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« DONMC Althouse Reads GoreBy lex, on February 28th, 2010
23 comments to Althouse Reads Gore |
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This annoys me enough to make me break my lurker status:
1) Is Carbon Dioxide a greenhouse gas?
2) Are human activities releasing gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere?
You need a good understanding of both those questions. I’m still trying to get clear answers.
You can’t be a contributor to the debate until you have a feel for IR absorbtion spectra. Or, maybe you can. But, likely, you’re just making noise. I have put a lot of effort into the actual hard science of this, and the only thing I know is that the planet’s getting hotter. Not fast, not uniformly, but, hotter. On the century timescale.
Maybe people aren’t changing the world. Ask a tiger.
But, please, don’t ask a politician to tell you about science.
1) Is Carbon Dioxide a greenhouse gas?
CO2 is *plant food*, and gases don’t act like the glass in a greenhouse to trap heat — the glass just inhibits cooling by blocking air circulation.
2) Are human activities releasing gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere?
Yup — but it’s only one-sixty-four-thousandth of one percent of that which Mama Gaia releases just from decaying plant material. Humans are pikers when it comes to CO2 production.
You can’t be a contributor to the debate until you have a feel for IR absorbtion spectra.
That’s about 1% of it, but it’s the only one the CAGW harps on — you have a *lot* of additional homework to do. I’d suggest doing some reading on the physics of the atmosphere, with special emphasis on hemispheric circulation.
I have put a lot of effort into the actual hard science of this, and the only thing I know is that the planet’s getting hotter. Not fast, not uniformly, but, hotter. On the century timescale.
You’ve wasted a lot of time and effort reading talking points, then. If you’d done some actual research, you’d have learned
1. that this is the normal warming associated with an interglacial period,
2. that global temperatures only a thousand years ago were, on average, 3C warmer,
3. that global temperatures in the ’30s and ’40s were warmer than they are currently, and
4. that global temperatures have flatlined for the past decade — there’s even some evidence that they’re declining.
And CO2 is *plant food* — the only
Maybe people aren’t changing the world.
The world is constantly changing *itself*. We live on a dynamic planet.
Ask a tiger.
Last tiger I saw, I shot. It was attacking a farmer’s kid.
Not even Gore is stupid enough to believe his pontifications.
BTW, what’s with the recent spate of Lefty Talking Points about China investing in “green grids and renewable energy sources” — China’s been giving both those areas the thumbs-down at every Climate Conference since Kyoto.
Yes, it’s a greenhouse gas, one of four; methane, ozone and – most significantly – water vapor included. Yes, large quantities of CO2 are being released into the air through hydrocarbons – up from 313 ppm in 1906 to 383 in 2009. Is that significant? How can you know, when climate has so many interrelating variables whose interactions we don’t understand, like cloud cover and solar variation, just to name two?
How can we trust the science here when so much of it has been built upon a rocky foundation, hysteria mongering, strange model coding and poorly associated political posturing on non- or obliquely-related issues?
How much wealth are you willing to transfer, what quality of life degradations are you willing to accept, what other things might that money be better spent upon and what’s the whole point when India and China refuse, with their half of the world’s population, to play along?
The medieval warming period was warmer than the IPCC forecasts this warming cycle to be and life flourished. During previous warming cycles, atmospheric CO2 lagged the warming trend rather than leading it and peer-reviewed research indicates that deglaciation is caused by orbital cycles rather than CO2 (although CO2 can spread the warming).
This is mind-bending stuff, and it doesn’t at all help when people like Gore and Pachauri – a railroad engineer – stand to personally profit from the effects of the policies they advocate while jetting around the planet talking down to the little people.
…peer-reviewed research indicates that deglaciation is caused by orbital cycles rather than CO2 (although CO2 can spread the warming).
Most glaciers in retreat aren’t melting (they’re ‘way above the freezing level), they’re sublimating because of a lack of snowfall to renew them. The most-publicized glacial regressions — Kilimanjaro’s ice cap and the glaciers in the Himalayas on India’s northeastern border — are caused by deforestation in the foothills. Farmers cut the trees down, the trees no longer produce water vapor to waft up the mountainside to produce snowfall when it condenses and is carried above the freezing level by air currents.
And all glaciers aren’t in retreat — there are just as many advancing. There are glaciers in Iceland and Chile that are advancing even as their neighbors on the other side of the same mountain are retreating.
If it warms up enough we can get some of that good Norse wine from “Vinland”–aka Greenland. May take a few more centuries to get back to the level of the Medieval Warming Period, but that may not be a bad thing.
Vineland was Nova Scotia, Mike. Greenlanders grew a variety of crops, but the winters were too tough to allow grapes to grow.
Lotta wine was produced in northern England, though, and it’s *still* too chilly there today for the vines to survive.
Yes, BillT, the guards and their families who lived hard by Hadrian’s Wall cultivated grapes and pressed wine “to make the time go faster” as it were. And we are just now finding out, thanks to recent excavations just how cosmopolitan Northern England, Ireland, etc., really were, as recent digs around York show wealthy N.Africans of Negroid extraction actually lived among them as a result of thriving commerce due in no small part to warmer conditions.
