Global Warming: Solutions

[Lukeje]

Also, the Romans had vineyards in England. Try growing grapes there now (without a greenhouse, mind you)...

I'm in 'I'm not scared yet, I'm not going to be scared'-camp.

I was under the impression that England was going to get colder as the North Atlantic Drift was going to move/stop...
And I'm pretty sure that if we just keep going on as we are, we'll find out for sure if Global Warming is real (its the only true scientific method; who cares if we wreck the planet? At least we'll know that we correctly modelled the behaviour of an incredibly complex system with a near limitless number of potential variables!).

 

[Danny Ocean]

Okay Okay, I admit the earth is getting warmer...wasn't it a total of like .01 degrees or something? I still don't see why warmer weather is bad.

Because the middle east, equator, and tropics are already hot as ovens. Because disruption of sea-based convection currents will make everything on the same latitude as Moscow, as cold as Moscow (Which is BAD for me!). Because slight changes in temperature can lead to enzymes denaturing in certain species of plant, which then die, which releases more CO2 back into the atmosphere.

And so on and so forth. I should probably read the rest of this thread.

Well I have the easiest solution, every building has it's roofs painted white. White repels heat, and will deflect a lot of the sun's harmful rays. Take that Al Gore!

*slightly concerning dance, with the words "Uh huh" and "Can you feel it" dotted about while performing*

Uh..no.
The white will indeed repel the heat... Right back into the atmosphere, which is where we don't want it. Black wouldn't work either, since it's an excellent radiator of heat.
I know! Two layers!

 

[Danny Ocean]

Well first of all, the main reason of global warming is the sun itself.
Secondly why are you so sure that we weren't just going through another ice age up until recently and the earth is going back to it's normal temperature?
I know I don't.

Okay, first, fix your Spelling and Grammar. I know it's only little mistakes but there's a lot of them.
Second, the sun is the route cause of everything. So that point is moot, what are you going to do about the sun, huh?
Finally, yes, I agree. A big chunk of the CO2 we are releasing was in the atmosphere in the first place. All we're doing now is just that: releasing it.

Yeah! Way to milk a double post!

 

[Rolling Thunder]

Conclusion: Pro-Global Warming has produced articles.
Anti-GW (Jayluz) has mocked them, and yet produced none of his own.

Axia has reserved the right to insult the queen...an SAS task force is now watching his house, very, very closely.

Goodman proposed standardised buildings. I object to this, because standardisation is for cowards. Plus, I like red-brick houses.

As far as I can see, Quayin has offered the only sensible solution.

 

[werepossum]

http://www.adn.com/news/environment/story/555283.html

http://www.eastoregonian.info/print.asp?SectionID=13&SubSectionID=48&ArticleID=83885&TM=29612.53

Since any change, hotter or colder, is incontrovertible proof of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, these two article prove the case. Obviously we are all doomed.

Funny how much CAGW resembles terrorism; all evidence is evidence that either CAGW is true, the terrorists have won, or both.

 

[guyy]

How can you really say that there is lots of evidence for something like global warming. How long have we been taking accurate measurements of global temperature?

When dealing with something with as much inertia as a planets ecology, which operates on massive time-scales, we do not have enough objective evidence to support either side of the argument.

Why do I keep doing this...

[a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5314592.stm" target="_blank"]About 800,000 years[/a]. (And this is from 2006.) Plenty of data if you ask me, considering this new effect is supposed to happen over only a few decades.

I assume lots of people have been going on about how the Sun causes global warming by itself and everything else has no effect, because someone ALWAYS says that in these debates. Stop it, OK? If we had no atmosphere, Earth's surface temperature would be about -18 degrees Celsius [a href="http://www.marathon.uwc.edu/geography/100/rad-temp.htm" target="_blank"](really)[/a]. Instead, it's more like 14 degrees due to the atmosphere. No reason why that can't fluctuate by a few degrees due to that same atmosphere, depending on its composition.

Another common fallacy: global warming means the temperature MUST increase EVERY year, and if it doesn't we should all start making fun of it because it's so silly. No. The Earth just isn't that simple; big surprise. But the C02 concentration is still increasing, so just because the actual warming pauses for a bit doesn't mean it's all just going to turn around. Energy is still building up in the system.

Conclusion: Pro-Global Warming has produced articles.
Anti-GW (Jayluz) has mocked them, and yet produced none of his own.

Exactly...but strangely the anti-GW people remain convinced they know better and that the other side is trying to trick them. We're not. Really. We just don't want to make the Earth uninhabitable for humans by blind ignorance.

