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?
Ric Werme,
Yes, it takes them a awhile to find out that their brilliant ideas are either wrong, or simply just don’t work.
Mary Hinge,
There is no data showing that climate change is proceeding at a rapid pace (temps have dropped) and that life forms are unable to adapt. This rapid climate change claim is a load of BS. Other than a cartoon of a drowning polar bear, show us a single study.
The real story is this..
They want to build nuclear power stations and they sell every story to build the nuclear power stations.
foinavon (06:44:26) :
“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….”
Thank you for making that clear. Now I understand that not only do flora & fauna mutate & adapt to their environment but so does physics.
DaveE.
I think he/she/it understands it. But the argument from climate scientists (if I understand it correctly) is that the lag is irrelevant, and that once CO2 “catches up it increases the warming which has already occurred. I don’t believe this is borne out by the best evidence we have, though, and is really complete speculation.
Pam Gray,
I’ve been keeping an eye on this too.
There aren’t very many places left for ice growth – East Siberia and the Barents Sea. I very much doubt we’ll reach 15 million sq. km…probably top out at 14.3 or 14.4 million sq. km meaning more or less a normal year. The projected temperature map supports your Greenland prediction:
http://www.wetter24.de/de/home/wetter/profikarten/gfs_popup/archiv/Europe/t2m/2009021612/nothumb/on/0/ch/9bc371061b.html
And it doesn’t matter if it’s baby ice or not!
(For the embiciles who are planning to kayak to the north pole in Sept.)
Is this the level of discourse we should expect from a NASA Director, employee? This individual is out of control and his case seems more relevant to the medical field than the climatological one…
Ron de Haan (08:10:17) :
Given the context, one of those was clearly meant to be Australia. Brown, Merkel, Rudd. UK, Germany, Australia.
Bill D (12:14:47) :
Clearly, we can’t immediately shut down the coal generated electricity. But a good starting point would be to stop building coal-fired plants and to accelerate the production of energy from non-fossil fuel sources. It seems that a lot of coal plants are being canceled in the US.
Starting point realized very soon. Any average heatwave will likely give California some lovely blackouts this summer thanks to this very thing. Enjoy.
I sincerely hope that everyone checks on and helps out the frail and/or elderly when that happens. Would certainly be a travesty for deaths to occur from refusing to allow building of power plants, yet it happens and will likely happen more and more.
Ahhh, the irony of real cause and effect given Hansen’s dribble.
Law of Nature (02:18:02) :
“I almost fully agree with:
Ron de Haan (13:16:26) :
“The analogy of the “death trains” and “death factories” with the “Holocaust”….
I have no words for it, absolutely tasteless.
We have found ourselves a Dr. Menken of climatology.”,
beside the name you are looking for was Mengele and I recommend to read about him and the like before writing about coal and Death trains in the same sentence.
Law of Nature,
Your are correct.
It is very sad to make any reference to the Nazi Regime in order to win an argument.
Global Warming Holocaust: 1,870,000 Google Hits
Global Warming Mengele: 24,200 Google Hits
The major objective was to disqualify the so called “deniers” (who are denying the concept of Global Warming caused by CO2 emissions) stating that their denial was comparable to the denial of the “Holocaust”;
This link provides us with an objective insight how the “Holocast”, “Death Train” Neurenberg Trial (to trial the “deniers) got into the discussion and who is responsible:
http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/2007/11/hansens_holocaust_global_warmi.shtml
To be honest with you, I am rather worried because Hansen and Gore both publicly
call for terrorist like attacks on our Carbon Fuel infra structure. As I have stated in an earlier posting, not so long ago such a public call would have been considered an Act of Treason against the State. Now they are getting away with it.
How is that possible?
Bill Illis (07:37:02) :
Careful Bill. You’ve been misled by the data. You’ve plotted an inappropriate data set that isn’t what you consider it to be at all. You haven’t plotted CO2 vs a global temperature proxy, and your statement about the temporal relationship of temperature and CO2 is meaningless.
Have a think about what Pangani et al have done (a read of their paper would help). They have used a proxy for atmospheric CO2 that involves analysis of stable isotopes in molecules called alkenones produced by algae in the oceans. Analysis of sedimentary alkenones allows a reconstruction of atmospheric CO2 at the time that the algae were photosynthesising.
However please note: …in order to properly determine the relationship between stable isotope composition and atmospheric CO2 the data need to be normalized with respect to the local temperature at which the organisms grew. Since data were collected from 8 different sites in various oceans around the world, at different latitudes with different sea temperatures, a proxy for the local temperature was determined from stable isotope values in co-sedimenting planktonic foraminifera. It is this “internal control for the effects of local temperature” that is tabulated in the pages you’ve accessed to draw your graph.
