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Climate Apocalypse

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Robert Tulip

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Re: Climate Apocalypse

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Please view Jonathan Trent's 12 minute video of his offshore membrane enclosure to grow algae. He explains recent progress in NASA's work in moving from laboratory to field trials in Santa Cruz and San Francisco Bay, using readily available sources of waste water and CO2.

The reason why algae is the only answer to the world energy and climate crisis is shown in the diagram below. Algae could produce 100 times the yield of oil per acre of soy, and nearly ten times the yield of the best current land based biofuel, palm oil. Algae produces orders of magnitude more oil than any other crop, does not compete with agriculture, and provides a ready abundant source of fuel, fertilizer and food.

Algae will put these first generation biofuels out of business, much as the petrol engine replaced the horse as a primary energy source. Grown at sea, algae requires no fossil fuel or land, but instead uses wave and tide and solar power to produce abundant renewable energy with potentially negative CO2 emissions.

Innovative technology and know can replicate at industrial scale the natural process that the earth used over tens of millions of years when it laid down the fossil petroleum from algae. We are now mining fossil algae like there is no tomorrow for our petrol tanks. Algae is the original source of the CO2 poison that we are now spewing into the atmosphere to kill our planet, and can also be the source of saving antibodies to reverse the threat of CO2, if we deploy it immediately on planetary scale.
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Re: Climate Apocalypse

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From BAUT
Trakar wrote:I fully concur with Hansen's concerns.

A recent paper sheds some light on the details of his concerns:

"Paleoclimate Implications for Human-Made Climate Change"
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1105/1105.0968.pdf
Many thanks Trakar, this is an important paper. I have read it today and have the following comments.

