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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Feb 16, 2014 - 01:18pm PT
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Few of these processes are linear. That makes it a difficult problem. Multiple variable non-linear processes.
On a sadder note, I just read this Guardian Article. I am with the guy when he says that what we are doing to the environment can't really be stopped:
http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2008/mar/01/scienceofclimatechange.climatechange
The change in climate will not cause an extinction of the human race. About the only thing that can cause such an extinction is us.
What we will see is a redistribution of arable land. If it warms a few degrees in the southern plains, it will affect where we grow food. Areas such as this, along with rainfall patterns will shift in location. This will affect where we grow our food and where we live.
We will also all be dead before it gets really bad. We are already seeing changes in the arctic, but China isn't going to stop burning so much coal, and Americans aren't going to give up their cars.
Simple version: My opinion is that we are hosed, and will be cursed by future generations.
All of this will affect Where we live and grow food.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Feb 16, 2014 - 01:22pm PT
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We CAN sequester carbon rather easily.
Take all of that growing organic matter and bury it, along with some sort of biocide to keep bacteria from turning it into CO2. Sequestering at the smoke stack is a huge problem, but there are tens of thousands of depleted oil reservoirs that we could inject it into.
It would be more efficient to do it with plant matter, though. It is far denser than CO2 gas. I don't know why I haven't heard of this method.
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TLP
climber
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Feb 16, 2014 - 01:26pm PT
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HSRV, the drought and lakebed tree evidence you cite is well corroborated from other sources. I'm not going to spend the time rummaging in digital and paper folders for the other citations, but it's totally for real. There is a substantial layer of charcoal 800 years old, or 800 and also 1200 (forget the details right now), in a wetland in South Lake Tahoe. I know: I found it and sent it to the C14 lab myself; part of a project we were doing.
But you make a completely unjustified leap to say that this casts doubt on climate effects from human GHG emissions. There is no connection between the two whatsoever. All that the past droughts (and the one you refer to was only one of multiple that we know of since the last Ice Age) show is that there are other climate influences which can exert a huge effect, not that ours does not exist. We also know that enormous meteorites have hit the Earth causing cataclysmic climate changes, much bigger even, by orders of magnitude, than this itty bitty little drought. Does it follow that the oceans have no effect, since something else had a bigger effect? Not at all.
In practical terms, accepting the reality of human-induced/enhanced climate change and setting about to get ready for its anticipated effects also helps get ready for climate problems that result from a coincidence of natural effects doing something even worse, should that occur. Models indicate that the frequency of extreme climatic events, such as droughts, is likely to become greater. The science of GHGs and their effects is pretty well settled, though we're not as certain as we'd like to be about the magnitude. It's time to start talking sensibly about dealing with stuff. And if all it does is prepare us for expected non-human-induced calamity, what's so bad about that? It's too late and would be too slow to steer the CO2 battleship off its present course quickly enough to avert some of the major consequences. Let's get ready for them.
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TLP
climber
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Feb 16, 2014 - 01:35pm PT
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Base, I can't agree that it is even a remotely good idea to try to sequester carbon by burying plant material and applying such a massive dose of wide-spectrum poison as to prevent decomposition forever. Basically, anywhere you do that has to be rendered into even more of a wasteland than a landfill; and you need a lot of these. Bacteria and fungi have been adapting to different energy sources - including petroleum! - and toxins (to them) for 4 billion years. Anything that would keep them from decomposing a huge, choice supply of fixed carbon forever would have to be really really nasty sh#t, applied in really huge amounts. And we can't even figure out how to deal with a comparatively tiny amount of radioactive waste. Not going to be a good idea.
But I totally agree we are hosed for exactly the reasons you state: China's coal use and our transportation. Sometime in the very distant future, we'll change the trend. But slowly and not for a long time. Meanwhile, we have to deal with what we've created in a practical way and stop having inane disputes about pretty well supported science.
Edited to add: I wouldn't know about CO2 capture at the stack, maybe that's really difficult too. But a lot easier there than once it is dispersed into the whole atmosphere.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Feb 16, 2014 - 02:06pm PT
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The CCS idea is a terrific one if it can be cheap enough.
There are zillions of depleted oil and gas fields in the country, and other trapped areas that never contained oil and gas for some reason.
You could basically inject it all, if you could capture it. We actually pay a lot of money for CO2, to use it as a tertiary flood substance. You inject it into old oil fields and recover a lot of oil that can't be produced otherwise. The CO2 is separated and re-injected. It stays down there, too.
