[JoeBrown]

The object of my experiment (reducing the number of farmed animals) is to test the hypothesis.
...

Changes in habitual behavior, often meets denial and resistance.  If you really wish to change habitual behavior, one needs to concentrate on educating the ignorant first.

Factory farming is problematic, w/regard to co₂ and probably more culpable methane released by these activities.  Antibiotic use, imposes epidemic effects, worthy of fear-mongering.

This video is encouraging and disheartening, but worth a watch, it's somewhat educational. []

[Tim the Plumber]

Based on the Ice Core graph, it seems the topic of this thread is clearly answered.  Skeptics are wrong to claim no link.

Cause/effect somewhat debatable.  Looks like increased atmospheric hydrocarbons drives temp &co2 spikes.

What are the most likely causes for increased hydrocarbons? 

Animal population explosions
Plant population explosions
Methane trapped in crust released
Fracking
Tar & oil extraction

What else could be added to the list?
 
I suspect many of the past spikes have followed seizemic events, where the crust was ruptured, exposing methane in large quantities.  Most likely precipitated by earth quake. 

Can't rule out cosmic events rupturing crust or meteors carring methane, both seem unlikely, but possible.

I must have missed the strong evidence that the climate is driven by hydrocarbon gasses. Which post was it in? That would be that hydrocarbons are more significant than any other factors in climate change.

Just because you want it to be so does not make it so!

[guest39538]

LISTEN, you are ALL talking of things that is not the cause of global warming, they are factors of global warming.

The cause is exchange rate and the laws of thermodynamics.


Following the wrong path will only lead to the wrong answers.

factors -

1. For every person or animal born   >S
2. For every person that dies   >S
3. For every fire >S
4. For every action >S
5. For every EM source >S


Now if S releases E at rate A, but S gains E at rate B which is greater than A, then S only goes and can only go one direction, which is ''UP''.  I.e when S gains B at a rate that is way greater than A, in this example we will use air,
it will go ''up'' and not come back down.



 

[alancalverd]

Then why has the temperature gone down in the past?

[Craig W. Thomson]

Wrong, wrong, wrong. It is of the utmost importance to understand the mechanism of a system if you want to control it. You cannot possibly say that the bullet leaving the gun was the cause of your finger on the trigger (well, you might, but nobody would believe you) or that the light coming on was the cause of your pushing the switch. Or that pregnancy causes sex.

If A always precedes B, you can't control A by modifying B. 

Now it is established (at least by the Vostok ice cores, probably the only untainted data we have) that temperature leads CO2 concentration, both upwards and downwards. The Mauna Loa annual data confirms this, and the mechanism is pretty clear.

So however desirable it might be to stop burning fossil fuel (no question there), it won't change the direction of climate, which is obviously driven by something else. All it will do is provide a short-term means for politicians and other parasites to blame you and me for the inevitable (and divert tax subsidies to their friends' "renewables" industries) instead of getting off their backsides and doing something to mitigate the looming disaster.

I have to give the Cameron government credit for one thing, at least - reducing the subsidies for unreliable energy sources. But it's a mere scratch on the surface of the problem.

Here's the part I want to focus on. You said, "It is of the utmost importance to understand the mechanism of a system if you want to control it." So tell me, where does the extra temperature come from that is causing the release of all that CO2 ?? What's the mechanism?

Oh, I know, it probably has something to do with applying combustion to 100 million years of fossil fuels. When you burn stuff, that produces heat.

What you are talking about is natural. Let's say the Sun's output was a bit higher. That would raise temperatures, which would thaw permafrost, releasing greenhouse gases. In that case, temperature would lead.

However, human beings are now part of the equation. That's what you're not considering. In the last 150 years, we've obviously added a lot of extra heat to the system by releasing lots of stored solar energy that was trapped in fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide isn't just "following" the temperature lead anymore, coming up out of thawed permafrost and such. We are adding a lot of it to the atmosphere through combustion, and removing less of it because of deforestation.

[Craig W. Thomson]

But the 1920 to 2020 rise of 1c is not, even if it continues, cause for alarm untill 2300, or later. I doubt we will be using fossil fuels for that long. We have only really significantly been using them for 200 years at most. Our technology is advancing very rapidly and many power systems look like they are just about to break through.

