Where does Carbon really come from - Global warming issue

[TGHusker]

Ok, this goes to the category of throwing mud on the wall for the sake of discussion & see if it sticks. I received this chain email. I have not verified anything about it but thought it might stir up some discussion on the topic. My understanding (indirectly mentioned in the email below) that there has not been an increase in global temps since 1998 or 1999. So, is global warming still occurring, taking a rest, or reversing itself (1970s - those of us old enough to remember - the fear was global cooling)? Is the bulk of the carbon issue the result of natural causes and is the global warming environmental agenda more about control/power than actual environmental science?

 

What say you?

 

 

Copied chain email - does this contain factual information: (eml is as I received except I removed one cuss word & volcano picture removed )

 

 

 

 

Where does the carbon really come from? Professor Ian Plimer could not have said it better. If you've read his book you will agree, this is a good summary.

Okay, here's the bombshell. The volcanic eruption in Iceland, since its first spewing of volcanic ash has, in just FOUR DAYS, NEGATED EVERY SINGLE EFFORT you have made in the past five years to control CO₂ emissions on our planet - all of you.

Of course you know about this evil carbon dioxide that we are trying to suppress - it’s that vital chemical compound that every plant requires to live and grow and to synthesize into oxygen for us humans and all animal life.

I know, it's very disheartening to realize that all of the carbon emission savings you have accomplished while suffering the inconvenience and expense of: driving Prius hybrids, buying fabric grocery bags, sitting up till midnight to finish your kid's "The Green Revolution" science project, throwing out all of your non-green cleaning supplies, using only two squares of toilet paper, putting a brick in your toilet tank reservoir, selling your SUV and speedboat, vacationing at home instead of abroad, nearly getting hit every day on your bicycle, replacing all of your 50 cents light bulbs with $10.00 light bulbs ...well, all of those things you have done have all gone down the tubes in just four days.

 

The volcanic ash emitted into the Earth's atmosphere in just four days - yes - FOUR DAYS ONLY by that volcano in Iceland, has totally erased every single effort you have made to reduce the evil beast, carbon. And there are around 200 active volcanoes on the planet spewing out this crud at any one time - EVERY DAY.

 

 

I don't really want to rain on your parade too much, but I should mention that when the volcano Mt Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991, it spewed out more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the entire human race had emitted in all its years on earth. Yes folks, Mt Pinatubo was active for over one year - think about it.

Of course I shouldn't spoil this touchy-feely tree-hugging moment and mention the effect of solar and cosmic activity and the well-recognized 800-year global heating and cooling cycle, which keep happening, despite our completely insignificant efforts to affect climate change.

And I do wish I had a silver lining to this volcanic ash cloud but the fact of the matter is that the bush fire season across the western USA and Australia this year alone will negate your efforts to reduce carbon in our world for the next two to three years. And it happens every year.

 

Just remember that your government just tried to impose a whopping carbon tax on you on the basis of the bogus “human-caused” climate change scenario.

 

Hey, isn't it interesting how they don’t mention “global warming” any more, but just “climate change” - you know why? It’s because the planet has COOLED by 0.7 degrees in the past century and these global warming artists got caught with their pants down.

 

And just keep in mind that you might yet have an Emissions Trading Scheme - that whopping new tax - imposed on you, that will achieve absolutely nothing except make you poorer. It won’t stop any volcanoes from erupting, that’s for sure.

 

But hey, relax, give the world a hug and have a nice day!

[Junior]

I've posted this before, and I'll do it again:

 

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/05/28/arctic_sea_ice_global_warming_is_melting_more_ice_every_year.html

 

The solid black line is the amount of sea ice over the year averaged from 1979 – 2000. The dashed line is the amount in 2012, and the brownish solid line is this year, up to late May.

 

 

It’s no surprise to regular readers I am quite concerned about climate change. My concern on this issue is two-fold: one consists of the actual global consequences of the reality of global warming, and the other is the blatant manipulation of that reality by those who would deny it.

 

These two issues overlap mightily when it comes to Arctic sea ice. The ice around the North Pole is going away, and it’s doing so with alarming rapidity. I don’t mean the yearly cycle of melt in the summer and freeze in the winter, though that plays into this; I mean the long-term trend of declining amounts of ice. There are two ways to categorize the amount of ice: by measuring the extent (essentially the area of the ocean covered by ice,though in detail it’s a little more complicated) or using volume, which includes the thickness of the ice. Either way, though, the ice is dwindling away. That is a fact.

.....

 

And, no doubt, the deniers will make lots of noise about this, calling me an alarmist and pointing to ever more cherry-picked data and misleadingly plotted numbers. But the fact is the Earth is warming up. That’s melting the ice at both poles, increasing sea levels. We’re still dumping gigatons of carbon dioxide in the air every year, and the amount increases at a steady and measurable level. That CO2 is warming us up.

 

Stopping the deniers may be as hard as stopping the warming itself. Perhaps once we have satellite images of an ice-free north pole we’ll see a change in public sentiment. It’s a shame that may be what it’ll take. My concern is that by the time that happens, it’ll be too late.

[Junior]

And this:

 

http://www.slate.com...free_op_ed.html

 

“The U.K. Met Office recently released data showing that there has been no statistically significant global warming for almost 16 years.”

 

This is simply, completely, and utterly false. The Met Office is the national weather service for the United Kingdom. In October 2012, they updated their database of global surface temperature measurements, a compendium of temperatures taken over time by weather stations around the planet. David Rose, a climate change denier who can charitably be said to have trouble with facts, cherry-picked this dataset and published a horrendously misleading graph in that bastion of scientific thought, the Daily Mail, saying the measurements show there’s been no global warming for the past 16 years.

 

 

But he did this by choosing a starting point on his graph that gave the result he wanted, a graph that looks like there’s been no warming since 1997. But if you show the data properly, you see there has been warming:

 

 

 

The top graph is from Rose’s article, but the bottom graph shows what happens when you display the data going back a few more years. See the difference? What he did is like measuring how tall you are when you’re 25, doing it again when you’re 30, then claiming human beings never grow. That’s a big no-no in science. You have to choose starting and ending points that fairly represent the data, as in the bottom graph. When you do, you very clearly see the trend that the Earth is getting warmer. In fact, hammering home how patently ridiculous this claims is, nine of the 10 hottest years on record have been since 2000.

[TGHusker]

Thanks for adding to the discussion Jr. Interesting graph on not this and this - top graph makes it looks like it has stalled but the bottom still shows the overall increase.

[BigRedBuster]

The top graph is from Rose’s article, but the bottom graph shows what happens when you display the data going back a few more years. See the difference? What he did is like measuring how tall you are when you’re 25, doing it again when you’re 30, then claiming human beings never grow. That’s a big no-no in science. You have to choose starting and ending points that fairly represent the data, as in the bottom graph. When you do, you very clearly see the trend that the Earth is getting warmer. In fact, hammering home how patently ridiculous this claims is, nine of the 10 hottest years on record have been since 2000.

 

 

I guess you will need to explain this a little more. He isn't saying the earth never has warmed. What he is saying is it hasn't warmed since 1998. So, to use your example, it is like measuring a person at 25 and again at 30 and claiming the person hasn't grown since he was 25.

[NUance]

I wish the global warming would kick in soon. I got a bit chilly this past winter.

 

/ empties another aerosol can towards sky.

[Junior]

The top graph is from Rose’s article, but the bottom graph shows what happens when you display the data going back a few more years. See the difference? What he did is like measuring how tall you are when you’re 25, doing it again when you’re 30, then claiming human beings never grow. That’s a big no-no in science. You have to choose starting and ending points that fairly represent the data, as in the bottom graph. When you do, you very clearly see the trend that the Earth is getting warmer. In fact, hammering home how patently ridiculous this claims is, nine of the 10 hottest years on record have been since 2000.

 

 

I guess you will need to explain this a little more. He isn't saying the earth never has warmed. What he is saying is it hasn't warmed since 1998. So, to use your example, it is like measuring a person at 25 and again at 30 and claiming the person hasn't grown since he was 25.

 

They took a one year spike in temperature as the starting point as a means of saying the temperature trend isn't on the way up. Look at the graph and it's pretty obvious what they did.

[Landlord]

comes from ur butt lol

[BigRedBuster]

The top graph is from Rose’s article, but the bottom graph shows what happens when you display the data going back a few more years. See the difference? What he did is like measuring how tall you are when you’re 25, doing it again when you’re 30, then claiming human beings never grow. That’s a big no-no in science. You have to choose starting and ending points that fairly represent the data, as in the bottom graph. When you do, you very clearly see the trend that the Earth is getting warmer. In fact, hammering home how patently ridiculous this claims is, nine of the 10 hottest years on record have been since 2000.

 

 

I guess you will need to explain this a little more. He isn't saying the earth never has warmed. What he is saying is it hasn't warmed since 1998. So, to use your example, it is like measuring a person at 25 and again at 30 and claiming the person hasn't grown since he was 25.

 

They took a one year spike in temperature as the starting point as a means of saying the temperature trend isn't on the way up. Look at the graph and it's pretty obvious what they did.

 

 

I would like to see a trend line JUST using from 1998 to 2012.

[Junior]

http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanowatch/archive/2007/07_02_15.html

 

 

Gas studies at volcanoes worldwide have helped volcanologists tally up a global volcanic CO₂ budget in the same way that nations around the globe have cooperated to determine how much CO₂ is released by human activity through the burning of fossil fuels. Our studies show that globally, volcanoes on land and under the sea release a total of about 200 million tonnes of CO₂ annually.

 

This seems like a huge amount of CO₂, but a visit to the U.S. Department of Energy's Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) website (http://cdiac.ornl.gov/) helps anyone armed with a handheld calculator and a high school chemistry text put the volcanic CO₂ tally into perspective. Because while 200 million tonnes of CO₂ is large, the global fossil fuel CO₂ emissions for 2003 tipped the scales at 26.8 billion tonnes. Thus, not only does volcanic CO₂ not dwarf that of human activity, it actually comprises less than 1 percent of that value.

 

Underlined portion in direct refutation of the email posted above.

[Junior]

The top graph is from Rose’s article, but the bottom graph shows what happens when you display the data going back a few more years. See the difference? What he did is like measuring how tall you are when you’re 25, doing it again when you’re 30, then claiming human beings never grow. That’s a big no-no in science. You have to choose starting and ending points that fairly represent the data, as in the bottom graph. When you do, you very clearly see the trend that the Earth is getting warmer. In fact, hammering home how patently ridiculous this claims is, nine of the 10 hottest years on record have been since 2000.

 

 

I guess you will need to explain this a little more. He isn't saying the earth never has warmed. What he is saying is it hasn't warmed since 1998. So, to use your example, it is like measuring a person at 25 and again at 30 and claiming the person hasn't grown since he was 25.

 

They took a one year spike in temperature as the starting point as a means of saying the temperature trend isn't on the way up. Look at the graph and it's pretty obvious what they did.

 

 

I would like to see a trend line JUST using from 1998 to 2012.

 

Use your eye. Look at 1997 versus 1998. You can see the trend is still up and that 1997 was an anomaly.

[BigRedBuster]

I'm not talking about 1997 and he didn't use the top of the spike in 1998.

 

One reason why analysts use trend lines on graphs is because the eyes can be deceiving when looking at them.

[Junior]

I'm not talking about 1997 and he didn't use the top of the spike in 1998.

 

One reason why analysts use trend lines on graphs is because the eyes can be deceiving when looking at them.

 

But why 1997? Why 1998? Because they fit closer to what you want the interpretation of the data to be. Look at 1995 or 2000. It's up from 2000 to now. That 1997 region was an anomaly that this guy specifically picked because it showed what he wanted it to show. The trend is up, and all of the data suggests that we are warming faster than most suspected we would. There is a mountain of climate change data (ice melt, temperature, CO2 ppm), ignore it if you will. I'm just afraid that by the time the deniers recognize the truth, it'll be far too late for us to do anything other than hope for the best.

[Junior]

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-carbon-dioxide-400-20130520,0,7130588.story

 

 

The ratio of carbon dioxide reached 400 parts per million Sunday in readings taken by the two top monitors of greenhouse gases.

 

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrationrevised its Sunday reading to 400.06, following a Sunday reading of 400.15 by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Both measures came from the top of Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii, and are considered an important bellwether for the status of Earth's atmosphere. Readings have exceeded that milestone in the Arctic but had not reached the level in the temperate latitudes in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, far from pollution sources.

The last time readings vied for the 400 parts per million level, nearly two weeks ago, NOAA revised its measure slightly downward. Monday's report represents revised figures for Sunday and are unlikely to change.

Although the benchmark has taken on symbolic weight amid warnings about man-made climate change, the rate of change in the composition of Earth's atmosphere is more cause for concern -- no period in Earth's history has exhibited so rapid a run-up in carbon dioxide content.

The last time Earth's atmosphere contained 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide was more than 2.5 million years ago, during the Pleistocene Epoch.

[The Dude]

I received this chain email.

That's generally where I quit reading.