The discussion revolves around the topic of global warming and climate change, exploring various perspectives on the causes, implications, and responses to these issues. Participants engage in conceptual debates about ecological responsibility, the role of human actions, and the potential consequences of inaction versus action regarding climate change.
Participants express a range of views, with some advocating for immediate action against climate change based on scientific consensus, while others question the urgency and implications of such actions. The discussion remains unresolved, with competing perspectives on the ecological responsibility and the effectiveness of proposed measures.
Participants express various assumptions about the nature of ecological responsibility, the potential for human extinction, and the economic impacts of climate action. There are unresolved questions regarding the effectiveness of proposed solutions and the long-term consequences of inaction versus action.
vanesch said:The extinction of our species (and quite a few other), followed by a renewal, with plenty of new species (the ants are coming :-). So the very long term cost of doing nothing, is probably nothing.
Chaotic? It goes back to 1851 and breaks the hurricanes into category by decade. Pretty clear.denverdoc said:Looks bloody chaotic to me at first blush. But surely the warmer water can produce more energetic storms, no? I mean just from first principles and the increase in surface temps has been documented, has it not. Thanks for the info.
Evo said:Chaotic? It goes back to 1851 and breaks the hurricanes into category by decade. Pretty clear.
I have no idea what you are talking about. The chart lists all hurricanes from level 1 through 5 going back to 1851. Nothing is missing. If you want 2005 and 2006 stats, you just need to look at the websitedenverdoc said:No what I meant is that looking say at just big storms, I don't see a clear cycle with a T of 30 - 35 years, maybe something closer to 50, and without the last 2 years, hard to know whether we were in a nadir or peak in 2005. Guess I like my data graphical vs tabular, if there is some big picture here.
I absolutely feel that man is making things worse. Like the knee jerk reaction to ban CFC's. We ended up replacing them with something that is 10,000 times worse for the environment. I will look that up tomorrow and post it, I previously posted it in another link.Ivan Seeking said:First, I think it is correct to say that we can never know if any particular storm was caused or amplified by GW. Likewise, we can never say that GW didn't play a role. Also, we can never say what it would have been without GW since this is a purely hypothetical circumstance. We can only say whether or not the observed trends are consistent with the models.
Also the issue of time has come up. Let's say that we can delay the most significant impact of GW by thirty years. Having an extra thirty years to anticipate and plan for the effects not only allows for potential technological solutions to emerge, but it also gives large populations an extra thirty years to adjust to the change. When the day comes that we have to evacuate New York or Japan, for example, that extra time may have come in handy. The more that we can soften the blow, the more time that agriculture, real estate, civil planning, disease control, economic systems, and perhaps even species pushed to the brink will have to adjust to the change.
Here it is.Ivan Seeking said:From what I've heard, the ban on CFCs is working. I will also try to find that report but it is getting too late right now. But refrigerants have always been a problem. In the bad old days your refer could kill you - ammonia, sulfur dioxide - and people in Russ's profession had a relatively high mortality rate, but the relatively benign alternatives found have long term environmental consequences. So the real problem is the need for refrigeration. The solution is to contain these gases and/or come up with better options.
Evo said:I absolutely feel that man is making things worse. Like the knee jerk reaction to ban CFC's. We ended up replacing them with something that is 10,000 times worse for the environment. I will look that up tomorrow and post it, I previously posted it in another link.
Yes, we have a problem. We need to be more environmentally friendly. It just saddens me when I see so much disinformation,when there is enough information that could be presented, if presented properly.
Hurricanes bring winds and slashing rains that flood streets, flatten homes, and leave survivors struggling to pick up the pieces. But has global warming given the storms an added punch, making the aftereffects more dreadful?
According to hurricane historian Jay Barnes of Pine Knoll Shores, North Carolina, ocean heat is the key ingredient for hurricane formation. More heat could "generate more storms and more intense hurricanes," he said.
Numerous studies in recent years have found no evidence that the number of hurricanes and their northwest Pacific Ocean cousins, typhoons, is increasing because of the rise in global temperatures.
But a new study in the journal Nature found that hurricanes and typhoons have become stronger and longer-lasting over the past 30 years. These upswings correlate with a rise in sea surface temperatures.
The duration and strength of hurricanes have increased by about 50 percent over the last three decades, according to study author Kerry Emanuel, a professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.
Emanuel's finding defies existing models for measuring storm strength. Current models suggest that the intensity of hurricanes and typhoons should increase by 5 percent for every 1ºC (1.8ºF) rise in sea surface temperature.
