Here’s an open thread for various climate science related discussions, to prevent more off-topic clutter everywhere else. We have some good posts coming up, but if you want to discuss something you read in the media, saw in a press release or just wanted to ask about, this is the time.
Some interesting things we’ve seen recently include discussions on the epistimology of climate modelling, Andy Dessler’s adventures in debate land and his new paper on water vapour trends, and a review of trends in the Columbia glacier. Have at it.
Addendum: Kevin McKinney has beaten us to the mention of this, but another recent article of importance is a thorough review of the state of knowledge of drought, past and future, by Dai. The article is open access here.
Dan H., Hank Roberts,
The “Green Grok” blog Hank linked to referred to the past winter as the warmest on record, but linked that to another post pointing out that January-April this year were the warmest on record.
“Winter” is a matter of definition (and some would have it start at Halloween). But it’s hard to squeeze in April — even though it is the cruelest month.
If we take “winter” to mean December-February, then according to GISTEMP at least, Dan H. is right — the winter of 2010 was probably not the warmest on record. 2007 was. The winter of 2010 was the second warmest.
(But the difference is only 0.05 ºC, so taking account of errors in comparing quarterly means, it might be fair to call it a tie.)
In any case, Green Grok’s point stands: globally speaking, the cold, snowy winter of 2010 was actually very warm.
See also:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.E.lrg.gif
John Pearson,
Again, both statistical and physical arguments are important, but it is also important to understand that confidence is not probability. To see this, consider the usual problem of drawing marbles with replacement from a jar. We are told that the marbles are either white or black. We draw 22 marbles and they are all white. This established with 90% confidence that at least 90% of the marbles are white (binomial statistics). We are then given the opportunity of to place a bet at 10:1 odds that the next draw will be a black marble. Do we take the bet?
The answer of course is no. We’ve established that 90% of the marbles are white with 90% confidence, but we have zero evidence that any marbles are black. 90% confidence does not necessarily mean that there is a 10% chance that the proposition is wrong.
When “winter” refers to three calendar months, they say which months:
http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/Temperature/T_moreFigs/4seasons.gif
St. Louis became known as the Gateway to the West because, in the days of covered wagons drawn by horses, The Mississippi River froze over so that a wagon and 4 horses could drive across the river on the ice.
I need documentation of the above. I forgot where I read it. Can anybody help?
Now you can’t drive on the ice at Davenport, Iowa. There usually isn’t any ice here.
JEP 400: Very likely means 90% in IPCC-speak. For me that means that it is statistically imaginable that CO2 has nothing to do with the current warming. From the physics perspective I don’t see a way around it but when the experts tell me there is a 1 in 10 chance that the current warming isn’t CO2 driven and I’m presented with a mechanism such as the one my denailist proposed I feel obligated to consider it.
BPL: Are you sure that’s what they’re saying?
Google found documentation of ice on the Mississippi at St. Louis for me.
I can’t believe nobody has mentioned the footnote. First of all, it’s “at least 90%”, so the remaining unexplained factor is of indeterminate size. Then the footnote says “Consideration of remaining uncertainty is based on current methodologies.”
I expect AR5 will move it up to 95%, since they’re a conservative bunch, and assessing the magnitude of natural variation is a tricky business, as the tree ring folks will tell you. Perhaps AR6 will dare to go to 99%. We will really be feeling the heat by then.
#406 Ed
The Mississippi has frozen over at St Louis a few times in the past, but never on a regular basis. Even then, it wasn’t really frozen, but a huge ice dam.
An ice dam formed just north of St Louis last winter. Is that proof that global warming isn’t occuring?
Hank,
Your link stated that winter 2010 was the warmest on record based on an editorial by Bill Chameides. However, his evidence was a link which stated that April, 2010 was the warmest on record, NOT the winter. Typically winter refers to the three months from Dec. – Feb. NOAA reported the winter of 2009-2010 as the 5th warmest on record. They reported the oceans as being the 2nd warmest, but the land was only the 13th warmest. Much of the differences between the reporting agencies is their handling of non-measured global areas.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=global&year=2010&month=2
402, Ray Ladbury: Again, both statistical and physical arguments are important, but it is also important to understand that confidence is not probability.
