gobal warming
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I have a chart here from giss.nasa.gov that shows no correlation whatsoever between C02 emissions and mean temperature between 1940-1970. In fact as emissions increased temperatures decreased. Mean temperature in the U.S. (the largest country with reliable and accurate temperature records going back) for 1880-2000 show an increase of 1/3rd degree celsius. 1934 ws the warmest year.
Temperature has gone up in the last 30 years but went down in the previous 30 years. These changes don't match carbon emissions and aren't exactly dramatic either.
All of the above info is from scientists who firmly believe in glabal warming.
The Urban Heat Island Effect is not fully understood either and thatpotentially heavily influences our temperature records in urban locations whcih is where the highest increases have been recorded. They weight the readings due to population and not the actual things liek building cover and materials used i nconstruction etc.
Lots of the stuff we're being told is bad for the environment is not as bad as we are led to believe. 1/3rd of this countries carbon emissions come from construction in particular from setting concrete, there is no mention of taxing that and it's mor than from cars!
We're being made to fell guilty for what we ned to do i.e. travel to the degree we are willing to acept being taxed heavily for it when there is no justification.
We will naturally seek different forms of energy without taxation. As fossil fuels grow scarce (teehy've been saying we'll run out of oil in 25 years for the last 30) they will get more expensive and politically sensitive i.e. a country relying on another for all it's needs, that we will seek to use natural power. The fact is we can cover the whole of the UK in windfarms and they still won't generate enough power for our needs.
There is a lot of talk of growing biofuel for cars and our energy needs etc, 38 million hectares globaly now from about 5m 5 years ago. The United Nations are now worried that due to this we won't be able to grow enough food to feed the whole world's population, 1/3rd of which is already not getting enough.
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By the way Co2 levels in the atmosphere form 500,000 years ago are taken form ice core samples. They drill into the ice at glaciers (they know how far back they go as to how deep they go etc), they then melt the samples and measure the gases released which should reflect what the atmosphere was like at the time the ice formed.
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Some good points, and I agree with many. Its very hard to lay all other factors still, and just measure co2. For instance Santorini in the mid 90s had a marked effect on global temps. My figures give a mean global increase in temp of 0.6C with a co2 increase from 280 to 380ppm, whicjh correlates well with the knowledge of co2.
There are so many sets of data available its hard to know who to believe. A typical graph:
http://zfacts.com/metaPage/lib/zFacts-CO2-Temp.gif
Shows a rough correlation, over decades rather than a few years, of increased mean yearly global temp vs co2.
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Was just going to say that there has never been any 'equilibrium' in the carbon cycle as suggested by Supersonic. I'd love to know anything in nature which has a natural equilibrium, whether it's the atmosphere, the environment etc etc. Just because it is at a certain level now doesn't mean it is going to stay that way for ever or is even a sustainable balance right now.
The atmopsphere, gas levels, temperature, nature, everything has always been constantly changing. Where I live on the south coast loads of places around here were under sea just a few hundred years ago. Now they might be again in the next couple of hundred years and everyone think's it's because we drive cars.
A single volcanic eruption can kick out so much greenhouse gases that it makes the human contributuion look pathetic.
The one clean source of energy we have is nuclear but the environmentalists spent so long telling us it was evil and dirty they are struggling to now admit it's the path we need to follow if indeed we need to reduce Co2 emissions.
I'm all for being as environmentally friendly as possible but when there is no proven negative effect of what we're doing I'm not happy being forced to pay through the nose for it or to even use it to hold back developing nations progress.
Scientists and the media are always seeking the 'next big thing'. Not long ago it was eugenics which all top scientists of the time believed in and many top politicians aroud the world passed legislation to enforce. Funnily enough after the Nazi's programme of ethnic cleansing it became somewhat unfashionable so now the history books wash over the fact that U.S. presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt and authors like H.G. Wells were leading proponents of Eugenics. By the way there was never any evidence eugenics worked in any way whatsoever.
I recall scientists and environmentalists telling us DDT was bad because it could cause all sorts of things even though it was, and still is to date, the most effective protection against malaria and the carrying mosquitoes. Anyway, due to the all the publicity it got a global ban and from nearly destroying malaria for good and reducing deaths worldwide to a minimal amount we are now back up to 50m deaths a year from malaria and since the ban DDT has been proven to be perfectly safe with none of the ill effects it was accused of. Has the ban been lifted? No.
Any similarities to the theory of global warming and climate change? Possibly.
Not long ago we were all going to die from the ozone layer being depleted. CFC gases were banned as propellants and in fridges etc and suddenly it's all fine even though HFC's largely replaced CFC's and they do even more ozone damage. There was a huge hole in the Ozone that was going to let in solar radiation that would kill our planet, haven't heard anything since.
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Not an equilibrium as such, but there is no evidence to suggest that carbon levels have rose so quickly in such a short space of time in the past. The Earth does gnerally adapt to the new conditions, and the levels will even out again, or slowly rise or fall. I view co2 as this: a contributor of many factors. It is well documented that the earth is a good 33 degrees warmer due to greenhouse gasses, and knowing the properties of them, Co2 has a contribution of around 6% to this effect. The study linked to earlier takes generous bounds of 4-8%. If levels climb above 500ppm, then thats a rough doubling of pre industrial levels. To the best of my knowledge volcanoes account for less than 1% of all the atmospheric co2. One thing is for sure, the levels are rising each year, and have done so for a very long time, with marked drops in seasonal variation corresponding to increased uptake of vegetation in the northern hemisphere. Pre industrial levels over a simialr time period shoe roughly even levels year to year
http://members.lycos.nl/ErrenWijlens/co2/co2time.gif
Now, whats interesting about this graph is that world population is roughly the same shape... But it can be seen how 'stable' levels were in that time period.
