The Great Global Warming Swindle

[jonbuoy]

Incorrect as it doesnt provide evidence the Co2 is made made and thats the argument here, so your happy to pay $3,000 more tax on the basis of that article ?????

Well something strange has been happening over the last 50 years. I´ve been following the "global warming swindle" since its early rumblings. I´ve read the articles, watched the TV shows and I´m convinced something is amiss and most likely man made. Its taken a lot of convincing not so long ago that leaded petrol was causing problems, CFC´s were eating the ozone layer, dumping barrels of toxic waste and PCP´s into the ocean wasn´t a great idea. All confirmed crimes against mother nature.

The extra 3,000 a year? Probably won´t make any difference to the planet in the real scheme of things, better off recycling, using our cars less, stop buying cheap disposable made in China shite and buy better quality products that will last longer.

[Quasievil]

The extra 3,000 a year? Probably won´t make any difference to the planet in the real scheme of things, better off recycling, using our cars less, stop buying cheap disposable made in China shite and buy better quality products that will last longer.

no it wont and you better wake up as the Copenhagen agreement is about to be signed , from that point on you can kiss your $3000 a year goodbye as it goes into the pit of "wont make any difference"

Remember the whole justification for this tax is that Co2 is made made and is causing global warming, this cannot be proved yet its justified to take your money away on the basis of a theory !!

[Badjelly]

Incorrect as it doesnt provide evidence the Co2 is [man] made...

Sigh.

Since 1850, CO2 has risen to levels that haven't been reached for at least the last 800,000 years (a period that spans 8 glacial/interglacial cycles). There's been a decline in atmospheric C13/C12 isotope ratios, as you'd expect if it came from fossil fuels. If the extra atmospheric CO2 didn't come from fossil fuels: Where did it come from? Where did all the fossil fuel CO2 go?

You appear to think you have already answered these questions? If you still think so, please tell me where.

[Quasievil]

Sigh.

Since 1850, CO2 has risen to levels that haven't been reached for at least the last 600,000 years (a period that spans approximately 6 glacial/interglacial cycles). There's been a decline in atmospheric C13/C12 isotope ratios, as you'd expect if it came from fossil fuels. If the extra atmospheric CO2 didn't come from fossil fuels: Where did it come from? Where did all the fossil fuel CO2 go?

You appear to think you have already answered these questions? If you still think so, please tell me where.

Awwww go away will ya you are like my old maths teacher !!

I do have a good discussion point against that and will do so soon however I have to go and sell some Oil to some customers (cause im a oil man)

[Badjelly]

I do have a good discussion point against that and will do so soon however I have to go and sell some Oil to some customers (cause im a oil man)

Looking forward to it.

So you've been telling us all the alarmists are in it for the money, and now you tell us you're in the business of peddling petroleum products! Pot, kettle?

Don't bother answering that, I'm just stirring. Peace bro.

[Quasievil]

Looking forward to it.

So you've been telling us all the alarmists are in it for the money, and now you tell us you're in the business of peddling petroleum products! Pot, kettle?

Don't bother answering that, I'm just stirring. Peace bro.

BWAAAAHHH yes I am, I work for the biggest oil company in the world, I should stop selling oil I guess but anything that moves would stop to.

[Winston001]

There's been a decline in atmospheric C13/C12 isotope ratios, as you'd expect if it came from fossil fuels. If the extra atmospheric CO2 didn't come from fossil fuels: Where did it come from?

Just for clarification, the "normal" ratio of carbon isotopes is presumably known from geological strata? And when volcanoes vent, that ratio is maintained? Can't remember the isotope stuff except for the usefulness of half-lifes.

[Badjelly]

There's been a decline in atmospheric C13/C12 isotope ratios, as you'd expect if it came from fossil fuels.

Just for clarification, the "normal" ratio of carbon isotopes is presumably known from geological strata? And when volcanoes vent, that ratio is maintained? Can't remember the isotope stuff except for the usefulness of half-lifes.

Disclaimer: I am not an expert on this stuff.

My original statement oversimplified things a bit. It would have been more accurate to say:

There's been a decline in atmospheric C13/C12 isotope ratios, as you'd expect if it came from fossil fuels or plants.

And I think what the observation of a decline in atmospheric C13/C12 tells you is that the additional CO2 did not come from the ocean, which has a similar C13/C12 ratio to the atmosphere.

The C13/C12 ratio is lower in plants than in atmospheric CO2 because plants take up C12 (in the form of CO2) in preference to the heavier C13.