Nevertheless, probability theory is used by Bayesians to model strength of belief. The belief and aleatory aspects of probability have always developed together: Ian Hacking, The Emergence of Probability.
Oh, this is a good one: “childhood silitilt”.
Edward Greisch, The Missisippi near St. Louis froze over in 2003 at least. People couldn’t drive across though because barge ice breakers mostly kept the channel open (and it’s illegal!)
“An ice dam formed just north of St Louis last winter. Is that proof that global warming isn’t occuring?” – JiminMpls
No. Assuming you’re serious (which would be hard to credit if I had not come across this sort of idiocy from denialists more times than I can count), have you really not grasped the difference between weather and climate?
Nick #412, JiminMpls was arguing ad absurdum against proving global warming by weather events, nothing more. That would be clear to anyone who knows his comment record. Holster that .38…
Quite right Nick,
The ice buildup during one winter is proof of nothing. Had he presented a long-term data of ice extent on the river or southern expanse, then maybe a parallel could be drawn. That is, assuming there is no man-made intervention with the ice buildup.
It still amazes me how many people claim that global warming is(not) happening due to a heat wave or cold spell.
Nick Gotts: The Mississippi froze over at New Orleans in 1784, but it had help from a volcano. Source: Heidi Cullen’s book on future weather.
The point is an unscientific “proof” that GW has happened. If you set up a good google advanced search, you can find more and more ice as you go back in history.
http://lds.org/gospellibrary/pioneer/02_Nauvoo.html shows a tiny painting of horse drawn wagons crossing the river at Nauvoo, Iowa in 1838.
I am talking about 1838, not 2003. Recently, meaning since 1990, there has not been any safe-to-walk-on ice at Davenport, Iowa. There was good ice in late 1968 at Davenport.
Again, regular crossing with horses and wagons at St. Louis is something that could only happen from 1800 to about the civil war or something like that. I have not yet found a history that goes year-by-year with a history of ice extent and dates, starting in 1780. THAT is what I would like to find.
“On the 13th of January, 1862, the Seventh was ordered to embark on a transport for the south. It was marched to St. Louis, and embarked on the noble steamer “Continental.” The weather was intensely cold, which detained the boat till about 9 o’clock at night, when she got under way, the river being full of floating ice, and proceeded down the river about twenty miles, where she was frozen up in the middle of the stream. We remained on board two days, when the ice became solid, and the regiment with its baggage was removed to the shore, took railroad, and returned to St. Louis.”
http://iagenweb.org/civilwar/regiment/infantry/07th/7th-inf-hist.htm
Please get as many people as possible to look at the video below of David H. Koch leading the Tea Party:
“Video proof David Koch, the polluting billionaire, pulls the strings of the Tea Party extremists”
http://climateprogress.org/2010/10/14/video-proof-david-koch-the-polluting-billionaire-pulls-the-strings-of-the-tea-party-extremists/
or
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JjQxPJOAfg&feature=player_embedded#!
The Koch brothers own Koch Oil Company.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/
Dan H, asking again — where did you find the “list” you attributed to Jones at Hadley? What’s your source for what you posted?
Ed,
You can’t take isolated weather events and make sweeping generalizations about climate change – or the lack thereof. The Mississippi has been so dramatically re-engineered over the past 100 years that even if you had detailed year-by-year records of freezes, you couldn’t draw clear conclusions from that.
For example, the river *never* freezes anymore just north of Red Wing, MN, but it has nothing to do with a warming climate. It’s the Prairie Island nuclear power plant warming the water. Just south of Red Wing, however, Lake Pepin freezes over nearly every year just as it always has. Just south of Lake Pepin, the dam and locks at Wabasha creates another break in the ice – and is probably the premier spot in the world for viewing bald eagles in the winter. I’ve been there when it was -12F and there were at least 50 bald eagles soaring and diving for fish.
Melbourne had all-time record cold temps in July. Does that mean Australia has been getting cooler?
Hank,
What do you mean by “list?” I referenced the monthly HadCRU data earlier. NOAA has similar data.
Hank,
If you want the raw data, here it is. Winter 1997-8 was the warmest followed by 2003-4, 2006-7, and 2001-2.
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcrut3/diagnostics/global/nh+sh/monthly
> Dan H
375/
and followups: 376, 392, 397, 399
CM@413,
Thanks. Poe’s law strikes again!
