0
mikkey

Handbook for AGW sceptics

Recommended Posts

Quote

Quote

It doesn't show that CO2 causes an increase in the amount of heat in a system, it shows how CO2 acts to retain heat put in a system from an external source.



Then why did you say
Quote

3) does a system increase in temperature if you increase its capacity to retain heat?



Care to make up your mind what you're arguing?

Quote

CO2 does not cause heat.



No shit.



All you are doing is showing all of us that you do not know anything about the subject you are writing about. I guess I'm embarrassed for you really.
...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Oh, sorry. It just looked like we were now talking about why they did it. (In your post you are using Irony to point out that the reason why they employed that equipment was to clean the air. If not, then you are saying that they don't employ those measures to clean the air)

Quote

Which, of course, is why factories go through the expense of stack scrubbers, supertemp exhaust, etc etc etc

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
>Probably about the same standard of 'science' that is obtained when a 'consensus' decides what is suitable for print or not.

Right. Let's not confuse that statement with a factual one about how science books, or the research gathered for them, are written.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Quote

Please show how Greenpeace will gain in the same volumes as Exxon/Mobil through lobbying, and don't falter by stating some other business is guilty of doing it.



Greenpeace will not gain the same volume as the largest company on earth. I am not saying that. Greenpeace does have something to gain.

Government intervention causes winners and losers. Let's just look at a carbon cap and trade law. Hedge funds and the financial industry is drooling at the thought of an entirely new commodity on the market. It'd be a new currency.

Ask who is pumping in money to lobby for the new environmental restrictions. There are plenty of entities and people who will make a shitload of money off of it.


My wife is hotter than your wife.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Quote

What do you think would happen if some of the people here wrote science reports?



You'd find lots of trash and perhaps a few nuggets.

Quote

What would happen if people didn't have to pass the bar exam to be lawyers? What piss poor standard of law would be practiced then eh?



Yes and no. There are some brilliant folks I've known who couldn't pass the bar. There are also dipshits like me who have. The Bar is meant to establish some kind of minimum competence for someone who will be assisting another person.

On the other hand, there are people out there whom I believe have some powerful things to say about the law who are not attorneys. I tend to find myself frequently falling into the lawyer way of doing things and thinking, which can be hazardous in many situations.

Each point should be met by its own merits. Just because Dewey Cheatham is a piece of crap, he will often have arguments and theories that are valid and require a careful response.

Never underestimate the opponent.


My wife is hotter than your wife.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
> Why did the factories install those things in the first place?

Because carbon monoxide, unburned hydrocarbons, soot and nitrous oxides are even worse than CO2 from a public health perspective.

The basic problem is that combustion turns hydrocarbons and oxygen into hydrogen (i.e. water) and carbon (i.e. carbon dioxide.) No scrubber will prevent that. You have to do something with all that mass, and it will be even heavier than the fuel you burned in the first place.

I like your idea of just requiring everyone to deal with their own emissions tho.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
>That it CAN act to retain heat, yes.

CO2 DOES act to retain heat when released into the atmosphere. It's not just possible; it's certain. And again, it's just plain ol' physics and thermodynamics.

>However, by your logic stated above, if CO2 increases, then temperature
>increases (you say it yourself, above) . . .

In a simpler system, yes, it would, and it would be exactly quantifiable. However, our system here on Earth is not very simple. Positive feedback from melting permafrost increases warming, and negative feedback from cloud generation (usually) decreases it.

We know we're adding heat to our system, and that absent a massive so-far-undiscovered negative feedback system, the temperature will rise. We're not 100% sure what will happen as a result of that temperature rise, and whether those effects will mitigate or exacerbate the temperature rise. If we're _really_ lucky we will travel along the minimal temperature rise prediction curves.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Quote

Quote

Quote

It doesn't show that CO2 causes an increase in the amount of heat in a system, it shows how CO2 acts to retain heat put in a system from an external source.



Then why did you say
Quote

3) does a system increase in temperature if you increase its capacity to retain heat?



Care to make up your mind what you're arguing?

Quote

CO2 does not cause heat.



No shit.



All you are doing is showing all of us that you do not know anything about the subject you are writing about. I guess I'm embarrassed for you really.



You may want to have a word with Jack... he's claiming that adding CO2 will ALWAYS result in a temperature increase. Maybe you should be embarassed for him, seeing as you were claiming that wasn't what he said, upthread.
Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
>Government intervention causes winners and losers. Let's just look at a carbon cap and trade law. Hedge funds and the financial industry is drooling at the thought of an entirely new commodity on the market. It'd be a new currency

Yep. Drool. Too bad for you libertarians, that would be yet another reason to scream.

