[hrothgar]

Al_U_Card, on 2013-July-04, 09:15, said:

The cumulative effect of CO2 as a greenhouse gas is logarithmic in nature and most of that effect has already occurred.

Not sure if this quote can be described as an outright lie.
Stupidity is a very plausible explanation. Feel free to take your pick which you prefer.

1. It's well know that the impact of c02 emissions on surface temperature is governed by a logarithmic curve.
What Al fails to mention is that C02 emissions are increasing exponentially.

2. As I mentioned in the previous post, there are lags all through this system.
We haven't begun to pay the costs for the C02 we've released in recent years.
Even if we completely stopped admitting C02 today, significant temperature increases are baked into the system

[PassedOut]

Zelandakh, on 2013-July-04, 03:07, said:

To my mind, all you are doing here is weakening your position when you post things that are quite obviously alarmist.

From my perspective, the 'alarmist' posts here come from the pants-wetters who predict dire consequences to jobs and the economy from our taking steps to reduce emissions.

Having been in business all of my life, I've gained a strong respect for the adaptability of the market. While that does constitute faith on my part, it is a faith based on experience. I can understand that folks with careers in the military and in other professions lack my faith in the market, but I believe that my faith in the market is much better founded than is the faith that something unknown will turn up to mitigate the effects of mankind's spewing of heat-trapping gasses.

[onoway]

My perspective is that we are being led down the garden path by a red herring. It's easy to sequester carbon. We need to stop the practices which lead to desertification. We need to stop strip mining the soil and poisoning the air and water and that's where there seems to be little will. It won't matter how much the sea level rises - or not - if we no longer have sufficiently clean water and all the topsoil has vanished or degraded to the point that food production collapses. This is the route we are charging down full speed.

According to Wikipedia:
Desertification has played a significant role in human history, contributing to the collapse of several large empires, such as Carthage, Greece, and the Roman Empire, as well as causing displacement of local populations.[3]

We know what to do about it, we know that it's reversible, we know that trees (and biodiversity) are vitally important to such recovery and we know that recovery leads to climate modification. We also know that soil which is covered with vegetation is a carbon sink, and bare soil is a carbon emitter. What we don't seem to know is how to make any politicians care.

[PassedOut]

onoway, on 2013-July-04, 22:17, said:

According to Wikipedia:
Desertification has played a significant role in human history, contributing to the collapse of several large empires, such as Carthage, Greece, and the Roman Empire, as well as causing displacement of local populations.[3]

We know what to do about it, we know that it's reversible, we know that trees (and biodiversity) are vitally important to such recovery and we know that recovery leads to climate modification. We also know that soil which is covered with vegetation is a carbon sink, and bare soil is a carbon emitter. What we don't seem to know is how to make any politicians care.

I recall a recent documentary about the 'dust bowl' of the depression. Changes in farming methods did play a big role in preventing the formation of a large desert in the plains of the US. The federal government under Roosevelt took a strong hand in changing those practices. Perhaps when the water starts to run dry there will be another examination of our ways of growing food.

[Zelandakh]

PassedOut, on 2013-July-04, 10:14, said:

Having been in business all of my life, I've gained a strong respect for the adaptability of the market. While that does constitute faith on my part, it is a faith based on experience. I can understand that folks with careers in the military and in other professions lack my faith in the market, but I believe that my faith in the market is much better founded than is the faith that something unknown will turn up to mitigate the effects of mankind's spewing of heat-trapping gasses.

Having been interested in science and technology all my life, I have gained a strong respect for the adaptability of humans. While that does constitute faith on my part, it is a faith grounded on experience. A good example of this was the critical food shortage warnings from my childhood, which went away (temporarily at least) once scientists discovered new varieties of higher yield crops. It is my opinion (faith?) that we have the technology already to offset the effects of additional greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It is simply a case of working out such details as who will pay the bill; who will gain from designing and building the required parts; and who will have to host them. I posted to this effect back at the beginning of this thread (when it was still on the topic of what we should do) and nothing much has changed since.

