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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: RetiredNow who wrote (751993)11/10/2013 11:57:00 AM
From: d[-_-]b1 Recommendation

Recommended By
FJB

  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1576601
 
* can humans survive much higher temperatures, especially if they decimate our ability to produce enough food or harvest it from oceans?

I think the answer to that is yes - without question we can survive higher temps - colder - not so easily. Even during periods of 10X CO2 the earth has never turned into a desert. Ice ball planet happened, ice ages happen like clock work.

* are the cost of changing our ways to cleaner energy sources outweighed but he costs of global warming, which include increased damage to coastal properties and lost life, increased disease from insect proliferation, and increased intensity of storms leading to increased damage to human property?

There are so many assumptions in your list as to the effects of warming that have been proven false or are still unclear they aren't worth addressing. The only question in your list worth considering is the financial cost. No we can't afford to do that today - aren't we as a nation 17 Trillion in debt already (probably 20T by the time dumbo gets done with us)- and without a solution the entire world will adopt - our actions would be nothing short of economic suicide. Besides any solution should come from the private sector - the government should stick to funding research for alternative energy.

The fact world temps have ceased increasing while we continue to pour CO2 at faster and faster rates into the air for the last 15 years should give you some serious pause in this questionable theory. I am 100% behind alternative energy at economically competitive cost and nuclear energy is that solution right now. Plan for disaster, place them in isolated locations and build the latest, safest plants possible. I've noticed the Chinese are having trouble selling their solar panels so the producers are installing them and selling energy instead now. Curious how long that will last since they build a coal plant a day over there.



To: RetiredNow who wrote (751993)11/10/2013 12:23:05 PM
From: FJB  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 1576601
 
Humans and all life THRIVES under warm conditions. Ice ages kill almost all life on the planet. If warming were occurring, we should celebrate it, because life will be good. An ice age will almost wipe out humanity, but a lot of greenies want this to happen. Hope you aren't one them...



To: RetiredNow who wrote (751993)11/10/2013 5:38:06 PM
From: Jorj X Mckie  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1576601
 
The earth will survive and maybe we will too, but there is a cost benefit equation that needs to be studied here to make the appropriate decisions about our energy sources and uses.

I have brought this up several times.

If we assume that the worst case scenarios of the CAGW crew are true, are the results of doing nothing better or worse than eliminating 50 to 70% of our energy resources.

So let's remove only coal, not nat gas or oil....50% of the worlds power generation. How many millions of people will die in the first year that we eliminate coal from out energy equation? How do you think the economy will respond to the removal of the energy source that fueled the industrial and technology revolutions?

I think the world needs to know this. I think we can do a little experiment that will help the scientist build meaningful models. We should have a week without coal. Surely nothing that bad could happen in one week without coal. Afterall, wind and solar are great baseload energy sources, aren't they?



To: RetiredNow who wrote (751993)11/10/2013 5:38:59 PM
From: Bilow  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1576601
 
Hi mindmeld; Re: "can humans survive much higher temperatures, especially if they decimate our ability to produce enough food or harvest it from oceans?"

The evidence in favor of CO2 caused global warming consists of climate simulations that "match the long term trend" in recent global temperatures.

During the recent temperature rise, human production of food has increased.

That indicates that either humans are better at adapting to global warming than you think they are, or that warmer climate is better for growing food (or some combination).

And one of the features of CO2 forcing is that it is logarithmic. [That is, doubling the amount of CO2 causes a certain amount of warming. Doubling it again and again only increases temperatures by that same amount each doubling.] Consequently, we've already seen the fastest rates of increase in temperature. From here things keep getting hotter (according to the global warming theory) but at a lower rate. And that suggests we can adapt to it more easily in the future than we have in the past. And since we've absolutely slaughtered the food crisis demon in the past, all indications that it will be easily managed in the future.

-- Carl

P.S. Since half of my audience is quite stupid, I'll do a numeric example of why the increase in temperatures slows down when the forcing is logarithmic.

Let's suppose 3 degrees C per doubling and set our anomaly to be zero when the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is 300 ppm. That is, we assume a relationship between CO2 and temperature of

T = 3 log_2( C/300)

where T is the temperature anomaly (degrees hotter) in centigrade, and C is the amount of CO2 in ppm. Then a table of steadily increasing CO2 concentrations leads to a temperature increase as follows:

C(ppm) T(degrees C)
300 0.00
325 0.35
350 0.67
375 0.97
400 1.24
425 1.51
...
575 2.81
600 3.00
625 3.18
...
875 4.63
900 4.75
925 4.87
...
1175 5.91
1200 6.00
1225 6.09

From the above, you can see that at 300 ppm, increasing the CO2 by 25ppm increases temperatures by 0.35 degrees C, but by the time you reach 1200ppm, the effect is only 0.09 degrees C.