Climate Change

[BasketCase]

When you write I disagree, you will admit it should be with the sentence before.

I'll write my posts in whatever way I please.

So your example was indeed there to illustrate "Gulf Stream doesn't help keeping Europe Warmer".

Perhaps it wasn't what you had in mind, but it's what you wrote.

Then I'll write it again.

Contention made earlier in this thread: Gulf Stream shutdown will cause an Ice Age.

My counterexample: I live very far away from the Gulf Stream. I am not living in an Ice Age.

 

[Rambuchan]

Shameless

 

[BasketCase]

Heheh. Bad idea, Rammy. My last post was a bit snippy; I figured it might have caused people to go and give up on the thread.

 

[Rambuchan]

Well that's a pity all round BC.

I notice no one commented that the G8 summit failed to deliver ANY kind of progress, agreement or even vision of how to deal with Climate Change. Have they just given up and accepted defeat?

 

[Sickman]

Climate is something complex and fragile, we should be careful with it. We are not sure if limiting CO2 production will have a real effect on climate.
But we know a change of climate could have drastic effects.

So, better safe than sorry, and we should at least try.

I agree in there completely.

We only know that we don't know everything about climate and our effect can change the whole global weather system.
It doesn't mean necessarily as big catastrophe as Ice Age but in smaller scale more drastic changes in weather.
And some people actually think they are "safe" from this or that "nothing" will happen.

This time it isn't necessarily God who has the dices, it's us.

Better play with care and know when to stop because in the end the house always wins.

 

[EdwardTking]

Well that's a pity all round BC.

I notice no one commented that the G8 summit failed to deliver ANY kind of progress, agreement or even vision of how to deal with Climate Change. Have they just given up and accepted defeat?

Our low expectations were correct.

Rest of world has given up expecting anything reasonable from
the Bush administration and is waiting for the 2008 US election.

 

[Rambuchan]

Our low expectations were correct.

Rest of world has given up expecting anything reasonable from
the Bush administration and is waiting for the 2008 US election.

Apparently there is meant to be some further discussion about it at the trade talks in November. Anyone else heard that?

I was not able to take part in Bozo's Kyoto thread but did that come up with any alternatives? (Saves me reading all 58 pages of it )

EDIT - In fact I just realised that I have the whole Executive Summary of the Kyoto Treaty bookmarked. How about that? Here's a summary introduction of the American reaction to it, link at foot:

A Briefing Paper on the Energy Information Administration's Analysis and Report

(Prepared for the Committee on Science, U.S. House of Representatives. October 1998)

The Kyoto Protocol, negotiated by more than 160 nations in December 1997, aims to reduce net emissions of certain greenhouse gases (primarily carbon dioxide (CO2)). Each of the participating developed countries must decide how to meet its respective reduction goal during a five-year period (2008-2012); but specific ground rules remain to be worked out at future negotiating sessions. The next meeting is in Buenos Aires (November 1998).

In a study entitled Impacts of the Kyoto Protocol on U.S. Energy Markets and Economic Activity, the Energy Information Administration (EIA), an independent statistical and analytical agency in the U.S. Department of Energy, has projected that meeting the U.S. targets under the Protocol will call for significant market adjustments:

* Reductions in CO2 emissions will result in between 18 and 77 percent less coal use than projected in the EIA Reference Case in 2010, particularly affecting electricity generation, and between 2 and 13 percent less petroleum use, mainly affecting transportation.

* Energy consumers will need to use between 2 and 12 percent more natural gas in 2010 and between 2 and 16 percent more renewable energy, and extend the operating life of existing nuclear units.

* To achieve these ends via market-based means, average delivered energy costs (in inflation-adjusted 1996 dollars) must be between 17 and 83 percent higher than projected in 2010.

* The amount prices must rise is uncertain. Accounting procedures and international trading rules for greenhouse gases are not finalized. Forecasting technological change and public response to it under various pricing scenarios is an inexact science. The more stringent the need for domestic emission reductions, however, the more costly the adjustment process will be.

The whole report this quote is refering to can be read here

 

[BasketCase]

Random question: has anybody here considered that the Earth is due for its next Ice Age?

 

[Rambuchan]

Random question: has anybody here considered that the Earth is due for its next Ice Age?

Yes. But from all that I have read (including this thread), I still think a warming pattern is more likely.

 

[Gothmog]

due as in 'any ten thousand years now"

 

[Rambuchan]

due as in 'any ten thousand years now"

What are you referring to?

 

[Gothmog]

The next ice age is indeed 'due', but the time scale for such events is hundreds of thousands of years (there have been about 20 in the last 2 million years).

So when one is 'due' it should be along 'any ten thousand years now'.

 

[Rambuchan]

The next ice age is indeed 'due', but the time scale for such events is hundreds of thousands of years (there have been about 20 in the last 2 million years).

So when one is 'due' it should be along 'any ten thousand years now'.

I'll admit both that an ice age is indeed 'due' according to the timescale you mention and also that I am not vastly qualified to come to any serious conclusions.

However, hopefully all the evidence I have posted up by way of quotes, maps, graphs and links, tells us that BEFORE we hit this ice age we are facing an unprecedented rise in global temperatures and sea levels and this is underway now. Consequences are being faced now and will escalate in the next 100 - 200 years.

So do excuse me if I choose to focus on the heating up at the expense of discussing the ice age. But I'm all ears.

 

[Gothmog]

Agreed, I was trying to give some context to BasketCases comment.

It really isn't very relevant to figuring out what climate will do on a human time scale, unless applied to paleoclimatological studies.

btw, if you haven't followed any of the other climate debates around here this is part of my field (earth science and atmospheric chemistry). I sometimes pop in to counter misinformation, or give context to a statement like the one above. Here's a cool link, the best climate science comentary site on the web: http://www.realclimate.org/

 

[blackheart]

Random question: has anybody here considered that the Earth is due for its next Ice Age?

We aren't officially out of the last Ice Age yet.

 

[Gothmog]

Depends on how you define 'Ice Age', but indeed we are in a warm interglacial (i.e. still in an ice age).