CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL WARMING

[Tizer]

No, he didn't. We are talking about different things. China is referring to the long-term change in temperature in the Arctic; I'm referring to what has just been reported as happening in recent months - the temperature of the water at the sea surface in the Arctic has risen dramatically and has been measured as high as 15C near Svalbard, about 13C higher than usual at this time of the year. That link in my post gives data - scroll down until you come to a lot of text on a yellow background below a heat map. Also see this LINK The extra heat results from more than one cause. Partly an effect of the jet streams and partly mixing of the ocean waters.

[chinatyke]

Apologies, Tiz, I can't open the link in your first post, not a broken link but the vagaries of the internet in China.
The article in your second link says: "Some of these currents were bringing water as warm as 6C to depths shallower than 50m; these are even more dramatic disturbances than the team had expected. The strength of [these currents] has been incredible," Dr MacKinnon said

Whatever the figures, global warming seems to be with us. The Earth has seen many changes like this and many ice ages. I read somewhere that humans are responsible for about 5% of the total carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, so even if we eliminate CO2 production we'd hardly make a dent if this is the cause of global warming. Governments must spread their propaganda on CO2 in order to justify the carbon tax, which is just another way of generating income for them.

20C forecast for us tomorrow, that will do me! Can't wait for it to get to 25C in mid-winter, keep those coal fires burning.

[Tizer]

It's not the proportion of the total CO2 we are responsible for that matters, it's the proportion of the rise in CO2 that's critical. It's explained here: LINK

In case China can't access that web page here is the main bit of text:-
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"...natural land and ocean carbon remains roughly in balance and have done so for a long time – and we know this because we can measure historic levels of CO2 in the atmosphere both directly (in ice cores) and indirectly (through proxies). But consider what happens when more CO2 is released from outside of the natural carbon cycle – by burning fossil fuels. Although our output of 29 gigatons of CO2 is tiny compared to the 750 gigatons moving through the carbon cycle each year, it adds up because the land and ocean cannot absorb all of the extra CO2. About 40% of this additional CO2 is absorbed. The rest remains in the atmosphere, and as a consequence, atmospheric CO2 is at its highest level in 15 to 20 million years (Tripati 2009). (A natural change of 100ppm normally takes 5,000 to 20,000 years. The recent increase of 100ppm has taken just 120 years).

"Human CO2 emissions upset the natural balance of the carbon cycle. Man-made CO2 in the atmosphere has increased by a third since the pre-industrial era, creating an artificial forcing of global temperatures which is warming the planet. While fossil-fuel derived CO2 is a very small component of the global carbon cycle, the extra CO2 is cumulative because the natural carbon exchange cannot absorb all the additional CO2. The level of atmospheric CO2 is building up, the additional CO2 is being produced by burning fossil fuels, and that build up is accelerating."
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[chinatyke]

Thanks Tiz.

[Stanley]

I should have had morte faith in you Tiz.... I offer a grovelling apology....

[Tizer]

No need for apologies from either of you. It's good to be able to debate these things with people who accept sound evidence and don't cling to myths instead! Anyway, China is right about the air temperature increasing and Stanley is right about the jet streams being involved.

China, if ever you can't access a web page to see essential information just let us know and one of us will copy the pertinent text into an OG post.

[Pluggy]

China, if ever you can't access a web page to see essential information just let us know and one of us will copy the pertinent text into an OG post.

Sometimes China's beloved firewall blocks OGFB as well.

It probably depends how on how many negative waves are emitted by OGFB posts.

Maybe we should all post in glowing terms about China........

[chinatyke]

...
Maybe we should all post in glowing terms about China........

Yes, I agree.

China, if ever you can't access a web page to see essential information just let us know and one of us will copy the pertinent text into an OG post.

Thanks again. It's just one of the little things we have to bear, but being here more than makes amends. Like the 23C sunny day that is forecasted for tomorrow. Must be the global warming in action, hope it lasts all winter.

[Stanley]

Smug bugger......

[Tizer]

...Maybe we should all post in glowing terms about China...

Well I did point out a few years ago on OG that the Chinese government were ahead of the curve on recognising the effects of climate change - they realised that many of the roads in the north of China were built on permafrost and that global warming meant this would melt and the roads would become unusable. So they started replacing the road foundations while Western governments were still dithering over whether or not global warming was happening.

[Stanley]

Bad news for the ice roads in N America and Russia.....

[Stanley]

See this LINK for an unexpected consequence of climate change. The West/East jet stream across the Atlantic is forecast to increase and this means that flights across the Atlantic west to East will have stronger head winds and be slowed down.

[Tizer]

Not only slowed down but will use more fuel and therefore emit more CO2 which will raise temperatures even further. They calculate the extra CO2 emissions will be equivalent to those from 7000 UK houses. Not much on a global scale but all these small extras add up.

In the US the Supreme Court has put an obstacle in the way of Obama's plan to regulate emissions of carbon dioxide from US power plants and to push forward renewable energy sources. The court has ruled that the president's Clean Power Plan could not go forward until all legal challenges were heard. A group of 27 states, utilities and coal miners sought to block the proposal in the courts. They argued that the plan was an infringement on states' rights. Well, what a surprise!

[Stanley]

The lawyers will be rubbing their hands......

