Declaring victory and moving on?
Declaring victory and moving on?
In 2006 I started teaching climate change to all comers. It was my first year at Michigan, and I was approached by a set of three students to start a course on climate change. None of these students were physical scientists. It is a fact of universities that professors often start courses so that the professor can learn a subject. I was recruited to Michigan to help develop a focus on climate and climate change, but I was not really a climate scientist. I entered this course with a lot to learn. With the help of the students I structured a course that looked at the intersection of climate change with economics, policy, and business (class link). I think I had 12 guest lecturers the first year.
During the first couple of years there were some truths that became self evident. One of first of those truths was that in the popular discourse of 2006, the arguments around the U.S. not ratifying the Kyoto Protocol was a red herring. Namely, there was this idea that if the U.S. had signed the Kyoto Protocol, then we would have dealt with the climate change problem. It was evident by 2006 that this was not the case; the Kyoto Protocol could not effectively address climate change. In 2006 the students in the class talked about the symbolic meaning of the U.S. as a member of the global community, by 2007 the students arrived at the conclusion that the protocol was, practically, irrelevant.
Several other self-evident truths emerged. People often talk about wanting to look at the evidence themselves and come to their own conclusions. That’s not an easy thing to do in your spare time, and, for climate change, I had the benefit of it being my job. After going through reports and papers and thinking about how to communicate climate-change science to all comers, you realize this massive body of knowledge supports the fact that the surface of the Earth is warming. The evidence is what I called, at the time, coherent and convergent. (In fact, my third blog, a better blog) The correlated information from many measures of the Earth’s climate, the measurements of the feedbacks that follow from the warming, and the stunning amount of evidence from ecosystems form a body of work that, using the word of IPCC 2007, is “unequivocal.”
When we place ourselves in the middle of the climate and its importance to us, the responses to surface warming appear complex. It is easy to conclude that the average temperature of the surface of the Earth will increase, ice will melt, sea level will rise, and the weather will change. We can also say that the changes will be larger in some regions than the other, and that the changes will be disruptive. It is we, the people, that make this more than an academic problem.
More study, more information, and a few outstanding student projects and other truths emerge. One is that there really are not reliable, safe ways to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere(Reliability of the Forest). Related to this, we conclude that a carbon market cannot be an effective policy vehicle. There are no choices, and markets need choices. There needs to be, at a marginal cost, choices of reduced-carbon energy sources and choices of reliable, safe ways to remove carbon from the atmosphere. All we really have working for us right now is energy efficiency, and we cast efficiency more as a moral value than a monetary value. If we want to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere with a market, then we are going to have to use technology and biotechnology to develop those market choices. Without market choices, we are not going to reduce our emissions, because we are not going to give up the standard of living that comes from the use of energy.
Today, right now, our ability to mitigate climate change by reduction of emissions is severely limited. We can design strategies that could make a difference; people teaching classes like mine anchor themselves in Pacala and Socolow, who describe a portfolio of technologically feasible solution paths to reduce emissions. But are we going to build a meaningful number of nuclear power plants in the next 10 years? Most large solar and wind projects are challenged for a variety of environmental consequences – ending or delaying them. Each year of delay is a few more parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We have no algorithm for trading off a large area of desert for invisible tons of carbon dioxide. Our environmental consciousness has no way to reduce the emission of carbon dioxide except by appealing to efficiency. And with that appeal, to argue that we need no new energy infrastructure, or we can personalize our energy generation. How can we reconcile this with the need for an energy-based economy to grow 2-3% every year to make enough jobs for a growing population? How do we put invisible carbon dioxide emissions in balance with perceived unemployment?
No consensus-based international policy is going to emerge in the next decade that will lead to near-term reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. My takeaway message from Copenhagen 2009 was that if there had ever been a European, Japanese, and U.S. opportunity to set the standard for carbon dioxide reduction it was lost. Emerging economies like China, Brazil, India, and South Africa have lots of emissions and plans to grow. They are spending a lot of money on the development of alternative energy; they are spending a lot of money on the development and use of fossil fuels. They spend enough on alternative energy to claim an environmental high ground, and to develop new technologies, new industries, and new standards. We use enough fossil fuels that even with these new sources of energy, carbon dioxide emissions increase at or above historic rates. Our only measure of success is to point to how high the emissions would be without these new developments.
