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cleo
Social climber
Berkeley, CA
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Dec 11, 2009 - 03:08pm PT
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CC...
yes, that would be horrible. but is it more horrible than watching children die of starvation? (I think both are pretty horrible myself, the question is rhetorical)
We STILL have a problem to solve, regardless of your or mine or anybody else's feelings on abortion. We as a society will have to make some tough decisions (and I'm not talking about abortion, more along the lines of consume less, save more).
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corniss chopper
Mountain climber
san jose, ca
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Dec 11, 2009 - 03:20pm PT
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Well that's an important question. Would I rather die by being aborted
or the possibility of starving to death later in life?
Hmmm. Give me a minute...
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cleo
Social climber
Berkeley, CA
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Dec 11, 2009 - 04:42pm PT
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CC -
we still have a problem, and abortion isn't the issue here. lets work on solving it and leave abortion for another debate?
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corniss chopper
Mountain climber
san jose, ca
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Dec 12, 2009 - 06:58pm PT
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Roger that Cleo.
No more talking about the Czar's proposal of abortion as a solution to AGW.
(Climategate story)
At gunpoint--reporter stopped from asking Climategate questions.
..as the press conference drew to a close Professor Schneider’s assistant called armed UN security guards to the room. They held McAleer and aggressively ordered cameraman Ian Foster to stop filming. The guard threatened to take away the camera and expel the film crew from the conference if they did not obey his instructions to stop filming Professor Schneider..
http://www.examiner.com/x-3704-Columbia-Conservative-Examiner~y2009m12d12-At-gunpointreporter-stopped-from-asking-Climategate-questions
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dirtbag
climber
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Dec 12, 2009 - 07:13pm PT
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Wow CC, that disproves everything.
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Roger Breedlove
climber
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
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Dec 12, 2009 - 09:33pm PT
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Intersting take on negotiations at Copenhagen from today's WSJ.
Temperature is increasingly at the mercy of the developing world.
By RICHARD MULLER
Imagine a "dream" agreement emerging from Copenhagen next week: The U.S. agrees to cut greenhouse emissions 80% by 2050, as President Barack Obama has been promising. The other developed countries promise to cut emissions by 60%. China promises to reduce its CO2 intensity by 70% in 2040. Emerging economies promise that in 2040, when their wealth per capita has grown to half that of the U.S., they will cut emissions by 80% over the following 40 years. And all parties make good on their pledges.
Environmental success, right? Wrong. Even if the goals are all met, emissions will continue rising to nearly four times the current level. Total atmospheric CO2 will rise to near 700 parts per milion by 2080 (the current level is 385), and—if the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) models are right—global temperature will rise about six degrees Fahrenheit at mid latitudes.
The reason is that most future carbon emissions will not come from the currently industrialized world, but from the emerging economies, especially China. And China, which currently emits 30% more CO2 per year than the U.S., has not promised to cut actual emissions. It and other developing nations have promised only to cut their carbon "intensity," a technical term meaning emissions per unit of GDP.
China claims it is already cutting CO2 intensity by 4% a year as part of its five-year plan. President Hu Jintao has hinted that at Copenhagen China will offer to continue such reductions. By 2040, that will add up to a 70% reduction in intensity.
Sounds good, but here's the catch: With 10% annual growth in China's economy, a 4% cut in intensity is actually a 6% annual increase in emissions. India and other developing countries have similar CO2 growth. That 6% yearly increase is what is shown in the nearby chart.
True, China's CO2 per capita is only a quarter of the U.S. emissions rate. But warming doesn't come from emissions per capita, it comes from total emissions.
China's carbon intensity is now five times that of the U.S.; it is extremely carbon inefficient. By the time the Chinese cut emissions intensity by 45%, its yearly total will be over twice that of the U.S. And in the proposed Copenhagen dream scenario, by 2025 China's emissions will actually surpass those of the U.S. per capita.
If the issue is rising emissions in the next several decades, the bottom line is simple: The developed world is rapidly becoming irrelevant.
Every 10% cut in the U.S. is negated by one year of China's growth. By 2040 China could be the most economically dominant nation on earth. The West might be able to cajole it, but won't be able to impose sanctions on China. Temperature will be at the mercy of the newly powerful economies.
Moreover, an expensive effort to reduce Western emissions sets a worthless example. Only emissions cuts that provide measurable economic benefit to the developing nations will be adopted by them. If the 80% U.S. emissions cut winds up hurting the U.S. economy, it guarantees China will never follow our example.
