Global Carbon Dioxide Levels Reach New Monthly Record 372
mrflash818 writes: For the first time since we began tracking carbon dioxide in the global atmosphere, the monthly global average concentration of carbon dioxide gas surpassed 400 parts per million in March 2015, according to NOAA's latest results. “It was only a matter of time that we would average 400 parts per million globally,” said Pieter Tans, lead scientist of NOAA’s Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network. “We first reported 400 ppm when all of our Arctic sites reached that value in the spring of 2012. In 2013 the record at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Observatory first crossed the 400 ppm threshold. Reaching 400 parts per million as a global average is a significant milestone."
AWESOME! (Score:5, Funny)
Those of us that live in northern climates above 600 feet and will see our land values skyrocket.... thank the rest of you.
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Underwater front property valuations are in for a rather rude and sharp decline. As this increases, denials and attacks will increase (they will become extremely loud, aggressive and distorted, pretty much anything goes), to allow the rich and greedy to dump those properties, into a market of the gullible. Low lying water front at this time is a truly horrible investment and governments who approve construction in low lying coastal areas are corrupt as hell. Yes, developers will be seeking to develop and o
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Don't forget mass murder [youtube.com].
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I'm sorry, but if you want to build a house at the beach, why should it be the government's business to stop you?
Because when inevitable destruction occurs to the beach property, you'll get an interview on TV and sob and whine about how much you love your house which was just destroyed, and then my tax payer dollars have to be invested in reconstructing the house that's in a dangerous place to build. That's why the government should stop the building of houses in dangerous areas.
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There are other considerations as well. Houses require sewers and you do not want sewers filling full of salt water, it tends to cause lots disease when it floods out. Electricity is also problematic when it floods. Not to forget no, good people do not stand by, when people are being ripped off. The whole absurd notion of what business is if of mine when I see people being ripped off, seriously, do unto others and yes I would appreciate being warned when I am about to be ripped off. What the bloody hell, d
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I'm sorry, but if you want to build a house at the beach, why should it be the government's business to stop you? It's your money, you should be able to spend it the way you want. Call 1 877 CASH NOW. Why would a government that doesn't stop you be necessarily corrupt?
As long as the Federal Government is underwriting flood insurance while not collecting enough to cover the costs it is the government's business. Why should the rest of us pay for other peoples recklessness.
Explains why my lawn and garden are doing well (Score:3)
Huzzah for free plant food.
Not enough CO2 yet (Score:2)
Lets clear some more trees.
Green Plants Everywhere Thank You (Score:2)
Speaking on behalf of green plants everywhere, we would like to thank you for making it easier for us to breathe and grow. Keep up the good work.
500! 500! 500! (Score:2)
Ferret
Article in foxnews.com (Score:4, Interesting)
I was surprised but happy to see that foxnews.com had an article [foxnews.com] called "Levels of carbon dioxide in air hits milestone". (news.google.com had a link to it.) The article says pretty much what the research.noaa.gov article says. Hopefully some people reading the foxnews article will be convinced that global warming is real.
Re:Milestone my ass (Score:5, Informative)
Refuted: https://www.skepticalscience.c... [skepticalscience.com]
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But that article just shows the concentration for tens of thousands of years of ice age could be THOUSANDS of ppm CO2,
Re:Milestone my ass (Score:5, Insightful)
Ordovician... Jurassic... at too long an interval, we are all doomed to repeat what we have no chance to remember.
Re:Milestone my ass (Score:5, Informative)
No correlation as in this picture [noaa.gov]? Denial gets more desperate by the day.
Re:Milestone my ass (Score:5, Insightful)
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Higher temperature results in more CO2 (after some delay), higher CO2 results in higher temperature (with much shorter delay). On a long term graph, you only see the first effect clearly.
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Why does the temperature increase precede the CO2 level increase more often that not in that graph?
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Because it's a feedback loop. Other factors (e.g. orbital variations) can initially trigger warming in the oceans, which then release CO2, which results in further warming. See this article [skepticalscience.com] for details.
Re:Milestone my ass (Score:5, Insightful)
The proof that CO2 does not drive climate is to be found during the Ordovician-Silurian and the Jurassic-Cretaceous periods when CO2 levels were greater than 4000 ppmv (parts per million by volume) and about 2000 ppmv respectively. If the IPCC theory is correct, there should have been runaway greenhouse induced global warming during these periods but instead there was glaciation.
