http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf

Of course, the media hyped the statement the IPCC hoped it would – that the panel is now more certain than ever that humans are the cause of the latest warming. Here’s what the media missed:

1) The top of the IPCC’s range for projected sea level rise by 2100 is now just 17 inches, with a low end of seven inches. That’s barely half what the IPCC was projecting in its third report. And any climatologist can tell you the average sea level rise since the last ice age has been about seven inches per century.

2) It’s not getting warmer in Antarctica. Yep, there it is Matthew Carroll, at the bottom of page 6, “no statistically significant average trends” in Antarctic sea ice, “consistent with the LACK OF WARMING reflected in atmospheric temperatures averaged across the region.” And on page 13, ohmygosh, “the Antarctic ice sheet will remain too cold for widespread surface melting, and is expected to GAIN IN MASS due to increased snowfall.”

3) Computer models failed to predict the cooling of the oceans that has occurred since 2003, yet the IPCC still argues that we will see an increase in the intensity of hurricanes attributable to “global warming.” Huh? Don’t hurricanes need warm water?

4) You know what else is missing? Any mention of the positive aspects of global warming. Did anyone notice the big freeze in California or the snowfall in Phoenix? Anyone noticed the bitter chill currently gripping the country from the Northern Plains to New England? Imagine the tremendous amount of fossil fuels being burned to heat the homes and offices. Would a milder winter be such a bad thing?

5) The report failed to identify where the greatest increases in CO2 emissions are originating – China and India. China is adding another 500 megawatt or larger coal burning power plant about once every 10 days. Environmentalists are fond of pointing out that China is a developing country and that per capita energy consumption in the USA far exceeds that of China. True, but what they don’t tell you is that our economy uses energy four times more efficiently. America produces $1.00 of GDP (gross domestic product) for every 9,500 BTU’s of energy consumed. In China, the figure is 35,000 BTU’s for a dollar’s worth of goods.

America is doing its part by developing new technology that will one day free the world of its dependence on fossil fuels. We have nothing to feel guilty about. And I see no urgency to hammer our economy with useless carbon contraints while other major CO2 emitters do nothing.

…what can be done?

Somehow someone always suggests humans are not agents in climate change. I disagree, but let’s assume, for the moment, that humans are not agents in climate change. What would this mean? We would still have massive amounts of evidence of climate change. Thus, if humans have played no role, this evidence would mean that the climate is changing such that it endangers humans! And, as human survival is the issue, this would mean our evidence indicates an even more severe danger for humans (and lots of other species we have come to depend upon)!

Thus, if humans have played no role, but we still want to survive as a species, we had better get to work doing what we can to try to push things in the opposite direction! So, if the corporate sponsors of the “humans have had no effect on on-going climate change” position are right, we are actually in MORE trouble than if they are wrong, because any way you slice it, the projected changes are going to be overall negative for human survival (disease, collapse of ocean ecologies, more severe weather, endangered growing seasons, and on and on and on). And, if we have had no effect in producing this problem, then we have to take even more drastic measures to push matters toward a survivable equilibrium.

Thus, if some want to argue humans have played no role so far in climate change, I think that’s a distraction. Let’s just accept that claim. But, that just means we have to take even more extreme actions to increase humanity’s chance of surviving. So, which is it–have humans made a difference, or not?

Take care.
Sam

Anyway, as one of the moderators who is working late on a Friday night I just thought I would defend us.

GAME ON

Here’s a fact kiddies:

China burned 2.35 billion tons of coal last year. That’s more than TWICE the amount burned in the USA, and nearly half the world’s total. Based on its current rate of increase (8% per year), by the year 2030 China’s coal production will increase to 3.5 billion tons per year.

Here’s the math. In the next 20 years, Chinese coal consumption, much of which is subject to little (if any) pollution control measures, will increase more than 1 billion tons/year, which is about the amount burned in the United States each year.

So much for your global warming “solutions.” Maybe the Sierra Club should teach its lobbyists Mandarin and send them to Beijing.

Just in case you decide not to censor this post, here’s the link from my last post to the ridiculous list of things blamed on global warming …

http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm

Ralph

My journey only began last week when I saw An Inconvenient Truth, ( hey I live in a little town in Australia. I have been researching online nearly every day since. It seems to me that the only way we are going to do anything is to talk talk talk, to neighbours, to workmates, to anyone. It also seems that this has begun to have an effect. Hey Ralph the changes required from you personally are only energy reduction and recycling, leave the influencing to peoople better qualified.There are big corporations taking action, Seimens and Bluescope Steel as examples, there are research projects at many universities in association with industry. If CO2 is the biggest problem, please do not denegrate sequestration until you can suggest an alternative because most processes to try to convert it to something else will only produce more of it, it just doesn’t have big enough commercial uses or in other words it is a largely inert gas and energy is required to split it into it’s component parts, more energy producing more CO2.
I can tell you this, I live in a coastal region and I am looking to move to a higher altitude.
Things I have noticed in the last twenty years, Ross River Virus which was confined to the Ross River region of Queensland http://www.wtpc.org.au/images/australia map.gif

I have really liked the organization, Republicans for Environmental Protection (www.rep.org)- they’re finally making global warming a non-partisan issue- which it HAS to be. Being from Dallas, I can’t say that I’ve haven’t been debated and even personally attacked for the issues I’ve chosen to work on before. But Republicans for Environmental Protection has always provided a voice of reason for many of the conservative (but (more importantly) concerned) people I’ve spoken to and worked with. If you’re so inclined, I’d definitely recommend checking out their website, it’s really good and comprehensive- especially on the myths and concerns associated with global warming that’s been addressed here. And even they advocate “policies to reduce greenhouse gas emssions for which total benefits outweigh the costs.” I really like their article: “Facts and Myths about Global Warming: A Conservative Perspective” by John R. E. Bliese, Ph.D., (http://www.rep.org/news/GEvol5/ge5.1_globalwarming.html) which discusses the economics, science, and politics of global warming discourse from a conservative standpoint. Oh, and I’m certainly not a democrat, I’m an independent, for the record.

