsure:

To Neville, I see your point that there is something of a difference between burning of fossil fuels and burning living vegetation. A good point well made. I think there is some blurring of the line between artificial and non-artificial, though - after all, coal is basically fossilised wood which means that, give or take a few million years, burning coal is much like burning logs. Not that much difference. Similarly, gas and oil are decayed living organisms (plants and animals) which can contribute to forest fires as much as anything (as mentioned in my previous post). Maybe I'm being pedantic. but I was arguing with P3 that "Things Burning Now" is much the same as "Things Burning Then", if you see what I mean.

I'm not great on all these things but if we "capture" all of the carbon stored underground and release it into the atmosphere, and assuming that CO2 is a GHG then would the global temperature not end up be similar to that when Britain was a tropical rainforest? My point is that one of the proposed methods of reducing CO2 emission is to sequester it in mines, however that is where it has already been sequestered.

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Posted
  • Location: Sunny Southsea
  • Location: Sunny Southsea

Just a quickie, for now.

C-Bob; the main reason there isn't a runaway increase in heat is the relative inertia of the climate system, combined with the natural carbon-sinks which sequester a proportion of the carbon emitted. One of the worries about the current situation is that it is believed that 250-300 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere is within a 'manageable' range for natural forces to self-adjust in the modern (holocene) climate, in other words, the amount of CO2 that was in the atmosphere prior to the Industrial Revolution. One of the reasons why there is currently a year-on-year increase in the amount of carbon measured in the atmosphere is that the 'natural' global system is balanced and cannot adjust rapidly enough to increase carbon absorbtion, leaving the residual amount free in the atmosphere.

I suspect that the terms 'natural' and 'artificial' aren't helping here; perhaps we should stick to considering carbon produced directly from human (industrial) activity, and carbon produced from all other sources.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with encouraging technological solutions as part of a package of ways in which we can improve the way we treat both the planet's resources and the climate system, but this is dealing with the symptoms, not the 'disease'. I don't know what the best solution is for reducing emissions, but taxing the consumer isn't high on my list of viable strategies. As about 70% of the CO2 emissions are the by-product of industrial energy production and use, my first step would probably be to legislate to force change in these areas first. This wouldn't cost industry anything in the long-term, because the costs would be passed on to the consumer, no doubt. Another useful contribution to reducing energy usage would be to compel all of the 800,000 new-build houses going up in the South of England to be thermally efficient, partially self-sufficient, and provided with a free water storage system. The costs of this would also be passed on to the buyer, so no problem there, either.

The political side of climate change is tricky and I'm not confident I understand all of the implications, but if it is true that more CO2 in the atmosphere will at some point in the next 200 years cause temperatures to rise still further, then surely it is a no-brainer that reducing the amount - at the very least, the rate at which emissions are increasing - will, eventually, be of benefit and may (I would argue, probably would) stave of a degree of warming which would have catastrophic side-effects. On the other hand, what is the benefit of not reducing emissions?

'nuff for now.

:)P

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Posted
  • Location: Near Newton Abbot or east Dartmoor, Devon
  • Location: Near Newton Abbot or east Dartmoor, Devon
To Neville, I see your point that there is something of a difference between burning of fossil fuels and burning living vegetation. A good point well made. I think there is some blurring of the line between artificial and non-artificial, though - after all, coal is basically fossilised wood which means that, give or take a few million years, burning coal is much like burning logs. Not that much difference. Similarly, gas and oil are decayed living organisms (plants and animals) which can contribute to forest fires as much as anything (as mentioned in my previous post). Maybe I'm being pedantic. but I was arguing with P3 that "Things Burning Now" is much the same as "Things Burning Then", if you see what I mean.

Let me know what you think. :)

C-Bob

It's not 'much the same'. CO2 conc wouldn't be growing at a rate of knots if it were.