You can't ignore the fact that the Sun was dimmer back then and the topology of the continents was completely different. CO2 isn't the only factor in the Earth's climate, just the most important greenhouse gas in determining it. (If you want to chime in and claim that water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas, it's true that WV causes the largest effect of the greenhouse gases but WV is a condensing gas under conditions in the Earth's atmosphere and the level is strictly controlled by temperature. Water vapor can not drive climate change.)
Re:Milestone my ass (Score:4, Informative)
The Sun is a stable G2 dwarf, and over the short term (millenia/eons) its power output is stable to parts per ten thousand.
Over hundreds of millions of years, the accumulation of helium "ash" in the core increases pressure and density and therefore power output; The sun's power output has risen roughly 25% since its formation, so changes on the order of a few percent since the formation of complex life are expected.
It's a shame neither of these facts is researchable...
Re:Milestone my ass (Score:4, Insightful)
The Sun is a stable G2 dwarf, and over the short term (millenia/eons) its power output is stable to parts per ten thousand.
Sure, I really would like that to be true too. But that "fact" doesn't explain the Maunder minimum which appears to be a fluctuation in solar power output considerably greater than the threshold your assertion. I notice that some researchers are actually claiming [livescience.com] that a 0.2 W per square meter change in solar output somehow causes climate changes on par with a supposed 2 W per square meter heating today from greenhouse gases (other than water vapor).
I think this is typical of the current silliness in climate research that one can assert without supporting evidence that solar output doesn't change significant on the scale of millennia while ignoring the only known solar fluctuation which correlates with significant climate variations of the time.
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There are certainly other solar irradiance fluctuations greater than that, of course. GP was only referring to the long-scale growth in solar output.
The sunspot cycle varies output by about 0.1%, and of course there are Milankovitch cycles (orbital variations) which also affect the solar irradiance we get (though not the star's output). The Maunder minimum appears to have been due to an anti-phase correlation between the sunspot cycle and heliospheric current
sheet inclination variations (interesting paper h [cc.oulu.fi]
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No, if you had paid better attention you would understand what you've been told is that the variations that have been observed in the Sun's output are not enough to account for the changes in climate we've been seeing lately. At most the Sun accounts for 1% or 2% of the change.
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When you talk about the Earth's temperature you need to look at the whole geosystem including the atmosphere, the oceans and the land surface. Since about 93% of the accumulating heat from global warming goes into the oceans and they have continued warming the Earth's temperature has continued to increase.
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93% of the accumulating heat from global warming goes into the oceans
There does not exist historical deep ocean temperature readings to prove this conjecture.
Re:Milestone my ass (Score:5, Informative)
The current warming period hasn't been going on long enough for the abyssal ocean to notice the warming much yet. But the top 3 meters (10 feet) of the oceans holds as much heat at the whole atmosphere and the average depth of the oceans is around 3,700 meters. The Argo floats have been measuring ocean temperatures down to 2,000 meters since the early 2000s. This chart of ocean heat content [wikipedia.org] shows the oceans down to 2,000 meters have accumulated nearly 10 x 10^22 joules of energy since about 2003. It takes about 5.95 x 10^21 joules to raise the temperature of the atmosphere 1 degree Celsius. [scholarsandrogues.com] 10 x 10^22/5.95 x 10^21 = 16.81. So if the heat that's accumulated in the top 2,000 meters of the oceans since the early 2000's was all in the atmosphere instead the temperature of the atmosphere would have risen about 16.81 degrees Celsius.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/worlds-fish-have-been-moving-to-cooler-waters-for-decades-study-finds/2013/05/15/730292e8-bcd7-11e2-9b09-1638acc3942e_story.html
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/may/08/warm-water-species-speading-northwards
Re:Meh (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So when will this actually happen? (Score:5, Informative)
I think you are confusion sensationalist media reports with the actual science. As far as the science is concerned, we're on the same track we've been on for 20 years..
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Sensationalist media reports are not actual science, unless they're about climate.
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Many of those things that the poster stated came from scientists, not the media until they picked it up. Much like that poster, I also remember "all the rainforests will be gone by 2000," "Canada will be a desert because we're cutting down all the trees." And if I go get my grade school notes from the 1980's I can find more. Including the source of them. Usually out of some scientific journal.
Re:So when will this actually happen? (Score:5, Informative)
Who moderated this fucking idiot up? Other idiots?
Ozone is still here, because of Montreal Protocol. Read up about it!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M... [wikipedia.org]
You know why we no longer have Acid Rain? Cap and trade. Read up about it!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... [wikipedia.org]
It does not take a few years to cause noticeable change in Global Warming. It takes centuries. Maybe your great-great-great-grandkids will intent a timemachine and shoot you for your own stupidity, because it will be them that will be affected. It will also be them that will not be able to do anything about it, except to invent a time machine.
