NASA’s Dr. James Hansen once again goes over the top. See his most recent article in the UK Guardian. Some excerpts:
“The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death.”
And this:
Clearly, if we burn all fossil fuels, we will destroy the planet we know. Carbon dioxide would increase to 500 ppm or more.
Only one problem there Jimbo, CO2 has been a lot higher in the past. Like 10 times higher.
From JS on June 21, 2005:
One point apparently causing confusion among our readers is the relative abundance of CO2 in the atmosphere today as compared with Earth’s historical levels. Most people seem surprised when we say current levels are relatively low, at least from a long-term perspective – understandable considering the constant media/activist bleat about current levels being allegedly “catastrophically high.” Even more express surprise that Earth is currently suffering one of its chilliest episodes in about six hundred million (600,000,000) years.
Given that the late Ordovician suffered an ice age (with associated mass extinction) while atmospheric CO2 levels were more than 4,000ppm higher than those of today (yes, that’s a full order of magnitude higher), levels at which current ‘guesstimations’ of climate sensitivity to atmospheric CO2 suggest every last skerrick of ice should have been melted off the planet, we admit significant scepticism over simplistic claims of small increment in atmospheric CO2 equating to toasted planet. Granted, continental configuration now is nothing like it was then, Sol’s irradiance differs, as do orbits, obliquity, etc., etc. but there is no obvious correlation between atmospheric CO2 and planetary temperature over the last 600 million years, so why would such relatively tiny amounts suddenly become a critical factor now?
Adjacent graphic ‘Global Temperature and Atmospheric CO2 over Geologic Time’ from Climate and the Carboniferous Period (Monte Hieb, with paleomaps by Christopher R. Scotese). Why not drop by and have a look around?
Mary Hinge, or is it Unhinged?
Quote
“An example would be the loss of one species of orchid could wipe out the Brazil Nut. (There is only one bee species able to pollinate the Brazil Nut flower, this bee is dependant on one species of orchid to obtain the pheremone the male needs to court the female. You lose the orchid you lose the nuts.”
BJ wonders……
Not so sure you have the correct data Mary Hinge……More than one type of Bee I think….
Bees of the genera Bombus, Centris, Epicharis, Eulaema, and Xylocopa have been captured visiting Brazil nut trees (Moritz, 1984; Müller et al., 1980; Nelson et al., 1985).
Brazil nut trees grow in Ceylon, Kuala Lumpur and Ghana btw. The orchid doesn’t however.
For the most part, cross-pollination is needed for seed set in Neotropical Lecythidaceae. Therefore, the bees, and to a lesser extent bats, are essential for the pollination and subsequent fruit and seed development of Lecythidaceae. Although a low level of in-breeding may occur in Bertholletia excelsa, most seed set in this species is the result of cross-pollination (Mori and Prance, 1990b).
Anyway Nature abhors a vacuum so no doubt the Brazil nut tree will find a suitable alternative pollinator.
To all of you arguing that increased levels of CO2 in the geologic record correlated to increased global temperatures your argument is moot. Over the last 30 years CO2 has been continuosly rising and global temperature has not. Until you can prove the correlation holds true today you have nothing to stand on.
E.M.Smith (16:45:32) :
Oh well. Never mind the science let’s play at conspiracy theory…!
Yes the ice core data has relatively high temporal resolution and one can present this as a temporal evolution of atmospheric CO2 during the past ~700,000 years. There are compilations of paleoCO2 data in which the proxy points are “joined up” covering periods further back in time:
e.g. P N Pearson and M R Palmer (2000) Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations over the past 60 million years. Nature 406, 695-699
But one has to be careful to address this data properly in the context of the question at hand. If one wishes to assess the relationship between CO2 levels and Earth temperature for example, then one can only be confident that the sampling is adequate under the circumstance that one has contemporaneous paleoCO2 and paleotemperature data. In other words, one can’t take extremely sparse data and “join the dots” and assume that the interpolated values are “true”. A pertinent example is the Late Ordovician. There is a paleoCO2 proxy dated at around 450 MYA and the next most recent proxies are at around 415 MYA. Would you say that drawing a straight line between these proxies gives you the atmospheric CO2 values for all the time periods in between? Obviously not. However if one were to use the sketch in the top post to address these issues one would be mislead. That’s obvious I would have thought….yes?
