Climate constantly changes, to think we can actually have any impact on significantly altering the climate is the height of arrogance. It's been warmer in the past than today and its been cooler, we know this..... but somehow altering a carbon footprint is going to save us? This is not to say that we should not try and be prudent in the use of resources, but the proposed changes all mandate government control of your life and all that will do is make things worse for people, not better.
Nonsense. 7 billion people can affect a closed system quite readily, it’s not arrogance. The greenhouse gases model is readily accepted by the world’s actual scientists, only US conservatives seem to have a problem with science. Leave your car running in the garage and say it’s arrogant to believe we can affect a closed space.
The problem is not all scientist accept those models. Mainly because they have not produced reasonable results that match what is happening now. I'm not even sure where this nonsense comes from because by definition if you are a scientist you must question. Unfortunately this has become political ammo used to scare people so rational questions are suppressed.
You are being misled by whoever is driving these beliefs. The physics of planetary climate is perfectly fine, and has been repeatedly tested against planets with atmospheres, obviously including our own as time has marched forward. The questioning is fine - just keep asking (you won’t be the first person asking these questions and they all have already been answered) - but these are just your basic heat transfer processes that are used to model Venus’ hot house, Mars’ cold thin air, Titan’s nitrogen cycle, so on and so forth.
It’s the same heat transfer processes that’ll predict what temperature a car’s interior will get to and how long it will take to get to that temperature. It’s the same heat transfer processes used for every single thing we do in one fashion or the other. It’s not a fully open or fully closed window either, it can all be dynamically done based on the state of how open the windows are.
On the question of the 97% of scientists, I never liked it as an argumentum as it is an appeal to authority. Not only that, it’s wrong, it’s more like 99.9% of “experts” or people who have reviewed the material all agree on the basic physics of greenhouse gasses will drive up Earth’s surface temperatures.
The physics of planetary climate is indeed fine. The ability to predict future climate clearly is not. Also, our atmosphere is hardly comparable to other planets. Just because a hot planet has enormous amounts of CO2 does not mean that CO2 caused it.
As for CO2, yes, it absorbs infrared radiation from the earth's surface at around 15 microns, but then again, it is only 0.04% of the earth's atmosphere, and historical data (like the volstok ice cores), show that ice ages have occurred at historic CO2 highs, thus strongly suggesting that CO2 plays a minimal role in regulating climate temperature.
As for the 97 or 99 or 99.9999 scientists, the question has nothing to do with the degree of influence. I'm part of that 97% too. The real question is the degree of impact, which appears to be minimal, at best.
Climate constantly changes, to think we can actually have any impact on significantly altering the climate is the height of arrogance. It's been warmer in the past than today and its been cooler, we know this..... but somehow altering a carbon footprint is going to save us? This is not to say that we should not try and be prudent in the use of resources, but the proposed changes all mandate government control of your life and all that will do is make things worse for people, not better.
Human caused climate change is a fact. I've been following the subject for 40 years and the only constant is we keep underestimating people's impact. I will leave it to you to explain to your grandchildren why you didn't do anything.
Even if the US completely stopped outputting CO2 today, developing countries like China and India are just getting started. You can fret all you like but nothing is going to change anytime soon. I would love to buy a Tesla model 3 if it didn’t cost 44,000 dollars. Those of us who live in the northeast can’t ride our bikes all year long. Public transportation in my city is pretty limited. If solar power can be made cheaper I would look into it but for now it’s out of reach, for me at least.
So because you personally can’t buy an electric car, nothing should be done by anyone? You think maybe industrial polluters might have a larger impact than individuals? Or because other countries are outputting CO2, no other countries should reduce emissions? What kind of logic is that?
I swear, the anti-science types like those on this forum will be the literal death of us all as a society. Bet some of you were convinced when Jim Inhofe brought that snowball into congress. Fucking infuriating.
No the problem here is that the elitist will go out and buy electric cars and all sort of other so called green solutions and then demean people that can't afford the bill.
As for industrial pollution that must be addressed but CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is in fact required as part of the life cycle on earth. Nothing yet produced has indicated to me that the minuscule changes in CO2 in the atmosphere have done anything at all with respect to the climate.
The death to society will be when science is so controlled politically that we can't get to the root causes of the many problems we have in this world. Frankly one has to be incredibly gullible to even consider some of the stuff that gets attached to climate change.
Wow Wizard. "CO2 in the atmosphere has nothing to do with climate change . . .The death to society . . ."? How old are you?
I'll take the bate ;-)
Check out this review of a book that talks about the current causes of climate change.