That’s why the temperature data look so odd when plotted with respect to time. It doesn’t really have a meaningful temporal relationship. It’s a hodge-podge of the local temperature proxy in relation to the core-site and the depth a which the algae grew…
REPLY: He has a small apartment in NYC near Columbia, where he lives during the week, commuting on weekends. – Anthony
————-
Maintaining two residences is only marginally better.
There’s the material that went into building the second residence. And the energy required to heat two residences.
The deaths that are attributed to short extreme weather events are deaths that would have occurred sooner or later that particular year or the next year anyway. It’s not the young and fit individuals that die, but the frail and sick who are kept alive thanks to modern medication and care, a practice that interferes with the normal course of nature. I bet that there are less deaths in the months after a weather extreme because of this unfortunate “cleansing” effect. I am not advocating to lower the standard of care for the elderly but only suspect that what I describe is the dominant factor. I doubt whether the death totals for the whole of 2003 in France were significantly higher than those in other years.
Paul Shanahan (08:07:49) :
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.
Recheck the temporal scale. Recent on the left, ancient on the right.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the power station managers all decided to support him for a day and disconnected their stations from the power grid (I know you can’t just turn a power station on and off). Possibly the rail hauliers could support the Hansen Green drive by refusing to deliver “deadly coal” for a week, forcing power stations to shut down.
Even a couple of stations dropping off the network could overload it and cause widespread blackouts, similar to the blackout in thre New York area in 2003. Think how much carbon dioxide emissions that would cut especially at this time of year.
Trouble is, people would die, and it would not be Mr Hansen getting the blame, however, they can always call Mr Hansen as a witness to their saving the planet.
All in jest. I wouldn’t want to hurt anyone. Even those delightful Green activists who say things like De***rs should be fed into wood shredding machines feet first.
DaveE (08:31:22) :
Perhaps I could have stated this very obvious point more clearly. Let’s try again:
Two major contributions to the Earth’s global temperature are the solar irradiance and the greenhouse effect (obviously!). During the Carboniferous the solar constant was around 3% lower than now, and as a result higher greenhouse gas concentrations were required to maintain the the Earth near any given temperature, than would be required now with a “hotter” sun.
Or one could describe the analyses of radiative forcings resulting from greenhouse gas oncentrations during the Phanerozoic in relation to the thresholds for broad climate regimes (e.g. a significant glaciation). Such an analysis [see for example Royer (2006)], indicates that during the Ordovician the threshold for glaciation was as high as 2-3000 ppm (i.e. drop below these values and build up of ice sheets is possible). Nowadays the threshold for glaciation is considered to be near 500 ppm.
Or one could simply say that for a given greenhouse gas concentration the Earth now will be warmer than it was in the past at that particular greenhouse gas concentration (to a first approximation)…
D.L. Royer (2006) “CO2-forced climate thresholds during the Phanerozoic” Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta 70, 5665-5675.
foinavon (06:44:26) : “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….”
Is that right? Could you tell us the Earth’s albedo at these times? How can you assess warming effects without understanding albedo.
You also did not mention the total land surface vs. ocean surface. Seems that might be helpful in your calcuations. I won’t even go into bio-sphere and volcanic issues.
Finally, your statement that CO2 will have more of an effect now is an ASSUMPTION since the actual effect is still an open discussion, as are the positive forcings required for it to have any substantial impact whatsoever.
You seem to be good at regurgitating data that you think supports your position without doing any critical thinking. In earlier posts you have discounted data from models that went against your position and used model output that supports your position. You don’t even seem to understand this disconnect.
If you really want to find the truth I suggest you become MORE skeptical of everything you read.
Now, putting CO2 to work in greenhouses, coupled with the heat from the exhaust anyways, is a great idea. Produce electricity, produce food.
Waste not, want not.
Life is good.
———–
I saw a story a few years ago, where these guys made a deal with the local power plant. They diverted a small amount of the waste water going into the cooling pond, and used that warm water to grow tropical fish.
They got free hot water, and the power company was able to skip an expansion of their cooling ponds.
Reflecting on the way Hansen carefully parses his words:
He says “burn allof the fuel”. He does not say “burn at the present rate”, He is making a statement deliberately designed for fear mongering, that he knows is based on a case that cannot happen. This, combined with both his continued false comaprisons between Venus and Earth, and his admission in 2004 that he deliberately ‘tailors’ his science results to achieve policy results, tells me a lot about him: He is deliberatley lying.
foinavon,
Did I miss where you described the difference between logarithmic functions and linear in reference to GHG’s?
tallbloke (09:44:04) :
Recheck the temporal scale. Recent on the left, ancient on the right.