It really does pay to come around here. I never knew that, Virgil. Thank you, Sir.
On the other hand, Bill, a thousand years ago Greenland supported dairy farming.
%$#@!
Not Nova Scotia, Newfoundland.
NS was too chilly for grapes except during the early Holocene — but we weren’t around to cultivate ‘em.
For a good fisking of both the science AND the politics behind all of this go to: 1) Willis Eschenbach’s open letter to Judith Curry at “Watts Up With That?” and some 708 + responses@
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/o2/25/judith-I-love-ya-but-youre-way-wrong/
(h/tKate@small dead animals)
and an equally compelling article at Steve McIntyre’s “Climate Audit” in an article entitled:”Climategate From an Enron Perspective” (plus some 111+ responses) @
http://climateaudit.org/2010/02/24/rob-bradley-climategate-from-an-enron-perspective/
Excellent calls, virgil. Anthony Watts does a superb job of posting articles from both sides of the fence.
Glaciers, Schmaciers. I’m worried about my cup of joe.
LINK
“Land and water are being fought over by farmers and energy producers.”
Make my java more expensive AND scarce at the same time? Yet another VERY GOOD reason to draw & quarter ALGORE and his acolytes.
Fliterman, according to your link “There is already evidence of important changes” said Nestor Osorio, head of the International Coffee Organization (ICO), which represents 77 countries that export or import the beans. In the last 25 years the temperature has risen half a degree in coffee producing countries, five times more than in the 25 years before,” he said.
I’m trying to imagine your pain, thinking you might be addicted to a substance so unstable that it suffers a “35%” hit in production with a 1/2 degree climate change. Escape while you can. “Give it up for Lent”, and don’t look back.
Addicted? Probably.
Maybe that is why I am hoarding bags of coffee beans, along with weapons and ammo for TEOTWAWKI. Not only will these things be good to have, they will also have tremendous barter value when our currency becomes worthless.
Also, I am stocking up on mosquito nets. I plan on going into business when temperatures rise, and malaria moves northward.
Biggest outbreak of malaria in history was in the ’20s and ’30s.
In *Siberia*. North of the Arctic Circle.
Anopheles skeeters only need liquid water and mammals to survive and thrive, and they only need ‘em for six weeks out of fifty-two…
Hmm, had not thought of mosquito nets. Have one for myself as it is sometimes helpful when camping in the backcountry. The nets might be good for barter though.
My engineering background has made it clear that attempting to solve any problem without defining it clearly is almost a guaranteed route to failure.
Let me address the unsettled science issues, they are many.
Question: What is the role of CO2 as a greenhouse gas and exactly what is its overall impact on global temperatures?
1. The known science regarding the absorptivity of specific wavelengths infrared energy by CO2 suggests that the maximum total impact on the earths temperature is only about one degree F.! This is true even if today’s levels of CO2 were doubled to 0.076% and then doubled again to 0.152%
2. The above statement comes from a Professor of atomic, molecular and optical physics at Princeton University. He has studied the interactions of visible and infrared radiation with gases – one of the main physical phenomena behind the “greenhouse effect”
3. Another key issue is, what is the source of atmospheric CO2? This is still unclear, but it is pretty clear that burning fossil fuel is hardly the primary or even major source. (think oceans)
4. Many scientists question if the Earths temperature leads or lags the rise in CO2. A case can be made to suggest that CO2 levels actually lag temperatures by about 800 years. A good case can be made for Global Warming in cycles of 1500, 10,000 and 100,000 years.
5. Another point of conjecture is just what impact does the use of fossil fuel by America have on the entire issue. Once again it is pretty clear that if we cut our output in half and cur it in half again it would have NO measurable effects as the rest of the world grows their industry and agriculture ( don’t forget the effects of methane from live stock) output.
6. There is some current question as to how to measure global temperature trends and what is a reasonable time base. In recent times we have experienced global cooling concerns ( 1975) and global warming ( temperatures peaked in 1998 and are currently on a 10 year decline). 1865 was one of the warmest years on record in modern times and the Vikings farmed Greenland when it was green in the early 1400’s.
Lapman … very useful analysis. As far as CO2 is concerned, it is, as Lex noted, an essential gas, along with oxygen, methane, ozone and, wait for it, water vapor. I’m deeply interested in CO2, not because it has much, if any effect, in the warming or cooling of the globe [it doesn't] but because its greatest boon to the earth is that it’s an *essential* fertilizer for all green plants, from redwoods to grasses to grains to orchids. Without the CO2 that silly Al Gore is trying to rid us of, we’d all be living in a sandbox. For the few hours or days left to us.
So … hurrah for CO2. Let’s make more of it. Start panting now …
Marianne
Since water vapor is by far the predominant greenhouse gas, that should be the concern, not CO2. First we cover the oceans with plastic sheets. Then we get rid of all those hydrogen fuel cell cars, since they give off such huge quantities of H2O vapor. Covering the oceans will also cut down on pesky problems such as hurricanes, and imagine the dampening effect on Tsunamis. Of course we would need to develop huge submarines for shipping cargo. Hey, imagine all the green jobs that those nuke subs would create!