Global Warming

[axordil]

Elsha, River--

You don't see the big deal because your next yacht purchase isn't dependent on fossil fuels.

[River]

Knew I was missing a detail.

[elfshadow]

Elsha, River--

You don't see the big deal because your next yacht purchase isn't dependent on fossil fuels.

Damn, I forgot about that. All those poor socialites...

[Inanna]

Well, it will probably be the new-yacht-owners who will have very less to worry about if fossil fuels do start depleting (which does not seem as likely as it did 50 years ago). It will be the folks in developing countries where food prices will shoot up.... and there will be riots. So, I don't think its the yacht people that don't "get it". They will swing by, anyway. The people who fight it the most are those whose energy costs might increase a bit in the near future, and they can't afford that increase.

The one problem with the entire focus on CO2 (can I have this the right way, you know 2 below O. Sorry! ), as Ghân said, is that the rest of the climate change debate gets drowned. Now, is it that big a problem compared to people saying that humans aren't responsible, No. Could it be a problem when it comes to policy-making, Yes.

Take Methane, for example. A greenhouse gas... worse than CO2. Comes "from" cows. One of the best things people can do is to stop eating beef. Reduce the industrialized production of beef, and cows, and methane would go down. But nobody is talking about asking people to convert to vegetarian, are they?
Or take the Amazon forests - please let's keep destroying them to plant corn to reduce our CO2 emissions. After all, that is what matters.

[vison]

People don't need to stop eating beef, they just need to stop eating so much of it and to stop raising it the way it's raised in North America. Don't forget, there were once vast herds of buffalo, and they did not emit perfumed gases.

The other issue with beef is that people who never used to eat it are eating it now: in India and China. The methans emitted by these cattle is only a very small one of the many issues created by this new appetite for red meat: Issues of land use, diversion of food from people to cattle, etc.

Nature produces a lot of CO2, all by herself. It's "natural". But we are adding it to the atmosphere (and thence to the oceans) at a rate never seen before. When we burn coal and oil we are releasing centuries' or even millennias' carbon in the space of decades or even single years.

[Ghân-buri-Ghân]

People don't need to stop eating beef, they just need to stop eating so much of it and to stop raising it the way it's raised in North America. Don't forget, there were once vast herds of buffalo, and they did not emit perfumed gases.

I think you will find that bisen emit far less methane than cattle. Cattle are ill suited to their environment. The problem is exacerbated by intensive cattle farming, which increases per steer methane production by a factor of four compared to small herds on mixed natural feeds. However, irrespective of how the cattle is raised, the greenhouse gas emission of cattle is far in excess of bisen (buffalo). In comparison, buffalo gas really is perfumed.

And it is not just North America. South American cattle ranching is a large, and growing, problem. Especially as pastureland is being created by forest erosion...[/quote]

[River]

Take Methane, for example. A greenhouse gas... worse than CO2. Comes "from" cows. One of the best things people can do is to stop eating beef. Reduce the industrialized production of beef, and cows, and methane would go down. But nobody is talking about asking people to convert to vegetarian, are they?
Or take the Amazon forests - please let's keep destroying them to plant corn to reduce our CO2 emissions. After all, that is what matters.

Corn ethanol for fuel is just a bad idea for a million reasons, but the American farm lobby loves it.

The scientists studying climate change are well aware of methane. They write many papers on it. But it's not in the public press so much because first of all, no one seems to be able to talk about cow flatuence with a straight face and second of all, if you think people are defensive and freaked out about changing their energy consumption habits, try opening up a discussion on changing their diet.

I'm a vegetarian. I've never liked the taste or texture of flesh so I just don't eat it. I am not one of the prosyletizing, self-righteous types. I do not get offended if people around me are eating meat, nor do I judge. At the end of the day, humans are omnivores and people like me are not the norm. But even so, I've encountered people who found my choices threatening...and I'm not trying to encourage anyone to make that same choice. It's almost as if, just by existing, I make some meat-eaters uncomfortable and the reactions can get vicious. Really nasty. And I really try to fly under the radar with my diet. I can only imagine what would happen if someone started up a public campaign to cut beef consumption. We'd probably have people holding up steaks, screaming "You can have my meat when you pry it out of my cold dead hands!"

[vison]

People don't need to stop eating beef, they just need to stop eating so much of it and to stop raising it the way it's raised in North America. Don't forget, there were once vast herds of buffalo, and they did not emit perfumed gases.

I think you will find that bisen emit far less methane than cattle. Cattle are ill suited to their environment. The problem is exacerbated by intensive cattle farming, which increases per steer methane production by a factor of four compared to small herds on mixed natural feeds. However, irrespective of how the cattle is raised, the greenhouse gas emission of cattle is far in excess of bisen (buffalo). In comparison, buffalo gas really is perfumed.

And it is not just North America. South American cattle ranching is a large, and growing, problem. Especially as pastureland is being created by forest erosion...

[/quote]

If you had read my entire post, you would have noticed the bit about "how beef is raised". I am an actual farmer, you know, and have actually raised dozens of beef cattle over the last 45 years. I have never "finished" my beef on corn, they have all been grass fed.

Range cattle do not create any more methane than bison. And the resulting meat is "better for you", the proportions of Omega 6 to Omega 3 fats are healthier.