We have to plan for an Earth with a lot of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The synthesis provided by the recent National Research Council document, Climate Stabilization Targets: Emissions, Concentrations, and Impacts over Decades to Millennia put the stamp of authority and certification on the fact that once fossil-fuel carbon dioxide is placed in the Earth’s atmosphere, it stays there for a very long time. If we held our accumulated carbon dioxide to a trillion tons, then the carbon dioxide would stabilize at about 440 parts per million. That would be a stunning accomplishment. Far more likely, we will emit two or three trillion tons of carbon dioxide, and we will be living with values at double or more compared with pre-industrial levels; we are looking at 600 parts per million.
What is my intent? If you look at the issues raised above, many of them are where we have maintained and will maintain ongoing public arguments. These arguments attract attention, take our time, and take our minds. We align behind ideas like cap and trade and Kyoto, but by the time they might, maybe, possibly be made politically viable, they do little for addressing climate change. They take on the spirit that if we support them, then they are a symbolic first step. We align behind ideas of alternative energy and advocating efficiency, but the implementation of these ideas is met with opposition and challenges. Climate change is from the invisible gas, and the consequences are in the future; we relegate it to an issue of the common good. The urgency to address climate change is lost again and again; it is easily derailed by convenient political arguments and philosophical beliefs. The short-term always trumps the long-term. Our continued use of fossil fuels confirms that we want our energy; our resistance to a comprehensive energy policy relegates attention to climate change as secondary.
The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society has a special issue on world at four degrees warmer. In the Introduction by Mark New and colleagues many of the ideas addressed above are addressed more elegantly and more completely - new ideas emerge. The rate of warming matters a lot. The projected rate of population growth and our current warming trajectory work to maximize stress at the same time. With warming approaching four degrees, stress on resources and human systems related to climate change become comparable to those from population stress.
The acceptance that, with even our best efforts, we are moving to a world that is much warmer removes the incapacitating anxiety of argument. It gets us past the idea that we are going to avoid dangerous warming. We can get to work. I believe that the climate change projections provide us opportunity. I want my students to learn to exploit these opportunities. I believe that trying to exploit these opportunities will make the problem real to many more people, and that their talking about their opportunities, their solutions, will beget more of the same. They will gain, ultimately, advantage.
It is disingenuous to continue to teach my course in the same way. I will talk about the ways we can reduce emissions. I can talk about the need to keep our average warming below two degrees centigrade, our convenient definition of “dangerous climate change.” I can and will talk about policy options, but the truth is, our population and economic imperatives in combination with our lack of real alternatives and policy opportunity leave us with very little wiggle room. Describing that warm world and developing adaptation strategies will make the climate change problem more concrete. It will make the costs far more real. It will bring the problem home to cities, communities, and people. It will motivate technology, solutions.
Here, I advocate we do something different, because what we are doing is not working. I heard arguments for more than a decade that talking about adaptation would keep us from addressing mitigation. Now if we talk about geo-engineering we will fall into the false security that we can manage the climate. It is not rational that by avoiding these subjects that we will somehow change our energy system and reduce our emissions. It is not rational that our denying and ignoring the possibilities, while others take advantage of the information, somehow contributes to a productive dialogue to development of abstract policy solutions to seemingly distant problems. I assert that by addressing these real problems of adaptation, we will identify risk in a meaningful way, and we will make real the need for mitigation.
r
Figure 1. Cover of Four degrees and beyond: the potential for a global temperature increase of four degrees and its implications
Reader Comments
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From your post, it isn't clear that you understand thermodynamics. All economies are energy based. Even the solar economy the world had before the industrial revolution was energy based, but only on annual solar energy input. This is because without a constant input of energy, entropy considerations diminish successive returns, leading to stasis where life can't survive. The reason I raise this is that technological solutions are limited by these thermodynamic constraints.
The point you don't raise and which is further in the future, is that we are going to run out of feasible fossil resources. All those millions of years of stored solar energy are being used at a tremendous and growing rate. It is likely that by the end of this century they will only be useful marginally because their cost in energy terms won't be worth their benefit. That increases the stress of increased population and climate change, as we will lose much of our ability to generate energy to deal with it. Of course, a hundred years is a reasonably long time, and lots can be discovered. Unfortunately, we seem to have plucked the low hanging fruit of technological advance, so that has to be a factor. We've spent the equivalent of the entire economic output of several small countries on fusion energy annually for 40 to 50 years with little practical to show for it.
