“We are often told that the biggest CO2 emitter in the food chain is not the transort to the supermarkets, but the customers ‘cars”

That is because of centralisation. If markets were more decentralised, the energy burden would be the opposite. Total energy consumed would remain the same.

I drew a diagram to illustrate this.

http://img67.imageshack.us/img67/5374/marketmodel.png

Energy saved through mass transport of goods in the decentralised model would be lost in energy consumed operating more stores. People still need cars simply to carry a weeks worth of groceries less they make 2-3 trips for what can be carried by hand.

There is no price that can be put on the time lost by walking that could be saved by driving. If you lost 1 hour a week walking to stores instead of driving, this would add up to one year over the course of your life.

1 year of your life lost, for what you would consider one small sacrafice. Environuts want us to make not one sacrafice, but thousands. How much will that add up to?

Your diagram is insightful, Mike. The percentages could be replaced with costs, and it is clear that the food vendors in this way put transport costs on the consumers.

The problem with your model is that it is very abstract. There are people that live very close to the cetralised super market. There may or may (more often) not be a convenient public transport there. Tranporting food from other continents to my local store obviously consumes more energy than transporting it to a few big supermarkets. But what if the local store sell locally produced goods?

The claim put forward by this article is that more CO2 is emitted by consumers cars than transport to supermarkets (I assume this already takes into account varying travel distances). My response was limited to within that scope. Comparisons between the energy burden of local producers and international producers are beyond that scope.

Public transport would still limit you to what can be carried by hand, and require more trips for what can be carried by car.

There are many better economical reasons to support local producers than their carbon footprint. Too many factors come into play to make a direct comparison of the energy burden intercontinental transport (ie. third world/first world, mode of transport, availability of goods within one’s own country, etc).

Of course you can load more in a car, than what you can carry by hand, but what volume are we talking about? The amounts I personally buy are so small that it is no problem to carry them by hand.

I completely agree, that there are many more reasons to suport local production than carbon footprints.

I think in debating climate change, we tend to focus too much on the CO2 emissions. These must be cut, but they are just a part of a much bigger picture, of ecological and social qquestions.

It really doesn’t matter how much volume we’re dealing with. If you can manage through one handful of groceries a week, then you could do the same with a car with just one trip every 3 weeks (granted, perishables won’t last that long, but you get the point). In this case I’m talking from the viewpoint of a typical family of 4.

Climate changes. Regardless of what we do. Anything we do is completely dwarfed by natural forces. We are dust by comparison. The only sensible course of action is to adapt.

I am now no longer able to purchase incandescent light globes. Robbed of the freedom to make that choice. Their replacement is more costly, less radiant, contain mercury, emit harmful UV rays, do no work with dimmers, do not last as long as advertised and do not even achieve their goal of reduced energy consumption for which they banned incandescent globes. Ever since I installed these things, my hair has started turning grey.

I am only 20 years old.

How many environuts does it take to screw a light bulb? We now know the answer.

Just another “small” sacrafice.

Yes, I do get your point. Do you get mine?

Let’s say the walk to the store takes one hour. It doesn’t cost me anything. With a car I can do it in 15 minutes, but I need to pay the gas. Sure - I have 45 minutes extra, but chanses are that I spend them in the sofaor in front of the computer.

In the end the car trip costs dollars, and CO2, and the walk costs no money and no CO2.

CO2-levels are now way higher than they were ever before, through at least 10.000 years. We behave like if we were dust, but the truth is that our actions affect the planet.

You might lose your freedom, but <a >other people lose their lives due to CO2emissions from the industrialized world</a>. Face it.

“In the end the car trip costs dollars, and CO2, and the walk costs no money and no CO2.”

We already talked about this.

http://climatechange.thinkaboutit.eu/index.php/think2/post/i_dreamt_that_martin_luther_king_was_standing_by_my_compost_bin/

“other people lose their lives due to CO2emissions from the industrialized world”

PROVE IT. You’ve been reading my comments. You know exactly how facetious a comment like that is.

I have clearly demonstrated that CO2 does not cause warming (and hence does not cause climate change) AND that any real attempts to cut CO2 emissions will not simply kill billions, but DEMANDS THAT THEY BE KILLED.

On top of this, I have proposed the alternative solution of increasing the planet’s albedo as being guaranteed to work regardless of what is causing the warming, infinitely more cost effective and humane.

AND DESPITE THIS, you continue to advocate the death of billions, WITHOUT ANY PROOF to your cause!

You admit that we should LOSE FREEDOM to “save the planet”. That we should all sacrafice ourselves. Just face it, you wish we were all DEAD.

