Is coal the number one enemy?

Two issues with coal that are not often mentioned;
The mining of coal, especially surface mining which is prevalent in N America, allows enormous amounts of methane to escape into the atmosphere. Methane is 23 times more potent as a GHG than CO2.
Coal contains several very toxic substances that either go into the atmosphere on combustion, or are present in the ash waste that is dumped in huge tailings ponds thereby constituting a severe source of ground and surface water pollutants.

Clean coal is impossible.

Availability of oil is finely balanced against demand and in the medium to long-term I cant see the price of oil going any where other than upwards. That might do a lot to regulate future growth in air travel. Coal, on the other hand, is still plentiful. As other sources of fossil fuel energy become increasingly expensive there is a danger that we will turn increasingly to coal to supply our future energy needs. That would be a disaster for the climate.

It's always a tad sad to hear these issues described in terms of activists versus... the public. Versus?

But I was also interested to hear that the transport mode of choice of many of the former, while 'better' and to be lauded for that, is only so by 18%.

It is therefore indeed reassuring that some are fortunate enough to be able to afford the time and costs associated with this transport choice.

Were that all of us could be able to afford the means to either not travel at all or, if professional, the employers kind enough to write off time 'on the track'. I'm guessing not to many lawyers all aboard at any rate.

We probably need more such unique, sympathetic funding viewpoints. Then rail would be a fine option, especially if complemented by a chauffeur from station to destination, as some are apparently prone to enjoy.

https://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/news/article270333.ece

But I am minded of the time I arrived to present at the rural base of an eco-minded potential client in my car (petrol then; now LPG). They were not happy. So I asked if they would be prepared to fund my day rate for the several hours on public transport that would be required, vs. the 30 minutes car ride I was swallowing already. It seems they were not. Short meeting. I hope they ended up with the service they were seeking, though it seemed the CSR box-ticking was more key in the process. I am sure their clients in turn feel well-served.

We'll get there, but looking at that first sentence, I'd suggest it might happen a tad quicker if some were to concede that many are already struggling with the basics, and whilst the green message is one well worth sharing in an objective, inspirational and inclusive way, many self-appointed, well-funded, dip-in messengers from on high can often seem a little idealistic at best, and possibly even less than empathetic.

FWIW, coal is not looking like an easy energy option to spin at all. Which makes the efforts closer to home in some quarters amusing if they were not tragic.

Dont bother on my account thanks, Justin.

Nor do I see any merit in being lectured by an actress, or by Hansen, who refuses to explain his crackpot theories to real scientists, and just keeps making up scare stories to match his delusions.

Still, if you want to make the alarmists look even more silly than they do now, carry on its a free world.

Just stop worrying about CO2 it cant change the climate but its good for plants. Embrace it.

Ethical Man you need a brain transplant. Where is the quote that " virtually all scientists agree that levels above 550ppm would guarantee catastrophic climate change."
Let us get something really clear. CO2 is neither a poison nor pollutant. It is very easy to hype computer predictions and James Hansen's utterances about coal mines being "Death Factories" but the truth is that without coal we would be having power outages almost permanently. Green initiatives about wind power sound good but are an almost total waste of money. You cannot have wind power without having backup from coal/oil/gas/nuclear sources. Because wind power is horribly inefficient [usually about 25% of the oft stated but never realised maximum output figure] It isn't free because taxpayers have subsidised the construction of turbines to such a degree that wind power is about the most expensive source of electricity there is.

When coal was being formed by the growth of trees, shrubs etc the CO2 level was around 20 times the present level. The Planet survived.
Temperatures were higher in Medieval times, despite Mann and his hockey stick scam erasing the data and massaging results to end with a graph that is laughed at [by the same climate scientists who now realise that CO2 is not the trigger for any apocalyptic increase in world heat levels].

The carbon claptrap that the BBC pours out is never balanced with opposite views, [held by thousands of their subscribers btw] only media hyped 24 'Breaking News' outbursts which have little or no substance in their production.
Take the latest Catlin Arctic Survey trio led by one Pen Hadow. A total disaster and yet the BBC screened their return as if they had 'saved the planet'.
They started from a point on first year ice and reported regularly as they trekked towards the North Pole.
Monitors showed their heartbeats etc. Radar sled info on depth was being recorded. Except that they were using recorded heartbeats etc from a pre Survey test. Simply put, it was a scam. The equipment had failed dismally, as had the radar sled.
At one point they were returning towards their start point because the ice on which they walked was moving quicker than they were. The cold weather surprised them??? They had not taken proper gear so their sleeping bags filled with ice, the cameraman got a frostbitten toe and in the end they didn't even get halfway. Their report said they had to be rescued because of early melting of the polar ice. Not true. Apart from being told they should be off before the end of April they carried on, with Pen Hadow drilling useless holes in one spot while they waited for the weather to clear.
As it is known that the sea ice coverage has been way above the 2007 level so I wonder what the purpose of this 'expedition' really was aimed? Publicity for an Insurance company is about all it was.

Anyway Ethical Man, you patently can't see the wood for the trees and let us have a Green debate with both sides being allowed to present their views, not just the Al Gore 'science is settled' one.
As I type this I am exhaling CO2 at about 40,000 parts per million like the rest of humanity. Should we all stop breathing? Carbon footprints are about as valid as Fools Gold, Witchcraft, Dragons and UFO's.

Taxing a non existent danger is similar to the Middle Ages Catholic Church selling expensive Papal Indulgences so tat all wealthy people gave generously to the Church and were 'guaranteed' entry into Heaven. That is so like the principle of 'Carbon Offset Trading'!

Welcome to the world of Don Quixote, Ethical Man. You are both tilting at windmills.

"Unless most of the world's vast reserves of coal are kept underground then rapid climate change is, according to the scientific consensus, inevitable."

Justin, what's consensus got to do with science? I think you mean a media consensus, which can safely be ignored.

Meanwhile, China and India ignore the scaremongering, and carry on regardless. They have industries to build, power to generate and mouths to feed - so it's no contest - there's going to be huge coal consumption worldwide for decades yet. But it will prove that CO2 can't change the climate. And Hansen will be regarded as an embarrassment to the scientific community.

I see the anti- Hansen and anti-climate change posters are out in full force. Basically, people like this are afraid of change. They can't live without conveniences for even a minute. The science is there, the data is there and objective scientists agree that continuing our current habits, castostrophic climate change will occur. It is useless to try to debate the scientific merits to the these people that post here. Coal is the number one problem. The Coal industry is very powerful and very little is likely to change in the amount of CO2 that we pump into the atmosphere during my lifetime. If I live to my life expentancy, then I'll only witness the beginnings of the castrophic climate change. People will survive and I believe the Earth will eventually recover (centuries from now) and the poeple will look back at us living during this time as fools....which we are.

GoonerPetronius......

The amount of CO2, we [Humans] add to Mother Nature's, is a little over 3% annually.

What does our 3% do that Mother Nature's 97% doesn't?

Nothing is changing measurably outside the normal variations/cycles that have occurred for millions of years. And no computer model is even close to predicting accurately even the last ten years of actual data.

If we regress to another Ice Age then coal will be our salvation!

It seems to me that, while the use of coal is a great problem facing the planet, the failure to address the problem of the disastrous expansion of the population makes all other attempts to save the climate hopeless.
While I realize the reduction of the world population to maybe 2 billion would be a difficult task , that doesn't seem to me to be any reason to turn a blind eye to it as most commentators do. Population isn't even mentioned in most discussions of the worlds problems which makes me feel totally helpless !!
Adrian Turner
Wales

Well done Justin. I went to a presentation last week from an IPCC scientist who entirely agreed with your position on coal.

