Obama to address Climate Change in speech - It's About Damn Time.

[werepossum]

He absolutely cannot. First of all we're only one country and there's only so much CO-2 he can stop. He can't come to my house and make me get rid of my 2 cars and boat. He can't replace all the coal plants with wind and I doubt he's suggesting they switch to nukes.

All I ask is this before raising my electric bill to pay for this:

Tell me what percentage of CO-2 emissions your policies will cut (like say 20%) and tell me what effect that'll have on global climate.

Okay, let me rephrase. Obama can do quite a lot about domestic CO2 production without Congress. He can order the EPA to set output limits and stiff fines to limit the dirtiest producers' viability. If your generation plant cannot produce energy at a cost that makes economic sense you will either modify it or close it, in which case price goes up and another provider becomes practical. I don't think that will make much if any change to climate because I don't think CO2 is driving climate, but the lower the production rates, the less chance CO2 will drive climate or directly cause environmental damage. Or to use a simple analogy: When one is on fire one doesn't run past a very small fire extinguisher because it's not a very big fire extinguisher.

As far as economic cost, one must look at projected costs versus mitigated ecological damage and we can't do that until we have specific proposals. Even then we're faced with great uncertainty - climate scientists are currently about the level of having your six year old rebuild your automobile engine and economic scientists little if any better. But there's a couple of military operations axioms which I think apply here if paraphrased:
A good plan now beats a great plan tomorrow.
A poor plan vigorously executed beats a perfect plan not executed.

Worst case we crash our economy and China takes over the world. More likely down side is we damage our economy for little to no visible gain. Most likely is we slightly damage our economy for slight gains. That may not sound like a good trade-off, but consider that as our economy improves, the Fed will choke it down with interest rate increases anyway; the Fed is composed of private bankers and controlling inflation (to a manageable, predictable level) is job one. Nothing against bankers, but I'll take a very slightly cleaner environment over fatter bankers any day.

NASA... you mean the former director of GISS James Hansen, a radical enviromental activist that repeatedly gets himself arrested over pipelines? Yeah, wonderful men in control of our temperature record over there.

You know what his science was? He laid out three scenarios at the beginning of this Global Warming Climate Change campaign. Since then the recorded temperature has tracked just below or at Scenario C, which he explained at the time meant "zero emissions". Do you think CO2 has stopped rising? No? Then his science is false.

You look to a political activist who gets arrested and cannot predict anything for your appeal to authority?! Try harder.

Hansen is indeed a tool. I think the biggest problem with the pro-CAGW crowd in general is a lack of ethics.

 

[werepossum]

Did I say I disprove anything?

There is nothing to disprove in your comment - you've just linked to data.

In fact that is one problem of the AGW theory - there is no condition that apparently can disprove it. There is always something new that was never mentioned before to explain why the "settled science" didn't follow the script.

And do you really think that the 3300 argo floats, that require constant correction since they are affected by currents and what not, can really measure quarterly changes of 0.01ºC at over 2300 feet?

Between the instrument error and the corrections applied that read is within the error bands.

And finally what does it prove?

What caused the ocean heat? Is it natural or never seen? Why did the atmosphere warmed in the 90's but now it is the oceans? Why is it related to human activity? What is the thesis? What are the conditions that if are observed will prove that it is wrong?

We know the temperature go up and down - ice ages and periods of temperatures higher than usual (Dinosaurs in Antarctica, Vikings in the Greenland, etc). Why is this rise of temperature in the oceans troubling?

Why aren't the North Pacific and North Atlantic warming up?


Since 2008, despite the UK met office predictions based on its computer model, predicting that the winters would be warmer, there has been a streak of cold winters, including one of the coldest in 100 years (2010).

Truth is the science is far from settled and we will be better prepared to face a warmer world by localized investments than by trying to reduce CO2, that has yet to happen and considering the history of CO2 increasing with the rise of temperature (yes, first temperature of the planet rises, then CO2 increases) it would most likely be futile anyway.

