Don't bother designing green anymore?

As you say, the climate cycle is slow-moving. However, 10,000 years for a 40m rise in sea level is a lot slower than 50-odd years for 2m. GW is not about changes over the order of tens of thousands of years, it is about the sudden lurch, already visible in direct human records, with time-scales measured in decades. It correlates with the biggest incident in global pollution for many thousands of years. And there is a plausible mechanism whereby one caused the other. It is not often that you get a correlation and a causal mechanism jump up and bite you on the nose at the same time, but in this case it is a smoking gun - plus "motive, method and opportunity". Actually, I'm open minded; just, as they say, not so open minded that I let the wind blow through it. In particular I'd like to know why a known massive increase in a known major component of the planetary climate mechanism should NOT result in a major change of temperature and yet something else just happens to come along and cause it anyway. Hence my skepticism about the skeptics.

We will just have to differ on this, until the science becomes clear enough for both of us.

What I do agree is that the current episode pales into insignificance compared with the changes that have occurred even since modern man appeared. I might almost agree that nature will adapt - if it's allowed to.  However, human beings in the short term matter at least as much as polar bears in the long term and the impact of a relatively small spurt of GW (whatever its cause) is greatly amplified by two factors unique to our species. One is that there are rather a lot of us, the other is that we have created systems to perpetuate economic inequality. As a result, the poor of the world will not be able to adapt. They will not be allowed to flee to higher ground. They will not be allowed to migrate relocate to where the food grows best. They will not be allowed to build sea defences themselves, but will have foreign "aid" wished upon them with crippling repayment terms. They will have their carbon credits confiscated as payment for basic survival. They will be perceived as the cause of the problem, not the victims, and told it is their own fault for breeding too fast. I would love to wave a magic wand and change human nature - or at least the global economic system - but I think the chances of that happening are rather less than the chances of cooperating to solve a problem (whatever its cause) with technology, which are themselves pretty slim.

Personally I'll stick with "Warming" rather than "Climate Change" as it uses fewer words to say more

Hi Cabe,

The NASA data is very interesting, mostly because it verifies the increase in CO2 coming from the melting ice.  It did not show any correlation to the industrial areas where Human generated CO2 should be concentrated.

As I stated before, the earth is warming, that is not the issue.  The issue is if there is sufficient data to blame Human industrialization as its cause.  From the data collected and presented so far, there is no correlation. There are assumptions, but no smoking gun.

My main point is that the earth goes through these warming and cooling cycles all of the time.  We are currently in a time phase where the rate of change is changing the most, so we are indeed noticing the change.  Unfortunately, there is very little that we can do about it.

I fully back all changes in manufacturing techniques to make human produced products less toxic to the planet.  That is indeed an area where we have full control.  Stopping CO2 build up in the atmosphere however, is not something we can change enough to make a difference.

The climate will change.  Humans will either adapt or die.  If you continue to live in areas near sea level, you are going to get wet.  The key element is that we have plenty of time to prepare and deal with the changes.

Don't Panic!

Thanks

DAB

There is no reason at all to expect CO2 to be regional on any relevant scale. Its life-time in the atmosphere is about 100 years; the mixing time is just one or two. It has plenty of time to spread out.

Matter of fact, CO2 from melting ice will be of a different isotopic composition from burning coil and oil, so the melting ice vs fossil fuel question can be settled with complete certainty if anyone cares to Google it.

The other important point is this. If that graph is to be trusted then it provides a compelling argument that industrialization is the cause of elevated CO2 levels. Suppose for a moment that the fact that the graph goes vertical at just the right time is nothing more than a coincidence. As Harry Hill would say, "What are the chances of that happening?" Well in this case it's easy enough to calculate. It's just the probability of human society hitting industrialization within about +/-100 years of such a surge. On the data shown, that would be about one in two thousand at the most. Apply Bayesian probability and it becomes absurd to say "there are assumptions but no smoking gun". The proof is right there. I cannot force you to accept it but proof is proof whether its detractors call it "assumptions" or not.

Data can only be trusted if it can be independently verified.  Data can only be compared if the data collection methods are under controlled and repeatable protocols.

The ice core data is flawed by several issues.

1.  We do not know if the CO2 captured in the ice represents to total or only a fraction of the CO2 in the atmosphere at the time the air was captured in the glaciation process.

2.  We do not know at what altitude of the air captured.

3.  The ice data shows a 100,000 year cycle, but we do not know what drives the cycle.  Until we understand what drives the cycle, we cannot put the data into any context, especially in comparing todays measurements with data from times past.

