A solution to global warming at last - a Mr Burns style sun shade in space!

[IRONxMortlock]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/11/061104090409.htm

Space Sunshade Might Be Feasible In Global Warming Emergency

The possibility that global warming will trigger abrupt climate change is something people might not want to think about.
But University of Arizona astronomer Roger Angel thinks about it.

Angel, a University of Arizona Regents' Professor and one of the world's foremost minds in modern optics, directs the Steward Observatory Mirror Laboratory and the Center for Astronomical Adaptive Optics. He has won top honors for his many extraordinary conceptual ideas that have become practical engineering solutions for astronomy.

For the past year, Angel has been looking at ways to cool the Earth in an emergency. He's been studying the practicality of deploying a space sunshade in a global warming crisis, a crisis where it becomes clear that Earth is unmistakably headed for disastrous climate change within a decade or two.

Angel presented the idea at the National Academy of Sciences in April and won a NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts grant for further research in July. His collaborators on the grant are David Miller of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nick Woolf of UA's Steward Observatory, and NASA Ames Research Center Director S. Pete Worden.

Angel is now publishing a first detailed, scholarly paper, "Feasibility of cooling the Earth with a cloud of small spacecraft near L1," in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The plan would be to launch a constellation of trillions of small free-flying spacecraft a million miles above Earth into an orbit aligned with the sun, called the L-1 orbit.

The spacecraft would form a long, cylindrical cloud with a diameter about half that of Earth, and about 10 times longer. About 10 percent of the sunlight passing through the 60,000-mile length of the cloud, pointing lengthwise between the Earth and the sun, would be diverted away from our planet. The effect would be to uniformly reduce sunlight by about 2 percent over the entire planet, enough to balance the heating of a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere.

Researchers have proposed various alternatives for cooling the planet, including aerosol scatterers in the Earth's atmosphere. The idea for a space shade at L1 to deflect sunlight from Earth was first proposed by James Early of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1989.

"The earlier ideas were for bigger, heavier structures that would have needed manufacture and launch from the moon, which is pretty futuristic," Angel said. "I wanted to make the sunshade from small 'flyers,' small, light and extremely thin spacecraft that could be completely assembled and launched from Earth, in stacks of a million at a time. When they reached L1, they would be dealt off the stack into a cloud. There's nothing to assemble in space."

The lightweight flyers designed by Angel would be made of a transparent film pierced with small holes. Each flyer would be two feet in diameter, 1/5000 of an inch thick and weigh about a gram, the same as a large butterfly. It would use "MEMS" technology mirrors as tiny sails that tilt to hold the flyers position in the orbiting constellation. The flyer's transparency and steering mechanism prevent it from being blown away by radiation pressure. Radiation pressure is the pressure from the sun's light itself.

The total mass of all the fliers making up the space sunshade structure would be 20 million tons. At $10,000 a pound, conventional chemical rocket launch is prohibitively expensive. Angel proposes using a cheaper way developed by Sandia National Laboratories for electromagnetic space launchers, which could bring cost down to as little as $20 a pound.

The sunshade could be deployed by a total 20 electromagnetic launchers launching a stack of flyers every 5 minutes for 10 years. The electromagnetic launchers would ideally run on hydroelectric power, but even in the worst-case environmental scenario with coal-generated electricity, each ton of carbon used to make electricity would mitigate the effect of 1000 tons of atmospheric carbon.

Once propelled beyond Earth's atmosphere and gravity with an electromagnetic launcher, the flyer stacks would be steered to L-1 orbit by solar-powered ion propulsion, a new method proven in space by the European Space Agency's SMART-1 moon orbiter and NASA's Deep Space 1 probe.

"The concept builds on existing technologies," Angel said. "It seems feasible that it could be developed and deployed in about 25 years at a cost of a few trillion dollars. With care, the solar shade should last about 50 years. So the average cost is about $100 billion a year, or about two-tenths of one percent of the global domestic product."

He added, "The sunshade is no substitute developing renewable energy, the only permanent solution. A similar massive level of technological innovation and financial investment could ensure that.

"But if the planet gets into an abrupt climate crisis that can only be fixed by cooling, it would be good to be ready with some shading solutions that have been worked out."

I guess it could make a handy backup but I think it's better for us to spend 99% of our energy making sure a global warming crisis doesn't occur in the first place. Treat the route causes of it rather than continue to live as we do in the hope that some wacky innovation like this will save our planet.