Unfortunately, it seems that renewables are unlikely to be able to make up the shortfall, so the only alternative to relying on coal is a massive increase in nuclear power or to significantly reduce consumption and/or population. Our politicians do not seem willing to even make the connection that more people means more energy use.

Great blog, Justin.

How did you get to America ? Sail ? Row there like John Ridgback ?

Hope you didn't f-f-f-f-fly in a p-p-p-plane ...

Wow, GlobalClapTrap and Fractious have redefined ignorance. I could try and explain to them where there reasoning went wrong but judging from their rants I don´t think it would make any difference so I will reply in kind.

From GlobalClapTrap

"The amount of CO2, we [Humans] add to Mother Nature's, is a little over 3% annually.
What does our 3% do that Mother Nature's 97% doesn't?"

If it didn´t add up year after year probably nothing. But a sizeable portion stays and accumulates. Nature doesn´t on average (there are exceptions such as unusual periods of vulcanism). This is measurable and nobody, literally nobody, questions this. If this response is too complicated imagine your piggy-bank is the atmosphere, and you have 100 coins, now add 3 every year and pull out 2, how many would you have in 100 years?

"When coal was being formed by the growth of trees, shrubs etc the CO2 level was around 20 times the present level. The Planet survived."

Apart from all the variables you have brushed aside (the poles enjoyed tropical weather, the continents were in completely different places and, lets face it, the world was a giant swamp) consider 6 billion plus apes having to just survive. The planet of course will recover but what would the cost be for us as a civilization? Maybe you relish the thought of going back to being a bushman in Greenland but I doubt your view is shared, even in Namibia.

Fractious:

"Nor do I see any merit in being lectured by an actress, or by Hansen, who refuses to explain his crackpot theories to real scientists, and just keeps making up scare stories to match his delusions."

I don´t care much for media personalities myself but that doesn´t mean you are right. As for real scientists I am guessing you have never met one.

"Just stop worrying about CO2 it cant change the climate but its good for plants. "

Instead of being lectured by an actress we are being lectured by a gardener. Supply verifiable evidence and we will listen. Otherwise...

"Meanwhile, China and India ignore the scaremongering, and carry on regardless. They have industries to build, power to generate and mouths to feed - so it's no contest - there's going to be huge coal consumption worldwide for decades yet. But it will prove that CO2 can't change the climate. And Hansen will be regarded as an embarrassment to the scientific community."

And if it does you´ll buy us a round of beers? Come on, China is building more nuclear power stations than anybody else and it is instaling wind turbines practically as fast. The problem is that it needs energy fast, so it will build anything as long as you can plug a lightbulb to it. Still they impose fuel efficiency standards which are fast approaching Europe´s and coal plants which are amongst the most efficient. This from a country which,according to you, thinks that climate change is hogwosh. As for an embarrassment to anybody look no further than your mirror.

The term "scientific consensus" is a ridiculous contradiction in terms. Galileo did not discover that the Earth revolved around the Sun by popular vote (quite the contrary). Einstein did not develop the Special Theory of Relativity by asking his peers for their best guess and taking the average.

The IPCC is a left wing political organization - in their widely-cited reports they have taken the pieces of evidence that fit their story and left out the pieces of evidence that contradict that story. The Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) theory is the greatest lie in the history of mankind. It hasn't got a robust scientific leg to stand on. It is a clever sleight of hand whereby government can tax us all to high heaven by the back door and we all say "thank you, can we have some more?"

The Earth has been cooling since the strong El Nino in 1998 - why aren't the media reporting that? At the same time as Arctic sea Ice reached a record low in 2007, the Antarctic sea Ice reached a record high - why was one reported and not the other? Arctic sea ice has grown since 2007 at a record rate and is now above the long term average - why aren't the media reporting that? Meanwhile, the Sun is at its dimmest since the 1800's - not important? Did you know that Alaskan and Alpine glaciers and the Greenland ice sheet are actually growing, not shrinking? It is time for every man, woman and child in this once great country and once great western world to wake-up, stop acting like blind sheep, and question the motives of those who would claim that we are at a "tipping point" or that catastrophe is just around the corner. They want to send us all back to the stone age. The AGW movement is the equivalent of the fundamentalist preacher that stands on the street corner claiming "The end is nigh". Unfortunately the media and many otherwise well-meaning people have fallen for it hook line and sinker. Please, please, please stop being ignorant to reality!

A concerned atmospheric scientist...

All fossil fuels bound the majority of their carbon from atmospheric carbon dioxide. Therefore, the statement that "the CO2 stored in the world's known coal reserves would be enough to push atmospheric CO2 concentrations up to around 600 parts per million...But virtually all scientists agree that levels above 550ppm would guarantee catastrophic climate change" completely ignores the fact that life on Earth flourished with CO2 levels above what we today would consider catastrophic. The ecosystem did fine without humans and with a much higher CO2 content then today

One has to keep in mind this is all show business. The real work occurs in laboratories and engineering contracting groups. What people want to watch are 'the big fight' between demonstrators and cops. What they don't want to watch is someone flashing really large numbers up on a whiteboard.

As a somewhat generous number, the US uses 1 trillion watts during a peak summer day. If solar panels produce 200 watts per square meter, dividing 1 trillion by 200 yields 5 billion square meters. There are one million square meters in a square kilometer, so dividing 5 billion by 1 million yields 5000 square kilometers. 70 kilometers x 70 kilometers = 4900 square kilometers. Multiplying a kilometer by .6 to get miles, one has 42 miles by 42 miles, an area slightly larger than one typical county in a typical midwestern state.

Since the effective daily yield out of a solar panel is equivalent to five hours per day, one might need to quadruple the area to get something representative of a day/night cycle, so this would be 84 miles by 84 miles, or less than the area of five counties out of the whole country. As an interesting coincidence, this is about the area of the Nevada Test Site, the region of the country the US used for testing nuclear bombs.

Scientist's views are often respected simply because they have PhDs and wear lab coats. One can point to endless occurences of scientists making wild-ass assertions, scientific claims that proved to serve their self interest, and in a few cases simply create phony results for no other reason than they couldn't do the job. Scientists measure things. They design an experiment, set up a control, let the experiment run to it's conclusion, measure the differences between the control and the experiment, write them down, graph them, and publish the results in a paper. Every few years they have to fish for money from a sponsor. This means justifying the value of their work in the bigger picture. If there is a popular perception of a problem, their grant requests will be received more favorably if their work addresses that perception.

Media organizations don't do boring. Media organizations do panic, so the news you're watching is 'swine flu pandemic', 'global catastrophe', 'millions of refugees trapped in a no-man's land', etc. Scientists feed the panic, the media amplifies it further, the scientists get their grants, and then go on to 'prove' we're in even more trouble than we thought.

The average citizen needs a handbook of methods for figuring out, on their own, what's going on. This 'handbook' needs to contain a lot of numbers: annual carbon emissions; coefficients for reflected radiation through CO2, methane, water vapor, etc.; current growth rates for solar and wind power; energy investment required to create the fuel used in nucelar reactors compared to the energy produced from the fuel, and so on. They should have this handbook in their possession anytime they are watching environmental programs, whether on the news, the nature channels, or DVDs. What would become clear almost immediately is that most of the TV programming creates no perspective whatsoever.

I'm not willing to assert that global warming is or is not a problem. It will be for some people, including some Americans. I find it highly likely that energy costs are going to rise substantially, for reasons that have nothing to do with global warming. Much of the price of gas right now is governed by lack of refinery capacity, and refinery capacity is governed by the engineering talent required to build new ones, and the people that might be engineers are instead spending their time lobbying Congress or demonstrating in the streets, things that don't take much brains, patience, or painstaking work.

