Climate Change: Some Observations

DaveFagan said:

In my lifetime, the population of the Planet has doubled, with twice as many people doing twice as many things simultaneously. All expending energy. The point is that the Planet is not the same as in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Our activities have increased exponentially, not linearly. Also, you have distorted my answer. I specifically gave a conservative number of 2.5 degrees in a hundred years, not relating to Greenhouse Effect and allowing considerable room for error. I am attempting to approach the warming with simple logic and to minimize the math to matters of common sense and observable phenomena.
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Mithrae said:

You're confusing cause and effect there. The things which have provided the greatest comfort to the greatest number are firstly democracy, secondly technological advances and abundant energy only thirdly. Technology and energy harnessed to the will of the glorious leader are scant comfort to folk in North Korea, I imagine, and without scientific and technological advances there would be no coal or petroleum engines to begin with.

Abundant energy has been instrumental in human progress of course, but where is it written that this energy can only come from the combustion of fossil fuels? Or even that 'abundant' needs to mean increasing supply, rather than decreasing demand?

21st century nuclear technology, solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and maybe even carbon capture and storage if it proves to be effective and economical can all be viable components of an energy mix. Better city design, telecommunications, and greater efficiency in products, vehicles and international transport are all modern approaches to energy consumption.

Exaggerating and glorifying fossil fuels as the pinnacle of human civilization is pretty much a rejection of the very technology and progress which you incorrectly attribute to them in the first place. Even aside from climate change, the smoke and fumes from combustion is dirty stuff to begin with - it's always been a trade-off, a necessary evil at best which societies have struggled over time to enforce cleaner regulations upon. Let's not get all dewy-eyed over coal stacks belching black clouds, shall we? :lol: Or international wars fought to ensure the security of oil reserves?

While they might always have some role in for example aviation, at least for the foreseeable future, the transition away from combustion fuels has always been desirable and inevitable. Their contribution to climate change just makes it a little more pressing.

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code1211 said:

You seem to arbitrarily define the chicken and the egg into a pretty rigid pecking order.

Your example of the North Korean Economy and the control from the glorious leader creates a false choice between democracy and dictatorship.

There were democracies prior to the advent of the use of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels have been burned absent democracy. Democracies have existed absent efficient governmental models.

It is only through the proper evolution and combination of democratic governmental systems combined with economic models that properly reward individual effort that the productive use of the refined products of fossil fuels have created the recent abundance we know today.

It is the synergy of all of the above that created the world we know today. Take away one leg of the stool and the stool falls.

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Mithrae said:

All of that is true, and none of it addresses the issue. Burning fossil fuels at current rates is twiddling one of the planet's major climate dials, at a rate it hasn't been twiddled during the lifetime of our species. We know how modern civilization works in the current climate; but as for twiddling that dial, at best we don't fully understand what the consequences will be, and more likely we've got a pretty fair idea that it will on balance be negative, perhaps very bad if sensitivity turns out to be on the higher end. So no, we can't control all the dials, but it's still pretty obvious that we should aim to hasten the transition away from combustion fuels and into 21st century generation and usage technologies as quickly as pragmatically possible. That's not exactly rocket science, it's just common sense, especially since it's a transition which had always been inevitable and desirable to begin with.

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code1211 said:

The fact remains, though, that fossil fuels comprise one leg of the stool that our modern civilization is perched upon.

Without that leg, the stool falls.

Perhaps in a century or so, that leg will not be needed and we will view fossil fuels in the same way as we currently view whale oil.

Unless and until it becomes a curiosity of a bygone age, though, that source of energy is fundamental to our civilization.

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Mithrae said:

There is plenty of room for increased production of energy by modern nuclear, solar, wind, hydro and geothermal power. There is plenty of room for decreased consumption through energy efficiency, individual and organizational habits, building design and city planning; not to mention reduction of outright wastefulness and worldwide social detriment in shipping goods halfway around the globe and back to find the cheapest labour and lowest environmental standards, pitting one country against each other to see who'll go the lowest.

You evidently view reality in black and white - fossil fuels or no fossil fuels. But I have rarely found that to be either accurate or helpful, so I hope you'll forgive me for not sharing your assessment.

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code1211 said:

That is not the way to do this.

The temperature of the globe is not a stagnant thing. Climate change is continuous thing. Changes in the landscape due to climate change are ongoing. The Sahara Desert was not always a desert. It was previously a Great Plains type of environment. It changed prior to the rise of the Old Kingdom in Egypt.

It is believed by some that the migration of the desert people to the Nile Valley and the synergy created by the collision and combination of ideas created one of the first great empires of the world.

The point is, though, that climate change is not new and is ongoing and has been present on the world for billions of years. The frantic and panicked approach of the AGW Alarmists is that "we have to act now to stop it".

The little bit they leave out is that climate change has always been happening, the change to date over the last 2000 years is only 0.7 degrees and that we are presently cooler than the warmest part of this interglacial or any of the interglacial warming peaks in the last half million years.

It is only by wearing blinders and ignoring actual historical data or changing it that the panic is justified.

You indicated in your post that the various factors all had a particular forcing and I was only adding up those forcings and asking when the 20 year cycle you described actually started.

From you post:

"At one time I calculated petro usage to add one tenth of a degree every ten years.
So, coal probably adds a tenth.
Natura Gas adds a tenth.
Biomass adds a tenth.
Nuke adds a tenth.

That's five tenths every ten years. "

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DaveFagan said:

"That's five tenths every ten years. Let's say I could have an error of 100% and usage would only add half that five tenths every ten years. Two and a half tents every ten years and 2.5 degrees after 100 years."

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