View Full Version : Global Temperatures/Global Carbon Emissions in 2010
Back in January the BBC reported that the average Global temperatures hit a record high (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12241692) for 2010 and today the BBC reports that global carbon dioxide emissions for 2010 hit a record high (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13595174).
Could there be a connection or could it be just purely coincidental? :confused
Although getting prepared for yet another bad rep from our troll, what about this:
'Fifty million years ago, temperatures soared to unprecedented levels and the seas became a staggering 12C hotter than today. But researchers have found this massive warming had little to do with carbon dioxide, the main cause of today's climate changes. The trigger was instead rising levels of methane, ozone and nitrous oxide, gases that are accorded relatively scant attention by current climate treaties'....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2004/jul/11/science.environment
Although getting prepared for yet another bad rep from our troll, what about this:
'Fifty million years ago, temperatures soared to unprecedented levels and the seas became a staggering 12C hotter than today. But researchers have found this massive warming had little to do with carbon dioxide, the main cause of today's climate changes. The trigger was instead rising levels of methane, ozone and nitrous oxide, gases that are accorded relatively scant attention by current climate treaties'....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2004/jul/11/science.environment
50 million years ago for goodness sake? How has that any bearing on what is happening today?
EDIT: Oh I see, you are actually acknowledging that greenhouse gases like methane etc do cause global warming, but now anthropological carbon dioxide is driving climate change then I see the point.
secrets in symmetry
30-May-11, 20:19
Back in January the BBC reported that the average Global temperatures hit a record high (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12241692) for 2010 and today the BBC reports that global carbon dioxide emissions for 2010 hit a record high (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13595174).
Could there be a connection or could it be just purely coincidental? :confused
What I find really strange is a typical educated man in the street's reaction...
He has heard that fossil (or ice, or whatever) records indicate that global temperate rises predated increases in atmospheric CO2. He then concludes that CO2 doesn't cause global temperature rises.
In other words, if A causes B, then B doesn't cause A.
This is odd because he usually thinks that if A causes B, then B causes A.
Of course, neither of these two conclusions is correct. You need more information and more understanding, and that is provided to us by scientists. The man in the street's opinion is essentially worthless.
secrets in symmetry
30-May-11, 20:21
Although getting prepared for yet another bad rep from our troll, what about this:
'Fifty million years ago, temperatures soared to unprecedented levels and the seas became a staggering 12C hotter than today. But researchers have found this massive warming had little to do with carbon dioxide, the main cause of today's climate changes. The trigger was instead rising levels of methane, ozone and nitrous oxide, gases that are accorded relatively scant attention by current climate treaties'....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2004/jul/11/science.environment
Lol! This is a perfect (but different) example of the point I made in my previous post!
It's totally irrelevant, can't you see that?
John Little
30-May-11, 20:52
Lol! This is a perfect (but different) example of the point I made in my previous post!
It's totally irrelevant, can't you see that?
Well you are puzzling me.
It looks perfectly relevant to me.
Please explain why it is not.
50 million years ago for goodness sake? How has that any bearing on what is happening today?
EDIT: Oh I see, you are actually acknowledging that greenhouse gases like methane etc do cause global warming, but now anthropological carbon dioxide is driving climate change then I see the point.
You asked..Well Rheghead, I'd like to debate with you, but bearing in mind your comment at 15.35 today:
"They [Orgers} don't debate with me for fear of having their views totally shattered. People only believe what they want to believe and like the comfy zone."
I think I'll leave you to your illusions..
John Little
30-May-11, 21:51
"They [Orgers} don't debate with me for fear of having their views totally shattered. People only believe what they want to believe and like the comfy zone."
[/QUOTE]
Good grief!
That's almost worth a thread to debate! :eek::eek:
"They [Orgers} don't debate with me for fear of having their views totally shattered. People only believe what they want to believe and like the comfy zone."
Good grief!
That's almost worth a thread to debate! [/QUOTE]
Ah well boys will be boys.;)
What I don't get is why with all this change in Global Temperatures am I so cold and it is nearly June........ Just not right:~(
Good grief!
That's almost worth a thread to debate!