Nuclear: I'm all for it. i think its a viable solution in tandem with reducing energy usage.
I agree, scientists often get it wrong, but usually its a case of constant refinement as error bounds lessen and confidence intervals increase. No doubt global warming will change again: I think the estimates given to it are too high.
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Reducing energy usage is proabbly pie in the sky when we have developing nations with huge populations. Even if we do everythign we can in the UK it won't make the tieniest bit of difference.
Scientists get it wrong because they exaggerate to get attention and funding. The estimates are way too high in order to scare us into drastic things like tax.
That graph for Co2 levels is fine but if you measure temperature changes alongside it will bear no correlation. Co2 on it's own 'should' increase temperature but it doesn't appear to be, that's kind of what I'm getting at.
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Unfortunately too true, its all of us that need to work together. US had its day, as has the UK, so now its Chinas turn and I can't see them stopping!
CO2 vs temp year by year shows little correlation. Over 5 years at time a rough trend starts to emerge, same per decade. Its these longer term trends that the scientists are worried about. Same can be said of many periods in time, such as the maunder minimum: a few years is not enough to go on, as other factors year to year influence the outcome, but stretched out the effect is plain to see for all. There is of course statistical variation in any set of data, and also particulates in the atmosphere need evaluating. There has been a big drive to reduce these lately after a large increase just a few decades ago. The solar output is interesting too, as it is showing a small increase year on year, even though at the min we are at a very barren solar minimum. Many models try and predict 'knock on' effects which is where they trip themsleves up I think. I just cannot see how Co2 by itself can produce such a raise in temperature, but I know that it has an additive effect on whatever else is happening at anyone time. Just have to wait to get hit by another comet!
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Nuclear has pros and cons. It's reliable, incredibly effective and is much safer than some would have us believe. However, it is incredibly hard to get rid of waste. If we are trying to be "green" then burying it isn't an option, so therefore launching it into space becomes a better choice. Does this then become classed as a nuclear missile? What do we do about the gasses in the atmosphere from the rocket launches?
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It all has to be offset. We could just dump it all on the Isle of Man ;-)
Not sure how much a rocket launch produces, under the impression it was solid fuel hydrox mix, so produces water! Plus if it crashed, ouch. Interesting approach taken by a Scottish station in the 50s - bury it all in a deep hole under the plant. Which eventually caught fire! Newer breeds of reactors should be more efficient, and methods of disposing and resuing waste is improving all the time.
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We don't want more water if the sea levels are rising!!! No more rocket launches!!!
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We launch them from Africa!
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Giving them rain, allowing them to grow crops and solving 3rd world hunger. Nuclear is the way to go then
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Nuclear produces very very little actual waste, it's just that it's nasty stuff and tricky to dispose of safely.
Newer reactors are supposed to be far more efficient plus we can recycle used fuel to be re-used (not all fuel gets used up in the reactor). Studies done on sites wherenuclear waste has been dumped at sea shows little or no negative effects, in fact there was an increase in healthy sea life at the sites!
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As part of my third year project I was studying radiation in the environment, and had a sample of seaweed from Sellafield - it was 400x over the safety limits for Cs137! This however I think may not have been anything to do with Sellafield, but interesting non the less!
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I like Topshelf - very articulate.
A question - what are the thermal properties of other atmospheric gases?
My take on the climate debate is that there is a huge amount of arrogance in it - we pollute, the climate is changing, it must be us. It's also very anti developmental. Will Africa be able to develop a steel industry or run and rail network on the renewable energy we currently have available?
Plus scientists will do anything for funding. It's even happening in my area (geography) now with a couple of seminar series getting funding doing the kind of research they were before, but do the same research with a weak leak to cc and you get money thrown at you!
TyMBR
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Quite a few resources showing absorption spectra of differing gasses in the atmosphere.
This is a useful and concise article:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/alternate/ ... ppd_d.html
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So, assuming i understood that correctly (and im not sure i have), water vapour can trap twice as much heat as CO2 and water vapour makes up between 26 and 100 times more of it in the atmosphere. Right?
TyMBR
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Indeed! I would say that water vapours contribution is about 15 times that of water, given a 5% contribution of Co2. But its concentration is very variable around the planet (poles, deserts, seasonal variation) unlike C02 which is almost the same around the globe, so its cumulative effect can be better predicted. PlusCO2 only accounts for 5% of the total warming effect, but increasing its conc to 550pm will double this. The effect is logarithmic though, and its maximum contribution will peak at 15% providing other gasses on average stay around the same. While water vapour does vary from place to place, overall global mass is quite stable year to year, unlike Co2. As from the text: It is important to remember, however, that it is currently believed that the impact of water vapor produced from surface sources such as fuel combustion on the atmospheric water vapor concentrations is minimal.
The water vapor concentrations are very much driven by the global temperature and total mass of water vapour on a year to year basis does not change much on average: unless the temperature increases which not only allows the atmosphere to hold more water, but releases more as well. CO2 may possibly be the jump start to this, and many physical models solely usuing CO2 and its properties (as in the original text I posted) shows that it does have the potential to store extra energy. I believe this is why some climate models get a bit carried away by trying to add in the knock on effects of water vapour. However it shouldn't be ignored.
So to sum up we are not looking at what is providing the greatest overall heating effect: but what is changing it. And Co2 is changing fast. Just because something has the greatest total effect doesn't mean its contributing to the greatest change over a period of time.
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