I have a few questions for the community here about global warming. Has the planet been warming? Are humans a major cause of this warming? Is the warming from CO2? How much damage will this cause? What can we do about it? Just want to here what the truth is on this subject.
1. Yes. 2. Yes. 3. Essentially yes. Other anthropogenic effects are both positive and negative, but are smaller in magnitude and net close to zero, so other legitimate answers are possible. Natural causes also are smaller in magnitude and net close to zero. And remember that we're talking climatologically significant timescales here, in decades or more. 4. It depends on our response. 5. A fair amount, if we act quickly. But time is running out. The first step is to decarbonize the electricity grid, by any and all means necessary. Once that is done, a number of currently fossil-intensive activities (such as transportation and space heating) can be electrified, and in so doing de-carbonized. (And here we're talking about fossil carbon, not biocarbon). Taking these steps by mid-century would be enough to reduce our fossil carbon emissions to nearly zero, which is where we need to be; and the cost would not necessarily be huge (indeed, the cost in the US could be negative according to the Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project.) Once we have eliminated emissions, the planet will continue to warm because it will take some decades to get back into energy equilibrium. During that time we should begin stronger mitigation efforts to reduce existing atmospheric CO2, for example by olivine mining and dispersal. That would mimic natural rock weathering to remove CO2 from the air, but at a much more rapid pace.
Medieval Climate Optimum There is that nagging problem of the Medieval Climate Optimum. When temperature shot up beyond today's measurements in so short a time. Anyone who appreciates History Channel, Vikings - should appreciate the Medieval Climate Optimum. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period I disagree with their graph because England is not a major wine producer against France, as occurred in History. What CO2 levels 1400 years ago? <sigh> Really. Climate Change Happens. Just like . . . Moi r > g No
Generally. Note the lack of Wolly mammoths Well, not as far as the Mammoths are concerned. It's more that if we keep up the way we're going we might make the heat up happen faster than it otherwise would. Making it hard to adapt to the change. Well, the man made part of it mostly, plus deforestation. Otherwise I believe the behavior of the sun has a great deal to do with it. Actually, sun spot activity caused a temporary halt and reversal in the warming trend for a number of years. Hence why denialism went up since actual temperature was well lower than the popular climate scientist models. It depends a bit on how you measure damage. In the absolute sense? Quite a bit? In a zero sum game considered from America, things are looking better. We're wealthy enough to do a lot. However most of the environmentalists who want to fight global warming also oppose nukes. So in practice we'll be driving battery powered cars charged by natural gas plants while we wait on solar. And then there is the third world, who want to increase their quality of life but can't afford our pricey green stuff.
I looked at that graph in your wikipedia link and it seems like temperatures now are moderately higher than in the middle ages and are increasing at a much faster rate. How is it significant to your point what the C02 levels were 1400 years ago?
We greatly rely on carbon fuels. If we try to move away from them to less efficient alternatives, this could create immense economic damage, far more than anything higher temperatures would cause. Maybe we need solutions that won't damage the economy as much.
That is precisely the problem, and precisely what we must stop doing. Not carbon per se, but fossil carbon, is the problem. A highly dubious proposition. Unmitigated climate change has been estimated by the Stern Review to cost the world 5% to 10% of global GDP by 2100. Mitigation would cost 1%, from the same source (Stern is a world-class economist). BC has instituted a revenue-neutral carbon tax, and their economy is doing better than Canada's as a whole, while emissions are declining. Meanwhile, the Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project has found that complete decarbonization of the US could be surprisingly low-cost, and perhaps even negative-cost (depending mostly on the future price of oil). We don't have to use less energy, we just have to use the right kinds. Every machine in the world needs to be replaced after a few decades of use. In most cases, there is no reason we can't replace with something just as good, but non-fossil.
Yes, the planet is always either warming or cooling. It goes through cycles like everything in nature. Complicated question. Are you asking what is scientifically possible to do, or what we are capable as a socially hamstrung society to do. Just want to here what the truth is on this subject.[/QUOTE]
Has the planet been warming? Yes, and in the past it has cooled and warmed. Generally it is cooler since the Holocene Optimum. The question is, has it warmed since actual recorded temperature. Yes and no. It has warmed and cooled with a fair amount of warming from the late 70's to the late 90's and none since. Are humans a major cause of this warming? CO2 centric hypothesis says yes. Other scientists say no. It is not settled. Is the warming from CO2? See above. How much damage will this cause? There is where the real debate it. Damage? The planet will change no matter what man does so if man concentrates it's resources for building in the most volatile areas, like coasts, then any change can be damaging whether man made or not. What can we do about it? Adaptation is the best goal. Radically restructuring society on the off chance that the CO2 centric hypothesis is correct a fools effort. The proposed changes are predicted to only make tenths of a degree difference which will produce little effect at great cost to society and mainly to the poorest. The money is better spent adapting and helping the poorest in the world. Common sense has taken a back seat to the global warming hysteria when predictions like this which have come along almost every 20 years or so and are always proven wrong.
Humans, I don't know. But I do know these things go in cycles between ice ages and warm periods. A lot of it depends on the tilt of the earth, the suns activity, volcanoes and impacts from space objects. The earth has been a whole lot warmer and at least once covered entirely in ice. Mother Earth has a habit of doing what she wants and mankind be danged.
Valid points, all of them. Some sanity in the midst of the hysteria. Solar, geothermic, wind farms, will not even come close to replacing fossil fuels and nuclear as energy sources for almost 8 billion people and growing. So, we either accept fossil fuels or we build exponentially more nuclear power plants. No other options, bar some breakthrough in clean energy from the quantum world. Which is potentially more dangerous to life, fossil fuels or nuclear? Given the fact the earth is active geologically, nuclear and what it creates when they break down, 10s of thousand of years of uninhabited areas, plus the tendency for those radioactive materials getting into water, frankly it scares most thinking minds. So that leaves fossil fuels. Now does taxiing the co2 this emits change significantly carbon emissions? Of course not, and since that is the fact, carbon tax is just another ploy of the elites to shove their greedy little paws deeper into the pockets of working people who are in dire straits due to neo feudalistic globalization, which is a ploy to exploit the poor for slave wages. So, carbon taxes are extracted from working people, the powerless, with it having to be transported to the poor nations in Africa, and that allows some elites to dip their pelican sized beaks in that flow of money, like any good crime syndicate does, and what is left goes to a poor nation, to be given to MNCs who will be paid with it to build infrastructure primarily the needed infrastructure that the MNCs need in order to move factories their to exploit those poor, in order to max out their profits. It's a perfectly devised scheme, worthy of the mafia, and being hardly different from any other criminal activity. Of course if we could remove much more of the co2 from emission of burning fossil fuels, with technology, that would not satisfy those who want to shove their greedy little paws down deeper into the pockets of those who must work to survive. You cannot create as much new income using this, when compared to carbon taxes. So, if you want to actually live in reality, you have to understand that its either fossil fuels or nuclear. But there is a group of incoherent people, driven not by logic and reason, but who are easy prey to the manipulation of their emotions, that will ignore the fact. These are dangerous people. This Shangri La incoherent thinking that solar, geothermal and windfarms can supply the demands of a modern world with a growing population is keeping us from actually thinking clearly and accepting what reality is. And those that refuse to live in reality can cause more new problems than they can ever solve, and therefore they are not worthy to even be given an ear. And we have a load of these incoherent beings here on this forum. But the evidence is there that those in high places like gov't and the UN that are creating the hysteria of climate change, are dishonest at worse and simply incoherent and divorced from reality at best. For if this was such a great problem, and they were actually concerned, we would already be addressing co2 levels with land management as Freeman Dyson, who isn't incoherent, has suggested, and we would have an international effort at halting the destruction of rain forests the world over one of the lungs used by the earth to control co2 ,and to foster plant life. The fact that there is no move to do this, that is even close to the scheme of carbon taxes, should show a mind capable of logic and reason, exactly the agenda in place.
If you want the truth suggest you do your own research. There are very few climate scientists on this forum.
Suggest a more interesting topic for discussion would be is global warming good or bad. It is almost inconceivable to me that the human population has not had an impact on the earth's climate. It's almost like saying that humans have terraformed the entire planet and yet nothing has changed as a result.
The science (which I personally use to garner truth), indicates our planet is entering a period which ends the last Ice Age...obviously this will mean warming. Though we are probably speeding up this process by increasing greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, this additional concentration would not be the cause. We may increase the positive feedback loop by helping Icemelt and permafrost removal, but the full effects are inevitable at this point.
Nuclear needs to be taken very seriously. But the US has quite a safety record, and in any case coal is just continually putting out nasty particular pollution and even if a nuclear power plant melts a core that isn't going to advance global warming (though it would be an incredible tragedy). There are also some gains to be made from efficiency. But generally yeah. Although it's possible just slowing climate change will make it much more manageable. Regardless we may want to spend more of our time considering how we will be able to adapt to a changing world and preparing for that. For example working on GMO crops than can thrive, using zoning at the least to encourage cities to develop uphill instead of down to the coasts and into the floodplains, and altering construction codes or otherwise encouraging or east coast cities to harden against hurricanes. And being from the midwest I can't believe how they're building all these homes in tornado ally up on hills on flat cement slabs and then act surprised when the whole structure gets wiped out. Some people need to watch some Lassie re-runs so they can remember why cellars with storm doors were so popular. I haven't heard much about that, but I bet you could get some support for it from the global warming crowd, as I bet they also love protecting the rainforest, and green spaces in general. However land management has costs too.
