What data gathered over the next decade would cause you to conclude that humankind's effect on the climate is not a cause for alarm/ doesn't warrant drastic measures in terms of curbing CO2 emissions/is irrelevant when compared with "natural causes" etc.

What are some key markers that will bear out the theory/hypothesis you support regarding AGW or AGCC?

I would like to see some time capsule predictions that we can all review in 10 years.  

My boyhood idol, Carl Sagan, cited "nuclear winter" science and claimed that if the Kuwaiti oil fields were set ablaze, the world's climate would be characterized by a "year without a summer" with devastating effects. He and the rest of the "nuclear winter" folks were wrong. Now the very same people call me a "denier" when I question there theory/hypothesis regarding AGW/AGCC?

* I use theory/hypothesis to avoid the navel gazing argument regarding the proper use of the terms. Pick the on that pleases you and I will stipulate that you are correct.

My boyhood idol, Carl Sagan, cited "nuclear winter" science and claimed that if the Kuwaiti oil fields were set ablaze, the world's climate would be characterized by a "year without a summer" with devastating effects. He and the rest of the "nuclear winter" folks were wrong. Now the very same people call me a "denier" when I question there theory/hypothesis regarding AGW/AGCC?

We are to compare the environmental effects of a number of localized oil fires in a desert region with the routine daily burning of 85 million barrels of oil across the globe, day in, day out?

http://www.dailykos.com/User/Cassiodorus

I think it means:

not even any plug-in hybrids, only electric vehicles powered from wind/solar/geothermal

A strict ban on any forest destruction, and massive replanting/soil reconstruction

No artificial fertilizers, as that means using natural gas, and maybe no pesticides, since that takes petroleum

No biofuels at all? Burning them emits carbon.

No hydropower in tropic areas that lead to methane release

No pools of cow and pig shit releasing ghg's

obviously, no coal, period. Storage, porridge, all energy has to be from electricity, and no electrical generation can emit carbon.

no big trucks, long-haul all from electric trains

all off-road vehicles have to be electric

A massive -- and I mean massive -- production of solar ovens and other measures to eliminate the need of most of the world's population to use biomass for heating and cooking

did I miss anything?

Oil is not the problem. The culprit is coal. Anyway, we're going to burn through all of the petroleum, period. And it's my guess that we're going to burn through all of the coal. The IPCC, by the way, overestimates the amount of CO2 emissions due to oil and coal combustion, but that's not much consolation.

...but people need to understand what no carbon emissions mean.  I forgot a couple:

no natural gas for heating, have to use geoexchange heat pumps, solar heating, etc.

no natural gas for industrial heating  -- I guess large-scale electrical heating could replace it (from renewable sources, i suppose this would take large-scale storage).

Without a switch to organic agriculture AND elimination of as much human caused GHG as possible and as much land returned to natural carbon sink as possible, it won't be stopped.

But with all these steps all around the globe, it could even be reversed.  How much time do we have?

If it happened over 20 years with half in 10 years, that would do it.  Waiting any longer is crazy.  Those positive feedbacks like methane hydrate ice melt and exponential glacial and ice cap melting, that darkens the earth, absorbing more solar heat, are waiting to take off.

We have a mass delusion going around that fuel farming, clean coal, flex fuel gas guzzling, and nuclear power will be be positive steps.  They aren't, in fact they all increase gHG and delay real solutions.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Stop breathing
Stop eating

Stockypig

Just to be a devils advocate I will stipulate that 100 years ago the CO2 count was about 200ppm, and I will round way up to say that today it is about 400ppm, I will also pretend that the global temp has gone up one whole degree (please don't use these numbers to make a claim that we have doubled CO2 levels, or that the temp as gone up by that much - this is just to make the point that will be in the next paragraph).


Ok, to start with experiments conducted to prove that CO2 is a Green House Gas have traditionally gone something like this: You take a container with 100% CO2 in it and the same size container with air in it, put them side by side, aim a light/heat source at them and see what happens.  The result is fairly consistent: The CO2 container gets 20% warmer than the air.
So, lets do some math (sorry but when you have numbers, math is just natural): 200 ppm difference in CO2, 1 degree of temp, 20% impact; so, thats 200/1,000,000 or 0.00002 * .20 * 1, or 0.0000040 = 40 millionths of that 1 degree being accounted for by the CO2 increase.


With wind causing convection effects (and/or using the more real numbers of less than .5 degrees and 150 ppm difference), the real number is even lower; but, the point is clear.

Scientific progress requires decent. Totalitarianism requires its absence.

When I looked at the absorption spectra of O2 and CO2, guess what I found.

