There was no global warming hiatus.

a reply to: Phage

Is there any evidence that CO2 emissions from vulcanism have increased in the past century?

It's a large planet, accurate numbers are not available as far as I can tell.

Is there any indication in the isotopic composition of atmospheric CO2 which indicates that the observed increase is due to vulcanism?

There is some controversy as to the isotopic fingerprinting.

carbon-budget.geologist-1011.net...

Both tectonic and volcanic CO2 are magmatic and depleted in both 13C & 14C. In the absence of statistically significant isotope determinations for each volcanic province contributing to the atmosphere, this makes CO2 contributions of volcanic origin isotopically indistinguishable from those of fossil fuel consumption. It is therefore unsurprising to find that Segalstad (1998) points out that 96% of atmospheric CO2 is isotopically indistinguishable from volcanic degassing. So much for the Royal Society's unexplained "chemical analysis". If you believe that we know enough about volcanic gas compositions to distinguish them chemically from fossil fuel combustion, you have indeed been mislead. As we shall see, the number of active volcanoes is unknown, never mind a tally of gas signatures belonging to every active volcano. We have barely scratched the surface and as such, there is no magic fingerprint that can distinguish between anthropogenic and volcanogenic sources of CO2.

Putting that all aside, C02 levels have been used to villanize the fossil fuel industry.
Rising C02 levels have been used to plant the seeds of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. I'm an optomist, I see a 2 ppm rise per annum in c02 levels as not something to fear, but something that has benefits for humanity.
Do a Cost/Benefit analysis. Fossil fuels are essential for todays society, no way around that.

a reply to: D8Tee

There is some controversy as to the isotopic fingerprinting.

Not really.
Your Bachelor of Science degreed source seems to be confused and unaware of available data.

Sequences of annual tree rings going back thousands of years have now been analyzed for their 13C/12C ratios. Because the age of each ring is precisely known** we can make a graph of the atmospheric 13C/12C ratio vs. time. What is found is at no time in the last 10,000 years are the 13C/12C ratios in the atmosphere as low as they are today. Furthermore, the 13C/12C ratios begin to decline dramatically just as the CO2 starts to increase — around 1850 AD. This is exactly what we expect if the increased CO2 is in fact due to fossil fuel burning.

www.realclimate.org...

Putting that all aside, C02 levels have been used to villanize the fossil fuel industry.

In lieu of evidence for a dramatic increase in vulcanism over the past 100 years, the combustion of fossil fuels would seem to be the best candidate.

Fossil fuels are essential for todays society, no way around that.

Yes, indeed. That doesn't mean they have to be, until we use them up, anyway.

a reply to: Phage

Yes, indeed. That doesn't mean they have to be, until we use them up, anyway.

Raises an interesting question to which I can't seem to find an answer. If we replaced all the energy from Fossil Fuels with so called clean energy, what amount of fossil fuels would still be required to make the fertilizers, lubricants, pesticides, herbicides, detergents, paints, and artificial fibers used in clothing, asphalt and countless other items essential to our everyday life?

a reply to: D8Tee

A lot less.

But those things don't release billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year.

originally posted by: D8Tee
a reply to: Phage

Yes, indeed. That doesn't mean they have to be, until we use them up, anyway.

Raises an interesting question to which I can't seem to find an answer. If we replaced all the energy from Fossil Fuels with so called clean energy, what amount of fossil fuels would still be required to make the fertilizers, lubricants, pesticides, herbicides, detergents, paints, and artificial fibers used in clothing, asphalt and countless other items essential to our everyday life?

Now that would be a great idea! Engineers have talked about burning fossil 'fuels' as like burning Picassos to keep the house warm.

The fraction of petroleum products used to synthesize useful chemicals is small compared to burning:

www.eia.gov...

19.531 million barrels per day in 2015 in USA. The parts of that table which are most consistent with manufacturing and not burning are:

Asphalt and Road oil: 0.343
Petrochemical Feedstocks: 0.331
Lubricants: 0.138
Special Napthas: 0.052

So about 5% roughly goes to non-burning uses, but it may be higher as some elements are unclear. And that use of petroleum of course would not add any significant greenhouse gases, because they are emitted only when the fuels are burned. I consider non burning uses valuable and desirable use of natural resources.

