global warming again

[MikeG.]

The reason you haven't, Jon, is that by the time fossil fuels run out the current emergency situation will either have been fixed, or it will be too late. There are hundreds of years of coal supply left in the ground, and we haven't got hundreds of years to sort the mess out.

Devonwoody, please pay attention to the answers. Carbon dioxide is emitted and absorbed in a natural process. For squillions of years those processes have been roughly in balance. In the last 200 or so years, there has been more carbon dioxide put into the atmosphere than the processes can cope with immediately, so there is a build up. Concentrations of CO2 have gone from around 270ppm pre industrial revolution to around 400ppm now. That is a roughly 50% increase in the concentration.

As well as emitting more CO2, we have also reduced the earth's ability to absorb it, by reducing the area of the planet available for woodland, and by changing the temperature and acidity of the oceans.

If the entire population of the planet buggered off to somewhere else in the universe today, woodlands and forests would regenerated quickly, and the seas would eventually return to "normal", and the excess CO2 would soon be mopped up. We would be back to a natural balance between the amount emitted (by volcanoes, animals etc), and the amount absorbed (by plants, algae and the oceans etc).

So, take your ideas about "it doesn't matter how quickly we use up fossil fuels", stir everything around for a bit and have a good think before you ask the same question again.

Mike

 

[devonwoody]

Mike, it hasnt absorbed it and I still dont think it will absorb it at lower emissions.

Therefore when the balance of fuel is used it wont have absorbed it even over a longer timespan.
I am saying it can never return to a balanced use and recovery position.

 

[jlawrence]

It can return to a balanced use/absorb scenario.
The balance might well be at a higher level than previous but it will still be in balance.
Everything in nature is a matter of balance.

 

[devonwoody]

JLawrence
Thats what I wanted to hear.

Then I went on to imply that only a certain person/country might only get the benefit of using these fuels in the future.

The hidden agenda implication portion of my posting.

 

[MikeG.]

Mike, it hasnt absorbed it and I still dont think it will absorb it at lower emissions.

John,

I have no idea what you mean. What do all those "it"s refer to? I assume the second "it" is excess CO2....in which case, just re-read what I just wrote. CO2 is being constantly absorbed, but just not fast enough to cope with the extraordinary amounts we are churning out at the moment.

There is no hidden agenda. Everything is very much on display. All governments are trying to act in their own self-interest.......financial interest. Bearing in mind that the lifespan of most governments is 5 years, why should any one government do something that may reduce their own competitiveness in the short term to deal with a problem that won't really start killing millions for a decade or two?

To see conspiracy in everything is moronic. There is no hidden agenda here whatsoever. This is just governments unable to do what the science has been demanding we do for the last 20 or 30 years.....

Mike

 

[RogerS]

...// This is just governments unable to do what the science has been demanding we do for the last 20 or 30 years.....

Mike

Maggie, for all the faults she may/may not have had was one of the first politicians to champion the cause of CO2 emissions etc. IIRC she was a trained chemist. So maybe they shouldn't be politicians unless they were scientists? Has to be better than the current lot (of all parties) - ex-lawyers whatever.

 

[wobblycogs]

DW, the worlds processes can be seen as cycles. One of the simplest is the water or hydrological cycle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_cycle which shows how water is being constantly moved around the planet. There is also a carbon cycle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle which shows how carbon is moved around in the environment. The carbon cycle is far more complex than the water cycle and it involves some long term storage of carbon in both fossil fuel deposits and absorption into rocks etc.

If you look at the earths carbon cycle you will see why the rate at which we burn fossil fuels is important. The earths processes can remove upto a certain amount of CO2 per year, lets say it's a 1000 tons maximum. If humans had never existed the earth would still naturally produce CO2 from volcanos, rotting matter, animals etc. Lets say naturally the CO2 production is 998 tons per year. Since the rate of absorption is greater than the rate of production a balence will be found and th CO2 levels will stabilize as they did at around 250ppm.

