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I know, naive and with many holes, but imagine it for a moment...
The key document given in this article is the Robinson report of 1968. Looking at the excerpts given, this report made a prediction for CO2 level rise that can be tested: it predicted about 400 ppm by the year 2000 (from a value of about 320 in 1968). This was an overestimate: the actual level in 2000 (using the Mauna Loa measurements, which seem to be the key reference relied on in the report) was about 375. This en…
The harder problem to solve is social, I think. The planet is literally unable to support 7 billion people living a USA/Western Europe lifestyle. Who's going to be the one to tell all the people in developing economies, "Sorry, but you can't have those things that we have."
Who is going to be so brave to tell poor third world countries they cannot have nice things? We do all the time, by complicity in geopolitics which consist in things such as propping up dictators elsewhere so "our" corporations can get bigger slices of pies and resources rather than the local population. Not to mention war. So who is going to tell the actual centers of power that this can not be tolerated any longer? That is the real question IMO.
The problem is taking out resources and exploiting people at a level that cannot be sustained; not that others want to do it too, but that anyone does.
I mean, what is "a Western lifestyle"? For me it's stuff like basic sanitation, freedom of speech, high literacy rates, having medicine and clothes and shelter. Living and letting live, and last but not least work, preferably meaningful. Yes, some prosperity is a requirement to even have the possibility of those things. But buying new things all the time, ordering screws individually at Amazon, and throwing away a lot of plastic, those things and others seem not strictly needed to me.
We need the scientific method, human rights and rule of law, not so much a constant stream of trinkets. People should be free to strive for trinkets, sure, but without too much pollution (which is essentially a way of restricting the freedom of others; indirectly, but very powerfully). As many things in life, it's not really a complex issue, it's not wanting to step on the toes of powerful people or peers that makes it complicated and contorted I think.
The key document given in this article is the Robinson report of 1968. Looking at the excerpts given, this report made a prediction for CO2 level rise that can be tested: it predicted about 400 ppm by the year 2000 (from a value of about 320 in 1968). This was an overestimate: the actual level in 2000 (using the Mauna Loa measurements, which seem to be the key reference relied on in the report) was about 375. This en…
The CO2 level rise clearly must have been an estimate based on, "If we project current usage trends forward, here is how much fossil fuel gets burned. Here is what that does to CO2." That usage model would have been thrown off by the first OPEC price shock of the 1970s, which induced a lot of conservation efforts and resulted in significantly less emissions.
I'd be shocked if they had the basic "fossil fuel to CO2" relationship wrong. There is no way that they could have predicted the economic shocks that slowed consumption.
Now let's talk about their environmental model. They gave a range from about 1 F to 7 F. The actual rise is about 1 F. I'd call that a success! (And why did you switch between F and C? Was it just to make the actual rise seem smaller.)
Moving on, you argue for which model should apply, then argue that they got it wrong. Your behavior already doesn't make me trust you, but let's assume you are right. What mistake likely explains it?
My best guess is that they simply did a long-term steady state model for what temperature things would stabilize at. That is a relatively simple calculation, and would have been fairly accurate if the atmosphere were mostly separate from the ocean. However we've learned since that heat exchanges with the oceans are much larger than we knew. (I remember circa 1990 learning in fluid mechanics that there was a big question THEN about how much global warming would slow down.) So the long-term temperature picture in the model is relatively accurate, but we get there more slowly than predicted.
This is the kind of detail of our system that we COULD NOT have predicted with 1960s science. They knew that they were overestimated and knew that they would be right in the end, but had no way to know how long it would take to get there.
The key document given in this article is the Robinson report of 1968. Looking at the excerpts given, this report made a prediction for CO2 level rise that can be tested: it predicted about 400 ppm by the year 2000 (from a value of about 320 in 1968). This was an overestimate: the actual level in 2000 (using the Mauna Loa measurements, which seem to be the key reference relied on in the report) was about 375. This en…
It seems that you're cherry-picking items in a deliberately deceptive way. The CO2 level rise clearly must have been an estimate based on, "If we project current usage trends forward, here is how much fossil fuel gets burned. Here is what that does to CO2." That usage model would have been thrown off by the first OPEC price shock of the 1970s, which induced a lot of conservation efforts and resulted in significantly…
For example, the switch from F to C is because the underlying paper is written using F, as that was the style of the time; but the GP presented in C as that is the current preferred unit.
Robinson admits that the model is crude, as he was using an older model of Moller (from 1964), and that he expected that more sophisticated models would improve forecast accuracy. Nonetheless, the numbers presented in the paper are reflected accurately in the GP's post, including uncertainty ranges, and the comparisons seen valid at a glance.
In this case, the GP is not cherry-picking, at least not in the usual sense, as they are using the "cherry-picked" portions of the paper to produce verifiable predictions.
Admitting that early models of climate change make some inaccurate predictions does not necessarily undermine the correctness of the directionality, especially as newer research has come to light, but it does present a less sinister explanation as to why the results were not taken as seriously modern observers feel they should have been.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems that you're cherry-picking items in a deliberately deceptive way. The CO2 level rise clearly must have been an estimate based on, "If we project current usage trends forward, here is how much fossil fuel gets burned. Here is what that does to CO2." That usage model would have been thrown off by the first OPEC price shock of the 1970s, which induced a lot of conservation efforts and resulted in significantly…
From this reply it is clear that the GP read, at least, the portions of the Robinson paper excerpted in the article. Unfortunately, the particular critiques that you have made indicate that you have not read them. For example, the switch from F to C is because the underlying paper is written using F, as that was the style of the time; but the GP presented in C as that is the current preferred unit. Robinson admits th…
That said, now that I find it, it is easy to dig in for details. Moller's model from 1964 can be read in http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/JZ068i013p03877/a... and says up front that a 1% increase in cloudiness is sufficient to counteract the warming effects of 30 ppm in CO2. I'm sure it leaves out ocean heat sink effects. According to https://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/far/wg_I/ipcc_far_wg_I_chapt... it seems that cloudiness HAS increased several percent. Which means that the top end of the projection (which the GP thinks it the right model) would have been the wrong projection to use.
From whence did the GP draw the incorrect claim that humidity has remained the same? Shouldn't he have done the same Google searches that I just did and come to the same conclusion??
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That would devastate the global economy.
Using petrochemicals has already devastated the global economy. We will spend trillions to attempt to fix the damage that has already been caused, when exactly $0 is what we should have to spend. We are causing a mass extinction event on the planet and will never be able to undo all the physical damage done. We will spend a huge amount of the world's money, resources and time to do our best to fix it, and all that is…
You and I wouldn't be here if it weren't for petrochemicals. It didn't just make a few people rich, it made modern life possible.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Using petrochemicals has already devastated the global economy. We will spend trillions to attempt to fix the damage that has already been caused, when exactly $0 is what we should have to spend. We are causing a mass extinction event on the planet and will never be able to undo all the physical damage done. We will spend a huge amount of the world's money, resources and time to do our best to fix it, and all that is…
> We will spend a huge amount of the world's money, resources and time to do our best to fix it, and all that is wasted because it could have been used to move forward sustainably rather than make a few people obscenely rich at the expense of most life on Earth. You and I wouldn't be here if it weren't for petrochemicals. It didn't just make a few people rich, it made modern life possible.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
From this reply it is clear that the GP read, at least, the portions of the Robinson paper excerpted in the article. Unfortunately, the particular critiques that you have made indicate that you have not read them. For example, the switch from F to C is because the underlying paper is written using F, as that was the style of the time; but the GP presented in C as that is the current preferred unit. Robinson admits th…
The article had failed to load for me, so I was basing what I said on what was excerpted and what I read elsewhere. That said, now that I find it, it is easy to dig in for details. Moller's model from 1964 can be read in http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/JZ068i013p03877/a... and says up front that a 1% increase in cloudiness is sufficient to counteract the warming effects of 30 ppm in CO2. I'm sure it leaves…
I would too, and I wasn't claiming that they did. The CO2 rise prediction in the Robinson 1968 paper was actually reasonable; but the fact remains that to compare their temperature prediction with what actually happened, we have to first adjust it based on what actually happened with CO2 compared to what they predicted.
> They gave a range from about 1 F to 7 F. The actual rise is about 1 F. I'd call that a success!
They gave a range based on different assumptions about how humidity would change. Their prediction of 1 F was based on no change in absolute humidity--i.e., the same absolute water vapor content in the air despite a rise in temperature. That corresponds to a significant reduction in relative humidity, which clearly did not occur. In fact, the actual data on relative humidity change suggests, if anything, a slight increase in RH from 1968 to 2000. The Robinson 1968 paper prediction corresponding to that assumption is 7 F, as I said. So their prediction was not a success.
> why did you switch between F and C?
Current temperature projections, such as the IPCC reports, routinely use C, so that's what most recent figures are quoted in, including the data on temperature rise over the late 20th century. Feel free to convert back to F if you're more comfortable with that.
> the top end of the projection (which the GP thinks it the right model)
I didn't say I personally thought it was the "right" model; I said it's the model that appears to be most consistent with the position taken by the Robinson 1968 paper. Remember that the topic of discussion here is not how the climate actually changed from 1968 to 2000; the topic is whether the oil companies, in 1968, were remiss in not accepting the predictions made in the Robinson 1968 paper and acting accordingly--since that's the argument the article is making.
> From whence did the GP draw the incorrect claim that humidity has remained the same?
I said the usual assumption in making climate predictions is that relative humidity remains constant. (The data seems to bear out this assumption, as I noted above; but I don't see any data on RH in the excerpts of the Robinson 1968 paper.) Relative humidity is not the same as "cloudiness", so I don't see how your findings say anything about how, if at all, RH actually changed from 1968 to 2000.
Also, the Robinson 1968 paper, as far as I can tell from the excerpts, does not mention "cloudiness". This might simply be because that paper misunderstood Moller's model. But in any case, that would mean the Robinson 1968 paper did not take into account an additional factor that would clearly reduce the predicted temperature rise based on a given CO2 rise. So if you are correct that the actual increase in cloudiness was significant in reducing the temperature rise over the last half century, you are agreeing with me that the Robinson 1968 paper was overpredicting temperature rise, and therefore the oil companies, in 1968, were not remiss in treating that paper as they did.
Is the industry or us evil? most of us have big suv's that we drive alone and the only thing we care about oil is the price. Some will look worried, chat on forums about these stuff but continue to do nothing because "there is nothing we can do".