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They are almost the same.

That implies that they would have the same AGW/AGCC effect; except that, O2 is 21% of air, and CO2 is only 0.0003%.

So it's really all that main made O2 causing it?

Not to fear, it's really all the di-hydrogen-monoxide in the air (#1 AGW/AGCC gas); so, lets ban that.

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Just kidding: dy-hydrogen = H2, monoxide = O, H2O is water.  
It (water vapor) really is the #1 AGW/AGCC gas though.

Scientific progress requires decent. Totalitarianism requires its absence.

Every atmospheric chemist since Svante Arrhenius was wrong as Ed Number has just proven by looking at the absorption spectra for CO2 and O2!

Thank gawd for decent!

Ed Number your posts are embarrassing enough without  also screwing up your tag line.

I think you mean to say "dissent".

You're on your own with your math and chem problems.

Yep, multiple ID spammer.  Agreeing with his own posts.  How about a "descenting" (sp?) opinion now?  Come on dood, spam out some "fairness and balance" now?

But first, hold your breath.  Until this all makes sense.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

jabailo ... the story you cite is from, ahem, Fox 'News'???  

Dude, why even bother to read it?  That's like citing a press release from the Vatican regarding the merits of the birth control pill ...

No.

We are to compare the scientific consensus of 1991 that predicted Nuclear Winter with the scientific consensus of today regarding AGW and the looming effects. If the very same people were dead wrong in 1991 isn't it fair to be skeptical about their latest claims?

The data was indisputable. Every reputable scientist agreed. Deniers were impugned and ridiculed on 60 Minutes.

But my main point is to establish a criteria we can agree upon. In ten years, what would the data from the next decade have to look like for you to agree that AGW is not anything to worry about?

If your kids can't take care of an ant farm, don't buy them a pet elephant. You make an excellent point.

I saw an interesting article done by Texas A&M being published in a journal called Risk Assessment.  I didn't read it completely but the argument was that the more people are educated about Climate Change, the less they do about it.  This a something of a paradox because in theory, education should motivate people to do more about the situation.  Us wild and crazy Americans sure are something else.

After reading that article I came across all these nice goals that we just stop all CO2 emissions at once and thought "gee, dream on teenage queen."  It reminded me of a ozone dispersion model of Houston that showed if all ozone precursors were zero, no cars or industry, ozone would still occur.  

Telling the public things like this - that warming  and ozone will still happen even if all emissions were stopped - isn't very smart PR, is it?  

Onward through the fog

...this one's been jangling around my head for awhile: does God have a bad sense of humor, I mean, there couldn't be a worse place for global warming to have its first big impacts than in the arctic and antarctica, where practically nobody lives (and most people don't care about the Inuit, unfortunately).  If the first big impact had been, I don't know, at the Galleria in the San Fernando Valley, that would have made an impression.  But up in inaccessable glaciers? on the edges of deserts?  not fair, God, not fair!

Switching to a vegetarian or vegan diet strikes me as one of the simplest ways to fight global warming and yet it frequently seems to be left off of the green to-do list.  

that's where the bulk of the ghg's from meat-eating comes from.  Then there's switching agriculture to organic, soil-enhancing techniques.  Basically, livestock would have to be only pasture-fed, and then only if it didn't degrade the soil, as it does in so many parts of the world.  But certainly, you couldn't have factory farms, forests turned into feedlots or rangelands, etc., which would probably mean, at the least, a much smaller amount of meat per capita than currently, at least in the developed world.  Now tilapia and catfish, on the other hand...

Jon you bring up a good point, that we just don't see the effects of global warming in the US. That doesn't mean it's not happening, though. Any expert on coastal waters, wetland, and birds will tell you stories of immense changes on the coast that have been only accelerated by our continual development and pollution. Entire species of birds seem to have become rare or not recorded any longer. Invasive species are here and even a slight warming has caused them to flourish and expand northward.  

What is happening is truly horrific but no, it doesn't make for good PR either ... but I wish the word would get out that unless we do something, our coasts will be nothing but a barren wasteland, and no swimming either.  /sam

Onward through the fog

   Perhaps one of the reasons for all the deniers is that they can't stand (psychologically) to face the truth.  So, they cling to whatever falsehoods they can find.  See, it won't be so bad.

   You can see this whenever there is a crisis ("Don't worry, baby, we won't hit the iceberg, and if we do, everything will be okay, I'm sure!).

   One of the weaknesses of the American electoral system is that it tends candidates towards the center, towards feel good promises.  Most candidates in order to reach the highest office have had to mold themselves into whatever they think will comfort people.