No, we're burning not just some 'logs' but the crushed, heat treated and all bar the carbon removed remains of countless billion of trees that had accumulated in countless deltas where coal tree lived over countless thosands of years. Likewise oil is the carbonacious remains of countless billions of animals that died over countless numbers of year.

The suggest there is some comparison between 'things buring now' and 'thing burning then' is thus to misunderstand the magnitude of the quantity of 'logs' we are now buring.

Edited by Devonian
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Posted
  • Location: A small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Guildford, Surrey
  • Location: A small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Guildford, Surrey

Hi P3 - just a quick point-by-point for now,

You say "the main reason there isn't a runaway increase in heat is the relative inertia of the climate system, combined with the natural carbon-sinks which sequester a proportion of the carbon emitted", and that's exactly my point: that the Earth is a more complicated system than any laboratory experiment can replicate.

You say "One of the worries about the current situation is that it is believed that 250-300 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere is within a 'manageable' range for natural forces to self-adjust in the modern (holocene) climate, in other words, the amount of CO2 that was in the atmosphere prior to the Industrial Revolution". This is a "worry" based on a "belief" (and from what I have read elsewhere, this is not just due to your wording which appears to be quite accurate). The problem is that this "belief" is not founded on concrete science, but rather on assumptions and expectations.

You say "I suspect that the terms 'natural' and 'artificial' aren't helping here; perhaps we should stick to considering carbon produced directly from human (industrial) activity, and carbon produced from all other sources. " Considering the discussion we were having, I disagree. You said in a previous post "The lag of CO2 behind temperature in the ice core record is not relevant, because at that time, there was no artificial enhancement of CO2 levels to kick-start the process", and I questioned what you meant by artificial. The insinuation was that we are putting large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere that otherwise wouldn't be there, and I argued that wide-ranging forest fires put large amounts of smoke and CO2 into the atmosphere that isn't "supposed to be there". The fact that forest fires are a natural phenomenon doesn't mean that the Earth can adjust to CO2 input from forest fires any quicker.

You say "There is nothing intrinsically wrong with encouraging technological solutions as part of a package of ways in which we can improve the way we treat both the planet's resources and the climate system, but this is dealing with the symptoms, not the 'disease'". Assuming that mankind's activities are contributing to GW then you've got that backwards. The way we treat the climate is the "disease", and the response to that treatment by the climate is the "symptom" (since symptoms are caused by disease, climate response is caused by climate treatment). Therefore, attacking the way we treat the climate will alter the way it responds. However, if a doctor treats a patient's symptoms without learning the cause of those symptoms then he can do the patient more harm than good. We need to know more about the "disease" before we can legitimately start prescribing "medication" (which is part of what "No Regrets" is about).

I pretty much agree with your suggested solutions to reducing CO2, and I agree that there is no benefit in not reducing emissions so long as doing so doesn't economically cripple you.

I hope that clears up my position a bit! :)

To Devonian, you said "It's not 'much the same'. CO2 conc wouldn't be growing at a rate of knots if it were.". My point was that CO2 has risen "at a rate of knots" in the past - and there is no reason to assume that burning of forest fires was an irrelevant contribution in the past so, if that were the case, where's the big difference?

The quantity of logs is irrelevant (especially since a large amount of "tree" and "animal" is lost during the transition to coal and oil). How much of this planet was forested 100,000 years ago? Or 200,000 years ago? Or longer? Compared to now, a whole heck of a lot more - if you accept that forest fires can quite easily break out under certain conditions, there was a lot more forest to catch fire, a lot more wood to burn, and a lot fewer people around to put those fires out in the past. You're basically saying "we burn a lot more now than was burned back then", but how do you know?

:)

C-Bob

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Posted
  • Location: Near Newton Abbot or east Dartmoor, Devon
  • Location: Near Newton Abbot or east Dartmoor, Devon
To Devonian, you said "It's not 'much the same'. CO2 conc wouldn't be growing at a rate of knots if it were.". My point was that CO2 has risen "at a rate of knots" in the past - and there is no reason to assume that burning of forest fires was an irrelevant contribution in the past so, if that were the case, where's the big difference?

