How Bad Is Global Warming?

[Ben D]

What the everlasting fuck are you on (about)?

You are so tiresome.....do you really still think the statement by Piers J. Sellers, who is the acting director of earth science at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center that..."if you have no faith in the predictive capability of climate models, you should also discard your faith in weather forecasts and any other predictions based on Newtonian mechanics", is sound?

[DrEvil]

What the everlasting fuck are you on (about)?

You are so tiresome.....do you really still think the statement by Piers J. Sellers, who is the acting director of earth science at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center that..."if you have no faith in the predictive capability of climate models, you should also discard your faith in weather forecasts and any other predictions based on Newtonian mechanics", is sound?

Yes. They're predictions, not absolute truth.
The climate scientists aren't saying "This is what will happen. Period", they're saying "This is what we find most likely to happen, based on our best models and the data we have available".

[Ben D]

What the everlasting fuck are you on (about)?

You are so tiresome.....do you really still think the statement by Piers J. Sellers, who is the acting director of earth science at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center that..."if you have no faith in the predictive capability of climate models, you should also discard your faith in weather forecasts and any other predictions based on Newtonian mechanics", is sound?

Yes. They're predictions, not absolute truth.
The climate scientists aren't saying "This is what will happen. Period", they're saying "This is what we find most likely to happen, based on our best models and the data we have available".

Ah yes...the first impression from reading the statement is the implication that if you are skeptical of agw model predictions, you should logically be also skeptical of weather predictions, as they are both based on Newtonian mechanics. So it follows then that those who are overly skeptical of agw predictive science and rather accepting of weather forecasting are somehow being inconsistent...not logical if you like....and it this secondary implication that I have been addressing in my posts.

[justdrew]

Ben, perhaps we're building up too much Phlogiston

While newtonian mechanics is hardly the ALL of climate modelling, it certainly plays a role, at least in Advection and Convection.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newtonian_fluid
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_transfer

[Ben D]

^ Yep justdrew...perhaps some dephlogistication is in order...

[stillrobertpaulsen]

At This Rate, The World Will Have To Cease All Carbon Emissions In 2040 To Stay Under 2°C

by Jeff Spross Posted on November 17, 2014 at 2:58 pm


CREDIT: Shutterstock

By 2040, the world will emit all the carbon it can afford while remaining within safe ranges of climate change, according to a report released last week.

Scientists and policymakers have generally settled on 2°C as the amount of global temperature increase, over pre-industrial levels, the climate can take without creating truly dangerous upheavals. Because the effect of carbon in the atmosphere is cumulative, staying below that threshold requires a hard limit on the amount of carbon the world emits between now and 2100. We’ve already blown through a bit over half of that “carbon budget.” Last week’s World Energy Outlook 2014 from the International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that, on our current course, we’ll chew through the rest by 2040.

To remain under 2°C, all world carbon emissions would have to immediately drop to zero after that year, which of course they won’t. While IEA projects that renewables will grow aggressively between now and 2040, overtaking coal as the globe’s leading source of electricity, and that coal and oil use will effectively plateau by that point, fossil fuel use — and thus carbon emissions — will remain about 75 percent of the world’s energy consumption. That, according to IEA, puts us on course for roughly 3.6°C of global warming by 2100.

“By 2040, world energy supply is divided into four almost equal parts: low-carbon sources (nuclear and renewables), oil, natural gas and coal,” according to the IEA report’s press release. “In the central scenario, the entire carbon budget allowed under a 2°C climate trajectory is consumed by 2040, highlighting the need for a comprehensive and ambitious agreement at the COP21 meeting in Paris in 2015.”

The Paris meeting will mark the next round of international climate talks, where observers hope a series of binding treaties to significantly cut carbon emissions will be hammered out by the major world powers. The previous round of such talks in 2009 failed to secure any sort of agreement. If the world’s available 2°C carbon budget is to be stretched beyond 2040, the 2015 talks will need to significantly increase the rate at which countries — particularly the U.S., China, and Europe — are cutting their emissions. IEA also projects that the world will need to ramp up its investments in low-carbon energy to four times above their current levels. This would require bringing annual global investment up to roughly $1 trillion, from the roughly $230 billion IEA anticipates it will stay at through 2020 given current policies.

Back in September, a coalition of 340 global investors representing $24 trillion in assets released a statement calling on national governments to institute meaningful and reliable carbon pricing policies in order to drive more investment into clean power.

IEA’s numbers also roughly line up with the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which determined that, on its current course, the world will lose out on a 50 percent chance of staying under 2°C in 28.4 years, and will lose out on a 33 percent chance of doing so within 33.3 years.

The IEA report anticipates that demand for coal in the United States and Europe will drop between now and 2040, and will plateau or even drop slightly as well for China, while increasing slightly for the world as a whole. It also projects that annual demand for all forms of energy combined will flatline almost immediately for advanced western nations, and will effectively flatline for China as well by 2040, while roughly doubling for the rest of the world over that time period.

