(In response to Vick's question) Why ARE we acting?

Question

The fact of the matter is that we don't know what the climate will do in the future. The many factors input into climate models are not understood well enough for the models themselves to be used as fact.

"The bad news is that the climate models on which so much effort is expended are unreliable because they still use fudge-factors rather than physics to represent important [factors].... They are not yet adequate tools for predicting climate."- Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson

Then the argument follows that even if AGW is wrong, the effects of the prevention policies will be extremely beneficial, economically and environmentally. This is a lie.

"Ethanol is the favorite new, environmentally friendly, domestic fuel here in America. Sadly, it is not new, [or] environmentally friendly.... The Clean Air Act would have outlawed if because it evaporates more easily than gasoline, causing more smog.... The energy that goes into making ethanol- planting the corn, maintaining the fields, fertilizing the crops irrigating them, harvesting the corn, shipping it, distilling it, shipping the ethanol, and so on- uses more energy, from natural gas, coal, and gasoline, than the resulting ethanol yields, according to scientists Tad Patzek and David Pimentel. In other words, making ethanol is possibly a literal waste of energy." Christopher Horner, Economist, and expert on global warming legislation.

So why are we willing to take so much risk, for so little benefit?

OK....so is the reason that no one is answering that my logic was so outstanding that no one has anything to say? Ha...just KIDDING!

Answer 1

Long answer so I'll give you the bottom line first. Irrespective of the accuracy of climate models, or even if we ignore them altogether, it's a physical impossibility for the planet to do anything other than continue warming.

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Climate models are incredibly complex, it would take pages and pages just to explain the basics. However, there are models you can download and run on your own computer. They're simple versions as they're designed to run on standard PC's, the real models require massive computing power to run. You may need to install something called NetCDF - it's a programme for handling scientific data, the installation is a bit tricky but if you're familiar with computer language it shouldn't be too much trouble.

The primary aim of computer models is to predict what will happen in the future, and it is very difficult to do this with any real accuracy. It's for this reason that no prediction is specific, instead a range is assigned.

The two primary components that the models need to account for are the natural and the human factors.

There are several natural cycles that the Earth goes through, these are predictable and we can calculate just where the planet will be within these cycles at any point in time. The simplest of these cycles is Earth's rotation on it's axis, one cycle = one day, as simple as that. There's the orbit around the sun, one orbit = one year. Of course, you're familiar with these because you use them every day. The other cycles might not be familiar but they're also quite predictable.

These cycles also relate to the way that the Earth moves in space. It's not quite as simple as rotating on it's axis and orbiting the Sun. For example, the elliptical orbit tends to and from circularity, it's known as eccentricity or orbital shape and is the longest of the Earth's cycles. Other cycles relate to the way the orbit itself bounces up and down (orbital inclination), the gyroscopic rotation that affects axial alignment (precession) and the tilting towards and away from the Sun relative to the plane of Earth's orbit (obliquity or axial tilt).

All of these affect our climate but because they're cyclical they're also predictable. It's for this reason that we can, in respect of natural cycles, accurately predict how the temperature of the planet has changed in the past (hindcasting) and how it will change in the future (forecasting).

This is the reason which it's such a ludicrous argument to claim that global warming is the result of natural cycles. It really is as absurd as saying that tomorrow will be longer than usual or that next year will be 10 months long.

However, natural cycles aren't the only thing that affects the climate. There's all sorts of things happening down here on Earth, some of them are caused by humans and some are caused by nature. It's here that the guesswork is needed, but it is educated guesswork. There are of course some things that can't be foreseen such as massive volcanic eruptions or ecological disruption.

The very early climate models were crude but climatology is advancing in leaps and bounds. We've learned more in the last 7 years than in all the time before that. We also have much greater computing power that allows more accurate models to be run and more things to be taken into account. Today’s models are far more accurate than the previous ones. That said, even the early ones were a lot more accurate than people, notably the skeptics, give them credit for.

Here's some graphs http://profend.com/temporary/archer002.jpg that show how more recent models accurately hindcast the past temperature. Note that when natural and human factors are taken into consideration how accurate they are (third graph). Knowing that the models work backwards gives a high level of confidence that they'll work forwards as well.

Please don't act like so many other skeptics and take things out of context. You quote from Freeman Dyson but conveniently omit selected parts (maybe you copied it from somewhere else, in which case it's them that are being selective and distorting the facts). Putting it back into context it takes on a whole new meaning...

"There is good news and bad news. The good news is that we are at last putting serious effort and serious money into local observations. Local observations are laborious and slow, but they are essential if we are ever to have an accurate picture of climate. The bad news is that the climate models on which so much effort is expended are unreliable. The models are unreliable because they still use fudge-factors rather than physics to represent processes occurring on scales smaller than the grid-size. The bad news does not mean that climate models are worthless. They are essential tools for understanding climate. They are not yet adequate tools for predicting climate."

We don't need climate models to know that the planet has warmed, is warming and will continue to do so. We don't need the models to tell us what the consequences of a warmer planet are. They're a tool we use to predict potential future temperature changes. Knowing how much the temperature may change in the future provides useful information but it doesn't in any way affect global warming.

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I said at the beginning that the planet is going to warm in the future. There's no escaping that this is going to happen unless some large scale unpredicted event such as an asteroid impact or large scale nuclear exchange happens.

The natural cycles are going to cause slight warming and continue the trend that has been ongoing for a little over 10,000 years now. The majority of warming will be caused by the greenhouse gases.

