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Report Says Climate Change Already Evident, Emissions Gap Growing
Dupple writes "Following on from a world bank report of 4 degree C warmer world comes this story from the BBC. 'The effects of climate change are already evident in Europe and the situation is set to get worse, the European Environment Agency has warned. "Every indicator we have in terms of giving us an early warning of climate change and increasing vulnerability is giving us a very strong signal," observed EEA executive director Jacqueline McGlade.'"
Here's the report in question. There also comes news we've hit record levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Wait, you haven't heard? We have Cap and Trade in California now so Global Warming is solved.
Now we've rewritten history
The one thing we've found out
Sweet taste of vindication
It turns to ashes in your mouth
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Tell about it to New York people. I've heard it is getting windier there by.
I love an alarmist, panic-in-the-streets, headless-man-found-in-topless-bar, headlines as much as the next guy, but the Keeling Curve has been hitting 'record levels' every year since the late 1950s.
Apparently, there will never be enough data to convince some people of that. (See also "Evolution, teaching in US schools.")
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
I prefer mine with some context. Like this one.
Just look at the curve The rise is so steady every year in the last fifty has set a record and every year in the next fifty probably will too.
I love that the article includes the chart showing "Atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa Observatory".
Kinda like a thermometer hanging over a boiling pot of water to show it is warm.
to show this is definitely not a naturally occurring cycle?
No but the evidence is pretty good that it is primarily forced by CO2. And, in a very real sense it makes little difference if it's anthropogenic or due to His Noodlieness eating that giant bean burrito. We will still have to deal with relatively rapid environmental changes that will cause rapid economic and political pressures which, on top of the fact that there are too many humans running around, is going to create some 'interesting times' for us all.
The new news is that we seem to be plugging along the worst case scenario trend lines. So instead of having 50 to 100 years to deal with issues we may see dramatic changes in 10 - 20. It also makes it less likely that we can reverse the process by economic or political means which means that there will be even more pressure to start tossing some Hail Mary passes.
Whatcouldpossiblygowrong?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
"Methinks that in a decade or two some natural process"
Fairy dust? Maybe unicorn farts?
Yep. I have convincing evidence that all those exhaust pipes and coal-fired power stations were formed by erosion. This is a completly natural process that would have happened anyway.
No sig today...
I understand that there are many arguments as to whether global climate change exists, and/or how sever it is. I also understand that trying to reduce our emissions significantly can come at some economic cost. But there are still many low hanging fruits that we could easily tackle as a compromise, at very little cost.
To name a few:
- Boats - No emissions controls at all currently
- Planes - Trains should be a better option (particularly in the U.S.)
- Coal power plants - Outdated tech
- Lawn mowers - Electric mowers could replace most people's mowing needs
- Excessive water consumption - Top loading washing machines are a colossal waste of fresh water
Additionally, there have been numerous studies linking various forms of pollution to cancer and other serious health effects. So we stand to gain healthier people and lower health care costs by reducing our emissions as well.
I love an alarmist, panic-in-the-streets, headless-man-found-in-topless-bar, headlines as much as the next guy, but the Keeling Curve has been hitting 'record levels' every year since the late 1950s.
Yeah well, believe it or not one of the common arguments I face when talking about man made CO2 is that human emissions are nothing compared to natural forces of CO2 and a similar argument is that the Earth has a natural cycle that keeps this level of CO2 in balance and in check.
So as we watch CO2 levels steadily rise, it gives us insight into how much of these "natural processes" are effecting greenhouse gases in our atmosphere versus what we are contributing to these levels. And I think it's important to remind people that 1) these levels are steadily rising so no, the Earth is not keeping itself in check, 2) it's not just something where turn on the "remove CO2 machines" to fix it and 3) if natural processes are the cause of these levels of CO2, where is the corresponding increase in these natural processes?
Seriously people tell me all the time that one volcanic eruption dwarfs anything man could do in a decade. And I don't know where they get this shit. So tell me, where are all these new volcanic eruptions to explain this steady trend upward? Oh, we can't report that it's rising because you feel offended that it's "alarmist, panic-in-the-streets, headless-man-found-in-topless-bar, headlines." With all due respect, you're not helping this situation!
My work here is dung.
Decide for yourself: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/contents.html
Floating in the black seas of infinity without a paddle.
Yes, the reporting sucks, as usual. If the climate were perfectly stable (never is) and human economic growth continued you would EXPECT damages from pretty much everything to increase unless people in general were rational and had enough foresight to mitigate obvious problems like putting lots of expensive things next to the ocean.
Add a changing environment (hotter, colder - it really doesn't make much difference) and you're going to have more damage - unless you get smart about where to place things.
But the climate is changing - and changing fairly quickly. Whether or not mankind is really forcing the change or not, it still is going to be a big problem because we are pushing the carrying capacity of the planet at present. If you look at the history of human kind it is apparent that climate change has forced numerous civilizations to move, adapt or collapse (or various combinations). Given close to 7 billion people, moving lots of them doesn't work well. Adapting will certainly happen - some more successful than others and collapse is definitely a possibility.
Just try to ignore the media - as usual, it's not being terribly helpful.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
It's too late to do anything about it, more and more greenhouse gasses are being released from frozen tundras and lakes plus India and China are in full manufacture mode.
The only thing that will turn the tide now is removal of ~6.5 billion humans immediately.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Northern Europe where *I* live can do with some warmer climate. Why should I pay more for my power because of some future possible water shortages in "[river basins of] the Ganges and the Nile"? We must *prepare* for Global Warming, which may mean, for example, helping India and Egypt to build desalination plants and to grow more food in places which were too cold previously.
Yes, because everyone knows that global plant coverage is increasing at an enormous rate and will continue to do so as the global population expands.[/sarcasm] All the plant growth of a decade wouldn't soak up the CO2 from a single year of our emissions, not to mention the fact that in 100 years when those plants die they'll release all that CO2 right back into the atmosphere.
Methinks that in a decade or two some natural process will start to decrease carbon levels
Meagrees. Methinks it is much more likely that ledow (319597) is much more up to speed on climate modelling, geology, large scale biology and other natural processes than armies of scientists who have devoted large parts of their lives to studying this. Mealsothinks that people who have been studying it for a long time and spent their lives shooting down their collegues and being shot down (science is like that: there's no consipracy, it's generally a bunch of people desperately trying to make a name for themselves by proving everyone else wrong) are far more likely to have missed something obvious than ledow (319597).
Mewouldalso like to point out that your arrogance and self belief is quite astounding if you think that you're more knowledgable than the world experts.
Meisnot going to link to all the arguments about why your last paragraph is tosh because they are easily found and you would have read them by now if you actually had an open mind, rather than an ideology.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I am not sure what to tell you. More people getting better lifestyles = a warmer planet. We could solve global warming right now, all we have to do is start killing things. Global warming due to human activity is a walk in the park compared to the cataclysmic climate change the world experienced 12,900 years ago when a comet impacted with the planet and dropped the temperatures near chigago in 2 years to the same levels they were when Chicago had a mile of ice on it. If it gets too warm where you live, then move. That is why animals evolved legs. I am in support of minimizing the levels of carbon dioxide as best we can, but climate change is a reality. Cataclysmic climate change is a common occurence on our planet. If you feel that creating a museum of what the earth used to be is more important than humanity advancing our civilization to the point where we can take the life forms on this planet and colonize others then you are a luddite. In the future global warming will be called terraforming and it will occur on mars.
What I don't get is why we can't see this shit coming. We make all these predictions about what's going to happen, and then one day, BAM! "Oh shit! While we weren't looking, the earth got hotter, like our models said!" It's not ever a gradual report. There's like, "The earth is getting warmer" "The average temperature is increasing" "Global average temperature is in an up-trend" "TODAY, studies found that the earth is TWO DEGREES HOTTER!" "Earth still getting hotter" "Earth hotter still" "Global warming" "Manbearpig" "STUDY SHOWS EARTH 4 DEGREES HOTTER WOW!!!"
There's no "wow" here. The earth should only be marginally hotter today than it was yesterday; you shouldn't wake up and be like, "WHOA! I didn't know the earth was that hot!" You're a scientist, you've been tracking how hot the earth is for the past 30 years, how did it get several degrees hotter than you thought it was while you weren't looking?
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1. The end is nigh
2. Repent
3. ????
4. PROFIT!!!
Oh, right, of course, because after all the number of plants on Earth is increasing!
.
Nowhere on the surface of the planet have we seen any record cold temperatures over the course of the year so far. Every land surface in the world saw warmer-than-average temperatures except Alaska and the eastern tip of Russia. The continental United States has been blanketed with record warmth — and the seas just off the East Coast have been much warmer than average, for which Sandy sends her thanks.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration summarizes October 2012:
The average temperature across land and ocean surfaces during October was 14.63C (58.23F). This is 0.63C (1.13F) above the 20th century average and ties with 2008 as the fifth warmest October on record. The record warmest October occurred in 2003 and the record coldest October occurred in 1912. This is the 332nd consecutive month with an above-average temperature.