"We've had half a degree [Celsius] of warming, so that should have led to a 2.5 percent increase [in intensity], which is probably not detectable," Emanuel said. "What we've seen is somewhat bigger than that, and we don't really know why."
One possibility, Emanuel said, is that ocean temperatures may be increasing more quickly than atmospheric temperatures.
"When that happens we've shown theoretically you get an increase in the intensity of hurricanes," he said.
Anatomy of a Hurricane
According to Barnes, who has authored several books on U.S. hurricane history, the physics of hurricanes are complex and full of variables. "But the sun beating down on Earth is the primary thing that gets it going," he said.
Barnes explains in his book North Carolina's Hurricane History that the summer heat warms the ocean's surface and spurs evaporation. As heat and moisture rise into the atmosphere, billowing clouds, scattered showers, and thunderstorms form.
Evo said:Actually that's not true, there was a thread about it in the Earth forum and looking back, this is normal cyclical activity. Look at 2006, nothing in the way of a major hurricane. And something that's not mentioned is typhoon activity, which hasn't been unusual. Gee, is global warming only in the Atlantic ocean?
It's these inacuracies that tend to harm the global warming issue.
Consensus Statements by International Workshop on Tropical Cyclones-VI (IWTC-VI) Participants
1. Though there is evidence both for and against the existence of a detectable anthropogenic signal in the tropical cyclone climate record to date, no firm conclusion can be made on this point.
2. No individual tropical cyclone can be directly attributed to climate change.
3. The recent increase in societal impact from tropical cyclones has largely been caused by rising concentrations of population and infrastructure in coastal regions.
4. Tropical cyclone wind-speed monitoring has changed dramatically over the last few decades, leading to difficulties in determining accurate trends.
5. There is an observed multi-decadal variability of tropical cyclones in some regions whose causes, whether natural, anthropogenic or a combination, are currently being debated. This variability makes detecting any long-term trends in tropical cyclone activity difficult.
6. It is likely that some increase in tropical cyclone peak wind-speed and rainfall will occur if the climate continues to warm. Model studies and theory project a 3-5% increase in wind-speed per degree Celsius increase of tropical sea surface temperatures.
7. There is an inconsistency between the small changes in wind-speed projected by theory and modeling versus large changes reported by some observational studies.
8. Although recent climate model simulations project a decrease or no change in global tropical cyclone numbers in a warmer climate, there is low confidence in this projection. In addition, it is unknown how tropical cyclone tracks or areas of impact will change in the future.
9. Large regional variations exist in methods used to monitor tropical cyclones. Also, most regions have no measurements by instrumented aircraft. These significant limitations will continue to make detection of trends difficult.
10. If the projected rise in sea level due to global warming occurs, then the vulnerability to tropical cyclone storm surge flooding would increase.
The comprehensive scientific statement will be available on the WMO Tropical Meteorology Research Program website from Monday 4 December 2006:
The innate objective of about everybody is to survive, avoid danger, have offspring and ensures its future. An average citizen is certain to react to dangers for the future both for avoiding own danger and that for his offspring. Therefore, they are likely to listen and obey those who have identified a future threat and who appear to know how to fight it.
H.L. Mencken identified that effect of that listen-and-obey-to-fight-the-threat mechanism: “The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule it”. Not only the environmentalist want global warming to be true, but also the intelligent citizen, knowing that the fossil fuels will deplete and have a grave crisis potential if not timely countered by going nuclear or renewable. The climatologists want it to be true and secure moe research funding. The governments want it to be true because it’s a great way to rule, having an obedient population and impose taxes to fight the horrible enemy. The media want it to be true because the story sells excellently.And thus the positive scaremongering feedback loop continues to spiral up. So it is very good for humanity if anthropogenic global warming was to be true, but it isn’t.
The new SPM is characterized by fallacies, abandoning the scientific method, selective empiric evidence, ignoring all the scientific research with are more balanced approach until the outright refuting studies of an anthropogenic cause. Lot’s of evidence for warming until 1998, but none for its cause. Also, now that the Pleistocene ice ages, once the cause of the global warming fever, no longer support CO2 greenhouse gas effect neither as cause nor as positive feedback, it’s completely ignored. Few will realize that this is actually effectively falsifying the anthropogenic hypothesis. But there is no place for good news.
We need not to reduce emissions for saving the climate, we must think however how to transit to a fossil fuel-less future, but these are two completely different things and a false use of the first to ensure the second will rebound. People don't buy to be misled when they suffer from the highly backfiring measures against global warming during the next little ice age caused by the Landscheidt solar minimum around 2030.
