Climate change

[James Deuce]

Another thing to consider is we've only been studying climate and weather as a science within the scientific model framework for a 160 years. What the hell do we know? A planet 4000 years old, or 4000 million years old, 160 years isn't what any scientist could call a decent sample, as the sample most likely falls within a margin of error for the 4000 years let alone 4000 million.

A thought to ponder: most CO2 in our atmosphere comes from tectonic activity. Volcanoes and the Mid-Atlantic trench contribute a far greater tonnage to our atmosphere than man does.

The planet has endured warming and cooling cycles without our apparent "intervention" uncountable times.

[Dadpole]

I know one thing: If, in 50 years time when we are either frozen or being baked, the "experts" will still be producing scientific studies showing that the opposite is happening.

The problem with the warming theory is that by the time it can be clearly demonstrated, it will be to late to mitigate the problem.

[Jantar]

I know one thing: If, in 50 years time when we are either frozen or being baked, the "experts" will still be producing scientific studies showing that the opposite is happening.

The problem with the warming theory is that by the time it can be clearly demonstrated, it will be to late to mitigate the problem.

If warming is happening then its already too late to mitigate. How conceited can we be to imagine that anything we can do can change nature? The amount of additional GH gasses that man is responsible for is less than 6% of what nature puts into the atmosphere each year. To have an effect we would not only have to stop putting any GH gasses into the atmosphere, but we would somehow have to remove an amount equal to what man has put into the atmosphere. Man's contribution in minscule.

But have a look at the effect of CO2 on temperature at the South Pole. http://www.john-daly.com/stations/amundsen.gif Notice anything?

[inlinefour]

tree hugging pot smoking possum kissing hippies.

[Dadpole]

The trouble with the figures available is that they can be used to show what you want to see.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2004/
Shows rising average temperatures

[Dadpole]

tree hugging pot smoking possum kissing hippies.

You mean I should stop burning them? The bastards swore they were 100% organic, and would never harm the planet.

[Jantar]

The trouble with the figures available is that they can be used to show what you want to see.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2004/
Shows rising average temperatures

Absolutely correct, and that is the problem with the GISS data. As it is Ground Instrument (the GI part) data it is subject to UHI error. Although some attempt has been made to eliminate this error, the correction is neither universal nor always correct. Heathrow data, for example, is treated as rural with no UHI allowance. This is the very reason that satelite and radio-sonde data is now used rather than GISS data, as it is truly global.

It is also interesting that Mann, Bradley and Hughes have now been shown to have used bad data and poor mathematical methods in developing the hockey stick graph.

[Dadpole]

I can always burn some more tree hugging pot smoking possum kissing hippies (some of them have the nerve to object to me fishing) and monitor the results. Buggered if I am going to reduce my carbon dioxide output too. Breathing comes naturally.

[SPORK]

Well there had to be a warm year before this one. So wtf. It's nice in NZ. Imagine it in someplace like California...

[Skyryder]

For those that think the climate is not changing. Take a look at these. The first is a from 1981 and the second is from 91. The link

http://www.atm.ch.cam.ac.uk/tour/

There's plenty of science out there that this is happening. Mind you when Galileo could proove that the earth was not the centre of the Universe but moved around the sun...................

Skyryder

[Skyryder]

Squeaky clean fossil fuels

From http://www.newscientist.com/channel/...mg18624976.500


CAN we continue to burn fossil fuels and still hope to halt global warming? It seems unlikely - and with the cost of generating wind and solar electricity falling, perhaps unnecessary. Despite this, big money and big politics are lining up behind the development of "zero-emission" power plants that burn coal or gas but release no carbon dioxide.

The latest advocates are former fans of renewable energy at the European Union, who say the strategy will be "essential" if the EU is to meet targets for limiting the emissions of the greenhouse gas CO2. This month, at a conference in Brussels, Europe's new commissioner for energy, Andris Piebalgs, said the EU could cut CO2 emissions while continuing to burn its native coal and lignite. And still stay economically competitive.

One way to do this, Piebalgs said, is to embrace clean coal technologies - a move that would chime with the Bush administration's push for clean-coal technology in the US. The other is to store CO2 by capturing it before it leaves power plants and burying it underground. These are now the EU's two top priorities in energy research, something that will anger environmentalists who want the world to abandon fossil fuels as quickly as possible.

One technique to stop power stations producing CO2 is to pass emissions though chemical scrubbers which contain amines that react with and trap CO2. Similar technology is already used to remove CO2 from natural gas, to boost the proportion of hydrogen it contains. "It's just a matter of scaling up," says Julio Friedmann, a former ExxonMobil geologist now at the University of Maryland. In future, the carbon could even be removed from fuel before it is burnt.

To bury the CO2 securely underground, the gas has to be compressed, then injected under pressure down a pipeline into redundant coal seams, old oil or gas wells, or porous rocks filled with salt water.

On a rig in the North Sea, the Norwegian company Statoil already strips a million tonnes of CO2 each year from natural gas at the Sleipner gas field and buries it in a saline aquifer without ever bringing it to land. At the Salah gas field in Algeria, energy giant BP last year began reburying a similar amount of CO2 in sandstone 2 kilometres down. Old oil and gas fields stored hydrocarbons safely for millions of years, raising hopes that the same can be done for CO2 from power stations.

Oil companies like the idea, because injecting CO2 into oil wells can flush out any remaining oil. As the oil dissolves the CO2, its viscosity falls and its volume increases, forcing it out under pressure. This technology too has been shown to work: more than a million tonnes of CO2 a year is being injected into the Weyburn oilfield in Saskatchewan, Canada, to flush out the remaining oil.

In a similar way, the coal industry expects to be able to inject CO2 into coal seams, and recover methane gas into the bargain for use as fuel. An EU trial is under way in Poland.

Most major industrial regions have convenient CO2 burial grounds, Harry Audus of the International Energy Agency told the Brussels meeting. In the US, virtually all the top 500 CO2 emitters are within 150 kilometres of suitable geological formations. And Europe has a large potential burial ground in former oil and gas wells beneath the North Sea.
“Old oil and gas fields stored hydrocarbons safely for millions of years. The same could be done for CO2 from power stations”

Global estimates of the geological space available for the economic burial of CO2 are sketchy. But Audus estimates that around 11,000 billion tonnes of CO2 could be disposed of underground (see Graph), several times the likely emissions of CO2 from burning fossil fuels in the coming century. This could at least give the world extra time to give up its reliance on fossil fuels.

At an estimated current price of $40 to $60 per tonne of CO2, carbon storage and burial is still not cheap, though its proponents say it could soon compete with renewable energy. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will present a detailed report on carbon capture and storage to signatories of the Kyoto protocol in November. After that, says Audus, "it should become an accepted mitigation option".
From issue 2497 of New Scientist magazine, 30 April 2005, page 26
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Skyryder

[James Deuce]

Climate changes all the time, and the stimulus for change is manifold.

How do you make O3? In the upper atmosphere, instense bursts of solar radiation create an environment where some O2 atoms split and others attract the free O atom. We went 27 years without major solar flares, or solar storms, from the late '60s to the early '90s. The depleted Ozone layer was latched onto by the Green movement as a sign that man-made pollutants were breaking the ozone layer down. Rather than it being broken down, it wasn't being built up. As a free molecule CFCs for instance are too heavy to reach the upper atmosphere. Combined with the effects of a non-regenerating Ozone layer was the MT Pinatubo sulfate aerosol effect. The depletion of the Ozone layer accelerated rapidly after that eruption, and I rather suspect that we are still experiencing climate effects generated by it.

On the other hand Chlorine in the lower troposhere is a contributor to creating ground level ozone.

Whole life balance, and a minor blip in climate stats, does not a trend make, human created (unlikely), or otherwise. We've had a couple of big solar storms in the last 10 years, but you don't hear anyone daring to blame the Sun-God for the current increase in tempeature and storm activity in the Atlantic. Bear in mind too, that the 1962 Hurricane/Cyclone storm season in the Atlantic was as destructive as the current year in the Atlantic, and was only exceeded by Katrina. In '62 that was just how things were. Thanks to decades of Greepeace (and others) propaganda it's now our fault. I would suggest that atmospheric Nuclear bomb tests of the '50s and '60s released more carbon into the atmosphere than even the monstrously inefficient automobiles and trucks that passed for road based transport then. Mt Pinatubo certainly released a figure in the millions of tons.

[Dadpole]

Global warming theory has, unfortunately, turned into an ideology. Facts and figures are produced to prove the case for and against, and the people on the extreme ends of each side can only agree on one thing - that their opponents are part of a conspiracy.

[Korumba]

warm undies not required anymore - and this alarming shift occurred in less than a century!

[sels1]

Global warming is a fact not an idea.
I was at a presentation given by some of our countries top meteorologists just a few weeks ago. Temperature records go back several hundred years and despite seasonal variations there has been an overal increase recorded in temps that started around the time of the industrial revolution and has been more rapid in the last 10 years.
So the planet is getting warmer - its an obserserved and recorded fact
Why the planet is getting warmer is where the debate is. Is it a natural cycle or is it due to pollution? Is it a coincindence that temps really started to rise with industrialisation and the burning of fossil fuels etc? is it a coincidence that CO2 levels in the atmoshere have increased over the same time span?
Go figure.