Is Global Warming real?

SpaceNut · 2021-07-02 18:27:04

The change to the atmospher of earth also contains water vapor as well as methane both are known contributors as well to the warming effect.
We run our vehicles and power plants without a care for the exhaust output...all because of the need to move faster as well as further just to turn around and do it again hours later.
We use power just for the sake of having things on even though we will not use it anytime soon..

louis · 2021-07-02 18:34:55

The thing about temperature is that is not at all easy to say what the average air temperature of the whole globe is, even using satellite measurement.

But sea level rise is a much more objective measure. We don't have to measure sea level - we can rely on sea level as against land, particularly islands, whilst understanding that some land areas are rising or falling due to geological forces (I don't think there's any land that isn't either rising or falling relative to the oceans). So, at least with sea level we will know objectively when we see islands that aren't falling begin to disappear. We haven't seen any of that. In fact the Maldives and Seychells government are so confident the islands aren't going to disappear that they are spending billions on building international airports on these very low lying islands.

Whilst I am happy to accept that human-origin carbon emissions are affecting the climate, it's more difficult to say how and by how much.

I think we should try an return to pre-industrial carbon emissions levels on the precautionary principle.

There are other factors at work. THere has been a huge increase in irrigation schemes. Because these are often in desert or semi-desert areas there is a huge increase in water vapour into the atmosphere - from water that would otherwise have gone into the oceans. Could that be preventing sea level rise?

Equally, water vapour means clouds. No one really knows if water vapour is a greenhouse gas (well it is in one sense) or whether the albedo effect is more important (clouds reflecting insolation).

Calliban wrote:

The fact that carbon dioxide absorbs infrared light and therefore results in radiative forcing, is quite basic physics. It is a greenhouse gas, as average surface temperature needs to rise to overcome the feedback effect resulting from reradiation from the atmosphere to the surface. Carbon dioxide is a relatively weak greenhouse gas, but is being released in enormous quantities. Human beings are burning gigatonnes of fossil carbon every year and dumping the CO2 into the atmosphere. So, the fact that human beings are responsible for some amount of global climate change, is not controversial as far as I am concerned and I am puzzled as to why anyone would doubt that. What is less certain, is how feed back effects will combine to reinforce or dampen the effects resulting from increased radiative forcing.
It often amazes me how many people think that they can change what is true simply by arguing it. As if the eloquence of their words will somehow change reality, like some kind of magic spell turning piss into wine simply by quoting eloquent Latin words in the right order. We see it on this board and we see it in the wider world wherever vested interests are threatened. Renewable energy fanatics and fossil fuel supporting lobbies are both guilty of it. The problem is, that truth doesn't change just because you contest it or bury it in eloquent arguments. It remains exactly what it was before, just hidden by lies and distortions.
I think part of the reason that so many people are sceptical of human induced climate change, is due to perceptual error. Standing on the ground and looking up on a clear day, the sky appears as a vast, unending ocean of air. The apparent scale of sky to a human standing on the ground, reinforces the impression that any human impacts upon it must be tiny. But it is an illusion. If that ocean of air were to be condensed onto the surface of the Earth as a liquid, it would be a puny thirty feet thick. That isn't much taller than the average house. Compare that to the depth of the oceans, which average almost 1 mile deep. The atmosphere is a puny skin of fluid in comparison. The illusion of the boundless atmosphere disappears when travelling on a jet aeroplane. At 33,000' some three quarters of the atmosphere is beneath you, a thin skin of gas hugging the surface of our little world, just 6 miles thick. It doesn't look boundless at all when you look at it from above. Given how evidently human beings have changed the surface of the planet, one wonders why human action changing the composition of the atmosphere would be a controversial proposition?

louis · 2021-07-02 18:36:06

Re water vapour I don't think we do know what the net effect is since clouds reflect insolation back into space as well as acting like blankets.

SpaceNut wrote:

The change to the atmospher of earth also contains water vapor as well as methane both are known contributors as well to the warming effect.
We run our vehicles and power plants without a care for the exhaust output...all because of the need to move faster as well as further just to turn around and do it again hours later.
We use power just for the sake of having things on even though we will not use it anytime soon..

