Carbon dioxide rise in the atmosphere

Yes, it is.

There is a remote possibility that somehow the basic physics of CO2 accumulation have been countered by unknown factors nobody has noticed yet, but that's not the way to bet.

You don't understand the situation. There are dozens of feedback effects, almost all of them positive. We already have a degree or more, in the bank, from an increase of less than 40% - and it's still adding up. If we hold the current CO2 level the warming will continue for quite a while - the planet's not in balance yet from what's been added already, there's a lag.

Then you aren't paying attention. We are going on two decades of consecutive years of January rain in central MN, for example - this affects everything from road repair and agriculture to lake levels and pollution runoff.

 

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No, I understand very well that all these horror stories depend on having a lot of positive feedback effects. If the climate changes a little bit, then the feedback hits and we have a climate catastrophe.
Somehow the climate in the past has been already a few degrees higher than today, during the time Greenland was green, and the feedbacks have, for some unknown reason, finished mankind. So I guess mankind will survive this too.

No. It will be that degree hotter than without. All the time. That's all. It will not become warmer, until 100 degree are reached. For getting it another degree hotter, you have to double CO2.

Maybe. So what?

 

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And you want to use that argument, for what? That billons of people will die , but mankind will survive? You want to call that a *good* outcome?

Can you provide a scientific model that *requires CO2 to double* for the global temparature to rise by 1 degree?

 

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Oh and we have *big* volcanic eruptions on a daily basis?

Show me the source for that number. Apparently you ignored the link I provided to an active monitoring system, which is based on actual measurements from data accumulation around the world.

Of course we are not affected equally. So ask yourself what will happen to regional climates which are already on the margins of habitability and any long term rise in temparature will make those regions uninhabitable?

I live in NO Idaho 3000 above sea-level and we can stand a couple of degrees increase. Except of course the farms which depend on run-off from mountains. But if the mountains have not enough snow to provide irrigation for farms, then what?

Have you forgotten what happened during the long draughts in the past.

 

There are other dangers, and, in particular, the danger of a nuclear war. This includes the danger of a nuclear winter, which is also a climate change, toward much lower temperature. And this danger would be, indeed, one where mankind may not survive. In comparison with this danger long time climate change toward higher temperature is not a danger at all. And if the outcome is that billions die is not clear at all. Lower temperatures would be more dangerous.

The scientific model is the standard one. What I have found immediately is the following: "Studies have given a possible range of values of 2-4.5°C warming for a doubling of CO2(IPCC 2007)." http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-co2-enhanced-greenhouse-effect-advanced.htm But this is the sum, which includes, of course, all the proposed positive feedbacks. The pure CO2 effect is below this, I don't know the exact value but remember something about 1 degree, that's why I have added the "or so". But the main point, that this is a logarithmic effect, follows from this number too.

Of course not. But if necessary one could easily arrange something like this.

Here, this posting: http://www.sciforums.com/threads/carbon-dioxide-rise-in-the-atmosphere.152504/page-3#post-3347438 Your point being? My point was, I hope, quite clear to the reader, you have used boldface and an irrelevant number of signs, together with emotional "striking Earth" phrases. Hearing such things, one tends to hope that this horrible Sun stops striking poor Earth, not? I think I should have reacted differently, by saying that I have doubt about this 304,184,374,215 number, and that the correct value will be probably closer to 304,184,374,213. Do you think this makes a difference? If not, what is the point of using this number?

Are there a lot of such regions? I think that a long term rise in temperature will make a lot of regions much more habitable than now. Think about Greenland becoming really green again.

If there are positive feedbacks, they will have to include more water, because clouds are the main ingredient of greenhouse effects. So, or the effect will be negligible, closer to the 1 degree per doubling, or the average effect will be more clouds, that means more rain.

Ok, if there will be climate changes, droughts in some parts of the world may be part of it. But this will be hardly the average effect. More rain in regions where there was no rain may also have some negative side effects, but this is simply because it is unusual. But climate change is something people get used. And they are slow. So, even if one has to change something, there will be time to do this.

 

Really? Let's see that understanding in action:

Nope. Not a clue. Posting bullshit and garbage from denialist websites financed by fossil fuel industrialists and American fascist propagandists.

Sure we'll survive, barring such (increasingly likely) possibilities as the clathrate gun, but that's not saying much.

That is contrary to theory and also contrary to the evidence: that's not what the physics says, and it's not how things have been observed in fact working. The planet is taking a while to balance from the 40% already added, and is over a degree from that 40% already while still rising, for example.

It will not become infinitely warmer, but it will keep warming for a while, until the radiated energy balances the trapped. And it's already over a degree, without near doubling yet.