Nothing resolved itself. People took action, and you fucking idiot don't even bother to figure out that someone else saved your sorry ass.
Re:So when will this actually happen? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nothing resolved itself. People took action, and you fucking idiot don't even bother to figure out that someone else saved your sorry ass.
Just like Y2K, It's the same shit over and over again: society expends resources to head off disaster, because of said expenditures disaster is averted, fucking morons baffled because disaster that everyone was talking about didn't happen.
Fucking morons believe disaster scenario was made up to expend resources.
REALITY FUCKING BAFFLING TO MORONS! FILM AT 11
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"It does not take a few years to cause noticeable change in Global Warming. It takes centuries. Maybe your great-great-great-grandkids will intent a timemachine and shoot you for your own stupidity,"
Those idiots, if they just would have continued pumping up the CO2 levels we wouldn't have this ice age now.
Re:So when will this actually happen? (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the first predictions of running out of oil was made in 1914 by the Bureau of Mines. They thought the world would run out in 10 years. There have been similar predictions since then. Why haven't they come true? Because huge sums of money have been invested in making sure we don't run out or at least to put it off as long as possible. Billions and billions have been spent on locating more oil, and figuring out how to extract the relatively small amounts of oil that are in places we already know about. Think about some the crazy stuff we do to get oil out of the ground even in the middle of the ocean.
One of the consequences has been that the price of oil has gone up over time. It's slumped back down for now, just like it did in the 90's but it rose after that and you can bet it will again. If in the early 90's you had told somebody that gas would cost almost $4.00 a gallon in a decade, they would have thought armageddon was coming.
In both the case of the ozone layer and oil supplies, the dire predictions didn't happen in large part because we did what was necessary to keep them from happening. Same thing with Y2K. A ton of money was spent updating computers and software.
And we could avoid the problems being predicted as consequences of global warming if we take action and be willing to spend some money. But for some reason, we'd rather just argue about it whether it's really a problem or not and in the meantime the solutions just get more expensive and likelihood of widespread consequences increase.
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Re:So when will this actually happen? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:So when will this actually happen? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's just because the world is not dominated by engineers/scientists anymore. History has shown that if you sit down and try to constructively solve a problem rather than argue about it, you can achieve some pretty incredible things. But the world has never been dominated by problem solvers. It is generally dominated by bullies who realise it is easier to steal someone else's lunch than figure out how to make more sandwiches. The world wars showed the folly of this sort of destructive, zero-sums thinking, and for a while after people worked on solving problems and creating new stuff. Now we are just quickly heading back to our old (and normal) ways.
This is why companies like Tesla are so interesting. I really hope that Musk can prove that a market led solution can bring about positive technological change. If he fails then it pretty much means we should all go re-train as lawyers. It isn't anywhere near as hard as you might think, you just have to lose hope in humanity first.
Re:So when will this actually happen? (Score:4, Insightful)
It gets harder and harder to take these claims from environmentalists, scientists and politicians seriously, when they're so wrong again and again and again.
Someday, you'll realize that everything said by a politician, and most things said by a journalist, are misleading exaggerated gibberish. Try talking to someone with a science degree about your science-related concerns.
Re:So when will this actually happen? (Score:4, Informative)
So when will all of this destruction and devastation actually happen?
The next prediction was that the ozone layer would be almost completely depleted by 2002. It didn't happen.
Then we were told global warming would spiral out of control by 2011. It didn't happen.
Apart from the fact that you "distinct memory" seem to be highly selective and not quite reliable, this seems to be a very weird example. Yes, we were destroying the Ozone layer with (primarily) CFCs. Scientists were warning that things would get worse if nothing was done about it. But for once, the world did something. In 1987, the Montreal Protocol [wikipedia.org] banned most releases of CFCs worldwide. And about now we can see the Ozone hole slowly recovering. This is not a failed prediction, it's an example of regulation working and predictions coming true.
Re:So when will this actually happen? (Score:4, Insightful)
And the big one, population growth. But another big one is also this:
An environmentalist who had travelled the world to find a job in carbon trading, explained to me that, "it doesn't matter if CO2 isn't really a problem, because by cutting CO2 you force a reduction in production and consumption; it is about reducing GREED."
As far as I know she wasn't religious, but it seems the West has inherited a monotheistic dogma about man being full of original sin, and sometimes it shows up in environmentalism.
Humans are creative intelligent creatures full of potential for empathy and freedom. But rather than champion our better qualities, some think we should persecute starving Africans for being born.