Fossil fuels were originally plants so fossil fuels also have a low C13/C12, preserved from when they were formed, given that C13 and C12 are both stable. (Again, this is obviously oversimplifying things a bit, because fossil fuels were formed a long time ago. Was the atmospheric C13/C12 ratio different then? I don't know, though doubtless somebody has sorted all this out. Anyway, whatever the details of how it came to be, when you get coal or oil out of the ground now and burn it, the CO2 produced has a C13/C12 ratio that's lower than current atmospheric CO2.)

What about C13/C12 in CO2 emitted by volcanoes? I don't know. I'll look into it.

[Badjelly]

Still learning on this isotope ratio stuff.

This exchange of letters in Physics Today is interesting:

http://ptonline.aip.org/journals/doc...s_5/16_1.shtml

The one by Eduoard Bard mentions three observed changes in atmospheric makeup (C13/C12, C14/C12 and oxygen concentration) that limit our freedom to provide explanations for the recent rise in CO2. The fossil fuel explanation is consistent with all 3. I don't think you can say that about the alternatives (but don't take my word for this). The second one (decline in C14/C12) was apparently the one that convinced the scientists of the day that the rise in CO2 was caused by fossil fuel burning, but it's not mentioned much these days.

The person who wrote the last letter in the exchange, Spencer Weart, wrote a book called The Discovery of Global Warming, available online, that describes through the history of climate science in the 20th century. On the way, it shows how we know what we know (and what we don't know). It's very good, in my opinion.

One of the difficulties you get in science is that the recent, interesting, groundbreaking stuff is covered in journal articles that you can get reasonably easily (provided you have a subscription!) but the old basic stuff that "everybody knows" is covered in old articles in paper journals that have been stacked out the back or lost. So it can be a bit of a struggle to work out why (and if) we know what we think we know.

[Winston001]

You are correct Badjelly - from Realclimate.org:


Over the last 150 years, carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations have risen from 280 to nearly 380 parts per million (ppm). The fact that this is due virtually entirely to human activities is so well established that one rarely sees it questioned. Yet it is quite reasonable to ask how we know this.

One way that we know that human activities are responsible for the increased CO2 is simply by looking at historical records of human activities. Since the industrial revolution, we have been burning fossil fuels and clearing and burning forested land at an unprecedented rate, and these processes convert organic carbon into CO2. Careful accounting of the amount of fossil fuel that has been extracted and combusted, and how much land clearing has occurred, shows that we have produced far more CO2 than now remains in the atmosphere. The roughly 500 billion metric tons of carbon we have produced is enough to have raised the atmospheric concentration of CO2 to nearly 500 ppm. The concentrations have not reached that level because the ocean and the terrestrial biosphere have the capacity to absorb some of the CO2 we produce.* However, it is the fact that we produce CO2 faster than the ocean and biosphere can absorb it that explains the observed increase.

Another, quite independent way that we know that fossil fuel burning and land clearing specifically are responsible for the increase in CO2 in the last 150 years is through the measurement of carbon isotopes. Isotopes are simply different atoms with the same chemical behavior (isotope means “same type”) but with different masses. Carbon is composed of three different isotopes, 14C, 13C and 12C. 12C is the most common. 13C is about 1% of the total. 14C accounts for only about 1 in 1 trillion carbon atoms.

CO2 produced from burning fossil fuels or burning forests has quite a different isotopic composition from CO2 in the atmosphere. This is because plants have a preference for the lighter isotopes (12C vs. 13C); thus they have lower 13C/12C ratios. Since fossil fuels are ultimately derived from ancient plants, plants and fossil fuels all have roughly the same 13C/12C ratio – about 2% lower than that of the atmosphere. As CO2 from these materials is released into, and mixes with, the atmosphere, the average 13C/12C ratio of the atmosphere decreases.

[Winston001]

The core of Quasi's objection is that people cannot see any logic in carbon charges which are simply going to make our lifestyles more expensive - for no benefit.

As I understand it, the issues are:

1. Carbon emissions by human activities amount to maybe 4% annually of total carbon release. It's a small amount.

2. CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas. In fact its minor. The biggest greenhouse effect by far comes from water vapour. That is driven by solar radiation and completely outside human action.

3. Carbon trading simply allows a polluter to carry on as usual so long as they buy carbon credits. CO2 production isn't reduced, simply transferred from one place to another.

4. We the great unwashed do not understand how carbon emissions are calculated. For example, a nation like NZ with a tiny population, sod all heavy industry, hydro electricity, millions of hectares of bush and forestry (all soaking up CO2) is deemed to be a serious polluter. It defies logic.

5. The public are not convinced that anthropomorphic (man-made) carbon emissions have anything to do with global warming. Given the power of the sun, plus water vapour, our efforts are puny.