The quantity of logs is irrelevant (especially since a large amount of "tree" and "animal" is lost during the transition to coal and oil). How much of this planet was forested 100,000 years ago? Or 200,000 years ago? Or longer? Compared to now, a whole heck of a lot more - if you accept that forest fires can quite easily break out under certain conditions, there was a lot more forest to catch fire, a lot more wood to burn, and a lot fewer people around to put those fires out in the past. You're basically saying "we burn a lot more now than was burned back then", but how do you know?

:)

C-Bob

Co2 is at levels not seen in a record 600, 000 long. I explained the big difference. We're not buring the world's forests, we're buring years and years of the worlds forests, burning geological timespans of forests in a geological instant. We can't have burnt that much that qucikly in the past, we're only now exploiting those fossilised forests (as fossil fuels) - so your final question points to an impossibility.

Edited by Devonian
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Posted
  • Location: A small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Guildford, Surrey
  • Location: A small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Guildford, Surrey
Co2 is at levels not seen in a record 600, 000 long. I explained the big difference. We're not buring the world's forests, we're buring years and years of the worlds forests, burning geological timespans of forests in a geological instant. We can't have burnt that much that qucikly in the past, we're only now exploiting those fossilised forests (as fossil fuels) - so your final question points to an impossibility.

Sorry - what impossibility? I'm not talking about anything we have burned in the past - I'm talking about naturally occurring forest fires way back in the geological record. To stress my point once again I was not suggesting that ancient forest fires necessarily give off as much CO2 as human activity, but was arguing the fact that burning of carbon isn't a new phenomenon and that forest fires are a legitimate "artificial" source of CO2 (since burning forests generate CO2 without being a part of the emission/absorption cycle).

This is getting quite far away from the original discussion, which is that there is a great deal of uncertainty as to what effect CO2 in the atmosphere actually has on atmospheric temperature.

C-Bob

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Posted
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......
  • Weather Preferences: Hot & Sunny, Cold & Snowy
  • Location: Mytholmroyd, West Yorks.......
Sorry - what impossibility? I'm not talking about anything we have burned in the past - I'm talking about naturally occurring forest fires way back in the geological record. To stress my point once again I was not suggesting that ancient forest fires necessarily give off as much CO2 as human activity, but was arguing the fact that burning of carbon isn't a new phenomenon and that forest fires are a legitimate "artificial" source of CO2 (since burning forests generate CO2 without being a part of the emission/absorption cycle).

This is getting quite far away from the original discussion, which is that there is a great deal of uncertainty as to what effect CO2 in the atmosphere actually has on atmospheric temperature.

C-Bob

Without keeping the thread skewed I would like to reinforce what was said about utilising carbon that has been stored for millions of years. We are, and have been for the past 150yrs and more ,been burning millions of years of Carboniferous (and younger) forests. In past warming/coolings you can see a CO2 spike (or dip, depending on increased botanical activity or decreased activity) that the planets current carbon store reprisents. Multiply that by the thousands of 'planets worth' of vegetation, buried, compressed and heated for millions of years that are our coal reserves and you can see more clearly why people have concerns. By the time the period of the Carboniferous that laid down our coal measures had finished the mountains to our north (then) had eroded to stumps (depositing our millstone grits as the quartz weathered out) and capped the deposits with their debris. We cannot easily visualise such huge chunks of time but be assured lots and lots of generations of trees go into making a 1ft coal seam which can be burnt in a power station in a matter of weeks releasing more than our total accumulation of all our trees over a period of years.......and that is 1 power station.

We have always had forest fires but they didn't last for millions of years with the trees being miraculously replaced to burn anew every day!!!

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Posted
  • Location: A small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Guildford, Surrey
  • Location: A small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Guildford, Surrey
We have always had forest fires but they didn't last for millions of years with the trees being miraculously replaced to burn anew every day!!!

Howdy Gray-Wolf!

You're absolutely right, of course, that coal represents an awful lot of wood but, just to re-emphasise my point, coal is basically "concentrated" wood. Large amounts of wood have burned in the past (not for millions of years, granted, but the current warming is quoted as being only over the past hundred years or so - not that forest fires burned for a hundred years at a time either, but...). P3 said that historically there was no artificial source of CO2, so I'm arguing that there were similar "artificial" sources - not to the same degree as the present, but still sources outside of the "normal" emission/absorption cycle.

If this, and other sources of CO2, was compensated for by other processes in the past then is there any compensation going on now that isn't being taken into account. Which leads us back to the original question, which is how much of an effect does CO2 actually have on global temperatures?

I must go and do some more digging!

:clap:

C-Bob

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Note the use of the word "Unpopular", as if environmental issues were a popularity contest... We have had tax hikes on petrol in the past few years which have been described as being for environmental reasons.

Sadly the arguments on this board have gone away from the scientific ones to which you and P3 decided to have to political conjecture such as the above. Your answer to the above is indeed disingenuous; taxation is an electoral issue and no UK party apart from the Greens would seek to thrust forward extra taxation on green issues so openly without regard first to what effect these will ahve on the electorate's voting intentions. Politics is, if nothing else, a popularity contest in which you can have any policy you want (so long as it gets you elected!)

Incidentally I disagreed with the departure from being able to query sources of information. Part of the sceptic (I'm not sure sceptic is the right term here, I don't have a problem with sceptics - denial industry is better) aim in trying to present to the public their views have relied upon trying to appear as genuine scetics rather than carbon funded lobbyists. Your request that backgrounds not be challlenged falls exactly into their desire and hides for them a weakness. It doesn't stop what they say having to be rebutted or otherwise, but by automatically granting a press release credibility you make some PR men very happy.

Furthermore you have failed to demonstrate why the scientists P3 has quoted in the past are not worthy of trusting. That you don't trust them does not make them untrustworthy unless you can demonstrate why. Otherwise the temptation is to suggest you just don't agree with them in which case you again need to demonstrate why. IMO anyway.

I have just noted again I appear to be having a go at you - please take none of this as a personal attack. I have really enjoyed and learnt from some of your posts and you provide an effective foil for P3 on occasion.

I hope you and P3 will back track from the science only and once again concentrate on the papers and who wrote them. I think it is central to the discussion you are having.

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Posted
  • Location: New Romney, Kent
  • Location: New Romney, Kent

C-Bob,

Devonian and Gray Wolf have precisely clarified the point I was trying to make, can't add anything to what they have written.

Mans activities have lead to a sudden rush of CO2 into the active carbon cycle, and at a faster rate than the natural processes can bind it back into the crust, at least in the short term, hence the steady rise in CO2 over recent history.

Unfortunately I have no depth of knowledge to comment on the warming effect of this increase, but find eavesdropping on knowledgeable discussions like this fascinating and useful in the wealth of information that is brought to the surface. At least here they don't usually degenerate into flame wars. On the motorcycle forum where I normally reside, someone started a general climate change thread and within a page the American contingent had split along party lines, and were practically making death threats against each other. :)

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Posted
  • Location: A small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Guildford, Surrey
  • Location: A small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Guildford, Surrey

Hi EA - nice to hear from you again! Let me go through your post a point at a time (or else I'll get terribly confused and start spouting nonsense, and that won't help a bit!) :)

Sadly the arguments on this board have gone away from the scientific ones to which you and P3 decided to have to political conjecture such as the above. Your answer to the above is indeed disingenuous; taxation is an electoral issue and no UK party apart from the Greens would seek to thrust forward extra taxation on green issues so openly without regard first to what effect these will ahve on the electorate's voting intentions. Politics is, if nothing else, a popularity contest in which you can have any policy you want (so long as it gets you elected!)

