My prediction of CO2 level in 2030 is 'about' 440 ppm .. based on the level is increasing by 'about' 20ppm every 10 years so adding 20ppm to the current level of 'about' 420ppm gives 'about' 440ppm. The exact figure doesn't really matter .. we can get better estimates as we get closer to 2030. The important point is that whatever trend results from increasing CO2 is likely to continue pretty much unchanged for the next 10 years.
Even if you can't make a prediction there are people who, for better or worse, have to make decisions based on the 'most likely' scenario which will involve something similar to the technique I outlined above - it isn't exactly rocket science.
Your understanding of the way trends work may not enable you to make any sort of prediction - you might choose to predict something unpredictable will happen.
Let's see how you manage.. any ideas about what the CO2 ppm might be in 2030?
Syne Wrote:"projections" are only educated guesses/predictions that also run afoul confounding factors.
Let's say my error in the projected increase in CO2 is +-10%
So in 2030 we're projecting between 438 and 442 ppm CO2. The error is slightly less than 0.5%. If you were using a kettle and it took 10 seconds longer to boil you might notice .. but half a second you probably wouldn't. The uneducated make a great fuss about errors in 'projections' - in the real world anything reasonably close is likely to be 'good enough'.
"From Video Wrote:" The controversial part is how sensitive the atmosphere is to the addition of extra greenhouse gases and in particular carbon dioxide. The reason why that’s not as straightforward to calculate as it would appear from what I’ve just waved my hands about and explained is that the addition of carbon dioxide is not the whole story. For example, if you were to add a certain amount of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, it would heat things up a bit, but then what else has happened is that you’ve made the atmosphere a bit warmer, which would mean it can hold on to more water vapor. If you make the air hotter, it can have more water vapor in it. Water vapor is another very strong greenhouse gas. So suddenly, we’ve got another greenhouse gas being added to the atmosphere. You might imagine that if you warmed things up a bit, you might melt the snow and ice, which would reflect the sunlight straight back into space. So now suddenly, the earth would be absorbing more energy than it was before. You might change the number of clouds, but it’s not clear whether the number of clouds would increase or decrease, but again that would reflect sunlight straight back up again. So, there are kind of knock-on effects of adding more CO2 to the atmosphere. Generally, they make things worse or warmer, depending on your perspective. So, there’s kind of this amplifying and feedback effect. The whole argument about how much the earth warms when we add CO2 to the atmosphere has to do with how big those amplifying effects are. There’s still quite a range of uncertainty to what that sensitivity is when you add a certain amount of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and how much the temperature goes up.
Just my opinion, but from this side of the pond, it looks as though not many trust the government intervention bit. And Yazata made a good point about the whole social aspect, not to mention all the money to be had on both sides of the argument.
It’s way too complicated for me. I can't personally verify any of the data. When it comes down to it, we’re supposed to listen to the experts, but he’s right, it’s hard to know which expert to listen to nowadays.
Here’s the bit that I don’t understand. They say that 95 percent of the CO2 is a natural process, but that the natural process is almost precisely offset by plant growth, absorption into the ocean, etc. How would anyone know that? No humans contributed to the demise of Venus, did they?
"From Video Wrote:" The controversial part is how sensitive the atmosphere is to the addition of extra greenhouse gases and in particular carbon dioxide. The reason why that’s not as straightforward to calculate as it would appear from what I’ve just waved my hands about and explained is that the addition of carbon dioxide is not the whole story. For example, if you were to add a certain amount of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, it would heat things up a bit, but then what else has happened is that you’ve made the atmosphere a bit warmer, which would mean it can hold on to more water vapor. If you make the air hotter, it can have more water vapor in it. Water vapor is another very strong greenhouse gas. So suddenly, we’ve got another greenhouse gas being added to the atmosphere. You might imagine that if you warmed things up a bit, you might melt the snow and ice, which would reflect the sunlight straight back into space. So now suddenly, the earth would be absorbing more energy than it was before. You might change the number of clouds, but it’s not clear whether the number of clouds would increase or decrease, but again that would reflect sunlight straight back up again. So, there are kind of knock-on effects of adding more CO2 to the atmosphere. Generally, they make things worse or warmer, depending on your perspective. So, there’s kind of this amplifying and feedback effect. The whole argument about how much the earth warms when we add CO2 to the atmosphere has to do with how big those amplifying effects are. There’s still quite a range of uncertainty to what that sensitivity is when you add a certain amount of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and how much the temperature goes up.
Just my opinion, but from this side of the pond, it looks as though not many trust the government intervention bit. And Yazata made a good point about the whole social aspect, not to mention all the money to be had on both sides of the argument.
It’s way too complicated for me. I can't personally verify any of the data. When it comes down to it, we’re supposed to listen to the experts, but he’s right, it’s hard to know which expert to listen to nowadays.
Here’s the bit that I don’t understand. They say that 95 percent of the CO2 is a natural process, but that the natural process is almost precisely offset by plant growth, absorption into the ocean, etc. How would anyone know that? No humans contributed to the demise of Venus, did they?
If you follow the money you see a well organised and credible campaign to continue 'business as usual'. If you attempt to follow the science you see a totally disorganised bunch - the mechanisms of climate change are poorly understood and there's a lot about which absolutely nothing is known.
There's no 'science' in data but (as Syne points out above) it can be falsified or misrepresented (cherry picked).
My own 'desire' would be to go for a clean sustainable planet as quickly as possible which conflicts with the fossil fuel industry who need to make money NOW and coincides with the need(?) to address global warming. You say to your kids "There you go, nice clean planet, no need to fight over resources, do whatever you like with it.".
Quote:According to a report by American University's Investigative Reporting Workshop, the Koch brothers [Oil!] have built "what may be the best funded, multifaceted, public policy, political and educational presence in the nation today."[29] Opposition to the government spending any money on climate change is among this network's activities.[30][29] Anthropogenic climate change skeptic Willie Soon received more than $500,000 from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation and a trust used by the Kochs.[31] The primary recipients of Koch contributions, including Americans for Prosperity, The Heritage Foundation, and the Manhattan Institute, actively oppose clean energy and carbon legislation and are skeptical of climate science.
Sep 11, 2023 11:26 AM
(This post was last modified: Sep 11, 2023 12:55 PM by confused2.)
![[Image: co2_data_mlo.png]](https://gml.noaa.gov/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2_data_mlo.png)
