Showing posts with label global warming. Show all posts
Showing posts with label global warming. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Letter to the editor: Facts on global warming

A long letter, maybe too long to print. I tried to write it for easy chopping

Sir,

I'd like to thank Dick Keane for rising to the challenge and
presenting tangible claims in contrast to the rhetoric of other
climate change sceptics.

He is correct that CO2 is a very small part of the Earth's atmosphere.
He is also correct that there is far more water vapour in the
atmosphere (although NASA's Earth fact sheet puts it at 25 times
greater than CO2 in contrast to Mr Keane's 100). Neither of these two
facts justify his claim that CO2 is therefore "almost completely
irrelevant as a greenhouse gas".

Different gases have different properties, including different greenhouse
properties. Despite its relative rarity, CO2 is still a major greenhouse gas.
Water vapour is indeed the greatest greenhouse contributor and probably
contributes 2 to 4 times more than CO2 but CO2 is far from "irrelevant".

The other important point is that the amount of water vapour in the
atmosphere is relatively unaffected by human activity. If we add extra
water to the atmosphere it soon condenses and falls as rain. CO2 in
contrast stays in the atmosphere until it is extracted by photosynthesis
or absorbed into the ocean.

Finally, Mr Keane says that it is "warmer oceans", not human activities
over the last 150 years that have caused the observed increase in CO2.
There are two problems with this.

It is indeed harder for CO2 to dissolve in warmer sea-water, however
over the industrial period, the oceans have been a net
absorber of CO2. This could only happen if the level of CO2 in the
atmosphere from other sources was enough to overcome the effect of the
warmth and force the oceans to absorb even more.

Secondly, all the oil, coal and gas we've burnt neatly accounts for the
increase in CO2 that we've seen. To suggest that something else caused
the increase begs the question, "what happened to all that we released?".

Nature spent hundreds of millions of years extracting a vast amount of
carbon from the atmosphere and burying it as fossil fuel. The idea
that we can release it all back into the atmosphere over a couple of
centuries with no side-effects is extraordinary. As such it requires
extraordinary evidence to back it up. This evidence has not been
presented.

The sources of my data are The Royal Society's report on ocean
acidification, NASA and www.realclimate.org,

I got the information on total human CO2 emissions from realclimate.org and I also used thier comparison of the relative strengths of greenhouse gases

Monday, March 24, 2008

Letter to the editor: climate change

Sir,

as usual Robert O'Sullivan includes no actual facts or arguments in
his letter on climate change (Mar 24th), just flippancy and vague
references to unnamed "think-tanks" who are supposedly raking it in
from climate change "codology". The great advantage to this form of
"argument" is that it can't be contradicted because it contains no
information.

The only point of interest is his statement that we need not worry
because "the planet will take care of itself as it has done for
billions of years". I'm not sure Mr O'Sullivan gets the full
implications of what he is saying.

There is no reason to think that the planet will take care of us while
it's taking care of itself. In fact the exact opposite seems likely.

Neither nature nor this planet have our interests at heart. There is
no reason to believe that we can release gases, destroy forests and
drain aquifers on an industrial scale with no consequences.

There is certainly no reason to believe that the planet can equitably
sustain the 9 billion humans projected for 2050 without either a huge
change in our impact on the environment or a huge fall in living
standards for many. At the moment it is those whose standard are
already lowest who are bearing the brunt.

Yes the planet will take care of itself but we are responsible for
taking care of ourselves,

Published 2 days after. Funnily 2 comments (one by another Fergal) on the original letter say pretty the same thing between them.

Dick Keane took up my challenge for facts and I replied.

Friday, December 07, 2007

Letter to the editor: bio-fuels vs food

Most of this comes from George Monbiot's recent article entitled "An Agricultural Crime Against Humanity".

Sir,

James Gleason repeats his usual points about climate change (Monday
December 3rd) but for a change, I find we something to agree with -
the impact of bio-fuels on food supplies for the poorest people in the
world.

The use of bio-fuel made from organic waste or grown on idle
agricultural land might have helped to reduce our use of oil but that
is not what is happening. Instead, land previously used to grow food
is being converted to grow fuel crops, in some countries, tropical
forests are being slashed and burned for the same purpose.

When you factor in the energy needed to farm and refine them with
current technologies, the environmental benefits of bio-fuels are
quite slim. Burning a forest to plant fuel crops eliminates the
benefit entirely and turns the whole thing into a net loss for the
environment.

Some foods can also be fuel crops, for example Swaziland is now making
fuel from casava while 40% of its people are facing food shortage.

Even the IMF is warning that demand for bio-fuel is pushing up food
prices for those who can least afford it.

Western governments must reevaluate their policies and targets for
bio-fuels and at the very least end subsidies,

Update:Published without edits I think.

Sunday, December 02, 2007

Letter to the editor: more climate change

Sir,

Robert O'Sullivan complains about the "non-solution put forward" in my
letter. I put forward no solution at all in my letter, I am simply
trying to show that there is a real and urgent problem. He calls me an
"alarmist" but has yet to make any real argument that this is a false
alarm.

Mr O'Sullivan brings up Homer Simpson's again. I agree that Homer has
something valuable to contribute. How we will have hamburgers if we
have to kill all of the farting cows? A funny question but with a
serious side to it.

I believe many people who deny the reality of man-made climate change
do not do so on the basis of scientific argument. They deny the
reality because they do not want to face questions like Homer's or
questions like "how will I have my holidays in the sun if I have to
pay for the full impact of the pollution it will cause?".

The fact is that someone must pay for it. Maybe it's someone in a
flood in Bangladesh or someone in California who's house has been
incinerated or someone in Tuvalu who's home disappeared below below
sea-level a few years ago. Or maybe it's a member of your family in
the Ireland of the future.

These are hard questions and we might not like the answers but the
longer we avoid them the greater the pain we will have to endure when
we are finally forced to deal with them.

I enjoy hamburgers and I enjoy travel, although I have already cut
back on my travel. I hope we can all continue to enjoy them but this
requires immediate action, not prevarication and denial,

Update:Published with some edits that probably improved it. Some fun going on in the comments on that page too. Next day, someone else calls Robert O'Sullivan clueless.

Saturday, November 24, 2007

Letter to the editor: there is no debate on climate change

Sir,

Robert O'Sullivan complains complains that the "save the planet" squadron only
quote from scientific sources with which they agree. He himself does
not quote from any scientific source, the best he can manage is a
quote from Homer Simpson.

What else can he do? The only explanation for climate change that has
stood up to scrutiny is that it is caused by man-made emissions of
greenhouse gases. It's a pretty simple. Greenhouse gases trap the heat
of the sun and humanity is pumping out greenhouse gases like never
before, while at the same time slashing and burning the forests that
might have soaked them up.

If you do the calculations based on what have burnt and what the Earth
can absorb, it all fits with what we observe in reality.

The few other explanations that have any scientific basis at all have
been debunked.

Every now and then someone puts forward a new possible cause,
frequently with much media coverage. Then over the course of a few
months the results are analysed, mistakes are found and the idea is
put to rest. Of course the debunking never gets the same news
coverage.

There have been "natural" climate changes in the past but this time
around we have a smoking gun and a bullet wound - declaring it to be
"natural causes" would require some extraordinary evidence and that
evidence simply has not been found,
Update: Published without my reference to the media's lack of interest in debunking theories and some other minor tweaks. Update: Another round, although I don't think he actually read my letter!