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Doubling of CO2 Not So Tragic After All?
carvalhao writes "The Register reports on a study from NASA and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that claims that new climate models that account for the effects of increased CO2 levels on plant growth result on a 1.64 C increase for a doubling of CO2 concentrations, a far less gloomy scenario than previously considered."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification stop calling the huge change taking place "global warming" that make it sounds like nice cozy sauna. The effects are much more complicated.
Do you want to know what that is? It's the sound of an evil ghost toy slurping the graveyard fog off of your cheeks!
The stuffing is a nice place! It's warm, it's stuffy, and there's parades all around!
Hopefully reports like this are taken as good news not fuel for the skeptics and deniers. Good news because we have a better chance and perhaps more time at managing with increased CO2
RGdot.com
this whole global warming thing will be revered as one of the greatest follies of the 21st century!!!
Now let's see when Wikileaks publishes the other models taking into account solar activity.
I'm not a climate scientist, but I can tell when someone is bullshitting me.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Was it done in metric, imperial, or a mix of both units? Either way, I think I'll reserve judgment until it's peer reviewed. If only the pundits would do the same the issue would be a lot less politicized and murky.
All of those previous models are crap, but so too is this one most likely crap.
None of the climate models have shown skill at prediction, which is the only objective measure by which to conclude that a model is not crap.
Until they can do that, its crazy to formulate policy based on model results. You wouldnt get in an airplane designed by model results as crappy as these.
"His name was James Damore."
This is great news! As long as nobody chops down all the tropical rainforests, those trees will offset global warming. Surely mankind would not be so stupid as to dump massive amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere while simultaneously destroying the forests. This solves the problem once and for all.
Is that a range between 1 and 64 degrees?
AC makes an excellent point.
Increase in precipitation contributes primarily to increase evapotranspiration rather than surface runoff, consistent with observations, and results in an additional cooling effect not fully accounted for in previous simulations with elevated CO2.
And what if it the precipitations don't increase? Or don't increase enough in areas with vegetation (like mid of the ocean)? Or if the precipitations are high enough to flood and drown the vegetation? What about precipitations during winter?
Yes, yes, yes...the simulation is sooo more precise: it predicts a value with 0.3C lower than the older models. But... errr... what about the confidence levels of the modeling? (not that the older models would have one ready).
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
1.64DegC is still within the error bars for climate sensitivity that have not significantly changed since the 1970's; ie: 3.0DegC +/- 1.5 degC for a doubling of CO2.
The abstract itself claims: "By accelerating the water cycle, this feedback slows but does not alleviate the projected warming, reducing the land surface warming by 0.6C. Compared to previous studies, these results imply that long term negative feedback from CO2 induced increases in vegetation density could reduce temperature following a stabilization of CO2 concentration." [My emphasis] - In other words nature will suck up our excess if we stop pumping into the atmosphere faster than she can cope with it, which has been the assumption for many years.
Disclaimer: I'm not rubbishing the study I think it's a valuable in the effort to reduce the above mentioned error bars. However despite the inference of the summary it does not change the risk assesment one iota.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Give it a week or two at most before something (or someone) refutes it. Remember the magical Arsenic Bacteria NASA discovery? Didn't even last a week.
Yah! Finally! Some is asking the right question. Here are the wrong questions:
1) Is the climate warming or cooling?
2) Are humans responsible?
Here are the right questions:
3) What's going to happen that's so bad we have to "do something about" now?
4) When is that going to happen?
Maybe you need to answer the first two questions to answer the last two but if no-one is asking the last two then we're likely to run off half-cocked and implement political policy that does more harm than good. (see, for example, cap and trade).
How we know is more important than what we know.
Okay, everyone! Pack it in! No need to plan for a green future free of oil dependency! NASA says coal is okay to burn, so let's get to it!
There is no -1 Disagree.
A doubling of atmospheric CO2 partial pressure above a water surface will acidify it by approx. 0.2 pH units. (ref.)
Interesting findings.
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
If the last century is to go by, I doubt we're going to see an increase in vegetation anytime soon. We've already lost 20% of the Amazon since 1970.
2010 NASA claims Arsenic-based DNA discovered
1996 NASA claims fossils found in Martian meteor
in both cases it was determined that NASA lacked the evidence to back up those assertions. should I even bother listening to them anymore?
I don't care if the models are good or if they're bad. This is because I was brought up to believe that every action we take has consequences. Some of those consequences may be bad. Some of those consequences may be good. But something happens as the result of our actions. Now if the models are good and they're predicting nasty consequences, then clearly we must act otherwise people will die and there will be mass migrations of displaced populations that will come knocking at our doors. But some argue that the models are wrong, or that they are inconclusive, or that they are inconsistent with each other. Clearly the scientists don't know what they are talking about, so we can safely ignore them. WRONG. Just because we don't understand the consequences doesn't mean that those consequences don't exist. And if you have the choice between unknown consequences (bad *or* good) and the status-quo, then you should seriously consider the status-quo. After all, our world may be imperfect but at least we know that we can survive in it. Usually.
They have a pretty crazy AGW-denier agenda. Models have long taken into account the effects of plant growth
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
El Reg, your go-to place for judicious pronouncements on climate change, the publication that launched Steven Goddard. That's right, the same Steven Goddard that predicted we should see C02 snow at the South Pole, that Venus is warm because of adiabatic heating, etc.
So, of course, The Register's editors are the very best at judging the significance of climate science findings, right?
Seriously? Were Fox News and World Net Daily unavailable?
I consider it irresponsible for scientists to single-mindlessly point fingers at CO2 as the culprit most worrisome. Recent news articles on the matter of methane now spewing-forth from the melting tundra and ocean depths should at least be mentioned! Methane's 'heat-trapping' effects have been published to be 23 *times* that of CO2 .. !!!
Yes, CO2 could give warming a nudge .. but once started, warming becomes an unstable, perhaps unstoppable cascade where entirely different entities cause much more massive effects!
"There are 11 kinds of people: those who know binary, those who don't, and those who could not care less!"
The main complain about ALL of the is that they ignore solar activity.
Is this as close as we get to a leaked cable showing global warming to be a liberal made conspiracy?
Guess what you moron. The actual actual temperatures recorded during the last few years show a drop in temperature. Why do you think the stop calling it "global warming" and now they claim is "climate change"?
So that didn't happen has a lot of evidence proving your high level of stupidity.
While these authors include CO2 uptake by plants they fail consider the reduction in vegetative cover that can be expected to result from higher soil temperatures and the increasing frequency of drought in many parts of the world. Plants must be able to survive throughout their entire life-cycle, not just during period optimum for growth.
Consequently, the results reached by this study are flawed. This often happens when you get NASA scientists, who have little immediate knowledge of biology beyond their area of expertise, taking measurements from satellites. Remember all the big fuss about life on mars, generated by geological artifact and the recent, the bogus Arsenic based life story? Here we go again.
They won't. They will credit the success of their attempts to lower CO2 with the complete lack of any long term extreme climate change whether it would have happened or not.
(i nearly used the wrong whether there but decided that the pun would make it much too hard to live with myself)
RUGBYRUGBYRUGBY
Obligatory Dogma reference link. Skip to 1:30 if you are rushed.
Because their denialist agenda is so strong that they always get this stuff wrong. 1) Doubling CO2 doesn't mean doubling from the current value of 390. It means doubling from the original pre-industrial value of 275. Hence they are talking about what happens when there are 550 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere, not 780. This is a huge difference from the point of view of how much time we have to stop the warming. 2) The model used in the paper predicts only a 1.94 C warming in the absence of the plant feedback. This is just barely inside the range of what is expected from a CO2 doubling. Most estimates are closer to 3.5C. Of course, changing the model to a more sensitive one (and therefore more likely), might change the plant effect, but if we assume that the plant effect is properly modeled, then it's -0.3C out of 3.5. 3) At any rate, we can't go on for centuries in any case. The authors are talking about what happens *after* the CO2 is stabilized.
Of course the sun has nothing to do with the warming of Earth. I mean, if it did, you'd expect other planets, such as Mars and Venus, to be warming up as well.
It seems simple enough that increased levels of CO2 *would* surely cause a nice increase in plant growth... but on the other hand, the mankind is doing its best to chop down all vegetation from Earth's surface, which pretty much negates the positive effects.
This is pure politics. They found that "We're all clearly going to die" is not a palatable argument for attracting boosters, as we have pretty much moved past the point of arranging a political solution on the previous timeline, and the end point was extinction. So now they start promoting studies that move that "end of the world" deadline forward a few years later than was previously said. Hansen must be having kittens.
But this means they had the studies, or the studies were in progress that were hinting at this, as were the theories that were never mentioned, and they knew it, and promoted the end of the world stuff as "factual" and "unquestionable" because it was seen as a better driver for action.
Badly managed, political fallback position. I call bs.
Be that as it may, the level of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere has risen from about about 280 parts per million before the industrial revolution, to about 380 ppm at present. The burden of proof is on those who believe that that's not going to have a noticeable impact to make their case, and if their conclusions are at all in doubt, the path of prudence is to not rock the boat, and do what we can to cut back on CO2 emissions.
does anyone have access to the original research paper referenced in this article?
Seems to me it's a complaint that requires extrodinary evidence since it's trivial to point to the IPCC forcing graph showing the widely accepted values for the main forcings used in climate models. (Solar activity is the short bar second from the right).
You and the GP both made what is in my opinion is a bullshit claim that has been parroted from psueo-scientific propoganda sites who's only purpose in life is to spread anti-science FUD. If (as it appears) you can't back up the claim with anything other than bluster and bald assertions then the best scientifically motivated course of action would be to STFU until you have at least attempted to apply some self-skepticisim to your extrodinary claims.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Talk "off the record" with any seasoned international airline pilot. They will tell you that just in the last 10 years thunderstorm clouds over the oceans are getting worse and worse, they keep reaching higher and wider. One of the contributing factors to the recent Air France A330 crash over the Atlantic was thunderstorm clouds (Cumulunimbus). Even when aircrafts don't fall out of the sky, they spend 30+ minutes going around huge thunderstorms that weren't this huge 10 years ago.
We need to cap CO2 emissions right now. There's more than the usual global warming threat from rising levels in worldwide pollution.
China is poisoning their land and the worlds air with their coal addiction. They're starting to use some solar and wind power, but not nearly enough. Lots of land that once were forest is now desert.
Do you thing that the yearly fires in California and Australia are normal ? Every year those seem to get worse and worse. And they end up releasing even more CO2 into the air.
Drought in Africa ?
We need more Nuclear power plants that use reprocessed nuclear waste. If the US did what France does with nuclear waste, there wouldn't be much of a nuclear waste issue. ...
Nuclear fission power is a 50 year stop gap until either nuclear fusion takes off or wind/solar/geo/tidal power takes over. Even then some level of nuclear power will be needed to buffer us from moments of low wind activity, nighttime/bad weather to solar,
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The effects are much more complicated.
Complicated is the word people switch to when they realize they didn't know anything about what was happening after all, when someone was telling them so.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Good news because we have a better chance and perhaps more time at managing with increased CO2
Manage what? With the new predictions it doesn't even get as warm as it once was. There is no runaway effect.
So instead of rushing to solve a problem that no longer exists, we can make a rational cost-effective transition to alternative energy sources, which is what we should have been doing all along.
Your statement is exactly what is wrong with any large organization, once in place it feels it must "manage" something even if the best course of action is to close down that group.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I find it strange that people think the scientific method is based on a philosophy or ideology.
Why? It's the only example of "science" anyone has seen for quite some time. It's what has been implied the scientific method is, so there should be little surprise when people start thinking ideoogy is part of it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There is nothing absolutely nothing in the paper that suggests that the authors have studied any plants at all. They merely extrapolate an effect based on some very large assumptions that plants everywhere can be represented by a few simple parameters in their model. A look at most of the arid regions of the world, demonstrate that these assumptions are wildly optimistic. Ground cover in these regions is shrinking dramatically due to lack of soil moisture.
Sure you're not confused? "Fucking truth" is what we want to find out in a totally different story in the news nowadays.
by this one can only mean "inconvenient truths". This what the deniers hate the most and why they are so eager to jump all over Al Gore.
I suspect with republicans coming in to help fund more denial research, we will have a great "debate", but the easy to predict sophism won't do much to alter the reality that the planet is getting hotter as a result of forcing by carbon dioxide and as the temperatures in the arctic continue to increase, methane as well.
If the outcome is negative the consequences are severe. The CIA agrees: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121352495?
So are you willing to bet the lives of your family? Suppose all the offspring of your immediate family are wiped out and you have no direct descendants? You good with that? Or are you thinking that you live in the first world, and only a bunch of dark skinned people who live near the equator will be in trouble?
So what is the cost of moving away from fossil fuels? More technological development requiring more basic R&D spending? Building solar/wind/ocean based power plants that require more local jobs? Less deaths in coal mines? Less worldwide dependence on politics in the middle east? Except for currently entrenched (and inefficient and incompetent) fossil fuel energy producers who is going to loose anything?
This is one of the things that really bugs me about the do nothing/know nothing climate deniers and skeptics. (Skeptic in this case is a weaker version of a do nothing attitude.) Moving away from fossil fuels has short term benefits and long term benefits that have nothing to do with climate change. So why fight against it? Or do you like being held hostage to religious strife in the middle east, or watch the morons at BP and Halliburton do a gigantic uncontrolled ecological experiment in the Gulf of Mexico? Perhaps you are a major stockholder in Exxon/Mobile, which has been one of the most profitable companies in history http://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&channel=s&hl=en&source=hp&q=exxon+profit&btnG=Google+Search#q=exxon+profit+history&hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=s&prmd=iv&tbs=tl:1&tbo=u&ei=1o8ATcW0D4fEsAOhvICwCw&sa=X&oi=timeline_result&ct=title&resnum=11&sqi=2&ved=0CHkQ5wIwCg&fp=1441ab651b23d901 Outside of personal greed I see no motovation to keep on the way we are going.
Why is Snark Required?
Who is going to ever believe anything again NASA says after the stunts they've recently pulled?
