Oil and NASA's mission statement change

Much of the warming has been due to the same Solar cycle that produced the Medaeval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age and the cool period in the early 19th Century, as explained in a recent New Scientist article but what Rob wrote is still true:

". . . many species died out in lockstep with several Daansgard - Oescgher events . . . it is apparently fairly easy to send the Earth into a very warm time . . . the warming evidence found in the geologic record proceeds in lockstep with greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere."

This is all very convincing, so I expect that talk of consensus amongst scientists about this scenario will soon be a lot truer than it has been. However, as I wrote earlier, I fear consensus may continue to elude us in what we should do about it.

I fear a fatal split, especially amongst the Anglophone (English-speaking) nations, between those who, like Rob, think of the Earth system as a living organism, Gaia, and those who, like myself, more realistically see it as simply a living system. The difference is critical when it comes to fixing it, as we apparently need to start thinking about.

It¡¯s the difference between fixing a car and fixing a mother. Many more options are open to car fixers, cheap quick fixes, indirect fixes and so on, than to mother fixers.

The Gaia people may follow James Lovelock, a great man, in thinking that ¡°Gaia has a fever¡±. This sentiment may cause them to resist most obvious, most economic courses of action. Gaians may insist on reversing the immediate cause, decreasing what has been increasing greenhouse gas concentrations and so on.

This would be seen as catastrophic by economists and other realists, would never be agreed to by opponents and so on. The same division we¡¯ve seen already over Kyoto. The same division is common wherever this problem is discussed . . . Yep, this is the critical issue. An example illustrating this point:

That there are many options open in systems engineering, and poor decisions can be catastrophic, was illustrated by ill-fated Concorde. When debris on the runway caused that last fatal crash, a runway debris-cleanup-radar solution would have been the most economical solution but wasn¡¯t followed, so now there is no Concorde air service . . .

I fear something similar happening to us for much the same reason. Our not committing ourselves to economical systems engineering for arcane spiritual reasons, with the consequence that all gets blown, ending Civilisation . . .

PN, You could put your many fears to rest with a understanding the CO2 cycle a bit better. The flora in the biosphere absorb about 100 times the amount of CO2 that is the result of mankind. The same flora exhausts about 100 times the CO2 that all human activities. So you see man has little effect in this reguard. What man has done is upset the balance a little by removing forest and wetland areas and making cities, roads and landfills on a good part of that area. We need to restore the balance and that can very easily be done. So, I know its not easy for you to do but don't worry about this stuff. It does nothing to help fix the problem and will ruin your day.

I went to see Al Gore¡¯s ¡°An Inconvenient Truth¡± today. It is very well done, makes a good job of the CO2 case . . . and is implicitly Gaian (which I argue is dangerously narrow) in the way it refers only to reversal of atmospheric CO2 levels as the only way of dealing with the problem.

This is not good enough! We¡¯ve got to keep all systemic options open, as explained in earlier posts. Increasing albedo in various ways, as discussed in this thread, may be necessary, along with greenhouse gas emission reduction and so on, if we are to avoid catastrophic global warming, 7-15 metre sea level rises and so on.

But what we¡¯re up against is that Gaian narrowing down of options, which is happening so subtly and slowly that, like Al Gore¡¯s frog, few see this dangerously ideological aspect of what is going on, and Gaian ideology thus continues to grow, spread dangerously . . .

Gaia and Gaia-related ideas have always been ¡°good television¡± and the Environment movement is adept at using the latest, PR political science, which is extremely effective. They are thus able to use every opportunity to suck in more and more people, ultimately the majority they need to win. Such people as Al Gore, Gorbachev, pop stars and so on have been very helpful . . .

All this is very frightening, because this narrow, technophobic Gaian course is almost certainly ultimately catastrophic, ending civilisation catastrophic: As CO2 reversal and other ¡°natural/organic¡± methods fail, prove to be insufficient, our Gaian leaders will not be blaming themselves, their technophobic ways and so on. No, they will be finding scapegoats to blame, saboteurs amongst their own minor officials, and others in Internet threads like this one . . .

There will be the usual show trials, persecutions of minority groups, concentration camps and so on. People will be gotten rid of for pushing techno-ideas: GM-enhancing the DMS system; sending up satellite mirrors; and so on. The world will get much hotter than it would have had the Gaian idea not destroyed the Western World . . .

[Peter Nielson] "We've got to keep all systemic options open, as explained in earlier posts. Increasing albedo in various ways, as discussed in this thread, may be necessary ... As CO2 reversal and other "natural/organic" methods fail, prove to be insufficient ... "

I'd say that the ability to adjust albedo, rather than merely increase it, is the critical need for the future. I'm less worried about CO2 reversal etc. failing, and more worried about them succeeding - to the point of massive overshoot. That's probably how Earth started with a greenhouse and ended with an ice age in the past. I'd like to avoid that this time around if possible.

===

Such an ability (to make rapid changes in Earth's effective albedo) is not without its own risks, of course. Learning to control it will almost certainly come at the expense of at least a few (hopefully minor) mistakes. But the alternatives (including change nothing) are argueably even more risky.

If we had the will, we could begin putting a useful number of first generation mirrors in orbit within six months. Within a year we could halt the melting of the ice caps by differentially shading the polar areas. And then hold our breath and cross our fingers and see what happens. The progression to more advanced intervention (including reversal of polar shading, IOW polar heating, if we went too far with the cooling) could procede as circumstances dictated.

Or we could return to no intervention at the drop of a hat.

LB

Hi Jim, I apologize for the delay in responding, just haven't had any time to spare!
Ok, to start with a quote from your post <i><b>The greenhouse gases don't generate any energy and since a warmer planet radiates more energy than a colder one it also follows the warmer planet requires more more energy than a colder one. In the case you are following( say a 5 kelvin change in temperature) the amount of extra energy for the warmer or colder Earth is many trillions of watts. How can this extra energy be provided?</b></i> Basically, an energy increase isn't necessary...... only an increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases, notably H20 vapor, CO2 and CH4. These molecules are transparent at optical wavelengths, but absorbtive in the longer iR wavelengths; thus the heat generated by sunlight in the lower atmosphere and on the ground is more efficiently "trapped" - as it has more difficulty radiating back out into space, so that more heat becomes trapped, leading to warming. A pretty straightforward summary of this can be found at <i><font color="red">this</i></font id="red"> page. Remember too, the Earth is not a blackbody, so the radiated energy is less than you might have expected, of course dependent upon <i>atmospheric composition/ density</i>. If you want to see a typical chart correlating CO2 concentrations and temperature changes, check out <font color="red"><i>this</i></font id="red"> link; although there is a great deal of disagreement over timing (in some cases, the CO2 density increased <i>after</i> sudden temp. rises... or so we think!) there are enough examples/ data like the aforementioned to make a pretty convincing argument that greenhouse gas concentrations are one of the main - if not the major components in large scale rapid climate variation. The Earth also has many cycles such as <font color="red"><i>Milankovich</i></font id="red"> forcing which complicates matters..... not to mention variations from our sun which is technically a <font color="red"><i>variable star</i></font id="red"> as well as a host of other factors; the control and variation of the Earths temperatures over time is an extremely complex system we just don't fully understand, which is of course the reason for so much disagreement over what will happen next - although a loosely cohesive picture is slowly emerging.

The critical thing to note is that the <i>real</i> moderator of our climates is the oceans..... the atmosphere can retain very little energy, but it does slowly transfer that energy to the oceans, which act as a huge heat sink due to the high specific heat of water.
The reference is often made to the worlwide melting of mountainous glaciers as the <font color="red"><i>canary in the coal mine</i></font id="red"> (note the "Relevant Stories" at bottom right of that page listing various large glaciers melting worldwide), but the warming of the oceans is at least as significant. Once you saturate the oceans with enough energy to raise at least the upper layers a few degrees - the longer it will be that we warm up - and stay warmer. The effect on the high latitudes will be much more pronounced, and this is where the huge deposits of CH4 clathrates are located..... the CO2 has a much smaller effect, but will force (at some point) large scale CH4 releases... which have the potential to be very unpleasant for our non self reliant, overly interdependent and fragile world.

Rob, You and all your references need to do a little math reguarding the connection between temperature and energy. As you know the interior of Earth is about 2,000 kelvin or so. And the surface of the Earth is about 295 kelvin(the exact average is no known nor is the amount of change in temperature. Both these are blackbody temperatures. The amount of energy being radiated from the interior and surface is a mystery at this time but can be estimated by use of blackbody laws. You and the references you quote say the Earth is warming when you mean the surface of Earth is warming but you don't have clue about the energy needed to make this happen. You don't even have the energy flux of the Earth in the mix of things you say have an effect on climate. I'm sure you know sea vents and volcanos add energy to the ocean but you don't seem to know these vents exist nor do you have a clue as to how much energy and CO2 they vent into the ocean or if any of this stuff ever gets to the atmosphere.