Re:So when will this actually happen? (Score:5, Interesting)
>I distinctly recall hearing about how major cities along the U.S. eastern seaboard would be under water "within a decade" back in the mid 1970s. It didn't happen.
That's good to know because, right now, parts of Miami are flooding at high tide and larger areas flood during king tides. There are huge projects going on all along the coastal areas of southern Florida to raise sewer lines and lift stations so toilets will continue flushing. We are spending tens of millions to try and protect the well casings that supply freshwater to Miami.
There are trails in Palm Beach we grew up rollerblading when we were kids that flood twice a day now; the storm drains start flowing backwards. Then there are the underwater boat docks and places where the waves lap over the tide wall.
That doesn't even touch beach erosion. It's funny as hell to watch cities pump sand back up on the beach.
The next big hurricane that comes in from the wrong direction and you're going to see boats washed up on I-95. Miami's going to be dead long before the waters claim it for the last time but the water is coming and there's nothing we can do to stop it.
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So when will all of this destruction and devastation actually happen?
I distinctly recall hearing about how major cities along the U.S. eastern seaboard would be under water "within a decade" back in the mid 1970s. It didn't happen.
Then we were supposed to be completely out of oil by 1990. It didn't happen.
The next prediction was that the ozone layer would be almost completely depleted by 2002. It didn't happen.
Then we were told global warming would spiral out of control by 2011. It didn't happen.
It gets harder and harder to take these claims from environmentalists, scientists and politicians seriously, when they're so wrong again and again and again.
It's not even a case of efforts to mitigate the problems actually having any effect.
Most of the time these efforts haven't even started by the time the problem has either resolved itself, or been shown to have been a load of bullshit in the first place.
When a scientist says "if the current trend continues, X will happen", media reports it as "X will happen".
What they don't report - and what people like you seem unable to understand - is that the current trend DIDN'T continue because people, governments, nations, actually DID something about it.
So the ozone layer is still here (slowly recovering) because we stopped spewing CFCs into the atmosphere. We MADE SURE the trend didn't continue.
We still have oil because we go to silly lengths and spend ridiculous
Re: Meh (Score:5, Insightful)
Led lights, fuel efficient cars. We have choices to help fix things. But you fuckers get bent out of shape just trying to get you to use a different light bulb.
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Yes, an arbitrary number but humans tend to take note of round numbers more than others. While it's likely that the number will dip slightly below 400 ppm this coming (Northern Hemisphere) autumn and maybe in the autumn of 2016 after that no one currently alive will ever see the CO2 level drop below 400 ppm again.
Re:Meh (Score:5, Informative)
This was predictable based upon the Keeling curve, which has a seasonal oscillation based upon northern hemisphere plant growth. http://www.climatecentral.org/... [climatecentral.org] About two years ago, the peaks of the CO2 concentration measured at Mauna Kea exceeded 400 ppm. Now the average is 400ppm, and in about two years, the trough of the CO2 concentration will exceed 400ppm.
The way things are going that'll be the last point we see 400ppm until the next extinction event.
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We shouldnt be measuring levels on Mauna Kea
It might upset the natives and their gods
Re:Meh (Score:4, Informative)
CO2 levels below 400 ppm is relatively close to the level at which plants can not survive.
CO2 has been in the 200-275 ppm range for the last million years, and plants did fine.
Re:Meh (Score:4, Informative)
According to ice core samples [nasa.gov] going back 400 thousand years, the historical maximum was 300ppm until 1950.
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Meh
Just another arbitrary number
Funny, that's the exact same thing your mom said.
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It doesn't absorb more from the Sun, it just traps more of the long wave IR that would radiate back to space. And ... "adsorb"?
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Re:Meh (Score:4, Informative)
Your post has some basis in scientific facts, but misrepresents their implications.
The CO2 peak is a fairly narrow range of infrared, but it's right at the wavelength that the Earth emits most strongly. To say that it's unimportant is like a traffic reporter saying that 99% of the roads in a city are wide open, only the main freeway is gridlocked, so no big deal. What matters is the fraction of total outgoing energy that CO2 prevents from escaping, which is roughly 20%. Keeping in mind that zero blockage would correspond to a global temperature of -18 C / 0 F, and 50% restriction would give a temperature of +30 C / 86 F -- 20% is a big deal. Just going from 20% to 25%, which is what we're looking at, is also a pretty big temperature shift.