You're right, of course, about my comment being disingenuous - it was intended to be, in an attempt to emphasise the fact that politicians use environmental issues as an excuse for taxation rather than being genuinely concerned about it (also suggested in my comments previously about smoking - health issues aren't a major concern, but raising tax on cigarettes is...). I'm not happy with political discussions in general because, it seems, one man's hero is another man's crook, but the discussion segued into it. Time to return to science, methinks!

Incidentally I disagreed with the departure from being able to query sources of information. Part of the sceptic (I'm not sure sceptic is the right term here, I don't have a problem with sceptics - denial industry is better) aim in trying to present to the public their views have relied upon trying to appear as genuine scetics rather than carbon funded lobbyists. Your request that backgrounds not be challlenged falls exactly into their desire and hides for them a weakness. It doesn't stop what they say having to be rebutted or otherwise, but by automatically granting a press release credibility you make some PR men very happy.
I still maintain that the sources are irrelevant - the facts are facts regardless of the sources. If a source is dishonest and has skewed, distorted or fabricated facts then those facts should be easy to disprove, hence the source is irrelevant. A dishonest source is easy to discredit on a factual basis rather than on an ad hominem basis (sorry for that - ad hominem has become a popular phrase since the Monckton article, but it seemed an appropriate use ;) ).
Furthermore you have failed to demonstrate why the scientists P3 has quoted in the past are not worthy of trusting. That you don't trust them does not make them untrustworthy unless you can demonstrate why. Otherwise the temptation is to suggest you just don't agree with them in which case you again need to demonstrate why. IMO anyway.

I'd better quickly just clarify my position on this - I have found that several scientists have released papers that continue to be refuted. I am not suggesting that these scientists have necessarily fabricated their information, or even that there is a deliberate distortion, but it is a well-known fact that personal bias can skew the findings of any scientific inquiry. This is why, in many different scientific arenas, they use the "double-blind" test, which helps to eliminate bias. Climate Science is one of the few sciences that does not incorporate a double-blind method to test their findings. When any one scientist (or group of scientists) proposes a theory and programs the models and runs the experiment and collates the data and makes the conclusions, there is quite obviously the scope for considerable bias to enter the process. The bias may well be completely subconscious and unintentional! I am not suggesting that these scientists are "crooked" or "untrustworthy" in that sense. I hope this explains my distrust of many of P3's sources. :)

I have just noted again I appear to be having a go at you - please take none of this as a personal attack. I have really enjoyed and learnt from some of your posts and you provide an effective foil for P3 on occasion.
No offense taken! Message boards are the kind of place you expect disagreements, but as long as the discussions are kept even-tempered and rational then I have no problem with that! ;) And thank you for your second comment - that is very flattering - P3 isn't an easy person to counter!
I hope you and P3 will back track from the science only and once again concentrate on the papers and who wrote them. I think it is central to the discussion you are having.

I do intend to get back onto the science now (I've had enough of politics!!), and hopefully we can make some more headway in the discussion.

I have a couple of interesting leads to follow up right now (tree growth data in heightened CO2 environments and historical ocean temperature records), so I must away!

Until next time ;)

C-Bob

PS - To Neville - Just saw your post when I previewed this one! I shall try to keep the death threats to a minimum :) I did take your point, and I do appreciate what you are saying, but I have been trying to infer that the complete Earth system is more complex than many give it credit. The article Viking has linked to about "salps" is very interesting and, whether or not they have any tremedous contribution to negating global warming, the fact that they even exist introduces yet another level of uncertainty into the models. "There are more things in heaven and on Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio", as the Bard said. I might have to put that in my signature! TTFN ;)

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For those who haven't come across it before, the 'petition signed by 17,000 scientists' cited by the Heartland Institute link is known as the 'Oregon petition'. This is one version of the story about it; feel free to google it & see what comes up.:

