On Tue, 07 Nov 06 09:59:43 GMT, (Lloyd Parker)
wrote:

So what?... Did 6000 ppm exterminate all life on Earth? Oh, that's
right...all life _was_ exterminated, which is why you are NOT arguing
with me now (since all life on Earth died)...

I do not really care if bacteria survive. I care if human civilization
survives.

So you now wish to claim that nothing but bacteria survived those high
levels of CO2? Or is this yet another strawman, Lloyd?...

Retief

On Tue, 07 Nov 06 10:17:31 GMT, (Lloyd Parker)
wrote:

The sun behaves approximately as a black body. If the sun increases
in temperature (and output), the spectrum shifts towards the blue (and
increased UV).

You're confusing intensity with temp. They are 2 different things.

No Lloyd, you are once again grasping at strawmen.

If the temperature of the sun increases, the emitted spectrum shifts
(as a black body).

If the temperature of the sun increases, the rate at which energy
radiates away from this hotter object increases.

BTW Lloyd, I've noticed that you refuse to answer my questions
regarding your temperature and CO2 records.

Flooding what is now New York wouldn't have had much effect a million years
ago. Would it today?

So your predicition is that New York will be flooded?

We presume that Parker is prepared to support this claim with data...

Retief

On Tue, 7 Nov 2006 20:56:11 +0000, John Beardmore
wrote:

http://www.profc.udec.cl/~gabriel/tu...cp1/1-11-2.gif

Clearly these different gases have different absorption spectra, and
can never be "equivalent to CO2"...

They can have a net thermal effect similar to CO2.

They absorb at different wavelengths, and they absorb at different
efficiencies. No, they are not similar.

They are similar in that they are greenhouse gasses.

Ozone (O3) is a greenhouse gas. CO2's spectral response is quite
unlike Ozone.

Or perhaps we can say that CO2 is equivalent to O3, and therefore we
needn't worry about an ozone hole, because there is this "equivalent
gas" present?...

They are similar in they cause net amounts of energy to be retained
which affects temperature. That they absorb different amounts at
different wave lengths doesn't mean that different amounts of various
green house gasses can't achieve the same energy retention / temperature
increase as some particular amount of CO2.

Gosh, and that also allows one to pretend that these gases have the
same spectral response, especially when we discover that the solar
flux has increased... (which it has)

The technique demonstrated by claiming "equivalence" is called
"begging the question" (a well known logical fallacy).

Well - you begged it - you got an answer.

Nonsense. The question being begged is "How is CO2 equivalent to
those other gases?"... Answer: it isn't.

BTW, have you stopped beating your wife?

But if "net thermal effect" is what the comparison is all about, why
don't you compare it to something people can see and touch -- say, a
burning candle?

Could do, but it interesting to compare the 'potency' of various
greenhouse gasses, and if CO2 is the one with the biggest effect, it's
not surprising that people adopt it as a bench mark, but contribution to

Why not compare it to water, which is the biggest?

heat retention and heat flows are calculated. Candle power would be
rather a small unit to use though.

Why is that?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candle

"A candle typically produces about 13 lumens of visible light and 40
watts of heat,..."

The IPCC is claiming that CO2 contributes an "equivalent" of 1.5
W/m^2.

So the candle would be a bit large, but managable. But it wouldn't be
nearly as frightening to claim it's the equivalent of 1 burning
candle, every 27 square meters (after all, 1/27th is such a small
number, and 430 looks so much larger and scarier...).

"This is equivalent to XXX extra candles burning per
square mile of Earth's surface"... Oh, but then you wouldn't be able
to fold in the CO2 boogeyman...

Not a matter of any particular bogey - just causes, effects and
mitigation.

Mitigation implies a good understanding of the system, a controllable
cause, and a certainty that the changes being observed are not due to
natural variations.

The sun behaves approximately as a black body. If the sun increases
in temperature (and output), the spectrum shifts towards the blue (and
increased UV).

OK - and how significant do you claim this is ?

The solar data was in the link below:

And NOAA notes that the solar emission spectrum has changed:
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/p...irradiance.txt

and thus those gases are NOT
_equivalent_ to CO2. Their behavior is qualitatively and quantitively
different.

