Arguments about climate change

Just looking through that Monbiot article again, a couple more quotes -

" ... In 1999, coal consumption fell to its lowest level since 1970 (56m) and the UK's emissions fell to their lowest level since 1990 (540m). Emissions rose in 2006 because coal burning increased when gas prices shot up. They fell back again in 2007 when the gas price dropped. In all cases, coal has been the key swing factor for CO2 production ...

... New research I've commissioned, published for the first time here, shows that the (coal) industry is planning a great opencast revival. Since January last year, 22 new opencast coal mines or mine extensions have been approved by British planning authorities.... (only 2 rejected) ... if the new proposals are accepted, 55 million tonnes of coal extraction is in the pipeline. If we accept the outer limit proposed by the IPCC for the carbon cut required to prevent more than 2C of warming (85% worldwide, which means 95.9% in the UK), the coal these pits will produce equates to the sustainable annual emissions of 280 million people ..."

Carbon tax and invest in renewables research...

I saw this coal thing on sky news the other day I'd swear - open cast mining in Wales ... A revival.

Now, maybe they'll feed algae with it? Algae could take the CO2 from the coal burning process and make oil ... algae doubles in size in a day depending on the container you have for it. I hope this happens.

Auditor #9 wrote:I suppose if Climate change is real then there's an emergency and there could be a justification for going nuclear. There are hundreds of stations in the world already and we saw somewhere here before that nuclear submarines can have tidy little reactors in them that don't need refuelling for 30 years. But in 30 years we could have yet another problem in finding an alternative - best do it now if possible but if there is an emergency and the reactors can be built that fast ...

For China, England or Germany perhaps, for ireland it's a bit ludicrous.

Here's something from Der Spiegel on Atomkraft with some stats. The Germans were talking about phasing out their nuclear stations by 2018 ...
I hope they don't
http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/0,1518,492111,00.html

Are you disappointed Atticus?

Nope, am not ideological on this, though I probably would've been some years ago. Want to see more figures, however I also get pretty cheesed off at how my taxes have helped the huge public funding of the nuclear industry here for not-always good results (from my layman's point of view) and at the slavish behaviour of John Hutton, our Business Sec, a man I have a particular loathing for, he is so desperate for a job in the industry when he's sacked from govt in the Autumn

... em, anyway back to business, no, am not ideological. Will read that Spiegel article in the morning, bin viel zu Muede jetzt, Ich verwende aber das "Muede"-emoticon nicht, Ich weiss, das hast Du gar nicht gern!

Armes Haeschen bist du muede?

however I also get pretty cheesed off at how my taxes have helped the huge public funding of the nuclear industry here for not-always good results (from my layman's point of view)

We really don't have a say in how taxes are spent do we? That would be real voting if we could overthrow the bas**** again and erect a few gallows not penthouses I say.

Goodnight

Edit
Don't worry - I won't be testing you on the article or anything like that Atticus...

We may stop complaining about our little bit of rain and mudslides.

http://www.indiawaterportal.org/blog/index.php/2008/08/30/kosi-bihar-floods-2008-maps/

More than 2 million people are displaced from their homes and land in Bihar as Monsoon flooding has caused the region's main river to shift its course to an old channel that had been dry for over 200 years.

That river burst its banks and went in a totally different direction all of a sudden. Here is an after and before from that website:

Until last week, the Kosi, a tributary of the Ganges, curved westwards out of Nepal in a C-shape. But in the torrential rains that have hit
the region, the river burst its banks and diverted southwards through the state of Bihar, into a channel it had followed 200 years previously.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7586824.stm

So is the fact that the river is returning to a bed it occupied 200 years previously anything significant? i.e. is climate change cyclical?

A 20% increase in Monsoon rain is predicted. This is an interesting article about how the Sahel used to have heavy monsoons. As we've found here, the effects of warmer climate aren't always readily predictable. In a general way though heavier monsoons and the melt of the Himalyan snows are both predicted.


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1997/10/971017065205.htm

Auditor #9 wrote:That river burst its banks and went in a totally different direction all of a sudden. Here is an after and before from that website:

Until last week, the Kosi, a tributary of the Ganges, curved westwards out of Nepal in a C-shape. But in the torrential rains that have hit
the region, the river burst its banks and diverted southwards through the state of Bihar, into a channel it had followed 200 years previously.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7586824.stm

So is the fact that the river is returning to a bed it occupied 200 years previously anything significant? i.e. is climate change cyclical?

It's a standard process for rivers, called "avulsion" - think of a trickle of water running down a window suddenly switching to a new track. It happens without climate change.

Yes, in this case it already happened (the river shifting course) 200 years ago, in the other direction. I don't know if there is an established trend for the monsoons to get wetter, I only know there are predictions of an increase in rainfall. There are also reports of the Sahara getting greener, which is why I was interested in the article I linked talking about how there used to be hippos there, if you go back a million years.

Climate is so complex that I would be surprised if changes were predictable except in some very general broad brush way. Did anyone predict that Ireland would get endless summer rain because of warmer sea temperatures? Does anyone know what will happen if sea temperatures continue to rise? More of the same, or another shift to a second ice age, or desertification ?

We should clearly be preparing for change, but its difficult to know what the local effects of climate change might be in any particular location.
There has been much agonising and money spent in the UK to make houses warmer in winter and now the biggest increase in domestic energy use is from air conditioning because of the hot summers.

In the mean time, we should presumably build the least energy dependent, least floodable and most wind resistant buildings that we can afford to build and not building on good agricultural land.

The UK Met Office has some brief pages on it - they have a page showing the Vostok Ice Core going back half a million years and it shows that CO2 was never more than 300 ppm but now it's tending towards 500. I'd swear there's other ice cores with the current ppm value repeated at intervals into the past ...

Here's the rainfall modelling:


The North West Atlantic is greener in the bottom graph indicating more rainfall. It gives no reason though but you say it's the higher ocean temperatures that are responsible for this? Is this a form of Continental Condensation?
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/myths/6.html

Auditor #9 wrote:The UK Met Office has some brief pages on it - they have a page showing the Vostok Ice Core going back half a million years and it shows that CO2 was never more than 300 ppm but now it's tending towards 500. I'd swear there's other ice cores with the current ppm value repeated at intervals into the past ...

Not sure I've heard of any, but I'll have a look around. This record is a composite:



This shows Vostok and EPICA, which together go back 650,000 years:

Link

Image from a photograph taken 2 days ago showing the the North Pole is an island now, with the north west passage and north east as navigable open water.




Link

ibis wrote:

Auditor #9 wrote:The UK Met Office has some brief pages on it - they have a page showing the Vostok Ice Core going back half a million years and it shows that CO2 was never more than 300 ppm but now it's tending towards 500. I'd swear there's other ice cores with the current ppm value repeated at intervals into the past ...

Not sure I've heard of any, but I'll have a look around. This record is a composite:

Strangely the rises in CO2 in the records in the past rise very dramatically too (and at 100,000 year intervals) and the level it's at today isn't overly dramatically above those peaks in the past though the trend is scary.

I'd wonder how accurate those ice cores are too - do we use the same method today for determining the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere? i.e. we should continue to use the same ice core method. What if they are using a balloon hovering over a coal-fired power station or a city?

I'm not very good at reading graphs but hasn't it almost gone off the page?

cactus flower wrote:I'm not very good at reading graphs but hasn't it almost gone off the page?

I assume the purple bit is either projections or as they say there - "observations". This could be data collected next to a power station or over a rake of trees at night ...

Auditor #9 wrote:

ibis wrote:

Auditor #9 wrote:The UK Met Office has some brief pages on it - they have a page showing the Vostok Ice Core going back half a million years and it shows that CO2 was never more than 300 ppm but now it's tending towards 500. I'd swear there's other ice cores with the current ppm value repeated at intervals into the past ...

