Thread: Any doubts about Climate Change?

Originally Posted by pseudolus

'MythBusters' asks: Are motorcycles greener than cars? - latimes.com

I love mythbusters

"Motorcycles were indeed more fuel-efficient than cars and emitted less of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, but they emitted far more smog-forming hydrocarbons and oxides of nitrogen, as well as the toxic air pollutant carbon monoxide. "

Hmmm, bikes are more fuel efficient and emit less CO2, but more hydrocarbons, oxides and carbon monoxide.

"emissions are only part of the story of a vehicle's true greenness. According to the Motorcycle Industry Council, motorcycle manufacturing requires thousands fewer pounds of raw materials than automobiles. They require less fossil fuel, so they require less energy to pull that fossil fuel out of the ground. They use fewer chemicals and oils than cars. And motorcycles produced today are 90% cleaner than they were 30 years ago."

Oh, and the study fails to address the fact that motorcycles take up less space, create less traffic, and put far less wear on the roads than cars.

So, which is greener my friend?

Motorbikes '16 times worse than cars for pollution' | Environment | The Guardian

Motorbikes '16 times worse than cars for pollution'

Motorbikes are churning out more pollution than cars, even though they make up only a small fraction of vehicles on the roads, according to a report.

Tests on a selection of modern motorbikes and private cars revealed that rather than being more environmentally-friendly, motorbikes emit 16 times the amount of hydrocarbons, including greenhouse gases, three times the carbon monoxide and a "disproportionately high" amount of other pollutants, compared to cars. Ana-Marija Vasic at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research, who led the research, said the need to legislate on emissions from motorbikes has been overlooked because there are so few on the roads. The oversight has lead to a paucity of research into ways of making their engines run more cleanly.

In Britain, there are 1,060,000 motorbikes on the road but more than 25m private cars.

Dr Vasic's tests showed that, especially in urban traffic, when motorcyclists frequently accelerated quickly, motorbike engines burned fuel inefficiently, giving a sharp peak in emissions. The yearly hydrocarbon emissions of the average two-wheeler in urban traffic measured up to 49 times higher than that of the average car, according to the study, due to be published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

"The importance of [motorbike] emissions has been underestimated in legislation, giving manufacturers little motivation to improve aftertreatment systems," said Dr Vasic. The tests were carried out on a variety of Yamaha, Piaggio and Honda 50cc scooters and Suzuki, Honda and BMW motorbikes with engine sizes ranging from 800cc to 1150cc.

Originally Posted by TonyBKK

So, which is greener my friend?

Ummmmm

Originally Posted by pseudolus

Motorbikes '16 times worse than cars for pollution' | Environment | The Guardian

Motorbikes '16 times worse than cars for pollution'

Motorbikes are churning out more pollution than cars, even though they make up only a small fraction of vehicles on the roads, according to a report.

Tests on a selection of modern motorbikes and private cars revealed that rather than being more environmentally-friendly, motorbikes emit 16 times the amount of hydrocarbons, including greenhouse gases, three times the carbon monoxide and a "disproportionately high" amount of other pollutants, compared to cars. Ana-Marija Vasic at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research, who led the research, said the need to legislate on emissions from motorbikes has been overlooked because there are so few on the roads. The oversight has lead to a paucity of research into ways of making their engines run more cleanly.

In Britain, there are 1,060,000 motorbikes on the road but more than 25m private cars.

Dr Vasic's tests showed that, especially in urban traffic, when motorcyclists frequently accelerated quickly, motorbike engines burned fuel inefficiently, giving a sharp peak in emissions. The yearly hydrocarbon emissions of the average two-wheeler in urban traffic measured up to 49 times higher than that of the average car, according to the study, due to be published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

"The importance of [motorbike] emissions has been underestimated in legislation, giving manufacturers little motivation to improve aftertreatment systems," said Dr Vasic. The tests were carried out on a variety of Yamaha, Piaggio and Honda 50cc scooters and Suzuki, Honda and BMW motorbikes with engine sizes ranging from 800cc to 1150cc.