Climate constantly changes, to think we can actually have any impact on significantly altering the climate is the height of arrogance. It's been warmer in the past than today and its been cooler, we know this..... but somehow altering a carbon footprint is going to save us? This is not to say that we should not try and be prudent in the use of resources, but the proposed changes all mandate government control of your life and all that will do is make things worse for people, not better.
I don't know how old you are Normang, but I suspect you may be young enough to regret your "it's not human caused climate change, the government is the problem (certainly not me)" comments.
I don't have to check out the mainstream media articles that are nothing but fiction.. If you haven't figured that out yet, I really feel sorry for you..
Plus there is nothing to regret.. If we could really actually alter the climate in any meaningful way, other than telling you how to run your life and return to the stone age, which is going to be far worse than any climate calamity. Look at these saviors fo the world flying thousand of personal jets to Davos, there is an good example of saving the planet right? Get real... get your head out of the sand for one minute and think of any action on any scale that will stop a tornado or hurricane or any other natural activity just isn't going to happen...
No Norman:
Please DON'T check out the "mainstream media" (even for a book review). Just check out your fringe media where you can drink "Trump KoolAid" and wank rather than think. I'll give you another chance . . .
Check out this review of a book that talks about the current causes of climate change.
It's about "if we are the right species" - or if we've thrown away a lovely planet Mike. You can expect some differing views . . .
I'm fine with differing views, that's not the issue. The topic and the debate also aren't the issue. Nobody who's post remains is the problem, but things are starting to escalate.
It's about "if we are the right species" - or if we've thrown away a lovely planet Mike. You can expect some differing views . . .
I'm fine with differing views, that's not the issue. The topic and the debate also aren't the issue. Nobody who's post remains is the problem, but things are starting to escalate.
The physics of planetary climate is indeed fine. The ability to predict future climate clearly is not. Also, our atmosphere is hardly comparable to other planets. Just because a hot planet has enormous amounts of CO2 does not mean that CO2 caused it.
As for CO2, yes, it absorbs infrared radiation from the earth's surface at around 15 microns, but then again, it is only 0.04% of the earth's atmosphere, and historical data (like the volstok ice cores), show that ice ages have occurred at historic CO2 highs, thus strongly suggesting that CO2 plays a minimal role in regulating climate temperature.
As for the 97 or 99 or 99.9999 scientists, the question has nothing to do with the degree of influence. I'm part of that 97% too. The real question is the degree of impact, which appears to be minimal, at best.
Point me to where this Vostok ice core data is.
I’m reading your comments as you think that our current physics models can’t predict the effect of increased CO2 concentrations, which are very small, in Earth’s atmosphere. If we had two containers, one filled with air with 0.02% CO2 and the other filled with air with 0.04% CO2, and we put it out in the sun, current physics models would be able to compute difference in the equlibrium temperature and the rise time to that equilibrium temperature between the two? If they can (I think you will answer ‘yes’ to the two containers question), what’s the difference between these unit problems and “Earth”? (Or maybe you think their won’t be a temperature difference?)
You do accept that increased CO2 concentrations will increase surface temperatures. So, where does the heat go? What in the future is going to reduce this heat or take away the heat?
Lastly, what is minimal? Are you talking tens of millions of migrants, hundreds of millions of dead, a billion? You don’t think sea levels will rise and impact all low lying coastal communities? Never count humanity out. No matter how bad you think humans can be, they can be worse. The migrants issue is a rather high profile issue today. In a future where equatorial temperatures go up on average 4 to 8 °F, there will be hundreds of millions to billions of migrants, and the politics and consequences of that is going to be a horror show.
The physics of planetary climate is indeed fine. The ability to predict future climate clearly is not. Also, our atmosphere is hardly comparable to other planets. Just because a hot planet has enormous amounts of CO2 does not mean that CO2 caused it.
As for CO2, yes, it absorbs infrared radiation from the earth's surface at around 15 microns, but then again, it is only 0.04% of the earth's atmosphere, and historical data (like the volstok ice cores), show that ice ages have occurred at historic CO2 highs, thus strongly suggesting that CO2 plays a minimal role in regulating climate temperature.
As for the 97 or 99 or 99.9999 scientists, the question has nothing to do with the degree of influence. I'm part of that 97% too. The real question is the degree of impact, which appears to be minimal, at best.
Point me to where this Vostok ice core data is.
I’m reading your comments as you think that our current physics models can’t predict the effect of increased CO2 concentrations, which are very small, in Earth’s atmosphere. If we had two containers, one filled with air with 0.02% CO2 and the other filled with air with 0.04% CO2, and we put it out in the sun, current physics models would be able to compute difference in the equlibrium temperature and the rise time to that equilibrium temperature between the two? If they can (I think you will answer ‘yes’ to the two containers question), what’s the difference between these unit problems and “Earth”? (Or maybe you think their won’t be a temperature difference?)