Solutions and efficiency. that’s what’s exciting. I left the meeting incredibly excited about the potentials for a new future- full of efficiency and renewables, away from dirty fossil fuels and old patterns of development. I can’t wait for the future, because it’s going to be great.

At the same time, it’s not going to just happen eventually. It will have to take concerned citizens to accept the science and the affects of the planet’s heating (it was 70degrees F in Washington DC! I spoke with a hotel concierge and for the first time, she considered becoming a Sierra Club member because she Knew that something was wrong when guests are walking around in t-shirts and jeans in mid-January. Not Normal. Citizens are waking up.

Mario— your idea on Kyoto on the state level is excellent. Some states are already adopting clean energy intitiatives (ie: Washington, Colorado and at least 20 others) and more are looking at clean care CAFE standards (California, Vermont, even Illinois perhaps in the next year) which cleans the air, provides jobs, enhances our energy security, and decreases our dangerous dependence on fossil fuels. In fact, the Mayor’s Climate Protection Agreement is now a national project started by Mayor Greg Nickels of Seattle that urges cities to sign on to meet and even exceed Kyoto targets. As of Jan. 4th, 355 mayors are signed on, representing over 54 million Americans- each working to reach Kyoto on a local level! (http://www.seattle.gov/mayor/climate/) I’m not sure if scientists are looking to modify chemical imbalances in the ocean- but it seems like an interesting idea.

I don’t claim to know everything, that would be silly! I have a full life of learning ahead of me. So that’s why I trust climate scientists to guide my level of concern about global warming, and sane economists and engineers to help guide solutions.

I’ve only bought into science. I guess I’m guilty of that, but you know, I’m proud of it.

1. You state the Antarctic is getting colder. This is not the case. Every indication is that both the Arctic and Antarctic are getting warmer, and much faster than the rest of the planet. In many ways the vulnerable poles are our early warning system, and they are sounding a very clear alarm at the moment.

2. Ice ages are caused by the Milankovitch cycle, a small but significant fluctuations in the earth’s orbit around the sun resulting in a decrease in incident solar radiation and consequently drop in surface temperature. However, recent warming and increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations has been far too rapid to be correlated with this cycle. The current concentration of CO₂ is now substantially higher than at any point in known history, including during all ice age / interglacial periods for which we have data. Furthermore, 650,000 years of ice core data shows a clear correlation between temperature and CO₂.

3. Water vapour is, as you say, one of the primary “green house” gasses, however water is so short lived in the atmosphere it’s effect is responsive, rather than driving, and the best way to look at the effect of water is as an amplifier. CO₂ is the gas primarily responsible for forcing temperature, CO2 magnifies that effect.

4. Implying that a 300ppm – 400ppm (3/10,000 to 4/10,000) increase in CO₂ concentration is somehow negligible because the overall concentration is so low (compared to nitrogen and oxygen, the primary components of the atmosphere) shows a remarkable lack of understanding of the basics of atmospheric physics.

5. I’d be interested to see a peer-reviewed, scientific paper that shows that 60% of global CO₂ emissions come from the oceans.

6. If you the IPCC’s third assessment report you will know that many other factors (such as deforestation) are considered by climate scientists. However, the bulk of the evidence suggests that these are far less important than the primary cause of warming – anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide from combustion of fossil fuels.

7. Stating the IPCC has backed off on “many of its alarmist predictions” is also naive. The recent press reports of the likely reduction in the upper level of predicted sea level rise in the IPCC’s fourth assessment report due this year are a prime example of scientists doing good science. In the third assessment report they gave three possible scenarios of sea level rise due to global warming. The upper scenario has been reduced slightly due to new data – this is how science works, and if you look at the data you will see that the (revised) upper “business as usual” scenario for sea level rise is still a big, big problem. Alarmism has never played a role in the IPCC’s work – it is good quality science, and good quality scientists revise things when new data becomes available. That doesn’t mean they were “wrong”, per se, or that there is no longer a problem.

8. Nobody is suggesting that the US address the issue alone. Of course it can’t do that.

9. Regarding the economy, one of the greatest problems we, as human beings, face is that our economic systems fail, utterly, to account for their true costs. In business terms, fossil fuels are like capital. Our global economy has been built by spending an energy capital (energy from the sun stored in fossil fuels) and that capital is running out. We have a bubble, which we can no longer sustain, and our best hope is that we can deflate it slowly in a controlled fashion, before it bursts. New technologies undoubtedly have a role to play, but in reality we have technologies already that will help greatly in solving this problem – energy efficiency, renewables, lifestyle change, public transit, etc. The issue is that we do not have the political, and social, will to implement them on the scale that is required since most of society has been lulled into a state of sheer denial regarding the problem we face.

10. “in the meantime, let’s allow the economy to continue producing the wealth” is exactly the upper-level “worst case” emissions scenario talked about in the IPCC’s work.

Matthew