Damn, you brits must have some filthy old bikes...

I'll take the Mythbusters results. Thanks

so tell us Tony , what's your method of transport ?
car
motorbike.
bicycle
public transport

Originally Posted by blue

so tell us Tony , what's your method of transport ?
car
motorbike.
bicycle
public transport

Mostly get around on my magic carpet. you?

I just spent 5 hours in my Range Rover doing a 3 hour journey, road work queue's etc
As I was sat in the jam with my air con on full blast I got sick of those pesky
Polluting motorbikes carving through the traffic. They should be forced to wait
With their engines running like everyone else.

But bunto what the hell has that got to do with taxing people?

Originally Posted by GR3

I got sick of those pesky
Polluting motorbikes carving through the traffic. They should be forced to wait
With their engines running like everyone else.

Driving a deranged rover, the very worst king of cager.
And to think I gave you green a while back.

Elevated carbon dioxide making arid regions greener

31 May 2013
AGU Release No. 13-24

WASHINGTON, DC—Scientists have long suspected that a flourishing of green foliage around the globe, observed since the early 1980s in satellite data, springs at least in part from the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere. Now, a study of arid regions around the globe finds that a carbon dioxide “fertilization effect” has, indeed, caused a gradual greening from 1982 to 2010.

Focusing on the southwestern corner of North America, Australia’s outback, the Middle East, and some parts of Africa, Randall Donohue of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in Canberra, Australia and his colleagues developed and applied a mathematical model to predict the extent of the carbon-dioxide (CO2) fertilization effect. They then tested this prediction by studying satellite imagery and teasing out the influence of carbon dioxide on greening from other factors such as precipitation, air temperature, the amount of light, and land-use changes.

The team’s model predicted that foliage would increase by some 5 to 10 percent given the 14 percent increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration during the study period. The satellite data agreed, showing an 11 percent increase in foliage after adjusting the data for precipitation, yielding “strong support for our hypothesis,” the team reports.

“Lots of papers have shown an average increase in vegetation across the globe, and there is a lot of speculation about what’s causing that,” said Donohue of CSIRO’s Land and Water research division, who is lead author of the new study. “Up until this point, they’ve linked the greening to fairly obvious climatic variables, such as a rise in temperature where it is normally cold or a rise in rainfall where it is normally dry. Lots of those papers speculated about the CO2 effect, but it has been very difficult to prove.”

He and his colleagues present their findings in an article that has been accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

The team looked for signs of CO2 fertilization in arid areas, Donohue said, because “satellites are very good at detecting changes in total leaf cover, and it is in warm, dry environments that the CO2 effect is expected to most influence leaf cover.” Leaf cover is the clue, he added, because “a leaf can extract more carbon from the air during photosynthesis, or lose less water to the air during photosynthesis, or both, due to elevated CO2.” That is the CO2 fertilization effect.

But leaf cover in warm, wet places like tropical rainforests is already about as extensive as it can get and is unlikely to increase with higher CO2 concentrations. In warm, dry places, on the other hand, leaf cover is less complete, so plants there will make more leaves if they have enough water to do so. “If elevated CO2 causes the water use of individual leaves to drop, plants will respond by increasing their total numbers of leaves, and this should be measurable from satellite,” Donohue explained.

To tease out the actual CO2 fertilization effect from other environmental factors in these regions, the researchers first averaged the greenness of each location across 3-year periods to account for changes in soil wetness and then grouped that greenness data from the different locations according to their amounts of precipitation. The team then identified the maximum amount of foliage each group could attain for a given precipitation, and tracked variations in maximum foliage over the course of 20 years. This allowed the scientists to remove the influence of precipitation and other climatic variations and recognize the long-term greening trend.