Cheap green energy is not going to be easy. Coal is dirt cheap, and China has been installing a new gigawatt coal plant each week—enough to supply five completely new cities the size of New York every year.
Technological change can help a great deal. For now carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) from coal combustion is unproven, but so is cheap solar. I expect we can make CCS work. Perhaps the West can subsidize CCS in China or pay to make its plants CCS ready. A dollar spent in China can reduce CO2 much more than a dollar spent in the U.S.
There is another alternative: luck. Here's how it could help. Scientists are aware of a phenomenon that would counter the greenhouse effect: warmth evaporates water; water creates clouds; clouds reflect sunlight. A small cloud increase would significantly reduce predicted warming. The IPCC gives such cloud feedback only a 10% chance. My estimate is 30%. Clouds may already be kicking in, responsible for the negligible global warming of the past 12 years. Maybe, but we don't know. That's why we need luck.
Perhaps we could geoengineer a solution: Squirt a few million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight, emulating the 1991 Mt. Pinatubo eruption. We'll certainly get pretty sunsets. Or we could foam up the oceans to increase reflectivity. Many people find such ideas scarier than warming because of the threat of unintended consequences.
Another option is that we could learn to live with global warming. Despite claims to the contrary, storms aren't increasing. The rate of hurricanes hitting the U.S. coast has been constant for a century, and the number of damaging tornadoes has been going down. Will Happer, a former director of research for the Department of Energy, argues that additional CO2 may have helped the agricultural revolution. And chilly Berkeley might be nicer with a few degrees warming.
But the bottom line is that 80% cuts in U.S. emissions will have only a tiny benefit. The bulk of our effort is best directed at helping the emerging economies conserve energy and move rapidly toward efficient solar, wind and nuclear power. Developing cheap carbon capture and sequestration is also a priority. Above all, we need to recognize that make-the-West-bear-the-burden Copenhagen proposals are meaningless.
Mr. Muller is professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of "Physics for Future Presidents" (Norton, 2008). References and a spreadsheet with the numbers for the chart are at www.mullerandassociates.com.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Dec 13, 2009 - 07:19pm PT
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interesting video (click on the second one); i'd be interested to hear your response, ed
http://theautopsy.wordpress.com/2009/12/11/more-fallout-from-climategate/
by the way, the associated press assigned 11 reporters to "fact-check" palin's book...and 5 to "fact check" the climategate scandal...i think that qualifies as an obsession: palin derangement syndrome
also, anyone notice those peaceful demonstrations over in copenhagen? almost as scary as those tea-partiers
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Dec 13, 2009 - 08:12pm PT
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Ed mentions the Nov 27 Science article on the Little Ice Age and Medieval Climate Anomaly.
The article includes this striking graph showing temperature reconstructions based on "more than a thousand tree-ring, ice core, coral, sediment, and other assorted proxy records spanning the ocean and land regions of both hemispheres over the past 1500 years." Following the naturally-caused Medieval Climate Anomaly (red box) and Little Ice Age (blue box), the recent anthropogenic warming stands out.
Fig. 1 Decadal surface temperature reconstructions. Surface temperature reconstructions have been averaged over (A) the entire Northern Hemisphere (NH), (B) North Atlantic AMO region [sea surface temperature (SST) averaged over the North Atlantic ocean as defined by (30)], (C) North Pacific PDO (Pacific Decadal Oscillation) region (SST averaged over the central North Pacific region 22.5°N–57.5°N, 152.5°E–132.5°W as defined by (31)], and (D) Niño3 region (2.5°S–2.5°N, 92.5°W–147.5°W). Shading indicates 95% confidence intervals, based on uncertainty estimates discussed in the text. The intervals best defining the MCA and LIA based on the NH hemispheric mean series are shown by red and blue boxes, respectively. For comparison, results are also shown for parallel ("screened") reconstructions that are based on a subset of the proxy data that pass screening for a local temperature signal [see (13) for details]. The Northern Hemisphere mean Errors in Variables (EIV) reconstruction (13) is also shown for comparison.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Dec 13, 2009 - 08:29pm PT
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And in the Nov 20 Science, yet another reminder that the ocean-atmosphere system has a reality independent of what the blogosphere thinks.
