-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 0
/
post2.html
321 lines (281 loc) · 16.4 KB
/
post2.html
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en"><head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
<meta name="description" content="">
<meta name="author" content=""><title>David Nola - Death by Global Warming</title><!-- Bootstrap Core CSS -->
<link href="css/bootstrap.min.css" rel="stylesheet"><!-- Custom CSS -->
<link href="css/clean-blog.min.css" rel="stylesheet"><!-- Custom Fonts -->
<link href="http://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/font-awesome/4.1.0/css/font-awesome.min.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
<link href="http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Lora:400,700,400italic,700italic" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
<link href="http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Open+Sans:300italic,400italic,600italic,700italic,800italic,400,300,600,700,800" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"><!-- HTML5 Shim and Respond.js IE8 support of HTML5 elements and media queries --><!-- WARNING: Respond.js doesn't work if you view the page via file:// --><!--[if lt IE 9]>
<script src="https://oss.maxcdn.com/libs/html5shiv/3.7.0/html5shiv.js"></script>
<script src="https://oss.maxcdn.com/libs/respond.js/1.4.2/respond.min.js"></script>
<![endif]--></head><body>
<!-- Navigation -->
<nav class="navbar navbar-default navbar-custom navbar-fixed-top">
</nav><div class="container-fluid">
<!-- Brand and toggle get grouped for better mobile display -->
<div class="navbar-header page-scroll">
<button type="button" class="navbar-toggle" data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#bs-example-navbar-collapse-1">
<span class="sr-only">Toggle navigation</span>
<span class="icon-bar"></span>
<span class="icon-bar"></span>
<span class="icon-bar"></span>
</button>
<a class="navbar-brand" href="index.html">David Nola</a>
</div>
<!-- Collect the nav links, forms, and other content for toggling -->
<div class="collapse navbar-collapse" id="bs-example-navbar-collapse-1">
<ul class="nav navbar-nav navbar-right">
<li>
<a href="index.html">Home</a>
<br>
<br>
<br>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
<!-- /.navbar-collapse -->
</div>
<!-- /.container -->
<!-- Page Header -->
<!-- Set your background image for this header on the line below. -->
<header class="intro-header" style="background-image: url(img/post-bg.jpg);">
</header><div class="container">
<div class="row">
<div class="col-lg-12 col-lg-offset-0 col-md-10 col-md-offset-1">
<div class="post-heading">
<h1>Death by Global Warming</h1>
<h2 class="subheading">How global warming stands to hurt us directly if current trends persist</h2>
<span class="meta">Posted by <a href="#">David Nola</a> on June 3, 2015</span>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<!-- Post Content -->
<article>
</article><div class="container">
<div class="row">
<div class="col-lg-12 col-lg-offset-0 col-md-10 col-md-offset-1">
<p><br>
</p>
<p>In this blog post I intend to demonstrate a simple model of global
warming derived from the Stephan-Bolzmann law, and use it to build an
interactive model of global warming. The end goal of the model is to
look at one of the most direct results of an increase in global
tempurature: human death due to natural heat. <br>
</p>
<big><span style="font-weight: bold;">Why Global Warming?</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">Why death to natural heat?</span>
</big><br>
<p>Global warming is an oft-discussed topic that has become a
hot-button issue in many political discussions. The politization of
global warming has turned it into a highly controversial issue - but an
issue that is only really controversial in the media, and amongst
laypeople. In the scientific community, there exists a broad scientific
consensus that human inflicted climate change is not only possible, but
highly likely if current trends persist. In fact, no scientific body of
international standing disagrees with this view (<a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2006EO360008/abstract">Source</a>).
All too often in the media, we discuss various sensor measurements and
debate various mechanisms that have affected temperature through
history - but interpretation of the various measurements and theories
we hear have nothing to do with this consensus. These theories and
measurements are set up as a straw man that make global warming appear
much more controversial than it actually is - I'm positive you have
heard of arguments about global heating and cooling cycles by now (Like
<a href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/global-cooling-is-here/10783">this</a>).
