A Note: Global Warming Threads

[Billy T]

"... OPEC lower its 2012 demand forecast to 88.87 million barrels per day from a previous forecast of 89.01 million barrels per day. That's still a LOT of {global oil use} — more than a thousand barrels a second...." {And growing rapidly as China & India prosper buy more cars (without scrapping an old one) etc.}

Humans need to re-forest* the Sahara Desert etc.

* It once was a forest but now is expanding southward into forested and pasture lands of Africa. Most think the Bedouin's black goats eating young saplings played a large role in converting a forest into world's largest, and still growing, desert.

The Israel is eliminating the few Bedouins remaining. (None in Israel still live as nomadic Bedouins - All are in one of three confinement camps or have been assimilated into the army, IDF, is how some men escaped from the confinement camps.) Israel has nearly exterminated their black goats (a few still live mainly in zoos.) so it is probably possible to restore the forest of the Sahara. - Perhaps as a condition of aid to the new governments of North African coast line.

 

[origin]

"... OPEC lower its 2012 demand forecast to 88.87 million barrels per day from a previous forecast of 89.01 million barrels per day. That's still a LOT of {global oil use} — more than a thousand barrels a second...." {And growing rapidly as China & India prosper buy more cars (without scrapping an old one) etc.}

Humans need to re-forest* the Sahara Desert etc.

* It once was a forest but now is expanding southward into forested and pasture lands of Africa. Most think the Bedouin's black goats eating young saplings played a large role in converting a forest into world's largest, and still growing, desert.

The Israel is eliminating the few Bedouins remaining. (None in Israel still live as nomadic Bedouins - All are in one of three confinement camps or have been assimilated into the army, IDF, is how some men escaped from the confinement camps.) Israel has nearly exterminated their black goats (a few still live mainly in zoos.) so it is probably possible to restore the forest of the Sahara. - Perhaps as a condition of aid to the new governments of North African coast line.

No it is not possible to restore the forests to the sahara. It is a desert, there is not enough rain to support forrests. In the SUB-SAHARA regions it might be possible to allow the grass lands to move farther north with the elimination of grazing.

As far as forrests and savanah in the Sahara that was during the times when a great portion of the northern hemisphere was covered by an ice sheet - global weather conditions were quite a bit different than now!

 

[slavenenco]

how long will it take till all the ice is melted???

 

[adoucette]

Well the IPCC estimated that if temperatures were 20 deg C greater than today, it would take about 10,000 years to melt Antarctica.

Of course there is no plausible human climate driven mechanism for the temperatures to ever get to 20 deg C greater than today.

Indeed the temp trend remains below 1 deg C per Century, so the more realistic answer is essentially never.

This is not to say that warming can't ever be a problem, it's just that your yardstick isn't a very good one.

Antarctica has ~90% of the world's ice and it's average temp is so very cold, indeed the highest temp ever recorded at the South Pole is -13 degrees, and even summer months in Antarctica sees average temps below freezing, so it is in no danger of melting within many thousands of years.

 

[Billy T]

No it is not possible to restore the forests to the sahara. It is a desert, there is not enough rain to support forrests. ...

Getting large amounts of hydro-electric power for something like 500 years by draining Med Sea water into the Sahara´s Qattar depression, without the need to construct an expensive dam was first suggested at least 100 years ago. That Idea is now joined with plan to partially reforest part of the Sahara, and produce fresh water & humidity for growing plant crops in the sands of the Sahara, but probably it is not feasible economically to reforest much of the Sahara. Here is some information about one of the more advanced projects:

“...The Sahara Forest Project[7][8] is a scheme that aims to provide fresh water, food and renewable energy in hot, arid regions as well as re-vegetating areas of uninhabited desert. This proposal combines the seawater greenhouse concept with concentrating solar power (CSP). CSP is a form of renewable energy that produces electricity from sunlight using thermal energy to drive conventional steam turbines. It is claimed that these technologies together will create a sustainable and profitable source of energy, food, vegetation and water. The team behind the Sahara Forest Project is composed of experts from Seawater Greenhouse Ltd, Exploration Architecture, Max Fordham Consulting Engineers and the Bellona Foundation. The scale of the proposed scheme is such that very large quantities of seawater would be evaporated. By using locations below sea level, pumping costs would be eliminated. Among planned activities are one pilot project in Jordan and one in Qatar [9][10][11][12] …”