You do accept that increased CO2 concentrations will increase surface temperatures. So, where does the heat go? What in the future is going to reduce this heat or take away the heat?
Lastly, what is minimal? Are you talking tens of millions of migrants, hundreds of millions of dead, a billion? You don’t think sea levels will rise and impact all low lying coastal communities? Never count humanity out. No matter how bad you think humans can be, they can be worse. The migrants issue is a rather high profile issue today. In a future where equatorial temperatures go up on average 4 to 8 °F, there will be hundreds of millions to billions of migrants, and the politics and consequences of that is going to be a horror show.
Ok, I'll do some homework for you. Just did a brief ddg search and found this, explains it fairly clearly. Not only did ice ages occur at historically high CO2 levels, but as this reference explains, CO2 elevations *lagged behind* elevations in temperature, by 800 years. CO2 elevations occurring after elevations in temp is, of course, expected (CO2 is a volatile gas that is released from the oceans when the temp rises); the reverse, does not seem to be true based on this data, which shows fluctuations in both, not an ever increasing progression of CO2 and temp, which is what would occur if CO2 did in fact have a strong effect on earth's temp. Simple physics: http://joannenova.com.au/global-warming-2/ice-core-graph/
As for your box scenario, I don't accept that a closed box can be extrapolated to include the complexity of the entire planetary ecosystem. Yes, CO2 traps heat, but it's not a sealed off container that traps 100% of certain wavelengths of energy, especially at 0.04% (at most) of the earth's atmosphere. As I mentioned above, if your scenario is correct, then even the tiniest amount of CO2 would produce a snowballing effect of increasing temp, which of course is not what has happened throughout history.
Minimal means that that CO2 does not affect the temp that much, as the data suggests.
But, you're assuming I meant minimal impact on the environment/humanity. I'll address that too. Even using IPCC models, unchecked climate change is will only result in a 2-4% adjustment in income by 2100. DDG national bureau of economic research William Nordhaus. And I don't think that, even in the worst case scenarios of these incredibly faulty models, that a bunch of people moving a couple miles inland is going to be too much of a catastrophe as it gradually occurs over hundreds of years.
The truth is that there's a lot of evidence for CO2 association with heat (which is expected), but not much evidence that it causes a large change in the global temp.
It is incredibly unfortunate that so many resources are being wasted on this issue, when they would do so much good if allocated to other environmental issues, which are having a drastic impact on our world now, not hundreds of years from now: habitat destruction, pollution, fishery depletion, species extinction, etc.
It's all a moot point. According to our favorite NY congresswoman the world will end in 12 years anyway.
Nobody has said that, and certainly not AOC. If you’re going to deny reality, at least try to be intellectually honest while doing so.
Yes, AOC certainly said that, and when asked about it later, she doubled down on it. Alarmist? Yes. Logical? No.
Her beliefs, and the fact that so many feel she's credible, explains a lot about our current political climate.
I found the quote, so okay... but I don't think she meant literally that the world will end in 12 years. The timeline Ocasio-Cortez referenced was based on a U.N. backed report, released last year, that predicted the consequences of man-made climate change would become irreversible in twelve years if global carbon emissions are not immediately and dramatically reduced. I think we can all determine from this that she misspoke or perhaps more likely utilized a little hyperbole to make a point.
It's all a moot point. According to our favorite NY congresswoman the world will end in 12 years anyway.
Nobody has said that, and certainly not AOC. If you’re going to deny reality, at least try to be intellectually honest while doing so.
Yes, AOC certainly said that, and when asked about it later, she doubled down on it. Alarmist? Yes. Logical? No.
Her beliefs, and the fact that so many feel she's credible, explains a lot about our current political climate.
How somebody that is so ignorant can get elected is beyond me. You would think that people would simply tell such people to go to hell after hearing these predictions year after year for decades now. We have a far greater chance of a major climate shift and the death of billions, from a super volcano explosion.
It is nonsense like this from people like AOC, that has rubbished the credibility of everyone involved in climate research. A scientist with any self respect would stand up right now and reject this proclamation.
She may best be described as a “useful idiot” for the Democrats to use as a goad against the President. I doubt any of the Democratic leadership is comfortable with her fact-free assertions, no matter what they say in public. And believe me, none of those DC scumbags want their own income taxes to go up to 70%.
Oh for fuck's sake. The 70% would apply to income *after* $10 million. Anyone implying otherwise is being willfully obtuse.
You do realize that is a huge false equivalency, right?
It's hilarious how AGW believers love to condescendingly shout "science!" at everyone, then use complete ridiculous arguments like this one.