Technology is the problem. If it wasn't for technology, there wouldn't 7 billion people blazing through resources at breakneck speed on an exponential growth curve. We would still be living at a balance with what the environment was able to support.

It is time for humans to take stock of our situation and do something about it. Blind faith in technology and "progress" is a big part of what got us into this mess in the first place.

[guest39538]

Then why has the temperature gone down in the past?

I am not 100% clear on your question Alan, what I consider is when air rises the thinner air up top becomes more dense , and the dense air at sea level becomes more thin, opposite and equal reaction, so I consider if up top becomes more dense, then up top becomes warmer , and if down below becomes less dense, it becomes colder.   Less energy per parts volume.

[guest39538]

 Blind faith in technology and "progress" is a big part of what got us into this mess in the first place.

Oh yes, those who tried to stop the industrial revolution were not wrong. I agree with you totally that we should have never ''ate the apple''.

[Tim the Plumber]

Here's the part I want to focus on. You said, "It is of the utmost importance to understand the mechanism of a system if you want to control it." So tell me, where does the extra temperature come from that is causing the release of all that CO2 ?? What's the mechanism?

Oh, I know, it probably has something to do with applying combustion to 100 million years of fossil fuels. When you burn stuff, that produces heat.

What you are talking about is natural. Let's say the Sun's output was a bit higher. That would raise temperatures, which would thaw permafrost, releasing greenhouse gases. In that case, temperature would lead.

However, human beings are now part of the equation. That's what you're not considering. In the last 150 years, we've obviously added a lot of extra heat to the system by releasing lots of stored solar energy that was trapped in fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide isn't just "following" the temperature lead anymore, coming up out of thawed permafrost and such. We are adding a lot of it to the atmosphere through combustion, and removing less of it because of deforestation.

No, the amount of heat produced directly by human activity is utterly tiny in comparison with the heat budget of nature.

The hypothesis that explains the increase in CO2 after a warming of the world is that CO2 dissolves in water better when the water is cold. As the water heats up the CO2 comes out. The oceans have lots of CO2 dissolved in them and take a long time to fully adjust to temperature changes on the surface of the world. This is why there is an 800 year lagg between temperature and CO2 peaks and troughs. At least that's the hypothesis.

[Tim the Plumber]

But the 1920 to 2020 rise of 1c is not, even if it continues, cause for alarm untill 2300, or later. I doubt we will be using fossil fuels for that long. We have only really significantly been using them for 200 years at most. Our technology is advancing very rapidly and many power systems look like they are just about to break through.

Technology is the problem. If it wasn't for technology, there wouldn't 7 billion people blazing through resources at breakneck speed on an exponential growth curve. We would still be living at a balance with what the environment was able to support.

It is time for humans to take stock of our situation and do something about it. Blind faith in technology and "progress" is a big part of what got us into this mess in the first place.

Evil drivel. If you mean that we should return to some sort of hunter gatherer society with a total population of a few million using fire to hunt with etc then be my guest to try it and find out that being incompetant in the modern world has the prediction that you will still be incompetant trying to hunt for yourself.

You will also quickly find out that us humans can't live at all without technology. The thrown stick is technology. The spear is advancing tec. Fire is tecnology. How are you going to eat the root vegitables you will need to without fire?

Mods; Should such anti-hunam, anti-technology, anti-science types as these drivel speaking hippies be allowed anywhere near a science forum?

[Craig W. Thomson]

Then why has the temperature gone down in the past?

Have you ever had a fever? Did your temperature go back down?

The "biosphere" on the surface of the earth is basically an organism. All the interactions of plants and animals, predators and prey, cause gradual changes to the planet and atmosphere. Ice melts, reflecting less sun, so even more ice melts, moving cubic miles of ice off land masses and into the ocean, triggering volcanoes, which cool things off. Animal populations explode, shifting the dynamics of grasslands and forests. All these thing work together to keep temperature and CO2 content within certain parameters. However, right now, the Earth has a fever. We are the organism causing that fever. That fever is the earth trying to keep us in check, just like your body does when you have a fever.

Ever wonder why we haven't found intelligent life yet? IMHO, a big part of the reason for that is because planets like earth are rare. I think there are a whole bunch of rare coincidences that make the Earth habitable. Just the right distance from the Sun, just the right size to hold an atmosphere that happens to be just the right mix of gases, just the right amount of water to make ice/albedo effects possible, just the right core for a protective magnetic field, just the right planetary system to sweep up asteroids and debris to keep us safe, etc. To me, the Earth essentially "won the lotto." Self-regulating planets with biospheres aren't an everyday occurrence.

"Life force" operates under the same sort of "invariance principle" or "gauge symmetry" that any other force does. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. As a life force, we are increasing entropy in our environment, and the environment is starting to push back. This is to be expected according to the laws of physics.

[Craig W. Thomson]

No, the amount of heat produced directly by human activity is utterly tiny in comparison with the heat budget of nature.

FALSE. The earth's life forms spent hundreds of millions of years taking solar energy OUT of the system. That's what oil and coal are: dead plants and animals.

It is NOT hyperbole to say that we have quite literally, in the course of 150 years, released millions and millions of years' worth of stored solar energy that was previously stored safely away, trapped in fossil fuels.

Here's an analogy, just for you. Let's say every person that lived in America since 1776 had thrown a dollar in a hole. That wouldn't affect the GDP very much, or the economy. It's just a dollar. However, let's say you stumbled upon that hole in 2016 and decided to take it all out. There are over 300 million people alive today in the US. You would find something like a billion dollars. That's enough to effect the economy a little bit when you spend it all at once.

Now, imagine the U.S. had been around since 1.776 billion years ago, replace the Americans with trees, replace those dollar bills with lumps of coal, and you have a better idea what I am talking about.

I don't know why I bother to explain these things. After more than 25 years, I've concluded that skeptics are always going to believe what they want to believe no matter how much they get slapped in the face with the truth. An ex-girlfriend of mine used to call it "stuck on stupid."

[Craig W. Thomson]

Evil drivel. If you mean that we should return to some sort of hunter gatherer society with a total population of a few million using fire to hunt with etc then be my guest to try it and find out that being incompetant in the modern world has the prediction that you will still be incompetant trying to hunt for yourself.

Should such anti-hunam, anti-technology, anti-science types as these drivel speaking hippies be allowed anywhere near a science forum?

Okay, I'll go, but only if we also kick out all the plumbers and fiscal conservatives. You're the ones disseminating misinformation. I've got news for you, pal. You don't get to decide what's best for the whole human race, and you are not even close to smart or informed enough to make that decision for us, so maybe you should lay off the right wing fascist streak and go unclog a toilet, because apparently you are at least competent enough for that.

Heck, forget about my college degree. I cleaned carpet professionally for just under a year before I moved to California. I had three professional certifications. I'll bet I know more about chemistry than you just from that. I'll bet I can get a crap stain out of carpet better than you can unclog a toilet, and I can fully explain the science of how it works. Incompetent hippie my foot.

e·vil
ˈēvəl/Submit
adjective
1.
profoundly immoral and malevolent.

I resent that. I further propose you are a hypocrite. You're worried about your own self interest more than the whole of humanity. That's not just immoral and malevolent. It's antisocial and uncivilized.

I mentioned "gauge symmetry" and the "invariance principle" to alancalverd a couple of posts back. That applies to your comments, too. Keep trying to silence the "hippies" like some kind of fascist, and you can expect some pushback from people who want to silence the climate change deniers. Yes, the laws of physics and entropy manifest themselves in politics and economies, too. I'm positive, you're negative, and this thread is roughly as politically charged as our democracy right now.

[Bored chemist]

No, the amount of heat produced directly by human activity is utterly tiny in comparison with the heat budget of nature.

FALSE. 
I don't know why I bother to explain these things

Ok lets look at the numbers
First off let's see how much heat the Earth gets from the sun.
The solar constant is of the order of 1.3 kilowatt per square metre.
The Earth's area facing the sun is pi r^2
(That's the area of the shadow it casts rather than the surface area.)
the radius is about 6.4 million metres.
So the area is 128E 12 square metres
So we get about 1.7 E 17 Watts from the sun

In a day we get 4 E 18 Watt hours and in a year we get 1.5 E 21 Watt hours
That's 1.5 E 9 TWHr per year.

