Friday round-up
Blogging has been a little light recently (apologies!), but here are a few pieces that have caught our eye this week.
First up, the Columbia Journalism Review has a two-parter on journalistic coverage of climate change inspired by comments from Jeff Huggins on the Andy Revkin's Dot Earth blog. The key issues CJR addresses are familiar ones to readers here: how to communicate mainstream science in a way that doesn't distort the reality of the consensus on many issues in favour of controversy on more cutting-edge topics. Definitely worth a read, and proof (if such were needed) that commenting on blogs can make a difference to coverage.
Next, the role of CO2 as a long-term climate forcing. The old CO2 lead/lag issue keeps making the rounds as a contrarian talking point (and made a brief resurgence here in comments this week) despite the fact that the existence of impact of climate on the carbon cycle in no way invalidates the impact of CO2 (as a greenhouse gas) on climate. However, there is a nice paper in Nature this week (Lunt et al, 2008) which looks at the various proposed triggers for the onset of the quaternary glaciations at the end of the Pliocene (~3 million years ago). These triggers involve, permanent El Nino events, the closing of the Isthmus of Panama, changes in orbital forcing, tectonic uplift of the Rocky mountains - and long-term decreases in CO2 as a function of very slow variations in sea floor spreading and chemical weathering. Lunt et al find that only the change in CO2 (400 ppm to 280 ppm) can explain the changes in the ice sheet. None of the other ideas come even close.
Thus, it looks very much like the climate changed radically due to this externally forced drift in CO2 (and tectonic is external for climate purposes on this timescale). As a corollary, this is an expansion of the idea we discussed a few months back, that the long term changes in the Earth system due to external forcings might be well be larger than the classical (Charney) sensitivity we often talk about.
Third. There has been a lot of discussion on energy futures in the comments - Nature had a good rundown of the scientific constraints on the different prospects. But this video is a quite entertaining discussion of why we just can't get our heads around the issue from Dan Gilbert (h/t GH).
Finally, a commentary on the prospects for continued employment as an Arctic ice expert (h/t Climate Feedback).
29 August 2008 at 9:18 PM
Hi,
The video link on energy futures discussion does not work and I would like to see it if possible.
-sc
[Response: Fixed. thanks - gavin]
29 August 2008 at 9:31 PM
Re: Electricity without carbon: capture the sun and it can be done
The obvious question, asked by many before, is why renewable energy hasn’t been made available on a large scale. In answering this question we must always remember that, also obvious, energy development still generally follows profitability. Imagining a renewable energy future-scenario is implausible when the profit motive dominates decision-making.
29 August 2008 at 11:14 PM
see Carlos Pascual and Strobe Talbott oped at WASH POST. “7 years left to fix claimate change”
29 August 2008 at 11:20 PM
I would like to touch on the CO2 and climate forcing thread - but in a deep time way. I work on mass extinctions, and have had the chance this summer alone to look at late Ordovician strata in Nevada, Frasnian-Fammenian (Devonian) strata in Nevada and Australia, and KT boundaries in Montana and North Dakota. My question: all three times had putative CO2 higher than 1000 ppm, following Bob Berner’s GEOCARB model estimates. All three seem to show rapid sea level changes that suggest rapid ice melt/ice formation. How high can CO2 be and still allow ice caps? Is there any literature out there on this?
29 August 2008 at 11:39 PM
Regarding the Friday roundoup blurb about the problems of news coverage of AGW: i.e. why most citizens of the U.S. don’t get it. Here’s a recent example of the problem in a recent news story about the coast guard and others preparing for the opening of new arctic shipping lanes because of the loss of the artic ice cap due to global warming.
http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=2008_4613313
Taken from the article: The head of the Coast Guard, Adm. Thad Allen, carefully avoids the debate over climate change. It’s too early to say what the Coast Guard’s future operations here will be, but Allen is certain his agency will have a key role as the Arctic landscape is transformed by higher temperatures.
“I’m agnostic to the science and the debate about what the cause is,” Allen said. “All I know is there’s water where there didn’t used to be.”
That pretty much sums it up. It appears that Admiral Thad Allen can’t be seen admitting to global warming. Why? Retribution from his superiors? Teasing from his buddies? The absolute polarization of the debate by our government and he being a public employee?
30 August 2008 at 9:44 AM
The real reason that renewables have not been developed is that the fossil fuel corporations and their paid-off cronies in politics have deliberately attacked and undercut renewable energy proposals for decades now.
This is why there are thousands of pharmaceutical research programs in the U.S., and only a bare handful of renewable energy reserach programs. For whatever reason, the NSF decided to leave all issues surrounding research into clean energy to someone else, namely the Department of Energy.
Has anyone ever looked at the DOE budget? A rough synopsis is here: http://www.doe.gov/news/4706.htm
The bottom line is that they spend almost nothing on real renewable energy programs - their budget for the “DOE Legacy Project” is twice that for solar research. Thier budget for nuclear weapons research is around 9 billion dollars, I think.
As far as why the press doesn’t cover this? Well, it must be that the people who own the press and hire and fire journalists and editors also have significant holdings in fossil fuels, and so they routinely refuse to cover stories on the energy issue.
We can predict that the American press will continue to refuse to link extreme weather events to global warming. That’s a very noticeable trend - American press reports on heat waves, massive floods and giant hurricanes always leave out any mention of the role that global warming might have played.
The reason is really simple - if there really is an association between global warming and fossil fuel emissions, and there is, then that means that the fossil fuel companies could be held liable for damages - but only if they could be shown to have tried to to hide the truth from the public, as the tobacco companies did with their products.
That shouldn’t be too hard to show, should it?
30 August 2008 at 10:28 AM
Hi Gavin
I have a problem of understanding for the Lunt et al 2008 paper.
When they write:
“suggest Eocene atmospheric CO2 of the order of 1,000 p.p.m.v., falling to levels as low as 200 p.p.m.v. in the Middle Miocene,”
Why could Greenland avoid a glaciation when the CO2 was only 200ppm?
For them, in the Pliocene, the fall from 400 to 280 ppm was sufficient and a fall from 1000 ppm to 200ppm in the Miocene was not?
(I believe it was sufficient for Antarctica glaciation)
can you explain me?
[Response: Fair point - I don’t really know. However, judging from figure 6.1 in the IPCC report, it’s clear that the estimates for CO2 through the Cenozoic prior to the ice core records (including the Pliocene and Miocene) are pretty uncertain. - gavin]
30 August 2008 at 10:48 AM
Dr. Ward, great to see your question. I dropped a couple of recent abstracts on CO2 levels (papers that you’re likely well aware of already) at the end of the ‘Are geologists different?’ thread.
On your query, I hope our hosts would consider a topic limited to people who know something about it (paging Figen, and others, who actually cite sources they’ve understood). It could go on for months or years if it attracted the people working on that one big question.
Lunt et al.’s Nature paper is of course paywalled (trip to library for me). Their supplementary info is available: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v454/n7208/suppinfo/nature07223.html
30 August 2008 at 10:59 AM
We have enough nuclear fuel for FIVE THOUSAND YEARS
according to “Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy”, by B. Comby. “Breeding”
fissionable fuel and recycling nuclear fuel greatly extends the supply. We have
many possible uranium mines that we haven’t started mining. The reasons we are
not doing so are political and psychological. Most people have an irrational fear
of anything nuclear caused by coal industry propaganda.
Everything, including yourself, is made of atoms. All atoms have nuclei. You
have many atomic nuclei inside yourself since you are made of atoms. The
simplest nucleus is one proton. That would be a hydrogen atom. An oxygen
atom has 8 protons and either 8, 9 or 10 neutrons in its nucleus. All other nuclei
also have neutrons. Uranium has 92 protons and either 143 or 146 neutrons. If it
has 143 neutrons it is U235. If it has 146 neutrons, it is U238. Nuclear fuel is
only 2% to 8% U235, the kind that fissions/divides, providing energy. The rest is
U238 that doesn’t fission. A nuclear reaction happens when a neutron is captured
by a nucleus. If a U235 nucleus captures a neutron, the nucleus and the atom split
approximately in half and 2 or 3 neutrons are released because the 2 smaller
nuclei don’t need so many neutrons. If a U238 nucleus captures a neutron, it
ejects an electron and the neutron becomes a proton. The U238 thus becomes
Plutonium 239. Plutonium is fissionable, which means that plutonium is a good
fuel. If you add Thorium to the fuel, you can make more fissionable uranium. If
a Thorium atom nucleus captures a neutron, it ejects an electron and the neutron
becomes a proton. The Thorium atom thus becomes U233. U233 is fissionable.
Depending on the design of the reactor and the mix of the fuel, the fuel % in the
reactor can either grow or shrink. It is kind of like the fuel gauge can go either up
or down, but it is more like the reactor can run hotter or cooler over time. The
temperature is kept constant by adjusting the control rods. A breeder reactor is a
reactor designed to make the fissionable part of the fuel load grow rapidly.
