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Is Global Warming becoming unstoppable?

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True, tornados come in cycles but they were the worst ever, the flooding is also effected by all the concret culverts but again it was the worst ever, this combined with the worst Texans drought ever in the same year! Pretty amazing.

Warming of the atmosphere would be expected to increase the severity of weather extremes and we have a lot more warming to come.

Channel 7 news said the weirdness and severity of the storms that hit Melbourne on Christmas day were caused due to the red centre hitting a new 47 degree record. Interesting times ahead in my opinion as we have a lot more warming to come over the next 30 years.
 
you hit an interesting point here.
I do believe there is a man made global warming happening (and so i am automatically put in the category of dum ass, carbon tax fanatics by many on this thread). This is just based on natural observations of first flowering for fruit trees, progression of tropical pests /vegetation and regression of other in the area I live (Brisbane), disappearance of frost etc.

I actually did the computation a few years ago as i was unconvinced of the CO2 cause;
basically every energy source (oil /coal extracted, uranium burned, etc ends up in heat);
I did bypass the oil used in plastic as i had no figure at the time;
The end result of this release of heat on a close system in equilibrium (if not , we would have been frozen or cooked for million years)-> more or less the exact increase matching the temp curves from Al Gore and Cie since the industrial revolution;
Out of this , I can either
- discard the CO2 and claim that all is right; but I am kidding myself and do not prepare Australia to peak oil [which will hurt, I am sure of that]
- see the fact and realise that only solar and wind are heat neutral and can be used safely which is impossible in our economy. And then consider that the CO2 story is not a bad one to follow as it overall will mitigate the problem.
I chose the later as the less er of the evil

Up to you if you want to take your pen and redo the computation, sadly in this case, even the nuclear lobby will not sponsor you so good luck if you are a professional scientist as no one will want to hear your results .
I am genuinely keen to see if any one can find faults there (with some numbers please)

Have all a great new probably warmer overall year
Oliver
 
qldfrog said:
you hit an interesting point here.
I do believe there is a man made global warming happening (and so i am automatically put in the category of dum ass, carbon tax fanatics by many on this thread)
Click to expand...

Welcome to the dum ass, carbon tax fanatics club its not a bad club to be in, certainly better than the deny everything, change nothing, Dumb Ass club.
 
So_Cynical said:
Welcome to the dum ass, carbon tax fanatics club its not a bad club to be in, certainly better than the deny everything, change nothing, Dumb Ass club.
Click to expand...

Well AGW or not, what is really the most dumb ass thing of all, is believing a carbon tax will change anything.

A lowering of emissions can only be achieved by individuals collectively doing something and even the most vociferous alarmists do nothing... in fact some have enormous carbon footprints.

Do something with your own lifestyles you hypocrites, lead by example.
 

Wayne,
I do not disagree with you on the carbon tax ability to change anything, and i do my best without the need for taxes there. Sadly, more than often, the tax issue is blurred with AGW deniers: of course the carbon tax is a tax, what does anyone expect with this government;
to be effective a carbon tax should be just that: no compensation, applying on imports etc; as is, it is another wealth redistribution package. I did not vote Gilliard (nor did the majority of Australians BTW and yet there was no street protest.. This country will never cease to amaze me...) so do not blame me !
Cheers
 
The tax isn't the way forward and just because you acknowledge global warming is occurring doesn't automatically mean you agree with it. There are better ways.

Secondly I have never seen that Al Gore film and I bet many others in this thread haven't either. It seems to me that the fact Al Gore is a Democrat that most upsets the more vitriolic skeptics as it keeps being brought up ad nauseom as a pathetic call to arms.
 
I haven't done the calculations myself on the impact, but once you realise just how much oil, coal, gas, nuclear, hydro and wind energy we turn into heat every hear then it must surely be having some impact on the planet's temperature.