Emphasis added. If you were born in or after April 1985, if you are right now 27 years old or younger, you have never lived through a month that was colder than average. That’s beyond astonishing....
Maps and the full article are here.
It's hard to convince the general public not steeped in an interest in science from an early age the way a lot of the geekverse was. People need to see something happening in a big, clear way before they believe it.
Well, except for religion.
And politicial ideology.
And conspiracy theories.
And urban myths.
And all the "I know what I know" categiries.
And... er... hmmm...
Their heads will explode.
On second thought... yes by all means, tell the Republicans!
Maybe because scientists have actually been UNDERESTIMATING THE DAMAGE so people like you don't call them "alarmist". See this is the thing that kills me, guy like you always say "yeah, but what if it's not as bad as they say?" but you never stop to ask "What if it's actually much worse!?"
There is no way to gather a significant amount of data to suggest that we're doing anything "bad"
The amount of carbon (and pollution) we sending into the atmosphere is staggering, and currently accelerating.
Do you like the earth's atmosphere as it is now? Do you think we can just carry on going in this direction, without adversely affecting it?
I would agree with the general sentiment, but probably NOT in the way an AGW believer quite means....
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
A. Yes, we have had a very nice time for the last 400 years or so and that may be coming to an end. Humans may have had a big hand in pushing things into a less stable configuration, but regardless of the source the fact is that climate stability should not be something that we are counting on as a whole species. Yes, things might be tougher for a while but as a species we need to roll with it.
B. Too many humans is a problem that we need to solve in one way or another. One way is to fall into the "sustainability" trap and say that we need to get the population down to a sustainable level - really, really fast. The other way is to start exporting humanity. There is no third way of dealing with this and exporting humanity may not be much of a solution for solving problems on Earth but it does solve a lot of problems for the species.
How would we reduce the population really fast? Well, nuclear warfare between multiple actors would probably have that result as would some really nasty biowar stuff. Both would likely result in lots of bodies in the streets, so many that there wouldn't be enough people to clean up before they rot and are fed upon. However, I think if we can get everyone on the "Green" bandwagon we might be able to implement mass exterminations where people simply willing go down to the local "Green" centre so they can stop being a burden on the environment. You know, do it for the sake of the planet and your children.
A fraction of one percent of the non-biological co2 emissions are the problem. Of course.
Myth: Busted!
No sig today...
Sorry, just let me go dump fifty megatons of fertilizer into the ocean; I'll be right back...
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Hang on. Are you actually claiming that you need to see people commit acts of terrorist sabotage before you're convinced that they believe in the course of action they are suggesting? (reducing CO2 emissions, in this case)
You realize you're batshit insane, right? More than that, you realize that you shouldn't be participating in civil society, right?
I dunno, ledow (319597) is quite possibly right about some natural process decreasing carbon levels if we don't do anything...just wrong about the timeline.
See Malthusian catastrophe for more details.
I highly doubt that we will are capable of altering our climate in such a way to destroy all life on the planet. However, we very well might be altering it in such a way to make it very uncomfortable for us.
some natural process will start to decrease carbon levels
Yep, but most likely the process is going to create inhospitable climates for people (which would reduce carbon levels, just not the kind you're thinking)
significant amount of data to suggest that we're doing anything "bad" or that anything "good"
You're ignoring the fact that global temperatures are definitely rising. Whether it's from anthropogenic "good" or "bad" is beside the point. It is going to get very, very tough for people to live on this planet in the next 20-50 years. It would be wise to start figuring out ways to deal with arid cropland, ocean acidification and dried up aquifers. Oh, add a mean temp of 110F (possibly higher) to the US midwest region (you know, where most cropland is). In a very short time, even the "crackpot" schemes are going to seem quite viable.
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As a Canadian, I like to think of Obama forcing cake down into faces of the Republican party with one hand while trying to (ineptly) fix everything else with his other hand. Better to have awkward, clumsy progress in sorta the right direction than none at all.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
There is another aspect of this. People talk all the time about there being a cult following of climate change believers and how this is nearly a religion. Religious fevor has through the ages produced some very dedicated individuals willing to go to incredible lengths in pursuit of their beliefs.
So where are the extraordinary acts?
I think you have things backwards. Climate change caused by anthropogenic CO2 emissions is the mainstream, evidence-based consensus. It's the deniers who are like a religion. Just like "creation science", they have people who cherry-pick evidence, mash figures, and come up with conclusions that are counter to the mainstream. Just like "creation science", they have cheerleaders who repeat arguments that have been refuted time and time again (e.g. "volcanoes").
Oh, and of course, there's those with a vested interest in the fossil fuel industry, who'll back the denialist message, whether they believe it or not.
So perhaps the absence of "extraordinary acts" like blowing up coal fired power stations, is because the people keenest on reducing CO2 emissions, are sane, level headed people.
Mewouldalso like to point out TFA is written inextricably interlinking (or so its worldview declares) "socioeconomic disparities" with climate change. Climate change thus, as predicted, becomes another argument for government control.
And the problems climate change may introduce are economic issues. The vaunted scientists have been making incorrect analysis of economic impacts for 50 years. Impact is an economic issue.
These are the same clueless ones who brought you the fraud of peak oil, destructo-botted by capitalism when it got around to it.
If only an economist had non-controversial theories which could predict this! Theories which made counter-intuitive predictions that came true again and again and again!
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I just want to know: do you keep these in a text editor and just paste them over, or did you write this one on the spot? C'mon. You'll never be a successful troll if you're that brazen. You have to lead people on with ambiguous comments first.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Isn't that right next to a volcano? Didn't they observe a sharp rise a few years ago? The claims are interesting and all, but I think they chose to show a plot from an observation point that is exceptional.
Yeah, let's sit on our hands, then. I wonder how you guys managed to conquer the West!
Maybe your aware that ideas like that have been, um, floated.
Basically farm massive cultures of floating algae, which would fix CO2 and then be either used as biofuel (sequestering the CO2 produced from burning, or just saying it's a renewable fuel source) or just buried in some form in which the CO2 is fixed. I think there was something about it also cooling the earth by reflecting heat that the ocean would otherwise absorb.
Maybe it has potential. Maybe it's dangerous...
There is no way to gather a significant amount of data to suggest that we're doing anything "bad" or that anything "good" we do is working without comparing to some 10,000+ year cycle that we've never observed. Best records for such things go back a few hundred years, and beyond that the data is very sketchy and specific only to specific areas (e.g. ice cores, etc.).
Paleoclimatology is not exactly "sketchy". It studies global trends over millennia, and provides far more information than just a book of thermometer readings from the measly few years humans have been recording such things. There is indeed a large body of data. They use ice core data to determine temperatures and atmospheric composition. They have calibrated those readings based on the few hundred years of written records available. They also corroborate the data with other evidence, such as archaeological and fossil data, and even historical accounts of weather related events. No one piece of data tells the whole story, which is why they have gone to such great lengths to collect as much as possible from a wide variety of sources. Put together, the current body of evidence is scientifically acceptable.
The data is available, it's validated, and it's significant. Instead of continuing to deny climate change is happening, and appearing foolish to people who know better, why not put forth some plausible hypotheses about why you think the climate change that is happening now has natural causes at its core, and offer some tests to validate your theories?
John
"Do we know that reducing the CO2 level in the atmosphere - by whatever means necessary - will reverse or start to reverse climate change?"
If we're driving towards a cliff, do we know whether braking will prevent a crash? If we don't know, does that mean we shouldn't brake?
We know that accelerating our greenhouse gas emissions will kill us all.
December 1990 was one of the coldest months since records were first kept in the Silver State more than a century ago. In fact, it shares the podium with the coldest month of all, January 1937. The other winners in the "Top Ten" coldest months include January 1890, January 1913, January 1917, December 1924, December 1932, January 1949, December 1972, and February 1989. During the brutal cold snap of December 1990, at least 16 locations, with between 30 and 113 years of record, set new low temperatures for any month, with 2 to 3 times that many just missing all-time lows but establishing new minima for December. The State's long-standing December low of minus 45, set in 1924 in San Jacinto was broken, as minus 46 was recorded at Mountain City during the peak of the pre-Christmas cold snap. (The – 46 at Mountain City ranks second only to the minus 50 set in January 1937 as Nevada's all-time lowest temperature.)
I could find many, many more examples...
Methinks that in a decade or two some natural process will start to decrease carbon levels and then those people put in charge of whatever-crackpot-carbon-saving scheme now will be able to do an I-told-you-so then. When, really, everything we did made zero difference whatsoever.
