<DrumBeat: October 22, 2006 The Oil Drum Further to your comments on Gazprom>
<Lies, Damned Lies and Government Oil Production Forecasts? The Oil Drum: Europe ASPO-USA: Support for Global Energy Flow modelling and a Net Energy database>

79 comments on More Coal Equals More CO2

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

| Show without comments | PDF version

Engineer-Poet on October 22, 2006 - 11:00pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Goodness, that seems mild.  I'm looking at phenomena like the retreating glaciers, shrinking icecaps in Greenland and Antarctica, and the growing methane releases in Siberia and concluding that we need to start pushing CO2 down from where it is now (perhaps to 350 ppm or even less), and start warming-mitigation strategies immediately to prevent positive-feedback loops from starting before we can get there.

If you're a heretic, what am I?

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Valuethinker on October 23, 2006 - 6:19am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I would agree with your long term prognosis of what needs to be done.

When I first started noticing the debate, the IPCC I think settled on the 550 level.  It was something of a political compromise.

Now the leading climate scientists are talking 450, but some are talking lower.

Positive feedback loops are not something that politicians understand, nor most laymen.

http://web.mit.edu/jsterman/www/cloudy_skies1.pdf

I can't pluck the abstract out of the pdf, but it's really all you need to know.  A relative rate problem with a bathtub, a running tap and a drain-- and most graduate students still get it wrong.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Valuethinker on October 23, 2006 - 6:21am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I was laughing to myself... they tested this model on 'MBA students at Harvard'.

I guess President Bush (HBS class of 1973) wasn't in the test group?

;-).

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
step back on October 25, 2006 - 4:54am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Just when I was getting happy thinking that the only thing we had to fear was:

  1. Fear itself
  2. Peak Oil
  3. Global Warming
  4. Global Dimming
  5. Kim Jong-Il and the Pilsbury Dough Boys (rock on dudes),

some asshole gets on the TV and starts telling me how the Earth's magnetic field is collapsing and soon our planet will be just like Mars.

Damn. Can't a fellow finish off his remaining years simply believing in the life eternal?

Comments can no longer be added to this story.
Valuethinker on October 25, 2006 - 5:27am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Worry about solving the problems one can solve.  The rest God will look after for you (my personal image of God is the Supreme Being in the film Time Bandits, memorably played by Sir John Gielgud in a Saville Row suit).

If you smoke, you should still give up smoking.  As a society, we should still do something about global warming.

Whatever kills you, it probably isn't what you expect.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

79 comments on More Coal Equals More CO2

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

| Show without comments | PDF version