Hank,
After inclusion of the Sept. data, HadCRU currently has 2010 as the 2nd warmest, barely edging out 2002 and 2005. (The super El Nino year of 1998 was by far the warmest).
Dan, pointer please to the source you’re relying on for your statements.
I can guess. But you are capable of just copying the link off the navigation bar of your browser and pasting it in. Where are you getting your data?
What measure of significance is used for your statement about significance above? Just tell us where you’re getting your info, that’s what I’ve been asking.
You might be looking at something like the error bars here:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/2009/global-jan-dec-error-bar.gif — but look at the error bars there.
You might be doing your own calculations of significance, and be able to show your work.
You might be relying on something second hand you trust.
Or you be looking at the Hadley site and have significance numbers there.
Say where you get your info so people can look at your source.
If you found it at ‘climate4you’ you pointed to originally, what page?
You know what ‘significant’ means.
407 Didactylos said: I can’t believe nobody has mentioned the footnote. First of all, it’s “at least 90%”, so the remaining unexplained factor is of indeterminate size. Then the footnote says “Consideration of remaining uncertainty is based on current methodologies.”
I don’t know what they might have used other than current methodologies. The only other choices I can think of are old/obsolete or nonexistent methodologies. I copied the line in which they said that the probability (that the current warming was anthropic in nature ) had increased from likely in TAR to very likely in AR4WG1. I don’t see how any rational non-expert can argue certainty when the IPCC says 90%. As you pointed out the IPCC has two higher categories that they could’ve used but didn’t: extremely likely (>95%) and virtually certain (>99%). Personally I found chapter 9 of AR4WG1 a little bizarre. They wrote: “Greenhouse gas forcing has very likely caused most of the
observed global warming over the last 50 years. This conclusion
takes into account observational and forcing uncertainty, and
the possibility that the response to solar forcing could be
underestimated by climate models. It is also robust to the use
of different climate models, different methods for estimating
the responses to external forcing and variations in the analysis
technique.”
But there is no discussion as to why they didn’t say “extremely likely”.
Playing with unforced variations?
Climate change computer game
Fate of the World
reCAPTCHA: contrary govemoot
Hank,
420 has the link to the raw HadCRU data, and 375 has the link to the graph of the same data. I have provided the links, what more do you want? I am a chemist, I know what significance means, and 95% confidence.
OK, Dan’s link to Hadley popped in after I posted my question. He’s done his best to be helpful.
366 Hank Roberts,
Is it a problem that I post similar information at the Economist magazine as I do here?
I have no idea what NAWAPA is.
363 and 365 Anono C.
You say that there is no way that that 60,000 square miles of standing forests could hold enough ‘carbon’ to matter, but you can comprehend that sinking enough logs in oceans or lakes somewhere would be ‘enough’.
Actually, in my approach you could do anything at all that would preserve logs harvested as a part of managing mature forests, including making lumber for permanent construction, burying it in oxygen depleted situations where bacteria do not live. Being of economic frame of mind, I see no real advantage in burying good wood.
Branches and chips etc, could processed into biochar and burying that charcoal as stable carbon, yes really carbon. (I can’t find the persuasive mention of biochar here in past comments, but it seemed reasonable.)
You keep asking about quantitative info. Is it the 60,000 square miles you missed in my first rough estimate of a sufficient sized forest project? I believe I said a 3000 mile aquaduct, with 10 mile branches on each side, would be enough to match the on-going CO2 release from coal fired power plants in the USA. That would be after some years of lag while a high rate of growth became established. I compare that lag to the lag for the EPA to force coal fired power plants to upgrade to that EPA’s idea of CCS.
(Repeating a discussion of EPA planning: The announced plan by the EPA is to require ‘best available technology’ and the recent report by them (Sept 2010) said ‘carbon’ capture would cost up to $95 per ton of CO2. Working this out in terms of the burden on the use of a ton of coal shows that the burden for use of a ton of Powder River Basin coal (half the element carbon by weight) will be about $180 per ton of that coal, and higher carbon coal would incur proportionately higher burden, up to around $320 per ton.