Magical thinking at its worst. If you look at the evidence, god forbid, you'll find that there many examples of opposite happening. For instance warming is causing an accelerated release of methane from permafrost and since methane is a strong greenhouse gas... Sea warming is starting to cause release of methane hydrate deposits from the sea floor, which will also accelerate warming. Reduction of ice cover on the Arctic Ocean is reducing albedo (the amount of solar radiation (heat) reflected back into space). All of these are factors that are causing an acceleration of global warming.
-- QED
Methinks that in a decade or two some natural process will start to decrease carbon levels and then those people put in charge of whatever-crackpot-carbon-saving scheme now will be able to do an I-told-you-so then. When, really, everything we did made zero difference whatsoever.
Maybe bu,t oil and coal are still non-renewable energy sources, much of which we currently rely on from foreign nations. Consider, that if the U.S. becomes more energy efficient but can acquire more domestic oil, it could potentially export that oil and make more profits...something even the oil barons could appreciate
Oh, my sweet summer child! What do you know about fear? Fear is for the winter, when the snows fall a hundred feet deep; fear is for the Long Night, when the sun hides for years and children are born and live and die all in darkness...
Winter is coming.
I'm no expert either, but last I checked dead plants do tend to rot......
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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration summarizes October 2012:
The average temperature across land and ocean surfaces during October was 14.63C (58.23F). This is 0.63C (1.13F) above the 20th century average and ties with 2008 as the fifth warmest October on record. The record warmest October occurred in 2003 and the record coldest October occurred in 1912. This is the 332nd consecutive month with an above-average temperature.
Emphasis added. If you were born in or after April 1985, if you are right now 27 years old or younger, you have never lived through a month that was colder than average. That’s beyond astonishing....
Maps and the full article are here.
Is that the discredited NOAA figures http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/29/press-release-2 ?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/11/18/if-youre-27-or-younger-youve-almost-certainly-experienced-many-colder-than-average-months/
"And this will give ammunition to those who would write off a warming planet as little more than a hoax. Alarmism has no place in a discussion of science. We should leave that to 24-hour cable news pundits."
It's going to get tough for some people. We Canadians eagerly await the northward shift of the grain belt. We promise to be gentle masters of the Americans, providing they behave yourselves. And we won't charge too much for water.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"Do we know that reducing the CO2 level in the atmosphere - by whatever means necessary - will reverse or start to reverse climate change?"
If we're driving towards a cliff, do we know whether braking will prevent a crash? If we don't know, does that mean we shouldn't brake?
We know that accelerating our greenhouse gas emissions will kill us all.
James Lovelock takes the view that we've missed our chance to reverse or slow down global warming. He says that efforts to reduce CO2 output are diverting resource that could be used instead to adapt to the changed world. That is, instead of spending $1 billion moving to a CO2 neutral energy source, spend the $1B on flood defences, agriculture suitable for a warmer climate, relocating population centres as the sea level rises.
With your car/cliff analogy - since we don't know whether braking will stop the car before it reaches the cliff, don't waste effort on braking, use the time to open the door and jump out.
Of course, you should probably keep the brake pedal down while you're messing around with the seatbelt and the door handle. The analogy probably stretches that far too.
It's true that there is latency in recovery from greenhouse gasses. Plants are only a temporary solution, since much of what they capture will eventually be released back into the atmosphere. You can read some statistics here about how the concentrations of the major gasses have changed. The numbers at the bottom for residence time can be interpreted as "how long it stays in the atmosphere", i.e. how long before a reduction is noticed. CO2's huge variability is because most of the time when CO2 leaves the atmosphere, it goes into the top layer of the ocean, and then comes back out again. It can take up to 500 years for the carbon to actually work further down into the ocean and become completely removed from the system.
But this hardly means no action should be taken—it means that simply stopping isn't enough. We need to actively reduce the greenhouse effect by removing moreCO2 from the atmosphere than we're putting in so we can reach sustainable levels again. That's not an excuse to stop production, and claiming it might be makes you look like a spoiled brat.
Supporters of climate change research don't behave religiously because they aren't religious; the evidence is very solid and they're simply reacting logically. I'm glad we nipped that fallacy in the bud before it got out of hand. Conversely, though, I'm surprised you didn't try to blame environmental science for the ELF.
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I dunno, ledow (319597) is quite possibly right about some natural process decreasing carbon levels if we don't do anything...
Well, yeah, but the climate models do include everything that scientists know about.
I highly doubt that we will are capable of altering our climate in such a way to destroy all life on the planet. However, we very well might be altering it in such a way to make it very uncomfortable for us.
Given the circumstances under which extremophiles survive, we certainly couldn't eliminate life. Even with less extreme things, it is exceptionally likely that we could eliminate insects or even mamals (e.g. rats, mice, etc). I very much doubt we could even eliminate humans. But yes, just because us and life would go on, doesn't say anything about how comfortable we'd find it.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Hint: it's a terrible idea unless the algae sinks when it dies. If you're burning it, then the CO2 is just going back into the atmosphere. The atmosphere's CO2 levels need to be brought down, and the biofuel algae solution is only relevant after we've fixed the problem through some more permanent means.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Bullshit.....all graphs and charts show no warming from 1997 on. Plus, what happened to all those ice sheets covering the US....were there large SUV's somewhere we don't know about 50,000 years ago.....what caused this evil warming then. Stop it.
Mewouldalso like to point out TFA is written inextricably interlinking (or so its worldview declares) "socioeconomic disparities" with climate change.
Yeah, and? Climate change will affect poor people more than righ people because, simplistically put, rich people can afford to move somewhere nicer and poor people cannot.
Climate change thus, as predicted, becomes another argument for government control.
No, here's where your logic breaks down. Simply pointing out a fact does not consitiute an argument centred around the fact.
And the problems climate change may introduce are economic issues.
Yes? Is there anyone (even denialists) that dispute that IF climate change happens then it will have an economic effect? Anything global scale will have an economic effect.
But you're still introducing red herrings. Climate change may have certain effets on human society. That doesn't change the fact that it is happening.
The vaunted scientists have been making incorrect analysis of economic impacts for 50 years.
Do you know why science is vaunted? Because it works, bitches.. Science is the only mechanism we have for predicting things.
These are the same clueless ones who brought you the fraud of peak oil
Er yes. Those same scientists have been predicting peak oil and climate change for the last 50 years despite most careers in science being less than 50 years and in one field only. Here's a clue: it's a whole bunch of different people who have nothing to do with each other.
Anyway to cut to the chase:
The GP is a denialist and bases his opinion on the belief that he knows more than the experts.
You are trying to cloud the issue by bringing up multiple, unrelated points about economic impact.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I'm not a cheerleader for the idea, and I'm only repeating a vague version of it from memory.
But, as I said, if you burn the algae in a suitably equipped furnace, you could sequester the CO2, in the same way as carbon sequestration works for coal burning power stations.
Or you could bury it in such a way that it doesn't leak CO2 as it decays.
Or you could argue that by burning it, you're reducing the use of fossil fuel. Only putting CO2 in the atmosphere that you recently fixed from the atmosphere.
Or, as you said, you could arrange for it to sink into the ocean.
That would PROVE it true. If the CO2 level is higher this year than in any year past, it is a record. Then if it is even higher the next year, it is again a record, and so on.... presumably every year, until we do something about it or it magically disappears somewhere.
By growing certain plants in areas that currently have little vegetation, then burying the plants so the carbon they extracted from the atmosphere remains sequestered, we can remove significant amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It's not nearly enough to continue burning fossil fuels at the rate at which we currently do. There has been some work with "artificial trees" that can remove more carbon dioxide. You can read more about carbon sequestration.
To me, it seems easier to just increase energy efficiency and find alternative sources of energy. I don't understand why so many people are against those ideas. I remember some vague talk about it "destroying the economy" if we do so, but that sounds like alarmism.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
+1 outstanding!
You're a complete fucking idiot, but I applaud for having the courage not to post your moronic mutterings as an AC.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Remember, for pseudo-skeptics, even the most appallingly idiotic skeptical comment is proof against whatever science they are battling, but the bar on science's side must always be set impossibly high.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
If you're 27 or younger, you've never experienced a colder-than-average month
Oh look. Stupid on the web. I bet that a very small portion of humanity has never experienced a colder-than-average month.
Nowhere on the surface of the planet have we seen any record cold temperatures over the course of the year so far.
Do you know the difference between "record cold" temperature and "colder-than-average" temperature? I do. Do you know the difference between a global measurement and a measurement at a spot somewhere on the surface of the planet? I do.
That only applies if the organic matter ends up in anoxic conditions - buried under soil or anoxic water.
We could engineer that, I guess, if we put in a massive worldwide effort. It's unlikely to happen spontaneously at a large enough scale to help.
This sounds all well and good, but here's the question:
How much money are you going to pay me to do nothing with my time other than sequester CO2 out of the atmosphere? I'm willing to do it, but I'm not going to do it for free.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
People get paid to collect litter and sweep streets. They do it because it's necessary to keep the place liveable in.