The rate of human made change of atmospheric CO2 amount is now much larger than slow geological changes. Humans now determine atmospheric composition, for better or worse, and they are likely to continue to do so, as long as the species survives.
• We have moved from the Holocene to the Anthropocene. Humans are not above nature or separate from it, but part of it. Global regulation of atmospheric composition is a key to global economic security and stability. We have no choice but to embark on massive geo-engineering, on the scale of the Manhattan and Apollo Projects, based on scientific assessment of methods that will be most environmentally and economically beneficial.
The Cenozoic Era helps us determine the dangerous level of human-made climate Change
• Hansen studies the whole record since the dinosaurs, and finds that the climate is far more sensitive to small forcing than is generally understood. What we are doing now is extremely dangerous.
Milankovitch (1941) suggested that these climate swings occur in association with periodic perturbations of Earth's orbit by other planets (Berger, 1978) that alter the geographical and seasonal distribution of insolation over Earth's surface. The varying orbital parameters are (1) tilt of Earth's spin axis relative to the orbital plane, (2) eccentricity of Earth's orbit, (3) day of year when Earth is closest to the sun, also describable as precession of the equinoxes (Berger, 1978).
• To clarify, point three is precession of the equinoxes combined with procession of the perihelion axis. This is why this cycle is about 21,600 years in the climate record whereas precession is a cycle close to 25,800 years.
a target of 2°C for limiting human-made climate change is too high … paleoclimate data on climate change and climate sensitivity can be pushed further to yield an accurate evaluation of the dangerous level of global warming. Broad-based assessments, represented by a "burning embers" diagram in IPCC (2001, 2007), suggested that major problems begin with global warming of 2-3°C relative to global temperature in year 2000…. paleoclimate data imply that 2°C global warming would be a disaster scenario for much of humanity and many other species on the plane
• The geological record shows that when the world was 2°C warmer the sea was much higher. Accepting such a target as inevitable means we are storing up ‘tectonic’ pressure, with the current stability likely to have inertia, in view of the extreme rapidity of the change, but to risk shift to a new stability extremely suddenly, with collapse of Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets.
We interpret the stability of Holocene sea level as a consequence of the fact that global temperature was just below the level required to initiate the "albedo flip" mechanism on the fringes of West Antarctica and on most of Greenland. An important implication of this interpretation is that the world today is on the verge of, or has already reached, a level of global warming for which the equilibrium surface air temperature response on the ice sheets will exceed global warming by much more than a factor of two.
• This shows the key importance of thresholds, and the immense risk that stepping across a threshold puts the planet into a completely different space. We have already reached a state where the equilibrium is across a threshold, but the move has not yet happened.
today's climate models generally are less sensitive to forcings than the real world (Valdes, 2011), suggesting that models do not capture well some amplifying climate feedbacks and thus making empirical assessment via Earth's history of paramount importance.
• Prediction needs to be based much more systematically on comparison to what actually happened in the past. Getting all the factors into computer climate models is immensely complex. I thought some models were more sensitive to forcing than the real world, so it is interesting that Hansen says this is not the case.
Sea level rise, despite its potential importance, is one of the least well understood impacts of human-made climate change. The difficulty stems from the fact that ice sheet disintegration is a complex non-linear phenomenon that is inherently difficult to simulate, as well as from the absence of a good paleoclimate analogue for the rapidly increasing human-made climate forcing.
• This non-linearity makes climate change as hard to predict as the timing of earthquakes. However, like plate tectonics, we know that eventually something has to give when massive forces are in slow collision. The exact timing is uncertain, but the eventual occurrence is certain.
equilibrium (eventual) sea level change in response to global temperature change is about 20 meters for each degree Celsius global warming … eventual sea level rise of several tens of meters must be anticipated in response to the global warming of several degrees Celsius that is expected under business-as-usual (BAU) climate scenarios
• This is an amazing claim. It means we are storing up big storms for our grandchildren. It shows the expected rise of four degrees this century is not just the difference between tropical and temperate climate, but more akin to the difference between normal body temperature and a raging fever.
the fundamental issue is linearity versus non-linearity. Hansen (2005, 2007) argues that amplifying feedbacks make ice sheet disintegration necessarily highly non-linear, and that IPCC's BAU forcing is so huge that it is difficult to see how ice shelves would survive. As warming increases, the number of ice streams contributing to mass loss will increase, contributing to a nonlinear response that should be approximated better by an exponential than by a linear fit. Hansen (2007) suggested that a 10-year doubling time was plausible, and pointed out that such a doubling time, from a 1 mm per year ice sheet contribution to sea level in the decade 2005-2015, would lead to a cumulative 5 m sea level rise by 2095.
• Yet even the linear data of global warming is alarming. It makes sense that the extreme speed of change in geological terms will produce big lags in climate response, and that when the lags hit they will do so with immense force.
Pfeffer at al. (2008) … for Greenland …assume that ice streams this century will disgorge ice no faster than the fastest rate observed in recent decades. That assumption is dubious, given the huge climate change that will occur under BAU scenarios, which have a positive (warming) climate forcing that is increasing at a rate dwarfing any known natural forcing. BAU scenarios lead to CO2 levels higher than any since 32 My ago, when Antarctica glaciated. By mid-century most of Greenland would be experiencing summer melting … The main flaw with the kinematic constraint concept is the geology of Antarctica, where large portions of the ice sheet are buttressed by ice shelves that are unlikely to survive BAU climate scenarios. West Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier (PIG) illustrates nonlinear processes already coming into play … there is sufficient readily available ice to cause multi-meter sea level rise this century, if dynamic discharge of ice increases exponentially. Thus current observations of ice sheet mass loss are of special interest … data records suggest that the rate of mass loss is increasing, indeed nearly doubling over the period of record, but the record is too short to provide a meaningful evaluation of a doubling time
• Again, modelling of non-linear processes is essential, while recognising the chaotic trigger factors sit within a larger framework that is definitely linear. CO2 levels higher than an ice-free world will eventually cause an ice-free world.
Earth in the warmest interglacial periods of the past million years was less than 1°C warmer than in the Holocene. Polar warmth in those interglacials and in the Pliocene does not imply that a substantial cushion remains between today's climate and dangerous warming, but rather that Earth is poised to experience strong amplifying polar feedbacks in response to moderate additional global warming.
• This analysis of amplifying feedbacks and the lack of cushion shows the extreme sensitivity of global climate to relatively small forcing factors, like billions of tons of CO2
burning all or most fossil fuels guarantees tens of meters of sea level rise, as we have shown that the eventual sea level response is about 20 meters of sea level for each degree Celsius of global warming. We suggest that ice sheet disintegration will be a nonlinear process, spurred by an increasing forcing and by amplifying feedbacks which is better characterized by a doubling time for the rate of mass disintegration, rather than a linear rate of mass change. If the doubling time is as short as a decade, multi-meter sea level rise could occur this century. Observations of mass loss from Greenland and Antarctica are too brief for significant conclusions, but they are not inconsistent with a doubling time of a decade or less. The picture will become clearer as the measurement record lengthens
• Illustrates the previous point, adding emphasis on the need to shift to a non fossil fuel economy. My opinion is that large scale ocean based algae biofuel and food production is the best rapid option to regulate the global climate through geoengineering in a way that will provide a feasible transition path by retaining the use of liquid fuel.
High latitude cooling and low latitude warming would drive more powerful mid-latitude cyclonic storms, including more frequent cases of hurricane force winds. Such storms, in combination with rising sea level, would be disastrous for many of the world's great cities and they would be devastating for the world's economic well-being and cultural heritage.
• Sudden tipping of ice sheets into the ocean could cool the poles while the equator heats up, generating massive imbalances.
a target of 2°C is not safe or appropriate. Global warming of 2°C would make Earth much warmer than in the Eemian, when sea level was 4-6 meters higher than today. Indeed, with global warming of 2°C Earth would be headed back toward Pliocene-like conditions. Conceivably a 2°C target is based partly on a perception of what is politically realistic, rather than a statement of pure science. In any event, our science analysis suggests that such a target is not only unwise, but likely a disaster scenario.
• This illustrates the need to look at what fixtheclimate.org has said about the failure of the ‘emission reduction’ model through market signals to be a sufficient measure to address the climate crisis. We rather urgently need to geoengineer as the prime security issue for our planet. The ‘realism’ is based on existing technology, when it is very likely that large resources thrown at the problem can produce new technology fast.
atmospheric CO2 should be rolled back from its present ~390 ppm at least to the level of approximately 350 ppm. With other climate forcings held fixed, CO2 at 350 ppm would restore the planet's energy balance and keep human-made global warming less than 1°C,
• And that needs new technology. My estimate is that algae farms on 0.1% of the world ocean could do it.
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Re: Climate Apocalypse