In the US, fuel is left in the reactor for about 10 years, or 10% of the fuel is
replaced each year. The reprocessing step sorts out the fuel and puts the
percentage of fissionable fuel back to the starting percentage. In the process,
plutonium may be removed and either wasted or used as fuel. If we add thorium
to the fuel, we can make more uranium than we put in. Since the earth contains
more than twice as much thorium as uranium, it would be wise to make thorium
into uranium. By reprocessing nuclear fuel, we get an enormous, many centuries
long fuel supply. The products of fission are also removed when fuel is
reprocessed. These are just other ordinary atoms that are no longer useful as fuel.
The quantity is very small. We should reprocess fuel to keep the fuel load at the
correct percentage of fissionable fuel for the particular reactor design. Instead, we
go through the expensive process of making more “virgin” fuel for each new fuel
load. This greatly increases the price you pay for electricity. We are not
reprocessing nuclear fuel for political reasons. France reprocesses fuel and France
has a nuclear waste repository.
I have zero financial interest in nuclear power, and I never have had a financial
interest in nuclear power. My sole motivation in writing this is to avoid extinction
by H2S gas. H2S is how global warming kills everybody if we don’t act.
Coal is almost pure carbon, except for the URANIUM, ARSENIC, LEAD,
MERCURY, Antimony, Cobalt, Nickel, Copper, Selenium, Barium, Fluorine,
Silver, Beryllium, Iron, Sulfur, Boron, Titanium, Cadmium, Magnesium,
Calcium, Manganese, Vanadium, Chlorine, Aluminum, Chromium, Molybdenum
and Zinc that are coal’s impurities. Coal smoke and cinders are commercially
viable ORE for the above elements.
Chinese industrial grade coal is sometimes stolen by peasants for cooking. The
result is that the whole family dies of arsenic poisoning because Chinese
industrial grade coal contains large amounts of arsenic. Coal varies a lot.
You have to analyze it not only mine by mine but even lump by lump.
Reference:
OUR NUCLEAR FUTURE:
THE PATH OF SELECTIVE IGNORANCE
by Alex Gabbard
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Oak Ridge, TN
Selections from the 19th Annual Conference
SOUTHERN FUTURE SOCIETY
March 14,15,16, 1996
Nashville, Tennessee
Published by the
SOUTHERN FUTURE SOCIETY
1996
Edited by Jack D. Arters, Ed.D.
Conference Director
The truth is, all natural rocks contain most natural elements. Coal is a rock.
The average concentration of uranium in coal is 1 or 2 parts per million. Illinois
coal contains up to 103 parts per million uranium. A 1000 million watt coal
fired power plant burns 4 million tons of coal each year. If you multiply 4
million tons by 1 part per million, you get 4 tons of uranium. Most of that is
U238. About .7% is U235. 4 tons = 8000 pounds. 8000 pounds times .7% =
56 pounds of U235. An average 1000 million watt coal fired power plant puts
out 56 to 112 pounds of U235 every year. There are only 2 places the uranium
can go: Up the stack or into the cinders.
Since a reactor full fuel load is around 11 tons of 2% U235 and 98% U238, and
one load lasts about 10 years, and what one coal fired power plant puts into the
air and cinders fully fuels a nuclear power plant.
Compare 4 Million tons per year with 1.1 tons per year. 1.1 divided by 4 Million
= 2.75 E -7 = .000000275 =.0000275%. Remember that only 2% of that is
U235. The nuclear power plant needs ~44 pounds of U235 per year. The coal
fired power plant burns coal by the trainload. The nuclear power plant consumes
U235 in such small quantities yearly that you could carry that much weight in a
briefcase.
See also: http://www.ornl.gov/ORNLReview/rev26-34/text/coalmain.html
30 August 2008 at 11:40 AM
#4 Peter Ward
Depends on the “Faintness” of the sun (e.g., some things going on during the Ordovician), elevation, latitude, and other things. There’s probably a rather large range due to the logarithmic curve between temperature and CO2. I can’t imagine Greenland surviving in a 1000 ppmv world today (allowing for a sufficient response time), keeping all other Holocene variables constant. Antarctica would take a bit more than Greenland, and there’s also uncertainty in both climate sensitivity and the sensitivity of ice sheets to temperature change (they’d also get precipitation change as well).
30 August 2008 at 12:42 PM
Re 4 - I think newer research suggests a dip in CO2 level around the time of the late Ordivician associated (and largely caused by) the chemical weathering of the Appalachian mountains.
I didn’t think there was much ice at all around the time of the K/T impact.
Don’t know enough about the Devonian to comment on that one.
But generally, my understanding is that the three most intensive periods of glaciations in the Panerozoic - late Ordivician (right?) (brief), late Paleozoic (Permian? did it extend into the Carboniferous as well? not sure off hand) - (an extended period), and the later portion of the Cenozoic (~now) - these are all (including the new research I refered to above) associate with relatively low atmospheric CO2 levels.
30 August 2008 at 2:01 PM
One of the more annoying aspects of newspaper science reporting
(I’ll pick on the NY Times because I read it every day) is the lack of
informative links within a story. Two articles from August 26th and
27th hopefully make the point.
“Carbon Footprint: Savings at home” (Aug. 27th) contains nine
html links — one to a previous NYTimes story and eight to public and
non-public sites where the reader can find information pertinent to the
story.
“Wind Energy Bumps into Power Grid’s Limit” (Aug. 26th) contains
eight html links — every one of them to a previous NYTimes story or
such interesting tidbits as Bill Richardson’s biography and 334 news
articles containing Gov. Richardson’s name. None of these links point
me to one bit of information about the nation’s power grid!
When I am done reading many newspaper science/technology articles,
I frequently spend a lot of time searching Google for flesh to put on
the bare bones of the article.
By the way, the Columbia Journalism articles have great web links.
30 August 2008 at 2:50 PM
Re 5 and 6, it’s sad to see conspiracy fantasies rearing their heads in a scientists’ blog.
What’s next? ‘911 Truthers’, ‘Who Killed the Electric Car?’.
The public debating square is messy. The general public needs visible, imminent danger.
The casual, scientific literate person, looking at global temperature vs CO2 graphs over the
last 130 years has a great deal of difficulty linking the two in any calamitous way.
Steady warming in the 1980s and 90s - not much of anything in the remaining 110 years.
It’s a tough sell!
30 August 2008 at 4:29 PM
When ‘natural gas’ burns, does it not produce CO2? Isn’t it just another ‘fossil fuel’, a global greenhouse climate changing fuel? Why all the excitement about increased use of natural gas in the US?
(I probably know the answers, but I think the media does not.)
[Response: CO2 emissions per Joule of useful energy are much less with natural gas. Still, it is a fossil fuel and only looks good relative to coal or oil. - gavin]
30 August 2008 at 4:29 PM
re 13 Fred Jorgensen - just what graphs are you lookin’ at?
try
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1959/offset:-0.15/mean:30/plot/esrl-co2/from:1959/scale:0.01/mean:30/offset:-3.5
or
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
Is less ice => more sunlight absorbed => warmer air over Greenland => more melt => sea level rise => bad news for New Orleans, Miami etc
too hard for the average Joe to grasp?
30 August 2008 at 4:31 PM
“…That shouldn’t be too hard…”
Yes, chasing, demonizing, and — My! Oh! My! — prosecuting bogeymen is always hard.
30 August 2008 at 5:39 PM
Edward Greisch says in comment 9
The cupidity of many of our civil servants (and other tax beneficiaries) is influential. This is because their income is in large part hydrocarbon tax revenue, and nuclear energy makes that revenue go away.
This being so, citizens don’t have actually to be paranoid about nuclear energy; all we have to do is be silent while our rulers falsely impute this error to us. Polls say different, suggesting Greisch has credulously slandered the public.
Maybe, but there’s no rush.
Actually, many centuries of uranium supply are about as certain as anything in nature, even with a once-through fuel non-cycle. Projections based on known reserves at current prices (ca. US$0.4 per mmBTU) are misleading in two ways.
One, known reserves have been increasing at about ten times the rate of use. Two, current prices reflect an exceedingly low energy cost of extraction. A tonne of uranium now-a-days yields enough electricity to pulverize two million tonnes of hard rock, and pulverization is the bulk of the energy cost in extracting a very dilute mineral, such as the 2.2-to-2.8 ppm uranium in average continental crust. Thus, if much richer ores were not being found, one mass U could now-a-days, if richer ores were not being found, power the extraction from country rock of five masses.
30 August 2008 at 5:44 PM
Peter, you want DeConto and Pollard. See also this paper (Berner co-auth) and this related commentary, and this one (link to actual paper under the graphic) focused on the Ordovician. I’m confident there’s more in the pipeline.
30 August 2008 at 6:49 PM
When one is discussing these topics, one needs to keep in mind the position of the continents as well.
The more the continents are weighted toward the poles, the cooler the average temps on earth.
Put lots of continents together at the poles or one of the poles and we have snowball earth.
What was North America’s location 2.5 million years ago versus today and versus 5.0 million years ago. +/- 200 miles means ice ages versus no ice ages.
30 August 2008 at 7:27 PM
Molnar’s Law strikes again. (I’m not saying it’s necessarily off topic on this thread, but I’ll take credit where I can.)