Even in a place like Tasmania, the impact of direct heat emissions is measurable if you go looking for it. Go to somewhere like Melbourne and it's easy to spot. Now think about Europe, USA, China etc with their massive releases of heat which far exceed anything we do in Australia - it must be doing something to the planet surely, and the logical assumption is that it would increase temperature.

My own opinion is that the climate is changing based on my own observations and those collected more formally. I am not convinced that CO2 is the cause, but I have an open mind to the possibility. CO2 certainly does trap heat at high concentrations if you do a lab experiment - but whether anything happens at very much lower concentrations for the planet as a whole is another matter. I'd say it's plausible though.

But the deal breaker between the mainstream climate change movement and me is this:

1. Failure to acknowledge the oil supply problem. How anyone can advocate that we use gas, the only thing even approaching an oil alternative that we have, to generate baseload electricity is beyond me. That's just not a rational use of resources and it's not even clear that it actually does reduce greenhouse gas emissions anyway (methane leakage is the gas industry's big secret...).

2. The notion that relocating emissions from Australia to China is in some way helping. This is nothing other than wealth redistribution which, through furthering the development of a lesser developed country and thus increasing their consumption of goods and services, serves to actually increase emissions in the long term.

I've always had economical cars. I've always been keen on energy saving technologies and systems. I've spent a lot of my life to date arguing the case for renewable energy. But I'm not in the "carbon is evil" camp simply because they don't have a credible plan to actually deal with the problem. All they have amounts to nothing more than a casino backed by promises.

What are we going to do about liquid fuels for transport in the years ahead? What really is the plan there? Our own production is falling, and we're being slowly but surely locked out of world markets for imports. What's our plan? And why are we exporting all our gas at bargain basement prices thus leaving nothing for tomorrow?

I'd argue that's the number 1 resource issue facing this country going forward, and yet nobody wants to deal with it. All we hear about is carbon (which assumes we're going to have fuel to burn in the first place) and water (which always was a problem of poor management rather than actual scarcity).
 
Funnily enough smurph, I don't think the average punter realises the severity of the problem. Also the resultant impost on their lifestyles, it's ok sitting back saying the greens and labor are saving the world.
However when it comes home to roost in the next year or two, it will be terrific to read the enthusiasm of some of the pro government posters.
As is always said, be carefull what you wish for, the next period of time post carbon tax will be interesting.
Poor retired sparkies like me are going to struggle, lucky I've been there done that.
 
As a starting point, this page http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/tss/ahf/ has links to data they used to calculate 2005 anthropogenic heat flux as 0.028 W/m2. This one http://www.esri.noaa.gov/gmd/aggi/ has information about the calculation of total radiative forcing, which for 2005 gave a result of 2.81 W/m2. I find the terminology gets confusing, but that's a mighty big difference. It seems clear that the effect of direct heat emissions is far outweighed by the effect of greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere.

Not sure what you mean by the "mainstream climate change movement", but FWIW I personally think there are at least three major reasons to reject gas as a fuel for power generation. One is, as you say, that it's at least as serious a carbon emission source as coal. The second is that its development diverts resources from renewable generation, which has to be the eventual future. The third is that gas mining is a direct threat to water resources and in many places a direct competitor with food production.

I can understand this, but not having a plan to deal with the problem doesn't make the problem go away. My view is that while governments are failing people can and will act, and in western countries many actions that reduce carbon emissions are worth doing for other reasons as well. That's pretty close to my only reason not to despair.

Have you read Paul Gilding's book "The Great Disruption". He suggests that humanity is facing several crises which are all coming to a head in the next few decades and which each individually require big changes to how the dominant culture functions. Peak oil is one of them. Global warming is another. I'd argue that the desperate need is to find solutions to any of them that also contribute solutions to the others.

Ghoti
 
qldfrog said:
The end result of this release of heat on a close system in equilibrium (if not , we would have been frozen or cooked for million years)-> more or less the exact increase matching the temp curves from Al Gore and Cie since the industrial revolution;
Click to expand...

In my school I covered Newton's law of cooling, obviously yours did not.