That's not what the pros say, and so far the evidence is on their side. http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-sensitivity-advanced.htm

Note that nowhere in there, despite its dismissal of the imaginary "1C per doubling", is there a sensational consideration of the major factor in AGW: the rate of the change. It's not just that the current CO2 boosting is large and significant, but even more important (and the source of some disastrous possibilities) it's much faster than the CO2 boostings of the past. The rate of onset of its effects is going to make qualitative differences in those effects, compared with the past.

These changes coming in are not all going to be slow. People will "get used to them" by making radical changes in what they do, how they live, and quite possible how many of them there are.

Climate change is what got us the Sahara Desert. People got used to it. Slowly. By not living there, where they used to have towns and farms. If something like that happens rapidly, the "not living there" part can get fairly dramatic.

 

How clear do I have to make it?
304,184,374,215 Solar energy striking Earth today (MWh) The fact that this amount strikes the earth on a daily basis does not bother you at all. The number has just increased to 361,734,837,043, in the few hours between my first post and this one.

Yes lets replace 100 million people to Iceland.

Oh now we are back to doubling., what about 4.5 times (the worst scenario). What then? When the upper atmosphere gets warmer, condensation slows down and depresses rain formation.

You must listen to Albert Bartlett lecture on the "exponential function" to get an idea of what you are dealing with.

Yes, and the insects are able to adapt much faster than humans, a 6th extinctin and a rebirth of earth ruled by insects.

btw. have you seen the "6th extermination" yet.

 

Wow, denialists paid by fossil fuel industrialists have the same ideas? Nice to hear. Means, if something goes wrong I may find even somebody who pays me.

The heat added is added, and added immediately. 1 degree or more is another, very difficult issue - one which depends on the feedback, and what this feedback is we really don't know. Ok, it may need some time until this degree more has heated the whole ocean, as well as the whole Earth. But what we experience immediately, as the weather, is influenced immediately.

As I have already explained, the 1 degree number would be pure CO2 without anything else, and the number cited there would be what is predicted assuming positive feedback.

Note that nowhere in there, despite its dismissal of the imaginary "1C per doubling", is there a sensational consideration of the major factor in AGW: the rate of the change. It's not just that the current CO2 boosting is large and significant, but even more important (and the source of some disastrous possibilities) it's much faster than the CO2 boostings of the past. The rate of onset of its effects is going to make qualitative differences in those effects, compared with the past.

Decide yourself what creates more horror, fast of slow.

Given the dangers of nuclear war, all these climate horrors are nothing worth to care about. Actually, we have to survive the end of the American century, and the transformation toward a multipolar world. Actually, I expect a nuclear war probability of 10-20% during this period, given the behavior of Americans now, which will become much worse with Hitlary in power. The seriousness of the danger of nuclear winter is hard to estimate, if this is "science" of the level of climate science today, one could bet that it is a 10% danger for humanity. But it could be as well 50% or 90%, simply hard to estimate. All what I have to care about is quite certain - I have no chance to survive a nuclear war.

 

Of course, it doesn't. Why should it bother me? I would be afraid that if this number would be reduced to 300,184,374,215 MWh, we could have a real problem with the Earth becoming too cold, because this would be, it seem, around 10 times the effect of the Solar cycle.

If a doubling gives 1 degree, a factor four gives two degrees. If doubling gives 2 degrees, factor 4 gives 4 degrees.

If you say so, we have to believe this. Fine, in this case we have a negative feedback: Higher temperature -> less clouds -> lower greenhouse effect by water -> lower temperature. So, instead of 1 degree per doubling there will be less, say, 0.5 degree per doubling.

 

Of course - that's where you're getting them. When you are making all the same errors in the same terms, coincidence is improbable.

The radiation balance does not immediately adjust - at first, the heat is absorbed at the surface, and only over time does the transport out increase enough to balance the extra trapped in. In that interval - which in the case of warming oceans and insulated stratosphere etc might be many years - the warming continues. More heat in, not an equivalent amount out, temps continue to rise. As they have been rising - already past your 1C per doubling rate.

It's generally just physics. Much of the positive feedback is measured and described, just like the CO2 itself. The uncertainties are in the amounts, not the presences.

The fast is unknown - but very few aspects of it are reassuring. Generally, the more time to adjust the better, eh? But the fast is going to be different. No reassurances from the past warmings - so much slower - are reliable.

I take it back, about your sources - you are making some of this up on your own. It's too goofy even for them. The odds of nuclear war do not change the effects of the CO2 boosting.

And I take back the takeback - "Hitlary"? The T-Party vocabulary is a field mark.