30 August 2008 at 7:36 PM
#17–
What was the % yield on the U238 to Pu239 conversion in the reactors at Calder Hall? How much fissionable plutonium can one make from five masses of uranium derived from country rock?
All things being equal, there may be no necessary connection between development of nuclear energy and development of nuclear weapons–though this has not been established….not by a long shot.
But all things are never equal, and throughout its history nuclear power has been much more about getting people to do what you want them to without asking their opinion than it has been about providing electricity at low cost.
Compare to wind and solar, which are inherently more egalitarian, both because they are available to everyone without cost and because they are much less useful in the context of centralized power grids.
30 August 2008 at 8:51 PM
> middle Miocene (Pascal, Gavin)
Something complicated may have been going on for a while in there
http://www.google.com/search?q=DOI%3A+10.1016%2Fj.epsl.2007.07.026
Orbitally-paced climate evolution during the middle Miocene …
online version, at doi:10.1016/j.epsl. 2007.07.026. References. Abels, H.A., Hilgen, F.J., Krijgsman, …
www.geo.uni-bremen.de/geomod/staff/mschulz/reprint/Holbourn_etal_EPSL_2007.pdf
And always, a reminder, the planktonic organisms predominating may varied a lot under selection pressure as the climate and atmosphere were changing; I don’t know about that particular time. That’s a feedback far more variable and less repeatable than say geological weathering.
30 August 2008 at 9:04 PM
re natural gas: another reason besides GW natural gas is pushed (T.Boone Pickens e.g.) is very little is imported. Pickens’ idea is to build wind farms to shift the power utilities use of natural gas to transportation (direct use or production of hydrogen) thereby reduce our need for oil, much of which is imported and out of our control.
Incidentally, would someone inform Nancy Pelosi that natural gas is a fossil fuel? Shockingly, she thinks it is not!
30 August 2008 at 9:08 PM
Brian (15) says “…Is less ice => more sunlight absorbed => warmer air over Greenland => more melt => sea level rise => bad news for New Orleans, Miami etc
too hard for the average Joe to grasp?”
Yeh, pretty much.
30 August 2008 at 9:12 PM
Clarification: The commentary actually refers to this paper on the relationship between Miocene climate, vegetation and CO2 levels (and is a big advance on what was known at the time of the AR4, noting Gavin’s response to #7).
30 August 2008 at 9:30 PM
What is the yield? (Energy recovered compare with energy input)I asked a friend in the department of energy a quarter century ago. The answer was below 1, when you consider waste disposal. Helen Caldicott’s book (she is an adamant anti-nuke) also says this. I don’t know that it’s true but I am not convinced that nuclear power — as least the uranium phase of it — yields energy (keep in mind it’s been government subsidized, including the supposed permanent waste disposal — which has yet to happen and won’t for at least 10 years.) Plus there are the massive environmental damage (pitchblende tailings) and accident risks (said to be less than 1 in 10 million years before Three Mile Island).
I am so far from convinced nuclear is any kind of solution. Greisch’s discussion is an argument with selected numbers, not the whole picture. Lawyering.
I have not studied how the conversion to plutonium changes the energy yield. (A minuscule amount of plutonium is deadly, making it an ideal terrorist weapon, or choice poison).
What I think is, somebody should do the end-to-end energy yields, and the economics and throw in environmental considerations — on every energy choice, including nuclear.
30 August 2008 at 9:45 PM
From Sarah Palin, McCain’s new VP pick:
What is your take on global warming and how is it affecting our country?
“A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I’m not one though who would attribute it to being man-made.”
Thought you all would be interested in this…and McCain’s one who, for all his faults, actually knows the human contribution to climate change. Won’t get my vote…now doubly won’t.
30 August 2008 at 9:50 PM
In response to an interview question about global warming, Sen. McCain’s running mate Gov. Sarah Palin replied: “A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I’m not one though who would attribute it to being man-made.” This denialist formulation is at odds with what her state’s own Alaska Climate Change Strategy web site says about attribution.
30 August 2008 at 11:23 PM
Re 15: Brian Dodge. You show a pretty dramatic graph in the Woodfortrees link,
but try this:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1880/offset:-0.15/mean:30/plot/esrl-co2/from:1880/scale:0.015/mean:30/offset:-3.5
Slight rise until 1980s, then rise, then plateau from 1998. (And not so Wow!)
(CO2 doesn’t show back to 1880, but we know has had a pretty steady rise)
It’s tempting to mix axis and scales to fool the unwary [edit]
See:
http://climate.jpl.nasa.gov/keyIndicators/
where honest data is presented with mixed scales and ranges for dramatic effect!
30 August 2008 at 11:34 PM
Naw, shooting wolves doesn’t change the environment. Naw, her new victory over banning of mining that may directly and negatively impact a huge native salmon run won’t lead to harmful mining activity that will change the environment and put fishermen out of business. Naw, nothing we can do will change the environment negatively.
31 August 2008 at 1:48 AM
On the endless nuclear debate:
When I think of endless field of windmills or solar collectors, terrorism doesn’t come to mind.
But when it suggested than we build large numbers of nuclear reactors, the hair does stand up on the back of my neck…
31 August 2008 at 5:13 AM
Re #27 and #28, no, it cannot be, a republican not believing in AGW, surely not !!!!!
Lets get this straight. John McCain might believe in AGW but his strategy for dealing with it is hardly comprehensive. More like lip service.
31 August 2008 at 5:39 AM
It seems another tipping point has been reached:http://fistfulofeuros.net/afoe/political-issues/confirmed-methane/
31 August 2008 at 6:58 AM
Republican vice-presidential candidate Palin’s denialism goes beyond climate science; she also advocates teaching creationism in science class.
31 August 2008 at 7:49 AM
Another denier (do you think this magazine - Skeptic - is worth considering?)
http://www.skeptic.com/the_magazine/featured_articles/v14n01resources/climate_of_belief.pdf
[Response: We’ve discussed this ad nauseum in the comments (concluding here). It’s nonsense from conception to execution to conclusion. - gavin]
31 August 2008 at 8:26 AM
Re 33.
I went to that site. Release of methane really scare me too. Theoretically, CO2 emissions can be controlled, but I can’t imagine any way of preventing emissions from permafrost, on land, or coastal shelves, or of methane from hydrates on/in the sea bed…
However, one commentator (Al) says hydrates could only be liberated by volcanic activity, and increasing vegetation will mop up emissions from permafrost, and that global warming isn’t happening anyway…
This is the big problem that the layman, and the public in general face. Who to believe ?
Common sense says to me that the precautionary principle should be followed. If the deniers are right, nothing irretrievable has been lost. If the deniers are wrong, we’re all stuffed and cooked.
31 August 2008 at 8:31 AM
The Independent (UK newspaper) is running the story on the NW and NE passages opening up simultaneously around the Arctic - http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/for-the-first-time-in-human-history-the-north-pole-can-be-circumnavigated-913924.html
The article states that this hasn’t happened in 125000 years, is this figure correct? Just want to make sure as the Independent has hyped things up a little too much at times. If true this should help shock some climate change sceptics out of their complacency - at least some of the ones I know.
[Response: It’s likely true for recorded modern history (say since the 1700s) - but statements regarding longer time periods are highly speculative - it might be correct, but how would one know? These particular details are very subtle changes (unlike the large scale trends which are not subtle at all), and the proxy data for past climates doesn’t generally have this kind of granularity. - gavin]
31 August 2008 at 9:19 AM
It was established at Hiroshima.
31 August 2008 at 9:28 AM
Fred #29, surely you can do better than that?
31 August 2008 at 9:36 AM
I started reading the CJR articles, and when I got to how the media have not explained the carbon cycle well enough, I thought what about our educational system???!!! I learned about that in basic science classes in junior high school, required of ALL students. I mean, that’s right up there with “the earth, as we now understand it, goes around the sun (and not the more obvious converse).”
I also learned about the natural greenhouse effect, but that may have been in a more advanced course not required, or my own independent reading (I can’t remember). So I was well-primed decades later to understand global warming.
I have this sinking feeling now that we somehow reached the pinnacle of education in the 60s, and it’s been downhill ever since. We’re slipping into the Dark Ages.
Of course, there were kids even back then (during the 60s pinnacle of education) who didn’t pay attention to the science teacher, or promptly forgot whatever they learned — and I seriously doubt they’d pick up knowledge about the carbon cycle from the newspapers, even if it were frontpage every day. And they probably don’t even watch TV news.
As for the young people today, who are probably being forced to learn creationism along side evolution (and I think this IS the case, since I teach anthropology in college and the students don’t really know much about evolution, say it isn’t really taught), I suppose there’s no hope at all for a decent education….or an understanding of global warming. I know a high school teacher (of English, not science, thank goodness) who adamantly opposes the idea of global warming.
It’s like we’re entering into perhaps one of the worst problems humanity has ever faced, with harms to our life support systems (including a decline in agri) — unwittingly, unknowingly. [A problem we could ameliorate by our actions cost-effectively to a 2/3 reduction in GHGs.] So we’ll blame our woes on illegal immigrants, or terrorists. We’ll die a dog’s death.