In addition to greening dry regions, the CO2 fertilization effect could switch the types of vegetation that dominate in those regions. “Trees are re-invading grass lands, and this could quite possibly be related to the CO2 effect,” Donohue said. “Long lived woody plants are deep rooted and are likely to benefit more than grasses from an increase in CO2.”

“The effect of higher carbon dioxide levels on plant function is an important process that needs greater consideration,” said Donohue. “Even if nothing else in the climate changes as global CO2 levels rise, we will still see significant environmental changes because of the CO2 fertilization effect.”

This study was funded by CSIRO’s Sustainable Agriculture Flagship, Water for a Healthy Country Flagship, the Australian Research Council and Land & Water Australia.

Notes for Journalists
Journalists and public information officers (PIOs) of educational and scientific institutions who have registered with AGU can download a PDF copy of this accepted article by clicking on this link: CO2 fertilisation has increased maximum foliage cover across the globe's warm, arid environments - Donohue - Geophysical Research Letters - Wiley Online Library

Or, you may order a copy of the final paper by emailing your request to Peter Weiss at [email protected]. Please provide your name, the name of your publication, and your phone number.

Neither the paper nor this press release are under embargo.

Title:
CO2 fertilisation has increased maximum foliage cover across the globe's warm, arid environments

Authors:
Randall J. Donohue and Tim R. McVicar
CSIRO Land and Water, Canberra, Australia;
Michael L. Roderick
Research School of Biology, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia; Research School of Earth Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia; and Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science;
Graham D. Farquhar
Research School of Biology, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.
Contact information for the author:
Randall Donohue, Email: R****@csiro.au, Phone: +61-2-6246****

Dare you to call up this dude and say "you're full of shit". Go on, I dare you. More C02 = more food for the ever increasing population.

Energy Secretary Ed Davey is to make an unprecedented attack later on climate change sceptics. He is set to accuses climate sceptics of "blinkered bloody-mindedness".

Phew. I'm glad I have no doubts about it. Clearly it has been going on for thousands of years. How can anyone have doubts?

Originally Posted by S Landreth

humans are responsible for the majority of the global surface warming in recent decades.

That,s good news if true , with a warmer climate , we will be able to grow more crops ,important as the worlds population seems to be growing alarmingly,
Hopefully if this warming trend continues we will be able to re-inhabit Greenland , which is a huge landmass.

Originally Posted by S Landreth

0.15°C per decade (Lockwood)
0.12°C per decade (Folland)
0.16°C per decade (Kaufmann)
0.17°C per decade (Lean)

Ahh that explains why I have stopped wearing my vest. The temperature went up 0.17°C over the last decade.

Figure 2: The human (anthropogenic) contribution to global surface warming. From Imbers et al. (2013).

So we had minus contribution until the 1980's ?

My pool was a little chilly today when me and the missus went for our 5pm dip. I put this down to a lack of C02 in the atmosphere. It had nothing to do with the clouds blocking the sun most of the day.

Central Europe experiences the worst flood in history at present. Here a picture of Passau at the Danube in Southern Germany.



The water level is at it's highest ever. The previous record was in the year 1501. So the next image can't be taken at the moment, it's under water.



Bavaria and Saxony will loose over 50% of this year's harvest in agriculture. The wave of the Danube is going to flood large parts of 12 more countries on the way to the Black Sea, and the Elbe river large areas in Germany. Quite a success story of Global Warming.

"Satellite observations reveal a greening of the globe over recent decades. … Using gas exchange theory, we predict that the 14% increase in atmospheric CO2 (1982–2010) led to a 5 to 10% increase in green foliage cover in warm, arid environments. Satellite observations, analysed to remove the effect of variations in rainfall, show that cover across these environments has increased by 11%. Our results confirm that the anticipated CO2 fertilization effect is occurring alongside ongoing anthropogenic perturbations to the carbon cycle and that the fertilisation effect is now a significant land surface process."