Good post, and it very well lists the problems in climate studies. However, this

1. Science is NEVER* settled.
2. The point is to replicate results, not disprove them.
3. Any method which gives us the most accurate results at the moment, based on existing knowledge and instruments, is a valid method. Your point is a straw man argument.
4. There is an additional problem with rising CO2, and that is the pH of the oceans.
5. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/...ionid=139A18C1D5E2F97E3E4041AF11B491D6.d03t02
6. Some people use tree cores, others the vanishing ice caps? Speaking of the 70's, that was predicted by John Mercer.

is also a good post. None of us really know to what extent CO2 is driving climate because the Earth is an incredibly complicated (and I'd argue exquisitely designed) feedback system. We know that current climate models only work to predict things that have already happened. We DON'T know to what degree our understanding is off, because we know that some inputs can cause nonlinear changes in output. However, the effect of CO2 concentration on atmospheric, aquatic and marine acidity is child's play compared to CO2 as a warming gas as it relates to the Earth's negative feedback loops. Here we have directly repeatable experiments because we can isolate and replicate many if not most of the variables and produce results that match observed environmental phenomena. We know there are some bad effects from high acidity, particularly in marine reef systems. (Aquatic systems' acidity problems are typically from either terrestrial run-off or acid rain from sulfuric compounds, but still, increased acidity in the rain and from direct absorption from the atmospheric exacerbate these effects.)

So whether or not we agree with Hansen and company, the acidity problem seems amazingly straightforward. Why not ignore the climate debate for the moment and concentrate on the acidity problem? If the CAGW alarmists are correct, we'll also help keep our climate from overheating. If the CAGW alarmists are not correct, we'll at least have bought healthier oceans, lakes and streams, and less erosion of minerals and metals. Not such a bad thing, assuming we can accomplish it without tanking our economy.

 

[MooseNSquirrel]

Yeah, climate changes (Ice Ages and stuff).

I don't think most people contest that and that isn't the debate.

The debate is:
"Are humans causing climate change that will lead to catastrophic consequences"?

Again (although there are some groups that don't believe the Greenhouse effect), the debate isn't if CO2 traps heat or not.

The debate is:
Is the CO2 emitted humans the main mover of the climate or not?

The fact remains that the human CO2 emission are increasing at even a faster pace now but the temperature clearly isn't.

So the logical question is:
Are we sure it was anthropogenic CO2 the cause of the earlier temperature rise?

Lastly the CO2 hypothesis is the basis for computer climate models - the models don't fit with the empiric observation.

The scientific rebuttal to that is that the ocean has been absorbing most of that heat, and we have had a slight rise in surface temperatures over the last 17 years.

 

[BlueWolf47]

The scientific rebuttal to that is that the ocean has been absorbing most of that heat, and we have had ight rise in surface temperatures over the last 17 years.

Ive already tried and they claim its bunk science even though the studies are peer reviewed. Climate studies are some of the most scruitnized areas atm. The golden ticket for the oil industry is to find misrepresentations in the data. Dr. Andrew Tesler who is an atmospheric scientists at my university (TAMU), recieves freedom of information requests by private groups representing oil the oil industry any time he does a interview or writes a book. He then has to submit all his emails including his university address.

 

[GaiaHunter]

The scientific rebuttal to that is that the ocean has been absorbing most of that heat, and we have had a slight rise in surface temperatures over the last 17 years.

That doesn't explain why it didn't absorb most of the heat in the 90's but suddenly it is absorbing most of the heat after 2000 - the effect had to exist before as well.

Additionally it doesn't explain why for example the North Pacific and North Atlantic aren't actually warming up.

(There is also some debate of the way the raw data of the argo system is worked, but that seems to be a constant.)

And while there might have been a little surface warming (that is statistically indistinguishable from zero), the fact is the rate of warming slowed instead of increasing.