Climate changes. GET USED TO IT.

Mike, you have not demonstrated anything.

Now, walking has many good effects on your health. It’s a lot better exercise for your body than hitting the caps lock key and furiously typing away - not to mention the benefits for your blood pressure. Try it!

Actually, walking is perhaps the most useless thing you can do for your health. How I spend my time is none of your damn business.

There is no physical mechanism linking anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions to observed rises in global mean average temperature during the 20th century.

http://www.nov55.com/gbwm.html

@Mike, if you want Nanne to not critizise your car driving, stop trying to convince me to use the car instead of walking.

Which world kills people? Yesterday was the world hunger day. In spite of using more CO2 than ever, one billion people starve today.

In the long run it is obvious that the way we are living now is not sustainable, due to its focus on monoculture and za href=“http://www.peak-oil-crisis.com/”>dependence on fossile fuels</a>.

In the short run these problems will be aggravated by increasing temperatures.

For other links about individuals suffering climate change, check in later on my next blog post, which will be about this.

The IPCC writes “A global assesment of data since 1970 has shown it is likely that anthropogenic warming has had a discernible influence on many physical and biological systems”.

I am fully aware that you might regard the IPCC as “junk science”, but quite frankly I trust them more than mr. Gary Novak, a biologist specializing in Mushrooms, whom you refer to.

Mr. Novak seems to belive that the Copenhagen meeting, and other work against climate change is just a conspiracy by corrupted elite politicians. If this is so, why do you think it is so difficult for these “environuts” to reach an agreement that is way less demanding than what the IPCC and other scientists reccomend?

Walking is a very useful form of exercise as long as your primary purpose is other than losing fat, or even good for losing fat when you’re too obese to do other forms of exercise.

Refer to the wikipedia article.
Sustained walking sessions for a minimum period of thirty to sixty minutes a day, five days a week, with the correct walking posture,[6][7] reduces health risks and has various overall health benefits.[8] Such as reducing the chances of cancer, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, anxiety and depression.[9] Life expectancy is also increased even for individuals suffering from obesity or high blood pressure. Walking also increases bone health, especially strengthening the hip bone, and lowering the more harmful bad low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, and raises the more useful good high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol.[10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]

Walking is what we evolved to do, a lot. I have also found that walking is very beneficial for one’s ability to think and for one’s connection to reality, which should help one from listening to denialist pseudoscience by the likes of Gary Novak, who apparently thinks that there’s cold fusion of carbon dioxide in the oceans.

Ad hominem (logical fallacy):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

Appeal to authority (logical fallacy):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

Trust the IPCC? The same IPCC that brought us the hockey stick? The same IPCC whose own numbers cannot salvage the fraud of anthropogenic global warming?

Carbon dioxide levels are saturated in the atmosphere to the point that only 5-10% of what we emit can possibly contribute to any warming. Carbon dioxide only absorbs a narrow band (8%) of radiation available to it, and man is supposedly responsible for just 30% of the CO2 in the atmosphere. The greenhouse effect supposedly keeps us 33 degrees warmer at the surface than we otherwise would be. 1-5% of the energy hitting the surface of the Earth leaves it as radiation (IPCC falsely claims it’s 41%, but lets use that anyway). Water vapour positive feedback supposedly amplifies this warming by 3-10 times (impossible since it would cause thermal run away, but let’s ignore that).

Putting it all together:

Claimed heat due to atmosphere—- 33°C

41% due to infrared radiation from earth’s surface—- 13.53°C

8% of infrared bandwidth available to CO2—- 1.08°C

30% of CO2 produced by humans—- 0.32°C

10% of absorption “unsaturated” for global warming—- 0.032°C

Water vapour multiplier—- 0.32°C

Net temperature increase caused by humans is—- 0.32°C

claimed global warming—- 0.6°C
These numbers cannot be increased. As spurious as the IPCC’s numbers are they still can’t account for half the warming. If you were to use the real values, the warming by humans works out to be less than 0.0002 degrees (read: immeasurable).

If it takes 5 hours a week of walking to get some supposed “health benefit”, excuse me for saying that I consider this massive waste of time to be useless, when I can do a moderate work out for 30 minutes three times a week with twice the effect. You greens always take the path of most resistance.

1. The question of walking vs. car driving is kind of useless to discuss on a principal level. I wouldn’t walk to Paris. I wouldn’t take the car to my job 5 minutes away. Where the breakpoint is in economical terms depend on the gas price, and other costs for the car, and what I would do if I didn’t walk. I agree, that if I need to take time off from work to walk to the store, it doesn’t payoff.

If we do discuss CO2, it is clear that car driving emits CO2, and that this is problematic.