The technology has won a number of awards including:
1. Clinton Global Initiative 2010 Commitment, the Bellona Foundation commits to implement the first realization of the Sahara Forest Project (2010)
2. The Buckminster Fuller Challenge Finalist - Sahara Forest, The Buckminster Fuller Challenge, (2009)
3. “Power Generation & Water Solutions Innovation Award”, 2009 Power Generation and Water Solutions awards, Dubai (2009)
4. St Andrews Prize for the Environment, University of St Andrews and ConocoPhillips, (2007)
5. The Tech Award, Technology for the benefit of Mankind, Tech Museum of Innovation, San Jose CA, (2006) [2]
6. Global annual Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET) award for Sustainability[dead link], Institution of Engineering and Technology, (2006)
7. A special environmental award was made for the Seawater Greenhouse, which (distils) seawater for use (in agriculture) in arid climates[verification needed], Galvanizer association, (2001)
8. Design Museum Sense Award for best practice in sustainable industrial design and architecture

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_sahara_forest_project

PS if you had lived 150 years ago, no doubt you would have said it is not possible for man to fly.

Plans to use the Qattara Depression for the generation of electricity date back to 1912 from Berlin geographer Professor Penk.[4] In 1957 the American Central Intelligence Agency proposed to President Dwight Eisenhower that peace in the Middle East could be achieved by flooding the Qattara Depression. The resulting lagoon, according to the CIA, would have four benefits:[5]
It would be "spectacular and peaceful."
It would "materially alter the climate in adjacent areas."
It would "provide work during construction and living areas after completion for the Palestinian Arabs."
It would get Egyptian president Gamel Abdel Nasser's "mind on other matters" because "he need[ed] some way to get off the Soviet Hook."

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression_Project

In case you cannot read the map, the lowest point is 133m below sea level. If steady state between evaporation and filling were used, I think you have something like 100 meter hydro head - - a much greater hydro-head than many dams have.

 

[Emil]

Sahara Desert Greening Due to Climate Change?:

"In the eastern Sahara area of southwestern Egypt and northern Sudan, new trees—such as acacias—are flourishing, according to Stefan Kröpelin, a climate scientist at the University of Cologne's Africa Research Unit in Germany.
"Shrubs are coming up and growing into big shrubs. This is completely different from having a bit more tiny grass," said Kröpelin, who has studied the region for two decades."

 

[Grumpy]

We hear from Climate Change Deniers about there being no consensus on Anthropogenic Climate Change being real. They claim that there are a high percentage of actual Climate Scientists unconvinced by the evidence(UE). This is not true.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/22/1003187107.full.pdf+html

The UE group comprises only 2% of the top 50 climate researchers
as ranked by expertise (number of climate publications), 3% of
researchers of the top 100, and 2.5% of the top 200, excluding
researchers present in both groups. This result closely agrees with expert surveys, indicating that ≈97% of self-identified actively publishing climate scientists agree with the tenets of ACC

97% of real climate researchers agree that ACC is real. That's a strong consensus in science. Those claiming that the science is mixed or that there is a great deal of skepticism that Global warming is real are lying, whether through ignorance of the facts or active denial of them.

People like the Koch brothers have a huge financial incentive to lie about the facts(it will cost them money), and since they pay the bribes(largely to the Conservatives)there is an active political(not scientific)movement to deny Climate Change caused by human activity and Fox is a mouthpiece for their lies. They will, in the future, be seen in the same light as the Robber Barons and Trusts of an earlier era, but it will be too late to do anything effective about it by then.

Grumpy

 

[Aqueous Id]

Excellent cite, Grumpy, by the NAS. Just imagine how the NAS would be gutted if the denialists could get their hands on them.

I was quickly sucked back into the era of perpetual denialism:

"Go back to your laboratories and don't come to me again until you have the answer I want!"

and when they didn't:

After that speech and the release of data by Dr. Hansen on Dec. 15 showing that 2005 was probably the warmest year in at least a century, officials at the headquarters of the space agency repeatedly phoned public affairs officers, who relayed the warning to Dr. Hansen that there would be "dire consequences" if such statements continued, those officers and Dr. Hansen said in interviews.

In one call, George Deutsch, a recently appointed public affairs officer at NASA headquarters, rejected a request from a producer at National Public Radio to interview Dr. Hansen, said Leslie McCarthy, a public affairs officer responsible for the Goddard Institute.