On the other hand the emission rate of CO2 increased.

Clearly there are other players beside the CO2 and the climate models clearly show CO2 has been to heavily weighted while other factor were under weighted.

 

[BlueWolf47]

Short term cooling trends are expected and observed. This is the up and down escalator. Also, how can you base anything on a such a short period of time.

 

[woolfe9998]

Science isn't made by consensus - it is made by someone being right.

I never told you to listen to me.

You can just look at the data collected by satellites and other instruments and compare them to models based on a settled understanding of the climatology and on consensus.

And the scientific community isn't capable of doing the same, and isn't capable of understanding the data a lot better than you or me?

This isn't a populist issue or one of simple common sense. It requires expertise that neither you nor I possess. Your opinions are of the downloaded variety, not the variety of that which is earned through education and experience.

 

[MagickMan]

nonsense

Just like climate change.

 

[WelshBloke]

Yeah, climate changes (Ice Ages and stuff).

I don't think most people contest that and that isn't the debate.

The debate is:
"Are humans causing climate change that will lead to catastrophic consequences"?

Again (although there are some groups that don't believe the Greenhouse effect), the debate isn't if CO2 traps heat or not.

The debate is:
Is the CO2 emitted humans the main mover of the climate or not?

The fact remains that the human CO2 emission are increasing at even a faster pace now but the temperature clearly isn't.

So the logical question is:
Are we sure it was anthropogenic CO2 the cause of the earlier temperature rise?

Lastly the CO2 hypothesis is the basis for computer climate models - the models don't fit with the empiric observation.

It doesn't matter if human caused global warming is the main mover. It matters if human caused global warming is enough to push natural global warming over the edge.

 

[BlueWolf47]

 

[BlueWolf47]

 

[GaiaHunter]

Ah the escalator.

So we are still showing that cooling trends are to be expected by showing periods where the cooling was caused by volcanic eruptions.

So lets see - the first flat/cooling trend is based on data of 1880. I would like to see error bars for that and to how precise thermometers where then.

The 2nd and 3rd trend are caused by the volcanic eruptions of Mount Pinatubo and El Chichon.

The 4th trend is bogus.

Their period selection of 1994-2000 actually shows an average warming trend of 0.06ºC per decade that falls in line with the rest of the decades.

So what we end up with is a first trend that would be swallowed by error bars, a second trend explained by a volcano, a third trend explained by a volcano, a fourth trend that isn't there and a fifth cooling trend without a cataclysmic equatorial eruption to explain the cooling.

 

[colonelciller]

he wants to appease the eco-KOOKS. What has become the alarmist ritualistic cry of cooling / warming / sky is falling theism designed to sell to the low information crowd with cherry picked data and sound bites backed up with hoaxed up videos of polar bears and glacier calving. It's a lie. A hoax. A long con spawned by alGore. It's the carbon-CON.

it's sad to see this kind of abject ignorance and immature eagerness to ignore science and stroke the shaft of big energy propaganda. there are sooo many brain-dead like the quoted among us that we are deeply and truly fucked as a species.

idiots and their puppetmasters are destroying this planet.

the puppet masters only want coin today... the idiots just lack science literacy and critical thinking skills. the govts of the world don't really ca because th e people running them like their power, money and have friends who profit from keeping things the way they are.

we are truly fucked

 

[colonelciller]

this thread is great at exposing the scientific illiterates

 

[BlueWolf47]

Ah the escalator.

So we are still showing that cooling trends are to be expected by showing periods where the cooling was caused by volcanic eruptions.

So lets see - the first flat/cooling trend is based on data of 1880. I would like to see error bars for that and to how precise thermometers where then.

The 2nd and 3rd trend are caused by the volcanic eruptions of Mount Pinatubo and El Chichon.

The 4th trend is bogus.

Their period selection of 1994-2000 actually shows an average warming trend of 0.06ºC per decade that falls in line with the rest of the decades.