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The rate of human made change of atmospheric CO2 amount is now much larger than slow geological changes. Humans now determine atmospheric composition, for better or worse, and they are likely to continue to do so, as long as the species survives.
Again, such over-reaching statements only give climate skeptics ammunition. Nothing is ever as simple as we try to make it out to be.
The IPCC climate models aren't even close to being accurate. I think the idea that we will ever be able to accurately model global climate is far from a given.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 43800.html
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geo wrote:
The rate of human made change of atmospheric CO2 amount is now much larger than slow geological changes. Humans now determine atmospheric composition, for better or worse, and they are likely to continue to do so, as long as the species survives.
Again, such over-reaching statements only give climate skeptics ammunition. Nothing is ever as simple as we try to make it out to be.
The IPCC climate models aren't even close to being accurate. I think the idea that we will ever be able to accurately model global climate is far from a given.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 43800.html
There is no over-reach in Hansen's statements here. They are clear and defensible statements of scientific fact.

We are changing the CO2 level much faster than any geological event ever did. Before industrialisation, CO2 level changed at clearly measurable and very slow rate. Since industrialisation CO2 level has rapidly and steadily increased. The rate of increase is itself increasing as poor countries industrialise. It is caused by human activity.

You obviously have not read Hansen's paper if you accuse him of over-simplifying. Indeed, just in the part I quote, he emphasises that available datasets are too short to predict timing for sea level rise.

However, as I point out, simple modeling is clear. It is a bit like a tectonic fault line - you know eventually there will be an earthquake because you can measure the rate of movement of the plates, and the only thing that can resolve the tension at the joining point is an earthquake, so it will happen. This is a model. Similarly, over earth history there is a correlation between CO2 level and sea level. A sudden rise in CO2 creates a disequilibrium, which will eventually be resolved, we just don't know how long it will take.

I read your WSJ link. It is a clever piece of oil industry propaganda, very similar in method to the creationists who cite differences between Gould and Dawkins to cast doubt on evolution.
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Re: Climate Apocalypse

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Robert Tulip wrote:
geo wrote:
The rate of human made change of atmospheric CO2 amount is now much larger than slow geological changes. Humans now determine atmospheric composition, for better or worse, and they are likely to continue to do so, as long as the species survives.
Again, such over-reaching statements only give climate skeptics ammunition. Nothing is ever as simple as we try to make it out to be.
The IPCC climate models aren't even close to being accurate. I think the idea that we will ever be able to accurately model global climate is far from a given.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 43800.html
There is no over-reach in Hansen's statements here. They are clear and defensible statements of scientific fact.

We are changing the CO2 level much faster than any geological event ever did. Before industrialisation, CO2 level changed at clearly measurable and very slow rate. Since industrialisation CO2 level has rapidly and steadily increased. The rate of increase is itself increasing as poor countries industrialise. It is caused by human activity.

You obviously have not read Hansen's paper if you accuse him of over-simplifying. Indeed, just in the part I quote, he emphasises that available datasets are too short to predict timing for sea level rise.

