Crystal Ball Gazing

[pgk pgkParticipant @pgkpgk17461]

Posted by Perko7 on 19/07/2019 09:36:26:

Can't help but wonder how the scientists can state with such certainty what the atmospheric CO2 levels and sea temperatures were for anything more than about 400-500 years ago, as I doubt that the scientific understanding of our atmospheric processes and the means to measure them would have existed before then? Even the data that is recorded from those times needs to be treated cautiously as there may not have been the same level of accuracy in measuring and recording, and possibly no standardised calibration available for instruments of those eras compared with today.

Perhaps the use of 'reconstructed' relates to reasonable estimates from such things as ice core samples, growth rates of fossils, coral cores, pollen numbers and the like? Forensic archeology, taphonomy, palynology (I cheated and looked the last two words up) are quite sophisticated.

pgk

[Roderick JenkinsParticipant @roderickjenkins93242]

Quote from Wikipaedia:

"Proxy measurements can be used to reconstruct the temperature record before the historical period. Quantities such as tree ring widths, coral growth, isotope variations in ice cores, ocean and lake sediments, cave deposits, fossils, ice cores, borehole temperatures, and glacier length records are correlated with climatic fluctuations. From these, proxy temperature reconstructions of the last 2000 years have been performed for the northern hemisphere, and over shorter time scales for the southern hemisphere and tropics."

Rod

Edit –  beaten by 1s!

Edited By Roderick Jenkins on 19/07/2019 09:52:02

[pgk pgkParticipant @pgkpgk17461]

snap!

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Thanks for the quick-fire advice, chaps

MichaelG.

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… still hoping that Neil will disclose and [unless he is its author] perhaps credit, the source of his graph.

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Edit: The title of this thread seems increasingly appropriate 

 

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 19/07/2019 10:07:36

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Posted by Michael Gilligan on 19/07/2019 10:03:41:

… still hoping that Neil will disclose and [unless he is its author] perhaps credit, the source of his graph.

.

Edit: The title of this thread seems increasingly appropriate

You don't need to look too closely at your balls to see where Neil got it from

[Roger BParticipant @rogerb61624]

A few graphs have been posted on here which deserve some comment. As others have already noted how valid is this data?

Dave (SOD) posted global sea temperatures going back to 1870. Using Hadcet as a reference the time around 1870-80 looks to have been cold so choosing this start point will accentuate the temperature rise. The other question is how valid is the old global sea temperature data? This was taken from ships so would tend to be surface or close to surface data. There would have been significantly more measurements in the North Atlantic than in southern seas at this time which may also bias the results. Searching the NOAA website I couldn’t find any more details. Maybe Dave has some.

Not Done it Yet linked a NASA graph on CO2 levels, once again with no real details. The historic values in the graph probably come from ice core samples as they look similar to the Vostok ones:

https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/trends/co2/graphics/vostok.co2.gif

More details are here:

https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/trends/co2/vostok.html

The recent data is probably taken from the Mauna Loa series. Is it reasonable to fuse two separate sets of data for CO2, one taken from Antarctic ice and one taken by an active volcano in the tropics? How have the two sets been equalised?

Neil’s graph, as others have noted, has no validation at all. It looks similar to Michael Mann’s original ‘Hockey stick’ which was quite controversial. Skeptical Science attempts to defend it here:

https://skepticalscience.com/broken-hockey-stick.htm

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by JasonB on 19/07/2019 11:18:53:

Posted by Michael Gilligan on 19/07/2019 10:03:41:

… still hoping that Neil will disclose and [unless he is its author] perhaps credit, the source of his graph.

.

Edit: The title of this thread seems increasingly appropriate

You don't need to look too closely at your balls to see where Neil got it from

.

In which case, this [quoted verbatim from the same page]:

[quote]

For the purposes of this comparison, the author is agnostic as to which, if any, of the reconstructions of global mean temperature is an accurate reflection of temperature fluctuations during the last 2000 years. However, since this plot is a fair representation of the range of reconstructions appearing in the published scientific literature, it is likely that such reconstructions, accurate or not, will play a significant role in the ongoing discussions of global climate change and global warming.

[/quote]

Says a lot.

MichaelG.

[David Standing 1Participant @davidstanding1]

Posted by DMB on 17/07/2019 15:37:44:

Consider from a slightly different angle; many species are tottering on the point of extinction. Humans are reverse of that, the current number of over 7 billion of us is, I think, ridiculously unsustainable in the long term. The rate of increase in numbers, soon to exceed 8 billion, is also way beyond sustainability.

Edited By DMB on 17/07/2019 15:54:50

In a nutshell, this is the real issue.

There are many theories of when the human race reached the point of true sustainability as far as the planet and its resources are concerned, but it probably happened around the industrial revolution.

Steam and then electric power allowed the industrial revolution to happen, with the growth in production, and population, that then followed.

The question was asked earlier 'when will governments do something about it?'.

The simple answer is, no one government can do anything about population growth.

All so called developed countries are built on a basis of increasing GDP, so are all chasing a common goal. All so called developed countries have huge sovereign debt, and have to service that debt. They need taxpayers to fund growth in GDP and pay for sovereign debt, and need to increase, or at least sustain, birthrates to create new taxpayers.

The USA (say, as the world's biggest economy) could in theory today announce that there is a complete ban on births, and immigration, to reduce the population. Apart from the fact it isn't at all enforceable (China tried to control births, and failed), and it would take many years to have an effect, nevertheless in a short space of years they would have an even more ageing population, decreasing taxation revenues, an inability to service debt, an inability to grow enough food, an inability to replace crumbling infrastructure, and a whole host of other issues which would lead to a collapsing economy, and massive increase in job losses, and so more loss of income and tax revenues.

That is one economy, what about all the other developed countries? They would also have to do the same.

None of the above is ever going to happen, if nothing else it is political suicide.

All of the world's developed countries are based on a fiscal policy of massive borrowing…..from each other.

Global economies rely on each other (look what happened when Dubai almost went bust, and Abu Dhabi baled them out), and it is all a deck of debt cards that could easily come tumbling down if you take one out.

Global population will only rise, it is impossible to voluntarily reduce it.

Now, will nature decide to take its planet back, by way of something like a global pandemic, a nice new nasty version of a flu virus mutation? That's a different matter, and the answer is probably yes, nature is very clever.

As was once said 'The human race, the only species intelligent enough to document its own self destruction'

[pgk pgkParticipant @pgkpgk17461]

David has a reasonable summary of conventional and government thinking but the reality is that soemthing really ought to be done.

The flaws in such conventional thinking is based in GDP whereas in reality the only thing that really matters is the balance of import-export. GDP may reflect the activity of a country but that is sheer consumerism and has no bearing on actually servicing debt beyond manipulating things to look wealthier than one is. The only real suplus money comes from exporting more than you import. Which not only do we fail to do but worse much of our activity is financial services which has to be the easiest business to cripple and poach – EU (that is the current axis of Franco-German control) have been trying to nab the London Stock Exchange for a while.

You can reduce population albeit it's not an easy political sell and you can reduce migration so long as you do these things at a rate where even though you start with a more aging population the younger tasks are taken up with technology. It would be a slow job to end up with balance but could be done.

The local farming community here tell tales of how many families were sustained working on just one small farm only a few generations ago and now one family has to run 2-3 farms to keep itself – mechanisation lead to that.

The problem is that we have allowed some things to go too far.. reduced the quality of education, reduced access to health care etc all to cut costs and then waste that money on vanity projects and band-aid solutions and chase globalisation in the mistaken belief it will end war.

Education is the starting point – getting away from the rush to own expensive import stuff and foreign holidays and be more sustainable – simple things like free linux instead of windows, not buying a new phone every year, not buying your car on a 3 yr lease and swapping it for another new one (I went 20 years with one), eating seasonal stuff and growing it here….

[pgk pgkParticipant @pgkpgk17461]

Back to the OP's thoughts (if we can avoid this thread degenerating too far). the document link has the provenance of the national grid. Note the percentage increases in generating capacity they use..

How smart charging can help unlock flexible capacity from EVs

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