What I don't get is why with all this change in Global Temperatures am I so cold and it is nearly June........ Just not right:~([/QUOTE]
You're right, there and the winter was our worst for years!.. 'maybe' there's something in this; "Global temperatures increased for twenty years from the late 1970s to the late 1990s but have actually been cooling the last eleven years".
http://www.isthereglobalcooling.com/
And I see Canada's Conservative government has defeated a climate change bill calling for cuts in CO2 emissions. The bill called for a reduction of greenhouse gases in the country by 25% from 1990 levels.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11781175
Yoda the flump
31-May-11, 00:49
Time to build some more nuclear power stations then Rheg?
Time to build some more nuclear power stations then Rheg?
Yes there is, but and it is a big but.
What gets me about nuclear is that it is an amazing feat of human scientific endeavour and ingenuity but it will only provide a limited helping hand as a stop-gap source of energy in the short to medium term to allow us time to develop a whole range of renewable energy plants which will bring carbon dioxide levels down. In the long term, nuclear energy is not a low carbon energy source, its carbon footprint is ~110g CO2/kWh compared to wind <32g CO2/kWh. But scientists say we need to cut carbon emissions by 80% if we are to get real on global warming. Yes it is a lot better than coal or gas, but it is not nearly as low carbon as renewables and that is why it has a very limited role in tackling climate change. Furthermore, nuclear is not sustainable as a dominant feature of our energy mix, it currently provides only 4% of the UK energy, so if we went down the road of Germany who are getting rid of all their nuclear by 2022 and replace the energy by fossil fuels then we will only increase our carbon emissions by a very nominal amount, say 4%, a significant amount some would say but not enough justification re long term waste storage and operation risk to the environment and population.
And then there is the uranium fuel reserve problem, the more you burn up the more environmentally undesirable it becomes because uranium reserves are finite, reserves according to current literature suggest that they will last for ~80 years at current consumption rates. So to put it into perspective, nuclear will provide 4% of the affluent nations (France notwithstanding) energy for just 80 years, I'm afraid 80% of the rest of the world who can't afford or can't be trusted with it must lose out due to political or resource and technical reasons. So it depresses me when the West are acting so pious on carbon emissions due to nuclear when others are denied it, when it is largely the West who have historically been responsible for most of the anthropological CO2, so how can we convince the world to reduce their carbon emissions? Double standard?
Of course, we can say fast breeders will give us 60 times more energy out of that uranium and it is true, it probably could but at what cost? Yes the people of Caithness can get emotional about fastbreeders but conventional nuclear is already more expensive than onshore wind and I'll dare to surmise that fast breeding is quite expensive and on a par with current offshore.
But crikey, I'm not ideologically against nuclear like some, I see great improvements in safety with the AP1000, it is just I'm more pragmatic about nuclear energy's limitations in the Global context.
You're right, there and the winter was our worst for years!.. 'maybe' there's something in this; "Global temperatures increased for twenty years from the late 1970s to the late 1990s but have actually been cooling the last eleven years".
So it is not just my age or fond memories of long hot summers.;)
Since the "Little Ice Age" ended around 1850 we should be glad it's been getting warmer since then.
Global warming didn't stop in the late 1990s, the temperature records from various independent groups show this. Since 1998, 2005 and 2010 have been statistically hotter though the overlap on the uncertainties make them share the dubious title of the hottest years. The first decade of the 21st century was the hottest on record.
But global warming did stop in 2010.
Perhaps I was wrong about global warming stopping in 2010? Just watched the BBC weather report and the guy said it was Britain's driest and warmest Spring since records began.
The sorry fact is that no government in the world would be, or is, actually prepared to take the measures really needed to tackle this problem.
I am very lucky and have no children and am quite old. My time here will remain reasonbly comfortable. Those of you who are under 30 or have children-sorry its going to get very difficult to maintain a standard of living anything like you are used to.:(
The Worlds Going To End (2012)
George Brims
03-Jun-11, 06:39
50 million years ago for goodness sake? How has that any bearing on what is happening today?
Well it's the same planet...