Unfortunately it won't be until the blatant effects of global warming begin to really effect people that they will start demanding changes from their politicians. At that point perhaps this kind of thing will be the only solution available?

[Crazed Rabbit]

I am immensely skeptical of all the "the earth is in crisis, we will all die in 10/15/20 years!" claims. A bit of an exxageration, but not by much.

Enviro-whackos are just trying to use fear to sway people because they don't have conclusize science to prove global warming it mainly man-caused or that we can do anything about it, much less that it will cause devastation.

CR

[Samurai Waki]

I don't buy the Global Warming Theory Completely. Yes, we know the earth is steadily getting warmer... and the Oceans are Rising... but, and this is a big one, is it because of us or completely natural? Or quickening a natural tendency?

The Earth hasn't always been cold, and during the last Major Ice Age, the sea level dropped almost 350 feet. It's regained about 200 Feet in the last 20,000 years, but we've still got another 150 feet of sea level to go before we're back to Normalcy.

[IRONxMortlock]

I'm affraid it's time to wake up smell the coffee folks. Global warming is here, and humans are responsible for rapidly accelerating it.
http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2486/24861403.jpg

Here's a rather good summary of the current situation.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/sci_tech/2000/climate_change/
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/

Burying our heads in the sand over this issue simply isn't going to help anyone. At least Roger Angel has come up with something to help us out. I'd just rather we treated the disease rather than the symptoms.

[BDC]

It's probably worth noting that any maths behind this is so incredibly complex, and any margins of error so big, that any estimates are a little dubious. There is an issue here though. Even if it's natural (which it clearly isn't entirely at the very least), it still needs to be dealt with. Expensive problem if all the world's coastal cities flood.

[Kanamori]

Not to mention that we have little idea about how the equilibrium of our atmosphere actually works. These changes appear to have happened long ago, many times both globally and locally.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png Even farther in the past, 10^6 + years, there have been many cycles of global cooling and warming. Personally, in my research I've not found anything that necessarily attributes these present changes to our actions, and I am hesitant to just believe some graph w/o seeing why they've made it the way they do; it seems that there are still many other possibilities.


Anyway to deny that there appears to be a trend towards global warming now would be stupid, whether or not it will continue and for how long is debatable. Blinding ourselves to finding the reason behind it by blaming ourselves w/o sufficient evidence is stupid. If we're going to find the cause and fix the problem, it will almost certainly take more than biasing science towards blaming us, and there are certainly more reliable ways than hoping it is us and somehow stopping people from burning things.

[yesdachi]

I like the ideas, both the electromagnetic launcher and the fliers. Creative people are great.


Fliers… humm… perhaps if we give them independent thought so they can self correct their angles and such, Ooo and the ability to replicate incase the we need to make a larger shade, Oooo and then equip them with blasters to fend off any invaders, Oooo and a driving compulsion to save humanity. That should be enough to do us all in.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

https://img392.imageshack.us/img392/1511/00029517gr1.jpg

[drone]

Excellent... all that's left is for me to steal candy from a baby.

[MSB]

https://img392.imageshack.us/img392/1511/00029517gr1.jpg
:laugh4: Funniest thing i've seen all day :laugh4:

[BDC]

In related news, apparently our grasp of ocean mechanics wasn't that great, and the Gulf Stream won't collapse or anything.

Which means global warming will just result in Britain becoming warmer and more pleasant. Pile on the coal I say!

[Scurvy]

https://img392.imageshack.us/img392/1511/00029517gr1.jpg

:laugh4:

--> i can't wait until 2020 now :clown:

[yesdachi]

i can't wait until 2020 now :clown:
By then the progression will start going the other way and there will end up being snow suits at the right! :laugh4:

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Scurvy...2020 is already on there :yes:

It's the farthest to the right, past that blue/green one.

[Xiahou]

I'm affraid it's time to wake up smell the coffee folks. Global warming is here, and humans are responsible for rapidly accelerating it.
http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2486/24861403.jpg

Here's a rather good summary of the current situation.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/sci_tech/2000/climate_change/
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/

Burying our heads in the sand over this issue simply isn't going to help anyone. At least Roger Angel has come up with something to help us out. I'd just rather we treated the disease rather than the symptoms.
Oh no, not the hockey stick again! :no:

[Crazed Rabbit]

Global warming is here, and humans are responsible for rapidly accelerating it.

Proof? Thought not.

You are aware that there was a mini ice age in medieval times, right? That global temperature is not a constant?

CR

[Papewaio]

Oh no, not the hockey stick again! :no:

I thought the hockey stick graph issues was for projected future data not historical data...

[Xiahou]

It's when the data is manipulated to show recent increases in temperature as a sharp increase far above the "norm"- creating a hockey stick-like graph. In the graph posted earlier, it accomplishes this effect by leaving out previous data that shows prior warming. In the case below, it was done by omitting/minimizing the Medieval Warm Period.

tohttps://img394.imageshack.us/img394/2392/nwarm05as5.gif

[IRONxMortlock]

Oh no, not the hockey stick again!

This particular graph isn't the infamous "hockey stick".



Proof? Thought not.


Of course there are natural causes for global warming too; it's just that humans are contributing to it.

See for yourself. Compare fossil fuel emissions with rising temperatures.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/sci_tech/2000/climate_change/evidence/warmer.stm

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/earth/mg18524861.400-climate-change-menace-or-myth.html

First, the basic physics. It is beyond doubt that certain gases in the atmosphere, most importantly water vapour and carbon dioxide, trap infrared radiation emitted by the Earth's surface and so have a greenhouse effect. This in itself is no bad thing. Indeed, without them the planet would freeze. There is also no doubt that human activity is pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, and that this has caused a sustained year-on-year rise in CO2 concentrations. For almost 60 years, measurements at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii have charted this rise, and it is largely uncontested that today's concentrations are about 35 per cent above pre-industrial levels (see Graph).

The effect this has on the planet is also measurable. In 2000, researchers based at Imperial College London examined satellite data covering almost three decades to plot changes in the amount of infrared radiation escaping from the atmosphere into space - an indirect measure of how much heat is being trapped. In the part of the infrared spectrum trapped by CO2 - wavelengths between 13 and 19 micrometres - they found that between 1970 and 1997 less and less radiation was escaping. They concluded that the increasing quantity of atmospheric CO2 was trapping energy that used to escape, and storing it in the atmosphere as heat. The results for the other greenhouse gases were similar.

Maybe you'd care to read about this then?
http://scrippsnews.ucsd.edu/article_detail.cfm?article_num=666
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1489955,00.html

...[the study] found that natural variation in the Earth’s climate, or changes in solar activity or volcanic eruptions, which have been suggested as alternative explanations for rising temperatures, could not explain the data collected in the real world. Models based on man-made emissions of greenhouse gases, however, matched the observations almost precisely.

It's only a hard fact to face up to if you've been holding your fingers in your ears and screaming to avoid listening.

After reading some of the reponses here I'm actually glad that people are thinking of things like this space shield; "crazy" solutions like this may be our only hope if the issue is ignored and drastics steps are not taken to reduce global CO2 emissions soon.

[Xiahou]

This particular graph isn't the infamous "hockey stick".It's still hockey stick-like and distorts the data in a similar way, which is what I referring to.


Of course there are natural causes for global warming too; it's just that humans are contributing to it.There sure are natural causes- far stronger ones than our human contribution.

If you want an idea of how uncertain it all is, read this article from the New York Times of all places...
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: November 7, 2006

In recent years, scientists have made sizable gains in what was once considered an impossible art — reconstructing the history of Earth’s atmosphere back into the dim past. They can now peer across more than a half billion years.

The scientists have learned about the changing makeup of the vanished gases by teasing subtle clues from fossilized soils, plants and sea creatures. They have also gained insights from computer models that predict how phenomena like eroding rocks and erupting volcanoes have altered the planet’s evolving air. “It’s getting a lot more attention,” Michael C. MacCracken, chief scientist of the Climate Institute, a research group in Washington, said of the growing field.

For the first time, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations group that analyzes global warming, plans to include a chapter on the reconstructions in its latest report, due early next year.

The discoveries have stirred a little-known dispute that, if resolved, could have major implications. At issue is whether the findings back or undermine the prevailing view on global warming. One side foresees a looming crisis of planetary heating; the other, temperature increases that would be more nuisance than catastrophe.

Perhaps surprisingly, both hail from the same camp: scientists who study the big picture of Earth’s past, including geologists and paleoclimatologists.

Most public discussions of global warming concentrate on evidence from the last few hundred or, at most, few thousand years. And some climate scientists remain unconvinced that data from the deep past are solid enough to be relevant to the debates.

But the experts who peer back millions of years, though they may debate what their work means, do agree on the relevance of their findings. They also agree that the eon known as the Phanerozoic, a lengthy span from the present to 550 million years ago, the dawn of complex life, typically bore concentrations of carbon dioxide that were up to 18 times the levels present in the short reign of Homo sapiens.

The carbon dioxide, the scientists agree, came from volcanoes and other natural sources, as on Mars and Venus. The levels have generally dropped over the ages, as the carbon became a building block of many rock formations and all living things.

Moreover, the opponents tend to agree on why the early Earth’s high carbon dioxide levels failed to roast the planet. First, the Sun was dimmer in its youth. Second, as the gas concentrations increase, its heat trapping capacity slows and reaches a plateau.

Where the specialists clash is on what the evidence means for the idea that industrial civilization and the burning of fossil fuels are the main culprits in climate change. The two sides agree that carbon dioxide can block solar energy that would otherwise radiate back into space, an effect known as greenhouse warming. But they differ sharply on its strength.

Some argue that CO2 fluctuations over the Phanerozoic follow climate trends fairly well, supporting a causal relationship between high gas levels and high temperatures. “The geologic record over the past 550 million years indicates a good correlation,” said Robert A. Berner, a Yale geologist and pioneer of paleoclimate analysis. “There are other factors at work here. But in general, global warming is due to CO2. It was in the past and is now.”

Other experts say that is an oversimplification of a complex picture of natural variation. The fluctuations in the gas levels, they say, often fall out of step with the planet’s hot and cold cycles, undermining the claimed supremacy of carbon dioxide.

“It’s too simplistic to say low CO2 was the only cause of the glacial periods” on time scales of millions of years, said Robert Giegengack, a geologist at the University of Pennsylvania who studies past atmospheres. “The record violates that one-to-one correspondence.”

He and other doubters say the planet is clearly warming today, as it has repeatedly done, but insist that no one knows exactly why. Other possible causes, they say, include changes in sea currents, Sun cycles and cosmic rays that bombard the planet.

“More and more data,” Jan Veizer, an expert on Phanerozoic climates at the University of Ottawa, said, “point to the Sun and stars as the dominant driver.”

Highlighting the gap, the two sides clash on how much the Earth would warm today if carbon dioxide concentrations double from preindustrial levels, as scientists expect. Many climatologists see an increase of as much as 8 degrees Fahrenheit. The skeptics, drawing on Phanerozoic data, tend to see far less, perhaps 2 or 3 degrees.

In the Phanerozoic (the term is Greek for visible life), complex organisms arose. If its countless ages were compressed into a single year, fish would have appeared in January, land animals in March, dinosaurs in June, monkeys in December and humans late on New Year’s Eve.

The Phanerozoic dispute, fought mainly in scholarly journals and scientific meetings, has occurred in isolation from the public debate on global warming. Al Gore in “An Inconvenient Truth” makes no mention of it.

Some mainstream scientists familiar with the Phanerozoic evidence call it too sketchy for public consumption and government policy, if not expert deliberations.

“In my view, the uncertainties are too great to draw any conclusions right now,” Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton, said. “It could be that when the dust settles some insight will emerge that will be germane to the current problem — how do we keep the climate from spinning out of control.”

Skeptics say CO2 crusaders simply find the Phanerozoic data embarrassing and irreconcilable with public alarms. “People come to me and say, ‘Stop talking like this, you’re hurting the cause,’ ” said Dr. Giegengack of Penn.

Robert A. Rohde, a graduate student in geophysics at the University of California, Berkeley, may represent a neutral voice. The evidence, he said, “is that CO2 is just one of many influences.”

For Wikipedia, Mr. Rohde recently drew up graphic overviews of Phanerozoic carbon dioxide, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Phanerozoic_Carbon_Dioxide.png, and climate swings, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Phanerozoic_Climate_Change.png.

For nearly two centuries, scientists have known that the ancient Earth went through ice ages and other climate upheavals. Their explanations included changes in land forms, ocean flows, solar intensity and Earth’s orbit around the Sun.

The new argument dates from 1958, when scientists began to track carbon dioxide in the air, finding its levels low, 0.0315 percent, but increasing. They knew that excess gas could in theory trap more heat from the Sun, warming the planet and providing a new explanation for climate change.

The greenhouse theory rose to prominence in the 1980’s as carbon dioxide continued to increase and as global temperatures started to increase. While scientists tracked many greenhouse gases, including ozone, methane and water vapor, they focused on carbon dioxide because its concentrations seemed to be rising quite rapidly.

Keen to put the threat in perspective, they sought to compare modern CO2 levels to those of the past. Ice cores from the frozen regions turned out to harbor tiny air bubbles that showed carbon dioxide concentrations going back hundreds of thousands of years. Scientists found the preindustrial levels averaging 280 parts per million, down from 315 parts per million, or 0.0315 percent, in 1958.

Scientists suspected that the concentrations were once much higher, especially in hot eras of little or no polar ice. Eager to push beyond the cores, which went back just a half million years or so, scientists looked for ways to peer further back.

Dr. Berner of Yale focused on computer models. His studies of the Phanerozoic analyzed factors such as how some ages produced many volcanoes and much atmospheric carbon dioxide and others spawned mountains, extensive weathering of fresh rock and, by that mechanism, considerable uptake of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

From the start, he consistently reported close ties between carbon dioxide and climate swings. For instance, in the explosion of plant life from 400 million to 300 million years ago, he found a sharp drop in the gas, occurring as the earth entered an ice age.

“These results,” Dr. Berner wrote in the journal Science in 1990, “support the notion that the atmospheric CO2 greenhouse mechanism is a major control on climate over very long time scales.”

Other scientists looked for clues among fossilized soils, plants and sea creatures, assuming that fluctuating climates had altered their growth patterns. In time, the ancient specimens yielded a bonanza of subtle evidence, some confirming aspects of Dr. Berner’s modeling.

Claudia I. Mora and two colleagues at the University of Tennessee found that ancient soils verified the steep decline in carbon dioxide between 400 million and 300 million years ago.

Other scientists found conflicting evidence. In 1992, a team from the University of New Mexico reported that ancient soils showed extremely high levels of carbon dioxide 440 million years ago, an age of primitive sea life before the advent of land plants and animals. The carbon dioxide levels were roughly 16 times higher than today. Surprisingly, the scientists said, this appeared to coincide with wide glaciation, an analysis, wrote Crayton J. Yapp and Harald Poths in the journal Nature, that “suggests that the climate models require modification.”

Throughout the 1990’s, reconstruction papers offered evidence on both sides of the debate about the effects of carbon dioxide. Starting in 2000, the attacks intensified as Dr. Veizer of Ottawa questioned the CO2-climate link across the whole Phanerozoic. He and two Belgian colleagues, writing in Nature, based their doubts on how two ice ages — 440 million and 150 million years ago, in the age of dinosaurs — apparently had very high carbon dioxide levels.

In 2002, Daniel H. Rothman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology also raised sharp Phanerozoic questions after studying carbon dioxide clues teased from marine rocks. Writing in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, he said that with one exception — the recent cool period of the last 50 million years — he could find “no systematic correspondence” between carbon dioxide and climate shifts.

In 2003, Dr. Veizer joined Nir J. Shaviv, an astrophysicist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, to propose a new climate driver. They envisioned slow movements of the solar system through the surrounding galaxy as controlling the cosmic rays that bombard Earth’s atmosphere. A reduction, they argued, would lessen cloud cover and Earth’s reflectivity, warming the planet. The reverse would cause cooling. The Phanerozoic record of cosmic-ray bombardment showed excellent agreement with climate fluctuations, trumping carbon dioxide, they wrote.

In 2004, Dr. Berner of Yale and four colleagues fired back. While saying cosmic rays were possibly “of some climatic significance,” they argued that such an effect was much less than that of carbon dioxide.

In the debate, opponents can differ not only on the contours of past CO2 fluctuations but also on defining hot and cold eras. Although Dr. Veizer sees a cold period 150 million years ago, a time of increased ice at sea but not on land because the continents had shifted from the poles, Dr. Berner, in his modeling, disregards it. Such differences can muddy the dispute.

Today, each side claims new victories. Dr. Veizer says he has a comprehensive paper on the cosmic-ray theory coming out soon. Dr. Berner recently refined his model to repair an old inconsistency.

The revision, described in the May issue of The American Journal of Science, brings the model into closer agreement with the fact of wide glaciation 440 million years ago, yielding what he sees as stronger evidence of the dominant role of carbon dioxide then.

Dr. Yapp, once a carbon dioxide skeptic, concurred, saying, “The data complied in the last decade suggests that long-term climate change correlates pretty well with CO2 changes.”

Some climatologists view the Phanerozoic debate as irrelevant. They say the evidence of a tie between carbon dioxide and planetary warming over the last few centuries is so compelling that any long-term evidence to the contrary must somehow be tainted. They also say greenhouse gases are increasing faster than at any other time in Earth history, making the past immaterial.

Carbon dioxide skeptics and others see the reconstructions of the last 15 years as increasingly reliable, posing fundamental questions about the claimed powers of carbon dioxide. Climatologists and policy makers, they say, need to ponder such complexities rather than trying to ignore or dismiss the unexpected findings.

“Some of the work has been quite meticulous,” Thure E. Cerling, an expert at the University of Utah on Phanerozoic climates, said. “We are likely to learn something.”

link (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/07/science/earth/07co2.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&ref=science&pagewanted=all&oref=login)

[IRONxMortlock]

It's still hockey stick-like and distorts the data in a similar way, which is what I referring to.


That's nonsense. Come on Xiahou, the whole hockey-stick thing was just something thrown out to the uninformed masses which they could repeat over and over again so they wouldn't have to actually read about the issues for themselves. The fact a graph may look like a hockey-stick doesn't mean it's distorting the data.

Here's another hockey-stick like graph. Has the information on the number of AWD vehicles also been distorted? It is "hockey-stick" like after all.
http://www.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/images/facts/fotw366.jpg

Here's another
http://chart.finance.yahoo.com/c/5y/h/hal

The "hockey-stick" controversy came about from a graph like this
http://www.climateaudit.org/wp-content/1000yearsco2small.jpg

The dispute with this came about when Michael Mann's data (something like above) was found not to take into account certain localised data from the middle-ages. Some of Mann's statistical sampling methods were also called into question. This critique was done by economist Ross McKitrick and mineral-exploration consultant Stephen McIntyre. However, since then the US National Academy of Sciences has "more-or-less" endorsed Mann's work (less part for how his work is being used politically).

Who do I believe - the NAS and most of the world's most respected paleoclimatologists or an economist and a mining industry consultant? Hmmmm?:book:



If you want an idea of how uncertain it all is, read this article from the New York Times of all places...

Yes, I guess you could say it is uncertain exactly what effect humans vs. natural processes are having on the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere. This stuff is very difficult to model and it's not something you can get exact information for easily. However the data that has been developed clearly shows a relationship between increased levels of CO2 and high temperatures. What isn't in question is that we are making more and more CO2 and this heats things up and therefore exacerbates global warming.

[BigTex]

Not this again. Look what 90% of any graph will always ommit when dealing with global warming is the simple fact that the sun is currently producing more energy then any previously recorded time. Also all of your graphs start at the ending of the small ice age, of course the tempature is going to rise, common sense. No ice age, warmer tempatures when compared to tempatures during ice age.

We still arent even at a "regular" tempature since we so recently emerged from a major ice age. Don't the sea levels need to rise about 150 or so more meters to reach normal levels? We've barely warmed, compare the tempetures now to the temp's of the Medieval Warm period (something the hockey stick deny's happened), back then you could and they did grow amazing wines in England.

Also I'd like to know what you'd have us do about our creation of this "Global Warming catastrophy". Even if we suddenly and immediatly halted all production of CO2 it would take 50 years for it to leave the atmosphere. It is far better that we press on ahead full steam and let supply and demand dictate are energy choices, as their begining to now. We're seeing the beginings now of many green friendly energy sources reach mass use. Also since you seem to deam coal and other CO2 producing energy sources as evil, are you for or against the use of Nuclear power?


Currently due to the predicted decline of the suns temp over the next few decades. We are on the verge of a decline in global tempature. Not to mention many volcano's are preparing to erupt. The creator of the year without a summer Mt. Tambora has regrown to nearly full size and is becoming unstable enough to worry scientists about an eruption. While we may pump out alot of CO2, we produce nothing compared to what nature can and will produce.

I guess I'll soon be sipping some fine British wines, yumm.

[Xiahou]

Not this again. Look what 90% of any graph will always ommit when dealing with global warming is the simple fact that the sun is currently producing more energy then any previously recorded time. Also all of your graphs start at the ending of the small ice age, of course the tempature is going to rise, common sense. No ice age, warmer tempatures when compared to tempatures during ice age.
Indeed, a chart of solar radiance levels and temperature lines up pretty well. Also, if you look at the historic CO2/temperature data- it would appear that temperature change actually precedes the changes in CO2. Not too compelling an argument for CO2 causing global warming....

IRONxMortlock, not all hockey-stick shaped charts are distortion- just the global warming ones that try to show recent temperature change as a sharp change from a previous stable norm. The "norm" is a false premise, we never had a stable temperature. It has always been changing- it's been much colder than it is now and also much warmer, all without us driving our SUVs around to cause it.

[IRONxMortlock]

Not this again. Look what 90% of any graph will always ommit when dealing with global warming is the simple fact that the sun is currently producing more energy then any previously recorded time. Also all of your graphs start at the ending of the small ice age, of course the tempature is going to rise, common sense. No ice age, warmer tempatures when compared to tempatures during ice age.
Xiahou
Indeed, a chart of solar radiance levels and temperature lines up pretty well. Also, if you look at the historic CO2/temperature data- it would appear that temperature change actually precedes the changes in CO2. Not too compelling an argument for CO2 causing global warming....


...[the study] found that natural variation in the Earth’s climate, or changes in solar activity or volcanic eruptions, which have been suggested as alternative explanations for rising temperatures, could not explain the data collected in the real world. Models based on man-made emissions of greenhouse gases, however, matched the observations almost precisely.


It has always been changing- it's been much colder than it is now and also much warmer, all without us driving our SUVs around to cause it.

ARRRGHHH!:wall:

No one is saying anything different. Do you honestly think paleoclimatologists don't realise that? I'm just a simple archaeologist and I'm also quite aware that the earth's climate has been different in the past. It really isn't a secret that can be droped like a bomb to destroy the argument of human induced global warming. I can assure you we’re not missing the point. The majority of the world's other scientists aren't either. It's a matter of how quickly it's changing thanks to our SUV's etc. That's the point, we are dramatically effecting the speed at which the climate is changing with our CO2 emisions. Perhaps I should have brought this up earlier? I just assumed that it was obvious.

[IRONxMortlock]

Just noticed this report today.

Doesn't look like we've come too far even with recent attempts to control carbon emissions. I am very concerned for what kind of world my children will live in.

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article1963236.ece

Global growth in carbon emissions is 'out of control'
By Steve Connor Science Editor
Published: 11 November 2006

The growth in global emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels over the past five years was four times greater than for the preceding 10 years, according to a study that exposes critical flaws in the attempts to avert damaging climate change.

Data on carbon dioxide emissions shows that the global growth rate was 3.2 per cent in the five years to 2005 compared with 0.8 per cent from 1990 to 1999, despite efforts to reduce carbon pollution through the Kyoto agreement.

Much of the increase is probably due to the expansion of the Chinese economy, which has relied heavily on burning coal and other fossil fuels for its energy.

Dr Mike Raupach, chair of the Global Carbon Project, an international collaboration of researchers who compiled the latest figures, warned yesterday that emissions were spiralling out of control.

"This is a very worrying sign. It indicates that recent efforts to reduce emissions have had virtually no impact on emissions growth and that effective caps are urgently needed," he said.

Current levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are 380 parts per million (ppm), about 100ppm higher than before the Industrial Revolution 200 years ago. Some computer models predict damaging and irreversible climate change if carbon dioxide levels rise above 450ppm or 500 ppm.

The rate of increase of emissions suggests it may soon be impossible to avoid some of the worst-case scenarios, said Josep Canadell, executive director of the Global Carbon Project. "On our current path, we will find it extremely difficult to rein in carbon emissions enough to stabilise the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration at 450ppm, and even 550ppm will be a challenge," he said. "At some point in the near future, we will miss the boat in terms of achieving acceptable levels."

Based on current trends, carbon dioxide concentrations are likely to increase to 500ppm this century. The last time the planet experienced levels as high as 500ppm was about 20 or 40 million years ago, when sea levels were 100 metres higher than today.

The Stern report earlier this month warned that the uncontrolled release of greenhouse gases could lead to a rise in average global temperatures of up to 5C by 2100 - about the same temperature difference between now and the last ice age.

Scientist have warned that global temperatures will continue to rise for many decades after carbon dioxide concentrations have stabilised due to the environmental inertia of the world's climate system.

Dr Peter Falloon, a climate impact scientist at the Met Office's Hadley Centre, said the latest findings did not augur well for attempts at averting climate change.

"It's not what we want or hope to see. The concern comes from the fact that the greater the emissions are now, the harder it will be to bring them down in the future," he said. "It takes 30 or 40 years to realise the change in carbon dioxide emissions. It highlights how important it is to take quick and effective action now."

Professor Bill McGuire, director of the Benfield Hazard Research Centre in London, said: "This is more very bad news. We need a 60 to 70 per cent cut in emissions, but instead, emission levels are spiralling out of control. The sum total of our meagre efforts to cut emissions amounts to less than zero."

[BDC]

Just noticed this report today.

Doesn't look like we've come too far even with recent attempts to control carbon emissions. I am very concerned for what kind of world my children will live in.

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article1963236.ece

Global growth in carbon emissions is 'out of control'
By Steve Connor Science Editor
Published: 11 November 2006

The growth in global emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels over the past five years was four times greater than for the preceding 10 years, according to a study that exposes critical flaws in the attempts to avert damaging climate change.

Data on carbon dioxide emissions shows that the global growth rate was 3.2 per cent in the five years to 2005 compared with 0.8 per cent from 1990 to 1999, despite efforts to reduce carbon pollution through the Kyoto agreement.

Much of the increase is probably due to the expansion of the Chinese economy, which has relied heavily on burning coal and other fossil fuels for its energy.

Dr Mike Raupach, chair of the Global Carbon Project, an international collaboration of researchers who compiled the latest figures, warned yesterday that emissions were spiralling out of control.

"This is a very worrying sign. It indicates that recent efforts to reduce emissions have had virtually no impact on emissions growth and that effective caps are urgently needed," he said.

Current levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are 380 parts per million (ppm), about 100ppm higher than before the Industrial Revolution 200 years ago. Some computer models predict damaging and irreversible climate change if carbon dioxide levels rise above 450ppm or 500 ppm.

The rate of increase of emissions suggests it may soon be impossible to avoid some of the worst-case scenarios, said Josep Canadell, executive director of the Global Carbon Project. "On our current path, we will find it extremely difficult to rein in carbon emissions enough to stabilise the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration at 450ppm, and even 550ppm will be a challenge," he said. "At some point in the near future, we will miss the boat in terms of achieving acceptable levels."

Based on current trends, carbon dioxide concentrations are likely to increase to 500ppm this century. The last time the planet experienced levels as high as 500ppm was about 20 or 40 million years ago, when sea levels were 100 metres higher than today.

The Stern report earlier this month warned that the uncontrolled release of greenhouse gases could lead to a rise in average global temperatures of up to 5C by 2100 - about the same temperature difference between now and the last ice age.

Scientist have warned that global temperatures will continue to rise for many decades after carbon dioxide concentrations have stabilised due to the environmental inertia of the world's climate system.

Dr Peter Falloon, a climate impact scientist at the Met Office's Hadley Centre, said the latest findings did not augur well for attempts at averting climate change.

"It's not what we want or hope to see. The concern comes from the fact that the greater the emissions are now, the harder it will be to bring them down in the future," he said. "It takes 30 or 40 years to realise the change in carbon dioxide emissions. It highlights how important it is to take quick and effective action now."

Professor Bill McGuire, director of the Benfield Hazard Research Centre in London, said: "This is more very bad news. We need a 60 to 70 per cent cut in emissions, but instead, emission levels are spiralling out of control. The sum total of our meagre efforts to cut emissions amounts to less than zero."


Great. So we in Britain can get loaded with a huge amount of 'green' taxes, expensive air travel and near-pointless recycling, and then get flooded anyway because no one else bothered.

I'm going to invest in property in mountain ranges...

[Moros]

Don't worry most of North America and Europe will cool down, not warm up. So maybe we can ski to work in the future! As we'll get an Alaska like climate.