10 ms·

Global warming caused by chlorofluorocarbons, not carbon dioxide, new study says

65 points by DanielBMarkham 13y ago

pvnick 13y ago
What's up with "global warming" these days? I was under the impression that, since there hasn't been any recent evidence of warming, everybody had just substituted the more general term "climate change" to deal with anthropogenic environmental stuff. I'm really crossing my fingers that preventing anthropogenic global warming is as simple as banning CFCs. A lot of the CO2 emission control schemes being considered could seriously stress the economy.
- duncan_bayne 13y ago
  That must be what optimism looks like. You need to understand that many - a minority perhaps, but many - of the supporters of emission controls are opposed to industry per se, not the effects of same.
  - guelo 13y ago
    And many - who knows what percentage - of deniers are motivated by hatred of liberals or environmentlists or Democrats or the UN or scientists. So what?
    - duncan_bayne 13y ago
      'Deniers' isn't a useful term - in fact, it's the kind of label that is designed to shut down debate. Like "communist" in the McCarthy era, or "defeatist" during WWI (hat tip to PG for opening my eyes to this). Leaving that aside, my point to the OP was that he was being naive in assuming that calls to limit industry would cease if CFCs were proved to be the sole agent of AGW.
      - mikeash 13y ago
        What term would you use? I can't think of one that's less loaded than "denier", which is at least fairly correct.
        ams6110 13y ago
        skeptic
        mikeash 13y ago
        I thought of that, but it seems to have far too many sarcastic overtones.
        duncan_bayne 13y ago
        I wouldn't use a term at all. There isn't a convenient description for a group of people whose opinions vary from "God promised he wouldn't drown the Earth, and that's why he creates rainbows" to "we think that CFC levels correlate better with climate data than CO2 levels". Terms like "denier" or "warmist" are only useful if you want to shut down reasoned debate.
        mikeash 13y ago
        I don't know that their opinions are as varied as all that. Certainly they express that full range, but in my experience, they're all just contrarians of one stripe or another at heart, with the "God" or "CFC" stuff being rationalizations that stem from a belief that climate change is false, rather than the other way around. If there were substantial numbers of people going from evidence to the conclusion that climate change is not real, then I could see not labeling them all with the same term, but there isn't.
        waterlesscloud 13y ago
        Of all the things about the climate debate, the use of "denier" is the one I despise the most. It's very clearly meant to be pejorative and to up the political rhetoric level. It's taken directly from "holocaust deniers", and that's a shameful association to be making. I can't take anyone who uses the term seriously on the issue, it's just too much of political hack word.
- andyl 13y ago
  Yeah, what about the so-called 'global warming'?? We need to protect that oil and gas industry at all costs. BTW, I heard that evolution is just a 'theory', and many experts seriously doubt that it can be true.
  - pvnick 13y ago
    We know much less about the climate than we do about evolution.
    - andyl 13y ago
      Yeah - it's all just so mysterious and uncertain. 97% of climate scientists might say that human produced carbon causes warming. (http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus) But that's just their opinion. There is still doubt. The imperative is to protect the oil and gas industry, and keep putting carbon into the atmosphere. It's great for the economy, and some say it's good for plants!
      - pvnick 13y ago
        "Consensus" is not a valid scientific argument. For the longest time it was the "consensus" that the earth was flat and that existence was only 6000 years old (although not if you ask early Catholic theologians - they always saw Genesis in a metaphoric light, but I digress). Between this and your last comment, your "scientific" arguments aren't very persuasive, they sound more like daily kos talking points.
        mikeash 13y ago
        When was it the "consensus" that the Earth was flat? As far as I understand it, the Earth has been known to be round for approximately as long as people both thought to ask the question and attempt to figure out an answer. "Consensus" may not give us proof, but in the absence of compelling evidence against it, it's fairly strong. Yep, they could be wrong. But it's not the way to bet.
- guelo 13y ago
  That Fox News myth has been debunked http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/04/23/1909881/debunking-the-dumbest-denier-myth-again-climate-change-vs-global-warming/ http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/04/23/1909881/debunkin... But like a lot of propaganda it continues being spread after being killed. Zombie propaganda.