I think that the govnuts are selling it poorly, but hey, I do not believe we can do anything to stop natural + human warming (and believe that the human contribution is minimal - which is probably why nobody has ever proven it)

BUT

Sell me environment benefits, resource preservation such as peak oil etc, and sure, I'm interested.

MW

(one of the climate change realists)
 
ghotib said:
Not sure what you mean by the "mainstream climate change movement"
Click to expand...
I mean the common view held by the likes of mainstream environmental groups and some political parties. The one that says if we just close a couple of brown coal power stations in Victoria, force people to use public transport and pay a tax on carbon then that will fix the problem.

It's misleading at best and comes with a host of other problems. For a start, there are various studies which show pretty clearly that some forms of public transport, including the "light rail" (trams) favoured by the mainstream green movement, are actually more polluting than private cars. That's problem number 1. Next is that the carbon tax largely relocates emissions instead of reducing them, and the other is that at least brown coal doesn't come with huge methane emissions or other major side effects - it does have its' environmental good points.

I see a lot of that as little more than socialism dressed up as environmental protection. A lot of "force" people to do this, "force" them to do that but not a lot of actual benefit to the environment to show for it.


Agreed. But isn't the only real "failing" of government that they have "failed" to force individuals to make their own changes? Other than forcing individuals (by whatever means) government can't really do that much - they don't even own the power stations, gas works or coal mines in most cases these days so it's not as though government can directly cut emissions of its own accord.


Haven't read the book but I agree with what you are saying. We really need to look at all the problems collectively. There's no point burning more high grade hydrocarbons (oil / gas) as a means of cutting CO2 for example, since we've got another problem with scarcity of those resources. We need to fix one (CO2) without making the other worse.

That's actually one of the big issues I have with things like the call to close Hazelwood power station (Vic). Then what happens? If we close it anytime within the next decade then all we'll end up with is a 30+ year commitment to a new baseload gas-fired plant that will in itself burn through a substantial portion of Vic's remaining natural gas. Either that or we build a new brown coal plant that still pollutes and commit to running it for decades to come.

To me, it would make more sense to keep Hazelwood and Yallourn running and gradually build up non-coal / non-gas alternatives that are actually sustainable. If that means Hazelwood and Yallourn are there for another 20 years then so be it. That's got to be better than wasting the gas on a solution that's half baked.
 

Now the carbon tax is in, I would be suprised if Hazelwood and Yallourn are shutdown. The more they run, the more tax the government gets, the more people are charged for electricity.
Why would the government want it shut down?
They know, other than nuclear, there is no viable alternative to coal.
So it really is just another consumption tax, however unlike the g.s.t where you can decide whether you buy something or not.
Electricity is something you have to use, it really is a nasty tax, there's no avoiding it.
Wow maybe Tony's right, maybe he wasn't just being negative.LOL

Also smurph, it might explain the push for privatisation of generation, hard to tax yourself.
 
sptrawler said:
So it really is just another consumption tax, however unlike the g.s.t where you can decide whether you buy something or not.
Click to expand...
Now there's a thought... I assume there will be GST on the carbon tax? A tax on a tax? Given the way it is to be imposed, this would seem hard to avoid.

As for Yallourn and Hazelwood, for those reading this who aren't aware - these two plants between them generate almost half the electricity in Victoria and have been there for ages.

The current Yallourn plant has been operating since 1973 (full capacity since the early 1980's), but the previous smaller power plants at Yallourn (A, B, C, D and E power stations) were commissioned between 1924 and 1962, with progressive closure from the about 1968 to 1989.

Yes, it took 21 years to close the old plants at Yallourn, combined capacity of which was only 42% of the much larger plant that is there today. And of course when those old plants were closed, we just built a big new coal-fired one to replace them. (For the record, closure of A and B stations was because they were basically worn out, closure of C, D and especially E station had a lot more to do with asbestos than anything else since E station in particular was quite modern in design and efficient apart from the asbestos issues) .

