Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

Cyclops, I agree with you in the spirit of what you say, but only to a point. I think the difference of opinion arises from where the moderate and reasonable policy should be. I think we as humans are living longer and healthier now than we have in the past, before most of this so-called terrible pollution has occurred. And I contend that the worst health hazards are those that we voluntarily do to ourselves, most importantly smoking, drinking, bad diets, and lack of exercise. I don't know if you want to go there right now, that is a subject unto itself, but I think it can be amply demonstrated that just those 4 things I listed are far worse than any pollution hazards we may suffer. And as I said, aren't we living longer now?

I think we as humans are living longer and healthier now than we have in the past, before most of this so-called terrible pollution has occurred. And I contend that the worst health hazards are those that we voluntarily do to ourselves, most importantly smoking, drinking, bad diets, and lack of exercise

parados wrote:

Oh yes, and Greenpeace links to the IPCC report on the page you gave. The same IPCC report that talks about Solar forcings. The same report you don't seem to know a thing about. If Greenpeace links to it how can they be ignoring it?

Nothing like a little dose of reality here. You have now made 2 statements that on their face are not very factual Mini..

I did'nt state anything NOT factual Parados.

The Summary for Policymaker quote you gave said that solar forcing occurs mostly before the first half of 20th century , added to the fact that most anthropogenic CO2 is emitted in the last decades, added to the hockey stick shape showing a sharp rise in temperature in the 2000's convey the (false) idea that the only driver of climate is CO2. And that's precisely what I said.

And seriously, do you really think a simple link to IPCC's thousands pages of documents on the site of Greenpeace demonstrated they want to inform people of solar influence ??? I think this link is here just to give their page some form of credibility.

But I have the feeling that no matter what I could write, you'll find every possible reason to have a fight. You've reach a point where facts don't matter, only rhetorics counts, so I'll stop right now. Just need to know we have unreconcilable positions. Needless to wage another futile war, even if it's just vocal.

Maybe see you on another topic. :wink:

ps. to show that not everyone is a 'political' environmentalist, I, for example, am a strong supporter of nuclear technology, whereas many who are more 'poltical' are not for various reasons.

Cycloptichorn wrote:

ps. to show that not everyone is a 'political' environmentalist, I, for example, am a strong supporter of nuclear technology, whereas many who are more 'poltical' are not for various reasons.

I'm sure you must realize the tree huggers essentially killed the nuclear industry in the late 70's, and no new electrical generating facilities using nuclear have been built since in the U.S. It was environmental concerns they used to kill it. And now they are using other environmental concerns to kill other industries. No matter what energy producing method there is, there are environmental and other concerns, so are we as a society going to wake up to the fact that we need to get rid of the environmental extremists? I don't mean eliminate them, but simply marginalize them in terms of their political clout. It will not be easy, cyclops, but we level headed conservatives that want to have a balanced energy program would welcome you to our camp if you are actually serious. Bush of course favors developing nuclear, but I am sure the Bush haters would hold him in derision over that if the debate ever got serious.

No matter what energy producing method there is, there are environmental and other concerns, so are we as a society going to wake up to the fact that we need to get rid of the environmental extremists? I don't mean eliminate them, but simply marginalize them in terms of their political clout.

Now what are Nordhaus's results? If you go to page 7-34 (page 34 of the PDF document), figure 7-3 shows you the trajectory of the optimal tax over time in 1999 dollars per ton of carbon. It starts at $7 in 2010, rises to $20 in 2035, and on to almost $70 in 2105. Translated into gasoline prices, that would be about 18 cent/gallon in 2010, 54 cent per gallon in 2035, and almost $1.89 in 2105.

Measured against the cost-benefit optimum Nordhaus and coworkers found, gas tax policies on both continents are non-optimal. But if Europe's current policies are still reasonably responsible, the United States' certainly are, too.

Thomas wrote:

Now what are Nordhaus's results? If you go to page 7-34 (page 34 of the PDF document), figure 7-3 shows you the trajectory of the optimal tax over time in 1999 dollars per ton of carbon. It starts at $7 in 2010, rises to $20 in 2035, and on to almost $70 in 2105. Translated into gasoline prices, that would be about 18 cent/gallon in 2010, 54 cent per gallon in 2035, and almost $1.89 in 2105.

Thomas, the optimal tax numbers you take from Nordhaus is just about carbon tax aiming at CO2 emission! Besides, I would NOT take them for granted, especially the predicted number for 2105 (!)

blatham, The hot weather has already impacted many farmers in California. The grape-wine industry is afraid of what this heat is doing to the grape vines.

120 degrees in South Dakota (unofficial)

120 in SD. Jez, I thought only Yuma got that hot.

