Global Warming

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
81

OF course more and more cuts are necessary – did you read my last post? There is a limit to the atmospheric CO2 concentration we can allow. Climatologists don’t know where it is exactly, but all agree that 750ppm is past it. If we reduce emissions to near 1990 levels as per Kyoto, guess what? We still end up reaching the limit, only not so quickly.

So, if the US doesn’t even accept Kyoto, it effectively presses the accelerator towards the limit rather than the brake. Any miracle alternative technologies will have to be invented and implemented worldwide even more quickly. If Kyoto is unrealistic, this is just plain la la land.

Nuclear is not a magic wand. I advocate its increased use as a lesser of evils, but you realise that “90% nuclear” means everyone owning electric cars and the invention of an electric or emissionless jet engine within 2 decades? I think people will feel vastly more inconvenienced by a 90% nuclear society than one in which increased nuclear is one of, say, a more complete portfolio of 15 feasible strategies. In any case, the UK government has concluded, on what worryingly seems like a very solid evidential basis, that the nuclear ‘solution’ is actually no solution at all.

Like I said in the OP, Anthropogenic Climate Change denial is dead in professional and academic climatology. The sceptics you see are not climatologists.

The models are as solid as in many other sciences. Yes, there are large error bars, but you are effectively asking for proof that the climate is not modelled by the absolute most optimistic region at the bottom of all such error bars. As scr4 says, I might just as well ask you for proof that reducing CO2 won’t result in anything but the absolute least detrimental estimated effect on the global economy.

82

No, in the world – it’s only in the last few decades that the US has attained 20% of global emissions.

Receding quicker than ever, mind you.

Well, Europe has managed it and I don’t feel particularly ‘curtailed’.

Pollution is a separate issue, but they are involved in the next wave of talks. In any case, I think they’re rather antitled to say “You’ve had your share of emissions, now it’s our turn while you curb your flatulence.

Of course the Earth has undergone far more extreme events in its 5 billion years. Life on Earth will continue. Humanity will almost certainly continue too, barring highly pessimistic models which could release sea-floor methane and make the atmosphere toxic. But we can slow this warming enough to buy time to implement alternative energy strategies, making the consequences for our grandchildren less extreme.

83

It looks like Global Cooling could be coming into play again, what with the massive* drop in average worldwide temperature over the last few years!

Oh, then you must check out this informative article from the noted Theodoric of York :D.

*[sub] massive - as in a massive area, like, the whole earth, dude; not massive in the sense of a large temperature change. ;)[/sub]

84

Yes, I read your last post…I was kind of playing off of it. And yes, I well realized that ‘more and more cuts are necessary’. That was kind of the point I was trying to get around too.

Do you think the US is doing nothing to cut emmisions…Kyoto or no Kyoto? And that we haven’t been doing anything for the past few decades? Not exactly throwing ‘the accelerator towards the limit’.

And again, your arguement hinges on the ‘fact’ that Kyoto will actually be able to make a measurable difference (even assuming all the countries signed on actually meet the goals).

To me by NOT putting the brakes on our economy and by encouraging innovation we will more rapidly move past the need for fuels that emit CO2. By putting on the breaks we will stifle innovation because we will be focusing inward (not to mention the very real danger that our economies will either collapse and at the very least take a very negative downturn during one of your ‘more and more cuts’ iterations post-Kyoto adoption).

Allow the price of gas to continue to rise with the market (hell, increase the taxes on it for that matter) and eventually technologies will be available that WILL overshadow our current technologies…and people will willingly (even eagerly) adopt them because it will make economic sense. And we will have done it without wrecking or seriously hampering our economy.

Put your hand down on broken glass to break the fall or run faster. I say run faster and close the window more quickly in which we continue to use our current technology and thus stop a large percentage of emmissions perminently…instead of dragging out that window of use over a longer period while perhaps marginally cutting emmissions. YMMV and obviously does.

(oh yeah…and hope you guys are right that humans ARE a major contributor to Global Climatic Change…because if we are only a bit player we will STILL have the problem even if our new technology cuts emmissions down to almost zero)

No, ‘“90% nuclear” means everyone owning electric cars and the invention of an electric or emissionless jet engine within 2 decades?’ isn’t what I was saying when I said ‘90% nuclear’. Sorry if I was unclear. I mean in power manufacturing we need to be ‘90%’ nuclear…i.e. no more coal or oil fired power plants. ‘90% nuclear’ was a rough guess off the top of my head factoring in other ‘clean’ sources like geothermal, wind, solar and hydroelectric. So, if we could achieve ‘90% nuclear’ in a decade or two (probably be difficult by not impossible…Europe expecially is already well on the way, at least in countries like France) we WOUD cut our emmissions quite a bit…just by doing that.

