View Full Version : Atmospheric CO2 passes milestone 400 ppm
"Indirect measurements suggest that the last time the carbon dioxide level was this high was at least three million years ago, during an epoch called the Pliocene. Geological research shows that the climate then was far warmer than today, the world’s ice caps were smaller, and the sea level might have been as much as 60 or 80 feet higher."
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/11/science/earth/carbon-dioxide-level-passes-long-feared-milestone.html?_r=0
Yossarian
5-20-13, 11:54am
Hard to know how to take that excerpt. They haven't done a good job with their near term predictions so it's hard to put much stock in the bigger claims.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/ipcc-ar5draft-fig-1-4.gif
Pretty hard for a simple colledge gadiate such as myself to make good sense of the chart and where it came from, though I did enjoy learning about the Nobel Prize winning IPCC, who they are, and what their recent conclusions have been. And at the end, what groups of scientists endorse their findings. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC
what their recent conclusions have been
Yeah, way wrong :laff:
It's an interesting area to follow.
The whole issue of human activity contributing to or causing climate change (depending on your POV) struck me as somewhat silly the first day I heard it and it still does. Even back then no one disputed burning fossil fuels releases toxic chemicals into the air/water/ground. Who with any sense at all does that? I've told people who argue that its not so bad to close their garage, start the car and let me know what they think after that experiment.
Is our climate changing? It certainly looks that way. Even so, there are myriad perfectly natural causes for increased CO2 levels so I can't buy the extreme that says humans are causing the shift. It does, however, make perfect sense to think our activity could be exacerbating the problem. Poisoning + drowning 1/3 of humanity? Hmmm. Maybe we unlocked the answer to the over-population problem after all.
I'm pretty much going with 95% or more of the climate scientists. It seems like they are the ones who should know. Since CO2 is invisible, I understand how some people cannot wrap their hands around the issue, regardless of the evidence. I lived in a town back in the day where an old fellow believed the lunar landing was a Hollywood production. Heck, maybe he was right.
There are always going to be non-believers. It is what the others choose to do that matters.
It seems logical that human activity is contributing to gases in the atmosphere, and it seems prudent to me to do what we can not to pollute the earth we live on, but years of experience, study, and observation have taught me that science is neither pure nor infallible, and I've grown exceedingly wary of conventional (consensus) "wisdom." I'm fine with prudence in this case, on the basis that if climate science is correct we don't have a lot of time to act on our own behalf, and at the very least we'll be rewarded with a cleaner planet.
I'm fine with prudence in this case, on the basis that if climate science is correct we don't have a lot of time to act on our own behalf, and at the very least we'll be rewarded with a cleaner planet.
Exactly Jane. +1
I'm fine with prudence in this case, on the basis that if climate science is correct we don't have a lot of time to act on our own behalf, and at the very least we'll be rewarded with a cleaner planet.
Tricky though, this sort of Pascal's Wager. As some of the "prudent" immediate actions with today's technology may not be cost-free, which means in a world of non-infinite resources, you are perhaps causing harm somewhere else by taking action.
For instance - asking the developing world not to develop until we sort this out might be killing a whole lot of people, when you look at the details. Increasing costs of energy in the developed world to cause demand reduction might also kill, say, elderly folks who can't afford their heat or air conditioning anymore.
And this is all the sort of stuff that The Market isn't so great at resolving - timescales are too long, information isn't as clear as you'd like.
Tricky though, this sort of Pascal's Wager. As some of the "prudent" immediate actions with today's technology may not be cost-free, which means in a world of non-infinite resources, you are perhaps causing harm somewhere else by taking action. ...
Agreed. It's a complicated world we live in.
And this is all the sort of stuff that The Market isn't so great at resolving - timescales are too long, information isn't as clear as you'd like.
It seems to me like that is basically where we are at right now. The solutions are complicated and we've arrived at something of an analysis paralysis that leads to relatively slow activity. Which carries it own risks. In my corporate days the solution would be for the boss to say, "We need more data!", regardless of how much data was already there. In the mean time there would be opportunity losses on the time scale.
There are exceptions like the poor and elderly, but I think many or most Americans and a lot of people in other industrialized nations can afford to pay for the true cost of fossil fuel energy that includes all market externalities or for other renewable energy sources. I think generally we are pretty spoiled.