[Stanley]

Have a look at THIS Guardian report on cyclone Winston that hit at 19:00 last night, local time. Nobody is saying so but possibly another manifestation of El Nino. We are so lucky here that we do not face the same dangers, largely because our built infrastructure is so much better but also because most of us don't live in close proximity to the sea. I've experienced winds of 130mph on the Isle of Eigg and can attest that when the wind gets up that high, the normal rules go out the window. Fiji had 200mph.....

[Stanley]

I see the death toll has reached 30 this morning. (LINK)
A later report puts it at over 40 and still rising.

[Tizer]

`CO2 data is 'wake-up call' for Paris climate deal' LINK

"Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere grew more in past 12 months than at any time in the past 56 years. Measurements at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii went up by more than three parts per million(ppm) in 2015. Scientists say the spike is due to a combination of human activities and the El Niño weather pattern. They argue that the data increases the pressure on global leaders to sign and ratify the Paris Climate Agreement."....

"The latest figures show that in January and February this year the levels of CO2 at Mauna Loa went through the symbolic 400ppm level. Prior to 1800, say the US National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), atmospheric levels were 280ppm. "Carbon dioxide levels are increasing faster than they have in hundreds of thousands of years," said Pieter Tans, lead scientist of Noaa's Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network. "It's explosive compared to natural processes."

[Stanley]

The evidence for climate change due to human activity mounts. Is it my imagination or has the Noble Lord Lawson transferred his attention to the EU.....

[Tizer]

This is a major advance in our knowledge of CO2 levels on Earth and dramatically reinforces the warnings of the serious present rate of atmospheric CO2 increase:

`Rate of carbon emissions put in context'
By Jonathan Amos BBC Science Correspondent, 21 March 2016
"We are now putting carbon into the atmosphere at a rate unprecedented since at least the age of the dinosaurs, scientists say. The researchers have examined ocean sediments laid down during the so-called Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) - a dramatic warming event some 56 million years ago. They find the amount of CO2 going into the air at its onset was four billion tonnes a year at most. Today's figure is 10 times as big. The work is published in the journal Nature Geoscience."...."Zeebe and colleagues calculate that it took at least 4,000 years for the PETM warming to take hold, with carbon going into the atmosphere at a rate of between 0.6 to 1.1 billion tonnes of carbon per annum. At present, human emissions of CO2 are approaching 40 billion tonnes a year." LINK

[NB. Don't confuse this with the extinction of the dinosaurs, which occurred at 60 million years ago and is thought to have been due to comet/asteroid impact. The PETM was 4 million years later.]

[Stanley]

We're not fit to have a planet.....

[plaques]

I read that Ken Hartley was putting a proposal to the Pendle Council to firm up the resistance against fracking. Has anyone heard anything about it?

[Tizer]

I put his name, Pendle Council and fracking into google and got this: LINK

[Bruff]

I’m broadly supportive of fracking for these reasons. I agree entirely that we have to ween ourselves off fossil fuels. I see fracking as a bridging source as we move increasingly to renewables, which cannot be done overnight. Ideally, I would like Government and industry working together on this with expectation being that a significant chunk of the billions fracking is expected to raise going towards supporting the development of renewables. Fracking seems to me the least worst bridging option as we move to wind, and solar, and tidal and the like. It also reduces our reliance on energy from unstable countries and regions. The absolute worst thing we could do with fracking is just see it as another fossil source we can burn like billy-o and see the profits and monies hosed up the wall. I can understand resistance on these grounds. But I do not understand resistance to this: allow it as a bridging fuel and a kick-starter for the meaningful shift to and investment we need in renewables. That just seems the very definition of NIMBYism.

Just to note, Portugal powered the entire country for 5 days using only renewables the other week.

Richard Broughton

[plaques]

Thanks Tizer for the link. Its worth having a read at Naomi Klein's book, "This Changes Everything, Capitalism vs. the Climate" Lancashire Libraries, Covers all the points mentioned by Bruff. She is a bit over the top at times but there is a lot of evidence to show that we are not being told all the facts and all the potential hazards.If all goes to plan fracking should be safe enough but sods law says if things can go wrong they will go wrong the consequences don't bare thinking about. Again if burning gas as a fossil fuel as a replacement for dirtier coal then we may call it a bridge towards reducing the carbon we pump into the air but to say it will act as a bridge until we develop better renewables is pie in the sky. The capital expenditure in putting these fracking sites in place is not going to be abandoned until they have shown a profit. I'm afraid that Mr Cameron is still a capitalist at heart and will continue to lean towards the status quo rather than invest in real climate change policies.

[David Whipp]

Ken's resolution was prompted by the way in which 'permitted development rights' were being used to carry on with fracking operations in Lancashire. (It was passed at last night's meeting, but didn't get the support of Conservative councillors.)

The uneven planning playing field for renewable energy applications versus fracking applications is breathtaking. For wind turbines local communities have what is in effect an absolute veto on proposals. For fracking, the decisions are being made at national level with little to no meaningful effective input from local people.

Whatever the technical arguments for or against fracking, I'm opposed. If humanity is to have much prospect of a future beyond the next couple of hundred years, fossil fuels need to stay in the ground. Once begun, fracking will only cease once every last ounce of CO2 generated carbon is squeezed out of the rock. I think that's sufficient reason not to start in the first place.