As to the problem of personal transport that is a problem already being researched. Let the market decide what technology emerges on top…within a decade at most SOMETHING will. I know that Toyota is poised to release a hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicle by 2015…and I think GM by 2012 IIRC. Hybrid technology is also being heavily researched, as are alternative bio-fuels. Battery technology is also being heavily researched (and with all those nuke plants you’d have plenty of juice for them). Even solar seems to be finally taking off. As gas prices rise higher and higher a lot of these technologies waiting in the wings or not quite ready for prime time (yet) will become economically feasible…hell, they will be highly in demand. Instead of relying on good intentions I put my faith in greed. :stuck_out_tongue:

I’m not going to address your worries about nuclear here…its not really the place for them. I will only say that its YOU guys who are filling us with all this gloom and doom (cut emmissions or DIRE things will happen!!)…so, if its that vital then this would be a major solution to the ‘problem’, no? As you said, lesser of two evils and all that.

-XT

85

Getting to “90% nuclear” is achievable, but is in no circumstances possible in just 10 years. The US will be hard-pressed to get even a single plant built in that time, let alone the hundreds necessary to meet this goal. The French and other substantially nuclear powered nations built up their capacity over 40 years.

Secondly, there is not an infinite supply of unmined uranium. If all the world’s electricity at today’s comsumption rates were nuclear-generated, there are enough known uranium reserves for a whole decade. And we have a better idea of uranium reserves than oil, it being radioactive and all. So we go all-nuclear and in 20 years’ time we need to find yet another energy source. And that’s putting aside the calculations that building, running, and decommissioning a nuclear plant releases a pretty significant amount of carbon all by itself. Nuclear is not the magic answer.

86

Anyway, what I came in here to comment on what this:

The amount of carbon not in the atmosphere is irrelevant to the discussion of how much humans have contributed to atmospheric carbon. The “human contribution to atmospheric carbon in the form of CO2” is actually pretty significant, having increased the concentration by roughly one third in 150 years. If Essenhigh really compares the amount humans have increased CO2 in the atmosphere against the total carbon reservoir to reach his “less than 5 percent” figure, as Cecil says, then he pretty much loses all credibility. And shame on Cecil for not pointing that out.

87

Well, I did say it would be difficult and take a major commitment. And I acknowledge that a single decade would probably be impossible. However, there are new plant designs (in China and South Africa) that are much easier to build and operate (they are cheaper too)…so if we could ever get the enviro-nutballs out of the way we could at least get started.

IIRC there are hundreds if not thousands of years of uranium reserves…even if we go 100% nuclear. By THAT time we will have figured out fusion (only a decade away, right? :wink: )…or something else will present itself. And this is making the assumption that we stay right here on this rock in the next 1000 odd years. If we range out there is a whole solar system full of uranium out there waiting to be had.

-XT

88

I think you are confusing a reserve and resoource. Reserves have no real bearing on this discussion, Theyare simply well explored and test mined deposit that we know can be profitably extracted right now. They tell us exactly nothing about how much of the stuff is actually out there because once all stakeholders own what they consider a sufficent reserve they quit exploration.

We have exactly the same idea of uranium reserves as we do of oil reserves. That is whythey ar eboth reserves.

If you are misusuing the term reserve and are referring to resources then you are way off base. We have very little idea about uranium resources because the material is in a masive surplus, thus exploration has been limited.

That’s not even close to being true. We covered this in this thread.

We have enough conventional fuel for about 25 years if we need to switch to an entirely nuclear economy tomorrow. Using just seawater and phosphates as fuel we could manage about 300 years. Using just fast breeders and conventional Uranium supplies we could manage about 400 years. But using seawater and fast breeders we could sustain our society on just nuclear and hydro for about 10, 000 years.

Depends entirely on how you define ‘significant’. I say that it is insignificant.

89

Literally nothing? No, its emission rates have fallen slightly, but still not anywhere near back to 1990 levels, and the emission per capita is still a gargantuan 25 tons CO2 equivalent.

The emission rate is vastly greater (ie. the progress towards the limit has vastly accelerated) compared to decades ago.

The US is the most important signatory of all in this respect, given its colossal 20% share of global emissions for less than 5% of global population. If the US slows the progress towards the limit, the total progress towards the limit will be significantly affected even if that slack is taken up by China and India: the US would not be making further additional progress.

Thus meeting Kyoto anyway, like Russia, you mean? The limit thankfully remains further away in either case.

Agreed – enormous increases in fuel tax is partly how other countries have reduced emissions. Again, we seem to be agreeing on the necessity for all kinds of government-enforced mechanisms in order to reduce emissions to 1990 levels and lower. Kyoto was merely a signed intention to do so. What’s the fuss?