Just want to verify that everyone who is full-on convinced about the negative effects of climate change is a vegetarian. At this point it's essentially indisputable that eating meat -- particularly beef, but all meat due to second order effects aside from methane (increased fuel usage for the additional grain required to grow animals, etc) -- is a significant factor in greenhouse gas production. If every American became vegetarian, the reduction of greenhouse gasses would be greater than swapping out every SUV for an electric car. So, those of you pilloring consumers, government, or industry -- you've already made the switch, right? Cause you wouldn't want to be hypocritical.
Due to circumstances beyond my control, I am master of my fate and captain of my soul.
During the Permian concentrations of methane, another potent greenhouse gas went way up and the earth warmed dramatically. The result was that about 95% of all organisms on the planet went extinct. At least the good news is that humans, who are at the top of the food web, and hence dependent upon those organisms below them will be among the first to go.
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I think I'll wait for a second opinion by a non-US research entity.
1. The reporting rag, The Register, has a minor infestation of deniers, and is a fairly low brow online tabloid, so ignore the article and focus on the paper itself.
2. Some simple maths. First scientists estimate was +2C, first denier estimate was +0C (or negative change in some cases). This paper makes the case for a +1.6C change over sea and a +1.3C change over land, so the scientists were clearly more right than the deniers in the first place
3. This is only one paper. Lets wait to see how this plays out in the literature before deciding this has rocked the field of climate science, please.
4. I will try to access the full paper when I get into university later today, but there is no mention in the abstract of other limiting factors to plant growth. That might make this an optimistic estimate (or more charitably, a lower limit)
Basically, this is just science as usual. Climate change has not been 'debunked', the register is overreacting, and there is no need for anyone to be a complete Dellingpole about this.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
...then this might be good news.
If we don't slow down the rate we are clear-cutting rain forests, it's just a academic debate over what caused our impending doom the most.
Welcome our future posthuman overlords. Specially their archeologists, that will be rotfling when they find this discussion.
Yes. The precautionary principle v the law of unintended consequences. Both apply to either side of the debate, believe it or not, so it's not really the kind of argument you can come to a conclusion about.
You know, we don't actually know *what* causes ice ages (and no it's not the gulfstream) ... the long-term graphs seem to indicate pretty strongly that one is indeed coming :
http://www.landcareresearch.co.nz/research/globalchange/images/temp-001.gif (source http://www.landcareresearch.co.nz/research/globalchange/climate_change.asp)
I mean the graph has jumped 10 degrees downward 10 times like clockwork every 100000-110000 years or so. Seems logical that it will in fact jump again, doesn't it ? Last time it jumped was about 108000 years ago. So it's pretty much bound to jump again. And I repeat, we do *not* know what causes this, and the temperature drops like a stone (weather apparently goes from normal to ice age conditions, meaning permafrost in the northern sahara, and a *very* white Christmas in southern Mexico, while Florida becomes an ice sheet, just to give an idea how extreme this is, in less than 10 years). That's 10 years, triggered by some unknown event, after which America less inhabitable than Greenland. Even the deserts of the middle east will be cold conditions, and harsh winters, at best.
Of course the error margin on these data are like 500-1000 years, which is a lot of time. But while we don't know why or how, *something* is going to trigger an ice age, pretty soon now. But that's "pretty soon" in "very likely in the next 2000 years" ...
You've never read the IPCC reports, have you. "Negative feedback loops are just not mentioned" ???? They're mentioned ALL OVER THE PLACE in the IPCC reports and in the papers they draw from!
Just because you don't like the result, why MUST you lie out your back teeth like this?
THIS is the reason why deniers (like you) are wrong: you make shit up because you don't like what the truth is.
A 95% error bound merely means that the author thinks, based off several (possibly) sound assumptions, that what we are saying could arise by chance in 5% of cases.
If the graph has datapoints that fit within a 95% bounded line then all you can say is "this data didn't arise by chance in 19 out of 20 cases if the datapoints lie within this bounded path". Typically this 95% probability isn't per point, i.e. when you look at the graph you can't take the fact that each point lies within the bound as repeated 95% probabilities correctly turning out which would combine to a much higher confidence.
In the hopes that this helps,
Richard Feynmann has a lot to say about this, and is well worth listening to.
There's nothing like a climate debate to revamp people's passion for scientific scepticism. Oddly it doesn't seem to happen with other topics. Let's recap:
Burnhard (1031106) calls ocean acidification a "ridiculous Green bandwagon" and lumps it in with other "idiotic claims". Modded interesting.
Rockoon (1252108) states that "All of those previous models are crap, but so too is this one most likely crap.". Modded insightful.
Mashiki (184564) lets us know that "Models are garbage, even hindcasted.". Modded interesting.
Let me add further scepticism: Unless you cite a paper that you published in a peer-reviewed journal to back up your claim, you don't get to dismiss models that have been accepted in peer-reviewed journals.
My UID is prime. Hah!
The climate change thing is sold as a whole package, a "You believe all of this or you are a DENIER!" kind of thing. However it is really a series of arguments, and at each level someone might have questions. Even some of the basics there can be some questions about. I mean the most basic is "The Earth is getting warmer, outside of any currently known cycles and over a longer period of time." Ok, pretty strong evidence here, but still there is things to look in to. The temperature recording stations have not been controlled and monitored the way we might hope, the record is not as accurate as we would like. Probably nothing that affects any results but in good science you don't write shit off just because it might be inconvenient. That doesn't mean "Look we found a potential inaccuracy, throw it all out!" but it also doesn't mean that questions shouldn't be looked in to.
A bigger things to question would be all the dire predictions, that a couple degrees in temperature rise leads to massive problems, massive loss of life and so on. This really doesn't have any good evidence and is pretty close to fear mongering. Yes I'm aware there are computer models, appreciate that means nothing. You can make a computer model to say whatever you want, a model is only good if it accurately models things, if it has proven predictive power. There is a lot to question in the "Warming means our DOOM," part of the argument.
An even bigger question would be that in the case that is correct, that cutting emissions is the thing to do. The reason is best as we can tell the Earth has been much warmer, and colder, in the past than it is now. So real good chance that happens again, to think that we are in some magic time of stability where all variation has stopped would be extremely silly. Thus sooner or later, no matter what we do, the temperature will almost certainly shift multiple degrees. If that is truly going to be deadly to us, then the concentration needs to not be on what is causing this change, but how to survive such a change. It does no good to make drastic cuts to emissions and stop this change (presuming that it would indeed stop this change) only to then get hit with a change that humans DIDN'T cause and thus can't stop.
You can very well accept many of the fundamental ideas (like that the Earth is getting warmer) and yet still question the conclusions and policy propositions. This idea that it is part and parcel, that you have to accept EVERYTHING, all the premises, all the conclusions and all the policy without question or your are a DENIER is false. It also leads one to question what the hell is going on. A student of human behaviour immediately recognizes that tactic: That of a con man. That is how people peddling fake crap, religions, and other things that don't stand up to scrutiny do it. They present their show and shout down anyone who questions it at all. They attack people who question because they know their argument does not stand up to questioning. Only blind acceptance of the entire package is acceptable, anything else draws hostility.
As such one may wonder why this is done with regards to climate change. It makes some of us nervous.
Since 1975 global temperatures have risen 0.6C and CO2 concentration has gone from 335ppm to 390ppm. The results in the paper don't match reality.
sigh, when you speak about temperature changes of 10 degreas in any direktion, it's evidence of you not knowing anything about the subject of climate change. When you start talking about changes in maximum couple of degrese celsius or kelvin or just fractions of a degree. Then I know that you have some creditiblity.
But I give you that, you've realised that the "ice age" was a sudden event and not a slow process that took centuries or even millenias to form. So in that sence global warming has very little to do whit ice ages or hot periods at all, as this is slow processes. But Mexico with artic conditons is an exaguration too.
Much more likely this will be used as justification to turn coal-fired electricity production up to 11.
A potential issue is the rate of deforestation the model assumes. The rate of deforestation is unpredictable, especially when companies hack into Brazil's rainforest management system:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/12/hackers-plunder/
But any news of decreased damage from climate change is good news, since mankind is entirely incapable of taking action against anything that isn't at our doorstep in terms of time and/or space. If that damage isn't as great, maybe there will be more time for humanity to act between the time when Earth becomes uncomfortable and when it becomes uninhabitable.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
No, you prove AGW when you put another blanket on. After all, the sheet stops convection from your body, therefore that OUGHT to be enough. Adding blankets that are cooler than your body won't make you warm unless extra CO2 causes a similar effect, since there's already plenty to block surface radiation, the denialidiots like yourself insist there's no warming effect left, but if so, then once you have a shirt on or a sheet on your bed, you have no need for a duvet or blanket: all the convection you're losing without it is already blocked!
"Many other factors go into global temperature - plant absorption of CO2"
Goes in to the models. If more CO2 goes in, where is the extra mass of plants?
Oh, we're cutting them all down faster than they can grow?
Bugger.
And if it's going in to plants, why are CO2 levels rising?
"solar output"
Already in the models, but solar output is going down, whilst temperatures are going up.
"etc"
Etc what? The two you've put in are already taken care of.
"that mean that changes in CO2 could go with, against, or independent of global temperature."
Yes, Mojab Latif has already said that on short timescales you will see this, but the TREND is upward. Of course, Mojab was reported by denialidiot talking heads as saying "we're going in to a 30 year cooling period, at least!" (yes, really, go to greenman's crock of the week where they play two idiot talking heads saying just this).
So it's complicated, but those complications are in the models and your final point is EXACTLY WHY "it's cold this winter" is not disproof of AGW.
But the trend is UP.
THERE is the proof of AGW.
Read Bacon, Newton, and Descartes. The "new science" (what we would call the scientific method) was first developed as an extension of the "new philosophy" which wa sitself the application of the theology of the Reformation applied to epistemology and metaphysic.
What you describe is not the scientific method but the basic process of trial and error. Approaching science in that way is the difference between a programmer and a computer scientist, between an alchemist and a chemist.
"Climate change" is such a clever slogan because climate, almost by definition, is and has always been changing. So far, so good. It should be unsurprising, however, that skepticism is evoked when any idea, especially a scientific theory, is so passionately embraced by political movements spawned to both advance the theory and "solve" the expected ill. Yes, propaganda can be targeted for good or ill intent, but when it becomes so loud, obnoxious, and ubiquitous that it attempts to discourage all legitimate debate, intentions matter little regardless how pure and saintly the proponents. Sorry to say I just come equipped with activist warning lights. When it comes to the depth of our understanding of systems so complex and paradoxically subtle as climate, ham-handed political "solutions" are far more likely to spawn unknown and unintended consequences than mitigation to ascribed risks.
So it invalidates this study?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100503161435.htm
That can not be right, because it was scientifically proven.
The scientific method is based on methodological materialism, an empirical epistemology, and certain metaphysical views.
We moderns grew up with these presumptions as part of our lives so we generally don't notice them or count them as ideologies.
It's kind of like the way that no one thinks they have an accent until they move somewhere where everyon talks just a bit differently.
My overclock is already teetering on the edge...
while Florida becomes an ice sheet
You exaggerate to the point of absurdity. Florida never saw glaciers. There's no evidence of large scale glaciation past about the middle of the US (Iowa or so).
I've been reading through several comments...
What I'd like to know (and have wanted to know for a while) is how much data** do we actually have about this stuff? By that I mean, how many points on the globe have been measured, how well distributed are they (not just clumped together in a few small areas), how many readings a year are taken, how many years back they have been taken, etc.
As was pointed out with London possibly having a 3rd white Christmas... that's ONE location on earth. Further, do we have data going back farther than 50 years? If so, what are the answers to the questions above for that 50 years? Then go back 100 years. Then 150, 200, etc. While I've not looked into it, I doubt we have accurate data going back 200 years or more in the amounts we have nowadays or in the distribution we (may) have.
If we don't have data going back sufficiently far enough then how can we say this is definitely not part of a natural cycle? Further, even if something we're doing is having an effect, how can we presume that the earth doesn't have sufficient mechanisms in place to self-correct in time despite any increase in CO2, GHG, or other chemicals from mankind? Yes, I get it that sitting on our hands may be a problem if it really is rising and continuing to rise without a self-correct mechanism from the earth (or even the solar system for that matter). But, it's extremely hard for me to take people like Al Gore or other alarmists seriously when they're declaring the destruction of the earth and others (with more knowledge, experience, and authority) are saying no, it's not that bad. It's even harder when the alarmists' solution has that eery ring of global redistribution of wealth and communism. Yes, I'm bringing politics into the discussion, but that's what Al Gore and others have done, so I think it is fair game to discuss the political motivations of those crying out for change in industrial practices and social changes "for the greater good".
** Where data is absolute temperature, along with what else was going on at the time... no rain, tons of rain, storms, other natural factors.
Thank god we've got brilliant ACs who see through this science ruse. This is just like that bullshit about gravity being the cause of things dropping to the ground, but some things like balloons and steam rise --what's with that? Obviously science is completely made up.
Ask me about my sig!
That doesn't link to glaciers increasing. So you're already wrong. We need something other than that link.
PS it would be a good idea to make it a link to some scientific organisation that measures the glaciers, as opposed to a partisan blogroll.
"{Amsterdam is also having its second white C in a row "
Er Isn't "Sinterklaas" called Santa Claus in English? Most of the illustrations of the jolly old guy who comes down the chimney suggest caucasian origins. Still in these days of political correctness and more people of colour in europe I spose that might not be allowed. Of course since he lives at the north pole then he would more likely be Inuit than african or asian.
Don't mean to troll, but... Those who say that kind of thing are people who live in relatively cold places. Come live in really warm places and see how much of a difference global warming is making.
"I decided I could write something better than everything out there in two weeks. And I was right." - Linus Torvalds
How about dogs and cats living together? Any evidence of that? Ice sheets in Florida don't concern me. Dogs and cats living together, though... end times, man. End times.
i dont understand why people are considered "green or not" and not includes skeptics and disbelievers.....what about people like me? people who dont really care, being that this wont affect me in my lifetime give me 1 reason why i should care(and no not FOR THE CHILDREN, im not a politician.)
Also this is not flamebait or a troll, i honestly just want to know why people care so much
if we fuck up the earth bad enough itll bite back and fuck us up.
and the world goes on.
let people be stupid, if they dont notice something extreme changing, then let natural selection take its course.
plus i would pay money to see a vegan in an ice age.
-Noc
There's a few problems with your statement:
1) "Climate change" isn't a slogan, it's the name of the problem. A slogan would be "More cars, less land".
