Tim the plumber

If I accept the IPCC's figures (although I think they have been stretched upwards as far as they will go) and still think that the small bit of warming they predict is going to be a nice thing and not a problem does that make me a sceptic, a denier or a realist? The only humans who will be significantly adversely effected by global warming are, as far as I can see, those who own a ski chalet. It will be on the wrong mountain.

Normally there would be a natural balace between the release of CO2 from volcanoes, natural errosion/leaking of fossil fuels and errosion of limestone and the absorbsion of CO2 by vegitation and oceans. Since we are burning quite a lot of fossil fuel the amount of CO2 has increased. This higher level of input into the atmosphere has resulted in an increase in the the amount in the air. The rate of absorbsion is strongly related to the amount of the stuff in the air. Untill the abundancy of CO2 reaches a level where the rate of release matches the rate of absorbsion the level of CO2 will increase. I expect that long before such a time we humans will have developed new tecnologies which will be cheaper at making electricity and fuel.

Has the average global temperature changed by more than the limit of obsevable accuracy since 1998? Just because it's published in a glossy famous mag does not make it decent. Do you have any point which makes my argument that it's drivel wrong?

I'll bother to respond to this as I'm sured you are presenting a straw man argument for me to demolish. There's just no way anyone numerate would come out with such a graph. Since we have been recording temperature with thermometers there have been occaisions where the climate has warmed more quickly than the period 1970-98. Since 1998 it's not warmed of course. The "trick" you have used to create the above graph ("trick" is giving it too much credit) is to present a very very long time scale climate temperature graph with the noise of sudden small scale temperature variations removed alongside the extended line of a very very short temperature climate graph. If you had chose the period 1998 - now then of course you would have a flat line showing that over the next few thousand years there will be no climate change at all. That would be equally stupid of course. When exactly is the point of us using fosil fuel? 1650 when we were just starting to use coal? 1820 when we serriously started to industrialise? 1950 when we actually started to use the stuff in quantities similar to today? You see, if the amount we used in 1820 was at all capable of affecting the world's climate the by now we should be Venus2. If you chose 1950 you have to explain why the temperature did not rise from that point. You also will have problems explaining the flat line over the last 15 years. Of course the problem of posting such drivel with no mechanisim, no actual reason to expect that this prediction of an 8 degree temperature rise will be not understood by any one who needs a pretty graph to look at. Reading this far and maintaining your concentration will be beyond you. Although, as I've said, I think you have to be taking the preverbial. The idea of having a climate prediction of thousands of years is also mind staggering. To do so you have assumed that our tecnology will remain the same over that period. Imagine going back a thousand years and discussing the trouble with fossil fuel!!! If this issue is a thousands of years thing then we definately have a few decades to deceide if it's real and find better ways of making electricity.

THE NUMBERS THAT THE IPCC PUBLISHED say there is nothing to worry about. That is there is not going to be any significant sea level rise (below knee high). There will be no disaterous warming (3.2 degrees max) by 2100. I acept that it has been a warm period recently. It may get a bit warmer still. So what? We will be using other tecnologies to produce most of our power within the next couple of decades. If we acept the premise of CO2 induced warming then there is still nothing to cause us to lose sleep.

The numbers presented by the IPCC say that there is no significant problem to worry about. Do you have any peer reviewed papers which suggest otherwise?

Does Greenland have much in the way of trafic to get messed about by increased snow fall in your world?

Yes, there are those who handle risk daily in their lives. Police, construction workers, soldiers etc. Then there are those who sit in offices. They don't cope very well with risk at all especially when they cannot have some sort of authoritive figure to hold on to. Their reasoning falls down. Do you fully understand the workings of the rail trafic signaling system? Then how can you use the train? We do not fully understand the effect of increased CO2 in the air. We do understand that the process of humans putting lots of it into the air will be short lived (next couple of decades before we have something better) and that the effects will be very minor if any. I do get the exact same arguments fired at me when ever any slight climate change is mentioned. Increased humidity of arctic air over Greenland is unlikley to cause significant trouble with trafic flows. Oceanic heating will not cause significant thermal expansion. I could site various papers on it but let's just stick to the IPCC's. "How many second rate scientists does it take to change a lightbulb?" "CHANGE???!!!"

