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nigelj at 17:58 PM on 6 January 2018Climate Chats - New Year, New Life, New Climate
While I was typing this, they started a discussion of life of George Orwell on the radio, which is rather an ominous coincidence.
War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength!
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Pluto at 17:43 PM on 6 January 2018One Planet Summit: Finance Commitments Fire-Up Higher Momentum for Paris Climate Change Agreement
The Good Samaritan helped the victim out of his own free will. He was not taxed or coerced by his government in any way. Big difference!
I'm not sure how the topic of energy storage came up, but if you are thinking in terms of storing clean energy from solar or wind sources, you better think differently. No battery (or array of batteries) even comes close to being able to deliver the kind of power needed for the heavy machinery in factories, farms, or even workshops.
Back in 2009, I asked our electrician about expanding our (residential) solar array, possibly adding wind power, so that we could be "off-grid" and not have any power bills. He told me that we would first have to change our stove and clothes dryer from electric to gas (propane) because either one would totally drain the battery bank within a few minutes. If we are running into these kinds of problems just to make "clean sustainable energy" work for a house, just imagine what we would be up against in trying to make it work for an entire city!
Additionally, batteries are heavy, expensive, and involve toxic waste (mostly sulfuric acid) which is making environmentists unhappy even now. Just wait until they are produced and disposed of on a much larger scale. Also, a battery that is 65 percent efficient is considered to be a darned good battery.
Then there is the issue of DC to AC conversion. Electrical energy stored in batteries is in the form of DC (ie. fixed positive or negative voltage) whereas plugin appliances generally run on AC (ie. sinusoidally varying voltage). The devices needed for the conversion further cut down on efficiency and may place limitations on the amount of power the battery bank can supply. Also, long distance transmission of DC power is totally unfeasible — a lesson that Thomas Edison learned way back when.
The bottom line here is that when generating clean sustainable energy, use it or lose it! There is no storing it.
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nigelj at 17:30 PM on 6 January 2018Climate Chats - New Year, New Life, New Climate
Nice video Adam. I get where you are coming from.
Humanity is growing too fast in several ways, like it's on steroids. It's going to end in trouble, especially for future generations, as the planet imposes harsh corrections on us.
But I think sending emails is worth it, and I have had a few of my own published. No problem was ever solved by staying silent.
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Eclectic at 17:06 PM on 6 January 2018The science isn't settled
Replying to TLander from another thread :-
TLander, you are deceiving yourself if you propose that there is some as-yet-unknown or undiscovered dominant cause of the rapid modern global warming. You wish to imply that that we should halt activities designed to mitigate CO2 emissions . . . until such time that your not-even-yet-hypothesized mechanism of rapid global warming gets discovered (and also shows itself to be so strong and beyond human influence, that it is futile for humans to attempt softening [through CO2 reduction] the warming effect caused by your notional new discovery).
TLander, there are at least two counter-arguments against your proposal.
You are already aware of (A) : That for many decades, many tens of thousands of scientists have very closely studied climate-related science (and the underlying physics). This is not the era of science in the mid-1800's . The chance of them entirely missing a major previously-unknown factor . . . is exceedingly small. Indeed, so vanishingly small, that surely no sane man would gamble the health of his planet on that chance.
But you might not be aware of (B) : That CO2 (and the other greenhouse gasses) form a superb match for the physics of modern global warming — both in theory and in empirical evidence. Merely a correlation, you say? No — the theory backs the observations, and the observations back the theory. So, if you are proposing an as-yet-unimagined novel "dark cause" of Global Warming . . . then you have a big problem, a double explanation which you need to pull out of your hat.
Firstly you need to find a "dark cause" factor which very closely matches the historical & growing effect of CO2. Then you also need to discover another new factor — this time a cooling factor which matches and cancels out the known warming effect of CO2.
All a very big ask.
TLander, the implication is that you have not thought things through.
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Eclectic at 15:30 PM on 6 January 2018Past 150,000 Years of Sea Level History Suggests High Rates of Future Sea Level Rise
TLander @42 . . . your post seems to have been "snipped" for wandering too far off topic.
But I should point out that your "third factor" — namely coastal erosion — can well be described as an historical constant , rather than a large new threat to coast dwellers. Likewise with tsunamis, and coastal subsidence/uplift.
The man-caused local coastal erosion [that you mention] is a very tiny portion of the total world coastline.
Of your (unfounded) proposal that CO2/greenhouse-gasses are highly unlikely to be the cause of Global Warming (or Climate Change, or whatever word-label you care to use for the underlying reality) . . . well, you evidently have not thought the matter through — so I shall reply to you on a more appropriate thread.
[ I haven't yet decided which would be the most appropriate thread — there are several eligible threads, and at this stage I am leaning towards using "Climate Myth Number 68 : Is The Science Settled" ]
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bozzza at 14:52 PM on 6 January 2018Climate Chats - New Year, New Life, New Climate
Life is a bunch of lies: Nietzsche said this is what we had to discover in order to survive!
(I think haha!)
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Eclectic at 14:44 PM on 6 January 2018One Planet Summit: Finance Commitments Fire-Up Higher Momentum for Paris Climate Change Agreement
Pluto @22 et seq. :-
(A) "Render unto Caesar . . . "
(B) Was the Good Samaritan "stolen from" by the victim he helped?
Pluto, your knowledge of ethics seems as deficient as your knowledge of energy storage.
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Digby Scorgie at 14:37 PM on 6 January 2018Climate Chats - New Year, New Life, New Climate
Adam is concerned for the future of his niece, as well he might. Integrating a lifetime of observing the antics of humanity — in a completely unscientific way — I conclude that the probability of his niece enjoying a happy old age on a pleasantly habitable planet are extremely low.
