Climate change forecasts 50 years hence

D

Duke of Marmalade

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I'm in danger of sending this excellent forum off topic but here goes anyway. I presume there is irrefutable evidence that temperatures are rising, though I understand it is by no means true every year. What makes me think that if there was irrefutable evidence of temperatures falling we would also be hearing warnings of Armageddon. To me the speculation about outcomes in 50 years time is just that, speculation, not irrefutable evidence.
It is reasonable of course to expect there will be some change to the human condition wrought by climate change but it seems to me that a conviction that this change will be calamitous has an almost religious belief that the good Lord created the perfect climate for his creatures.
 
The scientists are not speculating, they are using historical records and fairly advanced modelling (which I don't claim to understand) to project the impact of increasing GHGs emissions on our planet.

What we need to do is not changing, with each year that goes by where we don't take action it's the SCALE of what is needed that changes.
 
Climate change is about money, give the pretend scientists more as if that will change the climate, there is no evidence to suggest c02 causes global warming.
The climate has changed since the beginning of time and will do long after we are gone, you can burn all the coal,gas and oil and it won't make any difference, there is evidence to suggest the earth is actually cooling because of the energy output of the sun, look at the evidence in a balanced view and you will come to the same conclusion, it's about money for the pretend scientists.
 
Something is going on with the climate, but I'm rather dubious about handing economic control of the planet to climate scientists who can't explain the Medieval Warm Period but claim to have such perfect knowledge of the next 50 years.
Just in the last 20 years we had the whole go diesel debacle which has probably led to more deaths than anything directly climate change related.

As Ian O'Doherty wrote in Independent this weekend, realistically if you are that concerned about climate change you should be pushing for nuclear energy, which is a current known energy producing option that dramatically reduces emissions. A lot of the other proposals are not realistic, when even France can't push through fuel hikes and China brings more and more coal plants online.
 
Plus hard to take concern about the climate seriously from those many people whose emissions footprint in a month is more than mine in a lifetime... and I amnt really trying. Just I am stingy.
 
While I share a certain scepticism about the consensus around climate change.

This
BilliamD75 said:
there is no evidence to suggest c02 causes global warming.
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is simply wrong. Understanding the greenhouse effect of certain gases is leaving cert chemistry.

I agree that the observed historical variation in climate does not appear to be explained, The Medieval Warm Period and the subsequent Little Ice Age. These are not just the objections of cranks. In 1658 the Swedish King Charles X Gustav marched 12,000 soldiers across the frozen sea to invade Denmark. Fairs were held on the frozen Thames in the Elizabethan period. But in Roman times sea levels were lower than today and there was inhabited land in the Netherlands which is even today under the sea. The Romans grew grapes in Northumbria, which suggests temperatures well in excess of 2 degrees warmer than today.
 
BilliamD75 said:
Climate change is about money, give the pretend scientists more as if that will change the climate
Click to expand...

Where are they asking for that? What climate scientist is asking for more money? Most of the reports I've seen have recommendations that will see them calling for goverments to take action that will see them losing out financially. I haven't heard of a single occasion any such scientist has requested funding with the notion that they can have some effect, perhaps you could point us to that?

BilliamD75 said:
there is no evidence to suggest c02 causes global warming.
Click to expand...

There isn't???? Here's one paper, what about the methods/ outcome do you find is flawed?


Wow!! Can you point us to peer reviewed work that backs up those points? I've read a couple of pieces that propose cooling, but they are fundamentally flawed in their approach and scope, and mostly dating from the '70s!

It's really weird that the 'energy output from the sun' would be responsible for cooling the earth when solar radiation increased steadily over the 20th century and has seemed to stabilise at historically high levels. Oh, and there also isn't a single study on solar activity that points to long term impact on the climate in either direction. There's a few that show short term effects of the sun's ~11 year magnetic cycle.
 
I suppose my point is the human penchant for predicting Armageddon which goes back to Nostradamus. Has there ever been a school predicting good things and yet the human condition today is so vastly superior to that of a few centuries ago.

There are many examples, but perhaps the most relevant was the dire warning of the population explosion which dominated 60's popular discourse. It is relevant because in fact the underlying projection was scientifically based and was indeed borne out. The world population has increased from 3bn in 1960 to over 7.5bn today. So they got that right. But what they got so terribly wrong was that it was claimed we wouldn't be able to cope with that. With obvious exceptions (mostly due to wars) we on the whole are far better off today than we were 50 years ago.

