Two questions about climate change:

[XemaSab]

If climate change is caused by man, then what do we do about it? What SHOULD we try to do about it, and what CAN we do about it?

If climate change is NOT caused by man and we try to do something to slow or stop this perceived imaginary threat, what's the worst that can happen?

I have answered both of these questions for myself; what do you think?

[lapfog_1]

1. "not caused by man" and "perceived imaginary"

are not in a logical relationship to each other.

The first question is "Is Global Warming Real?"

The second question is "If it is, what can we do about it?"

As part of determining the answer to the second question is the question "Are we doing something that contributes to it?" as that would lead to one potential answer "Maybe we should stop doing that" or "Can we do something to mitigate what we are doing and have determined that we must continue to do?"

[NNadir]

2. I don't see how you can blame man.

Women are involved too.

[XemaSab]

3. .

:P

[Howzit]

4. I am waiting to see who slams you as a denier for daring to ask those questions.

Yet, they are fundamental and need to be asked. You may need to answer them for yourself though, as there is very little risk of hearing any opinion here that falls outside the "consensus".

XemaSab, you can add more questions to that list, such as: How bad would it be if the temperature actually went up 2 degrees C in the next 100 years? After all, people live just fine in places as hot as the Sahara to places as cold as Iceland. That is one heck of a range, and if the cold places heated up a little, wouldn't that increase the land area available for habitation? After all, the poles will heat up more than the equator.

Now I am waiting to be slammed as a denier myself for daring to suggest that anyone might have an opinion that falls outside what everyone knows to be true. How could climate change possibly have any beneficial effects? After all, it is caused by evil Big Oil and is driven by Republicans.

[XemaSab]

5. I thought about writing a long essay for the OP

then I decided the questions would be better left simple and somewhat open to interpretation.

And I'd like to hear some opinions outside the consensus. Even opinions inside the consensus tell me something about the author and how they think.

Probably the most telling thing about this thread is how 84 people have looked at this thread and not answered. :P

[Howzit]

6. Your tree-hugger credentials are well established

No one will dare accuse you of being a denier.

[kristopher]

7. Regarding the OP

The word 'vapid' leaps to mind.

[codjh9]

18. I'm not going to 'slam' you for you answer, but a great deal has been written

about what is likely to happen if global temperatures go up just 1-2 degrees. It's not as simple as you make it out to be in your second paragraph. (Sorry, I don't have time to go find links and add them here, but you can find them if you want).

[Howzit]

24. Yes, there will be floods and droughts. Too many weeds and not enough edible vegetation.

If we look at history where there was a 2 degree rise in temperature, doesn't that show us what actually happens when the temperature goes up 2 degrees?

[XemaSab]

34. Define "weed"

:P

[Nihil]

40. "A weed is simply a plant that is in the wrong place according to the opinion of the speaker."

How's that?
:P

[XemaSab]

42. There ya go

:)

[kestrel91316]

43. I guess we're worried about nothing. They grow LOTS OF FOOD

in the Sahara and Iceland, so 125 degrees would be just fine.

[The Croquist]

8. Tough questions

"Is Global Warming Real?"

Yes. The earth has warmed for 18,000 years. The question can be argued over the question of "what period of time" but over most periods in the last 18,000 years, yes, global warming is real.

"If it is, what can we do about it?"

I'm going to give two responses:

If it is not caused by man
I say we should do nothing about it. If it is a natural event I think it is more dangerous to intentionally mess with it then to do nothing (again for this response I am assuming it is natural). If we try any of the global proposals we risk changing things we do not understand, over compensating and making things worse. As I've said before, standing up in a canoe is a bad thing. Dimming the earth is crazy. It blocks out sunlight that is the source of energy for most life on the planet. I put dumping iron into the ocean, trying to increase clouds and many other solutions in the same category.

If it is caused by man
This answer is much tougher. First how significant is it going to be. Is it going to to lower the quality of life for humans or improve it? I understand that it will cause severe damage or extinction to many species but they don't really get a vote on this. In this regard they are dependent on humans to protect them and we're not really very good at putting other forms of life first are we? If we were, we would be starving ourselves to death to save the lives of plants, we wouldn't take antibiotics or sterilize things. If doing something about it is going to either lower standards of living or retard their improvement (especially in the third world) the reaction will be "screw it".