Oh, well in that case, even 100% non-emitting power plants within 20 years (which is still as fantastic as any environmentalist’s policies) still yields enough emissions from other sources (ie. engines of one sort or another) that progress will still be made towards the limit, and at the current 3ppm per year increase those 20 years of transition will still be a massive 60 ppm step towards it. The multi-trillion budget must be ratified by Congress within the next few years to even get close to what France has achieved over many decades. Again, is this as realistic as other measures seeking to cut demand instead?

Of course, I sincerely hope so too. But we’ve been saying the same for decades on this subject, too.

OK, but read that link – the difficulties are very genuine, as much as I wish that they weren’t. Nuclear would only be the lesser evil if it was a solution, and this suggests it may very well not be.

And YOU guys are the gloomy ones in terms of dire economic consequences for cutting emissions, note.

90

Much of the debate here has been centered on the Science of global warming, and whether Kyoto “works”

What about the politics?

What about Kyoto as a symbol of “yes we care, yes we can do something, and yes we are doing something”?

By not signing Kyoto, the US (and those nations they have enticed to join them in their “alternative” agreement) are saying there is no problem. Whatever is being done now could be so much greater if a real commitment was made.

The best example I can think of is the CFC / Ozone layer debate, here we pushed the panic button, and eliminated the use of CFC in new products basically overnight, the latest figures I see are that now the Ozone layer is actually starting to grow again.

Will sticking to Kyoto be difficult and expensive for the US? Undboubtably. Is it going to cause the economy to self destruct - definitley not (although many people may lose money on oil stocks :rolleyes: ) And just think of the benefits to be had if the US is actually able to lead the world in “energy efficient” technology (as I am sure they are able if they are motivated enough to throw their weight behind research)

In short, does something need to be done? - YES
Is Kyoto the full answer? - NO, but to cite a truism, even a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.

By not signing onto Kyoto, the US is essentially saying, this is too difficult, I don’t want to take the first step, a position that I find reprehensible and indefensible.

91

Ha! You got me there. Good point and good post SM. :stuck_out_tongue:

-XT

92

As has been pointed out already here with this link, the idea that global cooling ever was the consensus view in the scientific community is a pernicious myth. One popular book by a scientist and a few articles in news magazines or popular science magazines do not a consensus make. Most importantly, when the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the organization that we have precisely to weigh in on these sorts of things, was asked to produced a report about climate back in the mid-1970s, they rightfully concluded that at that time the future of the earth’s climate could not be predicted (as they understood that there were warming influences due to greenhouse gases but also cooling influences due to sulfate aerosols from pollution and a long-term expectation of cooling…on time scales of millenia and more…due to the natural glacial-interglacial oscillations). They recommended further study.

Now, fast-forward 30 years later and here is what the U.S. National Academy of Sciences has to say, in a joint statement with the academies of 10 other major nations:

So, the question is, why exactly are we supposed to ignore this view of the scientific community?

93

This is exactly the sort of bogus crap masquerating as science that fools the uninformed. If you even bother to look up the graph of global temperatures produced by the “Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia” which he cites, you will see that it does not support his conclusion in anyway. Yes, according to them, the year 1998 is still the hottest on record. However, as you can see, 1998 was an incredible anomaly at the time it occurred (being produced by what was called the El Nino of the Century). Global warming does not mean that there are no natural variations in the climate system, just as the fact that it generally warms from winter to summer does not mean that it was not cooler last Saturday here in Rochester than it was for most of January. As you can see, although 1998 still holds the record according to these researchers, the last 4 places are the 2nd-5th hottest in the instrumental record. [And, by the way, NASA’s estimate of global temperatures actually put 2005 a tiny bit ahead of 1998…which is pretty incredible given the highly anomalous El Nino in 1998 and the fact that 2005 as a whole was almost neutral on the El Nina - La Nina scale.]

Does it bother you that this Bob Carter person found it necessary to massively deceive you to make his argument?!?

94

That should read “the last 4 years”. I also forgot to note the obvious fact that the trend continues up by any reasonable averaging method such as the one shown by the black line (although I wouldn’t hold much stock in the downward curvature in the last couple of years since it is not clear what assumption they are using for the data beyond 2005 in order to apply their temporal filtering technique).

95

Sorry, I’ve been out, you know full time job, 5 kids and all…

You do see the irony in taking one scientist’s word to denigrate my position, don’t you?

Even when General Relativity came out, you wouldn’t find scientific papers opposing Newton’s Theory. General Relativity provided context for Newton’s theory, it did not invalidate it. General Relativity has/had competitors, but pretty much every scientist accepts it at the classical level (nonquantum and discounting really large distances). A similar study of abstracts would show a similar result to the study I quoted for global warming.

Evolutionary theory was certainly controversial when it came out, and genetics was necessary before a mechanism could be found. Religious American right or not, a similar study of papers in biology would provide similar results to the study I quoted for global warming.