[PassedOut]

Zelandakh, on 2013-July-05, 03:07, said:

It is my opinion (faith?) that we have the technology already to offset the effects of additional greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It is simply a case of working out such details as who will pay the bill; who will gain from designing and building the required parts; and who will have to host them. I posted to this effect back at the beginning of this thread (when it was still on the topic of what we should do) and nothing much has changed since.

Thanks. I was unaware that we have the technology to prevent or to otherwise deal with large rises in sea level. Could you provide some links so I could read up on that?

[billw55]

PassedOut, on 2013-July-05, 07:35, said:

Thanks. I was unaware that we have the technology to prevent or to otherwise deal with large rises in sea level. Could you provide some links so I could read up on that?

http://www.nyc.gov/h...rt/report.shtml

Glad to see someone working on adapting to the inevitable.

[hrothgar]

billw55, on 2013-July-05, 08:00, said:

http://www.nyc.gov/h...rt/report.shtml

Glad to see someone working on adapting to the inevitable.

It's certainly possible to protect a small number of wealthy enclaves like New York City

It's really going to suck if you're unlucky enough to live in Bangladesh, or for that matter, Florida...

[Zelandakh]

The beauty of taking greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere directly is that it does not take very long before the gases even themselves out again. So you can position these devices in non-urban areas and still get the benefits in NYC. Here is one of the first hit I got for the google search "artificial trees" "global warming". There are also many other solutions out there, although the majority have a much bigger downside than this one. The difficulty is not the technology itself so much as the cost and the sheer scale. There is also a long-term issue of storing the removed CO2. This particular solution relies on a very simple piece of chemistry: carbon dioxide + sodium hydroxide = sodium carbonate + water. This has been tested on a (very) small scale and works. Better than this, it is the same solution I used as child when playing SimEarth, so it has a special appeal to the gamer/scifi freak in me.

[billw55]

hrothgar, on 2013-July-05, 08:12, said:

It's certainly possible to protect a small number of wealthy enclaves like New York City

It's really going to suck if you're unlucky enough to live in Bangladesh, or for that matter, Florida...

Yes, perhaps. I expect that changes in which areas are habitable will be a major effect. Luckily, this will occur slowly by human standards (even if rapidly compared to climate history). Is 50-100 years an unreasonable time frame to move away from threatened coastlines? Mainly, people just need to stop building in those areas, and start building a little further away instead. We could do it in Florida, and should be already IMO. But as you say, maybe more difficult in underdeveloped nations.

[Daniel1960]

Zelandakh, on 2013-July-05, 08:29, said:

The beauty of taking greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere directly is that it does not take very long before the gases even themselves out again. So you can position these devices in non-urban areas and still get the benefits in NYC. Here is one of the first hit I got for the google search "artificial trees" "global warming". There are also many other solutions out there, although the majority have a much bigger downside than this one. The difficulty is not the technology itself so much as the cost and the sheer scale. There is also a long-term issue of storing the removed CO2. This particular solution relies on a very simple piece of chemistry: carbon dioxide + sodium hydroxide = sodium carbonate + water. This has been tested on a (very) small scale and works. Better than this, it is the same solution I used as child when playing SimEarth, so it has a special appeal to the gamer/scifi freak in me.

Another viable option is the variation of the Fischer-Tropsch process, using CO2 as the feedstock. This is possible, although economically prohibitive at the moment. Under such a scenario, hydrocarbons and CO2 could be recycled continuously.

[PassedOut]

Zelandakh, on 2013-July-05, 08:29, said:

The beauty of taking greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere directly is that it does not take very long before the gases even themselves out again.

No doubt we should employ techniques to clean the atmosphere of greenhouse gasses built up over many years -- in fact, we'll likely have no choice but to do so. That includes changing our methods of agriculture.

But it has to be more cost-effective and less disruptive to curb the emissions in the first place.

It's like a city on the river that sends its sewage downstream. The technology exists for the downriver cities to clean up the sewage they receive before putting it into the water supply, but that's not a sufficient reason to allow the pollution in the first place.

