Obama to Declare Carbon Dioxide Dangerous Pollutant (Update1)

bloomberg link only ^ | Oct. 16 | By Jim Efstathiou Jr.

[xcamel]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601082&sid=alHWVvGnkcd4&refer=canada

Link only

This is important

[cogitator]

Gondring, *ANY* substance known to man, when misused, can cause discomfort or death. Does this mean all substances known to man are pollutants?

See post 91.

[cogitator]

But I will remind you that in the year 1000 Leif Ericsson founded a colony on Greenland, where it thrived in an environment about 6 to 7 degrees warmer than it is now.

It wasn't Leif Ericsson, it was Erik the Red. Where do you get 6-7 degrees warmer (F or C)? And is that local for Greenland?

[mlocher]

It wasn't Leif Ericsson, it was Erik the Red. Where do you get 6-7 degrees warmer (F or C)? And is that local for Greenland?

OK -- Erik the Red. Degrees in F. Source is "A History of Christianity" by Paul Johnsson. Johnsson did not specify if it was a local or global phenomena. There have been some scientists who have stated it was warmer in the year 1000 than today, but left it at that.

[cogitator]

A nice turn of phrase using the word "industrial".

Doesn't really cover the transportation sector, does it? How about "technological and land-use"? Clunky.

Need to minimize the harm of that policy since we all know the climate benefits of it will be nil.

Forestalling or preventing Greenland ice sheet collapse might be considered a climate benefit. So might preventing loss of biodiversity and preservation of coral reefs (taking a double hit due to increasing SST and ocean acidification).

"All of the above" works for me, with emphasis on nuclear, wind, and biofuel in the immediate future.

[palmer]

In fact, careful measurements by oceanographers at thousands of locations in the ocean, both in the water and in the overlying atmosphere, indicate that the ocean waters are currently a net sink for CO2

"Careful" doesn't mean inclusive or necessarily accurate. The net sink argument might be true for recent measurements but there's no way to know if the ocean was a net sink less recently (before those "careful" measurements could be made).

The bottom line is most of today's CO2 spike is man-made and some is natural and the proportions are basically impossible to determine.

[palmer]

Forestalling or preventing Greenland ice sheet collapse might be considered a climate benefit

Impossible to say. Again, no quantitative analysis of how the sheet will collapse (showing how it can turn into a big slush pile and flow into the ocean).

So might preventing loss of biodiversity and preservation of coral reefs (taking a double hit due to increasing SST and ocean acidification).

A bit more valid, but still needs quantifying.

[cogitator]

There's no quantitative analysis with any accuracy showing how much CO2 comes from fossil sources.

Making me do a literature search, huh? The best quantitation is from flux measurements. Oceanographers do atmospheric and in-water pCO2; very simple math gives you the flux at that point. Land scientists can do similar either with flux chambers or soil moisture CO2 measurements. That's how you get a schematic like this:

Now, as for quantifying the Suess effect, try this one. It's a Powerpoint presentation; several interesting references in it.

http://ecology.botany.ufl.edu/radiocarbon07/Downloads/2006%20Lectures/2006%20Atmosphere.ppt

Look at slides 18 and 52. Those plots imply to me that there's a model (more than one, actually) estimating CO2 fluxes and deriving the Suess effect numbers for comparison with observations.

If the models match the observations as well as shown, then that's quantitation in my book. (In case anyone despairs models, this is how it's done. You construct a model that predicts measurable quantities and then examine the predictions of the measurable quantities against the actual measurements.)

[cogitator]

There have been some scientists who have stated it was warmer in the year 1000 than today, but left it at that.

There's no doubt it was generally warmer in Greenland from 1000-1300 (1400?) than subsequently.

[cogitator]

Again, no quantitative analysis of how the sheet will collapse (showing how it can turn into a big slush pile and flow into the ocean).

I expect Richard Alley's still working on that one. Have you seen the most recent results on the thinning of the glaciers in southern Greenland?

[Old Professer]

May I remind you that the allotropic form of oxygen is one of the primary “pollutants” since around 1970? (O3)

[Old Professer]

Lead (air-borne)lowered from 1.5 micrograms/litre to .015 mcg/L.

At least 18 states currently exceed those levels with no immediate remedial tools at hand with which to comply.

[pleikumud]

“Our climate experts can’t even accurately tell us where a hurricane will land in 48 hours.

Climate experts don’t forecast hurricanes. Meteorologists do that.”

Your reply sounds very academic. So why don’t we have the climate experts do the forecasting, so people will know precisely when, where, and with what intensity? Are the “climate experts” not allowed to speak?

[Old Professer]

Plants store all of the CO2 they take in, the oxygen exchanged to air in the process comes from groundwater; so more plants, less groundwater - lose, lose.

[palmer]

I don't disagree in general with the carbon flux model, it shows that most of the ongoing increase in CO2 is manmade. What is lacking is accurate measurements of carbon storage in the ocean, soil, etc. The carbon flux measurements are mostly derived from storage numbers (it's basically impossible to figure out CO2 transfer from the sea surface) and that's why the whole model can't give an accurate answer.

As for the slides, #19 shows a bit of the natural variations. Unfortunately they don't show (or don't want to show) preindustrial variations which are of the same magnitude as CO2 itself (preindustrial). The natural variations are overlayed on the manmade effect shown by the model and continue to the present.

[Old Professer]

Using the same logical argument, aggravated alimentation should also be regulated by the EPA and then all the Joe The Plumbers of the world would be at risk of their livliehoods, not just one political incorrect one that we see today.

Imagine how much CO2 could be reduced just in the transportation field, alone.

[Old Professer]

I don’t think this was Obama’s idea to release this now, it seems to have come out during an interview with one of his many advisors, Jason Grunet.

[Old Professer]

Such a clean stack would ideally emit only CO2 and water as steam or vapor; mount an evaporator coil with cooled liquid circulating through it in this exit stream and drain the water to catch basins and pump the CO2 through pipes and eventually into underground storage caverns to await future consideration; a carbon dioxide bank, so to speak.

Now, there’s a job-building project worthy of any peacetime navy hull painting crew ever imagined.

[Old Professer]

Ain’t it sweet!!!?

[Old Professer]

So far this year we have counted 24 sunspots, about 2.4 month although we just went through a record period of zero; the historical average is 8.6 per month, this year so far being about the third lowest year since counting began.

[Old Professer]

“In my estimation a “pollutant” is something that does not belong there, or is in abnormal, artificially induced quantities that cause harm of some kind. I remain unconvinced that CO2 is causing any harm whatsoever...”

All atmosheric science is built around anomalies, deviations from the perceived ideal or the rationalized normal; it is here that the science is picked apart, reassembled and ordered toward an understanding of the cycles, perturbations and probabilities. Now they have added consequence to the list and they have done it with the assumption that our lifetime somehow represents the ideal; consequently, any deviation may be then perceived to be harmful climate change.

A nearly perfect scheme if not exactly empirical as tradition has to be overcome in favor of prediction.