Thanks for the post. I like your pragmatic style.
TUNNELS!!!!!!
:)
South Korea chaos after 'heaviest' snowfall
The BBC's Nick Ravenscroft in Seoul says that although winters are colder than anywhere else at its latitude, with frequent frost and snow, this year has been different.
January was the coldest since the 1960s.
Link
The projects were approved without the permits required by the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Gulf Restoration Network, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club said in a formal notice of their intent to sue the government.
“Even after the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, the feds are still violating the laws intended to protect the Gulf’s wildlife in their rush to approve offshore oil activities,” Miyoko Sakashita, the oceans director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a news release.
http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/newsworldnation/90 8621-227/environmentalists-to-sue-over-new-gulf-oi l.html
Gee, I wonder what the head honcho will do with this
issue, blame BP?
Global warming sceptics are pointing to recent record cold temperatures in parts of North America and Asia and the return of Arctic Sea ice to suggest fears about climate change may be overblown.
* The deceit behind global warming
* Climate debate far from over, claim senators
* Climate shift 'poles apart'
According to the US National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), the average temperature of the global land surface in January 2008 was below the 20th century mean (-0.02°F/-0.01°C) for the first time since 1982.
Temperatures were also colder than average across large swathes of central Asia, the Middle East, the western US, western Alaska and southeastern China.
The NCDC reported that the cold conditions were associated with "the largest January snow cover extent on record for the Eurasian continent and for the Northern Hemisphere".
In some parts of China and central Asia, snow fell for the first time in living memory, the NCDC noted.
"For the contiguous United States, the average temperature was 30.5°F (-0.83°C) for January, which was 0.3°F (0.2°C) below the 20th century mean and the 49th coolest January on record, based on preliminary data".
Link
Some folks just can't handle the truth.
A freeze in Mexico last week has crippled winter vegetable supplies from the region and sparked price spike forecasts. A surprise freeze that ran through Mexico overnight on Thursday-Friday last week has pummelled the country’s winter vegetable crop, sparking expectations prices in the North American market will hit the roof over the next few months.
The freeze was focused on the western states of Sinaloa and Sonora, and hit temperatures as low as -3°C (26.6°F) for one to three hours on Thursday night. The cold spell was the worst in at least 55 years, according to industry group the Fresh Produce Association of the Americas.
Story by Tom Bicknell of fruitnet.com
Link
Climate change I agree, it just happens to be cooler.
He is saying you can't squeeze blood out of a turnip. Get it?
Questions for you. How much energy falls on the Earth per second? How much energy does mankind use per second? How much energy that falls on the earth is surplus,catchable so to say without it affecting the rest of Earth, green things etc?
I hope you can make some sense of this geo-engineering idea of mine?? What you think? Is the tunnel idea easy to understand now? Not to scale of course.
REGIONAL!
How much energy gets trapped by GHGs?
REGIONAL!
This winter has been cold and snowy in North America, but farther north, temperatures have been unusually warm. Data collected by NASA's Aqua satellite shows that ice was low in Canada's Hudson Bay, Hudson Strait and the Davis Strait between Canada and Greenland. Normally these areas are frozen over by late November, the NSIDC reported. This winter, they didn't free until mid-January 2011. The Labrador Sea was similarly ice-free.
Arctic ice monitoring began in 1979. The previous record low for January ice was set in 2006; at a coverage of 5.23 million square miles (13.55 million square kilometers), this January beat that record by 19,300 square miles (50,000 square km). This January's ice cover was also 490,000 square miles (1.27 million square km) below the 1979 to 2000 average.
In October, NSIDC reported an unusual late-season decline in Arctic sea ice.
Link
Why do you suppose that Norway figures don't agree with NASA? Cyclone, only one can be correct.
