Where is the Data on Climate Change?

It is time to listen to a sage whose prophetic vision has been overlooked for nearly a century!

ENERGY AND KNOWLEDGE: 'Civilization as it is at present, even on the purely physical side, is not a continuous self-supporting movement. It becomes possible only after an age-long accumulation of energy, by the supplementing of income out of capital. Its appetite increases by what it feeds on. It reaps what it has not sown and exhausts, so far, without replenishing. Its raw material is energy and its product is knowledge. The only knowledge which will justify its existence and postpone the day of reckoning is the knowledge that will replenish rather than diminish its limited resources.' Frederick Soddy (Noble Laureate) on Matter and Energy in the year 1912.

It is high time to pay heed to this great man and adopt renewable energy ASAP in order to save our planet.


Yash Pal Singh

Well I think the trouble has more to do with apathy rather than science. If you look back at out how humans have coped with other global catastrophes you can see that even when all the evidence is staring them in the face very little is done. Look at Hitler and the Jews, even when world leaders and politicians new Hitler had begun the mass exterminations, they didnt bother to parachute in weapons to support the Warsaw Ghetto or anything like that. They were quite happy to watch Stalin massacre millions of his soilders, knowing they could march in over the rubble and take the prize. Its happening today... what have you all done about Dafur? The trouble is enough people know climate change is human induced and happening and killing people as we speak. They just are not doing enough about it.

TO: GERRY WOLFF

For the sake of promoting sustainability in our culture without sending the wrong message, please revise your reasoning.  The Earth isn't going to "burn down."  what you're doing here is illustrating an apocalyptic message about someone other than the real victims - that is, humans, you and me.  The planet is going to keep on rotating round and round.  

Enough with the "Save the Planet" slogan.  Most people don't care about the "planet" - they care about themselves, first and foremost.

www.climateaudit.org  is a good site if you are math minded and don't mind going through  a  pile of statistics.

I have supported rmi.org (Rocky Mountain Institute) for more than 2 decades and continue to do so despite my view that the Kyoto protocol is a piece of bird cage lining.

Eat less beef! Seriously. Try some of the meat analogues and you will cut emissions more than any other way. http://www.physorg.com/news103983167.html

A kilogram (2.2 pounds) of beef causes more greenhouse-gas and other pollution than driving for three hours while leaving all the lights on back home

I like the article because we should always focus on resource efficiancy NOT just the latest in a long series of fear mongering.  Sadly missing (as always it seems) is any mention of water vapor as the most important GHG.

"RealClimate does a great job of putting those "yes but" objections in context and answering them each in turn.".

I disagree and suggest you check out climateaudit.org

When confronted with the fact the CO2 trails warming in the ice cores the answer from realclimate.org was a bit of a joke! "There are 6 stages to a warming cycle and CO2 isn't responsible for the first one sixth but it is for the next 5 sixths". That is completely unsupported by any evidence. 

Speaking at the Solar Power 2006 conference in California, US venture capitalist Vinod Khosla said: "I find it surprising that every single one of us insures our home when there is a 0.1% probability—maybe 0.5% probability—our home will burn down. With something between a 20% and 80% probability of our planet burning down, we don't insure ... our planet. I find that surprising!"

I would like to know if there is a rating system for renewable products? I seems like everyone has the best products on the market. How can anyone find out which is the best of the best?

Thank you

Bernie

Why is it that the human herding culture requires danger or fear to do, at times, the right thing. Regardless of whether the "globe is warming" or the "climate is changing" we need to conserve all of our resources and use renewable options where we can. Not becuase of fear or becuase someone needs to make money off of our fears  Many times doing something for the wrong reasons has unexpected and at times unpleasant surprises associated with it.

 

For those that weren't aware of the discussion around cliate change, here are links to two on-line documentaries on the subject:

http://www.aconvenientfiction.com/

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4520665474899458831&q=the+great+swindle
 

There are many good websites with current news and discussion about the  reality of human influence on the climate. A great starting point is http://www.realclimate.org where a dozen active climatologists answer questions from readers and keep up on science news. They have a good list of links to more science-based information.