Water vapor is a major greenhouse gas, but human emissions of it do not change the amount of it in the atmosphere for three reasons. First, the tight feedback you mentioned (the Clausius-Claperyon relation) means that any extra water added immediately falls out as extra rainfall. Second, human emissions of water vapor via combustion amount to 2 gigatons per year, or a global layer or liquid water 4 microns thick -- utterly insignificant next to the natural evaporation and rainfall of about 1 meter per year. Third, you mentioned increase in paved surfaces that would "catch rainwater", but precisely the opposite happens: water drains quickly off pavement and into rivers and sewers, while natural soils remain moist for longer.
That's not to say that water vapor's role as a greenhouse gas is unimportant: if temperature rises for any reason (including from CO2 greenhouse effect), the Clausius-Claperyon relation allows more water vapor to enter the atmosphere, amplifying the warming.
The upshot: water vapor is a major greenhouse gas, but that doesn't call the role of CO2 into question: instead it amplifies the importance of CO2.
http://climatemodels.uchicago.... [uchicago.edu]
http://www.skepticalscience.co... [skepticalscience.com]
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I think what we need to do is genetically engineer some kind of "plant" that can breathe carbon dioxide. Perhaps this "plant" could extract the oxygen component which would solve our problem with increased CO2.
It could then "adsorb" the excess CO2 and make the world a cleaner place.
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Perhaps this "plant" could extract the oxygen component which would solve our problem with increased CO2.
The CO2 problem is too big to be solved by plants, especially since the viable space would be competing for bigger economic interests.
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Re:Meh (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but the people deciding today will be long dead by then.
Re:Meh (Score:5, Interesting)
That's only true if you define historic average to include billions of years when we were NOT here (making your second sentence erm... dumb).
We were evolved for a temperate climate, we did not evolve in the carboniferous age, we almost certainly could not have survived then - we have no guarantee we can survive in any climate other than the one we evolved in - and this is far above the average for ANY period in that age.
We merely need to look at the recorded history of much SMALLER climate events in our history to see how badly adapted we are to significant changes in global climate. Krakatoa went off in 1883 - not that long ago and technologically VERY recent. 1884 was Europe's year without a summer - just one year where a major event disrupted the normal climate pattern hugely (dust from the volcano blocked the sun out over Europe).
Go look up the death toll of that... there previous thing to get anywhere close to that many dead bodies in Europe was the black death, more people died from that double-winter than from the Spanish Flu in 1918 and World War 1 combined.
Many killed by the cold itself, many more starved because of the resulting crop failures.
And that was relatively tiny, it only really affected one continent - and only for one year (on the upside: it directly led to the writing of Frankenstein).
Now imagine something like that, on a global scale, lasting decades or centuries... you talk of historic averages but you carefully leave out context. Massive climate changes like that have, historically, been responsible for the largest mass extinctions in the history of our planet. Indeed, far more dinosaurs were made extinct by the nuclear winter CAUSED by the asteroid than were killed by the asteroid impact itself. And COLD is a LOT easier to deal with than hot.
The largest extinction event that ever happened, the Cambrian mass extinction killed 96% of all living organisms at the time - and the most likely cause of it was significant climate change caused by living organisms altering the atmosphere.
In context your trite dismissal is not as convincing as you thought now is it. Also - there is no need for US to die for a climate event to make us extinct, technology could help us cope with a climate change perhaps... but it may not save us, because we are not an independent species, our survival depends on the eco-systems we are a part off, which is made up of ALL the other species alive today. None of which has technology... take too many of them out, and we'll go too. Technology can't provide us with food when none of our crops can grow anymore. It can't protect us when mosquitos grow 1m wingspans (which they have done before and could again in the right climate conditions).
But go ahead, fuck with something you don't understand for a bit of convenience. Since YOU don't understand it you get to dismiss the people who DO understand it without evidence and carry on regardless right ?
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190 per F4240.
Much better number than 110010000 per 11110100001001000000
Still not as good as 7uj per 68GP though (base58)
Re:"The Polar Bears will be fine" (Score:5, Insightful)
Dyson agrees that anthropogenic global warming exists, and has written that "[one] of the main causes of warming is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere resulting from our burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal and natural gas."[53] However, he believes that existing simulation models of climate fail to account for some important factors, and hence the results will contain too much error to reliably predict future trends: ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... [wikipedia.org]
Freeman Dyson also doesn't understand gravity (no one does). But that doesn't mean some vague claims can't be made about the two -- "heavy objects hurt when they fall on your foot" isn't a rigorous scientific statement, but it is true, as is his (vague) quote above.
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And how does energy independence and decentralized electricity generation (= greater individual freedom) move us closer to a totalitarian state?