Rare but not impossible, Sacramento breezed through the month of August without reaching or exceeding 100 degrees. Consider it a reward for enduring the blistering heat of July. Temperatures in downtown Sacramento have remained mercifully in the double digits since a record-breaking heat wave ended July 27. "This is one of the nicest Augusts I can remember," said Don Noxon, who knows of what he speaks. A forecaster for the National Weather Service in Sacramento, Noxon has lived here since 1952.

That's not to say it hasn't been balmy in August before. Looking over the period of record, which stretches back 129 years, this is the 24th August in Sacramento to escape triple digits. Before 2006, the most recent year it happened was in 1991. It's worth noting that 1991 is distinguished by another bit of weather trivia: In that year, the mercury reached triple digits on Oct. 10, the latest date of the year. In other words, it's not over until it's over. September can be hot, too. An average September in Sacramento sees three days of 100 degree-plus temperatures.

So far, though, there appears no end to the spate of relatively mild days and cool nights. The forecast high for today is 97, moderating to the mid-90s on Saturday and low 90s on Sunday. Between Labor Day and Thursday, the forecast calls for highs between the mid-80s and mid-90s. The moderate temperatures of August had a noticeable impact on electricity use. Demand for the month, as tracked by the California Independent System Operator, which manages the power grid for about 80 percent of the state, reached a peak of 43,709 megawatts on Aug. 9.

By contrast, July's peak -- a record-breaker -- was 50,270 megawatts, reached on July 24. Another contrast: The overall average temperature in August was 1.9 degrees below normal, while July was 4.4 degrees higher than normal. The difference between the two months may have played a part in people's perception of August as unusually pleasant. As Dace Udris, a spokeswoman for the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, put it, "Maybe it's because I hated the end of July so much that August seemed great." In terms of electricity bills, August may well turn out to be great -- or at least, not as bad as July, which produced some whoppers. SMUD said its preliminary figures -- based on a small sampling of 20,000 bills that have been prepared for residential customers, out of 560,000 -- show an average August billing of $95.07. That's 4 percent lower than bills in August 2005, and markedly below the average residential SMUD bill of $123.67 in July, Udris said. Pacific Gas and Electric Co. also saw significantly lower peak demand. Spokesman Jon Tremayne said it will be another week or so before the utility company can say what August bills will look like as a result.

The back-to-back unusual months of summer inevitably raise questions about global climate change. But they're not questions that climate scientists can definitively answer, at least not based on two months of weather. "Nobody makes statements about global warming based upon single months or single years," said Bryan Weare, a professor of atmospheric science at the University of California, Davis. "There are some projections that say the variability will be greater on a warmer Earth," Weare said. "But to try to make anything out of two months really doesn't make any sense."

I'm not taking them for granted, I am taking them as a baseline for a rational discussion; a discussion without the usual doomsday predictions of environmental collaps or economic meltdown.

Thomas wrote:

I'm not taking them for granted, I am taking them as a baseline for a rational discussion; a discussion without the usual doomsday predictions of environmental collaps or economic meltdown.

I think a rational discussion must be based on an outright ban of numbers taken from models, especially those for 1 century ahead. Only number from reality with some prudent short term projection must be used.

Thus, given your choice of acceptable numbers, no rational discussion of potential global warming problems is possible at all.

The world only has 10 years to develop and implement new technologies to generate clean electricity before climate change reaches the point of no return - something the UK government failed to appreciate in its recent energy review, according to an expert.
Speaking at the British Association festival of science in Norwich yesterday, Peter Smith, a professor of sustainable energy at the University of Nottingham, said the UK had to embark on a strategy to reduce energy use by insulating homes better and encouraging more micro-generation schemes such as solar panels.

... ... ...

Global solar power generation is expected to increase by 25 per cent this year, a European conference on solar energy was told at its opening session on Monday.

In 2005, worldwide turnover in the sector was 5.8 billion euros (7.4 billion dollars, according to Heinz Ossenbrink, head of the Renewable Energy Department of the Institute for Environment and Sustainability at the EU Research Centre in Ispra, near Milan.

'The drastic increase in oil prices and the growing awareness of business, politics and consumers with regard to the limited availability of fossil fuels has given the photovoltaics sector enormous momentum,' Osenbrink told the 21st European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition in Dresden.

Only a fraction of 1 per cent of the world's energy demand is satisfied by solar power.

Germany is the world leader in the field, generating enough power from the sun's rays to meet the needs of households in a city of 590,000, according to the Solar Energy Association BSW.

Last week, a solar electric power plant, billed by its operators as the world's biggest, went into service in the southern German state of Bavaria.

More than 1,400 movable solar modules will collect the sun's rays and harness them into energy for around 3,500 homes.

Germany accounts for 60 per cent of the world market in solar energy, with some 5,000 firms exporting one-quarter of their products in a sector that employs 45,000.

BSW managing director Carten Koernig said countries like Greece, Italy and Spain were following the example of Germany's Renewable Energy Act that offers financial incentives for solar energy fed into the national grid.