I'm sure the numbers you asked about are available somewhere online, and I'd guess that you probably already know them ;-). I've read that one hour of sunlight falling on one square mile of earth's surface at noon on the equator is equivalent to all the energy used by humans in a year, though I haven't verified that via calculation so it could be an urban legend. So it would seem that there is room to harvest solar energy for human use. But this is like the argument that all the people on earth could fit in Texas, so there isn't overpopulation. Spurious nonsense.
The problem is that solar energy is very low quality. By that I mean the ability to extract work from solar energy is limited because it is at low temperature. Think of a blast furnace. It needs to be at thousands of degrees in order to work. We currently use the slow accumulation of solar energy that occurred in plants over long periods of times compressed into coal to make those temperatures. For a more formal description of what I'm talking about here do a search on carnot cycle.
I read a research paper extract recently suggesting that we could get the equivalent to energy humans use today by deploying solar and wind over only 1% of the earth's land area. *Only* 1%! For every 10 mile by 10 mile square on the surface of the earth, 1 square mile is dedicated to energy extraction. Talk about geo engineering, and side effects! Imagine what happens to the winds that send dust with nutrients from the Sahara to the Amazon if we take 10% of the solar energy falling on the Sahara and move the heat, via electricity, to Europe instead. And this only gives us electricity. We have no means currently to use electricity effectively for transportation. Electric planes? Electric cars for long distance driving? Electric trucking? Electric tractors for farming? Pipe dreams or concept at this point. I see research with lots of potential improvements in solar energy that would make it a real alternative, but their implementation is probably 5 to 10 years off if they survive scaling to production level.
I know people are currently deploying solar, but at this point that is more political than effectiveness driven. That is, it's not being deployed because it makes economic sense (which is another way of saying thermodynamic sense), but because it satisfies political constituencies.
In case it isn't obvious, my position is that our problem is that there are too many people on earth. We see it in stress on the planet's ecosystems. There is lots of evidence that they are fraying. And it is quite likely that they are chaotic. By that I mean that if they reach a tipping point, they go into a negative feedback loop for a new setpoint, which then stabilizes there until another forcing event.
Since the US consumes 25% of the world's energy, if everyone in the US committed suicide there would be an instant solution to the climate change problem, according to official reports. Volunteers? :-^
We can all make suggestions to the driver(s), everyone here, but for the most part we're just along for the ride so we should sit back and enjoy it. If you're going to the gallows anyway, you might as well go with a smile on your face and a quip for the crowd. That way, if it's really your inauguration, you aren't nonplussed. :-)
Coal is dirty, dirty, dirty. Mercury, arsenic, and acid rain. Not to mention particulates. Thousands of people a year probably die because of coal powered power generation. But they die anonymously, without attribution, and so aren't ascribed to coal fired power.
No, what I'm against is folly. If solar isn't a viable alternative, let's not invest resources that could better be spent on other things. When it becomes viable, people will naturally choose it over alternatives because it is obviously better. I don't think we are there. I've examined it several times as a means to create energy independence, and it just can't compete. Yet.
I've seen enhancements that make the panels last longer before they break down, use cheaper materials, double the energy capture, capture from any angle so no moving parts, and shed dust automatically. These were all strictly experimental results, but if they can be introduced to production, solar power will be part of every building from at least 40N to 40S latitude. If that is matched with a similar enhancement in energy storage technology, everyone will prefer solar.
PowerFilm® is the world’s leading thin film photovoltaic solar electric modules.
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http://www.angelfire.com/mt/marksomers/cosmicacco unting.html
The relevant number is 1.7439 x 10**17 or 174,390,000,000,000,000.0 watts/second.
Because this is so large, it means that an error in even the third or fourth, maybe even the tenth, decimal place has a significant effect on calculations. Thus even slight changes in solar output will have large effects on earth.
And it also means that any upset to the steady state on earth is magnified a lot. A very small change in the way solar energy behaves on earth can have a large effect.
Photo of Dr Bill Patzert, copyright NASA
* Date:10 Feb 2011
* Source(s):National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
An interview with Dr. Bill Patzert of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Oceanography group
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
National Climatic Data Center
Many lines of scientific evidence show the Earth's climate is changing. This page presents the latest information from several independent measures of observed climate change that illustrate an overwhelmingly compelling story of a planet that is undergoing global warming. It is worth noting that increasing global temperature is only one element of observed global climate change. Precipitation patterns are also changing; storms and other extremes are changing as well.