Yawn. Yeah its all a big conspiracy. And for some reason they didn't stop when they found out that TERRORISM works so much better for their goals of New World Order. Nobody keeps you from bringing not really large amounts of liquids on board a plane by saying AGW. Nobody taps your phone by because of AGW. They don't even make you use lamps that use one tenth the energy because of AGW - they do because it fucking makes sense.
Re:"The Polar Bears will be fine" (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with focusing on the fringe like this is that the fringe rapidly becomes a straw man argument for environmentalists. If you actually go to the Greenpeace web site and read their policies they don't suggest any of the stuff you mention, but every debate on Slashdot about environmental issues claims that they do.
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Don't reckon listening to Greenpeace is high on the list, thanks.
Ferret
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THERE IS NOT IMMEDIATE THREAT
It's like smoking. There's no immediate threat, but if you continue to smoke, there may be a point 30 years in the future where you'll face an immediate threat of dying from lung cancer. At that point, it will be too late to undo the damage. Of course, as you point out, that doesnt mean that science (yes, the real one, not the anti tabacco religion) wont solve these problems all by itself over the next 20-30 years.
Re:"The Polar Bears will be fine" (Score:4, Interesting)
As a general rule, if Freeman Dyson doesn't understand something, you don't, either.
Freeman Dyson is not a climatologist, and should not be expected to understand it. He also has a strong contrarian streak, and will oppose almost any viewpoint that he perceives as a consensus. He is not a denier, he is a skeptic. But he is a skeptic of pretty much everything.
Re:"The Polar Bears will be fine" (Score:4, Insightful)
Freeman Dyson
"Generally speaking, I'm much more of a conformist, but it happens I have strong views about climate because I think the majority is badly wrong, and you have to make sure if the majority is saying something that they're not talking nonsense." - Freeman Dyson (who is smarter and more educated about damn near anything, than any of you fools).
"What I’m convinced of is that we don’t understand climate." - Freeman Dyson
As a general rule, if Freeman Dyson doesn't understand something, you don't, either.
Oh don't go there.
Dyson is a good guy, and if you point that out, these people are going to organize campaigns to shun him, have what he says banned, make it impossible for him to get work, and likely organize protests at his home.
It's the way tolerance works in the 21st century. Any resemblance to 20th century fascism is purely coincidental.
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He's 91 years old. I /really/ hope he doesn't still have to work a day job to put food on his family's plate.
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There's a very good reason for that: periodic internal purges are an essential component of the belief system [mises.org].
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You will probably be modded down for pointing that out, the same way I was.
Welcome to the future.
Re:"The Polar Bears will be fine" (Score:4, Insightful)
Linus Pauling was very smart and a good man. He has Nobel prizes in Chemistry and Peace to prove it. As a general rule, if Linus Pauling didn't understand something, you don't, either. Yet, toward the end of his life, he had some odd ideas regarding megadoses of vitamin C that haven't ever been proven in clinical studies. The point is that a great scientist can, at times, be wrong about things--especially when they are outside his field of specialization. The big difference between Linus Pauling and Freeman Dyson is that Linus Pauling's ideas regarding vitamin C were mostly harmless, while Freeman Dyson's claims on climate change can be quite catastrophic if we take them seriously.
Re:"The Polar Bears will be fine" (Score:5, Informative)
Don't be so damn deceitful. His quote in Context:
"In a 2014 interview, he said that "What I’m convinced of is that we don’t understand climate ... It will take a lot of very hard work before that question is settled.""
Hard work involves more studies, and more money.
Dyson, like Muller, believes that the Science isn't settled; it very rarely is. Also, like Muller, Dyson believes that there is Global Warming going on, and (that)
""global warming" (is/)as synonymous with global anthropogenic climate change..."
It's Real, and we Dunnit.
His somewhat pessimistic view is that there is no longer anything that we can do about it, except study it, and prepare for the worst, and put more effort into things that we can do something about.
Now before I get crucified, I should like to point out that if you liquified the Atmosphere, it would only be some 30 meters thick, and you could see through it.
The biggest, and least understood, part of modeling Climate Change is the World's Oceans; which are somewhat deeper than 30 meters, and if I remember correctly, is some 40000 times more massive than the Atmosphere.
The Oceans _are_ getting warmer, and because of dissolved CO2, are more acidic. (This may actually be a form of long-term Climate regulating cycles, but it is happening too damn quick.)
Re:One wonders (Score:5, Funny)
So you're in agreement that it's anthropogenic.
Re: (Score:2)
One wonders if the leftists are breathing on the sensors
If anyone were really wondering, they'd take your own CO2 measurements. Go to a remote area, sample some air in a few bottles, send them to different labs for analysis, and publish the results.