I'm sure many disagree but I don't see China, India, Africa or South America stepping up to the plate and volunteering economic sacrifice to protect the planet. They are too busy trying to prevent famine and escape from poverty to worry about a rodent somewhere. Sure they signed Kyoto but they also received exemptions from it.

Look at the Three Gorges Dam that China just built. The lake it will create is 1,045 square kilometers. Do you really think that something of this scale would be built in the Australia, Europe or the US today?

First world nations are generally more willing to sacrifice for the environment but what they consider a "sacrifice" is more an inconvenience. It's easy to say that they will cut down on industrial CO2 emissions when they are exporting industry to third world countries where CO2 emissions are exempt anyway.

If the average human will be negatively impacted by global warming then we may do something about it (key word "may"). Humans have never been very good at looking a hundred years into the future and that is especially true of poor humans.

Now for the solution:

Population control. I don't know what the optimum population of the planet should be but I do know that we have too many people. First world countries generally have either a zero or close to zero population growth except for immigration. Here are the Population growth rates for some parts of the planet:

World Population growth rate 1.188%
China Population growth rate 0.629%
India 22.22 Population growth rate 1.578%
United States Population growth rate 0.883%
European Union Population growth rate 0.16%

If we can get the third world to stop growing and eventually to shrink their population (not through murder or force) we can address the problem without putting an undo burden on the population of the the entire planet. The world has already made progress. Since about 1950 the world growth rate has declined from about 2% to about 1.2%. Unfortunately at that rate we will still end up with billions of more people on the planet. The population density of the planet (less Antarctica) is about 50 people per square mile. The US is about 33, EU 114, China 143 and India 386. I don't consider the US crowded but I don't live on the coast.

How we get them to stop reproducing I don't know.

[XemaSab]

9. I like your answer

:thumbsup:

(PS What's the US population growth without the Palin family? :shrug::hide:)

[The Croquist]

21. What's the US population growth without the Palin family?

I'm trying to type but it's tough.

What is more important to the species, quality or quantity? I defer to tom_paine. He's the biologist.

[XemaSab]

35. As a biologist myself...

It's all quantity.

ALL quantity.

Quality doesn't factor in.

[bananas]

10. The problem is not population, and it isn't third-worlders.

The problem is consumption by first-worlders.
Even uber-doomer Paul Erhlich, author of "The Population Bomb", acknowledges this:
"The worst population problems are in rich nations, especially the U.S."
"Consumption is ... the single most difficult problem"

"Paul Ehrlich, famed ecologist, answers readers' questions
<snip>
Q. Do you still believe -- as you've said in the past -- that population growth is the No. 1 environmental problem, and that coercion "for a good cause" to slow population growth should still be our first priority? -- Peter Walker, Eugene, Ore.
A. I think trends in population are in the right direction, but still too slow. China, of course, has done miracles with a relatively coercive program, but I think now we could get birthrates where they belong without much coercion. The worst population problems are in rich nations, especially the U.S., because of their very high rates of consumption. Consumption is, in Anne's and my view, the single most difficult problem to deal with now -- as we discuss extensively in One With Nineveh. Times have changed -- population control, especially among the rich, is critical, but consumption control today is probably more critical and certainly tougher to achieve."
http://www.grist.org/comments/interactivist/2004/08/09/ehrlich/index1.html

[The Croquist]

12. To a degree I agree with you

It is possible to support many more people on the planet if we feed them 1,500 calories a day, give them no access to proper sewage, reliable electricity, quality education, clean water and proper medical care but that's no way to live. Sadly that's how billions are living today.

Yes, first world residents produce much more CO2 then residents of the third world but virtually everyone on the planet wants to live that way as well. I am considering not just life but the quality of life.

[bananas]

27. Cause and effect vs scapegoating vs real solutions

The cause of the CO2 increase is first-worlders burning fossil fuels.
The only way to solve the problem is for first-worlders to reduce their consumption of fossil fuels.
The best way to do this is increased efficiency: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x85630

Blaming third-worlders is just scapegoating.
Some people might even consider it racist.
Even if you killed off all the third-worlders, which is what you seem to want to do,
it wouldn't stop CO2 levels from increasing, because they aren't the cause of it.

