Topic: Global Warming

[KJP]

Yeah, who wants to have better-educated children, higher standards of living and longer life expectancy...

[Boreas]

Changing climate of Republican opinion doesn't agree with Tea Party
Nearly two-thirds of moderate or liberal Republicans believe there is solid evidence for global warming, Pew poll finds

This won't make the Koch brothers happy: nearly two-thirds of moderate or liberal Republicans now believe there is solid evidence for global warming, according to a poll from the Pew research centre.

That's 22 points higher since 2009, the year the billionaire oil brothers first began pouring money into Tea Party groups working to discredit Barack Obama's green agenda.

The shift suggests that the Koch efforts to spread doubt about climate science may be backfiring.

Climate change doubt – seen by Tea Party activists as a litmus test of conservative credentials – is not, as it turns out, energising the Republican masses.
...continued...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/dec/02/climate-republican-debate-tea-party

[Hts121]

The tide does seem to be shifting somewhat.... at least to the point where if you outright deny climate change and the cause and effect relation with human activity (whether that be industry, farming, farting, whatever), you are increasingly finding yourself in a shrinking minority.  But there is still significant divide on the question of, not 'how', but 'whether' we can do anything about it.... and then there probably is that camp who would wonder whether we 'should' do anything about it even if we 'can'

[Gramarye]

But there is still significant divide on the question of, not 'how', but 'whether' we can do anything about it.... and then there probably is that camp who would wonder whether we 'should' do anything about it even if we 'can'

I think those latter two camps have actually represented the majority of GOP thinking for some time.  The more vocal voices were simply sucking up all the oxygen.  The third major question you didn't mention is the question about the severity: the "how much" and "how fast."  Are we looking at a 0.5C increase over 100 years or a 3.0C increase over 40?  That makes a huge difference.

[Hootenany]

I think we're to the point where we just need to get realistic about climate change.  Yes, it's happening.  Yes, human activities have caused at least a portion of it.  Yes, it's unstoppable in the short term.  In my opinion our efforts need to be focused more on mitigating the effects of global warming than attempting to stop it outright.  Sure we should still attempt to reduce our CO2 emissions I suppose, but we need to understand that even a 50% reduction in CO2 emissions in the USA is nearly negligible on a global scale.  My only point here is that our regulations and their effects (negative and positive) need to be proportional to their ability to achieve the stated goal of slowing down global warming.

And don't even get me started on attempts at climate engineering.  What a disaster it would be if we start pumping aerosols into the atmosphere or building sun shades to reduce the amount of energy reaching the earth's surface.  The consequences of these actions would likely be dire and unintended.

[Boreas]

The End of the Nuclear Renaissance

John Quiggin | January 3, 2012

http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/the-end-the-nuclear-renaissance-6325?page=1
...
The stunning decline in the cost of PV has critical implications for the debate over climate policy. It is now clear that the cost of decarbonizing the economy, and the associated economic disruption, will be far lower than was suggested by previous estimates and even by many recent estimates that use out-of-date cost estimates. In this context, the continued adherence of most U.S. Republicans to conspiracy theories, in which the science of climate change is a cover designed to bring about radical economic and social change, is even more nonsensical than before. Perhaps 2012 will be the year when sanity finally prevails on this issue.
---
We are familiar with it.

[Gramarye]

I would be interested in hearing his response to Naomi Klein's article and the quotes of the people she quotes therein, then.

I would also be interested in hearing whether or not you believe this John Quiggin enough to support a cap on measured costs of environmentalist restrictions on American productivity, with an automatic sunset of such provisions when that cap is exceeded (i.e., if the costs to the economy of whatever he's proposing--and I notice he was silent as to what he would actually propose--turn out to be far larger than the rosy scenarios painted by Quiggin et al.).

[Hts121]

You two are addressing two different issues.  Boreas' point of emphasis was on the tinfoil hat theorists who think that climate change is nothing more than a hoax, being utilized by the radical, gay, islamist, communist left to enact social reforms, spread the wealth, and mandate weekly anal sex.  Gramarye is addressing issues you only reach once you take off that hat and start thinking rationally.

[tedolph]

The tide does seem to be shifting somewhat.... at least to the point where if you outright deny climate change and the cause and effect relation with human activity (whether that be industry, farming, farting, whatever), you are increasingly finding yourself in a shrinking minority.  But there is still significant divide on the question of, not 'how', but 'whether' we can do anything about it.... and then there probably is that camp who would wonder whether we 'should' do anything about it even if we 'can'

No one ever "outright denied" climate change.  The earth gets hot, the earth gets cold.   Everybody knows that, the core samples proove it!