 

[Melaisis]

*Also doesn't think that man-induced climate change doesn't exist*

 

[meece]

Point is almost moot because we're probably going to run out of fossil fuels first! ^^

............"probably"

............

 

[Rolling Thunder]

@Possum:Just like CNN...

 

[Jazzyluv]

How can you really say that there is lots of evidence for something like global warming. How long have we been taking accurate measurements of global temperature?

When dealing with something with as much inertia as a planets ecology, which operates on massive time-scales, we do not have enough objective evidence to support either side of the argument.

Why do I keep doing this...

[a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5314592.stm" target="_blank"]About 800,000 years[/a]. (And this is from 2006.) Plenty of data if you ask me, considering this new effect is supposed to happen over only a few decades.

I assume lots of people have been going on about how the Sun causes global warming by itself and everything else has no effect, because someone ALWAYS says that in these debates. Stop it, OK? If we had no atmosphere, Earth's surface temperature would be about -18 degrees Celsius [a href="http://www.marathon.uwc.edu/geography/100/rad-temp.htm" target="_blank"](really)[/a]. Instead, it's more like 14 degrees due to the atmosphere. No reason why that can't fluctuate by a few degrees due to that same atmosphere, depending on its composition.

Another common fallacy: global warming means the temperature MUST increase EVERY year, and if it doesn't we should all start making fun of it because it's so silly. No. The Earth just isn't that simple; big surprise. But the C02 concentration is still increasing, so just because the actual warming pauses for a bit doesn't mean it's all just going to turn around. Energy is still building up in the system.

Conclusion: Pro-Global Warming has produced articles.
Anti-GW (Jayluz) has mocked them, and yet produced none of his own.

Exactly...but strangely the anti-GW people remain convinced they know better and that the other side is trying to trick them. We're not. Really. We just don't want to make the Earth uninhabitable for humans by blind ignorance.

Did you see me rape your articles last time, obviously not. One of your articles SUPPORTED ME.

 

[raemiel]

Why do I keep doing this...

[a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5314592.stm" target="_blank"]About 800,000 years[/a]. (And this is from 2006.) Plenty of data if you ask me, considering this new effect is supposed to happen over only a few decades.

In fact data reaching back that far (and much much further) using ice cores and other geophysical techniques is what supports the global warming as a natural process side of the argument. The Earth experiences massive time-scale cycles of temperature variation. Recently (as in over the last few million years) the Earth has experienced an ice-age (remember all those woolly mammoths) and has since moved into a more temperate temperature range. The natural progression (which has gone through numerous cycles over billions of years) now is movement to a hotter global temperature. This increase in temperature is not going to be at the rate all the newspaper 'scientists' yell at you, it is a process which takes millions of years.

Also, claiming that 800 000 years is plenty of data is just plain incorrect. The Earth is over 4 billion years old and the cycle of global warming and cooling takes tens of millions of years at least. 800 000 years is barely anything on geological timescales and is not as conclusive as you state.

 

[werepossum]

How can you really say that there is lots of evidence for something like global warming. How long have we been taking accurate measurements of global temperature?

When dealing with something with as much inertia as a planets ecology, which operates on massive time-scales, we do not have enough objective evidence to support either side of the argument.

Why do I keep doing this...

[a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5314592.stm" target="_blank"]About 800,000 years[/a]. (And this is from 2006.) Plenty of data if you ask me, considering this new effect is supposed to happen over only a few decades.

I assume lots of people have been going on about how the Sun causes global warming by itself and everything else has no effect, because someone ALWAYS says that in these debates. Stop it, OK? If we had no atmosphere, Earth's surface temperature would be about -18 degrees Celsius [a href="http://www.marathon.uwc.edu/geography/100/rad-temp.htm" target="_blank"](really)[/a]. Instead, it's more like 14 degrees due to the atmosphere. No reason why that can't fluctuate by a few degrees due to that same atmosphere, depending on its composition.

SNIP

Sorry, you fail. The question was How long have we been taking accurate measurements of global temperature? The correct answer would be since a bit past the end of the Little Ice Age, almost a century and a half.

Your answer was how far back we estimate climatic conditions. Since efforts to correlate ice core dating with known dates have been poor at best, I'd rather not put all my eggs into that basket. Reduce CO2 emissions? Certainly; lots of nasty things happen from too much CO2. Move away from fossil fuels? Natch; all fuels have to be superseded by something else, and it's clearly time to move on. End of the world? Chance not.