Industry is compelled by government to sequester pollutants, and dispose of them in an approved manner.
CO2 sequestration is analogous to both of these. It's not free. It needs to be done.
Well, yeah, but the climate models do include everything that scientists know about.
Including knowledge of who is paying their bills. They may well be right, but I'm going to look at actual evidence not hysterics from people who have a vested interest in scaring the crap out of me.
Maybe you can point us to where "it got several degrees hotter than we thought it was while we weren't looking". It sounds like you're making it up just to be argumentative. The average global temperature has risen about one degree Celsius over the past several decades, and I don't think that has surprised many climatologists because it's in line with the predictions we've seen since the nineteenth century.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
I wonder, is there a correlation between people who don't believe in temperature records derived from the fossil record, and people who don't accept the evidence of evolution from the fossil record?
Climate change will affect poor people more than righ people because, simplistically put, rich people can afford to move somewhere nicer and poor people cannot.
So does greenhouse emission reduction and other costly mitigation approaches. The difference is that there will be a lot more rich people in 2100 in the absence of mitigation efforts today. One has to take into account the relative costs of each approach and the time value of money.
So your plan is sit around and Nature will save us? That's just a short hop away from Senator Inhofe's "only God can change the climate" statement.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
There are two things causing climate change:
1. Human activities. This is the one everybody focuses on, partly because we can easily grasp the idea and because it is a very profitable idea. Carbon taxes would burden everybody and make the elite even more wealthy, replacing/supplementing oil as the means of yoking the populace.
2. Solar system changes. Significant change is happening on all 9 planets, to their climates and magnetic signatures. People don't like to talk about this, and a lot of work has been put into twisting the data. It's all swamp gas, you see. The electric nature of the solar system, once one begins to understand this, becomes a key aspect in explaining all of this change. (Why is the heliosphere of the sun millions of time hotter than it is closer to the surface? The answer to that cannot be explained through conventional physics. But it can be explained when electrical properties are taken into account.)
There are much bigger things going on than our little ego-centric view of the world allows for.
It is comforting and our guilt-systems are easily engaged by thinking it's a simple question of industrial exhaust. But there is a great deal going on which is far, far outside of our control.
That being said, pollution sucks. Clean air should be a right to all humanity, and clean industry should be a priority, but I hate the way it's being spun to benefit the elite, and I hate the way people are so willing to accept manipulations.
Localization is not the question, and in fact most climate discussion I find frustrating because it's the wrong argument. The argument should not be "Is man changing the climate?" but rather "Are we fucking things up?"
If we look at the suggested question, the answer is absolutely "yes". First, we know for a fact that Oil is not sustainable with the current population. Even if we all recycled plastics Oil vanishes faster than the earth is producing new Oil. Second, we are polluting everything. That pollution has not gotten better recently, but rather worse since we are arguing "Climate" instead of addressing our impact. This in turn has resulted in reduced controls, higher acceptable levels of pollution, and deregulation. Our pollution rate is not sustainable. Lastly, are we rendering portions of the Earth inhabitable and useless? The obvious answer to that question is also yes. Numerous studies show how we have rendered at least 10% of the Earths farming area useless for at least 100 years and that number is increasing. The same goes for Oceans and dead zones in them.
Look at it this way. It does not take a rocket scientist to realize that coal power is bad for people's health. Both the powdering process for the coal, and the burning of the coal pollute the environment something fierce. We do so knowing it's bad because it makes some people a whole lot of money regardless of the impact. The excuse to continue has nothing to do with "is it bad" but rather "it's cheaper than wind power (which could be argued rather heavily from the angle of wind not being as profitable to the same people making money from fossil fuels)".
We need to get back to the real issue, which by the way was prominent in the 70s and 80s by the way.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
So who gets to decide the "correct" temperature? Some has been politician making money off of it?
No good deed goes unpunished.
...As an individual, is to reduce/eliminate the consumption of farm animals. We breed billions of cows and pigs, and feed them unnaturual diets--which greatly increases their flatulence. So we're pumping massive amounts of methane into the atmosphere that wouldn't be there otherwise (Cows in particular are methane machines, and there would be nowhere near as many as there are now if not for humans). Methane is 20x better at trapping heat than CO2, and recycles out of the atmosphere in 7 years instead of 100. We could see immediate effects on global warming.
But in addition to that, most deforestation is being done so that cattle has grazing land. That's where most of the Amazon is going now--not to make wood or paper, or even just room for people, but so that cattle have grazing land, and cheap beef can be exported to fast food chains. Fast food chains are shrinking the lungs of the world.
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
I wonder whether this is true for any thirty-ish day range, or only true for calendar months?
The problem is that the scientists have no power to fix it. It is the politicians and everyone else that has to do the dirty work.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Your argument seems to be:
1) Believing in Climate Change must be like a religion.
2) No Climate Change believers have resorted to illegal acts to stop pollution.
Therefore: Even Climate Change Believers don't believe in their "religion" enough so why should everyone else?
I'd argue that 1 is wrong because most folks who "believe" (using that word loosely) in climate change do so because they've seen the evidence. As for 2, you can believe in a religion and not commit illegal acts to further your religion. I'm Jewish and keep kosher. I don't go around bombing pork processing centers. Does this mean that I'm not a "true believer"? If a religious belief I held was opposed by a societal law (e.g. If a public school was requiring students to recite Christian prayers), I'd work within the system to change this law (e.g. talk to the school board, local/state officials, etc). I wouldn't immediately resort to violence. (Going back to my example, bombing the school might stop the forced prayers in the short term, but would only hurt my cause long term.) So even if #1 and #2 were true, your conclusion is false.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I'm sorry. "Electric nature of the solar system"? Are you talking about charged particles? WTF? What you wrote reads like word salad, and I suspect probably is.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
If you had read and understood what the article stated
You obviously do not understand the meaning of the word experienced.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yes, there is.
The only exception would be if some unknown external effect was found that, for some reason didn't impact other planets or out most outer atmosphere.
Since that is EXTREMELY unlikely, we need to lower CO2 to about 1930, or so, levels.
And i mean the probability as close to zero as possible.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
U.S. carbon emissions are already below the Kyoto desired levels. So in any discussion where you want to lower CO2, look to other countries first - the U.S. has already done its bit.
P.S. it's particularly stupid to think you can for 99% of people replace airline travel with train travel. The extra time simply makes it impractical, and people can already drive shorter distances (I'll drive anywhere within ten hours rather than flying).
Basically, stop trying to make the U.S. be Europe - it simply does not fit.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Maybe it has potential. Maybe it's dangerous...
Normally I just lurk, but this needs to be said.
The idea really is good in principle but ecologies are, unfortunately, complicated things. Dumping fertilizer in the ocean is something that we're already doing (it's called agricultural and industrial pollution) and we know from experience that the increased algal growth reduces oxygen levels to the point where higher animals can't survive. (Algae produce more O2 than they consume on average, but the make the levels drop rapidly at night.)
The result is a "dead zone" of algae and jellyfish, like the one you currently get in the Sea of Japan.
We could build smaller, controlled farms but these (by definition) aren't possible on the required scale.
The very question itself suggests you have no idea what you're talking about
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I have it on very "good" authority that I don't need to.
Personally, I believe that a disaster of this magnitude should drop the planet into a wartime command economy. We shouldn't be wasting our time with mechanisms of self-interest like capitalism when they're so transparently a threat to our well-being. There are gentler ways of dealing with the problem involving subsidies and the creation of a whole new industry, certainly, but no one should be unwilling to deal with the situation on crisis terms if necessary.
It's very disappointing that so many people are so irresponsible.
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It certainly seems to be a step in the right direction.
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Do you KNOW that you will be in a car accident the day that it happens?
Why the fuck do you wear a seat-belt then?
No, they get paid not because it's necessary, but because people are willing to pay them so they don't have to live in squalor and because they are too lazy to take the trash to a dump themselves. (There are many places around the world where people are not willing to pay for trash pickup, and so trash piles up everywhere...)
There are other important differences, as well, such as the fact that refuse accumulation is not a probabilistic event but a deterministic one, and all the climate change issues are probabilistic*. While you might argue it's government's role to step in to address these probabilistic events, it gets tricky because who decides what the acceptable rate of return is on the "preventive measures"?
*Yes, on the whole, you can say that "the climate will change" and that is deterministic; what is probabilistic is the specific effect in a particular geographic area, be it changes in land arability, sea level, or frequency and magnitude of severe weather events.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
Scientists aren't alone. Banks, governments, militaries and economists have all agreed that it's a huge problem with 'socioeconomic disparities'. Why? Because the poor can't buy their way out of the problem.
Too hot? Turn up the A/C. Crops not getting enough water? Desalinate at huge expense. Etc. The poor can't spend their way out of the effects so they just die of drought and starvation. The rich are already so disconnected from pressure that they have wiggle room for a few degrees change.