Until citizens make up their mind to understand the numbers, humanity is just one big football, and is getting kicked around by a lot of self-interested zealots.

Hi Justin,

While in the US why not interview star blogger Anthony Watts - owner of https://www.WattsUpWithThat.com/ blog.

It's a hang-out for real scientists - you know PhDs and Professors and statisticians.

In the future, the superpowers will be the countries with energy to spare. When Oil and Natural Gas supplies are all but exhausted and their prices are sky high, when a population far larger than the current one is desperate for far scarcer resources, that is the time when the balance of world power will shift.

Wily Governments might well be thinking that far ahead. Train the population to be more energy efficient, conserve resources, burn less, be productive with lower energy needs, and your wonderfully energy efficient country will be stronger when the time comes for energy resources to be fought over.

Climate change, whether genuine or not (I can and will argue both sides using the same data on different days), is a real opportunity for governments to prepare for energy shortages with a plausible and non-threatening excuse. If they told their people "in thirty years there might be resource wars and we must prepare for them", they would either be laughed at, ignored, or pilloried for scaremongering. They would certainly be viewed by other countries with some suspicion. Climate change is a superbly convenient long term "cover story".

Climate change is hard to prove, there are so many variables. On the other hand it is easy to prove that there will be enormous shortages of what will be very expensive energy in the all-too-near future. If we want to be strong in those times, maybe we should get used to using less energy. Maybe we should encourage saving energy and become less dependent upon fossil fuels like coal... in other words, do the things the climate change lobby recommends, but for different reasons.

JasonFM.

Happy to be my sort of ignorant. Please supply proof that CO2 is causing Global Warming via nan made CO2 'pollution'.
Why does mankind's 3% CO2 accumulate and Mother Nature's doesn't?
Why do people like Hansen, Mann, Gore etc alter scientific data always towards 'proving' their mantra about tipping points, cataclysmic sea level rises etc?
Why ignore the fact - even GISS [Hansen] - that world temperatures have not climbed at anything like the IPCC hyped rate, in fact have stayed static for nearly a decade.
Why avoid acknowledging the Arctic sea ice is increasing its area to nearly the 1979 level. Notwithstanding Chinese war junks circumnavigating the North West Passage in the 14th Century.
Pen Hadow and Lewis Pugh failed spectacularly in their 'expeditions' to prove a melting North Pole ice cap.
Not a peep from the Greens. Other than lies.
And finally when the planet had around 20 times the atmospheric CO2 levels of today there were also Ice Age conditions not always high temperatures. How did CO2 suddenly become the catalyst for Global Cooling as well as Global Warming?
Could it be because it has very little influence and water vapour has the majority? Will the Greens start taxing clouds when their 'ignorance' clears?

Those who attack James Hansen resort to name calling, the weapon of choice for those who have no data or real analysis to support their assertions. For anyone who wants to make the effort, the basic physics of CO2 are easily determined from the scientific literature. For this discussion, the relevant facts were determined at the end of the 1800s. In particular, CO2 like other green house gases is transparent to short wave radiation from the Sun and largely opaque to longer wavelength radiation that re-radiates from the surface of the earth. That is why people who design satellites to measure temperatures on the earths surface have to look for narrow windows in the atmosphere that transmit the longer thermal infrared wavelengths. The idea that the earth would be warmed by increasing CO2 was put forward at the end of the 1800s based on the physics of the gas, long before computers and computer based models had been developed.

Those who attack modeling are perfectly happy to fly in airplanes designed using the same principles of modeling they so strongly ridicule. If they were really paying attention they would notice that the physical measurements indicate that warming is happening faster than the models predict. However, just as there are people who still maintain the world is flat and that pictures of the earth from space have been faked, the global warming deniers will continue to put out their vacuous rhetoric.

Re: Killifish2007
"The idea that the earth would be warmed by increasing CO2 was put forward at the end of the 1800s based on the physics of the gas, long before computers and computer based models had been developed."

Show me one piece of empirical data (not a 100+ year old theory, or a model, but actual data) that shows that CO2 warms the Earth's atmosphere?

Meanwhile, for those interested in what the actual data shows. It has been shown conclusively (e.g. see https://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1143791v1 and similar papers) that in the historic record (from ice and deep sea sediment cores) temperature has ALWAYS risen first, followed by a rise in CO2 later (about 1000 years later). The mechanism is simple - warm the oceans (through natural mechanisms) and slowly but surely warm water supports less and less dissolved CO2, so it gets released to the atmosphere. How do you propose that CO2 is the cause and temperature is the effect here? You can't.

The rise in temperature we have seen in the later half of the 20th century is a combination of recovery from the Little Ice Age (which DID happen btw) and natural internal cycles in the Climate system. That rise stopped shortly after the last major EL Nino and we have now taken on a slight cooling trend.

Re: Killifish2007 wrote:

"Those who attack modeling are perfectly happy to fly in airplanes designed using the same principles of modeling they so strongly ridicule."

Sorry, but this is a ludicrous analogy. The Wright brothers did not need computer models to work out that you acheive lift if you have wings shaped like a bird. Unlike the Climate, winged flight is not a chaotic dynamical system. Unlike the Climate models, models which are used for airplane construction are not fed with made-up numbers and approximations. They are fed with hard data identified through detailled experimentation in the laboratory. Don't tarnish the professional engineering industry with the same brush as Climate modellers who don't even understand the system they are attempting to model.

In fact a better analogy for the complex models used in Climate Change Scenarios are the financial risk models used by the worlds top banks - again they are attempting to model a chaotic dynamical system using simple (essentially linear) models with approximations for the various parameters. We all know how these models performed recently....

#18

"Why does mankind's 3% CO2 accumulate and Mother Nature's doesn't?"

Because 'Mother Nature' also absorbs CO2 through photosynthesis and through absorption of CO2 by bodies of water. Mother Nature's net CO2 emissions are negative because oceans absorb more CO2 than they release (contributing to ocean acidification). Human CO2 emissions are always positive. It is estimated that around 50% of all historic human CO2 emissions have been absorbed by oceans (although there is also evidence that the ability of oceans to absorb our CO2 is now declining). Simple accounting tells us that you are wrong. If CO2 emissions from nature really exceeded CO2 absorbed as you claim, then we would starve to death through lack of food, and then choke to death through lack of oxygen. Life on Earth would never have occurred if Mother Nature is a net contributor of CO2.

There is other proof that you are wrong. The isotope of Carbon C14 has a half life of around 6000 years and is therefore not present in fossil fuels. We know that the relative amount of C14 in the atmosphere has declined as CO2 levels have risen, proving the CO2 increase comes from fossil fuels. There is other evidence from the analysis of isotopes of carbon in the atmosphere, but I leave it to you to look that up from sources that are more expert than mine. This is pretty elementary stuff so Im really surprised you dont know about it.

#20

"Show me one piece of empirical data (not a 100+ year old theory, or a model, but actual data) that shows that CO2 warms the Earth's atmosphere?"

Just because a theory is old does not mean it is wrong. It is almost 150 years to the day that John Tyndall proved through experimentation that CO2 absorbs radiant heat, whilst Oxygen and Nitrogen are transparent to radiant heat. His results are easily replicated using modern instruments and have never been refuted. Mathematical calculations prove that the Earth is around 30-35 deg. c. warmer than it should be given our distance from the Sun. The reason for the difference is the greenhouse effect where certain gases, such as CO2, absorb some of the solar energy that would otherwise be reflected back into space. Venus is hotter than Mercury despite being further from the Sun because it has a dense atmosphere consisting almost entirely of greenhouse gasses. The evidence for the existence of greenhouse gases, and for CO2 being a greenhouse gas is overwhelming. The extent to which human emissions of CO2 might warm the planet might be disputable, but no scientist seriously disputes the physics of greenhouse gases or that CO2 is a greenhouse gas.

globalclaptrap.

