Climate Change

[natmarie73]

Krakatoa actually cooled the planet because of the aerosols and dust put into the atmosphere. Hmm....did you read Heaven and Earth: Global Warming ? the Missing Science by Ian Plimer?

Try this instead: http://www.skepticalscience.com/volcanoes-and-global-warming.htm

The burning of fossil fuels and changes in land use results in the emission into the atmosphere of approximately 30 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year worldwide, according to the EIA. The fossil fuels emissions numbers are about 100 times bigger than even the maximum estimated volcanic CO2 fluxes.

This is also interesting: http://www.earthmagazine.org/article/voices-volcanic-versus-anthropogenic-carbon-dioxide-missing-science?page=1

Published estimates based on research findings of the past 30 years for present-day global emission rates of carbon dioxide from subaerial and submarine volcanoes range from about 150 million to 270 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, with an average of about 200 million metric tons,

These global volcanic estimates are utterly dwarfed by carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burning, cement production, gas flaring and land use changes; these emissions accounted for some 36,300 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2008, according to an international study published in the December 2009 issue of Nature Geoscience. Even if you take the highest estimate of volcanic carbon dioxide emissions, at 270 million metric tons per year, human-emitted carbon dioxide levels are more than 130 times higher than volcanic emissions.

Interesting LibGS, thanks for the info. Is carbon dioxide the biggest "greenhouse gas" then? Way I see it, is we should probably stop chopping down trees so they can turn it back into oxygen then.

And interestingly enough, with all this extra CO2 in the atmosphere how come my gas test readings still show O2 levels at 19.8%? One would assume O2 readings would start declining as CO2 levels rise? That is one question that I really would like to know the answer to.

To be honest, I am more concerned with the many many tonnes of highly radioactive water flowing into the Pacific ocean every day from the Fukushima meltdown mutantifying our sea life Has anyone seen those photos of freak vegetables and flowers going around on facebook?

 

[Piston Broke]

There was never any impending ice age when I was studying.

So any studies in any part of science from a number of years ago are to be written off as hogwash? Or only the parts if science where you disagree with the findings?

And Tim Flannery is actually a professor at Monash according to the Monash web site.

The 70s was all about the coming ice age, maybe your memory is clouded
And of course no oil by the year 2000.

And yep, if Flannery was made "professor", history has pretty much shown that weather/climate studies have been useless. Those books would've made good land fill.
Science and politics of convenience are two very different things. Again history has shows this as well. It's all there for those with time to search.

"Man made" climate change is very localized and on a global scale, minimal.
And Australia's effect is irrelevant on a global scale.

 

[HiEquity]

Interesting LibGS, thanks for the info. Is carbon dioxide the biggest "greenhouse gas" then? Way I see it, is we should probably stop chopping down trees so they can turn it back into oxygen then.

And interestingly enough, with all this extra CO2 in the atmosphere how come my gas test readings still show O2 levels at 19.8%? One would assume O2 readings would start declining as CO2 levels rise? That is one question that I really would like to know the answer to.

To be honest, I am more concerned with the many many tonnes of highly radioactive water flowing into the Pacific ocean every day from the Fukushima meltdown mutantifying our sea life Has anyone seen those photos of freak vegetables and flowers going around on facebook?

CO2 levels are around 390 parts per million. Wouldn't move the needle on an O2 meter.

Amazing how people can have such strong opinions on issues they clearly have NFI about...

 

[Aaron_C]

Amazing how people can have such strong opinions on issues they clearly have NFI about...

Indeed. Cue extreme Lefties like Adam Bandt et al.

 

[geoffw]

The 70s was all about the coming ice age, maybe your memory is clouded
And of course no oil by the year 2000.

There was the "oil crisis". But there was no coming ice age as a part of my studies. I finished in 75. The oil crisis was of short duration. There was a lot of politics in that.

And yep, if Flannery was made "professor", history has pretty much shown that weather/climate studies have been useless. Those books would've made good land fill.

Let's burn all the books then. And all meteorology is useless? You don't agree with a viewpoint reached by many trying to find out what is really happening, so you want to throw out the entire science. [/QUOTE]

Science and politics of convenience are two very different things. Again history has shows this as well. It's all there for those with time to search.

"Man made" climate change is very localized and on a global scale, minimal.
And Australia's effect is irrelevant on a global scale.

Your viewpoint. Not one backed by many people who are studying climate. But that doesn't matter. You don't agree with what they've been finding, so you can just call them crackpots and dismiss the whole thing.

 

[Angel]

interesting that you think im part of "the left"

My understanding is that the quote was referring to Cimbom.

 

[seismic]

the earth did survive billions of years

We are living on an amazing space ship which rotates on its own axis and has revolved around the sun billions of times. It is tough else it would not have survived for so long.

There were major events like the Siberian traps, one of the largest known volcanic events of the last 500 million years, that continued for a million years. Estimates of the original coverage are as high as 7 million km2.

The Deccan Traps formed 60 million years ago. This series of eruptions may have lasted less than 30,000 years in total. The original area covered by the lava flows is estimated to have been as large as 1.5 million km?. Erosion and plate tectonics have reduced the area of directly observable lava flows to around 512,000 km2.

While these events caused extinction of life - life did survive in other parts of the world.

The earth has a very thin crust, much larger mantle and core. We have never been successful in penetrating much below the thin crust even with a 3 inch hole (operation Moho).

The outer core of the Earth is a liquid layer about 2,266 km thick composed of iron and nickel which lies above the Earth's solid inner core and below its mantle. The temperature of the outer core ranges from 4400 ?C in the outer regions to 6100 ?C near the inner core.