Mars_B4_Moon · 2021-07-10 07:53:18

Record Brazilian drought causes coffee prices to spike to highest level in years
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/brazil … -1.6096120

Spain braces for ‘extreme’ weekend heat with temperatures set to top 44ºC (111ºF)
https://english.elpais.com/spain/2021-0 … p-44c.html

SpaceNut · 2021-07-10 16:01:00

Thick clouds such as nimbostratus. and cumulonimbus would normally reflect 80–90% and absorb 10–20% of the solar radiation incident upon them but with less rain falling the number for reflection is dropping. This re-radiated heat is then absorbed and re-radiated by greenhouse gases and clouds, and warm the atmosphere gases, dust, and other particles 23% of incoming energy. Earth's average albedo is about 0.3. In other words, about 30 percent of incoming solar radiation is reflected back into space and 70 percent is absorbed.

Not all of the sunlight that reaches a PV cell is converted into electricity. In fact, most of it is lost. The more sunlight a surface absorbs which includes Solar panel array on a rooftop, the warmer it gets, and the more energy it re-radiates as heat. Solar cells generally work best at low temperatures. Higher temperatures cause the semiconductor properties to shift, resulting in a slight increase in current, but a much larger decrease in voltage. Extreme increases in temperature can also damage the cell and other module materials, leading to shorter operating lifetimes.

Void · 2021-07-11 09:43:13

I enjoyed your post.

I stumbled on to this today, I think it makes fair sense. Perhaps you will like it?
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=wh … &FORM=VIRE

For Earth, and Mars, we may have methods on the ground to influence the processes in various layers of air, and in various
time sequences.

Some here like Fission, some like phto-panels, and of course some may like Heliostats.

Any of these might be a problem or a useful tool.

I myself, am puzzled as to why people want to capture CO2 and perhaps limit the burning of fuels too much. It is my thinking
that for C02 we may have two treatments having to do with oceans. One is to add nutrients to "Sink" CO2 by microbe growth at
the base of a food chain. The other would be to temporarily store CO2 in lower layers of water. This might be accomplished
as a side effect of OTEC, or with windmills, when they have extra power. However, I am in favor, of sensible prudence in
reducing CO2 output where it is done with logic and math, not pseudo relegion.

As for Methane, I cannot express certainty, but I have a very strong suspicion that biology and soil chemestry may tend
to consume it, as it is a fuel, unlike CO2 and H20. It is an opportunity for some life forms to get Carbon into their life
cycles, while also consuming an energy generating fuel, at least on Earth, where Oxygen if plentiful to "Burn" it with.
Even on Mars, though it appears that some process during the day sucks it out of the atmosphere.

As for water vapor, of course we may want to try to have a humidifier, to help warm Mars up. For instance a robotic fission
reactor may be placed into an ice body, and so, with a sufficient output, may spout steam. If this is sufficiently strong
it is very reasonable to expect the steam to float rapidly in a ~CO2 atmosphere. Where our instincts, suggest that it
should condense into ice crystals, (And some might), the slurry of vapors of water and ice crystals, and atmospheric
components may form a vortex, which may rise into the sky. This could be assisted with Heliostats, and perhaps with
microwaves, and maybe even Lasers.

For the Earth, dealing with water vapor in the skys, Heliostats may be very good. If you have energy storage devices, you
may stuff energy into those and create an event where the sky is temoporarily colder than what it was to be, and you might
induce a rain storm. Of course cloud seeding could also be applied. And so you might dry the sky, and yet get water for
people to use. If your energy storage is saturated, you may reject sunlight directly back into space with the Heliostats.
In that process, you may direct that away from locations where you hope to induce rain or snow clouds.

Back to Mars, as I have said elsewhere, big dust storms might be avoided by either stuffine energy into storage devices, or
reflecting sunlight back into space.

And in general these methods if done correctly can perhaps help to maintain as healthy, (Per our preferences),
Earth and Mars, into conditions where humans can have a good standard of living.

I can see where it may be possible to get most peoples on board with something like this, as nobody wants to be told that
they just need to be poor and die. I have actually seen some dude on video telling the young people that they are going
to need to sieze control of the governments and shut down Carbon fuels completely. Same dude seemed to indicate that
7 Billion people need to not be here, to just leave 1 Billion. Club of Rome stuff. Not good.

Done

Calliban · 2021-07-12 14:53:53

Void wrote:

I can see where it may be possible to get most peoples on board with something like this, as nobody wants to be told that
they just need to be poor and die. I have actually seen some dude on video telling the young people that they are going
to need to sieze control of the governments and shut down Carbon fuels completely. Same dude seemed to indicate that
7 Billion people need to not be here, to just leave 1 Billion. Club of Rome stuff. Not good.
Done

The Club of Rome 'Limits to Growth' report has been much maligned for nearly fifty years, not because it was mistaken or inaccurate, but because people didn't like the implications of what it had to say. Delivering bad news, no matter how true, will never make you popular. So far, the results of LTG have proven to be prescient.

