And 400 years ago, when it was as hot as now, and many, many times in the last few million years when it was hotter yet, you couldn’t blame the human race for it. Yet the planet survived, and some climate changes may have made it possible for humans to exist.
Just throwing that in to the mix.
Your 400 years ago claim - where was it hotter? How much of the icecaps had melted compared to now? I suggest you’re talking about a localized warming - e.g. England was growing grapes really well and made good wine - but not something that was melting 200,000 year old glaciation.
The difference between then and now is the enormity of the population as it stands, and the large numbers of people and economies in coastal regions. Take China. Nearly the entire economy of China is in Shenyang, Shanghai, Fujian, Hong Kong, Guanzhou and Macau. The rest of the country is still pretty badly off. A rise of two metres in sea level knocks out pretty much the whole of the economic production zone.
Anyway, the big idea is carbon trading. First, the governments have to impose quotas and taxation for carbon emission, and secondly, allow a free-market style trading of pollution stocks. Companies that play it well make profit and can pollute, companies that can’t go to the wall.
Unlike the EU’s piss-poor performance in this sphere recently, though, they need to be stringently enforced.
Any hydrogen used in a combustion process is going to produce water vapor. Whether its pure hydrogen or in compound form. The easiest (not necessarily the best) solution to automobile emissions would be to run something like a hydrogen peroxide based fuel (H2O2). We could burn this tomorrow using existing engine technology (with revised induction systems). We could also use existing distribution nodes.
I’m not totally discounting the certificates but I’m not seeing anything that looks like a balance sheet or summary of transactions. The mere mention of “non-profit” makes me wish I was one of the starving directors of organizations like the Sierra Club (which is one of the lowest paying of the big enviro groups).
If I find myself trying to cut down on carbs I will probably invest directly in a company that is building environmentally friendly generators. That way I can look at the mandatory financial statements that come with stock ownership.
My husband has a theory that the pause in rising temperatures during the 1940-60s or thereabouts (which some have used to argue against global warming) was due to dust kicked into the upper atmosphere by all the nuclear testing going on.
So, perhaps we could initiate a gynormous dust storm on purpose?
Actually he might be on to something (not the nuke thing). During 9/11 there was a measurable change in average temerature due to the lack of vapor trails from the grounded A/C. Supposedly there was a 1 degree average rise in temperature which is a huge change. If this holds true then we may very well be able to affect the temperature of the planet by varying the amount of water vaport we put into the atmosphere. It would be nothing to pay airlines to use water injection on their engines. Might even be able to dump all the recycled beer at high altitude.
As we speak there are studies being done to see if we can affect the temperature of ocean water over large areas (the rise of which makes hurricanes more intense).
I can only imagine how much comfort that idea gives to the dinosaurs.
My point is that for the reasons mentioned, manmade water vapor simply isn’t a major factor in climate. Yes, we might be able to alter the amount…but it would probably take several orders of magnitude increase in the amount to start to make a significant difference to the global climate for the reasons that I mentioned.
The point is that there is a natural balance in the cycle of plants absorbing carbon and then it being liberated when they decay or burn in fires. Yes, land use changes (such as planting trees on the positive side or burning down large areas of Amazon rainforest on the negative side) have some effects…and are important to consider. But, ultimately the predominant effect that has caused an increase of ~35% in CO2 levels since the industrial revolution is the liberation of carbon that has been locked away for many millions of years in the form of fossil fuels.
I believe there is a fair bit of dispute about this. Needless to say, it wasn’t a very controlled experiment…and it was a one-time thing so it is hard to get good statistics on it.
I’m not sure quite what you are getting at, i.e. how you imagine that the temperature of the ocean water can be controlled. It takes a huge amount of energy to change the temperature of the oceans…which is why nearly all of the excess energy that has been absorbed due to the anthropogenic greenhouse effect (I seem to recall numbers around 90%) has gone into heating the oceans. I suppose one could try to drive up cooler waters from lower down in the ocean; is that what was being studied?
I haven’t yet read all the other posts so someone may already have said this. Whatever is a “cost” to one person is an “income” to another. What it really will cause is dislocation by distributing costs and income differently from now. One thing this means that the elite, high corporate executives will have to really earn their salaries and benefits which is reason enough for them to oppose taking any action.
And a quick scan of the posts indicates to me that it didn’t take long for that which was to be taken as given to become the certer of the argument.
Fair enough. Sorry if I was rude earlier, but it felt like you were implying everything I posted wasn’t true.
I am actually starting to worry about green certs now too. I don’t know if spending $20/month or so will actually fund something meaningful or if it’ll just go to a coffee break. But I guess you run into that problem with everything like that. If you give $20 to charity you don’t know for certain what you get with that $20, if it actually makes a difference or not. I am not able to supply my own renewable energies as I live in an apartment now but I would if I could.
As far as water vapor I don’t think we can change it in any meaningful way anytime soon. it took 250 years to increase CO2 levels from 280 to 380 ppm. Water vapor is a weaker greenhouse gas and I don’t think it is going to cause any climate change for centuries or millenium in a hydrogen economy, even if it does affect water vapor levels in climate. Water vapor makes up about 15,000-30,000 ppm. I’m not an expert on the subject, but the amount of water vapor put into the atmosphere will be relatively low and there seems to be alot more leeway in the ppm levels than with things like carbon dioxide. There is also speculation that water vapor has a feedback loop where it just rains if too much vapor gets into the atmosphere.
