Global warming basics.

[exchemist]

His level of not understanding goes deeper than the data. He does not even understand the Greenhouse Effect which is why I began with the Stefan-Boltzmann Law here.

Actually, understanding the greenhouse effect strikes me as a lot harder than understanding the implications of climate change, though you have done a good job of explaining - helped by that excellent graph provided by It Ain't Necessarily So in post 61.

 

[Stevicus]

Actually, understanding the greenhouse effect strikes me as a lot harder than understanding the implications of climate change, though you have done a good job of explaining - helped by that excellent graph provided by It Ain't Necessarily So in post 61.

This picture was from a National Geographic issue from several years ago. It uses a bathtub as an analogy. I thought it was very helpful and explanatory:

 

[Subduction Zone]

I just saw this:

 

[exchemist]

I just saw this:

That's very good.


Though in the interests of accuracy I should point out that the European oil majors have been on board with climate change for about 30 years now.

 

[Subduction Zone]

That's very good.


Though in the interests of accuracy I should point out that the European oil majors have been on board with climate change for about 30 years now.

That makes sense if one wants to stay in the energy business and make money in the long run. Too many U.S. oil companies are in there for the profit today and to hell with tomorrow.

 

[Valjean]

That's very good.

Though in the interests of accuracy I should point out that the European oil majors have been on board with climate change for about 30 years now.

The oil companies knew about it back in the '70s; knew it posed a problem, and were looking for solutions.
It was only later that they decided it would be in their economic interest to bury the issue.
Exxon Knew about Climate Change Almost 40 Years Ago
https://gizmodo.com/exxon-isn-t-the-only-oil-company-that-knew-about-climat-1749498557

Effects were noticed even before that:
Scientists pinpoint signs of climate change as early as 1940 and it began in Africa | Daily Mail Online

After all, the basic physics involved was well known:
The Discovery of Global Warming [Excerpt]
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/1912-article-global-warming/

I mentioned in an earlier post how estimates of warming's effects and rate tended to be revised upward with each reassessment of the latest data.
Ocean warming has surged since 1992, study says
Global warming may be DOUBLE what earlier models predicted | Daily Mail Online

 

[exchemist]

The oil companies knew about it back in the '70s; knew it posed a problem, and were looking for solutions.
It was only later that they decided it would be in their economic interest to bury the issue.
Exxon Knew about Climate Change Almost 40 Years Ago
https://gizmodo.com/exxon-isn-t-the-only-oil-company-that-knew-about-climat-1749498557

Effects were noticed even before that:
Scientists pinpoint signs of climate change as early as 1940 and it began in Africa | Daily Mail Online

After all, the basic physics involved was well known:
The Discovery of Global Warming [Excerpt]
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/1912-article-global-warming/

I mentioned in an earlier post how estimates of warming's effects and rate tended to be revised upward with each reassessment of the latest data.
Ocean warming has surged since 1992, study says
Global warming may be DOUBLE what earlier models predicted | Daily Mail Online

Thanks, that's interesting - esp. the prescient article dating back to 1912!

All I can say is the my employer, Shell, was going public about climate change from the end of the 80s or early 90s onwards and BP was very similar, as I think were Total/Fina/Elf in France. I don't what they knew or suspected before this (though I joined in 1978), as companies tend not to comment publicly on things until they have worked out what their strategy is going to be. The US companies, especially Exxon, have been lamentably slow to acknowledge it and Exxon even campaigned against policy responses until about 2010, I think, which is rather shocking. But from my time in Houston I have noted that commercial lobbying in the States seems very nakedly self-interested, compared to Europe, certainly when it comes to the oil industry.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

The oil companies knew about it back in the '70s; knew it posed a problem, and were looking for solutions.
It was only later that they decided it would be in their economic interest to bury the issue.
Exxon Knew about Climate Change Almost 40 Years Ago
https://gizmodo.com/exxon-isn-t-the-only-oil-company-that-knew-about-climat-1749498557

Effects were noticed even before that:
Scientists pinpoint signs of climate change as early as 1940 and it began in Africa | Daily Mail Online

After all, the basic physics involved was well known:
The Discovery of Global Warming [Excerpt]
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/1912-article-global-warming/

I mentioned in an earlier post how estimates of warming's effects and rate tended to be revised upward with each reassessment of the latest data.
Ocean warming has surged since 1992, study says
Global warming may be DOUBLE what earlier models predicted | Daily Mail Online

This is why corporations and the people deregulating them are not our friends.

 

[Valjean]

...(By the way I wish the USA luck with Hurricane Florence. One storm does not prove much but we do seem to have had a fair number of severe ones recently.)

Thanx -- though I'm well away from it, personally.