For thousands of years prior to the industrial revolution nature was absorbing as much co2 as it emitted. The result was that co2 levels in the atmosphere remained at stable levels.

Since the industrial revolution human emissions have tipped this balance and caused co2 levels to rise over 30% in just 200 years.


auntClueless.

Rising temperature does cause a rise in co2, but this doesn't mean co2 rise doesn't cause warming.

Re: Asopus

"Venus is hotter than Mercury despite being further from the Sun because it has a dense atmosphere consisting almost entirely of greenhouse gasses."

Ah...the old Venus vs. Mercury vs Earth chestnut. Lets look at the facts.

Mercury has no atmosphere and its daytime surface temperatures reaches about 447 deg. C.

Venus has an atmosphere about 90 times the volume of the Earths (leading to a surface pressure 90 times that of the Earth) of which 97% is CO2. There are thick clouds of sulfuric acid (opaque to infrared, but transparent to ultraviolet), chlorine and flourine and the daytime temperature is extremely stable at 467 deg C. Even with that toxic pea-soup of an atmosphere compared to no atmosphere on Mercury, the difference in temperature is 20 deg C.

On Earth, CO2 forms 0.0384% of the atmospheric composition. It is a what we call a "trace gas".

How can you possibly use the atmosphere of Venus as grounds to claim that a minor change in the 0.0384% concentration of live-giving CO2 here on Earth will lead to catastrophic runaway Global Warming?

You can't just compare the day side of Mercury, you have to include the night side as well. Mercury's average surface temperature over the entire planet is 70 degrees Celsius.

Venus is 460 degrees Celsius.

Re: rainbehemoth

"For thousands of years prior to the industrial revolution nature was absorbing as much co2 as it emitted. The result was that co2 levels in the atmosphere remained at STABLE levels." (my emphasis)

Really!?

The current atmospheric concentration of CO2 is around 370 parts per million (ppm). Under current emissions projections, and assuming a "business as usual" scenario (i.e. don't do anything) we might reach 520 ppm by 2030 or so.

During the Early Carboniferous average concentrations were about 1500 ppm - there was no runaway Global Warming.

During the Jurassic average CO2 concentrations were about 1800 ppm - there was no runaway Global Warming.

During the late Ordovician average CO2 concentrations were about 4400 ppm - there was a prolonged ice age.

During the Cambrian average CO2 concentrations where about 7000 ppm - there was no runaway Global Warming.

Relative to the last 600 million years, we are actually at a deep low in CO2 concentration!!

https://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html

By stable I obviously refer to the fact CO2 levels were about 280ppm for thousands of years.

In all of those cases you list co2 could have been providing significant warmth. On geological timescales there are bigger forcings than co2. But on timescales of hundreds of years we are going to be the biggest!

#25

"How can you possibly use the atmosphere of Venus as grounds to claim that a minor change in the 0.0384% concentration of live-giving CO2 here on Earth will lead to catastrophic runaway Global Warming?"

I dont think I put it that strongly. I was using the case of Venus to prove the existence of greenhouse gases, which you seemed to question, and not as an example of what will happen to Earth. Maybe I got it wrong and you werent questioning the existence of greenhouse gases, but are disputing the extent to which increasing levels of a single greenhouse gas will warm the planet as, if you accpet that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, then you have to also accept that increasing levels of CO2 will have some affect on climate. The issue is then the extent of that affect. Rather than highlighting the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, look at the contribution of CO2 to the greenhouse effect. CO2 contributes between 9-26% of the greenhouse effect, and the sum of all greenhouse gases add 30-35 deg. c. to global temperatures. There doesnt have to be a lot of CO2 in the atmosphere to have an affect on climate.

The prevailing scientific understanding of the climate is summarised by the IPCC and their position is endorsed by practically every major science academy and professional body of scientists on the planet. The prevailing scientific opinion is that human activities are altering the climate. It isn't controversial or outlandish for me or Justin Rowlatt to accept those findings. If you DO have something to contribute to the scientific debate on climate then present it for peer review by scientists and for publication in a scientific journal. The scientific community awaits your response.

I see that a few people here have been raiding the "climate denier" quote-mines:

"When coal was being formed by the growth of trees, shrubs etc the CO2 level was around 20 times the present level. The Planet survived."

The Sun was also a lot dimmer back then, with a lot less energy reaching the Earth. As the Sun has warmed up over Earths lifetime, the amount of atmospheric CO2 has reduced significantly due to the evolution of photosynthetic life and burial of carbonate rocks. This is what has kept global temps within a fairly narrow range for the past few hundred million years.


"The IPCC is a left wing political organization..."

Does that also include the high proportion of US scientists that were effectively appointed to the IPCC by the George W Bush administration?

"The Earth has been cooling since the strong El Nino in 1998 - why aren't the media reporting that?"

Even though 8 of the warmest years on record have all happened since 1998? The phantom cooling trend so beloved of the deniers disappears if you start the trend line in 1997 or 1999. You only get it if you start your trend line in 1998. Not cherry-picking are we?


"Arctic sea ice has grown since 2007 at a record rate and is now above the long term average"

You do know the difference between area and volume, don't you?


"Did you know that Alaskan and Alpine glaciers and the Greenland ice sheet are actually growing, not shrinking?"

Some may be growing, but a lot of them a shrinking and fast. How do glaciers grow? It's a balance between summer temps being cool enough for them to survive and precipitation through the year to feed them. As the Earth warms, it will get wetter. Weather patterns will change and increased rain and snow-fall will occur, therefore some glaciers will grow even if global temperature increases.


"A concerned atmospheric scientist..."

Priceless!

One really cannot help thinking that the whole climate change scenario is being handle in reverse. For instance, the deforestation of the amazon and other indigenous rain forests is a major cause right? So, why are we not paying the indigenous populations to plant and preserve these forests rather than cut them for farm land?

Why are we not allowing carbon trading of the lungs of the earth to also finance new planting and preservation? Surely, if we were to tackle things from the other way round things would be better, cheaper and more productive, whilst providing breathing space to deal with the issues of alternate energy and the 'not on my door step' mentality that goes with such.

Just a thought....

AuntClueless chose her name aptly.

As has been pointed out in another post the wavelengths that CO2 is transparent to and those that it absorbs, i.e. is opaque to have been well established for over 100 years. From this basic physics, one can deduce that the balance between energy arriving at the earth from the Sun and leaving by being re-radiated out to space would be influenced by changes in the concentration of the gas in the Earths atmosphere.

The models used in Climate Modeling are non-linear and make extensive use of data to set initial conditions and verify results. The models are well studied and provide a far more reliable method of estimating the impact of changes to the earth/atmosphere system than the assertions of the warming denial flaks. If you really want to see data, you can go to the WEB.

Here is a site, at the University of Illinois for a starter:

https://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/index.new.html

If you want, you can go to various NASA sites (search on DAAC) and get the raw data for free and do your own analysis. There is variety of free software available online to boot strap your own analysis. That is the difference between science and religion, you can repeat the analysis yourself if you dont think it has been done correctly. You can even submit it to a reviewed journal for publication.

Unfortunately, some of the climate warming deniers take a page from the Republican dirty tricks book and invent fictitious facts to confuse the public.

1) What is the perfect climate ? Is today's climate perfect ?

2) What is the perfect green lifestyle ?

As long as the world population continues to grow unabated, efforts to lower CO2 and switch to greener energy sources are doomed to failure.
For all the talk in the US, you see very little in the way of renewable energy.
We get 55% of our power from coal and yet President Obama continues to support our very rapid population growth that will demand many more power plants be built. How will we generate the power for 50 to 100 million MORE people in 40 years and do it with renewable energy? Possible, but
that means we would still burn the same amount of coal we do today.

