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

Diest TKO wrote:

Other factors in no particular order...

Methane, aerosols, land ice, forrestation/deforrestation, water pollution, volcanic activity, solar radiation, global procession, orbit variance.

I'm sure I've left some out. I'm sure some are yet to be discovered.



T
K
O

Okay, so what percentage or influence is calculated for each of the factors you list, Diest? This should be a piece of cake for you, given that the influence of man produced CO2 has been pinned down so well. Keep in mind here that you brought this up about other factors, so you owe it to all of us to prove that all of those influences have been claimed, and I assume calculated and published, otherwise how would you ever be able to determine the scope of man caused CO2 influence?

okie, if you ever bother to read the IPCC's assessment reports, you would notice that they always list ALL the factors known (and reasonably suspected) to affect climate, including the ones Parado listed, and further expansions on them. The amount of impact is quantized too.

Nope. For example, you see that strong peak in 1997-98, the strongest el Nino on record? See that strong dip right after it, 1998-99? la Nina year.

Some are stronger, some are weaker, of each, just like most things on earth.

The Earth has already warmed 1.3°F over the past century, and it is projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to increase by an additional 3.2-7.2°F over the 21st century. These increases may appear minor compared with short-term local temperature changes, such as those from night to day or winter to summer, but they are changes in the Earth's global average temperature. To put this in perspective, global temperatures during the last ice age (about 20,000 years ago) were "only" 9°F cooler than today; however, that was enough to allow massive ice sheets to reach as far south as the Great Lakes and New York City. At the high-end of projected warming, human activities would change Earth's climate by up to 7°F but in the opposite direction.

The Navier-Stokes equations are the fundamental partial differentials equations that describe the flow of incompressible fluids. Using the rate of stress and rate of strain tensors, it can be shown that the components of a viscous force F in a nonrotating frame are given by

[ (1) , (2) shown in link >
http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/Navier-StokesEquations.html
> as symbols not supported on this site.]



(Tritton 1988, Faber 1995), where is the dynamic viscosity, is the second viscosity coefficient, is the Kronecker delta, is the divergence, is the bulk viscosity, and Einstein summation has been used to sum over j = 1, 2, and 3.

Businesses ill-prepared for climate-change costs

UN Investor Summit

Janet Whitman, Financial Post
Published: Friday, February 15, 2008


NEW YORK - Another sub-prime-mortgage-meltdown-sized risk could be looming for investors: global warming.

That alarm was sounded yesterday at an investor summit at the United Nations headquarters, at which 480 investors, pension fund leaders and corporate executives from around the globe were warned that the vast majority of companies are ill-prepared for the Earth's changing climate.

Many oil producers, utilities and manufacturing plants have yet to factor in the added expense if the United States -- as is expected in the next few years -- imposes caps on carbon-dioxide emissions. Similarly, many companies with big real-estate holdings in U.S. coastal regions haven't calculated their exposure to increased tropical storms and rising seas.

Most of the financial institutions that lend to these companies and the insurance companies that protect them also have yet to adequately consider how they might get burned.


"It's like subprime mortgages ... one of longest-kept secrets of uncalculated risk," said Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres, a coalition of investors and environmental groups, which co-hosted yesterday's event. "By not acting on climate change ... we face the same kind of [risks] with what we're seeing in subprime."

Al Gore, the former U.S. vice-president, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year for bringing attention to the issue of climate change, echoed that theme as keynote speaker, urging investors to dump any assets they hold in businesses that are heavily reliant on carbon-intensive energy -- or risk losing a ton of money down the road.

"You need to really scrub your investment portfolios, because I guarantee you ... that if you really take a fine-tooth comb and go through your portfolios, many of you are going to find them chock-full of 'subprime' carbon assets," he said according to an Associated Press report of the speech, which was closed to the press.

Similar to betting on subprime mortgages given to people with bad credit histories, "the assumption that you can safely invest in assets that come from business models that assume carbon is free is an assumption that is about to go splat," Mr. Gore said.

Wall Street is starting to catch on.

(now , thats' rather interesting imo. hbg)

This month, a group of big U.S. banks said lending for coal-fired power plans would hinge on utilities demonstrating they would be economically viable under a crackdown on emissions.