CO2 fertilisation has increased maximum foliage cover across the globe's warm, arid environments - Donohue - Geophysical Research Letters - Wiley Online Library

Originally Posted by Rainfall

Central Europe experiences the worst flood in history at present. Here a picture of Passau at the Danube in Southern Germany.



The water level is at it's highest ever. The previous record was in the year 1501. So the next image can't be taken at the moment, it's under water.

Jing lor?

BBC News - Central Europe on alert for flooding
3 June 2013
The German cities of Passau and Rosenheim have declared a state of emergency.

Authorities in Passau, which lies at the confluence of three rivers in Bavaria, said waters could rise above the record levels of 2002.

Originally Posted by Jesus Jones

NaturalNews
Learn more: Al Gore backlash: Why environmentalists are celebrating rising CO2 levels

And about the author; Mike Adams, of the piece (of crap) you sent us to,..

Adams is an AIDS denialist, a 9/11 truther, a birther and endorses conspiracy theories surrounding the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. He has endorsed Burzynski: Cancer Is Serious Business, a movie about Stanislaw Burzynski. Steven Novella characterises Adams as "a dangerous conspiracy-mongering crank"

and

Among its most outspoken critics are "Orac" of ScienceBlogs, who has called it "one of the most wretched hives of scum and quackery on the Internet," as well as Peter Bowditch of the website Ratbags, and Jeff McMahon writing for Forbes. Steven Novella has called NaturalNews "a crank alt med site that promotes every sort of medical nonsense imaginable. If it is unscientific, antiscientific, conspiracy-mongering, or downright silly, Mike Adams appears to be all for it – whatever sells the “natural” products he hawks on his site.". Other critics of Adams' website include astronomer and blogger Phil Plait, PZ Myers, and Brian Dunning, who listed it as #1 on his "Top 10 Worst Anti-Science Websites" list. Adams is listed as a "promoter of questionable methods" by Quackwatch Robert T. Carroll at The Skeptic's Dictionary has said, "Natural News is not a very good source for information. If you don't trust me on this, go to Respectful Insolence or any of the other bloggers on ScienceBlogs and do a search for "Natural News" or "Mike Adams" (who is NaturalNews). Hundreds of entries will be found and not one of them will have a good word to say about Mike Adams as a source."

maybe we can ask Mr. (no Phd., no Dr., nada) Adams

Originally Posted by S Landreth

Nice read for the deniers/loonies out there/here. You’ll never be able to reach some people (nor should you continue to try),......

10% believe US agencies intentionally created the AIDS epidemic and 15% believe that the evidence for a link between second-hand cigarette smoke and ill-health has been invented by a corrupt cartel of medical researchers.

5% believe exhaust seen in the sky behind airplanes is actually chemicals sprayed by the government for sinister reasons

15% think the medical industry and the pharmaceutical industry “invent” new diseases to make money

25 percent of British people "don't believe the Apollo 11 moon landing."/six percent of Americans think the government staged the Apollo moon landings

21 percent think that the US government is covering up evidence of alien existence

4% say they believe “lizard people” control our societies by gaining political power

5% believe exhaust seen in the sky behind airplanes is actually chemicals sprayed by the government for sinister reasons

5% believe that Paul McCartney actually died in 1966

How can scientists respond?

By definition, conspiracy theories are largely impervious to increasing amounts of evidence. Indeed, in the case of climate change, we have arguably reached the point where it is the strength of the overwhelming scientific evidence that is compelling some people to accept a conspiracy theory in preference to a price on carbon or other government regulations.

Additional evidence will not find any traction among those who think of science as a conspiracy. Instead, communicators should focus on the vast majority of people who know that when medical scientists pointed to the health risks of tobacco, they did not conspire against smokers but sought to keep them alive. And that vast majority of people also understand that, when climate scientists say that the globe is warming from greenhouse gas emissions, they are not attempting to create a World Government but are alerting us to a risk to humanity’s most basic life support system.

No matter how strong the evidence on climate change, deniers will keep denying

[/QUOTE]