Lets use a slightly more relatable analogy, the weather, which scientists can't reliably predict more than 2 days out. And we're expected to accept that there will be a climate armageddon coming in 60 years? Nope. And on top of that, the models have been wrong over and over.. So, nope again.
So, who is it you find more convincing and more legitimate and more convincing than the scientists? Fauxnews? The Coal Industry? Exxon? Or, maybe one of the Russian trolls on Facebook?
Facts are convincing. The problem is climate research isn't about facts, at best it is about guesses that may or may not be corrects. Physics and engineering has progressed to the point that may theories and processes are accepted as fact, due to years of verification, research and Challenging those facts. For one nobody is challenging the Global warming theories without a lot of hate being thrown at them. Second those models (what most of this sciences is based on) fail to actually predict current conditions. Thus without verification you can't call man made global warming a fact.
By the way Exxon has done more climate research, especially with data collection, than you might imagine.
Climate constantly changes, to think we can actually have any impact on significantly altering the climate is the height of arrogance. It's been warmer in the past than today and its been cooler, we know this..... but somehow altering a carbon footprint is going to save us? This is not to say that we should not try and be prudent in the use of resources, but the proposed changes all mandate government control of your life and all that will do is make things worse for people, not better.
Yeah, f**k the climate. It's not like all that 97% of the scientific community (some of them dedicate their lives to study climate and the impact humans have on it) are right, right?
That 97% figure is total nonsense based on a poll taken of scientist attending a climate conference. In other words scientist with a vested interest in promoting the idea that the climate will change drastically due to human activity. In other words we are not talking about a ethical sampling of the scientific community.
You're wrong:
The 97 percent number comes from several distinct sources. The first was a 2009 survey published in the American Geophysical Union’s Eos magazine. A total of 3,146 Earth scientists responded to two questions regarding whether Earth’s temperature has “risen, fallen, or remained relatively constant” since before 1800, and whether human activity is a “significant contributing factor to changing mean global temperatures.” In the full study, 90 percent answered “risen,” and 82 percent said yes to the human impact question. The authors drilled down to those with more expertise: 79 researchers listed climate science as their specific area of expertise and had published more than half their recent peer-reviewed papers on climate science topics. Of those, 96.2 percent said “risen” to the first question, and 97.4 percent of 77 of them who responded said “yes” to the second question (this is likely where Santorum’s claim regarding 77 scientists originates).
A year later, another study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesfound a similar result. The authors in this case set a specific criterion for expertise: All included must have authored a minimum of 20 peer-reviewed publications on climate science. Among a group of 908 such researchers, evidence from the publications themselves “show[s] that 97-98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field surveyed here support the tenets of [anthropogenic climate change] outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.” The authors also pointed out that the “relative climate expertise” of researchers who are “unconvinced” by those tenets is “substantially below” that of those who are convinced.
Finally, a 2013 paper published in the journal Environmental Research Letters has garnered perhaps the most attention for its consensus findings. That paper analyzed a total of 11,944 journal article abstracts published from 1991 to 2011 that matched the search terms “global climate change” or “global warming.”
From that list of papers, the study authors picked out which ones actually expressed a position on anthropogenic — human-caused — global warming, and which ones took no position. A total of 4,014 papers (33.6 percent) took a position, and of those, 97.1 percent endorsed the idea that humans are causing global warming.
A second analysis in that same study asked 8,547 authors to rate their papers. Did they think their papers endorsed the consensus on warming? A total of 1,189 scientists responded, rating 2,142 individual papers. The results were similar to the first part of the study: 97.2 percent of the papers endorsed the consensus that humans are causing global warming.
The authors concluded: “The number of papers rejecting AGW [anthropogenic global warming] is a miniscule proportion of the published research, with the percentage slightly decreasing over time.”
As for the 97 or 99 or 99.9999 scientists, the question has nothing to do with the degree of influence. I'm part of that 97% too. The real question is the degree of impact, which appears to be minimal, at best.
Really? We're already seeing early stage impacts. Cities like Norfolk, Va.; Baltimore; Charleston, S.C.; and Miami experience flooding due to rising sea levels. An estimated 800 million people in more than 570 coastal cities are vulnerable to oceans rising 1.6 feet by 2050. Are you willing to wait til we see those effects in full before acting?
The physics of planetary climate is indeed fine. The ability to predict future climate clearly is not. Also, our atmosphere is hardly comparable to other planets. Just because a hot planet has enormous amounts of CO2 does not mean that CO2 caused it.
As for CO2, yes, it absorbs infrared radiation from the earth's surface at around 15 microns, but then again, it is only 0.04% of the earth's atmosphere, and historical data (like the volstok ice cores), show that ice ages have occurred at historic CO2 highs, thus strongly suggesting that CO2 plays a minimal role in regulating climate temperature.
As for the 97 or 99 or 99.9999 scientists, the question has nothing to do with the degree of influence. I'm part of that 97% too. The real question is the degree of impact, which appears to be minimal, at best.
Point me to where this Vostok ice core data is.
I’m reading your comments as you think that our current physics models can’t predict the effect of increased CO2 concentrations, which are very small, in Earth’s atmosphere. If we had two containers, one filled with air with 0.02% CO2 and the other filled with air with 0.04% CO2, and we put it out in the sun, current physics models would be able to compute difference in the equlibrium temperature and the rise time to that equilibrium temperature between the two? If they can (I think you will answer ‘yes’ to the two containers question), what’s the difference between these unit problems and “Earth”? (Or maybe you think their won’t be a temperature difference?)
You do accept that increased CO2 concentrations will increase surface temperatures. So, where does the heat go? What in the future is going to reduce this heat or take away the heat?
Lastly, what is minimal? Are you talking tens of millions of migrants, hundreds of millions of dead, a billion? You don’t think sea levels will rise and impact all low lying coastal communities? Never count humanity out. No matter how bad you think humans can be, they can be worse. The migrants issue is a rather high profile issue today. In a future where equatorial temperatures go up on average 4 to 8 °F, there will be hundreds of millions to billions of migrants, and the politics and consequences of that is going to be a horror show.
Ok, I'll do some homework for you. Just did a brief ddg search and found this, explains it fairly clearly. Not only did ice ages occur at historically high CO2 levels, but as this reference explains, CO2 elevations *lagged behind* elevations in temperature, by 800 years. CO2 elevations occurring after elevations in temp is, of course, expected (CO2 is a volatile gas that is released from the oceans when the temp rises); the reverse, does not seem to be true based on this data, which shows fluctuations in both, not an ever increasing progression of CO2 and temp, which is what would occur if CO2 did in fact have a strong effect on earth's temp. Simple physics: http://joannenova.com.au/global-warming-2/ice-core-graph/
As for your box scenario, I don't accept that a closed box can be extrapolated to include the complexity of the entire planetary ecosystem. Yes, CO2 traps heat, but it's not a sealed off container that traps 100% of certain wavelengths of energy, especially at 0.04% (at most) of the earth's atmosphere. As I mentioned above, if your scenario is correct, then even the tiniest amount of CO2 would produce a snowballing effect of increasing temp, which of course is not what has happened throughout history.
Minimal means that that CO2 does not affect the temp that much, as the data suggests.
But, you're assuming I meant minimal impact on the environment/humanity. I'll address that too. Even using IPCC models, unchecked climate change is will only result in a 2-4% adjustment in income by 2100. DDG national bureau of economic research William Nordhaus. And I don't think that, even in the worst case scenarios of these incredibly faulty models, that a bunch of people moving a couple miles inland is going to be too much of a catastrophe as it gradually occurs over hundreds of years.
The truth is that there's a lot of evidence for CO2 association with heat (which is expected), but not much evidence that it causes a large change in the global temp.
It is incredibly unfortunate that so many resources are being wasted on this issue, when they would do so much good if allocated to other environmental issues, which are having a drastic impact on our world now, not hundreds of years from now: habitat destruction, pollution, fishery depletion, species extinction, etc.
You're vastly understating the effects of sea levels rising. Even a modest sea level rise means coastal cities and thousands of islands under water, and millions of people displaced. But hey if it happens slowly it's cool?
CO2 elevations *lagged behind* elevations in temperature, by 800 years. CO2 elevations occurring after elevations in temp is, of course, expected (CO2 is a volatile gas that is released from the oceans when the temp rises); the reverse, does not seem to be true based on this data, which shows fluctuations in both, not an ever increasing progression of CO2 and temp, which is what would occur if CO2 did in fact have a strong effect on earth's temp.
This is basically a fallacy of a critical detail where if one detail is not explained, then a hypothesis or idea is disproved, but it ignores the entire body of work. It is basically used all the time to critique modeling of any complex system (like an eyeball and evolution).
The lag doesn’t negate the fact that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, nor does it negate that adding more CO2 in the atmosphere will increase average atmospheric temperatures. (It seems you are saying that in the latter it won’t or it won’t raise it much for which I would like know why, even though CO2 absorption models of heat are rigorously tested and proved.) It only shows that the Earth is a complex dynamics system.
There aren’t any physics here. It’s just plots of data showing derived averaged surface temperature deltas co-plotted with derived atmospheric CO2 concentration data. It’s highly correlated and there is a time difference in the start of the rise time to interglacial periods. Cool. A mystery to solve. The New Scientist article speculates on some of the reasons why. (I could speculate too if you want).
Physics is implementing a set of equations to show what phenomena would generate the lag, or show how the system would behave. There is zero of this in this weblog.
CO2, at the 280 ppm levels of the past 12k years, is about a 20% contribution to the greenhouse effect. This is just your basic math model of taking heat sources, heat sinks, modeling the transport mediums, and out comes an equilibrium temperature with linear contributions from various factors. (Full math models using numerical methods to compute the physics are being done and get better and better as compute power increases).
As for your box scenario, I don't accept that a closed box can be extrapolated to include the complexity of the entire planetary ecosystem. Yes, CO2 traps heat, but it's not a sealed off container that traps 100% of certain wavelengths of energy, especially at 0.04% (at most) of the earth's atmosphere.
It’s not extrapolation. It’s modeling of an energy system with heat transfer (physics) equations. A unit problem. It’s a way to prove that the model is correct. Your distrust when applying it to Earth implies some hidden phenomena that is not modeled. What is it you think can’t be modeled? Or why would you trust it for other planets, but not ours?
The physics models have to be critiqued seven ways from Sunday to continuously prove their correctness and to continuously improve it, but in the end, if you don’t listen to what the model is saying, what are you basing your decisions on?
As I mentioned above, if your scenario is correct, then even the tiniest amount of CO2 would produce a snowballing effect of increasing temp, which of course is not what has happened throughout history.
All else being equal, yes it would start a warming effect until CO2 concentrations come to an equilibrium. If you start out tiny, say from 0.028% to 0.029%, and hold other things the same (sunlight et al, CO2 sinks stay constant), it will produce a snowball effect, but the rise time is going to be really really slow, maybe on order 10s of thousands of years. That’s plenty of time for an orbital cycle to change solar input though, or a biological reaction to pull CO2 out of the air (weathering, forests, etc), and that feedback effect is stopped. So, there is some give and take here, but the Earth system in the recent few million years is a bimodal system fluctuating between glacial and interglacial periods. Some small inputs will make it swing, like planetary orbit and precession cycles.
This is one reason why people are freaked out. It’s a complex system and CO2 concentrations are above 0.04%, above human history average. We’re on route to doubling the concentration from the human experience of 0.028% to 0.050% or so, and that is assuming we will have our shit together, and that is a huge change relative to what’s happened before short of a Deccan Traps type event. (We do not have our shit together as you’ve noticed.)
The concentration of CO2 is “tiny” relative to N2 and O2, but it is responsible for about 20% of the greenhouse effect. It’s like saying poison isn’t harmful since it is 0.01% of a person’s body, and we shouldn’t worry about it, but we know differently as we know what that small amount can do, and we avoid poison.
Minimal means that that CO2 does not affect the temp that much, as the data suggests. But, you're assuming I meant minimal impact on the environment/humanity. I'll address that too.
There isn’t any other impact more important than what it does to humanity, no? Anything else is just intellectual curiosity.
Even using IPCC models, unchecked climate change is will only result in a 2-4% adjustment in income by 2100. DDG national bureau of economic research William Nordhaus. And I don't think that, even in the worst case scenarios of these incredibly faulty models, that a bunch of people moving a couple miles inland is going to be too much of a catastrophe as it gradually occurs over hundreds of years.
Like I said, never count humanity out in its capacity to be horrifying. So, Nordhaus has a model to predict the future cost of global warming on our income, or derived from some kind of GDP cost figure. You trust that model, an economics model, over the physics models? Why?
His meta-survey paper where there is a 2% to 4% effect on income figure states this:
“One question that had been raised by scholars was whether the Tol estimates were accurate. We therefore endeavored to replicate the estimates of the Tol studies. Of the original 14 estimates, 7 were found to be incorrect or not replicable. In the final revision in 2014 (a correction of a correction), we found that of 21 estimates, 10 were found to be inaccurate or not replicable. ...
An additional warning is that the impact estimates are generally not comprehensive. They often cover key sectors such as agriculture, sea-level rise, energy, and forestry. Most do not include many non-market impacts, and the quantifications of non-market impacts that do exist are generally just guesses. As examples, estimates of the losses from ecosystems or damages from melting permafrost are omitted or unreliable. This point suggests that the figures examined here are likely to be underestimates of true damages. ...
a final conclusion, we emphasize the limited nature of work on impacts. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of impact studies in different areas such as health, agriculture, energy, ecosystems, and coastal structures. However, very few are comprehensive both in sectors and regions.”
Sounds like he is saying the results are crap. (Nordhaus btw is full on the train of reducing CO2 ASAP).
The truth is that there's a lot of evidence for CO2 association with heat (which is expected), but not much evidence that it causes a large change in the global temp.
Other than the physics models that you say can’t be used to model the Earth, even though they are good for other planets, stars, smaller local phenomena, and basically any product from the super complex down to the simplest problem.
Why do you think modeling the Earth can’t be done again? You are saying you don’t think we can model the Earth, why?
Comments
I'll take the bate ;-)
Check out this review of a book that talks about the current causes of climate change.
If you like, you could also read the book. Warning: It will need a little attention span.
Unfortunately, the Author is wrong - his future readers won't even be able to eat insects . . .
https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2018/10/15/hyperalarming-study-shows-massive-insect-loss/?utm_term=.9c0cbc5861b4
Please DON'T check out the "mainstream media" (even for a book review). Just check out your fringe media where you can drink "Trump KoolAid" and wank rather than think. I'll give you another chance . . .
Check out this review of a book that talks about the current causes of climate change.
If you like, you could also read the book. Warning: It will need a little attention span.
Unfortunately, the Author is wrong - his future readers won't even be able to eat insects . . .
https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2018/10/15/hyperalarming-study-shows-massive-insect-loss/?utm_term=.9c0cbc5861b4
I’m reading your comments as you think that our current physics models can’t predict the effect of increased CO2 concentrations, which are very small, in Earth’s atmosphere. If we had two containers, one filled with air with 0.02% CO2 and the other filled with air with 0.04% CO2, and we put it out in the sun, current physics models would be able to compute difference in the equlibrium temperature and the rise time to that equilibrium temperature between the two? If they can (I think you will answer ‘yes’ to the two containers question), what’s the difference between these unit problems and “Earth”? (Or maybe you think their won’t be a temperature difference?)
You do accept that increased CO2 concentrations will increase surface temperatures. So, where does the heat go? What in the future is going to reduce this heat or take away the heat?
Lastly, what is minimal? Are you talking tens of millions of migrants, hundreds of millions of dead, a billion? You don’t think sea levels will rise and impact all low lying coastal communities? Never count humanity out. No matter how bad you think humans can be, they can be worse. The migrants issue is a rather high profile issue today. In a future where equatorial temperatures go up on average 4 to 8 °F, there will be hundreds of millions to billions of migrants, and the politics and consequences of that is going to be a horror show.
http://joannenova.com.au/global-warming-2/ice-core-graph/
As for your box scenario, I don't accept that a closed box can be extrapolated to include the complexity of the entire planetary ecosystem. Yes, CO2 traps heat, but it's not a sealed off container that traps 100% of certain wavelengths of energy, especially at 0.04% (at most) of the earth's atmosphere. As I mentioned above, if your scenario is correct, then even the tiniest amount of CO2 would produce a snowballing effect of increasing temp, which of course is not what has happened throughout history.
Minimal means that that CO2 does not affect the temp that much, as the data suggests.
But, you're assuming I meant minimal impact on the environment/humanity. I'll address that too. Even using IPCC models, unchecked climate change is will only result in a 2-4% adjustment in income by 2100. DDG national bureau of economic research William Nordhaus. And I don't think that, even in the worst case scenarios of these incredibly faulty models, that a bunch of people moving a couple miles inland is going to be too much of a catastrophe as it gradually occurs over hundreds of years.
The truth is that there's a lot of evidence for CO2 association with heat (which is expected), but not much evidence that it causes a large change in the global temp.
It is incredibly unfortunate that so many resources are being wasted on this issue, when they would do so much good if allocated to other environmental issues, which are having a drastic impact on our world now, not hundreds of years from now: habitat destruction, pollution, fishery depletion, species extinction, etc.
You mean this Exxon?
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/what-exxon-knew-about-climate-change
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/sep/19/shell-and-exxons-secret-1980s-climate-change-warnings
You're wrong:
Source: https://www.factcheck.org/2015/09/santorums-climate-consensus-claims/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-18/in-dire-report-pentagon-warns-bases-imperiled-by-climate-change
You're vastly understating the effects of sea levels rising. Even a modest sea level rise means coastal cities and thousands of islands under water, and millions of people displaced. But hey if it happens slowly it's cool?
This is basically a fallacy of a critical detail where if one detail is not explained, then a hypothesis or idea is disproved, but it ignores the entire body of work. It is basically used all the time to critique modeling of any complex system (like an eyeball and evolution).
The lag doesn’t negate the fact that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, nor does it negate that adding more CO2 in the atmosphere will increase average atmospheric temperatures. (It seems you are saying that in the latter it won’t or it won’t raise it much for which I would like know why, even though CO2 absorption models of heat are rigorously tested and proved.) It only shows that the Earth is a complex dynamics system.