  - pvnick 13y ago
    I'm not quite sure what point the article was trying to make. It simply read like an unnecessarily rude and polarizing circle jerk. One one had, the author vaguely hints towards some sort of conspiracy only to offer one of his own (Frank Luntz and his back-room terminology redefining). Pure crap.
- breadbox 13y ago
  "I'm really crossing my fingers that preventing anthropogenic global warming is as simple as banning CFCs." The snarky response of What's the weather like on your planet? has never seemed more appropriate.
- HEYGRANDMA 13y ago
  It's been called climate change for quite some time; for instance the IPCC was established in 1988: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipcc http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipcc
- AnthonyMouse 13y ago
  >A lot of the CO2 emission control schemes being considered could seriously stress the economy. A lot of the CO2 emission control schemes being considered are lame. The key to reducing CO2 is to commit to a policy that will affect the energy market in a gradual, predictable way: A slow phase in of a carbon tax. Raise the carbon tax the equivalent of $0.25/gallon every year, forever. No increase in the year the tax passes. That means no economic effect this year. No change at all -- except that everyone now expects gas to be $5/gallon in four years, so if you're buying a car now you better get something with an electric motor on it. If you're investing in energy you better invest in renewables rather than petroleum. And then by the time the gas tax is $1 higher than it is now, the installed base of cars has been replaced with higher efficiency ones, so the burden of the tax is already mitigated because a) you're now buying less gas, and b) so is everyone else, so demand goes down, so the pre-tax price of gas goes down and cancels out a significant portion of the tax. Meanwhile the government collects a large pile of cash (largely at the expense of oil company profits -- what a shame) that can be used to subsidize the installation of renewable energy generating capacity, which creates jobs etc. etc.
  - msandford 13y ago
    Given our government's not very excellent management of Social Security I wouldn't bet on them wisely spending on renewables when there are all kinds of other things the money could be spent on. As such I'm a bit skeptical of your proposal. EDIT: sarcasm removed
    - AnthonyMouse 13y ago
      "The government screws everything up" is not an argument, unless the point of the argument is that we shouldn't have a government. We know the government is capable of doing bad things, but unless we intend for them to do nothing whatsoever, the idea is to do what we can to have them do something good rather than something bad. For example, the problem here is "how can we subsidize renewable energy efficiently." Obviously there are plenty of stupid ways to do that. See: Solyndra. Let me suggest a better alternative: Forget about which companies should get money or qualifications or anything of that nature. Just take the money from the tax and give it to the people generating electricity from non-fossil sources in proportion to the number of kilowatt hours they push into the power grid. No complicated rules, no governments speculating about which companies are going to succeed or fail, just this: you produce a KWh from solar/wind/hydro/whatever, you get a check. The end.
- Lagged2Death 13y ago
  I was under the impression that, since there hasn't been any recent evidence of warming, everybody had just substituted the more general term "climate change"... Addresses a couple of your impressions rather directly: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/04/23/1909881/debunking-the-dumbest-denier-myth-again-climate-change-vs-global-warming/ http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/04/23/1909881/debunkin...
saurik 13y ago
I am not qualified to judge either side (nor did I even find this link: someone on r/science commented with it), but this article may be interesting to those who are (and I certainly would be interested in hearing the opinions of others): http://www.skepticalscience.com/Could-CFCs-be-causing-global-warming.html http://www.skepticalscience.com/Could-CFCs-be-causing-global...
- gus_massa 13y ago
  Nice graph! It was very strange that the graph in the original article only covers the last 50 years. (I understand that a graph is not a proof, but it's an easy way to look at the information.) I searched for a similar graph of Temp-CO2. The first entry in Google images is: http://zfacts.com/p/226.html http://zfacts.com/p/226.html It covers a similar period of time and has a similar scale. The first thing I noted is that there is a temperature bump circa 1940 and neither the CO2 or CFC concentrations have a bump at that time. Is there any explanation for it?
woodchuck64 13y ago