2) While the climate does change naturally, it changes naturally on a much slower time scale than we are currently experiencing. That's why scientists usually talk about Anthropogenic Climate Change.
3) There are political movements spawned to fix many different problems, and all of them provide "solutions" for the expected ills of the problem. It wouldn't be a political movement if it didn't propose solutions to the problem. This is expected.
4) Skepticism is good, and thus many people like to think or pretend that they're skeptics. It's usually pretty easy to spot the people who only claim to be skeptics because they do not critically examine their own evidence only the evidence of others.
5) At some point debate has to end, there is literally no benefit to having to argue every day over whether 2+2=4 and whether gravity will continue working tomorrow.
6) Ham-handed political solutions always spawn unknown and unintended consequences. The benefits of taking action have to weighed against the risks.
Most of the world would rather be talking about the benefits and drawbacks of different solutions to the problems posed by climate change, however, as long as the so-called debate over whether the problem actually exists it's difficult to have a rational discussion about what to do about the problem. Upton Sinclair wrote in one of his books: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!", and the debate over climate change has certainly demonstrated the profoundity of that statement. At some point, the debate has to end, regardless of how many people would rather that it continue until after they have retired and their salaries are no longer dependent on the problem not being addressed. There will always be a question of how much evidence is enough.
That's something you might need to ask yourself. What would actually convince you that climate change represents a danger to the lives of millions, possibly billions of people?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
It would appear the Register boffins don't like a non-cataclysmic scenario.
"Climate change" isn't a slogan, it's the name of a problem.
Except the problem was previously called "Global Warming" and when it became clear that maybe that wasn't panning out, "Global Warming" morphed to "Climate Change".
That change looks like a problem called "politically expedient."
How many years ago was it that Gore said "The science is settled"?
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
First, please call it climate change. The term global warming suggests the wrong outcomes. Second, more CO2 may increase plant growth. This is nothing new and has been discussed for some time. There are also publications showing that the growth of plants is not that much stimulated by and increase of CO2 as expected. So this not necessarily a completed discussion in this area of research.
Also CO2 increase means automatically oceans going acid which has a negative effect on plant/plankton growth in the seas. The proposed extension of planted areas through a higher CO2 level is merely an assumption not a proof. However, it is true that at least the climate models from the last decade did not incorporate the "good" vegetation models. But still the results of this work are more in a propositional state.
Furthermore they state (in the abstract) that the increase of CO2 does not have that big effect on the climate than proposed in previous models. As they do not say all previous models, but reference (some) previous studies, there is a missing reference (for us readers). And even though. The system is still increasing its energy level.
This still results in an arctic meltdown, this still does not include men made plant reduction, it does not change the negative effects on the seas and we will still run out of oil. So even if they are totally right and the assumption made by /. are true, than we still hit the wall, but may be a little later. Still a good choice to use the brakes.
Problem is when all you have is a hammer, everything's a nail. "Climate Change" advocacy comes chiefly from the left, and therefore the nail, predictably, is more socialism.
The fact that you cannot complete a single sentence without multiple spelling and grammatical errors does not give me any confidence that you should be listened to either.
The only reason "global warming" didn't "pan out" is that there are too many idiots around who call BS every time it snows because they can't comprehend that the warming is on average. What "global warming" really means is that you're adding more energy to the system and thereby increasing volatility -- hot places get hotter, cold places get colder, storms get stronger, droughts get drier. It's like how the surface of a glass of water gets less flat when you shake it. But you dumbasses just don't fucking get it, so it got renamed "climate change" to try to help you understand.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Sorry, but what you've got there is called "spin".
The IPCC has has climate change in it's name since 1988.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
What would actually convince you that climate change represents a danger to the lives of millions, possibly billions of people?
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that TFA probably won't.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
We do know what causes ice ages. The principal cause is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovich_cycles
Small ice ages can be caused by various reasons, but the cause for the large ones is long known.
Also, look at the time scale. Milankovich cycles take _ages_.
Global warming is occurring. But more heat is simply more energy, which manifests itself in more ways than hotter average temperatures.
Heat rises, creating low pressure zones that suck in cold air from other areas. So the additional energy trapped on Earth doesn't all go directly into raising the thermostat, but also into increasing winds and storms and general "mixing" of the atmosphere. So yeah, temperatures in many places will actually drop as cold air is sucked over them... and this will also decrease the "average global warming" observed at the thermostat. A lot of the science has indicated that the temperature of polar regions has raised the most, and melting ice will raise sea levels and decrease reflected solar energy. But no one really lives up there, and slightly raised sea levels just mean more damage to coastal areas during storms, so most blame will go to the hurricanes and typhoons anyway.
So global warming might be the cause, but climate change is the effect that we're really worried about. And anthropogenic global warming is that part of it that is actually our fault. But like most environmental regulation, like the clean air acts in 1956 after a couple extra thousand people died from London smog, I doubt nothing will be done about it until a lot of death / damage is sustained. So the only question we need to pose to the AGW deniers is how much damage / death is enough for them to go along with the emissions controls.
It would be nice if it was handled more proactively, like the ozone hole in the 70s, where we got CFCs regulated before the ozone hole over the antarctic grew over populated areas. But if people want to push their luck, I don't see why we can't just tell them to go ahead and pollute, and hold a section of their profits in escrow to pay for the eventual cleanup.
While the climate does change naturally, it changes naturally on a much slower time scale than we are currently experiencing
Factually wrong.
A common error with global warming proponents is to repeat mantras they've been told but never verified.
And in the seventies the big scare was Global Cooling. The Smithsonian still has a display up demonstrating this danger. Explain that one.
Those who are skeptics just don't believe that we know enough. Sorry. I don't believe the models are accurate, and this study confirms it. Not that I necessarily believe this study either...but it highlights that we don't really know enough. We can't model something this big yet.
As for the evidence...Sorry, but it's week. Yes some temperatures have changed. However -
1. That's not surprising or alarming in and of itself.
2. The method of acquiring the data is wholly unprofessional. Temperature readings from airports are not accurate. Or cities. And the "compensation" factors that are used are fudge factors with no basis in reality. If you remove readings from "suspect" regions, the picture is not nearly as grim as what has been shouted about.
I neither confirm nor deny the AGW hypothesis. I believe the science has to get better before taking a position.
And for those who really do care - please don't be so obnoxious. PETA doesn't do animals any good because they've lost credibility by acting like crackpots. Environmentalists are at risk of ruining their own (good) cause in the same manner. Let's not be abrasive, please?
Well, the problem was "Ice Age, we're all doomed, give me political power" when I was in school, "Global Warming, we're all doomed, give me political power" circa 2000, and "Climate Change, we're all doomed, give me political power" now. I give it ten more years to complete the cycle.
Technically, we're currently in an Ice Age now. I get so tired of people getting that wrong. The Earth shifted from "hothouse" to "icehouse" conditions about 23 million years ago (meaning you can find ice at the poles). The present (Quaternary) ice age started about 2.5 million years ago. We're currently in an inter-glacial period in the Quaternary ice age, but glacial conditions should return soon enough (on a geological time scale), unless by some quite unlikely coincidence the Quaternary ice age has ended.
Human activity is just not on the same scale as these changes (which also likely means the feedback mechanisms that keep CO2 in line don't act in human timescales).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
4) Skepticism is good, and thus many people like to think or pretend that they're skeptics. It's usually pretty easy to spot the people who only claim to be skeptics because they do not critically examine their own evidence only the evidence of others.
Interesting statement, but really it doesn't support the position you believe it does.
You have a red shirt. I have a blue shirt. You say your shirt is a color other than red. At this point, it doesn't matter what color I say my shirt is (correct or incorrect), as for starters, what you're saying is factually incorrect. Basically, if we're both wrong, who cares. If you're wrong, then basically we're all good.
Better spelling and grammatical errors than the factual errors he was responding to.
farmers almanac (85 percent accurate over the centuries) started saying the world was going to cool in 2009, due to their solar sunspot monitoring.
they have repeated it each year in their publication.
agreed, global warming is a red herring.
but doubtless without a doubt we are soiling this planet in a myriad of ways.
the world could have 100 percent employment just by ordering it all cleaned up.
that extra carbon will help with the plant growth now that we are losing the sun
1) Climate change isn't a name of a problem. It's a fact of life. The climate would change whether or not people were even here. Needs a better name than that.
"There are political movements spawned to fix many different problem.." one of the issues is that some of the groups that suggest solutions have been offering the same solution since before this issue was on the radar: an end to free markets, consumption, and a general reduction in economic activity. Those individuals are not worth listening too. I have a friend who, when discussing some of the issues with current climate change pushes, actually made the argument that the proposed solution is good regardless. Some of the supporters of various solutions are being opportunistic rather than being created to deal with the issue.
On the other hand, I'm sure the KKK agrees with me that 2+2=4. I'm not going to dismiss it as a concern just because I dislike or mistrust some of the people advocating solutions. What really puts me strongly in the skeptic camp is that when I checked the GHCN and USHCN, the adjsutments have a warming trend of their own. The USHCN shows a similar patter, with a warming trend greater than the trend in the raw data. As the USHCN adjusted values are used in all of NOAA's models, that's both relevant and deeply suspicious...
"Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
Well, the problem was "Ice Age, we're all doomed, give me political power" when I was in school
Frankly, that's simply not true.
Human activity is just not on the same scale as these changes (which also likely means the feedback mechanisms that keep CO2 in line don't act in human timescales).
You are correct here in that human activity is not on the same scale as the changes that cause ice ages. Human activity is faster and stronger. We're not heading back into an ice age any time soon.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
How dare you question the dogma of the one true religion?
Frankly, I don't think you've explained that very well, and you've forgotten one important possible scenario. What if I say my shirt is green... and it is green? But you can't see that because you're red-green color-blind?
Of course what you may not have understood my position: You actually need to examine the behavior of people who claim to be skeptics. It's easy and popular to make the claim, it's much harder to live up to it.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
"Compared to previous studies, these results imply that long term negative feedback from CO2‐induced increases in vegetation density could reduce temperature following a stabilization of CO2 concentration."
I encourage more attention to the last phrase in the last sentence of the abstract of the report (http://europa.agu.org/?view=article&uri=/journals/gl/gl1023/2010GL045338/2010GL045338.xml&t=gl,bounoua). It doesn't appear to even ameliorate the temperature change until after CO2 stabilizes.
Mike O'Donnell
Mike O'Donnell http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~odonnell/
"it's not a slogan" false.
"when it's natural it's slow" false again.
"political movements are created to address an issue" false. political movements are created to keep sheeple occupied. kind of in the same way a dog licks himself.
"i'm skeptical of my own assumptions, but I don't think you're skeptical of yours" and false yet again. you're on a roll buddy. why don't you shove something up your ass, at least we'd be entertained.
"at some point the debate has to end, and the debate ends with me winning" you're a lying goddamn piece of shit. the debate never ends you fucking moronic twit.
and your last comment about ham solutions.... and the rest of your platitude filled tripe ...doesn't even deserve a rebuttal.
Notice the scale on the graph. Its in 50,000 year increments. Notice that the peaks of glacial advance and retreat correspond roughly with perhaps some time lag to those on the CO2 graph. Notice that carbon dioxide has gone up from about 280 to about 380 in a period of only 150 years, nearly as much as it took under pre-human activity about 95,000 years to accomplish. Notice that carbon dioxide is going up, not down as would be required to bring on that big rapid ice age you jump to the unjustified conclusion is just right around the corner. The issue has never been whether or not the climate would change, rather the rate and the direction of that change.
One should also notice that the graph only goes back about 400,000 years. Although there was glaciation in the past, indeed nearly the entire earth may have been frozen in the Cryogenian (about 680 MYA) the kind of "regular" glacial advances and retreats only mark Pleistocene times. One has to go back a long time in geological history to find extensive glaciation before the Pleistocene.
As far as peer-reviewed science has been able to establish, the concentration of a carbon dioxide, well and long known to have a warming effect in the atmosphere, has never, ever gone up as quickly as it has in the past 150 years, at a time there has been no appreciable deviations of solar output beyond its typical cyclic patterns, save an episode between 1645 and 1720 (Maunder Minimum), nor has volcanism been any more or less active than we might expect. Indeed during your typical modern year (2003) volcanoes produced about 200 million cubic tons of carbon dioxide, whereas burning of fossil fuels accounted for about 26.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide. Although equatorial volcanoes can have a tremendous effect on short term weather they have seldom produced extended climatic anomaly over the course of hundreds of years (extensive outflows on the mid-Atlantic ridge about 280 MYA, the extrusion of the Deccan traps 68 MYA, and certain Siberian outflows may have been exceptional). Consequently, its not hard to understand why climatologists have coined the term "hockey stick" to account for the result.
There is no evidence that Florida was ever glaciated in any of the Pleistocene glacial periods or that it took only 10 years or so for it to be under an ice sheet. Florida wasn't emergent in the Cryogenian so its state at that time, would be largely irrelevant.
If you are going to make stuff up and get the ignorant to believe you, you might at least take the trouble to get a few of the most evident facts right. But beyond trying to pull the wool over the eyes of fools, what you are actually advocating that it is perfectly alright by you if life on planet earth for their children and grandchildren gets pretty bleak.
Not surprisingly, people have studied this considerably and don't entirely agree. But basing predictions off of a graph with all of five peaks and no resolution to speak of is unwise. The variability in spacing between the 100 kyr glacial cycles, about 10 kyr, is roughly as long as all of human history. The climate change labelled "global warming" is interesting on a time scale of about 100 years. A 100-year timespan wouldn't even show up on that graph. So, "we're due for another ice age any time now" is perhaps true if thousands or tens of thousands of years qualifies as "any time now". They're entirely different time scales.
The Wikipedia on Ice Ages, incidentally, has a brief and more or less accurate discussion on different predictions for how long our current interglacial period may last. It's anywhere from a thousand years to 58,000 or so.
Frankly, I don't think you've explained that very well,
LOL. I never said I covered all possible cases.
You seemingly, completely missed the point. You state some should critically examine other's evidence but fail to review their own. The point is, if their own evidence is in fact bad, there isn't a need to examine anyone else's evidence.
The simple fact is, a lot of "evidence" is factually bad and completely based on either bad science or worse, science for purchase. Furthermore, a lot of this science it entirely based on climate simulation models. Surprise! A new model no completely contradicts every other model. Which means, if those original models were worth anything, they would have already identified the problem long ago.
