The Science and Philosophy Forum

It seems quite likely to me (approaching undeniable) that like the O2 portion of our atmosphere, the ozone layer is also a product of the biosphere. This suggests to me that there may have been species of phytoplankton more adapted to UV exposure. At the very least, there may have been species of phytoplankton more adapted to warmer climates. Perhaps the recent (or current) ice age is why phytoplankton seem to prefer colder climates at this time.

Apparently 175 million years ago the CO2 levels began to decline from 2500 ppm down to the 225 ppm average that we have had over the last million years or so (now 400 pmm at the moment). Most of that time the average global temperature was much much higher. If phytoplankton was reason for this change in CO2 levels then it seems likely it was adapted to a higher temperature. In this case, it would be just a matter of time for these previous versions of phytoplankton to reassert themselves, though the evolutionary time scale is not so helpful to human civilization. But then there is Braininvat's suggestion that we might help this along ourselves.

I acknowledge that this is not the only possible explanation. Just because phytoplankton is responsible for the majority of our CO2 to O2 conversion right now does not mean that it always has been. Also the buildup of our current O2 versus CO2 levels may been a rather slow process from other plants or a less effective phytoplankon and we cannot assume it was more effective at higher temperatures in the past.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-electric-taxi/london-hails-electric-cabs-for-a-fare-to-a-different-world-idUSKBN1E00E0?il=0

Whittling away at our carbon footprint. The question is, do these little victories aid the whittling to where it can eventually make a dent?

Braininvat » December 6th, 2017, 1:27 pm wrote:https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-electric-taxi/london-hails-electric-cabs-for-a-fare-to-a-different-world-idUSKBN1E00E0?il=0

Whittling away at our carbon footprint. The question is, do these little victories aid the whittling to where it can eventually make a dent?

Nah! Too late. And anyway, the current US administration will do more harm in a year than the rest of world can undo in a decade.

More admirable whittling.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/passive-house-affordable-housing-1.4432331

Had we begun these measures in 1968

1967 - Manabe and Wetherald make a convincing calculation that doubling CO2 would raise world temperatures a couple of degrees. =>Radiation math
1968
Studies suggest a possibility of collapse of Antarctic ice sheets, which would raise sea levels catastrophically. =>Sea rise & ice

the whole thing might have been prevented - with the bonus of far better health, both of humans and other species, world-wide. Imagine the shape we'd be in if we'd listened back in the 1890's.

The timeline in the link may be of interest.
https://history.aip.org/climate/timeline.htm

zetreque » September 2nd, 2017, 10:48 am wrote: Would be interesting to see some data on insect changes around where I am over the past 30 years but I don't think anyone in my area was studying that so long ago as the population was a fraction of what it is now.

I don't know where you are, and it doesn't seem to matter. This paper was brought to my attention recently. I mentioned it elsewhere, but if you're still interested, here it is again
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185809

Here's some water/petrol for the fire ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwqIy8Ikv-c

BadgerJelly » Wed Jan 10, 2018 1:53 am wrote:Here's some water/petrol for the fire ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwqIy8Ikv-c

Why even post such a piece of trash? It is missing so many things such as disappearing ice, methane hydrates, or rapid change and the speed of evolution. And it's hardly related to the topic. best for another topic of small minded people like the US president.

Lindzen against the academic community.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/06032017/climate-change-denial-scientists-richard-lindzen-mit-donald-trump

"As [Lindzen's] colleagues at MIT in the Program in Atmospheres, Oceans and Climate, all of whom are actively involved in understanding climate, we write to make it clear that this is not a view shared by us, or by the overwhelming majority of other scientists who have devoted their professional lives to careful study of climate science," said the March 2 letter, signed by 22 current and retired MIT professors.

https://skepticalscience.com/skeptic_Richard_Lindzen.htm

This thread is already so long already but this certainly fits the category.

2009 was the first approved Hemp construction house in the USA.
They make a lot of claims and I wonder how well the claims actually stack up long term and if there are any negative indoor air quality effects. If it sucks carbon out of the air I wonder how well indoor plants would do. If it is significant enough to make a difference.

I wonder what rate the concrete becomes more dense aka carbon sequestration rate.



133$ per square foot. Not bad.

California Cow Power
http://www.jwnenergy.com/article/2018/1 ... alifornia/

This technology is nothing new, but maybe it will be more competitive and better known with volume.

Very informative article. Thank you. I researched this the other day when posting above because I am hopefully very soon starting on my own building project. After my research I don't think I will be using hempcrete but haven't entirely ruled it out. It comes down to cost. As the article points out, even the seeds have to be imported. With time this product will get very cheap I think when farmers start growing it locally, but right now it's not entirely sustainable being shipped all over and it's more expensive going through all the building exemptions, labor and mixing.

Also as the article points out, it's not for structural. You are basically replacing the costs of standard insulation, drywall and siding with the cost of hempcrete which is much more labor intensive. California might be much more open to the industry after the last series of disastrous fires wiped out thousands of homes. I think even as non-environmentally friend as standard concrete is, concrete still looks good when you take into account it's being fireproof, thermal mass, soundproofing and strength. (so long as the next owner of the house doesn't just tear the thing down to build his or her own dream home which happens quite often.)

This article mentions the problems with being used close to ground level. I did not read that in my research and that adds additional problems. I'd like to consider this building material, but unfortunately I might be a little to early to the game. The article gave me a couple leads to look into. Thanks again.

You're welcome. It's certainly early days, in terms of knowing all the pluses and minuses. I try to restrain jokes about homeowners too stoned to flee the house when it catches fire.

Also in the news recently in the A2F technology experiments, where CO2 is extracted from the air to make carbon neutral fuels...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... bill-gates

Not a bad idea, that one. They're going into production of precast panels; they could as easily make bricks, or other shapes for prefab construction. I can imagine, with a little more tweaking of the formulation, reinforcing it with rebars or a mesh of something tougher - say, cedar bark off all those fence-posts - to make it strong and thus more versatile.
http://www.westlocknews.com/article/Tiny-house-builder-branches-out-his-hempcrete-business-20170207

At this stage, he noted that hempcrete is quite cost competitive since most of the biomass he is using is actually rotting away in fields.
....." We’re basically using a local waste product to build houses. The benefits there are astronomical. Not only is it a waste product, its fire resistant, mould resistant, pest resistant, earthquake resistant.”
Hempcrete is also notable for its heat-retaining properties and low-environmental impact. He noted that materials for an average house could be produced on five-acres of land in one growing season.
As well, aging only strengthens the blocks as the natural fibres petrify over a 30 to 40-year period.

RjMaan » June 23rd, 2018, 10:56 am wrote:This topic does need a debate on it. Actually there are a lot of sources of climate change and we cannot eliminate those resource at once. It will need a lot of time. As you know the shifting of people from gasoline cars to electric cars and bikes took a lot of time. Plus, it also depends on the awareness of people, if people are well aware of the climate change and its causes then they will actively take part in prevention.

There have been electric vehicles since the 1830's; practical designs since 1870. http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/overview-of-early-electric-cars.html
It took over 2 centuries to wake up to the destructiveness of fossil fuels: even though the immediate effects were obvious, commercial interest won out over conservation, environment, human health and welfare, indigenous cultures and communities, wildlife and nature.
Now, it might be more advantageous to some financial interests to promote ecologically sound practices, but opposing commercial interests are still invested in the destructive technologies, and most industries are still finding it a lot cheaper to dump toxic waste illegally than to to dispose of it safely - or **imagine!!** - stop producing it.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/13/climate-change-oil-industry-environment-warning-1968 Of course, the use of coal was clearly bad for miners, railway and ship crews, as well as all the working people in industrial cities, but they simply didn't matter until they unionized and got some degree of protection. The environment couldn't. Here's something from 100 years ago. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/1912-article-global-warming/

The accelerating rate of of climate change have been clearly and loudly enunciated by scientists for the past half century - though, trying to avoid being labelled as "alarmist", they regularly erred on the optimistic side of prediction.

These weather changes are currently manifesting in disasters all over the globe. The number of people permanently displaced, mainly by too much or not enough water as rain and wind patterns are increasingly disrupted, will continue to grow.

If you're still only "debating", when do you expect to see results?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/study-tests-whether-seaweed-in-cattle-feed-reduces-emissions/2018/08/31/376e4466-ad45-11e8-9a7d-cd30504ff902_story.html?utm_term=.a631b5c2e853

Decrease in cow farts could be some help in reducing total GHG levels.

We've known that for a while, but acting on it would play right into the hands of *#!!&*@*! vegetarians.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... 82dbbbcc44


As most of you here know, a temperature rise of 4 degrees Celsius would have grave consequences.

Interesting that the administration is now acknowledging facts that it has earlier denied. Global warming is no longer a "hoax, " but now is reframed as a lost cause, a climatic juggernaut we are powerless to stop or delay.

Unfortunately BiV, the Washington Post now has a paywall. I'm quite interested in the subject, but do not wish to receive the Washington Post.


Is there a reference to an original study or anything in the article that's possible to access independently of the Washington Post?


Thanks


Doogles

Hi, Doog. WaPo provides 4 free articles per month. If you are past that, your browser's Incognito or InPrivate mode should allow you to read without having your cookie registered. In this case, the article references the Trump administration's new report on GW, so I can easily find another free source. Hang on....

https://www.livescience.com/63709-trump ... grees.html
(short version)

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/20 ... -2100.html

(longer, more opiniony)

It has a link to the NHTSA environmental impact statement that the WaPo story was based on.

https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/study-oce ... asurements

Note the Nov. 9 correction note at the start of the story. This correction is how science is supposed to work. A climatologist blog called attention to the original paper's problem...

https://judithcurry.com/2018/11/06/a-ma ... ake-paper/

This link turned up in my emails today.

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/worl ... t-warming/

Is there any member qualified enough to make a comment on this?

Hi, Doolges. I follow astronomy and NASA (and SpaceX, Blue Origin, et al) news and had actually read this brief a while back, which may be helpful. Your citation seems to grossly exaggerate the overall temperature effects from stratospheric cooling.

https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/rind_03/

Anyone posed a realistic solution or even focused on the problem?

My answer is always the same and has been for 7-8 yrs.

Braininvat » Fri Nov 16, 2018 2:10 am wrote:Hi, Doolges. I follow astronomy and NASA (and SpaceX, Blue Origin, et al) news and had actually read this brief a while back, which may be helpful. Your citation seems to grossly exaggerate the overall temperature effects from stratospheric cooling.

https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/rind_03/

This release does have quite a recent date (Nov 14), but I suspect, like you, Braininvat that because it is one of the weakest so-far-recorded sun cycles, that it will only be limited to the stratosphere for a limited time.

Braininvat » November 24th, 2018, 10:51 pm wrote:https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/

No answers there. Some more minimal posturing. Slaughtering billions is one option ... ?

A few projects here and there aren’t going to get people to choose greener energy and food sources over life. Do those people deserve death for wanting to live? Or would it be better to make their lives better so they actually care about the future beyond the next week, day or morning?

That is the heart of the problem imo.

Also, as Paul Krugman describes today in the New York Times, there is the fact that most people don't understand much about atmospheric physics or geosciences generally, and can be easily swayed by little slivers of out-of-context information that has been spun by fossil fuel industry shills.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/03/opin ... p-gop.html

If the majority of the population could understand that the reason scientific consensus is 97%, and not 100% on anthropogenic GW, is that the other 3% are paid by the fossil fuel industry to cast doubt on a mountain of solid research, then we might be able to start taking some bigger steps towards clean energy.

I'm starting to wonder how many more "storm of the century" level events, and "hottest summer on record" events, and related catastrophes, we need packed into a few years to dislodge all the pro-industry fairy tales from people's minds.

I don't know anybody who denies that the average world near-surface temperatures have increased by a significant 1.6 degrees or so in the last 100 years.

The debate seems to be whether carbon dioxide increases could be the cause and whether reducing their emissions could alleviate the problem. I've issued a challenge before for anyone to find a basic experiment on the properties of carbon dioxide to absorb and radiate heat since the time of Tyndall in the mid-19th century. That challenge still stands. And remember that Tyndall recorded that the carbonic acid he used, radiated off its heat as fast as it absorbed it.

In fact a pilot experiment was conducted in 2008 to 2012 via the Marakesh Accord wherein 37 countries plus the European Union agreed to achieve certain targets of carbon dioxide emission-reduction. That pilot experiment had absolutely NO detectable effect on the graph of emissions during and subsequent to that period. You can have a look at the Cape Grim or Mauna Loa graphs for yourself. Why haven't the results of that Marakesh Accord been published and scientifically investigated by the the IPCC? If they were able to demonstrate even a modicum of a reduction after that pilot experiment, it would have given all of us a bit of confidence in the carbon dioxide faith. It did not happen.

I'm quite skeptical about the role of carbon dioxide in 'Climate Change'.

It seems to me a case of everyone ignoring the elephant in the room -- world population increases. I published a crude graph on this in another thread some time back showing a 90% correlation between annual residual world populations and the megatonnes of carbon emitted annually. There was a 90% correlation. I reworked those figures recently and found I'd transcribed one piece of data as 8000-odd megatonnes instead of 6000-odd megatonnes. The corrected figure came out with a pearson Coefficient of 0.94 (P<0.00001), which is getting close to 1.0.

This means that if anybody is putting their in faith carbon dioxide on the basis of the accuracy of the mathematical models using carbon dioxide to predict future changes, that they would achieve close to the same results if population figures were substituted for carbon dioxide figures. They are close to interchangeable.

If you wish to see a graph that is rising in the same manner as population and carbon dioxide, have a look at this this one on increases in world usage of electricity usage (Kwh per head of population) -- https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.USE.ELEC.KH.PC. I would be interested if any of our mathematicians could convert those figures into average temperature rises at near-surface levels.

I produced a schemattic diagram of populations in another post some time back and demonstrated its interractions with a number of other adverse situations including exhaustion of agricultural fertlilizer supplies.

Even though I have not seen any convincing basic evidence that carbon dioxide is seriously involved in the small average increases in near-surface temperatures, I can see that if you can slow down population, you will definitely see a slow-down in carbon dioxide emissions, and conversely I believe that nothing is going to change until we address that elephant in the room.

The preponderance of evidence clearly points to methane, CO2, and diesel soot to be primary factors in human-induced global warming. Per forum guidelines, contrarian theories go in the Personal Theories section. Though the fellow who wrote those SCF guidelines has moved on, I made certain promises to honor those guidelines. Because I know you to be a gentleman and person of integrity, I know you will honor them as well.

Since production of GHGs would tend to be somewhat in proportion to the number of humans producing them, it would seem clear that our large population is very much part of the causation. The reason that population-based solutions get so little discussion is because, generally, their implementation would require a gross abrogation of human rights. (see China) Carrot solutions seem better than stick solutions, i.e. governments offering financial incentives to have smaller families. So long as nation/state power and influence are considered vital, few nations will implement such plans. It will probably take ecodisaster and famine of mind-bending proportions to shift public thinking on this matter.