Manchot said:Wood is much cleaner than natural gas or coal. Even though it seems to produce more pollutants, as far as CO2 is concerned, it is leaps and bounds better. The major difference between the two is that carbon released from wood is carbon already in the ecosystem, while carbon released by burning natural gas and coal is carbon that was excluded from the ecosystem millions of years ago. In the long run, burning wood is a carbon-netural process, which means that it does not disturb the equilibrium of the carbon cycle. Coal and gas throw the whole thing out of whack.
That's not true. Here are the listings of hurricanes by category, the number of severe hurricanes has decreased. It only seems like they are worse because of population increase and news coverage. You can't argue with the facts.Schrödinger's Dog said:What you don't mention is that it's generally believed by scientists that although global warming does not increase the number of hurricanes, there is consistent evidence that it increases the ferrocity. Same number of hurricanes increasing category, the fact that in the last 50 years some of the most damaging hurricanes have wreaked havoc across the Carribean and gulf coast.
Evo said:That's not true. Here are the listings of hurricanes by category, the number of severe hurricanes has decreased. It only seems like they are worse because of population increase and news coverage. You can't argue with the facts.
You'll find sensationalism is rampant in any media, a good hard look at the facts is always needed for a reality check.
Climate model predictions of the influence of global
What health consequences?Azael said:You are ignore the health consequenses of burning wood.
It's the opinion of one person and the article you posted seems to disagree with his opinion.Schrödinger's Dog said:So the scientists paper in nature that claims this is wrong? Do you think they simply looked at the news reports then and misrepresented the facts? Seems a little amazing that well respected scientists could claim such a thing and it actually be based on a tissue of misrepresented facts and half baked ideas?
turbo-1 said:What health consequences?
People in Maine (especially women and children) are warned not to eat too much fresh-water fish from the state's waters. Why? Mercury from midwest coal-fired plants is polluting our lakes, ponds and rivers. Our waters are being acidified by those same power plants. We frequently have health alerts for high ozone levels during the summer - people with respiratory problems are warned to stay indoors and avoid exertion. Again, pollutants drifting in from the west. Maine only has about 1.2M people, and we are not creating these problems, we are suffering the consequences of the actions of others. It is difficult to see how burning dry, seasoned firewood in a well-designed wood stove can be more harmful to one's health than burning fossil fuels. Remember that heating oil (the predominant fuel here in Maine) may burn relatively cleanly, assuming the furnace is clean and well-tuned, but that is absolutely the cleanest part of its product cycle.
The pollution involved in burning #2 fuel oil is cumulative. Crude has to be pumped from the ground and transported to ports and loaded onto supertankers that bring it to the states. It is off-loaded and run through refineries (ever stand down-wind from one?), then the finished products are loaded onto coastal tankers for the trip to Maine and off-loaded at tank farms. The products are then loaded into semi-trailer tanks for delivery to fuel companies. At every step of this process, there are environmental impacts. When the tanker comes into the harbor, and when the diesel tractor-trailers accelerate out of the tank farm, they pump soot and unburned fuel into the air, so even delivering the finished product has negative environmental impacts. By burning wood, I am using a renewable energy source that is far cleaner in total than heating oil. The only time you will ever see any smoke coming out of my chimney is when I am starting a fire from scratch - the flue temperature is high enough that all you will see over my chimney is a refractive shimmer.
Evo said:It's the opinion of one person and the article you posted seems to disagree with his opinion.
"Numerous studies in recent years have found no evidence that the number of hurricanes and their northwest Pacific Ocean cousins, typhoons, is increasing because of the rise in global temperatures."
"Emanuel's finding defies existing models for measuring storm strength. Current models suggest that the intensity of hurricanes and typhoons should increase by 5 percent for every 1ºC (1.8ºF) rise in sea surface temperature.
"We've had half a degree [Celsius] of warming, so that should have led to a 2.5 percent increase [in intensity], which is probably not detectable," Emanuel said. "What we've seen is somewhat bigger than that, and we don't really know why."
Just glancing at the paper he wrote he's making a "prediction". Apparently all of the studies done so far disagree with his "predictions" as the article stated.
Global warming
Link between tropical cyclone activity and sea surface temperature over the past century in the Atlantic Basin This image has an uncertain copyright status and is pending deletion. You can comment on the removal.
Link between tropical cyclone activity and sea surface temperature over the past century in the Atlantic Basin This image has an uncertain copyright status and is pending deletion. You can comment on the removal.