[Daniel1960]

hrothgar, on 2013-July-04, 09:27, said:

Not sure if this quote can be described as an outright lie.
Stupidity is a very plausible explanation. Feel free to take your pick which you prefer.

1. It's well know that the impact of c02 emissions on surface temperature is governed by a logarithmic curve.
What Al fails to mention is that C02 emissions are increasing exponentially.

2. As I mentioned in the previous post, there are lags all through this system.
We haven't begun to pay the costs for the C02 we've released in recent years.
Even if we completely stopped admitting C02 today, significant temperature increases are baked into the system

Agreed that the impacts of CO2 are logarithmic. However, atmospheric CO2 levels are not increasign exponentially. Mauna Loa measurements show a fairly linear increase over the past 20 years (1.95 ppm /yr, R2 = 0.999). Granted, this is an increase from the early-mid 20th century, and indeed, there was an exponential increase post-WWII. However, that has eased as many countries have industrialized, and many scientists expect the increase to lessen as the large developing countries (China, India, Brazil, etc.) stabilize.

The concept of a CO2 lag is highly debatable. While, we have sufficient scientific data concerning the heat trapping properties of CO2, none of that data indicates that the process is not immediate. The idea of a temperature lag was postulated to account for the lessened temperature rise based on the IPCC climate sensitivity value of 3/doubling. This concept could account for the lag in the temperature increase during the mid-20th century, which manifested itself at the end. However, the stagnation in temperature rise in the 21st century has put significant doubt in this postulation, as a much higher temperature suppression would need to occur to counter not only the heating from recent increases in atmospheric CO2 levels, but also the lagged heating from previous CO2. In such a scenario, the cooling mechanism must be greater than the CO2 warming capacbility, or the mechanism has switched from warming in the latter part of the 20th century to cooling in the early 21st century, and the heating capability of the added CO2 is less than postulated by the IPCC. Recent scientific research seems to support the latter argument.

[Zelandakh]

PassedOut, on 2013-July-05, 08:57, said:

But it has to be more cost-effective and less disruptive to curb the emissions in the first place.

Does it? Is it more cost-effective or disruptive for a city to have everyone their do everything manually or to use a power station to provide electricity that can be used by everyone and use the eexcess power to deal with any side-effects? The truth is that what is more disruptive depends on how much actually turns out to be required. The answer will not involve people returning to a state where they did not have freely available electricity. This is the point that China makes too, that there is no reason why the people there should be forced to endure a lower standard of living than those in the West just because they reached this point in development later.

Instead, we need to look at solutions that will work given that emissions will need to provide power for nearly everyone. That will probably involve a mix of policies. In the same way as the solution to the critical food shortages that I mentioned a few posts back involved (inter alia) both a technological solution (high yield crops) and a life-change solution (China's One Child policy).

My personal solution would be (I suppose) a form of carbon tax but implemented at a national level. Each government pays into a central pot (presumably controlled by a UN council with international representation) an amount according to their greenhouse gas emissions. That pot is then used towards funding solutions such as the one I linked to. Each country is free to raise that capital in whichever way it sees fit. That might be with a carbon tax but if a government has reasons for avoiding that approach then it is ok. The advantage of this is that the biggest poluters foot the bill (as it should be) but no further international agreement is required beyond the initial set-up. This seems to me to be easier to get passed than the Kyoto-style agreements and has the potential for a long-term solution, something none of the suggested treaties up to this time have had. The downside is that it does not really fit the ideals of either side. For the ecologists, there is no direct cut in emissions. Cuts come only from governments pursuing policies to reduce their tax bill. For the corporations, they are almost certainly going to end up paying the bill one way or another and it will have an impact on their profits. So I have little hope that my approach will ever be adopted; but since this is a forum I can at least put it out there.

[Daniel1960]

billw55, on 2013-July-05, 08:00, said:

http://www.nyc.gov/h...rt/report.shtml

Glad to see someone working on adapting to the inevitable.