Sometimes there are considerations that outweigh all others. If, for example, we could all agree that continuing to burn fossil fuels would cause our planet to become unlivable in __(insert # of years)__ regardless of whether that is from toxification or from accelerated climate shifts or whatever then the impact of cutting off the use, or not starting it, becomes negligible. We all want to follow our ethical guide and consider all the exceptions, but if you really want to dive into it, do the poor and elderly deserve any more consideration than the other several trillion lifeforms that also live on Earth, but can't do a thing to stop humans from destroying their world? Should we try very hard to look out for people who won't be able to take care of themselves as things change? Absolutely. Should we do it at all cost? Not so much. Take steps to save the planet and some people get screwed. Don't do it and everyone does. Hard choices to be sure, but am I missing something?
Makes pretty good sense to me, Gregg. I think the problem there is that the outcome of climate change doesn't have agreement even among the climatologists and remains one of probabilities ranging from extreme to moderate problems and uncertain timelines. I think that is exactly what the IPCC is trying to resolve and as far as I can tell they seem to be the global effort of the best science can offer to evaluate severity and global societal and economic costs (along with loss of life). I am not sure exactly how the poor and elderly fit into it all, but I do think one thing for sure. The planet most likely doesn't have the carrying capacity for the developing nations to have lifestyles like us. This probably goes beyond climate change to the long term sustainability of multiple resources including fossil fuels. Sort of sucks, but I think that is the hard reality and no easy way to resolve.
ApatheticNoMore
5-22-13, 12:10pm
Sometimes there are considerations that outweigh all others. If, for example, we could all agree that continuing to burn fossil fuels would cause our planet to become unlivable in __(insert # of years)__ regardless of whether that is from toxification or from accelerated climate shifts or whatever then the impact of cutting off the use, or not starting it, becomes negligible.
And there are scientists who will tell you this, they dont' get a lot of airtime. I don't know if it's consensus though. There have even been threats to silence outspoken climate scientists.
And yea, yea, even overwhelming scientific consensus is sometimes wrong, but we're gambling with mass human extinction here and before then life being made barely livable (quality of life being in the tiolet) so .... I get the intellectual argument for scientific fallability and I appreciate nuance, but I'm not that nuanced!!!
Should we try very hard to look out for people who won't be able to take care of themselves as things change? Absolutely. Should we do it at all cost? Not so much. Take steps to save the planet and some people get screwed. Don't do it and everyone does. Hard choices to be sure, but am I missing something?
+1. I am disgusted and enraged at our politicians etc. lack of action. And I still have some fight in me and can't go gently toward extinction (though if other life survives and some probably will I'm sure it will be very happy humanity is gone). I'm not going to consider how the powers that be are just carefully weighing moral outcomes, because I really don't think they are. I think they are just corrupt period. Now I can perfectly well accept there may be no complete, or perfect, answer even if our leaders were saints and heroes - ok I don't believe in perfect answers anyway, and we've already screwed things up pretty badly, so things may be some degree of catastrophic whatever. However in the real world THEY ARE NOT EVEN TRYING, they are not even doing what they can (for instance the simpliest things like investment in research in renewables that is very far from guaranteed to pay off - still not done). That's what enrages. I think you do do what you can to help out the elderly and the poor and so on while dealing with climate change. So one proposal: carbon taxes, offset by a subsidy to everyone. Now you could have increased subsidies to the poor and that's fine, but I wouldn't want to weigh carbon taxes down with that debate - because the climate change issue is just way too important to debate everything else along with it - but there are of course a lot of measures that could be taken to help the less fortunate while we deal with climate change.
I think we have to understand the causes of our denial and/or opposition to change regarding either pollution or climate shift. As Rogar said, we are spoiled, but most people have no idea how spoiled we really are. Consider this, a barrel of oil has roughly the energy equivalent of 24,000 man hours of work (in calories). Globally we are using about 90 million barrels of oil a day. If you figure a person working an 8 hour day that means oil is providing the equivalent of 270 BILLION days of work for us every single day. That is a significant advantage for a species with a population of only 7 billion and is the reason for such an accelerated technology curve starting in the late 1800s (compared to the first few million years of humanity).
It would be political suicide to take that advantage away from a pool of voters which is why our ‘leaders’ won’t do it. Nobody wants to go backwards, but we simply don’t have any other resource that is as concentrated, versatile and as portable as oil. Our addiction is pretty easy to understand. Unfortunately we might (soon) reach a point where we can’t afford to live with out it and can’t afford the consequences of living with it.
It's the truism that until there's a crisis, nothing gets done Like the dangerous intersection that neighbors complain about repeatedly but the city only installs traffic regulation after there's a fatality or two. We're taking tiny steps forward with lower-impact cars and better-insulated homes and appliances, and some countries--notably Germany--have actual incentives for sustainable power generation, but if projections are correct (big if, IMO), the crisis is going to outrun our ability to catch up. Then we'll scramble. Maybe we'll have a population die-off--better for the planet than for us, certainly.
Charlie WA
5-22-13, 8:09pm
I recently read the book "Climate Cover Up" http://www.amazon.com/Climate-Cover-Up-Crusade-Global-Warming/dp/1553654854 The corporations in the fossil fuel industry are worried that goverment regulation or a carbon tax on CO2 emisions would hurt their profits. They fund 'think tanks' and other organizations where people write articles to convince people that CO2 emisions are not causing global warming. People read these articles and believe that they are reading the truth. It doesn't surprise me that corporations in the fossil fuel industry would spend millions of dollars a year trying to convince people that CO2 emisions are not causing global warming. Why would they not do that?
I'm mostly with Jane on getting something significant done. I think it is going to take an environmental issue affecting a larger group of people that can be pretty directly linked to climate change. Maybe something to do with rising oceans. It would be nice if a strong U.S. leader laid the facts on the line and stated publicly the probabilities and impacts that the IPCC is defining. It seems like it has slipped into a shadow behind economic and other problems. Maybe it would be better coming from a non-partisan person. I wonder sometimes if Gore did harm or good just because politics could not be separated from the facts. And it almost seemed like he was selling a package of goods rather than objective facts. To complicate things, I think that the developing nations are now the larger consumers of fossil fuels.
It does seem like progress is going slowly. I subscribe to our local energy provider's wind source, which means that theoretically all my electric comes from the wind farms. It costs me about ten dollars extra a month. I imagine this is subsidized with federal funding, which isn't all that bad in my book.
NPR had a decent story today that I thought reflected the current state of things on the political front: http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/05/23/186098607/obama-groups-climate-push-puts-president-under-scrutiny
iris lily
5-23-13, 10:09am
...NPR had a decent story today that I thought reflected the current state of things on the political front: http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/05/23/186098607/obama-groups-climate-push-puts-president-under-scrutiny
And Ira Glass' This American Life piece that aired last weekend ( I don't know if it is old or new, Ira is skipping out a lot lately on producing new pieces) was a mix of infuriating, ok, and enh.
TAL had a 3 part segment about the "belief" factor of human caused climate change. The first segment irritated me so much because it was essentially his squeaky voiced associate running around "interviewing" ranchers. about their thoughts of climate change. I really tire of Ira's smug righteousness, and I used to love This American Life. He wants people to change, dammit! Because he is right, dammit!
I found the second segment of the show interesting. It was about a Republican former Congressmen, defeated by {evil} tea party candidate. This Republican politician has set up a foundation to support the education of conservatives in climate change. The irony is that his lectures and meetings are attended by people on the political left.
The third segment I don't even remember.
ApatheticNoMore
5-23-13, 12:19pm
I'm mostly with Jane on getting something significant done. I think it is going to take an environmental issue affecting a larger group of people that can be pretty directly linked to climate change. Maybe something to do with rising oceans.
possibly but who can predict what it will take? Besides as we have all been told it's hard to link a weather occurance to climate even though there's been some pretty obvious candidates and patterns (eastern stroms, western fires, drought etc.).
It would be nice if a strong U.S. leader laid the facts on the line and stated publicly the probabilities and impacts that the IPCC is defining.
Now that's something I think the probabilities are low of :) But yes in some world that doesn't exist it would be nice. Alternatively what at least has better chances than that (but what doesn't) there is attempt to drive change from the bottom up through both activism (keystone protests etc.), local politics, and individual action.
It seems like it has slipped into a shadow behind economic and other problems.