Qing-Bin Lu doesn't have a good record in climate science as discussed here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/07/lu-from-interesting-but-incorrect-to-just-wrong/ http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/07/lu-fro..., so I'm not holding my breath over this one.
- pvnick 13y ago
  It may help if you refuted the central argument rather than attacking the source.
  - 3am 13y ago
    They're both wrong. Global warming is caused smartphone batteries. And don't give me the old, "That's obviously stupid" response. I demand a good faith refutation that treats my central thesis seriously, even though my predictions have a poor track record and my thesis is outside of mainstream consensus.
    - duncan_bayne 13y ago
      http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ad-hominem.html http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ad-hominem.html
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
      - 3am 13y ago
        Are you agreeing with me, or not? Sending me that link without any other kind of comment, as if I were one of the few dozen people on the internet that are unfamiliar with the ad hominem fallacy, is a bit patronizing. My point is that attacking someone's argument by noting their poor academic track record is not ad hominem, it's a perfectly valid approach. Otherwise non-science people seeking to alter scientific consensus would have a trivial loophole to DoS the process.
    - 13y ago
paul_f 13y ago
As we move from coal based to natural gas based electricity generation around the world, the amount of CO2 emissions as a percentage of energy produced will naturally decrease. There are fewer carbon atoms attached to natural gas than coal, and as a result, less are launched into the atmosphere as a by product of burning it for power. Even if we do nothing other than let the natural gas revolution take root, the amount of CO2 in the air, and hence the amount of global warming will be reduced significantly. tl;dr if CO2 does cause global warming, it will be fixed on its own
- markkat 13y ago
  However, the half-life of atmospheric CO2 is about 100 years.
- ams6110 13y ago
  But the energy density of natural gas is a lot less than coal, so you are burning more gas to get the same energy output. I'm not sure it is quite a wash, gas is cleaner in a lot of other ways (no particulates, no or very little sulfur, etc.)
  - ars 13y ago
    > But the energy density of natural gas is a lot less than coal, so you are burning more gas to get the same energy output. No you aren't, and no it isn't. Not if you measure by weight. By weight natural gas is 2 or 3 times more dense.
stephengillie 13y ago
This "new" study was released in 2009. http://thepeoplescube.com/peoples-blog/qing-bin-lu-is-trying-to-destroy-the-planet-t4603.html http://thepeoplescube.com/peoples-blog/qing-bin-lu-is-trying...
- guelo 13y ago
  That is really suspicious. It seems the paper was published by Elsevier's Physics Reports in 2009 and now republished by South Korea's International Journal of Modern Physics B.
leohutson 13y ago
Is the "International Journal of Modern Physics" as published by "World Scientific" considered a reputable journal?
- greenyoda 13y ago
  It's indexed by a number of scientific abstracts services[1], but not being a physicist, I can't tell you how significant that is. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Journal_of_Modern_Physics#B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Journal_of_Moder...
vxNsr 13y ago
This is probably one of the most controversial and highly politicized topics of the last and current decade. Lets see if we can discuss this without bringing politics into the discussion.
DennisP 13y ago
The physics of CO2 trapping heat is well-established, and pretty well matches the amount of warming we've seen. So if it's actually CFCs causing warming, then two things have to be true: 1) There's some kind of unknown physical process that prevents warming by CO2, and 2) The warming from CFCs happens to match the expected warming from CO2. Seems shaky.
- baddox 13y ago
  Except that the article claims that global temperatures have decreased since 2002, correlating with a decrease in CFCs but with no correlation to CO2.
- hayksaakian 13y ago
  or that CFCs and CO2 are both responsible? Why does everything need to be black and white?
  - msandford 13y ago
    Because these days, everything is political even if it shouldn't be. And people need to feel good about themselves for picking the "correct" party, whichever party that is. Think for yourself? Why bother! Jump on our bandwagon instead.
    - dragonwriter 13y ago
      > Because these days, everything is political even if it shouldn't be. I think the problem isn't that "everything is political", the problem is that everything that is political is tribal. The problem isn't that it has a connection to politics, the problem is that it is tied up in group identity and that people respond to it on that basis rather than rationally.
      - msandford 13y ago
        You got that a lot more right than I did.
  - 13y ago
johnny99 13y ago