The fact that nobody has done this shows that either a) nobody is really wondering but they just wanted to create some FUD, or b) the results agreed with NOAA's.
Re: (Score:3)
The USA = about 3% of the Earth's surface.
Re:The Jurassic DGW, Dinosaurogenic Global Warming (Score:5, Insightful)
The Jurassic period. O2 in atmosphere was 130% modern levels. CO2 was at 1950ppm, 5-7 times modern levels. The temperature was a whole 3 DEGREES C over modern times!
So, you're basically chiming in here to agree with the global climate models. There was more carbon dioxide in the paleozoic, and the climate was warmer. Yep. The climate was warmer, and the dinosaurs lived with it Of course, the planet didn't have any ice caps then, and a lot of what we call "farmland" they called "shallow ocean".
We probably won't get the dinosaurs back, though.
climate sensitivity estimate-good news (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually that's some nice numbers, roughly 2.5 doublings of CO2 content, and a 3 degree C temperature rise, give about 1.2 deg C per doubling, in line with the 1.0 deg C per doubling you'd actually expect from CO2's measured properties, and a far cry from the IPCC publicised figures of 2-4.5 generated from GCMs of dubious accuracy.
So what does this tell us? The feedbacks are NOT strong, and not very positive.
So, with a climate sensitivity of 1.2 we can look forward to a slightly warmer climate for the next
Re: (Score:2)
but we can see from the last 20 years that a massive increase in CO2 does not bring with it an equivalent increase in temperature
That's because it takes the temperature some time to catch up. There's a lot of water in the oceans.
Re: (Score:3)
You can't ignore the that's accumulating in the oceans. As I calculated above [slashdot.org] if all of the heat the oceans have accumulated since the Argo floats went online in the early 2000s had gone into the atmosphere only it would have meant over 16 degrees Celsius rise in atmospheric temperatures.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Bit to belabor the obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, I'm 100% sure that they just walked up there, plopped it down, and it didn't even *occur* to anyone at NOAA to consider the volcano thing.
Jesus fucking fuck, what the hell IS it with you people on slashdot who think that the first "insight" you have five seconds after thinking of something for the first time in your life hasn't occurred to people who do it for a living? Here's a hint: If you were *that* smart you wouldn't be talking shit on Slashdot.
Re:Bit to belabor the obvious (Score:5, Informative)
And here's the explanation:
Isolated in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and at over 11,000 feet above sea level, the upper north face of Mauna Loa volcano is an ideal location to make measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide that reflect global trends, not local influences such as factories or forests that might boost or drop carbon dioxide within their vicinity. The CO2 sensors at Mauna Loa are positioned such that they sample an incoming breeze direct from the ocean, unaffected by human activities, vegetation or other factors on the island. (The Mauna Loa Observatory is high enough that the incoming breeze rides above the thermal inversion layer.)
Volcanoes are considerable sources of carbon dioxide themselves. However, the sampling location was chosen to be normally upwind of Mauna Loa's vent, and Keeling perfected methods for detecting and correcting intervals when the wind blew the wrong way.
Measurements at about 100 other sites have confirmed the long-term trend shown by the Keeling Curve, although no sites have a record as long as Mauna Loa.
Source: http://www.climatecentral.org/gallery/graphics/keeling_curve [climatecentral.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Doesn't matter.
All climate data is corrected.
Multiple times.
Re: (Score:3)
Doesn't matter.
All climate data is corrected.
Multiple times.
Yeah, I have seen the men that make it seem like plants are blooming earlier than some years ago myself, spraying lots of pollen in the air. Not to mention preventing the plants from spitting them out when they actually would. The allergics are easily fooled, but not us two!
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Re:Bit to belabor the obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
More importantly, it's a sampling site in the middle of the ocean, far away from human influences. When the wind is coming from the ocean, it is very clean. When the wind is coming from the direction of an active volcanic vent, they throw out the data.
Of course, anybody who's in doubt could take a sample of air at a location of their own choice, and send it to a lab for CO2 analysis.
Re: (Score:2)
Did I also mention it's an island chain that gets most of it's power from burning oil ? 72% 14% coal and 4% garbage
Be willing to bet that 4% garbage yields truly funky data points.
http://www.hawaiianelectric.co... [hawaiianelectric.com]
Re: (Score:3)
You would be willing to bet that a bunch of experts who have been doing this for 50 years missed things that you find obvious ?
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/c... [noaa.gov]
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You are willing to bet your life this is actually a good representation ?
Re: (Score:3)
Depends. What do I get when I win ? And who will be the referee ?
Re:Bit to belabor the obvious (Score:5, Informative)
Who in their right mind situates an atmospheric sampling site in the middle of a chain of active volcanoes ?
The Mauna Loa CO2 series is often cited because it is the longest continuous record of CO2 in the atmosphere (since 1958). The occasional times that local CO2 from the volcano affects the measurement is obvious and they exclude those measurements from the record. But since then CO2 is also being measured at dozens of other locations around the globe and they all show relatively the same thing as Mauna Loa.
Re:Bull. Shit. (Score:5, Interesting)
When it comes to climate science, there are only have two types of studies: Those with an obvious agenda, and those that show that we're cooking the earth.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Informative)
Wow, so /. is going to post monthly updates to CO2 but not monthly updates on the 18 years and 5 months of flat temperatures? The latter is news worthy, CO2 concentrations if you've been watching it, are jumping up and down as if life is consuming it. Like it was food for something which isnt human...
Meanwhile someone discovers a link between Sun pollution, magnatism, heat transfer between planets and the 'void' which may explain away "Dark Energy" as simply being sun pollution. Unspent electrons. Energy for star ships.
Yet /. is more focused on cutting off it's nose to spite its face?
What kind of future does /. want to see? One where we're all accountable for creating food to feed plants and be chastised for it based upon "green" ideology? "Green" ideology which says food for plants is making the planet hotter because CO2 is a "greenhouse gas"? *ALL GASES IN THE ATMOSPHERE ARE GREENHOUSE GASES * because they all absorb some energy vs not having an atmosphere at all!
Oh gosh, where does on start.
I guess I'll take a simple approach.
Svante Arrhenius showed in 1896 that CO2 absorbs much more infrared radiation than Nitrogen or Oxygen, which is nice because it keeps our planet from being an ice ball. CO2 levels then were around 300 ppm.
CO2 levels today are about 400ppm, that is the highest they have been in 800,000 years. And no, CO2 levels weren't this high 800,000 years ago. That is just how far back we can go with ice cores.
Human activity, mostly burning fossil fuels, is pumping 36 gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year.
If you don't buy human-caused climate change, explain to me which one of those facts you disagree with. Or explain to me how you interpret them.
Reference: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/c... [noaa.gov]
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Informative)
Congrats to Svante, and obviously smart man for his discoveries, now, that about 125 years ago.
I think science has progressed since then, or it did until climate science came along and it started regressing.. but I digress.
We put 36 gigatons of CO2... ok, so? Half of that is scrubed. The half life of the rest is MUCH shorter than 1980s and 90s chicken littles where predicting with their crystal balls. And the effects of CO2 in the atmosphere are logarithmic, most of the IR rays being trapped are already being trapped... the extra does have an effect, but its almost nothing compared to the first 30-50ppms.
Latest sensitivity for doubling of CO2 is in the range of 1 to 1.2c. The fact that many alarmists still cling to their untenable bullshit claims of 3-4 or even 5C is irrelevant. Real science adjusts itself. Climate science desperately tries to make models, data and fake research fit with their pre-determined notion of WHAT climate should be doing.
None of the facts that you stated above mean CO2 is the main driver of the increase in temperatures we have observed, the palsy .85c over the last 100-125 years.
None of the facts above demonstrated that 1-2c average increase would be bad.
None of those demonstrate that there currenly is observed catastrophe happening.
I could go on. But as usual you will find a way to try to destroy my character, point to propaganda at SKS.
Tell me I'm an idiot because I state stuff that are in blogs.
Go ahead. The blogs report what scientists are researching. Not what the IPCC and their handlers cherry pick to show.
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, so /. is going to post monthly updates to CO2 but not monthly updates on the 18 years and 5 months of flat temperatures?
Check for yourself. The temperatures for the last 18 years are still around the same rising trend line as before.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/g... [woodfortrees.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Warming is obviously a lot more complex than CO2 levels, because warming has continued to basically flatline as it has for decades now.
You can only say that if you only look at the atmosphere and cherry pick the extremely hot year of 1998 (that was 2 sigmas above the temperature curve). As I calculated above [slashdot.org] if all of the heat that accumulated in the oceans between 2003 and 2012 were in the atmosphere instead we would have had over 16 degrees Celsius of temperature rise.
Not only that but if you do a statistical analysis of surface temperatures it's not possible to even show there's even been a slowdown in temperature rise. Tamino, a stat
Re: (Score:2)
For a couple hundred bucks you can get your own meter [google.com] and start measuring it yourself. You won't get exactly the same numbers as they get at Mauna Loa but if you keep a record of it over a period of time you will see the same amount of rise as they get.