Long story short, most of the "facts" asserted by people are in fact, complete bullshit. Even the basic temperature readings are in question and frequently fall outside the margin of error. Furthermore, the more we study, the more we learn the climate is a far more complex system than we ever realized and have yet many more variables which are not and have never been accounted for in our models.
The simple fact is, anyone who says we have little more than an inkling of how the climate works, let alone what's going on, is an egotistical, clueless, idiot.
At the end of the day, it really doesn't matter if you "believe" in climate change or not
As a species, we have two options - forget about climate change to protect some rich fat-cats in the oil industry, keep driving our huge cars around because trains and busses are just so terribly inconvenient, the world runs out of fossil fuels (but not before we destroy our environment exploiting every last source of them - i.e. the gulf disaster, mountaintop removal, fraking, etc), we have an apocalyptic third world war for enery, and we all end up like fallout in a disgusting, exhausted, polluted world. In this world, I will only turn those who weren't giant douches into super mutants.
Second choice: We just go with the assumption that all this business about CO2 and climate change is real, we sack up and make a serious commitment to develop alternative energy sources (not really that big of a deal, there's more energy around us in wind, solar, and tidal sources than we'd ever know what do with, not to mention the possibilities of fusion/fission). Our world is much cleaner and more beautiful, we don't all die after we turn it into a disgusting polluted hellhole, no world war 3. Loosers: a couple coal towns (which are up shit creek anyways when we chop the top of their mountains, frak their aquifers, and light their coal mines on fire) and some fossil-fuel CEOs - Winners: everybody else in the entire world.
Really the only excuses to argue against climate change and energy reform is that you're a) Incredibly stupid b) hate mother nature (and living, and puppies, just kill yourself and do us all a favor) c) Such a giant pussy that you can't fathom changing your way of life even a little bit to make the entire planet a beautiful, clean, energy-rich utopia.
You state some should critically examine other's evidence but fail to review their own.
Actually, that's the exact opposite of what I was saying. In point: that to be a skeptic you need to critically examine everything, including your own assumptions.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
You Slashdotters are so tiresome with your trying to convince each other to change your minds. You are engaging in political jousting - NOT scientific debate! What you aim to do is influence readers to either "believe in" anthropogenic global change or "not believe in" it.
While beliefs are powerful forces, actions are even more powerful.
For those who believe that carbon emissions are going to doom mankind, there is only one viable response: Reduce your "carbon footprint". Once you've done that, you can self-righteously lecture others on what "bad people" they are for not worshipping the same belief system as you. Mind you, I don't see how you will EVER be able to demonstrate that your actions have in fact averted a catastrophe. And if catastrophe strikes you will always be able to bemoan the fact that it was "all the unbelievers" who wrecked our world.
But if you claim to "believe" and fail to "act", you are a common hypocrite.
For my part, I don't give a rodent's rectum if carbon emissions are "wrecking our world". I just know that emitting carbon costs me money! I have to work for my money so the simple equation is that if I emit less carbon, I've spent less money.
I bought a home a few years ago. First "real" home I've ever owned (previously had a "shack" that served as a home - didn't count). I live ONE MILE from my office. Weather permitting, I walk to work. I drive a Jeep Liberty, so you holier-than-thou's would probably throw eggs at me if you saw me driving by. (I bought the Jeep when I had to drive 300 miles from place of work to the aforementioned "shack used as a home", and back, on weekends, on icy winter roads).
So I now burn a tank of gas about every 3 weeks, versus a tank a week.
Thanks to the proximity of my home to work, my mortgage is about $70k upside down. I could have saved money by buying a home in the boonies, but to be completely honest, my choice of location was more based on convenience (and short commute) than on environmental or even financial concerns.
I'm switching to LED lighting as fast as I can afford it. CFLs? What a crock! They're all dying in my house at an alarming rate.
BTW: As you drive your hybrid, all puffed up over your environmentally conscious virtue, keep in mind just how much energy it takes to process bauxite ore into aluminum. Aluminum and concrete both take HUGE amounts of energy to produce. And we use them with nary a mention of the profligate consumption of energy they represent. Waste is all around you; stop focusing on "Big Oil" as a boogeyman. They're like drug dealers. If you wouldn't buy their junk, they wouldn't be able to terrorize the neighborhood. We bring it on ourselves, people.
I have written before and noted that this problem (of anthropogenic climate change) is somewhat self limiting. Ironically, global financial collapse is likely to be the most effective short-term antidote to AGC. Is this what we want? Don't matter if you want it or not. As liquid fossil fuel becomes more scarce, you will have to pay more for every drop. As you have to pay more, you will have less money. Companies will have less profit. Unemployment will go up. Tax revenues will go down. Wars will be started (to fight over the declining supply - some argue this is already with us). Food shortages will become more commonplace. You won't need to worry about when the next iPhone is released - it will be very low on your list of priorities - way behind feeding yourself and keeping yourself from freezing to death. At such a time as this, you may be *thankful* that the average global temperature is rising!
Be careful what you wish for, greenies. You may (and probably will) get it in spades. It won't be what you envisioned.
Biggest worry for the future: COAL. When liquid fossil fuel becomes too expensive, we will be faced with the painful choice of "adapt or die". Adaptation will take the form of switching from petroleum to coal, and damn the consequences! Who among you will give a rodent's rectum about sea levels when you have no job, no food, no medicine, etc.? Consider just how much you DEPEND on this nasty fossil-fuel-driven world economy before you judge.
gulfstream) ... the long-term graphs seem to indicate pretty strongly that one is indeed coming :
a
Its far more likely that remedial AGW measures are meant to trigger a tipping-point into the next ice age.
Overpopulation will be a concern of the past. The elite will get what they want, small underground nuclear powered cities will provide them with an means of survival. Thren we will be able to rebuild humanity as we see fit. Wait... err, nevermind.
It's also interesting to note that all of the previous temperature increases in the earth's history have also been marked by drastic increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. I doubt there were any big oil company throwing tons of CO2 into the atmosphere 100,000 years ago, so it begs the question: is the atmospheric CO2 increases that we're seeing now causing the warming, or are they a result of the warming? We read that CO2 increases are causing the warming, but who's to say that the warming couldn't be causing the release of sequestered CO2 into the atmosphere? The correlation between increased CO2 and temperature increases does NOT denote CAUSALITY.
No, it wasn't. The rise in global average temperature was first anticipated by Michael Faraday, and the idea has only strengthened by additional evidence.
The Global cooling thing from the 1970's was a short-lived idea that never gained consensus, and was clearly wrong.
The only people that bring it up now are Teabaggers and other climate change deniers. And besides, past ideas don't discredit current ideas. After all, scientists used to think all kinds of weird things, and now they don't. It doesn't mean that scientists can't be trusted, it just means that they have better ideas now.
Better ideas now. Try to pick up some better ideas for yourself, you might enjoy it.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
The benefits of taking action have to weighed against the risks.
Since nobody has a real clue what forces are involved in climate change, and which factors are more (or less) important, any action we take is pretty much a wild-ass guess.
Not that I'm a cynic or anything, but my take is the only safe course is to only perform actions that won't lead to somebody close to a goverment employee having more money in their pocket. Although they are just as risky as every other guess, at least there won't be many people lobbying for the wrong reason (i.e., cash).
Which one?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
whatever Bill O'Reilly
Pave the Earth. Now.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Many mosquito species are exquisitely sensitive to climate change, particularly changes in yearly minima. Put another way, some mosquito species can overwinter north of the Arctic Circle, while other species can exist only in the tropics.
Readers may not be aware of the significance of the foregoing facts, because these readers may not be aware of the unique importance of mosquitoes as disease vectors.
An increase in average annual global temperatures of 1.64 degrees Celsius (nearly 3 degrees Farenheit) means, amongst many other things, that the mosquito vectors of diseases heretofore unknown in the temperate latitudes will find a permanent home in the temperate zone and spread their diseases.
Already, the West Nile virus has become endemic in the northern United States and, apparently, even into Canada. Far worse, dengue fever (and the associated, nearly always fatal, hemmorhagic fever), previously regarded as a tropical disease, has now become endemic in the Brownsville, Texas, region. Other, mosquito-borne diseases, particularly including drug-resistant malaria, are also making their way north.
The foregoing are dire, undisputed facts. This author's view is that those who denigrate the world-wide efforts to stop climate change can only be taken seriously when they provide solutions for the problems climate change has already produced.
...almost certainly exists and is probably caused by human activity.
However, every time I read one of these discussions I feel bad about agreeing with a bunch of religious zealots who deliberately use terms such as "denier" to smear those who disagree with them.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
5) At some point debate has to end, there is literally no benefit to having to argue every day over whether 2+2=4 and whether gravity will continue working tomorrow.
So, on the topic of the article, are you unconvinced by the findings in this report? You talk about people who 'do not critically examine' evidince, but are you or are you not one of those?
I'm only asking because this report seems to have not been published by Exxon, but rather NASA, so it just might be credible. Yet your diatribe here is unmodified. Why?
1. "Climate Change" has indeed become the marketing sound-bite for those with the political and economic agenda to further empower the IMF to channel first world wealth to other sources, taking a cut. These is the group to which "climatologists" produce data and models to empower. They used "Global Warming" before, but with record-breaking winters and floods when drought was predicted by useless models, they decide to use "climate change" and any weather-related disaster is now attributed to "climate-change". Hard winter in Europe, it's climate change! Flooding, it's climate change! Drought, it's climate change!
2. Changes over a few decades don't constitute climate, and yet that is all for which we have accurate records. You can't take a hand made, lip blown thermometer from 1850 and use that on a scale to show temperature growth of a fraction of a degree F over decades, but that's one gross error the "climatologists" make. It is absurd to claim the recent global temperature high (from which we are coming down from even though carbon dioxide concentration continues to climb).
3. There are *economic* solutions being proposed that allow the skimming of our money to private funds and banking cartel. The politicians in the pockets of these elite are the supporters of carbon tax, cap and trade...it's a "piece of the action" scam the same as any mafia shaking down every store on the street.
4. Skepticism in view of false and useless "climate models" put out by "climatologists" is quite healthy indeed; one should be skeptical of liars and proven false prophets. "Where is the heat going??!!!" as our temperatures are now dropping is the wail of the "climatologist" (I always put in double quotes since fabrication and cooking books isn't any true scientific profession)
5. The debate will continue as long as this economic scam continues to be perpetrated, there are enough intelligent people, which include real geophysicists and meteorologists, who won't play ball with scientific fraudsters and big finance elite with an agenda
6. We don't need ham fisted solutions to non-existent problems. We're presently cooling off of highs of 1998-2005 even though CO2 continues to climb. Q.E.D.-B.S.
Your absurd statement about danger to millions is quite laughable, climate kills people every year even when not changing. Of course climate is always changing. For example, sea level has been rising since the last ice age, and will continue to rise. For example, to use a whine of the climatatologists, those who live at essentially sea level will have their land flooded, it's a certainty which nothing will change.
I think if you examine the evidence presented, I have passed no judgement at all on the article. I was merely pointing out a number of flaws in the post I was responding to.
I do not have to take sides to correct obvious factual and critical thinking errors.
Specifically on the subject to the journal article. It claims that their new evidence may indicate that rate of warming will be 30% lower than that predicted by other models. Frankly, I hope that they're right.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
What exactly are you talking about? Cap and trade? The implementation might be buggered, but it's clearly a market directed approach.
"Less regulation" doesn't do anything but increase pollution (can't wait till free trade, austerity and the drive for competitiveness allows all our environments to become as economically efficient as China).
(source http://www.landcareresearch.co.nz/research/globalchange/climate_change.asp
and the temperature drops like a stone (weather apparently goes from normal to ice age conditions, meaning permafrost in the northern sahara, and a *very* white Christmas in southern Mexico, while Florida becomes an ice sheet, just to give an idea how extreme this is, in less than 10 years). That's 10 years, triggered by some unknown event, after which America less inhabitable than Greenland. Even the deserts of the middle east will be cold conditions, and harsh winters, at best.
Of course the error margin on these data are like 500-1000 years, which is a lot of time. But while we don't know why or how, *something* is going to trigger an ice age, pretty soon now. But that's "pretty soon" in "very likely in the next 2000 years" ...
But, your very own source seems to indicate that both CO2 and CH4 levels are much much higher than what the normal cycle produces. Also, the current temperature, according to that graph, is higher than seen in the past 450,000 years. Surely that won't have an effect on the changes that come? If CO2 of 280ppm produces an ice age which plummets average temperatures by 6 degrees, what catastrophic drop will we see from CO2 of 370 (and rising...)?
I'm also curious as to where you're getting your "10 years" figure. If the margin of error on the data is 500-1000 years, how could you possible infer that the temperature drop and glaciation occurs over such a short timeframe?
Or even worse... what if the Ice Age that's supposed to be triggered in the next 2000 years is prevented, and instead the temperature keeps spiraling upward? I don't think either is desirable. I love my car as much as any red-blooded American, but for the sake of my children's children's children(x10), I think we definitely need to make some changes to how our race is treating this planet.
Pfah, such short-term thinking. I prefer this graph:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/65_Myr_Climate_Change.png
Really, current "climate change" (global warming theory) is so short-term-focused as to be meaningless, as both graphs amply demonstrate.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
a) Temporal ordering is for the time period of the last two centuries and the degree of CO2 increase during that time. The curve you linked to spans 2000 times as long, with Milankovitch cycles causing temperature variations roughly ten times the ones we observe now but over a hundred times slower. These cycles are caused by differences in warming by sunlight (caused by variation in the Earth's orbit), so you get warming -> more CO2 -> more warming through positive feedback. In contrast, just adding CO2, you get more CO2 -> more warming.
b) If you look at the peaks in the curve you linked, the peak in CO2 actually precedes a peak in temperature. (Use another window as a ruler) Note that time goes from left to right.
Excellent, well thought out post.
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
I wish I had the mod point to take your comment up to +5. Instead I'll echo your comment and add.
