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The Forum > Article Comments > The history of global warming > Comments

The history of global warming : Comments

By Don Aitkin, published 30/5/2013

Too early to write it off, but not too early to start understanding it in context.

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Antiseptic - Let's hope we learn our lesson and the next interglaciation doesn't see the same thoughtlessly opportunistic growth behaviour

Wishful thinking unfortunately. Western type humans are naturally opportunistic and as such there will always be those who regard money /profit as supreme God. The best hope for the ecosystem is that one of the non-money-focussed races will gain the upper hand.
Posted by praxidice, Monday, 3 June 2013 8:44:45 AM
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Rafe Champion•a few seconds ago −

To understand how the climate scare took off so quickly, it helps to understand the infrastructure put in place by the anti-nuclear power movement that morphed out of the Ban the Bomb campaign of the 1950s. The late John Grover told the tale, http://www.the-rathouse.com/2011/Grover-Power.html
Posted by Pericles2, Monday, 3 June 2013 12:04:54 PM
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Praxidice, ALL humans are opportunistic because we all evolved from ancestry that was opportunistic. The evidence is everywhere on the planet, because this species of African chimpanzee has been so good at exploiting opportunities as they arise, especially the one offered by the extended favourable climate of the past 10,000 years or so. You are confusing a cultural artefact with a biological imperative.

Spindoc, I have no means of evaluating the CFC claim, but it is not hard to see that atmospheric CO2 concentration is a lag indicator of atmospheric temperature, since the mechanisms which contribute to it are temperature sensitive.

Since CO2 concentration is highly responsive to temperature changes, both from lows of less than 200 ppm and from highs of around double that, according to the evidence from ice cores and other geological records and is known to reduce radiative cooling at long IR wavelengths in proportion to concentration, it seems reasonable to suppose that the temperature limitations on the rate of source and sink processes are constraining a runaway positive feedback of both concentration and temperature, even when lots of it is present.

The same thing applies to water vapour, methane and other naturally occurring species, because they have both source and sink mechanisms which are an inherent feature of geochemistry.

On the other hand, CFCs have only one source - us - and no sink other than decomposition by high intensity UV in the upper atmosphere. Since they are causal in the destruction of ozone, they lead to an increase in the amount of high energy UV that penetrates to the lower atmosphere, where it is absorbed and transfers its energy to particles in the form of either kinetic energy or heat. An increase in kinetic energy means an increase in the ability to do work, including by colliding with other particles and transferring some of that energy as heat.

It stands to reason that a correlation exists, the only question is whether the net energy flux to the lower atmosphere caused by CFC-induced ozone depletion is of sufficient scale to be a significant causal influence.
Posted by Antiseptic, Monday, 3 June 2013 9:57:58 PM
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http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2013/05/31/qing-bin-lu-revives-debunked-claims-about-cosmic-rays-and-cfcs/

We should act upon what we know and not upon what we wishfully think. I wish it was CFC's, volcanoes, anything but CO2, but it ain't. Nor are CFC's candidates for ocean acidification.

Anti and Coh should put up their arguments in scientific fora for scrutiny rather than banging on here. As far as I am aware, there is a world scientific consensus that something needs doing about CO2, so lets do it, be it by a Labor or LNP mechanism.
Posted by Luciferase, Tuesday, 4 June 2013 9:24:36 PM
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Luciferase, I've come late to the subject, having seen it to be essentially a religious debate in the long tradition of catastophism with little science to go on.

Having looked at it again recently I've seen that while the science is advancing, there is still a long way to go, because the climate emerges from the combined effects and interactions of so many different processes on so many timescales that it's unpredictable.

I'm simply trying to reason my way through it, rather than adopting an ideological position. As a result I've already said I agree with the proposition that reducing anthropogenic CO2 emissions and sequestering what we can is a good idea, since CO2 clearly has a net heating effect. However that doesn't explain the fact that CO2 concentration cycles up and down with temperature, so clearly the other effects are more important, including rate/temperature relationships and of course, solar activity cycles. CFC's are a new factor altogether with a large effect on the upper atmosphere, so clearly their effect needs to be understood in the context of the whole system.

My reasoning isn't complex so I'd have thought that there would be many here who could follow it. If there aren't, then perhaps the subject is simply too complex for useful public discussion?
Posted by Antiseptic, Wednesday, 5 June 2013 7:16:33 AM
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"My reasoning isn't complex...". Exactly so, but you need it tested in scientific fora rather than thinking aloud here. Yes there are extraneities that weigh into climate models, but through the fog we return to man's impact on CO2 levels as it both correlates and provides a mechanism for global warming that CFC and other theories so far do not.

We should act prudently on the scientific consensus. Bucking it is a political position, not a scientific one, for the vast majority of skeptics. Clinging uncritically to science that obfuscates the consensus, for political reasons, is a luxury that it may well turn out should not have been afforded.

We all know the real LNP position on AGW is that it is simply crap. The likelihood of Australia continuing its leadership role after September looks doomed if the political pundits are right. Indeed, with political developments in Europe and the US and India and China's relaxed attitude towards the environment it seem humanity is to allow an experiment upon itself. IMO, it will get very ugly on many fronts, but man the species will survive (though perhaps without your or my DNA, Antiseptic).
Posted by Luciferase, Wednesday, 5 June 2013 11:20:06 AM
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