Global Warming

WA Governor Jay Inslee wrote:

"This is not some distant problem of the future. This is a problem that is affecting Americans right now."

These were the words of President Obama on Tuesday as his administration released the National Climate Assessment, a landmark report written by over 250 scientists and government officials that confirms something we've known for a while: Man-made climate change is real and is already altering our lives and our planet.

But this report doesn't just warn us about the problems facing our planet in general -- it specifically warns that Washington is now facing greater wildfire risks, a reduced water supply, and significant damage to our shellfish industry due to ocean acidification.

We've heard warnings like these for far too long, yet failed to act. But as I said on Tuesday, "This challenge is significant, but it is matched by tremendous opportunities." That's why, last week, I announced an executive order to limit carbon pollution and asked you to help stop climate change before it's too late.

Thousands of Washingtonians have heeded the call and signed a petition, in just the last week, to declare that they support this executive order and demand bold action to address the climate crisis.

As our movement grows stronger, we know the opposition is watching. With the release of Tuesday's report, there should be no doubt that now is the time to join us, and show them that we're not backing down.

Click here to declare your support for real climate action in Washington -- including a market-based program to limit carbon -- by signing my petition now.

Very truly yours,

Jay Inslee

I dunno. Haven't they determined that if we stopped all CO2 production right now, zero emissions right now, that the planet will continue heating up for the next 250 years?

Question:

How detrrmined, and where did the 250 year figure come from?

Dunno. I didn't look it up before I posted. It was from memory -- which is notoriously unreliable.

Well, I wouldn't be too concerned about this single opinion about these so-called 250 scientists then. Doesn't seem like a significant number as compared to the likely far greater number of actual scientists in the world. They tend to all disagree on the details of anything they study anyway. And we really need to find out how many skew their results out of political bias, etc. A study should be done of the scientific community generally.

Is there not some kind of technology that could extract the harmful emissions out of the atmosphere, that ran on alternative energy sources, and could be mass produced and distributed around the world to take away what is feeding global warming?

Short answer: no.

It has been proposed that huge solar sails could be orbited which would block a percentage of the sun's rays for a few years --

But basically we're fucked. The polar ice pack affects the earth's albedo; when it reaches a certain tipping point it'll accelerate the global warming until the poles are ice free. That's the 175 foot sea-level rise they're talking about, and it's happened several times in our planet's history.

It's also gone the other way, where the whole planet gets covered in ice.

Neither one is good for "plants and other living things."

What scientists worry is happening --maybe already has happened(!) -- is that we've hit the tipping point and all the world's fresh water supply is about to be dumped in the oceans. That process could take a couple hundred years, maybe a lot less.

http://www.wired.com/2008/10/california-comp/

Zubrin came up with some kind of fuel conversion tech with the idea that Mars' s atmosphere of co2 could be used as a fuel source for a return trip.

The knowledge is there for alternative fuel sources that could feed off greenhouse gases, as well adds produce them.

If we can't beat big oil, why not start a parallel industry that feeds off of their harmful by product?

Win Win.

Quote :

Fossil fuels are comprised of chains of hydrogen and carbon atoms called, appropriately, hydrocarbons. The more carbon atoms in the chain, the greater its energy content. Gasoline, for example, has seven to 10 carbon atoms, while jet fuel has 10 to 16. When those hydrocarbons are burned, they release carbon dioxide. Theoretically, the carbon dioxide could be split and its carbon atoms used to make more hydrocarbons. But CO2 is very stable and breaking it up requires so much heat and pressure that it has not been economically viable. Carbon Sciences says it has solved that problem. "We’re very excited by what we’ve seen in the lab," McLeish told CNN. "We’ve had some promising results."

The company says its "C02-to-Fuel" technology uses CO2 to create ethane, propane and methane, three run-of-the mill hydrocarbons used to make high-grade gasoline and other fuels. The key to the process is biocatalysis, a process where natural catalysts are used to perform chemical reactions. Biocatalysis is a more energy efficient and cost-effective way to break down CO2, making the possibility of a large-scale ramp up economically feasible. The approach uses a low energy biocatalytic hydrolysis process that splits water molecules into hydrogen atoms and hydroxide ions, says Dr. Naveed Aslam, the company’s chief technology officer and inventor of the process. The hydrogen is used to create hydrocarbons, while the free electrons in the hydroxide are used to fuel the biocatalytic process, he says. The process "is based on natural organic chemistry processes that occur in all living organisms where carbon atoms, extracted from CO2, and hydrogen atoms extracted from H2O, are combined to create hydrocarbon molecules using biocatalysts and small amounts of energy."