George Brims
03-Jun-11, 06:42
"Global temperatures increased for twenty years from the late 1970s to the late 1990s but have actually been cooling the last eleven years".
Where did you get that idea? 2010 was equal to the hottest year on record (2005?).
That what it says on the tin - let's face it, there are no experts on here....
Cars. I'm a big fan. But.. to do anything serious about carbon emissions, which are very bad for people and the planet in general regardless of a) whether you believe in global warming at all b) whether you think we are responsible. We should have been driving Hydrogen Fuel Cell cars 20 years ago. This tech. is still years and years away from being practical. The current crop of 'new' plug in electric cars are technology from the 20th century and are a rather embarrassed attempt (forced by legislation) of the auto industry looking like they are doing something. And this is the problem (same with wind farms) it's all about looking like you are doing something.:roll:
If I were in power and wanted to seriously do something, I would ban the manufacture of cars world wide today. (still too late) That gives us approx 20 to 30 years (you can quite easily make cars last that long and a lot longer). to come up with an alternative.
Hows that for progressive! :eek:
You all will say oh waley waley what about all the people employed in the auto industry? Well, you are all for sacking all the bankers and NHS managers, these folk are doing a damn sight less harm than auto workers!
secrets in symmetry
03-Jun-11, 12:25
Well you are puzzling me.
It looks perfectly relevant to me.
Please explain why it is not.
The possibility that other greenhouse gases may have caused global warming 50 million years ago is not directly relevant to establishing whether current levels of CO2 are causing global warming now.
I was a bit sarcastic in my previous post.
secrets in symmetry
03-Jun-11, 12:38
We should have been driving Hydrogen Fuel Cell cars 20 years ago. This tech. is still years and years away from being practical. The current crop of 'new' plug in electric cars are technology from the 20th century and are a rather embarrassed attempt (forced by legislation) of the auto industry looking like they are doing something. And this is the problem (same with wind farms) it's all about looking like you are doing something.:roll:
Like many others on this forum, I learned a lot of what I know about this subject from David Mackay's book. This is a few years old now, but he certainly isn't (or wasn't) a fan of hydrogen fuel cell powered cars. He says:
I think hydrogen is a hyped-up bandwagon. I’ll be delighted to be proved wrong, but I don’t see how hydrogen is going to help us with our energy problems. Hydrogen is not a miraculous source of energy; it’s just an energy carrier, like a rechargeable battery. And it is a rather inefficient energy carrier, with a whole bunch of practical defects.
Read more of what he has to say here (http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c20/page_129.shtml)
Like many others on this forum, I learned a lot of what I know about this subject from David Mackay's book. This is a few years old now, but he certainly isn't (or wasn't) a fan of hydrogen fuel cell powered cars. He says:
I think hydrogen is a hyped-up bandwagon. I’ll be delighted to be proved wrong, but I don’t see how hydrogen is going to help us with our energy problems. Hydrogen is not a miraculous source of energy; it’s just an energy carrier, like a rechargeable battery. And it is a rather inefficient energy carrier, with a whole bunch of practical defects.
Read more of what he has to say here (http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c20/page_129.shtml)
Nothing is perfect and there is no such thing as a free lunch. I don't think they will ever work either and this highlights one of the problems, while effort and funding is constantly pumped into fashionable flavours of the month (that won't work), effort is not going into stuff that might.
secrets in symmetry
03-Jun-11, 13:04
Wind works. It may not be very good in a lot of ways, and you may not like it, but it works in that it generates electricity. It needs backup at the moment from fossil fuel power stations but they burn little gas when they are turned down low. Intermittent renewable sources like wind, wave and tide all need backup and/or energy storage. The latter will have to come eventually, but we are nowhere near it yet.
The man in the street is quick to criticise wind energy, electric cars and so on, but criticism is easy and cheap, and it's also tiresome. As Rheghead has explained, nuclear is fine but known uranium resources will only last of order a hundred years at current projected rates of consumption. Breeders would increase that time by up to two orders of magnitude, but the technology and infrastructure for a large scale breeder programme aren't there either. There are also obvious problems with cost, waste, security, etc. Other fuels such as thorium are worth exploring, but nuclear isn't a panacea for many reasons. For example, it's not renewable and you can't switch it on quickly.