I am aware that not all CO2 goes to the amtosphere. Much of it is absorbed by rain forests, oceans etc. That is why preserving these environments is very important, and has a direct impact on climate change.

But what happens, according to you, if we keep emitting CO2, but cut down forests and destroy marine eco systems? The CO2 must go somewhere…

That human activites respond for only 0.0002 degrees seems very strange, given that temperatures have risen with several temperatures during the last centries, when human activities have been more intense than usual. Morover, what signifies human civilisation during these decades is the burn of fossile fuels.

Noone has claimed that there is no CO2 in the atmosphere before us, the point is that a comparatively small extra input from human activities can have huge effects.

Look at for example, taken from <a href=“http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=231437”>this forum, how little the difference is between the present levels of CO2 in the atmosphere and glacial times, and think what a slight addition to that could make.

I think youhave misunderstand ad hominem. It would be an ad hominem if we said that Mr. Novak is jewish, and his statement can therefore not be trusted. What we are saying is that he has researched on mushrooms, not about climate, a statement which is openly published on his website.

Unlike mr. Novak, the staff at IPCC (check for example Working Group II>) have a long experience from researching exactly these questions. Why shouldd I not tkae their arguments for at least as valid as Novaks? In deed, they look more reasonable to me…

Now you are obfuscating. It doesn’t matter where the CO2 goes, only 10% of what we add can possibly add to any warming, and only high in the atmosphere. At ground level, CO2 absorbs all radiation available to it in about 10 metres.

The greenhouse effect is a not a mirror. When radiation is absorbed, it is emitted in all directions equally.

You are trying to rationalise a physical impossibility. There is no arguing with physics. The IPCCs own numbers cannot be salvaged!

I can only pound my head at your graph. Firstly, there is only a 1 degree temperature difference between preindustrial and 2x preindustrial. Secondly, we can never hope to raise CO2 to above 1000ppm. Thirdly, it will take at least another 200 years just to reach 2x preindustrial levels. Yet they claim we will “likely” have 4-7 degrees of warming this century. Fouthly, your graph is just wrong and has no basis in reality.

http://nov55.com/dispa.html

It is ad hominem, because you are attacking the person, not the argument. The IPCC has no scientists. They do not conduct research, they state this on their own website. They are a political organisation. All they do is compile other scientist’s work. The summary for policy makers has no basis in science. But that doesn’t matter, because their arguments are wrong.

I am not obfuscating, I asked you a question. Where would the CO2 go if there are not enough CO2 sinks to receive it? This is not a statment, it is a question to you.

Yes, the role of IPCC is not to conduct research, but to summarize and suggest guidlines according to research performed worldwide. Notably, if for example Gary Novak had published his “findings” in a peer previewed scientifical publication, his research would add to IPCC’s final judgement.

Obviously, doing this job demands scientific experience, and unless the website is lying the IPCC staff have such.

In the end, you take your climate data from a mushroom expert, while the people you attack take their data from climate specialists. Of course, there is a degree of reliance on authorities here, but the alternative is that everyone taht wants to say something about climate change goes out and measure CO2-levels themselves. This is ot how science works, and even if I appreciate the ddemocratic aspect of such a world, the car you love to drive would hardly exist if noone relied on published science.

You are obfuscating, because you are asking me where CO2 goes where I make no reference to it.

I could post hundreds of peer reviewed studies, but choose to reference Gary Novak’s website as it provides the most comprehensive overview of all the claims in words that a layman can understand. It is merely the starting point.

If you are not obfuscating, then you are apparently confused by my statement that only 10% of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere possibly contributes to warming. This is not because 90% goes somewhere else. It is because 90% of the CO2 is saturated. This means there isn’t any additional radiation to be absorbed by 90% of the CO2, because it is already being absorbed to extinction by the CO2/other GHGs that are already there. If you fail to understand this distinction, then you can see why I reference a mushroom expert, who puts the subject in simple words, rather than post scientific articles that would probably fly over your/other people’s head.

I’d like to remind you again, that present CO2 induced warming cannot exceed 0.32°C, according to the IPCC’s own spurious numbers.

Ok, Mike,, thanks a lot for drawing people´s attention to my blog post, which is probably the one I put the least amount of work in writing.

Your data do confuse me, since what I have heard before is that the more CO2 there is the hotter it gets, basically, and that there is no theoretical upper limit how hot the world can get.

