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The Day We Discovered Global Warming
Monday | February 08, 2010
In truth there probably was not a specific day a person had an eureka moment and discovered global warming. In the book I am holding in my blog picture there was just such a day for the discovery of the universe. That would have been the day the photographic plates showing the Cepheid Variables in Andromeda Nebula were identified and the tabulations were made as to their distance. In truth even the existance of other galaxy systems such as our own were debated for many decades before this January day in 1925. Possibly we could site the day in the late 1890's Svante Arrhenius finished his calculations (done laboriously by hand over a period of years) which showed that CO2 building up in the atmosphere from industry, would begin to warm the planet eventually. Better still we, might point to the day Charles David Keeling (who developed a accurate way to measure Cabon Dioxide in the atmopshere) first reported in 1960 that baseline CO2 levels taken over two years had risen. However, he probably knew or suspected the case far before then. More important to our story is the fact that global climate change is a discovery of science and not a liberal conspiracy cooked up by small d democrats to cause small r republicans discomfort. It is one of those kinds of discoveries like applying X amount of force to a given mass will cause will cause Y amount of acceleration under a given set of conditions. In climate science X amount of CO2 in the atmosphere traps heat stopping it from being radiated to space which increases the Earth's heat balance. It really is that simple and the prospects for humanity are not good while we have a group of lunatic contrarians in the congress or the news media controlling the political discourse. I just finished reading "Storms of my Grandchildren" by James Hansen which finishes a trilogy of books I have been reading about Global Warming and writing blogs about the subject for you all. The other two books just to tweek your memory were "With Speed and Violence" by Fred Pearce, and "The Discovery of Global Warming" by Spencer R. Weart. Although I have been following James Hansens career since 1988 when he testified on the need for congress to act on climate change, I was surprised to learn this was Hansen's first book. I highly recommend the book even though the writing skills Hansen displays are only in the class of a first time author. If ever there was a case of the message being more important then the style this would be it. As a scientist James Hansen lays it all out in a clear and concise manner. It is all about the Forcings with a capital letter F. Carbon Dioxide is worth about 0.5 watts per square meter on aveage over the planet. Imagine one small Christmas bulb on each square meter. Doesn't seem like much until you consider how many square meters there are on planet earth and let me assure there are a lot of them. There are other forcings, and there of course can even be negative forcings, but in general people tend to way over estimate their proportional value. For example if vocanoes accounted for .05 watts per square meter forcing it is absurd to blame volcanoes for global warming and to imply this lets man added Cabon Dioxide to the atmosphere off the hook. One negative forcing that has a masking effect on global climate change is the aerosol (air pollution to you and me) problem over Asia. There is so much air pollution over India and China that it has some cooling effects on the planet. They are even finding some of this air pollution that has drifted all the way across the Pacific Ocean in California. Again here this is a fixed quanity, no one in their right mind would argue we need Asian like air pollution amounts distributed over the whole planet to combat global warming. In point of fact a negative forcing like this that only reduces the problem a little can not be consider to be a fix for the problem. Much more is made about temperature data then should be. In point of fact the best data we have is the paleoclimate record which shows what happened in the past under certain conditions. In the past a slow forcing like orbital perameters for the Earth would cause a set of conditions where CO2 would build up in the Earth's atmosphere. Imagine in the past only 0.2 ppm CO2 per decade, instead of the current 2 ppm CO2 being added to the atmosphere every year like we have today. This slow incremental change was responsible for the ebb and flow of glaciers a mile deep during the ice ages. The key here is you have to imagine these changes continuing for centuries.. We are applying a positive forcing to the atmosphere today that is a order of magnitude above anything nature has ever seen since the massive warming caused my methane releases 50 million years ago at the begining of the Eocene. This warming was up to 13 degrees centigrade and caused a mass extinction. If 0.2 ppm per decade can cause the retreat and advance of