 

Unfortunately, nobody pays me. Can you give me more information about these guys who pay for this? (For those who don't get the point, this is not serious, I'm able to survive without such money.)

And there are, as well, negative feedbacks. The uncertainties about this are in the ideological appropriateness, not the presences.

My problem is a very simple - I see a large amount of pro-climate-change propaganda, which can be identified as propaganda simply by the usual methods to identify propaganda. The consequence for me is simple - propaganda is worth to be ignored. If one wants to find out something about reality, one has to think oneself. Such is life, there is no other possibility.

I have not done very much to find out the truth. I have checked if it is really a logarithmic problem - 1 degree of temperature rise requires a factor of increase of CO2. And that means, what we see now, in comparison with the past, will increase, but not too much to become really catastrophic. Then, there is the clearly positive feedback of CO2 - higher plant growth. Moreover, if one would have to choose, higher or lower temperature, higher temperature would be clearly preferable. The regions of Earth which are close to inhabitable because of low temperature are large, while there are none inhabitable because of high temperature. Sahara is inhabitable because there is no rain, not because of high temperature. The fact that positive effects of higher temperature do not appear at all in the mainstream discussion is, BTW, the decisive evidence that all this is propaganda.

So I conclude that the harm done by what is suggested to do to solve this problem (roughly an US-led world government which regulates all this) will have much more negative impact than the problem itself (however serious it really may be).

Agreement about change being something negative, and fast change even more, because to adapt one has to invest, and some investment of the past becomes worthless. But climate change, even if fast in comparison with climate change in the past, is very slow in comparison with the change in human society and technology.

Explain this point, I simply do not understand. A nuclear war would be, probably, a nice solution for global warming problems. The nuclear winter theory promises a global cooling much more serious than any global warming scenario. Even if not, it will heavily reduce especially those evil nations who create most of the CO2 now, because they are mostly NATO, thus, targets in such a war. SCNR, and I hope only 50% forget to use their irony detector reading this.

I read very different sources. You may remember, I have liked to read your own sources and used what I found there against you. So, do you really think I will not read some T-Party sources? I have even read Mein Kampf. And even during my childhood, educated as a communist, I have read everything I could obtain from anticommunist, dissident sources. And I use vocabulary I like. Hitlary is a nice joke. This woman is comparably evil, but much more dangerous than the original, because she will control nuclear weapons, so that she can really destroy the world.

A typical green propaganda film.

I do not doubt that the extinction of species is a problem, and one worth to care about. But, sorry, I hate propaganda, even for good aims.

Let's simply note a few points - extinction of species because of emigration of more successful species from other parts of the world. Of course, the world of the past was more diverse, because there was less communication between different parts of the world. This increase of transport leads to the extinction of some species which have been, in the past, defended by the oceans. But this is a quite limited effect. The most successful animals will be global animals. Except for the ice bear coming to Antarctica eating all the penguins, there will not be much left. Then, almost everything can survive in quite small regions, and small regions will survive as natural parks. The only exceptions are large animals - only for them it is plausible that they need a large territory to survive. And the large animals are well-known and survive, in the worst case, in zoological gardens. In Europe, even today the diversity of birds is greater inside the towns than outside. Of course, this is all one-sided too, diminishing the problem (which exists). But this is what I have missed there, and this failure is what disqualifies the film as propaganda.

 

I find it satisfying that cranks in one area of science are also often cranks in other areas of science.

 

Followed by:

So let's list all the errors in your statement.

First you initially used degrees F, then quoted something in degrees C. So it's not going to get 1 degree F hotter if you double CO2. It won't get 2 degrees F hotter. From your own post, it will get between 3.6F and 8.1F hotter.

That indicates you really don't have a clue about the factors that make up climate change.

Because that is the change over one hour, not ten years.

And given the dangers of being struck by an asteroid the size of Ceres, all those nuclear war horrors are nothing to care about. (See? You can do that for anything.)

That's fine - as long as you are willing to pay for the changes. Some people would rather pay a lot later than a little now. There are a lot of them; these are the people who get the 25% interest rate loans, thinking that they won't have to pay them off until an unimaginably distant time in the future.

 

The con artist gets paid. The suckers do not. That's kind of the point.

That isn't so, especially not with the unprecedentedly rapid CO2 boosting. Even in the past much slower climate changes the record of human civilizations caught and destroyed is well populated with examples.

They are included in the standard calculations.

No, that's not what it means. You haven't checked that part - the part about "what it means".

Those wingnut web sites are lying to you. You need to find reliable sources of analysis and information. There's nothing "clearly positive" about the effects of the CO2 boost on plant growth - like the rest of the effects, there are good and bad aspects mostly dependent on rate and timing and scale and other contingencies and so forth.