>Ask who is pumping in money to lobby for the new environmental restrictions. There are plenty of entities and people who will make a shitload of money off of it

Yep makes sense.

Hey, wait a minute.

Instead of the corporate bailouts we have to deal with and the level of taxation that no conservative person supports, why don't we just have the U.S. government socialize the next enviro-friendly alternative fuel that comes out? With the profit levels you speak of, we wouldn't have to tax an American soul again. That seems like a pretty win-win scenario.

(edit): Also, wouldn't this solve much of our involvement with middle-eastern oil lords? Would we be in fewer wars in the middle-east? I wonder if we would actually have more national security threats as a result of stopping our oil consumption. I'd like to learn more about that.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Quote

>That it CAN act to retain heat, yes.

CO2 DOES act to retain heat when released into the atmosphere. It's not just possible; it's certain. And again, it's just plain ol' physics and thermodynamics.



Everything ELSE remaining equal, yes - which was my point. Given all the fucking rocket scientists here that don't want to do anything but play gotcha games with anyone not possessing a PHD in physics or thermodynamics, I figured the point that we are NOT talking about a closed system where everything else is equal would be obvious.

Quote

>However, by your logic stated above, if CO2 increases, then temperature
>increases (you say it yourself, above) . . .

In a simpler system, yes, it would, and it would be exactly quantifiable. However, our system here on Earth is not very simple. Positive feedback from melting permafrost increases warming, and negative feedback from cloud generation (usually) decreases it.

We know we're adding heat to our system, and that absent a massive so-far-undiscovered negative feedback system, the temperature will rise. We're not 100% sure what will happen as a result of that temperature rise, and whether those effects will mitigate or exacerbate the temperature rise. If we're _really_ lucky we will travel along the minimal temperature rise prediction curves.



Would that be the 'massive so-far-undiscovered negative feedback system' that is currently keeping the temp from rising, even WITH the continuing rise in CO2?

Thank you for FINALLY admitting that we are NOT working with a closed system and that things are constantly in flux,
Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
>I figured the point that we are NOT talking about a closed system where
>everything else is equal would be obvious.

A closed system cannot radiate away its heat into free space. Since we can, the planet reaches equilibrium with empty space (which has a very low radiative temperature.) We're changing that equilibrium.

>Would that be the 'massive so-far-undiscovered negative feedback system' that
>is currently keeping the temp from rising, even WITH the continuing rise in
>CO2?

No. See below. Note the trend, and the lack of the "negative feedback system." Also note the stretches where the climate fluctuates normally, such as during the 1940-1970 period where temperatures did not rise.

Back in the 1970's, there was another multi-year period where temperatures started trending downwards, due to high altitude aerosols.

>Thank you for FINALLY admitting that we are NOT working with a closed
>system and that things are constantly in flux,

I think you have a very massive misperception concerning the science behind climate change if you think that "it's not a closed system" is a revelation. It's as if someone said to you "thank you for FINALLY admitting to yourself that a gun is a deadly weapon and not a toy."

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Quote

Note the trend, and the lack of the "negative feedback system."



I did note the trend. I also note that the temperature has DECREASED the last several years, while the CO2 level has INCREASED.

QED, either a negative feedback system DOES exist, or CO2 levels have not yet reached a level where there is a direct effect upon temperature.

Quote

I think you have a very massive misperception concerning the science behind climate change if you think that "it's not a closed system" is a revelation.



Then just maybe the GW advocates should quit putting their focus on a single variable of the system. Doing so would make their arguments look much less like religious zealotry.
Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
No one is disputing that putting additional CO2 into the atmosphere won't have some kind of impact on the planet.

What's in dispute is the actual change in Earth's air-temperature that is due to this additional CO2. I personally doubt this additional CO2 is going to cause a 3-6 degree warming in the Earth's air-temperature.

I'm extremely skeptical when someone claims that the temperature of a thin layer of gas on top of a huge water body is going to have any material effect on the huge water body's temperature.

For a debt-o-crat Congress to legislative "environmental laws", that will inevitably be draconian in their nature, cannot be justified by the AGW debate, IMO.
We are all engines of karma

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
>I did note the trend. I also note that the temperature has DECREASED the
>last several years, while the CO2 level has INCREASED.