Yes - they all cause different amounts of heat to be retained per
amount of greenhouse gas released, but that doesn't mean that the total
heat retained can't be represented as being equivalent to a particular
amount of carbon dioxide.

Only if your desire is to disguise the true cause(s) of the changes.

Indeed! Why do we believe that increasing CO2 will be any more
catastrophic than it was a million years ago?

Well, you mentioned a figure of 6000 ppm I believe. How well would you
cope physiologically at that concentration ?

Let's see, 6000 ppm is 0.6%.

What is the concentration of CO2 in my breath? My recollection is
that we breathe in air with 21% O2, and exhale air with about 16% O2
-- the missing balance is CO2.

Again, current CO2 levels are exceptionally low, compared to past
history.

Geological history yes, but as I understand it, not human history.

And?... That is no way changes the observation that the current time
is for some reason at an exceptionally low CO2 concentration. And
claiming "human history" will not prevent any sources of natural
variation from occurring.

And we note that those high levels did not exterminate life
on Earth.

Which doesn't mean humanity would have survived. I suggest that if,
warming aside, 6000 ppm CO2 concentrations pose a major physiological
challenge to us and other animals, that in itself is a global catastrophe.

You will have to provide some data to support this claim...
We currently exhaust rather high levels of CO2 in our breath.

Retief

John Beardmore wrote:
In message , Orator
writes

John Beardmore wrote:

In message , Retief
writes

On Fri, 03 Nov 06 11:22:33 GMT, (Lloyd Parker)
wrote:


The "greenhouse gases" has been defines as "CO2" it is clear as clear
can be! The "equivalent to" refers to "parts per million (ppm)" -
measure!



"gases" is plural, doofus.



That in no way addresses the challenge to the assertion that CO2 is a
"prototypical greenhouse gas, whose characteristics explain and define
all other GHGs..."

You've put this in quotes as though somebody had said it, but
searching for the phrase suggests otherwise.


The article makes that claim, doesn't matter if you can't see the
precise text. The meaning is there nevertheless.

Seems to be a pretty sloppy approach to quoting.

It is called "paraphrasing" and it is quite legitimate to use quotation
marks around such.

CO2 is greenhouse gas. It doesn't explain and define others
however, but given that the effect of each gas can be measured and
characterised, any given amount of another gas can have an effect
which can be expressed as an amount of CO2 that would have the same
effect.


Wrong wrong wrong.


I don't think so.

I know so.

The purpose of the "paper" was to point to a remedy not debate the
cause and effect.


So ?

You don't understand the difference?


As I have noted elsewhere, that their "remedy" is solely related to
CO2, and THAT is what defines the "gasses" as being CO2 alone,
irrespective of the use of the plural!


I don't think it does. It would be pretty to stupid to deny the
existence of other GHGs, even if you only plan to act by cutting carbon
emissions.

So Stern is "stupid", is that any sort of news? He sure is stupid being
so blatantly obvious with his exaggerations, hyperbole and hysteria.
More than one economist has raised their eyebrows at that same report,
questioning the economic assumptions by Stern, not only the scientific
humbug he resorted to.

This said, whatever the strap line, I've yet to see a climate change
remediation program that would turn down the change to cut the emissions
of GHGs other than CO2.

What "other emissions" are you referring to?

_IF_ it was as you and the AGW Mufti Lloyd say then they have missed
out including the most important of all "greenhouse gases" - water
vapour! Why would they do that if they intended an "equivalent to.."
meaning for all greenhouse gases? I'll tell you why, because it would
have been too blatantly obvious that it is all a SHAM.


This is an ancient and unworthy diversion as nobody disputes the effect
of water.

Oh? That simply is not true. The AGW mufti Lloyd at least does! Further
more my argument blew a hole big enough for the QEII to sail through
your and the Mufti's spin.

You should know better, but it is interesting that you are
clearly of the opinion that GHGs do exist, and are "important".

Of course they are important. This would be a miserably cold planet with
a mean of -18 degrees C without some of them!


-- which is what your "equivalence" implies...

In your dreams I think...


You are unable to arrive a conclusions from a given set of conditions?


No - I think I understand perfectly well,

If so, why do you then go on to address unrelated issues to the question?

....that unable to find anything
of significance wrong with Stern, you will pick at anything to try and
discredit it.

Fair enough, fraud and fabrications are OK by you and "not significant",
as long as it supports your AGW religious dogma. Yeah, sadly religion is
like that!

Unfortunately for you, most readers will be familiar with equating the
effect of one GHG with another and won't be fooled, and others may read
it and make up their own minds.

Thinking people will reject the notion (and Stern), if for no other
reason that the fraudulent use of mixed gases compared to a single gas
(CO2) in order to falsely/fraudulently ramp up the apparent effect to
generate hysteria!

You aren't going to turn the tide without something more substantive
than you have 'found'.


J/.

In message , Retief
writes
On Tue, 07 Nov 06 10:17:31 GMT, (Lloyd Parker)
wrote:

The sun behaves approximately as a black body. If the sun increases
in temperature (and output), the spectrum shifts towards the blue (and
increased UV).

You're confusing intensity with temp. They are 2 different things.

No Lloyd, you are once again grasping at strawmen.

If the temperature of the sun increases, the emitted spectrum shifts
(as a black body).

So you don't mean that the spectral lines move ? OK, and that energy
distribution within the lines and continuum change ?


If the temperature of the sun increases, the rate at which energy
radiates away from this hotter object increases.

Yes. And the extent of this is ?


BTW Lloyd, I've noticed that you refuse to answer my questions
regarding your temperature and CO2 records.

Flooding what is now New York wouldn't have had much effect a million years
ago. Would it today?

So your predicition is that New York will be flooded?

It certainly looks as if more frequent floods may be expected.


We presume that Parker is prepared to support this claim with data...

A trivial google search finds

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20061024/

which mostly seems to be based on NOAA data.


J/.
--
John Beardmore

Retief wrote:


They absorb at different wavelengths, and they absorb at different
efficiencies. No, they are not similar.


Stepping in with a boring physics point this is actually very
important.

Any greenhouse gas operates by absorbing certain wavelengths more than
others - as the concentration of the gas increases so does absorbtion
but this is not and can not be linear. There is a law of diminishing
returns.

To see why take a simple example.
Gas x at concentration c absorbs 60% of frequency y - being a
relatively long wavelength this is primarily in the form of heat
radiated from the ground and so gas x is a strong greenhouse gas.
If we double the concentrations of gas x to 2c it cannot absorb 120% of
the frequency y (that would be nonsense) nor can it start absorbing
neighbouring frequencies (that defies the very physics that are
occurring). In practice the total absorbtion would tend towards 100% of
the specific frequencies at which point further concentrations have no
further forcing effect on climate change.

One of the reasons why this matters is that a mix of greenhouse gasses
has a far greater capacity to warm than a single gas. Doubling a single
gas is NOT the same as leaving that gas unchanged and adding a
supposedly equivalent amount of a different gas - the two gasses will
have a greater warming effect than twice the amount of a single gas for
any case where the warming effect is significant.


The sun behaves approximately as a black body. If the sun increases
in temperature (and output), the spectrum shifts towards the blue (and
increased UV).


It is probably more relevant that we are within the suns magnetosphere
and the effects that has on our climate are still rather poorly
understood, probably in part because climatologists are not solar
physicists by trade or training. In a sense the Earth is inside the
Sun's outer atmosphere and is directly affected by fluctuations in that
atmosphere.

--
Nic

On Fri, 10 Nov 2006 07:55:48 +0000, John Beardmore
wrote:

If the temperature of the sun increases, the rate at which energy
radiates away from this hotter object increases.

Yes. And the extent of this is ?

Quite substantial:

http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/irradiance.gif
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/p...irradiance.txt

So your predicition is that New York will be flooded?

It certainly looks as if more frequent floods may be expected.

Do you have high quality sea level data? If not, how do you conclude
this?

http://www.agu.org/revgeophys/dougla01/node3.html

"In fact, short (a few decades) tide gauge records are of no use
whatsoever for determining an underlying long-term global trend,
because of low-frequency fluctuations of sea level."
[...]
"The conclusion that can be drawn from all of this is that 50 years is
the absolute minimum sea level record length that should be considered
in an analysis of global sea level rise or acceleration from tide
gauge data alone."

We presume that Parker is prepared to support this claim with data...

A trivial google search finds

Nice, but Parker's claims are in general based on nothing at all.

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20061024/

which mostly seems to be based on NOAA data.

This seems to be asserting increasing hurricanes...

U.S. Hurricane Strikes by Decade:
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pastdec.shtml

Doesn't seem to show an increase in hurricane frequency...

Retief

In message , Retief
writes
On Fri, 10 Nov 2006 07:55:48 +0000, John Beardmore
wrote:

If the temperature of the sun increases, the rate at which energy
radiates away from this hotter object increases.

Yes. And the extent of this is ?

Quite substantial:

http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/irradiance.gif
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/p...olar_variabili
ty/lean2000_irradiance.txt

Doesn't look like a huge increase, though I grant it may make some
difference. Are you asserting that climate modellers haven't taken this
into account ?


So your predicition is that New York will be flooded?

It certainly looks as if more frequent floods may be expected.

Do you have high quality sea level data? If not, how do you conclude
this?

http://www.agu.org/revgeophys/dougla01/node3.html

"In fact, short (a few decades) tide gauge records are of no use
whatsoever for determining an underlying long-term global trend,
because of low-frequency fluctuations of sea level."
[...]
"The conclusion that can be drawn from all of this is that 50 years is
the absolute minimum sea level record length that should be considered
in an analysis of global sea level rise or acceleration from tide
gauge data alone."

This may be true in some sense, but it stands to reason that if the
planet warms, the ocean will expand, so there is more than one approach
to considering this issue.

Further there does seem to be real world experience of more frequent and
extreme tides from sites like the Thames Barrage which is now required
to operate to protect London much more frequently than it was thirty or
so years ago.

While there may be "low-frequency fluctuations of sea level" of
considerable complexity, there seems no reason to assume that the
warming of the planet isn't contributing as well.


We presume that Parker is prepared to support this claim with data...

A trivial google search finds

Nice, but Parker's claims are in general based on nothing at all.

Hmmm... Not that I'd noticed, but I guess that sort of bickering can
stay between you and him.


http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20061024/

which mostly seems to be based on NOAA data.

This seems to be asserting increasing hurricanes...

U.S. Hurricane Strikes by Decade:
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pastdec.shtml

Doesn't seem to show an increase in hurricane frequency...

What about intensity ?


Cheers, J/.
--
John Beardmore

Roger Coppock wrote:
HM Treasury's page where the entire 700+ pages may be downloaded:
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/Indepe...view_index.cfm


A 27-page executive summary is found he
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/h...6_exec_sum.pdf


Roger - Thanks for the link. I notice that the usual barrage of
insults and counter-insults has broken out in this message string, with
the effect of effectively burying the main point you were making about
the Stern report's availability.

For people who are a little bored by the irrelevant insults, however,
it's good to know that we can easily access the Stern Report's findings
and evaluate them for ourselves. Whether or not we end up agreeing
with them.
------------------------------------------
"Darkness at the face of noon
Shadows, even a silver spoon
a handmade blade, a toy balloon
eclipses both the sun and moon ...."
Bob Dylan -- "It's All Right, Ma"

---------------
"Answer not a fool in his folly, lest you become like him."
-- The Book of Proverbs, Jewish Scriptures/Christian Old
Testament
--------------------------------------------------

Uh - what about the economic analysis that Stern has offered, folks?
Because so far
it seems that most responses to the original post about the Stern
Report, as per above, have involved either

(A) A mindless exchange of insults resembling "a tale told by an idiot,
full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" [Shakespeare], OR

(B) Fervent debate over the SCIENCE of global climate, which apparently
is not the main focus of what Stern wrote.

A modest question: Has anybody in here read actually what the Stern
report concludes about the ECONOMICS of climate change and efforts to
slow, stop, or adjust to it?
If so, do you care to share some of that ECONOMIC analysis with us?

I confess I haven't read the report yet, either, so this is not a trick
question.

But if we're arguing over a 700 page report by an economist, it's
probably a good idea to be examining his economic analysis. Just for
starters. Not whether he completely took into account the latest
wrinkle in climate science. And certainly not whether "Bawana" or "CO2
Storms from Hell" or "Claudius Denk" is this group's biggest doo-doo
head.

--------
"The devil has got a slippery shoe
If you don't watch out, he'll put it on you --
Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on."
-- American civil rights movement hymn, 1960s