</p>
<p>The problem with these sorts of arguments is that the scientific
foundation of global warming doesn't stem from a belief in any sort of
cycle, or any past trend of measurement, incidence of ice age, or
anything else. In fact, the broad scientific consensus really has its
foundation in a simple law of physics you can find in any college level
textbook - the Stephan-Bolzmann Law. Given this law, it is
mathematically demonstrable that an increase in CO2 concentrations in
the atmosphere will increase global tempurature. I intend to
demonstrate that math here (It isn't hard), and show the repercussions
of that math given the current trends of CO2 production relative to CO2
absorption. The earth absolutely has natural processes of heating and
cooling independant of human driven processes,
but when discussing global warming it is really more of an
issue of how much mankind can directly 'move the needle' independant of
any cycle or historical fluctuation - and change global temperatures
from what they would be otherwise. To put it in perspective, the
absolute range of mean temperature in the last five million years as
measured via delta-O-18 (a ratio of two oxygen isotopes that are
produced in different ratios at different temperatures) in geological
core samples is about 10 degrees C from max to min
- so even a single degree of climate change from baseline in a thousand
years due to human processes would still be massively significant.
(Source: <a href="http://lorraine-lisiecki.com/LisieckiRaymo2005.pdf">here</a> for delta-Os, using the relationship that that a delta-O
of 0.22‰ is equivalent to a 1 degree C cooling, ceteris paribus.)</p>
<p>As for why I chose to fixate on death to natural heat, again I want
to stick to the things I can demonstrate on paper in a way any typical
college educated layperson should be able to understand. Natural heat
kills hundreds of people every year in the USA, sometimes even reaching the
thousands. It follows that more heat means more death to heat - a trend
which I can demonstrate using government death statistics on a
state-by-state level. There are any number of theories on the
disastrous consequences of changes in global tempurature - but it is
hard to prove undeniably that any of these disasters will happen. Death
to natural heat, on the other hand, already happens - it is a fact that
natural heat is deadly, so it is a much more concrete consequence that
I can form my model on top of.<br>
</p>
<p style="font-weight: bold;"><big>The Law, and our CO2 Production:</big></p>
The Stefan-Bolzmann law relates the power radiated from a black body to
its temperature. By accounting for a body's emissivity, the model can be
extended to cover grey bodies, such as Earth. The following is the law:<br>
<br>
<br>
<div style="text-align: center;"><big><big>The Stefan-Boltzmann law:</big><br>
(For a black body)</big><small><br>
<br>
</small><big>F = σ*T^4 </big><br>
<br>
Where F is energy emitted in Joules per second per square meter<br>
σ is a constant (5.67037310−8 W m^−2 K^−4)<br>
and T is temperature (in K)<br>
The effective T for the earth is 255K<br>
</div>
<br>
<br>
Now, differentiating the law and solving for dT, we can get a relationship between change in F and change in T as follows:<br>
<br>
<div style="text-align: center;">dF/dT=4*σ* T^3<br>
<br>
dT=dF/(4*σ* T^3 )<br>
<br>
dF as measured by spectroscope for a doubling of CO2 concentration is 3.7 W m^−2 (<a href="http://88.167.97.19/albums/files/TMTisFree/Documents/Climate/New_estimate_of_radiative_forcing_of_well_mixed_greenhouse_gases_myhre_grl98.pdf"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Source</span></a>)<br>
</div>
<br>
Plugging in the given numbers, we reach a dT of 0.984K - essentially
just under 1 degree C. Treating Earth as a gray body and accounting for
emissivity actually doesn't change this number too much - yielding a dT
of around 1.6C instead - which is more in line with IPCC estimates
built using historical observational data (<a style="text-decoration: underline;" href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00382-014-2342-y">Source</a>).