Do you have a cite for: 1. A change in average temperature after 9/11 and 2. The reason being lack of airplanes flying?
My guess is that he is referring to this paper (see also this CNN report on it). All that they can really say is that the diurnal (max-min) temperature range during the 3-day period of Sept 11-14 was unusually large and that the two surrounding 3-day periods by contrast had a slightly below average range. They can’t really show cause-and-effect although they do try to argue that because it is a fairly strong statistical outlier, at least part of this large diurnal temperature range is likely due to the contrail effect. (They can’t tell if the net effect is warming or cooling…because simple arguments suggest that contrails would have a tendency both raise the nighttime temps and lower the daytime temps.) I have heard a counterargument that one knows that there was an unusually broad high-pressure system over much of the U.S. during that period and that could account for the higher diurnal temperature range (although they argue that the weather nationwide was such that there should not have been a strong net effect of this sort).
In this post, the RealClimate give their opinion on the general contrail effect:
(I actually find the Minnis et al. paper to be pretty confusingly written, as their estimate of the radiative forcing seems quite tiny and yet they somehow make an estimate of the temperature effect that is not so small.)
An observation about agricultural land: We here in The Heartland (cue “America the Beautiful”) have a constant conversation about land being taken out of production as rich farmland is built over and water taken off the land for municipal use. Historically, we don’t seem to be able to resist building on farmland, thus destroying the very thing that makes it so attractive in the first place. It’s possible that global warming could actually create new farmland, and at the same time turn the old, overbuilt farmland into a Phoenix-like desert perfect for old folks and recreation but good for little else.
Also, the History Channel recently presented a 2-hour special on the “Little Ice Age,” and the environmental disasters – mostly agricultural – that occurred over the course of 400-500 years. Humankind had almost no technology to deal with that, and completely lacked any understanding of what was happening.
By the way, back on the subject of the OP. There has been a fairly vigorous debate about whether or not we already have the technologies available to solve the climate problem. The IPCC report said: “… known technological options could achieve a broad range of atmospheric CO2 stabilization levels, such as 550 ppm, 450 ppm or below over the next 100 years or more. … Known technological options refer to technologies that exist in operation or pilot plant stage today. It does not include any new technologies that will require drastic technological breakthroughs. …” This review article in Science says, basically, “No, we can’t. Significant technological breakthroughs are needed.” Then, this article counters by saying that by combining a variety of currently-available technologies, one can in fact be on track for such CO2 stabilization scenarios over the next 50 years. From the abstract:
I saw this on a Nova program about global dimming and the suspected decrease in evaporation.
Quote: DAVID TRAVIS: We found that the change in temperature range during those three days was just over one degree centigrade. And you have to realize that from a layman’s perspective that doesn’t sound like much, but from a climate perspective that is huge.
If it was anything other than Nova or Frontline I wouldn’t even post it. I found it interesting and worth reading as part of this thread. They also talk about the risk of destabilizing the methane hydrates (in frozen form) on the bottom of the ocean which would be a serious problem if it occured on a large scale.
What I don’t have at hand is an article about experiments to cool ocean water but I did find an interesting article on the cooling effect of volcanoes.
I didn’t take it as such and I was actually going to apologize for inferring that you were wasting your money. I simply have no idea. I must have been born in Missouri in a former life because I want to be shown everything.
The thought behind the thought was my state’s e-check program. They basically taxed people in target areas $10 to check cars that are run by computers. The environmental return on investment was probable a negative number because of the low rate of failure combined with an extra trip to the e-check station. IMO it would have been better to tax EVERYONE in the state and use it on power company rebates for clean air projects.
By the way, today’s New York Times has an article about geo-engineering solutions to combat climate change. My general take on this has always been to be leery of what I see as the “swallow a spider to catch the fly” approach to the problem, but I guess it is worth doing some research on in case we really find our backs against the wall.
Doesn’t really matter if it comes out of a tailpipe or a burning tree. The solution should be cost effective whether it’s a reduction in total emissions or a change in ocean evaporation rates.
when you look at climate change there are things we can’t easily change now. The deserts of Africa are a function of the Himalayan mountain range and not global warming. Their tectonic rise over time has changed global weather patterns over an entire continent. Its a natural phenomenon that we will eventually be able to alter but not through environmental changes.
http://www.physorg.com/news70386548.html
Energy efficiency is overlooked as a way to fight climate change. I think cars in the 70s got about 13mpg. With hybrid and carbon fiber cars you can get 70mpg. So fuel efficiency is able to be 5x what it was just a few decades ago. Modern refrigerators use half the energy of 1970 models and are still improving.
Alll in all though we can’t fix global warming as of 2006. There are a multitude of technologies we can use now that weren’t affordable 20-30 years ago like wind, carbon fiber autos, hybrids, energy efficient appliances, new nuclear designs, but they aren’t enough to stop global warming. In the next 10-20 years we will have made solar, carbon capture, plug in hybrids and other new technologies feasable as well.
I agree. By the way, Gavin Schmidt at RealClimate just did [on geo-engineering solutions.
And, lest we forget, climate change is not the only thing we need to worry about from the buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere. There is also the less-well-studied issue of [url=http://www.livescience.com/environment/050630_oceans_acid.html]ocean acidifcation](]a post[/url).