the ice ages, I leave it to your own imagination what 2 ppm per year can do given enough time. Time is not a commodity we have. The planet is talking to us in the form of dissapearing glaciers, and the loss of the arctic ocean summer ice cover. The crux of the matter is where is the tipping point of our climate system? Like any massive system our climate system has a tipping point. There are what is called amplifying feed back systems which can cause a run away green house effect. One is that as we see more snow and ice melt, we see darker colored surfaces exposed (a change in albedo) to the energy of the Sun and instead of a white highly reflective surface shooting that energy back toward space. We are now seeing these surfaces absorbing more energy in the arctic. One tipping point we have discovered much to our chagrine is that rather massive ice fields are prey to mechanical forces we are just now beginning to fully appreciate. For example while air temperature may not be enough to melt the glacier directly, melt water finding its way down Moulins to the base and then lubricating said glacier speeds it on its way to the ocean which can melt it very well thank you very much. Another is the accelerating release of methane from the permifrost. Hansen state emphatically that we not only need to reduce CO2 output to the atmosphere, we need to reduce the present total of about 390 ppm to 350 ppm just to avoid a run away green house effect caused by these amplfying feedbacks. He says while we are working on the problem over the next 20 or 30 years maybe we can let this figure coast up to 420 ppm or so but that is it. Hansen's prescription for action is clear also. "GET RID OF COAL". If it is not cleaned up, and the CO2 sequestered it should not be allowed to be used period. As a Ev World reader and after hearing Hansen out, I would have to agree. It will do us no good at all to move the whole of our vehicle fleet to electric drive if in the main this power is generated in coal fired base electrical plants. Like Hansen I do not see fossil fuels being completely eliminated from the mix for transportation anytime soon. Electrricity can be (and is) produced by many different prime mover sources. The 4th Generation Nuclear Power Plants Hansen talks about in his book need to be seriously lookeed into and implimented if we are going to get serious about averting these storms for our grandchildren Hansen talks about in his book. Please do yourself a favor and try to find a copy of Hansen's book "Storms of my Grandchildren" and read it for yourself. Remember you seen it here, reducing CO2 in our atmosphere to "350 parts per million" is the only sane and safe course. Cap and Trade, and the new green energy sources just are not going to get the job done by themselves. Any talk to the contrary is just another weapon of mass distraction regardless of which party is peddling it.
Originally published: February 08, 2010 | Total Page Views: 1098 Add Your CommentsReport abuses to: editor@evworld.com
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a d v e r t i s e r
John Gilkison
John Gilkison is a professionally-trained astronomer who works for the New Mexico State University in Las Cruses. He chaired committee that wrote Las Cruces, NM Outdoor Lighting Ordinance in 1999, which was adopted in 2000. He incorporated the National Public Observatory (www.Astro-npo.org)in 1999. He is keenly interested in aerodynamic improvements in vehicles.
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This Month's Posts
Sausages and Laws
John's Archives
Talking To The Boss or Someone Like HimSir Thomas More and Universe Views
Human Extinction in 100 Years!
Forbidden Planet
Meet The Million Lumen Hour
Energy Should Be Made a Strategic Commodity
Incentivising Denial of Reality
The First Time I Met Phil Knox
The Day We Discovered Global Warming
Aerodynamic Trailer Project on Hold for Now
The Uncertainty of our Climate Future Squared
The Uncertainty of Climate Science
A Prototype Vehicle Range Extending Trailer
Some Penultimate Ideas
Hybrid like Highway Mileage in my new Honda Civic
Negative versus Positive Freedoms
Wasting Money on Mars, Entropy, and other Gremlins
Sputnik and Tail Fin Mania
The Fatal Mistake in 1787
Get Rid of Traffic Lights Improve MPG's Dramatically
A Parallel Universe Politically Speaking
Hybrid Sailing Ships Just Not Practical
The Poverty of Nations
Business and Government Can't Justify Outdoor Lighting Waste
Deficit Spending on Planet Earth
The Real Tragedy of Crushing the EV-1
Santa Claus Needs a Houseboat
The 29th Day
Water Skiing The North Pole
Don't Let Lutz Hide and Greenwash GM Behind The Volt
An Unpalatable Truth
Neanderthal's Revisited
Max MPG Car Project Formulated
Four Pounds A Second
The Northwest Passage
The Earth's Half Empty Oil Tank
The Syriana Scenario
We are Reality Producing Machines
An Outline for a Mini Hyper Car
The Kazhoom Brookes Theory
Driving in Hurricane Force Winds
Aerodynamics versus Style
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