A quiz for the curious
Pop quiz for the curious
Okay here is the pop quiz.
1) What are the gas components of Earth’s atmosphere, by percentage of the total content?
2) What portion was the carbon dioxide component of Earth’s atmosphere (as a part of the total) before the era of industry, and what is it now?
3) What is the mathematical relationship between increased atmospheric carbon dioxide and increased average global temperature?
4) How many barrels of oil were produced every day in the world last year?
5) How many gallons of oil are there in a barrel?
6) What portion of yearly industrial carbon dioxide output, expressed as a percentage, is caused by the burning of oil?
7) What happens to Earth’s oceans when Earth’s atmospheric carbon dioxide component is increased?
8) Why are Earth’s forests important to Earth’s climate?
9) What were scientists originally trying to explain when they discovered the “greenhouse effect”?
10) Why is methane a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide?
11) How long does methane last in Earth’s atmosphere?
12) What is “climate forcimg”?
Could we get Ellen DeGeneres to offer prizes for correct answers or something like that?
Nina Eliasoph’s (1998) book Avoiding Politics: How Americans Produce Apathy in Everyday Life is an ethnographic study which discovers a common explanation for how “apathetic people” reason. "Apathy takes work to produce" is its primary argument. Among the many reasonings Eliasoph finds among "apathetic people" is one which goes along these lines: “to have a political opinion, one needs to understand the facts. To understand the facts, one needs to be an expert. I am not an expert” (pp. 136-143). (As the author emphasizes, for the group of "apathetic people" she studies, "Without political conversation, analysis was impossible, and the world of politics seemed to be a collection of spare parts that did not fit together and was probably best avoided altogether" (p. 132).)
Perhaps the above strategy for proclaiming ignorance explains why climate change still has a low profile. People are already working hard to ignore scientific issues, and climate change is an especially hard one. But here is my reading of the strategy Eliasoph discusses. The "culture of political avoidance" is characterized largely by strategies, self-deprecating or otherwise, to remove political subjects from the individual's set of concerns. The activist's goal, in light of Eliasoph's observations, is to blunt these strategies. The quiz is my contribution. People know from school that quizzes can be fun, or at least they're what's often expected when the topic of "knowledge" comes up. So have fun with the quiz!
At any rate, the "I'm not an expert" strategy seems like it would work well to preserve one's ignorance of climate change, or at least climate change as a political topic. Climate change is typically presented as being about facts, right? Climate change appears easy to duck as a "fact-based" political problem since the scientists themselves haven't thought all that carefully about what changes to the social order would be necessary to mitigate climate change, having focused their attentions upon the question of "what is climate change?". But that's another topic. The trick is to get people involved in the science of climate change, to get them to know what it is. It's not as hard as it initially seems.
Maybe the trick is to get people to subscribe to the journals which publish the big climate change papers. Here's a short list:
and in a more focused sense:
Maybe that's the trick, to start with the magazine buffs and go forward from there.
Would a cute graphic help?
Okay so what are your ideas for climate change education? Remember, we aren't talking about schools here so much as public information...
Comments
Number 5 is quite well known ever since Doug Adams went
blabbing his mouth off.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
I overheard my boss say that history shows
Temperatures have always fluctuated. I've heard this argument before in what I guess is a way to eschew any human responsibility for global warming. What I'd like to know is what facts counter that assumption?
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
That's a really good question.
Over on Grist someone named Coby Beck put out a piece called "How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic." Maybe it's somewhere in there.
Otherwise I can heartily recommend Spencer Weart's history titled The Discovery of Global Warming. (Which brings me to question #9: scientists were trying to find out why there were ice ages, thus at some point Svante Arrhenius discovered the mathematical relationship between increased atrmospheric CO2 and higher average global temperatures.
'French theory is a product of US cultural imperialism." -- Gabriel Rockhill
Not exactly bed time reading
but I'd be interested to know nonetheless. Will put on my reading list and wade through during the daytime. No need to feed the climate change nightmares I'm prone to have after digesting too much hard reality.
Thanks for the links.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
I guess you could just argue --
that there's a well-established relationship between increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere and increased average temperature, and that your boss ought to reflect upon what sort of changes are supposed to occur when industry adds an additional 50% to Earth's atmospheric carbon dioxide endowment.