By comparison we use something like 100,000 TWHr/ year
(from here)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption

So the sun provides about 15000 times more energy than we use.

So, Tim's comment "No, the amount of heat produced directly by human activity is utterly tiny in comparison with the heat budget of nature."
is true

I also therefore, don't understand why you say such things , and yes, I think we can forget about your college degree.

But what matters is that, because the sun's energy supply is so huge, even a small change in how much is absorbed (because of CO2 levels rinsing, for example) will make a significant difference to our climate.

[Tim the Plumber]

No, the amount of heat produced directly by human activity is utterly tiny in comparison with the heat budget of nature.

FALSE. 
I don't know why I bother to explain these things

Ok lets look at the numbers
First off let's see how much heat the Earth gets from the sun.
The solar constant is of the order of 1.3 kilowatt per square metre.
The Earth's area facing the sun is pi r^2
(That's the area of the shadow it casts rather than the surface area.)
the radius is about 6.4 million metres.
So the area is 128E 12 square metres
So we get about 1.7 E 17 Watts from the sun

In a day we get 4 E 18 Watt hours and in a year we get 1.5 E 21 Watt hours
That's 1.5 E 9 TWHr per year.

By comparison we use something like 100,000 TWHr/ year
(from here)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption

So the sun provides about 15000 times more energy than we use.

So, Tim's comment "No, the amount of heat produced directly by human activity is utterly tiny in comparison with the heat budget of nature."
is true

I also therefore, don't understand why you say such things , and yes, I think we can forget about your college degree.

But what matters is that, because the sun's energy supply is so huge, even a small change in how much is absorbed (because of CO2 levels rinsing, for example) will make a significant difference to our climate.

Thank you for injecting some actual science.

I think it is a reasonable idea that more CO2 should have a significant effect on the climate but I don't see it as being anywhere near the top end of the IPCC's predictions.

The reason I say this is because the amount of CO2 we have released since 1998 is more than the IPCC expected yet there has been no significant temperature change. This surely means that we can discount the top half of those predictions. At which point there is nothing to worry about at all.

For the record I am something of a liberal with socialist tendancies. And an atheist.

[JoeBrown]

Thank you for injecting some actual science.

... subjective science analysis removed ...

For the record I am something of a liberal with socialist tendancies. And an atheist.

I'm brewing a little oxymoron, anybody want some?

Sorry, just seems like we need a little levity and something about that post, struck me curious.

CO₂ Not the driving force.  It's an indicator IMO.  The driving force of our climate is the mean temperature of the oceans.  If there's more CO₂ more critters (bacteria, et al) are going to reproduce and deal with it.  But it's going to take time, like Tim said, our planet lives.

Human activities, combined with GREED and industrial scale technology has increased atmospheric content of both CO₂ and hydrocarbons.  Both slow the process of heat escaping into space, opposed to nitrogen and O₂.

I believe the oceans of this world, drive the wind and the rain and most (not all, but most) everything we term the climate.

Weather changes over night.  The climate changes on the decade (or longer) scales.

I can remember hearing about tornadoes and hurricanes when I was a child.  I don't believe human activity has ever caused them to occur.  But it seems that if we insulate (only a little) more heat in the oceans, their frequencies increase.  It seems to me, to be the case...  But historical human knowledge of these events is quite limited.

I counter all that with my "liberal" sense of morality.  We all seem to be greedy.  We will drive cars an a daily basis, when we can.  That's a form of greed.  Morally speaking, if we use up all the hydrocarbon resources, w/out providing for existence when they're gone, we not only greedy, we're pretty stupid.

Many, many societies would utterly collapse tomorrow, if the oil well goes dry today.  That's a morality, I have a hard time coming to terms with.  I think we're doing things wrong, burning fossil fuels for any purpose other than creating a sustainable "NOW."  I'd like to see a world where my kids won't blame my greed, or for not shouting, "Hey... Guys wtf..."