 

[raemiel]

Since efforts to correlate ice core dating with known dates have been poor at best, I'd rather not put all my eggs into that basket.

That's simply not true, the methods utilised in correlating ice-core dating with dates are very refined. Ice-core dating is the science in this area which gets the most attention but it is not the only technique, nor is it the most far back reaching. Dating of cores of marine and lacustrine sediments provides a much older timescale and is utilised in conjunction with sciences like ice-core logging and stratigraphic fossil assemblages to provide a fairly comprehensive history of temperature and climate variation.

It's not like they use the core retrieved on it's own and preserved air-bubbles in ice is not the only way to determine climatic changes. The whole discipline of palaeoclimate analysis utilises a huge amount of sciences, many of which one would not even have thought could be applied in such a manner. Claiming that the results are 'poor at best' is just a slap in the face to thousands of scientists and illustrates an unenlightened perspective on the subject at hand.

 

[crazy-j]

for humanity to go extinct

 

[Zeke109]

Speaking of which, what will we do when the core stops spinning and we need a magnetic field?

 

[raemiel]

Speaking of which, what will we do when the core stops spinning and we need a magnetic field?

We'll learn from The Core!!!

That movie is great, one of my lecturers let us watch it in class just so we could pause it every 30 seconds and refute it's stupid science. But any movie where geoscientists are the heroes are great! Except that he showered and shaved far too much to be taken seriously in his field (perfect example of the inaccuracies in the film).

 

[werepossum]

Since efforts to correlate ice core dating with known dates have been poor at best, I'd rather not put all my eggs into that basket.

That's simply not true, the methods utilised in correlating ice-core dating with dates are very refined. Ice-core dating is the science in this area which gets the most attention but it is not the only technique, nor is it the most far back reaching. Dating of cores of marine and lacustrine sediments provides a much older timescale and is utilised in conjunction with sciences like ice-core logging and stratigraphic fossil assemblages to provide a fairly comprehensive history of temperature and climate variation.

It's not like they use the core retrieved on it's own and preserved air-bubbles in ice is not the only way to determine climatic changes. The whole discipline of palaeoclimate analysis utilises a huge amount of sciences, many of which one would not even have thought could be applied in such a manner. Claiming that the results are 'poor at best' is just a slap in the face to thousands of scientists and illustrates an unenlightened perspective on the subject at hand.

So name for us some projects where the depth of ice for a particular dateable phenomenon was predicted and correctly found? Let's say a particular volcano erupted in 1312 and was well documented - where are the projects that accurately predicted the depth of burial for that layer of sediment? Saying that one unverifiable study is well-correlated with another unverifiable study is all well and good, but if we're to believe the end is nigh and turn over control to the nigh-sayers, I'd like some repeatable evidence that the system of unverifiable studies can be reasonably proved accurate.

As an example, consider the rate of deceleration in the universe's expansion. For decades it was taken as a given that the universe was expanding AND that the rate of expansion was decreasing. Many studies and observations attempted to measure the rate of deceleration with various degrees of success, but no published studies found acceleration. Then we get some instruments in space, take some better measurements, and presto! The universe's expansion is actually accelerating. Now every study and observation measuring the rate of acceleration in the universe's rate of expansion finds acceleration. The moral is that universal agreement in science does not always indicate the right answer. Science blindly followed is not science; it's religion.

 

[goodman528]

Another solutions: Louder and slower aeroplanes
Very simple, when you design you want it to be safe, quiet, efficient, and fast. Currently, you'd find some comprimise between the four, if you just optimised for safety and efficiency, you'd make a big saving.

And another: LED lighting.
Replace all the electric lights in the world with LEDs, they are much more efficient.

And another: Natural ventilation.
Just think how much CO2 we produce from heating our houses or air conditioning. We can design better buildings and ventilate them naturally. And why should we expect our rooms to be 20C all year round? It's ironic (and extremely sad) that those of us who don't need all that heating in winter, and can just put on a sweater don't actually do it. But every year old age poverty means the old people who really do need the extra heating, don't actually use it, and as a result die from the cold.

And another: Plant an apple tree in your garden.
I have one outside of my window, last month the entire house got free apples everyday.

And another: Driver free cars.
Safer and more efficient. Obvious, isn't it.

And another: Centralised computing.
With increasing internet speeds we can go back to the workstation age. All you have is a screen and keyboard and mouse (and router), all computers are stored in big rooms with big water cooling solutions.

