climate change--electrical or anthropogenic?

[fosforos]

Today Stephen Smith wrote: "Climate change, for example, rather than being an anthropic phenomenon, is doubtless an aspect of the electrical connection between Earth, the Sun, and the galaxy."

This "rather than" is putting it all wrong. Whatever is happening in regard to "the electrical connection between Earth, the Sun, and the galaxy"--about which we have no usable data whatsoever--there is no question that the more CO2 and methane in an atmosphere, the more opaque that atmosphere is to infra-red radiation, nor is there any question that the increase in infra-red-opaque gasses in our atmosphere is anthropogenic. Therefore, if a trend in the electrical connection, over which we have no control whatsoever, is indeed contributing to global warming that only makes all the more urgent our need to reverse the anthropogenic aspect of the global warming process.

[solrey]

Hi fosforos and welcome.

May I point out some of the latest science regarding CO2, methane and anthropogenic climate change.

Dozen Lesser-Known Chemicals Have Strong Impact on Climate Change

A new study indicates that major chemicals most often cited as leading causes of climate change, such as carbon dioxide and methane, are outclassed in their warming potential by compounds receiving less attention.

The compounds, which contain fluorine atoms, are far more efficient at blocking radiation in the "atmospheric window,"

This next quote is where the real problem lies in the whole AGW thing...it's pretty much all conjecture.

The researchers looked at more than a dozen chemicals, often referred to as "greenhouse gases," listed as warming agents by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the most prominent international scientific group monitoring global warming. The study employed both results from experimental observations and from computer modeling using supercomputers from Information Technology at Purdue (ITaP), Purdue's central information technology organization, and NASA. The goal was to determine which chemical and physical properties are most important in contributing to global warming.

"Believe it or not, nobody has ever delineated these properties," Lee said.

That's the problem with science in general these days. Too many wild conjectures spoken as undeniable fact and "consensus", which upon honest scrutiny prove to have no basis.

A reference list for 450 peer reviewed skeptical papers.


Think of the Earth as acting as a "load" in a circuit with the Sun. As the total input of energy increases and decreases, the load in the circuit responds accordingly, much like an electric heating element responds, with a bit of lag, akin to turning the knob on an electric stove.

A very important factor is that there are billions to be made on carbon trading and that needs to be considered when certain AGW fearmongers get on forklifts while touring the world on jets (producing a LOT of fossil fuel exhaust in the process, when they're not in their 20x average energy consumption mansion) to scare folks into thinking they need to pay for their CO2 output, fattening the bottom line for companies and markets in which these fearmongers are heavily invested. Like they say, follow the money.

Do we need to clean up our act? ABSOLUTELY. I'm doing a lot more than most to reduce my TOTAL environmental "footprint". I went so far as to design and build a pedal powered washing machine and I cool my house with a clever system using a solar powered attic fan, plus a whole lot more. Am I at all worried about carbon dioxide? Not a bit. In fact as a gardener, I'll take all of your personal CO2 output please. Filtered from all the other stuff that really is pollution. Don't buy offsets, filter it, bottle it and send it to me. I'll pay for shipping. The increased productivity of my garden and greenhouse will be worth it. Ultimately I'd be your personal carbon sink.

[mharratsc]

Interesting that you bring that up, Sol!

I was talking with my wife (who is concerned that Earth is using up it's supply of water), and I suggested that I think that the Sun actually creates water for the planet- I know you know what I'm talking about Sol- but for the benefit of anyone new on the boards or whatnot...

We know that the Sun sends a load of ionized hydrogen our way in the form of the solar 'wind'. Some of those ions make it through the plasmasphere of our planet, generally at the poles I believe. Hydrogen ions will latch onto a passing oxygen atom, and form a water molecule- H2O, right?

There is more than a mile of ice laying across the Antarctic continent, and from what I've heard, up until very recently the north polar ice sheet was regenerative- it would melt a little, then reform from new precipitation, on a yearly basis.
Recent'y, the amount of precipitation has fallen off, and the melting has increased. However, the rise in the waterlines has not gone up as quickly as anticipated.

This is where it ties in to what Solrey was saying regarding the CO2- we don't have as many plants on the globe as we used to! Without copious amounts of free oxygen atoms, the hydrogen ions that've been making it through the plasmasphere haven't been finding buddies to latch on to- or perhaps they've been bonding with other heavier atoms in oxygen's place? That I dunno.

So what I think is- lack of vegetation and essential phytoplankton layers in the oceans is due to the disregard of Man of his impact on our environment. Our planet developed photosynthetic life in abundance due to the copious light energy delivered to the Earth, as well as an abundance of ionized hydrogen. This had the byproduct of creating a 'wet' world, and concurrently lifeforms that almost all share an affinity for water.

Now we've gone and upset the apple cart. :\

Don't get me wrong- I think we're stupid for our continued pollution of the environment, and we're lucky that the Earth has been so good at cleaning up our mess as well as it has! However- just as Solrey pointed out- I don't think the reason we have so much CO2 building up is what is causing our warming issues, I think rather we have CO2 building up because we have decimated the plant life on the Earth that is our natural CO2 sink... and the source of our abundant water to boot!