[Tim the Plumber]

1, it was not I who waxed on with the Gia gibberish.

2, 2015 was one of the lowest tornado years;

http://www.climatedepot.com/2016/03/10/noaa-number-of-major-tornadoes-in-2015-was-one-of-the-lowest-on-record-tornadoes-below-average-for-4th-year-in-a-row/

The models which predict increased storm activity are the same ones which have failed to predict the climate for 18 years. Surely more even temperatures would create conditions of less wind and storms. And tornadoes.

[alancalverd]

So tell me, where does the extra temperature come from that is causing the release of all that CO2 ?? What's the mechanism?

The distribution of water between the atmosphere and the surface, between its various states and formats, and in the circulation of ocean currents, appears to be the principal driver of climate change.

This bounded chaotic oscillation will lead to roughly periodic variations in temperature at any point on the globe. The shape of the temperature curve is consistent with the known positive feedback of the water vapor greenhouse effect, leading to rapid temperature rises and slow decreases. 

It is even arguable that the water cycle produces a cyclic variation in the mean surface temperature of the globe, but as I've pointed out previously, we don't have credible data on that parameter before 1970 so it would be unscientific to speculate.

[Tim the Plumber]

So tell me, where does the extra temperature come from that is causing the release of all that CO2 ?? What's the mechanism?

The distribution of water between the atmosphere and the surface, between its various states and formats, and in the circulation of ocean currents, appears to be the principal driver of climate change.

This bounded chaotic oscillation will lead to roughly periodic variations in temperature at any point on the globe. The shape of the temperature curve is consistent with the known positive feedback of the water vapor greenhouse effect, leading to rapid temperature rises and slow decreases. 

It is even arguable that the water cycle produces a cyclic variation in the mean surface temperature of the globe, but as I've pointed out previously, we don't have credible data on that parameter before 1970 so it would be unscientific to speculate.

I think it is reasonable to say that the medeval warm period was global. We seem to have plenty of proxy data for that. Just because the data is a form that is not as "cool" as an easy number does not make it not credible.

Obviously the Holocene Optimal, the climate in the early bronze age 2200+ years ago, was even warmer than the MWP.

These periods are both within the present ice age so any time outside an ice age makes us look positively frigid now.

[Craig W. Thomson]

So the sun provides about 15000 times more energy than we use.

So, Tim's comment "No, the amount of heat produced directly by human activity is utterly tiny in comparison with the heat budget of nature."
is true

I also therefore, don't understand why you say such things , and yes, I think we can forget about your college degree.

But what matters is that, because the sun's energy supply is so huge, even a small change in how much is absorbed (because of CO2 levels rinsing, for example) will make a significant difference to our climate.

What's the total combined mass of humanity? About 500 million tons? That's the teeniest, tiniest fraction of the planet's mass. Yet, we've managed to influence the climate of the entire planet. All that combustion has caused the CO2 level of the whole entire atmosphere to increase a full 20% in ONLY 50 YEARS. That's the point I'm getting at. Our changes are relatively small if you only use the sun's total output as your metric, but they appear much larger when you compare them to the sorts of atmospheric changes that usually take thousands, tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of years of geological time, like the changes brought about by continental drift and plate tectonics. That's why there's a sharp spike at the end of this graph the coincides with the invention of the mass-produced automobile:

https://robertscribbler.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/ice-core-co2-record-800000-years.jpg

See that? That spike is NOT representative of the statement that our paltry 1/15,000 of the suns output is "negligible."

I totally agree with you, that "even a small change will make a significant difference to our climate." But, instead of supporting my side of the argument, you're supporting the confirmation biased guy who's using this same information to support his flat earth, no-climate-change skeptic argument. Yeah, he's technically correct, but not really.

Besides, guys like him usually say the opposite when it's convenient. As in, "The sun's energy is simply too diffuse and weak to supply our power needs." Are you going to stand up for him when he pulls that one out too?

Just in case, I'll post a pre-emptive strike against that argument as well:

Two square meters of sunshine melts a rock that's been around for ten billion years. That could easily provide enough steam-generated power for an entire house, perhaps enough to move a train.