A common question is whether global warming will cause less frequent or delicate tropical cyclones. So far, virtually all climatologists agree that a single storm, or even a single season, cannot clearly be attributed to a single cause such as global warming or natural variation.[109] The question, therefore, is whether a statistical trend in frequency or strength of cyclones exists.
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory performed a simulation that concluded "the strongest hurricanes in the present climate may be upstaged by even more intense hurricanes over the next century as the Earth's climate is warmed by increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere."[110]
In an article in Nature,[111] Kerry Emanuel stated that potential hurricane destructiveness, a measure combining hurricane strength, duration, and frequency, "is highly correlated with tropical sea surface temperature, reflecting well-documented climate signals, including multidecadal oscillations in the North Atlantic and North Pacific, and global warming." He predicts "a substantial increase in hurricane-related losses in the twenty-first century."[111]
Along similar lines, P.J. Webster and others published an article[112] in Science[112] examining "changes in tropical cyclone number, duration, and intensity" over the last 35 years, a period when satellite data has been available. The main finding is that while the number of cyclones "decreased in all basins except the North Atlantic during the past decade," there has been a "large increase in the number and proportion of hurricanes reaching categories 4 and 5." That is, while the number of cyclones has decreased overall, the number of very strong cyclones has increased.
Both Emanuel and Webster et al. consider sea surface temperatures to be very important in the development of cyclones. The question then becomes: what caused the observed increase in sea surface temperatures? In the Atlantic, it could be due to global warming and the hypothesized Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), a possible 50–70 year pattern of temperature variability. Emanuel, however, found the recent temperature increase was outside the range of previous sea surface temperature peaks. So, both global warming and a natural variation (such as the AMO) could have made contributions to the warming of the tropical Atlantic over the past decades, but an exact attribution is so far impossible to make.[109]
While Emanuel analyzed total annual energy dissipation, Webster et al. analyzed the percentage of hurricanes in the combined categories 4 and 5 and found that this percentage has increased in six hurricane basins: North Atlantic, North East and North West Pacific, South Pacific, and North and South Indian.
Assuming that the six basins are statistically independent except for the effect of global warming,[113] zFacts has carried out the obvious paired t-test and found that the null-hypothesis of no impact of global warming on the percentage of category 4 and 5 hurricanes can be rejected at the 0.1% level. This means that there is only a 1 in 1000 chance of simultaneously finding the observed six increases in the percentages of category 4 and 5 hurricanes. This statistic needs refining because the variables being tested are not normally distributed with equal variances, but it may provide the best evidence yet that the impact of global warming on hurricane intensity has been detected.
Azael said:According to a study done by the swedish environmental protection agency burning wood causes 2.1 deaths by cancer for every TWh heat produced. (primary cause is release of PAH's)
A study done in portugal gives the number 5.5 deaths/TWh heat produced. This because of damage to respiratory organs(I hope this is the correct translation). Not taking into account cancer.
Biofuels emit more cancerogenic substances than coal power plant while coal power emits more NOx.
Info gotten from here
http://www.analys.se/lankar/bkgr/bakgrund96-5.html
It is in swedish but it is a respected organisation in sweden.
Many people are blissfully unaware of this, and they cite health studies that are often based on wood combustion in 3rd world countries. My chimney drafts wonderfully, and the stove burns very cleanly. As a result, I feel that I am having far less negative environmental impact when burning wood than when burning #2 heating oil. I bought a tank of #2 the summer before last, and only used the furnace when I was hunting (away for the whole day) and didn't want my wife to come to a cold house after work. I still have over 3/4 of the tank left after two hunting seasons and quite a number of day-long absences during very cold weather. This year, I expect that my heating needs will be supplied by about 2-1/2 cords of well-seasoned hardwood, and I have another 3 cords in reserve for next year. Our house is a small log home with lots of insulation and it's easy to get the house too hot with just a small fire. I burned down the coals today and started a small fire about 3 hours ago - it's 77F in here and I'm sitting here in a T-shirt and light pants. My 10-acre lot is over 90% wooded, with lots of white ash, white maple, beech, birch, etc, so I cannot run out of firewood in my lifetime. I realize that this option is not available to everyone, but I think that it's the best choice for me. In fact, since insulating the roof last year, I am thinking about buying a smaller wood stove to replace this one (already pretty small) and splitting my wood even finer to gain more control over the temperature of the house. A fair-sized fire in this stove can prompt us to open the doors.edward said:Most of the health problems from burning wood are related to particulate matter ie soot and PAH. A modern wood stove fitted with a catalytic cumbustor, which is the equivalent of an automobile catalytic converter, produces no more soot or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons than heating oil.