Still, I still think we should go down fighting. And my way of fighting is to use the pen, or to be more up to date, the keyboard. In 2017 I fired off nine "e-mails to the editor" to four different publications and saw six of them published in all but one publication. I don't know if it helps, but one can hope.
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Pluto at 14:31 PM on 6 January 2018One Planet Summit: Finance Commitments Fire-Up Higher Momentum for Paris Climate Change Agreement
(-snip-)
Moderator Response:[DB] Off-topic ideological rant snipped.
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Pluto at 14:30 PM on 6 January 2018One Planet Summit: Finance Commitments Fire-Up Higher Momentum for Paris Climate Change Agreement
michael sweet @19
The jobs discussed in the link you provided were a small drop in the bucket compared to what is needed. As I stated @13 (but the "moderators" snipped), the intermittent nature of solar and wind power makes their use unfeasible except possibly as a grid-tie in a system with a more reliable main source such as coal or nuclear. If that's not good enough, then blame Al Gore and his Washington comrades for wasting the capabilities of thousands of scientists and engineers who could have made advances in these critical technologies such that we don't feel in such dire straights now. At this point, all I can say is that if the AGW believers/advocates are correct, then we are toast, period.
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Pluto at 14:29 PM on 6 January 2018One Planet Summit: Finance Commitments Fire-Up Higher Momentum for Paris Climate Change Agreement
Eclectic @18
In regard to your Christian ethics, I believe the commandment says "Thou shalt not steal", and to my knowledge, it was never amended to give governments an exemption.
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One Planet Only Forever at 09:36 AM on 6 January 2018One Planet Summit: Finance Commitments Fire-Up Higher Momentum for Paris Climate Change Agreement
Pluto@13:
Regarding the 'transfer of wealth' you allude to:
The Kyoto Accord and Paris Agreement requirements for 'the people/nations that are more fortunate because they got away with more burning of fossil fuels' to charitably assist 'the less fortunate who are negatively affected by the climate changes already created and being increased by prolonging that unsustainable trouble-making activity' are simply the natural understanding of the fair corrections required for the future of humanity. And that charitable assistance includes renewable energy technology development and transfer to assist the less fortunate develop to a better way of living without transitioning through the damaging step of fossil fuel burning.
And the required fair correction to minimize the harm done to future generations is the 'charitable/helpful' rapid termination of the global burning of fossil fuels as well as the 'charitable/helpful' reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere to a level of 350 ppm.
That may be 'perceived' to be 'unjustified wealth transfer', but that would be a misunderstanding. And that misuderstanding would be common among people who have developed unjustified perceptions of prosperity and opportunity.
The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are the result of about 50 years of collaborative global leadership pursuit of increased awareness and better understanding. The Climate Action Goals are based on Climate Science. Achieving those goals requires increased public awareness and understanding of climate science. That requires leaders/Winners among humanity to responsibly raise awareness and understanding.
The climate science awareness and understanding is a key aspect of the SDGs. Climate change impacts many of the other SDGs. Achieving the Climate Action Goals makes it easier to achieve those other goals.
Private Interests that are contrary to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals have deliberately fought any way they can get away with to delay the inevitable trend of increased awareness and understanding that would make the Private Interest pursuers of benefit from the Damaging Dead-end Fad of burning fossil fuels (and many other developed and developing unfair harmful ways of Winning Private Interests) into the Losers they deserve to be.
I hope that increases your awareness and helps you understand what is going on, and why efforts to increase awareness of climate science are closely linked to the politics of what is going on.
I am preferring to understand things as Helpful or Harmful related to achieving the SDGs. That allows all manner of categorization to be set aside. Right-Left, Capitalist-Socialist-Communist-Anarchist, Spiritual (as opposed to dogmatic religious)-Agnostic-Athiest, Dictatorship-Democracy-Autonomous Collectives where people take turns being on the leadership team ... all can be helpful or harmful.
What I have observed (as apolitically as I am able - and others can also see/confirm if they look for it), is that the people Uniting and 'claiming' to be Right or Conservative are typically fighting against some or all of the SDGs being achieved (and all of the SDGs must be achieved for humanity to really have a better future). So that is a clarification I will try to make in the future rather than simply calling Unite the Right wrong/harmful.
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Daniel Bailey at 09:18 AM on 6 January 2018CO2 effect is saturated
BC embarrassed himself, and forever established himself as a denier, on this NOAA thread on Facebook.
Put your coffee down before reading.
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One Planet Only Forever at 07:28 AM on 6 January 2018One Planet Summit: Finance Commitments Fire-Up Higher Momentum for Paris Climate Change Agreement
Pluto@13:
Some responses to your claims:
1) "Al Gore (first as U.S. Senator and then Vice President) started his activism on global warming, stressing the importance of reducing our fossil fuel while mentioning nothing about actually solving the problems of obtaining clean sustainable energy."
Re-read Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth". It is full of truths that are inconvenient including his promotion of the need to stop burning fossil fuels and change to renewable energy sources.
2) As for the lack of 'supportive leadership': That would be the Bush Administation and the Republican Controlled House and Congress since 2010. And I agree that specific group have been incredibly deliberately unhelpful.
Renewable energy 'has to be the only source of energy' in the future. The other types, like burning fossil fuels, are Dead-ends. Terminating the burning of fossil fuels and developing the replacement requires Leadership. That type of leadership is severely lacking in politics and the economy, and not because of Al Gore and AGW activists. There really is a problem. Get focused on the real problem (hint: They like to keep what they are really doing as secret or misunderstood as possible. And they abuse misleading marketing to do that, as well as to attack threats to their Private Interest. And they also abuse misleading marketing to tempt people to be greedier and less tolerant in order for them to unjustifiably Win more of their Private Interest - connect that to Unite the Right and you are on the Right Track).
3) "Also, Al Gore has not exactly been a leader by good example with his power usage being 20-30 times as high as the average American."
