Climate change: the longer we wait to act, the more severe the costs.

[Direckshun]

It's really time for the excuses to end. There are a hundred arguments you could make against climate change:

Originally Posted by Direckshun

There's no way human activity can alter the climate.

And even if it can, there's no way it can alter it by that much.

And even if it could, there's nothing alarming about it.

And even if there was, there's nothing we can do about it.

And even if there is, it wouldn't do much.

And even if it did, it would cause too much economic collateral damage / be ineffectually implemented / inexcusably rob us of freedom to pursue.

Therefore, I am opposed to climate change legislation.

The science has shot down every one of these arguments, save the last one which is a political argument.

To that political argument, ask yourself one question:

Do you think, in our current trajectory of global greenhouse gasses, that whether it be 10 years, 20 years, or 50 years, is unsustainable and damaging to our ability to exist on this planet as we currently do?

If you do, than you really have no choice. We must act now to stave off having to suffer drastic solutions later.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/...9010HU20130103

Cost of combating climate change surges as world delays: study
By Environment Correspondent Alister Doyle
OSLO | Thu Jan 3, 2013 7:15am EST

An agreement by almost 200 nations to curb rising greenhouse gas emissions from 2020 will be far more costly than taking action now to tackle climate change, according to research published on Wednesday.

Quick measures to cut emissions would give a far better chance of keeping global warming within an agreed U.N. limit of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6F) above pre-industrial times to avert more floods, heatwaves, droughts and rising sea levels.

"If you delay action by 10, 20 years you significantly reduce the chances of meeting the 2 degree target," said Keywan Riahi, one of the authors of the report at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria.

"It was generally known that costs increase when you delay action. It was not clear how quickly they change," he told Reuters of the findings in the science journal Nature based on 500 computer-generated scenarios.

It said the timing of cuts in greenhouse gases was more important than other uncertainties - about things like how the climate system works, future energy demand, carbon prices or new energy technologies.

The study indicated that an immediate global price of $30 a metric ton on emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas, would give a roughly 60 percent chance of limiting warming to below 2C.

Wait until 2020 and the carbon price would have to be around $100 a metric ton to retain that 60 percent chance, Riahi told Reuters of the study made with other experts in Switzerland, New Zealand, Australia and Germany.

And a delay of action until 2030 might put the 2C limit - which some of the more pessimistic scientists say is already unattainable - completely out of reach, whatever the carbon price.

"The window for effective action on climate change is closing quickly," wrote Steve Hatfield-Dodds of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia in a separate commentary in Nature.

Governments agreed to the 2C limit in 2010, viewing it as a threshold to avert dangerous climate change. Temperatures have already risen by 0.8 degree C (1.4F) since wide use of fossil fuels began 200 years ago.

ECONOMIC SLOWDOWN

After the failure of a 2009 summit in Copenhagen to agree a worldwide accord, almost 200 nations have given themselves until 2015 to work out a global deal to cut greenhouse gas emissions that will enter into force in 2020.

Amid an economic slowdown, many countries at the last U.N. meeting on climate change in Qatar in December expressed reluctance to make quick shifts away from fossil fuels towards cleaner energies such as wind or solar power.

Each U.S. citizen, for instance, emits about 20 metric tons of carbon dioxide a year. There is no global price on carbon, only regional markets - in a European Union trading system, for instance, where industrial emitters must pay off they exceed their CO2 quotas, 2013 prices are about 6.7 euros ($8.83) a metric ton.

The report also showed that greener policies, such as more efficient public transport or better-insulated buildings, would raise the chances of meeting the 2C goal.

And fighting climate change would be easier with certain new technologies, such as capturing and burying carbon emissions from power plants and factories. In some scenarios, the 2C goal could not be met unless carbon capture was adopted.

($1 = 0.7585 euros)

(Scientist corrects carbon price to $30 a tonne from $20 in paragraph 6)

[cdcox]

Originally Posted by Baby Lee

But no one really explains credibly how the carbon emission is stopping sun rays from returning to space, but doesn't stop the increased solar waves that are incoming.

.

CO2 and other greenhouse gases absorb various wavelengths of light more or less efficiently. Incoming radiation is short wave and is not absorbed well. Out going radiation is long wave and is absorbed well. (very over simplified explanation).

[Pin Head]

Originally Posted by cdcox

CO2 and other greenhouse gases absorb various wavelengths of light more or less efficiently. Incoming radiation is short wave and is not absorbed well. Out going radiation is long wave and is absorbed well. (very over simplified explanation).

It makes huge leaps in the assumption that it actually knows the concentration of CO2 in our atmoshere. Distribution of CO2 varies greatly from the upper atmospheres down and mixes differently as well.


CO2's radiative forcing is logarithmic.It's because of rising CO2 and other atmospheric gasses rising that our stratosphere is cooling.

Having a role in the greenhouse effect is not the only thing that CO2 does. Not all effects of green gasses are the greenhouse gass efffect.

Its not rererred to as the greenhouse effect but rather a parallel effect.

[KILLER_CLOWN]

Someone brought global warming back, it's in the 60's in KC in January. Thanks St. Al of the Gore..aka The Gorical.

[tiptap]

Originally Posted by Narrow Head

It makes huge leaps in the assumption that it actually knows the concentration of CO2 in our atmoshere. Distribution of CO2 varies greatly from the upper atmospheres down and mixes differently as well.


CO2's radiative forcing is logarithmic.It's because of rising CO2 and other atmospheric gasses rising that our stratosphere is cooling.

Having a role in the greenhouse effect is not the only thing that CO2 does. Not all effects of green gasses are the greenhouse gass efffect.

Its not rererred to as the greenhouse effect but rather a parallel effect.

Let's add baby lee's comment:

"2. I've read a whole lot on DCC, the crux for me is that no one gives a adequate explanation of the albedo, which is the basis being concerned about DCC. The rise of emissions, yes, and a panoply of new products and procedures to minimizes. But no one really explains credibly how the carbon emission is stopping sun rays from returning to space, but doesn't stop the increased solar waves that are incoming."

So let me ask both you, Narrow Head, and Baby Lee do you all have a conceptional explanation for why water rises in temperature much quicker than the air inside your microwave oven?

[Pin Head]

Originally Posted by tiptap

Let's add baby lee's comment:

"2. I've read a whole lot on DCC, the crux for me is that no one gives a adequate explanation of the albedo, which is the basis being concerned about DCC. The rise of emissions, yes, and a panoply of new products and procedures to minimizes. But no one really explains credibly how the carbon emission is stopping sun rays from returning to space, but doesn't stop the increased solar waves that are incoming."

So let me ask both you, Narrow Head, and Baby Lee do you all have a conceptional explanation for why water rises in temperature much quicker than the air inside your microwave oven?

Actually the feed in from the Polar magetosphere will have an effect on ionising radiation entering the Earths biosphere as it tilts more off the planar pole, the higher the feed in from solar ionisation.

[tiptap]

Originally Posted by Narrow Head

Actually the feed in from the Polar magetosphere will have an effect on ionising radiation entering the Earths biosphere as it tilts more off the planar pole, the higher the feed in from solar ionisation.

The question is why does the water in a cup heat up faster than the air in YOUR MICROWAVE OVEN?

[Pin Head]

Originally Posted by tiptap

The question is why does the water in a cup heat up faster than the air in YOUR MICROWAVE OVEN?

I wasn't addressing your question, obviously. Lest I need to keep responding to your feelings.

[tiptap]

Ok conversation can be done. Since I gather you don't have an answer. And you are left with just insults. I just wish I could pinch your cheeks.

[Comrade Crapski]

[go bo]

comrade crapski?

what have they done to my shitsprayer?

[Pin Head]

Originally Posted by tiptap

Ok conversation can be done. Since I gather you don't have an answer. And you are left with just insults. I just wish I could pinch your cheeks.

Its entirely predictable. It's nice and linear with no surpises my guess is that unknown non linear processes exclusive to the sun represent much of the uncertainty in climate.

Second, I'd finger the chaotic interaction of GHG's and carbon cycle that may forever resist complete understanding and effective modeling.

This stuff just doesn't build good models.

[Pin Head]

Originally Posted by Direckshun

It's really time for the excuses to end. There are a hundred arguments you could make against climate change:



The science has shot down every one of these arguments, save the last one which is a political argument.

It seems that global climate will remain an unmodelable enigma for quite sometime.

Climatologists are tasked with studying the climate. The hubris and arrogance comes in when anyone beliving those studies have become proven scientific fact without clear, experimental repeatable data.

That would entail changing the climate through man made experiments and being able to replicate them over and over.


That is undone.


Some of us don't mind theories...but we know how to seperate those from actual documented fact. Some, obviously, do not and are content to run with them as fact.

[Taco John]

This is an easy problem to solve. Just press a trillion dollar coin, and pay whoever needs paid to solve this problem. Problem solved!

[RNR]

Originally Posted by Taco John

This is an easy problem to solve. Just press a trillion dollar coin, and pay whoever needs paid to solve this problem. Problem solved!

Better press two of them just to be safe~

[Mesa Goat Man]

If you want to worry about something worry about Geo-enginering. What living thing can live without an atmosphere?