That link claims that global temperatures have declined since 2002, which is untrue. Will hunt for more authoritative sources, but a quick search turns up this story from Forbes, refuting that non-fact: http://www.forbes.com/sites/petergleick/2012/02/05/global-warming-has-stopped-how-to-fool-people-using-cherry-picked-climate-data/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/petergleick/2012/02/05/global-wa...
- msandford 13y ago
  Yeah the problem there is that isn't not conclusively proven either way. The crux of the argument is that the error bands on the last 10-15 years of temperature data show that the trend isn't cooling, and that in fact it's just a slow decade and about to be followed by a warm one. And we all know that can happen. Problem is, the error bands are significant relative to any cherry picked "things are warming up" 8-15 years OR any "things are cooling down" 8-15 years and as such, no rigorous conclusion can be drawn. We'll know more in a decade. Sadly that's how it works when you're measuring stochastic processes.
- khawkins 13y ago
  I believe the general consensus is that there is no statistical increase in temperature over the past decade. However, that source isn't exactly reliable considering the existence of global warming is, in a large part, key to his business model.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
jerf 13y ago
This would be really, really good news if it were true. We have demonstrated the ability to put these things into the atmosphere, with 40-50 year-old tech, and as an accidental side effect rather than a deliberate attempt to do so. We have demonstrated the ability to let them decay out of the atmosphere without adding significantly more. If the CFCs had this level of impact on the atmospheric temperature, this would give us such an enormous stick in global temperature management that at the very least the fears of a new ice age [1] could be put to rest for the duration of our technological civilization, and of course there's the fact that it would also demonstrate that our CO2 contribution is also not that big a deal so our warming fears could also be all but put to bed. It's such good news, in fact, that I daresay it's too good a bit of news. The Cynic's Razor [2] may not be quite as reliable as Occam's Razor, but it's still pretty darned reliable. (Unfortunately.) Alas, the Cynic's Razor must slash this theory away without a great deal more evidence. [1] I fear global cooling far more than I fear global warming. I say that without regard to any immediate probability estimates of the two, I'm considering the whole life span of civilization here. Take the worst global warming scenario you've ever heard. The compare it to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Iceage_north-intergl_glac_hg.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Iceage_north-intergl_glac_... And bear in mind that "areas with no growing season to speak of" continues a significant distance beyond the glaciers themselves. Canada and Britain completely uninhabitable. The US, Russia, and most if not all of Europe with zero growing season for any commercially-viable crop. Similar problems in the southern hemisphere. Global warming may be bad for civilization, an Ice Age is potentially death to the entire concept of civilization. YMMV. [2] Drat! Not quite an original construct: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Cynic%27s+Razor%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Cynic%27s+Razor%22 So close.
- DennisP 13y ago
  Eh...the worst global warming scenario I've ever heard? Positive feedbacks like methane emissions take hold, and even if we stop emissions entirely the planet tips itself into its hot mode, when sea levels were about a hundred meters higher and most life on the planet was clustered around the poles. No wait, the worst is a repeat of the greatest mass extinction ever, killing off 95% of the species on Earth, caused in part by ocean acidification leading to mass emissions of hydrogen sulfide.
commanda 13y ago
This article doesn't address the CFC effect relative to the effect of CO2 emissions fallout landing on the glaciers and polar ice caps, which changes the albedo of the ice, resulting in melting them. More and more ice melts every year, and less re-freezes, raising the sea level, altering the salinity, changing the worldwide currents, resulting in massive change to the ocean biomes. Does that result in less climate change than CFCs eroding the ozone layer over the poles?
- ars 13y ago
  > of CO2 emissions fallout The what? Did you typo? If you didn't, then the article did not address it because there is no such thing.
  - commanda 13y ago
    Ok, sorry, I meant carbon particulate (soot), not CO2.
    - ars 13y ago
      There's probably less soot now than there was in the past. Wood fires (campfires, stoves, hearths, etc) make a TON of soon. Modern burning techniques are much better. So if it didn't do anything in the past, it's certainly not doing anything now.