That's exactly what the 'skeptics' are thinking, and saying, as opposed to others (so-called 'deniers') who are silly enough to believe that scientists are actually lying about the temperature rise, as some sort of conspiracy movement. Anyone who knows can tell such deniers that you can't get scientists to conspire to do anything. They argue too much, and the funding models encourage discord. That's a deliberate tradition, which allows us to get a real variety of approaches to a problem, and thus enhances the chance of a discovery or breakthrough. I know an NSF grant worker, and she tells me that the NSF knows it's funding a certain percentage of crackpot projects, because you can't tell what's crackpot and what's not when it's a radical change.
Why that didn't happen this time, when it is pervasive in much of science, tells me something about the agenda of the people funding the research, not the perceived agenda of scientists. It makes me nervous when a bunch of scientists get together in lock-step, and refuse to look into issues that, as you describe, "[may] be inconvenient" to their ability to march in time. It suggests to me that their meal tickets are being punched on their ability to dance, rather than on the quality of their results.
I am sure scientists could have a reasonable argument if there weren't strings attached to their funding. It is clear to me that the funding went to projects "discovering the causes of a presumed problem (global warming)" rather than "discovering if there is a problem, what causes it, the nature of any problem that can be found, and what we can safely do about it."
Big difference, and the latter method got no funding from anyone but oil companies (which introduces just as much potential bias), and was resultantly lambasted as "bad science."
The solution is that we focus on funding science again, instead of justification and rationalization of political presumption. We need to put our Federal money into research, not agendas. ;^)
--
Toro
God I hope not, I hate the cold. By the time it hits that cold though, I'll probably be dead, one way or another.
I love our new NASA world of science.
1. Regardless of whether you like the term climate change or not, and whether or not your paranoia is justified, climate change is still not a slogan.
2. 2010 is on track to be the warmest year on record. I'm not sure how this plays into your claim that temperatures are falling. In fact, as I understand it, the 10 hottest years on record are (in order): 2010*, 1998, 2005, 2009, 2003, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2007 and 2001. That list doesn't look much like "temperatures are falling". In fact, NASA is predicting that 2012 will likely displace 2010 as the hottest year on record.
3. Carbon taxes would not allow the skimming of profits to private funds and banking cartels. As a "tax" it would be going to governments. Cap and trade, on the other hand, would most definitely result in profit form private enterprises. In fact, I dare say, the whole idea of cap and trade is based on the idea that is better from private industry to profit than for the government to profit from the production of CO2.
4. We should be skeptical of all claims, not just those of people we disagree with. Many of your views, in particular, seem to be wildly out of sync with reality. A little more healthy skepticism of the people who you agree with might help you back to some views grounded in reality.
5. This is a perfect example of why debate has to eventually end. If you dismiss anyone who disagrees with you as a fraud or con artist then there can only ever be one satisfactory end to a debate. Now imagine there is at least one person who thinks the same way as you on the other side. The debate is now eternal, regardless of the merits of the arguments.
6. You might like to look at some the temperature graphs. The line is still trending upwards. It's true that 1998 and 2005 were the top 2 warmest years on record. However, the average global temperature for 2009 was virtually the same as the temperature of 2005. We expect to see warming and cooling cycles related to El nino and El nina effects. The next year that is likely to experience similar conditions to 1998 is expected to be 2012.
Yes, weather events do kill people every year, however, climate change is making many natural disasters worse and the greatest threats aren't from freak weather conditions but from changes systematic changes in agricultural areas. If once fertile areas are rendered minimally fertile due to repeated flooding, droughts, and pest migrations, it will likely take years (at best) to replace them. War and famine triggered by climate change represent the biggest threats from climate change. It is in our best interest to carefully consider what the consequences of each action is, including the consequences of inaction.
* As 2010 is not yet done, in theory there still remains a chance that it will be the second or third warmest year on record.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
The weird thing is, most of the things that people can do to reduce atmospheric carbon are also good for the economy. I mean, why would anyone be against increased efficiency in power product and reducing U.S.'s dependence on foreign oil (and therefore, less foreign influence on U.S. policy)?
I drank what? -- Socrates
It's is absolutely true that when I was in school "experts" were saying that the climate change fear was the return of the ice age. I was there, I heard it with my own ears. I believed it at the time, being young enough to fall for it.
Human activity isn't even a blip on the scale of geological-scale temperature and CO2 regulation. The total CO2 in the air, in all the oceans, and in all the known fossil fuel reserves is a rounding error compared to the amount of CO2 in the rock uplift/weathering cycle. But that's a long cycle.
You're completely correct that we're not going to "return" to an ice age, becuse we're in the Quaternary Ice Age right now. We're in an interglacial period (permanent year-round ice covers only a small portion of the planet), and we're about 10000 years overdue to return to a glacial period. No one knows why we're late, because there are no solid theories for the glaciation cycle revealed by the Vostock ice core data. You can see all that from your second link. "Ice age" may be popular useage for a glacial period, but I hope for correct technical usage on /..
I find that data extremely interesting - how do you get such regular periodicity, unless it's something orbital (but surely we'd know if so), or a solar cycle we just don't know about? The drop in temps at the end of the cycle is very rapid, but what could cause that? Massive geological activity could, but we don't see the spike in dust and CO2 levels that you'd expect at the end of each cycle (and why would it be regular?). It's a cool area of research.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I never jest, and don't call me Shirley!
Many of the things we can do are good. Many of the things proposed by legislators are not. This is my main beef with all this climate change stuff going on.
-]Phreak Out[-
But you see no problem with the people denying the scientific theory being the ones that stand to lose money, like big business?
Not only that, most people fail to make the connection that the primary sponsors of terrorism are currently Saudi Arabia and Iran (Also notable as the top 2 oil exporters). In particular, there are a few oil billionaires in those countries who are deliberately funding radical Muslim jihadists. A dramatic reduction in oil consumption would likely do more to combat terrorism than sending soldiers to the Middle East.
So to U.S. keeps giving money to the primary sponsors of terrorism so they can fight terrorism. It's a no win situation, as long as you have to pay the people you're fighting for the privilege of fighting them.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
We've always been at war with Eastasia.
Your chocolate ration has been increased from 35g to 25g!
I drank what? -- Socrates
You asked a good question at the end. And the answer is based on internal, subjective feeling, coupled with things like trust -- how much do I trust those who claim global warming is human-CO2-based and we have to establish a carbon credit system? And for me, I think of Al Gore, and I think, not enough.
But there are others who say the Earth is in danger from human pollution, smog, toxic waste and so on, and we should put money to fix those problems first, and those prople I do trust.
What would actually convince you that climate change represents a danger to the lives of millions, possibly billions of people?
For me, if we stopped getting ridiculous dramatizations that are beyond the realm of reason. If they got it so that it was COMPLETELY a matter of scientists at organizations not funded by politicians or companies to agree on what was going on. Hell, if the scientists themselves were consistent (you're as well aware as I am that they spent a decade or more going on about how we were cooling down and headed for an ice age, then all of the sudden that same data magically morphed into an irrefutable warming trend).
Especially when the person who's the main leader of the global warming cause is a politician who likes to pretend to be a scientist and not an actual scientist.
I know you'll come back with all sorts of reasons for why the politicians are right and anyone who disagrees with them is just bought off by a corporation because god forbid, theres a chance you might have been hoodwinked by the politician and scientists supporting him may have been paid off.
Go ahead, damn the economy, take away all our technology to stop the boogeyman of "climate change". What I want to know is, if you're proven wrong in 20-30 years, how hard are you going to kiss the ass of everyone who said it was blown out of proportion? Are you willing to back a law saying that all climate change supporters must be registered and if proven wrong, must do slave labor (in whatever form) for the rest of their lives to make up for the damage caused by their policies to stop climate change? If you're not that confident, then you shouldn't be pursuing these polices that will have massive repercussions for hundreds of millions of people.
Regarding your comment of "There will always be a question of how much evidence is enough". Well, first off, I hope to god you're never on a jury with your "we don't need to be fully informed!" attitude. Secondly, don't you find it the least bit ironic that every time a scientific study comes out showing that climate change isn't the big bad destroyer of worlds that it's made out to be, people like you come out and say that the scientists were paid off or that they're religious or some other stupid shit to claim that they can't be right, yet every time a report comes out that says "ZOMG!! Oceans will rise 9,000,000,00% and the whole planet will be covered in water up to the clouds unless we sacrifice technology to please Gaia!" you all unthinkingly back them because "they're scientists" (funny how you ignored those scientists who disagree with you)? If you were as much into "science", you wouldn't blindly support one side because they agree with you. Remember, when doing research / experiments, you collect ALL the data and examine it, you don't ignore the data that doesn't match your hypothesis.
Let the standard "you don't agree with my religious views" modding down commence. And yes, global warming is more religion than science.
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
You've got a lot of ranting and suppositions in there, but not much of use.
1) Even in the 70s most of the research indicated Global Warming not cooling. You need to understand that what the media says scientists are saying and what scientists are saying are not always the same thing.
2) Al Gore isn't the main leader of climate change, he's most likely just the person you are most aware of being associated with it.
3) I consider it highly unlikely that anyone could really afford to pay off that many scientists without leaving a clearly visible money trail.
4) The point isn't to damn the economy or take away anyone's technology. The point is to reduce our reliance on a limited supply of petroleum which is having an effect on the global climate which is going to be harmful to many people.
5) Frankly, I'm not pursuing any policies.
6) I think you are likely overstating the negative consequences of taking actions to reduce carbon emissions
7) I would be skeptical about the results of any such a laws. I strongly suspect it would be used to enslave people regardless of the outcome of climate change. I'm strongly reminded that in there have been many times when disaster was averted only to have people immediately declare that was never any danger because disaster didn't happen.
8) Juries routinely face the question of how much evidence is enough. It's their primary job to determine whether the evidence presented is sufficient to convict someone beyond a reasonable doubt.
9) You are making a huge jump to reach the conclusion that I think "we don't need to be fully informed". I'm merely pointing out that you can always claim there isn't enough evidence. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if every defense lawyer who ever practiced law routinely used that claim in their closing arguments. It's a claim that requires justification.
10) People like me do not come out and say the scientists were paid off or anything like that. You might notice that I said nothing of the sort. I hope these researchers are right, it would be good for everyone if they were.
11) Also people like me do not unthinking back catastrophic predictions of climate change. People like me usually assume that it's an idiot reporting making the claims and that they are not backed up by the underlying science. Then we check to see what the real story is. It's partly of really actually being skeptical.
12) I don't blindly support any side. I'd really rather than climate change wasn't occurring, but like you said, I can't blindly agree with you when the evidence indicates it is occurring.
13) As long as you continue to believe that everyone who disagrees with you is an unthinking zealot, you will find agreement difficult to reach on any issue.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
5) At some point debate has to end, there is literally no benefit to having to argue every day over whether 2+2=4 and whether gravity will continue working tomorrow.
No. It doesn't.
A market directed approach to wealth redistribution is still socialism.
Alternatively
"It is EASY to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon him understanding it!"
Apparently police officers, lawyers, prison guards... all tend to be against drug legalization. It's not hard to understand... they're jobs depend on it.
Teachers all tend to be against school choice... It's not hard to understand... they like the public school monopoly.
At times I'm amazed. People are so quick to scream about the corporate and military industrial complex. Oh lockheed martin loves war!. Bush went to war for oil! Yet these seem people cannot see the same 'profit' motives drives teachers, police officers, doctors, nurses, engineers, and yes scientists.
There is no 'pure' profession of people. People who think scientists are 'pure' are like those who thought the church should lead society because all priests are good people who follow (biblical, koranic...insert whatever code). If you ever point to people that scientists should not lead society, they say... 'scientists have a code of peer review!'
I personally think climate change is happening. I've yet to see any proposal from politicians that actually helps to deal with it.
I remember Dean's climate change proposal was to have a carbon tax... then funnel that money into healthcare?
Just think about this for a second. Humanity is supposedly at risk... billions of lives at stake... and instead of taking the money from carbon taxes to fund I dunno (levies, relocating people away from shorelines...), he wants to plow it into a scheme for healthcare.
It's far too political these days to have sensible policy.
My own view is we're far too along in the climate change cycle to stop it. Several other scientists have made this point as well. I'd much rather see us plan to deal with increased see levels, drought... than spend billions upon billions in the hopes of stopping it.
What I mean is this... if I had 20 billion to spend to combat climate change.
I'd spend 15 billion improving levies, relocating people, improving irrigation...and 5 billion on 'green' efforts.
When sea levels rise, I'd rather have actual defence against it... as opposed to a wind farm while my city floods.
I think it is the prudent thing to do.
Yet, where is this in our global warming proposals? No where to be seen. Because 99% of the efforts about climate change or global warming are doing nothing to deal with the problem. They're just interested in transferring money to this group or that group, or pushing people vision of society, or trying to create jobs...
And climate change is only one of the issues facing us. Far too many people seem to think the ends justify the means. Oh don't worry about the debt, the economy, state power... just do everything to solve climate change. Sorry, climate change isn't the biggest worry in the world. It is a worry, but it is not everything. Far too many people have this narrow tunnel vision as well.
That is politics unfortunately. An unavoidable part of life. And yes, that means dealing with people who might not understand the issue. The alternative is to think some 'high council' should just make decisions. It's very appealing to academics... until they realize... how easily 'high councils' get corrupted or that they really don't have any power... beyond what the politicians give them. There can never be a scientist led society for this reason.
And if the people don't trust the government or don't trust certain groups as the solution to climate change... I'll put my backing with the people.
If nothing gets done... just move away from the coast line. We'll adapt as humanity.
I'd love to solve the issue... but not at all costs.. and our political leader have certainly not earned the trust of their citizenry to tackle the issue with the large resources they demand.
I understand that's what you were saying. My contention was with a specific point you were offering.
The simple fact is, climatologists are also meteorologists. Basically, they are meteorologists with a tiny bit of archeology thrown in. Climatologists who get funding for these studies say the world is ending. Meteorologists, who don't receive funding, say the world is not ending. In fact, they say this is a normal historical trend with some additional curves likely affected by man.
Meteorologists say the computer models climatologists use are garbage. Many climatologists say the computer models are garage. Furthermore, most meteorologists say much of the data is garbage and some climatologists say its garbage. Furthermore, the lion share of the data has errors which fall outside of the margin of error to determine a significant deviation. And I could go on and on and on...
Factually, the only thing we can say, in absolute honestly, we have no fucking idea what's going on. And those who insist we do, are either lying, an idiot, or ignorant. Furthermore, much of the "science" which everyone throws around is nothing but guesses combined with garage and known bad data points.