Ah, ok. *cleans spectacles*
Many thanks.
hunter (07:11:17) :
and TerryS (07:19:28)
Yes I do understand the difference between logarithmic and linear functions hunter. Thank you for asking!
As for the temp lead/lag, I think we have to be a little more careful and thoughtful. The temperature rise does lead CO2 levels in Antarctic ice cores (although CO2 changes lead the temperature change in Greenland cores). The Antarctic cores allow us a very nice way of determining the atmospheric CO2 response to changing temperature.
Over several glacial to interglacial cycles we find a transition from around 180 ppm to 270 ppm atmospheric CO2 during a period of around 5000 years, associated with a temperature rise near 5-6 oC globally averaged? Yes? So we can establish that the Earth releases CO2 from accesible sources (largely the oceans) equivalent to something like 15 ppm of atmospheric CO2 per oC of temperature rise, and since the transitions were very slow, we can consider that this is close to the equilibrium CO2 response to rising temperature.
Now you’re right that we don’t have sufficient temporal resolution to establish the relationships between temperature and CO2 changes in the deep past. However we can use the ice core data as a guide. Let’s consider the mid Eocene to mid Miocene temporal evolution that saw a (very slow!) drop of atmospheric CO2 from a high spot near 1500 ppm to around 300 ppm. This was also associated with about 5-6 oC of global cooling.
This reduction in CO2 is broadly consistent with Berner’s analysis of weathering/tectonic induced contributions to atmospheric CO2 levels. Is it compatible with a temperature-induced reduction of CO2 in the manner that we’ve seen in ice cores? It seems a difficult one to support I would have thought. The reduction in temperature (6 oC) might be expected to give us a drop of 90 ppm over this period. In fact the CO2 drop was around 1200 ppm.
So if one wants to use the ice core data as a guide to the relationship between CO2 and temperature, it doesn’t work for the Eocene/Miocene evolution of CO2/climate.
Similar arguments apply to CO2/temperature relationships in the deep past. The CO2 variations were simply massively too large to consider that they arose from temperature-induced recruitment of CO2 from accessible stores in the short term carbon cycle.
And in fact we do have very good evidence of very large rises of greenhouse gases as a result of tectonic events leading temperature rises. Some examples are the temperature rise following the massive tectonic events that opened up the N. Atlantic plate boundary at the Paleo-Eocene Thermal Maximum, and the end-Cretaceous warming that seems to have been a response to the massive tectonic events that gave us the Deccan Traps (in now India), possibly supplemented by a massive extraterrestrial impact that blasted into limestone-rice deposits and vapourized humoungous amounts of carbonate back into CO2…
Ron de Haan (08:10:17) :
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.
It’s understandable how it could happen. I just would have expected a little better, I’m sure you will understand.
If this mistake should disqualify the entire article? I don’t think so.
It is not a scientific report.
I doubt it will have much effect on the article as a whole and in the grand scheme of things should not disqualify it.
atmoaggie: re California power and coal
“Any average heatwave will likely give California some lovely blackouts this summer thanks to this very thing. Enjoy.”
California power is not coal-based except for a small amount imported from other states. Our power is primarily natural-gas based, with a small amount nuclear, some hydro, and 2200 MW renewables. Most of the renewables are from geothermal and biomass so the generating capacity is better than wind.
We also have 500 MW of solar (Stirling Solar One) due online early in 2009, which should provide power during peak demands this summer. Plus, the Governator mandated construction of gas-fired peaker plants.
In any event, the utilities have a voluntary load-reduction plan that mostly involves government facilities: they go dark and the workers leave while the rest of us work. Hopefully, the government workers do not go home and turn on the A/C, but go to a shopping mall until the evening.
We made it through last summer just fine, and this summer is likely to be cooler due to global climate change…global warming…whatever…PDO shifting gears…la nina…el nino…near-record snow-based albedo…and all that with CO2 going up, up, and awaaaaayyyy!
And in the spirit of an earlier comment on this thread:
“There’s something happening here,
What it is, ain’t exactly clear…” — Buffalo Springfield
The Allosaurus was also fond of Cinnamon sprinkles and drove a jeep.
Happy birthday to you, keep the playful mood goin’
tallbloke (09:44:04) :
tallbloke, Bill’s plot isn’t a CO2 proxy vs global temperature proxy plot, and is essentially a meaningless comparison of the CO2 proxy and an internal control that was determined to correctly establish the CO2 data [see foinavon (09:28:27)]. It really doesn’t matter which way you read it…