Convection of liquid metals in the outer core creates the Earth's magnetic field. This magnetic field extends outward from the Earth for several thousand kilometers, and creates a protective bubble around the Earth that deflects the solar wind. Without this field, a larger proportion of the solar wind would directly strike the Earth's atmosphere and destroy it slowly. This is hypothesized to have happened to the Martian atmosphere, rendering the planet incapable of supporting life.

The solid rock masses on the crust of the Earth move around on top of the liquid magma underneath, and can sometimes collide, like cookie pieces floating in milk.

 

[BayView]

I wonder how much emission there is from this lot?

http://www.volcanodiscovery.com/erupting_volcanoes.html

 

[The Fence]

Great post Seismic.

This earth is far bigger and badder than we think.

We are but miniscule in the scheme of things and I dare say that all that info on the Earths core is also guestimate stuff but it goes to show that we will never ever be able to truly save the planet by introducing a carbon price and scaring people into believeing the rhetoric going around currently.

There was no beginning and there will be no end. Think about it.

 

[pieman]

I wonder how much emission there is from this lot?

http://www.volcanodiscovery.com/erupting_volcanoes.html

Not much...

 

[NedKelly]

 

[The Fence]

Ned...I still reckon your sig does all the saying.

 

[HiEquity]

Now we are waiting for the graph on natural sources of CO2 absorption versus manmade sources of CO2 absorption...

Come on, where is it?

 

[Dazz]

It hasn't been pal-reviewed yet.

 

[LibGS]

Great post Seismic.

This earth is far bigger and badder than we think.

We are but miniscule in the scheme of things

Virus cells are sooooo tiny. And given that I don't know how they work, I can only conclude that they can't possibly affect something as big as a human.

 

[Tigger]

I think people are missing the point. The planet isn't going to end. Nor is all life likely to end. Humans however have evolved within fairly tight limits. We live within the biosphere so we need to look at the effects on the biosphere.

The biosphere is only about 10 kms deep. It stretches from the top layers of soil to the lower layers of the atmosphere. The atmosphere protects us from heat coming in from the sun and traps all gases within the biosphere.
What is happening within the biosphere?

The earth is a closed system. For about 260M years a large chunk of carbon has been stored as fossil reserves within the planet but out of circulation in the biosphere. Humans and many of the more advanced species (eg the ones we rely on for food) have evolved in a low carbon habitat.

For the last 3oo years we've been releasing more carbon (and by default water as water is the byproduct of carbon combustion). Where does this released carbon and water vapour go? It ends up in the atmosphere where it accumulates. Then it traps more heat, which by the way seems now to be held more in the seas than in the air. (As the seas heat up the climate patterns change hence a mini ice age in western Europe was one of the earliest predicted outcomes of GW).

Meanwhile as those small apparently insignificant changes accumulate eg (0.3 of a degree) our food sources become more unstable and insecure. One of the basics of physiology is that all organisms have their optimal limits so no, they won't easily be able to adapt to a shift of 1-3 degrees. And like it or not, for essential life supplies, we are still 100% dependent on those other organisms.

Our very large global popn (large in comp to ecologically sust popn, not fossil-fuel-based popn) starts to suffer. Don't forget fossil-fuel-based society has been in existence for about 300 years and is now about 7 times what we could maintain without fossil fuels eg food supply chains, pharmaceuticals and hospitals are all fossil-fuel reliant, etc. etc.

Fossil fuel use has built a huge human popn, liberated more greenhouse gases than the biosphere has had to deal with in 260M years, and is now making our global atmosphere more variable. (Fossil fuel supplies are also now declining which raises other issues).

At this point someone usually chimes in with "the trees will take up all the extra carbon and grow faster". Not they won't because they are at their physiological limits already, and globally we are still clearing more trees than we're allowing to regrow.

No you can't summarise it in 2 sentences because it's just too complex.
We're not trying to 'save the planet'.
Another mass extinction will be followed by another species radiation.
Which taxonomic group do you think will replace humans as the dominant one on the planet?

 

[kathryn d]

Flies and mosquitos

 

[NedKelly]

For the last 3oo years we've been releasing more carbon (and by default water as water is the byproduct of carbon combustion). Where does this released carbon and water vapour go? It ends up in the atmosphere where it accumulates. Then it traps more heat, which by the way seems now to be held more in the seas than in the air. (As the seas heat up the climate patterns change hence a mini ice age in western Europe was one of the earliest predicted outcomes of GW).

Water vapour is very short lived in the atmosphere. It has never been proved that the released carbon, in the form of CO2, traps heat in the atmosphere.

 

[NedKelly]

Heavy ice delays Australian Antarctic icebreaker Aurora Australis

You couldn't make it up!

It's from the ABC as well!

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-...antarctic-icebreaker-aurora-australis/5114778

 

[HiEquity]

Water vapour is very short lived in the atmosphere. It has never been proved that the released carbon, in the form of CO2, traps heat in the atmosphere.

The fact that CO2 is transparent to visible light and absorbs and re-emits infrared radiation is very well proven. Do you dispute it?

This (along with the other GHGs in the atmosphere with the same properties) is the only reason that can explain why the planet remains as warm as it currently is, rather than dropping to something like -40C, which would happen if GHGs didn't exist at all and no heat was trapped in the atmosphere. Do you dispute that?

The amount of GHGs in the atmosphere over the known life of the earth is very well correlated to its temperature. Do you dispute that?

If no to the above, then what do you expect to be the effect of increasing the concentrations of GHGs in the atmosphere, as we are clearly doing, given there are no man made sources of GHG absorption...

As for a cold Antarctica, you do of course realise that trapping heat in the atmosphere will not just make everything more warm but rather add energy to global climate systems, increasing their extremes in both directions (hot and cold)? Or slow down key global weather systems such as the North Atlantic drift, responsible for the relative warmth of Western Europe, thereby making that part of the world colder rather than hotter?