Nevertheless, the 1C number is an oft-used bare minimum estimate in
climate science, so for the sake of building a conservative model, I
will use the 1C number.<br>
<br>
In terms of CO2 production, most estimates put us in the range of 30 gigatons of CO2 annually (<a href="http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=3628#.VXLIpWCm2TA"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Source</span></a>) with 46% of that actually being absorbed by the amosphere (The rest gets absorbed by plants and the ocean - <a style="text-decoration: underline;" href="https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/2013/07/03/how-much-co2-can-the-oceans-take-up/">Source</a>). To put those numbers in perspective, the Earth's atmosphere contains roughly 750 gigatons of CO2 in total (<a href="http://www.epa.gov/aml/revital/cseqapp.pdf"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Source</span></a>). <br>
<big><br>
<span style="font-weight: bold;">The Data on Death to Natural Heat:</span></big>
<br>
<br>I used a government dataset provided by the NCHS (available on NBER <a href="http://www.nber.org/data/vital-statistics-mortality-data-multiple-cause-of-death.html"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">here</span></a>)
that has a complete listing of official state death records. Starting
from around 2000, these records broke out the category 'X30' - which is
death by natural heat. After 2005 the government stopped breaking down
records on a state by state place of occurence level. So I used the
years 2000-2005 to determine deaths to natural heat by state. I then
got data on the average tempurature in each state as well as population
statistics for each state, and came up with a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">micromort</span></a>
exposure vs average state temp graph. I fit an exponential model to the
graph, and use it to extrapolate how average tempurature affects
micromort exposure to heat. The real goal here is to see what sorts of
death tolls we could expect to see in a developed country like the USA
(developing countries fare much worse) at different tempurature levels.<br>
<br>
Supplementary data I used for the model such as tempuratures and populations available <a style="text-decoration: underline;" href="http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004986.html">here</a> and <a style="text-decoration: underline;" href="http://www.currentresults.com/Weather/US/average-annual-state-temperatures.php">here</a>, assuming a .7% population growth rate.<br>
<p style="font-weight: bold;"><big>A Description of the Model:</big></p>The
two sliders available control the rate of increase of CO2 production
year over year, and the rate of CO2 production tapering year over year.<br>
<br>
The production slider is done using percentage change, whereas the
cutback slider is an absolute fraction of that percentage (i.e. a 2.9%
production increase with a .1% cutback assumes a 2.9% production teh
first year, 2.8% the second, and so on). So by the default values, the
model starts at a 2.9% increase year over year (which has been our
historical rate of increase in the past decade), and assumes we taper
that rate of increase down to 0% after 52 years, continuing to reduce
our absolute rate of production after that. This represents a fairly
average case model by IPCC standards.<br>
<br>
Other considerations:<br>
<br>
The model assumes a 1% decay of the 46% absorption rate of the
atmosphere (i.e. the atmosphere absorbs more and more every year as our
production outpaces the earths ability to absorb it). This is because
although the atmosphere absorbs 46% of our production today, as we
produce more the fraction absorbed will not remain the same - if the
earth is absorbing 14 gigatons of carbon into plants and the ocean
today, it is unlikely it will be able to absorb 46 gigatons yearly if
we were to start producing 100 gigatons yearly. <br>
<br>
While it is likely that if we absolutely stopped CO2 production
altogether the Earth may begin to absorb that CO2 back, the model as it
stands does not allow for CO2 levels to decline in an absolute sense
year over year - i.e. the model can drop below the baseline 30 gigaton
production rate if the cutback slider is high enough, but 'negative CO2
production' is not allowed by the model.<br>
<br>
<p><big><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Model:</span></big><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><big><span style="font-weight: bold;">Conclusion:</span></big></p>
<p>In conclusion, human driven climate change is a near certainty at
this point. With some luck, we might catch the earth in a natural
cooling trend, but our rate of carbon production is so high that even a
record breaking cooling cycle wouldn't be able to stop it. At best it
could buy us some time. Short of that, climate change in the next 100
years is inevitable - and as the above model demonstrates - is going to
cause disastrous outcomes even when using conservative numbers. Simply
put, if we continue to inject politics into global warming when the
objective data and the basic laws of the universe imply disastrous
outcomes, we are digging ourselves into a hole we might never be able
to get out of. Human driven climate change is not an opinion, or a
conspiracy, or a political stance, it is a cold hard fact. Public views
on global warming need to change fast, or it will be too late.<br>
<span style="font-weight: bold;"></span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><br>
</p></div>
</div>
</div>
<hr>
<!-- Footer -->
<footer>
</footer><div class="container">
<div class="row">
<div class="col-lg-8 col-lg-offset-2 col-md-10 col-md-offset-1">
<ul class="list-inline text-center">
<li>
<a href="#">
<span class="fa-stack fa-lg">
<i class="fa fa-circle fa-stack-2x"></i>
<i class="fa fa-twitter fa-stack-1x fa-inverse"></i>
</span>
</a>
<br>
</li>
<li>
<a href="#">
<span class="fa-stack fa-lg">
<i class="fa fa-circle fa-stack-2x"></i>
<i class="fa fa-facebook fa-stack-1x fa-inverse"></i>
</span>
</a>
<br>
</li>
<li>
<a href="#">
<span class="fa-stack fa-lg">
<i class="fa fa-circle fa-stack-2x"></i>
<i class="fa fa-github fa-stack-1x fa-inverse"></i>
</span>
</a>
<br>
</li>
</ul>
<p class="copyright text-muted">Copyright © David Nola 2015</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<!-- jQuery -->
<script src="js/jquery.js"></script>
<!-- Bootstrap Core JavaScript -->
<script src="js/bootstrap.min.js"></script>
<!-- Custom Theme JavaScript -->
<script src="js/clean-blog.min.js"></script>
</body></html>