What's up with "global warming" these days? I was under the impression that, since there hasn't been any recent evidence of warming, everybody had just substituted the more general term "climate change" to deal with anthropogenic environmental stuff. I'm really crossing my fingers that preventing anthropogenic global warming is as simple as banning CFCs. A lot of the CO2 emission control schemes being considered could seriously stress the economy.

duncan_bayne 13y ago
That must be what optimism looks like. You need to understand that many - a minority perhaps, but many - of the supporters of emission controls are opposed to industry per se, not the effects of same.
- guelo 13y ago
  And many - who knows what percentage - of deniers are motivated by hatred of liberals or environmentlists or Democrats or the UN or scientists. So what?
  - duncan_bayne 13y ago
    'Deniers' isn't a useful term - in fact, it's the kind of label that is designed to shut down debate. Like "communist" in the McCarthy era, or "defeatist" during WWI (hat tip to PG for opening my eyes to this). Leaving that aside, my point to the OP was that he was being naive in assuming that calls to limit industry would cease if CFCs were proved to be the sole agent of AGW.
    - mikeash 13y ago
      What term would you use? I can't think of one that's less loaded than "denier", which is at least fairly correct.
      - ams6110 13y ago
        skeptic
        mikeash 13y ago
        I thought of that, but it seems to have far too many sarcastic overtones.
      - duncan_bayne 13y ago
        I wouldn't use a term at all. There isn't a convenient description for a group of people whose opinions vary from "God promised he wouldn't drown the Earth, and that's why he creates rainbows" to "we think that CFC levels correlate better with climate data than CO2 levels". Terms like "denier" or "warmist" are only useful if you want to shut down reasoned debate.
        mikeash 13y ago
        I don't know that their opinions are as varied as all that. Certainly they express that full range, but in my experience, they're all just contrarians of one stripe or another at heart, with the "God" or "CFC" stuff being rationalizations that stem from a belief that climate change is false, rather than the other way around. If there were substantial numbers of people going from evidence to the conclusion that climate change is not real, then I could see not labeling them all with the same term, but there isn't.
      - waterlesscloud 13y ago
        Of all the things about the climate debate, the use of "denier" is the one I despise the most. It's very clearly meant to be pejorative and to up the political rhetoric level. It's taken directly from "holocaust deniers", and that's a shameful association to be making. I can't take anyone who uses the term seriously on the issue, it's just too much of political hack word.
andyl 13y ago
Yeah, what about the so-called 'global warming'?? We need to protect that oil and gas industry at all costs. BTW, I heard that evolution is just a 'theory', and many experts seriously doubt that it can be true.
- pvnick 13y ago
  We know much less about the climate than we do about evolution.
  - andyl 13y ago
    Yeah - it's all just so mysterious and uncertain. 97% of climate scientists might say that human produced carbon causes warming. (http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus) But that's just their opinion. There is still doubt. The imperative is to protect the oil and gas industry, and keep putting carbon into the atmosphere. It's great for the economy, and some say it's good for plants!
    - pvnick 13y ago
      "Consensus" is not a valid scientific argument. For the longest time it was the "consensus" that the earth was flat and that existence was only 6000 years old (although not if you ask early Catholic theologians - they always saw Genesis in a metaphoric light, but I digress). Between this and your last comment, your "scientific" arguments aren't very persuasive, they sound more like daily kos talking points.
      - mikeash 13y ago
        When was it the "consensus" that the Earth was flat? As far as I understand it, the Earth has been known to be round for approximately as long as people both thought to ask the question and attempt to figure out an answer. "Consensus" may not give us proof, but in the absence of compelling evidence against it, it's fairly strong. Yep, they could be wrong. But it's not the way to bet.