31 August 2008 at 9:38 AM
Good grief, folks, must you bring this endless nuclear argument to every new thread opened here?
Can’t you keep it in one place instead of taking over every single topic as soon as it’s opened?
[Response: I concur - no more nuclear power discussions on this thread. Thanks. - gavin]
31 August 2008 at 9:39 AM
Re: #34 Tamino says:
“Republican vice-presidential candidate Palin’s denialism goes beyond climate science; she also advocates teaching creationism in science class.
I wonder how she’d feel about teaching the Big Bang Theory of the creation of the Universe in a Bible study class?
31 August 2008 at 9:48 AM
[no more nuclear please]
31 August 2008 at 10:46 AM
Gavin, don’t you think a comments policy should be designed rather than improvised? How nice of you to declare nuclear comments off-topic after Edward Greisch eating up half of the thread’s space for spelling out at kindergarten level some of the basics of nuclear fission. Anybody thinking we needed that is unequipped to have any opinion on the level that matters.
Forgive me for believing for a moment that because one such un-thought-through and potentially disastrous idea for “fixing” the climate crisis, geoengineering, was even worthy of a post, that commenting on other such ideas, and on how interested parties are trying to lobby for them under the global warming prevention flag, would perhaps be remotely relevant too. Dr Strangelove is alive and kicking. Ugh.
[Response: Look, I’m happy to have pretty much anything discussed in a moderate fashion (and it’s not worth my time to get any more directed than that), but Hank is correct, this continual hijacking of threads with the same discussion over and again is tedious for all concerned. Remember the definition of a fanatic? someone who can’t change their mind and won’t change the subject? Well, I’m changing the subject. You will undoubtedly get future opportunities to discuss this. - gavin]
31 August 2008 at 11:35 AM
Oh, I agree. Just criticising your timing.
…and is that me you’re calling a fanatic? A thread hijacker? You know my commenting history.
[Response: Indeed. But you know who I’m talking about. - gavin]
31 August 2008 at 11:50 AM
“someone who can’t change their mind and won’t change the subject”
That’s a cool definition of a fanatic
[Response: Churchill. - gavin]
31 August 2008 at 12:12 PM
Fred Jorgenson posts:
And that’s an example of why casual perusal of graphs doesn’t always tell you very much. Statistical analysis of trends might be more helpful.
Although when I look at the NASA GISS or Hadley CRU temperature curves for the last 120 and 150 years, respectively, it sure does look like an exponentially rising curve to me.
31 August 2008 at 1:02 PM
Lynm re #40
You are correct.
How is it that people that use cell phones can deny science. Don’t they understand that phones are proof that science works?
On a freshman chemistry exam (1971), as an extra credit question, we were given production statistics for halogenated hydrocarbons. Based on what we had about free radical chemistry, we were expected to predict in a few minutes the ozone hole that would be detected in the mid 1970s. With all due respect to the climate modelers, predicting gross AGW is not that hard.
However, in 1991, I worked in a large engineering firm. One of the tasks I was assigned, was clipping and circulating articles on global climate change, because some of the very technically sophisticated members in our group “just did not get it.” In 2001, some of those guys still “did not get it.”
Some strong believe system allowed these guys to do complex engineering on a daily basis, and still not accept the calculations and even observations of AGW. Now, I believe that some people can do the science and accept AGW, and other people have deep rooted aversions to accepting AGW. I think that is a matter not of better education in atmospheric science, but a matter for psychologists, biologists, and anthropologists as to why some people cannot accept AGW.
31 August 2008 at 1:18 PM
Re #34, sounds like the new republican movement to me. All science is dross unless it is allowing us to defend our realm. Obama must surely win this time around otherwise the 10 years to a different path will become six.
31 August 2008 at 1:36 PM
After reading that Nature article, I have to wonder. It’s as if you asked someone to design an agricultural system capable of feeding a billion people and they handed you back a list of crops you could possibly grow: corn, beans, sugarcane, wheat, soybeans, pineapple, coconut, lettuce…
The energy mix issue is a lot more complicated, and could be presented much more coherently.
First, let’s break energy supply into two forms: fuels (liquid, gaseous, or solid) and electric current.
Electric current is the most adaptable and useful energy source - a flow of electrons from high potential to low potential. There are many ways to generate current, but it is more difficult to store electricity. Typical sources of electric current include nuclear reactors, natural gas- and coal-fired power plants, hydropower from dams, geothermal plants, biomass-fired power plants, and solar and wind power. The only long-term sustainable versions (century scale) are solar and wind.
Fuels are used for heating and to drive combustion-based machinery, from internal combustion engines to steam boilers for generating electricity. All carbon-based fuels that we use were originally formed by photosynthesis, using atmospheric CO2 as the raw material - this is true for coal, oil, natural gas, and all biofuels.
Liquid fuels have a special advantage over all other energy sources in that they are relatively easy to transport across long distances. The other advantage that fuels have over electricity is that they can easily be stored for use on demand. Electrical storage devices leak and have low capacity and are very expensive in comparison - but it is easy to charge up a battery using a gas-fired generator; it isn’t easy to convert CO2 to petroleum using electricity.
How do this relate to plants?
What plants actually do, at the biochemical level, is use sunlight to generate an electric current at a the nanoscale. Electrons are stripped off water, excited by light, and then the flow of electrons from high to low potential through the so-called electron-transport protein chain generates the raw materials for fuel production: ATP and NADPH. At that point, the plant has succeeded in converting solar energy to electrical energy to chemical energy - something that we humans still struggle with.
The most promising long-term future energy supply system is to take the photosynthetic energy-conversion system and replicate the essential details using durable materials like silicon, industrial catalysts, and the like.
One major step towards this goal might have been reached recently: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080731143345.htm
This solves the main problem with wind and solar energy, the intermittent delivery. In this model, large-scale solar PV or wind farms would convert any excess energy into stored chemical energy, which could be converted back to electric current as needed.
The long term hope would be to replicate the entire plant process, from capture of sunlight to fixation of CO2 to the level of hydrocarbons (fatty acids, biochemically speaking), in an industrial setting. Such a device would use sunlight and water to generate activated chemical intermediates, which would then be used to pull CO2 out of the air, just as plants do, and synthesize a stream of hydrocarbons. In goes sunlight, water and air, and out comes a stream of golden-yellow atmospheric carbon-neutral hydrocarbon fuel, C6-C12 or so - gasoline.
P.S. Nature repeated the old mantra of nuclear fusion solving all energy problems for the future. Say we did build some massive fusion reactor somewhere. There are a lot of problems with this notion, however. First, how much water would it take to cool it? It would operate on the standard boil-water-and-spin-a-turbine-to-generate electricity, right? Second, how would all that electricity be distributed to the end user? Third, you would need another,uranium or plutonium reactor to generate the heavy isotopes of hydrogen needed for the process, as well. The claim that “nuclear fusion will solve everything” has been repeated so many times that nobody even bothers to think about how it would work in practice.
31 August 2008 at 2:12 PM
I don’t mean to launch an off-topic discussion of electoral politics, but perhaps it is appropriate in a “weekly roundup” thread to note that in perusing several online discussions of Republican VP selection Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska, I have observed an upsurge of comments from energized, even ecstatic, climate change denialists.
They are all cheering Governor Palin’s comment about global warming and climate change that “I’m not one though who would attribute it to being man-made” and supporting statements from officials in her administration that she believes “the jury is still out” on the anthropogenic causation of global warming.
One comment after another cites the familiar celebrities of the denialsphere and familiar long-discredited talking points while praising Governor Palin for bravely standing up to the vast conspiracy by liberal climate researchers, perpetrating their great global warming hoax in order to destroy capitalism with windmills and compact cars.
I would not be surprised to see a rising tide of the most tiresome, repetitious, grotesquely ignorant, yet supremely confident bordering on triumphalist, global warming denialism swelling over the shores of this site during the next two months.
31 August 2008 at 2:58 PM
Thanks Gavin. FYI and FWIW, I never paste my comments from boilerplate. Ever.
31 August 2008 at 3:16 PM
Ike (6), about half of DOE’s $26B budget goes to reduce dependency on oil and/or support climate concerns; this does not include their $9B lo-an program toward the same ends. Also 2/3 of their $9B regular nuclear program goes for already incurred liabilities of maintenance, security, and cleanup. Where does your seemingly misplaced criticism lay?
(I admit the referenced link was not easily read — clearly written by public relations, not accountants, so I might have erred. Do you have any other source for your contention?)
Gavin, thanks for the spam tip.
31 August 2008 at 7:13 PM
RE some of the “buttons” Dan Gilbert says GW & its effects are not pushing.
1. We respond to faces & people (he had pictures of Hitler, et al.), and GW doesn’t have some single, evil antagonists to fear and fight. However, there are evil-doers who have been obstructing the scientific knowledge of GW from escaping NASA & NOAA & EPA — they get my blood boiling.
2. GW doesn’t violate our moral sensibilities the way disgusting food choices or immoral sex does — it’s just not indecent, repugnant, disgusting, or dishonorable. I disagree here; I consider it all those things to kill poor Africans, which is precisely what we are doing by causing them increased and more intense droughts through GW. Not to mention killing & harming people and other life forms through all the other GW effects. A good & funny podcast on religion & the environment, GOD IS GREEN, asks if carbon is the new sex - http://www.operationnoah.org/node/533 )
3. We respond to immediate threats, not future threats (at least not as well). In my books GW IS an immediate threat, since we may be very close to the runaway tipping point of no return, in which we will have plunged humanity and the rest of the world over the cliff of massive death and destruction. It’s just that people seem not to be aware of this. The tipping point is perhaps near, but the death and destruction would go on for maybe 100,000 years, and it could get very bad even within this century. Still that’s a hard point to tell people so they’ll do something soon. And I think this point of responding to immediate, not future, danger was well understood by certain presidents — and that’s perhaps why they plunged us into certain wars….bec we were getting too concerned about GW, and they needed to distract us (maybe this is too cynical, but it did cross my mind).
4. The brain is sensitive to relative and fast change, not absolute and slow change. We don’t see gradual change (Gore made that point in AN INCONVIENT TRUTH with the frog in heating water). Gilbert made the great point that if people of the 1940s could see the environmental harm of today — the polluted water, air, etc., they’d be horrified. But bec these have happened very slowly day-by-day, we just aren’t aware of them. We’ve come to accept the polluted world as is.
And likewise we don’t perceive the increasing effects of GW, bec they are happening so slowly — the increasing droughts, storm intensities, wildfires, heat spells, floods. These are perhaps considered “that’s just the way it is,” by most people.
However, I sort of think that these harms are escalating even faster than the scientists were predicting 20 years ago, and the scientists are totally shocked by the alacrity of these intensifications, and even a part of the public is noticing that this is not just the way the world is. The Republicans are shaking in their boots over Hurricane Gustav; they know the current admin failed on Katrina, and that many people are perhaps blaming Republicans for doing nothing re the GW that is spawning more intense hurricanes.
OTOH, maybe Gilbert is right, and GW & its horrible effects will become “that’s the way the world is” in the minds of people, even if they are aware it’s human-caused. The next “do-nothing” strategy of the powers that be. Yes, GW is happening, and yes we are causing it, and yes it is very harmful, but “that’s just the way it is - get used to it.”
31 August 2008 at 7:19 PM
Thanks for the great responses to my query about CO2 and icecaps - as a life-long Cretaceous worker dabbling in other times, and very worried about our future, I am perplexed by late Cretaceous sea level changes - really fast in the Campanian/Maastrichtian, suggesting ice cap melting/freezing, but high CO2. Is there a general model of when ice caps can and cannot form relative to CO2 levels that goes beyond Royer, Berner, and others cited in this thread. I do not want to take up valuable space here, but surely a predictive point of view using the past might help us understand how much time we have before high tide.
31 August 2008 at 9:38 PM
Ike Solem #50
A lot, but no more than any other technology producing the same energy using boiling water.
Copper wire. And when the copper runs out, aluminium wire
No, why? The reactor produces a high flux of neutrons which are used to convert lithium to tritium. Deuterium is stable and can be extracted from sea water.
The neutron flux is the only residual waste problem, as it would activate the reactor structure, limit its age and have to be disposed of. But it’s orders of magnitude less than with fission.
Another problem non-existent for fusion would be weapons proliferation due to civilian and military technologies being joined at the hip. It is true that inertial-containment fusion and directed-energy weapons are similarly connected, but the latter are hard to use offensively.
The prospect of a planetary nuclear gangland is no prettier than any of the climatic scenarios we are trying to avoid, but apparently it is easier for folks like Hansen and Lovelock to see the threat they deeply understand than the one they do not. It would become them to acquire such insight before speaking out
The biggest problem with fusion though is just getting it to work in the first place.
31 August 2008 at 9:57 PM
Re: 51
“They are all cheering Governor Palin’s comment about global warming and climate change that “I’m not one though who would attribute it to being man-made” and supporting statements from officials in her administration that she believes “the jury is still out” on the anthropogenic causation of global warming.”
What does she attribute GW to- Divine Intelligence? It’s good to hear her non-authoritative opinion on this matter, but it’s pure BS! Red meat for the far right.
If she thinks “the jury is still out” wrt the human factor , she hasn’t been anywhere near the courtroom lately,in fact not in a long time.
31 August 2008 at 9:59 PM
SecularAnimist wrote in 51:
She is into creationism as well:
… which is bound to get cheers out of many of the same people.
31 August 2008 at 10:55 PM
“If the deniers are right, nothing irretrievable has been lost. If the deniers are wrong, we’re all stuffed and cooked.” The latter is self evident - but the “if” is pivotal. To the former I say “not quite”. An overreaction to a perceived threat followed by a series of reactionary decisions on economic policy could result in a loss of the US’s status as a preeminent economic and military power. Some may cheer at this prospect but I ask them: “If not the US then who would you like to see in the driver’s seat”? The wrong choice could lead to irretrievable consequences for civilized society as we know it. IMHO.
31 August 2008 at 11:11 PM
The epistemologist in Gavin might be interested in this:
http://www.the-thinking-man.com/global-warming.html
[Response: Curses! Philosophical theorizing yet again proves global warming can’t be happening or if it is nothing can possibly be done. Back to the drawing board then… But as an aside, how do you feel about medical advice? Do you still smoke? How’s your cholesterol? weight? And why should anyone be concerned about these things? Let’s see how consistent your philosophy is. - gavin]
1 September 2008 at 4:48 AM
Looks like the UK press have gone a bit mad on geoengineering solutions today after the Royal Society released some kind of statement/report decrying the state of CO2 emissions and what we are doing to curtail them (er nothing to be fair) and hence we must engineer a solution or adapt.
So for all those who think that carrying on as usual is best then it looks like for the present at least you are suceeding. Apparantly the frustration is starting to get to some people as they see literally nothing being done on a large scale to combat AGW especially in the USA I guess.
1 September 2008 at 5:21 AM
Re #55: Peter, I think this recent Hansen et al paper (supporting material here) is exactly what you want.
Specifically on the Maastrichtian, see the detailed discussion in this submitted Climate of the Past paper. The authors state that their next step is a paper addressing the details of the glaciations. The Hansen paper discusses why the relationship between CO2 levels and glaciations during this period is probably not a very good guide for our immediate future, however.
Note finally that Gavin and co-authors have a new paper out on the Greenland ice sheet. It would seem that it’s probably not long for the world.
[Response: Actually, the paper is about the Laurentide ice sheet (greenland only gets a small mention). - gavin]
1 September 2008 at 7:05 AM
59, John Melnick,
“An overreaction to a perceived threat followed by a series of reactionary decisions on economic policy could result in a loss of the US’s status as a preeminent economic and military power. Some may cheer at this prospect but I ask them: “If not the US then who would you like to see in the driver’s seat”? The wrong choice could lead to irretrievable consequences for civilized society as we know it.”
John, you have a point, re economic effects, but I was looking at the situation from a biological perspective.
I don’t, personally, attach importance to nationality. The chance event of being born in a particular locality doesn’t seem to me, to be a rational basis for identity. We’re all in the same boat, and if it sinks, we all go down.
As for having American imperialism in the driving seat…isn’t America the major cause of the problem, both historically and on-going ? Who else ? Well, maybe Sweden, or Bhutan.
As I see it, it’s not a choice between good or bad. It’s a choice between mitigated catastrophes or the disappearance of human civilisation.
1 September 2008 at 7:06 AM
SecularAnimist posts:
I understand she wants creationism taught in public-school science classes too. It’s just two issues, but it looks a lot like she’s a scientific illiterate.
1 September 2008 at 8:15 AM
Isn’t it curious how certain attitudes seem to cluster together ?
I wonder, if her child had a headache, and the spec-ialist doctor said “It’s a brain tumour”, she’d say “No, it isn’t, I know better”. I mean, she’s not a climates scientist, nor even a scientist, so she has no expertise or insight into the matter to be able to make an informed judgement.
But then, you don’t need to actually know anything about anything to qualify as a politician.
As Kruschev said, “When it comes to gathering popular support, a politician will promise every village a new bridge, even where there are no rivers”
I find the ‘cut off the left foreleg’ quite barbaric. It reminds me of King Leopold’s Belgian Congo, with photos of enormous piles of hands and ears, severed from natives who refused to obey the rubber tappers.
http://www.defenders.org/newsroom/press_releases_folder/2007/03_27_2007_judge_asked_to_shut_down_wolf_bounty_program.php
reCaptcha says ‘Yield SEVERED’. Hmmm.
1 September 2008 at 8:42 AM
Getting back to the initial discussion of why people find it hard to react to the threat of climate change, I think the analysis ignored the fact that people seem to respond strongly to the threat of eternal damnation, although they have little evidence for it from their daily experience. It is all based on what someone else has told them about what may happen to them after they die. Although there are many departures from what religious leaders teach people, they are still extremely successful at governing behavior. Whole societies have been in the past and continue to be today motivated by hypothetical threat, which can never be proven.
So what explains the difference. Why are many people in the US, for example, regularly motivated by what they think may happen to them after death, but don’t seem to be specially concerned about what may happen to their children and grandchildren because of their actions today, where there is some good evidence, if not certainty.
Perhaps if we understood the difference, we might make more progress getting people to modify their behavior so that we could minimize the effects of climate change.
1 September 2008 at 9:49 AM
Re #60 Tom Stark
From what little search I have done, there doesn’t seem to exist a clear constitutionally valid definition of ‘religion’. But in a common sense sense, this kind of solipsistic libertarianism unshaken by mere fact very much is a religion — and a fundamentalist one to boot. With potentially interesting legal consequences…
Reminds me of some Marxists-Leninists I used to know. Religion that, too. As my old friend Vladimir Ilyich used to say: useful idiots.
1 September 2008 at 10:40 AM
I threw out a passing mostly humorous comment about Nancy Pelosi, planning to just let it lay. But some of the posts here bring it back to unexpected relevance. Everyone is going gaga and piling on Gov. Palin’s comments on AGW (and throwing creationism in for good measure.) This is understandable. What is curious is why these same posters who are criticizing Palin’s scientific illiteracy, are not jumping all over Pelosi, someone already in power with significant authority to directly affect the outcome right now (and only two heartbeats away from the Presidency) , for showing explicit and unarguable sandbox-101 scientific illiteracy by stating a number of times “natural gas is not a fossil fuel”. Is there “good” and “bad” scientific illiteracy in the minds of scientists?
[Response: Ignorance is curable. Denial, not so much. Pelosi was obviously confused and is wrong. If she ever says the same thing again (now that she’s no doubt been informed about the true origin of natural gas), then I’ll both be surprised and more critical. The sad fact is that most politicians mis-speak out of unfamiliarity with the details of scientific (and other matters) - my experience is that politicians know much less than we often give them credit for (and that is very true for climate change). Their staff and advisors are another thing entirely - they are usually very well informed indeed (with the possible exception of Inhofe’s). - gavin]
1 September 2008 at 11:33 AM
Getting back to the subject, one item in the Lunt et al paper caught my eye. 400 ppm. I thought we were at the highest level of CO2 concentration ever in the last 2 million years. Could you please post a graph of what Lunt et al say was the CO2 concentration over the last 2 million years. (I really don’t have the luxury of spending my money to download scientific papers.)
[Response: The Pliocene is more than 2 million years ago. - gavin]
1 September 2008 at 12:14 PM
Rod B (#53),
I had a look at the 2008 Appropriations Bill for the DOE Budget, and the numbers are different from what you quoted. I lay no claim to whether these percentages are good or bad for the US in the long haul, but I thought that some folks might be interested:
The 2008 budget was $28.1 Billion and it breaks down as follows:
Defense related: $15.4 Billion, or 55% of the budget
Nuclear (non defense): $ 1.9 Billion, or 7% of the budget
Fossil Fuels: $ 2.1 Billion, or 8% of the budget
Alternative Energy: $ 1.8 Billion, or 6% of the budget
Power Plants/ Dams $ 1.4 Billion, or 5% of the budget
Science $ 4.0 Billion, or 14% of the budget
Of course, the percentage devoted to science research should be bumped up, but that’s the only pitch I would make!!
Cheers,
Jeff
1 September 2008 at 1:10 PM
59, John Melnick,
“… in a loss of the US’s status as a preeminent economic and military power.”
Some food for thought, John, as to how that notion looks from the outside.
http://www.countercurrents.org/oneall010908.htm
1 September 2008 at 1:13 PM
I live in the state of Oregon. I will be voting for Vice President. I will not be voting for or against Pelosi, because I don’t live in her district in California. Only something like one of thirty-five Californians are eligible to vote for or against her.
Perhaps it will become a campaign issue. It would certainly be legit given the rules of the game. But I doubt I’ll never know, because I rarely pay attention at all to Congressional races outside my district. The last Congressman in California I cared about was Pombo, because of his seniority and constant attacks on the environmental protection act (among other things). Now that the Dems have control, I don’t even know if *he* is still in.
1 September 2008 at 1:39 PM
While browsing online, I happened upon a book entitled A History of Atmospheric CO2 and Its Effects on Plants, Animals, and Ecosystems, by authors J. R. Ehleringer, T. E. Cerling, and Maria-Denise Dearing (2005). You can read excerpts of this book online: Atmospheric CO2 data from ice cores: four climatic cycles
In this article, they talk about the lead versus lag issue in the Antarctic ice cores, and propose an explanation that I hadn’t heard before. The authors acknowledge that CO2 lagged the temperature increase in Antarctic ice cores by 800 ±200 years, but say:
I don’t think that climate scientists have emphasized enough that the Antarctic temperature record does not represent the global temperature record. I know that there are passing references to this in past RealClimate articles, but they were not worded very strongly, to the point that I did not even remember them being discussed until I went back and had a look. My questions are:
(1) What constraints do we have on global temperatures for the last four interglacials, including ice cores and other proxies?
(2) Does temperature really lag CO2 in the Northern Hemisphere during the last four glacial/interglacial transitions?
The notion that CO2 would lag temperature in the Southern Hemisphere makes sense to me, given that Milankovitch forcings initiated the transitions from glacial to interglacial conditions. CO2 degassing from oceans would occur over hundreds of years, and since most of the oceans are in the Southern Hemisphere, that hemisphere should warm first. I can also see methane rising about the same time that ice sheets were melting in the Northern Hemisphere, due to trapped methane reservoirs in permafrost. Is that a fair analysis?
My last question would be what happened to the Southern Annular Mode, such that temperatures could warm in the Antarctic?
1 September 2008 at 2:29 PM
> Pelosi
Telling the outdated story is disingenuous.
You could have looked this up and reported the correction issued a week ago.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/08/24/pelosi-on-natural-gas-fossil-fuel-or-not/
“Update: “She knows it [natural gas] is a fossil fuel but includes it because compared to other fossil fuels (coal and oil) it burns more cleanly,” said Pelosi’s spokesman, Brendan Daly. “Also, it is plentiful domestically and cheaper.”
———————————————————————————————————
Natural gas really does get treated differently than any other fossil fuel, certainly in California. Check your local building codes, I’ll bet it does where you are also, nowadays.
Why? Natural gas is much less lossy in transmission than electricity over long distances.
I recently checked into replacing our old gas hot water heater, installed 32 years ago.*
Transmission losses for electricity are estimated by the city building office at 40 percent, and energy efficiency of the housing stock longterm is a criterion. They permit switching from gas to electric hot water heat only after assessing attic and underfloor insulation, and adding either solar hot water boost or a heat pump system, to recapture that efficiency loss in retrofits.
By contrast, a replacement of a gas hot water heater with a new one (better insulated, better flame control, electronic ignition) is a simple no-problem permit. The gas hot water heaters available now are well insulated, pizeo ignition, and flame controls. (As of next year our area will join the LA area in also requiring a nitrogen oxides control system standard on gas hot water heaters).
We’d looked into it because electric is easier to later upgrade to solar boosted (except in our city you have to do the whole installation at the same time, as above). An electric hot water heater can just have its bottom heating element removed and replaced with the heat exchange loop directly, both for solar boost and for a heat pump boost, and can use a long-lived plastic tank instead of a glass-lined steel tank. So for new construction it makes sense to do it all at once.
http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/consumer/your_home/water_heating/index.cfm/mytopic=12840
“… While a refrigerator pulls heat from inside a box and dumps it into the surrounding room, a stand-alone air-source heat pump water heater pulls heat from the surrounding air and dumps it—at a higher temperature—into a tank to heat water. You can purchase a stand-alone heat pump water heating system as an integrated unit with a built-in water storage tank and back-up resistance heating elements….”
(What I want is a way to have our kitchen refrigerator’s waste heat captured to a holding tank to prewarm cold water for our hot water heater. An addon heat pump to add to a hot water system is about the same size and costs a thousand dollars — while the refrigerator sits in the kitchen blowing hot air on your feet yearround. Anyone going to invent this?)
Summing up, for local politicians and building/zoning people, natural gas is thought of as very different. Yes, it’s a fossil fuel (I’m sure Pelosi wasn’t pushing the abiogenic methane theory).
______________________
* How to get more years of service from a hot water heater:
– add a long curved dip tube, that swirls the water at the bottom of the tank, reducing the tendency of crud to adhere and insulate right over the flame; add and replace the optional addon corrosion protection rod every decade or so; flush out the sediment from the bottom of the tank, running a few gallons of hot (HOT! CAREFUL) water out the lower drain valve every three or four months as recommended (not turning it off and draining it, just letting the incoming cold water flush the sediment out the drain valve).
Our plumber says we are the only customers he has who listen to him; he gets comparable long service out of his gas hot water heater. If your gas hot water heater makes ‘bumping’ noises, look into the above before the pounding puts little cracks in the inside enamel and it starts to rust out.
Oh, and buy a “Leakfrog” too, it’s precautionary good sense. You know how to find this stuff.