If we didn't burn it, the reserves would last 20 times as long and the climate would be saved.

a reply to: mbkennel

Not a bad idea, but crude oil is not a homogenous mixture. Oil in general is a mixture of different hydrocarbons, ranging from pentane to heavier chains, with some hydrocarbon gases mixed in. Not all molecules are suitable for all purposes. Gasoline, for example, is a mixture of lighter chains like octane; diesel fuel is heavier chains; lubricants are made from still heavier chains; and asphalt/tar is made from the heaviest components. Plastics are made from various components depending on the plastic. If we only used oil for non-combustive purposes, we would have as much fuel as we do today, just waiting to be burned.

Otherwise we would need a way to efficiently splice chains which us not available so far as I know.

TheRedneck

a reply to: mbkennel

If we didn't burn it, the reserves would last 20 times as long and the climate would be saved.

Right. But my house is going to get mighty cold and the lights won't be on, whats to be done about that?

a reply to: D8Tee

Uranium, and stored sun power.

originally posted by: TheRedneck
a reply to: mbkennel

Not a bad idea, but crude oil is not a homogenous mixture. Oil in general is a mixture of different hydrocarbons, ranging from pentane to heavier chains, with some hydrocarbon gases mixed in. Not all molecules are suitable for all purposes. Gasoline, for example, is a mixture of lighter chains like octane; diesel fuel is heavier chains; lubricants are made from still heavier chains; and asphalt/tar is made from the heaviest components. Plastics are made from various components depending on the plastic. If we only used oil for non-combustive purposes, we would have as much fuel as we do today, just waiting to be burned.

The current refineries are optimized for what currently sells. Chemical transformation could easily worry about such problems if petroleum didn't go for transportation.

a reply to: mbkennel

Nothing like a warm bowl of U235 on a cold night.

a reply to: mbkennel

Optimization only goes so far when dealing with fractional distillation. Gasoline and diesel are mixtures of various chains within a certain range, and yes, that range can be adjusted by changing the distillation temperatures. What comes out, however, is also changed. One can only include lighter chains in diesel so much until it burns too fast, or use heavier chains in gasoline before it burns too slow. Different crude oils from different locations also contain different combinations of chains, and thus will give different proportions of the various fuels.

Supply and demand principles are typically the go-to method for managing the market for various fuel grades. If too much diesel compared to gasoline is being sold, the price for diesel rises and the price for gasoline drops.

There is at present no chemical magic wand for turning propane into dodecatane... just like there is no magic wand that turns lead into gold. Rumplestilskin is a fairy tale.

TheRedneck

a reply to: TheRedneck

There is at present no chemical magic wand for turning propane into dodecatane..

One of the largest implementations of Fischer–Tropsch technology is in Bintulu, Malaysia. This Shell facility converts natural gas into low-sulfur Diesel fuels and food-grade wax.

You can use this same process with not just natural gas. Most any hydrocarbon will suffice. The Germans used coal to make synthetic fuel during WW2.

a reply to: mbkennel


Box 9.2 on page 769 of Chapter 9 of IPCC the AR5 Working Group 1 (i.e. the most recent IPCC so-called science report) is here and says

Box 9.2 | Climate Models and the Hiatus in Global Mean Surface Warming of the Past 15 Years

Figure 9.8 demonstrates that 15-year-long hiatus periods are common in both the observed and CMIP5 historical GMST time series (see also Section 2.4.3, Figure 2.20; Easterling and Wehner, 2009; Liebmann et al., 2010). However, an analysis of the full suite of CMIP5 historical simulations (augmented for the period 2006–2012 by RCP4.5 simulations, Section 9.3.2) reveals that 111 out of 114 realizations show a GMST trend over 1998–2012 that is higher than the entire HadCRUT4 trend ensemble (Box 9.2 Figure 1a; CMIP5 ensemble mean trend is 0.21ºC per decade). This difference between simulated and observed trends could be caused by some combination of (a) internal climate variability, (b) missing or incorrect radiative forcing and (c) model response error. These potential sources of the difference, which are not mutually exclusive, are assessed below, as is the cause of the observed GMST trend hiatus.

GMST trend is global mean surface temperature trend.
A “hiatus” is a stop.

It’s not IPCC that “denies” the pause. It’s the folks translating CMIP5 for MSM “journalists” (who cannot comprehend technical writing, or don’t want to) and the MSM talking heads themselves, who, even if someone translated CMIP5’s statement on the “hiatus” to them, ignore such banalities and choose to simply chant the mantra “It’s CO2, and it’s mankind’s fault.”