Not sure I've heard of any, but I'll have a look around. This record is a composite:

Strangely the rises in CO2 in the records in the past rise very dramatically too (and at 100,000 year intervals) and the level it's at today isn't overly dramatically above those peaks in the past though the trend is scary.

Scale! Scale, boy! The left-hand portion of the graph is hundreds of thousands of years, the right hand scale is only hundreds. The fact that the rise on the right hand is nearly as steep as the rises on the left means that the change is currently happening a thousand times as fast.

Auditor #9 wrote:I'd wonder how accurate those ice cores are too - do we use the same method today for determining the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere? i.e. we should continue to use the same ice core method.

Ice core accuracy is very high - about +/-0.5%. What you're dealing with is essentially trapped atmosphere samples - the main uncertainty is actually age, not gases.

Auditor #9 wrote:What if they are using a balloon hovering over a coal-fired power station or a city?

Actually, early records (pre-1950's) were usually from cities - hence all the stuff about how CO2 was "much higher earlier in the century". Historic records are from known locations, and we now use mostly remote areas - here's some examples from the Australian monitoring network:

Mauna Loa, Hawaii - Barrow, Alaska - Cape Matatula, Samoa - South Pole, Antarctica - Alert, NWT, Canada - Cape Kumukahi - Christmas Island - Baring Head - Kermadec Island - La Jolla Pier

http://www.breakingnews.ie/World/mhqlojqlsnoj/

On hurricanes and global warming.

Climate-change satellite will complete a map of the gravitational field once every 70 days and stay in operation for about 18 months.


The satellite, when launched, will orbit from pole to pole at an altitude of about 160 miles. This is very
low for satellites, but it needs to be close to the Earth to be able to measure minute fluctuations in gravity -
about 10 million-millionths of the gravity we feel on Earth. To measure these the engineers developed sophisticated
control mechanisms that dampen other forces acting on the spacecraft, including buffeting by cosmic rays

Scientists are preparing to launch a new satellite to make more precise measurements of the Earth's gravitational field and so help improve predictions about global warming.

The €330m (£265m) project aims to provide an extremely accurate map of the planet's gravitational field. Its main mission is to help climate scientists improve their predictions by enabling them to produce a more precise picture of the ocean currents.

By comparing the surface shape of the oceans with the undulations in the gravitational field, scientists can arrive at a more accurate picture of the oceans' currents - the flows that transport vast amounts of heat around the planet and so have a profound impact on the global climate.

Gravitational field mapping - what bullsht will they think of next

Gravity-mapping satellite will help predict climate change - The Guardian

Auditor #9 wrote:Climate-change satellite will complete a map of the gravitational field once every 70 days and stay in operation for about 18 months.


The satellite, when launched, will orbit from pole to pole at an altitude of about 160 miles. This is very
low for satellites, but it needs to be close to the Earth to be able to measure minute fluctuations in gravity -
about 10 million-millionths of the gravity we feel on Earth. To measure these the engineers developed sophisticated
control mechanisms that dampen other forces acting on the spacecraft, including buffeting by cosmic rays

Scientists are preparing to launch a new satellite to make more precise measurements of the Earth's gravitational field and so help improve predictions about global warming.

The €330m (£265m) project aims to provide an extremely accurate map of the planet's gravitational field. Its main mission is to help climate scientists improve their predictions by enabling them to produce a more precise picture of the ocean currents.

By comparing the surface shape of the oceans with the undulations in the gravitational field, scientists can arrive at a more accurate picture of the oceans' currents - the flows that transport vast amounts of heat around the planet and so have a profound impact on the global climate.

Gravitational field mapping - what bullsht will they think of next

Gravity-mapping satellite will help predict climate change - The Guardian

Standard geological tool - they've been making gravity maps for decades! Heck, we even have a gravity map of Venus.