_____________
reCaptcha: prudence There
1 September 2008 at 2:39 PM
Gavin et al. Re. “…the onset of the quaternary glaciations…”
I’m confused. During the the quaternary glaciations, didn’t the Milankovitch cycles change from strong 40,000 year pulses to 100,000 year cycles?
CO2 shifts couldn’t explain this, could it?…or what is the latest thinking on why the cycles changed from 40,000 to 100,000?
1 September 2008 at 4:08 PM
The subject of religeon seems to have been brought up more than a few times in the replies above, which raises the question, was the biblical quotation ‘And the meek shall inherit the earth’ actually refering to Jellyfish?
I’m not convinced that there is a growing culture of denial about climate issues, but I think there is a qrowing fear of public panic and civil unrest. The wearing of the ‘bag for life’ supermarket T-shirt is just about all the vast majority of people can actually do about, and whilst the recycling is over-filling the media is claiming that the US’s best year for hurricanes, has got nothing to do with it, it’s not really in the public interest to know that, it’s likely that ‘the end is nigh’.
A couple of years the UN security council upgraded climate change to a global security issue, they seem now to expecting wars over land, water, food resources etc.
Would it be best for the majority of people (general public) to be left to stockpile the excess carrier bags, in green T-shirts, whilst those that can, do something about it, then hopefully no-one will notice there was a problem in the first place, and no-one goes out of there minds, although the problem is, it’s likely they won’t.
1 September 2008 at 4:17 PM
On the 40- (or 41- or thereabouts) to 100 (or so) thousand year change — that question’s called the “Transition Problem”
Search within RC, it and much else about this addressed before, particularly inline by Gavin in responses.
More generally search: +Milankovitch +”Transition Problem”
“The “Transition Problem,” for example, asks why, prior to a million years ago, cycles occurred at 41,000-year intervals, but after a million years ago, they occurred only at 100,000-year intervals.”
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2007/08/the-milankovich.html
Short answer: complexity, including evolution changing primary productivity feedbacks, continental drift changing circulation patterns. Much more if you run that suggested search.
1 September 2008 at 4:56 PM
Jeff in 73 says:
Setting aside which hemisphere follows which, I hope you don’t mind if I focus on the lead vs. lag.
Rant follows…
Lead vs. lag — in a system subject to positive feedback, the central questions are: “What is the forcing?” and “What is the feedback?” Orbital forcing causes increased solar insulation (absorption of solar radiation), gradually raising the temperature of the ocean, resulting in a reduction in its capacity to retain gases — including carbon dioxide. This raises the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, making the atmosphere more “opaque” (sorry, Hank!) to thermal radiation. (I could show you infrared images of it doing exactly this over western and eastern seaboards of the US due to higher population density, traffic and carbon dioxide emissions.) Given that energy continues to enter the system at the same rate but escapes the atmosphere at a reduced rate, the temperature of the climate system must rise until the temperature to the power of four (thermal emission of radiation in accordance with Planck’s law) rises enough to compensate for the increased opacity of the atmosphere to infrared radiation, and the rate at which energy leaves the system is equal to the rate at which energy enters the system. This basically follows from the conservation of energy. So in this case — what we predominantly see in the paleoclimate record — the increased solar insulation is the forcing, carbon dioxide the feedback — and we would not be able to explain the extent to which the temperature rose simply by means of the increased solar insulation alone.
However, there are other points in the paleoclimate record where carbon dioxide or methane rose first, before temperature, and temperature followed carbon dioxide. Good case in point: the Permian/Triassic extinction. A supervolcano in Siberia erupted for over a million years, with lava releasing methane from shallow water methane hydrate deposits. The opacity of the atmosphere climbed first, then temperature. So it is false to say that carbon dioxide (or methane) always follows temperature. We see both. Temperatures may increase first or greenhouse gases may increase first. For the most part the climate system doesn’t really care where the forcing comes from — whatever the forcing thatinitially results in an imbalance in radiation going out vs. radiation coming in, the results will largely be the same.
But not entirely the same… Initially, increases in solar insolation will tend to raise the temperature of both the troposphere and stratosphere as visible light gets absorbed at the surface and ultraviolet by ozone in the stratosphere. In contrast, increased opacity of the atmosphere due to greenhouse gases will lower the amount of thermal radiation that is able to reach the stratosphere, cooling the stratosphere while the troposphere warms due to the reduction in the rate at which thermal radiation is able to escape it. Thus you have a signature of global warming due to greenhouse gases. It has been observed. There are others. For example, increased solar insulation would tend warm days more than nights, but an increase in the opacity of the atmosphere due to greenhouse gases would tend to warm nights more than days. This has also been observed.
Basically what the denialists are counting on are people being gullible, unable to realize that there is such a thing as positive feedback.
1 September 2008 at 7:41 PM
Timothy (78),
Perhaps you miss the point of my questions. I don’t dispute that CO2 can be a forcing or a feedback, and that it was certainly a feedback during glacial/interglacial transitions. In fact, I agree with everything you wrote. Your response does not, however, answer the two questions that I pose. What I am postulating is that it is in fact wrong to say that CO2 lags temperature during the last four interglacials, because Antarctic temperatures are not representative of global temperatures. If Greenland’s temperatures didn’t start rising until thousands of years after CO2 started to increase, how can one say that CO2 lags (global) temperature? Perhaps by mentioning Southern Hemisphere and Northern Hemisphere I was only causing confusion. What is necessary, however, is a globally averaged temperature record before one can even discuss lead versus lag. I find that this concept has been missing from all discussions.
Cheers,
Jeff
1 September 2008 at 7:50 PM
Two excellent articles on the Beeb site:
– Rigor mortis sets in on the cosmic ray-climate connection.
– The Hockey Stick is back! Mike and team have updated it with the multitude of new available proxies. Unsurprisingly, things remain flattish. Expect a paroxyxm of bile from the usual sources.
1 September 2008 at 7:58 PM
Fusion!?
I am 73 years old. I can remember reading in Popular Mechanics or Popular Science or Science Digest (remember that one?) or Scientific American in the mid-’50s that unlimited virtually free electric power was only twenty, repeat-20, years away.
Guess what kids? ‘Tis been 20 years away ever since!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER
According to researchers at a demonstration reactor in Japan, a fusion generator should be feasible in the 2030s and no later than the 2050s.
1 September 2008 at 8:12 PM
Schmert, 76, said
“…whilst those that can, do something about it…”
Thing is, who are ‘those that can’?
The vast majority, who are pre-occupied with the problems of their daily survival ?
Or, the few, who are vastly rich ? Or the powerful political leaders ?
http://www.countercurrents.org/walberg310808.htm
I heard a quote, ‘An avalanche is built of snowflakes’…
IMHO, we, as a species, have reached the greatest crisis in human history. We should stop calling it ‘climate change’; we should start calling it climate crisis, or climate chaos, or climate cataclysm…
Maybe it’s the people I contact, but I don’t know of any serious, educated, informed person who is not deeply apprehensive.
It is possible that the super-wealthy elite, the 6000 or so mentioned in the link above, believe they can insulate themselves and ride out a crash in global population, rather than make the changes that would address the roots of the problem.
Personally, I think most politicians and CEOs are stressed, harried individuals, who have no time or leisure to look at our predicament in a long-term eco-historical perspective. They see red lights flashing, and pull levers, without a clue as to where we are going to end up…
Maybe we’ve just exceeded carrying capacity, and are due for a population crash, and there’s little we can do to avoid it.
I mean, commentators in ancient Rome could foresee collapse of that empire, and analysed the causes correctly, but still could do nothing effective to prevent it from happening.
What can I do ? What can you do ?
http://www.greatchange.org/footnotes-overshoot-st_matthew_island.html
http://www.greatchange.org/footnotes-overshoot-easter_island.html
1 September 2008 at 8:13 PM
dhogaza Says:
1 September 2008 at 1:13 PM
The last Congressman in California I cared about was Pombo, because of his seniority and constant attacks on the environmental protection act (among other things). Now that the Dems have control, I don’t even know if *he* is still in.
Dems brought in someone specifically to get rid of him. He has a lot in common with the new VPpotential (R-AK). ‘Twas a happy day when he lost.
1 September 2008 at 8:17 PM
RodB:
The general categories in the DOE budget request are:
Nuclear Security: $9.385 billion
Environmental Responsibility: $6.344 billion
Scientific Discovery: $4.398 billion
Energy Security: $3.123 billion
Management Excellence: $0.629 billion
Where might the solar, wind and biofuel research money be hiding?
Scientific Discovery might be a good place to look, but the wording is extremely vague in the subsections. Here are the only two possible places in that section:
Biological and environmental research………..$0.531 billion
Basic energy sciences………………………$1.498 billion
There is no mention of solar or wind energy in the descriptions of those programs, and very little mention of biofuels.
(There is also half a billion directly earmarked for fusion research)
How about Energy Security?
Yes, there it is, under the subheading “Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy”:
Biomass and biorefinery systems R&D……………..$0.179 billion
Solar energy………………………………….$0.148 billion
Wind energy…………………………………. $0.040 billion
There is also an Office of Nuclear Energy in this section, $874 billion. There is no Office of Wind Energy, or Office of Solar Energy, or Office of Biofuel Energy.
So, that’s it in the overall budget, according to this document:
http://www.cfo.doe.gov/budget/08budget/Content/Highlights/Highlights.pdf
So, how does the solar money work?
It’s not about funding basic science at the university level. The details are at: http://www.doe.gov/news/4855.htm
However, this is a cart-before-the-horse program - because there are no basic renewable energy research centers of note, outside of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory - which may be involved peripherally in the solar research. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory, oddly enough, is managed by a joint partnership between Bechtel, noted pipeline constructor and nuclear contractor, and Battelle Memorial Institute, the non-profit research corporation that is also leading the public-private FutureGen coal capture project. Back in 1997, they canceled their research into what most people would agree is the highest-yield-per-acre biofuel source, algal biodiesel. The 1998 wrap-up report is here: www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/fy98/24190.pdf
So, that’s why you don’t see large scale renewable energy research projects at the nation’s universities and National Laboratories. There is no federal money available to do it, and the private contractors that manage the DOE energy program are not at all interested in developing replacements for coal, oil and nuclear power.
We could look to privately funded efforts to do renewable energy (”public-private partnerships”), such as Stanford University’s “Global Climate and Energy Program”, GCEP, which has several hundred million in private funding. The lead donors are ExxonMobile and Schlumberger Oil Field Services, along with Toyota and General Electric. They each have a representative on the committee that makes the final decisions over which projects get funded - but don’t worry, Stanford has a seat at the table as well - and a vote, just like the others. The private partners also get an exclusive extendable 5-year patent control clause.
Exxon is also very excited about seeing its profits collapse as electric cars take over the market, and so is Toyota. Schlumberger wants to do less business, not more, and GE wants to shut down their entire nuclear division. There is not a single conflict-of-interest issue that needs airing here. And so on.
Hope that clarifies things a little bit.
1 September 2008 at 8:48 PM
Oh, thanks for that, no wonder he hasn’t done anything bad recently!
And I meant Endangered Species Act above, I brain-farted.
1 September 2008 at 11:51 PM
Re 84 - that’s maddening.
Re 73,75,77,78,79:
CO2 feedback mechanisms are more complex than the simple ‘warm water dissolves less gas’. They have to be, because, while a temperature drop increases the ratio of concentration of a saturated solution of gas to the partial pressure in the overlying air, the change in partial pressure of the air that occurs is too great. Also, if the total organic C content of vegetation and soil declines while atmospheric C declines, that also has to go into the ocean somehow.
Of course, gas dissolved at depth in the ocean (below the mixed layer) might stay dissolved regardless of atmospheric partial pressures (?)
But with CO2, it is important to remember that it’s more complex than a physical reaction of going into or out of solution. It also gets converted to carbonate and bicarbonate ions. It affects the PH. The abundance of cations (like Ca ions) affects this. PH affects the abundance of cations (by affecting the stability of CaCO3 solid in the water). The ions affect how much CO2 can be taken up from the air. etc. I don’t know exactly how it all works.
Other mechanisms I am aware of:
fertilization of plankton by wind-blown dust (or whatever other mechanism?) - some fraction may fall to the deep ocean. While some fraction may be oxydized there the CO2 produced in the deep ocean may stay there until reaching an upwelling region (PS perhaps increased phytoplankton by upwelling nutrients would thus be ineffective at loading the deep ocean with CO2, considering where the dead plankton would be falling?).
Change in deep ocean currents, thermohaline circulation - because how much CO2 that goes into or stays in water (aside from decay from plankton falling into it at depth) is affected by the chemistry of the water and the regional climate where the water was last in the mixed layer, and the chemistry of the water is affected by where it comes from and what the conditions were like, for example, when it was at the sea floor over some carbonate minerals and dead plankton (?) - I think.
Also, when an ice sheet forms, wouldn’t it form on top of the soil before pushing the soil out? So maybe some cold organic C stays in the soil and then gets released from moraines as the ice recedes - or gets washed into the ocean (or lakes), and then see above (more speculative ideas on my part).
There may be some other points - see also Ruddiman - “Earth’s Climate Past and Future”
——–
Over long periods of time, geologic outgassing (including oxydation of organic C in sedimentary rocks - not sure how big a source that is relative to directly inorganic geologic CO2 emissions) must tend to balance chemical weathering and organic carbon burial (from memory, I think organic carbon burial is typically ~ 20% of the total rate of geologic sequestration of carbon).
chemcial weathering:
CaSiO3 (for example) + CO2 (slightly acidic rainwater) -> SiO2 (for example) + CaCO3 (or another carbonate mineral)
net photosynthesis (focus on C) CO2 -> O2 + organic C.
geologic outgassing (inorganic):
CaCO3 + SiO2 under heating (I think) -> CaSiO3 (in magma, then lave, then rock) + CO2
oxydation of organic C - no need to show formulas there…
organic burial on land is favored by flat areas (no erosion, poor drainage) with wet (warm, I think) climates, I think.
chemical weathering is enhanced by warmer and wetter conditions and by rapid mechanical weathering. A tropical mountain range in the path of monsoon rains helps (Himalayas - Tibet itself affects the Asian monsoon) (sure, there isn’t much if any chemical weathering under the mountain glaciers, but in a steady state, glaciers continually deliver rock fragments to their edges, where they may be carried down to warmer wetter conditions, etc…)
These are all generally slow processes, hence the negative feedback that chemical weathering provides by tending to remove CO2 faster in warmer conditions - this doens’t overwhelm the positive feedbacks of shorter term glacial-interglacial transitions. If the Earth got stuck in one state or the other long enough, and all other factors were right, the chemical weathering feedback could initiate the end of either state - but I don’t think recent 100,000 year timescale climate variations are long enough for this to be important (and there’s Milankovitch cycles).
Interestingly, repetitive glacial-interglacial variations may, over time, produce an average increase in mechanical weathering and affect chemical weathering that way (I think) - so maybe the interglacials and glacials together have a cummulative effect on CO2 that a prolonged glaciation wouldn’t have (??)
Continental drift, exposed land area, and in particular, the formation and location (and mineral abundances) of mountain ranges affect chemical weathering. Changes in geologic outgassing can force changes in CO2 over long time periods, changing the climate until the CO2 removal by chemical weathering responds fully, at which point a new (long-term)equilibrium is reached.
The chemical weathering feedback helps explain the reduction of CO2 over Earth’s history while the sun has gotten brighter, but changes in geologic outgassing rates, geography, and biological evolution also have their roles.
The negative chemical weathering feedback suggests that a prolonged period of elevated methane would tend to reduce CO2 (perhaps relevant to the later portion of the Archean in particular?). It also played (or would have played, depending) a role in the Paleoproterozoic Snowball Earth episodes - with the Earth in a frozen state for millions of years, CO2 would continually build up from geologic outgassing (meanwhile the very slow but not nonexistant water cycle would have time to produce and build land glaciers and ice sheets). Upon thawing and melting, the positive albedo feedback would have created a ‘carbonic acid sauna’, and the CO2 would have been quickly (much faster than typical rates) drawn out the atmosphere (with the help of newly-exposed and moistenned glacial debris).
——-
The timing issue - Milankovitch cycles do not repeat exactly over time - over hundreds of millions of years the moon has drifted away from the Earth, the Earth has slowed it’s spin and its equatorial bulge has shrunk, and that certainly affects precession and obliquity cycles. Over shorter time periods, the ~ 100,000 year eccentricity cycle is modulated (or occurs on top of?) a ~ 400,000 (or is it closer to 450,000 or 500,000 - I forget) year eccentricity cycle, so that, for example, we are approaching a lower eccentricity value than we’ve had for a few glaciations and interglacials.
But in as far as the change in climate response around - 700,000 or 900,000 years ago, something like that - is concerned:
The precession cycle is modulated by the eccentricity cycle - the effect of precession is simply to change the seasonal timing of the effect of eccentricity, so when the eccentricity is low the precession cycle’s effect is weak. The three cycles work together to vary the climate forcing, which is mainly a seasonal and latitudinal redistribution of sunlight (the global and annual average top-of-atmosphere solar forcing changes very little) - which at times may favor ice sheet growth or shrinkage - depending on the overall climate state of the globe, at some high latitudes, depending on ocean currents and land distribution, etc, there could be regions where, when the Milankovitch forcing reduces the seasonal extremes in regional solar heating, mild wet winters may have enough snow accumulation that the mild summers cannot melt it all - whereas greater seasonal extremes could lead to greater summer melting, and maybe less winter accumulation (?). The precession cycle also affects low-latitude monsoons, which may in some way have an effect on ice sheet growth and decay through global circulation and moisture and temperature fluxes, though I’m not sure how important that would be (?).
There is threshold behavior - at any given location, there is a threshold that must be crossed before an ice sheet can form, and a threshold that must be crossed (not the same threshold, due to ice-albedo effects, and to ice surface elevation, among possible other things) to start destroying an ice sheet - although I’d expect the threshold is made fuzzy by the albedo feedback itself -