374 Ray Ladbury and 366 Hank Roberts
Hank Roberts, you say that NAWAPA was done in detail, so it is an old idea, suggesting of course that there is no reason to think on it again in present circumstances 50 years later, but if I could show that new forests could be established with new water that would add something new.
So were I to step up and point out that orchards, having characteristics similar to trees since they are in fact trees, stretch as far as the eye can see in the California Central Valley lining the California Aquaduct; you could associate my discussion with NAWAPA, whatever the heck that was?
Then Whammo, along comes Ray Ladbury who says NAWAPA involved nukes? That is a slick way to argue against anything you don’t like.
Why do I feel like Charlie Brown?
Actually, I discuss using a large labor force to create the needed water system, and this force would be drawn from our underemployed work force, thus relieving another problem situation. No nukes needed!
Not being inclined to see conspiracies around every corner, I am sure this had no coordinated intent.
As the election results roll in, it is abundantly clear that the United States will do absolutely nothing to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The rest of the world must take action: Place a 100% tarrif on all US goods and services until the USA reduces carbon emissions top 20% of 1990 levels.
Hello all, I hope I am not hijacking the thread (I wish RC had a general question thread)
, but my good buddy Wally over at Climate Skeptic has done the following critique of Gavin’s paper “Spurious correlations between recent warming and indices of local economic activity,” which is itself a response to McKitrick, R.R. and P.J. Michaels (2007), Quantifying the influence of anthropogenic surface processes and inhomogeneities on gridded global climate data.
Does anyone know these papers and could anyone shed some insight in Wally’s somewhat one sided critique?
First, he talks about the de Laat and Maurellis 2006 paper (referred to as dLM06). His basic criticism seems to stem from a belief that this result doesn’t break some sort of confidence threshold and is subject to several biases. The main bias he talks about is starting point. Look at Figure 2. He started the same analysis at 6 different time points, every 10 years from 1940 to 1980. What he found was strong negative temp correlations to CO2 output in one case. Small negative in one, small positive in another, some what medium positive in one, and strong positive in two.
This was an odd way to approach this problem. It would seem far better to simply take 1940 to 2003 as one large data set instead of breaking it up into 6, 23 year over lapping windows. If Gavin’s real motivation was to prove what is going on, I suspect this what he would have done that. Instead, it appears his motivation is to simply discredit the other work and say “see I can do this 5 other times and get 4 different results.” That’s nice Gavin, but what I really want is the truth. But it does seem the over all trend between the 6 runs is positive (two strong +, one mild +, one weak +, one weak -, one strong – would seem to add up to one strong + plus one mild +). Given the overlapping nature of the 6 runs however, its pretty much impossible to figure out just how much, however. As comes up later with the other paper, these tests where non-independent Gavin….
Also, he makes no attempt to actually test how well this method does rise above what ever significance threshold he cares to use. Such as in figure one, he shows how noisy the data is. Great, its noisy, we know that. Its climate data. But that doesn’t mean you can’t find a significant change in the mean. So yeah, the noise (here shown as 1 SD in gray) goes from 0 to .6 C/decade in figure one, but the mean is still up at ~.4 C/decade. Well Gavin, what’s the confidence in that mean being significantly different from zero, or the raw, un-UHI-adjusted temp record?
This was a half cooked criticism that with a little more time might have actually proven something useful. It does make me wonder, given Gavin’s obvious biases from a strong personal investment in one particular side of the debate in a private blog, if the more in depth analysis showed something he didn’t like and he stopped half way.
Now our MM07 paper criticisms by Gavin:
1) Lower trophosphere will naturally have less outliers than the surface because it more well mixed, thus you might get random correlation with human activity and outliers.
No duh Gavin, this is stat 101 and why you create a large sample size and control group. MM07 did that. You don’t have anything here.
2) Adjacent areas are not fully independent with regard to temp.
Again no duh, but that’s the point. The adjacent areas are that “control group” that are supposed to make for decent proxies for what unbiased temps might be. There is a little to be said that maybe you still see an effect in adjacent boxes from human activity in the other box, but if you go farther out, you lessen the ability to find what the temp “should be” in the UHI box in question. Really don’t see anything of consequence here either.