So it may indeed be the case that temperatures will continue to rise but the predictions of the dire consequences remain to me to be highly speculative and informed by an inherent dooms watch in our psyche.
 
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a comment on the fact that 2/3rds of wild animals have gone from the planet caught my attention. There is definitely far less birds around than when I was a child. What to me is clear is that things are changing and if you stop and observe you can notice that change. I grew up with very little plastic in use but now it's everywhere and that one issue has always rankled withme
 
Other unintended consequenes of, for example, switching to bio-fuels such as palm oil, is deforestation and habitat loss.
Almost half the palm oil imported into the EU is used in biofuel.
 
odyssey06 said:
Other unintended consequenes of, for example, switching to bio-fuels such as palm oil, is deforestation and habitat loss.
Almost half the palm oil imported into the EU is used in biofuel.
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I agree. Biofuels are most certainly not the answer. They cause significant environmental damage.

The only viable solution we currently have to burning hydrocarbons, or will have in the medium term, is nuclear power.
 
That's why I keep asking my friends and colleagues: do you really need to buy that? Do you need to get the goods you bought in that paper bag that will probably not be re-used again? Please any small change can help in the long run. We cannot keep proliferating and believe that this planet will keep surviving, I am sorry this is just not realistic... We are interconnected here... And I think Mike Burry is a genius in investing in water and so Harvard:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/harvar...-vineyardsand-the-water-underneath-1544456396
 
I was thinking about climate change the other day and the green house effect.
Well green houses are good at growing plants so simply grow more plants to soak up the CO2 and problem solved.
 
RichInSpirit said:
I was thinking about climate change te other day and the green house effect.
Well green houses are good at growing plants so simply grow more plants to soak up the CO2 and problem solved.
Click to expand...

Good idea but there are two problems with it. The first is that plants only temporarily absorb CO2. When they die and decay the CO2 is returned to the atmosphere. It would be preferable if there was a way for the CO2 to be sequestered for longer than the lifetime of the plant. Nevertheless, trees can have lifetimes of hundreds of years, so let's suppose we could make do with that.

There was a study published recently about the effect of European colonisation of the Americas. Apart from killing lots of people, it disrupted agriculture so much that large areas became afforested. This drew down 5 parts-per-million of CO2 from the atmosphere and caused Europe's "Little Ice Age". However, this is only three years worth of current CO2 increases, and the afforested area was the size of France. It puts in perspective the amount of new plant growth that would be required to offset modern CO2 output.
 
Here's a Swiss company claiming to have a commercial process for drawing down CO₂ from air -- Climeworks promo video, plus article from qz.com. "Commercial" obviously means having a paying customer, and in this case the first one is a huge grower taking CO₂ and waste heat for greenhouses from a nearby incinerator. For long term sequestration the idea would be to dissolve the CO₂ in water and pump it into underground basalt rocks where it reacts with minerals to become carbonate rock. A tonne of CO₂ can be stored in 14 cubic metres of basalt, and there are easily enough basalt formations readily available in subsea locations, along with seawater as the solvent.

The problem with applying this to the wider climate change issue is one of scale and cost. We emit more than 30 gigatonnes (30 × 10⁹ t) of CO₂ per year, and would need to sequester at least 10 Gt per year to make a dent in the problem. Climeworks' current cost is $600/t which they eventually hope to reduce to $100/t. It's not clear if that covers capital cost or just operation, I suspect the latter. It's not clear if it even covers sequestration or just capture. In any case, the capture part is expected to dominate the cost. http://science.sciencemag.org/content/344/6182/373.full (This article) about carbon storage in basalt is more optimistic about costs, reckoning that the total cost of capture and storage could be $80 to $140 per tonne.

Let's be very optimistic and suppose that total operating cost and amortised capital cost for both capture and storage could be reduced to $100/t. The cost of 10 Gt annually would be a nice round trillion dollars. That is well over 1% of global GDP, using optimistic assumptions about a minimum level of intervention. On the other hand, it could compare favourably against the economic cost of reducing our GHG emissions by a third. Personally I doubt that anybody with sufficient clout is going to want to pay for either reduction or capture and sequestration.
 
Isn't there a plant in Iceland already using basalt rock to fix carbon dissolved in water?
 
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