Cattle can use the land that the bison once used. Raising range cattle is becoming more popular for a variety of reasons and one of those reasons is that cattle, properly managed, will not harm the range. Land currently dedicated to growing corn to force-feed cattle in feedlots could just as easily be converted to pasture.

Destruction of forest land to create cattle range is absurd and harmful, and is only being done to satisfy the enormous appetite for beef that is becoming common in previously non-beef eating parts of the world, or to satisfy the appetite for beef in people who suddenly have enough of an income to buy it more often.

[N.E. Brigand]

There is a repeated ad hominem attack against AGW skeptics, accusing them all of being in the pay of "industries". Strangely, those attacks are never levelled at AGW supporting scientists who also receive their funding from those "industries".

I have seen many such attacks leveled at scientists whose findings indicate that Anthropogenic Global Warming is real, including a few in this forum. The claim is that they are either in the pay of "green" industries who want their technology privileged over traditional energy, or of "nanny state" advocates who want to take away all our cars and coal.

[N.E. Brigand]

Okay, first of all, I think this may have been lost in the shuffle so I'll reiterate: sometimes Science and Nature screw up and publish pure hooey.

And sometime those journals publish papers that appear to counter the consensus view of anthropogenic global warming -- and sometimes such papers themselves turn out to be incorrect.

[River]

I'll just put this here.

The Earth's surface really is getting warmer, a new analysis by a US scientific group set up in the wake of the "Climategate" affair has concluded.

The Berkeley Earth Project has used new methods and some new data, but finds the same warming trend seen by groups such as the UK Met Office and Nasa.

The project received funds from sources that back organisations lobbying against action on climate change.

The Berkeley Project's got its stuff released on their website. They're not taking the standard approach to peer review, but I wouldn't call it science by press release either. What they're doing is more along the lines of arxiv, which I'm told is quite popular in some branches of physics.

Now, the really interesting part:

The Berkeley group does depart from the "orthodox" picture of climate science in its depiction of short-term variability in the global temperature.

The El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is generally thought to be the main reason for inter-annual warming or cooling.

But by the Berkeley team's analysis, the global temperature correlates more closely with the state of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) index - a measure of sea surface temperature in the north Atlantic.

There are theories suggesting that the AMO index is in turn driven by fluctuations in the north Atlantic current commonly called the Gulf Stream.

The team suggests it is worth investigating whether the long-term AMO cycles, which are thought to last 65-70 years, may play a part in the temperature rise, fall and rise again seen during the 20th Century.

But they emphasise that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) driven by greenhouse gas emissions is very much in their picture.

Nifty.

[eborr]

There is a repeated ad hominem attack against AGW skeptics, accusing them all of being in the pay of "industries". Strangely, those attacks are never levelled at AGW supporting scientists who also receive their funding from those "industries".

I have seen many such attacks leveled at scientists whose findings indicate that Anthropogenic Global Warming is real, including a few in this forum. The claim is that they are either in the pay of "green" industries who want their technology privileged over traditional energy, or of "nanny state" advocates who want to take away all our cars and coal.

I think it's much simpler than that, the proponents of AGW are inherently very dull people, who in saner times noboby would pay any attention to, who having grabbed their time in the sun are determined to make us listen.

The reality is that even if we are getting a tad warmer and the activities of man have something to do with it, compared to the incoming glaciation the impact is meaningless. We have much bigger problems to deal with namely global poverty, injustice and corrupt goverments. If only a few percent of the energy that it wasted on this fallacious debate was devoted to those subjects the world would be a far better place.

[axordil]

Except the "tad warmer" that may only (relatively speaking) inconvenience wealthier societies has the potential to totally disrupt ones already bearing the brunt of poverty, injustice, and corruption.

Bangladesh isn't going to improve if even more of it goes underwater.

[Primula Baggins]

"Incoming glaciation"?

[River]

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[eborr]

If you care to really study climatic change you will know that we are in a warm phase of an ice-age, and at some stage it's going to get an awful lot colder, this can happen really quickly.

For example in northern Europe the weather over a about 10,000 years ago the climate changed very dramatically over a period of some 50-75 years, the most obvious consequence of which was the dissapearance of the land-bridge between UK the Europe, and Doggerland disaapeared beneath the waves. Having said that some of the really bonkers climate change people have tried to blame this on the beginning of farming in the middle east. THis was all part of a general warming due to changes in solar activity.

[Primula Baggins]

eborr, do you think that possibility hasn't been investigated in the present situation? It has and it has been ruled out. Solar irradiance is down a bit (a fraction of 1 percent), but it varies constantly, and a change over a year or a few years is not enough to make a trend. Meanwhile the globe overall is warming and continues to do so. Ice is retreating, not advancing; glaciers are disappearing completely that have been in existence since the last Ice Age.

It's also possible for global warming to cause local cooling, especially in Europe, historically. Warming can shut down the Gulf Stream, ending the transport of warm ocean water to the northern Atlantic and making Europe significantly cooler. That doesn't mean the world is not still getting warmer overall. (The Gulf Stream has not shut down yet, but it could happen if the ocean warms much more.)

[axordil]

Along the lines of localized cooling, I believe a few Southern Hemisphere (NZ comes to mind) glaciers are growing because of precipitation shifts. That's an aberration to the larger trend, which is melt, melt, melt.

[Primula Baggins]

South American glaciers (in the Andes) are also disappearing. There's a map here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retreat_of ... since_1850