16 years 9 months, crazy fast global warming

So which one of you denier/liars will the first to admit that the recent spike in CO2 by 40% is due to man? Anyone of you have an ounce of intellectual integrity?

 

When are you going to stop being a Climate Reality Denier (CRuD) / Liar and admit that that any recent increase in CO2 is well within norms for the earth and is not causing any type of global warming to be concerned about. Do you have an ounce of intellectual integrity?

 

So you don't think the spike is due to man. Alrighty then.

 

"Invest in adaptation"

Taking Effective Action Against the Unstoppable
Carbon Cuts Now Won’t Stop Climate Change, but Could Limit Damage
By Eduardo Porter
24 June 2014

"Climate change is not an event in your children’s future. It is bearing down upon you now. And there is nothing you — or anyone else — can do to prevent the hit.

"Over the next quarter-century, heat-related death rates will probably double in the southeastern states. Crop losses that used to happen only once every 20 years because of cataclysmic weather will occur five times as often.

"This is our future even if every person on the planet abruptly stopped burning coal, gas, oil, wood or anything else containing carbon today and we hooked the world economy onto the wind and the sun tomorrow. The change is baked in, caused by CO2 spewed into the air long ago.

"This stark future is rendered vividly in a comprehensive report released on Tuesday by the Risky Business Project, a coalition of political and business luminaries representing widely different political views — including the former Treasury secretaries George P. Shultz, Robert E. Rubin and Henry M. Paulson Jr. — that is intended to raise awareness about the impending perils of a changing climate.

"The report is aimed squarely at corporate America, offering the kind of risk modeling a financial firm might make to assess the probable impact of a changing climate on an investment portfolio whose “assets” included farming, housing, labor productivity and crime."

Article, links>>

 

"..............The former Treasury secretaries — including Henry M. Paulson Jr., a Republican who served under President George W. Bush, and Robert E. Rubin, a Democrat in the Clinton administration — promised to help sound the alarm. All endorse putting a price on greenhouse gases, most likely by taxing emissions.

“I actually do believe that we’re at a tipping point with the planet,” Mr. Paulson said in an interview at his home in Chicago. “A lot of things are going to happen that none of us are going to like to see.”

 

Yes, I ALSO said that. We don't know for sure yet, but at this point there is no compelling reason to rule out the recent spike being naturally occurring. That is consistent with what I pointed out above with regard to a chart you posted previously showing the cyclical nature of Temperature and CO2.

I'll attempt to say this another way, because I am apparently failing to make my point clear. There is considerable error associated with the values of atmospheric CO2 calculated from proxy data. The ice core data is proxy data. Very recent ice core data is insignificantly affected by diffusion (it is a slow process), but very old ice will have CO2 content changed by diffusion . Consequently, any direct comparison between values for atmospheric CO2 content computed from ice recently laid down versus ice laid down thousands of years ago is invalid unless a correction for diffusion of CO2 in ice has been made. That was Salby's point.

In your previously posted chart , the one illustrating the cyclical nature of CO2 and temperature over time, there was a modern day spike determined by direct observation, was it not? (Although it doesn't really matter, the CO2 content of recently laid down ice will be consistent with CO2 by direct observation.) Whereas the values (Y-axis numbers) for all the other spikes were from proxy data and are inaccurate if not corrected for diffusion. It is not, therefore, scientifically valid to draw the conclusion from either of your charts that today's spike is significantly higher than those in the past unless the data for ice laid down thousands of years ago has been properly corrected for diffusion. Salby has done this, and he has determined that CO2 content in ancient atmospheres was as much as fifteen times greater than has been incorrectly determined using uncorrected proxy data.

Salby's point, and mine too, is that previous core measurements were not properly corrected for diffusion, so while the general cyclical pattern is valid it's amplitude will have been suppressed by diffusion. One can't compare values obtained from ice only a few centuries, or less, old with values obtained from ice thousands of years old if a diffusion correction has not been made. And of course it is completely invalid to compare uncorrected proxy data with modern day direct observation; yet I see these kinds of naive comparisons being made in various web blogs , even by some who should know better. Salby was the first to point out the necessity of correcting for diffusion and deserves credit for that. He is also, I believe, the first to correctly take into account the time relationship between temperature and CO2 concentration changes. He deserves a tremendous amount of credit for that beautiful work.

It seems that you are a smart guy, so you will know that CO2 in ice will spontaneously diffuse down a concentration gradient from higher to lower concentrations. Naturally, over time, this will raise the concentration in regions of lower CO2 content and lower it in regions of higher concentration. The net result over hundreds of thousands of years will be to reduce the difference between high and low concentration, and presumably if one waits long enough the concentration of CO2 in ice will be everywhere the same. Why not do some research? Go to the source of the data for the Antarctic ice core chart you've posted and see how they corrected for diffusion in the oldest cores, and whether you agree with their method.

Your childish attempts to launch personal attacks against Salby such as : Salby is a fool and and a liar..." , in my opinion, diminish your credibility. Why not just stick to the science in this discussion and leave the personal insults where they belong, i.e., unsaid.

 

I heard about that report on NPR the other day, and the first thing that popped into my mind was the Goldman Sachs connection (Goldman has been reported as a potential party in a carbon credits market). Sadly no one knows for sure how the climate will change over the next year let alone the next century. We can be fairly certain though that the climate will change with time if the pattern of the past holds going forward .

These folks can compute the probability of Y assuming X happens. The problem is no one can yet compute, with any accuracy, what the probability of X is.

We know how prescient the Wall Street risk management gurus were in predicting the 1987 crash and in evaluating CDO risk. I'm confident they'll be just as effective in evaluating climate risk.

I laughed when I read this:
"This is our future even if every person on the planet abruptly stopped burning coal, gas, oil, wood or anything else containing carbon today and we hooked the world economy onto the wind and the sun tomorrow. The change is baked in, caused by CO2 spewed into the air long ago."

Except for the last clause, no one can argue with it. Leave off the "...caused by CO2 spewed into the air long ago." and you get a statement that not even Yogi could upstage.. "Our future is still ahead of us."

 

At a certain point in these disagreements, a decision maker has to go with expert opinion and a bit of gut instinct. So while we value your perspective, and thank you for sharing it, it's time to move on. Carbon mitigation technology and technique is the future. Not even the future, it's here today and growing rapidly.

 

Ricter, did you notice that even the title of that article is a bit of a joke: "Taking Effective Action Against the Unstoppable" (I thought Yogi was dead.)

 

You are a reasonable person, and what you write is very reasonable. But here is my concern, and I believe it is equally reasonable. We are about to take steps costing many billions of dollars with potential world wide impact and possible wasting huge resources that could better be spent elsewhere, if, and this is a really big if, we are wrong about the science. I am absolutely convinced that we are moving prematurely before the science is settled. Obviously, you can't have Temperature rise precede CO2 rise if CO2 is the cause of the temperature rise. Until that question is resolved, we should hold off on these pronouncements from the lay public and politicians and do more science to resolve these issues. I'm also concerned about people such as Rubin, Paulson and Gore getting involved with shaping public opinion. They are not experts. I really prefer to hear from the climate experts, and there is a lot of disagreement there, despite FC's opinion polls.

Thank you for being both bright and constructive. We can disagree and have a civil conversation, and that is a very nice thing in these forums.