Energy from the Sun Has Not Increased
The amount of solar energy received at the top of our atmosphere has followed its natural 11-year cycle of small ups and downs, but with no net increase. Over the same period, global temperature has risen markedly. This indicates that it is extremely unlikely that solar influence has been a significant driver of global temperature change over several decades.
Global surface temperature (top, blue) and the Sun's energy received at the top of Earth's atmosphere (red, bottom). Solar energy has been measured by satellites since 1978.
* The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for January 2011 was 0.38C (0.68F) above the 20th century average of 12.0C (53.6F). This is the 17th warmest January on record.
* The worldwide ocean surface temperature for January 2011 was the 11th warmest January on record, at 0.35C (0.63F) above the 20th century average of 15.8C (60.5F).
Click for larger image:
Yes, January was the second coldest in China since that nation's climate service started keeping records in 1961.
Has Joe Bastardi retracted his "it'll be the coldest January in a quarter-century" remark yet?
it is not a word,
The word you've entered isn't in the dictionary. Click on a spelling suggestion below or try again using the search bar above.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/deniali sts
though it does describes the lack of acknowledgment of
the current NH severe winter by most of the faithful
here on this blog. Seems to be difficult to accept
the empirical data, shockingly congruent with the
IPCC philosophy.
I suspect these scientists are all wrong.
Or, paid off by the Petroleum Industry.
* Myles Allen, head of the Climate Dynamics group at University of Oxford's Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics Department. Lead author, IPCC Third Assessment Report. Review editor, Fourth Assessment Report.
* Richard Alley (1957- ), American, Earth's cryosphere and global climate change.[1]
* Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927), Swedish, greenhouse effect.[2]
* Sallie Baliunas, American, astrophysicist, solar variation.
* Robert Balling, American, former director of the Office of Climatology and is a professor of geography at Arizona State University, climatology, global climate change, and geographic information systems.[3]
* Vilhelm Bjerknes (1862-1951), Norwegian, forecasting, numerical models.[4]
* Raymond S. Bradley, American, historical temperatures, paleoclimatology, and climate variability.
* Keith Briffa (1952- ), United Kingdom, dendrochronology, temperature history.
* Wallace Smith Broecker (1931- ), American, Pleistocene geochronology, radiocarbon dating and chemical oceanography.[5]
* Ken Caldeira, American, geoengineering, ocean acidification, atmospheric chemistry.
* Guy Stewart Callendar
* Mark Cane, American, modeling and prediction of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation.
* John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. Best known (with Dr. Roy Spencer) for developing the first version of the satellite temperature record.
* Paul J. Crutzen (1933- ), Dutch, stratospheric and tropospheric chemistry, and their role in the biogeochemical cycles and climate.[6]
* Kerry Emanuel (1955- ), American, atmospheric dynamics specializing in hurricanes.[7]
* Matthew England (1966-), Australian, physical oceanographer and climate dynamicist.
* Joe Farman
* Joseph Fourier (1768-1830), French, greenhouse effect.[8]
* Inez Fung American, climate modeling, biogeochemical cycles, and climate change.
* Peter Gleick (1956- ), American, hydroclimatologist, hydrologic impacts of climate change, snowfall/snowmelt responses, water adaptation strategies, consequences of sea-level rise.
* Jonathan M. Gregory
* Joanna Haigh
* James E. Hansen (1941- ), American, planetary atmospheres, remote sensing, numerical models, and global warming.[9]
* Ann Henderson-Sellers (1952- ), Australian, climate change risk evaluation.[10]
* John T. Houghton (1931- ), British, atmospheric physics, remote sensing.[11]
* Phil Jones (1952- ), British, instrumental climate change, palaeoclimatology, detection of climate change.
* Jean Jouzel
* Thomas R. Karl (1951- ), American, climate extremes and variability.
* Charles David Keeling (1928-2005), American, atmospheric carbon dioxide measurements, Keeling Curve.[12]
* Kurt Lambeck, Australian, cryosphere-hydrosphere-lithosphere interactions, and sea level rise and its impact on human populations.[13]
* Richard Lindzen (1940- ), American, dynamic meteorology, especially planetary waves.[14]
* Edward Norton Lorenz (1917-2008), American, discovery of the strange attractor notion and coined the term butterfly effect.[15]
* James Lovelock (1919- ), British, Gaia hypothesis and biotic feedbacks.[16]
* Syukuro Manabe (1931- ), Japanese, pioneered the use of computers to simulate global climate change and natural climate variations.[17]
* Gordon Manley (1902 – 1980), English, Central England temperature (CET) series.