6. Because the public don't believe in anthropomorphic global warming (AGW), they think carbon trading is pointless - so it must be a scam or political stupidity.

7. Very few commentators and politicians state any connection between our industrial activities and pollution of the planet - which carbon reduction would help cure.

8. While we impose extra costs (carbon tax) on ourselves, billions of people in China, India, South America, and Africa continue to increase their populations and industries. If the wealthy nations stopped industry tomorrow, carbon emissions and deforestation would still continue on a massive scale.

9. It is all too hard. The ball was set rolling by the Industrial Revolution 150 years ago and we can't reverse the effects.

10. Climate change is a natural process. It occurs despite man's efforts. We should carry on as normal and adapt. A defrosted Greenland could literally be green again as it was in the days of the Vikings.

[Badjelly]

The core of Quasi's objection is that people cannot see any logic in carbon charges which are simply going to make our lifestyles more expensive - for no benefit.

As I understand it, the issues are:

1. Carbon emissions by human activities amount to maybe 4% annually of total carbon release. It's a small amount....

It would take a while to cover all of these, and I don't necessarily disagree with all of them, but for now let's just take number 1.

Yes, carbon emissions by human activities are small relative to the total (for more on what this total means, see below), but nevertheless we still know that the increase in CO2 since 1850 or so is caused by humans. How? Well, I've been explaining some of the reasons (isotope ratios and such-like) but the main one is that an increase of the sort we're seeing now has not been seen (i.e. nothing remotely resembling it has been seen!) over the last 800,000 years. The big swings in climate between glacial and interglacial have caused the atmospheric CO2 to swing between 180 and 270 ppm. Then 150 years ago, people started burning fossil fuels and the CO2 has been rising at a steadily accelerating rate and it's now at 380 ppm. I mean, you've really got to wonder if that's just a coincidence!

And scientists did wonder, so they've put in a lot of work gathering evidence about where the extra CO2 might have come from, and the answer is fossil fuel burning plus a bit of deforestation. No other explanation has been found to be consistent with the facts.

Now, about that total. Carbon emitted into the atmosphere by fossil fuel burning and cement production is currently around 7 Gt per year. Deforestation might be contributing ~ 2 Gt per year. (These figures are from the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, Chapter 7.) Meanwhile, every year, plants are absorb CO2 during photosynthesis and release it during respiration, in amounts of several hundred Gt (too lazy to find a more exact value). This process is seasonal, so the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere fluctuates during the year. For example, here is a graph of atmospheric CO2 at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawai:

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki...on_Dioxide_png

You can see a seasonal variation, with a peak-trough difference of about 6 ppm. The mean annual cycle, shown in the inset graph, has a maximum in April (northern spring) and a minimum in October (northern autumn). Hmmm, in the half year between October and April, it increases by 6 ppm, so the rate of increase of this period must be about 12 ppm/yr. Meanwhile, there's also a trend in this data: the annual average CO2 rose from 325 ppm in 1970 to 368 ppm in 2000. Hmmm, so that's a rate (need the calculator for this one) 1.4 ppm/year. (And it turns out that this trend is about 60% of what you'd get if all the fossil fuel CO2 stayed in the atmosphere.) ... Ohmigod you're right, the natural fluxes are much larger than the human ones.

So what if there were a long-term imbalance between respiration and photosynthesis in plants. Couldn't that produce trends that dwarf the anthropogenic ones. Maybe, but

• Why now, just when we're burning all that fossil fuel? And never before in the last 800,000 years?
• What happened to all that fossil-fuel CO2?
• It's not consistent with the atmospheric chemistry observations (specifically the drop in C14/C12)--see above.
• That alleged imbalance requires a steady drop in plant biomass. Has that been observed? (Not saying it couldn't have happened, just asking.)

Sure, there are large natural fluxes, but as far as I know, no one has put forward a serious case, with evidence, for how a sustained imbalance in these fluxes could have produced the observed rise in CO2. When someone does put forward such a case, perhaps we can treat it like any other scientific hypothesis and look for further evidence for and against it. In the meantime, the only reasonable conclusion is that the rise in CO2 is man-made. And the moon is not made of green cheese.

[Badjelly]

The core of Quasi's objection is that people cannot see any logic in carbon charges which are simply going to make our lifestyles more expensive - for no benefit.

As I understand it, the issues are:

As I said, it would take a while to address all these in detail, and I don't necessarily disagree with all of them. Number 1 is a dead horse which I've soundly thrashed some more in the previous post. For the others, here are some quick responses. They're "quick" as in not giving any detail or justification; I could go into some in more detail, but hey, I don't know everything!

2. CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas. In fact its minor. The biggest greenhouse effect by far comes from water vapour. That is driven by solar radiation and completely outside human action.