However, as I point out, simple modeling is clear. It is a bit like a tectonic fault line - you know eventually there will be an earthquake because you can measure the rate of movement of the plates, and the only thing that can resolve the tension at the joining point is an earthquake, so it will happen. This is a model. Similarly, over earth history there is a correlation between CO2 level and sea level. A sudden rise in CO2 creates a disequilibrium, which will eventually be resolved, we just don't know how long it will take.

I read your WSJ link. It is a clever piece of oil industry propaganda, very similar in method to the creationists who cite differences between Gould and Dawkins to cast doubt on evolution.
I agree we are changing the C02 levels to an unprecedented degree. The problem is we don't what that really means. Historically, C02 levels lag behind rises in temperature which means that the onset of warming trends are not entirely due to C02 levels. Other factors clearly affect climate, but we are predominantly concerned only with C02 levels and we don't know how significant C02 is in the grand scheme of things.

The WSJ is one of the most unbiased newspapers out there in my opinion. I thought it was a fair piece. Far from casting doubts on the issue of global warming, the new findings related to cosmic rays add a new piece to the puzzle.
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Re: Climate Apocalypse

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The rhetoric in the WSJ journal was definitely loaded with bias. Some of the prose and choice of wording was of a skeptic. Whether to appeal to a skeptic reader base, or because the author is a skeptic, I'm not sure.


That point of largest impact that Robert makes is that the difficulty in producing an accurate model does not mean we can't make predictions with the information we have. If the trend is going in a certain direction rather than fluctuating around a baseline, something will give. Something will be unbalanced. I sense we're sitting in a period of calm, and the change has occurred so fast that the reaction will be like a sonic boom, hitting all at once. Many coastal inhabitants will be eaten by sharks.

If we've vastly overestimated the impact of CO2 on climate, we could just as easily have overlooked other effects of high CO2 levels(rampaging carnivorous plants). The bottom line is, drastic change in any direction is away from the point of equilibrium we've been at for a few millennia, and nature tends to be a bitch about self-correcting.
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I guess the WSJ's level of bias depends on where you're coming from. I have no doubt that I'm a bit off center on this topic, but I can tell you that I have looked at global warming many times and it's never very clear where things really stand precisely because it's such a highly politicized issue. Al Gore brought global warming to the forefront, but he's merely a layperson talking about a very complex scientific problem. Perhaps he's not the best publicist for such an important debate. Real scientific knowledge comes in fits and starts through exploration and discovery. There are many reasonable questions as to the extent of warming and how large a role C02 emissions play and especially what kind of political response can be made. This article points to yet another possible contingency in global warming, proving that despite all demagoguery, real science is actually taking place. Global warming is an emotionally charged issue which has folks taking sides with minimal comprehension of the facts and in that respect this issue quickly becomes as polarized as any other political issue. It amounts to people taking sides and drawing battle lines without really knowing what they're arguing about.
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geo wrote:I guess the WSJ's level of bias depends on where you're coming from.
Geo, lets analyze the bias.
"The Other Climate Theory"
This title insinuates that mainstream climate theory ignores information about changing solar energy levels. False.

"Al Gore won't hear it, but heavenly bodies might be driving long-term weather trends."
Subtitle - yes, it is well known that cosmic factors of earth's orbit and changing solar radiation are long term drivers of climate change. But the fact is these long-term trends are utterly swamped by the current very short term trend of CO2 emissions. And the dig at Gore as closed-minded is just playing to the tea party.

"The theory has now moved from the corners of climate skepticism to the center of the physical-science universe: the European Organization for Nuclear Research, also known as CERN."

Scientific analysis of solar radiation is entirely mainstream. Equating this theory with "climate skepticism" is a lie by the WSJ, dignifying propaganda with the aim of confusing the public by putting it on a level with real science, so their advertisers can make short term profit, and so they can imply that CERN supports climate denial.

"Mr. Kirkby's CERN experiment was finally approved in 2006 and has been under way since 2009. So far, it has not proved Mr. Svensmark wrong. "The result simply leaves open the possibility that cosmic rays could influence the climate," stresses Mr. Kirkby, quick to tamp down any interpretation that would make for a good headline."

But that didn't stop the WSJ from using it to hype climate skepticism.

"both Mr. Kirkby and Mr. Svensmark hold that human activity is contributing to climate change"

So typical - a disclaimer buried deep in the story that gives WSJ an excuse to say their inflammatory headline is not unbalanced.