Yes there was much higher CO2 in the past. That’s obvious too. However one also cannot address these issues without recognising that the solar constant was considerably lower in the past (by 4% during the late Ordovician and by around 3% during the Carboniferous). So the greenhouse gas thresholds for the different climate regimes (e.g. warm, cool, glacial and so on) were very different from today. In fact the radiative forcing resulting from 1500-2000 ppm of atmospheric CO2 100 million years ago (MYA) was considerably larger than the forcing from 5000-6000 ppm 500 MYA. Likewise the radiative forcing from 1500 ppm now would be larger than that from 1500 ppm of CO2 100 MYA.
So to address your question explicitly CO2 was much higher then, and burning the coal will make CO2 “high”. However the third element that you are missing is that “high” CO2 has a much stronger warming effect now than during the Carboniferous….
I think we need to figure out why temps and CO2 are not connected today before we say that they were or were not connected 1 zillion years ago. Why spend time discussing what happened back then?
I want the low down from warmers about today, and 10 years from today. If I can’t use your assumptions —that it is getting warmer— to go ahead and make an investment to plant a vineyard in NE Oregon (because you say it will be warmer and by extrapolation it will be wetter when it is warmer), I just can’t bring myself to spend time reading what you say happened 1 zillion years ago.
Had I jumped on the bandwagon of “CO2 caused warming is upon us folks” and changed my agricultural practices to this long term warm season production, I would be in the poor house right now. So why would I listen to you about what happened 1 zillion years ago? If you don’t have it right, right now, and you have to adjust the models (or even re-write them) to explain why they are off by a bushel and a peck, you don’t have it right back then either.
Most of the atmos[pheric CO2 is now locked up in the rocks in limestone, etc.
Mary Hinge
Please define what the optimum CO2 level is for all the species of the earth that you are referring to or point us to some literature upon which you base your claim. Please also define what rate of change in CO2 levels these species can tolerate. Until then your argument seems more like an assertion than fact.
Thanks
Ed
OT… My apologies.
Given the negative PDO and the La Nina winter much of this temp trend across the nation does not surprise me. I was, however, surprised by the temps in the extreme southeast. Perhaps Anthony or someone could elaborate on the meteorologic patterns that produced them. Or am I missing something about the general La Nina winter pattern?
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/2009/jan/02_01_2009_DvTempRank_pg.gif
Daniel Lee Taylor: re lawsuits to block AGW
There are a few lawsuits to stop some of this. As many of Anthony’s readers may know, California has the first U.S. Global Warming law, aka AB 32. Some provisions of AB 32 have been challenged in court. One that I admire is Tesoro Refining and Marketing Company v. California Air Resources Board, filed in California state court (Sacramento).
Tesoro claims that forcing refiners to produce transportation fuel (gasoline) with 10 percent renewables (e.g. ethanol) is inconsistent with the mandate to reduce GHGs because converting bio-mass to ethanol consumes essentially the same amount of energy as the energy contained in the ethanol produced. Stated another way, there is no GHG reduction, as GHGs are just shifted around. The argument is substantiated by studies that considered the agricultural energy requirements to plow, plant, fertilize, water, cultivate, harvest, transport, convert to ethanol, then transport the ethanol (by truck or rail) to gasoline blending locations.
That is a heck of an argument, and it will be quite interesting to watch this one play out.
Some car dealerships also sued the Air Resources Board over the proposed car mileage standards (Pavley standards), claiming the state cannot make rules where the federal EPA has set mileage standards (the pre-emption argument). That argument looked good under President Bush, but President Obama has ordered his EPA to effectively grant California’s request. Those lawsuits will be moot in short order.
foinavon,
Do you understand the difference between logarithmic and linear functions?
Do you also understand that CO2 has lagged in every proxy-based study of CO2 and temperature?
foinavon (05:44:01) :
M. Pagani et al (2005) Marked Decline in Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentrations During the Paleogene Science 309, 600 – 603.