Good or bad is a better discussion because history shows us that all human advances in civilization happened during warm periods. The reasons are obvious as warmer means better agriculture whereas colder means more death. Even more CO2 is better for agriculture. We have been in a relative low of CO2 during this point in history. Want to capture CO2? Turn it into topsoil which is good for agriculture.
Nuclear scares you because you don't know much about it. Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been continuously inhabited since the bomb. People are living in the Chernobyl exclusion zone (illegally) and outliving those who accepted forced evacuation. People are living in the Fukushima exclusion zone too. The plain fact is that Fukushima killed zero, and never will. Numerous studies have shown that nuclear is far, far safer than fossil fuel as an energy source, by orders of magnitude. It's not even close. Utterly false. British Columbia instituted a very modest carbon tax in 2008, and its emissions have fallen significantly since then, while its economy is growing faster than Canada as a whole and income tax is the lowest in Canada. What's not to like?
The faithful are touting the success yet there is no reason to since gasoline sales are up in B.C. and even higher than before the tax. http://business.financialpost.com/fp-comment/terence-corcoran-no-b-c-carbon-tax-miracle-on-120th-st
What brought them down? Was it co2 removal technology being used, or was it less energy use by the public, because the price of electricity went up, due to carbon taxes? If we cut co2 emission today by 60 percent, worldwide, which isn't gonna happen, the rate of warming would continue on for the next several hundred years. So what are you solving by co2 taxation? You can only depress economic engines, when we are at a time where they are already too depressed. You are cutting off the head of your horse to alleviate his headache. Again, if this was actually about climate change via warming, via co2, there would be a push from the UN for all nations to manage their lands to remove co2, dropping its levels by using plants on that land owned by gov't around the world. We would also be putting an end to rain forest deforestation, which would naturally push up co2 levels higher, due to the loss of co2 loving plants, worldwide. What Canada has done, will not help one bit, with climate change. It's an exercise in futility and a waste of time. With capitalism exploiting new areas of the world, after it exploited china, these areas to be developed will only add more co2 to the air. And if you tax it, you are only allowing the elites to shove their greedy little paws down deeper into the pockets of working people, to extract his last red cent, in their greed. And that is all that this co2 hysteria is about, money, and getting more of it from those that actually do the work.
As I state before, the modern world has to have electricity and some source to propel around the means of transportation. And it is a fact that only fossil fuels or nuclear can provide the needs of the modern world. So, we either accept the fossil fuel route, and the co2 that comes with it, or we decide to go fully nuclear based. There are no other options. So which source of energy is more potentially dangerous? Given geologic activity, natural disasters, accidents, and what a failed nuclear reactor creates, which is vast areas of uninhabitable living areas, that will remain so for thousand of years, not to mention what happens when such stuff gets into the ecosystem, going nuclear has some tremendous risks involved that fossil fuel is the safer route to go. Given this fact, taxing carbon doesn't have a role in reducing co2 emissions, only technology offers a solution. Until we find another energy source, we are gonna just have to accept that the modern world is a world created by fossil fuels, and there is not a safer alternative to date. And then get on with our lives on the greener earth that is in our future.
It was electric utilities switching away from the now-more-expensive fossil fuels, to guard their profits. Utterly false. Where do you get this crap? The rate of warming. In spite of your falsehoods to the contrary. How odd then, that BC's economy got stronger when revenue-neutral carbon taxes were imposed, displacing income taxes. You do know what "revenue-neutral" means, don't you? More right-wing propaganda unsupported by the tiniest shred of evidence, and totally refuted by real-world evidence. That's a good start, and the UN (via the IPCC) does recommend that. But even if fully implemented, it would not be nearly enough. Even under the most optimistic scenarios, the total amount of carbon we could mitigate with reforestation, CCS, and CDR combined would be only about 40% of what we burn. Ending fossil fuel use is the only feasible path that can actually solve the problem. Once again you seem not to know what "revenue neutral" means. Why don't we all wait until you look it up, so that we can have an intelligent conversation? Because until then, you're just knocking down strawmen.
ABC's ’08 Prediction: NYC Under Water from Climate Change By June 2015 New York City underwater? Gas over $9 a gallon? A carton of milk costs almost $13? Welcome to June 12, 2015. Or at least that was the wildly-inaccurate version of 2015 predicted by ABC News exactly seven years ago. Appearing on Good Morning America in 2008, Bob Woodruff hyped Earth 2100, a special that pushed apocalyptic predictions of the then-futuristic 2015. The segment included supposedly prophetic videos, such as a teenager declaring, "It's June 8th, 2015. One carton of milk is $12.99." (On the actual June 8, 2015, a gallon of milk cost, on average, $3.39.) Another clip featured this prediction for the current year: "Gas reached over $9 a gallon." (In reality, gas costs an average of $2.75.) http://newsbusters.org/blogs/scott-...rediction-nyc-under-water-climate-change-june#