Overpopulation is no longer the problem, the world population is already starting to level off, and will stabilize around 9 billion:
"U.N. estimates for 2050 are down from 9.4 billion to 8.9 billion. Eventually, the world's population is expected to stabilize at 9 billion by 2300."
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4188/is_20031209/ai_n11424218

There are plenty of resources for all 9 billion to have full stomachs, proper sewage, reliable electricity, quality education, clean water and proper medical care. We just have to move to technologies that reduce the ecological footprint. And that is happening.

[The Croquist]

28. I never suggested killing off the "third worlders"

I suggested an end to population growth and preferably a decrease. Why don't you tell the billions of "third worlders" that they don't need cars. Let me know how that works out.

[bananas]

29. I'm not telling anyone they can't have a car.

Global energy consumption is around 15TW, offshore wind potential is around 70TW.
There's plenty of energy for everyone to have a car, but it has to be an electric car.

[The Croquist]

32. That's OK. I didn't suggest killing "third-worlders"

but you suggested that I did anyway.

[bananas]

30. Population control won't solve the prpblem.

The problem has been caused by first-worlders, a fraction of the global population, burning fossil fuels.
You suggested ending third-world population growth as a solution.
It's not a solution, because that's not the cause of the problem.
The only way to solve the problem using population control would be to drastically reduce the first-world population.

[The Croquist]

33. The solution is to increase everyone to first world status

AND reduce the population.

Lowering the amount of fish removed from the oceans is a good thing.
Lowering the amount raw sewage dumped into waterways is a good thing.
Lowering the amount of carbon monoxide put into the atmosphere is a good thing.
Lowering the amount particulate matter put into the atmosphere is a good thing.
Lowering the amount lead put into the atmosphere is a good thing.
Lowering the amount nitrogen dioxide put in the atmosphere is a good thing.
Lowering the amount sulfur dioxide put in the atmosphere is a good thing.
Lowering the amount ozone put in the atmosphere is a good thing.

These are things that the first world does.

What is China doing?

[XemaSab]

38. Word

You forgot endangered species protection, logging regulation, clean water regulation, public lands and their protection, and about 20 other things that we do that China doesn't to protect the areas we live in.

[XemaSab]

37. CO2 increase

is but one aspect of a very, very complicated problem.

[NNadir]

14. Don't worry yourself about it. Stupidity in the first world will ensure that everyone is equally

impoverished.

We're only a few years from third world status here, especially after 8 years of Mobutu capitalism in the United States.

I would think of course that the anti-nuke community would be thrilled with this outcome. Recently a very stupid anti-nuke here suggested that the answer was grinding up our forests to provide energy to replace coal. This is very third world.

I wrote about how wonderful life in the third world from an environmental perspective some time ago on another website, where I discussed deforestration in Cameroon in a diary called http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/11/16/10438/196">This Power Plant Produces More Energy Than The Nation Of Cameroon.

I suspect that deforestration connected with poverty is involved with climate change, and that while the rich nations may bare the bulk onus for what is occurring, their real problem is that they have their heads way up their ass about how poverty effects every single living thing on this planet.

I note with due contempt that our "renewables will save us" cretins here have been in favor of destroying the Sumatran and Brazilian rain forests to drive their stupid cars, claiming all the time that they are working to reduce poverty.

Bullshit.

[XemaSab]

16. When we talk about climate change

it's not just CO2, it's desertification associated with deforestation and overgrazing too.

Clearcutting the Amazon would totally change the rainfall patterns and soils there in a way that the forest would never regenerate.

[The Croquist]

20. Nice to see that you are as polite as ever...

XemaSab asked two questions, neither of which involved Mobutu. If you would like to discuss how nuclear power would help ease or solve the problem fine. I will almost certainly agree with you but XemaSab didn't ask you to blame anybody. He asked you what should we do about climate change if it is happening. I don't see how insulting people really helps the issue. You get insulted allot but sometimes (including this time) you bring it on yourself.

Perhaps deforestation is a issue but it has already happened. The question is what do we do about it not what we should have done about it.

I can understand your frustration. I'm arguing that there is a good chance that man made global warming is not happening. I'm not especially popular here either but I try not to be rude.

