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Given that we know CO2 rates, can you tell me precisely what the average temperature will be next year? How many tons of CO2 equal one degree of temperature cha

Given that we know CO2 rates, can you tell me precisely what the average temperature will be next year? How many tons of CO2 equal one degree of temperature change? What’s the effect of CO2 on forests and agricultural output? My problem with the climate change agenda is that it’s reductionist: “CO2 bad.” Climate change activists never talk about the bad aspects of windmills. Or the bad aspects of battery mining. Or the bad aspects of buying things from China. Some random town will try to “save the climate” and put restrictions on people, while if that town were wiped off the map, it wouldn’t make a single thousandth of a degree of difference. It’s a bunch of virtue signaling that makes life far more expensive than it needs to be while having a zero measurable positive effect. The mistake environmentalists have made is that they got mixed up with the Marxist/Communist far left who don’t actually care about the environment as much as they care about shifting control of the means of production. It’s about power, not temperature.

ben_w 2y ago
> Given that we know CO2 rates, can you tell me precisely what the average temperature will be next year? Depends what you mean by "precisely … the average". If by "average" you mean the test is against a set of 1000 hypothetical worlds starting from the same (to within measurement errors) initial conditions, and by "precisely" you mean to a precision of 0.01°C, then yes, totes. If by "average" you mean "specifically of this world integrated over that year", then definitely not: El Nino/La Nina by itself has an impact of about ±0.2°C on the global average, which is also why despite this year being over the 1.5°C threshold in the most recent global climate political foo, the people involved aren't anything like as concerned as you might expect. > How many tons of CO2 equal one degree of temperature change? I personally can estimate that to be 5.263×10^14 kilograms/°C, I'd have to look up a real research paper to be more accurate and this is just a back-of-the-envelope calculation. (But also: it's not a linear relationship). > What’s the effect of CO2 on forests and agricultural output? Varies wildly by region, with huge positives and huge negatives in different places at the same time. Also oceanic primary production is significantly more messy than land-based photosynthesis, due to the complexities of nutrient mixing over the water column and how that changes in response to the weather as well as the climate: https://spj.science.org/doi/10.34133/olar.0066 https://spj.science.org/doi/10.34133/olar.0066 (Oceanic primary production is my one scientific publication: you can forecast how much octopus fishermen will catch from using wind records combined with satellite-data-based-estimates of chlorophyl levels in the hatching and growth seasons prior to the fishing season itself: https://www.int-res.com/articles/meps2008/362/m362p181.pdf https://www.int-res.com/articles/meps2008/362/m362p181.pdf) Also note that agricultural output is hugely dominated by fertiliser — something like half the nitrogen in our bodies is from the Haber–Bosch process. > Climate change activists never talk about the bad aspects of windmills. Or the bad aspects of battery mining. I've been seeing anti-windmill campaigns since the mid-00s, and that's just when I was starting to pay attention to such things. The bad aspects of battery mining only started getting in the news as soon as electric cars stopped being a joke. > The mistake environmentalists have made is that they got mixed up with the Marxist/Communist far left who don’t actually care about the environment as much as they care about shifting control of the means of production. It’s about power, not temperature. Aye. An ex of mine, who is a proudly and literally communist and green (there's a video of her campaigning for the US green party, saying Clinton was so bad that she'd rather people vote Trump), is very vocal about the bad aspects of battery mining… albeit because of how important that is to Musk, whom she loathes. And in UK politics, despite being green and the coal miner strikes being before she was born, supports the coal miners.

ben_w 2y ago

> Given that we know CO2 rates, can you tell me precisely what the average temperature will be next year? Depends what you mean by "precisely … the average". If by "average" you mean the test is against a set of 1000 hypothetical worlds starting from the same (to within measurement errors) initial conditions, and by "precisely" you mean to a precision of 0.01°C, then yes, totes. If by "average" you mean "specifically of this world integrated over that year", then definitely not: El Nino/La Nina by itself has an impact of about ±0.2°C on the global average, which is also why despite this year being over the 1.5°C threshold in the most recent global climate political foo, the people involved aren't anything like as concerned as you might expect. > How many tons of CO2 equal one degree of temperature change? I personally can estimate that to be 5.263×10^14 kilograms/°C, I'd have to look up a real research paper to be more accurate and this is just a back-of-the-envelope calculation. (But also: it's not a linear relationship). > What’s the effect of CO2 on forests and agricultural output? Varies wildly by region, with huge positives and huge negatives in different places at the same time. Also oceanic primary production is significantly more messy than land-based photosynthesis, due to the complexities of nutrient mixing over the water column and how that changes in response to the weather as well as the climate: https://spj.science.org/doi/10.34133/olar.0066 https://spj.science.org/doi/10.34133/olar.0066 (Oceanic primary production is my one scientific publication: you can forecast how much octopus fishermen will catch from using wind records combined with satellite-data-based-estimates of chlorophyl levels in the hatching and growth seasons prior to the fishing season itself: https://www.int-res.com/articles/meps2008/362/m362p181.pdf https://www.int-res.com/articles/meps2008/362/m362p181.pdf) Also note that agricultural output is hugely dominated by fertiliser — something like half the nitrogen in our bodies is from the Haber–Bosch process. > Climate change activists never talk about the bad aspects of windmills. Or the bad aspects of battery mining. I've been seeing anti-windmill campaigns since the mid-00s, and that's just when I was starting to pay attention to such things. The bad aspects of battery mining only started getting in the news as soon as electric cars stopped being a joke. > The mistake environmentalists have made is that they got mixed up with the Marxist/Communist far left who don’t actually care about the environment as much as they care about shifting control of the means of production. It’s about power, not temperature. Aye. An ex of mine, who is a proudly and literally communist and green (there's a video of her campaigning for the US green party, saying Clinton was so bad that she'd rather people vote Trump), is very vocal about the bad aspects of battery mining… albeit because of how important that is to Musk, whom she loathes. And in UK politics, despite being green and the coal miner strikes being before she was born, supports the coal miners.