I am also not a scientist. My understanding of the current status of the debate is that past extreme changes (in global surface temperature, atmospheric carbon, ocean acidity and so on) have generally taken place over millennia if not even longer periods. On the rare occasions when these changes have been more rapid, it has invariably been due to unique events such as super-volcanic activity, asteroid impact and other catastrophic occurrences. It is only now – for the first time – that these changes are happening as the result of the activities of one species, and that at such a rate (in terms of geological time) as to be comparable with past catastrophic events.

We live on a dynamic and constantly evolving planet and much is beyond our control. The climate warms and cools, calms down and becomes more violent. A warmer atmosphere is a more turbulent one, exhibiting extremes of weather as a result of the energy it contains. Nevertheless, we need – for the sake of our own survival as a species – to do what we can to shorten the odds in our favour. I maintain that our self-indulgent, wanton comforts and appetites have reached such an extreme level of unsustainability that they need to be curtailed. The sculptural dancing elegance of contemporary wind turbines is a small price to pay in comparison to the squat, lumpen, boorish, subsidy-gorged obesity of a nuclear power station lurking toxically somewhere over the horizon – in someone else’s back yard.

To my knowledge there is no parity between the opposing camps of scientific opinion on this matter. Some people consider that there is equal weight of argument on many such matters; Darwinism and evolutionary theory versus creationism and intelligent design, the fabricated and fraudulent scare surrounding the MMR vaccine and its supposed role in causing autism. The mass of scientific authority sides with the theory of anthropogenic climate change. Only the terminally misanthropic, commercially self-interested and publicity hungry provide any degree of counterweight on the side of denial.

If I travel by bus I would always give up my seat for a lady. I would thus treat you with deference, not because you need it, but on the precautionary principle that you might. Our host planet should be treated in a similarly polite and decent manner.

Our recent winter weather in our small corner of the globe has been more than offset by the searing heat in other regions. The southern hemisphere has seen drought, heatwave and record high temperatures. Our northern European winter might have been colder than those of the past few years but it was still warmer than 1963 and 1947. If this is as cold as it gets we should be worried.

Best regards,

Jonny.

If irreversible climate change (it used to be global warming until the recent harsh winters in the Northern Hemisphere) really is taking place due to increased CO2 emissions, surely we should be concentrating on how to cope with the inevitable effects, not on destroying our evolved way of life.

However, you first have to identify the causes of the disease before you can find a way of ameliorating its consequences, and it seems to me that there is enough conflicting scientific opinion on the reasons for climate change for this to be beyond us at present.

Personally, after the last couple of weeks, roll on global warming!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/nov/15/real-global-warming-christopher-booker

“Look on my works, ye Rational, and despair!” Sorry Shelley…

Rgds

Damon

Has he gone?

Good. Now we can continue …

These articles seem to be relevant to the problem – and suggest a partial resolution:

http://www.windturbinesyndrome.com/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8223048.stm

While I believe that Ecotricity actively tries to work with communities, could these efforts be made even better?

Has anyone got any thoughts on how engagement with communities by developers in general can be improved, to increase a sense of ownership and positive identification between local communities and the turbines?

To what extent are apparently “local” Nimby campaigns manufactured by outside interests in a manner akin to 1970s style flying pickets? To what extent are scaremongering mythologies used on a suggestible and ill-informed public by those who have – for whatever reason – an anti-wind agenda?

Best regards,

Jonny.

I just don’t understand why someone like you, who can at least spell, swallows all this nonsense about rising levels of CO2. Why don’t you try and be original? At least my ideas are mine, not someone else’s. I might not be right but by slavishly following the Establishment, you will certainly be wrong. Throughout history, on all matters scientific, the Establishment has a 100% record of being wrong.

What did the Establishment do in response to the Black Death? They paid to have all the cats killed, (5 million at the time), because they thought that cats carried the disease. Typical. 100% wrong – making matters much worse.

Here’s an idea: Use your devotion to the Establishment and help reduce congestion in London by doubling the length of the buses; or reduce drug addiction by downgrading Cannabis; or improve the education system by increasing the size of schools; or help third-world countries by banning food imports into the EU; or promote world peace by invading other people’s countries; or fight AIDS by encouraging promiscuity; or help the Labour Party by banning smoking in working-men’s clubs; or beautify the countryside by subsidising factory farming; or reduce people’s personal debt by printing more money; or support sound money by encouraging property speculation? Best of all, be part of the world’s financial Establishment and tell everyone that you have scientific proof that money generates money.

The truth is, Mr Beaker, you believe anything the Establishment wants you to believe. That’s the basis of true ignorance.

If you can explain why all the CO2 hasn’t already ended up as one sort of carbonate or another, please do. I would be fascinated. Unfortunately, you say you fail to see the relevance to the debate. I’m surprised:

The significance is that if CO2 dissolves in seawater after which a fair proportion precipitates out and leaves the Carbon Cycle for ever, then, given the area occupied by seawater on this watery planet, and the almost incalculable mass of carboniferous sediments which has already accumulated across the surface of the Earth, suggests that the only source of Carbon, (the atmosphere) maybe diminishing. After all, the process has been taking place for the last four billion years.

Your conundrum on sequestering carbon in limestone and chalk is kids stuff. Look up a carbon cycle in a school science textbook and you will see (once again) that is a little more complicated than your posts suggest. For starters, volcanos release CO2 – lots (but man made emissions are 100 times more – lots and lots and lots!), plus there is the weathering of carboniferous rocks. So yes I can explain why all the CO2 hasn’t ended up as sedimentary rock – but fail to see the relevance of your question to me.

A recurring theme in your posts here is that contrary to what we are able to observe CO2 in the atmosphere is not rising, and were we to cut fossil fuel CO2 emissions, atmospheric CO2 may fall to our detriment. You offer no evidence (unless you count analogies to weapons of mass destruction and the works of Swift). You also deride the collected expertise you disagree with as being motivated to lie by some sort of loathing for human kind. And of course, despite frequent efforts of several others here to point out that even if it were a simple zero sum relationship between atmospheric CO2 and O2, a very significant increase in CO2 is still an insignificant decrease in O2, you continue to cling to a nonsensical argument.

Instead you accuse others of being gullible, and throw out gems such as pterodactyls flying in Precambrian air (taken there by Dr Who?) and my fave, “I sincerely believe that atmospheric CO2 is being depleted.”
Tell me, are you by any chance a fan of Christopher Booker’s work?

Kind Regards
Beaker

I can’t believe what I’m reading! I’m sure you must be taking the Mick.

C02 weighs 3.66 times the weight of carbon. This is derived from the atomic weights of carbon, 12, and oxygen, 16. The molecular weight (MW) of C02 is therefore 12 + (2 x 16) = 44. Since the MW of carbon is 12 C02 must be 44/12ths or 3.67 times heavier than carbon per molecule.

Therefore burning one billion tons of carbon produces 3.67 billion tons of C02 and burning 7 billion tons of carbon (annual fossil fuel consumption) will produce 26.7 billion tons of C02. Conversely, as the MW of CO2 is 44 and the MW of O2 is 16 then CO2 must contain 44/16ths of oxygen which is 2.75 heavier than the Carbon molecule. In other words, burning 7 billion tons of fossil fuel not only produces 26.7 billion tons of CO2 but also consumes 19.25 billion tons of Oxygen. What do you think the formula should be?

If you don’t understand chemical formulae, ask Dr James Wilton at Imperial College London to enlighten you. The sneering arrogance you display while trying to be supercilious concerning my subject (chemical engineering) is extremely irritating.

The oceans absorb more CO2 than all the vegetation in the world put together. A proportion of this dissolved CO2 is converted into various carbonates, a proportion of which precipitates and sinks to the bottom of the sea bed and passes out of the Carbon Cycle forever. Chemical engineers the world over know this fact produces a conundrum, namely, atmospheric CO2 should have disappeared thousands of years ago.