A typical windmill generates around .6 mega watts - a typical power plant generates around 1500 megawatts. That means you need nearly 3000 windmills running a full speed 24 hours a day to equal one day of coal or gas fired power plant running at max output.
A nuclear plant takes 10 years to build and NO ONE will tolerate the long term waste storage any where near their children.

The future doesn't look too bright.

Re: Killifish2007

Wow, yet another AGW proponent who resorts to personal attacks when someone puts the pressure on and questions their MacScience.... I will reply to all of your claims and back it up with peer-reviewed scientific publications and data.


"AuntClueless chose her name aptly."

Reply: I am actually male - its called a "Pseudonym".


" As has been pointed out in another post the wavelengths that CO2 is transparent to and those that it absorbs, i.e. is opaque to have been well established for over 100 years."

Reply: This recent paper outlines the basic problem with that 100+ year old theory [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator] I quote from the abstract: "The atmospheric greenhouse effect...essentially describes a fictitious mechanism...." and "...according to the second law of thermodynamics such a planetary machine can never exist." and "...the atmospheric greenhouse conjecture is falsified."


"The models used in Climate Modeling are non-linear and make extensive use of data to set initial conditions and verify results."

Reply: How can projections for 10, 20, 100 years ahead be verified when they haven't happened yet (unless I misunderstand a fundamental law of nature)? These models are "tuned" to replicate the history of the 20th century, nothing more. They are built to replicate observations, not to make reliable forecasts. The UK Met office use these very same models to make seasonal forecasts - their seasonal forecasts are disastrous! Here are a couple of recent papers talking about the skill in these models

[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
I quote "...model results and observed temperature trends are in disagreement in most of the tropical troposphere..." and "...in layers near 5 km, the modelled trend is 100% to 300% higher than observed"

[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
I quote "The results show that (climate) models perform poorly, even at climatic (30-year) scale. Thus local model projections cannot be credible, whereas a common argument that (climate) models can perform better at larger spatial scales is unsupported"


"That is the difference between science and religion, you can repeat the analysis yourself if you dont think it has been done correctly. You can even submit it to a reviewed journal for publication."

Reply: I am actually an Atheist and MANY papers have been published where the conclusions contradict the mandate of the IPCC.


"Unfortunately, some of the climate warming deniers take a page from the Republican dirty tricks book and invent fictitious facts to confuse the public."

Reply: At no point in my previous comments did I deny that the climate has warmed in the 20th century. So in that context I am not a "climate warming denier" as you like to label me. Again, this seems to be a common thread with the AGW lobbyists - if you don't agree with the dogma, you are a "denier". A long time ago when I was obtaining my PhD in Physics (and yes I am concerned atmospheric scientist) I learned that science is about being skeptical and questioning every theory and subjecting it to hard scrutinization. It was einstein that said " No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong".

It is obvious that temperatures show a warming trend from the ~1930's through the late 1980's (with a strong cooling period around the 1960's - we can debate why that happened elsewhere). My point is that AGW theory said that "the science is settled" and that temperatures would continue to rise exponentially into the future as Co2 emissions increased. Well, emissions have increased, yet temperatures have not climbed any further - in fact they are tracking BELOW the IPCC baseline scenario labelled as "Co2 stabilized at 1990 levels". Something is badly wrong with those projections. Where's the beef?

Further, I have not "invented fictitious facts". I have provided references to back up everything I say.

My position is still one of considered ignorance.

I listen to the arguements from both sides of a highly polarized debate. I conduct my own research and study in my spare time. I consider myself of above intelligence and I actively seek knowledge and opinion on this subject.

There are many areas involved in this debate from science, computer modeling, geography and geographical history, politics, media, economics and self interest on an individual and national scale.

After taking on board all of what I have heard and read I am still in the 'don't know' camp.

My intuition, however, tells me we, as a global people, are not living in harmony with the planet. And if we carry on as we are with our current lifestyles, our materialistic consumer aspirations and population growth we will become a cropper.

I am an optimist though and I believe there are 'solutions' that will allow us to live abundant lives in harmony with each other and the planet.

For example, as a vision, I would like to irrigate the deserts of the world and grow rainforest and grow bio diesel - my understanding is that it does not pollute as much as oil. Any profits from such enterprises would fund global welfare initatives - health care provsions for example.

The irrigation could use sea water which was desalinated using solar power as it made its way across hundreds of kilometres of desert as perhaps in Western Austraia for example.

There are many other intiatives available - again better recycling.

We need co-ordinated will and belief and a change in thinking from our money and status obsessed cultures.

https://bbc.kongjiang.org/www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ethicalman/2009/05/is_coal_the_number_one_enemy.html?ssorl=1242995344&ssols=13&ssoc=register

Happy to be my sort of ignorant.

Please supply proof that CO2 is causing Global Warming via nan made CO2 'pollution'.
Other than basic physics of CO2, as pointed out by Killifish2007, Rainbehemoth and others? Or maybe the satellite measurements (not ground data, which according to people like you is all liable to be wrong) of surface temperatures for the last 40 years?, or maybe oxygen isotope ratios in ice-cores going back for tens-of-thousands of years? Or evidence from tree rings? Or maybe this is evidence you don´t understand and that is why you rebel in your ignorance?

"Why does mankind's 3% CO2 accumulate and Mother Nature's doesn't?"
Simply because there is a carbon cycle where biological and chemical pull CO2 out of the atmosphere while biological degradation on organic matter and volcanic activity spew it back. If you hasten the release of carbon by tapping on trapped carbon (be it in the form of coal, gas or other fossil fuels) you are tipping the balance in favour of accumulation.

"Why do people like Hansen, Mann, Gore etc alter scientific data always towards 'proving' their mantra about tipping points, cataclysmic sea level rises etc?"

The data points towards nothing, it is just data. All analyses indicate warming, to what degree, that depends and that´s why there is a range. You probably interpret this as uncertainty, which is tru, but the ranges are never 0-4.5C so regardless as to how you look at it, there is warming by any measure.

`"Why ignore the fact - even GISS [Hansen] - that world temperatures have not climbed at anything like the IPCC hyped rate, in fact have stayed static for nearly a decade."

The trend has continued so I guess you are referring to the last couple of years. Two words, La Niña.

"Why avoid acknowledging the Arctic sea ice is increasing its area to nearly the 1979 level. Notwithstanding Chinese war junks circumnavigating the North West Passage in the 14th Century."

What planet´s ice-caps are you checking, Mars´? Last summer commercial vessels could cross it. And lets not even mention the thickness (or non-seasonal) ice which according to sonar surveys by the US Navy (hardly tree huggers) has been, and still is, getting thinner.

"Pen Hadow and Lewis Pugh failed spectacularly in their 'expeditions' to prove a melting North Pole ice cap.
Not a peep from the Greens. Other than lies."

Never cared for greens, they are like you but with hairy armpits. As for reporters, I never get my info from them as it is not their job to do science or to report facts but stories.

"And finally when the planet had around 20 times the atmospheric CO2 levels of today there were also Ice Age conditions not always high temperatures. How did CO2 suddenly become the catalyst for Global Cooling as well as Global Warming?Could it be because it has very little influence and water vapour has the majority? Will the Greens start taxing clouds when their 'ignorance' clears?"