Water vapour is the major greenhouse gas. It's short-lived and is controlled by surface evaporation, precipitation, etc. As far as we can tell, the level goes up with temperature, so it's an amplifying factor for all climate forcings: volcanic aerosols, greenhouse gases and solar radiation changes.

3. Carbon trading simply allows a polluter to carry on as usual so long as they buy carbon credits. CO2 production isn't reduced, simply transferred from one place to another.

In other countries, "emissions trading" is called "cap and trade". I think the word "cap" is the relevant one here.

4. We the great unwashed do not understand how carbon emissions are calculated. For example, a nation like NZ with a tiny population, sod all heavy industry, hydro electricity, millions of hectares of bush and forestry (all soaking up CO2) is deemed to be a serious polluter. It defies logic.

I don't understand in detail either. I don't know about sod all heavy industry--there's a fair bit of primary production. Forest only soaks up carbon if it's growing. It's premature to say it defies logic unless you've made a serious effort to understand that logic. I haven't.

5. The public are not convinced that anthropomorphic (man-made) carbon emissions have anything to do with global warming. Given the power of the sun, plus water vapour, our efforts are puny.

Our efforts are not puny. There are various ways of estimating the climate's sensitivity to forcing, and they all produce numbers that suggest the recent & expected future rises in CO2 are significant. Just what effects they will have are unclear, but we are poking the climate system with a big stick. (That's one I will expand on if pushed. You have been warned!)

6. Because the public don't believe in anthropomorphic global warming (AGW), they think carbon trading is pointless - so it must be a scam or political stupidity.

There are people who think that, yes.

7. Very few commentators and politicians state any connection between our industrial activities and pollution of the planet - which carbon reduction would help cure.

Pass. There are various sorts of pollution, with different sources, effects, time scales in the atmosphere. It gets rather complicated considering them all.

BTW, soot from coal burning is a nasty pollutant to breathe, looks awful and warms the planet. (Recent work suggests it's partly responsible for recent warming on the Arctic.) Reducing that would be a very good thing, and not that hard to do.

8. While we impose extra costs (carbon tax) on ourselves, billions of people in China, India, South America, and Africa continue to increase their populations and industries. If the wealthy nations stopped industry tomorrow, carbon emissions and deforestation would still continue on a massive scale.

How on Earth can we ask them to hold back when we (the wealthy nations) have emitted most of the extra CO2 that's in the atmosphere now and are still emitting it at much higher per capita rates than they do?

9. It is all too hard. The ball was set rolling by the Industrial Revolution 150 years ago and we can't reverse the effects.

We won't reverse the effects for tens of thousands of years. (Seriously.) We're poking the climate system with a large stick. I think we should try to make the stick smaller.

10. Climate change is a natural process. It occurs despite man's efforts. We should carry on as normal and adapt. A defrosted Greenland could literally be green again as it was in the days of the Vikings.

You're mixing up several things here. Climate change has occurred and will occur naturally. But (again) we're poking the climate system with quite a large stick. We will have to adapt, no question. Greenland may well become a more pleasant place to live as the Earth warms. I don't think New Zealand will be particularly badly affected either. I'm not so sure about the tropics and the semi-arid regions of the globe though.

[Winston001]

[*]That alleged imbalance requires a steady drop in plant biomass. Has that been observed? (Not saying it couldn't have happened, just asking.)[/LIST]

For your peace of mind we are on the same page Badjelly but it is useful to set up the denial arguments, some of which are fair points.

Just a quick note: the newly released organic carbon with lighter isotopes could come from melted arctic tundra. Everyone concentrates on coal and oil forgetting the vast tonnages locked up in the frozen north of the planet.

That is currently melting and may have been quietly doing so for a long time. However getting it into the atmosphere is tricky.... Nevertheless there is an example of reduced biomass.

On the other hand there is a substantial increase in biomass - in the ocean. Algae blooms. We just don't see it. The ocean is soaking up much of the CO2 and saving the planet from extreme heating but only for a while. Warm water holds less dissolved CO2.

Ocean microbiota and plants gobble organic carbon. Additionally inorganic carbon bonds with water to raise the acidity of the seas, thus slowly killing anything which makes a shell. So as animals reliant upon the food chain we are facing a disaster which is barely even mentioned to the public.

[Quasievil]

I don't know where you got your 1.7% from, and you won't tell me, but its either wrong or irrelevant (probably the latter, I suspect).

There you go, sorry for the delay I had to ask my new Friend Ian

UN's own reports, AR4 published 2007, which says humans produce about 3.4% of the CO2 but only half remains in the atmosphere (1.7%), the rest being soaked up.