Global Warming Update
Over the past 15 years air temperatures at the Earth’s surface have been flat while greenhouse-gas emissions have continued to soar. The world added roughly 100 billion tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010. That is about a quarter of all the CO₂ put there by humanity since 1750. And yet, as James Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, observes, “the five-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade.”
This is from The Economist.
How do we not account for long-term effects? I get upset at both sides of the global warming debate because they tend to make too many assertions based on poor data. Global climate shifts and human contribution to it is a very pre-mature science that we don’t know how to measure well.
It is interesting to see how temperatures have remained flat even though our CO2 emissions have gone up. This is not causation however and I will be interested to continue reading about more studies that eventually may provide more significant evidence.
Some experts believe that this temporary lull in temperature increases would have to be sustained for 30 to 40 years before they would concretely disprove global warming theory.
Many scientists believe the Earth is warming. But I don’t believe there is yet convincing evidence that the activities of man are significantly contributing to the warming. Indeed, if it were firmly established that man is the cause of global warming, would societies across the Earth be willing to curtail their standards of living to do so? It’s an important question. As India and China develop, their populations of 2 billion plus people will contribute far more towards carbon use than Europe and America’s 700 million people. It is doubtful Indians and Chinese want to curtail growing their economies to slow down global warming. Unless every country is willing to forgo consumption, it doesn’t make sense for other countries to willingly forgo consumption.
See David Friedman on this: http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
Global warming has been a very curious news topic for the past ten years. Interesting to see how much division there is over this topic!
It is foolish to assume that our action have no effect whatsoever on the environment. However, before we march a crusade on carbon emissions, we must take into account two very different societal costs:
1) What is the cost to society associated with each additional unit of pollution?
2) What is the cost to society associated with preventing each additional unit of pollution?
There will be a long-run economically efficient level of pollution prevention – where the pollution costs and the prevention costs are the same. The trick is, finding this level.
Yeah, I’m not reassured. Look at “the Cool Sea” figure showing that the oceans are absorbing more and more heat. The anomaly is measured in zettajoules.
Zettajoules. This is an extraordinary amount of energy, and since it’s the anomaly being measured, that’s the extra energy that can’t be accounted for based on the usual inputs. The bomb we dropped on Hiroshima was about 1 x 10^14 joules. He’s measuring an energy anomaly of 50 x 10^21 joules, the total anomaly is thought to be about 1×10^23 joules, or about 1/10th the total energy we receive from the sun in a given year. I realize, it’s a big planet, but holy crap, that energy has to go somewhere.
Even if it’s slowed and the new climate sensitivity is closer to 2 degrees with each doubling, it just goes to show the extraordinary increase in energy we’re absorbing with increases in greenhouse gas.
Additionally, we know that we should be on a cooling trend, yet we’ve maintained the temperature anomaly. We’ve also seen decreases in CO2 output from the US and other nations in the last few years due to decreased economic output.
If we have slowed, we should treat it as a gift, giving us more time to address the problem. Nothing about these data tell me the problem has gone away.