CO2 is a lot more expensive than natural gas.
I still think that you will get more of a bang for your buck by burying it. If you are a person who thinks that you should get your panties in a bunch over regular landfills being ugly, while allowing the climate to shift, then you are being a candy ass. What do you want? A little ugly that serves a great purpose? Or do you want to keep those irrigated, mono species, farm fields "natural."
As if farming is in some sense natural. Come visit me over the next month and I'll drive you around over the Ogallala Aquifer. You can see them growing corn where it is otherwise way too dry. At the same time, the federal government pays farmers to not farm ground in more humid areas (See CRP program).
There are many biocides. It doesn't have to be toxic to humans. You could lower the PH a couple of points and that would take care of it. You just need something to control the bacteria which would normally break this down.
If you aren't willing to sequester carbon like Mother Nature did, under anoxic conditions, simply because it is an eyesore, then you are not being intellectually honest.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Feb 16, 2014 - 02:13pm PT
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When the oil industry injects CO2 as a miscible fluid to recover more oil, we have to run acid-resistant casing liners and rods.
CO2 forms carbonic acid, and that stuff will eat through regular steel well casing in only a few years.
That doesn't make it impossible. CO2 is a valuable substance in the oil industry...oddly enough...
Your pipelines will be a little more expensive. We have had CO2 pipelines for many decades.
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HSRV
Mountain climber
Santa Cruz, CA
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Feb 16, 2014 - 02:50pm PT
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Thanks TLP. However, it seems you accept one premise regarding how changing climate (AGW and/or natural) can change wind and ocean currents and ocean temperatures than allegedly result in droughts and/or floods, but then you seem to conveniently dismiss that 220-year mega-drought that could never have been the result of human activities. You can't really have it both ways.
As to someone else further up this thread attempting to draw an analogy of AGW's lack of any semblance of linear functions to that of the moon with tides, that's akin to trying to suggest that 1+1 is the same as an exponential function. There's nothing complex about the moon's gravitational pull on Earth's bodies of water, whereas with climate dynamics there are multiple variables interacting in very complex ways, none of which are predictable as to outcome. Chaos manifested!
BTW, TLP, that same science report to which I alluded previously also mentioned another 140-year mega-drought in California. So it's not so fluke-ish, it might be part of some bigger natural cycle.
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TLP
climber
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Feb 16, 2014 - 03:16pm PT
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Base, good points. But it is not the eyesore issue, it is the conversion of land area to (permanent?) unproductive condition that's a bit concerning. It would end up happening exactly where plant productivity is highest (forest, ideal crop areas) which is desirable land for other purposes. As fkked up as modern industrial farming is, agriculture is what supports the population, and it's not going to change much until groundwater pollution and just plain exhaustion of aquifers compels it. Kind of like CO2 emissions.
I'm not that concerned about the toxicity of a biocide to humans - got way too many of us anyway - but to the rest of the ecosystem, which is very dependent on microorganisms. If you could be sure the stuff would stay far from ecosystem contact, not as much of a problem. But big industrial scale stuff like this does not tend to get done in the best way, just the cheapest.
Now, anoxic conditions: that's a winner. And combined with lowering the pH, that sounds exactly like an acid-generating mine waste rock dump. Perfect! Only perhaps so acidic that the carbon would get liberated again. But waste rock dumps would be perfect.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Feb 16, 2014 - 04:07pm PT
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HRSV made a nice post above^^^
Dogma is not a good quality to have in a science debate.
As for the usual cast of characters, Rick S and Napoleon, they are just irritating. Kind of like flies around the soup. Anyone who buys their hype must first graduate from the Stupid Academy.
This New World Order guy is quite a character, too.
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HSRV
Mountain climber
Santa Cruz, CA
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Feb 16, 2014 - 04:17pm PT
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Why did it take 400 years? Because it took 400 years. Not a bright question. Math and science evolve, period.
However, the best computer climate models can't predict at all, and to think so is self-deluding adherence to the religion of AGW.
Try this simple observation in the reality of chaos. Go to a beach somewhere after a good rain where seasonal streams wash across the sand and into the waves. You will observe undulations in the surface of the moving water that are both dictated by the constantly changing ripples in the sand below the water as well as creating those same ripples in the sand due to friction between the water and the grains of sand. As you watch the constantly changing undulations in concert with the constantly changing ripples in the sand you will be unable to predict at all where the next ripple and next concomitant undulation will appear. And yet here's the underlying beauty of rhythm to this chaos: If you are observant enough you will see a clear periodicity to the build up and collapse of the inter-acting ripples-undulations. They migrate downstream and they both build to some mathematically proportional limit, then in an instant they both collapse and the surface of the water and sandy bed momentarily smooth out before the cycle of build-collapse begins anew. You can time this cycle and it is almost a constant for each individual rate of flow of different streams.
Be here in awe of the order in chaos. Buddha didn't say that, I did.
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HSRV
Mountain climber
Santa Cruz, CA
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Feb 16, 2014 - 04:49pm PT
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I think that TLP made perhaps the most sensible observation. Given that none of us -- NONE OF US -- really KNOWS what's what with climate dynamics and any predictions thereof, it's best we err on the side of rational caution.
I think that if it wasn't for the massive widespread deforestation on this planet that CO2 would be of no concern as trees are the best terrestrial carbon sink. I don't think the problem is anthropogenic CO2 as much as it is too many trees have been culled. Now the oceans have become the #1 default carbon sink, which may or may not be good or bad.
Science in its purity (and very little of that remains anymore) does not whore itself to politics, to peer acceptance, or to money. We like to think we are above taking a religious approach to science, but the AGW issue has degenerated exactly into bastardized science. I think it was Lao Tzu who said a half-truth is a whole lie, and when we color science with a religious fervor, projecting beliefs and faith into it, then we have created a lie.
You might be able to teach calculus as I once did or understand physics, but that skill does not translate to trying to fathom the elusive yet elegant complexity of something like climate.
We need far less preaching from our towers of self-aggrandizing arrogance and admit that we really don't know how Earth's systems work in concert with one another. As Lao Tzu pointed out so eloquently, "Those who say don't know, those who know don't say."
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HSRV
Mountain climber
Santa Cruz, CA
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Feb 16, 2014 - 05:02pm PT
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My final input on this AGW thing. Everyone posting to this thread is using electricity and a computer or cellphone. Where's your electricity coming from? Where did all the plastics and exotic metals in your "devices" come from and how much fossil fuels energy was used in their entire manufacturing profile? Do you all drive cars? Do you all buy climbing gear made of synthetics and energy-intensive metal forging? Need I really keep going on with this rhetorical line of questioning?
Come down out of those ivory towers and stop shooting your arrows of hypocrisy. Unless you are living like Cro-Magnon Man (in which case you wouldn't even know that SuperTopo exists), then start pointing your fingers at yourselves.
I got out of my self-righteous environmentalist ivory tower years ago, and I suggest everyone "here" does the same.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Feb 16, 2014 - 05:10pm PT
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HSRV, I politely disagree. A lot is known about climate. The real problem with climate science isn't what will happen, it is the quantitative answers:
How much, how bad, and where?
I've worked a lot with weather models, and many climate models are similar in some ways, you play with the input and let it run. We have a good historical record on climate and CO2 levels going back 800,000 years (from ice core). You can go much further back if you use proxy data such as leaf stomata, oxygen isotope ratios, etc.
The purpose of a model is its predictive capability. Current weather models are very good in a broad sense. You know that a wave is coming, it is just a matter of being off a state or two and 24 hours or so...and that is for the ten day long range models.
Weather is, in a general sense, pretty damn predictable. The waves in the jet directly cause surface weather. To understand that, you need to understand geostrophic/ageostrophic flow.
From what I know about paleoclimate, simply from looking at the late Mesozoic hothouse event, CO2 does have a great influence on climate. It has happened before, and we have a fairly good idea of the CO2 concentrations which forced that event.
Shorter term events appear to correlate well to Milankovich cycles, and in sequence stratigraphy, we can identify high and low stands of sea level which also correlate.
I will never forget Napoleon posting a paleo-CO2 level chart and thinking that nothing happened. Well, the rifting that separated Pangea caused a huge amount of volcanism, and the current thinking is that the associated CO2 release caused the late Mesozoic hothouse event. Dinosaurs lived close to the north pole, for example.
BTW, we are currently in a cooling phase of the orbital cycles.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Feb 16, 2014 - 05:14pm PT
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As to your post about hypocrisy, I've pointed this out many times. That is why I think that we are screwed.