Well it's not like they are doing anything about the economy either, so whatever problems it has slipped behind are taken no more seriously, though they do distract attention
Maybe it would be better coming from a non-partisan person.I wonder sometimes if Gore did harm or good just because politics could not be separated from the facts. And it almost seemed like he was selling a package of goods rather than objective facts.
yea possibly on Gore
To complicate things, I think that the developing nations are now the larger consumers of fossil fuels.
China is and then the U.S., the U.S. is still a major consumer, ahead of most developing nations.
It does seem like progress is going slowly. I subscribe to our local energy provider's wind source, which means that theoretically all my electric comes from the wind farms. It costs me about ten dollars extra a month. I imagine this is subsidized with federal funding, which isn't all that bad in my book.
I doubt it's that much more subsidized than fossil fuel, which is afterall heavily subsidized in the U.S. and elsewhere (when subsidization of fossil fuel globally becomes a major issue among *environmentalists* and it has, you know it's not just incidental). I too buy green power.
NPR had a decent story today that I thought reflected the current state of things on the political front: http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolit...under-scrutiny
Yea a front group wants to use climate change to promote Obama but doesn't actually care whatsoever about climate change itself and the fact Obama is doing nothing about it. Lovely. Does anyone remember an episode of the Simpson's about the freemasons or something where they had a song "who controls the british crown, who keeps the metric system down! we do! we do!" They need a song like that for Obama: who keeps Gitmo in operation, who won't deal with the climate situation, Republicans do! Republicans do!
For example, protesters have marched against the Keystone XL pipeline for more than a year — including a demonstration that brought thousands to the White House.
of course more than marched, there are those right there while it is being built protesting the building of the southern part of Keystone.
ANM, I pretty much agree with all of you points. There are some possibilities that there will be the mainstream changes that I talked about, but my opinion is that we will basically have to be toast before global economies get enough steam behind the issues to do much. I was mostly offering optimistic possibilities.
There always things we can do as individuals including activism and voting green, but I think it is all an upstream battle. Until it hits peoples wallets and is obvious I think we are not going to deviate much from our present course. I honestly think it is the most important issue facing modern society and will invariably vote for the greener candidate regardless of any other issues. It is one of the main reasons why I am living simply and have other projects going that I hope will help.
I honestly think it is the most important issue facing modern society and will invariably vote for the greener candidate regardless of any other issues.
For many people living in a mud hut there are more important issues, which is why I have my doubts about the effectiveness of these policies. We don't want to burn coal? Fine, they just ship it to a poor country because it is cheap energy. That's not to say you shouldn't do what you can, but my expectation is that there will be very little net benefit.
I would think solar power would be an easy sell in developing countries--at least the equatorial ones.
For many people living in a mud hut there are more important issues, which is why I have my doubts about the effectiveness of these policies.
I have to disagree: "Although Africa contributes only about 3.8% of total greenhouse gas emissions, the continent is among the most vulnerable in the world. According to IPCC's climate change modelling results (IPCC, 2007), decreasing water resources as a result of climate change is heavily affecting water levels of major rivers and lakes in Africa. Climate change will result in increased frequency and severity of droughts, floods and other extreme weather events, negatively impacting sub-Saharan Africa, thus economies that depend heavily on sectors such as agriculture, forestry, fisheries and tourism are quite susceptible. This is because many African economies heavily rely on climate sensitive sectors."
http://allafrica.com/stories/201305231564.html
I would think solar power would be an easy sell in developing countries--at least the equatorial ones.
Passive solar power, perhaps so.
PV technologies are a different matter. With today's technology, what is the full life-cycle cost of a solar panel, including the production and end-of-life disposal? How much energy is consumed in this, what pollutants are released into the environment?
Passive solar power, perhaps so.
PV technologies are a different matter. With today's technology, what is the full life-cycle cost of a solar panel, including the production and end-of-life disposal? How much energy is consumed in this, what pollutants are released into the environment?
This seems like a problem tailor-made for today's goal-oriented philanthropists.
I have to disagree
And yet..
http://www.technologyreview.com/sites/default/files/images/graphitix910_0.jpg
Passive solar power, perhaps so.
PV technologies are a different matter. With today's technology, what is the full life-cycle cost of a solar panel, including the production and end-of-life disposal? How much energy is consumed in this, what pollutants are released into the environment?