Quantum mechanics was controversial when it came out, and some pretty notable scientist objected to either it or parts of it. (Einstein famously never accepted it. Dirac never accepted renormalization in field theory.) However, a similar study of papers in physics would show a similar result to the study I quoted for global warming.

Why? Because GR, evolution, and QM are theories, and so interpretations of fact, that are fully accepted within their respective communities, if not outside. People just don’t publish papers arguing with those theories. That an analysis of almost 1000 papers published over a 10 year period did not find a single one opposing global warming (as described by IPCC) indicates that the field has reached consensus.

Does a field reaching a consensus mean what your favorite experts claim? Seems to me the question is best answered by considering theories that have become the consensus. I know the history of physics better than that of other fields. In most cases I can think of, one consensus might replace another in the sense that one theory places another in context, but I can only think of two cases in which the consensus might be considered to have been wrong: the age of the earth, and light as a wave or particle. In the former case, before the discovery of radioactivity, physics could not explain the facts it had and have the world be millions of years old. Geology and biology could not explain their facts with a world only a few thousands of years old. I don’t know if Lord Kelvin’s position was the consensus or not within the field of physics, but it might have been. After radioactivity was discovered, the consensus became that the earth was at least millions of years old, with Lord Kelvin in the position of “religious herectic”.

It is certainly true that the consensus within physics was the consensus view was that light was a wave. (Ironically, Lord Kelvin is supposed to have remarked that the consensus held because the advocates of light as a particle were all dead.) Quantum mechanics, of course, showed that light is both/neither.

96

I’m afraid you do not RC; at current consumption rates there are 50 years of cheaply accessible reserves and 150-200 years of expensive reserves (cites below). I love the “something else will present itself” :slight_smile:

By the nuclear industry’s own figures (cites below) we have 50 years’ worth of cheaply accessible uranium at current consumption rates, 150-200 years’ of expensive uranium. Nuclear now supplies 16% of the world’s electrity, so dividing those figures by 6 to get to 100% nuclear we have 4 years’ worth of cheap uranium and 25-35 years’ worth of expensive uranium.
… the provable uranium reserves amount to approximately 50 years supply at the current level of consumption with current technology, with another 150 years of additional reserves.

… the world’s present measured resources of uranium in the lower cost category … are enough to last for some 50 years … if those covering estimates of all conventional resources are considered - 9.7 million tonnes (beyond the 3.5 Mt known economic resources), which is some 140 years’ supply at today’s rate of consumption.

… today’s low uranium cost equates to about 50 years of assured resources (3.5 Mt) using conventional reactors at the current usage rate, a doubling of the market price increases this time roughly ten-fold. In all, conventional estimated resources (today’s assured resources plus that not yet economical to mine) account for about 200 years’ supply (13.2 Mt) at the current consumption rate.

97

Maybe the politics of Kyoto is not what you are reading into it. Maybe the politics of Kyoto is not what the US is saying to the world, but what the world community, i.e., UN hangers on, NGOs, and the politicians of failed or tottering states, are saying to us: “We are the elite. We are the smart and sophisticated who attend conferences at Davos and hobnob with movie celebrities. We are the believers in socialism who live in million euro flats. But our countries are in free fall, or in slow decline, or in stagnancy, and our citizens are every day more and more dependent on social systems that are creaking louder and crumbing faster. We don’t want to treat our citizens with respect, as adults, and give them the freedom needed to have vibrant economies. That would rob us of our purpose and of our privileges and of pride. But you, the US, grow richer and more powerful, and many of our most productive citizens flock to your shores. Your unemployment rate is half or a third or a tenth of what ours is. Your growth rate is twice or ten times what ours is. We envy you. We cannot emulate you and preserve our sense of moral superiority, so we must do our best to bring you down. We don’t care that, even without signing Kyoto, you are lowering emissions faster and better than many of us. You are doing it without damaging your economy, and that isn’t what we had in mind. Somehow we must make you bow your head and acknowledge our importance. We are the world. Hear us roar. Oh, and by the way, did you send this month’s check?”

98

Do you understand the term “strawman”, AMJo?

99

dufus

the earth’s orbital movements have taken it into a region where the solar radience will lessen, yes putz we have entered the next ice age. the only event stopping this is the increase in so called “green house” gases which hold that precious radience. so i say burn all the hydrocarbons and fart my friend, STOP THE ICE AGE NOW.

awarakomski

100

awarakomski. Take a few moments to acquaint yourself with the rules of the Board. You’ll find that you can’t use insults such as “dufus” and “putz” outside of the Pit forum.

And the spelling, grammar, punctuation, capitalization police will be along in a moment to thrash you. Enjoy your stay.

samclem moderator in General Questions