"findings don't herald the end of a debate, but the resumption of one. That is, if the politicians purporting to legislate based on science will allow it."

This method of sowing doubt by systematic censorship of real science and pumping of misleading rubbish is as evil as holocaust denial, given that climate denial could kill more people than the holocaust. Earlier in this thread, I posted a chart that shows greenhouse gasses are more than ten times the contribution of solar forcing to global warming. So for WSJ to hype a tiny stable factor, giving the impression it ranks against the real short term crisis of rapidly increasing emissions, is utterly unethical and corrupt. They are bribed by the energy sector, along with many American politicians.

If you are interested in the facts about this debate it is easy to google rebuttals of this WSJ rubbish:
http://mediamatters.org/research/201108310023
I have no doubt that I'm a bit off center on this topic, but I can tell you that I have looked at global warming many times and it's never very clear where things really stand precisely because it's such a highly politicized issue. Al Gore brought global warming to the forefront, but he's merely a layperson talking about a very complex scientific problem. Perhaps he's not the best publicist for such an important debate. Real scientific knowledge comes in fits and starts through exploration and discovery. There are many reasonable questions as to the extent of warming and how large a role C02 emissions play and especially what kind of political response can be made. This article points to yet another possible contingency in global warming, proving that despite all demagoguery, real science is actually taking place. Global warming is an emotionally charged issue which has folks taking sides with minimal comprehension of the facts and in that respect this issue quickly becomes as polarized as any other political issue. It amounts to people taking sides and drawing battle lines without really knowing what they're arguing about.
Look Geo, if you are interested in "comprehension of the facts", how about reading Hansen's article that I linked yesterday? He is not a demagogue or a politician, he is a scientist who is deeply worried for the future of life on earth. Apparently unlike the WSJ.
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Re: Climate Apocalypse

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I guess the WSJ's level of bias depends on where you're coming from.
This is quite true, subjectively. I think when the amount of bias in an article is nearly the same as our own, it appears to be "baseline". How else could intelligent men be afflicted by bias?

If we each read an article that was perfectly bias-neutral(an ideal), how would we judge it if we were each slightly biased away from the ideal? Would the neutral article appear biased to us, even though it isn't? Relativity, applied to our biases.

I think the answer is yes, but also no. If we're running on cognitive autopilot, it may be the case. If bias in an article matches our own, it may be so easy to digest that we swallow it up without a hiccup. But if we apply some critical thinking and introspection, we may be able to better see the truth of the matter.
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I still maintain the WSJ is an excellent newspaper, better than most other newspapers I can think of. (USA Today and Christian Science Monitor are pretty good as well.) The Op-Ed I posted is, in fact, an opinion piece. I guess I'm willing to give it some leeway in terms of its slant, especially the dig on Al Gore who has for whatever reason become the poster boy for global warming. But there's a big difference between news and opinion and in hindsight, I shouldn't have posted the piece and then try to defend it as a fair article. Mea culpa.

From my perspective there's so much misinformation and hysteria related to global warming that it's very difficult to see what's really going on. As a result, I'm fairly reserved (emotionally) about the issue. As I've said before, I frankly don't know why folks are so focused on global warming which is only a symptom of a much larger problem. Even if we could "engineer" the climate or somehow reduce our carbon footprint overnight (which is what we need to do, right?), there's no telling what other problems the world faces with its 7 billion (and still growing) human population.

I'm still reading through Hansen's article. Much of it is beyond my level of understanding, but he's basically making projections based on climate models and theory. I'm very skeptical that something as complex and dynamic as the global environment can be modeled in any meaningful way. It all looks good on paper, but can we actually predict future climate changes based on such models?

Paleoclimate analysis seems a rather ambitious goal when you consider that it's data points are spread apart by over a thousand years. Hansen calculates 100-year data signals which are essentially extrapolated from the larger data points. This doesn't seem much different than population projections based on current fertility rates. Hansen is basically guessing what might happen, but he's projecting well beyond his own evidence.

Over the past 100 years or so the Earth has warmed anywhere from .74°C +/- .16°C so there isn't even enough data to give us an accurate number for this century. Can we really expect to derive meaningful prognostications and set climate policies according to current climate models which cannot possibly take all factors into consideration?

So anyway, we've all heard the arguments. Whether we buy them or not, what's going to stop people from the massive fossil-fuel-bender we've been on for the past 80 years or so? What exactly is being proposed?
Last edited by geo on Mon Sep 19, 2011 12:48 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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