So, in order to settle this. Give me three peer previewed articles that claim that CO2 induced warming cannot exceed 0.32 degrees celsius, and I will give you three that supports my position. This way readers can judge temselves. I expect you to read the abstract of each study, not the entire one, and will do the same with yours.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/01/28/0812721106.full.pdf+html

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;302/5651/1719?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT;=&andorexacttitle=or&andorexacttitleabs=or&fulltext=climate+change&andorexactfulltext=or&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&fdate=7/1/1880&tdate=10/31/2009&resourcetype=HWCIT

http://www.agu.org/eos_elec/99148e.html

Hi.
I like to now if this is a fairly common set expression in English. The meaning I’m trying to convey is that of: OK, I’ve done what I had to do, now it’s your turn. I’m not looking for alternative expressions, though if you have them, they’re welcome! But I want to know, mainly, if this is correct or not, since it doesn’t appear in the dictionaries listed neither under “do” nor under “part”. Anyway, I’m quite sure I’ve heard this expression a couple of times.

Thanks…
Blood Pressure

Possibly not, English is not my mother tongue

Models are not evidence. The principles on which the GCMs are based, such as the Stephan Boltzman constant, have fundamental flaws. The assumptions and fudge factors made produce error bars orders of magnitude greater than the predictions they make.

http://nov55.com/steph.html
http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/pdf/Unsound_IPCC.pdf

Peer reviewed article:

Doubling CO2 less than 0.4°C:
http://www.int-res.com/articles/cr/10//c010p069.pdf

Not that the IPCC abides by its own peer review processes or anything. Since you have yet to invalidate the calculations above (using the IPCC’s own numbers no less), I will leave it at this for now.

Radiation is the limiting factor, not greenhouse gases. This is why we do not have thermal runaway. Most of the radiation is already being absorbed and additional CO2 has diminishing effect. If thermal runaway were possible it would have already happened millions of years ago. The water vapour “positive feedback” mechanism is also invalid, since this would cause thermal runaway. CO2 would supposedly cause more water to evapourate, which supposedly adds to the warming 3-10 fold. What’s stopping this extra warming from evapourating even more water vapour, which creates more warming, which evapourates even more water, which creates more warming, etc. It just doesn’t happen.

Without a positive feedback mechanism (recently rebranded as “climate sensitivity”), not even the IPCC claims a doubling of CO2 from pre-industrial levels would produce more than about 1°C of warming. And it will take another 200 years at present trends just for the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere to double from pre-industrial levels.

Models are models, and evidence are evidence. The problem with your model, where human CO2emissions have no effect, is that it doesn’t correspong to the world as we see it - where increased CO2emissions are strongly connected with rising temperatures.

The site you link to either misunderstands or obfuscates the The Stefan Boltzman constant. Being a constant it belongs to the world of models, not to the experienced world. Moreover it refers to a surface area of black body. Your text says. “Physicists wrote an equation for the relationship between temperature and the amount of radiation emitted. They apply it to all matter—solids and gasses—at all temperatures.” which is not at all the way the Stefan Boltzman constant is used.

Thanks for the link.

As you previously highlighted, the IPCC neither perform research or review articles - they summarize findings from articlies in peer reviewed articles.

Thermal runaway is exactly what we do see at the moment http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v443/n7107/abs/nature05040.html

The problem with your data is that according to them this should not happen. Still it does…

Double the CO2 in a room sometime and tell me if it gets any warmer. The real world as we see it indeed.

The Stefan Boltzman constant is used in calculating the earth’s “energy budget” as presented by the IPCC. They assume that the whole Earth acts like a blackbody; at the assumed average temperature of the earth (15°C, 59°F), it’s 390 W/m^2.

The first link I presented above describes how this number is absurd and that normal temperature matter does not give off this much radiation.

The second link describes the erroneous application of global average temperature to the Stefan Boltzman constant, which easily produces error margins greater than the claimed amount of radiative imbalance/forcing by GHGs.

This is only ONE of the fatal assumptions used in the GCMs.

Bubbling methane is not thermal runaway. Thermal runaway would be the methane bubbling producing additional warming, this additional warming then bubbling more methane, which causes more warming, which bubbles more methane, ad infinitum. Reality shows that thermal runaway does not happen.

The parallel distribution systems are set up.
It takes time but there is progress!

I realise it’s a bit late, but I’d like to point out that Gary Novak (whose site is referred to above ‘nov55.com’) is an unpublished mushroom biologist.
He seems to believe that he has single-handedly out-thought the entire physics community (from relativity to the basic laws of kinematics).  He has zero credibility with respect to physics and climate change.
As a starting point for rebuttal of his arguments see:

http://moonflake.wordpress.com/2006/11/10/midweek-cuckoogary-novak/

It also seems a bit ridiculous to use materials such as these as a basis from which to assault the blog’s owner.