The time resolution of this study isn’t high enough to determine whether temperature rises/falls lead or follow CO2 changes. They use geomagnetic reversal to determine the dating of the samples.
DeConto RM et al. (2008) Thresholds for Cenozoic bipolar glaciation Nature 455 652-654.
Is in fact about a climate model.
Fletcher BJ et al (2008) Atmospheric carbon dioxide linked with Mesozoic and early Cenozoic climate change . Nature 1, 43-48.
Like the first one doesn’t have enough resolution to determine which comes first, the CO2 or the temperature rise.
The only long record with a hight enough resolution is the ice core samples and these all show the temperature leads CO2 and not the other way around.
Mary Hinge (05:11:30) :
tallbloke (02:34:25) :
You’re right! It must have been the dinosaurs holding BBQ’s and riding round in SUV’s!
More accurate to say it was a combination of asteroid strike and the lav outflows from the Deccan Flats. With you it seems impossible to distinguish what are flights of fantasy and your own beliefs, just though I’d clear this up in cas anyone was confused.
It’s my birthday, I’m in a playful mood. Anyway, as the well informed and intelligent readership of this blog is well aware, dinosaurs prefer sushi and drive Toyota Priuses.
I am predicting Arctic ice recovery for the next week. The jet stream, Arctic oceanic currents and temperatures, and wind patterns all point towards ice extent increase in the next week. The ice extent area in the southeast part of Greenland will shove its boundary further away from the Arctic as it continues its fight along a boarder of colder than normal SStemps working its way South along the coast with warmer than normal SStemps within the incoming Arctic current that sources from the Atlantic East of Greenland. I will go out on a limb and predict we will end up with average ice extent and, more importantly I think, fairly thick summer melt resistant ice edges.
To foinavon,
Pangani’s actual data set regarding temperature and CO2 over the last 45 million years is here.
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/climate_forcing/trace_gases/pagani2005co2.txt
It does not show what you claim it shows.
Here is the chart.
http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/9681/panganice0.png
Once again, we find temperature leading CO2. Interesting.
I think one should look into the actual data rather than reading the abstracts.
thefordprefect (15:48:01), Mike you said “Your plot, for which there is no reference data and is just about the only one I have ever seen on the web, is irrelivant to the current situation.” That plot is from the same source as the link you provided re: continental drift.
Many fine assessments made above. For those of you who recognise our mind’s inherent pattern recognition system, I have had one pattern return over and over again like some bit of a jingle that is persistant. I made a representaion of the image here. http://i43.tinypic.com/somq83.jpg
Mary H. is 12″ of sea level rise per century really that catastrophic? That is only 30% of the average rate since the last ice age. Does it occur to you that cities cause the land to sink? People have always been displaced, but more by cold than heat. Think ice sheets on the NH.
Jeff L (06:23:34) :
These two relationships show that with time, CO2 has been gradually sequestered in carbonate rocks. As more & more is sequestered, 2 things happen. 1) the overall concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere goes down 2) With less CO2 in the atmosphere with time, there is less “raw material” to build carbonate rocks & less are found with time. So from a mass balance standpoint, the presented graph of CO2 is generally supported by the geologic record.
The ironic part of this observation is that going forward, the long term geologic threat to mankind (not for millions of years though) could be a lack of CO2 ==> No CO2 = no plant life = no animal life.
This from Top Physicist Freeman Dyson:
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dysonf07/dysonf07_index.html
“First, if the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is allowed to continue, shall we arrive at a climate similar to the climate of six thousand years ago when the Sahara was wet? Second, if we could choose between the climate of today with a dry Sahara and the climate of six thousand years ago with a wet Sahara, should we prefer the climate of today? My second heresy answers yes to the first question and no to the second. It says that the warm climate of six thousand years ago with the wet Sahara is to be preferred, and that increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may help to bring it back. I am not saying that this heresy is true. I am only saying that it will not do us any harm to think about it.”
Operating Engineer: I’m curious about the source of your CO2 figures. I’m not questioning them. Are your CO2 readings from a local study or are they from the Energy Management System of the building you operate? If they’re from the Energy Management System, whose CO2 sensor are you using?
“You lose the orchid you lose the nuts.”
That sounds like a punch line.
Anyway, there is nothing unnatural about coal. Since coal plants have been cleaned up decades ago, they have been an important and clean part of our energy mix.
Why should coal have a black eye? I think our black coal is beautiful. Many would have died in the cold without it.
“The point here is the rate of change and an organisms ability to respond to rapid changes. Past history shows us that extinctions occur when rapid change happens and organisms do not have the time needed for evolutionary change.”
Equine Feces. Anyone who has moved livestock to another climate knows animals adapt quite well. example of adaption across the equator: click
While on that site look how much CO2 the greenies are resposible for puting in the air ALL at once. THE WALL OF death: click
PICTURE: click page down a couple of times
STORY: click
Operating Engineer,
I wonder what type of instruments you use to check the CO2 levels in the building. Also, would those same instruments, if used at Mauna Loa, give the same results as the Mauna Loa instruments?
Mike Bryant
Paul Shanahan (15:54:00) :
Thank you for the information. I think what you are essentially saying is that the graph posted at the top of the page cannot be dis-proved, nor can it be proven as accurate. On that basis, I am happy to accept it as a reasonable re-creation of historical levels until something better comes forward.
foinavon (03:42:59) :
Not really Paul. The graph is inaccurate as a means of assessing the relationship between atmospheric CO2 levels and global temperature in the deep past.
Erm, that’s what I said! You said the graph is inaccurate I said what you are saying is that the graph cannot be proven or dis-proven as accurate.
Come on my friend, stop arguing for arguments sake.
We can see in a number of recent studies that it appears that CO2 lags temperature changes. Granted, there is some debate as to time period of lag. I’ve seen quotes of 5 months, 800 years and (i think) 2 thousand years. If we take this as real (I’m not saying you should) then this is the basis for which we have to work with the paleoclimate reconstructions. It’s just basic logic, IMO.
“An example would be the loss of one species of orchid could wipe out the Brazil Nut. (There is only one bee species able to pollinate the Brazil Nut flower, this bee is dependant on one species of orchid to obtain the pheremone the male needs to court the female. You lose the orchid you lose the nuts. This example shows how everything is connected.”
This is an excellent example of an evolutionary dead-end. Perhaps Monsanto would be kind enough to insert Surviability Genes in the bee, or Brazil nut. Another problem solved through technology.
PS I hate Monsanto.
Bill Illis (07:37:02) :
Once again, we find temperature leading CO2. Interesting.
Are you sure that is the correct way round? Looks to me like CO2 leads temperature.
Paul Shanahan (01:59:53) :
“Ron de Haan (18:21:14) :
Another response the the Guardian Publication of Hanson can be found here:
According the author, Hanson suffers from authoritarianism and megalomania
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/the-political-philosophy-of-james-hansen-4961
Ron,
Usually your links provide good reading. This one I’m a little dubious about. The author states “Hansen is not even a citizen of Germany, Britain, or the United Kingdom”
I would like to point out that Britain and the UK are one and the same. I would hope the Author would have that one correct!
But keep up the good work, I always enjoy reading your info”.
Paul,
Thanks for your kind remark.
I have noticed this mistake which could have been resolved by a quick check at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom
However, people often make this mistake.
They mix up England with Britain.
Great Britain or the United Kingdom = England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. Sometimes simple things can be a bit of confusing.
If this mistake should disqualify the entire article? I don’t think so.
It is not a scientific report.
Most coal fired power plants sell the waste product “flyash” to asphalt companies. Most oil refinerys do the same with their waste product which is “tar bottoms”. Tar bottoms and fly ash are mixed along with sand and gravel to make asphalt which we use to pave and repave out highways.
The good that both coal fired power plants and oil refineries do far and away outweight the the supposed bad.
Mr Hansen is the ultimate hypocrite by useing ANY electronic device, anything gas or electic powered, or by taking advantage of any heating or cooling device.
Corinne
Based on what has already been presented on this thread, organisms on this planet have evolved with an innate ability to handle CO2 levels many times greater than the status quo. Any statement to the contrary would require some type of documention as support. Certainly plants thrive at today’s CO2 levels. I have not heard anything that indicates that squirrels, ants or fish are struggling with the current CO2 content.