In the long term, fusion will hopefully power us, but that's projected to be 50 years away, just as it was 50 years ago...
John Little
03-Jun-11, 13:37
The possibility that other greenhouse gases may have caused global warming 50 million years ago is not directly relevant to establishing whether current levels of CO2 are causing global warming now.
I was a bit sarcastic in my previous post.
Indeed - but perhaps un-necessarily so. You know as well as I do that no-one, even 'experts' have a monopoly of truth on this matter.
It is true that C02 levels have risen - but it is also true that there are volcanoes erupting continuously- and they pump out C02 on a massive scale. The earth has a certain capacity to absorb it... and yes I know that humans emit far more C02 than volcanoes - but volcanoes also put out other warmers such as Sulphur Dioxide, Chlorine etc which have an effect on climate.
There have been 4 ice ages and in each case the earth warmed. Factories, cars and airliners did not do that. The last ice age ended 10.000 years ago, which is the merest blink of an eye in geological time, not 50 million years. Why do you think it not directly relevant?
Kilauea has been erupting since the 1980s.
Why should I discount this?
http://www.volcanodiscovery.com/erupting_volcanoes.html
Global warming and the whys and wherefores of what causes it is a thing which exists wholly in the hypothetical - there is no such thing as proven truth in the matter.
There is a lobby which behaves as if it were all cut and dried.
If the earth is indeed warming up then why should it not be due to natural causes? At least in part?
A mixture of human and natural?
Why one or the other?
In the absence of a canon of undoubted evidence Bekisman's point seems eminently reasonable.
As to power, I would dearly love someone to explain to me why we are investing so many billions into renewables? Scotland and England together sit on known coal reserves enough to last for 600 years.
If the billions going into wind were put into research and development so that coal could be used in a clean way, then many of our economic problems would disappear, our mining industry be revitalised, hundreds of thousands of jobs created, the need for nuclear irrelevant and the prospect of power shortages bumped out of sight.
Is it beyond the wit of science to come up with a workable form of carbon capture so that this incredible resource may be used?
Mind you - it really would mean that Scotland would be independently wealthy!
Wind works. It may not be very good in a lot of ways, and you may not like it, but it works in that it generates electricity. It needs backup at the moment from fossil fuel power stations but they burn little gas when they are turned down low. Intermittent renewable sources like wind, wave and tide all need backup and/or energy storage. The latter will have to come eventually, but we are nowhere near it yet.
The man in the street is quick to criticise wind energy, electric cars and so on, but criticism is easy and cheap, and it's also tiresome. As Rheghead has explained, nuclear is fine but known uranium resources will only last of order a hundred years at current projected rates of consumption. Breeders would increase that time by an order of magnitude or more, but the technology and infrastructure for a large scale breeder programme aren't there either. There are also obvious problems with cost, waste, security, etc. Other fuels such as thorium are worth exploring, but nuclear isn't a panacea for many reasons. For example, it's not renewable and you can't switch it on quickly.
In the long term, fusion will hopefully power us, but that's projected to be 50 years away, just as it was 50 years ago...
All well and good and needs doing. The point I am trying to make is we are 'doing' 30 years too late, and we are not doing anything like enough even if we, as we should have, started in 1980s and not now. I was having these debates almost verbatum then.
Consequently, as I said before; old and no kids, so I've decided it ain't my problem and refuse to let it worry me anymore.
Sorry folks but I'll have to come off this thread, as I've been notified by secrets in symmetry that 'he' is a scientist and that "every one of your posts on that thread is rubbish" and "I don't think that adds much to the thread".. so, without more ado, I'll bow to your superior knowledge sir..
John Little
03-Jun-11, 19:09
Sorry folks but I'll have to come off this thread, as I've been notified by secrets in symmetry that 'he' is a scientist and that "every one of your posts on that thread is rubbish" and "I don't think that adds much to the thread".. so, without more ado, I'll bow to your superior knowledge sir..