Case Study: The Oregon Petition

The Oregon Petition, sponsored by the OISM, was circulated in April 1998 in a bulk mailing to tens of thousands of U.S. scientists. In addition to the petition, the mailing included what appeared to be a reprint of a scientific paper. Authored by OISM's Arthur B. Robinson, Sallie L. Baliunas, Willie Soon, and Zachary W. Robinson, the paper was titled "Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide" and was printed in the same typeface and format as the official Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Also included was a reprint of a December 1997, Wall Street Journal editorial, "Science Has Spoken: Global Warming Is a Myth, by Arthur and Zachary Robinson. A cover note signed "Frederick Seitz/Past President, National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A./President Emeritus, Rockefeller University", may have given some persons the impression that Robinson's paper was an official publication of the academy's peer-reviewed journal. The blatant editorializing in the pseudopaper, however, was uncharacteristic of scientific papers.

Robinson's paper claimed to show that pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is actually a good thing. "As atmospheric CO2 increases," it stated, "plant growth rates increase. Also, leaves lose less water as CO2 increases, so that plants are able to grow under drier conditions. Animal life, which depends upon plant life for food, increases proportionally." As a result, Robinson concluded, industrial activities can be counted on to encourage greater species biodiversity and a greener planet:

As coal, oil, and natural gas are used to feed and lift from poverty vast numbers of people across the globe, more CO2 will be released into the atmosphere. This will help to maintain and improve the health, longevity, prosperity, and productivity of all people.

Human activities are believed to be responsible for the rise in CO2 level of the atmosphere. Mankind is moving the carbon in coal, oil, and natural gas from below ground to the atmosphere and surface, where it is available for conversion into living things. We are living in an increasingly lush environment of plants and animals as a result of the CO2 increase. Our children will enjoy an Earth with far more plant and animal life as [sic]that with which we now are blessed. This is a wonderful and unexpected gift from the Industrial Revolution.

In reality, neither Robinson's paper nor OISM's petition drive had anything to do with the National Academy of Sciences, which first heard about the petition when its members began calling to ask if the NAS had taken a stand against the Kyoto treaty. Robinson was not even a climate scientist. He was a biochemist with no published research in the field of climatology, and his paper had never been subjected to peer review by anyone with training in the field. In fact, the paper had never been accepted for publication anywhere, let alone in the NAS Proceedings. It was self-published by Robinson, who did the typesetting himself on his own computer. (It was subsequently published as a "review" in Climate Research, which contributed to an editorial scandal at that publication.)

None of the coauthors of "Environmental Effects of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide" had any more standing than Robinson himself as a climate change researcher. They included Robinson's 22-year-old son, Zachary, along with astrophysicists Sallie L. Baliunas and Willie Soon. Both Baliunas and Soon worked with Frederick Seitz at the George C. Marshall Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank where Seitz served as executive director. Funded by a number of right-wing foundations, including Scaife and Bradley, the George C. Marshall Institute does not conduct any original research. It is a conservative think tank that was initially founded during the years of the Reagan administration to advocate funding for Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative--the "Star Wars" weapons program. Today, the Marshall Institute is still a big fan of high-tech weapons. In 1999, its website gave prominent placement to an essay by Col. Simon P. Worden titled "Why We Need the Air-Borne Laser," along with an essay titled "Missile Defense for Populations--What Does It Take? Why Are We Not Doing It?" Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, the Marshall Institute has adapted to the times by devoting much of its firepower to the war against environmentalism, and in particular against the "scaremongers" who raise warnings about global warming.

"The mailing is clearly designed to be deceptive by giving people the impression that the article, which is full of half-truths, is a reprint and has passed peer review," complained Raymond Pierrehumbert, a meteorlogist at the University of Chicago. NAS foreign secretary F. Sherwood Rowland, an atmospheric chemist, said researchers "are wondering if someone is trying to hoodwink them." NAS council member Ralph J. Cicerone, dean of the School of Physical Sciences at the University of California at Irvine, was particularly offended that Seitz described himself in the cover letter as a "past president" of the NAS. Although Seitz had indeed held that title in the 1960s, Cicerone hoped that scientists who received the petition mailing would not be misled into believing that he "still has a role in governing the organization."