guelo 13y ago
That Fox News myth has been debunked http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/04/23/1909881/debunking-the-dumbest-denier-myth-again-climate-change-vs-global-warming/ http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/04/23/1909881/debunkin... But like a lot of propaganda it continues being spread after being killed. Zombie propaganda.
- pvnick 13y ago
  I'm not quite sure what point the article was trying to make. It simply read like an unnecessarily rude and polarizing circle jerk. One one had, the author vaguely hints towards some sort of conspiracy only to offer one of his own (Frank Luntz and his back-room terminology redefining). Pure crap.
breadbox 13y ago
"I'm really crossing my fingers that preventing anthropogenic global warming is as simple as banning CFCs." The snarky response of What's the weather like on your planet? has never seemed more appropriate.
HEYGRANDMA 13y ago
It's been called climate change for quite some time; for instance the IPCC was established in 1988: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipcc http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipcc
AnthonyMouse 13y ago
>A lot of the CO2 emission control schemes being considered could seriously stress the economy. A lot of the CO2 emission control schemes being considered are lame. The key to reducing CO2 is to commit to a policy that will affect the energy market in a gradual, predictable way: A slow phase in of a carbon tax. Raise the carbon tax the equivalent of $0.25/gallon every year, forever. No increase in the year the tax passes. That means no economic effect this year. No change at all -- except that everyone now expects gas to be $5/gallon in four years, so if you're buying a car now you better get something with an electric motor on it. If you're investing in energy you better invest in renewables rather than petroleum. And then by the time the gas tax is $1 higher than it is now, the installed base of cars has been replaced with higher efficiency ones, so the burden of the tax is already mitigated because a) you're now buying less gas, and b) so is everyone else, so demand goes down, so the pre-tax price of gas goes down and cancels out a significant portion of the tax. Meanwhile the government collects a large pile of cash (largely at the expense of oil company profits -- what a shame) that can be used to subsidize the installation of renewable energy generating capacity, which creates jobs etc. etc.
- msandford 13y ago
  Given our government's not very excellent management of Social Security I wouldn't bet on them wisely spending on renewables when there are all kinds of other things the money could be spent on. As such I'm a bit skeptical of your proposal. EDIT: sarcasm removed
  - AnthonyMouse 13y ago
    "The government screws everything up" is not an argument, unless the point of the argument is that we shouldn't have a government. We know the government is capable of doing bad things, but unless we intend for them to do nothing whatsoever, the idea is to do what we can to have them do something good rather than something bad. For example, the problem here is "how can we subsidize renewable energy efficiently." Obviously there are plenty of stupid ways to do that. See: Solyndra. Let me suggest a better alternative: Forget about which companies should get money or qualifications or anything of that nature. Just take the money from the tax and give it to the people generating electricity from non-fossil sources in proportion to the number of kilowatt hours they push into the power grid. No complicated rules, no governments speculating about which companies are going to succeed or fail, just this: you produce a KWh from solar/wind/hydro/whatever, you get a check. The end.
Lagged2Death 13y ago
I was under the impression that, since there hasn't been any recent evidence of warming, everybody had just substituted the more general term "climate change"... Addresses a couple of your impressions rather directly: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/04/23/1909881/debunking-the-dumbest-denier-myth-again-climate-change-vs-global-warming/ http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/04/23/1909881/debunkin...