Hazelwood has produced electricity since 1964 (full capacity since 1971) and the associated much smaller Morwell plant since 1958 (full capacity since 1962). Hazelwood is slightly larger than the present operations at Yallourn, with Morwell being a much smaller plant primarily built as a briquette works with electricity as a sideline.

Yes they are old, lack of investment in the industry is something I've mentioned previously. But so far as electricity in Vic is concerned, they have "always been there" and it's going to be no small task to replace them - at least unless we just build another huge coal plant nearby or a nuclear plant.
 

Well if you extrapolate it out, they get taxed more untill the consumer screams enough. Then they turn around and say you pay a zillion dollars for solar or we have a nuclear solution for $0.15c per kw.
It's a no brainer we get nuclear, India and China get our cheap coal.
Do you ever feel, we are a test tube for the rest of the world?
 
medicowallet said:
In my school I covered Newton's law of cooling, obviously yours did not.
)
Click to expand...
reread your school book;
Newton's law of cooling has nothing to do with this problem
in an insulated system (ie earth in space)
once a balance is reached :
Loss Heat radiated in space =Gain heat from sun and planet inner core
any added heat will slowly but surely increase the atmosphere temperature until a new balance is reached but do not expect much in extra increased loss for a planet suspended in vacuum

For any person interested I did these computations a few years ago: see attached and do believe this is a significant factor if not the key factor in global warming.
I am interested in any serious feedback and would be keen if someone can redo the computations and maybe even get more recent data
 

Attachments

  • GW CO2 or human activity.pdf
    315.2 KB · Views: 47
Comments as follows (noting that I haven't attempted to verify the math).

1. Solar does indeed add heat in some ways. For example, land use change and the construction of asphalt roads converts sunlight to heat that would otherwise be reflected back into space. Likewise any other activity that darkens the earth as viewed from space.

2. The energy supply graphs can be somewhat misleading depending on interpretation. It is technically correct in terms of primary energy that is true. But consider that nuclear and hydro both produce similar amounts of useful energy (electricity) worldwide, it's just that the inherent high efficiency of a hydro turbine versus the very much lower efficiency of a nuclear fuelled steam cycle (which is even less efficient than if coal is used as the heat source) is such that nuclear involves a much greater amount of primary energy in order to produce about the same useful output as hydro. Similar distortions exist with other energy sources, although nuclear and hydro represent the two extremes. This doesn't affect the math you are doing, but it does overstate the relative importance of nuclear energy and understate the relative importance of hydro in terms of the broader issues of energy, political debate etc. To a lesser extent, the higher efficiency of natural gas use versus oil and especially coal creates a distortion there too.

3. Whether or not hydro adds heat is a complex one that I'm not really too sure of. Obviously in a direct sense there's heat from the electricity produced but as you say there's no net energy being added. However, energy lost via a natural river to some extent results in evaporation of water to the air whereas this does not occur in a hydro scheme apart from the tailrace, which is short compared to a natural river. The climate effects of this are probably not as straightforward as it may seem - adding heat via evaporation (natural) versus hot air (from electricity) may well have consequences of some sort even though there is no net energy being added. I'm thinking in terms of heat radiated into space from the air versus the effects of water vapour.

4. Other sources of heat may also have differing impacts depending on the method of release. For example, direct addition of water vapour to the atmosphere from the cooling towers of a coal (or any other fuel) power station may well have different overall impacts to simply releasing the heat by burning the same coal in a fireplace. That is, water vapour itself is a greenhouse gas that we are adding large amounts of due to fossil fuel combustion and other activities, whilst preventing the release of some through hydro schemes etc. This is no doubt a complex issue in itself and a third part of the climate science - CO2, CH4 and other gases, water vapour as a distinctly different one due to it's very short atmospheric lifespan, and direct heat emissions.

5. Harnessing energy from wind may also have some consequences we haven't thought of if done on a large enough scale (especially if concentrated into a small geographic region). I suspect that nobody has really researched this well enough to know, but I don't think it is wise to say there's no impact. We're disrupting a natural process and, if done on a large enough scale, there probably would be some consequences from doing that.