Tedolph,


Harbinger of the comming Ice Age

[Hts121]

You stopped reading mid-sentence it seems and missed the conjunctive.  But there certainly is that camp.  Do I need to pull up the Fox News clips from 'snowmagedon' just a few years ago?

[tedolph]

The jig is up!

Even the Lefty media now admitts that CO2 is not an imm mportant greehouse gas:

WASHINGTON — An international team of scientists says it has figured out how to slow global warming in the short run and prevent millions of deaths from dirty air: Stop focusing so much on carbon dioxide.

They say the key is to reduce emissions of methane and soot — two powerful and fast-acting causes of global warming.



Read more: Scientists now want focus on soot, methane to curb warming - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/commented/ci_19732843#ixzz1jOGPxaDC
Read The Denver Post's Terms of Use of its content: http://www.denverpost.com/termsofuse


I wonder where we have heard that before?



TEdolph

[eastvillagedon]

^damnable lies!

Hilarious Al Gore unhinged calls "bullsh!t" at Aspen Institute on climate skeptics

[Boreas]

Prominent MIT researcher Kerry Emanuel has been receiving an unprecedented "frenzy of hate" after a video featuring an interview with him was published last week by Climate Desk.

Emails contained "veiled threats against my wife," and other "tangible threats," Emanuel, a highly regarded atmospheric scientist and director of MIT's Atmospheres, Oceans and Climate program, said in an interview. "They were vile, these emails. They were the kind of emails nobody would like to receive."

"What was a little bit new about it was dragging family members into it and feeling that my family might be under threat, so naturally I didn't feel very good about that at all," Emanuel said. "I thought it was low to drag somebody's spouse into arguments like this."
...
Emanuel began receiving emails "almost immediately" after (a) video was posted on January 5, and the volume peaked at four or five emails a day.
...
The video—"New Hampshire's GOP Climate Hawks"—documented a climate change conference run by a group of Republican voters upset by their party's anti-science rhetoric. Kerry Emanuel was a keynote speaker along with former Republican congressman Bob Inglis from South Carolina (who, incidentally, has not received any threats since the video).
...
http://motherjones.com/environment/2012/01/mit-climate-scientists-wife-threatened-frenzy-hate

Climate change denialism has turned into a key rallying issue for the right wing and the Republican party.  Republican candidates use this issue to motivate voters and receive donations.  The obvious back story here is that these murderous, threatening wingnuts are merely doing the bidding of the coal and oil industry.  There have never been bigger "useful idiots"* in US history.

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot

[tedolph]

Intersting how Boreas ignored my post.

Also, NASA has said for years that Methane (and water vapor) are far more effective greenhouse gasses than CO2.

Go ahead, make my day-just ask me for the link!

tEdolph

[Loretto]

The jig is up!

Even the Lefty media now admitts that CO2 is not an imm mportant greehouse gas:

I'm not sure how you (and many people in the Denver Post comments section) can come to that conclusion reading that article.

"Scientists say carbon dioxide from fossil fuels such as coal and oil is a bigger overall cause of global warming, but reducing methane and soot offers quicker fixes."

Also, this is not a game changer for the broader debate.  Say every climate change scientist and advocate started going exclusively after soot and methane.  The same people on the other side of the fence would still be there claiming they want to kill jobs.

Edit: Meant to convey that there are a dozen or so things you can say from this article but "not an important greenhouse gas" isn't one of them.

[Hts121]

The Denver Post (i.e. "Lefty media") endorsed Bush in 2004.  They were surely taken off the NWO mailing list shortly thereafter.

[tedolph]

All good points.  May I use this as a teachable moment?

The jig is up!

Even the Lefty media now admitts that CO2 is not an imm mportant greehouse gas:

I'm not sure how you (and many people in the Denver Post comments section) can come to that conclusion reading that article.

"Scientists say carbon dioxide from fossil fuels such as coal and oil is a bigger overall cause of global warming, but reducing methane and soot offers quicker fixes."


This is Lefty double talk and proof the underlying comments are not biased.  Obviously, is you are serious about climate warming, you do the easiest cheapest stuff first. 


Also, this is not a game changer for the broader debate.  Say every climate change scientist and advocate started going exclusively after soot and methane.  The same people on the other side of the fence would still be there claiming they want to kill jobs.

It makes jobs because methane gas has value, It can be sold, turned into elecricity, etc. CO2 can not. 


Edit: Meant to convey that there are a dozen or so things you can say from this article but "not an important greenhouse gas" isn't one of them.

