USA’s top Climate Change Expert Lied

[EternalOptimist]

What's the trend, BB?

dramatically up.

or

dramatically down


depending on your start and end date

[BlasterBates]

What's the trend, BB?

Up....sharply up....

Watch out for the match ball!

[DodgyAgent]

In reality, I agree. There are technical solutions that allow us to decouple the historic correlation between economic development and fossil fuel, but they are largely political non-starters. For example cement production is a huge CO2 producer, it requires energy to get the high temperatures needed for production and the process itself generates CO2 as a waste product. There exist viable low-temperature low-CO2 alternatives but without an incentive to switch, the industry sticks to the 'devil it knows'.

As long as there is not a source that provides the energy density of coal at a comparable cost then the Chinese (say) will dig it up and burn it, and who can blame them? They're the largest emitters now but on a per capita basis they chuck out about a quarter of what the US does, and most of the CO2 in the atmosphere was put there by the First World. Absent a binding global agreement to include the long term costs of fossil fuels in their price, which would require unprecedented political co-operation on a global scale, which seems unlikely, to say the least, interesting times lie ahead for us and our kids...

Maybe you would like to explain why my version of ocean fertilisation will not work?

[Old Greg]

Up....sharply up....

Watch out for the match ball!

I'll wait to see if pj has anything to say on the matter. Sometimes your declarations are not all that they seem.

[EternalOptimist]

I'll wait to see if pj has anything to say on the matter. Sometimes your declarations are not all that they seem.

if I find out you have been taking the mick out of pj, you're dead


I thought you were taking the mick out of me

[Old Greg]

if I find out you have been taking the mick out of pj, you're dead


I thought you were taking the mick out of me

But we've already established your judgment is faulty.

[EternalOptimist]

But we've already established your judgment is faulty.

dont confuse 'we' with 'i'

a common problem amongst herbivores

[pjclarke]

What's the trend, BB?

The key question. Some days in March are cooler than some days in February, would you draw a line between two such data points and claim that summer would never come?

The Cryosat data is interesting and surprising, while it is relatively straightforward to measure sea ice extent - defined as sea with at least 85% ice cover -from space, estimating volume requires a measure of the thickness, and Cyrosat was the first mission specifically designed to do this. Here's the press release from the source

Arctic sea ice up from record low / CryoSat / Observing the Earth / Our Activities / ESA

While this increase in ice volume is welcome news, it does not indicate a reversal in the long-term trend.

Ah yes, the trend ...

[pjclarke]

Maybe you would like to explain why my version of ocean fertilisation will not work?

I do not believe I said it wouldn't work, I said that it had not been shown to work. As I understand it, the idea is that a lack of iron is the limiting factor for diatom growth in the ocean, adding iron causes a bloom of these plankton, which capture carbon from in their bodies, these then die off and fall to the ocean floor taking the carbon out of circulation.

What seems to happen is that the creatures in the vicinity that feed off the algae detect a free meal, rush in and consume the extra biomass before it gets a chance to sink.

Hungry shrimp eat climate change experiment - environment - 25 March 2009 - New Scientist

Other problems are ones of scale: to make a useful difference we'd probably have to turn huge areas of the ocean into plankton farms, which would almost certainly have a hard to predict impact on the marine ecosystem. For example, depleting the nutrients in one part of the sea is likely to p*ss off those downstream who make a living out of catching the fish that rely on those nutrients....

[BlasterBates]

you have to admit the increase is pretty massive (hint compare all changes between the same point in the last year), and how do you think the chart will look in 6 months time?

It's a massive increase in volume.....