The Great Debate UK
from Environment Forum:
“The Harry Potter theory of climate”
Climate doesn't change by magic.
Just ask Mark Serreze, director of the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado. On a conference call with other scientists and reporters, Serreze and others linked climate change to the last two harsh winters over much of the United States and Europe. And they squarely blamed human-caused greenhouse gas emissions for the rise in world temperatures that got the process going.
"Climate doesn't change all by itself," Serreze said. "It's not like the Harry Potter theory of climate, where he flicks his magic wand and the climate suddenly changes. Climate only changes for a reason."
He crossed off other possible drivers for climate change one by one.
"Could it be that the Sun is shining more brightly than it was? No, that doesn't work. We've been monitoring energy coming from the Sun and apart from the 11-year sunspot cycle, there's not much happening.
"Is it that the warming is coming from the oceans -- the oceans are releasing heat into the atmosphere? ... Well, if that were the case, we'd have to observe that the oceans are cooling ... but oceans are not cooling, the oceans are warming like the atmosphere.
"We might be able to argue that it's something we don't understand, something like a cosmic ray flux modulated by the Sun ... That's pretty much of a cop-out, OK? Because you're not really making an explanation, you're making a supposition."
A freakonomic view of climate change
Ahead of a U.N. summit in Copenhagen next month, scepticism is growing that an agreement will be reached on a global climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, due to expire in 2012.
The protocol set targets aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which are believed to be responsible for the gradual rise in the Earth’s average temperature. Many scientists say that reducing carbon dioxide emissions is key to preventing climate change.
But authors Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner argue in their new book SuperFreakonomics that humanity can take an alternative route to try and save the planet.
“If the goal is to stop warming then geo-engineering solutions are worth considering because they are far cheaper, probably much more do-able and easily reversible,” Dubner told Reuters before a talk at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in London.
Analogy: a smoker is found to have an early lung cancer.It is pointless to debated whether he should either (a) stop smoking or (b) have the cancer excised.He must do both. We must Both decarbonise our economy (which will itself deliver a much wanted boost to the world economy by creating jobs in energy conservation and renewables)and sequester the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.It’s a bit like walking along and chewing gum at the same time. Some cannot do this, but most, with a little application, find that they can.
from The Great Debate:
U.S. environmental agency walks a tightrope on CO2
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)'s proposed findings on greenhouse gas emissions were a carefully worded attempt to appease climate-change activists while containing hostility from business and energy organizations or Congress.
The "endangerment" and "contribute" findings, that greenhouse gases posed a danger to human health, were designed to provide clear signs of progress on a signature issue for the administration while preserving maximum flexibility.
The Obama administration is struggling to reconcile high hopes of ambitious action with the need to formulate a policy that can be sold to the Democratic Party's working-class base in the industrial Midwest and coal-producing states of Appalachia.
Of the man made CO2 about 14% to 32% is from transportation depending on whose numbers you want to use. No one really knows how much is man made verses nature made much less how much from what industry. Please keep in mind the following: “Consumption of vegetation by animals & microbes accounts for about 220 gigatonnes of CO2 per year. Respiration by vegetation emits around 220 Gt. The ocean releases about 330 Gt. In contrast, human emissions are only around 26.4 Gt per year.” So, transportation is responsible for about 3.7 to 8.4 Gt per year. The only way to make this be more than a drop in the bucket is if we completely shift from an oil based transportation industry to a total electric transportation industry. And, the problem with that is no one in Congress is looking at this kind of scenario. There are ways to do this. Here is a 1996 Discover article on a flywheel engine.
http://www.mega.nu:8080/ampp/bitterly.ht ml
But, the US auto industry and Congress has been controlled by big oil for so long the idea of such devices is avoided like the plague.
If you were to couple affordable LED lighting for home and industry and advances in both portable solar energy and vehicle energy recovery, the increase to the power grids would be minimized while providing the populace with very affordable transportation and a reduction in the CO2 output.
Of course with the increase in volcanism over the last 100 years this drop in CO2 is not significant. But we do not have to tell anybody that fact. I am all for cleaning up our pollution. I wish we would pay as much attention to water and land pollution as we do CO2. We pollute our land and water with so many hideous substances that nature cannot handle like it can handle CO2. I hope we don’t lose sight of these ecologically devastating substances just because it has become popular to jump on the global warming bandwagon. There are more dangers than just global warming and I am not sure I buy all the doom and gloom spread by the Global Warming industries.
from The Great Debate:
Obama mulls cap-and-trade by decree
-- John Kemp is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own --
Senior U.S. administration officials have indicated that if Congress does not pass comprehensive legislation providing for a cap-and-trade system to regulate greenhouse gas emissions they will press ahead unilaterally with proposals using the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)'s existing authority under the Clean Air Act.
This is an attempt to gain political leverage after deep divisions within the Democratic Party appeared when 26 Democratic senators rebelled earlier this month and voted for an amendment to the budget resolution barring cap-and-trade being considered as part of the budget.
The Financial Times reported White House budget director Peter Orszag admitting attempts to push a cap-and-trade scheme through Congress using the expedited budget reconciliation process had failed.
But Orszag insisted cap-and-trade is "nowhere near dead." Officials have been briefing lobby groups the administration will ratchet up the pressure by declaring it already has authority to regulate emissions through the Clean Air Act and the EPA, with an announcement coming as early as this week.
"MASSACHUSETTS VERSUS EPA"
The administration appears to be relying on a 2007 Supreme Court decision ("Massachusetts versus Environmental Protection Agency") that overruled objections from the Bush administration and the EPA to regulating greenhouse gas emissions. See PDF here.
Washington Post carries an editorial arguing along similar lines:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con tent/article/2009/04/16/AR2009041603947. html
The Harry Potter theory of global warming might be said to be the whole explanation behind the alarmist position on climate change: “The temperature has gotten 1.4 degrees F warmer in the last century, and we can’t find another explanation, so it must be CO2.”
This is clearly a good reason to shut down the over 50% of the globe’s electrical generating capacity that runs on coal. If a few hundred million people die from lack of clean water, heating and cooling, water pumps, and so on, their contributions to CO2 will help also.
Of course, the plan isn’t really to shut them down. The plan is to tax and regulate production of CO2 and use the money for social engineering, redistribution to third world countries, etc.