And that would have been when? You keep looking for one size fits all. Water influences both as a positive (heat trapping) and negative (clouds reflect light) force. Similarly other gases have an influence. Volcanoes spew ash and SOx and NOx as well as CO2 so cooling can occurr during periods of high volcanic activity. In a similar fashion human activity can lead to similar effects. Coal and diesel burning lead to the generation of large amounts of particulates and NOx/SOx. This is what is happening locally in SE Asia with their large smog cloud, which is causing a local cooling that is affecting the monsoon.



auntClueless wrote:

Re: Killifish2007
["The idea that the earth would be warmed by increasing CO2 was put forward at the end of the 1800s based on the physics of the gas, long before computers and computer based models had been developed."

Show me one piece of empirical data (not a 100+ year old theory, or a model, but actual data) that shows that CO2 warms the Earth's atmosphere?]

auntclueless, infrared absorption by CO2 is a fact, not a theory. You can test this with an infrared camera, a candle and a CO2 canister. As for data showing a warming trend in the last 100 years, you can also check the same data that Killifish2007 and others have supplied. Otherwise show us your graph taken in your backgarden.

"Meanwhile, for those interested in what the actual data shows. It has been shown conclusively (e.g. see h
ttp://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1143791v1 and similar papers) that in the historic record (from ice and deep sea sediment cores) temperature has ALWAYS risen first, followed by a rise in CO2 later (about 1000 years later). The mechanism is simple - warm the oceans (through natural mechanisms) and slowly but surely warm water supports less and less dissolved CO2, so it gets released to the atmosphere. How do you propose that CO2 is the cause and temperature is the effect here? You can't."

Auntclueless, the article, if you read it carefully, simply states that the warming prior to the Riss-Wurm Interglacial was probably caused by solar output and albedo changes in the Southern Hemisphere. Ergo, there are other mechanisms that can heat/cool the atmosphere. Nothing new there and it doesn't disprove the role of CO2.

"The rise in temperature we have seen in the later half of the 20th century is a combination of recovery from the Little Ice Age (which DID happen btw) and natural internal cycles in the Climate system. That rise stopped shortly after the last major EL Nino and we have now taken on a slight cooling trend."

Again, you are happy to look for multiple mechanisms as long as they don't involve CO2. The difficulty with climate trends is distinguishing between background noise (solar output, albedo changes, etc.). These effects can increase warming or supress it, that is why you have to rely on historical data, like the Little Ice Age and the Miedeval Warm Period, we all know there is natural variability, but CO2 is adding to it.

Auntclueless, your examples of paleoclimates only prove the point further:

Carboniferous: big swamp
Jurassic: dinosaurs near the poles
Cretaceous: crocs in Scotland and pretty much everywhere else

Do you fancy living in a world that is 2-4 C warmer then?

Jack_Hughes_NZ made a very apt comment though. Today´s climate is not the best, or ideal but humans evolved in something very much like it so it would be foolish to change it, even if accidentally.

It must be noted that a study in bedford using several test sites proved that by covering a single garage roof with solar panels and then using the power to produce and compress hydrogen, a converted petrol car can do just under 90% of its daily average milage on "Free" hydrogen.

Yes the car has to be strated on petrol, and yes the car when running on Hydrogen loses about 10% of its power BUUT we dont need a massive network of hydrogen garages as once run out the car runs on petrol, we dont need a massive investment in repair garages etc.

This proven system (the test were carred out over 10years ago) reduced car fuel costs by 90%, emisions by 90% and is releativly cheap at arounf 7000 per garage and car conversion.

I feel people are getting too hooked up on one cause of climate alone. CO and Methane are just as bad.

Also, the title of this article is surrounding the issue of Coal which seems to have been lost somewhere en route.

There are extremely clean ways to process and use Coal. One example is outlined at this web site which is still under construction but worth a look none the less:- sites.google.com/site/dumiorg.

The only issues preventing such technologies from coming to the fore are simple corporate greed and protectionism at corporate and Government level.

Looks like the BBC has jumped on the global-warming bandwagon.

Petty really: they could have just reported on facts and developments as they unfold, instead of being activo-journalists dishing up one-sided propaganda and misinformation.

I guess that what we are seeing here is several trends converging:

+ Cultural vertigo: life in developed countries is just so lovely that many people feel somehow guilty about enjoying an unprecedented standard of living.

+ Lefty trouble-makers: disappointed after the fall of the Berlin Wall and unsure where to go next so they hijack the conservation / nature movement.

+ Conservation / nature and animal lovers like the old WWF: hijacked by the new religion.

I guess the answer is to give the lefties some new cause to jump aboard and help the conservation peeps to get back to what they were good at like saving particular species that really were having a hard time like the natterjack toad etc.

Re: killfish
"Unfortunately, some of the climate warming deniers take a page from the Republican dirty tricks book and invent fictitious facts to confuse the public."

I do not appreciate the "Republican dirty tricks" comment. It has nothing to do with this discussion.

Re: Charlie

Thank you for being honest. The data is not as clear as both sides appear to have predrawn conclusions and only present evidence to support their position. Some evidence is simply popular conjecture.

Al Gore has direct, financial interest in 6 companies that sell carbon credits. He has much to gain with "Cap and Trade". For me, Al Gore's work is very suspect for this reason alone.

Contrary to those that say otherwise, bio-diesel is NOT cleaner than fossil fuels. The CO2, CO, particulate, and NOx emissions are comparable. The aldehyde emissions are slightly higher, but not significantly so. The CO2 per Kw/hr is identical (you know as fuel economy or specific fuel consumption).

Structures humans build absorb more heat than natural foliage. Specificially, asphalt roof shingles and concrete absorb more heat than a meadow. What portion of the global heat gain comes from this versus 'greenhouse gases'? Is our reduction in natural foliage more of a problem as it is what absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere?

As for the oceans absorbing CO2: why is this presented as though it is converted to carbonic acid (increases the acidity of the ocean) than feed for large plankton populations?

CO2 has both reflective and absorbing properties. Why are only the absorbent data presented?

For the camp that feels we are reverting to a slightly more prehistoric atmosphere, why are plants and foliage not responding favorably?

I have issues with the reckless depletion of resources and looking for the next thing to "burn". My consideration here is strictly a responsibly for future generations so they have natural resources for their lives. I see no merit in leaving nothing for anyone else.

As with other politically polarized issues, each side seems to feel the other is clueless. I sincerely hope we do not see organizations created solely to falsify results as we have seen in American elections.

The whole global warming idea rests on temperature readings from 2 series:

1) Surface weather stations over the last 150 years
2) Satellites since the 1970s

There is concern that many surface weather stations have been compromised by poor siting and nearby urbanization.

American bloggers have been surveying the surface weather stations in a project at SurfaceStations.Org.

The survey involves visiting the site of each station and recording the exact siting of the thermometers - and taking photos of the surroundings. The work is now 67% complete.

They found that only 3% of the sites they have visited actually meet the ideal spec for siting a weather station.

The bad sites typically have nearby car-parks, nearby roads with traffic, electrical equipment, air-conditioning units.

One site was at an airport. The runway had been extended since the weather station was first built and jets now turn and rev their engines towards the weather station.

The big problem with all these factors is that they distort any trend in temperature. The old sites were giving true temperatures in the past. But each change - a new road nearby, running a power cable overhead, extending the runway, totally trashes the long-term figures.

Now about that science...

Eastvillage has it exactly right. With an ever-growing human population efforts to reform energy consumption will only delay slightly the years of reckoning. As Kenneth Boulding said, if you believe in infinite growth on a finite planet your are either an economist or a fool.

There is another point of view represented by Herman Daly at the University of Maryland and Robert Costanza at the University of Vermont, both pioneers in the field of Ecological Economics. If President Obama truly was open to hearing all points of view he would at least have these gentleman in for an afternoon conversation. Unfortunately he seems to buy into the mythology of classic economics that growth in population and resource consumption can continue forever.