The problem though is that the poor are only poor because of governments. Without a government the poor simply organize and kill all the rich. So Government is *GOOD* if you are rich. It lets you organize international defense so that a desperate Mexican army doesn't invade. It is also good since it protects individual wealthy people through police and legal protection.
The rich in countries without a government live very differently--they're under siege from kidnapping and theft. The wealthy don't walk the streets.
We can either bunker in (which the military is starting to plan for) or we can fix the source of hte problem and hopefully not spend all of our economic impact on war to try and protect ourselves from the bad outcomes.
actually that would be the 2nd best thing you can do.
The #1 best thing would be to stop breeding. The world would benefit by following the example set by Slashdotters.
Huh. That's funny because where I live, we have received colder than average months two winters in a row. We're talking freezing temperatures in a place that rarely gets frost on the windshields! In fact, I believe we even broke a record low from the 1930s the winter before last.
There's a slight difference, though, between "being responsible" and "being forced to behave in a certain way."
I agree that it's disappointing that people don't do what they can, even simple things, but it's actually rational: the cost that "influential groups" are trying to impose on the individual is so high that those costs are perceived to exceed the benefits obtained by mitigating the externalities.
Consider people saying gasoline prices should double today; that will massively impact current quality of living, and people are just not seeing that it's worth it for the possibility of slightly lower prices for, say, home insurance, in the future. Compound that with the fact that people already know that prices of insurance are going up anyway, and then you realize that you're paying now for a lesser increase in the future, and it's wholly rational why people are resistant to pay for these things today.
If you could actually show that paying for things now would make other things cost less in the future (compared to now, not to some estimated future cost if the activities took place) and people would jump all over it.
Case in point: people won't even buy a Volt because it costs almost twice as much as a traditional sedan, even though you can probably recover that extra cost over the lifetime of the vehicle and come out ahead.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
http://skepticalscience.com/going-down-the-up-escalator-part-1.html
Also you're comparing geological time-scale climate change with dramatic recent climate change. Answers for your questions exist, even if you don't wish to see them.
4096R/EF7BAFA6 79E1 DF98 D09D 898F 9A11 F6F0 DDDC 23FA EF7B AFA6
Volcanoes emit around 0.3 billion tonnes of CO2 per year. This is about 1% of human CO2 emissions which is around 29 billion tonnes per year.
man-made no, insignificant yes
This definitely one of the front runners in the "really stupid objection to global warming" competition. It only takes about 10 seconds on the internet to discover that Mauna Loa is only one of many CO2 monitoring stations. It's valued because it is one of the longest running, but there are many, many others that provide cross checks to verify that it isn't only recording volcanic emissions (even if, by some bizarre coincidence, those were increasing). It only takes a little more time to learn something about the many controls done by the Mauna Loa observatory to ensure that their measurements are not corrupted by volcanic CO2.
Or you can simply go to Skeptical Science, who has already done the work for you, and laid out links to the references that you can verify yourself, just in case you've a mind to make another really stupid objection (like "They're a warmist site, so you can't believe anything they say")
http://www.skepticalscience.com/mauna-loa-volcano-co2-measurements.htm
TIL when something rots, it vaporizes.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
On its surface that sounds like a testable hypothesis. But measuring "belief" is one of those things that's going to be error prone in the extreme no matter what you do, and the wording of the questions would be really hard to keep neutral. I could easily picture such a study being executed very badly. And no matter how it's run, I suspect the results would be used and abused by people with opposing viewpoints to each validate their current opinions.
Finally, the people who don't accept physical evidence from scientific studies are by fiat not going to be swayed by evidence conflicting with their beliefs. If you're looking to change illogical people's minds, logic is not the tool for the job.
John
Bullshit? The only thing that's bullshit is your assertion that "all graphs and charts" show no warming from 1997 on.
Try educating yourself
And who are you going to get this "actual evidence" from if not those dastardly fearmongering scientists? The Heartland Institute? Don't forget that the Koch-bankrolled study came to the same conclusion. Once you use science, you become one of them.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Sorry it sounds like you're trying to make the plot of Elysium come true.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Sarcastic. :) Though you can do it in a more controlled manner.
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Wasn't there a Slashdot story on this recently?
http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/01/17/223213/is-climate-change-the-new-evolution
That's all I can find. But they are a bunch of tinfoil hatters (surprise surprise!):
http://www.livescience.com/23027-link-between-climate-denial-and-conspiracy-beliefs-sparks-conspiracy-theories.html
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Are you? If not, then on what basis do you propose that he shut down due to absence of authority that you yourself lack? And if you are, then have you not heard of a logical fallacy ad hominem? Perhaps you should either address his arguments or, in your words, please fuck off.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Movies aren't real. Elysium isn't a documentary about something that happened in 2189. It's idle speculation from a group with a vested interest in a particular sort of story.
But having said that, what makes you think my wealth building approach is more likely to lead to an Elysium dystopia than the "let's fix global warming (or whatever the ecological scare of the day is) by impoverishing the world" approach advocated today?
Here, I think, is a key and fundamental disagreement—it's a moral imperative, and doesn't degrade elegantly into monetary units. In some markets, global warming is a net win: more beachfront property, better farmland in northern Eurasia and Canada, more water in circulation because of melting glaciers...
If we're going to put a price tag on taking care of the environment, it has to be done artificially. Like in patent lawsuits, the money we stand to lose is the money that everyone makes already, doing their own thing. There's no bonus, no additional reward for fixing things. Just like a parent protecting his or her children, the outcome is that you live another day. If you want to reward parents for protecting their children in times of crisis, you're gonna hafta save up for it, because there's no source for the money to come from. Recovering the atmosphere is hence incomparable to buying a Volt—you can twist it, and say "unless you were to buy a Volt that used gasoline which stayed forever at today's gas prices," but that still misses the Tragedy of the Commons aspect. Self-interest just isn't a sufficient heuristic to deal with the problem.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Seriously, everybody likes to point to America, yet, our emissions continue to go downwards. OTOH, ALL of the decreases in emissions are overcome by China ALONE. Worse, the western nations have taken an insane attitude towards nuke power.
If the west really wanted to solve this, they would simply put a tax on all goods based on the CO2 per $ of GDP (and not PPP) that are emitted from the nation that the item and parts come from.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It would be even weirder if all New York City's carbon dioxide emerged from the same location.
[Is there enough data] to show this is definitely not a naturally occurring cycle?
That's the wrong question. It's epistemologically broken. The reason is that you can't prove non-existence of something through data. So if your standard of proof is, "show there is no natural process, possibly unknown to current science, which might account for climate trends better than the currently accepted scientific consensus," you will never be satisfied.
So a better question would be, "Is there any evidence that suggests global warming might be due to some natural, cyclical process?" The answer is, there is. In fact *there's bound to be*. But nothing so far has stood up as well as AGW.
That's not for lack of trying. Scientists make their careers by poking holes in the scientific consensus. People are still bringing up data that brings global *warming* into question. Scientific consensus shifted from global cooling in the 1950s to warming in the 1980s, with anthropogenic contributions the prime suspect. In the 90s attacks were made on the validity of historical records, on remote sensing data. Most recently we had the issue of Antarctic sea ice. None of them has proved to indicate a cooling climate. Likewise nobody has been able to rule out AGW as the culprit, but so far every other proposed culprit has been exonerated.
So you have to ask what level of proof you demand. If that involves disproving things we haven't even thought of, you aren't going to be convinced. The suspect was seen walking into the room with a pistol, then leaving a few minutes spattered in blood holding the same smoking pistol. Witnesses entered the room to find the victim shot in the back. They look for other entrances and exits to the room and find none. Is that proof enough for you? Well, I say. You can't prove that there might not be some *other* explanation that that the suspect shot the victim. And maybe there is. Maybe a magician contrived the whole thing, and the victim is still alive. It's possible, but without evidence of that you have to go with what the preponderance of evidence you actually *have*.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Evidence stands on its own without the need for elaborate and opaque interpretation. One of the things that is present today that wasn't present more than 30 years ago, is a variety of earth-oriented satellites that can do things like actually measure global mean temperature. You are correct that such things can be gamed or distorted, but it's at least a better class of evidence that what we have today.
Further, we can with these more sophisticated tools simply wait and see. I think it's no coincidence that some on the pro-AGW side (such as the various groups mentioned in the articles of this story) claim much more dramatic and urgent harm these days than even a few years ago.
If they can't convince people to buy in to the con now, it all falls apart. As a result, I see no reason not to wait a few more years (or even a few more decades!) until we see what really happens.
Mod up; That is spot on.