[XemaSab]

39. Here's why deforestation is important:

all the little plants, frogs, snakes, birds, and other critters are going to have to go somewhere when the dominant habitats shift.

If the forest and other veg around their habitat is GONE, where will they go?

They will have nowhere to go. :(

Frankly, I think habitat protection at this point is more urgent than carbon regulations. All the species extant today evolved in a dynamic climate. Under "natural conditions" these species managed to move out and fill other habitats when their original habitat changed.

How is the projected CO2 increase going to change the planet more than the global difference between a glacial and an interglacial?

The difference will be that all these species had undeveloped areas to move into. Not so today.

[Barrett808]

44. In addition, forests are important carbon sinks

Deforestation and widespread forest dieoff (from pine beetles, etc.) have turned many forests into net carbon emitters, which is Very Bad.

[XemaSab]

36. I have given much thought to this over the last few days

Obviously, outsourcing impacts is not a winner.

However, environmental protection in the US is better than environmental protection in MOST other countries, so even if we were to move most of out manufacturing back here, our forests, watersheds, and animals in MOST areas would remain unmolested.

(I drove through the Gold Country today... DAMN people did a lot of damage here 150 years ago. Damn.)

[Barrett808]

11. Let's not forget ocean acidification and eutrophication

Irrespective of climate change, reducing human carbon emissions has the benefit of saving the oceans.

What we can do:

• Leave the reduced carbon in the ground, especially the coal.


• Don't disturb the methane hydrates.


• Spend a trillion or two bux to repower the US with home-made alternative energy sources. Heck, that's about the cost of one Iraq war or investment-bank bailout, so it's easily affordable.

What we might be able to do:

• Air capture at scale. Richard Branson has an X-Prize going for this.


• Calcine limestone by using solar thermal, then dump the lime into the ocean. At scale, requires some tens of billions of tons of limestone to be mined and processed.


• CCS at fossil-fuel plants, but this remains to be demonstrated at scale (FutureGen dead).

What we shouldn't do:

• Disturb the methane hydrates.


• Geoengineer with sulfate aerosols (the world becomes cooler, but drier; doesn't help w/ ocean acidification).


• Pursue afforestation at high latitudes; darker albedo!

[Howzit]

13. What life was there before coal was formed and what was the CO2 level at that time?

The problem stems from lazy speaking leading to lazy thinking. "Carbon sequestration" is a misnomer, potentially resulting in confusion between carbon dioxide (product of combustion) and hydrocarbon compounds (fuel).

Coal is mostly carbon combined with significant hydrogen, but very little oxygen. As such, coal IS sequestered carbon (and hydrogen), but cannot be considered as sequestered CO2 - yes, the plants in coal removed CO2 from the air, but this is not the same as taking actual CO2 gas and burying it in millions of gas bottles or rock chambers. Coal does not take O2 out of circulation to form CO2 until it is dug up and burned.

If for argument's sake, one does consider coal as natural CO2 sequestration, cannot one extend the idea further? If coal is formed of plants that converted CO2 from the air and H2O from the ground into hydrocarbons, doesn't the CO2 from coal "belong" in the air, and by burning it, isn't man simply putting it back into circulation? As coal deposits on earth are huge, an equivalent mass of CO2 used to be in the air before the plants that make up the coal lived.

I know coal took a long time to form from buried plants, but does anyone know over what time frame the plants lived, at what rate they took CO2 out of the air, and what the CO2 levels where when the plants lived that are coal today? I agree that if we burn coal at a higher rate than it formed, CO2 levels will increase faster than they dropped when the plants grew and were buried. Do we know what the natural level of CO2 was before man came on the scene? How far back should one go in history to find the "ideal" CO2 level? Why not go back millions of years, to the time of the plants that are coal today?

What buried such a vast mass of plants in contiguous shelfs to form coal? Was it a comet strike kicking up a massive "dust cloud" that then fell and entrapped the plants (and animals)? Plants tend to decay and have their hydrocarbons oxidized by bacteria and fungi unless they are cut off from the atmosphere.

[Barrett808]

15. I'd define the "ideal" CO2 concentration as that which pertained when humans evolved

Which is to say, the best biosphere for humans is the biosphere in which we evolved.