In terms of erroneous claims by climate warming deniers, earlier on in this blog it was claimed that ice cover was growing in the Arctic and the Antarctic. All you need to do is go to the WEB sites I mentioned previously

https://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/index.new.html

and see for yourself. You also have the well-documented retreat of glaciers in most parts of the world well documented by historic versus current photographs and studying the glacial moraines left behind by the glaciers retreat. This certainly isnt what you would expect to see if the climate were cooling now is it? CO and CH4 are even stronger greenhouse gases, i.e. transparent to short wave radiation from the Sun and largely opaque to longer wavelength radiation re-radiated from the surface of the earth. However, over time, both CO and CH4 are oxidized in the atmosphere to CO2.

The issue with locations of weather stations and their changing local environments has been taken into account in the current analyzes. Given the nature of scientists it is truly amazing that you could get such a preponderance of the community to agree on anything. Here you have a preponderance of the climate science community acknowledging that global warming is happening and it will have major negative impacts on the life experiences of a large part of the human population.

A previous poster asked about reflection of radiation back into space. Ice is very close to white and does reflect radiant energy back into space. Of course the problem is the loss of ice exposes liquid water which absorbs a very large proportion of the incident radiation, or rock and soil which also absorb more incident radiation. You also have the melting of permafrost in the arctic regions which will lead to the decay of enormous amounts of peat producing both CH4 and CO2 making the problem worse. The danger is that at some point the warming could become a positive feed back loop of such magnitude that human intervention to reduce our own CO2 emissions will be overwhelmed. At which point our future will be cooked. The climate warming deniers are like the acid rain deniers. Basic inorganic chemistry says that if you put sulfur and nitrogen oxides into the atmosphere, and combine them with water, you will get acid rain, i.e. low pH rain. The acid rain deniers never felt the need to explain why it was now necessary to lime streams to maintain trout populations that had survived successfully for thousands of years in these same streams before the advent of fossil carbon based energy technologies.

It is clear that all too many of the people contributing to this blog were not paying attention in their physics and chemistry classes if they took these classes at all.

I am a realist and see no likelihood that human beings in the mass will be able to wrap their brains around this problem and deal with it effectively. I just hope most of the warming deniers are young enough to experience the result of their political triumph at least their children will.

Re: Younggasterix,

Since Al Gores concern about global warming predates the existence of these companies by decades have you considered the possibility that he is simply putting his money where his mouth is?

CO2 is rarely a limiting factor in algae growth in the open ocean. If you really want to see what algae can do when these nutrient limitations are overcome, just look at estuaries like the Chesapeake Bay. Not a pretty sight.

Hi bloggers !

It's easy to go round and round in circles if you try to follow the scientific details. For every blog saying one thing you get another blog that says the opposite.

Tomarto / Tomayto.

Instead we look at the honesty or hypocrisy of activists.
Like Al Gore flying round the world saying that flying is bad.
Or G Monbiot driving round saying that cars are bad.

Or at the absurdity of some 'solutions' - like sitting in the dark for an hour once a year.

Or even the timescales - it's easy enough to predict anything for the end of the century - with or without a computer model. Nobody here will call you out in 91 years time.

Or just close your eyes and pretend that the doom-mongers are correct and it''s all turning to custard and we are at a tipping point. In that case we should take drastic emergency action this year - not all these empty promises to do 'a bit' over the next 30 years.

I can only agree with Dr Hansen.
Protesting against Aviation, on the grounds that burning oil-based fuels is damaging the climate, would only prolong that particular problem. It is unfortunately the case that human beings will simply use oil-based fuels to exhaustion, and only then support the drive to other fuels, because it is easier to do so. Slowing the burning of oil-based fuels will lead to oil-based fuels use being prolonged. In essence, the sooner it's gone, the better for the planet.

As for coal, as pointed out, there is still an abundant supply, and using the analogy that we will use it to exhaustion would mean we would kill this planet completely before coal runs out. Mining coal is dirty for those involved in the process. Processing coal is dirty for those involved in the process. Burning coal is dirty for everyone, whether involved in mining, processing or using it, directly or otherwise. The suggestion that we could 'store' the resulting CO2 underground is a mad proposal, surely. How long before we have problems of a fragile planet being compared to physically fragile - virtually hollow with vast reserves of CO2 underground. OK - a bit silly, but would it not be better to process the CO2 in some way?

Better still, legislate to restrict coal burning. With the exception of power stations, coal burning has almost disappeared from UK life. We no longer burn coal in our homes, the trains are electric or diesel and most industry is fuelled in other ways, but it is still coal that provides the power behind this fuel.

Charging for the fuel based on its emissions is one way to do this, but that leads to unfair taxation to the end user in some cases. A fair business taxation that could not be passed on to domestic users, when other cleaner means of producing the fuel are available, would help. Incentives to business to switch to cleaner fuels - a smart tax - driving it from the top, and much bigger drives in the industry itself to find a clean alternative fuel without digging up the planet, and burning the atmosphere in the process, is more likely to succeed.

As users, domestic and business, large and small, we are slaves to the power companies. We have to use electricity to some extent. We use more today that we used 20 years ago, if only to charge our mobile phones, run our PCs, DVD players and Sky / set-top boxes. Office buildings burning lights and machinery all night long. Some practices can change, but it is the source of the problem that should be addressed.

The oil companies have research divisions to look into alternative fuels, but it is not in their immediate interest to promote these while the stocks of oil produce such large revenues for them. The coal companies have no need to research alternatives. They have a product that will out-live everyone alive today. The planet, however, will not.

They should all be re-profiled as fuel providers and the first to properly promote and bring into mainstream use, a proper clean fuel wins the prize. World fuel domination.

Jack_Hughes_NZ,

Are you really from New Zealand. I was there in 2006 and noticed that the glaciers on the South Island are greatly reduced from their previous extent. How do you explain that? Less precipitation, or a warmer climate? It sure rained enough when I visited and then snowed around the first day of summer.

I suggest that people need to go beyond blogs. In the blogs you can find flat worlders, hollow worlders and spheroid worlders. Go look at some of what credible scientists have to say. Look at the ice cover animation at the University of Illinois site. Get the raw data from NASA DAAC sites for free and check it out yourself. Or look at their analysis. If your not going to learn the basics of the science, how do you expect to have an informed view????

So what should Al Gore do. Stay home and suck his thumb when he thinks there is a crisis that needs to be dealt with. An individual flying on commercial airliners adds a minimal amount of CO2. What would you have him do, bicycle and canoe to his meetings/presentations?

Global warming models make a whole host of predictions that can be and have been observed over the past decades. For example global warming models predict more extreme weather, heavier rain fall when it rains, more frequent draughts, more hot days more cold days. In statistical terms there is an increase in the variance. This has been observed. If you want to, you can down load historic data from the U.S Weather Service. You may be able to get something similar for New Zealand. What ever point of view you might be curious about, you can likely find some one propounding it in a blog. So use the WEB to get some data. It is out there if you want to make the effort.

This is a situation where doom is a choice human societies can make one way or the other. On a local basis societies have been doing this for millennia. I suggest you check out Collapse by Jared Diamond for a summary of societies that have chosen collapse and those that have chosen to continue to play the existential game. A game societies can never win but only loose.

But dont worry, it is unlikely any extreme actions will be taken to slow or stop global warming. Human beings like other organisms have evolved in a milieu that favors maximizing short-term advantage. When asked about the environmental crisis Richard Dawkins asserted at a lecture at the University of Maryland, there is no real environmental crisis, humans will continue to proliferate until they either produce pollutants inimical to their existence or exhaust resources critical to their existence and then become extinct or very rare. After all, 99% of the species that ever existed have gone extinct. So far all the evidence indicates he is right.

Hi bloggers !