Evo said:Here it is.
"In theory, the ban should have helped both problems. But the countries that first signed the Montreal Protocol 17 years ago failed to recognize that CFC users would seek out the cheapest available alternative.
That effect is at odds with the intent of a second treaty, drawn up in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997 by the same countries behind the Montreal pact. In fact, the volume of greenhouse gases created as a result of the Montreal agreement's phaseout of CFCs is two times to three times the amount of global-warming carbon dioxide the Kyoto agreement is supposed to eliminate.
Some of the replacement chemicals whose use has grown because of the Montreal treaty -- hydrochloroflourocarbons, or HCFCs, and their byproducts, hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs -- decompose faster than CFCs because they contain hydrogen.
But, like CFCs, they are considered potent greenhouse gases that harm the climate -- up to 10,000 times worse than carbon dioxide emissions."
http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=11090
Yes. It's all driven by greed. Like the article says, companies have gone for the cheapest solution, which has turned out to be even more harmful.Ivan Seeking said:I will try to find my reference a little later - long day, Tsu finally coming home anytime now.
This is all rather silly. CFCs were banned to prevent the depletion of ozone, which is what shields us from UV radiation [kinda important]. GW was barely more than a tree huggers case of indigestion back then. If the HFCs are shown to be a problem for GW, then we need to address that issue as well.
+2.4°: Coral reefs almost extinct
In North America, a new dust-bowl brings deserts to life in the high plains states, centred on Nebraska, but also wipes out agriculture and
cattle ranching as sand dunes appear across five US states, from Texas in the south to Montana in the north.
Rising sea levels accelerate as the Greenland ice sheet tips into irreversible melt, submerging atoll nations and low-lying deltas. In Peru, disappearing Andean glaciers mean 10 million people face water shortages. Warming seas wipe out the Great Barrier Reef and make coral reefs virtually extinct throughout the tropics. Worldwide, a third of all species on the planet face extinction
+3.4°: Rainforest turns to desert
The Amazonian rainforest burns in a firestorm of catastrophic ferocity, covering South America with ash and smoke. Once the smoke clears, the interior of Brazil has become desert, and huge amounts of extra carbon have entered the atmosphere, further boosting global warming. The entire Arctic ice-cap disappears in the summer months, leaving the North Pole ice-free for the first time in 3 million years. Polar bears, walruses and ringed seals all go extinct. Water supplies run short in California as the Sierra Nevada snowpack melts away. Tens of millions are displaced as the Kalahari desert expands across southern Africa
+4.4°: Melting ice caps displace millions
Rapidly-rising temperatures in the Arctic put Siberian permafrost in the melt zone, releasing vast quantities of methane and CO2. Global temperatures keep on rising rapidly in consequence. Melting ice-caps and sea level rises displace more than 100 million people, particularly in Bangladesh, the Nile Delta and Shanghai. Heatwaves and drought make much of the sub-tropics uninhabitable: large-scale migration even takes place within Europe, where deserts are growing in southern Spain, Italy and Greece. More than half of wild species are wiped out, in the worst mass extinction since the end of the dinosaurs. Agriculture collapses in Australia
+5.4°: Sea levels rise by five metres
The West Antarctic ice sheet breaks up, eventually adding another five metres to global sea levels. If these temperatures are sustained, the entire planet will become ice-free, and sea levels will be 70 metres higher than today. South Asian society collapses due to the disappearance of glaciers in the Himalayas, drying up the Indus river, while in east India and Bangladesh, monsoon floods threaten millions. Super-El Niños spark global weather chaos. Most of humanity begins to seek refuge away from higher temperatures closer to the poles. Tens of millions of refugees force their way into Scandanavia and the British Isles. World food supplies run out
+6.4°: Most of life is exterminated
Warming seas lead to the possible release of methane hydrates trapped in sub-oceanic sediments: methane fireballs tear across the sky, causing further warming. The oceans lose their oxygen and turn stagnant, releasing poisonous hydrogen sulphide gas and destroying the ozone layer. Deserts extend almost to the Arctic. "Hypercanes" (hurricanes of unimaginable ferocity) circumnavigate the globe, causing flash floods which strip the land of soil. Humanity reduced to a few survivors eking out a living in polar refuges. Most of life on Earth has been snuffed out, as temperatures rise higher than for hundreds of millions of years.
You need to post a link to the source or I'll have to remove it.SF said:How accurate are these predictions?
Evo said:You need to post a link to the source or I'll have to remove it.
At first glance, it sounds ridiculous.