* Michael E. Mann (1965- ), American, paleoclimate reconstructions.[18]
* Patrick Michaels (1950- ), American climatologist.[19][20]
* Gordon McBean, Canadian, boundary layer research, hydrometeorology and environmental impact research, and weather forecasting.[21]
* Milutin Milanković (1879-1958), Serbian, Milankovitch cycles.[22]
* John F. B. Mitchell, British, climate modelling and detection and attribution of climate change
* Mario J. Molina (1943- ), Mexican, atmospheric chemistry and ozone depletion.[23]
* Abraham H Oort
* David E. Parker, British, surface temperature trend.
* William Richard Peltier (1943- ), Canadian, global geodynamic modeling and ice sheet reconstructions; atmospheric and oceanic waves and turbulence.
* Roger A. Pielke, Sr. (1946-), American, climate change, environmental vulnerability, numerical modeling, and atmospheric dynamics.
* Raymond Pierrehumbert, idealized climate modeling, Faint young sun paradox.
* Vicky Pope, British, Head of the Climate Prediction Programme at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research.
* Stefan Rahmstorf (1960- ), German, the role of ocean currents in climate change.[24]
* Veerabhadran Ramanathan, Indian, general circulation models, atmospheric chemistry, and radiative transfer.[25]
* Roger Revelle (1909-1991), American, global warming and chemical oceanography.[26]
* William Ruddiman
* Hans Joachim Schellnhuber (1950 - ), German climatologist, was an author for the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
* Stephen H. Schneider (1945 - 2010), American, Professor of Environmental Biology and Global Change at Stanford University.
* Stephen E. Schwartz (1941 - ), American, chemistry of air pollutants, radiative forcing of aerosols on climate.
* Richard C. J. Somerville (1941 - ), American, theoretical meteorology and atmospheric physics.
* Stocker, Thomas, Swiss, climate dynamics and paleoclimate modeling and reconstruction.
* Susan Solomon (1956 - ), American, chlorofluorocarbons and ozone depletion.[27]
* J. Curt Stager (1956-), American, paleoclimatology [1].
* Peter A. Stott, British, climate scientist [2].
* Hans E. Suess (1909-1993), Austrian, radiocarbon dating, Suess effect.[28]
* Simon Tett, British, detection and attribution of climate change, model initialization, and validation.
* Peter Thejll (1956- )Danish, Northern Hemisphere land air temperature, solar variation and greenhouse effect.
* Lonnie Thompson (1948- ), American, paleoclimatology, ice cores.
* Kevin E. Trenberth, decadal variability, El Niño-Southern Oscillation.
* David Vaughan - ice sheets, British Antarctic Survey.
* John Michael Wallace, North Atlantic oscillation, Arctic oscillation, El Niño-Southern Oscillation.
* Andrew Watson (1952-), British, marine and atmospheric sciences.
* Andrew J. Weaver, Canadian, climate modeling and analysis.[29]
* Carl Wunsch (1941- ), Physical oceanography and ocean acoustic tomography.[30]
New errors in IPCC climate change report
The United Nations panel on climate change is facing fresh criticism today as The Sunday Telegraph reveals new factual errors and poor sources of evidence in its influential report to government leaders.
Link
Real shocker!
You are right, of course. Relatively speaking .1% is .1%. However, .1% of 1 watt is .001 watt, while .1% of 3.8 * 10**17 watts is 3.8 * 10**14 watts. So the magnitude of a slight variation is very large. Will its effects on the system be very large? That depends on the system. How stable is it? How sensitive is it? What time frame are we talking about? And are there other changes to the system as well? For all we know, the removal of the bison covering a significant percentage (10%?) of the North American continent with their dark heat absorbing coats might have had an effect on global climate. In the winter, especially, they would absorb heat that would otherwise be reflected by the snow on the ground. I've read papers suggesting that most of the effects we are seeing in the arctic are due to particulates on the snow from diesel and coal absorbing more heatthan used to be the case. In human terms, a .1% change in solar energy dwarfs all energy that we use. That is, the energy input to the system from the sun makes the magnitude of our energy usage irrelevant. That doesn't mean we can't have an effect on the system in other ways, and that very slight changes we make won't have major effects because of the magnitudes of the numbers we are dealing with.
