17 Nobel Laureates Sign Memorandum Re: Climate Change

To me, AG's last post points to the real danger of the situation. We really don't know what we're doing. We could be walking into an absolute sh!t storm or not and we really don't know. To me that means our risk is high because we don't really know what we're dealing with. If we knew, we could prepare/deal. Getting blind sided is what we want to avoid.

 

The problem, assuming we Americans finally agree GW happening, there is lack of agreement on magnitude, and even if we were to agree on a certain consequence scenario, folks like physicst Richard Muller point out India/Chiba mega development will overwhelm anything we do here. I don't know where I am heading with this except to observe global status quo seems to be increased fossil fuel use next 20-40 years or so, and then maybe back off. USA needs to back off sooner since we are too energy intensive. The Nobel Laureates are saying the status quo may not work, but I believe S. Arrhenius may have made a similar GW warning speech when he accepted his Nobel Prize in 1903.

 

Im astounded that you dont understand that you are the one spreading FUD.

 

You're probably right about China/India unless we can develop techs/techniques what are less carbon intensive than coal and are also cheaper. The Chinese are probably sensitive to the issue as they watch the NW deserts move steadily towards Beijing.

 

Tripp, you did get the gist of my opinions of the situation. If we look at the cap and tax proposal that failed and look at the models, we can see that it really was a sham that paid out to companies that supported it like bp and the major utilities, but really did not reduce co2 enough to move any of the models. I doubt we have the political will to pass a bill that actually does the right thing. You need to actually understand the models to understand what is going on. We need to start looking at real reductions.

But my posts were about more than that. My last post was mainly about an absolute crazy idea about the science, and I feel that if some people learn about the real science we will be better off. Its important to understand why there is disagreement on the models and what it may mean.

 

The Copenhagen Protocol: How China and India Sabotaged the UN Climate Summit - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

 

some info, so we (you and mojo) stop making up your own facts:

As some previously mentioned, what does Cobalt have to do with GW?
with respect to Methane, concentration of methane growth is pretty liniar on logarithmic scale at the moment..

 

first of all mojo is not right; he is wrong. The only time he is right when he admits that he is a nutcase and he messed up his prescription again.

So basically we don't like model so let's adjust coefficient so we get result we want?

There is enough data accumulated from 1900. If model claims to be accurate it must predict what actually happened within known range with good accuracy. Even if it is more or less accurate within range (1900-2010), it could be off by considerable margin when you extrapolate outside of the range. 30%, 50%, 100%, 200% by 2100. Arguing about coefficient will generate alot of waves but will not get you anywhere

 

don't forget these guys:

 

AG- Earlier, we talked about Germany going to coal vs. nuclear. In another post, I think you mentioned Germany still plans to go 100% renewable by 40-50 years out. Not sure I got that right. Still I adopted it (Germany scenario) for discussion as a possible road map for global strategy. Switch over to renewable in out years as technology is improved, and fossil fuels are depleted and expensive. Assumption is the planet holds up, I know.

 

I wasn't making up those estimates and they agree with yours. Methane is being increased at a non-linear higher level, this is shown on your graph that it appears linear on a log scale. The importance of the half life figure is most warming from methane occurs in the first 25 years, after that because of break down to CO2 it warms and is squestered mainly as carbon dioxide. The Cobalt reference was a joke I think from that poster as mojo wrote Co2 instead of CO2

 

Hey I think that insult is over the line. The point that he is right about is that models often relate the sensitivity of the temperature to the log of carbon dioxide concentration not directly linear to its concentration. I posted an article that explained why without non-linear feedback this agrees with the physics.

There is wide disagreement about what the coefficient should be. This data is encapolated in the current models the IPCC uses. As we get more data and more fully understand the feedback mechanisms I hope better models are created.

All of the models fit historic data, but this data is used to initialize them. The models from 20 years ago did not do a good job of predicting what has happened in the last 20 years, so there is not enough new data to test the new models. One of the major faults of all the IPCC selected models is none of them do a good job on climate variability and fail to correlate well with ENSO. This makes them poor predictors of precipitation and hence the feedback from clouds and precipitation.

 

linear on log scale = exponential.. sorry if it was read any other way!

Could you refer where the "25 years" come from? b/c by Kyoto protocol methane is agreed to be 21 times more potent GHG then CO2. Per IPCC CH4 has warming potential of of 72 (calculated over a period of 20 years) or 25 (for a time period of 100 years) http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter2.pdf

A couple more things to consider about methane:
- when methane oxygenates it produces x2.56 of CO2 and x2 of H2O both of which are GHG
- much higher warming potential (at least x21 times)
- permafrost and arctic sea are the ticking bombs

http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005/2005GL022751.shtml

still looking for Co GHG effects

 

Cycle,

While I agree with your POV, leave the name calling to the true morons on this forum. It doesn't help the dialogue.

Icarus

 

I was just saying it agreed with what I was saying non-linear.

It's about 3 half life's so if you have 100 moles of methane at year 0, you will be down to about 12 moles by year 25 with 88 moles of CO2 but some of that will be naturally sequestered. That is why you get about 72 times the warming of CO2 in the first 20 years but it drops way down for the next 80 years.

CH4 + 2O2 => CO2 + 2H2O + energy

Your 2.56 is by weight, but my formula is by quantity which explains the difference in numbers. The amount of H2O quickly returns the same water balance so we don't need to worry about its extra warming. The models do need to account for the altitude of the water though.

 

correct in ppm it is 1:1 for CO2 and 1:2 for H2O.

btw Kyoto sets emission limits by ton, not ppm, and emissions are reported per ton at least in official reports.

if that's the case why we had such heated discussion about cloud formation? which mojo declared it to be "the real reason for climate change"

http://priuschat.com/forums/environmental-discussion/93854-cloud-mystery-cause-climate-change.html

CH4 oxygenates at higher altitudes.. will try to find any info on how much it contributes to cloud formation.

 

yeah sorry.. you are right we shall not digress; let's keep it civil.


:focus:

 

It is just my explanation of the difference in numbers even though the science is the same. IMHO jumping from unit to unit, from ppm to metric tons, may be part of the reason so many politicians are confused. Or maybe they are just pretending to be confused to put out some fake science.

I'm not quite sure why you had such a heated discussion, but cloud modeling is an important difference in the various climate models.

The conversion to methane to water and co2 contributes is a very small amount of the water vapor in the atmosphere. AFAIK the total water vapor in the atmosphere is not effected in the long term from methane conversion, nor are cloud formations effected. Clouds are definitely affected by other pollutants and surface temperatures though.

 

besides ENSO there is another much worse understood climate variability NAO.. [ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_oscillation]North Atlantic oscillation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame] NAO has bigger impact on arctic ice melting/methane release.

What we dealing with is that:
- not all processes related to climate change (methane, sulfur dioxide, cosmic radiation, etc etc etc) are well understood, accounted for or at least accounted for correctly
- models are incorrect or too crude to be useful due to level of understanding and complexity of the task
- there are obviously a natural and anthropogenic components to climate change phenomena. We can discuss to complete disagreement what human activity has on arctic ice melting, CO2, etc but at least we agree that both of the components are present and have impact
- too much special interest, bickering, propaganda and political maneuvering is going on

but if there is any scientific objectivity to this discussion, can we at least agree with 17 Nobel Laureates? They are politicians, they are renowned scientists... How could you "mojo" all this, deny and declare a hoax what they agree on?