And a bit of a dodgey one: filesharing (music).
You don't need to manufacture disks any more.

Conclusion: Pro-Global Warming has produced articles.
Anti-GW (Jayluz) has mocked them, and yet produced none of his own.

Axia has reserved the right to insult the queen...an SAS task force is now watching his house, very, very closely.

Goodman proposed standardised buildings. I object to this, because standardisation is for cowards. Plus, I like red-brick houses.

As far as I can see, Quayin has offered the only sensible solution.

Articles are a bit irrelevant, when global warming is such an obvious logical conclusion. If you had a box, and you put in more heat then you take out of it, then it heats up. What are we putting into our box? 1 trillion barrels of oil last centry, and 1 trillion more this centry, and even more coal, and some gas also. CO2 heats up under the sun (or more correctly CO2 heats up more compared to N2 and O2). What are we taking out of the box? Only the black body radiation from earth, the same as 5000 years ago.

Do you really need to find and read all these scientific articles to understand such a simple fact? The only question scientific models are asking now is by how much is global warming happening? If it's going to heat up by 1 or 2 C, then we should do all we can to stop it. If it's heating up by a lot, then we should build a spaceship for Mars (and I'm serious when I say this).

Respect for reading the replies and doing this summary.

 

[werepossum]

Another solutions: Louder and slower aeroplanes
Very simple, when you design you want it to be safe, quiet, efficient, and fast. Currently, you'd find some comprimise between the four, if you just optimised for safety and efficiency, you'd make a big saving.

And another: LED lighting.
Replace all the electric lights in the world with LEDs, they are much more efficient.

And another: Natural ventilation.
Just think how much CO2 we produce from heating our houses or air conditioning. We can design better buildings and ventilate them naturally. And why should we expect our rooms to be 20C all year round? It's ironic (and extremely sad) that those of us who don't need all that heating in winter, and can just put on a sweater don't actually do it. But every year old age poverty means the old people who really do need the extra heating, don't actually use it, and as a result die from the cold.

And another: Plant an apple tree in your garden.
I have one outside of my window, last month the entire house got free apples everyday.

And another: Driver free cars.
Safer and more efficient. Obvious, isn't it.

And another: Centralised computing.
With increasing internet speeds we can go back to the workstation age. All you have is a screen and keyboard and mouse (and router), all computers are stored in big rooms with big water cooling solutions.

And a bit of a dodgey one: filesharing (music).
You don't need to manufacture disks any more.

Conclusion: Pro-Global Warming has produced articles.
Anti-GW (Jayluz) has mocked them, and yet produced none of his own.

Axia has reserved the right to insult the queen...an SAS task force is now watching his house, very, very closely.

Goodman proposed standardised buildings. I object to this, because standardisation is for cowards. Plus, I like red-brick houses.

As far as I can see, Quayin has offered the only sensible solution.

Articles are a bit irrelevant, when global warming is such an obvious logical conclusion. If you had a box, and you put in more heat then you take out of it, then it heats up. What are we putting into our box? 1 trillion barrels of oil last centry, and 1 trillion more this centry, and even more coal, and some gas also. CO2 heats up under the sun (or more correctly CO2 heats up more compared to N2 and O2). What are we taking out of the box? Only the black body radiation from earth, the same as 5000 years ago.

Do you really need to find and read all these scientific articles to understand such a simple fact? The only question scientific models are asking now is by how much is global warming happening? If it's going to heat up by 1 or 2 C, then we should do all we can to stop it. If it's heating up by a lot, then we should build a spaceship for Mars (and I'm serious when I say this).

Respect for reading the replies and doing this summary.

Good ideas, except for a couple of things. First, LEDs are still less efficient than fluorescent tube lighting, high wattage metal halide, and almost all high and low pressure sodium lighting, although they are getting scary good in efficiency. We are just starting to use them in commercial designs (other than low wattage things like exit signs) within the last year.

Second, CO2 warming doesn't work quite like that. What happens is that the sun's energy comes through the atmosphere mostly in visible frequencies and strikes the Earth, warming it. The warmed Earth then gives off energy by radiating in much longer wave lengths like heat. CO2 absorbs little energy within the visible spectra, but absorbs a lot of heat within a narrow long wave spectrum. Thus CO2 and other greenhouse gases allow the energy to pass in, but trap it on the way back out. This is good because without that trapped energy we would be quite cold and lifeless, but is potentially bad because too much trapped heat makes things unpleasant.