So what we end up with is a first trend that would be swallowed by error bars, a second trend explained by a volcano, a third trend explained by a volcano, a fourth trend that isn't there and a fifth cooling trend without a cataclysmic equatorial eruption to explain the cooling.

Several factors can have a large impact on short-term temperatures, such as oceanic cycles like the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) or the 11-year solar cycle.* These short-term cycles don't have long-term effects on the Earth's temperature, unlike the continuing upward trend caused by global warming from human greenhouse gas emissions.

 

[GaiaHunter]

Several factors can have a large impact on short-term temperatures, such as oceanic cycles like the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) or the 11-year solar cycle.* These short-term cycles don't have long-term effects on the Earth's temperature, unlike the continuing upward trend caused by global warming from human greenhouse gas emissions.

Translation:

"We don't know what is going on, but it has to be CO2".

 

[michal1980]

Translation:

"We don't know what is going on, but it has to be CO2".

bingo.

 

[Paratus]

Translation:

"We don't know what is going on, but it has to be CO2".

Translation:

It's like too hard man. I like know its not CO2 because of like stuff but see its like way complicated and if I don't get it no one gets it.

Well here's a simple fact for you: The power that we measure coming in from the sun is greater than the power leaving the Earth.


It's like if someone told you your glass of ice water was warming up and you said, "no it's not it's still cold."

"But your ice cubes are melting!"
"I had 3 ice cubes and I still do"
"But they are getting smaller"
"Oh really where did they go then. I only have ice and water in this cup. Not water, ice and some magical melted ice stuff. Stupid liberal"

 

[Matt1970]

Translation:

"We don't know what is going on, but it has to be CO2".

Solution:

Raise Taxes.

 

[bshole]

So if they force Carbon Trading on America to solve the "problem" of global warming, what will be the end result? I imagine the end result will be the exportation of the few remaining manufacturing jobs in America to China. Why does that make a lick of sense?

 

[werepossum]

Translation:

"We don't know what is going on, but it has to be CO2".

LOL +1

So if they force Carbon Trading on America to solve the "problem" of global warming, what will be the end result? I imagine the end result will be the exportation of the few remaining manufacturing jobs in America to China. Why does that make a lick of sense?

Agreed. Carbon trading is a joke, enriching those who have positioned themselves to sell indulgences (and those with the lobbying power to muscle in.) This too will soon be outsourced, as it's very cheap to plant trees in third world nations.

Anything that raises energy prices hurts our competitiveness, but China's and the third world's low labor costs and relative lack of regulation is really doing the damage. I'd like to see us move to a sales tax base so that imported goods had the same taxes as American goods, preferably with import tariffs as well. But one way to minimize loss of manufacturing is to heavily invent manufacturing companies to adopt highly energy efficient manufacturing.

Anything we adopt is going to lower our standard of living, but surely a cleaner, healthier, more stable planet is worth something?

 

[GaiaHunter]

Well here's a simple fact for you: The power that we measure coming in from the sun is greater than the power leaving the Earth.

Thank goodness, otherwise we would be dead.

 

[colonelciller]

Anything we adopt is going to lower our standard of living, but surely a cleaner, healthier, more stable planet is worth something?

planet = life support system
who needs that?
🙄

 

[colonelciller]

Translation:

"We don't know what is going on, but it has to be CO2".

translation: YOUR scientific illiteracy prevents you from understanding what is going on... how embarrasing it must be

 

[GaiaHunter]

Anything we adopt is going to lower our standard of living, but surely a cleaner, healthier, more stable planet is worth something?

But aren't we, the ones that have been industrialized the longest, living more years and more comfortably than the ones before us that lived in that "idyllic world" before CO2 emissions?

And was that planet so stable?

Do we want to lower the CO2 emissions because it will lead to a better human life or because it will lead to an idyllic planet?

But wasn't that idyllic planet actually worse for our species?