'French theory is a product of US cultural imperialism." -- Gabriel Rockhill
You might point out to him that human body temperatures and
blood pressures vary too, but if his temperature ever gets to 106, or bp to 170/120, he should seek medical attention. Earth's temperatures has never been this high since it cooled.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
There are NO facts that counter that "assumption",
because it isn't an assumption, it's a fact: Global temperatures have always varied.
The problem is that anybody who thinks that fact says anything important about where we are now is an idiot, almost irreparably stupid. If he were capable of understanding why the reality of natural climate variation says nothing about the validity of AGCC theories, or about the catastrophic ramifications of AGCC, then he would have understood such immediately, without having had to have an argument with anybody. You might as well argue with a color blind person about whether there is or is not a numeral "4" in that pattern of dots, or argue with a one-eyed person about whether there is a particular shape floating in the foreground of a Magic Eye poster.
Imagine anyone making a similar argument about ... anything else. You walk into your uninsulated garage in December and it's almost as warm as the house. Your housemate says, "So what? It was warmer in the garage than the house last summer! This doesn't have anything do with my removing the door between the kitchen and the garage!" An ice jam caused by the pylons of a new bridge on the Red River backs up the water and floods dozens of square miles. Your neighbor says, "So what? 20,000 years ago this whole prairie was a lake 1000 miles across! This doesn't have anything to do with the new bridge!"
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Thanks for the quiz
The answer is A--it's always A in multiple choice quizzes as we learn climbing the educational ladder. In the case of the climate change debate, there is no doubt that climate change occurs, but the cause is illusory.
The more I learn about climate change, the more I am convinced that climate changes. The Little Ice Age It is a hard sell for me to believe that burning cow dung, trees, and whale oil caused too little atmospheric pollution to maintain global CO2 at a level precluding such a dramatic, centuries long temperature drop.
The cause is most likely, and almost certainly non-anthropogenic. Cyclic changes in solar radiation such as sunspot cycling and solar wind variance do have a demonstrable role in current climate fluctuations. But this alleged correlation does rule out extraterrestrial causes of climatic instability.
Looks like a stock chart
The correct answer to "prove that Global warming is caused by human activity"
is
"It doesn't matter if it is THE cause or A cause. What matters is 'how to mitigate Global warming whatever causes it'"
You'll never convince the public with charts showing .5 degrees C deviation. I'm barely convinced and I have scientific training. Five degrees C yes.
But, Antarctic Ice shelves and arctic pack ice melting and mega-hurricanes are convincing to me.
To the general public it sounds like "The sky is falling! The temperate went up three degrees!" Video of glaciers dropping into the sea are much more convincing.
EDIT: Typed wrong numbers
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
The only ice melting I wish to see is in my martini glass
Can't stop the process until the cause is known. Correlation is not causation.
Not necessarily mono-causal, much of reality isn't. Stopping or
slowing it doesn't require knowing them all with certainty. If I use 5 tea candles and a small can of sterno to heat a saucepan of water to a boil, removing any of the heat sources will lower the heat input, removing the sterno possibly will drop it below the point needed to reach boiling. We can't effect the earth's orbit or the sunspot cycle, but we can alter the production and release into the upper atmosphere of greenhouse gases.
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
More to the point, if you light a can of sterno
and 5 tea candles under a pot of water, anybody who says "5 tea candles alone would cause the water to warm, so you can't know that the burning sterno is causing any warming at all," is a moron.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
From your quote:
It's interesting that you've ruled out "decreases in the human population" as even a partial cause of the Little Ice Age. Got any evidence to support your discounting this assertion?
'French theory is a product of US cultural imperialism." -- Gabriel Rockhill
Um. Dear me. Of COURSE climate changes.
If it's taken you a while to decide that this is true, I worry for you.
I can't make head or tail of the rest of your comment. "the" cause is "illusory"? Perhaps you mean "elusive", but there's nothing at all elusive about the primary cause of the current warming. The basic thermodynamics are quite straightforward and well-understood. What that means is: If rising CO2 is not causing global climate change, the burden is on the naysayer to explain why the hell not.
This is a critical epistemological point: It is not enough for some dimwitted or malicious enemy of civilization to merely propose an alternative cause of the measurable changes. If we're baking bread in mid-July and it's becoming uncomfortably warm in the room, and I say, "Let's leave off anymore baking, the oven is overheating the kitchen," you are not allowed to say, "No, look, there is some sunshine coming through the window, which could cause the warming, and therefore there is no proof that the oven is responsible for any of the elevated temperature in the kitchen." The oven damned well is responsible, as a matter of well-understood fact and principle, regardless of any fanciful explanations you might offer in the service of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.
The physics of CO2 as a "greenhouse" gas are rather better understood than the molecular biology of Darwinian evolution; enough is known about both that each enjoys this same epistemological status: It is the obligation of the deniers to prove that the predictable phenomenon isn't happening.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Your critique is well-considered...but...
how does one comduct experiments wherein, on large scale, the variables are uncontrolled. For instance, sunspot cycles do cause variations in solar wind and other forms of irradiation. How to control for this. The actual contribution of CO2 to climate change cannot be measured in the absence of sulfide and sulfate aerosols, either of which are unrelated to CO2 but proportionately much more intense a contributor to green housing, just as is methane. Simplify the situation here: you are trying to conform to one hypothesis four independent variables: solar sunspots and solar wind; CO2 concentration; Sulfide/sulfate concentration; methane concentration. I submit that even with decades or even centuries of data the sorting of the relative contributions of each component to total terrestrial heat budget is impossible. If there are any atmospheric scientists in this community, or if one can secure a citation showing how to resolve a four variable equation in which variable is independent of the other.
Secondly, I haven't made an anthropogenic correlation of the effect of human population on a non-industrialized society, such as was Europe during the Little Ice Age, but I would clearly be interested how in a slowly growing world population, humans provoked climate change. The black death killed millions of people in Europe, and to a lesser degree (mainly eastern) Asia, the populations of Africa and the Americas were completely spared the epidemics. Overall, although "millions died" sounds like a lot, proportionately I would estimate that with an estimated 900 million inhabitants world-wide at the time of the Plague years, only a relatively small proportion of the world population was involved. Sample: 40 million died in Europe and throw in an extra 20 million Asian deaths from plague and you have 60 million people who died--out of 900 million: less than about 7%. Could that little percentage drop in pre-industrial society reduce anthropogenic emissions so much as to decrease climate.
Besides, the Black death preceded the Little Ice Age by several centuries.
From the graph, guess work though it is, note the small inflection downward in total population during the Plague years.
In sum, you have asked to prove the uncontrollable, multi-variable problem with an admittedly incomplete climatological record (despite ancient ice core samples dated). The burden of your theory is upon you, who support the climate model.
As you are likely aware, there are probably dozens of different climate models. Although many models give somewhat similar results, there are enough outliers as to make choice for the "correct" climate model dicey.
Timing of the "Little Ice Age" depends on definition
The end of the "Medieval Warm Period" has been guesstimated at somewhere between 1200 and 1300 AD - often neatly pegged at c. 1250 for convenience. The climate began to deteriorate approximately then, and kept worsening with several dips that, interestingly enough, correlated roughly with several calculated/observed sunspot minima: the Sporer Minimum (c. 1450-1550), Maunder Minimum (the best-known, c. 1645-1715), and Dalton Minimum (c. 1795-1820). Records aren't accurate enough to determine whether this was "normal", or an exceptional run of solar minima unusually close together.
It has also been claimed that the string of minima only affected the Northern Hemisphere, because the current axial tilt and position of the Earth points the North Pole toward the Sun at approximately the Summer Solstice. (Then again, the Northern Hemisphere is where most of the record-keeping peoples have lived, or at least the ones that kept records we can decipher.)
Another completely unclear factor is whether the climate re-established a "normal" before the increasing inputs of CO2 started raising the global temperature - thus, whether the measurements have been proceeding from a median point or a low one.
The correlation between increased CO2 and increased global temperatures is very close - and it's not linear, but exponential. That is what the cause for concern is: not just "how much?", but "how fast?"
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
Your research is appreciated
The temperature correlations are only rough, because, aw you mention, most record-keepers, inaccurate as they were, lived in the northern hemisphere. Don't forget that in winter, the axis of earth tilt puts the Southern Hemisphere closer, relatively speaking to the sun than the Northern.
Further estimations of climate in relatively recent eras are not marked by any obvious changes in fauna or flora in either north or south. Yes, many species of beetles exist, as is true for flies and other small critters. These species may have undergone considerable mutation during centuries of warm or cold, but the fossil record is lacking. Insects trapped in amber are occasionally discovered but even then would not constitute a likely population cross section.
Accurate temperature measurements, still almost entirely from northern hemisphere records do not begin to become at all comprehensive until no earlier than the Renaissance (my guess). This period is much too short from which to derive long-term climatic trends.
I'm not sure why you think we need remember that during
I
winter in the north it is summer in the south, but regardless, there's a misunderstanding in your CQ (Climate Quotient). There is no significance to the slight seasonal difference, due to the tilt of the earth, in average distance from the sun between points north and points south. The difference in question is on the order of 1/100000th of the overall distance to the sun.
Instead, what is important is that during northern winter, the northern hemisphere is tilted away so it receives less total sunshine than the southern hemisphere; indeed, in the far north it receives no sunshine at all. If the earth's tilt were not 23 degrees, but 90 (a la Uranus), the situation would be dire indeed -- during the January solstice there would be almost no sunshine at all, anywhere in the north, as the south pole would be pointed directly at the sun.
There is, however, a different and very significant seasonal difference in distance. Recall that the earth's orbit around the sun is an ellipse, with the sun at one focus. Entirely coincidentally, northern winter corresponds fairly closely with the Earth's closest proximity -- "perihilion" occurs in the first week of January. Conversely, northern summer corresponds with Earth's greatest distance from the sun., aphelion. The difference is about 3%; since the intensity of the radiation from the sun ("insolation") is related to the square of the distance, the difference in solar intensity is about 6% (1.03 x 1.03 is approximately 1.06).
In other words, the earth receives about 6% more energy from the sun during the northern winter than the southern winter; conversely, the earth receives about 6% LESS energy from the sun during the southern summer than during the northern summer. The implication is that, "all else equal" (which of course it never quite is), northern winters should be milder than southern winters, and northern summers should be milder than southern summers. Put another way, we'd expect seasonal variations to be more extreme in the south than in the north.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
What I have done is asserted that rising CO2 is causing
an aggregate rise in global temperatures. I will further state that this aggregate rise is certainly driving other climate change phenomena.
These statements are not "indisputable" -- nothing is indisputable, for the sufficiently disputatious -- but again, the physics are so well understood that if my assertions are not true, it can only be because some unknown or unconsidered phenomenon is somehow preventing what otherwise must be happening. (and indeed, a serious concern is that the warming is much less than it should be, due to the countervailing effects of industrial-pollution particulates in the atmosphere -- thus the disturbing prospect that were we to manage to get our generally filthy, polluted air cleaned up, temperatures will shoot up almost immediately ...).
Whether or not any other phenomenon might be adding to the aggregate warning is irrelevant. Every other possible contributor is exactly that: A possible contributor. (Well, some are actually well-understood contributors -- whose contributions are comparatively low.) The point -- the central point -- is that none of these possible contributors is of much concern, or of any significance regarding the problem of CO2, because all are far outweighed by the known, well-understood, overwhelming drive of the rising CO2. It doesn't matter how many "alternative contributors" you posit -- the existence of such alternatives contributors is not a refutation of the known, well-understood effect of rising CO2. End. Of. Story.
EPILOGUE
To reiterate for emphasis:
Not. A. Refutation.
AFTERWORD
I've no special knowledge on the Little Ice Age. My intuition is that if humans were involved, it was in the opposite direction -- for example, populations outside of Europe might have been increasing their use of fire to control vegetation (Some Native Americans, for example, employed "controlled" -- sort of -- burns), resulting in a rise in particulates that created a "nuclear winter" type effect.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Thank you for your observations.
I am sufficiently disputatious, befitting my nature. Let's talk about a phenomenon that gets little mention these days: geothermal effects of tectonic plate movements. On the human scale, the intervals in large seismic shifts are huge. But looking at a map of the globe, one sees the obvious imprimatur of Gaia being persistently torn apart--on its surface.
The tectonic plate movements have produced the famous circus-Pacific ring of fire: hundreds of active volcanoes, each capable of spewing inordinately huge amounts of particulates, and non-particulate gases (H2SO4 being a prime example--as are many other chemicals). Thus we should talk about "volcanic winters" instead of "nuclear winters". It is interesting, at least to me to speculate on the rate at which tectonic plate migration occurs and whether or not this combined ring of fire activity correlates to the sparse recorded data of past millennia, preceding the origin of writing.
The eruption of Karakatoa Volcano in 1883:
The Krakatoa eruption injected an unusually large amount of sulfur dioxide (SO2) gas high into the stratosphere, which was subsequently transported by high-level winds all over the planet. This led to a global increase in sulfuric acid (H2SO4) concentration in high-level cirrus clouds. The resulting increase in cloud reflectivity (or albedo) reflected more incoming light from the sun than usual, and cooled the entire planet until the suspended sulfur fell to the ground as acid precipitation.[17]
Regardless of the historical effects of
volcanoes or tectonic plates (which crawl along at about 10 feet/century, BTW), recent (last two centuries) anthropogenic increases in atmospheric CO2 have caused, and continue to cause, significant aggregate global warming, far beyond all other proposed causes combined.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Your estimate of tectonic plate motion rate is sound
but the analysis is lacking. At some point, one which mere mortals know not yet how to calculate, the movement of a tectonic plate, though slow, eventually suddenly "falls off the cliff". The fall, while sudden is not unexpected--but it is not predictable during a finite time period. Earthquakes do not continue for days and days.
They occur suddenly. Yes, there are swarms of aftershocks and foreshocks as well. But the main energy release is abrupt. This applies to volcanoes.
So what?
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
I guess I should further note:
with respect to tectonics, it is not only that "the" analysis is lacking, it is that "any" analysis is lacking: I provided none. I just threw that little number in there as what we in the bidness of rhetoricizing would call, a "parenthetical". You may have noticed that it was, in fact, punctuated by a matched pair of parentheses. This was not a coincidence.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
Plaudits for your grammatical construction
You did not state a conclusion. I extended your thoughts about gradualism, such as slow tectonic shift, to infer that the although the prelude to geologic catastrophes are gradual, centuries in the making often, but the energetic release is abrupt.
So what?
The effects of such particulate and gaseous release occurring at seemingly random fit into a climate model--any climate model--how? Since the magnitude of climatic disruption from a single volcanic eruption can be immense, how does one include such random but enormous events into a model. Are there any models which can account for these abrupt changes. CO2 effects are measured and produce predictable changes in temperature ranges, but these effects take months for large changes to accumulate. Consider Amazon forest fires: in a relatively short period of time enormous amounts of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, various acids (including sulfuric and hydrogen chloride), magmatic particulates. A relatively limited time period occurs in which these substances are suspended in the atmosphere. During such times, climatic changes may be dramatic but brief. However, chronic forest fires, a fact of nature, could conceivably produce elevations of CO2 to chronically elevate temperature--independent of anthropogenic causes.
None. Of. This. Matters.
We don't need advanced computer models to know that pumping CO2 into the atmosphere will cause warming; applying current models to "predicting" weather from the past is something of a reality check, and more generally it may highlight certain weaknesses or oversights in the models. However, it does not, and is not intended or expected (by those doing the work), to function as "proof" that pumping CO2 into the atmosphere will make the planet warm up. "We" (meaning, all persons possessed of an actual clue) know that pumping CO2 into the atmosphere will cause the planet to warm up. It must.
The only reason anyone mistakenly supposes that the purpose of historical analysis is to prove the basic model of "more CO2 means higher temperatures" is that boneheads and malefactors have been trolling the scientists for decades, requiring those same scientists to endlessly analyze new scenarios, and then communicate the inevitable results that Every. Single. Thing. We. Can. Measure. supports the model. The scientists already know that this is what the result will be, but "skeptics" (for our purposes here, alternatively understood to be "uneducable ideologues and/or self-interested assassins of civilization") remain indefatigably dedicated to their yabbut yabbut yabbut choruses.
What happens after the warming, well that's another story. Will we experience runaway heating due to methane off-gassing from thawing permafrost and/or sublimation of deep-sea clathrates? Or will the northern hemisphere plunge into an era of glaciation triggered by a warming-induced shutdown of the Atlantic conveyor? Etc? These are questions to which we do not know the answers -- and very well may not, until the event manifests.
The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.
I like your comment
Methane outgassing from melting permafrost will result in really terrible climate warming. Methane is about 4 times as potent an atmospheric heat trapper than CO2. So, all of those who eat hamburger will be doing our environment a great big favor by eliminating all those methane-expelling cattle. Hell, I do my bit any time I can when roaming my swamp, I urge fellow swampers and all those interested in preventing humanity from becoming parboiled to eat more meat and recycle used neoliberals (send them my way).
Uh, it's actually about 30 times more powerful.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140327111724.htm
'French theory is a product of US cultural imperialism." -- Gabriel Rockhill
30 is number with which I have difficulty
I can count to twenty--but beyond that, I'm pretty much lost. So what is the heat trapping index of sulfuric acid?
Thanks for this succinct
And easily repeatable quote:
.
Of which I will be doing..
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier