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Post by Snowstorm920 on Dec 12, 2015 18:42:47 GMT -6
Some pretty big news out of Paris today as all 200 countries agreed on a climate deal. Here's a summary: The measures in the final draft included: • To peak greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible and achieve a balance between sources and sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century • To keep global temperature increase "well below" 2C (3.6F) and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5C • To review progress every five years • $100 billion a year in climate finance for developing countries by 2020, with a commitment to further finance in the future. This is definetly a step in the right direction that we need. It's nice to see everyone agreeing climate change is a real problem that needs to be combated right now. Heres an article if you want to know more |
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Post by csnavywx on Dec 15, 2015 18:23:41 GMT -6
Some good parts and a lot of weaknesses:
The language about climate finance was good (especially "shall" and will") but they moved it to the preamble, which made it not legally-binding.
The framework with reporting and transparency was a good step.
The 1.5C target is almost cynical, since it requires some impossible emissions reductions to achieve. The rest of the language does not support an effort which would even come close to this. For instance, they admit in the text:
Notes with concern that the estimated aggregate greenhouse gas emission levels in 2025 and 2030 resulting from the intended nationally determined contributions do not fall within least-cost 2 ̊C scenarios but rather lead to a projected level of 55 gigatonnes in 2030, and also notes that much greater emission reduction efforts will be required than those associated with the intended nationally determined contributions in order to hold the increase in the global average temperature to below 2 ̊C above pre-industrial levels by reducing emissions to 40 gigatonnes or to 1.5 ̊C above pre-industrial levels by reducing to a level to be identified in the special report referred to in paragraph 21 below.
55GT is dangerously close to RCP 8.5 still (and well above the rest of the RCPs at this time). If emissions are at this level by then, even 2.5C will likely be out the window, much less 2 and 1.5C. Global temps will likely be very close to +1.5C already by then (we're eclipsing 1.0C this year). That translates to N. Hem. land temps well over +2C and the start of significant environmental effects and carbon cycle feedbacks.
There is literally nothing on aviation and shipping. Disturbing, since it's one of the fastest growing sources of GHG emissions.
All of the INDCs are intended and thus voluntary. There is no enforcement mechanism for failure and no penalties to pay if you don't increase ambition. Overall, the next is largely not legally binding.
Overall, while better than the Copenhagen "Accord", it is a pretty weak document.
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Post by guyfromhecker on Dec 18, 2015 10:03:34 GMT -6
Claiming arguing about climate change is the same about arguing about gravity is silly. The climate change stuff is still theoretical. Just because we have models and stuff now does not mean things don't have to stand the test of time. Gravity has graduated to scientific law climate change is still a young very theory that is changing.
I still look at people say the solar minimums and maximums are not understood in their role in climate, but they seem to understand CO2's role exactly which is really not logical. If you can't understand one part of a theory it is not complete yet. Until the Sun's role is truly understood this stuff is still a theory.
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Post by Snowstorm920 on Dec 18, 2015 10:19:56 GMT -6
Claiming arguing about climate change is the same about arguing about gravity is silly. The climate change stuff is still theoretical. Just because we have models and stuff now does not mean things don't have to stand the test of time. Gravity has graduated to scientific law climate change is still a young very theory that is changing. I still look at people say the solar minimums and maximums are not understood in their role in climate, but they seem to understand CO2's role exactly which is really not logical. If you can't understand one part of a theory it is not complete yet. Until the Sun's role is truly understood this stuff is still a theory. We may never fully understand the climate on this planet. It naturally swings from hot to cold over millions of years for reasons we can only speculate. But, that dosent mean we as humans arent doing anything to effect it by pumping millions of tons of a greenhouse gas into it in a short period of time. The earth is a closed system, those gasses only have so many carbon "sinks" to filter them out before they just increase in concentration in the atmosphere. It isnt a theory that more greenhouse gasses equals a warmer earth system. Again, im not saying you shouldn't be skeptical, because you should. We dont fully understand all the factors that make up the climate on this planet. But we shouldnt be blind to all the polluting we've done to this planet over the last 200 years. Thats what we do understand and it is something we can control. Edit: well for some reason that hyperlink wont work so heres the chart I was going to post  |
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Post by guyfromhecker on Dec 18, 2015 10:22:09 GMT -6
And by the way I'm a lifelong Democrat and will probably never change in spite of this one thing.