Hurricanes feed on heat, and the oceans have been warming. The hurricane currently headed for the Carolinas is noteworthy for being unusually far North for such a large storm.
Should be interesting when it hits the Gulf Stream...

Not only are the oceans functioning as a heat sink, but they're also absorbing much of the excess CO2 we're producing, lowering the pH.
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef Will 'Disappear' Within Two Decades With No Intervention

 

[wandering peacefully]

I just saw this:

What I find "funny" is how politicians have cried for decades that we need to become energy independent to the point of needing to frack up the entire country side. Using up a more valuable resource in the form of clean water. Polluting the ground with chemicals for hundreds of years to come. Invading public lands even in order to do it because we need it so bad. Really?

There are currently 12 pending applications which have been "fast tracked" by our current evil administration to build LNG EXPORT facilities. Not for our desperate country "lacking energy security" but TO SELL FOR PROFIT overseas.

Our lands, our clean water, all destroyed for the fossil fuels industrie's pockets. To give some reference there have only been around 16 total LNG previous import facilities. Now they have all been turned into export and they are adding 12 more new facilities.

I can support the idea of China and India using gas instead of coal and dirty oil but I can't swallow the idea of destroying our public lands and water while the industry get all the profits and politicians lie about why we need to do it.

Oh yeah, and global warming is a hoax. Tell that to all the people living in low lying lands by the sea. And the pretend melting glaciers and the massive storm sizes lately. The deniers claimed for the past 45 years it was a hoax. Now that it's obvious to even the dumbest morons on the planet, the mantra is "it's not due to humans".

There really has to be a cleaner way to power humanity. Or we most likely won't need to worry about power because the planet will revolt. Science deniers who yak on about warm planets during the dino years better get busy figuring out how to live with no clean water and a polluted food chain. That's something the dinosaurs didn't have to deal with.

 

[Valjean]

Thanks, that's interesting - esp. the prescient article dating back to 1912!

Ha! it goes back farther than that. Svante Arrhenius [Nobel Prize, Chemistry. 1903] predicted global warming from fossil fuel combustion back in 1896. Unfortunately, he failed to see the ramifications -- he thought it would be beneficial.

Perhaps he can be excused, though -- he did live in Sweden...

 

[Subduction Zone]

What I find "funny" is how politicians have cried for decades that we need to become energy independent to the point of needing to frack up the entire country side. Using up a more valuable resource in the form of clean water. Polluting the ground with chemicals for hundreds of years to come. Invading public lands even in order to do it because we need it so bad. Really?

There are currently 12 pending applications which have been "fast tracked" by our current evil administration to build LNG EXPORT facilities. Not for our desperate country "lacking energy security" but TO SELL FOR PROFIT overseas.

Our lands, our clean water, all destroyed for the fossil fuels industrie's pockets. To give some reference there have only been around 16 total LNG previous import facilities. Now they have all been turned into export and they are adding 12 more new facilities.

I can support the idea of China and India using gas instead of coal and dirty oil but I can't swallow the idea of destroying our public lands and water while the industry get all the profits and politicians lie about why we need to do it.

Oh yeah, and global warming is a hoax. Tell that to all the people living in low lying lands by the sea. And the pretend melting glaciers and the massive storm sizes lately. The deniers claimed for the past 45 years it was a hoax. Now that it's obvious to even the dumbest morons on the planet, the mantra is "it's not due to humans".

There really has to be a cleaner way to power humanity. Or we most likely won't need to worry about power because the planet will revolt. Science deniers who yak on about warm planets during the dino years better get busy figuring out how to live with no clean water and a polluted food chain. That's something the dinosaurs didn't have to deal with.

There are ways to replace fossil fuels. But that will take time and money. What is disgusting is that the oil companies that are making their money while they can are not sharing any of it with the ignorant dupes that support them. Okay, fuel prices would go up if we seriously attacked this matter, but that would only be temporary. There are many alternative sources. It only takes a little effort on our part.

 

[exchemist]

Ha! it goes back farther than that. Svante Arrhenius [Nobel Prize, Chemistry. 1903] predicted global warming from fossil fuel combustion back in 1896. Unfortunately, he failed to see the ramifications -- he thought it would be beneficial.

Perhaps he can be excused, though -- he did live in Sweden...

Arrhenius! Blimey. He of k =A exp(-Ea/RT), no less. But he must have been guessing. He can't have known anything at that stage about rates of generation or absorption of CO2. Also there was no IR spectrometry back then so he can't have known about the IR absorption of greenhouse gases, surely?

 

[Valjean]

What I find "funny" is how politicians have cried for decades that we need to become energy independent to the point of needing to frack up the entire country side. Using up a more valuable resource in the form of clean water. Polluting the ground with chemicals for hundreds of years to come. Invading public lands even in order to do it because we need it so bad. Really?