saurik 13y ago

I am not qualified to judge either side (nor did I even find this link: someone on r/science commented with it), but this article may be interesting to those who are (and I certainly would be interested in hearing the opinions of others): http://www.skepticalscience.com/Could-CFCs-be-causing-global-warming.html http://www.skepticalscience.com/Could-CFCs-be-causing-global...

gus_massa 13y ago
Nice graph! It was very strange that the graph in the original article only covers the last 50 years. (I understand that a graph is not a proof, but it's an easy way to look at the information.) I searched for a similar graph of Temp-CO2. The first entry in Google images is: http://zfacts.com/p/226.html http://zfacts.com/p/226.html It covers a similar period of time and has a similar scale. The first thing I noted is that there is a temperature bump circa 1940 and neither the CO2 or CFC concentrations have a bump at that time. Is there any explanation for it?

woodchuck64 13y ago

Qing-Bin Lu doesn't have a good record in climate science as discussed here: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/07/lu-from-interesting-but-incorrect-to-just-wrong/ http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/07/lu-fro..., so I'm not holding my breath over this one.

pvnick 13y ago
It may help if you refuted the central argument rather than attacking the source.
- 3am 13y ago
  They're both wrong. Global warming is caused smartphone batteries. And don't give me the old, "That's obviously stupid" response. I demand a good faith refutation that treats my central thesis seriously, even though my predictions have a poor track record and my thesis is outside of mainstream consensus.
  - duncan_bayne 13y ago
    http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ad-hominem.html http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ad-hominem.html
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - 3am 13y ago
      Are you agreeing with me, or not? Sending me that link without any other kind of comment, as if I were one of the few dozen people on the internet that are unfamiliar with the ad hominem fallacy, is a bit patronizing. My point is that attacking someone's argument by noting their poor academic track record is not ad hominem, it's a perfectly valid approach. Otherwise non-science people seeking to alter scientific consensus would have a trivial loophole to DoS the process.
  - 13y ago

paul_f 13y ago

As we move from coal based to natural gas based electricity generation around the world, the amount of CO2 emissions as a percentage of energy produced will naturally decrease. There are fewer carbon atoms attached to natural gas than coal, and as a result, less are launched into the atmosphere as a by product of burning it for power. Even if we do nothing other than let the natural gas revolution take root, the amount of CO2 in the air, and hence the amount of global warming will be reduced significantly. tl;dr if CO2 does cause global warming, it will be fixed on its own

markkat 13y ago
However, the half-life of atmospheric CO2 is about 100 years.
ams6110 13y ago
But the energy density of natural gas is a lot less than coal, so you are burning more gas to get the same energy output. I'm not sure it is quite a wash, gas is cleaner in a lot of other ways (no particulates, no or very little sulfur, etc.)
- ars 13y ago
  > But the energy density of natural gas is a lot less than coal, so you are burning more gas to get the same energy output. No you aren't, and no it isn't. Not if you measure by weight. By weight natural gas is 2 or 3 times more dense.

stephengillie 13y ago

This "new" study was released in 2009. http://thepeoplescube.com/peoples-blog/qing-bin-lu-is-trying-to-destroy-the-planet-t4603.html http://thepeoplescube.com/peoples-blog/qing-bin-lu-is-trying...

guelo 13y ago
That is really suspicious. It seems the paper was published by Elsevier's Physics Reports in 2009 and now republished by South Korea's International Journal of Modern Physics B.

leohutson 13y ago

Is the "International Journal of Modern Physics" as published by "World Scientific" considered a reputable journal?

greenyoda 13y ago
It's indexed by a number of scientific abstracts services[1], but not being a physicist, I can't tell you how significant that is. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Journal_of_Modern_Physics#B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Journal_of_Moder...

vxNsr 13y ago

This is probably one of the most controversial and highly politicized topics of the last and current decade. Lets see if we can discuss this without bringing politics into the discussion.

DennisP 13y ago

The physics of CO2 trapping heat is well-established, and pretty well matches the amount of warming we've seen. So if it's actually CFCs causing warming, then two things have to be true: 1) There's some kind of unknown physical process that prevents warming by CO2, and 2) The warming from CFCs happens to match the expected warming from CO2. Seems shaky.

baddox 13y ago
Except that the article claims that global temperatures have decreased since 2002, correlating with a decrease in CFCs but with no correlation to CO2.
hayksaakian 13y ago
or that CFCs and CO2 are both responsible? Why does everything need to be black and white?
- msandford 13y ago
  Because these days, everything is political even if it shouldn't be. And people need to feel good about themselves for picking the "correct" party, whichever party that is. Think for yourself? Why bother! Jump on our bandwagon instead.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > Because these days, everything is political even if it shouldn't be. I think the problem isn't that "everything is political", the problem is that everything that is political is tribal. The problem isn't that it has a connection to politics, the problem is that it is tied up in group identity and that people respond to it on that basis rather than rationally.
    - msandford 13y ago
      You got that a lot more right than I did.
- 13y ago

johnny99 13y ago

That link claims that global temperatures have declined since 2002, which is untrue. Will hunt for more authoritative sources, but a quick search turns up this story from Forbes, refuting that non-fact: http://www.forbes.com/sites/petergleick/2012/02/05/global-warming-has-stopped-how-to-fool-people-using-cherry-picked-climate-data/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/petergleick/2012/02/05/global-wa...