How does his CO2 generation compare? He has also paid to offset CO2 his actions created. But most important, how do all the others who are comparably wealthy to Al Gore compare to Al Gore?
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Eclectic at 02:02 AM on 6 January 2018Past 150,000 Years of Sea Level History Suggests High Rates of Future Sea Level Rise
TLander @40 — agreed, few would care to deny that a considerable portion of the world's population lives near the coast, where (as you rightly say) there is the issue of land subsidence / sea level rise. As ever in this world, the poor suffer disproportionately more greatly than the rich, when assailed by adverse events [events rapid or slow].
Though you are somewhat obscure when you allude to a third risk affecting the coast-dwellers. Were you referring to the increasing heat waves (and especially the high-humidity heat waves) which would increasingly make parts of the tropics unlivable as AGW worsens? That risk is already beginning to nibble at us — but of course applies inland as well as at the coastal regions.
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michael sweet at 01:45 AM on 6 January 2018One Planet Summit: Finance Commitments Fire-Up Higher Momentum for Paris Climate Change Agreement
Pluto at 16
Many jobs are currently being created in renewable energy. Your assertion that jobs in renewable energy are empty promises is simply ignorant and wrong. Please support your wild, incorrect claim that there are not an immense number of jobs in renewable energy or withdraw your claim.
obs installing solar panels on top of houses cannot be outsourced to India.
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TLander at 00:05 AM on 6 January 2018Past 150,000 Years of Sea Level History Suggests High Rates of Future Sea Level Rise
I beleive that is completely wrong.
It is pretty well known that a majority of the population in the world lives near the coasts and that a majority of the money is concentrated at the coasts. Just look up population/wealth maps of China, India, Europe and the United States. Even poor communities, specifically islands, have issues with subsidence due to pumping groundwater and salt water infiltraition causing dissolution like in Florida where they are dealing with sinkholes do to infiltration. It's not a poor/rich problem. It's a problem with where we build our cities and how we think we can control the Earth. We could keep mitigating and mitigating, but living near the coasts has more risk than just rising sea level or even subsidence.
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Eclectic at 20:09 PM on 5 January 2018One Planet Summit: Finance Commitments Fire-Up Higher Momentum for Paris Climate Change Agreement
Pluto @15 . . . yes, I am missing that point here. And I hope (while I retain my Christian ethics) that I will always continue to be missing that point. Always !
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Eclectic at 20:06 PM on 5 January 2018One Planet Summit: Finance Commitments Fire-Up Higher Momentum for Paris Climate Change Agreement
Pluto @16 , you might care to consider the USA southwest, where "renewable energy jobs" are increasing (if I can believe that Schwarzenegger politician). OTOH, in the northeast of the country, another (rather different) politician has promised a bigly increase of jobs in Coal & other industrials . . . but that promise has become no better than hot air. Just as you and I both expected.
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Pluto at 19:33 PM on 5 January 2018One Planet Summit: Finance Commitments Fire-Up Higher Momentum for Paris Climate Change Agreement
Eclectic@ 14
Likewise about clean sustainable energy — which would produce more jobs than coal or nuclear can.
Promises of jobs is one of the oldest tricks in the book. Invariably, such promises fall way short of expectations, and sometimes entire industries collapse. For example, the NAFTA and GATT treaties destroyed the entire textile industry in the US after we listened to the mumbo-jumbo about how some menial jobs might be lost to Mexico, but they would be replaced by higher paying high tech jobs in the States. WRONG! The entire industry "went south".What's much more likely to happen with clean sustainable energy is that the AGW politicians will give lots of speeches on it but no funds, and therefore no jobs.
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Pluto at 19:13 PM on 5 January 2018One Planet Summit: Finance Commitments Fire-Up Higher Momentum for Paris Climate Change Agreement
Eclectic@ 14
. . . you cannot seriously be proposing that the people advocating that the AGW problem be tackled . . .
You're missing the point here. Nobody is tackling anything. What the AGW politicians want is for you and me to cowar in the corner and be accepting of more taxes and regulations and a sizeable chunk of our wealth being redistributed to third world nations. After all, they are trying to save us from the AGW threat. Well I'm not doing it! And from now on, count on leaving me and US out of this climate charade.Moderator Response:[DB] Off-topic snipped.
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Eclectic at 17:19 PM on 5 January 2018One Planet Summit: Finance Commitments Fire-Up Higher Momentum for Paris Climate Change Agreement
Pluto @13 , you seem to have gotten things completely ass-backwards about Gore and the "AGW followers". Despite their manifest imperfections, you cannot seriously be proposing that the people advocating that the AGW problem be tackled . . . are somehow enormously worse than their opponents who are happily harming the planet & refusing to face the situation.
Likewise about clean sustainable energy — which would produce more jobs than coal or nuclear can.
Nuclear fission power is collapsing — it is extremely uneconomic. But you knew that, from another thread where you raised the same points.
Coal mining & burning is vastly more toxic than the photovoltaic-cell manufacture/usage cycle. And you know that, too.
Wind turbine blades killing/injuring birds — is an absolutely minuscule effect compared with other human-caused mortality of birds. (Not to mention the expected avian mortality from the advance of global warming.)
Pluto, your anger is blinding you intellectually.
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Pluto at 16:39 PM on 5 January 2018One Planet Summit: Finance Commitments Fire-Up Higher Momentum for Paris Climate Change Agreement
I realize that Comments Policy of this forum includes a "no politics" policy, but in view of the following statements, I presume this policy does not apply to this particular page.
The UN sustainable development goals make perfect sense.
I completely agree with your identification of the problem: "People able to get away with pursuits of Private Interests that are impediments to the pursuit of the Global Public Interest of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals."
My criticism is of politicians who are good at making announcements but not so good at following through. If those are the troublemakers, I am not sure what you do with them other than vote them out.
What I am questioning is the willingness of developed countries to transfer a significant portion its wealth to another country in the name of climate change.
Therefore, I will feel free to speak my mind, political or otherwise. I have a doctorate degree in physics and was one of thousands of scientists working in the defense industry who lost their careers in the early 1990s with the defense downsizing that occurred with the "end of the Cold War", sometimes called the "outbreak of peace". THIS is when the United States should have started acting on AGW problems if in fact they existed. The UN IPCC Fourth Assessment Report came out in 1990 which warned of possible threats posed by the enhanced greenhouse effect from human emissions, especially carbon dioxide. Also, Al Gore (first as U.S. Senator and then Vice President) started his activism on global warming, stressing the importance of reducing our fossil fuel while mentioning nothing about actually solving the problems of obtaining clean sustainable energy. To address these problems, especially with the urgency he was claiming, it requires the participation of many different scientists with various backgrounds in order to cover as many bases as possible. Oftentimes, several different technological breakthroughs are needed for a new alternative energy system to work. This is where many former defense scientists could have been put back to work, but guess what? — NO JOBS! Instead, the "peace dividend" (savings from the defense cut-backs) went into helping the former Soviet scientists, bailing out failed financial institutions, and getting involved in every skirmish in the Middle East, all with the support of Al Gore and his climate change followers. One of the scientific careers that was destroyed in the process was mine. So, I hope you understand that Al Gore is one person I am not cheering on. For a person who seems to revere "what the science says", he sure has helped to destroy lots of scientific careers.
Because of the anti-science attitude held by Al Gore and his political AGW followers, we are not nearly ready to switch over to any sort of clean sustainable energy. They only talked to scientists who could come up with good scare stories about what would happen if we don't cut back on our carbon emissions while barely mentioning the possibility of finding solutions. That, of course, would mean that more scientists and engineers would have to be hired — a commitment they did not want to make.
While some advances have been made in the area of alternative energy resources such as solar and wind, the intermittent nature of their operation makes it impossible for them to provide reliable power on their own. They may be able to mitigate the fossil fuel burning to some degree by grid-tying them to a power system run on conventional coal and nuclear fuel. Then, on sunny and/or windy days, the solar arrays and wind turbines reduce the load on the main generators, reducing the amount of fuel needed the meet power demands. Both solar and wind power, however, also have some bad side-effects that I'm not sure have ever been adequately addressed. For example, the photovoltaic cells used in the solar panels don't grow on trees. They must be manufactured and that involves toxic chemicals and lots of energy. Also, the latest manufacturing methods use nitrogen tri-flouride (NF3), a non-condensible greenhouse gas about 17000 times as strong as carbon dioxide. In the case of wind power, I have heard claims that the wind turbines are difficult and expensive to maintain and that the spinning turbine blades can be a real menace to the aviary population (ie. birds and bats) which play and important role in controlling disease carrying and crop destroying insects. With any new alternative energy source, we must ask the question of which is worse, the problem or the solution.
In addition to finding new energy source technologies, there may be ways of greatly increasing the efficiency of electric motors and generators based on existing technology. Nickola Tesla, a Serbian immigrant, has numerous patents in this area. Perhaps it is time we start dusting them off and seeing if his ideas could be of benefit in solving our current problems. Just because these patents are old does not mean they are useless or obsolete. Of course, qualified scientists and engineers would have to be hired to do this.
In view of the fact that Al Gore and the AGW community in general has done little or nothing to find solutions to the AGW problems they are preaching, I can only surmise that they themselves are not concerned about any AGW threats. Also, Al Gore has not exactly been a leader by good example with his power usage being 20-30 times as high as the average American. If they the AGW icons are not worried about such threats, why should I be?
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Eclectic at 09:02 AM on 5 January 2018Past 150,000 Years of Sea Level History Suggests High Rates of Future Sea Level Rise
TLander @38 , I suspect the reason that the subject of local land subsidence is not mentioned much, is that subsidence is not a factor affecting most of the world. Yes, parts of the USA and northern Europe — but these are wealthy regions and there is relatively little cost in "adjusting" to a slow and steady subsidence. OTOH the sea level rise is accelerating : towards a cumulative effect which will swamp [excuse pun] subsidence effects over the next century or so, and involving all the world's continents & islands.
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Eclectic at 08:45 AM on 5 January 2018CO2 effect is saturated
Brian Catt @455 , from what I've seen of the Uni. Chicago lecture, it does not support the thrust of the statements you have made. Please explain better, what you are intending to say — since your comments are coming across as "confused about the science".
Then there are the simple errors in your statements, such as (A) the current "tiny variation" [unquote] in surface temperature. [Alas, not so. The temperature is shooting upwards like a rocket. There's been nothing like this in the 200,000+ years of human history. And scientifically, the cause is obvious and undisputed. ]
.... And (B) water vapour causing "300 time greater effect" [unquote] in warming compared with CO2. Is that what you think? Or did you mean to state 3 times greater? Because that is around the upper limit of the multiplying "feedback" response by H2O to the driving force of CO2.
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TLander at 08:41 AM on 5 January 2018Past 150,000 Years of Sea Level History Suggests High Rates of Future Sea Level Rise
It actually doesn't say anything about using local subsidence in the calculations at all. Only general mention I find is in section 2.1.
"Sea-level measurements are affected by vertical land motion. Corrections for local land motion can come from long-term geological observations of the rate of relative local sea-level change (assuming the relative sea-level change on these longer times scales is from land motions rather than changing ocean volume), or from models of glacial isostatic adjustment, or more recently from direct measurements of land motion with respect to the centre of the Earth using Global Positioning System (GPS) observations. Here, the ongoing response of the Earth to changes in surface loading following the last glacial maximum were removed from the tide-gauge records using the same estimate of glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA; Davis and Mitrovica 1996; Milne et al.2001) as in our earlier study (Church et al.2004)." I'll have to dig in more to see if they used local measuresments of subsidence for corrections.
I'm sure that the satellite atlimetry is accurate, but that doesn't change the fact that if you have cosatal lands falling at 2in(~50mm) a year and sea level rising at 12mm/year than no matter what we do, the coasts will be under water in short time. Subsidence is a big reason that floods are becoming more expensive and frequent along the coasts.
Here is a link to an article Houston Chronical did on a USGS study of subsidence in the Houston area.
http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/For-years-the-Houston-area-has-been-losing-ground-7951625.php
Some areas show subsidence rates as high as 4'/year.
I'm not arguing that sea level is rising. I am arguing that the influence of subsidence is a compounding issue tied to sea level rise that doesn't seem to be talked about much. Its seems to be more of the issue than sea level rise, especially for coastal cities. We could completely drop fossil fuels tomorrow and it wouldn't change the fact that the coastal cities will be in sinking faster and faster and will be in trouble no matter what.
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oldmanthames at 08:14 AM on 5 January 2018On its hundredth birthday in 1959, Edward Teller warned the oil industry about global warming
Edward Teller was a nuclear scientist and a designer of the hydrogen bomb. Perhaps in his speech he was intending to plug nuclear energy as the alternative to fossil fuels. Unfortunately this has not proved very successful.
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John McKeon at 07:03 AM on 5 January 2018Climate Chats - New Year, New Life, New Climate
Thank you for speaking up, ClimateAdam. I feel the same way towards my grandchildren and grand nieces and nephews. Of course they are proxies for our sense of our common humanity. I feel most motivated when I consider, like you, that we could lose it all.
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scaddenp at 06:24 AM on 5 January 2018Past 150,000 Years of Sea Level History Suggests High Rates of Future Sea Level Rise
Tlander - why do you believe that substance rates are not accounted for in assessment of sealevel rise from tide gauges? Eg see methods part of Church and White. Furthermore, satellite altimetry methods are now used to assess sealevel rise and they are immune to coastal changes.
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TLander at 05:48 AM on 5 January 2018Past 150,000 Years of Sea Level History Suggests High Rates of Future Sea Level Rise
Hello, I know this topic isn't very active, but I just have a question. Why have people not incorporated the subsidence rates along the coasts into calculations of relative sea level rise? I never see it brought up in many of the sea level conversations, but it seems to be an important factor when subsidence of 2in year or more in some areas along the coasts. Take this paper on the Chesapeake Bay.
https://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/1392/pdf/circ1392.pdf
I quote, "The difference between the average sea-level rise computed
from the four NOAA tidal stations in the study area (3.9 mm/yr) and the benchmark global
rate (1.8 mm/yr) is 2.1 mm/yr, which is an estimate of the average rate of land subsidence at
the four NOAA stations. These numbers indicate that land subsidence has been responsible
for more than half the relative sea-level rise measured in the southern Chesapeake Bay region."I am just curious why this doesn't seem to be discussed when people are talking about sea level rise. Seems like a glaring mistake, but maybe I am crazy.
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Joel_Huberman at 05:09 AM on 5 January 20182017 in Review: looking back at 10 years of SkS and more
In my view, Skeptical Science is one of the most, perhaps the most, important site on the Web. Congratulations and thanks to the entire team for the wonderful work that you do!
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Aaron Davis at 03:13 AM on 5 January 2018CO2 limits won't cool the planet
[snipped]
Moderator Response:[TD] You're well past your grace period. In future I will simply delete your comments that are off topic, that repeat your previous claims without addressing responses including references you've been given, and that are sheer nonsense.
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One Planet Only Forever at 03:11 AM on 5 January 20182017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #52
nigelj,
You have comprehensively debunked the attempted counter-claims made by Rhoowl.
I would add that Rhoowl did not to provide a counter-claim to my first point that the 280 ppm level that existed for the last 2000 years was more than enough. No part of the counter-claim provided evidence that global plant growth was 'deficient' when CO2 was at 280 ppm.
I would however concede that an increase to 350 ppm would be a reasonable limit to the damage done to future generations, as has been established by many reports. So, today's generation having to lose personal benefits and opportunity in order to unprofitably rapidly bring the current CO2 levels back down to 350 ppm would be sufficient penalty for what regrettably got away with being developed.
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Brian Catt at 03:04 AM on 5 January 2018CO2 effect is saturated
The facts are obscured by the above analysis. The facts are that the effects of CO2 on the atmospheric absorption of IR by the atmosphere diminish rapidly and logartithmically with increasing concentration, so most of the so called greenhouse effect, that absorbs and re radiates IR, which isn't how greenhouses work, occurs in concentrations below 150ppm, which is so low trees and other vegetation die. Lower than the lowest and ice age minimums.
The effect is approximately the same for each doubling, so has expoentially LESS effect per ppm, so that at 200ppm another 200ppm, to get to where we are now, only produces the same effect as 20-40ppm.
So the statement that its never satuarted is deceitfully true, because it is partial by omitting the dominant factor, that while it's never quire saturated, it may as well be for all the effect it has, versus the natural variation in the 300 times greater effect of Water vapour, for example.
Reference? There is a useful course on this by the University of Chicago you can take for free w/o a certificate - that costs - which gives this initial fact in itshttps://skepticalscience.com/CO2-is-not-the-only-driver-of-climate.htm promo video. These are the facts on IR absorption of CO2 in the atmosphere. Not as advertised. The reverse of a tipping point in fact. We need to be looking elsewhere than CO2 for the rue cause of the tiny variation we are currently observing with the interglacial peak tempertaure range of an ice age interglacial. Soon be over, but at a rate humans cannot detect in a lifetime, as a quick study of the data shows anyone numerate. Real planetary climate hange of an interglacial is significant, but again any effect takes seberal lifetimes to be on bservable, even at the geologically rapid end of the current ice ages, over only 1,000 years...................https://www.coursera.org/learn/global-warming/lecture/CnAIV/the-band-saturation-effect
Moderator Response:[JH] url link activated. Please learn how to do this using the edit function provided.
For future reference, you may want to spell-check your draft text prior to posting a comment.
[TD] SkepticalScience is organized into a large number of narrow topics. You have commented on a topic that is only slightly relevant to your point about the direct IR effect of CO2 increase being logarithmic. Please click the View All Arguments link at the bottom of the list of Most Used Climate Myths, in the left margin, for more relevant posts, such as How Do We Know More CO2 Is Causing Warming?, and CO2 Is Main Driver of Climate Change. Note that many posts have Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced tabbed panes. The log relationship of IR absorption to CO2 level has been known for over 150 years, and always has been explicitly accounted for in all calculations of temperature effects of increased CO2.
[TD] To find posts specifically addressing the logarithmic relationship, enter the word logarithmic in the Search field at the top right of the page.
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Philippe at 00:30 AM on 5 January 2018How much does animal agriculture and eating meat contribute to global warming?
Thank you for this post.
I'm vegan and I do believe that most vegans, including main stream films such as Cowspiracy have exaggerated the part of animal agriculture in green gas emissions. This is a moot point though. Most decent vegans, with a scientific based mind, agree that veganism is an ethical stance beyond diet, and I'll add beyond any climate considerations. I simply believe that the gathering of sentient beings in what is truly equivalent to concentration camps for animals, is unethical and that's why I'm vegan. I don't need to tweak green gas emissions to feel better and legitimate my position.
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nigelj at 13:16 PM on 4 January 20182017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #52
Rhoowl @25, just one more comment: You say "If the tcr is low as predicted by many papers then the net effect of increased c02 will most likely be positive through increased food yields"
And only a minority of papers predict TCR is low as below.
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nigelj at 12:54 PM on 4 January 2018On its hundredth birthday in 1959, Edward Teller warned the oil industry about global warming
dkeierleber @9
I agree on all points.
Regarding the influence of dark money in politics, read the book "Dark Money" by Jane Mayer. Summary, review, and some discussion below:
This book is particularly relevant to the climate issue.
Money in election campaigns is so corrosive. IMO the only real answer is tax payer funded campaigns, but its hard getting the public to appreciate the sense in this.
However I dont know if stranded assets would cause a recession. Money would flow from oil company shares into other companies, ideally renewable energy. It probably depends on how orderly the process is, and whether theres a panic of some sort. Recessions are usually caused mainly by the business cycle or economic bubbles. However stranded assets are still obviously a problem.
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nigelj at 12:32 PM on 4 January 20182017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #52
Rhoowl @25
"Bullet 1 if that were the case then the planet would not have increased greening over the past 40 years. Plant are noticeably bigger and stronger now."
CO2 has caused some greening, but this effect saturates fairly quickly. Amazon is already becoming a carbon source for example.
"Bullet2 the increased co2 may have some negative consequences in the future. If the tcr is low as predicted by many papers then the net effect of increased c02 will most likely be positive through increased food yields. Food yields have been increasing steadily."
Read my comment @22 and the attached reference source in scientific american: Improvements in crop yields are small, and obviously negated by the negative effects of CO2 emissions
"Bullet3 not sure how the increased absorption of co2 into the seas will create a negative effect. The biosphere has been increasing its absorption capacity of co2."
Co2 absorption makes the oceans acidic (strictly speaking less alkaline) This causes damage to corals and shellfish because the acidity damages their shells. It's not just these organisms, because acidicication affects the whole food chain negatively and we have evidence that it has caused mass extinctions in the past. Refer the scientific american article below:
www.scientificamerican.com/article/rising-acidity-in-the-ocean/
"Bullet4 yeah...but we need to burn it now....we need energy and and the greens refuse to consider the nuclear option. If co2 is what you want to reduce then nuclear ome of your best option"
The Greens do not run the government or power stations Currently generating companies and governments are not interested in the nuclear alternative because of high capital costs, and slow buiding and regulatory process. We have other alternatives such as solar, hydro, wind and geothermal and costs are becoming very cost competitive with coal and gas. Refer cost of electricity by source on wikipedia.
"Bullet5 yeah...wars are fought over fossil fuel energy.....another good reason to embrace nuclear"
Wars will be fought over supplies of uranium, which would become stretched by building massive numbers of nuclear power stations. The resources of wind and the sun are free. Materials used for wind towers are abundant.
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Rhoowl at 10:59 AM on 4 January 20182017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #52
OOPOF@23
Bullet 1 if that were the case then the planet would not have increased greening over the past 40 years. Plant are noticeably bigger and stronger now.
Bullet2 the increased co2 may have some negative consequences in the future. If the tcr is low as predicted by many papers then the net effect of increased c02 will most likely be positive through increased food yields. Food yields have been increasing steadily.
Bullet3 not sure how the increased absorption of co2 into the seas will create a negative effect. The biosphere has been increasing its absorption capacity of co2.
Bullet4 yeah...but we need to burn it now....we need energy and and the greens refuse to consider the nuclear option. If co2 is what you want to reduce then nuclear ome of your best option
Bullet5 yeah...wars are fought over fossil fuel energy.....another good reason to embrace nuclear
Moderator Response:[DB] Thank you for taking the time to share with us. Skeptical Science is a user forum wherein the science of climate change can be discussed from the standpoint of the science itself. Ideology and politics get checked at the keyboard.
Please take the time to review the Comments Policy and ensure future comments are in full compliance with it. Thanks for your understanding and compliance in this matter.
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BaerbelW at 03:40 AM on 4 January 201897% consensus on human-caused global warming has been disproven
Aanthanur - have you ever entertained the thought, that your opinion/interpretation - instilled by a denier, no less - might be wrong?
This is why I suggest that you read Andy Skuce‘s article - not because of the consensus percentage - but in the hope that it might help you understand the role of implicit endorsements. But, from your additional comments, it reads as if you don‘t really want to understand but just want to cling to your way of seeing this. In which case we can just as well call it quits and agree to disagree.
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Aanthanur at 03:24 AM on 4 January 201897% consensus on human-caused global warming has been disproven
Nobody disproved my point, that is the point. nor is it off topic. i provided an example, that post was silently removed, but someone already saw it and responded.....
wow, i must say, i am extremely dispointed here. i am not a denier. not a luke awarmer.
Moderator Response:[JH] Sloganeering snipped.
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Aanthanur at 03:22 AM on 4 January 201897% consensus on human-caused global warming has been disproven
i provided credible evidence, or do you to think the suplementary data from cook et al 2013 is not credible?
or are you claiming they did not use the abstracts as they described in the paper?
Moderator Response:[JH] Sloganeering snipped.
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dkeierleber at 03:16 AM on 4 January 2018On its hundredth birthday in 1959, Edward Teller warned the oil industry about global warming
Most of this isn't about the science but it seems consist with other comments in this thread.
Not sure I would characterize America as a democracy. We have slid into the oligarchy realm as far as I can see and as long as dark money controls politics, things will continue to move in that direction. Elected officials don’t seem to even care what their constituents think. They are elected by money from big donors and industry. We’ll see if any of that changes in 2018 and 2020.
As far as our response to AGW is concerned, the fossil fuel industry keeps insisting that no assets will be stranded by any regulatory action taken by the government. When that lie is eventually exposed, what will the loss of trillions of dollars in assets do to our economy? When the coastal real estate market eventually collapses, what does that do to our economy?
The sooner we start moving in the right direction, the less the eventual pain will be, but do you really think industry is as ignorant as they pretend? Do you think maybe they’ll be safely divested leaving less sophisticated investors to bear the pain?
The recent tax plan will aggravate the other big problem of our economy---the inequality of income distribution. History teaches that concentrating wealth in the hands of a few at the top is not only toxic for the economy but can be fatal for the system as a whole, yet the big donors of the party in power insisted on what amounts to a $1.5 trillion heist. Does that sound like a democracy or more like the family of a dictator trying to get as much wealth out of the country as they can? Again, do you think they are ignorant of history and economic theory?
And then there is the 3rd contestant for what can take down our civilization fastest---the depletion of our agricultural base. How many decades of soil and aquifer depletion do we have left?
Did you see the latest prediction by Stephen Hawking? He dropped the time our civilization has from 1000 years to 100 years. Think he knows something?
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Aanthanur at 22:13 PM on 3 January 201897% consensus on human-caused global warming has been disproven
"How would you calculate the consensus that most of current global warming is due to humans if there were no abstracts/papers in categories 1"
by asking experts to quantify our contribution, like they did in Verheggen 2014.
"Somebody doing this kind of study in a couple of years for papers published later than the sample we used may well be faced with such a situation as more and more authors no longer see the need to spell it out in their abstracts as it just becomes the default position."
that might be. but with the data they had, they could have calculated it. its 87% which is still the overwhelming majority of experts.
"This is where the implicit endorsements come in, which in our paper were interpreted as implying that most of current global warming is due to humans (as long as there's no text in the abstract which minimises our effect, that is!)"
if you want to use unquantified abstract, you canot use the frase you used in the introduction. this is just wrong.
and no, will nto read it. because i do not doubt the consensus. i doubt the result of cook et al as it is wrong. they used unquantified abstracts for a quantified consensus.
and funny enough , Verheggen also comes to the 87% as i did when i only used endorsement leve 1 and 7.
Moderator Response:[DB] Rote repetition after being disproved of a contention constitutes sloganeering nd runs afoul of this venue's comments policy. Either move on to another point or bring credible evidence to support your contentions. Simply saying "Nuh-Uh" doesn't cut it.
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MA Rodger at 20:36 PM on 3 January 2018CO2 limits won't cool the planet
Aaron Davis @32.
You suggest "it may possible a 15 ppm seasonal variation between Arctic CO2 concentration could also be significant. " A look at the lower graph @19 suggests the Arctic experiences an effective 8ppm drop in CO2 over a six month period. In terms of long-term energy budgets that is equal to 4ppm permanently. As the cycle would have existed before AGW (being a natural phenomenon), such a reduction in CO2 globally would amount to a temperature change of 0.04ºC with today's CO2 level & ECS=3. (As you appear to grasp the concept, I here adjust for the logarithmic nature of CO2 forcing.) Due to the increase in CO2 since 1979, today's 0.04ºC has reduced from 1979's 0.05ºC.
The problem we face Aaron Davis is that this 0.04ºC (which will require some adjustment as it is not global) is not what you are attempting to measure.
Consider the following.
A row of seven stout wooden chalets are heated by identical electric fires 24-7-365. But an electrical fault results in all chalets losing power for a portion of the time. In the first chalet it is 1 millisecond every six milliseconds, in the second it is 1 second every six, in the third one minute in six, then one hour in six, one day in six, one month in six, one year i six.
On average, each chalet suffers the same loss of power and they will all experience a roughly similar drop in average long-term temperature. Losing one sixth of their heating, that drop is significant and is analagous to what you suggest @32 is considered as "could also be significant."
However, this long-term average is not what you attempt to measure. You are concerned with the wobble in temperature. In our analogy, the wobble will vary greatly chalet-to-chalet. In chalet one it will be undetectable. In chalet six, the temperature will wobble from that of an unheated chalet to that of a fully heated chalet. Using a 15ppm value, your calculation will be perhaps as chalet three. But you are expecting it to be chalet six or seven.
And your numbers "the 0.54/ to 1.2oC/ due to doubling CO2" appear to be nonsensical.
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BaerbelW at 17:54 PM on 3 January 201897% consensus on human-caused global warming has been disproven
Aanthanur - here is a thought-experiment for you:
How would you calculate the consensus that most of current global warming is due to humans if there were no abstracts/papers in categories 1 (and 2)?
Somebody doing this kind of study in a couple of years for papers published later than the sample we used may well be faced with such a situation as more and more authors no longer see the need to spell it out in their abstracts as it just becomes the default position. This is something which seems to have already have happened in other fields, like e.g. plate tectonics.
This is where the implicit endorsements come in, which in our paper were interpreted as implying that most of current global warming is due to humans (as long as there's no text in the abstract which minimises our effect, that is!).
If you haven't done so yet, please read Andy Skuce's post about our paper "Does it matter if the consensus on anthropogenic global warming is 97% or 99.99%?". It comes at this discussion from another angle, but uses plate tectonics as an illustrative example.
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Aanthanur at 15:42 PM on 3 January 201897% consensus on human-caused global warming has been disproven
the selfrating uses the same endorsement levels, and also there they put together endoresement level 1-3. So the same problem there.
and he is not a friedn, he was some denier that actually had a point.
if you actually look at the evidence provided by the paper, it is 87% for the quantified consensus, and 97% of the unquantified.
Moderator Response:[DB] Sloganeering snipped.
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Aaron Davis at 14:53 PM on 3 January 2018CO2 limits won't cool the planet
MA Rogers @28 For the 15+/-1 ppm chage the dF=-0.2 Wm-2, the change in temperature I am looking for in the seasonal analysis is between -0.11 and -0.24 oC based on the 0.54/ to 1.2oC/ due to doubling CO2. Actually the global warming by year 2017 figure shows just a 0.027oC/year from 1980 to 2017. If I use 26 occurences of the seasonal effect the error in the mean is reduced by a factor of 5, so if the monthly averages are accurate to 0.01oC, a the seasonal effect should be well above the noise. As further confirmation consider
Observational determination of surface radiative forcing by CO2 from 2000 to 2010
"Here we present observationally based evidence of clear-sky CO2 surface radiative forcing that is directly attributable to the increase, between 2000 and 2010, of 22 parts per million atmospheric CO2. The time series both show statistically significant trends of 0.2 W m−2 per decade "
Please consider that if 22 ppm difference in this paper yields a 'statistically significant result of 0.2 W m-2' over a decade, it may possible a 15 ppm seasonal variation between Arctic CO2 concentration could also be significant.
[TD] It doesn't seem possibile that decades of model based analysis of radiative forcing could not be validated by some clear and reasonable approach like a standard prediction error technique, but it seems like this is the case. Every article you suggest has as a basis a model manipulated to fit historical data, but seems to ignore how these models performs 10-20 years later. This whole argument reminds me of my work with ephemerides when I worked with Lockheed. For years we lived with a repeating range error of 30 ft. bulge in the range error. When I found and corrected the screwed up the polar wander transformation, the one rev prediction error did not change much because they recalibrated each rev, but try to predict 3 or 4 revs into the future and the calibrated model produced huge errors. The lesson learned is that fitting the data to an incorrect model can work for a while, but then diverges. Please provide a reference where the authors, rather than refit the model parameters to new data, really went back and fundamentally changed the model to predict 10 years out. To correct errors that far out it may be necessary to consider at least some of the a few serious "deniers" like The Atmospheric Thermal Enhancement - Dr. Ned Nikolov who establishes a pressure component to atmospheric model for global warming.
Moderator Response:[TD] Wow, you're a fast reader, especially for someone who just a few days ago misunderstood the second law of thermodynamics! That IPCC chapter I pointed you to has a lot of journal article references you say you've read, plus you had to take a bunch of basic classes so you could understand those articles. I'm really, really impressed.
Funny how all your sudden expertise in physics failed to help you recognize that Nikolov's articles are gibberish. Not just wrong, but gibberish. Even actual serious fake skeptic Roy Spencer acknowledges they are gibberish. Eli Rabbett also disassembled Nikolov's claims. And there are two posts at the aptly named And Then There's Physics. David Appell added another reason Nikolov is wrong. The bottom line: Your car's tires are not warmer than their surrounding air merely because the air pressure inside them is higher than the air pressure outside. That would violate the first law of thermodynamics. Oh, but maybe that's okay with you since that would fit your understanding of the second law of thermodynamics.
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Aaron Davis at 13:51 PM on 3 January 2018Quantifying the human contribution to global warming
Observational determination of surface radiative forcing by CO2 from 2000 to 2010
"Here we present observationally based evidence of clear-sky CO2 surface radiative forcing that is directly attributable to the increase, between 2000 and 2010, of 22 parts per million atmospheric CO2."When Feldman calculates the 0.2 Wm-2 for 22 ppm change the implied change in is for a 3.8% using the equation in the SC quantifying article dF=5.35 ln(CO2_2/CO2_1) = 0.2 . From 400 ppm 3.8% is just 15 ppm, so the function for dF might be a bit out of date. More like 5.3625*ln() might be more in line with this 2015 article.
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MA Rodger at 11:11 AM on 3 January 2018CO2 limits won't cool the planet
Aaron Davis @30.
The climate forcing from ΔCO2 is in no way contentious. It is a matter fo physics.
A doubling of CO2 will result in a forcing of 3.7Wm^-2. Thus a ΔCO2 equal to 15ppm/400ppm = 3.75% would result in a forcing of 3.7 x 0.0375 = 0.139 WM^-2. The globe has an area of 510e12 m^2. A year comprises 8766hrs x 3600sec. Thus a forcing of 1.139 WM^-2 will result in an annual Δenergy of 0.139 x 510e12 x 8766 x 3600 = 2,237e18j/yr. (This assumes my abacus has retained all its beads which is not something I can always gaurantee but in these circumstances I am confident that I am correnct even though I have just returned from the pub.)
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