Another factor that came to light too recently for IEA to build it into its projections is the pledge the United States and China announced last week, which commits the U.S. to cutting its carbon emissions at least 26 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, and commits China to peaking its emission by 2030 and getting 20 percent of its energy from renewables by that same year. The details have yet to be worked out, and most observers agree the primary significance of the deal is political, as a coalition building tool in the run-up to the 2015 summit. On its own, experts say the deal would likely alter global temperature increases by 0.1°C if fully carried out.

[Luther Blissett]

You Won’t Believe How Bad Pollution In China Has Become

With a newly-minted elite and an economic growth rate of over 10%, the environment has taken a backseat in China, the world’s most populous country. Growing pollution has led to unusable waterways, increased incidence of birth defects, and some of the dirtiest air on earth. It’s so nasty that there’s now a word for it: “smogpocalypse”.

With that said, China is not oblivious to its ecological impacts, and according to the Harvard Business Review “is taking this challenge much more seriously than others… doing things differently, making longer-term, sustained commitments that are much larger.” In 2010, China ranked as the world’s leading investor in low-carbon energy technology, which makes sense given national political leaders’ tendency to view clean energy as a great economic opportunity.

The following photographs prove that economic growth indeed comes at a cost, and one whose long-term effects remain unclear:
http://all-that-is-interesting.com/word ... -river.jpg
A journalist takes a sample of the Jianhe River, which has become red from chemical plants illegally dumping untreated waste water directly into a local stream.

http://all-that-is-interesting.com/word ... -china.jpg
In 2010, a blast in an oil storage facility in Dalian led to over 400 million gallons of oil being spilled. For comparison's sake, that's over four times the size of the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

http://all-that-is-interesting.com/word ... -river.jpg
http://all-that-is-interesting.com/word ... lution.jpg
http://all-that-is-interesting.com/word ... graphs.jpg
According to Greenpeace, Beijing experienced 2,589 deaths and a loss of US$328 million in 2012 because of PM2.5 pollution.

http://all-that-is-interesting.com/word ... n-smog.jpg
From Wired: By 2030, China’s carbon dioxide emissions could equal the entire world’s CO2 production today, if the country’s carbon usage keeps pace with its economic growth.

http://all-that-is-interesting.com/word ... g-city.jpg
http://all-that-is-interesting.com/word ... lution.jpg
http://all-that-is-interesting.com/word ... n-fish.jpg
By its own governmental projections, China will have exploited all of the country’s available water supplies by 2030

Some Vice videos at the link.

Edit: Photos not embedding for some reason.

[coffin_dodger]

How Bad Is Global Warming?

Obviously not bad enough

New EPA bill passed last week - http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-113hr1422rfs/pdf/BILLS-113hr1422rfs.pdf

AN ACT
To amend the Environmental Research, Development, and Demonstration Authorization Act of 1978 to provide for Scientific Advisory Board member qualifications, public participation, and for other purposes.

‘‘(C) [that] persons with substantial and relevant expertise are not excluded from the Board due to affiliation with or representation of entities that may have a potential interest in the Board’s advisory activities, so long as that interest is fully disclosed to the Administrator and the public and appointment to the Board complies with section 208 of title 18.10 United States Code;

Just dandy.

[Rory]

OMG!!!

Those monsters - The CAGW fraud is being perepertrated by the EPA!!!

[coffin_dodger]

[Ben D]

^ Now that's social engineering for you.

[DrEvil]

How Bad Is Global Warming?

Obviously not bad enough

New EPA bill passed last week - http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-113hr1422rfs/pdf/BILLS-113hr1422rfs.pdf

AN ACT
To amend the Environmental Research, Development, and Demonstration Authorization Act of 1978 to provide for Scientific Advisory Board member qualifications, public participation, and for other purposes.

‘‘(C) [that] persons with substantial and relevant expertise are not excluded from the Board due to affiliation with or representation of entities that may have a potential interest in the Board’s advisory activities, so long as that interest is fully disclosed to the Administrator and the public and appointment to the Board complies with section 208 of title 18.10 United States Code;

Just dandy.

The reason for that being there is that the Republicans wanted to ban scientists from the board on the grounds that if a scientist did the actual research s/he was discussing, it would (according to the Republicans) count as a vested interest. They tried to impose a blanket ban on climate scientists on the board.

Censorship in other words (and paid for by big energy).

[Ben D]

^ and apparently the bill would also make it easier for scientists with financial ties to corporations to serve on the Science Advisory Board, as well as making it more difficult for scientists who have applied for grants from the EPA to join the board....- thinkprogress

[Iamwhomiam]

The evangi-fundi-Christians can't wait to take hold of the Library of Congress to begin burning the archives before heading over to the Smithsonian to do some housekeeping there.

The reason for that being there is that the Republicans wanted to ban scientists from the board on the grounds that if a scientist did the actual research s/he was discussing, it would (according to the Republicans) count as a vested interest. They tried to impose a blanket ban on climate scientists on the board.

Right. All those lucrative grants!

Only pliant millionaires with pockets stuffed with billionaires pocket lint.

I know I owe you a response Ben. Soon.

[justdrew]

I think it's possible to avoid the Archdruid's prognosis and deal with climate change.

We'll be needing a Cultural Revolution on par with China's is all.