msandford 13y ago
Yeah the problem there is that isn't not conclusively proven either way. The crux of the argument is that the error bands on the last 10-15 years of temperature data show that the trend isn't cooling, and that in fact it's just a slow decade and about to be followed by a warm one. And we all know that can happen. Problem is, the error bands are significant relative to any cherry picked "things are warming up" 8-15 years OR any "things are cooling down" 8-15 years and as such, no rigorous conclusion can be drawn. We'll know more in a decade. Sadly that's how it works when you're measuring stochastic processes.
khawkins 13y ago
I believe the general consensus is that there is no statistical increase in temperature over the past decade. However, that source isn't exactly reliable considering the existence of global warming is, in a large part, key to his business model.

deleted 13y ago

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jerf 13y ago

This would be really, really good news if it were true. We have demonstrated the ability to put these things into the atmosphere, with 40-50 year-old tech, and as an accidental side effect rather than a deliberate attempt to do so. We have demonstrated the ability to let them decay out of the atmosphere without adding significantly more. If the CFCs had this level of impact on the atmospheric temperature, this would give us such an enormous stick in global temperature management that at the very least the fears of a new ice age [1] could be put to rest for the duration of our technological civilization, and of course there's the fact that it would also demonstrate that our CO2 contribution is also not that big a deal so our warming fears could also be all but put to bed. It's such good news, in fact, that I daresay it's too good a bit of news. The Cynic's Razor [2] may not be quite as reliable as Occam's Razor, but it's still pretty darned reliable. (Unfortunately.) Alas, the Cynic's Razor must slash this theory away without a great deal more evidence. [1] I fear global cooling far more than I fear global warming. I say that without regard to any immediate probability estimates of the two, I'm considering the whole life span of civilization here. Take the worst global warming scenario you've ever heard. The compare it to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Iceage_north-intergl_glac_hg.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Iceage_north-intergl_glac_... And bear in mind that "areas with no growing season to speak of" continues a significant distance beyond the glaciers themselves. Canada and Britain completely uninhabitable. The US, Russia, and most if not all of Europe with zero growing season for any commercially-viable crop. Similar problems in the southern hemisphere. Global warming may be bad for civilization, an Ice Age is potentially death to the entire concept of civilization. YMMV. [2] Drat! Not quite an original construct: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Cynic%27s+Razor%22 https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Cynic%27s+Razor%22 So close.

DennisP 13y ago
Eh...the worst global warming scenario I've ever heard? Positive feedbacks like methane emissions take hold, and even if we stop emissions entirely the planet tips itself into its hot mode, when sea levels were about a hundred meters higher and most life on the planet was clustered around the poles. No wait, the worst is a repeat of the greatest mass extinction ever, killing off 95% of the species on Earth, caused in part by ocean acidification leading to mass emissions of hydrogen sulfide.

commanda 13y ago

This article doesn't address the CFC effect relative to the effect of CO2 emissions fallout landing on the glaciers and polar ice caps, which changes the albedo of the ice, resulting in melting them. More and more ice melts every year, and less re-freezes, raising the sea level, altering the salinity, changing the worldwide currents, resulting in massive change to the ocean biomes. Does that result in less climate change than CFCs eroding the ozone layer over the poles?

ars 13y ago
> of CO2 emissions fallout The what? Did you typo? If you didn't, then the article did not address it because there is no such thing.
- commanda 13y ago
  Ok, sorry, I meant carbon particulate (soot), not CO2.
  - ars 13y ago
    There's probably less soot now than there was in the past. Wood fires (campfires, stoves, hearths, etc) make a TON of soon. Modern burning techniques are much better. So if it didn't do anything in the past, it's certainly not doing anything now.