The debate on CO2 warming is at what point do we reach saturation - in other words, at what point has all the radiation (within that band that CO2 absorbs) actually been absorbed, so that further CO2 has no effect because there is no more of that radiation to be absorbed by the additional CO2? And when that point is reached, will that amount of heat continue to heat the Earth, or will it be offset by other natural feedback phenomena?

There are of course other nasty affects of excess CO2, such as acid rain, increased erosion of stone and soft metals, and ocean acidification. These things to me are more worrisome than the heating effect of CO2; I think we reached saturation for the heating some time ago.

 

[raemiel]

First of all I must apologise as this will be a lengthy forum post, but read through it as I must answer werepossum's challenge to provide examples of when geophysical methods have been utilised to accurately date environmental phenomena.

Since efforts to correlate ice core dating with known dates have been poor at best, I'd rather not put all my eggs into that basket.

That's simply not true, the methods utilised in correlating ice-core dating with dates are very refined. Ice-core dating is the science in this area which gets the most attention but it is not the only technique, nor is it the most far back reaching. Dating of cores of marine and lacustrine sediments provides a much older timescale and is utilised in conjunction with sciences like ice-core logging and stratigraphic fossil assemblages to provide a fairly comprehensive history of temperature and climate variation.

It's not like they use the core retrieved on it's own and preserved air-bubbles in ice is not the only way to determine climatic changes. The whole discipline of palaeoclimate analysis utilises a huge amount of sciences, many of which one would not even have thought could be applied in such a manner. Claiming that the results are 'poor at best' is just a slap in the face to thousands of scientists and illustrates an unenlightened perspective on the subject at hand.

So name for us some projects where the depth of ice for a particular dateable phenomenon was predicted and correctly found? Let's say a particular volcano erupted in 1312 and was well documented - where are the projects that accurately predicted the depth of burial for that layer of sediment? Saying that one unverifiable study is well-correlated with another unverifiable study is all well and good, but if we're to believe the end is nigh and turn over control to the nigh-sayers, I'd like some repeatable evidence that the system of unverifiable studies can be reasonably proved accurate.

As an example, consider the rate of deceleration in the universe's expansion. For decades it was taken as a given that the universe was expanding AND that the rate of expansion was decreasing. Many studies and observations attempted to measure the rate of deceleration with various degrees of success, but no published studies found acceleration. Then we get some instruments in space, take some better measurements, and presto! The universe's expansion is actually accelerating. Now every study and observation measuring the rate of acceleration in the universe's rate of expansion finds acceleration. The moral is that universal agreement in science does not always indicate the right answer. Science blindly followed is not science; it's religion.

The Hatepe eruption of the caldera forming Lake Taupo in New Zealand is a perfect example of this. Information on it can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatepe_eruption (I know it is wikipedia but this entry is well referenced). Have a read of the Stages of eruption and Dating the Event sections.

Six distinct sedimentary units are identified in the stratigrapy surrounding this eruption which occured before human habitation of the area. Tsunami deposits have been identified as being associated with the eruption as well. Sedimentary analysis also indicates the eruption expanded the surrounding lake and caused a week long flood.

Initally the event was dated at 130 CE based on carbon dating techniques. This was seen to be a little inaccurate and so geophysical techniques were utilised to identify tephra laminations in the sedimentary record which were sourced from the eruption. The extent of tephra deposits indicates a massive eruptive column and cloud which would have been visible from China and Rome. Records from China and Rome correlate to what would be observed at the time of the eruption and so the eruption can be dated exactly to 186CE.

A different, and much more interesting, eruption of Taupo was the Oruanui eruption. This is the world's largest known volcanic eruption for the last 70 000 years and occured around 24 500BC. Information for it can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oruanui_eruption

The very shape of Lake Taupo is derived from this eruption as it was so massive. Tephra from the eruption can be up to 200 meters thick in the sedimentary record, and 1 000km away an 18cm ash layer (18cm is still a pretty thick layer in this circumstance) has been identified to be from this eruption.

This eruption occured far before human records and thus dating it relies on geophysical techniques. Techniques utilised would have included been stratigraphic correlation from around the world of sedimentary layers and the fossil record (macro and microscopic), atmospheric and particulate composition determination from ice-cores and geophysical analysis of the areas geomorphology just to name a few.
Note: dating this does not involve radioisotope dating, it is all geophysical.



Right, sorry for that lengthy post. This is not blind following of science and these eruptions are verified and accepted by the scientific community.