But you didn't actually read my sources. You read at most a couple of sentences, came to invalid conclusions based on errant preconceptions, ignored the rest, and returned to your standard wingnut blathering you picked up from your standard rightwing propaganda sources - the stuff you do in fact read. As you are doing here, with this topic - you claim to recognize, dislike, and avoid, propaganda, but you post reams of it while seemingly unaware.

The CO2 boost effects are incoming. Now.

The changes becoming increasingly likely and increasingly severe include several involving destruction of the resources available for investment.

You do know that this is all just ignorance on parade, right? That the effects of invasive species are not necessarily "limited", that many of the smallest of animals and plants are unlikely to persist if limited to small natural parks under climate change, that large animals in zoos are unlikely to persist indefinitely and do not constitute actual populations anyway, and so forth?

But that is not the most disturbing feature of this standard rightwing corporatist line of bull. The most dangerous aspect is the comfort displayed with the prospect of wiping out significant aspects of a biological world these people know nothing about, of regarding as insignificant anything they don't understand. And this (very ordinary and human) obliviousness to the scale, risks, and losses, of ignorance, which infuses the rightwing corporate world, is in their case magnified by their political and economic power.

 

No. I'm German, I never use degrees F. Then, I have explained that the official number is higher, because it includes the positive feedback effects, which are IMHO quite speculative.

Given that you make simply such a claim, without providing evidence, suggests that you don't have arguments.

First of all, the claim was quite different, it was over a day, and change was not mentioned. Then, the number is anyway completely irrelevant.

The problem is that what you propose to pay now is, with high enough probability, simply thrown away. Ok, not really away, there are some superrich which gain from such games. The fools are, BTW, not those who agree to pay 25%, but those who give the money for this.

The situation is much more clear on the other end: sheeple are always sheeple. Once one believes the mainstream, one always and everywhere believes the mainstream.

Of course, if one starts to understand that the media systematically lie, and in many areas, one may tend to believe that the mainstream is wrong even in areas where he is not wrong. To find truth alone is difficult, the probability of error quite high. The most problematic part is not to decide if the mainstream theory is a lie - this is usually quite obvious once one starts to doubt. But what is the truth? This is the hard question, and here one will err. Such is life.

 

People think the same thing about health insurance, or insulation in their homes, or getting new tires for their car, or fixing their brakes. "Why throw my money away? Only a fool would buy new tires just because some stupid website says that bald tires are dangerous. Sure, those super-rich tire company owners are laughing all the way to the bank, but I'm no sheeple and won't waste my money like that."

Generally those people get what they deserve.

Some reading on the subject:

New Study Adds Up the Benefits of Climate-Smart Development in Lives, Jobs, and GDP
June 23, 2014

. . .

The report, Climate-Smart Development: Adding Up the Benefits of Actions that Help Build Prosperity, End Poverty and Combat Climate Change, focuses on five large countries – Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and the United States – plus the European Union. It examines the benefits of all six implementing three sets of policies on clean transportation, energy efficiency in industry, and energy efficiency in buildings.

In the transportation policy scenario, for example, if the five countries and the EU shifted more travel to public transit, moved more fright traffic off of roads to rails and sea, and improved fuel efficiency, they could save about 20,000 lives a year, avert hundreds of millions of dollars in crop losses, save nearly $300 billion in energy, and reduce climate changing emissions by more than four gigatons.

It also looks at the potential impact of four country-specific projects, including landfills in Brazil, if they were scaled to the national level.

Short-Lived Climate Pollutants

Some of the benefit comes from reducing emissions of what are known as short-lived climate pollutants, or SLCPs.

Black carbon from diesel vehicles and cooking fires, methane from mining operations and landfills, ozone formed when sunlight interacts with emissions from power plants and vehicles, and some hydrofluorocarbons are all SLCPs. They can damage crops and cause illnesses that kill millions. Reducing these emissions could avoid an estimated 2.4 million premature deaths and about 32 million tons of crop losses a year.

Unlike CO2, SLCPs do not linger in the atmosphere for centuries but are removed in weeks or years. Stopping these air pollution emissions from entering the atmosphere would by itself help reduce warming and provide time to develop and deploy effective CO2 interventions.

Adding up the Benefits

Until now, socioeconomic benefits and environmental externalities, those consequences of industrial or commercial activities not reflected in their costs, have often been left out of economic analysis because they have been difficult to measure.

This report introduces a new macroeconomic modeling framework that can incorporate these considerations, providing a more holistic analysis of the co-benefits of development investments. The new modeling tools:

• Measure the multiple benefits of reducing emissions of several pollutants.