There's an old axiom; garbage in, garbage out. And yet a large number of climatologists are able to produce meaningful results from garbage, to the dismiss of meteorologists and many other scientists. And on top of that, surprisingly, only those that seem to be able to interpret this garbage are those who are paid to do these studies - and always with more study required.
None of this implies climate change is not taking place. But frankly, that's the only thing we do know is going on. Anything aside from that is pure bullshit.
1) "climate change" is not the name of a problem. There's been climate change since the earth acquired an atmosphere. It's part of nature. I guess we see it as a problem if it kills us, but it's business as usual for the earth. There's a lot of evidence that it's been a lot hotter here, it's also been a lot colder. Man hasn't been around long enough to experience the real extremes which this planet, in conjunction with the natural forces around it, is capable of.
2) How do you know this? How does anyone know this? I'd like to defer to the fact that on the geological time scale, if the earth's entire history were compressed to 1000 years, man has been around for the last second or so. We ain't seen nothin' yet. You are talking out of your ass. Man, as a species, cannot even yet grasp the breadth of what he doesn't know about the earth. We glom on to what we do know, put it in a neat little package, and postulate about the rest, assuming the rest of it is just as neat. We're _always_ wrong when we do that. Einstein got close, but he still wasn't entirely correct about things.
Most of these climate scientists don't know their science as well as, nor are they smart as Einstein. They're a lot more wrong about their science and theories. Maybe some should take a statistics class. If they did they'd realize the samples they're working with are entirely too small to predict a cycle that's been going on for billions of years.
3) you can't "fix" something that ain't broke. Well you can try, but usually people end up causing a big problem when they engage in such activity. Try fixing the cam shafts in the engine of your new car to experience what I'm talking about. Add .020" to the cam lobe size on your cam shaft, and start it up. Tell me how the fixed engine works. You sure as hell can't fix something that ain't broke with politics. The notion is absurd.
Rather than trying to fix the climate, we need to fix ourselves and figure out a way to make the changes work for us. Otherwise we die. Buying a Prius and recycling plastic sure as hell won't stop it. It's bigger than us.
We're spending so much time playing with broken computer models and looking in the mirror, that most of us haven't noticed that the rest of the planets in the solar system are warming too.
My neighbor's chevy suburban had nothing to do with that.
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
Wait, a couple of agencies sponsored and paid for by a government that won't ratify the Kyoto Protocol? Maybe we need some clarification from the other 95% of the world before rushing out to buy ourselves Hummers?
5) At some point debate has to end, there is literally no benefit to having to argue every day over whether 2+2=4 and whether gravity will continue working tomorrow.
No. It doesn't.
That's not debate, that's just contradiction.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
The Register article is really misleading, and presents a very political spin on the NASA paper. It starts out, "A group of top NASA boffins says that current climate models predicting global warming are far too gloomy," which is a severe exaggeration of what they actually say. It concludes that, "It now appears, however, that the previous/current state of climate science may simply have been wrong and that there's really no need to get in an immediate flap. If Bounoua and her colleagues are right, and CO2 levels keep on rising the way they have been lately (about 2 ppm each year), we can go a couple of centuries without any dangerous warming." That is simply false, and has no connection to what's actually in that paper.
Here's what the paper actually says:
These effects slow but do not alleviate the projected atmospheric warming by accelerating the recycling of water between the land and atmosphere, reducing the warming by about 0.3C globally and 0.6C over land.
That's what we're talking about: reducing the warming estimates by 0.3 C globally, or 0.6 C over land. That's a significant correction, but hardly means "there's really no need to get in an immediate flap," or that "we can go a couple of centuries without any dangerous warming."
Actually, even that is an overstatement. The authors of the paper include an important caveat that the Register article completely fails to mention:
"Secondly and most importantly, there is recognition that even if CO2 concentration could be stabilized, much of the warming is yet to be realized. In transient simulations [e.g., Betts et al., 2007], as CO2 rises stomata respond almost instantaneously but LAI takes a long time to grow, so the warming effect of stomatal closure can take a long time to be offset by the cooling effect of increased LAI.... This suggests that while increased LAI may not slow global warming significantly in the near term, its long term negative feedback could potentially reduce temperatures following a stabilization of CO2 concentration."
So this is a long term effect that won't help us significantly until after we stabilize CO2 levels. And that's not going to happen for a very long time, unless we dramatically reduce our current CO2 emissions.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
Overpopulation will be a concern of the past. The elite will get what they want, small underground nuclear powered cities will provide them with an means of survival. Thren we will be able to rebuild humanity as we see fit. Wait... err, nevermind.
At least there is no more Soviet Union. Otherwise, we might have to worry about a mine shaft gap!
Similar to the upcoming US election results
That's something you might need to ask yourself. What would actually convince you that climate change represents a danger to the lives of millions, possibly billions of people?
Wow. I don't know what it would take, but your shrill fear-mongering isn't going the trick at all.
BILLIONS OF PEOPLE IN DANGER!!! Yeah... right. Tell you what, I'll get right on that bandwagon when the first, oh, thousand or so die, ok?
Comment of the year
Actually, it's been called both for about the same period of time.
In was 1992 I think when the UN commissioned the IPCC or Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Their course of study was if the science showed that Humans had an impact on the climate- most notably the warming trends being stated since the mid 1980's. So the IPCC was set to study warming and any connections to humans.
The warming couldn't be proven conclusivly outside of a mere association. Models got it wrong on predictions but for some reason were always able to be adjusted to replay information that would again get it wrong on predictions. This latest note in this ongoing battle is just illustrative of that little problem.
The reason why the dumbasses don't get it is two fold. First it is specifically because people who didn't get it made assertions that proved to be untrue time and time again and even rejected feed back and forcing corrections based around someone's association with an oil company years ago. Second, it is because the entire science has been hijacked for political motivation in efforts to push through unpopular policies and redistribute wealth in which exaggerating the first reason made possible. In short, the reason the dumbasses don't get it is because it's not pure science on the level being approached or interacting by them.
Yes, that's right. It's nothing but rubbish that existed in the past that no one without an agenda ever brings up- even the scientists who should have scientifically discounted or explained away it by now id they are stating the opposite.
All we need to know is what is told us but the non-biased global warming cult members who don't want to hear anything about anything that doesn't sing their own tune.
And no, Faraday did not anticipate the global average temp increasing, he gave us a mathematical formula concerning the retention of heat as Co2 increased. This formula by the way has not products any significant models that I am aware of that are any more accurate in predictions then the previous methods.
And if you haven't guess by now, I'm not criticizing the concept of global warming, I'm criticizing your ability to chastise others for essentially what you are doing yourself.
There IS science that says, "Even if we stop 100% of all greenhouse emissions right now, it will continue on for at least 50 years."
That science is from NASA.
Climate Change Q&A
Here is the problem with Cap and trade. Suppose we lived in a world with 2 countries and between these two countries there are 10 needs that 10 businesses each offer. If one country installs cap and trade and the other doesn't, then moving all industry to the other defeats any purpose. But lets suppose that doesn't happen. We will also ignore the entire inter-situational advantages between geographical locations within the same country where energy is cheaper by default when it's primarily produced by hydro or something else that escapes the taxes.
Now lets say the making of clothing and selling it has 10 companies doing it. 5 of them are taxed heavily on their energy use for tax and trade the others are taxed on their imports to make up the disadvantage. Now, businesses do not wish and have money appear out of thin air, they have people who invest money expecting a return in addition to the money invested, they then take this money and hire employees, make a product and sell it to the people. In the end, selling it to the people has to generate enough money to cover making the product and repaying the investors. This means that if we jack up the costs to make the product through taxes or whatever, they simply have to sell the product for more money to cover that expense. Now, when they do that, we the consumers end up paying the tax- not the companies using the energy.
Now you might say well, company X is going to find a way to use less energy so their costs won't be as high. Well, that's all good and well for them, but it doesn't neccesarily translate into lower costs to the consumer. You see, now company X is at an advantage in the market with the other companies. There is no reason for him to reduce his prices to the consumer because they were already happily paying the previous costs and you are guaranteed an artificially inflated cost as long as the tax is in place.
So the effect on the consumer is one of two ways, It's either the company taking the reduced costs in producing the product as pure profit and not discounting anything to the consumer at all (now we are paying absurd profits to a company because of artificial costs injected into the market) or they lower costs in an attempt to attract more customers.
so lets explore this a little, If energy costs rose 35% because of taxes and imports had a comparable tariff on them to compensate for differences, and this translated to a 10% increase in costs to the consumer to recoup the costs, then we have to look at which makes more profit. So if the product costs $100 normally and $110 after the tax, and in both cases, they made a $5 profit and they sold 1000 pieces a year, they would be going from 100k per year in sales to 110K per year in sales for the same 5k profit. So if they found an energy source that negated the tax, they could keep the prices the same and increase profits by 10K a year. That's triple the original profit. But if they dropped prices back to the original price of $100 and doubled their customers, they would only be making double the profit of 5k which is 10K per year profit.
So when looking, an extra 5K per year is not as attractive as an extra 10k per year, so the logical path would be to keep the costs the same and take the larger profit. In the end, all you have done is increase the costs to the consumer and in effect placed a hidden tax on the people (if we don't force jobs to different locations and make people unemployed in the process).
Wouldn't if make much more sense to skip that idiocy and simply require power plants to be X much more efficient and pollute less (even if you consider Co2 to be a pollutant) and instead focus out time and efforts on science that can make that an actual reality? Then as technology progresses, we up the requirements for energy creation and again share this information so it can be used to make that same reality?
I fully agree. But we were speaking of climate change, the possible paths it might take, the mechanisms by which we might act to affect them, and the statistically variable presumptions of benefit, abstract and material, that those actions might have. The debate about these, you liken to a debate of whether 2+2=4, or a debate of whether gravity will persist tomorrow?
Me doth think you doth over-simplify. You doth think not?
He speaks the truth
National socialism.
I have no problem being skeptical with your beliefs, It's harder to question my own.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Mmmmm... Chocolate!
You people are a bunch of retarded, dirty hippies. Get a F'in job and move out of your parent's basements and all of this angst about things that don't matter or even exist will evaporate under the pressure of real concerns.
Frank Luntz suggested to the GWB administration they use the term "climate change" in their communications because it was thought to sound less severe. I don't think that's the first time the term was ever used but it probably was a factor in it coming into more common usage.
but I thought acid rain was going to be the end of life on Earth.
Slowly waving my hand - "This is not the sig you are looking for."
"The coming ice age" was popularized by Time and Newsweek but an examination of peer reviewed papers published between 1965 and 1979 found over 40 on global warming and less than 10 on cooling. And some of those 10 talked about it in terms of industrial pollution, mostly aerosols, and what would happen if they continued to increase, in other words AGC (Anthropogenic Global Cooling). Most of the real "experts" obviously didn't fear the return of glaciation.
Where did you come up with "we're about 10,000 years overdue to return to a glacial period"? The last glaciation only ended between 20,000 and 10,000 years ago. The Missoula Floods were happening around 13,000 yag. The information I've heard says the next glaciation could be expected to begin in around 20,000 years if you go by Milankovitch cycles. In fact the GP's 2nd link you refer to states:
These two factors, orbit and tilt, are weak and are not acting within the same timescale – they are out of phase by about 10,000 years. This means that their combined effect would probably be too weak to trigger an ice age. You have to go back 430,000 years to find an interglacial with similar conditions, and this interglacial lasted about 30,000 years
BTW, I share your frustration with the misuse of the term "Ice Age" but we're not likely to get very far.
You: Surprise! A new model no[w] completely contradicts every other model.
In what way does this new model "completely contradict" existing models? It's new information. If it pans out it will be added to the existing models. It doesn't say there is no global warming. To quote the abstract:
By accelerating the water cycle, this feedback slows but does not alleviate the projected warming, reducing the land surface warming by 0.6C.
It would take another 4 or 5 negative feedbacks like it to eliminate global warming.
Redistribute wealth? how did that get in there? How exactly do efforts to price fossil fuels better result in wealth redistribution?
I mean the graph has jumped 10 degrees downward 10 times like clockwork every 100000-110000 years or so. Seems logical that it will in fact jump again, doesn't it ? Last time it jumped was about 108000 years ago. So it's pretty much bound to jump again. And I repeat, we do *not* know what causes this, and the temperature drops like a stone (weather apparently goes from normal to ice age conditions, meaning permafrost in the northern sahara, and a *very* white Christmas in southern Mexico, while Florida becomes an ice sheet, just to give an idea how extreme this is, in less than 10 years). That's 10 years, triggered by some unknown event, after which America less inhabitable than Greenland.
At least I'll finally be able to put up with summer in Texas.
There are many assumptions in your post.
Scientifically, only one assumption can be a part of any theorem. An assumption, called a premise, is made from previously proven data, then a series of steps are taken in strict logical sequence to arrive at a conclusion. As long as no part of the theorem contradicts any other part, and does not contradict any part of any other proven data, then the conclusion can be vetted as valid.
Your first assumption: there is a "problem", but a definition of what exactly is the nature of the "problem" is lacking.
Taking just one miniscule example of the massively complex matrix of planetary forces that make humankind's activities appear like a campfire on the surface of the sun is the measurable dramatic increase over the past four decades in the sub-surface volcanic activity along the Pacific oceanic ridge. Is that a "problem"? Yes. - A problem to whom? -- The sea life along the Pacific ridge that has to struggle to adapt to warming ocean currents being produced by that volcanic activity, and all the people who depend on that sea life for their livelihood, and all the people living along the Pacific ridge whose llives are affected by the weather changes due to the planetary ebb and flow of sub-oceanic volcanic activity.
But here's the pertinent question: Is there anything humankind can do to control volcanic activity anywhere on the planet? So far, the answer is: No. However, the warming currents of Pacific oceanic ridge is a major part of the included data within the computer "models" attemting to amass data specifically designed by the AGW modeling software to point to an anthropological cause of the warming ocean currents, and natural global changes at large. The simple fact: humankind can not prevent volcanic activity. Yet, that activity is included as part of the data string in an anthropological climate change computer model theorem, which irrevocably invalidates the theorem and renders the model scientifically useless, however possibly quite useful politically.