Yes I live in NZ and my carbon footprint is very near to zero. My electricity is 100% hydro and I burn logs to warm the home. I walk to work.

I want the world to continue being a nice place for my children and any future grandchildren. I am not paid by Big Oil.

I have looked at the global warming hypothesis and come to my own conclusion: it's a load of tosh.

The biggest single problem is that it is not clearly defined what exactly are the creed and commandments of this movement.

Maybe some of the Climate Cadets on here can help with this definition - if they can agree.

The closest I can get on my own to a definition of the problem is:

mankind's activities will cause catastrophic damage to the world's climate in about 50 years time unless we do something different over some timescale

But therein lies the problem. It's so vague that it's difficult to prove or disprove.

The movement does not have any written creed - no Bible - no Das Karbon - that we can challenge. And its formal leaders - men like Al Gore and James Hansen and G Monbiot - they seem to be, well, hypocritical. Flying round the world saying that flying is bad.

Can someone help with a better definition of the problem or tell me who is the leader - the Climate Pope ?

Re: Jack_Hughes_NZ
There is no leader for those concerned about global warming. There is no creed. It is based on the best science, which is based on a wide variety of measurements and analyses that make a convincing case for those willing to study and understand it. It is clear that continuing business as usual or just making changes around the edges is not going to change the trajectory we are now on. Among the science community that focus on atmospheric science, the consensus is that the continuing increase in CO2 and other green house gasses added to the atmosphere by human activity will lead to a warming of the planet that will have significant negative impacts on human welfare. The continuing increase in CO2 has been well documented by long term measurements. It is really just a matter of physics.

Scientists are looking at all kinds of ways to try and ameliorate the problem without butting their heads up against the tendency of people to want to have as many children as they want and aspiring to high material standards of living. For this reason, it is unlikely that the problem will be dealt with effectively. The problem is that the Atmosphere is a global commons and the advantage to an individual of maintaining their life style outweighs the immediate cost to themselves. Garret Hardin wrote a paper Tragedy of the Commons that explains this trap we find ourselves in.

So if you live long enough you will be able to see the result. Well maybe not. Many human beings have immense powers of denial. How do you account for the shrinking glaciers on the South Island?

You really dont give any reasons for concluding global warming is a load of tosh except that you think Al Gore should stay home and cultivate his garden if it is really such a problem. Some of the global warming deniers have suggested those concerned about increasing CO2 concentrations should stop breathing, a position not exactly contributing to rational discussion of the data and analyses.

Hi Killifish2007 !

Thanks for your reply. I have a masters degree in engineering so I can see that climate science is an infant science at best.

In engineering we use computer models a lot. They work well. They can predict exactly what is going in in every part of a structure under different loading conditions.

The reason the engineering models work so well is that we understand exactly how concrete and steel behave under different loads. We did the same calculations before computers came along - using slide rules and paper.

The computer models used by the climate ppl are nothing like this. They do not fully understand how the individual parts of the weather jigsaw work in isolation - let alone when they are all combined.

If their models were any good then they could forecast next week's weather perfectly. And next month, and next year. But they cannot.

We engineers run our models once. The answer is correct and we get on and build our bridge / skyscraper / aeroplane.

The climate ppl run their models 400 times until they get some alarming answer then they go running to the press.

Some models predict a temp rise of 4 degrees - some just 1 degree. Imagine if I did not know if the bridge would support 4 cars or just 1 ?

The latest IPCC report just took an average of the models. How crap is that - its not science.

Then I look at some of the activities of the Climate Cadets. Leaving aside the hypocrisy of Gore and Monbiot, there is the stupidity of the Catlin crew and the 2 that were rescued last week by an oil tanker.

Or even my neighbours who celebrated the fatuous earth hour by switching off their lights then driving round and round to see who was sitting in the dark.

Just one last thought: if we really believe there is a problem and we can solve it all by a vote at the UN and all pulling together. Why not have some kind of dry run and all combine to end war ? We could warm up and build an international team spirit to end organised crime and people smuggling. Then move onto the more ambitious goal of preserving the planet's climate - keeping it unchanged forever.

globalclaptrap. yes you are.

The subsidies needed for wind already happened for coal and oil.it is not like they did not need them. we fought wars over the stuff.
have a beer and get real .watch the eveningsky . see the clouds and remember others are doing real research while you are pontificating on hte net.

Jack huges. you have amazing confidence in your abilities and the abilities of the profession you are in.
Engineers have made loads of mistakes relying on models because they only model what you know.

We do know we are screwing the planet for a quick beer.
Maybe not you. your field is not atmospheric or climatic sciences,is it?
If you think you are the only person with a degree to approach this subject I suspect you will be best advised to watch yourself,you are so smart you might cut yourself.

And have a beer.

"We engineers run our models once. The answer is correct and we get on and build our bridge / skyscraper / aeroplane."


unbridled arrogance.goodluck.forget the beer

"The reason the engineering models work so well is that we understand exactly how concrete and steel behave under different loads. We did the same calculations before computers came along - using slide rules and paper.

The computer models used by the climate ppl are nothing like this."

They are almost exactly like that.

"Some models predict a temp rise of 4 degrees - some just 1 degree. Imagine if I did not know if the bridge would support 4 cars or just 1 ?"

Millenium Bridge?

And that still comprises a future prediction.

"The latest IPCC report just took an average of the models. How crap is that - its not science."

Yes it is.

"The climate ppl run their models 400 times until they get some alarming answer then they go running to the press. "

No they don't.

"There is concern that many surface weather stations have been compromised by poor siting and nearby urbanization."

But working with the data shows otherwise:

https://climateprogress.org/2009/07/07/noaa-ncdc-is-the-us-temperature-record-reliable-deniers-anthony-watts-surfacestationsorg/

"Al Gore has direct, financial interest in 6 companies that sell carbon credits. He has much to gain with "Cap and Trade". For me, Al Gore's work is very suspect for this reason alone."

And ExxonMobil made 120billion profit in one year.

That's a lot more reason to deny global warming.

"CO2 has both reflective and absorbing properties. Why are only the absorbent data presented?"

They are.

It's one reason why the IR radiation isn't getting out: it's being reflected back to earth.

The sun doesn't produce much of its energy at IR wavelengths.

"Some models predict a temp rise of 4 degrees - some just 1 degree. Imagine if I did not know if the bridge would support 4 cars or just 1 ?"

But when you as an engineer are asked to build a bridge that takes 100tons, do you build a bridge that takes 110tons (10% error) or 200tons (100% error)?

Because if it is the latter, then your 100t bridge could take up to 400t but will take at least 100t.

1 to 4.

This blog is about coal. As a 1st year engineering student doing a summer placement with a company that works in the coal industry I have serious doubts about what journalists and celebrities say about coal. Currently companies, in the UK, are looking into Carbon Capture and Biomass firing, as well as building the first SCR in the UK (SCR removes NOx from output gases). Since CC is unlikely to yeild 100% capture, it cannot be perfect, but 80-90% is seen as an acheivable target. If this were combined with biomass firing of a similar percentage, again possible, partiularly on the new build at Kingsnorth, Coal fired power stations could actually move towards carbon neutral or even carbon negative. Too much emphasis is placed on wind, when there is very little data on how much power these turbines can generate. Even the National Grid, who are the experts, say that they cannot rely on wind as it is so unreliable. Coal on the other hand, is a reliable source of power, bearing in mind that the some of the current crop of stations have been in use since the 60's and still have plenty of life yet. Wind generation is not carbon neutral since they are built in areas that are difficult or impossible to reach using lorries. Therefore, helicopters must be used, which are hugely inefficient in terms of carbon emissions. Perhaps the greenies could try living in the real world once in a while, or they could change that one hour a year turn off to every day, because, if they get their way that's how life will be.