More noise about climate

[Morris Dovey]

Good point. Perhaps the poorest countries need some more appropriate means of producing the energy they use for warming their homes, cooking their food, increasing their agricultural production.

I don't thing they need anyone to do it for 'em - perhaps they just need for the technologically-advanced (richest) countries to show 'em how...

We could, but don't need to - but already in undeveloped areas people are eager to cook without having to gather fuel, and to improve their own neighborhoods. Increasing numbers are doing just that. :)

There's nothing wrong with using electricity to cook, but there are other ways - and, people being the inventive critters we are, we will find more ways still to fry our bacon...

[Morris Dovey]

So? There _is_ a choice: either give them their corporacracy or build a future in which they play much diminished roles.

Everybody gets to make their own choice.

[ Suggested reading: "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" , by John Perkins ISBN#978-0-452-28708-2 ]

Choose wisely.

[Bob Martin]

Please produce said evidence.

[Dave Balderstone]

Start here:

After that, I'll leave it to you whether you actually want to examine evidence on all sides of the debate or simply swallow what you're being fed.

[Han]

Dave Balderstone wrote in news:310120100434024828%dave@N_O_T_T_H_I_Sbalderstone.ca:

Per molecule CO2 is ot a very "good" greenhouse gas. Methane and some others are much better. But if you have a million more mlecules of CO2 than methane, and if it is indeed easier to reduce the number of molecules of CO2, than let's go for imiting CO2.

Many ifs, I know. But the advantages of reducing the use of fossil fuels are many. And if it is done through increased efficiency or switching to non-polluting systems like Morris' solar water pumps, than all the better. Morris is showing that it is a technological thinking leap that is needed, not new sources of (for instance) rare earth metals.

[Han]

I have to proofread better. My kayboard is not always transmitting what I type, here I fill in the missing letters ...

Per molecule CO2 is not a very "good" greenhouse gas. Methane and some others are much better. But if you have a million TIMES more molecules of CO2 than of methane, and if it is indeed easier to reduce the number of molecules of CO2, than let's go for limiting CO2.

Many ifs, I know. But the advantages of reducing the use of fossil fuels are many. And if it is done through increased efficiency or switching to non-polluting systems like Morris' solar water pumps, than all the better. Morris is showing that it is a technological thinking leap that is needed, not new sources of (for instance) rare earth metals.

[J. Clarke]

Something that a lot of people don't "get" is that CO2 from biological sources such as respiration is recycled so there's not a net increase. As for methane, methane is a fuel, it reacts with air and produces CO2 and water, sometimes rapidly in a fire, sometimes more slowly.

The question I want answered, that the greenies have never tried to address, is "Let's stipulate that everything you say is true. Suppose we let the whole thing run its course, burn up all the oil and coal and shale oil and whatnot. At the end of that process where will we be?"

[J. Clarke]

If we could magically make every energy system in the world 200 percent efficient it would not come close to hitting the IPCC targets. If this is a problem of the magnitude they are claiming, it's not going to be fixed by driving a Prius and using fluorescent light bulbs.

[dpb]

Han wrote: ...

... But CO2 is also very specific in the wavelengths it absorbs and it doesn't take much to make incremental changes in concentration to have less actual effect. Data indicates concentrations are at point of already being past the knee of the curve. If so, won't make much difference at all either way.

--

[J. Clarke]

What "knee" of what "curve"?

[dpb]

Differential light absorptionenergy attenuation vs concentration is exponential. Very low concentrations-->high (relatively) attenuation vs concentration but reaches a plateau where adding further makes successively little difference as the particular wavelengths are already heavily filtered. Roughly, it's ~exp(u/x)

--

[Larry Jaques]

On Sun, 31 Jan 2010 04:34:02 -0600, the infamous Dave Balderstone scrawled the following:

I'll give you odds that he denies validity...IF he says anything more. ;)

-- Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will. -- George Bernard Shaw

[Neil Brooks]

r

Ignoring your obvious straw men, I think the height of ignorance is the implication that you *know* the whole story, one way or the other.

You don't. I don't. We don't.

All YOU'VE done is say that anybody who believes other than what YOU believe is arrogant and ignorant.

Which is funny and ironic!

[Larry Jaques]

On Sun, 31 Jan 2010 08:54:45 -0600, the infamous dpb scrawled the following:

Y'mean "the knee of the hockey stick?"