Perhaps things would change if population growth went negative. I have no idea how to achieve this, but it is the most obvious answer to AGW and our shrinking reserves of non-renewable resources.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Feb 16, 2014 - 05:17pm PT
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NONE OF US -- really KNOWS what's what with climate dynamics and any predictions thereof, it's best we err on the side of rational caution.
I rarely post on this thread as I am not an expert of climate change
just as I would not post on a forum on nuclear waste disposal methods
however I have to disagree with this contention that none of us knows what is what with climate dynamics and predictions
seems to me the opposite is the truth, that we have a massive amount of both historical data and very knowledgable scientists who have come to the same conclusions
we also appear to be getting quite good at predictions, especially the easier longer term forecasts, such as the very simple prediction of our earth getting hotter coming true, which was predicted decades ago
it is summer in Australia and they are setting heat records, the California drought was predicted long ago, as was the devastating heat across the US grain belt that sent prices of soybeans, wheat, and corn to new all time highs
one may as well be insisting that the earth is only 6000 years old, you have every right to believe and preach that but....well....we all know that you are nuts and are just being polite when we tolerate your babble in the guise of Free Speech
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Feb 16, 2014 - 05:56pm PT
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HSRV said:
as trees are the best terrestrial carbon sink
This is wrong, or at least misleading. The key word here is terrestrial, meaning land based. The oceans are the biggest carbon sink on the planet.
Then you must find out what is a sing or not. I talk about it as a place where CO2 is permanently taken out of the atmosphere, a rarer process than you might think.
While it is true that plant photosynthesis does remove a lot of CO2, it is only sequestered until the dead plant rots, a process that returns that CO2 to the atmosphere. That is why I am talking about sequestering the densest biomass possible..forever.
The Earth use to have a CO2 rich atmosphere, with little free oxygen. If all life ended, the free oxygen would react and vanish from the atmosphere in a few million years. There is literature on that topic.
Where did all of that CO2 go, and where did all of that oxygen come from, then?
In the Paleozoic, there are massive limestone beds around the world. I'm drilling wells into Pennsylvanian carbonate reservoirs right now, so I spend all day over a microscope determining depositional environments and diagenesis of these rocks, which are mainly formed from fossil precipitation of CaCO3 tests (roughly meant: sea shells). CO2 does directly precipitate from seawater under proper conditions. An unbelievable amount of CO2 is bound in limestone beds worldwide.
The oxygen began with the beginning of respiration of cyanobacteria. All free oxygen comes from life, pretty much. The atmosphere became oxygen rich and CO2 poor fairly rapidly, from a geological perspective.
Go by a good carbonate depositional environment book which describes facies and depositional environments. It is too big of a topic to go into here.
Anyway, the oceans are the largest natural carbon sink, and life in shallow water intercepts much CO2 and sends it back as Oxygen, just as forest do.
What you need to understand is that, yes, a tree does turn a hell of a lot of CO2 into organic carbon. It isn't permanently removed from the atmosphere, though. After the tree dies, ALL of that carbon returns to the atmosphere as the tree decays. The only permanent way to get rid of carbon is to bury the things so that they cannot decay and return it to the atmosphere.
Sea shells are the other way. If they are buried, that Carbon will be sequestered. If not, then carbonic acid will release the bound carbon. Any weak acid will attack CaCO3. I have a little eyedropper of 10% HCL to test a sample for the presence of carbonate or carbonate cement between sand grains. For my little 40mm eyedropper, which will last for 6 months, I have to go to Home Depot and buy 2 whole gallons of Muriatic Acid, which is just 36% Hydrochloric Acid. People use it for cleaning pools. It isn't controlled. Even 10% makes any carbonate in the sample fizz like crazy.
You have to understand the carbon cycle and then get inventive on how you can cheaply sequester organic carbon. You can spend zillions on power plant emissions, or you can grow quick growing trees, figure out a best way to dehydrate and shrink its overall carbon package, and then bury it in a way that it can't be eaten by bacteria.
There are some tree species which are very rapid growing. Cut em down, bury them in a lined pit with some sort of simple biocide, and remove it from the carbon cycle. This is the only way I know of to easily engineer the atmosphere.
As humans, we are already well along on our experiment regarding atmospheric engineering, although it is not intentional. We could bio-engineer the atmosphere back. The big question is cost effectiveness. Find the cheapest way to do it. Just make sure that you intercept the natural carbon cycle somehow.