 There is an active campaign to cloud the issue about this critical topic, suggesting the science is not settled, nit-picking at each point in the chain of reasoning and cherry-picking the very few journal articles that raise any sort of qualification or uncertainty. RealClimate does a great job of putting those "yes but" objections in context and answering them each in turn. It's pretty clear that the truth on this is indeed inconvenient, when you see the lengths some people will go to in trying to avoid it.

Peak Oil is the solution to Global Climate Change, but it also brings the demise of billions of people.

At a certain point, you have to accept that some people wouldn't admit that they smelled smoke, if their clothes were on fire.  Trying to talk sense to them is like trying to persuade Osama bin Laden to change his mind.  They are too pig headed to consider it, so forget them and focus on the people who are expressing an honest scepticism.

Of course, there is no possible way to say beyond any shadow of doubt that humans are causing climate change, but the idea that injected billions of net tons of carbon that has been burried over hundreds of millions of years back into the atmosphere in a few centuries is having no effect at all seems a bit far fetched.

However, the more important question is what is the worst thing that can happen, if we opt for cleaner alternatives and greater efficiency and it the science is later disproven, we may find (but will not necessarily find) that we have incurred some unecessarilly high capital costs, but going forward we will enjoy cleaner air, less dependence on foreign sources of energy, probably a lower variable cost per unit of energy.  We may find that the moves have cost us some jobs in certain sectors (but they may also have created more / more stable jobs than they have cost).

The worst that can happen in the lives of our children and grandchildren if we do nothing to reduce CO2 emissions and the vast majority of climate scientists turn out to be right is a climate disaster the likes of which humans have not seen since the last ice age.

Imagine weighing up these two outcomes, one in each hand, and the smart risk management choices are pretty obvious.

RE-EDITED VERSION - At a certain point, you have to accept that some people wouldn't admit that they smelled smoke, if their clothes were on fire.  Trying to talk sense to them is like trying to persuade Osama bin Laden to change his mind.  They are too pig headed to consider it, so forget them and focus on the people who are expressing an honest scepticism.

Of course, there is no possible way to say beyond any shadow of doubt that humans are causing climate change, but the evidence is strong and the idea that we can take billions of tons of carbon that has been burried over hundreds of millions of years and inject it back into the atmosphere in a few centuries with no effect at all seems a bit far fetched.

However, the more important question is what is the worst thing that can happen, if we do / do not opt for cleaner alternatives and greater efficiency and the science is later proven / disproven beyond doubt?  We may (but will not necessarily) find that we have incurred some unecessarilly high capital costs, but going forward we will enjoy cleaner air, less dependence on foreign sources of energy, probably a lower variable cost per unit of energy.  We may find that the moves have cost some jobs in certain sectors (but they may also have created more / more stable jobs than they have cost).

On the other hand, the worst that can happen in the lives of our children and grandchildren if we do nothing to reduce CO2 emissions and the vast majority of climate scientists turn out to be right is a climate disaster the likes of which humans have not seen since the last ice age.

Imagine weighing up these two outcomes, one in each hand, and the smart risk management choices are pretty obvious.

Oceans are losing their ability to absorb CO2 as they become more saturated:

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2007/2007-05-18-04.asp

Isotopic evidence of fossil fuel source of CO2.  Fossil fuels are depleted in the carbon fourteen isotope.  In burning it, the amount of C-14 in the atmosphere should decrease at a rate that is faster than its half-life of 5730 years.

http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/cent-scha.htm 

Temperate zones have moved north in the U.S.:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/19/AR2006121901769.html 

I am no scientist, I don't have any degrees to help persuade me one way or the other. I don't know if Global Warming is real but common sense tells me that it doesn't matter. What is the down side of doing the right thing? Do we really believe that peak oil isn't going to happen? That our children will not suffer for our ignorance? I would rather pull my head out of the SAND and use it to produce solar modules now.

I like the "what do we have to lose?" attitude of most of the respondents above. I have worked with alternative means of producing energy over the past 18 years. I remember when Acid Rain was the boogeyman, then Ozone and now GHG. Through this all the "big polluters" have increased profits, changed names, turned over thousands of jobs and in the end the demand for energy has not dropped 1%.

As with most areas of the environment and the economy, as we continue to debate, someone is making money.Think back 100 years when we decided to industrilize, it has been a horserace ever since.