Citing handwritten notes taken during the conversation, Ms. McCarthy said Mr. Deutsch called N.P.R. "the most liberal" media outlet in the country. She said that in that call and others, Mr. Deutsch said his job was "to make the president look good" and that as a White House appointee that might be Mr. Deutsch's priority.

Of course this was 24-year old A&M dropout Deutsch censoring the seasoned and credentialed Dr. Hansen.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/science/earth/29climate.html?ei=5090&en=51c46d7689bee520&ex=1296190800&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

The tactics may change, but the message is denial. It seems there's always another George Deutsch waiting in the wings to carry the torch for them.

 

[adoucette]

We hear from Climate Change Deniers about there being no consensus on Anthropogenic Climate Change being real. They claim that there are a high percentage of actual Climate Scientists unconvinced by the evidence(UE). This is not true.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/22/1003187107.full.pdf+html

97% of real climate researchers agree that ACC is real. That's a strong consensus in science. Those claiming that the science is mixed or that there is a great deal of skepticism that Global warming is real are lying, whether through ignorance of the facts or active denial of them.

To be clear, the way this was done was to group people by the number of papers published, the cut off number was 20 and all they were agreeing to was this rather modest statement:

that it is “very likely” that anthropogenic greenhouse gases have been responsible for “most” of the “unequivocal” warming of the Earth’s average global temperature in the second half of the 20th century (3).

To paraphrase that statement using actual numbers and see why it's not surprising at all that most people agree with it:

We think that there's a 90%+ chance that anthropogenic greenhouse gases (CO2, CH4, CFLs, NOx etc) have been responsible for more than 0.2 C degrees of the .4 C warming that we have seen since 1950.

I agree with that statement, so I'd be in the CE group as well.

Yet I'm very skeptical of much of the IPCC modeling for the climate of the coming century since it is based on totally unrealistic scenarios used as input to very hot models to create an upper range that is not credible, but none the less are used as input to other papers to project the "results" of global warming in the most alarming method possible.

So when appropriate, I can be a skeptic.

So the point is, one can be skeptical of some of the methods in the field and yet not be in denial of anything.

Polarizing the debate by assigning labels and putting people in imagined pigeon holes is not productive.

Stick to the actual science/methods please.

 

[Trippy]

Hansen's 1981 predictions compared to the record since then.

Source

 

[adoucette]

So he was wrong since we haven't seen a slowly accelerating rise in temps over the last 30 years?

In fact, at this point in time, since we haven't slowed our use of fossil fuels at all, we should be seeing a rather dramatic year on year increase in temps. Indeed his "prediction" shows that in the last decade we should have had about a .2 C rise and instead temps have been flat (actually a slight decline) for about a decade.

And to be impartial we shouldn't model Hansen's predictions against the data set for which he also has control should we?

So let's compare these predictions to the Hadley Climate Center global land-sea temps.

So unlike that clipped graph that Hansen used which excludes the warm 40s, and sets the zero line at the cold point of the 50s, and thus shows about a .6 degree rise over 60 years, the Hadley graph shows a more realistic .3 degree rise over about 70 years, as well as just as significant rise in temps (and at a bit faster rate) in the first half of the 20th century.

It's often all in the presentation I guess.

 

[Trippy]

So he was wrong since we haven't seen a slowly accelerating rise in temps over the last 30 years?

In fact, at this point in time, since we haven't slowed our use of fossil fuels at all, we should be seeing a rather dramatic year on year increase in temps.

No, because if you paid attention you'd notice that he predicted the trend would be linear until 1990-2000. Hansen even goes as far as stating in his paper that he does not expect the three scenarios to begin to diverge until after 2000.

Furthermore, it does not depend on the scenario for atmospheric CO2 growth, because the amounts of CO2 do not differ substantially until after year 2000.

Which, it would seem, would relegate that particular argument to the realm of "Straw man hypothesis".

Indeed his "prediction" shows that in the last decade we should have had about a .2 C rise and instead temps have been flat (actually a slight decline) for about a decade.

And yet, inspite of all of that, we're still sitting above the worst scenario he predicted.

But then again, here you're asserting a false dichotomy, by implying that if any temperature change is due to anthropic activity, then it all must be, which is blatantly false. It's also not what Hansen predicted.

And to be impartial we shouldn't model Hansen's predictions against the data set for which he also has control should we?

So let's compare these predictions to the Hadley Climate Center global land-sea temps.

Because I have total control over what other people do right?

Besides, what should it matter unless your accusing Hansen of fiddling the books?