That comes form elsewhere (e.g. NASA). See my previous posts for citations.

[tedolph]

The Denver Post (i.e. "Lefty media") endorsed Bush in 2004.  They were surely taken off the NWO mailing list shortly thereafter.

Whew!

Glad you were able to discredit that so easily. 

Now I can go back toworrying about CO2!

TEdolph

[tedolph]

OK, is this Lefty enough?

The focus solely on CO2 is fueled in part by misconceptions. It’s true that human activity produces vastly more CO2 than all other greenhouse gases put together. However, this does not mean it is responsible for most of the earth’s warming. Many other greenhouse gases trap heat far more powerfully than CO2, some of them tens of thousands of times more powerfully. When taking into account various gases’ global warming potential—defined as the amount of actual warming a gas will produce over the next one hundred years—it turns out that gases other than CO2 make up most of the global warming problem.

Even this overstates the effect of CO2, because the primary sources of these emissions—cars and power plants—also produce aerosols. Aerosols actually have a cooling effect on global temperatures, and the magnitude of this cooling approximately cancels out the warming effect of CO2. The surprising result is that sources of CO2 emissions are having roughly zero effect on global temperatures in the near-term!

This result is not widely known in the environmental community, due to a fear that polluting industries will use it to excuse their greenhouse gas emissions.


http://www.earthsave.org/globalwarming.htm


TEdolph

[Hts121]

^scam by the Chicken industry and PETA temporarily putting aside their differences to work in secret conjunction.  Or maybe its the cows themselves trying another ploy after the 'eat mor chicken' ads failed.

Regardless, the red meat industry has responded - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7564682/Cows-absolved-of-causing-global-warming-with-nitrous-oxide.html

But, seriously, there's a legitimate concern here about livestock 'emissions', especially cows and any efforts to curb climate change should consider methods to reduce the methane produced by those animals.  Seems like research dollars invested into a change in their diet would better serve the environmentalists better than trying to convince people to eat less red meat.  JMO.

[Boreas]

Carbon dioxide is acidifying the ocean and will destroy all of the coral reefs at this rate of emissions.

[tedolph]

Carbon dioxide is acidifying the ocean and will destroy all of the coral reefs at this rate of emissions.

Do you have any idea how the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has varied over the eons?


TEdolph

[tedolph]

Well, I guess Earthsave.org is not Lefty enough.

Tedolph

[tedolph]

Ok, how about this from 2005:

   According to new calculations, methane's effect on warming the world's climate may be double what is currently thought. The new interpretations reveal methane emissions may account for a whopping third of the climate warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases between the 1750s and today. The IPCC report states that methane increases in our atmosphere account for only about one sixth of the total effect of well-mixed greenhouse gases on warming.

Part of the reason the new calculations give a larger effect is that they include the effect methane has on air pollution. A major component of air pollution is near-surface-level or tropospheric ozone, which is not directly emitted, but is instead formed chemically from methane other hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides. The IPCC report includes the effects of tropospheric ozone increases on climate, but it is not attributed to particular sources. By categorizing the climate effects according to emissions, Shindell and colleagues found the total effects of methane emissions are substantially larger. In other words, the true source of some of the warming that is normally attributed to smog is really due to methane that leads to increased smog.

"If we control methane, which is viable, then we are likely to soften global warming more than one would have thought, so that's a very positive outcome," Shindell said. 

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/methane.html



TEdolph

[Hts121]

So you are advocating a veggetarian diet, tedolph?  Never got over that crush on Allyssa Milano?

In other words, the true source of some of the warming that is normally attributed to smog is really due to methane that leads to increased smog.

I'm sure there is some truth to this, but that doesn't translate to some broad conclusion that smog is the result of cow burps.  I didn't see too many cows in LA last time I was there, but I did see a ton of cars and enough smog for the entire west coast...... (and, yes, I understand how geography contributes to that).

[tedolph]

So you are advocating a veggetarian diet, tedolph?  Never got over that crush on Allyssa Milano?

In other words, the true source of some of the warming that is normally attributed to smog is really due to methane that leads to increased smog.

I'm sure there is some truth to this, but that doesn't translate to some broad conclusion that smog is the result of cow burps.  I didn't see too many cows in LA last time I was there, but I did see a ton of cars and enough smog for the entire west coast...... (and, yes, I understand how geography contributes to that).

This may shock you but I have been an Ovo-pesce-vegatarian for almost 20 years.