Today's antropolotically generated climate change theorists are like babies playing in a sandbox in their backyard and observing the changes they make in their sandbox as a theoretical proof of the imminent destruction of the planet's desert environments by humankind.
What everyone concerned must do to actually understand their home planet and its place and interaction in the unfathomably vast cosmos is first gain a thorough and complete understanding of the "mathematics of scale". Once that is achieved, and that knowledge is applied to the juxtaposition of humankind and all of its activities to the planetory and cosmic forces at work every passing nanosecond, then and only then will a clear understanding be achieved that humankind's influence does not amount to much more than a momentary blip on the cosmic radar screen.
Very simple exercises like the above can answer more questions than one can ask in a lifetime. -- We are quite capable of destroying our tiny personal envronments on the planet's surface by amassing ourselves in grotesquely overpopulated concentrations, or personally poisoning our tiny personal envrionments so we dramatically make our lives miserable. But, all of that doesn't amount to a hill of beans on a planetary scale.
To wit: if the doubling of today's atmospheric CO2 was imminently dangerous to anything on the planet - including humans and polar bears - then the atmospheric CO2 levels during the Eocene Epoch, which was over 20 times the atmospheric CO2 concentration of what is today, then it would have been 20 times more devastating to all of life at that time too. Yet, the Eocene Epoch of 24 million years produced over 96% of all the higher life forms - the mammalian species - which have ever existed on our planet.
In other words: If our atmospheric conditions today are a "problem", then the atmospheric conditions of the Eocene Epoch was 20 times worse of a "problem", and yet if that immense Eocene "problem"
Except for the "problems", the start of ice ages being one of those thorny problems :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovich_cycles#100.2C000-year_problem
Yes, there's a tiny event that mostly correlates with the start of ice ages (even though this started happening long before ice ages started).
But there are many such events, obviously. Our position in the galaxy also has lots of special properties that occur once every 100000 years and thus mostly correlate (there's a few alignments of planets and even stars that happen to synchronize I believe).
So the answer "milankovitch cycles", barring new evidence, is about as good an explanation for ice ages as "the last 20 digits on my atomic clock are always 789215789235682348902348908231 when an ice age occurs".
the current temperature, according to that graph, is higher than seen in the past 450,000 years. Surely that won't have an effect on the changes that come? If CO2 of 280ppm produces an ice age which plummets average temperatures by 6 degrees, what catastrophic drop will we see from CO2 of 370 (and rising...)?
Oh so now global warming causes ice ages. You really have a one-track mind, don't you ? Any chance you have an explanation that extends beyond why you were right all along about today's situation ? There are quite a few ice ages, so let's try to find explanations that fit all of them, not just the (currently hypothetical) one that's about to start, okay ?
Of course, such arguments will not be all that useful for "WE MUST ACT NOW" screams. Boo-hoo. Chances are, imho, that we can't change what's happening (and definitely not by "saving energy", that's beyond stupid). So why are we trying these idiocies ?
And do you know statistics ? You must realize that the right side of the graph was collected differently from the left side, right ? The left side comes from a few kilometers under the ice, the right side comes from satellite measurements.
So the left side of the graph has been crushed, and the effect that has on the data is perfectly well known : it averages the values out a bit.
You *might* be right, that today we're seeing more extreme values than in the past, but there's no valid way to draw that conclusion. So you're very wrong indeed. We don't know what the upper limit (of co2, temperature) was that far back, we just know the average over, say 50-100 years and how it changed. If you take the average over the last 50 years, we're comfortably under the peak before the last ice age, today's temperatures are, in that graph, nothing special.
The next point "there's no evidence it drops in 10 years". Okay, technically correct, however it drops almost completely in less than 1 standard deviation of the approximation, meaning it drops in less than 1 (statistically sane) time unit. So it drops in a time unit that's most definitely less than 100 years, but we don't know how much less (though, again, probably a LOT less than 100 years).
"Climate Change" may not classify as a "slogan" per se, but it is most definitely a moniker, which now serves to colloquially mean: humans are responsible for everything "unpleasant" that occurs in any part of our natural enviroment. However, the actual use of the moniker is to gain and weild more political power over humanity in general. How much more politicaly powerful can one get than dictating what the masses can and cannot do within their own environment? ---
AGW - Climate Change (which is in fact constantly changing whether any human exists or not), etc, etc, is no more scientifically based than the proposal the Moon is made of green cheese. It's all political manipulation of people who call themselves scientiests and educators, who are knowingly willing to be used as puppets for the cause, and will say whatever the political agenda de jure wants them to say, and will spike and juggle the data to spit out models in whatever form or manner the same power-agendas need it to be for their purposes.
The Cold War fell off the political radar screen, Russia - the arch enemy of the West - disintegrated, nuclear destruction of the planet became yesterday's news, and most other "dire crisis" petered out. So, politics desparately needed a crisis to beat all crisis to reinvigorate and reestablish their reason for existing. There aren't many crisis that can peg the crisis meter like anthropological destruction of the planet's environment, and folks: that's all there is to it. All the rest is Mother Nature just doing her thing as she's done for over 4 Billion years - and nothing we do will ever change that. Compared to Mother Nature, we - and all that we do - are nothing more than a tiny zit on her ass.
There are no proxies granular enough to support your statement that CO2 in the atmosphere has never changed as rapidly as now before.
Science cannot stem from ignorance.
An interesting "problem" here is there's an assumption there is a "problem" with the way the earth and it's climate is changing. -- The earth and it's climate is in a constant flux of change - and has been for over 4 Billion years. In the history of our planet, humankind is a like the last inch of a 26 mile marathon - and has the same amount of effect on the whole picture. Taking just one miniscule example of the massively complex matrix of planetory forces that make humankind's activities appear like a campfire on the surface of the sun is the measurable dramatic increase over the past four decades in the sub-surface volcanic activity along the Pacific oceanic ridge. Is that a "problem"? Yes. - A problem to whom? -- The sea life along the Pacific ridge that has to struggle to adapt to warming ocean currents being produced by that volcanic activity, and all the people who depend on that sea life for their livelihood, and all the people living along the Pacific ridge whose llives are affected by the weather changes due to the planetary ebb and flow of sub-oceanic volcanic activity.
Now, comes the pertinent question: Is there anything humankind can do to control volcanic activity anywhere on the planet? So far, the answer is: No. However, the warming currents of Pacific oceanic ridge is a major part of the included data within the computer "models" attemting to amass data specifically designed by the AGW modeling software to point to an anthropological cause of the warming ocean currents, and natural global changes at large. The simple fact: humankind can not create nor prevent volcanic activity, yet that activity is included as part of the data string in an anthropological climate change computer model theorem, irrevocably invalidates the theorem and renders the model absolutely useless scientifically, however possibly quite useful politically.
Today's antropolotically generated climate change theorists are like babies playing in a sandbox in their backyard and observing the changes they make in their sandbox as a theoretical proof of the imminent destruction of the planet's desert environments by humankind.
What everyone concerned must do to actually understand their home planet and its place and interaction in the unfathomably vast cosmos is first gain a thorough and complete understanding of the "mathematics of scale". Once that is achieved, and that knowledge is applied to the juxtaposition of humankind and all of its activities to the planetory and cosmic forces at work every passing nanosecond, then and only then will a clear understanding that humankind's influence does not amount to much more than a momentary blip on the cosmic radar screen be achieved.
Very simple exercises like the above can answer more questions than one can ask in a lifetime. -- We are quite capable of destroying our tiny personal envronments on the planet's surface by amassing ourselves in grotesquely overpopulated concentrations, or personally poisoning our tiny personal envrionments so we dramatically make our lives miserable. But, all of that doesn't amount to a hill of beans on a planetary scale.
To wit: if the doubling of today's atmospheric CO2 was imminently dangerous to anything on the planet - including humans and polar bears - then the atmospheric CO2 levels during the Eocene Epoch, which was over 20 times the atmospheric CO2 concentration of what is today, then it would have been 20 times more devastating to all of life at that time too. Yet, the Eocene Epoch of 24 million years produced over 96% of all the higher life forms - the mammalian species - which have ever existed on our planet.
In other words: If our atmospheric conditions today are a "problem", then the atmospheric conditions of the Eocene Epoch was 20 times worse of a "problem", and yet if that immense Eocene "problem" hadn't ever come to exist, none of us would be here today to discuss it. Therefore, there literally is no method or model, regardless of how cleverly it is conceived and executed, that
Great, I'm guessing you're getting on the bandwagon right now, then? Or do people in Pakistan not count?
Somehow, I expect you'll make excuses instead.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Not terribly, some people are still arguing that "it ain't happening!" and some people are still arguing "it ain't people that's doing it!" and some people are arguing "it's the sun!" and some people are arguing "it's not getting warmer, it's getting colder!"
These endless infantile arguments over the well established basics are derailing and inhibiting discussion and debate on the very topics you mentioned.
Of course, that's really the point of the "science is not settled" campaign being waged by the "Merchants of Doubt". They've done it for tobacco, asbestos and others, the goal is to delay an action that might be harmful to their products by waging a PR campaign to convince people that "there is no link between smoking and cancer", "asbestos presents no health risks at all" and "Global warming? If it's happening why is it so dang cold right now?"
It's a little depressing how easily Americans are manipulated by a well crafted PR campaign.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
You may have stepped back a little too far to grasp what the human problem is. It's not that the end result is going to an uninhabitable planet (we hope) it's that a lot of people are going to die from the effects of climate change on the way there.
According to what I understand, the previous higher CO2 levels coincided with lower levels of solar output. Combining higher solar output and the same levels of CO2 would likely produce different results.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Very unlikely. More likely, they'll die from hunger, poor sanitation, civil war..all so much more attributable to lack of economic development and social ills than to climate change. And if they don't die for those reasons, they'll die for others.
Perhaps my biggest concern about the focus on climate change is that it diverts attention away from the more salient, and manageable, factors that hasten death. I really think the GP is right on about keeping apprised of scale.
A problem to the people, duh.
You seem to have this weird idea that "survival of the species" and "survival of the individuals that compose it" are equivalent things. But they aren't. For instance, let's suppose that things change enough that your area turns into a searing desert, crops die, and life in a city becomes impossible (because cities must be supported by the countryside). At the same time, Greenland becomes a lush tropical paradise.
Now the global stats of such a thing could conceivably look pretty good really. Perhaps overall things improve. But that doesn't mean that it's necessarily going to be pleasant for you. If your area ends up being disadvantaged, what are you going to do, move to Greenland? Think they'll just let you go and move there?
If such a thing happens over tens of thousands of years it's not such a big deal. Eventually things get uncomfortable and people figure out that maybe it's time to move somewhere better. But if something like that happens over a human lifetime, it's going to be a mess of epic proportions.
Yes, they will die from hunger, poor sanitation, wars (civil or otherwise) all of which are going to be made worse by climate change. The World Health Organization already attributes 150,000 deaths annually to the effects of climate change.
Climate change is widely expected to hit the poorest people hardest.
I think you need to consider the effect of making all those factors worse.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Somehow, I expect you'll make excuses instead.
How did you know? I thought immediately "Fanatics blaming poor flood control planning on Climate Change!" It's like you read my mind.
How about the World Health Organization saying that climate change "is estimated to contribute to more than 150,000 deaths" each year?
More excuses?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
How about the World Health Organization saying that climate change "is estimated to contribute to more than 150,000 deaths" each year?
They wouldn't be in a position to know. You're really good at this.
How about the Global Humanitarian Forum estimating that "[c]limate change disasters kill around 300,000 people a year and cause $125 billion in economic losses"?
Let me guess, more excuses?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
I can reuse the WHO excuse. They don't know enough to make estimates. Have to grade this one a miss. I find it interesting how every case you've given me so far has been bullshit. The bottom line is that we have no idea how worse, if at all, current global warming is making natural disasters. But given that there's almost no change in climate from prior to human industrialization, I doubt there's been a measurable effect.
It certainly is convenient to have so many excuses to dismiss anything you don't agree with. You know, some people might be inclined to believe that you dismiss them out of hand because you disagree with their conclusions rather than for actual legitimate reasons.
If you're interested in how the Global Humanitarian Forum came up with those numbers, here's a blog post explaining it.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Great, I'm guessing you're getting on the bandwagon right now, then? Or do people in Pakistan not count?
Right, because flooding *never* happened before industrialization.
Which brings up an interesting point: if you rebrand the whole she-bang as "climate change", then you allow yourself to include any absolutely normal, average weather-related activity in the definition. So it's kind of like cheating.
Or is that the point now? You can retro-actively classify any weather disaster after the advent of industrialization as "global warming" and then the death toll rises to millions and millions.
And the really hilarious part is, you just took the "herp derp global warming doesn't exist because it's snowing out!" retard excuse, and turned it around... you're doing the exact same confusing between "weather" and "climate." "Herp derp global warming must exist because there was a flood!" You're really not helping the case.
Somehow, I expect you'll make excuses instead.
If by "excuse" you mean "thinking rationally and questioning what you say," then... yes.
And now you're going to call me a "denier", when in fact I believe that climate change is happening, and is human-caused. I just don't believe it's anything to panic about.
Comment of the year
You should really give the people you choose to disagree with more credit. I hardly think it's a stretch to say flooding at unprecedented levels in Pakistan is extremely likely to be related to climate change. It's not like this was just some normal flood, at one point one-fifth of Pakistan's total land area was underwater.
At the very least we should be able to see that without climate change the flooding wouldn't have been as severe as it was. One of the most basic effects of a warming climate is to increase the amount of precipitation that wet areas get (and decrease the amount that dry areas get). More heat means more evaporation and that eventually means more precipitation.
Of course, not all weather incidents are related to climate change, but if climate change is occurring then we should be able to establish a baseline for what is a normal rate of weather disasters and then we can identify the number of events which lie outside of the expected range of events and we can therefore estimate the number of weather related disasters caused by climate change.
Which is what the Global Humanitarian Forum did when they estimated that 300,000 deaths in 2009 were attributable to climate change.