Here is a New Scientist article with more detail regarding CO2 concentrations lagging temperature: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11659-climate-myths-ice-cores-show-co2-increases-lag-behind-temperature-rises-disproving-the-link-to-global-warming/
It was written 4 years before your linked weblog entry, and addresses the time differential in the data.
There aren’t any physics here. It’s just plots of data showing derived averaged surface temperature deltas co-plotted with derived atmospheric CO2 concentration data. It’s highly correlated and there is a time difference in the start of the rise time to interglacial periods. Cool. A mystery to solve. The New Scientist article speculates on some of the reasons why. (I could speculate too if you want).
Physics is implementing a set of equations to show what phenomena would generate the lag, or show how the system would behave. There is zero of this in this weblog.
CO2, at the 280 ppm levels of the past 12k years, is about a 20% contribution to the greenhouse effect. This is just your basic math model of taking heat sources, heat sinks, modeling the transport mediums, and out comes an equilibrium temperature with linear contributions from various factors. (Full math models using numerical methods to compute the physics are being done and get better and better as compute power increases).
It’s not extrapolation. It’s modeling of an energy system with heat transfer (physics) equations. A unit problem. It’s a way to prove that the model is correct. Your distrust when applying it to Earth implies some hidden phenomena that is not modeled. What is it you think can’t be modeled? Or why would you trust it for other planets, but not ours?
The physics models have to be critiqued seven ways from Sunday to continuously prove their correctness and to continuously improve it, but in the end, if you don’t listen to what the model is saying, what are you basing your decisions on?
All else being equal, yes it would start a warming effect until CO2 concentrations come to an equilibrium. If you start out tiny, say from 0.028% to 0.029%, and hold other things the same (sunlight et al, CO2 sinks stay constant), it will produce a snowball effect, but the rise time is going to be really really slow, maybe on order 10s of thousands of years. That’s plenty of time for an orbital cycle to change solar input though, or a biological reaction to pull CO2 out of the air (weathering, forests, etc), and that feedback effect is stopped. So, there is some give and take here, but the Earth system in the recent few million years is a bimodal system fluctuating between glacial and interglacial periods. Some small inputs will make it swing, like planetary orbit and precession cycles.
This is one reason why people are freaked out. It’s a complex system and CO2 concentrations are above 0.04%, above human history average. We’re on route to doubling the concentration from the human experience of 0.028% to 0.050% or so, and that is assuming we will have our shit together, and that is a huge change relative to what’s happened before short of a Deccan Traps type event. (We do not have our shit together as you’ve noticed.)
The concentration of CO2 is “tiny” relative to N2 and O2, but it is responsible for about 20% of the greenhouse effect. It’s like saying poison isn’t harmful since it is 0.01% of a person’s body, and we shouldn’t worry about it, but we know differently as we know what that small amount can do, and we avoid poison.
There isn’t any other impact more important than what it does to humanity, no? Anything else is just intellectual curiosity.
Like I said, never count humanity out in its capacity to be horrifying. So, Nordhaus has a model to predict the future cost of global warming on our income, or derived from some kind of GDP cost figure. You trust that model, an economics model, over the physics models? Why?
His meta-survey paper where there is a 2% to 4% effect on income figure states this:
https://cowles.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/pub/d20/d2096.pdf
“One question that had been raised by scholars was whether the Tol estimates were accurate. We therefore endeavored to replicate the estimates of the Tol studies. Of the original 14 estimates, 7 were found to be incorrect or not replicable. In the final revision in 2014 (a correction of a correction), we found that of 21 estimates, 10 were found to be inaccurate or not replicable. ...
An additional warning is that the impact estimates are generally not comprehensive. They often cover key sectors such as agriculture, sea-level rise, energy, and forestry. Most do not include many non-market impacts, and the quantifications of non-market impacts that do exist are generally just guesses. As examples, estimates of the losses from ecosystems or damages from melting permafrost are omitted or unreliable. This point suggests that the figures examined here are likely to be underestimates of true damages. ...
a final conclusion, we emphasize the limited nature of work on impacts. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of impact studies in different areas such as health, agriculture, energy, ecosystems, and coastal structures. However, very few are comprehensive both in sectors and regions.”
Sounds like he is saying the results are crap. (Nordhaus btw is full on the train of reducing CO2 ASAP).
Other than the physics models that you say can’t be used to model the Earth, even though they are good for other planets, stars, smaller local phenomena, and basically any product from the super complex down to the simplest problem.
Why do you think modeling the Earth can’t be done again? You are saying you don’t think we can model the Earth, why?