Actuall it is landfills and uncaped refinery offgassing that make a big difference. This could be recaptured in an econmical way (someplaces already do).  Problem is, then you burn it to make electricity (or reform it to make gasoline) and it turns into CO2 (some of it anyway) and the Left can't stand that, even though CO2 is 1000 times less of a greenhouse gas than sending raw Methane into the atmosphere. 

Doens't fit the rehtoric or the political plan.


tEdolph

[Boreas]

If you *feed* them, they will keep coming back.

[tedolph]

If you *feed* them, they will keep coming back.

since you bothered to reply I will answer one of the questions I posed to you about coral reefs.   You are concerened about CO2 and coral reefs.  Do you know what depth coral reefs form at? 20-130 ft. depending on how clear the water is.  Do you know what the average sea level was before the end of the last ice age (about 12 ,000 years BFP)?   About 300 ft. lower than they are today.  So, all the coral reefs you see today did not exist in the last ice age.  That one went on for about 35,000 years, and the one before that for about 125,000 years with about 30,000 years inbetween. At the interstices of the ages, the ocean level changes about 300-400 feet.  coastlines changed by hundreds of miles (out to near the continental shelf).  We are currently discovering man made structures in over 100 ft. of water.



Now coral has  been around for millions of years.

Hmmmm......

Moral of the story?

The coral will adapt-it alwasy has.

Of course, as a diver I would prefer to see any changes until after I am dead, but that is just a personal preference.



TEdolph

[tedolph]

So you are advocating a veggetarian diet, tedolph?  Never got over that crush on Allyssa Milano?

Man, she was hot.

What is it with those Italian women?

TEdolph

[Foraker]

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) today released the new version of its Plant Hardiness Zone Map (PHZM), updating a useful tool for gardeners and researchers for the first time since 1990 with greater accuracy and detail. The new map—jointly developed by USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and Oregon State University's (OSU) PRISM Climate Group—is available online at www.planthardiness.ars.usda.gov. ARS is the chief intramural scientific research agency of USDA. . . .

Compared to the 1990 version, zone boundaries in this edition of the map have shifted in many areas. The new map is generally one 5-degree Fahrenheit half-zone warmer than the previous map throughout much of the United States. This is mostly a result of using temperature data from a longer and more recent time period; the new map uses data measured at weather stations during the 30-year period 1976-2005. In contrast, the 1990 map was based on temperature data from only a 13-year period of 1974-1986.

http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?contentid=2012/01/0022.xml&contentidonly=true

[Boreas]

WSJ Publishes Op-Ed From 16 Climate Deniers, Refused Letter From 255 Top Scientists

http://thinkprogress.org/green/2012/01/30/414277/wsj-publishes-op-ed-from-16-climate-deniers-refused-letter-from-255-top-scientists/

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, sixteen prominent global warming deniers with scientific backgrounds — such as tobacco apologist Richard Lindzen of MIT and ExxonMobil executive Roger Cohen — concede that manmade carbon dioxide emissions have a warming effect on the planet, but argue that the effect is “small” and nothing to “panic” about. All the other scientists in the world who believe the science are part of a conspiracy to intimidate people like themselves, they write, just as Soviet biologists who believed in genes were “sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death.”

As climate scientist Peter Gleick reports at his Forbes.com blog, those other scientists include 255 members of the United States National Academy of Sciences who wrote a letter about the scientific threat of climate change for the Wall Street Journal — but were turned down:

The most amazing and telling evidence of the bias of the Wall Street Journal with respect to manmade climate change is the fact that 255 members of the United States National Academy of Sciences wrote a scientifically accurate essay on the realities of climate change and on the need for improved and serious public debate around the issue, offered it to the Wall Street Journal, and were turned down. The National Academy of Sciences is the nation’s pre-eminent independent scientific organizations. Its members are among the most respected in the world in their fields. Yet the Journal wouldn’t publish this letter. Instead they chose to publish an error-filled and misleading piece on climate because 16 so-called experts aligned with their bias signed it. This may be good politics for them, but it is bad science and it is bad for the nation.

The NAS letter was eventually published by Science magazine.

[Boreas]

More than half of 82 species of coral being evaluated for inclusion under the Endangered Species Act "more likely than not" would go extinct by 2100 if climate policies and technologies remain the same, federal scientists concluded.

The experts cited "anthropogenic," or man-made, releases of carbon dioxide as a key driver of warming seas and oceans absorbing more CO2, in turn making waters more acidic.