Germans last year invested 3.7 billion euros in solar energy, one of the fastest growing sources of renewable energy along with wind power and biomass.

Solar energy accounts for less than 1 per cent of the country's energy needs, but the figure is expected to grow to more than 5 per cent by 2020, according to the BSW.

Ice bubbles reveal biggest rise in CO2 for 800,000 years
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Published: 05 September 2006

The rapid rise in greenhouse gases over the past century is unprecedented in at least 800,000 years, according to a study of the oldest Antarctic ice core which highlights the reality of climate change.

Air bubbles trapped in ice for hundreds of thousands of years have revealed that humans are changing the composition of the atmosphere in a manner that has no known natural parallel.

Scientists at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) in Cambridge have found there have been eight cycles of atmospheric change in the past 800,000 years when carbon dioxide and methane have risen to peak levels.

Each time, the world also experienced the relatively high temperatures associated with warm, inter-glacial periods, which were almost certainly linked with levels of carbon dioxide and possibly methane in the atmosphere.

However, existing levels of carbon dioxide and methane are far higher than anything seen during these earlier warm periods, said Eric Wolff of the BAS.

"Ice cores reveal the Earth's natural climate rhythm over the last 800,000 years. When carbon dioxide changed there was always an accompanying climate change," Dr Wolff said. "Over the past 200 years, human activity has increased carbon dioxide to well outside the natural range and we have no analogue for what will happen next.

"We have a no-analogue situation. We don't have anything in the past that we can measure directly," he added.

The ice core was drilled from a thick area of ice on Antarctica known as Dome C. The core is nearly 3.2km long and reaches to a depth where air bubbles became trapped in ice that formed 800,000 years ago.

"It's from those air bubbles that we know for sure that carbon dioxide has increased by about 35 per cent in the past 200 years. Before that 200 years, which is when man's been influencing the atmosphere, it was pretty steady to within 5 per cent," Dr Wolff said.

The core shows that carbon dioxide was always between 180 parts per million (ppm) and 300 ppm during the 800,000 years. However, now it is 380 ppm. Methane was never higher than 750 parts per billion (ppb) in this timescale, but now it stands at 1,780 ppb.

But the rate of change is even more dramatic, with increases in carbon dioxide never exceeding 30 ppm in 1,000 years -- and yet now carbon dioxide has risen by 30 ppm in the last 17 years.

"The rate of change is probably the most scary thing because it means that the Earth systems can't cope with it," Dr Wolff told the British Association meeting at the University of East Anglia in Norwich.

"On such a crowded planet, we have little capacity to adapt to changes that are much faster than anything in human experience."

The rapid rise in greenhouse gases over the past century is unprecedented in at least 800,000 years, according to a study of the oldest Antarctic ice core which highlights the reality of climate change.

Air bubbles trapped in ice for hundreds of thousands of years have revealed that humans are changing the composition of the atmosphere in a manner that has no known natural parallel.

Scientists at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) in Cambridge have found there have been eight cycles of atmospheric change in the past 800,000 years when carbon dioxide and methane have risen to peak levels.

Each time, the world also experienced the relatively high temperatures associated with warm, inter-glacial periods, which were almost certainly linked with levels of carbon dioxide and possibly methane in the atmosphere.

However, existing levels of carbon dioxide and methane are far higher than anything seen during these earlier warm periods, said Eric Wolff of the BAS.

"Ice cores reveal the Earth's natural climate rhythm over the last 800,000 years. When carbon dioxide changed there was always an accompanying climate change," Dr Wolff said. "Over the past 200 years, human activity has increased carbon dioxide to well outside the natural range and we have no analogue for what will happen next.

"We have a no-analogue situation. We don't have anything in the past that we can measure directly," he added.

The ice core was drilled from a thick area of ice on Antarctica known as Dome C. The core is nearly 3.2km long and reaches to a depth where air bubbles became trapped in ice that formed 800,000 years ago.

"It's from those air bubbles that we know for sure that carbon dioxide has increased by about 35 per cent in the past 200 years. Before that 200 years, which is when man's been influencing the atmosphere, it was pretty steady to within 5 per cent," Dr Wolff said.

The core shows that carbon dioxide was always between 180 parts per million (ppm) and 300 ppm during the 800,000 years. However, now it is 380 ppm. Methane was never higher than 750 parts per billion (ppb) in this timescale, but now it stands at 1,780 ppb.

But the rate of change is even more dramatic, with increases in carbon dioxide never exceeding 30 ppm in 1,000 years -- and yet now carbon dioxide has risen by 30 ppm in the last 17 years.

"The rate of change is probably the most scary thing because it means that the Earth systems can't cope with it," Dr Wolff told the British Association meeting at the University of East Anglia in Norwich.

"On such a crowded planet, we have little capacity to adapt to changes that are much faster than anything in human experience."