   What is needed is not a comforter but a scourge.

patrick in Beijing

I didn't read it completely but the argument was that the more people are educated about Climate Change, the less they do about it.  This a something of a paradox because in theory, education should motivate people to do more about the situation.

I'd be interested in what the article had to say.  "Education" about climate change usually limits itself to depictions of the problem.  The solution, of course, is to burn less carbon; the problem is that privileged world-society (and to a much MUCH lesser extent that 40% of the human race that lives on less than $2 per day) is locked into CAPITALIST world-society.  To that privileged stratum of capitalist world-society, energy, specifically fossil-fuel energy, is power, economic and political power.  Its individual members compete for that power when they compete for good jobs, when they compete for power within those jobs, and so on.  

To consume less energy means, in practical terms, dropping out, and (ultimately) joining the 40% with no stake in the system.  But doing such a thing is the complete opposite of what most students desire when they sign up with educational systems to take courses of study.  People go to educational systems so that they may acquire privileges and power within the capitalist system.  Employers, conversely, hire people to well-paying jobs based upon their having received academic degrees.

The problem of abrupt climate change will NEVER be solved unless world-society can make some sort of commitment to getting off of the capitalist track.  Think that's impossible?  Kill yourselves NOW -- avoid the mass rush that will occur when your self-fulfilling prophesy becomes true, and capitalist "development" DOES destroy the Earth's ecosystems to breaking.

To the eco-capitalists: good luck with your alternative path of saying "pretty please" to the representatives of the rich and powerful.  In fact, if you believed your own words you wouldn't be wasting time talking with the likes of us.

The post continues:

After reading that article I came across all these nice goals that we just stop all CO2 emissions at once and thought "gee, dream on teenage queen."

Indeed, world-society will not stop all CO2 emissions at once; but this is because world-society is not organized collectively to do that, or to do anything but to compete for status, money, power.  The abrupt climate change literature is shot through with fatuous assumptions that the problem of collective organization will just solve itself.

http://www.dailykos.com/User/Cassiodorus

Telling the public things like this - that warming  and ozone will still happen even if all emissions were stopped - isn't very smart PR, is it?

The truth about climate change does indeed defy the task which PR sets for itself.  PR, of course, is what corporations buy to foster the public impression that "we are all powerful and you should like that."  Abrupt climate change, on the other hand, is a problem no for-profit corporation can solve.

http://www.dailykos.com/User/Cassiodorus

Joseph R - there are some apparent assumptions in the paper you cite which I'm unable to justify, and which have a critical bearing on the outcome, and thus on the policy recommendations arising.

First, there is an assumption that, for all we have a great deal more committed warming coming down the pike, plus at the least another three decades worth of intensifying climate destabilization, the various accelerating interactive feedback loops will (far from offsetting our GHG cuts) somehow cease their diverse outputs as we cut GHG emissions to zero.

Second, there is a parallel assumption that the various GHG sinks will be maintained during the period of our emissions reduction, despite the present indications of increasing instability in oceans' capacity, in soils' capacity and in forests' capacity.

Under these two assumptions, a third is supposedly justified, namely that airborne CO2eq ppmv and thus global temperature could be "stabilized" by cutting GHG outputs to zero by 2100.

I wonder if you're able to justify these three assumptions ?

In reality, I think we are lagging in the race to recover sufficient airborne GHGs and cut further emissions to the extent of lowering global temperature sufficiently to decelerate the feedback loops and stabilize the declining carbon sinks, before these phenomena develop to the point of global warming becoming self-fuelling.
(For reference, the DOC feedback [Dissolved Organic Carbon] from peat-bogs' global decay due to elevated CO2, was already active in 1960 with airborne CO2 at around 320ppmv).

That we can recover airborne GHGs in relevant quantities per year - via global reforestation, plus terra preta, plus short-rotation grazing - is not in question. Nor is there any real question over the potential scale of usable sustainable energy supplies if geothermal, forest biomass and offshore wave are included (though the feasible rate of their scaling up seems unlikely to power conventional measures of economic growth for a period).

So I wonder if you'd agree that the core of the problem is essentially ideological - that powerful national & corporate interests are unable to face relinquishing their centralized controls on energy supply in favour of its globally decentralized production ?
Meaning that only a globally equitable treaty could address the issue ?  
And that no amount of unilateral effort for sustainable energy, for energy efficiency and for carbon sequestration will make a significant difference until that Treaty of the Atmospheric Commons is in operation ?

Regards,

Billhook

"the scientific consensus of 1991 that predicted Nuclear Winter [...] The data was indisputable. Every reputable scientist agreed."

Source?