If NYC were to implement these actions, they should be more than fine. They list climate changes of 2-3C temperature increase and 1-2 feet of sea level rise not by 2100, but in the next 40 years! Not only are they using high end estimates, but using a much shorter time frame. Of course, some of these improvements were long overdue.

[PassedOut]

Zelandakh, on 2013-July-05, 09:35, said:

Does it? Is it more cost-effective or disruptive for a city to have everyone their do everything manually or to use a power station to provide electricity that can be used by everyone and use the eexcess power to deal with any side-effects?

...

My personal solution would be (I suppose) a form of carbon tax but implemented at a national level.

The alarmist claim that curbing emissions will require everyone to do everything manually is preposterous.

The carbon tax is also my preferred solution because it would support a market-based approach to developing different sources of power and because more revenue would become available to implement other methods of cleaning the atmosphere of existing greenhouse gases.

[onoway]

PassedOut, on 2013-July-05, 11:32, said:

The alarmist claim that curbing emissions will require everyone to do everything manually is preposterous.

The carbon tax is also my preferred solution because it would support a market-based approach to developing different sources of power and because more revenue would become available to implement other methods of cleaning the atmosphere of existing greenhouse gases.

One thing that would be helpful..aside from a drastic switch to sustainable and profitable agriculture for farmers and not just chemical companies..would be a switch to less centralized power sources. It's been known for almost as long as we have known anything about electricity that there is a huge drop of effective usefulness over distance. That's one of the positive aspects of the liquid thorium reactors imo, in that they are cheap to construct and very safe, so they could be put near where the power is needed, thus cutting back on the waste power used just to push enough usable electricity sometimes hundreds of miles to get to where it's needed.

Zelanakh: Assuming you are talking about the current love affair that ill informed politicians have with GMO crops, I would be happy to discuss with you exactly what the economics of those "new and higher yielding" crops are and how they are inevitably and disastrously leading us directly into more and more trouble.

That's aside from the fact that non GMO crops have had as good or higher yields within a couple of years and thereafter, without poisoning the earth, water or food. After all, most of these chemicals were spawned for use in war and the chemical companies needed to find another market when the wars eventually ended, so somehow they managed to make it sound sensible to spray it on our food crops. Agent Orange renamed is still as bad.

Think about it for a split second. If reliance on fossil fuels is unsustainable, how are crops which ever increasingly RELY on fossil fuels in the form of fertilizers and other chemicals in any way sustainable? Especially when they also have to use massive amounts of water to deliver them to the plants as otherwise the plants don't take them up?

[blackshoe]

Fertilizers (and other chemicals) are not fuels. The problem with fossil fuels is not that they come from fossils, it's that when you burn them they inject CO2 and radioisotopes into the atmosphere.

Mind you, I"m not saying that there can't be other reasons to avoid such fertilizers and chemicals. As for "sustainability" certainly if we give up fossil fuels as such, the petroleum or coal or whatever used for fertilizer and other chemicals will last a lot longer. Nothing, of course, lasts forever.

[mike777]

again all of this is just a discussion of how urgent is climate change and how urgent do we need to move out or look into Outer Space for resources.

fwiw I still think by 2020 solar will be a useful source of cheap, safe, reliable energy. Yes, there are issues that need to be solved in a cheap and effective manner. I am betting on a massive trial and error process seeking profit to help us out here.( I mean massive in terms of a massive number of trial and errors not in a few massive trials.)
The Moon may help us with tide/wave energy.


Places such as Bangladesh and Florida will need a bigger fix in the sense of politics rather than science.

[Al_U_Card]

PassedOut, on 2013-July-05, 11:32, said:

The alarmist claim that curbing emissions will require everyone to do everything manually is preposterous.

The carbon tax is also my preferred solution because it would support a market-based approach to developing different sources of power and because more revenue would become available to implement other methods of cleaning the atmosphere of existing greenhouse gases.

Then you would most certainly be interested in this:

Taking care of business

As well as this: FAQ

Because temperature rise is the problem and [CO2] is the solution, right?