Blimey Bekisman! If that's the case I will do likewise - mustn't argue with boffins!! :eek:
secrets in symmetry
03-Jun-11, 21:25
Bekisman, you committed two fouls in your last post. You quoted a private message on the open forum, and you quoted me out of context.
Scientists need integrity. So, in order to set the record straight, here is the message I sent Bekisman this morning:
You may not be a scientist but I am, and, from the way he posts, I think Rheghead is too. You may be trying to wind up Rheghead, and I don't object to that, but every one of your posts on that thread is rubbish, and I don't think that adds much to the thread I don't suppose many people have noticed Rheghead trying to wind up everyone else...
SiS
I know it's irrelevant, and as you say we're not scientist, I KNOW and accept this is immature, but I just love stirring reggy up - sorry can't help it.. only wish it was a serious discussion, but 'fraid with Rheggys rabid green agenda, it's pointless to do so.. what with a PM from him but a few short hors ago: "They [orgers] don't debate with me for fear of having their views totally shattered. People only believe what they want to believe and like the comfy zone." is that a narcissist or what?
Beks aka Pete
I see why Rheghead treats you like he does.
John Little, thank you for your considered reply. I will reply to your post when I have time.
Bekisman, you committed two fouls in your last post. You quoted a private message on the open forum, and you quoted me out of context.
Scientists need integrity. So, in order to set the record straight, here is the message I sent Bekisman this morning:
I see why Rheghead treats you like he does.
John Little, thank you for your considered reply. I will reply to your post when I have time.
Sir, that is one of the most pompous bits of unadulterated text I've read for some time.I take it sir that you are a climate scientist?, if not, you are as disbarred as myself to post on this thread..
I'm not in the least bothered what Rheghead thinks - I recently posted a piece about Greenpeace and Paul Watson in particular - this was an honest post, which for - at that time - some obscure reason, Rheghead decided to red rep me, (but, I hasten to add none others who's postings were rather abrupt) I have since been notified the reason why he did..
I see that John Little is next in line for a tongue lashing by you sir. Do we line up outside your office? (touches forelock and retreats backwards).. ;)
S IN S, the term Scientist is a bit general but you seem to suggest some kind of specific knowledge.
I know several scientists, one makes femail hygene products, another toothpast and another is a haemotologist.
I don't think any of them know any more than I about climate change.
Care to enlighten us about your field of endeavour?
S IN S, the term Scientist is a bit general but you seem to suggest some kind of specific knowledge.
I know several scientists, one makes femail hygene products, another toothpast and another is a haemotologist.
I don't think any of them know any more than I about climate change.
Care to enlighten us about your field of endeavour?
I take your point and understand what you are getting at but it works both ways. There are plenty of political journalists, retired energy utility directors, and scientists outwith the field climatology etc who seem to think they have a valid voice on the subject without doing any research and who get a disproportionate amount of publicity to get it over.
At least if a layman takes info from a proper source like from proper climatologists then I think it is valid. Trouble is, the true situation about climate change if you read what those climatologists are saying breath-takingly dire and nobody wants to hear it.
I take your point and understand what you are getting at but it works both ways. There are plenty of political journalists, retired energy utility directors, and scientists outwith the field climatology etc who seem to think they have a valid voice on the subject without doing any research and who get a disproportionate amount of publicity to get it over.
At least if a layman takes info from a proper source like from proper climatologists then I think it is valid. Trouble is, the true situation about climate change if you read what those climatologists are saying breath-takingly dire and nobody wants to hear it.
Ah. so you are giving an opinion based on a proper source of proper climatologists. It is also your opinion that nobody wants to hear the true situation, what a big assumtion to make. You might be correct in your opinions or you might also be very wrong but as even the experts on this subject do not agree I will continue to listen and appreciate all views on the subject.
I understand that "Scientists need integrity", but that's missing the point, I'm just a normal Joe in the street, I see, I hear, I read, I have no background in climate science, but try in my simple mind to understand what is happening to our world.. I have been informed that every post on this thread is 'rubbish" - basically because SIS is a scientist and by his own surmising Rheghead is also a scientist, a conclusion reached by 'the way he posts'..