LTG was basically the results of a set of scenario models. Numerous starting assumptions were made, I.e. the size of resources, efficiency of use, recycling rates w.r.t time, etc. Population growth rate was an input parameter, energy intensity for production of goods, the ability of sinks to absorb wastes, etc. Then they ran the model. In all scenarios, exponential growth in population and resource consumption per capita, led to a peak in population and per capita living standards at some point in the 21st century. This was followed by rapid declines, which we would call a collapse. Varying the parameters to take account of different estimates of ore resources and new technologies, all shifted the point at which collapse occurred, but nothing changed the final outcome. In all scenarios, a catastrophic decline in population and living standards occurred at some point in the 21st century.

Really, LTG stated the obvious. In a finite environment, in which human use of natural resources exceeds the rate at which nature replenished them, some sort of depletion induced collapse is ultimately inevitable. We have created a civilisation that uses stored fossil energy to make goods using concentrated ores and other resources. As time goes on, the EROI of energy sources is decreasing and the required energy per unit of refined metals and other resources, is increasing. Economy of scale and efficiency improvements allow us to stay ahead of decline, for a while. But ultimately the outcome is inevitable, so long as we remain within a closed system with a fixed assay of resources.

It was precisely this understanding that got me interested in space colonisation in the first place. Fifteen years ago, I read the original LTG and realised that the future offered poor prospects if we attempted to continue industrial civilisation, with its inherently high per capita resource consumption, on a finite planet. Growing population and depleting resources would always lead to the same result eventually: decent back to stone age, with billions of casualties along the way. We have a very limited window of opportunity to build a space faring civilisation, before resource depletion slams the door on that opportunity for ever. If that happens, we will be trapped in the celestial cradle, which will have become a prison.

Last edited by Calliban (2021-07-12 15:02:23)

SpaceNut · 2021-09-25 22:56:52

bumping related topic for co2 capture

Void · 2021-09-26 09:48:31

This showed up in my viewings. I did not have to smoke anything.

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=ju … &FORM=VIRE

OK, I feel this looks good. Something that has not been devised to make the population poorer, but perhaps even better off.

I see much use for it here on Earth, and also Mars.

For Earth, we have some coral atols which are supposedly at risk.

Coral Atol:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atoll

Of course there will be other places.

The idea would be to make "Boats" of it, and to grow crops, including hemp on them.
I am aware that there would be many creatures that would enjoy consuming it, so that
has to be adressed. I picked the atols as the first notion, as those people have the
most to loose, if we believe in global warming, never mind how the global warming
may be happening.

And if they had farm boats to grow hemp on then they gain a resource, and also
perhaps an export item.

Floating gardens:
https://educateinspirechange.org/ingeni … nt-aztecs/

https://practicalaction.org/news-media/ … g-gardens/

One possible way to slow down the decay of such boats/rafts, would be to push air with
Oxygen in it with a gass without significant Oxygen in it.

Of course there would need to be limits on how much of the interior of an atol could
be converted to floating gardens, to protect the native life sufficiently.

Many of these places are not in the juristiction of courtries which might wish to
discourage this thing. The fear is that the Ecotopians would try to stifle it.

An interesting thing to do in the USA, would be to have these in reservoirs of the
west in particular. Reservoirs are not natural in the first place. It is hard to
say how that might change evaporation. It would keep the dry wind off of the water,
but if you grow hemp on them, or other plants, then of course those evaporate water.
But in this case you get a product. In reality is likely makes sense to do this rather
than to pump water out of the reservoir to water dry land crops.

It would be very amusing to see all the human creatures that would crawl out from the
rocks, either for or against this.

Done.

Last edited by Void (2021-09-26 09:50:36)

Void · 2021-09-26 12:09:26

Some interesting bodies of water: (Fresh)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Mead
Various fresh water lakes and impoundments in North America and elsewhere.

Salt:
Aral Sea
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea
Great Salt Lake
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Salt_Lake
Salton Sea
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Sea

Alright, I already addressed fresh water impoundments.

About internal bodies of salt water. Not as likely to have organisms to
try to eat the floating islands.

Also by using a continuing input of low Oxygen "Air" the tiny spaces
within could contain bubbles for floatation. This would preserve the
collected biomass to a great degree much like a bog.

While salt water of the Oceans will support many organisms that would like
to consume the biomass and put the Carbon back in the atmosphere, these
salt water lakes/seas may have salt concentrations that will not allow
those organisms to survive in that body of water. In this case, it is
to a degree possible that the floating islands would be "Pickled" by salt
water.

-The Aral Sea is out of the possible juristiction of our Ecotopians.
-The Mormons control Utah, and so will have some influence on the Great
Salt Lake. The modern day luddites will have trouble stoping this.
-The Salton Sea is not properly natural, but at times it has been.

So, for these if you can control the evaporation rates, you may be able
to "Inflate" these bodies of water. If it is desired. For the Great
Salt Lake, it would be necessary to make dikes to protect cities. Ask
the Dutch to halp out.

Now, about Frost and Dew in these systems. Lets just suppose that
50% of the water is covered by floating islands.

We should see an extended growing season. Frost often flows downhill,
and so, I would suppose into these gardens. However the open water will
fight it.

Dew: It seems likely to me that evaporation from the water will deliver
dew to the floating islands. A sort of distillation of the lake waters,
then delivered to the supposed crops.

So, a Carbon sequesteration with many advantages in my opinion.

Done.

SpaceNut · 2021-09-26 14:23:02

Slow the melting of the polar ice caps would be another as that is the contributor for the rising water levels....

Void · 2021-09-26 21:23:41

Yes, Spacenut.

It may not need to be forced that people need to be poorer to remove Carbon from
the atmosphere. It may be that we could be richer, That is my preference.

Interesting, I took a further look:
-Dead Sea. Should be possible. Probably not too bad for politics. The adjacent
nations should be able to work something to each one's advantage.
-Caspian Sea. Big storms, I would expect. Political problems?

There are a few others. But there is not a particular reason to need a salty
body of water. And reservoirs of fresh water cannot be said to be natural.

I guess if we want a frigid planet, we may have chances for it.

It is my pleasure to see that many different cultures could contribute to such
a learning, which indicates to me that a very good technology(s) could develop
for this. I am very happy thinking of that.

Done.

louis · 2021-09-27 06:38:07

Since the Club of Rome report we've had 50 years of unprecedented economic growth, more than a doubling of the world's population, huge advances in technology and a great increase in per capita real income and wealth in nearly all societies.

The writers claimed the limits to growth would be reached within 100 years (ie by 2072) wisely not giving an actual date that anyone then alive would be likely to be around to see and determine whether the prediction was accurate or not. They've clearly got the first 50 years entirely wrong. There is no evidence they will do any better with the next 50 which will see secure and cheap green energy dominant across the planet, even greater improvements in recycling, the creation of novel materials (e.g. controlled fungi for furniture and construction), and the beginning of asteroid belt extraction.

Personally I don't think we are anywhere near the limits of growth but of course what we are doing all the time is competing with other species for resources and habitat, to an extent which I don't think can be ethically justified.

But if you look at all the advances in energy production, creation of novel materials, use of new materials, recycling, rocketry and so on, the idea we are going to run out of "stuff" any time soon is obviously ridiculous. There's no evidence for that.

All the problems we have experienced re economics and supply chains are human in origin e.g. poor management of financial markets leading to a banking crash, the absurd and dangerous lockdown-Covid policies, and now attempts to rush at a Green economy allegedly because the planet is about to die because of carbon emissions - ie hysterical nonsense.

Calliban wrote:

Void wrote:
I can see where it may be possible to get most peoples on board with something like this, as nobody wants to be told that
they just need to be poor and die. I have actually seen some dude on video telling the young people that they are going
to need to sieze control of the governments and shut down Carbon fuels completely. Same dude seemed to indicate that
7 Billion people need to not be here, to just leave 1 Billion. Club of Rome stuff. Not good.
Done
The Club of Rome 'Limits to Growth' report has been much maligned for nearly fifty years, not because it was mistaken or inaccurate, but because people didn't like the implications of what it had to say. Delivering bad news, no matter how true, will never make you popular. So far, the results of LTG have proven to be prescient.
LTG was basically the results of a set of scenario models. Numerous starting assumptions were made, I.e. the size of resources, efficiency of use, recycling rates w.r.t time, etc. Population growth rate was an input parameter, energy intensity for production of goods, the ability of sinks to absorb wastes, etc. Then they ran the model. In all scenarios, exponential growth in population and resource consumption per capita, led to a peak in population and per capita living standards at some point in the 21st century. This was followed by rapid declines, which we would call a collapse. Varying the parameters to take account of different estimates of ore resources and new technologies, all shifted the point at which collapse occurred, but nothing changed the final outcome. In all scenarios, a catastrophic decline in population and living standards occurred at some point in the 21st century.
Really, LTG stated the obvious. In a finite environment, in which human use of natural resources exceeds the rate at which nature replenished them, some sort of depletion induced collapse is ultimately inevitable. We have created a civilisation that uses stored fossil energy to make goods using concentrated ores and other resources. As time goes on, the EROI of energy sources is decreasing and the required energy per unit of refined metals and other resources, is increasing. Economy of scale and efficiency improvements allow us to stay ahead of decline, for a while. But ultimately the outcome is inevitable, so long as we remain within a closed system with a fixed assay of resources.
It was precisely this understanding that got me interested in space colonisation in the first place. Fifteen years ago, I read the original LTG and realised that the future offered poor prospects if we attempted to continue industrial civilisation, with its inherently high per capita resource consumption, on a finite planet. Growing population and depleting resources would always lead to the same result eventually: decent back to stone age, with billions of casualties along the way. We have a very limited window of opportunity to build a space faring civilisation, before resource depletion slams the door on that opportunity for ever. If that happens, we will be trapped in the celestial cradle, which will have become a prison.

Void · 2021-09-27 11:13:04

Louis,

Your post is useful, but also might divert from what I was presenting. No matter,
I will address what you said, and then refer again to the materials that are currently
important to me.

I agree that "The Club of Rome" has made themselves a bit of a joke. Their calculations
did not include innovation over time. If we had an "InnovationMeter", then it is quite
hard to stay if it is steady or would see rises and falls.

Ha Ha, I bet some idiot will think to make one. However their inputs would almost certainly
not reflect the reality of consequences.

In that story, they would then try to appoint and anoint innovators. Often the wrong
people of course. But their ambitions are to become in charge of something. Really in
many cases true "Useless Eaters".

Perhaps their dream would be to set up a bureau in charge of innovation, where they will
pick the people they think are truly worth anointing and appointing. Such a thing is
actually a parasite, dragging down the chances of humans having innovations of value.

I have been told, that "They are not smart, they are not dumb". They are sharks. They
eat, they swim, and they make baby sharks. And in so doing in my opinion make a "Post
Human" population that eats the innovators energy. It is a thing to avoid as may be
possible without too much cruelty applied.

So, in my opinion, we have a history of peoples comming out of a wildness with high
aptitude for invention, and so to create civilizations of merit. Eventually the sharks
displace them using bad breeding habits, and also a shortcut crib sheet mind. They only
need to mimic what was previously produced, and to use cruel weapons to capture wealth,
and to help breed the humans beyond being human anymore, by claiming female mate using
documents that declair them to be justified, and to use technology only to the extent
of tools to kill other men and take their property.

So, now we need the wilderess or a perhaps eternal dark ages will emerge across the
Earth eventually.

So, honestly I think that the Club of Rome is nothing more than the next step to the
Talaban type culture.

Not what I am in favor of.

-------

In the previous two posts of mine, I spoke of a possible new technology which could
offer the removal of Carbon from the air and provide agricultural resources.

In that case I have made an effort to choose to suggest where this might least impact
existing biological structures.

In this I think may exist a method to grow bodies of water in certain deserts, North
America, and Central Asia perhaps, as examples.

So, my focus is not on a war with the "Club of Rome", but to step around their constructions
of impediment, and perhaps achieve something of worth in spite of them.

Done.

Last edited by Void (2021-09-27 11:17:11)

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#76 2021-07-02 18:27:04

Re: Is Global Warming real?

#77 2021-07-02 18:34:55

Re: Is Global Warming real?

#78 2021-07-02 18:36:06

Re: Is Global Warming real?

#79 2021-07-10 07:53:18

Re: Is Global Warming real?

#80 2021-07-10 16:01:00

Re: Is Global Warming real?

#81 2021-07-11 09:43:13

Re: Is Global Warming real?

#82 2021-07-12 14:53:53

Re: Is Global Warming real?

#83 2021-09-25 22:56:52

Re: Is Global Warming real?

#84 2021-09-26 09:48:31

Re: Is Global Warming real?

#85 2021-09-26 12:09:26

Re: Is Global Warming real?

#86 2021-09-26 14:23:02

Re: Is Global Warming real?

#87 2021-09-26 21:23:41

Re: Is Global Warming real?

#88 2021-09-27 06:38:07

Re: Is Global Warming real?

#89 2021-09-27 11:13:04

Re: Is Global Warming real?

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