General

My good man! I am an ocean and environmental engineer specializing in reuse, repurposing, waste minimization. Currently, I am repurposing sludge for beneficial reuse in agriculture and horticulture despite efforts to the contrary by the political elite in my state.

Interestingly, the ice cores from Greenland and tree rings that reach back 10 000 years clearly identify the impacts of the expansion of the Roman Empire on CO2 levels and climate around the world. There is proof that each major step and expansion of development is paired with a corresponding increase in CO2 levels and climate alteration. Just ask the Vikings in Greenland! The Artic is more sensitive and susceptible to atmospheric changes than other areas as the most recent observations have documented the drastic changes in temperatures and ice formations.

Thanks!! for this thread. What we eat impacts climate!

Buddy, you will need to show your work on this. I will only provide a single, small example.

Everyone knows we have solar cycles. Those solar cycles have not always been consistent in period or severity. There are also multiple cycles superimposed. Some of these cycles are sufficiently long in period that they could look like the rise and fall of the Roman empire. Since there is no direct data on the solar radiation received in the past, how do you identify the contribution of this natural activity?

When you finish that, you can move along to volcanic activity that we know even less about.

Then, (this is right in your wheelhouse), what is the contribution and response time for increased absorption of CO2 in plankton, etc. and what portion gets stored long term on the ocean floor?

I have not said that there is no contribution to climate change by man, but rather we are not anywhere close to knowing what that impact is.

We aren't even REALLY sure if it will ultimately be warming or cooling, because we don't know if many of the factors in nature are positive feedback, negative feedback, or linear.

I am reminded of the joke about the blind men trying to identify an elephant by touch. One encounters a leg and thinks it is a tree, another the tail and thinks it is a vine. Each has some of the data, but even together not enough to get it right. Seems to me we need to be less arrogant and spend a lot more time researching before we make predictions.

Also keep in mind that there are costs to taking dramatic action on (climate change) and there is no free ride.

How much loss in economic growth, or even negative economic growth will be involved? How much poverty will be allowed to exist to acheive lower energy use?

All of our current renewable options have environmental negatives. Our current best batteries use lots of lithium which is one the highest polluting mining operations in the world.

Wind is energy intensive (and uses petroleum) to build and install, tends to produce power far from it is needed (large transmission losses) and at the "wrong" times and when installed for high efficiency tends to kill lots of birds.

PV Solar uses lots of toxic chemicals to build, last typically about 30 years, are difficult to recycle and tend to produce power sporadically. In fact, rule of thumb is that for every 1 MW of installed solar power you need 0.5 MW of natural gas generation running to pick up the unplanned swing in load.

Nuclear is probably still the best bet for low carbon power generation, but nobody wants it in near them!

Thanks for that, Becomingoverweight. I feel your frustration with the site but appreciate your sensible responses to this. (Incidentally I am an engineer and have completed a course on climate change from Exeter University). I like the Algal Oil idea a lot, btw.

We need a new way of measuring global success. GDP is not the way.

Great thoughts and arguments. I might offer two common sense observations. First, using a mass balance man has been removing fossil fuels from carbon storage since the Bronze Age. Carbon that was sequestered by our Mother during the Carboniterous Age. This mass is being transferred to other parts of our biosphere like the atmosphere creating an insulating blanket. Only man, not gators or hippos, is extracting carbon resources and consuming them, which release insulating gases into the atmosphere. Beneficial reuse of sludge sequesters the carbon back into the soil helping to mitigate erosion and providing water retention and organic nutrients for agriculture.

Once on a slippery slope, the planet moves more rapidly oward a cataclysmic event throwing things out of balance along the way, like extreme storms, glacier melting, disappearing ice pack, and pronged drought. Why do pandemics spread rapidly? Because the natural balance is upset and the disease takes advantage, just like the Black Plague throughout the UK in the 1600s following drought and famine. And so, it repeats again. The snowball is rolling and picking up speed.

Economically, alternative sustainable energy has offered more job opportunities than the number of people currently employed in fossil fuels. The same has happened with the rise of computers creating many well paying jobs. Preventing further climate change will create an avalanche or tsunami of job and business opportunities. Paying 10% more for is a small price to pay for a healthy planet and a good quality of life. Are those plastic bags and other consumable plastics critical? No! Overfishing, which is idling related industries? No!

Our oceans are at a tipping point. Acidification and temperature escalation. Given the carbonate equilibrium, only so much acidic carbon dioxide can be absorbed. That is why freshwater aquariums require continuous pH adjustment. Accretion of carbonates to form limestone is a very slow process and acidification reverses that process while consuming the buffer capacity of the oceans. Storms from climate change accelerate the heating of the oceans and alter the movement and paths of the currents, which alters the productivity and food chain. The net result is less food for us.

I leave you with this. All life is interdependent for the circle to remain intact. Our Mother has done an incredible job of creating niches for life to flourish, balance among ecosystems and living things, and evolving through time in a resilient and orderly fashion. Everything worked harmoniously and holistically before man.

Think about this. The male bee in Peru seeks out a specific type of plant to pollinate and recover nectar. Why? So he can attract females bees and mate. If the plant goes extinct, so do the bees and other species dependent on them for pollination and food. Climate change is the biggest threat to them.

I'm an electrical and electronics engineer with a degree. I have also designed and installed quite a few air source heat pump and solar water heating systems. I am trialling some new ideas in that area.

Then why did the average world temperature set a new record record every month for months on end? Why has the average world temperature almost reach the threshold of a 2 C increase? Why have the average ocean temperatures continue to climb and the melting of glaciers and shelf ice accelerated over the past 10 years as shown in NASA satellite photos? The earth is at a tipping point near the edge of cataclysmic change.

The energy went into warming the oceans, melting ice, and extreme storms (more of them and more intense). Even insurance companies have taken notice and endorsed ways to slow climate change by altering human's destructive habits.

I love you guys coming to the party with data! It makes for a much more reasonable conversation.

I want to make a couple simple, but important points.

First, remember my saying that I agree that man is contributing to climate change. No need to convince me of that.

All this data is fine, but does not directly or effectively address my key points.

In order to decide to take some massive action with equally massive consequences, you have to know with some level of certainly what the actual impact of that action will be. This is of course the reason that the models are important, flawed as they are.

The irradiance data from NASA is good information but does not address any of my issues directly.

How much radiation from the sun impinges on the Earth and how much is absorbed by it depends on not just reflectance, but also solar output. We are substantially in the dark about what was going on with the sun historically over the period when the CO2 data (largely derived from CO2 stored in fosselized plants or arctic ice) took place.

The NASA data provides, for a relatively short span of time, a measure of how much solar energy impinged and how much may have been absorbed. (measurement method and precision are key here) It does not however, cover a long enough period to relate to climate as vs. weather.

At what point does the increased water vapor in the atmosphere related to increased temperature, impact the reflectance of the earth's atmosphere and reduce the energy from the sun heating the earth? Will this limit the temperature rise due to CO2 and mitigate the greenhouse effect? There are some scientists who think so.

I don't know, and in fact neither at this point does anyone else. We have lots of opinions and not many facts. These systems are just REALLY complicated and we lack understanding of them.

The information posted here is great (and not new to me), it just doesn't make a complete picture and is nowhere near what is needed to make valid predictions.

I am going to bow out at this point. I really appreciate everyone contributing and it is much better to exchange opinions with reason than with insults.

Since others are sharing creditials and experience I will too.

I am a PE Engineer in Control Systems. My career has been largely spent in Industrial Control Systems, a good part of which has been in some fairly sophisticated applications using "Advanced Controls" which is a marketing term for predictive models and some primitive neural nets (I would say ALL of our current nets are primitive!).

My experience has the concentration above, but I have worked in integrated circuit process (CMOS), designed VME based computer boards, and a variety of other things.

Thanks Guys!

This is why it's important not to extract trends from a small dataset.

Year to year (or even over the course of several years) there is considerable variation in global temperatures. Sometimes it goes up, sometimes it goes down. Very rarely do trends move in a completely straight line, there is almost always some level of variation and noise.

To see the trend you need to look at MORE than the last 5 years. This graph from the NASA website plots the global average temperature over the last 120 years, as measured by a number of sources, including the NOAA. You'll see that, while 2015 does appear to have a similar average temperature to 2020, the overall trend clearly indicates rising global temperatures, especially since around 1980.

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Here is the article that accompanies that image:
earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of-change/global-temperatures

My 3p
NASA is not a trustworthy source.
Fossil Fuel is misnamed. It's not from fossils.
Warming causes CO2 not the other way round.

As to your specific question about why the average global temperature readings for two separate years are similar, that's an incredibly complex question. Honestly I'm a little confused why you would be expecting, or even looking for an answer to that question on a niche fetish forum.

The earth is an immensely complex system. Why did it rain more in Idaho this August than it did the previous July? Why did it snow in Kentucky when the forecast called for sleet? Why is the water temperature in Baja, California higher than average one day and lower than average the next?

There are countless factors that influence minor changes weather changes like these on a day to day or year to year basis, which is why our knowledge of climate change has to be founded on data aggregated over many years.

If you're truly interested in learning the answer to your specific question, I would suggest reaching out to the environmental science department at your local university. Please share the response as I would love to see it.

Your question is also entirely irrelevant to the discussion on climate change, as the data cited above and elsewhere in this thread clearly shows there is a general trend towards increasing global temperatures, even if the upward trend doesn't follow a straight line.