Those who want the U.S. to act decisively on climate change seem to be losing the battle of public opinion lately. Only 30 percent of Americans say global warming should be a top priority for Congress and the President, behind the economy, terrorism, Social Security, health care, immigration and even that most tedious of all issues, trade policy. More than half, 55 percent have heard nothing at all about the cap and trade legislation in Congress (and that doesn't even count the otherwise honest people who don't want to admit to a telephone survey taker that they don't pay attention to the news).
We're even losing ground on the home front, according to a recent survey. Just one year ago, consumers said that more energy efficient windows and furnaces would top their list if they got a $10,000 renovation windfall. This year, most have their eyes on a new bathroom or kitchen and new flooring. The survey actually has even more alarming news for anyone who has pinned his or her hopes on individual Americans taking the lead in the energy efficiency department. Most consumers said that their energy bills would need to rise 70 percent before they would "feel forced" to make energy efficient improvements to their homes.
That last bit has to be especially galling for environmentalists. People seem to go crazy at the mere mention of a few extra dollars on their electricity bills to support renewables, yet they won't put in a new furnace until their bills go up 70 percent!
This really is not good, because improving efficiency is supposed to be the easy part of the energy debate. After all, there are juicy tax incentives for many of these improvements. Most save money on utility bills and pay for themselves in just a few years. Of course, people do have to front the money themselves, which may be tough in this economy. Then there's the whole chore of actually doing it. Either they have to roll up their own sleeves or find someone else to do it and go through the mess, noise, and the "But you said you would come yesterday" song and dance that often involves. It's right up there in root canal territory for a lot of us. We really have to find some better ways to make these kinds of "easy" changes happen.
But back to the bigger picture on energy and global warming. One major problem with continually ringing the global warming bell (other than it doesn't actually seem to be working) is that a lot of the Americans who agree it's a problem don't really understand what the country needs to do about. That makes it a lot scarier and more confusing than it needs to be. And rather then actually explain the problem, more than a few advocates are clinging to the hope that they can buy public cooperation with a few tax credits and slip cap and trade through without anybody much noticing.
It may work for the near term, but sometime soon, we need to tell the American people what the whole thing really means: the United States has to start reducing its reliance on fossil fuels like coal and oil. That means rethinking how we generate electricity and how we move ourselves and our products around. This is not something you do with one piece of legislation, and it's certainly not something you can do without telling anybody. Right now, four in ten Americans can't even name a fossil fuel and more than half think reducing smog means you're making good progress on reducing global warming. Most of what legislators, environmentalists and energy mavens are talking about is just sailing right over the public's head.
There are some hints that the public is not entirely unreachable. In a Public Agenda survey, 73 percent of Americans disagreed with the statement that "if we get gas prices to drop and stay low, we don't need to be worried about finding alternative sources of energy," and more than half "strongly disagreed."
Moreover, despite partisan debate, Americans find common ground on many measures to address the nation's energy problems. At least ten major energy proposals that would support alternative energy, encourage efficiency and reduce gasoline usage have widespread support, including one requiring developers to build more energy efficient homes, even if it makes them more expensive. At least three-quarters of Americans think that's worth pursuing.
The people who have worked so hard to make climate change an issue in the United States deserve enormous credit. This is a crucial issue that humanity can't afford to ignore any longer. But another clever graphic showing how carbon emissions get trapped in the atmosphere probably isn't going to make much difference to most people.
We have to get down to the business of helping Americans understand the choices for getting electricity and driving their cars. Americans need to understand their options, and they deserve to know what their leaders are really talking about.
Follow Scott Bittle and Jean Johnson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TheEnergyBook
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/timeseries/
To look at the global picture use Interpolated OLR, Latitude -60 to +60, Longitude -180 to 180. It should give you something like:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/cgi-bin/data/timeseries/timeseries.pl?ntype=3&lat1=60&lat2=-60&lon1=-180&lon2=180&iseas=0&mon1=0&mon2=0&iarea=0&typeout=2&Submit=Create+Timeseries
As I understand it, CO2 should be causing it go down... I have it increasing at 0.07 W/m^2/yr
"We define the longwave “radiative forcing” of the climate system as the difference between the top of atmosphere longwave flux with and without the greenhouse absorbers. This forcing is not the same as the “greenhouse effect,” which is related to the effect absorbers have on the earth’s surface temperature."
http://coelho.mota.googlepages.com/RadiationBudget.pdf
It has a lot of good info in it. I think your quote on the difference between the green house effect and forcing is right on. My understanding is that the greenhouse is like the total effect - obviously a good thing in that it keeps us from freezing! I think the radiative forcing is the radiative inbalance given a CHANGE in GHG concentration. I think it excludes the 'baseline' greenhouse effect.
When you warm the earth -via for example atmospheric CO2 - its TLR will increase, which is of course what we are seeing. About 90% of that TLR gets re-radiated back to earth via atmospheric greenhouse gases and thus warms the earth considerably more than it would be without said greenhouse gases - this is the "Greenhouse Effect."
Only about 10% of the TLR gets past the atmospheric greenhouse gases and escapes into space - that is what is known as the *outgoing* longwave radiation (OLR). Which is say: the OLR is *not* the total longwave radiation that it is emitted by the earth (the TLR) - it is only a tenth of the TLR.
Which is why when you warm the earth the OLR increases as well as the TLR - it's a small *proportion* of the TLR. Remember that the TLR too is increasing - and in absolute numbers (as opposed to proportionally) the TLR is increasing *an order of magnitude faster* than the OLR.
the water recently found there would evaporate off into space.
were the moon with sufficient gravitational force..
those water vapor molecules would instead stick around..
and make an atmosphere.. and warm the moon even more!
- Al Gore, a hundred millionaire from his carbon offset business
- Since 1990, over $20 billion in US grants for studies associated with global warming
- Copenhaven treaty including over $100 Billion/year to third world nations ($50B/yr from US)
- Cap & Trade bills with billions in grants promoting green industries
Common sense trumps pseudo-intellectualism with most Americans, thank goodness.
Science is never "settled."
la2010verdad: "and even more obvious that global temps are not increasing as the models predicted,"
And that's false.
If you disagree, cite your (global warning denier) source(s).
To pirouette gracefully and touch on smoking, right-wing blogs, one world government, schills for big carbon, very artistic.
Here is true skepticism: Why does the satellite data show that outgoing long wave radiation is going UP? Alarmist say that CO2 is causing LESS long wave radiation escaping to space and heating the Earth. This is not from right wing blogs - it is from published, peer reviewed, PRO-AGW papers. Why they didn't mention it, or catch it in peer review is beyond me... It was right there in four different papers... CO2 CANNOT be causing the warming we are seeing. Cap and trade is a bill of goods with a multi-trillion dollar price tag...
The argument is that the long wave radiation is slowed when leaving the atmosphere and thus retains more heat in the atmosphere than otherwise. The argument is not that there is more long-wave radiation leaving the atmosphere.
"So, because we know that CO2 is a radiatively active gas that allows the shortwave (visible) radiation from the sun into the climate system and slows that same energy down on its way out as longwave (infrared) radiation, we quite clearly expect that adding more CO2 will raise the average temperature of the earth's surface."
http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2008/10/what_is_the_evidence_that_co2.php
For the Earth to warm, the total outgoing radiation (short wave reflection - albedo, and long wave radiation) must be LESS than the incoming from the sun. The difference causes the warming.
If increasing CO2 is causing a radiative imbalance, then the the increasing CO2 should cause a DECREASE in outgoing radiation. If you read the literature, this is what is claimed. You will even find spectra demonstrating this claim (see figure 1 below):
http://www.skepticalscience.com/How-do-we-know-CO2-is-causing-warming.html
Unfortunately, this is bunk (I hate to use this term) but the truth is that the TOTAL outgoing long wave radiation has INCREASED over time while CO2 has also increased.
The good news is that we don't have to do anything to implement it. Our ignorance and arrogance has pretty much insured its implementation, which may be underway at this very moment.
The bad news is that the solution will require a somewhat painful transition with an unknown outcome. It will be under the direction of nature, and could be described as a "population recession" aka: massive untreatable illnesses (high death rate) coupled with a failure to reproduce (low birth rate). One estimate for a sustainable worldwide population is a reduction from 6.8 billion to say 2 billion humans.
Once the smoke clears, those humans still standing (if any) will be in the enviable position to start over to treat nature with the respect she deserves. Other societies that have failed to do so are extinct (see "Collapse" by Jared Diamond). You see, our planet is not in trouble, we are. It is quite arrogant to think our planet needs our help to “save it”, or that its very existence is somehow under our control. In our absence, nature has millions of years to cleanse herself of our legacy, regenerate, create many of new species, and perhaps evolve an improved human model.
Roy Mankovitz, Director
http://www.MontecitoWellness.com
lff
I (and others) also believe that the environmental cost of producing such Frankenfoods (CAFOs, GMOs, annual monocrops) and of disposing of the toxins generated by our current population, will so poison our environment (air, water, soil, food, climate) that a forced population reduction is inevitable. We can dicker over the timetable, but here are some predictions from those in the trenches.
Regarding the potential for a decrease in birth rate, see:
The Disappearing Male - a CBC documentary about one of the most important, and least publicized, issues facing the human species: the toxic threat to the male reproductive system.
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=7530701744597358451&ei=ndU-Sc-KFZ-QiQL369XeBQ&q=the+disappearing+male#
Regarding the effect of GM foods on reproduction, see:
http://www.seedsofdeception.com/Public/Home/index.cfm
Regarding the potential for an increase in death rate, read "Rising Plague - The Global Threat from Deadly Bacteria and Our Dwindling Arsenal to Fight Them" by Brad Spellberg, MD. Also see "Bad Bugs, No Drugs" by The Infectious Disease Society of America:
http://www.idsociety.org/badbugsnodrugs.html
I believe Malthus was right, but for the wrong reasons. The fact that his prediction has yet to materialize does not mean it will not. The clock is definitely running, but we are no longer the timekeeper.
There is no global warming argument. There are those who are fact immune, and there is rational America. You may fall in the former category with your canard about .2C - assumes only America changes its carbon output. Ignores the truism - when you find yourself in deep - first step is STOP DIGGING. We must stop carbon - with the nows.
You make some good points - but the screamers and birthers and deniers are becoming a real problem in our society. Facts have to be the basis for analysis - or we deserve the fate we are speeding towards.
Pass a law removing the limited liability for stockholders ONLY for damages caused by global climate change. This means that any state, nation, or person who can show harm from climate change can sue any polluter for damages. If there is no global climate change, this law means nothing...
Of course, if there is global climate change, you won't be able to give away Chevron or Exxon shares...
lff