And I like his little quote: “Some indication of this is given by the fact that the largest ‘contamination’ deduced from their methodology are in very remote polar regions such as Svalbard or the South Orkneys, hardly sites of significant industry”
That’s rather throw away here. Maybe human activity has a larger effect in polar regions for any number of reasons, like say replacing highly reflective white snow/ice with asphalt? Point not made Gavin.
3) He reran the analysis with slightly different methods with the updated CRUv3 (MM07 used CRUv2). He states:
“More interestingly, the significance of correlations to population, income and GDP growth disappear, pointing clearly to the fragility of these relationships.”
I would argue population as well as income growth and GDP growth are poor markers anyway. Population is a poor proxy for the type of land use, economic output and general infrastructure of a city. However, population did not “go away,” it was reduced by about 3/5th (.38 to .15). GDP growth, being a derivative, is going to swing greatly from positive to negative based on any number of factors. So UHI effect might not actually change in say New York, but the GDP estimate might go down, or stay flat, or go up. Seems silly to use this. Similar with income growth. Look I went from making a dollar a day to 3 dollars per day. I tripled my income! But here in the US, you went from $45K/year to $50K/year and you only went up 11%. Similarly silly. However, here again the correlation did not “go away” it went from .409 to .266.
Gavin is clearly over stating his case. “Significance” never goes away, since “significance” is a completely arbitrary term. One might think a correlation over <.5 isn't significant, and another might think <.25 isn't significant, and neither person is right or wrong. Its better to just tell us what the values are, and we can judge for ourselves. Like here, so the correlation dropped, but a correlation of ~.25 is nothing to thumb your nose at. Maybe he's got a case with .15. But you have to understand these are imperfect predictors of actual land usage, and types of economic activity, and all have some sort of faults. Thus getting correlations from them of this scale might actually be considered pretty strong.
"The economic indices ‘g’ (Total GDP), ‘e’ (education) and ‘c’ (coal use) do, however, remain nominally significant (under the MM07 assumptions)."
Right, some of the better markers remain quite strong.
4) He talks about the degrees of freedom between these multiple regression that MM07 ran. I'd agree. GDP is not going to be independent from education or coal usage, for example. But it doesn't really matter. We got a very strong correlation coefficient from probably the best maker we can use, GDP, at .44-.55 depending on the data/method used.
5) Gavin apparently then wishes to run this analysis against his GISS model? Not sure what kind of BS he thinks will come from that, but its plainly stupid. His model is not real data.
So Gavin brought up an occasional useful point, but I do not believe anything he said materially effects the general result of either paper. It might be possible the UHI was slightly over estimated (say small factors from non-independent variables, or using a larger data set in dLM06), but Gavin hardly makes a convincing case of that, and I see absolutely ZERO data, analysis and result that actually supports his statement in the abstract of " there is no compelling evidence from these correlations of any large-scale contamination.” MM07 and dLM06 both make cases that there is a significant effect on the temp records from the UHI effect, and nothing Gavin said leads me to believe they made any mistakes or oversights to change that general resul
[Response: I’m on travel this week and so I can’t provide any kind of an depth response, but
you havehe has clearly not understood what the point of the paper was. The fact of the matter is that for both dLM06 and MM07, correlations that are just as significant appear when you do the same analyses with model output that has no ‘contamination’ – and this goes for the various attempts that Mckitrick has made to rescue his original result. The correlations are spurious and do not stand up to scrutiny (remember too that dLM06 also found an effect in the satellite data). However this topic is OT on this thread. No more please. – gavin][moved from original location]
*sigh* No discussion of albedo? Dr. Joel Norris of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography gave an excellent colloquium presentation on this topic to scientists at Fermilab National Laboratory, please see the video here:
http://vmsstreamer1.fnal.gov/VMS_Site_03/Lectures/Colloquium/100512Norris/index.htm
BTW, Dr.
JohnDavid Archer just gave his “Long Thaw” talk to Fermilab, and I met him & obtained his signature in my copy of the book! Not bad, eh?In his book, he seems to agree with me on the importance of oceanic acidification as an immediate concern, as does Dr. Norris & the folks at Scripps. I wish this would be discussed more on RC, we are seeing some severe impacts in the oceans, particularly in the high latitudes.