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Post by guyfromhecker on Dec 18, 2015 10:24:26 GMT -6
Claiming arguing about climate change is the same about arguing about gravity is silly. The climate change stuff is still theoretical. Just because we have models and stuff now does not mean things don't have to stand the test of time. Gravity has graduated to scientific law climate change is still a young very theory that is changing. I still look at people say the solar minimums and maximums are not understood in their role in climate, but they seem to understand CO2's role exactly which is really not logical. If you can't understand one part of a theory it is not complete yet. Until the Sun's role is truly understood this stuff is still a theory. We may never fully understand the climate on this planet. It naturally swings from hot to cold over millions of years for reasons we can only speculate. But, that dosent mean we as humans arent doing anything to effect it by pumping millions of tons of a greenhouse gas into it in a short period of time. The earth is a closed system, those gasses only have so many carbon "sinks" to filter them out before they just increase in concentration in the atmosphere. It isnt a theory that more greenhouse gasses equals a warmer earth system. Again, im not saying you shouldn't be skeptical, because you should. We dont fully understand all the factors that make up the climate on this planet. But we shouldnt be blind to all the polluting we've done to this planet over the last 200 years. Thats what we do understand and it is something we can control , I realize that everything plays a part and I also realize we are not close to understanding at all yet. That is about all that I truly think is known about climate at this point |
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Post by guyfromhecker on Dec 18, 2015 10:51:50 GMT -6
One thing that is not mentioned too often is that the non stop warming we saw from the late sixties till about 2003 has leveled off considerably. I hate to mention the coincidence, but you know what was going on with the Sun at that time.
Once you get that warm I think it takes more than just an average solar cycle or two to start bringing you down. This warmer earth is considerably different than it was back in 1965. It seems only true minimums and maximums actually make the temperature change. When we have what I call mediums it either stays as about as warm as it was or stays about his cold as it was.
By any measure the maximum we went through for most of the 20th century was a big one. Biggest ever recorded. Those who say that we shouldn't have warmed after 1950 or so just don't appreciate the Sun. If you make the assumption that basically it shouldn't have gotten warmer since the second half of our solar maximum then I guess you would give a lot of credit to other things. I mean you would have to. How else would you explain the warm up? I truly believe that's what many climate scientists are doing. They cannot put a value on solar so they discount it completely. That is incomplete science.
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Post by guyfromhecker on Dec 18, 2015 10:58:53 GMT -6
And of course we are about to have the "hottest year on record" again. This kind of bookends the period of the warmest weather that started with the el nino of 2000 or whatever.
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Post by guyfromhecker on Dec 18, 2015 18:59:59 GMT -6
You could easily say we've been coming down off the max since 1990. So let's run a bit of math: For CO2, the radiative forcing equation looks like this: In 1990, CO2 was 352 ppm. It's 402 now, so we can plug in 352 into Co and 402 into C. That translates into a deltaF of 0.69 W/m2. If we want to be thorough and add all of the other gasses like nitrous oxide, methane and the halo-carbons, it's 0.80 W/m2. If you want to compensate for aerosol effects, it's probably even more, but that's a very complex subject and I'll neglect that for the sake of brevity here. For the sun, TSI peaked at around 1366.7 W/m2 in 1990's big max and declined to 1365.3 W/m2 during the long 2009 min-- a difference of about 1.4 W/m2 (about 0.1%!) Of course, this is against a perfectly incident flat surface, and the earth is a sphere, so to compensate for that and albedo (about 0.7), the equation looks like this: Which translates to 0.25 W/m2 of radiative forcing from max to min. Even another big decline of equivalent magnitude from the '09 min (which is probably overly generous) would not go beyond 0.5 W/m2 total. This is the issue in a nutshell. Read more: morethanweatherstl.com/thread/126/chriss-corner-december-holiday-edition?page=21#ixzz3uirpawLLWell, you could easily say we have been coming of it since then. Cycle 23 was still a warming type cycle though. Sitting next to 22 it looks a bit weak, but that was a biggie. I know climate folks really like those simple equations. There is more than a little debate about the linear simplicity of that CO2 equation. I know if I graphed it into the translation in warming it would lay on the warmup graph of the later 20th century so neatly.........it would look like it was derived from it. No lag whatsoever. Kinda fishy. There are folks who think the relation is logarithmic and use other equations. Some claim it has pretty much "logged out" already There is still sold debate in the community. |
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Post by guyfromhecker on Dec 18, 2015 19:20:22 GMT -6
solid debate
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Post by guyfromhecker on Dec 19, 2015 9:01:40 GMT -6
To kind of put the solar in a nutshell.........from a watt perspective we have seen a variation of less than1/2 watt since we have started measuring sunspots. That's talking about the average for a cycle. Think about this. Folks, our livable range for watts is probably so narrow it is scary. I would bet the first 1365.7 or so are just enough to keep an ice age away. I mean, when we dip to what I call idle on sunspots the avg watt per cycle drops to around 1365.5, and we go into the deep freeze. If we take the average since we started measuring sunspots its probably around 1365.8 or so. During our maximum it was near 1366. So if the lowest at 1365.5 can make it miserably cold why couldn't 1366 make it silly warm? I mean they are both anomalies. Think about it.
Of course you could say solar variation does not matter. that's seems to be the way some see it.
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Post by maddogchief on Dec 23, 2015 17:45:56 GMT -6
Pomp and circumstance is all that was. Guaranteed not to make it through the majority of parliaments and our congress for ratification.
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