6. Geothermal isn't directly adding heat that is true, but it is accelerating the release of it. Nuclear fission is much the same - rapid release via a nuclear power station versus slow natural decay over an extended period. In the short term (few thousand yeras), both could be considered a heat source just like coal and oil.

7. The use of fossil fuels, particularly low grade coal, directly releases "locked up" water in the same manner as it releases locked up heat and CO2. Another complication.
 
Thanks Smurf for taking the time to read these
Agree with all of your points.
pt 6 indeed: geothermal in the heat balance is similar to nuclear but on a shorter timeframe.
pt 2 : indeed the energy might not reflect the efficiency in production,missed that one
( but in that case, this would mean here again more heat released than I have computed and more H2O vapor)

And the point about vapor production is indeed a very good one but that does even worsen the case as vapor has a a green house "gas" effect (but also reflect the sun ib the upper atmosphere as clouds)
these napkin computations i have done just quickly make you realise that CO2 is not the whole story, that the GW vs CO2 correlation might be a consequence and not a cause [the never ending dilemma in science] and I have never seen thsi hypothesis scientifically validated/invalidated
IMHO, this is because if this effect is substantial, we have only one way out: reduction of overall activity, not to name it: reduction of the earth overall population.
Very unpalatable and not leaving much hope...
 
AS I have said before Follow the money!!!

Look at all these climate change deniers that are given a good wage to rant.
Look at all the money given by companies to slow change and confuse the public.

Confidential documents leaked from inside The Heartland Institute, a wealthy think tank based in Chicago and Washington, detail strategy and funding for an array of activities designed to spread doubt about climate change science, paid for by companies that have a financial interest in continuing to release greenhouse gases without government interference.

"The stolen documents were obtained by an unknown person who fraudulently assumed the identity of a Heartland board member and persuaded a staff member here to “re-send” board materials to a new email address," the Heartland Institute said in a statement this morning.

Among the documents that Heartland does not claim to be faked, is a budget showing payments to selected scientists.

One of the recipients of funding is Professor Bob Carter of James Cook University, a geologist and marine researcher who spoke at the "convoys of no confidence" protests against the carbon price last year alongside the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, and writes columns for News Ltd newspapers.

The documents show Professor Carter receives a "monthly payment" of $US1667 ($1550) as part of a program to pay "high-profile individuals who regularly and publicly counter the alarmist [anthropogenic global warming] message".

Professor Carter did not deny he was being paid by The Heartland Institute, but would not confirm the amount, or if the think tank expected anything in return for its money.

"That suggestion is silly and offensive - a kindergarten level argument," Professor Carter told The Age.

"Institutions or organisations simply pay for services rendered - in the same way that an architect is paid for their work, so are scientists," he said. "What they may make any payment to me for, I'm not discussing with anybody outside of my family."

Altogether, more than $US20 million had been spent funding and co-ordinating the activities of climate sceptics and bloggers since 2007, the documents suggest.

Other cash recipients include Anthony Watts, the leading US climate sceptic blogger, who is to receive $US90,000 for his work this year. Programs slated for funding include new curriculum modules that teach science from a climate-sceptic perspective, to be sent to US schools.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/environmen...for-climate-20120215-1t7ho.html#ixzz1mUxkQJBa

Gina better hurry over controlling the Age otherwise the public might get to know the hidden agenda.
 
PMSL Knobby.

Now that it is out in the open, let's compare funding:

Go to http://joannenova.com.au/2012/02/lo...-innumeracy-and-heartlands-efficient-success/

Follow the money?

Yes indeed.

As Judith Curry pointed out - "In terms of moral equivalence, what Heartland is doing is not surprising; seems to be no different than what other advocacy groups do."

Additionally, does this change our understanding of the science? Has something been tweeked or hidden as was exposed in the climategate emails?

The answer is no. Alarmists are clutching at straws and in the fullness of time, you will understand there is nothing to see here.
 
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