Fair enough, but I would be a lot happier about the scientists who claim that humans are causing Global Warming if they present one piece of evidence to prove without doubt that we are doing so. So far they haven't. I am not sure that we are causing Global Warming, and if we are why should we try to stop it?
This is what is being said is rubbish in my postings.. so be it, but as I reiterate; I am not a climate scientist..
So shall we leave it at that, but before I go, I'd better mention that the above text from 'I would be a lot happier to - we try and stop it?' are not my words but a fellow traveller and scientist; Rheghead. Written on this forum the 10th February 2005. I do not enjoy 'trawling', but when a statement is entirely a U-turn, I am fascinated..
* http://forum.caithness.org/showthread.php?1893-Global-Warming&highlight=scientists+claim
So shall we leave it at that, but before I go, I'd better mention that the above text from 'I would be a lot happier to - we try and stop it?' are not my words but a fellow traveller and scientist; Rheghead. Written on this forum the 10th February 2005. I do not enjoy 'trawling', but when a statement is entirely a U-turn, I am fascinated..
* http://forum.caithness.org/showthread.php?1893-Global-Warming&highlight=scientists+claim
I think you do enjoy trolling through old threads, you have a long history of it.
Are you saying that nobody is allowed to change their view on a subject after considering all the evidence? At the time of that post I remember I had read some articles by Lindzen and Michaels, they are proper climatologists, they were convincing, trouble is they have failed to convince 99% of their colleagues.
And another point, the question of being 'sure' was mentioned. I am still not sure about Global Warming, the case for it is not 100%, that is sure. Science doesn't do 'sure'. Science does 'likely' and 'almost certain'.
Basically, there are 4 possible scenarios.
1) Anthropogenic global warming is false, but we do something about it anyway.
2) Anthropogenic global warming is false and we do nothing about it.
3) Anthropogenic global warming is true and we do something about it.
4) Anthropogenic global warming is true but we don't do anything about it.
The body of evidence is that it is true, according to the Stern report, we have much more to lose if we don't do anything about it. If on the much slimmer chance that Anthropogenic global warming is a load of rubbish and we don't do anything about it, then we face rising fuel prices, but if it is false and we do something about it then we still reap the benefits of a low carbon economy and cheaper fuel prices.
On balance we should do something.
Mystical Potato Head
05-Jun-11, 23:17
What do you mean science doesnt do sure?I thought there was the odd scientific 100% sure fact kicking around in the many "genres" of science.
As for not being sure about global warming,its happened before and will do so again.I just dont believe we can do anything about it,sure we can cut the emissions that are pumped into the atmosphere and have much better air quality,nothing wrong with that but i'm a firm believer that climate change is a cycle driven by the sun and its varying activityand the consequences of earths 26,000 year precession.A view that has a high number of followers in the astronomy community,not just enthusiastic bubbly amateurs like me but professionals as well.
On a much shorter timescale is sunspot activity.The sun goes through long periods of inactivity producing only around 50 for spells that average around 70 years.When the sun is active there would be over 50 000 during this period of time.
During the famous "little ice age" the thames froze over with several feet of ice prompting yearly winter festivals or frost fairs on the ice.This was during the last long spell of solar slumber known as the Maunder minimum.The last 4 periods of major inactivity have resulted in long periods of cooling so i think the evidence is there that the sun drives our climate.We are currently approaching the next solar maximum but after that,who knows,the next 70 year period of inactivity could begin with the next solar minimum around 2024-2025 and the temperatures will start to fall again.It wasnt so long ago that the scientific community were telling us we were heading for a period of global cooling,that didnt happen so whos to say that in another 20 years the solar activity or lack of it will result in a gradual decrease in temperatures.
Maybe i'm being naive but it just seems logical to me that the sun is the climate changer and is quite oblivious to our carbon emmissions,whether they increase or decrease.
Maunder minimum (1645-1715)
Spoerer Minimum (1420-1530)
Wolf Minimum (1280-1340,)
Oort Minimum (1010-1050)
As for not being sure about global warming,its happened before and will do so again.I just dont believe we can do anything about it,sure we can cut the emissions that are pumped into the atmosphere and have much better air quality,nothing wrong with that but i'm a firm believer that climate change is a cycle driven by the sun and its varying activityand the consequences of earths 26,000 year precession.A view that has a high number of followers in the astronomy community,not just enthusiastic bubbly amateurs like me but professionals as well.