Yep. Just as it did from 1943-1950, from 1958-1963, and from 1973-1976. But if you'd predicted the same thing back then - that either a magic negative feedback mechanism was kicking in to stop the change, or that CO2 is not affecting temperature - you'd be wrong as well.

Temperature fluctuates from year to year. It might be colder next year, it might be warmer. Odds are better that it will be warmer than it will be colder, but not by much. But the trend over time is what we care about, because that's what's melting glaciers and changing weather patterns.

>Then just maybe the GW advocates should quit putting their focus on a
>single variable of the system.

Again, if you think that climate, oceanographic and atmospheric researchers are concentrating on CO2 and ignoring the other variables, you don't understand the issue.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Quote

Considering ocean mixing, we should have seen a .25 degree C increase in global temperature since 2001.



You're still making the same mistake of picking a single year as a baseline against which to measure trends. You can't reach a valid conclusion by doing that.
Math tutoring available. Only $6! per hour! First lesson: Factorials!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Quote

I like your idea of just requiring everyone to deal with their own emissions tho.



Is there a reason that no one has seriously considered that as an alternative? It seems really weird that we have all these measures to deal with exhaust. Why not just outlaw exhaust, make everybody collect and dispose of their own waste products, and be done with it? It'd just get priced into the end products and whoever wanted them (at that price) would be willing to pay for the entire process (including the cleanup).
-- Tom Aiello

[email protected]
SnakeRiverBASE.com

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Quote

EM waves propagate via photons; what is the equivalent particle for gravity?



The appleton. They were going to call it the newton, but that name had already been used to describe kg*m/s^2.

Jeez, Bill. I thought you were an engineer.
:)
Math tutoring available. Only $6! per hour! First lesson: Factorials!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
>No one is disputing that putting additional CO2 into the atmosphere won't
>have some kind of impact on the planet.

OK, cool.

>What's in dispute is the actual change in Earth's air-temperature that is due
>to this additional CO2. I personally doubt this additional CO2 is going to cause
>a 3-6 degree warming in the Earth's air-temperature.

I agree. I think it will cause closer to a 1.5 to 2C rise in temperature.

>I'm extremely skeptical when someone claims that the temperature of a thin
>layer of gas on top of a huge water body is going to have any material effect on
>the huge water body's temperature.

You mean the 40 mile thick layer of gas on top of an (average) 2 mile thick ocean? If you put a 20 foot thick blanket on top of a foot-thick person, would you expect it to not have any effect?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Quote

>Government intervention causes winners and losers. Let's just look at a carbon cap and trade law. Hedge funds and the financial industry is drooling at the thought of an entirely new commodity on the market. It'd be a new currency

Yep. Drool. Too bad for you libertarians, that would be yet another reason to scream.



I don't mind people and businesses making money. I do care when governments decide who wins and loses and when people and businesses say they are not in it for the money.




[Reply]Instead of the corporate bailouts we have to deal with and the level of taxation that no conservative person supports, why don't we just have the U.S. government socialize the next enviro-friendly alternative fuel that comes out? With the profit levels you speak of, we wouldn't have to tax an American soul again. That seems like a pretty win-win scenario.



First: Instead of bailouts? How about "no bailouts. Fuck them."

Second: if there were profits to make then private industry would have done it. If private industry can't do it profitably, then the government won't. It's why government health plans offer low cost coverage thanks to 550 billion in taxes on the rich.

Add to that the money that the government would lose in tariffs, taxes, leases, payroll taxes, corporate taxes, capital gains, etcm, you are talking about bringing in a subsidized industry and ruining a huge tax base.

Remember - those huge profits that oil companies make are music to the ears of the treasury.


[Reply]Also, wouldn't this solve much of our involvement with middle-eastern oil lords? Would we be in fewer wars in the middle-east? I wonder if we would actually have more national security threats as a result of stopping our oil consumption. I'd like to learn more about that.



I haven't considered that point. But since you have no credibility or qualifications in that area, you really aren't capable of bringing up a point like that.

Had nerdgirl asked, well, different story.

Yes, I'm an asshole.


My wife is hotter than your wife.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
> Why not just outlaw exhaust, make everybody collect and dispose of their
>own waste products, and be done with it?