Why don't we see variations? There are capacitances in the global system that absorb and release the changes; that is they introduce time constants into the system. And there is enough randomization in the system to mask slight changes, especially in the short term. Weather is a stochastic process, and it moves large amounts of heat around the globe. As do ocean currents.
As to why highest mean temperatures are in July instead of January, in the northern hemisphere, think about angles. When the angle of the sun is higher relative to the lattitude, the solar radiation is passing through less atmosphere and is hitting the earth more directly, so more energy reaches the surface. If you are familiar with trigonometry, you know that the cosine of an angle grows closer to 1 the smaller the angle away from the vertical. Or to answer another way, there is a reason the temperature at the equator is noticeably higher than the temperature at the poles.
I haven't examined it, but there might be higher temperatures in the southern hemisphere summer when we are closer to the sun during their summer than there are for the same lattitudes in the northern hemisphere summer when we are farther away, and vice versa for winter. Or atmospheric and oceanic effects could mask the difference.
According to two studies published today in Nature, global warming from rising CO2 levels can be for the first time directly linked to the growing intensity of rain and snow events in the Northern Hemisphere.
"The rise in extreme precipitation in some Northern Hemisphere areas has been recognized for more than a decade, but this is the first time that the anthropogenic contribution has been nailed down, says [the co-author of one of the studies]. The findings mean that Northern Hemisphere countries need to prepare for more of these events in the future. 'What has been considered a 1-in-100-years event in a stationary climate may actually occur twice as often in the future.'"
No kidding... ;-)
Article...
I can already smell the denialism beginning to boil...
Please note that this can also take CO2 out of the atmosphere which will prevent acidic oceans and save the shellfish and coral reefs. I think you are on to something with this design. This what I interpret form the drawing can you elaborate on what other capabilities are possible? Mr. Rood what is your opinion?
er
I mean days then.
What was the Dow Number inauguration Day 2009,,and what iz it today ?
GDP graph?
Maybe someone can google it. All da Kids are using da Google.
Bueller?
.....anyone ?
Hippos?
First post too,,so Welcome maybe?
ACK,,!!!!!!!!!!!!!
WASHINGTON -- Less than two months after signing tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans into law, President Barack Obama proposed a spending plan to Congress that cuts funding to programs that assist the working poor, help the needy heat their homes, and expand access to graduate-level education, undermining the kind of community-based organizations that helped Obama launch his political career in Chicago.
Obama's new budget puts forward a plan to achieve $1.1 trillion in deficit reductions over the next decade, according to an administration official who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity in advance of the formal release of the budget.
Those reductions -- averaging just over $100 billion each year -- are achieved mainly by squeezing social programs. A deal struck to extend the Bush tax cuts for just two years, meanwhile, increased the deficit by $858 billion dollars. More than $500 billion of that bargain constituted tax cuts, with billions more funding business tax breaks and a reduction in the estate tax. Roughly $56 billion went to reauthorize emergency unemployment benefits.
The president's budget was expected to mostly target "non-defense discretionary spending," which makes up less than one-quarter of the overall budget, making balancing the budget with such cuts mathematically impossible.
Indeed, the driver of the deficit is tax cuts. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that as a result of the tax cut deal, the projected deficit in Obama's budget will reach a "record" level of $1.6 trillion this year, though that figure, relative to the size of the American economy, is far lower than many other governments around the world, according to data compiled by the Central Intelligence Agency. And the relative deficit is well below the levels of the 1940s, a time of economic prosperity. "President Barack Obama's 2012 budget proposal projects this year's deficit will reach $1.6 trillion, the largest on record, as December's tax-cut deal begins to reduce federal revenues, a senior Democrat said Sunday," the Journal reported Sunday evening. (The deficit is only a record if it is neither adjusted for inflation nor considered relative to the size of GDP.)
A closer look at surveys suggests that when people say they are concerned about the deficit, they are actually worried about the economy.