Cheers, Chuck the DrPH
[comment moved]
Jim Bullis,
Claiming that a 60’000 square miles forest would make a difference is ludicrous. It’s the kind of thing one would normally not bother to respond to. But what I’d like to see since you keep posting about this in one thread after another and since the moderators keep humoring you is how you figure it would offset emissions from coal plants, quantitatively. How did you come up with a C uptake of about 40t/ha/yr? And you long is that supposed to last before you need a newer, larger forest to offset growing emissions?
The reason burying logs (or biochar but that would involve more work) has more potential is that burying (or sinking) adds up over the long run if it’s done over and over again with biomass from the same forest while letting the forest stand only captures CO2 once (and only as long as the forest survives). Of course letting the forest stand is going to remove more atmospheric CO2 in the short run but forests are not a short run thing anyway. The only thing which can possibly work to keep atmospheric carbon in check in the short run is unrealistic emission cuts. By long run I mean century-scale as opposed to decade-scale.
Jim Bullis,
The North American Water And Power Aliance was a program to bring water to the great plains. One proposed project was to use nukes to block and then reverse the flow of the Yukon. It was part of the program to find peaceful uses for nukes.
Chuck,
The idea of ocean acidification due to increased atmospheric levels of CO2 has been greatly overblown. The theoretical change in pH from 350 ppm CO2 to 700 ppm would be ~0.15 pH units. However, that would be in pure water. The oceans are anything but pure. The excess calcium in the seas would bind with some of the CO2 to orm limestone (CaCO3). This also ignores the biological action of the seas which tends to pull H+ out of the water. The buffering capabilities of the world’s oceans has been largely underestimated.
[Response: So you’re an ocean chemist then? References for those numbers? First of all, if you take 280 ppm as the pre-ind. baseline (as you should), there’s already been a pH decrease of ~ 0.1 unit, which, since the scale is logarithmic is roughly about a ~30% increase in [H+], and which would further increase to something like 100 to 150% at CO2 doubling of 560 ppm. At your 700 ppm this would be an ~ 200% increase, which is to say, ~ 300% of the pre-industrial [H+]. Sorry to say, you haven’t just nullified the findings of hundreds of ocean scientists over the last century plus with your claims–Jim]
[comment moved]
John E. Pearson: to be frank, I didn’t really understand the footnote.
@Comment by Dan H. — 3 November 2010 @ 12:24 PM, and others on RC:
I’m a biochemist at University of Illinois, performing research on algae biofuel. I’ve studied atmospheric carbon deposition since 1979, focussing on biomethane capture and destruction from manure systems.
This is the problem – the dissolution of carbon dioxide occurs at the interface of air and ocean water, which is also where the great majority of oceanic photosynthesis occurs (uppermost 10 feet or so). So, the production of carbonic acid throughout the water column is irrelevant, since the impact is most felt in the uppermost layer.
Calcifying algae such as coccolithophores are severely impacted at this acidified interface, and these guys are the foundation of the food chain as well as one of the primary methods by which carbon dioxide is converted to carbonates (in the form of exterior carbonate scales). Algae are either consumed or die, sinking to the deep ocean floor & carrying the carbonate with them. Dr. David (!) Archer seems to be in agreement with this from what I’ve read.
At a present CO2 concentration of about 390 ppm, these effects are being observed (refer to the EPA database). The mistake everyone keeps making is to look at atmospheric CO2 dissolved into the ENTIRE volume of the ocean!! Just worry about the interface. There’s a bit of recent news about this, please see:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/10/13/3037651.htm
The focus upon temperature alone is short-sited. Those of us who want controls on atmospheric carbon deposition must advocate broadly on a variety of environmental changes. The public is getting testy about long-range forecasts, but we are facing collapse of oceanic food chains in the not so distant future. If that happens, we better get used to eating jellyfish!! (a line from one of my colleagues)
[comment moved]
The whole problem of ocean acidification affecting the base of the food chain is something I find really disturbing, to put it mildly. Here are a few other articles that have high rates of being cited. Some I’ve read, some I have not yet, so I can’t vouch for them, but they’re good starting places for someone who is interested in the subject.
https://darchive.mblwhoilibrary.org/bitstream/handle/1912/370/Orr2004-12-27985_text.pdf?sequence=1
http://eprints.ifm-geomar.de/7878/1/965_Raven_2005_OceanAcidificationDueToIncreasing_Monogr_pubid13120.pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2596239/
http://www.reefresilience.org/pdf/Fabry_etal_2008.pdf
http://ic.ucsc.edu/~acr/eart254/Doneyetal2009.pdf
heehee ReCaptcha says “his dransbum”
435 Anon C
You seem to find it objectionable that I keep discussing the standing forest as a solution, but you continue to illustrate that we are not adequately communicating. You also help to bring out details, and though it sounds from your tone that you find that distasteful, thanks anyway. I might add that I have not intended to blurt out a full project plan, but am really putting details on as I go. I started with a general concept that looked interesting.
