Biggest Jump Ever Seen in Global Warming Gases

• BoatShoes

  This is not good news. Especially when we need anything we can to get our economy going.
  
  http://news.yahoo.com/biggest-jump-ever-seen-global-warming-gases-183955211.html
  

  WASHINGTON (AP) — The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumped by the biggest amount on record, the U.S.Department of Energy calculated, a sign of how feeble the world's efforts are at slowing man-made global warming.The new figures for 2010 mean that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago.
  "The more we talk about the need to control emissions, the more they are growing," said John Reilly, co-director of MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.
  The world pumped about 564 million more tons (512 million metric tons) of carbon into the air in 2010 than it did in 2009. That's an increase of 6 percent. That amount of extra pollution eclipses the individual emissions of all but three countries — China, the United States and India, the world's top producers of greenhouse gases.
  It is a "monster" increase that is unheard of, said Gregg Marland, a professor of geology at Appalachian State University, who has helped calculate Department of Energy figures in the past.
  Extra pollution in China and the U.S. account for more than half the increase in emissions last year, Marland said.
  "It's a big jump," said Tom Boden, director of the Energy Department's Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center at Oak Ridge National Lab. "From an emissions standpoint, the global financial crisis seems to be over."
  Boden said that in 2010 people were traveling, and manufacturing was back up worldwide, spurring the use of fossil fuels, the chief contributor of man-made climate change.
  India and China are huge users of coal. Burning coal is the biggest carbon source worldwide and emissions from that jumped nearly 8 percent in 2010.
  "The good news is that these economies are growing rapidly so everyone ought to be for that, right?" Reilly said Thursday. "Broader economic improvements in poor countries has been bringing living improvements to people. Doing it with increasing reliance on coal is imperiling the world."
  In 2007, when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its last large report on global warming, it used different scenarios for carbon dioxide pollution and said the rate of warming would be based on the rate of pollution. Boden said the latest figures put global emissions higher than the worst case projections from the climate panel. Those forecast global temperatures rising between 4 and 11 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century with the best estimate at 7.5 degrees.
  Even though global warming skeptics have attacked the climate change panel as being too alarmist, scientists have generally found their predictions too conservative, Reilly said. He said his university worked on emissions scenarios, their likelihood, and what would happen. The IPCC's worst case scenario was only about in the middle of what MIT calculated are likely scenarios.
  Chris Field of Stanford University, head of one of the IPCC's working groups, said the panel's emissions scenarios are intended to be more accurate in the long term and are less so in earlier years. He said the question now among scientists is whether the future is the panel's worst case scenario "or something more extreme."
  "Really dismaying," Granger Morgan, head of the engineering and public policy department at Carnegie Mellon University, said of the new figures. "We are building up a horrible legacy for our children and grandchildren."
  But Reilly and University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver found something good in recent emissions figures. The developed countries that ratified the 1997 Kyoto Protocol greenhouse gas limiting treaty have reduced their emissions overall since then and have achieved their goals of cutting emissions to about 8 percent below 1990 levels. The U.S. did not ratify the agreement.
  In 1990, developed countries produced about 60 percent of the world's greenhouse gases, now it's probably less than 50 percent, Reilly said.
  "We really need to get the developing world because if we don't, the problem is going to be running away from us," Weaver said. "And the problem is pretty close from running away from us."

  This comes shortly after renown climate change skeptic Richard Muller changes his opinion on climate change agreeing that it is real.
  
  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204422404576594872796327348.html
• fish82

  

  Cool story, bro. :rolleyes:
• sleeper

  

  I'm grilling out today.
  
  Hope this helps.
• Al Bundy

  By "ever" do we mean the extremely small sampling of data that we have compared to the age of the earth?
• tk421

  

  Yeah, I didn't know we've been collecting data for 4.5 Billion years. Wow, you mean the maybe 200 years qualifies as EVER? What arrogance.
• believer

  

  tk421;960442 wrote:Yeah, I didn't know we've been collecting data for 4.5 Billion years. Wow, you mean the maybe 200 years qualifies as EVER? What arrogance.

  Absolutely. Neanderthal 1 was launched into space 5 billion years ago to collect global warming - er I mean - "climate change" data.
• dwccrew

  

  Nobody cares.
• Belly35

  

  Global before another word should be define as "Fraud"
  
  Global warming I fart in your general direction.. mofo
• GOONx19

  

  Global warming occurs naturally and in cycles, and global cooling will be the problem in another hundred years. High CO[SUB]2[/SUB] numbers have nothing to do with us.
• jmog

  lol Boaty...you do realize that in reality EPA regulations that would cut back CO2 emissions would only HINDER the economy correct?
  
  I'm not even going to get into the climate change thing.
  
  I've gone over that many times on this site and the old one.
  
  Does the climate change? Absolutely.
  Is the climate changing right now? Absolutely.
  Is the climate changing due to man made CO2 emissions? This is most definitely not even close to be a proven fact. There is plenty of evidence to the contrary.
• Little Danny

  

  Al Gore is sitting on his Gulfstream right now wondering how in the world there are still people out there who believes this sh**.
• queencitybuckeye

  jmog;962330 wrote: Does the climate change? Absolutely.
  Is the climate changing right now? Absolutely.
  Is the climate changing due to man made CO2 emissions? This is most definitely not even close to be a proven fact. There is plenty of evidence to the contrary.

  One more: If we completely stopped all pollution today, it is scientifically invalid to make the assumption that the environment would revert to some pre-industrial revolution equilibrium.
• BoatShoes

  jmog;962330 wrote:lol Boaty...you do realize that in reality EPA regulations that would cut back CO2 emissions would only HINDER the economy correct?
  
  I'm not even going to get into the climate change thing.
  
  I've gone over that many times on this site and the old one.
  
  Does the climate change? Absolutely.
  Is the climate changing right now? Absolutely.
  Is the climate changing due to man made CO2 emissions? This is most definitely not even close to be a proven fact. There is plenty of evidence to the contrary.

  Did you not read my post? I intimated that something like cap and trade would be deleterious in our current economic situation (even though it's seeming increasingly more vital to have considering that carbon emissions have exceeded even the worse case scenario). That leaves us in a catch 22 because we also need to do something about the world's glaring emissions problem. However, correctly pricing in the externalities of fossil fuels would allow for renewable technologies to compete more effectively even faster.
  
  You may have gone over it but your position is not persuasive as there is more ample evidence opposing it. You can go ahead and say it's not even close to a proven fact but the deliberate bad faith of conservatives of course makes their standard of proof unattainable. All I know is that if 99 out of 100 meteorologists says it's going to rain today, a Conservative takes an umbrella with them. On the issue of climate change however, they rely on the 1 guy who says not to take an umbrella.
• BoatShoes

  Little Danny;962334 wrote:Al Gore is sitting on his Gulfstream right now wondering how in the world there are still people out there who believes this sh**.

  I realize you're being funny but an ovewhelming majority of experts "believe this shit"
• BoatShoes

  GOONx19;961876 wrote:High CO[SUB]2[/SUB] numbers have nothing to do with us.

  No major scientific organization agrees with this statement.
• Cleveland Buck

  

  BoatShoes;962408 wrote:No major scientific organization agrees with this statement.

  Who funds these "major scientific organizations"? The same people that are salivating over the thought of the lobby money to exclude them from cap-and-trade legislation?
• ts1227

  

  If you definitively take a side on this issue, you are a dumbass. It's still about impossible to tell if it's completely cyclical, or if it's a mix of it and human interaction, regardless of what your partisan hack of choice says
• Writerbuckeye

  

  ts1227;962541 wrote:If you definitively take a side on this issue, you are a dumbass. It's still about impossible to tell if it's completely cyclical, or if it's a mix of it and human interaction, regardless of what your partisan hack of choice says

  I'll even accept this position, because it means we don't have to kill our economy to prevent something we don't know for sure is being caused by (1) man or (2) carbon emissions.
  
  And Boat, if all the money in the research of this issue was going in the other direction, you'd be on here saying global warming isn't being caused by man.
  
  Follow the money...now and forever.
• jmog

  BoatShoes;962403 wrote:Did you not read my post? I intimated that something like cap and trade would be deleterious in our current economic situation (even though it's seeming increasingly more vital to have considering that carbon emissions have exceeded even the worse case scenario). That leaves us in a catch 22 because we also need to do something about the world's glaring emissions problem. However, correctly pricing in the externalities of fossil fuels would allow for renewable technologies to compete more effectively even faster.
  
  You may have gone over it but your position is not persuasive as there is more ample evidence opposing it. You can go ahead and say it's not even close to a proven fact but the deliberate bad faith of conservatives of course makes their standard of proof unattainable. All I know is that if 99 out of 100 meteorologists says it's going to rain today, a Conservative takes an umbrella with them. On the issue of climate change however, they rely on the 1 guy who says not to take an umbrella.

  lol, so your solution, in a nutshell, is to tax the hell our of fossil fuels to raise the prices of them so high that renewable technilogies are around the same price as the now higher priced fossil fueles.
  
  Yeah, and that won't cripple the economy...
  
  Here's the difference between myself and the conservatives you have so eloquently tried to paint me into the corner with.
  
  I have actual scientific background on this particular subject, I have published papers or been involved in published papers regarding scientific combustion models of fossil fuels.
  
  I have worked in research and development on fossil fuel combustion for going on 10 years now and I actually understand this subject.
  
  If you do NOT believe there is "politics" involved on the side that adheres to man made climate change, then you are just as biased as those "conservatives" that you rail against.
• jmog

  ts1227;962541 wrote:If you definitively take a side on this issue, you are a dumbass. It's still about impossible to tell if it's completely cyclical, or if it's a mix of it and human interaction, regardless of what your partisan hack of choice says

  DING DING DING DING...we have a winner!
• Devils Advocate

  

  Global warming has to be taken seriously. Our children and their children.......
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Have to be able to breathe in order to pay off OUR debts.
• FatHobbit

  

  ts1227;962541 wrote:If you definitively take a side on this issue, you are a dumbass. It's still about impossible to tell if it's completely cyclical, or if it's a mix of it and human interaction, regardless of what your partisan hack of choice says

  Don't forget that WE HAVE TO ACT NOW OR IT WILL BE TOO LATE!
• pmoney25

  

  ts1227;962541 wrote:If you definitively take a side on this issue, you are a dumbass. It's still about impossible to tell if it's completely cyclical, or if it's a mix of it and human interaction, regardless of what your partisan hack of choice says

  This is pretty much where I stand on it. Is it possible that Humans have added to the problem? Yes. Is it possible that this would have happened regardless? Yes.
  
  I do think it is a good idea to invest and try to get alternate energies. There is nothing wrong with wanting a cleaner, more efficient form of energy. However, I do not think the Government should be mandate/taxing this into happening.
• tk421

  

  BoatShoes;962403 wrote:That leaves us in a catch 22 because we also need to do something about the world's glaring emissions problem.

  Why do WE have to do anything? The US is NOT the highest polluter in the world, despite what people think. How are you going to get China/India and all the other emerging countries to "go along" with any "solution" that we the world police the U.S. come up with? Are we going to invade countries over global warming now? Do what we say or we will bomb your refineries and coal plants? What difference will it make if we kill our economy and cut our emissions by 50%? I'm guessing not a whole hell of a lot.
• jmog

  tk421;963778 wrote:Why do WE have to do anything? The US is NOT the highest polluter in the world, despite what people think. How are you going to get China/India and all the other emerging countries to "go along" with any "solution" that we the world police the U.S. come up with? Are we going to invade countries over global warming now? Do what we say or we will bomb your refineries and coal plants? What difference will it make if we kill our economy and cut our emissions by 50%? I'm guessing not a whole hell of a lot.

  DING DING DING DING...winner number 2.