When we release greenhouse gases they stay in the atmosphere for a long time and keep warming the planet long after they've been released. This is referred to as the residency period or atmospheric lifespan. The primary anthropogenic greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide, this has a residency period of 115 years, others have longer or shorter RP's. Even if we reduced our emissions to zero the gases already in the atmosphere are going to keep warming the planet for a long time, even allowing for natural recycling it would take 60 to 80 years for a state of equilibrium to be reached - and that's assuming we never produce any more greenhouse gases, quite clearly not something that is going to happen. To put it into some sort of context, nature can recycle 3 billion tons of CO2 per year, last year we emitted 29 billion tons, this year looks like it will be 31 billion tons; this is 10 times the amount nature can recycle and the accumulation of manmade CO2 in the atmosphere is such that it will take nature nearly 200 years to remove it.

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You made the point about AGW being wrong and the negative impacts. Let's put that into context. AGW is either wrong or it's right, we can chose to act or we can chose to do nothing. You appear to be advocating that we do nothing.

Let's assume you're correct, we don't do anything and AGW blows over - it was all a big mistake. No problem.

But what if you're wrong and we don't do anything. The cost of that is staggering, the World Bank has estimated it could cost up to $9 trillion per year. The World Health Organisation puts the annual death toll in the tens of millions. The United Nations predicts up to 2 billion people could be displaced. The insurance industry has calculated that financial losses could increase ten fold. The Dept of Defence has plans for going to war over resources such as water. These are worst case scenarios but they are the potential cost of doing nothing.

Weigh that up against the cost of taking action. It probably won't be cheap and depending just how the problem is tackled the cost could be anywhere from a few billion to hundreds of billions but it's certainly a far cheaper price to pay than doing nothing.

I hate to use this analogy but imagine you went to your doctor and were told you may contract cancer but the doctor had a pill that would prevent it. The pill cost $0.20 a week. Would you take the pill just to be on the safe side? Obviously you would. Well, the cost of insuring against global warming could be a lot less than that. It makes no sense to me that anyone would want to jeopardise the future of the planet for the sake of a few cents a week.

Answer 2

All models are wrong to some degree basically because we never have perfect knowledge about the system. But...they provide insight into what might occur, what factors are important and what we don't know. They're useful for exploring the bounds of uncertainty. When many models converge, as they do for the whole global warming bit, scientists are inclined to think there might be something to it. Combine that with historical data on CO2 and climate and a pretty cohesive picture emerges; the climate is changing.

As for the benefits of preventive policies being a lie. That's ridiculous. Sure, ethanol for fuel is nothing more than a political boondogle that no educated environmentalist would support as being either economically or environmentally beneficial. Higher fuel efficiency and, "gasp", lower consumption are reasonable and would immediately benefit the average joe/jane. There's a ton of other actions that are environmentally and economically sound. To say that prevetive policies are lies is ignoring a staggering amount of information (and logic).

Answer 3

That's simply the well ole force through media for you. If it is not dangerous adequate that Vick is beneath suspicion for this in poor health act, they must flip it up a notch and stick race in there. I swear whilst matters are dangerous the media reveals a way of creating all of it worse. Also, the media continuously demands 2 aspects...I imply it makes for a higher tale does not it? Most men and women (no less than those I have encountered) have already determined that Vick is responsible, so, I am certain that the media recognises this and reveals that it's an opportune time to light up his supporters; for this reason, developing much more controversy. Race will continuously be arguable... this is a sensitive area and I do blame the media for continuously bringing it to the leading edge..After all gossip and drama are what promote and that is all they care approximately.

Answer 4

There is still a good reason to change the status quo. Combustion emits pollutants (I'm not referring to CO2) into the atmosphere that contribute to smog. Agricultural practices release large quantities of effluent into bodies of water that reduce the amount of oxygen that species living in the water need to live. These are two examples of environmental concerns that we need to deal with.

I'm inclined to agree with you that ethanol isn't the miracle we've been waiting for. I'm also inclined to agree with you that we have an amazing potential to create more problems in the name of saving our world.

I'm also going to assume that you are referring specifically to actions that ONLY change practices concerning CO2 emissions. It's also interesting that many new technologies being designed to combat CO2 emissions also tend to reduce major pollutants. The new "environmentalism" revolves around CO2 as the major bad actor and tends to ignore other significant risks to the environment for some reason. Saving the Earth is big business, and I won't pretend that it isn't.

I'll end on the same note I started on though: it's simply a fact that all over the world we're making decisions that have an impact on the environment. I might not like everything about the new climate religion, but I do agree with the point that we can't do things the same way forever.

Answer 5

Picking one example and extrapolating it to represent all others is bad logic.

There are issues with corn-based ethanol. Does that mean that reducing our dependence on foreign oil which is also a limited resource, reducing particulate and ozone emissions, becoming more energy efficient, etc. is a bad thing?

Also, Trevor is correct. Studies have shown that not acting on global warming is the most expensive path we can take, by far.

Answer 6

you got it right punk! burning bio fuels produce co2 just the same as coal, wood, gasoline or chicken fat.in addition if we limit the 200 million cars & light trucks now on U.S. roads to 50 gallons of fuel per month & that fuel is corn alcohol it would take 2 BILLION acres to grow the corn, the U.S. only has about 800 MILLION acres of potental farm land.
the extra corn grown now to get the 51 cent per gallon subsidy is increasing the dead zone in the gulf at an unprecedented rate.
if people continue to get their information from Hollywood instead of science texts we're doomed.
for an unbiased synopsis on current biofuels read"whos fueling whom" in the november issue of SMITHSONIAN magazine. corn alcohol is the absolute WORST bio fuel we could choose unless destroying the environment is our goal.

Answer 7

The weather is changing that's for sure.

Loretta