A summary of "Aragonite Undersaturation in the Arctic Ocean: Effects of Ocean Acidification and Sea Ice Melt:"
One consequence of the historically unprecedented level of CO2 in the atmosphere that fossil fuel burning has caused, in addition to a warmer climate, is higher concentrations of dissolved CO2 in the oceans. This dissolved CO2 makes the oceans more acidic, and thus less saturated with respect to calcium carbonate. This has important ramifications for organisms that have calcium carbonate skeletons, which depend for their survival on the saturation state of calcium carbonate in the waters where they live. Yamamoto-Kawai et al. (p. 1098) report that in 2008, surface waters of the Canada Basin became undersaturated with respect to aragonite, a relatively soluble form of calcium carbonate incorporated into the shells or skeletons of many types of marine plankton and invertebrate. This undersaturation occurred much sooner than had been anticipated and has important implications for the composition of the Arctic ecosystem.
Not just the Arctic ecosystem; the authors suggest broader impacts.
Because they are important elements of the food web, the Arctic ecosystem may be at risk and requires observation in order to predict future possible impacts on marine organisms, fisheries, and biogeochemical cycles on both regional and global scales.
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corniss chopper
Mountain climber
san jose, ca
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Dec 14, 2009 - 12:29am PT
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Climategate: Warmist's are the new 'deniers.
A couple of years ago, supporters of global warming theory began referring to skeptics as “deniers” — implying that anyone who doubted climate change should be lumped with Holocaust deniers.
Now the shoe is on the other foot, thanks to the eye-popping e-mail dump that hit the Internet recently and quickly became known as “Climategate.” The response of much of the global-warming “community” has been … denial.
http://www.kansascity.com/275/story/1626919.html?storylink=omni_popular
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Dec 14, 2009 - 12:45am PT
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Geez
Rest assured that corporate profits will be maximized until the friggin sea rises and swallows your grandkids. The stock options will be long exercised by then.
They have a propaganda machine poised to keep everything in doubt enough to prevent any action.
Devil is in the details of all these climate talks that trade imaginary pollution for imaginary savings, all making money and maximizing political advantage without regard to real change
We trade for credits to pollute by buying them from places that don't have the money to make the pollution they planned for.
Peace
Karl
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corniss chopper
Mountain climber
san jose, ca
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Dec 14, 2009 - 01:34am PT
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Karl
Just had a thought that this carbon credit trading could get bloody with
forced population reductions in exchange for CO2 cash. Money makes people do crazy things.
After Rwanda nothing seems too over the top.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Dec 14, 2009 - 01:59am PT
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Population reduction is an elephant in the room for everybody with money and resources and the desire to use them.
It's the kind of thing nobody talks about in public but god knows what those with statistics and power do when they run the numbers.
But carbon trading is just your boogeyman. Forget it and you still have billions of people burning up all the remaining oil and leaving the world economy in ruins if the pumps run short before we have real solutions in place and ramped up
peace
Karl
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corniss chopper
Mountain climber
san jose, ca
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Dec 15, 2009 - 12:30am PT
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Shocking that the WARMISTS are not relieved that the hoax
has been exposed and all is well with the planet.
Could be that they are in it for the cash and are F'ing grifters.
Warmists are the enemy of humanity!
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corniss chopper
Mountain climber
san jose, ca
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Dec 15, 2009 - 01:13am PT
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Just lies Ed.
Rejoice in the good news.
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WandaFuca
Social climber
From the gettin place
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Dec 15, 2009 - 01:24am PT
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Corniss Chopper your name is so appropriate.
Like Wile E. Coyote, shrewd yet foolishly heedless while sawing through the bridge which holds him up, you and the rest of humanity tromp along, blissfully and ignorantly melting the ice which supports us.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Dec 15, 2009 - 06:54am PT
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"Once scientists are engaged as advocates, science is in trouble. Like intelligence agencies fitting the facts to the policy, they are no longer to be trusted. The IPCC may be serving a righteous cause, but it is not the honest broker this process needs. It has made itself a political agency – at times, a propaganda unit. All this, the public can see.
For the sake of their own credibility, scientists should maintain a cautious distance from politics, and those who take up politics should not expect the deference to disinterested scholars they would otherwise deserve.
Governments should be honest and base their case for action on what they know – that is, on a balance of probabilities, not on exaggerated certainties. The public, they will find, can cope. Voters are not fools."
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/cc90fb80-e817-11de-8a02-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1
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ydpl8s
Trad climber
Santa Monica, California
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Dec 15, 2009 - 12:15pm PT
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I just wanted to point out that China and India are posturing and taking the stand that I thought they would. That is, "our economics are more important than your stinking warming. We're for it as long as you western "developed" nations pay for it. Please don't inhibit our advancement to economic superiority."
Without them fully on board, it ain't gonna happen. China's coal use alone represents more carbon emission than most of western Europe.
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