The president's official budget proposal was released Monday morning and we'll be adding updates with breaking news and reactions throughout the day.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/13/obama-bu dget-proposal-cut_n_822689.html
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Yeah, he is doing just fine?!@%!
Go get them Tiger.
Go check the assessed value on your house, just ducky
#36
GDP,UP..Dow UP..Housing Starts Up.
President Approval Rating Up,up.
Change is coming and welcomed for the folks who can relate to the idiocy of the Cro-Magnum Past Leadership.
IM me on Facebook later
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The Boss is going down a bumpy road.
Our countries viability is at stake.
I hope for the best.
Geothermal areas in Iceland are divided into high temperature fields and low temperature fields (Figure 2). High temperature fields have temperatures of at least 150 degrees Celsius at a depth of one kilometer and are only found in the active volcanic zone along the tectonic plate boundary. Most of the high temperature fields are rich in gases and minerals and therefore cannot be used directly for space heating and bathing. How ever the fields' high pressure and high thermal energy make them well suited to heating fresh cold water which then can be used for space heating and the generation of electricity.
The low-temperature areas are distributed widely across Iceland because they are located in areas flanking the active volcanic zone. The water temperature decreases with distance from the volcanic belt and is below 150 °C to 100°C at a depth of about 1 km. The largest resources are located in southwest Iceland, especially in Reykir and Reykholt. The surface activity is usually restricted to hot springs; some systems have no surface manifestations at all.
Maybe we should punch some holes Yellowstone,
I'm sure the Sierra Club wouldn't mind saving the planet?
CFLs are made in factories where Chinese worker are exposed to near lethal amounts of mercury vapor, which is a component of CFLs. These factories are largely powered by coal. Since China lacks the environmental protection laws that we have in Europe and US it is more cost effective to make them there.
Once here, these bulbs cost hundreds of times more to purchase. Sometimes, local utilities have subsidize the cost of purchasing these bulbs bringing the price down to a reasonable level. The bulbs are very toxic, as they contain deadly mercury vapor. Mercury is one of the most toxic elements on Earth. All CFL bulbs contain a minimum of four to five milligrams of mercury. That is enough mercury in one CFL bulb to contaminate 6,000 gallons of clean water. If broken, the lethally toxic mercury puts the health of your entire family at stake. The proper cleanup of a broken CFL would require professional haz/mat services. That can be very very expensive.
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Energy Efficient Light Bulbs Unscrewed: A Triple Threat to Your Health and Environment (Part 1)
Threat 1: Compact Flourescent Lights Emitting Ultraviolet Radiation
To begin, early in October 2008, only months before Health Canada announced an investigation into CFLs, the British Health Protection Agency (HPA) cautioned CFLs sometimes emit UV radiation that is beyond acceptable safety levels.
Nine out of 53 CFL bulbs the HPA investigated emitted unacceptable levels of UV radiation.
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Be good to your mother(Earth)
NRA got it right:
The Black-crowned Night Heron is a noisy bird with a loud, harsh squawk.
While you're at it, why don't you run numbers on how many die because of poverty? And don't think for a minute that green doesn't increase poverty. It does and we all know it. That doesn't mean that society picking up the costs of pollution and other manmade bad stuff isn't worth it, but don't think the cost isn't in human life also.
OBL,
I can give a list of what they can prevent but this list is endless. Here are a few:
How about restoring sea levels to pre-industrial revolution levels. You mentioned North Arctic summer ice. You are correct they will restore that along with declining polar bear populations that depend on such ice. Same goes for the Walrus,Narwhal and Arctic Seal. How about reducing the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere which warmer oceans create thus trapping more radiative heat and preventing it from going back into space where it belongs which would help cool the Earth. It is going to take a few thousand years for the Co2 that we emit to cleanse itself from our atmosphere if we stopped emitting it now. So our future is a bleak one with continued warming. Our only hope is to stop emitting GHGs and sequester them. The tunnel idea can curb the GHGs we emit but we must now sequester them also to make a difference. The tunnels are up to task in sequestering the gasses also by supplying that operation with clean pure kinetic energy from the Gulfstream. Any replies are welcome as I will be glad to tell the many things they can do. Anyone wish to opine?
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