• Can be used to better design and analyze policies and projects.

• Provide a rationale for combining climate action with sustainable development.

This report utilizes the new framework in seven simulated case studies – three dealing with sector policies and four focused on project level interventions – to calculate the many benefits of air pollution reduction.

The sector policies include regulations, taxes, and incentives to stimulate a shift to clean transportation, improved industrial energy efficiency, and more energy efficient buildings and appliances.

By 2030, the benefits of these three sets of sector policies would include 94,000 premature deaths avoided annually and GDP growth of $1.8 trillion-$2.6 trillion per year. The policies would avoid 8.5 gigatons of CO2-equivalent and almost 16 billion kilowatt-hours of energy saved, roughly equivalent to taking 2 billion cars off the road. Together, these implementing these policies could represent about 30 percent of the total reduction needed in 2030 to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius.

The four simulated project case studies analyzed local development interventions scaled up to a national level in one country.

For example, in the Brazil landfill scenario, the report uses results from existing World Bank-supported projects in Brazil that are implementing a variety of integrated solid waste management options, including biodigesters, composting, and landfill technology that captures methane to produce electricity. If the same technologies were scaled up nationwide, over 20 years, the study estimates the changes could create more than 44,000 jobs, increase GDP by more than $13 billion, and reduce emissions by 158 million tons of CO2-equivalent.

The other three project case studies examine expanding bus rapid transit in India, the use of clean cookstoves in rural China, and the use of solar panels and biodigesters to produce electricity from agriculture waste in Mexico.

Together, the aggregate benefits over 20 years of those four projects scaled up to the national level are estimated to include more than 1 million lives saved and about 1 million-1.5 million tons of crop losses avoided. These projects could reduce CO2-equivalent, emissions roughly equivalent to shutting down 100-150 coal-fired power plants. For just three of these projects – in India, Brazil, and Mexico – the benefits equate to about $100 billion-$134 billion in additional value.

Inaction Raises the Cost

While highlighting the co-benefits, the case studies suggest the need for further development of the modeling framework. Nevertheless, the framework demonstrates that capturing environmental externalities can strengthen the rationale for projects or policies aimed at controlling air pollutants.

As the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment urged, climate action can become much easier to undertake if co-benefits are captured and quantified.

“Climate inaction inflicts costs that escalate every day,” says Rachel Kyte, World Bank Group vice president and special envoy for climate change. “This study makes the case for actions that save lives, create jobs, grow economies and, at the same time, slow the rate of climate change. We place ourselves and our children at peril if we ignore these opportunities.”

http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/fe...fits-climate-smart-development-lives-jobs-gdp

 

It is what I expect. It seems plausible to expect some factor 2, ok, may be 4, for human-made CO2. But this needs some time, during this time technology changes, and it is not clear at all that after that actual technology to make electricity is yet used.

I remember some nice ideas about some weeds profiting more than useful crops, big deal. You have not convinced me that this possibility changes the overall estimate that this is clearly positive.

I know this is just a few words, and not a scientific paper. And the point of these words was not to distribute some final truth, but to mention a few simple points which I have completely missed in that film. If the film would be something reliable, these points would have to be discussed - explained why they are wrong, for example.

It is one thing to have a bullshit and propaganda detector. For this purpose, it is usually sufficient to observe onesidedness and bias. To identify this, it is sufficient to consider simple ideas in the opposite direction, not that much if they are true, but if they are mentioned. If the source follows a scientific method, it will discuss such objections. If it is propaganda, they will be completely ignored.

Of course, the extinction of species is a problem. A problem worth to care about. But even if the aim of such films may be honorable, my propaganda detector works.

 

Many are not speculative. They are basic physics, just like the heat trapping and ocean acidification by the CO2 in the first place.

There is no such "overall estimate", as yet. The matter is still in basic research phase. I listed some factors involved, many of them largely unresearched and critical to any "overall estimate". You are mistaking your ignorance based intuitive reactions for some kind of reality based analysis.

So you expect everyone else have to anticipate the details of your ignorance-based misconceptions in advance, and waste time dealing with them, every time they make a movie, or you are going to refuse to learn anything about their movie topic.

So what, exactly, is preventing you from observing that your posts in this thread are standard corporatist propaganda, your opinions fed to you by propagandists paid to spread deception?

 

Ah yes, the conspiracy theory turn that is part of the crank methodology. Why one would bring up the potential for conspiracy but not follow the money is beyond me.

 

Your propaganda detector is a useless piece of crap as evidenced by your subjugation to propaganda.