Now lets put humans into the picture. Lets say we produce 12 tons of CO2 per year. Now the total CO2 produced per year by all processes is 1010 tons per year but the earth is still only able to absorb 1000 tons per year. Since production is out stripping absorption CO2 will build up in the atmosphere as is happening now.

The result of this is that we could burn the fossil fuels we have remaining and not affect the atmosphere but the rate at which we could do that would be much much lower than our current rate of consumption.

As I mentioned at the top the carbon cycle is very complex. The problem is we don't really understand what will happen when the CO2 levels get higher. We know from numerous studies that rapid rises in CO2 levels are associated with extinctions so things probably aren't going to go well. We are also already seeing acidification of the oceans due to CO2 absorption but it's not completely clear what the full effect of that will be. Perhaps alga blooms which remove CO2, perhaps mass extinctions in the oceans. We know that some plants grow faster in high CO2 levels which could help the earth absorb more but that doesn't appear to be a long term effect (plants alter the number of CO2 absorption sites on their leaves and the growth rate returns to normal).

Essentially we know that what we are doing is going to lead to a screwed up future what we don't know is quite how bad it will be screwed up or when it will happen.[/i]

 

[Digit]

You are obviously referring to the Permian extinctions wc, but it would, I think, be rather relevant to point out that the CO2 source was supposed to be the largest and longest known period of volcanic activity, associated with the break up of Pangea.

Roy.

 

[big soft moose]

.....
also i'd note that i used to work at a golf club and we got loads of well of members (may of whom were ceos etc) who would regularly be on the course by two or three in the afternoon.
.....

But you're making a value judgement. Unless you follow said individuals for 24/7 for a couple of weeks then you can't tell what their work involvement is or what their working hours are. For all you know they have just got up after an all-night session conference calling with the US and Far East. Even if they haven't, many people at this level are effectively oncall/involved with work 24/7 so who's to deny them a bit of R&R.

possibly but it is also a value judgement to assume that they are hugely hard working individuals taking a little R&R - Dont know means dont know.

As jake and I established earlier some people at all levels work hard, and the converse is also true - some people at all levels dont.

None of which has any bearing on the taxation argument - there is no evidence that someone who is on call 24/7 as a CEO works any harder than someone who is on call 24/7 as a park ranger or nature reserve warden, or for that matter someone working a nightshift for minimum wage (having personal experience of the latter two i can vouch for them being flipping hard graft)

as far as the taxation goes I'm happy to admit that some, even most, rich people earn their salaries but I dont see any reason for sympathy for their tax burden given the huge ammount they have left after tax, or for that matter any reason to reduce this level of tax due to their "hard" work

 

[RogerS]

BSM...reading your reply, I think we are in 100% agreement!

Rog

 

[devonwoody]

Now that the steam has gone from the tax/rich man section of this thread.

Can I come back to early in the thread and disregard tax this time.

In this country a rich man or a poor man cannot fly tip. (=pollution)

Will a rich man be allowed to pollute (CO2 emissions) more than a poor man when legislation is created in the future?

And will this be global?

I cannot see the new up and coming industrial countries agreeing to any lesser industrial use of fossil fuels if countries like the USA would not sign up last time and not again this time.

 

[Mike.C]

big soft moose:

my point precicely - some posters seem to be labouring under the misaprehension that only the well paid work hard or long hours

I presume that as I was the one who mentioned that highly paid workers work hard you are talking about me?????? If so why not say so?????

When did I say or even infer that only the well paid work hard?????? IMHO most low paid workers get such rubbish wages that many of them have to work as much overtime as they can just to take home a decent pay packet. In other words I have not mentioned that any tax or pay grade are lazy morons.

Oh wait what's this :shock:

big soft moose wrote:

however there are public sector workers who appear to do nothing but pass paper to each other and achieve very little.