I have never got the reason why anyone cares about floating ice. Let it all melt. So what? More humidity into the Greenland weather system thus more snow on the ice sheet. I know the area of Arctic sea ice has been lower than n the 1970's for a bit but again, so what? The cause, well it might be something to do with the present climate being on the warmish side. Only 20% of the time since the last ice age has been warmer.

Yes please tell me of any papers which show that the melting of land ice has been greater than the IPCC's expected rate. You can leave out the bit about the increase in CO2 being greater, I know it is, that's an argument against the CO2/warming argument. I'd also like to see anything which projects the actual ice line and volume of ice projected from any warming. I wonder that lots of otherwise rational people have a very deep need to have a "we are all doomed" religious complex going on. If there is not the Christian constant panic that God will turn up and judge us all then these types have the climate disaster vision which they cling to inspite of the massive evidence that all's well. And getting better. Who the F! is under stress? One of the better responses to in this thread, however; 1, The way to measure the volume of ice on Greenland is by ice penetrating radar. The figures we get come from satilite gravitational interpretation. That's less precise than looking on google earth. They don't want to use the air based radar because if they do they will lose the billion dolar budgets. 2. The head water glaciers of the ganges etc. are as significant to it's overall flow level as me pissing in the river don (Sheffield, England). The amount of rain that falls on the North Indian plane and the rainfall on the mountains is what produces the vast rivers there not a tiny amount of ice melt from tiny glaciers (yes I know some are several cubic klometers of ice). 3. The world's sea level rose by 18cm last centuary. This centuary it might be twice as bad. How many islands disapeared below the waves last centuary? Multiply zero by 2. 4. The residents of Greenland said, in the TV report I watched, that whilst the melting of the coastal ice had changed things it had changed things for the better, that the worry they had about global warming was that it was bringing all these environmetal regulations in which were stopping them hunting. 5. It's got a bit warmer. We are in the warm 20% percentile of times since the last ice age. 20% of those times have been warmer. Polar bears managed the even hotter periods OK. CO2 levels have yet to be shown to anywhere near dangerous. The IPCC says they are not at all dangerous. Glaciers do not provide any significant amount of water to any significant river. Their loss will not matter.

If the IPCC does not represent the consensus what does??????? I can go and post over a thousand papers which disprove the warmist hype-othosis if you want me to. Not my work but availible. Can you post any peer reviewed paper which suggests that the IPCC has underestimated the degree of risk?

I might be using English the way normal people tend to, with the assumption that the person on the other side of the conversation has a degree of imagination and lee way. The climate has not warmed for the last 15 years in any way that can be measured. Is that OK for you? CO2 has increased a lot, temperature has not. Climate model of the warmists fallen down.

The debate on climate change often gets into the chalenging of data sets and the way these are interperated. The "consensus" is often quoted. This consensus has to be the IPCC's report(s), surely. There are many other articles which get sighted as some sort of authority on what the consensus is but lets stick to the actual IPCC one. They (the IPCC) say that the worste case scenarion is that we have a 6.4 degree temperature rise by 2100 which will give us a 59cm sea level rise. Since making that prediction the temperature rise has been lowered to a worste case of 3.2 degrees. So that would be halving of the sea level rise (less really but..) to less than knee high. Last centuary the sea rose by 18cm. This one may be twice as bad. So expect twice as many cities to disapear below the waves..... The actual climate has in fact not warmed at all since they made this prediction. The other predictions are mostly about exteme weather. Sorry but that's easy to predict. There will always be extreme weather. The increasing accuracy of our data gatering will acomplish the logging of such events without any change in actual weather patterns which will in any case change so producing extremes as always. Weather and climate always change. There thus will always be new "extremes". Such predictions are useless as they will be true whatever happens. When the central, much shouted about, prediction of a group falls down they have lost credibility. Flat temperatures for 15 years have done this. The next problem for thise who wish to panic is that as we see all over the place new inventions such a cheap solar power will be here very shortly, certainly before 2030. As soon as they happen we will nolonger be producing all that CO2. Thus if ther eever was a proble it will vanish very soon. How risk averse are you? There is no problem really, if ther eever was it will be vanishing soon and the future looks bright.

EdEarl, The point of the safety of supply of Lithium is noted, thanks. Why are they so expensive then? I will start a nw thread to do the climate change debate (again...)

Arc, Do you agre that the earth's core is moving at a different spin rate to the crust? Do you think that this will cause/be part of currents of moving molten and smi-molten rock within the various layers of the earth? Do you think that this will create friction on the underside of the crust? Have you included this idea into your model? I think you have a strong point about the variability of the size of the earth. I do however, think you need to include other mechanisims in there as well. You can have a theory which gives the right answer and yet is still wrong. Lense theory for instance has been show to not be right as light is a particle. It works so every one uses it but....

iNow, I would use more copied and quoted stuff from your post but I don't seem to be able to copy and paste here. 1 Batteries are said to be a good answer to the problem of political instability affecting oil supply. The trouble is that the resources for these batteries are often found in even more unstable places, like Congo. 2 Solar actually working means that it is the cheapest solution to a power need. I know we have ones now which are very cool but only once they get to be better at making electricity than coal will they explode across every roof. I think we are almost there. 3 Climate change; I can give you the links to the IPCC's report if you like (worst case sea level rise less than knee high). However since we agree, I think, that within the next few decades at most solar will have mostly replaced coal burning as the power of the day it's a distant non-problem that will never happen at all. 4 Better batteries; Great! Have you got the answer up your sleeve? If not then we will have to burn coal at night. At least untill we get someting which will do it better than coal. (Geothermal? Stored water, hydro power?) This centuary looks like being the one humanity comes of age in. I can't wait! The new tecnologies and internationalisation of the world (such as this) are looking like they will be may factors more of a leap than everything we have done so far!

I get the idea that the changes in internal temperature could cause the crust to have to expand and contract and this would cause cracking of the crust which would be infilled with new lava which then forms new crust. But, America is slowly and steadily moving westwards away from Europe. It's doing it faster than the earth is expanding. Something is pushing it along. If the central core of the earth is rotating at a different speed to the crust then this is exactly what I would expect. The friction of the various layers of the earth will cause the top most crust to fracture and slowly float about on the more liquid layers benith. The speed of this has to be ponderous as the visocity of semi-molten rock 200km thick is a lot. It will however slowly sludge along carrieing the much thinner surface with it. I am not at all saying that the earth has no internal "weather" and that your idea of changes in temperature are not valid but the primary thrust to move continents has to be currents pushing them from below. If your idea of the thermal expansion and contraction was all there was then the crust would look like sea ice when it is fairly newly frozen and there are flat plates with ridges where they push against other such plates. The ridges are all around the flat plates, not the result of subduction and don't show the long term growth of mountains on one side of the plate of ice.

I'll do this in terms of bits I disagree with and then the good bits. Wrong bits; 1 Fossil fuels, there's loads left. 64 years of proven oil reserves. Loads more coal. We ain't going to run out any time this centuary. 2 Windturbines are rubbish. They are about as good as they are going to get and they are just not as good as coal. 3 Securtiy of energy by using electric cars, is saddly a pipe dream at present. They stuff you need for the batteries is in the Congo or other unstable areas. 4 Less traveling due to us getting smarter about where we need to go: Saddly the world is "run" by incompetant stupid humans. We are not going to get cleverer all of a sudden. 5 If you can save all this money by redesinging the pipework why was it put in like that in the first place? The answer is the same as above. We are going to carry on being as stupid as ever. Unlucky. 6 Forget terrorist as the main problem of blackouts. Rember Enron??? Corperate corruption is more of a worry. Won't it be good when solar actually works. 7 Climate change is nothing to worry about. It is not going to happen to any large degree, and it would be nice if the world's temperature raised by a degree, saddly it isn't going to happen because it never was and solar power will arrive and we stop digging up coal. Now the Good bits; 1 Are solar pannels really as cheap as grid electric? Fantastic if they are!!! As soon as there is at all a clear price advantage over normal power supply we will all be having them! Forget 2050, it will be 2018!! The coal plants will only be needed at night. I saw some solar pannels which said that that they worked at night using IR..... ?!!! 2 The wealth of the world will rocket as soon as these new tecnologies arrive. Perhaps that is why we have a world recession at the moment, the smart money is waiting for the next gold rush.

I may have misunderstood your model. I understand that the weight of the crust moving over the one being subducted is what is supplieing the force to push the lower one down into the mantle but that still requires a suficent force pushing the plates into collision in the first place. The idea that the weight of the decending crust can drag the rest after it is wrong. It might be my misunderstanding of your model there. If the upper crust plate was magically removed the lower one would float up. There is no force draging the crust downwards. If the inner core is rotating at a different speed to the crust then there must be friction between the various layers of the earth. This will supply horizontal forces to the underside of the crust plates. Mountain ranges which stick up into the air also have deep "roots" which stick down into the mantle. These supply the boyancy within the mantle to stop the mountains sinking into the mantle. They will also drag in the moving mantle more than the flatter low oceanic crusts. This will provide different horizontal forces acting on the underside of the various crust plates. This will set up the situations of collision and ripping appart. More mathsy scientific stuff is beyond me but that must be the basic situation given a differential rotation speed of the inner core.

phys.org/news/2013-05--earth-center-sync.html The earth's core is rotating at a different speed to the mantle. That will give you all the driving mechanisim you need.

Google says that the density of the earth's crust is 2.7 to 3 and the mantle is 3.3 to 5.7. The crust will not fall into the mantle. It will float upwards if it's in it. Something is driving the plates into and over each other that is not the crust falling down into the earth.

Arc, The computer won't let me cut+paste. Pretend I have put in the bit about 7.9 k/s. If the crust is less dense than the mantle it will not sink into it as it is boyant. It will float on top of it. Something else has to be the driving force pushing the crust under other bits of crust. 7.9 k/s ..... ummm, is that the cubic volume of rock which moves in one event or the speed of the shock wave or what? I don't see how the actual rock could move so quickly. It's over half the needed escape velocity from earth. I think we would have noticed if the rock was fired about at that speed. I know I am not able to keep up with the talk about strain energy or whatever but occaisionally I am the one who points out the King has no cloathes on.

I know this may be very basic, but what is the density of the crust compaired to the mantle? If it's higher it may well sink into it but if its' lower then the primary drive for plate movement must not be the weight of the crust droping into the mantle.

OK, I am out of my depth here but I chip in to try to put it in simple terms and see what you all make of it. The idea is that the core of the earth heats and cools over long periods due to changes in the magnetic influence of the Sun. I don't think that bits too solid, "arc" will have to do the maths to demonstrate that. However, if we say that we don't know what mechanisim is doing the heating and cooling then... The subduction and expansion of the earth's crust can (by this idea) be explained more than by the idea of the more dense crust sinking into the mantle in a subduction zone. I am a total novice here but the idea that the surface crust is constantly falling into the more liquid mantle at a reasonably constant rate which does not show the tendancy to do it all of a sudden and then regenerate a new crust seems odd. The weight of the decending crust would surely increase after it's sliped a bit which would add to the force draging it down and thus you would have a positive feed back loop. Once it started it would all tumble down sinking into the depths. Something else is at work making the whole process go reasonably smoothly. As a mechanisim to explain the subduction and compression of the crust I think this has merrit as an idea, if the convection currents in the mantle are not there. The day somone finds the currents of smi-liquid rock flowing along under the crust we are back to plan A . That the whole thing is driven by friction against the underside of the crust. Although I would expect this to find a sticking point and stop. The plates would have to wait untill the currents changed to move again. Is that about right?

Thanks. It's always facinating to understand something a little better. The idea that the arrangement of the land masses of the earth was the answer had definately never occured to me. I was thinking of asteroid impacts or something. I'll get back to upseting those who wish to ignore the real world.