The NAS issued an unusually blunt formal response to the petition drive. "The NAS Council would like to make it clear that this petition has nothing to do with the National Academy of Sciences and that the manuscript was not published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences or in any other peer-reviewed journal," it stated in a news release. "The petition does not reflect the conclusions of expert reports of the Academy." In fact, it pointed out, its own prior published study had shown that "even given the considerable uncertainties in our knowledge of the relevant phenomena, greenhouse warming poses a potential threat sufficient to merit prompt responses. Investment in mitigation measures acts as insurance protection against the great uncertainties and the possibility of dramatic surprises."

Notwithstanding this rebuke, the Oregon Petition managed to garner 15,000 signatures within a month's time. S. Fred Singer called the petition "the latest and largest effort by rank-and-file scientists to express their opposition to schemes that subvert science for the sake of a political agenda."

Nebraska senator Chuck Hagel called it an "extraordinary response" and cited it as his basis for continuing to oppose a global warming treaty. "Nearly all of these 15,000 scientists have technical training suitable for evaluating climate research data," Hagel said. Columns citing the Seitz petition and the Robinson paper as credible sources of scientific expertise on the global warming issue have appeared in publications ranging from Newsday', the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post to the Austin-American Statesman, Denver Post, and Wyoming Tribune-Eagle.

In addition to the bulk mailing, OISM's website enables people to add their names to the petition over the Internet, and by June 2000 it claimed to have recruited more than 19,000 scientists. The institute is so lax about screening names, however, that virtually anyone can sign, including for example Al Caruba, a pesticide-industry PR man and conservative ideologue who runs his own website called the "National Anxiety Center." Caruba has no scientific credentials whatsoever, but in addition to signing the Oregon Petition he has editorialized on his own website against the science of global warming, calling it the "biggest hoax of the decade," a "genocidal" campaign by environmentalists who believe that "humanity must be destroyed to 'Save the Earth.' . . . There is no global warming, but there is a global political agenda, comparable to the failed Soviet Union experiment with Communism, being orchestrated by the United Nations, supported by its many Green NGOs, to impose international treaties of every description that would turn the institution into a global government, superceding the sovereignty of every nation in the world."

When questioned in 1998, OISM's Arthur Robinson admitted that only 2,100 signers of the Oregon Petition had identified themselves as physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, or meteorologists, "and of those the greatest number are physicists." This grouping of fields concealed the fact that only a few dozen, at most, of the signatories were drawn from the core disciplines of climate science - such as meteorology, oceanography, and glaciology - and almost none were climate specialists. The names of the signers are available on the OISM's website, but without listing any institutional affiliations or even city of residence, making it very difficult to determine their credentials or even whether they exist at all. When the Oregon Petition first circulated, in fact, environmental activists successfully added the names of several fictional characters and celebrities to the list, including John Grisham, Michael J. Fox, Drs. Frank Burns, B. J. Honeycutt, and Benjamin Pierce (from the TV show M*A*S*H), an individual by the name of "Dr. Red Wine," and Geraldine Halliwell, formerly known as pop singer Ginger Spice of the Spice Girls. Halliwell's field of scientific specialization was listed as "biology." Even in 2003, the list was loaded with misspellings, duplications, name and title fragments, and names of non-persons, such as company names.

OISM has refused to release info on the number of mailings it made. From comments in Nature:

"Virtually every scientist in every field got it," says Robert Park, a professor of physics at the University of Maryland at College Park and spokesman for the American Physical Society. "That's a big mailing." According to the National Science Foundation, there are more than half a million science or engineering PhDs in the United States, and ten million individuals with first degrees in science or engineering.

Arthur Robinson, president of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, the small, privately funded institute that circulated the petition, declines to say how many copies were sent out. "We're not willing to have our opponents attack us with that number, and say that the rest of the recipients are against us," he says, adding that the response was "outstanding" for a direct mail shot. [5]

:)P

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