I donated to this project - I liked that it was "thinking out of the box" and dumped the idea using of solar in search of something that might be better suited for the project at hand.
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gravitylight-lighting-for-developing-countries
Yossarian, I think you right there. Without doing a fact check I would say that China is building several huge coal fired plants due to the low cost of coal. But in the US outdated coal plants are being replaced with natural gas due to the natural gas glut and environmental regulations. I have no idea about whether the flow of coal resources has shifted and we export a lot of it. It is actually a similar thing with the XL pipeline. Regardless of whether it is approved, I think the tar sands oil is somehow going to find it's way to the ocean for processing through another route.
As for whether the people in mud huts have bigger worries, I might suppose in the long run the underdeveloped nations are the most likely to suffer the effects of climate change a lot more than us. Per my quote and link.
Also, that gravity light is very cool, Creaker! I would like to have a couple.
Passive solar power, perhaps so.
PV technologies are a different matter. With today's technology, what is the full life-cycle cost of a solar panel, including the production and end-of-life disposal? How much energy is consumed in this, what pollutants are released into the environment?
Precisely. We've expended some energy in the past trying to determine the full life cycle costs of PV. I suspect there are still gaps in our collective knowledge base, but even without those tidbits it appears the current incarnation of PV is close to net-neutral. The most efficient way to save the planet right now is to become efficient with the use of our current resources. Conservation is where its at in 2013.
And bae is right. Passive solar, OTOH, can provide huge gains for little or no increase in life cycle costs over conventional construction methods.
Yossarian, I think you right there. Without doing a fact check I would say that China is building several huge coal fired plants due to the low cost of coal. But in the US outdated coal plants are being replaced with natural gas due to the natural gas glut and environmental regulations. I have no idea about whether the flow of coal resources has shifted and we export a lot of it.
I live in Nebraska which is a public power state. That basically means the customers own the utilities and get to vote on how they operate. The cheapest way to produce power here, by FAR, is to burn coal from Wyoming, right next door. That is what we do and no vote to change that arrangement has ever come even close to passing. People really do vote with their wallets, not their minds.
According to Wiki, about a third of US electric comes from coal down from 49 percent in 2008 due to plentiful supplies of natural gas from fracking. (Wiki - Coal).
According to the Union of Concerned Scientists (who I know little about), "...solar energy is still considerably cleaner than fossil fuels. Manufacturing solar panels may require energy from fossil fuels, but the energy used to produce those pales in comparison to the amount of clean energy those panels will produce according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. Moreover, the amount of land needed to generate solar power is roughly the same as the amount of land needed to mine coal." There may be better info sources somewhere, but I doubt the answer is unavailable.
At least that is what my quick searches said. Indeed the best answer is to use less energy, but there are better and worse choices depending on how much a person is willing to pay. I do volunteer work with raptor migrations and some of the the birding community is down on wind energy because the turbine blades kill eagles. There just isn't a free lunch.
ApatheticNoMore
5-28-13, 6:51pm
I do volunteer work with raptor migrations and some of the the birding community is down on wind energy because the turbine blades kill eagles. There just isn't a free lunch.
yea they seem to be losing though, although much is made to appease them (making the turbines safer for birds), and I'm glad. More wind power is coming!
*I'm glad because: continued unlimited fossil fuel use: catastrophic. Nuclear power (when they simply *won't* do anything to make sure it's safe in earthquake zones): catastrophic. Wind power: some threat to various species of birds.
I found a better reference for the life cycle emissions of solar cells that seems more inclusive of all phases of the life of the cells and a decent study. It includes disposal, transportation, installation, and operation and compares it to fossil fuels. Disposal seems incomplete due to lack of data since cells have a typical life of 30 years.
"Silicon PV panels have a low life cycle environmental impact compared to most conventional forms of energy such as coal and natural gas. The greatest carbon emissions caused by the use of PV panels are those associated with module production. Energy Pay Back Times (EPBT) vary between 3 and 6 years for various solar climates around the world. Overall, silicon PV panels payback the required upfront energy costs of production well before their useful lifetime and are a net energy generators for the majority of their useful life.
http://www.appropedia.org/LCA_of_silicon_PV_panels
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