This is a continuation of a remarkable thread that has now received 10,000 comments running to well over a million words. Unfortunately its size has become a problem and this is the reason for the move.
The history of the New Statesman thread goes back to December 2007 when Dr David Whitehouse wrote a very influential article for that publication posing the question Has Global Warming Stopped? Later, Mark Lynas, the magazine’s environment correspondent, wrote a furious reply, Has Global Warming Really Stopped?
By the time the New Statesman closed the blogs associated with these articles they had received just over 3000 comments, many from people who had become regular contributors to a wide-ranging discussion of the evidence for anthropogenic climate change, its implications for public policy and the economy. At that stage I provided a new home for the discussion at Harmless Sky.
Comments are now closed on the old thread. If you want to refer to comments there then it is easy to do so by left-clicking on the comment number, selecting ‘Copy Link Location’ and then setting up a link in the normal way.
Here’s to the next 10,000 comments.
Useful links:
Dr David Whitehouse’s article can be found here with 1289 comments.
Mark Lynas’ attempted refutation can be found here with 1715 comments.
The original Continuation of the New Statesman Whitehouse/Lynas blogs thread is here with 10,000 comments.
Peter Geany
I made the rough calculation on heat of combustion of all possible fossil fuels on Earth and added it to the overall calculation. This is rough, but (unless there are major errors) it shows:
All fossil fuels on Earth could raise atmospheric CO2 levels to 1065 ppmv when they are all consumed.
Based on observed past CO2 and temperature trends (1850-2011), this would increase global temperature by around 2°C above today’s level when they are all consumed. That is the maximum GH warming our planet could ever see from human fossil fuel combustion. This warming would (presumably) occur over the next 200 years or so, with around half occurring by 2100.
If we assume that the entire atmosphere plus the top 75 meters of the world’s oceans will be warmed by this amount, this equals around 230 million trillion kJ of energy.
The total heat of combustion of all fossil fuels is much lower than this, only around 90 thousand trillion kJ.
The basis on fossil fuel reserves is a recent World Energy Council report (2010).
See if you can find a major error in the calculation.
Fossil fuel impact on climate
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5317/5908605470_e037c869e7_b.jpg
Max
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5317/5908605470_e037c869e7_b.jpg
TOD,
Think about it this way………
If all of the sunlight reaching the earth was to suddenly cease and we were to rely only on humankind generated heat to keep the planet warm, the planet would turn into a ball of ice in a matter of weeks.
Most surface life would die from the extreme cold in a matter of days.
The earth is surrounded by an unending sea of frigid, empty, space and the heat is lost very, very quickly.
Imagine dropping a heated grapefruit size ball of steel (representing the planet) into the center of the Pacific Ocean (the Universe).
How fast would it cool to equilibrium?
TOD,
By the way, I get what you’re asking but the calculations would be enormous. I’m on vacation and won’t attempt to tackle it.
Max could probably figure it out.
You could start by getting a rough number of the total fuel consumed in a year then convert the btu content of each fuel…………..
fairynuff… thanks all for the replies… all interesting stuff… while i´m here, what do you lot make of the old abiotic theory of oil formation?.. that it comes from certain kinds of rock sublimating into the mantle, not from compressed biomatter, even thought that way works too… don´t they reckon some of those deep fields are below any biological remains, in places where the temp and pressure would disrupt the bio reaction anyway? and another silly question… how about the growing earth idea? apparently all the continental crust fits together nearly perfectly on a sphere thats a small fraction of the present size of the planet… quite interesting, if completely irrelevent… maybe all that solar wind hitting the poles has pumped up the planet over the eons… or something…
James, you are probably correct for a small conventional diesel engines. The large slow speed 2 stroke diesels easily hit 60%. However its the high speed diesel thats the most practical and in common use and we could hit 60% with these engines in the not to distant future. It will however take change in the way regulators look at emissions as technologies such as turbo-compounding are not commercially viable whilst they do not take account of efficiency in the emission budget.
I think the figures you have seen probably relate to a particular configured of engine, but electronic control of the advanced common rail fuel system has revolutionised diesel engines and the best is yet to come.
Thanks, Peter. I knew that the big marine engines were the most efficient, but was relying on faulty memory! In looking since, I stumbled on some interesting smaller engine configurations, including 6-stroke and opposed piston designs, but they never seem to make it into production. Is that simply inertia or do motor manufacturers actively resist such ideas?
“do motor manufacturers actively resist such ideas?”
“Maybe you can regale us all with your pontificant explanation of why the “free” electricity hasn’t met the Greek people’s electrical needs.”
possibly just paranoia, but LOL… you guys ever hear the words “monopoly”, “cartel”, “conspiracy” ?..
i sometimes the think the term “co-inspiracy” might work better… all inspired by the same things to follow the same path, as it meanders round and round like some crazed Lorenz attractor… or maybe it should be written “coins-piracy”… oh well…
on the subject of engine efficiency, another idea that was never too popular: why has no-one developed a “(heat pump?)/ stirling engine / dynamo / electroliser” combo to use the (heat) energy wasted from conventional engines for the production of hydrogen to supplement the primary fuel ? seems obvious to me that this should be able to give the overall efficiency a boost…
just a thought… although i really know nothing about such matters, so should probably just be quiet and leave you in peace… nothing to see here… just a crazy man making noise…
TOD,
You might be interested in these…..micro-turbines that produce electricity then utilize the waste heat for downstream processes…..co generation.
http://www.capstoneturbine.com/
http://www.capstoneturbine.com/prodsol/solutions/chp.asp
James, manufacturers don’t resist anything that would be commercially viable. And believe me everything is bought to the table and accessed. Most of the schemes such as the water engine etc just didn’t work, or some part of the story is is missing like you need an acid tank in the trunk. The opposed piston designs and 2 stroke offer great power density but have always had very high compliance costs. It is simply this that keeps them out of the market. No good developing something if it can not meet compliance standards no matter how efficient it is.
The biggest cost today is compliance. Our engines are now so clean that cleaning them further will not produce a corresponding improvement in the quality of our lives. And I bet that no one could devise a test to prove this one way or the other. So we have reached the point where a step change is needed where efficiency is put ahead of emissions. But regulators are still living in the 70’s listening to 80’s rhetoric, and just as with many other aspects of our lives that are now regulated they have lost the plot.
A bit of good news is the energy bill looks like it has been set aside.
http://www.thegwpf.org/uk-news/3395-hurray-uk-governments-green-energy-bill-shelved-huhne-loses-battle.html
nice machines… interesting indeed… now if they just used the heat side to drive a stirling(or steam engine) and onto a dynamo/hydro cell, so feeding back the heat output to an extra fuel input… maybe they tried it already… who knows…
Tod,
I don’t think there is any evidence that the heat produced directly from the burning of fossil fuels, or even in nuclear reactors, is likely to ever be a problem. Its just tiny in comparison to the total solar energy absorbed by the Earth.
There is an interesting statistic in this book, which I haven’t checked out, that the amount of heat absorbed by the greenhouse gas from the burning of fossil fuel is one million times greater than the energy released by burning the fuel itself
http://books.google.com/books/about/The_long_thaw.html?id=FeAgYqnsQOUC
tempterrain and tod
Regarding the energy from combusting all the fossil fuels remaining on our planet today versus the estimated energy from the theoretical GH warming that would result from the added atmospheric CO2, I made a rough calculation for Peter Geany (4201).
All the fossil fuels optimistically estimated to exist on Earth today (according to a 2010 report by the World Energy Council) contain just enough carbon to generate 10,500 GtCO2, which would raise atmospheric CO2 from today’s 390 ppmv to an absolute maximum level of 1065 ppmv.
Based on the observed increase since 1850 in both atmospheric CO2 (290 to 390 ppmv) and temperature (0.66°C), and allowing for 7% of the warming to date having been caused by natural forcing (i.e. solar), as estimated by IPCC and all other anthropogenic forcing factors other than CO2 (aerosols, other GHGs, land use, surface albedo, etc.) cancelling one another out, as also estimated by IPCC, a doubling of CO2 should theoretically result in a warming of 1.4°C.
Extrapolating this logarithmically from today’s 390 ppmv to a maximum ever concentration of 1065 ppmv would result in global GH warming of around 2°C.
If we assume that all of the atmosphere plus the top 75 meters of the ocean are warmed by 2°C, this represents 230 million trillion kJ of energy.
(Of course, as PeterM says, this energy all comes from the sun, and the GH effect just slows down its radiation into space, thereby causing the GH warming).
The combined heat of combustion of all fossil fuels remaining on Earth would generate 90 thousand trillion kJ of energy.
Even if we assume that IPCC has underestimated the natural forcing component, and that this is 50% of the total (rather than 7%, as assumed by IPCC), we would arrive at around 120 million trillion KJ of energy from GH warming.
So PeterM is right.
Max
Experts Find Deep Arctic Water Temps Fall By 1 Deg. – Bizzarro Theory That “Global Warming Hides” In Deeper Waters Not So Hot
http://www.c3headlines.com/2011/07/experts-find-deep-arctic-water-temps-fall-by-1-deg-bizzarro-theory-that-global-warming-hides-in-deep.html
Power bills to soar by 30% in ‘green’ reforms
Household electricity bills will soar by 30 per cent to pay for “green” measures being announced this week by Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary, according to experts.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/8627719/Power-bills-to-soar-by-30-in-green-reforms.html
max. thanks for the numbers, i should probably check your calculations, but as i said math was never my strongpoint… it does seem that human output of heat is fairly insignificant next to the solar input… but, would this still be true if a new, cheap and inexhaustible source of energy was discovered? would the incessant exponential growth in inefficient use of such an energy source shift the balance and bring human output up to “dangerous” levels? maybe hiking up the price of power and hiding such technology is just a way of slowing the growth in consumption?…
on the subject of “cheap” new energy sources, i found this video interesting ; http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1518007279479871760&q=Google+tech+talks+lerner&pr=goog-sl
it´s about hydrogen/boron fusion using “dense plasma focus”… the team are having trouble finding funding, suprise suprise, even though they seem to have had better results than any of the big tocamac projects…
it always seems to me that in terms of the biosphere, CO2 is really best thought of as PLANT FOOD… the more co2 there is, the faster and bigger the plants grow… so unless we destroy all the forests and poison all the arable land and oceans it shouldn´t really be a problem… maybe i´m wrong but i can´t help wondering what all the fuss is about sometimes… seems to me that chemical and nuclear pollution should be higher on the list of priorities than an overabundance of plant food in the atmosphere…
Tod,
I shouldn’t worry about maths not being your strong point – it isn’t Max’s either!
If you don’t understand maths, don’t understand science, but have fairly right wing views (froth at the mouth when people like Al Gore, or James Hansen are mentioned etc) then you’ve got all it takes to be an AGW denier. Sorry AGW sceptic.
Anyway some suggested bedtime reading for you.
http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/
Tod
Tempterrain has this knack of finding very silly extreme right wing web sites that he thinks the rest of us here slavishly follow, but we have actually rarely heard of, let alone read. Its an anbsurd site don’t waste your time.reading it.
tonyb
tempterrain, are you apologising for implying that agw skeptics are ignorant fascists? or just correcting and replacing the word “denier” with the word “sceptic” ? or maybe implying that deniers and sceptics are the same thing?
isn´t skepticism at the heart of the scientific method, and the reason that experimental proof is required to confirm hypothesis ? as such it´s perhaps an intelligent and constructive character trait… denial might be viewed as nothing more than a flat refusal to look at the facts, ie. “he´s in denial”… something quite different…
” If you can’t say what you mean, you can’t possibly mean what you say. And if you don’t mean it, why bother saying it to begin with? How’s that for screwball logic? *Tongue planted firmly in cheek…* ”
i sometimes think that language pretty much blows as a method for communicaton… but anyway… will check that link, cheers for the input…
“nothing to see here… just a crazy man making noise…”
“isn´t skepticism at the heart of the scientific method” Well yes it is , but if you’ve got to understand what you are being sceptical about. If you don’t, how can you know its wrong?
Mind you, people like Brute don’t seem to let a lack of comprehension worry them. It’s all just a part of a plot to install world government via the UN as far as he’s concerned.
TonyB is a slightly different animal. Crank is probably a better word for him. He doesn’t even believe that there has been a 40% rise in CO2 emissions since pre-industrial times due to the burning of fossil fuels. He thinks the ice cores records from Antarctica are all wrong.
I’d suggest you look up just what conventional science is saying about the problem before you get too confused.
Start with the Royal Society in the UK
http://royalsociety.org/Climate-Change/
or the US National Academy of Sciences
http://dels-old.nas.edu/climatechange/
This too is an excellent website:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/
tempterrain
Sorry, old chap.
Your bloviating over why Brute, TonyB, etc. are not rational skeptics in the scientific sense falls flat, because it is very apparent from your own remarks and behavior on this and other blogs that you are motivated by an antiquated type of Marxistic ideology rather than scientific curiosity.
As for the references to the stance taken by the political leadership of some august scientific organizations, this is simply an “argument from authority” (and therefore lacks any logical merit).
Despite months of waffling here, you have been unable to bring any valid scientific arguments to support your personal belief that AGW has been the principal cause of past warming and represents a serious potential threat to humanity or our environment. Until you do, Peter, you are simply blowing hot air.
Max
Hi Tod
Tempterrain has a very closed mind and is determined to put his fingers in his ears when he he hears any criticism of the science he wants to be true, due to his highly political view of the world.
Here is my article on co2 and its description from my web site
“In this article I have endeavoured to look at the little known social aspects of CO2 from the 18th Century onwards, in order to demonstrate that accurately measuring this gas was a common place occurrence and that the historic records appear to show that levels have changed little over the past 200 years. The comments enhance the article with numerous links, making this one of the most comprehensive resources on this subject available on-line
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/03/06/historic-variations-in-co2-measurements/
—– —–
For 130 years top scientists were routinely measuring co2 and then all of that science was judged to be completely wrong when, in 1957, Charles Keeling came along and even though he was a complete amateur apparently managed to do what his forefathers had failed to do-measure Co2 accurately.
Co2 is one of the pillars of climate science and you tamper with that pillar at your peril.
I don’t know the truth of the matter as methodology is different so we may not be comparing like for like, but it seems reasonable to ask that the tens of thousands of apparently reliable historic Co2 measurements are audited to see if they stand scrutiny.Sounds like the practical application of science to me but obviously Peter believes me a crank to dare to suggest this.
tonyb
Comprehension?
You’ve gone on and on about how the “skeptics” are conspiring to derail the global warming agenda Pete…….
The origin of this entire conversation was the statement from Whitehouse that “global warming stopped in 1998”……………
Now your fellow befuddled Luddites have sheepishly admitted that yes, the warming stopped in 1998.
So now we all are somehow supposed to follow their delusional thought process that the “unstoppable warming” and “tipping point” was somehow overcome by Al Gore waving his magic wand from the confines of his CO2 spewing private jet and counteracting the inferno that he had previously told us was imminent?
Pete, you are the most gullible person that I have ever known. There really is no hope for you……..
Tell us, have you joined some sort of Hippie commune in Guyana near Jonestown? Because, I’ve gotta tell ya……you are so thoroughly brainwashed that is the only explanation.
The very same thermometers and “scientists” that you worship are now telling you they were wrong (most say lied) and you refuse to believe them?
Brute 4224.
Pass the Kool-aid.