Sounds to me like using bacteria ("biocatalysts") to break down the CO2 into methane, a normal side-effect of digestion.

It's slow.

It's expensive.

And it's a long way from energy-neutral, much less energy-positive.

A number of methods for reducing the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are being studied. None of them are simple or cheap or guaranteed to work on a global scale.

A shit-load (pardon my use of esoteric economic terms) of money and talent will be required to come up with anything that will prove useful. Government involvement - not just the US, but all industrial countries - will be a necessity. Unfortunately, since the government officials of the US and most (maybe all) other industrial countries are owned by the fossil fuel industry, it ain't gonna happen.

Forget the old saying, "You can't fight city hall." What matters is that "You can't fight Wall Street."

I'm afraid NoCo is right: "We're fucked." Or more accurately, "You're fucked." (I'll be dead before the really bad shit hits, so na na na.)

Where can we go
When there's no San Francisco?
Better get ready to
Tie up the boat in Idaho.

You guys have a dark, dark world view. I thought I was cynical.   

Ours is science-based.

If by cynical, you mean reflecting a belief that human conduct is motivated primarily by self-interest, then I accept your definition of me as cynical.  But the humans I hold in this regard are primarily those in political and economic power, and those weak-minded individuals whom they have corrupted.

But I must state that this "cynical" position I now hold is relatively new for me  and is based on many decades of observation of change.

On the other hand, I  would also accept your definition if you are referring to the Greek cynics: philosophers who held that virtue is the only good and that its essence lies in self-control and independence.

NoCoPilot wrote:

Ours is science-based.

No more than mine, but I don't take science-based views or conclusions without some degree of skepticism either. There is plenty of confirmation bias to go around in other scientific fields of research, I don't see why climate scientists can or should be held to any lower degree of scrutiny, just because they see their work as 'authoritative'.

A simple yet often quoted and often ignored rule of skepticism is to not accept 'authority' without question. That goes for all the so-called evidence brought to bear and how that evidence is interpreted and how the research was conducted to gather evidence in the first place.

I do not and never have doubted that the climate is changing. Climate changes and always has throughout recorded history. Anyone claiming there's no such thing as climate change is speaking nonsense, because climate changes - it's the very nature of climate to change over time.

My concern is whether humans actually have directly caused the change. I have never seen one piece of evidence that has convinced me beyond a shadow of a doubt that humans are directly and completely responsible for the impending doom we keep hearing environmental/climate scientists warning us about. The moment you question the details of how the research was done to come to those conclusions, how the evidence was interpreted, etc, the doubts begin to unravel the assumptions. There is often far too much ambiguity in the results/data to be sure that we all may very well die of climate change regardless of human presence and activity on the planet. Nature has been extreme in the past, and likely will be again.

If we can't tell the difference between human caused extreme natural events and non-human caused extreme natural events, there is room for questioning the assumptions that we are responsible.

Of course, I'd rather err on the side of caution, and I think most of the scientific community would like to also... but that doesn't say much for the scientific community's research methodology as a whole and the question of direct and unequivocal human causation of the weather. The butterfly effect fallacy only goes so far and then you have to call bullshit on it. I suspect politics also plays a large part in how the scientific community achieves consensus, not to mention where their paychecks come from.

So yes, I do think there's room for skepticism regarding the scientific enterprise as a whole, and human induced global warming in particular.

Correlation does not equal causation.

I applaud you for your caution in accepting 'authority' without proof.

Unfortunately in this case, your caution is misapplied.  The proof is unambiguous. The only scientists who dispute it anymore are on the payroll of the coal & gas industry.

If you will forgive me, SAI2, most of your last post sounds as if it came from Exxon/Mobil/Shell/Republican headquarters.

I agree that one should not unquestioningly accept everything one is told, regardless of the source. But when your choice is between believing 95 percent of the scientific community, who have spent decades studying the problem, and a handful of corporate weasels... Well, I think you get my point.

To be fair -- and my initial point in this thread -- now that GW is happening it may not be that easy to stop or reverse it. If we have in fact reached the global tipping point we might as well all become Republicans and get all we can get because there won't be no grandchildren's generation.

I see my position as a position of neutrality, not black and white, either or. Again, another fallacy I'm supposed to accept without question - if its not questioning authority than it must be the infallibility of the majority. I have to wonder just how often skeptics violate their own principles simply because a majority of their team appears to have achieved consensus. Scientists are just as human and fallible as you or I. The scientific establishment is not a pristine and harmonious machine churning out absolute factoids and knowledge in convenient pretty packages.

I don't care if how I think about these subjects is in line with big oil. Its not my intention to support the fossil fuel industry if in fact that is going to lead to our demise. I'm just not as yet convinced that natures changes on a global climate scale, have much if anything to do with us. All I can say is I'm trying to learn more and find these incontrovertible causal chains of responsibility between humans and the overall global climate. Excuse me for not finding the data or arguments convincing.

It is the responsibility of climate experts to make their own arguments convincing, not just accept their words on their being 'scientists'... and therefore they must be always right.

Again I applaud your caution, and again I urge you to read up on the evidence.

The proof that GW is human-caused in incontrovertible.

Well.... I've listeened to many arguements and read many articles on CC, GW, TGHE (the greehouse effect), human affect, etc.... and again, not much seems convincing to me. Lots of correlation, but very little in my view to bolster the direct and clear causation of the human touch.

Which is where my skepticism is focused. As I've said previously, I do not dispute climate change. I am skeptical of global warming, but even if global warming were a fact, it remains to be proven satisfactorily that human's have any actual responsibility for that warming - if indeed that can be proven to be happening.

While seeking out convincing arguments and evidence for Human induced GW, I came across these articles which I thought might be interesting to see what you think. I'm not an expert in thermodynamics or greenhouse theory or physics generally, but these arguments seem just as convincing as any arguments I've seen in favour of the GH hypothesis.

Almost as many greenhouse gas theories as clueless climate scientists

Then there was this blog I stumbled across...

Greenhouse gas theory debunked

Now, at the very least, I don't think one can dispute that the "debate" is settled. Even amongst climate scientists themselves. Now, I suppose you could, and likely will come back at me with a "they are on big oil's payroll... but then you would have to prove that, and even if proven, it doesn't mean they don't believe what they are saying simply because they earn money in the oil industry.... if in fact they do. Nasa scientists get paid via the never-ending government coffers. Government workers are notoriously left leaning ideologically anyway, as is the scientific community generally. Is this a fair argument for bias in taxpayer funded science? I don't know. But just because ones funding is private, doesn't mean bias automatically must hold sway either.

Regardless, I still think there is room for debate and counter analysis on 'human induced GW'.

SAI2 wrote:

Government workers are notoriously left leaning ideologically anyway, as is the scientific community generally.

And there it is.

The Koch brothers' silver bullet -- the science is suspect because scientists, who are smarter than most of us, tend to be politically liberal.

Obviously, the science must be wrong. The bible is the word of god.

It's a fair argument with regard to confirmation bias, or even dis-confirmation bias. Politics does seep into science sometimes. Again, I don't support Koch or his brother or his ideological beliefs. I'm just trying to get at the truth.

The Right has the right to their own opinions.

They do not have the right to their own facts.

Science is not based on opinion, at least not good science.

SAI2 wrote:

...but these arguments seem just as convincing as any arguments I've seen in favour of the GH hypothesis.

Almost as many greenhouse gas theories as clueless climate scientists

Then there was this blog I stumbled across...

Greenhouse gas theory debunked

Once again, the absurd side of the internet rears its ugly head at the links provided.

If you are going to get information from the internet, you should ALWAYS first find out what you can about the author of the piece, the organization (if there is one), and any third-party involvements which can be discerned.

These are two completely worthless, dis-jointed articles written by a man who can - at best - be described as a charlatan. If you can find one scintilla of climatic study data in those articles, please point them out to me. There are no arguments presented in those articles, just ranting.

Here's a depressing article about the government's handling of climate change.