Obama to reduce CO2 emissions by 17%. But will it have any effect?

Yeah right, O-bomb-ya. You really want to save the world?

But you trash Iraq, you trash Afghanistan, you trash Libya, you trash Syria, and you trash America.

Who's next on your list? Oh that's right, Africa!

"Obama's Africa trip will cost taxpayers $100 million"
source : rt.com...

If we're ever going to save this world, we'll need to trash the corrupt politicians.

F.T.G.

Obama to reduce CO2 emissions by 17%. But will it have any effect?

For some asinine reason Obama acts like the Us is the only industrialize country in the world thus citing any reductions is practically meaningless.

The Us is not the largest polluter in the world.

What effect with it have?

Higher electric bills
Higher gas costs
Higher food prices
Higher consumer products

Because Energy is the foundation of all economic output everything we buy, and use is made from it.

He is living in a fantasy land.

Originally posted by neo96


Higher electric bills
Higher gas costs
Higher food prices
Higher consumer products

Quiet Neo......

You live in Realty land .....

What is he going to do? Gag all of congress and force them to stop talking? That would lower Co2 emissions by at LEAST 17%

No impact at all on global warming... and I'll tell you why. Carbon emissions are TRADED yes that's right. Country 1 reduces carbon... country 2 buys the emissions country 1 would have emitted. It's a hoax and a scam no one is really actually reducing carbon emissions for the good of the planet, they are just reducing their output with tight industry regulations, so they can trade them around the globe for fat profits with something labeled carbon credits... and pretending they are saving the planet as an excuse for the practice. When nothing is actually being reduced; carbon futures are considered the next BIG market, people running around yelling be green reduce emissions, want to save the Earth, however they are unknowingly and unwittingly championing the trading of it to another country NOT getting rid of it at all, through this emissions trading scam.

www.carbon-futures.org...

So there's the rabbit hole folks feel free to dive on in.

I like to refer to the term Osmosis in relation to climate change discussions, Osmotic pressure always attempts to equalize concentrations of temperature, pressure, salinity........

What I think maybe they are talking about is another ice age being brought on by earth's natural systems to balance out the insult we have placed upon the planet.

Doesn't make any difference anyway, we'll all be dead long before we kill our planet, or wish we were because life is gonna suck.

The only thing mankind ever did was try to control his environment, and set everything off balance and pollute it in the process.

Man is PART of the natural order of things, if only mankind would admit he is part of his environment instead of this religious BS saying he has dominion over it.

Even religion is swayed toward capitalist bull#, everything is a sales pitch.

Pay your tithe.

reply to post by BigBrotherDarkness

Carbon trading is really just a way for bigger businesses that can afford the carbon credits to produce more CO2, while basically running smaller businesses which don't have the capital to keep polluting in their carbon trading scam out of business.

They're not even trying to fix anything , they're just guaranteeing their position in the game later.

They're just setting up for the end game.

Wait a minute...

I thought we reduced our carbon emissions by like 80% when we moved all of our manufacturing industries over to China ?

Originally posted by sonnny1

Originally posted by neo96


Higher electric bills
Higher gas costs
Higher food prices
Higher consumer products

Quiet Neo......

You live in Realty land .....

It seems like Obama wants all the wrong things to be higher.
WTH is up with that.
About 6 months ago, my 78 year old mother started telling me that she thinks that it is Obama's goal to ruin the country. At first, I thought she was using a bit of hyperbole. Now I think she might be right.

Originally posted by neo96
The Us is not the largest polluter in the world.

But you generate almost a quater of the world's CO2 emissions despite having less than 5% of the world's population.

China has slightly higher levels of CO2 emissions yet they have 1 BILLION MORE people than the US does.

US are the worst polluters on the planet.