So unlike that clipped graph that Hansen used which excludes the warm 40s, and sets the zero line at the cold point of the 50s, and thus shows about a .6 degree rise over 60 years, the Hadley graph shows a more realistic .3 degree rise over about 70 years, as well as just as significant rise in temps (and at a bit faster rate) in the first half of the 20th century.

It's often all in the presentation I guess.

None of which has any relevance to the point being made.

Besides, if anybody reading Hansens paper wanted to compare Hansen's predictions to the historical record, the only thing they have to do is go back four pages and look at figure 3.

 

[Trippy]

Besides which, if I'm reading this graph right:

Which as I understand it is supposed to be from BP, and represents world energy consumption of the specified types. Then global consumption of fossil fuel growth has been an average of 1.5% to 2% per year between 1980 and 2008, whereas Hansen had this to say:

Energy growth has been 4 to 5 percent per year in the past century, but increasing costs will constrain future growth (1, 4). Thus we consider fast growth (- 3 percent per year, specifically 4 percent per year in 1980 to 2020, 3 percent per year in 2020 to 2060, and 2 percent per year in 2060 to 2100), slow growth (half of fast growth), and no growth as representative energy growth rates.

So in the absence of more accurate figures, which I will gladly accept, it appears that even though "at this point in time, ... we haven't slowed our use of fossil fuels at all" the assertion that "we should be seeing a rather dramatic year on year increase in temps" would seem to be of questionable validity.

 

[adoucette]

No, because if you paid attention you'd notice that he predicted the trend would be linear until 1990-2000. Hansen even goes as far as stating in his paper that he does not expect the three scenarios to begin to diverge until after 2000.

You want to debate a particular Hansen paper, then post a link to it.
All you posted was this graph.

Don't go on about how I'm wrong because he said X in a paper you didn't link to.

Sheesh.

 

[Trippy]

You want to debate a particular Hansen paper, then post a link to it.
All you posted was this graph.

Don't go on about how I'm wrong because he said X in a paper you didn't link to.

Sheesh.

1. It's a paper I've linked to previously.
2. It's a paper you and I have discussed previously - I'm fairly sure I can provide you with the links to the posts in question.
3. The link to the paper is on the page I linked to as being the source of the graph.

Or is clicking on two links too much work for you?

Don't take your laziness or faulty memory out on me.

Equally, maybe in the future you should refrain from commenting on papers that you haven't actually read.

Sheesh.

 

[adoucette]

1. It's a paper I've linked to previously.
2. It's a paper you and I have discussed previously - I'm fairly sure I can provide you with the links to the posts in question.
3. The link to the paper is on the page I linked to as being the source of the graph.

Or is clicking on two links too much work for you?

Don't take your laziness or faulty memory out on me.

Equally, maybe in the future you should refrain from commenting on papers that you haven't actually read.

Sheesh.

My bad.

But it did have to do with the display of that huge graph on my laptop, the link was not easily visible, and ps, you didn't help by naming a long URL which would stick out, into just SOURCE.

I'll look at the paper when I have a chance.

 

[adoucette]

I looked at it.

Figure 7 is the graph we have already discussed before.

http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2629229&postcount=237

 

[Trippy]

Figure 7 is the graph we have already discussed before.

http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2629229&postcount=237

Yes, I'm aware of that (obviously).

 

[Diode-Man]

Not Another Global Warming Thread!?

NOTE #1 : According to the most recent data available there are 11,194,445 miles of paved roads in the world. Roads convert sunlight into heat, that is a LOT of heat.

NOTE # 2 : Approximately 85.27 million gallons of fuel (gasoline, diesel, and oil) is burned worldwide in 24 hours. (The world's daily supply of fuel (approximately 85.93 million gallons) barely covers the demand. (That's why its so expensive)) That's a lot of heat produced by internal combustion engines, is it not?!

Just sit back, relax, and accept these obvious facts as to why the Earth is heating up... (possibly combined with the Earths natural trends?? )

 

[adoucette]

Note 1:

Pretty much everything except very white snow converts most of the sunlight energy into radient energy, so no biggy, particularly considering the size of the earth.

Note 2.

That's pretty much insignificant compared to the amount of energy from the sun we receive each day.

The IPCC refers to Land Use Changes as one of the sources of our warming world, but the main ones are considered to be the primary two GHGs, CO2 and CH4.
See the IPCC reports for the estimate of the actual warming potential of each though.