Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

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Plotting Carbon Dioxide Mostly For Fun: Jan Pompe

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Hi Jennifer,

Following on from the discussion at ‘Carbon Dioxide versus Temperature’ I have done two plots first is the normalises annual mean CO2 growth rate with annual fossil fuel usage the second is normalised CO2 mean growth rate compared with sea surface mean temperature anomalies.

First FYI the provenance of the data in some the actual data is ftp and current that causes safari to crash the links to actual data are in the page.

For fossil fuel usage: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/tre_glob.htm

For mean annual growth rate of CO2: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/

For mean annual sea surface temperature: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/#datdow

Jan Pompe_co2 and fossil fuel.gif

The covariance for this is .63. The motivation for comparing annual growth rate with usage is that if there is a relationship the difference if any will be due to what is actually put into the atmosphere this assumes (quite wrongly of course) that all the other sources and sinks are inactive. So the caveat here is there will be much more actually influencing CO2 concentrations and the correlation could well be meaningless or due to common factors if there is indeed a link. Bottom line is that apart from the general trend (which leads to the relatively high covariance) the growth rate varies much more than growth in usage and the CO2 peaks and troughs don’t match and I expect that if the data is detrended the covariance will be much smaller. I don’t have time to check this as I have to finish packing and putting stuff out for council clean up.

Jan Pompe_co2 and temp2.gif

This has a better covariance of .73 (correlation is the same) but as I suspected we don’t see any lag. This is because there is a single data point at each year for each series and any lag less than year is likely to be completely obliterated. Since the CO2 levels have an annual cycle superimposed on the long term trend any such lag will be buried in the “noise”. However we do have a physical (chemical) link with partial pressure of atmospheric CO2 and concentration in solution that is also temperature sensitive this needs more work than I have time for at the moment. There is however this http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2006/10/co2_acquittal.html . Where he plots concentration versus temperature difference from the vostok ice core, below I plot temperature versus concentration difference which is better I don’t know yet and I did it this way because that’s the way I had the data loaded I’ll look more closely when I get back [from Bellengen].

Jan Pompe_co2 verus temp.gif

Looks similar to Jeffry Glasman’s maybe it makes no difference but I’ll have to convince my self of that on.

Cheers,
Jan Pompe

Carbon Trading Blocked until Farmers get Credits: Steve Truman

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“It had been the previous [Australian] coalition governments intention and by default the Rudd governments plan to meet it’s commitments to limit the nation’s Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2008-2012 to the Kyoto Target of an 8% increase above the levels achieved in 1990, by using these accumulated credits [from bans on landclearing] without paying farmers for them.

“The Federal Court in Sydney in December last year agreed that farmers have an arguable case against the Commonwealth over ownership of the 80 million Tonnes of carbon created from land clearing bans…

“Now the court has given Mr Spencer the Green light to file a “notice of motion” which is an injunction to stop the Commonwealth from entering into any carbon trading scheme, until the case is decided.

Read more here: http://www.agmates.com/blog/2008/02/24/108-billion-payment-to-farmers-to-meet-kyoto-commitment/

The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change: I’m off to New York

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The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change is the first major international conference to focus on issues and questions not answered by advocates of the theory of man-made global warming.

Hundreds of scientists, economists, and public policy experts from around the world will gather on March 2-4, 2008, at the Marriott New York Marquis Hotel on Manhattan’s Time Square, to call attention to widespread dissent in the scientific community to the alleged “consensus” that the modern warming is primarily man-made and is a crisis.

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UPDATE

I was a delegate at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, March 2-4, 2008, New York City.
You can read some of my blog posts on the conference at the following links:

March 03, 2008
Climate Change Conference, New York – Day 1, In Review
https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/002809.html

March 04, 2008
Climate Change Conference, New York – Day 2, In Review
https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/002813.html

March 06, 2008
Climate Change Conference, New York – Day 3, In Review
https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/002820.html
—————————————————————————————————————-

The debate over whether human activity is responsible for some or all of the modern warming, and then what to do if our presence on Earth is indeed affecting the global climate, has enormous consequences for everyone in virtually all parts of the globe. Proposals to drive down human greenhouse gas emissions by raising energy costs or imposing draconian caps could dramatically affect the quality of life of people in developed countries, and, due to globalization, the lives of people in less-developed countries too.

The global warming debate that the public and policymakers usually see is one-sided, dominated by government scientists and government organizations agenda-driven to find data that suggest a human impact on climate and to call for immediate government action, if only to fund their own continued research, but often to achieve political agendas entirely unrelated to the science of climate change. There is another side, but in recent years it has been denied a platform from which to speak.

The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change promises to be an exciting event and the point of departure for future conferences, publications, and educational campaigns to present both sides of this important topic.

The goals of the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change are:

1. to bring together the world’s leading scientists, economists, and policy experts to explain the often-neglected “other side” of the climate change debate;

2. to sponsor presentations and papers that make genuine contributions to the global debate over climate change;

3. to share the results of the conference with policymakers, civic and business leaders, and the interested public as an antidote to the one-sided and alarmist bias that pervades much of the current public policy debate; and

4. to set the groundwork for future conferences and publications that can turn the debate toward sound science and economics, and away from hype and political manipulation.

The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change is the first major international conference questioning global warming alarmism, but it will not be the last one. This event is intended to be a catalyst for future meetings, collaboration among scientists, economists, and policy experts, new research, and new publications.

The proceedings will be transcribed, edited, and published as a major contribution to the debate over global warming. Other possible follow-up activities now being discussed include:

1. an event in London in 2009;

2. launch of a new journal devoted to climate change;

3. launch of an association of philanthropists willing to support further research and public education opposing global warming alarmism;

4. support for an International Climate Science Coalition that will act as an alternative voice to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; and

5. expanded cooperation among the scores of organizations currently sponsoring research, publications, and events on the dubious claims in support of the theory of man-made catastrophic global warming.

James M. Taylor
Senior Fellow
The Heartland Institute

For more information visit: http://www.heartland.org/NewYork08/program.cfm

I will be there.

—————–
UPDATE

I was a delegate at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, March 2-4, 2008, New York City.
You can read some of my blog posts on the conference at the following links:

February 25, 2008
The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change: I’m off to New York
https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/002787.html

March 03, 2008
Climate Change Conference, New York – Day 1, In Review
https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/002809.html

March 04, 2008
Climate Change Conference, New York – Day 2, In Review
https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/002813.html

March 06, 2008
Climate Change Conference, New York – Day 3, In Review
https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/002820.html

Oil on Saturn’s Moon Not from Buried Biomass: A Note from Louis Hissink

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A recent ABC report detailing the discovery of enormous volumes of hydrocarbons on Saturn’s moon, Titan, was accompanied with the comment that this may teach us more about our own planet’s oil reserves

One wonders whether the journalists writing this article were actually aware of what they were writing, for the Saturnine moon, 1.2 billion kilometres from the sun, where a warm day is -179 degrees Celsius, awash with oil, would cause some of us to ponder about the origin of hydrocarbons, especially when the prevailing belief is that hydrocarbons are assumed to be derived from buried biomass on earth.

To put Titan into perspective, it has a mass of 0.0075 that of earth, which makes it small indeed but then “has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, scientists report”. A satellite smaller than earth with no observed life, has more oil than earth? And it’s also a gigantic factory of organic chemicals?

Does this mean that there are carbon-based life-forms on Titan? Surely not, so how on earth are these hydrocarbons being formed. In fact the researchers are concentrating their work on how life evolved from these “organic” compounds, implying that the “oil” produced life, not the other way round.

Experimentally we now know that hydrocarbons are the high pressure polymorphs of the H-C system and according to the second law of thermodynamics impossible to be derived from biomass.

Considering these basic facts one is left with the conclusion that life is an epiphenomenon of oil. And if that is the case then Peak Oil theory is as much a crock as anthropogenic global warming, such theories being nothing more than pseudoscience.

Louis Hissink
Perth

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Alan Moran on the Garnaut Review: Mission Impossible

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In his Interim Climate Change Review for the Australian government Professor Ross Garnaut is looking to the world stabilising emission levels at year 2000 levels “soon after 2020”. Following this he sees a need for halving them by 2050 and reducing them to a quarter of 2000 levels by 2100.

He also considers that emissions must be based on some level of equality on a per capita basis. Realistically he recognises that there would need to be a phase to this and that population trends would need to be taken into consideration.

But, notwithstanding the cheer squad who were able to comment on detail about the report as soon as it was released, Garnaut barely scratches the surface in recognising the enormity of the task. Throw away lines like stabilisation at a uniform per capita level mask economic turmoil.

Australia’s emissions per capita are presently 16 tonnes of CO2 equivalent. Largely because much of the OECD has (unlike Australia) outsourced its heavy energy intensive industries, the OECD average is 11.5 tonnes. The world average is 4.5 tonnes. Given population growth, that would have to fall to under 4 tonnes by 2030 to get to stabilisation.

In other words, to meet the level that Garnaut sees as necessary, Australia would be emitting only one quarter of its present level of CO2.

That degree of self discipline is possible only by accepting returning the economy to living standards similar to those currently experienced in the developing world. Nobody purposefully emits CO2 (though until a few years ago it was not a concern). The simple fact is that its emission is a by-product of earning income. We know of no other way to enrich ourselves and raise living standards of the poorest countries than to do so using energy and that means carboniferous sources.

As Garnaut acknowledges, easy gains in emission reductions have been made, especially with the dismantling of the command economies of the Soviet bloc and China. Those countries’ CO2 intensities have now stopped falling, in fact are rising. Indeed, China ahs already surpassed the magic 4 tonnes per capita and has only pulled a fifth of its population out of poverty. It is a pipe dream to think that Indonesia and PNG could become vast sinks to offset other countries’ emission levels. Only by foregoing the use of oil, gas and coal is it possible to reduce CO2 emissions.

For Australia this is even more difficult. Our economy is built on low cost coal based energy. Coal is also one of our most important exports. Even if we were to restructure our electricity industry so that it became fundamentally nuclear based (forget the fairies at the bottom of the garden calling for solar) we would still be twice the 4 tonnes per capita level.

And in moving to that position the corollary must be a vast jump in prices. There is no other way of ensuring the constricted use of the energy. Already in Australia with what to the environmental lobby is seen as totally inadequate measures at mitigation, prices of electricity are rising. Anticipating the measures foreshadowed the wholesale price of electricity for delivery in the first half of 2011 in Victoria and NSW is 50 per cent above present levels. And we have seen nothing yet.

Garnaut is surely correct in those of his recommendations that council gradualism and further study. He is also correct that the Kyoto agreement that all signatories including Australia have found it impossible to meet without cheating is only the start. But achieving the goal, even with the loathed nuclear future, is Mission Impossible unless some totally unexpected technical breakthrough comes along.

Alan Moran
Melbourne

An Arctic Buzzard

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This Arctic Buzzard, also known as a Rough-legged Buzzard (Buteo lagopus), was found with a broken wing but rehabilited successfully.

Ann Novek_Arctic Buzzard_blog.jpg

It’s a bird of prey with a diet consisting mostly of mice, lemmings and young rabbits. The breeding range is very northern, described as holarctic, and migrates southwards in the autumn.

Cheers,
Ann Novek
In Sweden