Jerry says:
For the last 450,000 years CO2 ranged from 180 to 300 PPM

Now we are at 380 PPM, close to twice as much higher as the range over this time period

Who knows what the effect of this will be. Maybe Rog is right that nothing will happen, but there is a huge correlation with temperature and over that time period.

There are a couple of extra details we should tell folks about though Jerry.

1) Diffusion means the peak value is low, maybe by 30 or 40ppm. This means that todays values aren't really drastically higher then previous interglacials.
2) The rise and fall of co2 in your graphs lags behind rises and falls in temperature by 800-2800 years. After consulting the law of cause and effect briefly, most folks will come to the conclusion that temperature changes cause co2 changes, not the other way round.

"Just start off everybody with $10 million and then tell them they are own their own."

Here is an interesting story from USA Today. Not sure if it is accurate.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2011-06-06-us-owes-62-trillion-in-debt_n.htm

Basically the USA Today analysis shows the US Government has unfunded obligations of $62 Trillion or $534,000 per household. They also said that uncovential accounting practices hide it from the public (hmm... sounds familiar). Anyway, food for thought.

"I have no problem with zoning if 100% of the landowners agree to them."

100%? How do you run a democracy if getting anything approved requires 100% of the votes? Sounds more like tyranny of the minority to me.

"What often happens here in my state is that after you purchase land, our fine politicians re-zone it to the detriment of the owners, and often to the benefit of some special interest group."

Vote the scoundrels out and have your newly elected representatives re-rezone to your liking.

"But we used may different choppers and fixed wing aircraft. Some were all black with no identification."

Gee Nick, are we to infer that you were one of those guys flying around in black helicopters, defending the Western World from the commie hordes? I'm gonna have to tone down my posts to you.

"Basically the USA Today analysis shows the US Government has unfunded obligations of $62 Trillion"

Nick, Nick, Nick,...

I can't believe you're propogating such right wing "best government money can buy" propoganda

From a simple google search, this was created by the Peter G Peterson foundation

This is a right wing propoganda group

Peter G Peterson is the creator of the Blackstone Group - corporate welfare on steroids

The $62 billion is based on a 75 year economic model

We can't predict the economy 1 year ahead

It makes a bunch of assumptions about the economy, medical expenses,...

You can create any number you wish by making the appropriate assumptions

Sort of like global climate modeling - bringing it back to this thread's topic

I can't believe USA Today and other news sources are repeating this

Hi Rog

> of the 18 El Nino events shown on the graph, 17 of them *start* (i.e. SOI rises above
> zero) when solar activity has peaked and is falling.

OK. It was not obvious, but I can see what you are pointing at now.
For the life of me, I can't see why the planet should not be affected by the solar cycle. There is plenty of published research pointing out the effects in the mainstream literature. Is the influence of the solar cycle currently under-estimated? Dunno, but only rarely have we been exactly right at the start!

> and I think Roger Caffin could help me if he's willing.
An interesting idea, but there are some some complications. I will contact you privately to discuss.

Cheers

From today's Yahoo news.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110614/ap_on_sc/us_sci_quiet_sun

"1) Diffusion means the peak value is low, maybe by 30 or 40ppm. This means that todays values aren't really drastically higher then previous interglacials."

You're saying that in the 450,000 year record there were peaks of 380 PPM that don't show up in the ice core data?

I think you're dreaming! I guess we'll see in 20 or 30 years.

Using your 30 to 40 that would make the previous peaks 320 or 330 PPM and we're at 380 PPM now - not as bad but still a concern.

If you do the calculations of how much CO2 has been created by buring coal, oil, etc. it is consistent with the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere.

"2) The rise and fall of co2 in your graphs lags behind rises and falls in temperature by 800-2800 years. After consulting the law of cause and effect briefly, most folks will come to the conclusion that temperature changes cause co2 changes, not the other way round."

I agree.

Al Gore missed this in his "Inconvenient Truth".

One thing is, if the ocean warms, it will absorb less CO2, volcanoes continuously emit about the same amount of CO2, less is absorbed in the ocean, there's more CO2 in the atmosphere. This would explain why CO2 drops when temperature drops and vice versa.

But, CO2 does cause a greenhouse effect - more CO2 will have a warming effect - but things are very complicated and this may be cancelled out by something else. If it warms up some, then the ocean will warm, which will cause CO2 to raise - positive feedback loop. This will make things worse. Maybe up to now things are less worse, like the ocean is absorbing some of the CO2 so we don't see so much in the atmosphere. Or part of the air pollution is Nitrogen oxides which have a cooling effect, but these are quickly scrubbed from the atmosphere, so if we decided that CO2 was a problem and quit burning coal, Nitrogen Oxides would quickly drop, the CO2 would remain, global warming would increase.

I don't think we begin to understand global climate changes over time so ignoring the increase in CO2 is irresponsible.

You have a lot of interesting theories about climate, but they only make my point that we don't understand things and we better be careful about just ignoring rising CO2 levels.

Good info and links. That's why we need to consider all the possibilities. The locked in concensus throughout history tends to miss. Don't see why we are not witnessing a repeat before our eyes.

My gut says there will be more surprises.

OK Jerry, skip that 62 Trillion number, Bill Gross (manager of the largest bond fund in the world) has it closer to 100 Trillion.

Rog says:
"2) The rise and fall of co2 in your graphs lags behind rises and falls in temperature by 800-2800 years. After consulting the law of cause and effect briefly, most folks will come to the conclusion that temperature changes cause co2 changes, not the other way round."

Jerry replies:
"I agree."


Thank you. So if temperature changes cause the co2 changes, we can stop worrying about reducing co2, and start trying to work out what causes the temperature changes.

My money is on geomagnetism and solar radiation.

"Thank you. So if temperature changes cause the co2 changes, we can stop worrying about reducing co2, and start trying to work out what causes the temperature changes."

I agree, we need to understand climate better. Your info is good stuff. When we have another "Little Ice Age" it would be nice to know about it ahead of time so we could alter climate to reduce it or at least plan for it and move agriculture to where the weather will support it.

But, I think we should worry about CO2.

You say CO2 has no effect on climate. A lot of evidence says CO2 does effect climate.

If you just look at the delay from temperature rise to CO2 rise and thus conclude CO2 has no effect, then you're just as naive as the "warmistas".

If CO2 causes the temperature to rise, this will cause the CO2 to increase even more. Positive feedback. This will amplify the problem.

How long does it take for the temperature and CO2 to increase from a minimum? Maybe 10,000 years? What's the delay from temperature increase to CO2 increase? Maybe 1,000 years? That's consistent with a positive feedback loop.

Jerry says:
When we have another "Little Ice Age" it would be nice to know about it ahead of time so we could alter climate to reduce it or at least plan for it and move agriculture to where the weather will support it.

As of yesterday, the governments of the world should consider themselves to be on notice. If they react to this with any less vigour than their co2 taxraising opportunity then we will know what their true motive is. So far, the BBC is in solar denial, not a peep about this globally important news:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/14/all-three-of-these-lines-of-research-to-point-to-the-familiar-sunspot-cycle-shutting-down-for-a-while/

Sudden cooling is a lot scarier than warming, believe me. Crop yields improved all the way through the global warming...


How long does it take for the temperature and CO2 to increase from a minimum? Maybe 10,000 years? What's the delay from temperature increase to CO2 increase? Maybe 1,000 years? That's consistent with a positive feedback loop.

It's also consistent with a non-feedback linear relationship with a lag due to the length of the oceanic carbonate cycle. The fact that we still have water in the oceans should tell you that any positive feedback is self limiting at some upper boundary, given that the co2 level was twenty times higher 550 million years ago.

Edited by tallbloke on 06/15/2011 16:16:33 MDT.

New posts about the solar cycle at the NYT with very interesting comments as well.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/would-solar-lull-snuff-climate-action/?hp

"New posts about the solar cycle at the NYT with very interesting comments as well."

I like this response the author got from a scientist:

"The other would be to ramp up climate and space observations (instead of shredding budgets for relevant agencies), to boost the human capacity for resilience to climate extremes of all sorts, whatever the cause (a mantra on this blog), and to keep up a sustained energy quest to build a menu that works for the long haul — an imperative that is utterly sensible regardless of short-term ups and downs in temperature."

Gotta protect that cash cow!

Answer: Big organizations going green to save money - Walmart converting stores to solar

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-walmart-green-20110604,0,5889008.story?track=rss

...or the US Navy launching the first of many new hybrid warships like the USS Makin Island /

http://www.energynow.com/video/2011/01/30/inside-hybrid-ship

This is for bottom line, not really for PR or to get ecogroovy, tho Walmart and the Navy have cash, economies of scale that we can't emulate. Less fuel being oxidized means less CO2 and other emissions.

<...All I want to hear is a clear cut plan of action...thats all>

Edited by hknewman on 06/22/2011 19:38:46 MDT.