The evidence is there to see:- The White cliffs of Dover are about 600 feet high (or deep) of chalk/limestone. The ocean beds have an average depth of chalk/limestone (CaCO3) of about three thousand feet. The ocean water itself contains 50 times the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Why hasn’t all the CO2 ended up as sedimentary rock? Maybe you can explain it Mr Beaker.

Well, actually no. I’ve not mentioned anything about humans being horrible beings, and I’ve said nothing so far about State control. I’m more concerned about how we can avoid dangerous climate change. In a sense we are already there, when nomads in the Sahara desert have been surviving for centuries in harsh conditions are finding increasingly difficult to survive from about 20-30 years ago, when low-lying islands where people have been living for centuries are being abandoned because of rising sea levels and continual floods.

What’s changed recently (in the last few decades)? Industrialisation.

The changes in temperature are too fast to put down to natural causes.

Unfortunately I don’t have CO2 measuring equipment, and I haven’t been recording CO2 levels for the last century. So no, I can’t definitively prove to you with my own data that CO2 levels have been rising. But Professor Revelle and Charles David Keeling have been taking CO2 measurements daily over the middle of the Pacific Ocean (Hawaii) since 1958. The graph shows CO2 levels at 315ppm in 1958, and at 381ppm in 2005. It shows the levels sharply rising and dropping once every year, but the general trend is upwards. In fact if you go here you can see that CO2 has still been rising, year on year, reaching about 386ppm.

It seems you are determined to believe what you want to believe. I cannot understand why you or anybody else would willingly accept the word of ‘experts’ without some sort of empirical verification. Why would you? If humans in general and ’experts’ in particular had a long history of being right then you would be justified in accepting what they say without question. As it is, humans as a whole and experts in particular, are mostly wrong in what they put forward as being true so just about everything expressed by experts needs to be taken with a pinch of salt.

If the consequences were not so serious, believing without doubting what you are told would be no more than a harmless foible. In reality however, accepting facts unquestioningly is rarely harmless or innocent especially when exercised by politicians. Why, for instance, would anyone accept the existence of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq on the say-so of government paid experts? Why did Chamberlain tell the world, ‘Peace in our time’? Why is the whole world suffering the consequences of all those ‘experts’ who got their financial sums so completely wrong that many of the world‘s biggest banks and industries went bankrupt? The answer is obvious; it’s called the ‘clouding of reason’ or gullibility.

You say quite confidently, “CO2 has gone up by a third.” Why would you accept that without question rather than, “CO2 has gone down by a third.”? What empirical source of information do you possess which would lead you to accept either of the two statements? I wouldn’t. Neither statement is empirically verifiable.

Again, why would you accept something like, “…there is no correlation between solar activity and the warming trend we are observing…” when this is something you can clearly verify empirically. The sun’s radiation is all powerful and all-encompassing and we can all see and feel its immense power every day. To suppress your own experience of the sun’s intense radiation and deny it has any effect on climate is more than just a clouding of reason; it’s an ideological perversity.

Remember, Dean Swift wrote Gulliver’s Travels as a parody of the insane behaviour of his intellectual contemporaries. He also wrote ‘A Modest Proposal’ which advocated ways of cooking poor children to make them more palatable for the table. He was poking fun at the ridiculous solutions the experts of the day were recommending for poor people. The joke was; the experts thought he was serious!

By the way, what is wrong with, ‘One part carbon uses two parts oxygen when burning, which then produces three parts CO2’ ?

Pip pip!

Justin Gudgeon

Although this is interesting, it is more anecdotal than scientific. This simple experiment cannot be regarded as the factual basis upon which the Greenhouse theory exists. Difficulties will always arise if we accept, without question, anecdotal evidence. I know, for instance, water vapour is the most abundant of the ‘Greenhouse’ gases and must have the greatest influence over the Earth’s climate. Without water vapour in the air, the temperatures at ground level would be constantly below freezing. I know because I can see for myself the clouds forming and chucking down large quantities of water.

In your example Fourier states, “Clearly something else is keeping us warmer than we deserve……..the atmosphere was the key”. That’s fine – I have no problem with that except Fourier doesn’t mention the sun. What dictates climate is the sun in combination with the atmosphere. Since the atmosphere is known to be an incredibly stable media and the sun’s radiation is known to be quite unstable, why would you choose to believe, not the water; not the solar radiation but the minute quantities of CO2 in the atmosphere is causing the slight change in the climate?

The reason, I’m sure, is because you are temperamentally drawn to that side if society which relishes the idea that humans are horrible beings which need strong State control.

I’m going to have to quote from “The Hot Topic” by Gabrielle Walker and Sir David King:

“Clearly something else is keeping us warmer than we deserve. Fourier realised that the atmosphere was the key. However, he didn’t know which part of the air was acting as a warming blanket. This missing ingredient was discovered by a flamboyant Irishman named John Tyndall… He was fascinated with Fourier’s calculations, and wondered if something was blocking part of the invisible infrared glow, preventing it from escaping back to space.
To find out, Tyndall set up an artificial sky in a tube and started shining infrared light through it. He wanted his sky to be as clean as possible, so he took out all ‘impurities’ from the air. This left the gases that make up more than 99 per cent of our atmosphere: oxygen and nitrogen. But to his bafflement, infrared light slipped through the air unhindered. In other words, the gases that make up most of our atmosphere – nitrogen and oxygen – make no difference at all to its temperature.
On a slightly desparate hunch, Tyndall slipped a few of the ‘impurities’ back into his air. He added a whiff of methane, some water vapour and a soupcon of carbon dioxide, all of which exist in tiny amounts in the real atmosphere. And suddenly, everything changed. As far as infrared was concerned, Tyndall’s artificial sky went black. These so-called impurities did indeed trap infrared and prevent at least some of it from escaping back to space. They were Fourier’s mysterious warming ingredients.”

In conclusion, water vapour (which I haven’t previously mentioned), methane and carbon dioxide are greenhouse gases, i.e. they block infrared.

Maybe we are experiencing a language barrier here but I cannot see where you have made clear my errors concerning the atmosphere. If you burn a ton of charcoal you get the formula O2+C = CO2 + heat. The equation is balanced which means for a given amount of carbon, you need twice as much oxygen to sustain the reaction. Under certain conditions the reaction can result in O2+C = CO. In this case the equation is not balanced so has to be adjusted thus: O2+2C = 2OC meaning that an equal amount of oxygen and carbon is required to make Carbon Monoxide.

In other words, burning a ton of oil, uses up two tones of oxygen resulting in the creation of three tons of CO2. While there has indeed, been a net addition of three tons of CO2 to the atmosphere, there has also been a corresponding subtraction of two tons of oxygen from the atmosphere. Were this reaction to continue without the presence of plants, the level of oxygen would steadily decline. Since this is not happening, it must be the case that plants are photosynthesising the CO2 in line with the chemical formula: “Six molecules of water plus six molecules of carbon dioxide produce one molecule of sugar plus six molecules of oxygen”.

The significance of this formula is that, over millions of years, there should be equal amounts of Oxygen and Carbon dioxide. There isn’t which can only mean CO2 is being synthesised back into oxygen faster than it is being produced. The fact there is sixty times more Oxygen in the atmosphere proves this.

PS I don’t know the answer to your last question.

Of course you and Gary are right about the Pterodactyl not being around during the pre-Cambrian period but I was making the general point about the atmosphere being very dense in the Earth’s early history. At the risk of being a bore, the Earth’s early atmosphere must have contained a mass of carbon (as CO2) equal to the mass of carbon now contained in the solid organic matter as now existing all over the World. This includes all the sedimentary rock in existence as well as all the oil, gas, coal, and everything that lives. This unimaginably large mass of organic matter was extracted from the atmosphere. Since Nitrogen has always been a major component of the atmosphere, it’s clear the vast amount of primordial CO2 must have been in addition to the Nitrogen, making the primordial atmosphere extremely dense. The plants, of course, loved it! Now, sadly, (all good things come to an end), poor plants have to make do with a really measly amount of CO2 and in response, take forever to grow.

I sincerely agree with Jonny Holt but the good husbanding of our environment must not become an obsession like those strange Peoples who won’t till the land in case they kill the odd worm. But thank you, nonetheless for your open-minder comments.

Incidentally, if your are interested, I do have a workable hypothesis concerning the composition of the atmosphere and the demise of the dinosaur.

Best wishes to all

Justin Gudgeon

I’ve never been much of a fossil fan but 20 years of studying geology tells me that the Precambrian came to an end 542 million years ago whilst the pterosaurs were around int eh Mesozoic (251my to 65my ago). That leaves a gap of nearly 300 million years during which life on the continents flourished and expanded.

If you are really right and the atmosphere was 60% CO2 at the time of the pterosaurs then you may have solved the mystery as to why the dinosaurs died out – they asphyxiated (though why they didn’t take all the other animals, including mammals, with them will remain a mystery).

I was not aware that pteradactyls were around in the Pre-cambrian.

Surely we should not be distracted by the fact that aeons in the past, other climates supported species able to survive and thrive in those environments. It is our benign climate of today which supports us. We and all other living species have evolved for today’s environment and would be unlikely to survive a rapid return to the climate of the distant past. It would be the speed of that change that would be the problem and if the change has any chance of being anthropogenically driven we should do all we can to minimise it. This is both polite behaviour to our host planet and also self-interest.

However, if you are right and our polluting ways are not the cause of global warming, we will still have done the right thing if we adopt a policy of minimising our emissions.

It is all about treating our host with decency, good manners and deference.

Best regards,

Jonny.

The problem with theories which have to make too many assumptions is that that they tend throw up too many inconsistencies. The huge volcanic out-gassing you describe would, by modern theories, blot out the sun and reduce global temperatures. Don’t forget, the reason it is called ‘the greenhouse effect’ is because the glass of a greenhouse allows solar radiation IN but not OUT, thereby raising the temperature inside. Whitewashing the glass prevents this effect. In the same way, a high level of CO2 in the atmosphere is only relevant (as far as the greenhouse effect is concerned) is if the atmosphere is completely clear which it wouldn’t be after a colossal volcanic eruption.

The other major problem presenting theories regarding terrestrial evolution is that, due to the huge time periods involved, the sun itself undergoes considerable variations. When protozoan life first began on Earth 4.2 billion years ago, the sun might have been much hotter or much cooler. No-one knows. However, since we know empirically that the intensity of the sun’s radiation varies, it seems more likely that variations of much greater magnitude were responsible for the climate changes in past eons.

My belief, as stated before, is that this known variation in solar radiation, combined with a slight fall in the level of CO2, has made the resultant climate changes sharper and more noticeable.

Just as a matter of interest , the theory of a Precambrian atmosphere being much denser, (twice today’s) and containing over 60% CO2 explains both the huge amount of organic matter in existence as well as how the Terradactyl was able to fly. It certainly couldn’t fly in today’s thin atmosphere.

“Ice cores provide evidence for variation in greenhouse gas concentrations over the past 800,000 years. Both CO2 and CH4 vary between glacial and interglacial phases, and concentrations of these gases correlate strongly with temperature. Before the ice core record, direct data does not exist. However, various proxies and modelling suggests large variations; 500 Myr ago CO2 levels were likely 10 times higher than now. Indeed higher CO2 concentrations are thought to have prevailed throughout most of the Phanerozoic eon, with concentrations four to six times current concentrations during the Mesozoic era, and ten to fifteen times current concentrations during the early Palaeozoic era until the middle of the Devonian period, about 400 Mya. The spread of land plants is thought to have reduced CO2 concentrations during the late Devonian, and plant activities as both sources and sinks of CO2 have since been important in providing stabilising feedbacks. Earlier still, a 200-million year period of intermittent, widespread glaciation extending close to the equator (Snowball Earth) appears to have been ended suddenly, about 550 Mya, by a colossal volcanic outgassing which raised the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere abruptly to 12%, about 350 times modern levels, causing extreme greenhouse conditions and carbonate deposition as limestone at the rate of about 1 mm per day. This episode marked the close of the Precambrian eon, and was succeeded by the generally warmer conditions of the Phanerozoic, during which multicellular animal and plant life evolved. No volcanic carbon dioxide emission of comparable scale has occurred since. In the modern era, emissions to the atmosphere from volcanoes are only about 1% of emissions from human sources.”

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

You state that, “What has been sequestered over a very long time, is being oxidised and released to the atmosphere in a very short time -”

It doesn’t really matter if the sequestering of CO2 from the atmosphere by plants took a very, very long time. What matters is that plants did, in fact, remove it from the atmosphere and laid it down in the form of sedimentary rock, oil, gas, coal and peat plus all existing top-soil and everything now living. Given the absolutely gigantic amount of bio-mass this represents, what do you think the CO2 levels must have been during the long period when you say this was all happening?

Now, you say, this huge amount laid-down organic matter is being oxidised. Where exactly, is the oxygen coming from to supply the high rate of oxidation you speak of? The answer is; from plants; and from what do the plants produce this oxygen from? From CO2 + H2O.

Your chemical equations do not balance. Chemical equations have to balance otherwise it would mean matter would have to magically appear and disappear into thin air. (pun not intended) When you state, “..rising Plant uptake of CO2 is not keeping pace with our increasing CO2 emissions, so the atmosphere is being enriched with CO2…” is a case in point. It is just not possible for plants to produce less oxygen than is required to oxidise the fossil fuels. If plants were not sequestering the CO2, they would not be producing the Oxygen and there would be a dramatic fall in the amount of oxygen available to burn the fossil fuel. Surely you must see this? If there was some cataclysmic fire which consumed the whole of the South American rain forest in the space of a single day then, yes, there would be a big rise in CO2 but there would HAVE to be a corresponding fall on oxygen. Since nine-tenths of living things on Earth, including most micro-organisms, don’t ‘breath’ oxygen as such, but take up organic carbon from the air or in solution from water, the extra CO2 in the air would be quickly taken into solution via the oceans and/or be sequestered by increased plant growth. A large commercial green-house growing tomatoes will routinely have CO2 blown through it to increase plant growth. Like every living organism, more food means more growth and more growth requires more food. CO2 is plant food.

Your point about the Greens never being in power is not relevant. Stopping a by-pass is a local issue but the Greens represented a widespread national disquiet regarding Nuclear power and as such, were successful in persuading governments not to ‘go nuclear’. Maybe you don’t remember Chernobyl.

As for global warming being a ploy to overcome left/green opposition to nuclear power, a paranoid fantasy.
“I invite you to explain how the Green movement has been persuaded to drop its opposition to nuclear power.”
Assuming for moment the nonsense that there is or was such a thing as a unified Green Movement with a position on nuclear, where and when have they been in power? The most concerted efforts have not managed to stop a bypass (unless in your world, that is just what they want us to think…)

Regards

As before, your comments are balanced. However, you misunderstand the Carbon cycle. There has never been a balance in atmospheric gasses. As explained above, ever since life began on the planet, CO2 has been sequestrated from the atmosphere and not replaced. It has been laid down in organic deposits such as coal,gas and oil. The biggest deposits of course, are the ocean sediments which, due to the movement of the Earth’s crust, now stick out of the ground and form large land-masses such as the southern part of England and Europe.

Just as a note of interest, can you guess how deep the sediments/top-soil of the Congo wet-lands are, bearing in mind the area is half the size of Europe? Two miles deep.

You are right; CO2 levels can’t theoretically drop to zero but it is important you realise that the majority of respiration taking place on this planet is anaerobic. (ie, non-oxygen breathing organisms).

I have been studying the theoretical effects of near zero CO2 for over thirty years and still haven’t calculated what effect it would have on world ecology except that it would slow plant growth and reduce food production.

I have to be honest and say, if all modern activities involving any form of combustion stopped, I don’t know what effect this would have on the atmosphere. I personally don’t think CO2 levels could drop because plant growth would slow and the take-up of CO2 would be proportionally less thus producing no change. Its a fascinating subject.