I would include selective harvesting from a mature forest as a long term part of my suggested plan. I would seek to make this an economically viable harvest, where wood was put to good use as much as possible. Biochar would be a cleanup level activity if it was found to be meaningful.
You would include large scale harvest and burying of logs. And you seem to think this would not be so labor intensive. I think you are wrong about that. Yes, getting the logs to some body of water where bacterial action is not going to happen would also serve to capture CO2, and the long term process could go on as long as there was sufficient water storage. I can see that your approach would require less acreage, but I reiterate, it has not the fundamental economic feature of being self supporting. Buried logs are not a product.
And yes, there would be a need for continuous expansion of the mature forest since the greater capture rate is as you say, during earlier growth phases. I am not thinking much beyond the 50 to 100 year time frame, during which it would be appropriate to develop other means of power generation than coal.
I particularly look to natural gas, though not in the central power plant system that we now have, rather in a cogeneration arrangement, mostly using micro sized systems at households. Micro systems in households would enable use of heat for a variety of purposes, including obvious space heating and so forth, but also for refrigeration and air conditioning using vapor diffusion methods. And of course, nuclear done right, is still something that should not be ignored. I also have a bizarre hope of utilizing engines of small hybrid vehicles in the cogeneration function. That seems not to be something that will happen immediately, but it could as time goes on.
Even on the 50 to 100 year time frame it becomes reasonable to expect much better insulation in buildings, since that is something like the useful time frame of buildings, and it is much more cost effective to build with good insulation than it is to remodel old construction.
So feel free to stomp around with indignation, and maybe we will get somewhere.
Jim 432: As the election results roll in, it is abundantly clear that the United States will do absolutely nothing to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
BPL: Unfortunately, no one else will, either. Not enough to matter. Russia, China, and India are all devoted to pushing fossil fuels, right along with the US.
40-45 years from now human civilization will collapse. Nothing we can do about it at this point. This entire discussion has pretty much become academic. We’re screwed.
[Response: Barton, please.]
BTW, did you see the new GOP congress is going to hold hearings on the “Global Warming Fraud?” What a surprise.
[Response: Bring it on–Jim]
It sounds like Canadians understand these things quite well, and this shows that getting involvement of Canadians would require offering them a serious degree of participation on the productivity side of things.
Extracting from a Wall Street Journal article of Nov 2, 2010:
“- – – British Columbia has spent the better part of a decade lobbying Chinese officials to adopt a “Wood First” program to mitigate the effects of global warming. Touting timber as an alternative to steel, glass, and especially concrete, Canadians have sent teams of engineers and lumber experts to persuade officials in cities like Shanghai and Chengdu to adapt municipal building codes to allow for more wood construction in multistory structures.
In some cities, Canadians are building demonstration models of six-story apartment houses and other public buildings to show what wood can do. —“
Sellers prefer to sell higher-priced kiln-dried lumber. Importers want cheap sawlogs — available from Siberia, often with weed seeds and insect larvae included. http://www.albionmonitor.com/9701a/usdaforest.html
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=california-cuts-carbon-in-bid
“The California Air Resources Board developed … 70 measures, such as a low-carbon fuel standard, an increase in electricity generated from renewable resources to 33 percent, and a cap-and-trade program for 360 utilities, refineries and other emitting industries. The state released its more than 3,000-page rules for that greenhouse gas permit trading program on October 29….
… The majority of the efforts are … standards … such as a new limit on energy usage for televisions with more than 42-inch screens….
… The low-carbon fuel standard … final rule is expected in early 2011 … the board is struggling to understand the greenhouse gas emissions … directly and indirectly impacted by growing crops for biofuels. ‘It really is the single issue holding back the low-carbon fuel standards’ ….”