4.  The ice data represents samples from a very few places on the planet.  There is great uncertainty if the data it shows can be extrapolated over the entire surface of the planet.

5.  The NASA data shows a fairly wide range of CO2 concentration across the surface of the planet.  It also shows that over ten years in which accurate measurements have been made, we do not see a consistent mixing of the CO2 levels beyond the regional surface wind bands that wrap the planet.  The spatial distribution of the CO2 levels is consistent with the source of the gas being from the ice and the CO2 appears to remain in the general area in which it is released.

Further, the areas where man made CO2 is generated shows that the vegetation existing in those areas appear to be absorbing the CO2 at a level consistent with its generation.  The areas where CO2 has high concentration in the industrial areas is in the Rocky Mountains, the Alps and the Himalayan mountains, which is consisten with the ice being the source of the gas.  The localization of the concentrations is consistent with the lack of vegetation in those regions where the ice has just recently melted away.  As the vegetation becomes restored, the CO2 levels there and in the polar regions should fall consistent with the geologic record of revegitation after each ice age.

6.  The ice data represents an average CO2 concentration over hundreds if not thousands of years.  We therefore cannot compare spot readings of today with averaged data from times past.  Especially without accounting for the spatial displacement of the ice formation, the retention of the levels of gas soluable in the ice and the altitude at which the capture occurred.

So where should these issues lead us?

1.  We can verify that global warming is occuring and is a normal process that appears to follow a cyclical 100,000 year pattern.

2.  We do not know what cosmic forces have led to this cycle, but it has been very consistent for the last 5 to 600,000 years.

3.  The recent NASA data has verified that the ice is a major source of the CO2 gasses released at this approximate point in the cycle.

4.  The NASA data has identified that the gas concentrations appear to follow a spatial distribution with a limit to gas mixing due to the current wind bands circling the planet.

5.  Given the information on the spatial entrapment of the gases separating the polar concentrations from the temperate zone concentrations, the industrial generation of CO2 does not appear to be overwhelming the vegetation ability to absorb the gas and convert it to oxygen and trap the carbon.

6.  The geologic data identifies that the revegetation of the areas once covered by ice will lag the ice melting stage and CO2 release by roughly a thousand years, which accounts for the offset between the ice core temperature graph and the CO2 level graph.

7.  Comparing recent ten year or even 200 years of CO2 measurements with those made from 100,000's of years ago is comparing apples and oranges because we do not know under what conditions the gases were trapped withing the ice.  We know that the ice does trap CO2 as the glaciers form, but we do not know what percentage is retained and how much of the total escapes during the process.

8.  Engineering 101, when you see spikes or discontinuities in the data, you always recheck the measurements and reassess the experiment.  Double check your error analysis.  Try to obtain corroberating data to verify your data collection protocol and analysis methods.

9.  Never trust data that you cannot independently verify and validate.

So my engineering experience tells me that the case against industrial generated CO2 is at this point still circumstantual.  The witnesses do not have air tight (pun intended) alibi's.  The unknown cause of the global warming cycle definately leaves room for reasonable doubt.  Especially since the gas volumetric analysis of the concentrations do not add up.

So should be clean up our industrial processes to reduce CO2 emissions?  Yes we should, not because it is changing the rate of global warming, but because the current manufacturing techniques are wasteful, inefficient, polluting and killing people every day.

Can the pace of global warming be changed by direct actions by the population?  At this point of our technology and our ignorance of the driving force behind the 100,000 year cycle it is doubtful that we know enough to do the right things to change the effect.  We clearly need to improve our data collection and refine our understanding of the warming cycle, but it is too early to say what actions we could do now that would have any affect, let alone a positive affect.

When it comes to theories, they are just guess work until the math works, they can be independently verified (espicially by the skeptics) and they can accurately predict what happens next.  Right now, the math does not work.  The models cannot tell us what will happen tomorrow, let alone what will happen in a century or a millenium.

Before I am willing to let polititians make legislations, rules and regulations, I want full scientifically verified answers to the issues outlined above.

To be a good scientist or engineer, you have to trust, but verify and validate all of the pieces of your system.  On the issue of GW, we do not even know what all of these pieces are, let alone which part they all play in the process.

Remember, change is the only true constant in the universe.  Many things can affect the rate of change, but we cannot predict the direction of change or all of the implications of each change.

I promise, this is my last post on this issue.

Thanks,

DAB