I haven't yet read all of this paper, but it looks like a fair analysis. (Well, except for the dead polar bear pic. Har!)

It has a CO2 absorption chart. Please describe what you're talking about via the chart, or show another one to which you refer.

-- Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will. -- George Bernard Shaw

[Morris Dovey]

It's a good question, and I don't think there is a single answer. Where we will be, necessarily, will be determined by the choices we make between now and then.

I suspect, and of course have no way of knowing, that we will not completely consume all fuel resources - but I extrapolate that as each resource becomes less readily available it will become increasingly costly, and so diminish in terms of common usage.

As that happens, either the usage (what people accomplished with that particular resource) will be discontinued, or another resource or another means of accomplishing that goal will be adopted.

Such a scenario leaves a lot of room for all kinds of choices, and I'm not convinced that being a "greenie" (or not being a greenie) has much to do with that answer.

Those future choices will be influenced by the importance attached to "green-ness" of each person's outlook at the time - and, FWIW, I don't think "green" is a binary attribute.

To me the more interesting questions are "Where do we _want_ to be in five, ten, a hundred, or a thousand years from now?" and "What choices need to be made, and by when, for those visions to be realized?"

[HeyBub]

I need some proof that a trace gas has that much effect.

The CO2 in the atmosphere (0.003%) is equivalent to the blood stain left on a football field after an official received 17 stab wounds when he made three consecutive bad calls against the home team (i.e., less than two square feet).

I suspect that if power plants exhaled Argon or Helium, proof would be constructed that these gases are sealing our doom.

And asphalt costs what? Ten times that of installing concrete?

I can see it now: In an effort to increase the earth's albido, concrete is mandated. States with thousands of miles of two-lane Farm-To-Market or rural roads, each hosting 50 vehicles per day, are to be resurfaced. Two-lane concrete roadways cost a bit over $1 million per mile to construct. (Asphalt is about $150,000 per mile and can be recycled.)

There are over 41,000 miles of Farm and Ranch roads in Texas.

[Neil Brooks]

The other thing that is NOT binary is the pricing of the finite resources as they become less and less plentiful (whether that's in terms of absolute supply or the costs of extraction, refinement, and delivery).

Or ... simple market manipulation by the monopoly currently in control.

As that cost-to-consumer curve steepens, carnage ensues. We saw it, in micro, as gas reached -- what -- four bucks a gallon, rather recently?

Jobs are lost. Industries are wiped out. LIVES are horrifically impacted.

The much vaunted "market" will take an immeasurable toll on real human beings if we let it play out, vis-a-vis fossil fuels.

[Han]

Neil Brooks wrote in news: [e-mail]:

Exactly. In science it is implied that your theory is based on ALL the facts, and usually it is a given that you do NOT have all the facts. Hence further tests/trials/whatever. Yes that is a contradiction.

In this case, however, it seems without doubt that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, that human activity has increased the quantity of it, and that reducing the quantity of free CO2 would be beneficial by preventing further greenhouse heating of the earths atmosphere. That leaves out of the equation other greenhouse gases, cooling/heating effects of (volcanic?) particulates, and smog, among probably many more things affecting climate.

Despite the anomaly of a totally erroneous statement about retreating glaciers in the Himalayas, most glaciers worldwide are indeed retreating, for whatever reasons. In high school 50 years ago, the Rhone glacier in Switzerland was already an example of sorts.

[dpb]

Larry Jaques wrote: ...

...

I've not read any of it, but Fig 4 shows the effect. (Whether the fits are meaningful quantitatively is another question, but the shape is...)

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[Han]

"J. Clarke" wrote in news: [e-mail]:

That would take a very long time, and economics would largely prevent it. Coal is extremely abundant, though the ost usable quality is not. You know of course that oil-poor countries such as Nazi Germany and a prior version of South Africa used coal as a basis for producing oil/gasoline. Another conversion process is the well-known conversion of coal plus steam to CO and hydrogen, a mixture that used to be pumped around to homes as cooking gas. SO the question will langish for an answer for a very long time, since nuclear power, wind and water power, as well as solar power will eventually be more economical than fossil fuel power.

Politics will need to steer economics so as to find the most acceptable fuels/sources of power. Hence the debates, and the struggles between economic interests.

Stay tuned .