Well, that's doable, but counterproductive. A gallon of gas generates about 20 pounds of CO2. (It also produces water, but we'll ignore that for now.) To store the 200 pounds of CO2 from a 10 gallon tank of gas you'd need 4 50 pound CO2 tanks charged to 2000PSI. That would weigh around 640 pounds including the tanks themselves. It would also require a significant amount of energy to compress the gas to store it in the tank, although this would be minimal for most trips when the tanks were relatively empty.

Then you get home. Then what? One could imagine a service that would pipe away your CO2, but what would they do with it? Store it underground? I imagine that would work, but it would be expensive.

A much better way (IMO) is to just use the atmosphere as a transport medium. You can use the 'public atmosphere' to transport all the CO2 you want as long as you remove what you put in. You could remove it via planting stuff, or making methane via the Sabatier process, or by freezing it and shipping it off somewhere at home. Or you could pay a factory to do the same, and then buy their "credits" to offset your usage. Cheaper and easier.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Quote

Quote

Considering ocean mixing, we should have seen a .25 degree C increase in global temperature since 2001.



You're still making the same mistake of picking a single year as a baseline against which to measure trends. You can't reach a valid conclusion by doing that.



Check out the trends. The previous 60 years showed decreases or leveling of global temperatures comcomitant with a La Nina or a volcano.

Starting in 2001 we had one without an ascertainable proximate cause. I could go back to 1998, but that would be cheating and Hansen's paper used the year 200-2001 and made the scientific prediction.

We've seen other blips like this but we've had an identifiable proximate cause. The usual suspects have been eliminated.

You mention trends. I've identified not just trends but patterns going back to 1950. And a trend indicating a .17 degree per decade temperature increase.

This isn't arbitrary on my part.


My wife is hotter than your wife.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
One of the issues I have with AGW proponents is their use of "data". the famous hockey stick has long been proven to be false and a lot of ground temperature measurements like wise, because they are not always "representative" of the globaltemperature and especially ecause they have been compromised by urban development over the years (close to build up areas, traffic, air conditioners etc.).
The only reliable measurements are sattelite based and they show a different picture. See attached one that shows increase in Co2 and temperature.
---------------------------------------------------------
When people look like ants - pull. When ants look like people - pray.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Try to read this article by Bjorn Lomborg, It both talks about the witch hunt mentality of the AGW "priests" and the waste of our money and wealth through carbon caps and trading without having any substantial effect even if the AGW theory is correct.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25783305-7583,00.html


Quote

DISCUSSIONS about global warming are marked by an increasing desire to stamp out "impure" thinking, to the point of questioning the value of democratic debate. But shutting down discussion simply means the disappearance of reason from public policy.



and

Quote

Indeed, nobody emits CO2 for fun. CO2 emissions result from other, generally beneficial acts, such as burning coal to keep warm, burning kerosene to cook, or burning petrol to transport people. The benefits of fossil fuels must be weighed against the costs of global warming.

Gore and Hansen want a moratorium on coal-fired power plants, but neglect the fact that the hundreds of new power plants that will be opened in China and India in the coming years could lift a billion people out of poverty. Negating this outcome through a moratorium is clearly no unmitigated good.

Likewise, reasonable people can differ on their interpretation of the Waxman-Markey bill. Even if we set aside its masses of pork-barrel spending, and analyses that show it may allow more emissions in the US for the first decades, there are more fundamental problems with this legislation.

At a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars annually, it will have virtually no impact on climate change. If all of the bill's many provisions were entirely fulfilled, economic models show that it would reduce the temperature by the end of the century by 0.11C, reducing warming by less than 4 per cent.

Even if every Kyoto-obligated country passed its own, duplicate Waxman-Markey bills -- which is implausible and would incur significantly higher costs -- the global reduction would amount to just 0.22C by the end of this century. The reduction in global temperature would not be measurable in 100 years, yet the cost would be significant and payable now.

Is it really treason against the planet to express some scepticism about whether this is the right way forward? Is it treason to question throwing huge sums of money at a policy that will do virtually no good in 100 years? Is it unreasonable to point out that the inevitable creation of trade barriers that will ensue from Waxman-Markey could eventually cost the world 10 times more than the damage climate change could ever have wrought?

Today's focus on ineffective and costly climate policies shows poor judgment. But I would never want to shut down discussion about these issues, whether it is with Gore, Hansen, or Krugman.

Everybody involved in this discussion should spend more time building and acknowledging good arguments, and less time telling others what they cannot say. Wanting to shut down the discussion is simply treason against reason.


---------------------------------------------------------
When people look like ants - pull. When ants look like people - pray.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

0