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CLIMATE CHANGE: Dark Clouds Gathering Over Copenhagen


Environment  (tags: environment, globalwarming, CO2emissions, climatechange, humans, world )

Cal
- 15 days ago - ipsnews.net
It has been a bad week for the climate change summit in Copenhagen next month. During the week the last meeting in the formal round of pre- Copenhagen talks collapsed in Barcelona. Then, meeting here on the weekend, the G20 finance ministers put the seal
Comments

serge vrabec (253)
Monday November 9, 2009, 5:41 pm
Heres the deal :
All NEW drilling, new shale projects, more mountain top removal, etc. WILL NOT BE ALLOWED. There must be a new world economy that takes the earth and its people and animals and vegetation into account. The 'main" cause of this recession is not economic its environmental, this MUST be understood. Emissions and pollution are down worldwide thanks to this "recession", if the world cannot come to an accord in sustainability, then it should be common sense to US ALL by now that OUR Global economy will fall, only hard this time. That all i have to say about that. :):):) Thx Cal.
Thank god we have a guy that makes sense in office, all considered, or the world would have already been destroyed.
It would be wise FOR ALL to buckle up , we will have the change WE DESIRE, period. I see the light already...... NOTHING can stop the New era( age), I AM excited, but impatient(a little bored too, lol). send green star | .
 

serge vrabec (253)
Monday November 9, 2009, 5:43 pm
"It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory." ~W. Edwards Deming

Life is ETERNAL, there is no death, REJOICE......and lose the fear or not :):):)
 

Chaz Gaily Berlusconi (250)
Tuesday November 10, 2009, 3:12 am
they need to put everything into this deal to fight climate change... they need to clean up the environment and put these issues first.
 

Judy Cross (80)
Tuesday November 10, 2009, 10:02 pm
Uh Oh! New research shows no significant change in 150 years due to man made CO2

"This study re-examines the available atmospheric CO2 and emissions data including their uncertainties. It is shown that with those uncertainties, the trend in the airborne fraction since 1850 has been 0.7 ± 1.4% per decade, i.e. close to and not significantly different from zero. The analysis further shows that the statistical model of a constant airborne fraction agrees best with the available data if emissions from land use change are scaled down to 82% or less of their original estimates. Despite the predictions of coupled climate-carbon cycle models, no trend in the airborne fraction can be found.

Knorr, W. (2009), Is the airborne fraction of anthropogenic CO2 emissions increasing?, Geophys. Res. Lett., 36, L21710, doi:10.1029/2009GL040613.

According to Pat Michaels at World Climate Report:

Dr. Knorr carefully analyzed the record of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, atmospheric CO2 concentrations, and anthropogenic land-use changes for the past 150 years. Keeping in mind the various sources of potential errors inherent in these data, he developed several different possible solutions to fitting a trend to the airborne fraction of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. In all cases, he found no significant trend (at the 95% significance level) in airborne fraction since 1850.

(Note: It is not that the total atmospheric burden of CO2 has not been increasing over time, but that of the total CO2 released into the atmosphere each year by human activities, about 45% remains in the atmosphere while the other 55% is taken up by various natural processes—and these percentages have not changed during the past 150 years)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/10/bombshell-from-bristol-is-the-airborne-fraction-of-anthropogenic-co2-emissions-increasing-study-says-no/#more-12703
 

Dale Husband (124)
Wednesday November 11, 2009, 12:09 am
"Uh Oh! New research shows no significant change in 150 years due to man made CO2"

Judy, you are supposed to be commenting on the story itself, not spamming us with phony baloney denialist propaganda.

Just for laughs, I'll submit this:

http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2007/09/cut_and_paste_denialism.php

{{{Category: Global Warming Denialism
Posted on: September 9, 2007 5:53 PM, by MarkH

I think most skeptical bloggers would agree that one common tactic one sees from denialists is whole-hog cut-and-paste rebuttals without attribution. For instance, on finds when arguing with evolution denialists that they'll just cut-and-paste tired creationist arguments into comment threads.

We wrote briefly about the latest attempt by global warming denialists to suggest that the scientific consensus does not support climate change. To start with, it was little more than a repeat of the previous debunked attempts, and was hardly original.

Well, for more proof they can't think originally, write originally, or do anything other than rehash debunked arguments, check out Lambert's coverage of Shulte's reply to criticism that he's engaging in more typical denialist nonsense. It's a cut-and-paste job from Monckton without attribution! Not only is it total nonsense - nearly every citation is miscategorized or misrepresented - but it's almost word-for-word lifted from another global warming hack's writing, without attribution or citation.

So continuing the long tradition of hack responses to criticism, the latest global warming denialist nonsense looks just like the same nonsense that was debunked in years past, and just like the kind of nonsense one sees from creationists.

And one can't help but love the irony. Here's Schulte's last paragraph.

{{The author of the statement has been less than courteous, and less than professional, in having failed to verify the facts with me before thrice having used the word "misrepresentation" in connection with a draft of a paper by me which he or she cannot have read at the time. Worse, the author of the statement has used the word "foolish" about me when he or she had not done me the usual professional courtesy either of contacting me or even of reading what I had written before making haste to comment upon it. I should not expect any properly-qualified and impartiallymotivated scientist to behave thus.
If the statement was indeed authored by Oreskes, I expect her to apologize for her professional discourtesy to me, and I invite the Chancellor of her university to enquire into the matter and then, if she be the statement's author, to ensure that she apologizes promptly and unreservedly.}}

Ahh, "less than professional" accuses the denialist who plagiarizes in his response. I think Oreskes handled it just right. After all, does one really have to see each rehashing of a crank argument to know that it's nothing other than the usual misrepresentation and dishonesty?}}}

Now, it should be noted that when I argue about climate change, I often attempt to use my own words to show that I have my own understanding of the issue, rather than just pass the buck to others who come across as atuthority figures. Judy Cross, on the other hand, seems to copy and paste denialist propaganda because she cannot even understand most of what she posts, but merely assumes that it is evidence against the man-made global warming hypothesis. I took one look at what Anthony Watts posted on his blog about increasing CO2 levels, and nearly died laughing. It's WORTHLESS!

"Dr Wolfgang Knorr at the University of Bristol found that in fact the trend in the airborne fraction since 1850 has only been 0.7 ± 1.4% per decade, which is essentially zero."

No, it's not, especially over 150 years or so. What a bogus joke! According to my calculations, that would yield a minimum increase of 9.1% and a maximum increase of 11.9% from 1850 to now. Neither of which is anywhere near zero!

Now, here's something of my own work:

{{{Those terrible twins of climate change, CO2 and H2O

One of the most commonly held misconceptions about the man-made global warming hypothesis is that temperatures must increase every year and evenly over the world. No one knowledgable about climate issues would seriously claim that, so it’s an obvious strawman. The question is, why do temperatures fluctuate so much and does global warming explain this? Indeed it does!

Global warming has indeed stopped since 2005, due to the Sun. Ironically, the excess CO2 that has been produced by man and contributed to global warming when the Sun was roaring is causing a thermal backlash due to the Sun going quiet now. The reason is because of the other component involved in climate change: water vapor.

The process begins with the slight increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere known to be caused by human emissions. Because CO2 traps slightly more heat, it also causes more water to evaporate. Water vapor (H2O) is also a greenhouse gas, so that causes a feedback loop, in which the temperature increases further, causing more water to evaporate. In the summer months, the result is much hotter weather than you might expect from CO2 alone.

But H2O has an opposite effect in winter. As temperature drops, the increased amounts of H2O forms clouds, which block sunlight and thus cool the earth further. Winters will be even colder than one would expect, plus there would be increased precipitation, including snow.

As long as the average temperature over the course of a year at a certain place or region is below the melting point of water, then global warming actually has the paradoxical effect of causing colder winters, more snow and thus increased ice in certain places. It is where the average annual temperatures have risen above the melting point of water that we see glaciers retreating. And the hotter summers at the northern ice cap are nothing to ignore, for its melting away will still have a tragic effect on polar bears.

In the southern hemisphere, global warming has had less of an effect, and this can be explained by geography. There is far more land up north than down south. Land radiates heat, while oceans absorb it. Also, the Arctic Ocean is water surrounded by warmer land, while Antarctica is frigid land surrounded by cold oceans that insulate it from warmer regions. So it stands to reason that the Arctic Ocean will melt long before the Antarctic does, and that there may even be some increase in Antarctic ice for the reasons I explained above.

If there was no CO2, or any other greenhouse gas in our atmosphere, the average temperature on Earth would actually be below the freezing point of water, thus the oceans would be frozen solid and life on Earth would be impossible. And if there was no H2O to form oceans and absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, then CO2 would have accumulated so greatly in the atmosphere from volcanic eruptions over billions of years that we would have experienced temperatures too high for carbon based life forms to survive, thus we would already be like Venus. The abundance of water on Earth, plus the small amount of CO2 in our atmosphere, provide the delicate balance that maintains life on Earth. But too much CO2 can be as much a problem as too little, hence our concern about how much longer it may be before we reach a tipping point in the climate change problem.

The solar activity has dropped, while the CO2 levels have remained high AND the H2O levels are also high. The end result: Warm summers and VERY COLD WINTERS!

But wait until the Sun roars again. When that happens, we will get: Mild winters and VERY HOT SUMMERS!

Although both CO2 (carbon dioxide) and H2O (water) are indeed greenhouse gases when both are in their gaseous state, in practice only CO2 is always in that state in the atmosphere. That is why CO2 is indeed the most important greenhouse gas, despite it being less prevelant than water vapor. Global warming denialists have exaggerated the greenhouse role of H2O to justify ignoring CO2. That is flat out dishonesty.

The proportions and molecular weights of the most common components of the Earth’s atmosphere are:

Nitrogen (78%) : 28
Oxygen (21%): 32
Argon (1%) : 40
CO2 (0.38%) : 38
H2O (0.4%) : 18
Note that! Water vapor has less than HALF the molecular weight of CO2! And that leads to some serious results.

Since nitrogen and oxygen form nearly 99% of the atmosphere, the average molecular weight of it will be between 28 and 32. CO2 is heavier than that average, while water vapor is MUCH lighter than that average. Thus water vapor will tend to rise much more than the other gases listed.

Because CO2 is lower in the atmosphere, it traps heat closer to the surface. Trapped heat causes evaporation. The H2O quickly rises and as it does, it cools. In some cases, the relative humidity of the rising H2O exceeds 100% and that results in the formation of clouds, which block and reflect sunlight. And this nullifies H2O’s greenhouse effect and it instead becomes a cooling agent, all the way down to the surface. It is common knowledge that cloudy days are cooler than clear ones. The only times the greenhouse effect of H2O is really significant is at daytime when the sky is clear, and at night when the sky is cloudy. In the latter case the clouds hold in heat that would otherwise escape when the sky is clear.

Thus this statement by ICECAP, a denialist front group, is falsified:

http://icecap.us/index.php/go/faqs-and-myths#5

{{{CO2 is the most important greenhouse gas.

Not even close. Most of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapor, which is about 100 times as abundant in the atmosphere as CO2 and thus has a much larger effect.}}}

They are liars. The overwhelming tendency of water vapor to rise, to form clouds, and to shield the Earth’s surface from the Sun’s rays make that simply a falsehood. CO2 by nature actually has the larger effect because it NEVER forms clouds and thus can ONLY be a greenhouse gas. It operates regardless of the weather.

Of course, that will not deter denialists. They will still say, "Well, if CO2’s greenhouse effect is opposed by the cooling effects of water clouds, doesn’t that mean CO2 can’t change climate?" But that is wrong too. The skies are not always cloudy. Increasing CO2 amounts by human activities DO trap more heat, which goes into the oceans and into other bodies of water, including the Arctic Ocean. And that stored heat is why the Arctic ice cap has been melting away. That is also why we had that incredibly strong El Nino of 1998 and why we had so many devestating hurricanes a few years ago. In deserts, where there is hardly any water, the cooling effects of H2O do not apply and those areas will be even hotter and drier. And in areas where there is already plenty of rain, there will indeed be more rain, resulting in flooding in certain regions.

In short, the denialism of global warming/climate change is based entirely on ignorance, dishonesty, and hypocrisy. We need to debunk and do away with it for good!}}}
 

Judy Cross (80)
Wednesday November 11, 2009, 12:16 am

Climate Change Study Shows Earth Is Still Absorbing Carbon Dioxide
Environment (tags: Study, climate-change, world, CO2emissions, greenhousegases )

Katie
- 3 hours ago - telegraph.co.uk
The research, by Bristol University, suggests that despite rising emissions, the world is is still able to store a significant amount of greenhouse gases in oceans and forests.
http://www.care2.com/news/member/939310581/1300524
 

Dale Husband (124)
Wednesday November 11, 2009, 12:26 am
See what I mean? OF COURSE Earth is still absorbing carbon dioxide. No one ever said it wasn't! But that only illustrates how MASSIVE our CO2 emissions must be if the amounts in the atmosphere have increased since the 1950s. Sheesh!
 

Dale Husband (124)
Wednesday November 11, 2009, 12:36 am
Oh, and Judy, if you agree that the oceans can absorb a lot more CO2, why do you also get bent out of shape whenever we discuss the issue of ocean acidification, which increased amounts of CO2 in the oceans cause?

Because you are a fraud who attacks the global warming issue anyway she can, regardless of how rediculous your positions make you look.
 
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