Mind you having also worked in the private sector I can say without doubt that there are also people here who get paid for sitting on their fundament and doing nothing useful.

Bottom line on that is regardless of which sector people work in some are hard working and concientious , and some are lazy morons such is the huiman condition

It's certainly not my post, because the ONLY POINT that I was trying to make is that I do not think anyone should give nearly 50% of their hard earned wages to the goverment. This is my opinion, no one elses, and at no point does it infer that only the well paid work hard.

Cheers

Mike

 

[Argee]

a) ... by the time fossil fuels run out the current emergency situation will either have been fixed, or it will be too late.

b) ... we haven't got hundreds of years to sort the mess out.

c) The problem is we don't really understand what will happen when the CO2 levels get higher.

d) Essentially we know that what we are doing is going to lead to a screwed up future what we don't know is quite how bad it will be screwed up or when it will happen.

Pontificate all you wish, but when I see a) and b), then c) and d) paired in posts, nothing is added to the credibility of the arguments at all.

I have my own opinions on what may happen, which no-one can verify or disprove over the timespans regularly quoted. No-one making claims now will be around to crow or apologise, yet are quite happy to not only believe that they are unequivocably correct, but also to dismiss those who disagree as somehow lesser beings.

We clearly cannot know everything, if we did then scientists would have nothing to do. Why, then, does this topic seem to bring out the most un-necessarily scathing and holier-than-thou comments, I wonder? Could it be the latest version of the "King's New Clothes"? The one thing I'm certain of is that I don't know!

Ray

 

[wobblycogs]

Not fully understanding the consequences of your actions and knowing that the consequences will be bad are completely different things. To draw an analogy I don't fully understand what the consequences of drinking 20 pints of lager would be on me but I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be good so I don't do it. We know that continued release of CO2 faster than the earth can deal with it is going to result in bad things happening, the debate now is on how bad and how quickly. The consensus seems to be that it will be fairly bad and in a fairly short (even by human standards) period of time.

All the people here discussing global warming can probably bury their heads in the sand. It's looking likely that by the time we turn up our toes it won't have got that bad. Our children and grandchildren will probably know a different world though, one where crops regularly fail, water is in short supply, valuable farming land has been lost to rising sea levels, massive population displacement etc etc.

Have a look at a map of India, note how much land is less than 5m above sea level than find out how many people currently live on that land. If they all need somewhere else to live 100 years from now we have a really big problem.

 

[Digit]

Have a look at a map of India, note how much land is less than 5m above sea level than find out how many people currently live on that land. If they all need somewhere else to live 100 years from now we have a really big problem.

Or a different viewpoint. I've no idea who is/might be right, just a different take.


http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/06/s ... spectives/

Roy.

 

[wobblycogs]

Bummer if you live in Bangladesh though eh? Currently 160 million people according to Google. Lets say that just 10% live in a area that will be affected by sea level rise that's 16 million people the world needs to relocate. According to the UNHCR the world currently has 16 million refugees http://www.alertnet.org/db/crisisprofiles/REFUGEES.htm so Bangladesh on it's would double that.

Of course this is forgetting the fact that GW will have plenty of other effects such as more tornadoes an move violent weather generally.

 

[Digit]

According to Houghton 7 million.

Roy.

 

[Argee]

Of course this is forgetting the fact that GW will have plenty of other effects such as more tornadoes an move violent weather generally.

That sentence (with my emboldening) proves my point exactly.

Ray

 

[big soft moose]

to be fair to wobly it is a fact that more energy in the atmosphere leads to more storms/ tornados etc.

of course it doesnt absolutely follow that man made climate change is a fact but by the time there is absolute proof it will be too late to avert.

 

[Digit]

of course it doesnt absolutely follow that man made climate change is a fact but by the time there is absolute proof it will be too late to avert.

True I'm afraid. By the way BSM, have you seen my post about birds? What is your opinion?

Roy.