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Originally Posted by madbadgalaxyman
The physics of climate change is straightforward....there is some additional energy in the climate system, and temperatures rise.
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This statement is not a good way to describe the episode of climate change that we are currently experiencing.
Firstly, as you can be seen from the image below, the energy received by Earth from solar radiation has actually declined over the last 1/2 century and the temperature has risen in spite of this.
Attachment 131577
Source:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/ta...LB.Ts+dSST.txt
http://www.pmodwrc.ch/pmod.php?topic.../SolarConstant
http://www.mps.mpg.de/projects/sun-c...a/tsi_1611.txt
The root cause of global warming is that the Earth is radiating heat in to space less effectively than it used to. By our activities, we have placed a wavelength specific insulator between ourselves and our heat source/heat sink . The insulator (CO2) is transparent to short wavelength, high energy solar radiation, but is opaque to long wavelength, room temperature black body radiation.
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But policy makers are not fools, and they are pointedly doing nothing about mitigating climate change because policy has to be costed and measured and has to be effected over a specific period of time.....
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Indulge me while I deconstruct the argument that you have no doubt been sold via the main stream media.
Firstly, just because our politicians are not fools does not mean that their actions are in any way moral, ethical or above being corrupted by special interest groups waving the honey pot of cash &/or political tenure.
Secondly, the assertion that their inaction is a reasonable response to a lack of reasonable data is categorically incorrect.
NASA has spent a great deal of money trying to pin down our predicament using the scientific method ie) in terms that are above petty politics. Their measurements indicate that the Earth is in a state of energy imbalance due to CO2 pollution to the tune of +0.58±0.15 W/m2
Source:
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_16/
Thirdly, the twin assertions that the cost of climate change and the financial resources required to combat it haven't been estimated is again not correct.
I'll draw your attention to the Stern review commissioned by the U.K. government and also locally to the analysis of the findings of the Stern review (adapted to Australia's situation) by the CSIRO where they find that the best economic model is achieved by strong immediate action on climate change, and that the business as usual model adopted by the current crop of world leaders is actually the 'worst case scenario' in every respect.
Source:
http://www.csiro.au/files/files/pkec.pdf
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you can't base policy on current climate models which are so poor that they cannot predict the amount of temperature rise and the timescale for the temperature rise.
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So... what should we base or policy on?
The idea that global anthropogenic global warming isn't real?
That is patently absurd.
Don't you think we should defer to climate scientists instead of mining magnates, political whores and the press-titutes.
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In the absence of reliable predictions of how much temperature rise and over what period, which are 'actable" facts on which people will probably start to do something, climate change zealots resort to a generalized "we're all doomed" type of scenario.
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Seeing as we already have reliable predictions of temperature rise over time (
Hansen - NASA et al) and a viable alternative to our collective species suicide that would actually be cheaper than what we are currently doing, I don't get your point...?
Source:
http://beyondzeroemissions.org/zero-...australia-2020
The real doom-sayers as far as I can see are those predicting economic collapse if we disconnect from the nipple of the carbon economy.
The converse is actually true... the only viable economic option we have available to us long term is one NOT dependent on the burning of hydrocarbons as a fuel source.
In the mean time... enjoy the conflagration.