Allow me to use my old copout of "Pleast note- I am not a scientist! What I say is not gospel!"


Mike H.

[Grey Cloud]

Hi folks,
Some interesting thinking there re the CO2, H and H2O.
I would like to chuck in the fact that increased levels of atmospheric CO2 results in increased plant growth, i.e. the individual plant gets bigger which in turn absorbs more CO2, thus lowering the atmospheric levels etc. More ground cover by the vegetation means less water evaporating into the air which means less water available for rain and snow.

(Also the thread title is something of a false dichotomy - it does not necessarily have to be either of them).

[jjohnson]

There are wheels within wheels, it seems. I have read (and can't quote the source) that water vapor is the most powerful agent in our atmosphere at retaining IR energy. (the short waves go through it, strike the surface, and are partly re-radiated at longer wavelengths (from the heated surface)which is less transparent to the outgoing radiation. Sort of a diode action for IR energy. The more ice melts, the more water to evaporate, by a small amount - that being the additional surface water area due to rising sea level encroachment and possibly greater lake area. The more water evaporates, the more opaque our atmosphere is to outgoing IR energy. Conversely, there is a tempering influence - condensation into cloud cover, which increases the albedo and reflects more of the incident sunlight away. The down side there is that it is mostly short (optical and UV) wavelength radiation that is reflected by clouds, and this radiation tends to contribute less to the warming process. Measurements made while aircraft were grounded after 9-11, when there were almost no contrails produced in the stratosphere, showed more net heat loss and ground cooling than when contrails made up part of our cloud cover. Think what a small fraction of the sky contrails constitute!

Mike's comment on less green plant and phytoplankton mass, due to all sorts of human influences, is well taken. Just because there is more carbon dioxide doesn't necessarily equate to more plants - a forest fire is a good example of that (to be hyperbolic about it) - as are extensively logged and burned clear cuts everywhere we look on the planet. In this regard, my guess is that we currently clear the ground of trees and their leaves and needles a lot faster than the bigger, healthier plants from higher CO2 levels are providing increased foliage surface area.

More carbon dioxide's other side effect (besides warming)is the increasing acidity in the oceans, primarily in the continental shelf shallows. This increased acidity adversely affects survival rates among the primitive lower life forms with shells. These guys are at the bottom of our ocean food chain, so their loss reverberates upward into all the higher animals in the food chain, of which we are a part. Both reduced green plant biomass and increased combustion processes contribute to increasing the CO2 fraction in our air and water. I wouldn't implicate solar variations in those two processes right there, particularly.

"It's a complex web we weave", said the spider, hanging helplessly in the sticky threads of her own fashioning.

[nick c]

A few comments or the issue as I see it!
-pollution of the environment is not a good thing
-however, man, at this time, is having a negligible effect on climate change, global warming, etc. These effects are not caused by the actions of humans
-CO2 levels have been increasing since the beginning of the industrial age at a steady rate, however, average global temperatures for the 20th C were declining until around 1980, when it started to increase. I can remember reading in the 1970's that we were going into another ice age. That brings into question any correlation between CO2 levels and temperature.
-CO2 is of minor importance as a greenhouse gas by comparison to H20
-There is some preliminary evidence that other planets in our ss are undegoing climate change as well as the Earth
-The runaway greenhouse effect has it's origin in the attempt, in the early 1970's, to explain the anomalous heat of Venus. (Venus cannot be heated by a greenhouse, the heat has to be internal, ie radiating from the planet.) But then this erroneous assertion became "fact" and latter was applied to the Earth, as part of AGW theory
-Much of the Earth's CO2 is dissolved in the oceans. Colder oceans hold more CO2 than warmer oceans, so as the oceans warm they release more CO2. So, increasing CO2 levels could be caused by changes in the output of the Sun.
-In the Electric Universe, all stars are variable stars
-CO2 contributes to plant growth. Past geologic periods had higher CO2 levels then today and were characterized by thriving biospheres
-again, pollution is a bad thing and humans do many stupid things...but don't blame human activity for changes in climate

Nick

[jjohnson]

Nick: roger that! Regardless of the fact that there is likely nothing, that a finite species on a small planet at the mercy of its primary's feeder current, can do, we should as a collective at least follow the maxim, don't foul your own nest. I think sometimes that our species isn't playing heads-up ball in this regard.

[The Great Dog]

The Great Dog is convinced that it is anthropoid hubris that insists they are so important in the grand scheme of things that they have to have an effect on this planet. Other than crapping in their own nests, anthropoids are puny, weak creatures that the Earth will one day erase.

It is true that water vapor is the most effective insulator. More cosmic rays, more clouds. More clouds, cooler Earth.

Solar Breeze

In this time of solar magnetic field decline, cosmic rays are increasing.

TGD

[Phorce]

Have you seen this ?

1. N. J Shaviv and J. Veizer, “Celestial driver of Phanerozoic climate?,” GSA today 13, no. 7 (2003): 4–10.

[MrAmsterdam]

Taxing a gas in the air will not bring a solution to anything whatsoever. That seems to be the premise of all these climate discussions. Taxing a gas to generate a massive budget to be used for unproven mass scale technology is too silly....and more worrying it will be prone for mass corruption as it is nowadays.

Want to have a cheap solution for co2 reduction in the atmosphere? Cheap mechanism used for millions of years here on earth. All you need is some ground, water and electromagnetic radiation.

I believe its called a TREE. A huge amount of trees are forrests. A massive amount of forrests have been destroyed in the last 150 years.

Homework assigment; calculate the amount TREE SEED you need to neutralise the 3 procent of too much co2 gas dispersed in the atmosphere on a yearly basis. (97 procent of co2 is being neutralised on yearly basis by natural processes according to the IPPC)

Tell the Nobel price winner he should plant cheap forrests instead of building expensive co2 industries.

[Phorce]

The United Nations IPCC also publishes a research review in the form of a voluminous, occasionally-updated report on the subject of climate change, which the United Nations asserts is “authored” by approximately 600 scientists. These “authors” are not, however – as is ordinarily the custom in science – permitted power of approval the published review of which they are putative authors. They are permitted to comment on the draft text, but the final text neither conforms to nor includes many of their comments. The final text conforms instead to the United Nations objective of building support for world taxation and rationing of industrially-useful energy.

http://petitionproject.org/review_article.php

http://petitionproject.org - GLOBAL WARMING PETITION - 31,487 American scientists have signed this petition including 9,029 with PhDs ...

The purpose of the Petition Project is to demonstrate that the claim of “settled science” and an overwhelming “consensus” in favor of the hypothesis of human-caused global warming and consequent climatological damage is wrong. No such consensus or settled science exists. As indicated by the petition text and signatory list, a very large number of American scientists reject this hypothesis.

[mharratsc]

You say that it's hubris to think that Mankind affects the Earth, but all you have to do is look at our oceans to see that this is patently not true. Ask any of the fleets of professional fishermen if they can still fish the same waters that their father's did, or whether they must go farther and farther to catch less and less.

Jim is right, and to put it quaintly- "you reap what you sow." We sow a small seed, but the end result is many times bigger I think.

Interestingly, the circle is pointing right back at what Mr. A stated- Mankind needs to start planting real seeds, and possibly needs to start producing assisted-growth phytoplanktons for the seas, to recharge our oxygen-makers, so to speak.

We simply need to be better stewards of the world we live on, no matter how you slice it. We pollute on so many levels, it seems like a statistical certainty that one of those levels is going to pull the rug out from under us before too long.

Mr. A is right also, that the whole CO2 circus is mindbogglingly stupid, but also we need to assist the Earth in keeping the atmospheric regulation system in good health... replant the forests!

[GaryN]

replant the forests!

With industrial hemp I'd say, an underutilised wonder plant.

The 50,000 uses of Hemp.
http://www.voteindustrialhemp.com/

[Jarvamundo]

Great points all round... although... I think a serious point has been missed! I know i speak for everyone when i say, you've *got* to post a vid of this contraption in full flight!

I went so far as to design and build a pedal powered washing machine

[MrAmsterdam]

There are so many practical and 'economically feasible' ideas out there; to name one idea out of the many;

Hemp sounds like a solution...

http://www.hemphousemaui.com/resources/history.php
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16th-17th Century
Dutch achieve Golden Age through hemp commerce. Explorers find 'wilde hempe' in North America.

1619
Virginia colony makes hemp cultivation mandatory, followed by most other colonies. Europe pays hemp bounties.

1631
Hemp used as money throughout American colonies.

1776
American 'Declaration of Independence' drafted on hemp paper.

1791
President Washington sets duties on hemp to encourage domestic industry; Jefferson calls hemp "a necessity", and urges farmers to grow hemp instead of tobacco.

1801
Certain premiums offered to encourage the cultivation of hemp in Upper and Lower Canada.

1800's
Australia survives two prolonged famines by eating virtually nothing but hemp seed for protein and hemp leaves for roughage.

1850's
Petrochemical age begins. Toxic sulfite and chlorine processes make paper from trees, steamships replace sails, tropical fibres introduced.

1930's
New machines invented to break hemp, process the fibre, and convert pulp or hurds into paper, plastics, etc. - Racist fears of Mexicans, Asians, and African Americans leads to outcry for cannabis to be outlawed.

1935
Compressed agricultural fibreboard invented in Sweden.

1937
Marijuana Tax Act forbids hemp farming in the US. -Dupont files patent for nylon.

1938
Canada prohibits production of hemp under Opium And Narcotics Control Act.

1941
Henry Ford makes car fabricated and fueled by hemp.

1943
Hemp For Victory program urges farmers to grow hemp.

1955
Hemp farming again banned.
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