I can understand why you doubt it and they are reasonable doubts. But there is something special about this period of warming. It is the rate at which it is happening, currently we are seeing ~0.2C per decade, if you look at each time the Earth came out of an ice age, the warming was ~0.01C per decade. It is staggeringly fast which animals and plants will bare the brunt.
Furthermore, if you doubt that man made GHGs are causing it, then the task to explain it is even harder and improbable.
A) What is causing the rise in Global temperatures if it isn't man made GHGs?
B) Since man made GHGs are being pumped in to the atmosphere, why are they not causing the climate change?
secrets in symmetry
11-Jun-11, 19:01
Indeed - but perhaps un-necessarily so. You know as well as I do that no-one, even 'experts' have a monopoly of truth on this matter.
It is true that C02 levels have risen - but it is also true that there are volcanoes erupting continuously- and they pump out C02 on a massive scale. The earth has a certain capacity to absorb it... and yes I know that humans emit far more C02 than volcanoes - but volcanoes also put out other warmers such as Sulphur Dioxide, Chlorine etc which have an effect on climate.
There have been 4 ice ages and in each case the earth warmed. Factories, cars and airliners did not do that. The last ice age ended 10.000 years ago, which is the merest blink of an eye in geological time, not 50 million years. Why do you think it not directly relevant?
Kilauea has been erupting since the 1980s.
Why should I discount this?
http://www.volcanodiscovery.com/erupting_volcanoes.html
Global warming and the whys and wherefores of what causes it is a thing which exists wholly in the hypothetical - there is no such thing as proven truth in the matter.
There is a lobby which behaves as if it were all cut and dried.
If the earth is indeed warming up then why should it not be due to natural causes? At least in part?
A mixture of human and natural?
Why one or the other?
In the absence of a canon of undoubted evidence Bekisman's point seems eminently reasonable.
As to power, I would dearly love someone to explain to me why we are investing so many billions into renewables? Scotland and England together sit on known coal reserves enough to last for 600 years.
If the billions going into wind were put into research and development so that coal could be used in a clean way, then many of our economic problems would disappear, our mining industry be revitalised, hundreds of thousands of jobs created, the need for nuclear irrelevant and the prospect of power shortages bumped out of sight.
Is it beyond the wit of science to come up with a workable form of carbon capture so that this incredible resource may be used?
Mind you - it really would mean that Scotland would be independently wealthy!I could dissect your post and answer your questions about climate change, but I would end up giving you the standard list of evidence based reasons why most scientists think AGW is correct. You can read these for yourself in a number of places. Why ask me?
I think clean coal with CO2 sequestration is a great idea.
secrets in symmetry
11-Jun-11, 19:21
I can understand why you doubt it and they are reasonable doubts. But there is something special about this period of warming. It is the rate at which it is happening, currently we are seeing ~0.2C per decade, if you look at each time the Earth came out of an ice age, the warming was ~0.01C per decade. It is staggeringly fast which animals and plants will bare the brunt.
Furthermore, if you doubt that man made GHGs are causing it, then the task to explain it is even harder and improbable.
A) What is causing the rise in Global temperatures if it isn't man made GHGs?
B) Since man made GHGs are being pumped in to the atmosphere, why are they not causing the climate change?That's a good post Rheghead. It's very hard (perhaps impossible) to explain the observed 20th-century global temperature changes quantitatively without including the various human contributions.
The various Milankovitch cycles account for many (but by no means all) of the features in the historical temperature record, but the global warming of the last 50 years seems not to be correlated with the well known solar cycles.
Neil Howie
15-Jun-11, 23:49
Mystical Tattie Heid's sunspot argument will dominate the global warming debate for the next few months.
(seriously)
oldmarine
16-Jun-11, 15:14
So far temperatures appear to be normal here in Tucson, AZ, USA. I moved here after WW2 because I could not take the cold weather. I like it hot! I personally believe climate change is cyclic.
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