Industry's frantically trying to wrest all the profit they can from their assets, before the alternatives price them out of the market.

Oh yeah, and global warming is a hoax. Tell that to all the people living in low lying lands by the sea. And the pretend melting glaciers and the massive storm sizes lately. The deniers claimed for the past 45 years it was a hoax. Now that it's obvious to even the dumbest morons on the planet, the mantra is "it's not due to humans".

I think you're underestimating the dumbest morons...

Most of humanity lives near seas or rivers. What happens when sea rise renders them homeless? Europe's already in a nativest panic over a few Middle East and African refugees. How will the world handle four or five billion of them?

Fun fact: The Middle Eastern refugee crises was initiated by a drought (climate change) that sent several million bankrupt farmers into the cities, which didn't have the capacity to support them, resulting in increasing unrest and eventually to a spreading 'Arab Spring' of unrest and revolution, generating the aforementioned refugees.
In Africa, there was drought plus the Sahara desert extending into the Sahel scrublands.
Climate change = political problems.

Some people seem to have a hard time seeing multi step effects -- as evolution and climate change threads here reveal.

 

[wandering peacefully]

There are ways to replace fossil fuels. But that will take time and money. What is disgusting is that the oil companies that are making their money while they can are not sharing any of it with the ignorant dupes that support them. Okay, fuel prices would go up if we seriously attacked this matter, but that would only be temporary. There are many alternative sources. It only takes a little effort on our part.

It kills me how people start buying big cars and trucks because of "magically" fallen gas prices instead of demanding gas efficient vehicles. What's that? Prop up the auto industry with manipulated gas prices? Then the prices spike again and people can't afford to fill their tanks. Back to small cars for a while. It just seems like a lot of people can think past next week. And no one understands they are puppets of the fossil fuel industry. The companies get disgustingly rich AND have welfare. Yet none of them care to put some of that money into coming up with viable clean solutions or cars with a better system.

 

[wandering peacefully]

Industry's frantically trying to wrest all the profit they can from their assets, before the alternatives price them out of the market.
I think you're underestimating the dumbest morons...

Most of humanity lives near seas or rivers. What happens when sea rise renders them homeless? Europe's already in a nativest panic over a few Middle East and African refugees. How will the world handle four or five billion of them?

Fun fact: The Middle Eastern refugee crises was initiated by a drought (climate change) that sent several million bankrupt farmers into the cities, which didn't have the capacity to support them, resulting in increasing unrest and eventually to a spreading 'Arab Spring' of unrest and revolution, generating the aforementioned refugees.
In Africa, there was drought plus the Sahara desert extending into the Sahel scrublands.
Climate change = political problems.

Some people seem to have a hard time seeing multi step effects -- as evolution and climate change threads here reveal.

Sadly all true. It's only going to get worse. Us is their worst abuser of over consumption but the least willing to admit there is a problem until NY and Miami become submerged. Then all of a sudden dumbfounded dip#$!@s will be crying foul and looking like deer in their Escalade headlights.

 

[Subduction Zone]

It kills me how people start buying big cars and trucks because of "magically" fallen gas prices instead of demanding gas efficient vehicles. What's that? Prop up the auto industry with manipulated gas prices? Then the prices spike again and people can't afford to fill their tanks. Back to small cars for a while. It just seems like a lot of people can think past next week. And no one understands they are puppets of the fossil fuel industry. The companies get disgustingly rich AND have welfare. Yet none of them care to put some of that money into coming up with viable clean solutions or cars with a better system.

Are you trying to tell me that this was a poor choice for my daily commute:

 

[wandering peacefully]

Are you trying to tell me that this was a poor choice for my daily commute:

It sure looks good though! I can only talk because I traded in my Wrangler for a Ford Focus. POS especially in the snow but darnit if I'm not smiling looking down at the 36.8 mpg's I'm getting!

 

[Subduction Zone]

It sure looks good though! I can only talk because I traded in my Wrangler for a Ford Focus. POS especially in the snow but darnit if I'm not smiling looking down at the 36.8 mpg's I'm getting!

At least the bikini babe is standard equipment. That makes up for the roughly ten mpg it gets.

 

[wandering peacefully]

At least the bikini babe is standard equipment. That makes up for the roughly ten mpg it gets.

In all seriousness don't allow my input derail the thread. It's great to see people talking about the big pink elephant in their room.

I think we are going to reach the +10 degree mark real soon. 2033? Then look out cuz we don't know the meanin' of storms and high water now compared to what it will be. We are not going to stop the sea or the skies at this point. What to do? That's going to be a whole heck of a lot of people to have to move. I suggest charging the fossil fuel people along with all who denied and delayed viable options to greenhouse gas reductions.