I agree with the scientist, with some caveats, and a shift in emphasis from the bulk of the funding going to agenda tainted theory driven efforts to quality empirical observations.

What we need are good quality observations of the important metrics:

Ocean heat content, salinity and sea surface temperature
All wavelengths of solar radiation, and not just in the direction of Earth, but also from a satellite in a Jupiter synchronized orbit.
Ozone levels
Co2 levels
phytoplankton levels
Atmospheric opacity
Cosmic ray incidence
and so on.

What we also need desperately is an international standards agency of unimpeachable rectitude to sift, collate, standardize and make available all data. Given the outcome of climategate, no-one is going to take climate science seriously any more until recognized and agreed standards and better oversight and cross checking are in place.

the IPCC made yet another inflated claim that:

…80 percent of the world‘s energy supply could be met by renewables by mid-century…

Unfortunately, it has been revealed that this claim is similar to the Himalayan glacier melt by 2035 fiasco, with nothing independent to back it up. Worse, it isn’t the opinion of the IPCC per se, but rather that of Greenpeace. It gets worse.

Steve McIntyre discovered the issue and writes this conclusion:

It is totally unacceptable that IPCC should have had a Greenpeace employee as a Lead Author of the critical Chapter 10, that the Greenpeace employee, as an IPCC Lead Author, should (like Michael Mann and Keith Briffa in comparable situations) have been responsible for assessing his own work and that, with such inadequate and non-independent ‘due diligence’, IPCC should have featured the Greenpeace scenario in its press release on renewables.

Mark Lynas , author of a popular pro-AGW book, Six Degrees, has written some strong words also:
New IPCC error: renewables report conclusion was dictated by Greenpeace

Here’s what happened. The 80% by 2050 figure was based on a scenario, so Chapter 10 of the full report reveals, called ER-2010, which does indeed project renewables supplying 77% of the globe’s primary energy by 2050. The lead author of the ER-2010 scenario, however, is a Sven Teske, who should have been identified (but is not) as a climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace International. Even worse, Teske is a lead author of the IPCC report also – in effect meaning that this campaigner for Greenpeace was not only embedded in the IPCC itself, but was in effect allowed to review and promote his own campaigning work under the cover of the authoritative and trustworthy IPCC. A more scandalous conflict of interest can scarcely be imagined.

…

The IPCC must urgently review its policies for hiring lead authors – and I would have thought that not only should biased ‘grey literature’ be rejected, but campaigners from NGOs should not be allowed to join the lead author group and thereby review their own work. There is even a commercial conflict of interest here given that the renewables industry stands to be the main beneficiary of any change in government policies based on the IPCC report’s conclusions. Had it been an oil industry intervention which led the IPCC to a particular conclusion, Greenpeace et al would have course have been screaming blue murder.
---------------------------

My comment:

The only way renewables will be making 80% of supply in 2050 is if draconian energy rationing is going to be be enforced on a freezing population.

Windmills don't work very well in winter.

"Windmills don't work very well in winter."

I've noticed that it's windier in the winter.

It's difficult to project out 40 years.

There are a few people that want draconian energy rationing and a freezing population

Germany has an aggressive program to do solar panels. They currently supply 2% of their electricity. Some projections say 20% by 2050. The manufacture and installation has a positive economic effect, not a draconian effect. Then, there's a delayed effect - it costs more initially but then the power is almost free. That's the sort of thing we should be doing here. It's much sunnier here. At least we should be meeting any growth in power requirements with renewable energy.

Greenpeace is a great organization. A little radical, but maybe that's what you have to do sometime to get people's attention.

Jerry says:
I've noticed that it's windier in the winter.

Not where I live. But your locale may be different. The big problem is ice accretion on the blades, which then gets flung several hundreds of metres and kills the people and creatures it hits. Of course, you can heat the blades...

Some projections say 20% by 2050.

The Germans are rapidly going off solar, because the govt can't afford the subsidy to make it viable any more. Same story in the rest of Europe too.

At least we should be meeting any growth in power requirements with renewable energy.

Might be feasible if carbon dioxide taxation stunts the economy enough.

Greenpeace is a great organization. A little radical, but maybe that's what you have to do sometime to get people's attention.

Maybe so, but they don't have a place in an organisation which claims to be basing its recommendations on peer reviewed science. Especially not as self certifying lead authors.

HK Newman says:
Look no further than some of the US's large organizations as they increasingly go green to save money - Walmart converting stores to solar

How much is it costing the taxpayer to subsidize?

Edited by tallbloke on 06/16/2011 15:18:35 MDT.