It isn't time to panic, but it is time to start taking the reasonable and logical steps to mitigate the effects of climate change. Many of those steps are still pretty good ideas even if you don't believe that climate change presents a danger.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Assuming the socio-economic driving factors behind loss-generating events to be the same for all causes, the difference is likely to be due to climate change
That assumption is awfully wrong. For example, in the US, there has been a vast build up on coastal lands subject to tropical storms. And I imagine globally that disasters are better reported than they were in the 80s. Further, one would expect, with increasing population, more stuff to be built on flood plains, deltas, and other areas prone to flooding. That's where the food and flat land is. Earthquake faults are far less considerate of humanities need for good land, so they'd be less likely to be near high population centers. In other words, there are several huge examples of observer bias here. Bottom line is that loss events from disasters do not correlate with an increase in frequency or severity of a disaster.
The time frame of 25 years is embarrassingly paltry and the extrapolations should have in themselves thrown up warning signs. If you're predicting 40% of loss events are currently caused by global warming, you should have some support in the form of obviously stronger weather patterns. We don't. This is not a serious study at all.
The Kyoto treaty was more about the distribution of wealth then a reduction of fossil fuel use or even the capturing of carbon output from the use. It contained specific provisions that would allow a country under restriction relocate it's industrial mechanisms into a country not under restriction and you could actually increase emissions in this process and still have it counted as a reduction.
Like I said, it was hijacked for political puroses. Of all the countries that signed onto Kyoto, only about 35 or so of them (less then one third) had to do anything about carbon emissions. The rest stood to benefit from offering either a shelter in those emissions or by being able to compete in those markets once the local or home market got disadvantaged from internal regulation attempting to deal with compliance.
The problem is that the efforts to price fossil fuels "better" purposely had an exception for over 2 thirds of the earth's countries and when examined closely resemble efforts to retard the western or first world countries and prop up third world countries by a mechanism in the retarding.
In what way does this new model "completely contradict" existing models?
If you're asking that question it means you're not in a position to even attempt to participate in the conversation.
As for the rest, that's your assertion, not mine.
Oh your talking about the "we made the mess so we have to clean it up provisions". Actually I listened the a day long panel discussion the ethics of "converge and contract" and it all seemed pretty fair to me.
"Converge and contract" just means that the industrialized west has to restrict its emissions at a slightly faster rate then some of the developing world. But we all end up at the same place by the end of the program.
So I guess what your complaining about is having to clean up your own mess and somehow red baiting by calling it wealth redistribution.
Sorry but I find that a pathetic, weak, unjust, and irresponsible position.
NO.. What I am complaining about is the specific language that requires some to clean up their mess while allowing others to create the same mess and encourages the some to actually solve their problems by giving it to others.
If it was about cutting carbon emissions and not some political redistribution of wealth, then there would be steps that accounted for England moving a lot of it's manufacturing to India and China (which the EU more then tripled their imports from those two alone in the first 5 years of trying to get compliant under Kyoto). Instead, it rewards England for moving this production and actually causing more pollution then what was already being produced locally. The only difference is where the pollution is being produced politically and it's perfectly fine for England or any other country, under Kyoto, to move a factory to India and produce 10 times the carbon emissions while counting it as a reduction and India not being limited whatsoever at all.
Now is the problem carbon emissions in the atmosphere or Carbon emissions only in developed countries. I can support lowering carbon emissions all the way around (hopefully by advances in technology that allow more use or more clean use from energy and even alternative energy coming on line). I can't support raising them in other places to lower them in developed nations. If you cannot see where this is a political reality by design, you simply are not looking at it. Sure, they hide it in the cover story but the details show the reality of it. Kyoto is a fraud on a mass scale. All the money and effort spent on compliance with Kyoto would have been millions of times more useful if it was collected and spent on developing alternative energy and making existing energy more efficient then given to the world to adopt into use by regulation or the fact it's more competitive. Simply raising the costs of coal or oil in one area does nothing to reduce pollution when what depended on that can simply move everything to another area with cheap energy.
I see your assertion that 150,000 people are *already* dying annually due to climate change. And I read the cited article. You find substance in that article?
I have no hope nor inclination to change your mind about any of this. But please consider this: aside from the many uninformed people and faux skeptics, there are very well-informed, deeply considerate and concerned people who have thus far arrived at conclusions that differ greatly from yours. To the extent that they may wish to see inaction on the issue of AGW, you are a Poster Child who, among others, make *the* most compelling cases for skepticism.
150000 dead, indeed.
Carry on.
It's not my assertion that 150,000 people are already dying annually due to climate change, it's the World Health Organization's assertion. Some people would be inclined to think that they might have some credibility when talking about issues that concern the world and health.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
I see. Maybe I'm dense but can you explain how asking that question means I'm not in a position to participate in the conversation? Sounds to me like you don't have a cogent answer so you're just trying to win the argument with bluster.
But you can see by the quote from the abstract of the paper that even the authors of the paper say it merely slows projected warming. Are you saying the authors are wrong? I guess they must be (in your opinion) since they think it only modifies projected warming but doesn't say there is no global warming.
Yes, some people...no...MANY people rely on World Health Organization pronouncements. As a matter of fact, MOST people rely on highly politicized sources, like WHO, for their pronouncements. Many people, in fact, rely on commentators like Rush Limbaugh and Keith Olbermann (in the U.S.) as highly credible sources.
A very few people rely much more heavily on primary sources, basic research, because they think that's more credible (and I do to). You get to see the methods by which the data are produced...helpful context, I think. Of course, the source data and its conclusions are much more modest, disjointed and inconclusive than those other sources. But hey...everybody makes his own choice of what's credible, yes?
Anyway, I do apologize for having accused you of asserting that 150000 people are dying annually due to climate change. I thought you were saying that.
You can't take a hand made, lip blown thermometer from 1850 and use that on a scale to show temperature growth of a fraction of a degree F over decades, but that's one gross error the "climatologists" make.
That statement is a gross error on your part. Very accurate thermometers were being made in the mid-1700's. Both Daniel Fahrenheit and Anders Celsius died before 1750. The reason they start the global temperature record in the mid-1800's is that there were finally enough temperature readings being taken worldwide to form a synthesis of global temperature.
"Where is the heat going??!!!" as our temperatures are now dropping is the wail of the "climatologist..."
You read the words "Where is the heat going?" but you didn't bother to follow up and learn the context of the question. The actual quote from the email is "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." The travesty that Kevin Trenberth is referring to is the fact that we don't have enough instrumentation and detailed measurement to accurately determine where all of the heat is going.
Wouldn't if make much more sense to skip that idiocy and simply require power plants to be X much more efficient and pollute...?
It does to me but that's "government regulation". Cap and trade is a way to accommodate the free marketeers. It has worked quite well for SO2 emissions.
But my personal preference is a straight up carbon tax levied where the coal leaves the mine and at the well head for oil and gas and at the dock for imports. I would even put a tariff on imported products for the carbon released in making and delivering them.
It should start very low, maybe costing me $20 for the first year then should rise every year or two so in something like 30 years it becomes too expensive to continue to use fossil fuels for most things. Wouldn't doing it that way spur innovation in ways to gain a competitive advantage by reducing your carbon footprint?
Finally, I don't think the government should keep the money. It should be redistributed in equal amounts to all legal residents perhaps as a credit on your tax return. That would ease the burden on people who reduce their carbon use. I could see using maybe 5% of the money collect to pay for administration and to fund research.
Especially when the person who's the main leader of the global warming cause is a politician who likes to pretend to be a scientist and not an actual scientist.
Al Gore isn't the leader on global warming, he's more like the spokesmodel for it.
I think their logic is that since there is no such thing as anthropogenic global warming it can't be causing the disasters. Therefore anything that says AGW is the cause is automatically wrong.
We may not be able to say exactly how much of the Pakistan flooding was from global warming but from the fact that the current warming has increased water vapor in the atmosphere by 4% (which is a measurable effect) it's logical to expect more precipitation.
Unfortunately at this point we are already committed to plenty of warming and ocean acidification. Even if human CO2 emissions went to zero tomorrow it will take 30-40 years for the warming to stop (because of the buffer the oceans provide for temperatures). It would be over 200 years before the ice on Greenland and Antarctica reached a new balance. The sooner we do something about it the less worse it will get.
Well, not really. It's a way to accommodate for some of the markets but as we have notices, most of the manufacturing from nations regulated by the S02 emissions has moved away to markets not regulated.
You have to ask why making things in other countries is cheaper. Is it labor alone? Not really, labor only influences about 25% of the costs of a product and that can easily be compensated by taxes. It's emissions, labor, regulations and so on that all play into the off-shoring of manufacturing.
I'm not sure I would like that system. For one, I believe that energy is more of a utility necessary for the country then a privileged consumer good and any attack on energy is an attack on the country's infrastructure. But, if there is a tax put on it before it's moved out, then what happens when supply increased and prices drop and the price to those using it remains the same? Or worse yet, if every thing jumps in price, all industry simply raises it's prices to compensate and the people impacted are the workers who's pay hasn't caught up with the massive inflation yet.
You see, it would never rise to the point that fossil fuels are too expensive to use. You have to remember, any costs put on corporations is recovered from the sale of the products. If it's applied to everyone equally right off the bat, then you are only going to see prices increase across the board as they recover that cost.
This was illustrated during the Clinton years when they put a tax on telephone service of one or two dollars per connected customer to fund access in disadvantaged and rural communities. This was a tax to the phone companies, not the people but because it hit all the phone companies at once (even in markets that have competition and several phone companies), it was just passed onto the consumer's bill as a recovery of a fee the government charges. So instead of this coming from profits as most lawmakers probably thought, it just increased costs to the consumer and the phone companies let the consumers know why.
This has some problems too. First, people who do not pay taxes or file a tax return would be impacted by a energy source tax and see nothing on the return of it. Second, all this is doing it creating the temporary use of the money by the governments then being used to pay for the increased prices caused by the use.
In other words, lets say I charge you a fee of $10 to do business with me. I then give you a credit of $10 for doing business with me. Does that raise the costs of you doing business with me at all? Would you do less business with me motivated by that cost (You might decrease your business based on the idiocy of the policy, but effectively no costs have increased unless you start with the time value of money)? Now if everyone who provided
Well, not really. It's a way to accommodate for some of the markets but as we have notices, most of the manufacturing from nations regulated by the S02 emissions has moved away to markets not regulated.
I don't know about manufacturing moving away from nations with SO2 regulations but the biggest source of SO2 emissions has always been power generation (coal and high sulfur petroleum). That isn't very movable. SO2 emissions have been curtailed for a fraction of the cost that power companies said it would when the regulations were first being proposed. The benefit to the country as a whole in reduced acid rain and reduced medical costs has been far greater than the cost to industry.
I'm not sure I would like that system. For one, I believe that energy is more of a utility necessary for the country then a privileged consumer good and any attack on energy is an attack on the country's infrastructure. But, if there is a tax put on it before it's moved out, then what happens when supply increased and prices drop and the price to those using it remains the same? Or worse yet, if every thing jumps in price, all industry simply raises it's prices to compensate and the people impacted are the workers who's pay hasn't caught up with the massive inflation yet.
Well, my first premise of course is that it is necessary to stop CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels. The market method of doing that is to make it (eventually) prohibitively expensive to use them. Cap and trade is one method but I think a carbon tax is simpler and less subject to manipulation.
You see, it would never rise to the point that fossil fuels are too expensive to use. You have to remember, any costs put on corporations is recovered from the sale of the products. If it's applied to everyone equally right off the bat, then you are only going to see prices increase across the board as they recover that cost.
This was illustrated during the Clinton years when they put a tax on telephone service of one or two dollars per connected customer to fund access in disadvantaged and rural communities. This was a tax to the phone companies, not the people but because it hit all the phone companies at once (even in markets that have competition and several phone companies), it was just passed onto the consumer's bill as a recovery of a fee the government charges. So instead of this coming from profits as most lawmakers probably thought, it just increased costs to the consumer and the phone companies let the consumers know why.
I guess I would just say it needs to become more expensive to use fossil fuels to reduce their use. You talk as if it isn't possible to do the things we do without fossil fuels. I have more faith in our inventiveness and ingenuity.
Most large scale manufacturing in the US created their own energy before the mid 1970's/1980's. This stopped when SO2 regulations started forcing them down and repairs started escaping grandfather clauses.
I agree with your premise, just not your methods. Well, sort of anyways. I'm not convince the Co2 is a large problem yet but I'm ready to support efforts to reduce it if they make sense and do not harm the citizens noticeably.
It's not that we cannot do things without fossil fuels, it's that there is no real incentive created by attempting to manipulate the costs of using them to start doing things without them. Further more, it can actually harm us if the scheme isn't put in place in a way that stops companies from relocating.
Lol.. This is rich. You are basically saying that because a US citizen can file a return, the government taking your money and you being forced to apply to get it back is acceptable. Well, I can see how you might think that. I still do not think it would have any effect at all on usage though.
Where exactly is the incentive coming from? As I already showed, if you increase the costs to all businesses, they will simply increase the costs to the consumer to recapture it. I for the life of me cannot find anywhere where there might be an incentive outside of the company relocating overseas or something. I mean even in the US, take Ohio for instance that gets most it's power from Coal, it will be adversely impacted compared to areas like Oregon or Florida who get most their electric from hydroelectric dams and Nuclear power. So what if the increase in costs doesn't cause research and development fast enough and all of Ohio's businesses are shit down because they can't compete with goods manufactured in Florida or Oregon? And if Florida and Oregon is already primarily off Fossil fuels and realizing a benefit from all of Ohio's non-essential industries shutting down, then why would they have an incentive to invest in alternative energy research? The government would have to step in and do something so why put some convoluted mess in place that attempted to hope companies would do something that is likely only going to be done by government anyways, when you can skip that all, raise their taxes by half a percent, and have the government do the R&D in the first place with open
That change looks like a problem called "politically expedient."
Politically expedient to whom? Which incredibly powerful shadowy group is pulling the strings behind this attempt to get people to reduce CO2 output?
Seems like politicians are generally seeing this as incredibly inconvenient to be honest, to the point where any attempt to have collective action on it is pretty much hopeless. But hey, most of Earth's history it hasn't had ice-caps, so I doubt if we'll make it any less habitable in the long run for life in general. But a lot of cities will get flooded, and a lot of productive land will be lost, among other things I suppose.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
It means your asking basic questions to which you should already know the answer before you interject at this stage of the debate. Its means its far more likely you'll detract from the debate rather than have anything, other than parroting, to offer.
Here is my answer. The new model does not contradict older models. I merely adds a new factor to be considered. If it proves to be good science then it gets added to them to make them better.