"The combined direct and indirect effects of rising temperature, including increased incidence of disease and ocean acidification, both resulting primarily from anthropogenic increases in atmospheric CO2, are likely to represent the greatest risks of extinction to all or most of the candidate coral species over the next century," the experts concluded in a report released Friday by the National Marine Fisheries Service. ...

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/15/11209607-us-56-coral-species-face-extinction-danger-from-warming-acidic-seas?lite

[Boreas]

Wall Street Journal Online

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304363104577390432521371296.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

The battle plan is called "Beyond Natural Gas," and Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune announced the goal in an interview with the National Journal this month: "We're going to be preventing new gas plants from being built wherever we can." The big green lobbying machine has rolled out a new website that says "The natural gas industry is dirty, dangerous and running amok" and that "The closer we look at natural gas, the dirtier it appears; and the less of it we burn, the better off we will be." So the goal is to shut the industry down, not merely to impose higher safety standards.
...
Leaks from natural gas operations release methane into the atmosphere.  Methane is a way more potent green house gas than carbon dioxide.  The oil companies are allowing these leaks and if the leaks are great enough, we might as well be burning coal.  --Boreas
...
So why is the Sierra Club suddenly portraying natural gas as a villain? The answer surely is the industry's drilling success. The greens were happy to support natural gas as a "bridge fuel to the 21st century" when it cost $8 or more per million BTUs and seemed to be in limited domestic supply.

But now that the hydraulic fracturing and shale revolution has sent gas prices down to $2.50, the lobby fears natural gas will come to dominate U.S. energy production. At that price, the Sierra Club's Valhalla of wind, solar and biofuel power may never be competitive. So the green left has decided it must do everything it can to reduce the supply of gas and keep its price as high as possible.
...
Which will make the profits of gas producers summarily high.

[Gramarye]

Global Green Agenda Continues to Fail[/size]
Walter Russell Mead

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/05/28/global-green-agenda-continues-to-fail/

Those who want to follow the latest stage in the futile march of the global greens can read the BBC dispatch on the global non-summit; the air of despair hanging over the process comes through loud and clear. These are bureaucrats who realize they are becoming so irrelevant that they may soon face the grim possibility of budget cuts: as of now, there are no funds available for the next global green gabfest, tentatively scheduled for Bangkok.

Concern about the climate, we continue to believe at Via Meadia, is not misplaced, but the crazy set of unrealistic objectives, laughable foreign aid boondoggles, Malthusian panic mongering and cockamamie treaty plans made this UN process a clown circus that was doomed to fail — and the sooner, the better.  There was a time — as recently as early 2010 — when the Great and the Good, the Champions of the Conventional Wisdom and the Oracles of the Davoisie identified this forlorn negotiation as the wave of the future and the last best hope of man.

Let the futility and failure to which all this led be a reminder to us and to them: those who guide the world’s destiny aren’t nearly as discerning as they think they are. Between the American housing bubble, the European meltdown and the climate disaster, it almost begins to look as if the Establishment consists mostly of overpaid, egotistical blowhards.

**********

QFT.

The alternative that the greens openly espouse (a world powered by nothing but wind, solar, and maybe biofuels) is economically and technologically impractical given our current state of technological progress.  The alternative that the greens privately espouse (a world that simply consumes dramatically less power) would lead to privation and the rapid overthrow of any democratic regime foolish enough to inflict such a dramatic reduction in living standards on their population.  Therefore, the greens are necessarily anti-democratic (because their agenda will never be accepted democratically) as well as anti-capitalist (because free people in free markets will never choose to starve themselves and their children to satisfy the green theocrats).

Choking the life out of the resurgent gas industry means choking the life out of Youngstown's economic recovery, as well as that of less affluent parts of Pennsylvania and New York.  I doubt the greens will find a receptive audience for their message of "the less of it [natural gas] we burn, the better off we will be" even in more regulation-friendly New York, much less Ohio.  Both the producers of natural gas and the major consumers of natural gas (which includes a lot of heavy industries that could use a break in their energy prices) are apt to strongly disagree.  Heck, even Akron (no conservative Mecca) is running its bus fleet largely on nat-gas now.

[Mr Sparkle]

...
Leaks from natural gas operations release methane into the atmosphere.  Methane is a way more potent green house gas than carbon dioxide.  The oil companies are allowing these leaks and if the leaks are great enough, we might as well be burning coal.  --Boreas
...

What is the amount of Methane being leaked or flared from the natural gas operations and how does it compare to the CO2 reduction by burning natural gas vs. other fossil fuels?

Methane oxidizes in the atmosphere, thus its large impact is over a shorter period than CO2 - a net lifetime of 8.4 years in the atmosphere
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane