http://hartlodsgallery.blogspot.com/

With slides pertinent to this issue, in outline with comments.

Your’s, Peter K. Anderson a.k.a. Hartlod(tm)
From the PC of Peter K Anderson
E-Mail: Hartlod@bigpond.com
(*) – http://hartlod.blogspot.com/
(**)- http://hartlodsgallery.blogspot.com/

The policy needed is not so much of concern to ’stabilise climate’, such a situation is NEVER going to be Natural with Climate always altering within a natural & irregularly periodic Oscillation set, and it is futile to expect any effort of Humanity could do such with any success. It is also that there is NOT any unnatural climate change, so again there is not needed ’stabilisation policy’. The effort being made to redirect resources TO ‘climate change’ is however allowing REAL issues to go not only unnoticed but ‘unchecked’ and the Potential for ‘even sprawl’ of ‘new Human Population’ within regions that are still NOW generally still under ‘naturally materials’ will see the present ‘weather walking’, produced form the past 400 years of accumulated surface alterations more rapidly become more ’severely presented’.

The last 400 years involved not only the rise of Human population from ~500 Million to ~6 Billion, but the lagging effect of technology development. The next 100 years will ‘begin’ with technology to RAPIDLY rematerial vast regions of surface with an expectation for a ‘rise’ in ‘new population’ to be ~5 Billion, or even more for a near doubling of the present overall population. So all that has already happened over 400 years CAN be expected AGAIN in the next 100 years….all within ‘new regions’ of so far still ‘naturally materialed surface’ and presently with only sparse Human Habitat constructions included.

(As an aside, is it possible to place small images here, as I would include the most relevant slides here (as sub 50kb .jpg images), if not I will make another ‘blog entry’ at * just as ‘image gallery’ for easy construction of dialogue.)

Your’s, Peter K. Anderson a.k.a. Hartlod(tm)
From the PC of Peter K Anderson
E-Mail: Hartlod@bigpond.com
(*)- http://hartlod.blogspot.com/

Remember also that the ‘Temperature of a System’ is that Kinetic Energy residual within the materials constituting that System that is NOT directly involved in the production of the processes of Turbulence within that System. In a System where-in the Mass of the most involved materials contained is proportioned in (kilograms)x(10^24), then alterations to Turbulence within those materials WILL release (or uptake) vast amounts of Kinetic Energy, and that this will then be observed as a RISE (or DECLINE) in the measured Temperature of that System, with NO NEED for alteration of the RATE of overall ‘new’ Kinetic Energy induction. Interaction of Oceanic (slower) and Atmospheric (faster) process will see the style of variation of TEMPERATURE seen so far.

It is also these alterations to turbulence that induce ‘weather patterning changes’ inducing ‘unusual ‘drought’ or ‘flood’ situations, thus it IS being observed that alterations to overall ‘Turbulence’ are being made. This is accentuated by the sprawl of Humanity, this sprawl replacing Natural Surface with a ‘concrete desert’ that is repositioning across the Land Surface point so STRONG kinetic energy induction, facilitating these UNNATURAL alterations to Turbulent process and leading to the ‘unusual weather patterning’s’. The size of these alterations is noticed in slides in link * for geographical density of Human Population and also with notice of FUTURE alterations being made by forecasting of potential population growth (slide in link * from U.N. site) in the ‘developing nations’, with those presently considered ‘western developed’ presenting only a ’steady state population’ condition.

Thus new population (within the developing nations/economies) can only INCREASE the POTENTIAL for ‘Human-made sprawl’ alteration to overall Turbulent Processes. Those ‘new 8 million kilometers of asphalt in China, expected within the next few decades, will ALL be leading somewhere, for an example of the ’sprawl creation’ being forecast. So weather patterning will continue to ‘walk’ without ‘climate’ altering as CLIMATE processes continue to rise from the recent (only 20,000 years ago) ‘Ice Age’. This current ‘warm climate period’ is only ONE of many within the last ~3 Million year ‘Primary Trough’ period, it could well be the last without any need to allude to ‘humanistic alterations’, the forces involved are well beyond ‘human tinkering’ still, fortunately. All Humanity has done is move where the Rain might fall, but it will still be falling…just elsewhere than ‘now’.

Your’s,
Peter K. Anderson a.k.a. Hartlod(tm)
From the PC of Peter K Anderson
E-Mail: Hartlod@bigpond.com
(*)- http://hartlod.blogspot.com/

Notice the reality of the warmer Planetary Surface (slides in link * below), it is the MEDIAN SURFACE TEMPERATURE that is so oft heard of in relation to ‘warming’. It is seen see that the Ocean Surface trend follows the present Land Surface rise in ’shape’ even, lagging by 15 years due to the productions of Conduction and Convection transporting that Kinetic Energy TO the Ocean Surface whilst the muting of that displayed trend is due to internal production of Turbulence in the Ocean surface as reaction to those inputs of Kinetic Energy (this trend is seen in plots at the link * below).
The cumulative effect from the rematerialing produced within Human Habitat Sprawl (related to Human Population growth in its rapid rise from 500 Million to over 6 Billion in ~400 years) can be seen (again with slides in *) directly related to these alterations in Median Surface Temperatures.
Interaction of Oceanic (slower) and Atmospheric (faster) process will see the style of variation of TEMPERATURE so far observed in the ‘century/decade’ time frames far too often mentioned with allusion to supposed ‘climate change’. Nor would it be UNNATURAL if ‘Climate’ continued to rise from the current Primary Trough behavior and (back) into the more ‘common’ Primary Crest, the defining process observations indicate no reason to expect such will NOT happen. Then (reasonably) RAPID rise in relative sea level could occur and the Secondary Climate Oscillation will, instead of being outlined in recurring Glaciations, be observed in alterations to Relative Sea Level all of much ‘higher’ levels (at both the ‘high’ & ‘low’ points) than those within the ‘current’ ~3 Million year ‘long’ Primary Trough, generally speaking.

The supposed ‘climate remediations’ formed from ‘greenhouse supposition’ can’t have any REAL & beneficial effect. There isn’t possible any ‘CO2 based’ warming effect, these ‘greenhouse remediations’ can only then be seen as potentially DETRIMENTAL to the NATURAL course & persistence of ‘Climate events’ in their production of NATURAL alterations as observed in their irregular, but otherwise reasonable & ‘GENTLE style’.

There is not any policy needed to remediate ‘climate change’, there is not shown any UNNATURAL alterations and the Natural changes are NOT at all needing ‘blind tinkerers’ to become involved.

Your’s,
Peter K. Anderson a.k.a. Hartlod(tm)
E-Mail: Hartlod@bigpond.com
(*)- http://hartlod.blogspot.com/

Thanks very much for these substantive comments.

The numbers I am presenting are straight out of Pacala and Socolow. But I don’t see anything inconsiustent between what you have presented and P/S (?)

I don’t understand your figures, lets assume current values of 7GtC emissions, 2.5GtC sinks, CO2 rise of 2-3ppm/year. Therefore each GtC above 2.5 leads to 0.45-0.67 ppm rise in atmospheric CO2.

To stop CO2 levels reaching 550ppm (an increase of 170ppm above present levels) 253-377GtC above the steady state level (2.5GtC/year) will need to be emitted. The time over which this excess is emitted makes no difference (to a first order approximation). At current levels of excess (4.5GtC/year) we will exceed 550ppm in 56-83 years. If we are to limit CO2 levels to 550ppm we must limit the excess to zero eventually.

Waiting 10 years with CO2 emissions rising at 1.5% a year, not only reduces the allowed limit by 50GtC, leaves a higher level from which to make the cuts.

You ask:

“But a close examination of research in this area does appear to lend anything but pessimism to the notion that stabilization at 550 ppm is even possible.”

Shouldn’t this be “close examination of this research leads to nothing but pessimism…”

Yes, thanks for the catch!! (Should be “does not”)

Sorry about getting off the topic of your original post.

Regarding your post, there are some things I don’t understand and/or seem to be wrong. You write:

1) “But a close examination of research in this area does appear to lend anything but pessimism to the notion that stabilization at 550 ppm is even possible.”

Shouldn’t this be “close examination of this research leads to nothing but pessimism…”

After all, “anything but pessimism” means either: a) optimism, or b) neutrality.

2) “Socolow suggests that under business-as-usual carbon dioxide emissions will continue to increase at a rate of 1.5% per year. This growth rate would result in an additional 525 gigatons of carbon (GtC) being added to the atmosphere by 2054, and at that time an annual rate of emissions of 15.0 GtC.”

Well, there’s a problem with that suggestion. The world’s per-capita CO2 emissions have been absolutely flat for approximately the last ~35 years:

http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/glo.htm

It’s possible that per-capita CO2 emissions will begin rising again after being flat for 35 years, but it’s more likely that they will remain essentially flat, and then begin to gradually decline…not increase.

I’ve predicted the following emissions for 2050 (where e.g. “5% probability” means “5% probability emissions are less than…”:

5% probability = 6.5 gigatonnes (that’s METRIC tons) carbon

50% probability = 8.8 gigatonnes carbon

95% probability = 12.2 gigatonnes carbon.

So I’ve predicted less than a 5% probability emissions will be more than 12.2 gigatonnes (that’s 13.4 gigatons, in English tons).

When I re-do my estimates in the future, I might bump up the 50% probability, and almost certainly will bump up the 95% probability value, but I doubt that there is a 50/50 chance of 15.0 gigatons as carbon.

3) “Under Socolow’s business-as-usual, the total carbon dioxide emissions 2004-2104 are about 1630 GtC.”

Well, I strongly disagree that there is anywhere near a 50/50 chance that emissions will AVERAGE 16.3 GtC in the 100 years from 2004-2104. I find it hard to imagine anyone who knows about historical and likely future emissions could seriously think that emissions will AVERAGE that high. They’d have to end the century at well ABOVE 20 GtC to do that. There’s simply no way that’s likely. Look at the work of Jesse Ausubel. We will be in a hydrogen economy by 2100, almost certainly.

In summary, I don’t think stabilization at 550 ppm by 2100 is at all unreasonable. In fact, I think there’s about a 50/50 chance that’s what the concentration will be (unless future people decide to suck CO2 out of the air).

Mark