That means the CO2 concentration should be within the 180-280ppm range, which has dominated the paleoclimate for the last few million years (Pliocene/Pleistocene/Holocene).

I'd opt for the higher end of that range, because that's when climate seemed to settle down enough to allow agriculture (Holocene). Before that, climate seems to have permitted only hunter/gatherer and pastoral societies.

[Viking12]

19. What is 'ideal' is, frankly, a stupid question.

As are questions about the 'ideal' temperature. The pertitent question is, "what is rate of change of atmosperic CO2 to which human systems and the biological systems on which humans depend can adapt?" We DO have a say in the influencing that rate of change if we colectively desire.

[Howzit]

22. What percentage of CO2 in the air stems from human activity?

That will affect the degree to which you influence the rate of change. If humans stopped burning all fossil fuels today, how much effect would that have on CO2 concentration and on predicted global warming?

[Viking12]

25. All of the change from pre-industrial era to present is attributable to humans.

In other words, nearly 30% of the current concentration of atmospheric CO2 stems from human activity (nearly a 40% increase over pre-industrial levels).

If we halted all CO2 emmissions today, it would take nearly a century for atmospheric levels to return to pre-industrial levels under optimal conditions.

I'm not sure what you mean by "predicted global warming". To which predictions are you referring? Most projections are based upon the interaction of emissions scenarios and climate sensitivity.

[XemaSab]

17. Do trees really add to the albedo?

A green lawn is cooler than a pale gray sidewalk.

Similarly, a rich brown soil high in organic matter will typically be cooler than a baked, pale, compacted soil.

A dark soil shaded by a dark tree will be cooler than a pale soil in full sun.

Part of the issue is also percolation, runoff, uptake, and evapotranspiration. Water is the elephant in the room, and wise management of water may do more to protect the climate at less cost than faffing around with CO2.

[Howzit]

23. Lawns are cool because they are alive.

Unlike concrete on a dry day, plants are cooled by evaporation of water. Green plants are green because they absorb red and blue wave lengths of sun light. Concrete of the same gray level probably absorbs about as much heat, but isn't cooled by evaporation and has a much smaller surface area for air cooling.

[XemaSab]

26. That's pretty much what I'm saying

It's not as simple as a dark surface and a light surface. There are interactions there that make the issue much more complicated.

[kurt_cagle]

31. Climate Change

I'm something of an apostate - I believe that climate change is real and that it has an anthropogenic component, but I also believe that part of what we're seeing is due to long term cyclical solar activity, possibly in conjunction with interactions between the magnetic fields of the Sun, Jupiter, the Earth and the local solar neighbourhood. If I'm right, then we may in fact be at the end of a period of global warning that started in the 1970s and may in fact be seeing a pronounced global cooling starting around 2010.

When the Hadron accelerator comes online (after they replace the magnets which burned out ... oops), there will be an experiment run to determine whether in fact cosmic rays (gamma radiation coming primarily from the galactic core) are responsible for the formation of clouds. If they are, I think that this should force a significant revision in thinking about climate models, which in turn changes a lot of the basic assumptions about climate changes.

However, for all that, I think that something does need to be stated - contemporary society is becoming increasingly fragile and interdependent, and such interdependencies mean that it takes fewer negative stimulae to disrupt that society. Extreme weather has been a part of the landscape for a long time, but in general the lower the technology, the more that the society moves in synch with weather patterns. When we move from climate-controlled building to climate controlled building always set within a 10 degree range, the extremes of weather become far more pronounced when they cause this to break down.

I also think that there are significant anthropogenic effects. Pollution in the air gets absorbed by snow in the Arctic and Antarctic, the particulate matter acting as small radiators. This causes snow and ice to melt more quickly, which decreases the albedo of the planet fractionally as more seawater gets exposed. This in turn creates a feedback loop, increasing the temperature globally. My quibble right now is with the CO2 model in the atmosphere being a driving factor in global warming, rather than being a symptom of global warming. This means that there are still some strong reasons for reducing carbon emissions, but that we should also be cognizant that there are likely a number of different factors that go into the equation.

[AlecBGreen]

41. Id love to see the article on that!

"...gamma radiation coming primarily from the galactic core responsible for the formation of clouds".

I always thought it was just simple evaporation and condensation. Who knew? :shrug: