159 Comments

• Gordon Mullings says:

  February 17, 2006 at 2:12 am

  PPS: To give onlookers an idea on just how open-ended this area of research is, here is a CSM clip from a Jan 19 article on methane emissions from plants:

  Cows burp it, pipelines and landfills leak it, and vast amounts lie frozen beneath the ocean floor. Methane is ubiquitous – as fuel for heating and cooking and as a source of concern for atmospheric scientists. Molecule for molecule, methane packs thousands of times more punch as a “greenhouse gas” than carbon dioxide does.
  Until now, scientists tracking debits and credits in the globe’s methane “budget” figured they had a pretty good handle on where the gas comes from – mostly from microbes breaking down organic material in places where oxygen is relatively scarce.
  Enter Frank Keppler . . . [who] has discovered that plants may give off significant amounts of methane just by growing. And the amount they give off appears to rise with temperature. The results have stunned many researchers because no one expected methane to form biologically out in the open air, where oxygen abounds.
  It’s not that there’s more methane in the atmosphere, but that some of it is coming from a wholly unexpected source . . . .
  Given all the scrutiny plants have undergone, one of the open questions is how researchers could have missed these emissions. Keppler speculates that because the methane emissions are so small, they wouldn’t have been detected in field studies. Any signal would have been swamped by much larger natural background levels. And microbial sources have been so well established that no one has looked for another mechanism.
  For some researchers, the evidence Keppler and his team presents is sufficiently convincing to begin working them into computer models of the globe’s greenhouse-gas budget – especially the potential implications for land-use changes. To do that, scientists will need to see how emissions might vary with plant species, says Alex Guenther, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

  In short, here is a major GHG, and suddenly we see evidence for a newly recognised source for it that has been missed all along, with significant implications for just how well understood the underlying dynamics and processes of our atmosphere are understood.
  What else out there is not as well understood as one would think based on what is generally said in pu8blic and policy forums, and is subject to revision in light of further investigations?
  GEM
• sam says:

  February 17, 2006 at 2:06 pm

  What I meant to say is, “Energy supplies are “inexhaustible” when they are properly managed.”
  Thanks Gordon for adding the numbers to my “infinite” statement but I think if you would have picked up the term “flow resource” it would clarified it for you.
• Gordon Mullings says:

  February 18, 2006 at 4:55 am

  Sam:
  Thanks for the gracious note. Clarification noted. (I think we should avoid using “infinite” in that way as it is bound to be confusing; given the primary meaning.)
  Oil and coal, though seem to me to be stocks rather than flows, though I think the stock is enough for centuries yet and the issue is really about the scale of the economically exploitable resource. But, since the former is so connected to volatile regions and to associated geopolitics and economic woes, it is tot he advantage of the world to move away from it as a fuel, leaving it as a feedstock for industries.
  As noted, if we decide to switch to PBMRs or the like, thence Hydrogen, fuel cells and biomass derived sources, with fusion maybe 40 years down the road [I hope!], I think we would be better off, net to switch over the next 10 – 40 years. In the meanwhile research, energy efficiency and pioneering commercialisation of key technologies will be a good way to go. I note that fuel cells are now begining to move into vehicles, and that laptop computers and cameras etc may be the first viable markets.
  My concern on the Kyoto style scheme, is that there is a serious question on how the science has been cast in the policy process, and on the economic and sustainability implications of the proposed policies.
  Grace
  Gordon
• dd says:

  February 18, 2006 at 8:22 am

  From Junk Science:

  As of 6:15pm EST yesterday, since February 16, 2005, the Kyoto Protocol has cost US$ 150,723,416,210 while potentially saving an undetectable 0.001563058
• sam says:

  February 18, 2006 at 10:16 am

  Matthew
  I completely agree.
• sam says:

  February 18, 2006 at 11:19 am

  Oops…I meant Gordon…Although I do agree with Matthew also.
  I completely agree.
• Gordon Mullings says:

  February 19, 2006 at 6:36 am

  DD & Sam [and onlookers]:
  I must first thank DD for some stimulating links.
  I took some time to look up the links supplied by DD. The resulting harvest of information from these and onward links is interesting, and worth a few remarks:
  1] What is surface air temp?
  –> Here, the problem is to objectively define even basic terms used:

  The Elusive Absolute Surface Air Temperature (SAT)
  Q. What exactly do we mean by SAT ?
  A. I doubt that there is a general agreement how to answer this question. Even at the same location, the temperature near the ground may be very different from the temperature 5 ft above the ground and different again from 10 ft or 50 ft above the ground. Particularly in the presence of vegetation (say in a rain forest), the temperature above the vegetation may be very different from the temperature below the top of the vegetation. A reasonable suggestion might be to use the average temperature of the first 50 ft of air either above ground or above the top of the vegetation. To measure SAT we have to agree on what it is and, as far as I know, no such standard has been suggested or generally adopted. Even if the 50 ft standard were adopted, I cannot imagine that a weather station would build a 50 ft stack of thermometers to be able to find the true SAT at its location . . . .
  Q. If SATs cannot be measured, how are SAT maps created ?
  A. This can only be done with the help of computer models, the same models that are used to create the daily weather forecasts. We may start out the model with the few observed data that are available and fill in the rest with guesses (also called extrapolations) and then let the model run long enough so that the initial guesses no longer matter, but not too long in order to avoid that the inaccuracies of the model become relevant. This may be done starting from conditions from many years, so that the average (called a ‘climatology’) hopefully represents a typical map for the particular month or day of the year.

  –> In short, even the basic observations of surface air temperatures are open to serious scientific dispute as to how well they represent the real world.
  2] Projected Kyoto costs:
  –> Here, findings from Dumas’ Lombard Street consultants report on Kyoto costs are presented by the Scotsman, a UK newspaper, with some interesting economic numbers:

  PREVENTING global warming would cost the world economy a devastating $18 trillion (
• Gordon Mullings says:

  February 21, 2006 at 5:55 am

  A Bit of a Post Script:
  Here is the White House web page on “advanced” energy initiatives.
  Provided as information for reflection and analysis, perhaps balancing the tone of much of the above:
  Key points:
  1] Bush’s strategy:

  America
• Conservative Culture says:

  February 21, 2006 at 7:21 am

  Global Warming – Glaciers Melt and Grow

  In the beginning there was life. There was an ice age and then extreme global warming.
  If you follow the trends science books have long taught, there has been global warming and global cooling long before man had the automobile, air conditioning and…

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