We can't make coal, but I wish we could. That stuff if almost pure carbon. Power plants use a lot, which you will know if you have ever seen a hundred car train carrying all of that low sulphur coal from the Powder River area in SE Wyoming. We actually build coal fired power plants in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, etc. Even when they are directly sitting on far cleaner natural gas. Coal is more efficient than natural gas from a dollars and cents perspective.
Hard to believe, huh? It pisses off the oil and gas companies like crazy that we burn Wyoming coal on power plants sitting on top of massive gas fields.
Natural gas is a possible "Bridge Fuel," between coal and oil vs. a totally clean fuel, such as nuclear generated electricity in electric cars.
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wilbeer
Mountain climber
honeoye falls,ny.greeneck alleghenys
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Feb 16, 2014 - 07:29pm PT
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Well said Ed.[your hypocrisy post]
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Feb 16, 2014 - 08:05pm PT
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Is anyone involved in this thread privy to the "findings" that there was a 220-year mega-drought in what we now call California during the Medieval period in Europe
Megadroughts are a hot research topic among North American paleoclimatologists, I've seen some recent AGU posters and papers as well as publications. Routson et al. (2011) in Geophysical Research Letters review earlier studies before adding their own.
A better understanding of the range of long-term moisture variability is critical for anticipation of, and adaptation to, projected increases in aridity and drought frequency in the southwestern US (henceforth referred to as the Southwest) [Overpeck and Udall, 2010]. Many Southwestern high-resolution proxy records show numerous droughts over the past millennium, including droughts far more severe than we have experienced during the historical period [e.g., Woodhouse and Overpeck, 1998; Cook et al., 2004, 2010; Meko et al., 2007]. The medieval interval (ca. A.D. 900 to 1400), a period with relatively warm Northern Hemisphere temperatures [e.g., Mann et al., 2008], has been highlighted as a period in western North America with increased drought severity, duration, and extent [e.g., Stine, 1994; Cook et al., 2004, 2010; Meko et al., 2007; Woodhouse et al., 2010]. Iconic decades-long “megadroughts,” including Mono Lake low-stands [Stine, 1994], the mid-12th century drought associated with dramatic decreases in Colorado River flow [Meko et al., 2007], and the “Great Drought” associated with the abandonment of Ancient Pueblo civilization in the Colorado Plateau region [Douglass, 1929], all occur during the medieval period.
If this is in fact true that there was a 220-year mega-drought over 1,000 years ago it casts serious doubt on AGW forcing.
No, that's just stating your political beliefs. The scientists who did this research know better.
Given the effects of recent drought on water resources and ecosystems in the Southwest [Breshears et al., 2005; Overpeck and Udall, 2010], it will be important to test our hypothesis that 2nd century drought severity rivaled medieval megadroughts and more closely examine potential relationships with hemispheric climate patterns. Testing our hypothesis will require a better network of millennial length moisture proxy records that retain both short and long timescale climate variability in addition to more high-resolution reconstructions of global climate patterns. Until the climate dynamics of megadrought are thoroughly understood, managers of water and natural resources in the Four Corners, Rio Grande, and Colorado regions should take note that megadroughts as long, or longer, than 50 years could reoccur with the caveat that future droughts will likely be even warmer than those in the past [Karl et al., 2009; Weiss et al., 2009; Overpeck and Udall, 2010].
As a group I think paleoclimatologists, who are the source for most of our information about past climates, if anything tend to be more concerned than other climatologists about the risks of ACC. For example, much discussion of "abrupt climate change," and also some of the highest estimates for equilibrium climate sensitivity, come from paleo researchers.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Feb 16, 2014 - 08:09pm PT
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Your claims of accurate predictions ring hollow. When was the current California drought predicted? When was 2012 drought/heat wave predicted?
see Ed's post with links above to answer your naive question that you could have taken the personal responsibility to look up yourself
be a man Sketch, don't count on others to answer simple questions for you
personal opinions mean nothing when we have scientific consensus
so refute the science, get in there and refute
by the way, this thread has some 24K posts, how many are mine sketch?
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Feb 16, 2014 - 09:10pm PT
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If I emailed these questions to say a guy like Norton who would then phrase them as he saw fit would you then consider answering them? If you could do that then maybe i'll just shut up and stay out of your hair.
yes, I would agree to this
shall we proceed?
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