But many companies remain oblivious to the risks, panelists at the summit said.

A survey of global executives by consultancy McKinsey found 60% see climate change as strategically important, 82% expect to see stricter regulations on greenhouse gas emissions in the next three to five years, and 61% believe climate change could boost their profits. But only 40% of executives polled said their companies considered how climate change might affect their businesses.

Diana Farrell, a director for McKinsey, said companies' failure to act represents an opportunity for investors.

Since the first UN Summit on Climate Risk about five years ago, investors have ratcheted up pressure on companies to disclose how they manage the risk posed by global warming. Since then, proposed shareholder resolutions on environmental concerns have jumped from five to 40 and such resolutions now get an average vote of support of 25%, up from 4%.

As part of yesterday's summit, nearly 50 top U.S. and European institutional investors managing US$1.75-trillion in assets pledged to invest US$10-billion in clean technology opportunities over the next two years and also agreed to cut energy use in their core real estate holdings by 20% over the next three years.

The group also plans to put more pressure on Wall Street analysts, ratings agencies and banks to analyze the potential impact of carbon emissions and to urge the U.S. Congress to introduce a mandatory national policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

"Our goal is to transform the economy into one that is clean, green and sustainable," said Bill Lockyer, California State Treasurer .

Copyright © 2007 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest MediaWorks Publications, Inc.. All rights reserved.

...
source :
BUSINESSES ILL PREPARED FOR CLIMATE CHANGE

http://eesc.columbia.edu/courses/ees/climate/lectures/radiation/index.html
THE CLIMATE SYSTEM
The greenhouse effect.
The effective temperature of Earth [255 K (or -18 °C)] is much lower than what we experience. Averaged over all seasons and the entire Earth, the surface temperature of our planet is about 288°K (or 15°C). This difference is in the effect of the heat absorbing components of our atmosphere. This effect is known as the greenhouse effect, referring to the farming practice of warming garden plots by covering them with a glass (or plastic) enclosure.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2007/ann/global.html
The 1901 to 2000 average combined land and ocean annual temperature is 13.9°C;
13.9°C + 273.16°K = 287.06°K

Why are all the CO2 emission alarmists alarmed?


By the way, I assumed that the more accurate of the stated 288°K (or 15°C) average surface temperatures of our planet is 15°C.

ican711nm wrote:

Why are all the CO2 emission alarmists alarmed?


By the way, I assumed that the more accurate of the stated 288°K (or 15°C) average surface temperatures of our planet is 15°C.

If 20,000yrs ago the Global average temp was only 9 degree lower, then that meant that prior to this century the global average has gone up on average 0.045 degrees per century.

If an increase of 1.3 degrees over the last century is not "alarming" then you've got a screw loose or you simply do not care.

T
K
O

Yes, I agree that businesses are ill prepared for climate changes of the magnitude predicted for the predicted increase of CO2 in the atmosphere. Also they are ill prepared for the probable magnitude of error in those predictions.

It is relevant. It gives us a picture of what natural heating and cooling trends are without human factors. It is very relavant.

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T
K
O

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THE BIG THREE (automanufacturers) provide a good example imo .
they have started to realize that more and more consumers are buying japanese cars - for whatever reason .
so they are now beginning to compete with the japanese automobile manufactures - sometimes even selling their competitors cars with their own badge stuck on it . :wink:
they sure aren't doing it to help the japanese , are they ?
kind of telling , isn't it ?
hbg

Quote:

hamburger wrote:

...

THE BIG THREE (automanufacturers) provide a good example imo .
they have started to realize that more and more consumers are buying japanese cars - for whatever reason .
so they are now beginning to compete with the japanese automobile manufactures - sometimes even selling their competitors cars with their own badge stuck on it .
they sure aren't doing it to help the japanese , are they ?
kind of telling , isn't it ?
hbg

Long before the human caused CO2 emissions scare became widespread, people were buying Japanese instead of American cars to save on the cost of cars and the cost of fuel. I think that trend will continue regardless of whether the CO2 emissions scare ever materializes into a well supported reality.