Ecology. Complicated.
Congressional Research Service, March 2010
Report for Congress Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress
Deforestation and Climate Change
http://www.opencrs.com/document/R41144/2010-03-24/download/1005/
“The issues surrounding tree planting to offset deforestation are discussed ….
… reforestation of cleared areas is not always successful, because of drought and invasion by competing species (native brush, plants used for erosion control, invasive exotics, etc.). In some areas, natural succession may require years or decades to reestablish tree cover, and climate change may prevent such “normal” recovery.
…
… Naturally regrown (second-growth) forests in the tropics have been shown to contain less biological diversity and less total biomass (carbon) than intact forests, and forest plantations in the tropics have far less diversity and biomass than second-growth forests.130 Thus, under many circumstances, deforestation in tropical forests emits substantial quantities of carbon that cannot be adequately compensated by reforestation except in the very long term (several decades to centuries).”
What the BC government and the BC forestry industry understand well is marketing ploys, they need desperately to find a market for their lumber from clearcuts as the US housing industry collapsed and US clearcutters have gotten protectionist – BC has been trying to get a share of the Chinese market since way before climate change became a trade tool, using any hype they can think of, but the purpose is definitely not to “mitigate the effects of global warming”, it’s to maintain transnational corporate profits – most of the major BC forestry companies are American owned and none of them have an interest in climate change beyond how it might be used to enhance their bottom line.
Jim Bullis,
In your 50-100 years timeframe, your 60’000 square miles super-forest would have to fix 2-4ktC/ha to offset the emissions from coal (assuming you would grow the forest beyond its original size to keep up with emissions growth). If I wasn’t stomping in indignation, I would be rolling on the floor!
As to making use of the wood as two of you have suggested, again the numbers don’t work. We wouldn’t know what to do with so much wood. How you figured how many six-story wooden buildings in China would need to be built every year to sequestrate the emissions from their coal plants?
446 flxible
It seems like the Canadians are demonstrating how government and corporations can work in the common interest.
I did not mean to suggest that corporations exist for any purpose other than economic gain. Non-profits might be different, but even there it often turns out that the organization exists for the purpose of remunerating those that work there. I expect no morality from corporations and when there is a pretense of it, I take a strongly skeptical attitude.
However, where a corporate activity is in concert with public interests, it is appropriate that they brag about it and even seek ways to work for whatever common cause they can find.
Also, since I expect no morality, I realize the limits of what we should expect from corporations, and I know that government has to step up to fulfill its purpose as the creator and, especially, as regulator of the corporate entity.
However, the corporation serves a vital purpose in organizing projects that we all benefit from, both from the corporate operations such as providing electric power, and from providing an investment mechanism on which much of our future financial security is based.
This all leads to the need to keep a massive forest project in the public domain, literally, such that it serves the common good. This does not exclude contractual arrangements of whatever sort are appropriate.
447 Anon anon
You need to be careful not to stomp on your own toes. This same magnitude at which you scoff is equal to the magnitude of trees that you suggest could be stored in a lake at oxygen free depth. Note that national land holdings vastly exceed available lake storage capacity.
But since we are getting to numbers more precise than I have yet to do, we should first clarify what 2-4kTC means to you. Are we using EPA nomenclature where C refers to CO2? If so, ignoring water content, that is estimating wood mass as if it were dry, we get 1-2kTC per ha needed to be captured over 50 years and held permanently. Using round numbers of 100 large trees per ha, that means 10 – 20 tons per tree. A fully loaded logging truck might carry 20 tons(max for CA 18 wheeler trucks is 80,000 lbs.with 25,000 lb for the tractor and 15,000 lb for the trailer,leaving 20 tons for payload), and one large tree can be something like a load. So maybe we are in the ballpark? This all depends on tree type and so forth.
I would say we are close enough to have something to work with here.
And once again, I count success in varying ways, not necessarily including 100% capture of all CO2 from all existing and future coal power plants. The EPA is not thinking of any such wholesale implementation of CCS either. And I repeat, this is not a solution to forever burning of coal in central power plants as we do it today.
The study from Los Alamos indicated afforestation/reforestation of the United States and Canada will increase warming.