No it won't have much affect on emissions or on slowing down Global Warming (not a religion or faith, just science). It also won't have much impact on the economy either positive or negative because really this plan does virtually nothing. The speech was good for two things, one it was the 1st time a sitting US President acknowledged that we're in real trouble (that was about the only good thing), two it's an attempt to keep or regain Greens. I'm pretty sure that people who went to the Green Party are lost to the Democrats forever.

reply to post by Nathan-D

Aren't the IPCC claiming a 3 to 5 deg C temperature rise over the next 100 years based on current rates?

So either your calcs are wrong / don't tell the whole story, or the IPCC has its calcs wrong.

What do you think?

reply to post by EasyPleaseMe

So either your calcs are wrong / don't tell the whole story, or the IPCC has its calcs wrong. What do you think?

You don't have to rely on someone else's opinion, you can check the data for yourself.

WoodforTrees provides a tool to plot graphs from the most commonly used temperature data sets (GISTEMP, HadCRUT, the Satellite records), the data is updated monthly, you can set time periods, trendlines and compare adjusted to raw data.

GISTEMP is usually the "warmest" data set, but even there, global mean temperature has only increased 0.06 d/C in the last 15 years (IPCC projection 0.25 d/C). The starting date, 1998, has also been the strongest El Nino event in last decades, that means the trend for the last 12 years (2001 - 2013) shows even less warming and is slightly negative for HadCRUT or the Satellite data. In any case, all temperature trends for the last one and a half decade are "indistinguishable from zero" or "statistically insignificant".


1998 - 2013


2001 - 2013


HadCRUT 2001 - 2013


Model-Data Comparison for the same time period. (IPCC Model Assembly vs GISTEMP)




This is what one of the IPCC lead authors has to say about the lack of rising temperatures, failing climate models and the implications for scientists and policymakers.

Der Spiegel Interview with Hans von Storch

Storch: So far, no one has been able to provide a compelling answer to why climate change seems to be taking a break. We're facing a puzzle. Recent CO2 emissions have actually risen even more steeply than we feared. As a result, according to most climate models, we should have seen temperatures rise by around 0.25 degrees Celsius (0.45 degrees Fahrenheit) over the past 10 years.

That hasn't happened. In fact, the increase over the last 15 years was just 0.06 degrees Celsius (0.11 degrees Fahrenheit) -- a value very close to zero. This is a serious scientific problem that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will have to confront when it presents its next Assessment Report late next year.

SPIEGEL: Do the computer models with which physicists simulate the future climate ever show the sort of long standstill in temperature change that we're observing right now?

Storch: Yes, but only extremely rarely. At my institute, we analyzed how often such a 15-year stagnation in global warming occurred in the simulations. The answer was: in under 2 percent of all the times we ran the simulation. In other words, over 98 percent of forecasts show CO2 emissions as high as we have had in recent years leading to more of a temperature increase.

Storch: If things continue as they have been, in five years, at the latest, we will need to acknowledge that something is fundamentally wrong with our climate models. A 20-year pause in global warming does not occur in a single modeled scenario. But even today, we are finding it very difficult to reconcile actual temperature trends with our expectations.

Der Spiegel

reply to post by EasyPleaseMe
Yes, it’s correct. I double-checked, triple-checked and quadruple-checked it – of course you don’t have to take my word for it, you could do the calculation yourself. The reason it probably seems so small is because a) it is based on only 1 gigatonne which is only 17% of the US’s contribution to worldwide emissions b) it is only the yearly increase in temperature from 1 gigatonne of CO2 and c) it excludes the feedbacks. I decided not to include the feedbacks and chose to convert the radiative forcing into temperature with the S-B law. Nevertheless, with the feedbacks included the global warming per year comes out at 0.0013C, as opposed to 0.0003C, which I’m sure you’ll agree is still very, very small. The calculations are very straightforward. Just simply input the following figures into a calculator (I inputted them into the ‘Web 2.0 Scientific Calculator’ – Google it, it’s free to use. (People who aren’t familiar with it, the symbol / is divide and * is multiply. Input everything how you see it. In fact I’m pretty sure you can just copy-and-paste the figures below into the calculator).

Converting increase in CO2 in ppmv to radiatve forcing with the IPCC’s logarithmic equation

ln(400.13/400)*5.35

Converting radiatve forcing to temperature with the S-B law

(288^4+0.0017/0.000000056704)^0.25 - 288

Ignoring the 2nd equation with the S-B law and converting the radiative forcing straight into temperature with feedbacks

0.0017*0.8

The IPCC’s equations can be found on Wikipedia’s ‘radiative forcing’ page

Hope that helps.

(Note: I have changed some of the wording in my blog post to the post I copy-and-pasted onto this site, because I thought there were some issues with my communication that could be misunderstood).

reply to post by talklikeapirat


Or you can use the same site and input the full span of years so they're all in one graph which shows a more accurate picture in my opinion.

global mean temperature has only increased 0.06 d/C in the last 15 years (IPCC projection 0.25 d/C).

That's simply incorrect. The IPCC has never projected a set value of temperature increase.



ars techinica

The IPCC temperatures are on target

A paper in Nature Climate Change checks in on the projections from the first IPCC report, published in 1990. That report projected simple trends based on greenhouse gas emissions through 2030, a period we’re just over halfway through. The most frequently cited projection estimates 0.7–1.5°C of warming between 1990 and 2030, which means we would see an increase of about 0.35 – 0.75 °C through 2010. (The range of values is a product of uncertainty about the exact sensitivity of climate to greenhouse gases.) The observed temperature trend through 2010 is about 0.35–0.39°C, depending on the dataset.

So, is it as simple as saying the projection was (barely) correct, but overestimated warming? Not really. The first thing to do is account for natural variability. The researchers chose to address this by running many climate model simulations in a “stable” configuration with no drivers of warming or cooling. Ninety percent of the natural variability fell within a range of ±0.19°C. If you apply that as a measure of potential noise around the signal of the underlying trend, the projected warming by 2010 becomes 0.28 – 0.81°C, which includes the observed trend a little more cleanly.

Now as far as von Storch goes... I have been searching him up for a while and he does seem to have some clout in the climate science community, however though he himself claims he was a lead author in Working Group I for TAR and has been invited back to WG-I for the upcoming AR5... I can only find him listed as a reviewer for both. Maybe I'm missing something.

That aside, von Storch gets trotted out by contrarians pretty often. His biggest heroic feat was casting doubt on the 'hockey stick' though contrarians as well as himself claim he defeated it, the scientific debate largely favors that the hockey stick is correct. It's important to note that von Storch does not disagree with the AGW theory at all but he is very vocal about his belief that the predictions are overblown.

From his own site regarding the hockeystick:

The "skeptics" were keen on deconstructing the hockeystick because they considered it as a key argument "pro" man-made causes. However, it was not, and the fact that the hockeystick methodology was flawed did not imply that the question about man-made causes would be entirely open again. (Of course there is some doubt left, because of significant uncertainty in the level of natural variability - but this doubt is small.) This demonstrates very clearly that overselling does not pay; instead it endangers the credibility of the whole community.

I find his interview in Der Spiegel extremely deflective and duplicitous, assigning certainty where there is none for example... a common technique contrarians use to 'debunk' AGW.

Originally posted by talklikeapirat
reply to post by EasyPleaseMe

 

So either your calcs are wrong / don't tell the whole story, or the IPCC has its calcs wrong. What do you think?

You don't have to rely on someone else's opinion, you can check the data for yourself.

I will. The graphs you posted are too noisy for the size of the data set to give an accurate trend I think.

reply to post by Nathan-D


Thanks I will look everything up and do the calcs myself.

Originally posted by Kali74
reply to post by talklikeapirat

 

Or you can use the same site and input the full span of years so they're all in one graph which shows a more accurate picture in my opinion.

An accurate picture of what? The "anthropogenic signal"? All it shows is, that according to GIStemp, global mean temperature has increased by 0.88°C in the last 100 years.
The IPCC's own assessment is, that human influence became the dominant climate factor in the mid 20th century, when greenhouse gas emissions started to increase exponentially.

Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations. This is an advance since the TAR’s conclusion that “most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations”.

IPCC

Hansen & Sato

Nathan's calculations are not based on IPCC estimates for climate sensitivity, but rather on the ~1°C according to the Boltzmann law. But EasyPleaseMe has raised an interesting point.

That's simply incorrect. The IPCC has never projected a set value of temperature increase.

Of course it has. Why would you even claim it hasn't? That's the whole point of the exercise. To provide assessments of future climate projections for policymakers.

It is extremely likely [">95% probability"] that human activities have caused more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature since the 1950s.

Naturally, the logical questions would be, how much has it warmed and how much warmer does it get in the future. Contrary to your claim, the IPCC has given very specific answers.

The right-hand panel shows ranges of global average temperature change above pre-industrial, using (i) ‘best estimate’ climate sensitivity of 3°C (black line in middle of shaded area), (ii) upper bound of likely range of climate sensitivity of 4.5°C (red line at top of shaded area) (iii) lower bound of likely range of climate sensitivity of 2°C (blue line at bottom of shaded area).

IPCC

The "set values" for each of the different climate scenarios are even more specific. It's only reasonable to test these model projections against reality. Which is exactly the point von Storch is making, or NOAA and ironically it is exactly what has been done in the article you've linked to. Play around with the GISS time series and you will find that most of the warming in last two decades occured in 1990's and as shown above, temperature trend post 2000 has been virtually flat.

SkepticalScience has done it too, and got it completely wrong.

The linear global warming trend since 2000 is 0.18°C per decade for the IPCC model mean, vs. 0.15°C per decade according to GISTEMP (through mid-2011). This data falls well within the model uncertainty range (shown in Figure 2, but not Figure 3), but the observed trend over the past decade is a bit lower than projected.

The linear global warming trend since 2000 according to GISTEMP has been closer to 0.08°C vs. SkepticalScience's claim and vs. the IPCC model mean. It shows even less warming through mid-2013 and is approaching a trend 4 times smaller than climate models project. A value near zero.

NOAA 2008

Ensembles with different modifications to the physical parameters of the model (within known uncertainties) are performed for several of the IPCC SRES emissions scenarios. Ten of these simulations have a steady long-term rate of warming between 0.15° and 0.25ºC decade–1, close to the expected rate of 0.2ºC decade–1 (...).

Near-zero and even negative trends are common for intervals of a decade or less in the simulations, due to the model’s internal climate variability. The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.

As for the cheap shots against von Storch, it would have taken you less than a minute to find the link, listing him as lead author for AR5. He's a accomplished climate scientist. That's it.

Even if it were economically possible to reduce CO2 by that much, it would cost trillions and avail none.
China and India are putting out more greenhouse gasses and CO2 than the US ever did. The world can go broke reducing CO2 but they won't actually get it where it used to be or even slow it down much.

It's about controlling people and money. They know it isn't actually going to "save the planet".

People don't understand.

Obama wants to reduce it by 17% in the US so he can balance out Obama's 'Power Africa' Initiative.

World wide there will be no reduction in anything other then taxpayers wallets

reply to post by Kali74


see reply above

(not a religion or faith, just science)

more ideology and politics featuring religious elements

Storch: Unfortunately, some scientists behave like preachers, delivering sermons to people. What this approach ignores is the fact that there are many threats in our world that must be weighed against one another. If I'm driving my car and find myself speeding toward an obstacle,

I can't simple yank the wheel to the side without first checking to see if I'll instead be driving straight into a crowd of people. Climate researchers cannot and should not take this process of weighing different factors out of the hands of politics and society.