Here's some history to illustrate your point: San Gimignano "della belle Torri". Watch the photo.The rich lived in "beautiful" towers high above the common people. Note that the towers had no windows. That was too dangerous. They hade some slits to be able to shoot arrows at attacking commoners. And first-floor walkways in case you wanted to visit another rich family, without having to risk walking outside amongst the people who hated your guts.
I've been there, and it was very impressive, but I wouldn't want to live like that; would you?
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
What's this 4 degrees C thing then and why is it suddenly relevant today?
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So the scientists are manipulating the numbers and producing fake scientific data? I don't trust them.
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All comparisons to fictional situations are inherently fallacious? Aw too bad I really liked using those.
Anyways, we've discussed in this thread that climate change poses a bigger threat to people of lower incomes - at least I think so, it's harder for them to relocate, power AC units, afford hydroponically grown food, etc. When the economy grows a small percentage of the population gets most of the benefit - shown by a few decades of economic numbers at this point. At the same time a shrinking economy hits the lower classes far harder, but if they get hit too hard they might revolt and the upper classes will voluntarily take some responsibility to avoid doing the Elysium thing which is far from ideal. If we go full-steam ahead with environmental destruction, there is a greater chance of running into an unmanageable crisis where the richies have no option but to hop on their ark* and hope for the best while the rest of the world turns into Mad M-, uh, a barren dystopian world with roving bands of survivors fighting for resources.
*I'm calling this a well-established metaphor
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Further, we can with these more sophisticated tools simply wait and see.
Unless your more sophisticated tools are a time machine or a massive geoengineering project, this seems like a bad idea...it's not the kind of thing you want to wait and see, or at this point, I'd say even get closer to seeing.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
All comparisons to fictional situations are inherently fallacious?
Interesting how that works out. It's almost like the approach is inherently broken.
Anyways, we've discussed in this thread that climate change poses a bigger threat to people of lower incomes
The proposed fixes are also a bigger threat to people of lower incomes. My main point is that adapting to global warming, say in a century, is going to be done by people who would be considerably wealthier, if no fix were attempted today, and more capable of dealing with any problems of the time.
If we go full-steam ahead with environmental destruction
We abandoned that path back in the 1960s. So that's not a story to take seriously.
Unless your more sophisticated tools are a time machine or a massive geoengineering project, this seems like a bad idea...it's not the kind of thing you want to wait and see, or at this point, I'd say even get closer to seeing.
Even better. My sophisticated tools are satellites which actually measure what we want to measure. And why wouldn't I want to wait and see? Who has actually shown a real AGW problem that needs our urgent attention? Nobody so far.
I wish there was a mod rating called "Hopelessly moronic and deluded". That some people even modded parent as interesting on a supposedly educated site like /. is even more depressing. May be civilization usually ends because people have refused to be deluded and pig-headed. Darwin award for an entire civilization. Too bad there is only one we know.
You assume that the rich won't or can't help pay to fix global warming, and therefore it's best to maximize their numbers to give the best chances for the survival of the human race. We can tax them, they'll live, they'll get over having to settle for gold-rimmed pools.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Climate != Weather.
In fact, with climate change, we'll have the average highs and lows diverging constantly.
Just because the earth is warmer doesn't mean that the weather will be warmer. We'll just have more bitterly cold winters, followed by brutally hot summers (remember, the 4C average is a global year round average temperature). So the brutal heat of summer will have its temperature offset by frigidly cold winters.
The weather will be stormier because oceans need to cool off, and they do that by hurricanes to dump the ocean warmth into the cooler atmosphere (standard heat engine - except the "work" being done is destructive).
That's why "global warming" is a really bad term - yes the earth is warming, but the global rise accounts for the highs and lows, and why extremely frigid winters are to be expected even as the earth warms up - because you'll compensate by brutally hot and long heatwaves.
We can tax them, they'll live, they'll get over having to settle for gold-rimmed pools.
We could also "tax" them in 2100, assuming that a reason to do so has come up by then.
Who has actually shown a real AGW problem that needs our urgent attention? Nobody so far.
Let's ignore the more powerful storms and the droughts we've recently witnessed that are hard to pin on global warming. The water management and agricultural land availability problems and the loss of coastal land from modest sea level increases are pretty well-studied, are you just going to ignore those? Not worried about ocean CO2 levels at all? Gonna go right into it with coal plants blazing and forests in decline and see what happens? Could you deal with the consequences if you were 100% wrong? If I'm 100% wrong it just means we have clean sustainable energy and maybe less megayachts.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
[...] it is exceptionally unlikely that we could eliminate insects or even mamals (e.g. rats, mice, etc). I very much doubt we could even eliminate humans. But yes, just because us and life would go on, doesn't say anything about how comfortable we'd find it.
Fixed that for you.
At least I presume that's what you meant. Otherwise I think you are grossly underestimating the contribution of insects to the stability of earth's biosphere. If they go – we go. No question at all.
Doing nothing now means having a bigger problem to deal with in the future. You're gambling that the increase in wealth is more than enough to handle the increase in the gravity of the problem, in a world of decreasing resources. I'd rather play it safe than kick the problem down the road and cross my fingers.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
...As an individual, is to reduce/eliminate the consumption of farm animals. We breed billions of cows and pigs, and feed them unnaturual diets--which greatly increases their flatulence.
Yeah... blame it on the cows.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
It is called a prediction. It has been relevant for decades. Why do you think it somehow wasn't relevant yesterday? We certainly have suspected that temperatures would rise by several degrees Celsius for quite a while, as my last post pointed out.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
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Perscriptio in manibus tabellariorum est.
Doing nothing now means having a bigger problem to deal with in the future.
How much bigger? It's worth noting that even if humanity were wiped out tomorrow, we'd still see some degree of global warming for a short period of time. Even with aggressive carbon emission reduction, these doomsayers are claiming that we merely would halve the effects of global warming in 2100 (and that's assuming everyone complies, which they won't). That's not much of a difference in outcome, but it is quite a cost.
You're gambling that the increase in wealth is more than enough to handle the increase in the gravity of the problem, in a world of decreasing resources.
I think that's a good gamble to make. It's not like the Sun is going anywhere. We'll still have renewable energy, we can still mine new resources even if they're a bit harder to mine than current and past resouces, land might dwindle a little, but no one is projecting anything serious on that front, and in general we'll have most of what we have now, but with more wealth and better technology.
And we have more serious problems to deal with now. For example, the poorer parts of the world aren't going to play ball with carbon emission reduction as long as their populations remain so deeply impoverished. We have desertification which destroys more arable land per year or two now than global warming is forecast to do in a century. We have poor incentive structures in the developed world that encourage people to take bad risks (most relevantly, the US's publicly funded flood and earthquake insurance programs). We have preventable diseases that kill many millions of people each year.
A lot of these problems can be solved merely with wealth. Make the average person wealthier and poverty, overpopulation, food production, disease prevention, and many other things are almost automatically addressed on their own.
Frankly, I think it's more cost effective to just look at adaptation some point after 2050, than bother with costly, aggressive, but nearly pointless tactics today.
Unsurprisingly enough, it's the exact same way we determine the "correct" distribution of money.
What are these "draconian means" I keep seeing people refer to? Increasing energy efficiency seems quite sensible to me, especially given the current cost of energy. And we will have to switch to alternative energy sources some day because fossil fuels will run out. The means seem perfectly reasonable and sensible to me, not "draconian". Of course, the longer we delay, the more draconian the means will need to become, so we better get started right away to reduce the draconianness as much as possible.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Who has actually shown a real AGW problem that needs our urgent attention? Nobody so far.
Let's ignore the more powerful storms and the droughts we've recently witnessed that are hard to pin on global warming.
Keep in mind that we would see "more powerful" storms and droughts even in the absence of global warming.
The water management and agricultural land availability problems and the loss of coastal land from modest sea level increases are pretty well-studied
And shown to be rather insignificant. For example, desertification destroys about as much arable land every year or two as climate change is forecast to do by the end of the century.
And when a business or family needs to move, just move to higher ground every once in a while. I don't see major costs from migration when there is a lot of inherent migration in the first place.
Not worried about ocean CO2 levels at all?
Only concern that appears there is that corals apparently have a little difficulty, but not a lot of difficulty, adapting to both increasing acidity and temperature of the oceans.
Gonna go right into it with coal plants blazing and forests in decline and see what happens?
Forests aren't in decline in the developed world. Even in Brazil, the biggest offender, they're getting considerable natural reforestation.
Could you deal with the consequences if you were 100% wrong?
Of course! Adaptation would consist mostly of moving people around or creating agriculture in new areas. We already know how to do that. And of course, we'd have more wealth with which to handle these "100% wrong" issues.
If I'm 100% wrong it just means we have clean sustainable energy and maybe less megayachts.
What an economically ignorant answer. We'd also have a poorer world less equipped to deal with the actual problems of the future.
Well, you're correct that the data is there. However, it doesn't tend to actually say what certain paleoclimatologists or activists would have you believe...
"They use ice core data to determine temperatures and atmospheric composition."
Correct, but they also find that CO2 rises after temperature, not before, with a lag time of at least a couple of centuries. What's interesting is that right now CO2 is rising first, which means that there are very interesting questions about the degree to which this impacts warming.
"They have calibrated those readings based on the few hundred years of written records available."
The problem is that prior to the Little Ice Age, they tend to ignore those records. The current alarmist claim is that we are in an unprecedented period of warming. The historical reality is that while the rise of CO2 prior to temperature is pretty unprecedented, the levels of warming are not. We've been this warm and warmer before, in both the Medieval and Roman Warm Periods.
How do we know this? Because the economies of the time were barter economies, and therefore the tax records were tracking goods rather than money. We actually have detailed records of what was grown where, when, and frequently how well. We have archaeological evidence and records of old vineyards at altitudes that cannot support vineyards today. We have Medieval deep water ports in Scandinavia that are not deep water ports today (the water level hasn't risen back to high enough). And then there are the hundreds of peer-reviewed proxy studies that indicate a Medieval Warm Period at least as warm as the present, if not warmer. Don't take my word for it - the Medieval Warm Period Project has been collecting and listing them: http://www.co2science.org/data/mwp/mwpp.php
Now, all that said, this says nothing about what the impact of man-made CO2 has on the atmosphere - we are in a warm period, and we are contributing greenhouse gases to it. Some of the latest research out of NASA suggests that the actual sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 is under 2 degrees: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/08/new_model_doubled_co2_sub_2_degrees_warming/
And, we also have the empirical evidence of Linzden and Choi, who did some of the first long-term research on actual solar warmth coming in vs. warmth going back out in comparison to CO2. They found that the empirical evidence suggested a warming of around 1 degree: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/16/new-paper-from-lindzen-and-choi-implies-that-the-models-are-exaggerating-climate-sensitivity/
When you actually look at the journals (which is what I try to do - when I delve into this stuff, I prefer the websites that aggregate research papers), you see far less consensus and far more active discussion. The problem is that "Our climate is changing, we're in a warm period, and we are going to need to adjust and ensure that we're not creating problems" does not read nearly as well as "Our climate is changing, it's unprecedented, and we're all going to die!"
If you haven't guessed, I'm a skeptic on this, but this means my opinion on the matter is always changeable - I go where the evidence points me. I take empirical data over computer models always, and I'm trained to look at historical trends. And, it drives me crazy when people misrepresent the history, derive the wrong conclusions from it (the history tends to indicate that we as a species do better during the warm periods, not worse), and drown out the critical research and its findings with declarations of apocalypse.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
You think the average person will somehow be wealthier while dealing with the effects of global warming?I think higher food prices alone could eat that up quickly, and then there are cooling costs and the costs of dealing with natural disasters. Assuming again that the rich say "let them eat cake" and put all the burden on the lower classes, your plan will only give short-term gains.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
This has been addressed elsewhere, but I'll bring it up, because that meme, while well-intentioned and does convey something important, is problematic in how it's been formulated.
October was the 332nd consecutive month (27 years, 8 months IIRC) with an above-average global average temperature. Local extremes exist, of course, within each global average. So while it is true to say that those of us under 27 have never experienced a month with a global average temperature colder than average, it is not true to say that we personally have never experienced a month which was colder than average.
I understand the fact that local extremes exist, and always will. However, the GP clearly stated that anyone under the age of 27 would have never experienced a colder-than-average month. You cannot experience the global average, because you are not omnipresent. While I am over the age of 27, I have just recently experienced colder than average temperatures, as has any child who was living here in the past 2 years. Therefore the statement is patently false, and absurd. If you start out your entire post with something that is obviously false, why should I even continue reading what you have to say?
Fixed that for you.
At least I presume that's what you meant.
Thanks, that *is* wnat I meant.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
It has been tested. They dropped loads of fertiliser [in the Southern Ocean, the rate, limiting nutrient was iron] in the ocean and quantified the algae growth and carbon capture. IIRC the problem was that in order to capture enough carbon to make a significant difference there just isn't enough iron.
Here's one link to get you started: http://infohost.nmt.edu/~oliver/Nature_News_SOFeX_2002.pdf
And of course WIkipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization
Interestingly, I first heard about this in an undergrad geology course. If you want to know more about the history of the Earth's climate, and how we _know_ the effects of atmospheric CO2, I'd highly recommend an introduction to Earth Systems. I assume most undergrad geology programs offer something similar.
sustainable living
You should read those reports. There are to many problem that you cannot make a truthful statement that it is false.
Just a couple of items:
1) They don't count all volcanic emissions and if you read in depth you find most scientist will admit they don't even come close to having an accurate count of all volcanic related emissions.
2) Once it leaves a volcano it is no longer counted in most reports. So that smoking ash once it leaves the the volcano it ceases to be counted even those it does not cease to generate emissions.
3) If a volcano sets a tree on fire the emissions from the tree is not counted.
4) That the tree is gone does not count continue to count against volcanoes; however if you as an "evil human" cut down a tree that the tree is gone continues to count until the area has been replanted.
Methinks that in a decade or two some natural process will start to decrease carbon levels
Uh, why?
No, seriously, why do you think that?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
And I was not arriving at conclusions as to "why" the climate is changing. I'm pointing out that it "is" changing, and that the evidence supports that. The GP was denying that change is happening, which is a completely unsubstantiated claim.
Could this be natural and cyclic? Could this be human-driven? Could it be C: All of the above? That's the real question. And that's just "cause". For "effect", we get into a different set of debates: will the seas rise? Will the increased warmth increase the intensity and/or frequency of calamitous weather? Will certain species die off?
The biggest question is how do we test any of these theories? We can observe the retreat of the polar ice caps, but can't yet prove that the cause is directly related to weather, or to CO2 reflectance, or to any of these global phenomena. Small scale experiments and some studies suggest such things might be the cause, but I agree that there is not yet compelling proof.
What there is plenty of, though, is urgency. The current rates of change are abnormally high, and holding remarkably steady. And people want to know if these changes are permanent, and ultimately what they might mean. Better crops and more food? Bigger storms and more disasters? Both? Neither?
I agree that the answers are yet to be found. But I also agree that we need those answers sooner, rather than later.
John
Therefore the statement is patently false, and absurd.
I'm glad you latched on to the most important part of the meme (the GP was just parroting a meme which has been making the rounds lately), which was the problematic formulation, and not the message it was trying to convey.
No, I assume that the less we interfere with the economy now, the more wealth we'll have in the future for dealing with the actual problems of that future.
Bwhahahaha. No economic problems here boss.
And to follow up, how do you propose we not "intefere with the economy". What the fuck do you think the economy is?
(Answer - it's us!)
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Well, no.
The science comes up with a range of temperatures (or sea level rises, or whatever).
If anything other than the low estimate gets cited people bitch that the problem is being overstated.
So, oddly, the problem allways gets undertated.
Shittty, isn't it.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
The last gasp of a dying culture.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
How do we know this? Because the economies of the time were barter economies, and therefore the tax records were tracking goods rather than money. We actually have detailed records of what was grown where, when, and frequently how well.
For tiny parts of the earths surface.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Why start out your statement with a meme that makes absolutely no sense? It doesn't strengthen your argument at all, and allows you to be easily dismissed as a global warming wacko. And yes, there are global warming wackos. There are extremists on both sides.
I don't think most of Europe can be classified as a "tiny part of the Earth's surface"...
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
One thing I need to know... it is going to rain tomorrow?
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
Oh come on, next you'll be saying that actual observed data trumps computer model output!
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
To be specific the average you are talking about is the 20th century average (which your quote says). Every month since March of 1985 has been warmer than the 20th century average (1901-2000) for that month.
Actually the average global temperature has been stuck in the vicinity of 0.34C for little more than a decade, some papers have predicted that there will be a 30 year cooling trend beginning right around now.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Anybody ever notice the irony that conservatives keep talking about not wanting to "crush future generations with debt" when talking about the US National Debt, but are rabidly against the notion that they are actively working to crush future generations in an entirely different, but equally difficult to survive way?
Quite simply, there are two arguments:
The difference: There is no consensus among economists about how burdensome the national debt really is - macroeconomics simply doesn't work the same way corporate or personal finances do. Nobel Prizes are still awarded to Keynesian economists, as well as monetarists and adherents of the Austrian school. Even though these schools of economic thought have radically different and conflicting viewpoints, each school continues to win Nobel prizes. There simply is no consensus as to how economies actually work.
On the other hand, among climate scientists, the conclusion is nearly unanimous with an overall consensus of over 98%: The climate is warming, and human burning of hydrocarbons is the cause.
The vast majority of climate deniers come from people who have no credible qualifications; a dentist shouldn't have to argue about how to pull a tooth with a businessman with a string and a door.
Yet climate scientists have to argue with crackpots with a meat thermometer and a solo cup.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Better to have awkward, clumsy progress in sorta the right direction than going backward.
There, fixed that for you.
It's amazing; bring up "climate change", and /. is suddenly full of (1) comments containing same old fallacious rebutted-ad-nauseum arguments like parent and (2) transparent trolls trying to steer the discussion in a different direction. And 80% of them are ACs, much more than in most other stories. I'm honestly wondering how much of this is astroturfing...
I can't believe anything some "official" or "expert" says anymore. Too many lame people with dumb ass agendas that use the fear mongering tactic to scare people into doing what they want.
I have had enough!!!!
Fuck you people that think you can scare me into thinking like you do. Fuck you people that think fear is a good motivator to change what we do to something that you like.
Fuck off.
Be seeing you...
I held that same belief until I reminded myself that emotions and feelings have no place in facts. So I did my research using both sides of the argument and, like I've always done no matter the issue, I dropped my belief in the face of evidence.
:)
I always try to follow a very logical way of thinking but sometimes I get caught up by my emotional brain and ignore fact checking. I'm only human, but I'm trying everyday to fix that
In order to even equal human emissions of CO2 volcanic emissions would have to be 2 orders of magnitude greater than the estimates. I find it highly unlikely that vulcanologists estimates are that far off.
I held that same belief until I reminded myself that emotions and feelings have no place in facts. So I did my research using ...
In your research, you didn't stumble over a possible solution that doesn't involve a forced global conversion to a vegan diet?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Even if human civilization were to collapse and 90% of the population dies off that only stops the increase in CO2. The level of CO2 would stop rising but the natural processes alone that remove CO2 would take 1,000's of years to bring the level down significantly. Only humans actively removing it from the atmosphere would make much of a dent on decadal or century time scales.
As a result, I see no reason not to wait a few more years (or even a few more decades!) until we see what really happens.
The problem with that attitude is the many of the effects of global warming are not reversible on any human time scale. Once we see what happens we can't really fix it. On top of that even once we get to net zero CO2 emissions it will take 20-40 years for actual temperatures to catch up to the forcing and reach a new equilibrium. This is primarily because the oceans are a huge heat sink that absorb 90% of the excess energy coming in.
A lot of these problems can be solved merely with wealth.
I guess we know what's important to you and it's not the science. All the wealth in the world won't do you much good if the infrastructure behind our civilization can't be maintained.
The problem with saying scientists are manipulating and producing fake data is that it's impossible to get away with it forever and when it's discovered the manipulators scientific reputation is destroyed. Most scientists are far too smart to think they could get away with that for any length of time. Despite all sorts of accusations I'm not aware of any of that, just some of the sort of errors you can expect in any human enterprise that are corrected when discovered.
What's this 4 degrees C thing then and why is it suddenly relevant today?
Because if you want to avoid it it's far easier to get started on it now than 50 years from now.
Also, if CO2 is not the limiting factor in plant growth (e.g. nitrogen or sunlight is the limiting factor), then increased concentrations of CO2 will not necessarily lead to more plants.
:(){
quote>Correct, but they also find that CO2 rises after temperature, not before, with a lag time of at least a couple of centuries.
Yes, rising CO2 is a well known feedback of warming, primarily because of out-gassing from warming oceans. But the ultimate warming that occurs in such a situation is warmer that it would be without the increased CO2. And that in no way means that CO2 increases independent of feedback from warming can't also drive temperatures up. It's not an either/or situation.
We have Medieval deep water ports in Scandinavia that are not deep water ports today ...
The absolute Sea level hasn't changed that much since medieval times. What has changed is the level of the land has risen where those ports are located as the whole Scandinavian Peninsula is still undergoing post-glacial rebound after the last ice age.
I have to say I have a hard time taking anyone who cites WattsUpWithThat seriously.
That's not as silly as some of the bullshit professional economists paid to have the "correct" opinion have come up about that place. I've heard one state seriously that the financial problems were due to the union in charge of prison officers asking for a wage increase. The real problem is of course as obvious as wanting to spend more than earnings - fine for extraordinary costs when the money can be recovered later but not fine for ongoing costs and no sign of extra money to cover it in the future.
As someone outside the USA I'm curious, who was it that completely fucked up the Californian tax system? Was it Reagan or was it broken before he turned up? Hollywood's almost total tax avoidance on top of weird restrictions really have cut the revenue stream down towards the sort of trickle that third world governments have to live off.
The best thing you can do for the environment is get sterilized. That's not politically correct to talk about.
I tend not to be a defeatest, but we're going to burn every drop of oil. Then we'll switch to nuclear. Efforts wasted on legislation are better spent on developing new techniques to remove carbon from the atmosphere on a geo-engineering scale. Humans are smart, but we're reactionary.
..don't panic
Then don't bother asking a climatologist because they don't really care. Ask your local weather service.
Ah, you are of course referring to the pre-emptive strike from heartland institute funded PR folks that accused scientists that were far more poorly funded than the PR folks of chasing the money. Apart from being hypocritical, completely wrong and morally dubious it's ... well it really has nothing going for it apart from entertainment value.
Scientists have a vested interest in proving it all wrong and getting a huge amount of money from Koch et al along with their Nobel prize and fame. However they've actually got to provide real proof that will not be laughed at to get all that and it hasn't happened. What do you say to that? Some bullshit about a young earth and all science being fake anyway?
Cool! Can I start work doing your job with zero skill, training or experience tomorrow, or would you prefer next week?
If you really believe what you are writing you have some serious problems, however I'm pretty sure you don't actually believe your stupid arguments and are just a liar instead.
One of the things that is present today that wasn't present more than 30 years ago, is a variety of earth-oriented satellites that can do things like actually measure global mean temperature.
Well, no. We can infer the temperature from satellite measurements but not directly measure it.
And... here are the results:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/uah/plot/uah/from:1980/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1980/trend
Funny, the satellites give the same answer as those nasty CRU guys.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
I don't think most of Europe can be classified as a "tiny part of the Earth's surface"...
Yurp: 10,180,000 km2
Land: 148,940,000 km2
So about 6%
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Why start out your statement with a meme that makes absolutely no sense? It doesn't strengthen your argument at all, and allows you to be easily dismissed as a global warming wacko. And yes, there are global warming wackos. There are extremists on both sides.
I think the "meme" nicely reveals the stupidity of people who can't differentiate between a global climactic average and the temperature in their own fucking back yard.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
...As an individual, is to reduce/eliminate the consumption of farm animals. We breed billions of cows and pigs, and feed them unnaturual diets--which greatly increases their flatulence.
Yeah... blame it on the cows.
Moo-y fuckers.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
to show this is definitely not a naturally occurring cycle?
What's "enough"?
This is very close to the "but Evolution is just a theory, not a 100% accurate, infallible description of reality, so therefore we should teach Creationism as being equally valid" argument.
There are no absolute certainties or impossibilities in life. The sun may not rise tomorrow, because the whole universe has been destroyed on the toss of a die by some trans-dimensional super-being. Natalie Portman may finally realise the futility of those so-called restraining orders and agree to re-enact her Black Swan lesbian scene with Mila Kunis live in my bedroom.
Who can say for certain?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Miaow. Good work.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Well, yeah, but the climate models do include everything that scientists know about.
Including knowledge of who is paying their bills. They may well be right, but I'm going to look at actual evidence not hysterics from people who have a vested interest in scaring the crap out of me.
Look, if you and the rest of the "skeptics" can come up with convincing scientific evidence that AGW is wrong, please go ahead. There must be plenty of funding out there from the oil companies alone.
Personally, I'd much prefer it if we could just carry on as we are. I don't actually want my grandchildren to be living back in the Stone Age, bizarrely enough.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
It is, of course, theoretically possible that all the data collected with existing technology to date is wrong. It is also theoretically possible that the Sun will explode tomorrow, so we might just as well spend all our time drunk/high and not worry about the future anyway.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I assume that the less we interfere with the economy now, the more wealth we'll have in the future for dealing with the actual problems of that future.
If in a hundred years time we have a largely uninhabitable planet, it's not going to make any difference how rich we all are. Money by itself can't just produce some technological breakthrough out of thin air which will allow us to magically transform the planet just at the moment things go really seriously wrong.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Some coal deposits are pretty thick. Were those all forests in shallow anoxic water? As for soil -- how do you keep burying fallen trees under soil on a longer timescale? I presume a river delta would work, or perhaps dunes, but was that kind of environment that widespread? And what about someone else's post about there being no bacteria at the time that could metabolize lignin etc.? Where's Samantha?
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Jeez, if you want to be a geologist, read some books.
But yeah, Wikipedia tells me that "The wide, shallow seas of the Carboniferous era provided ideal conditions for coal formation, although coal is known from most geological periods."
Meanwhile, in the present day, we've been digging up our peat long before it can become coal.
2. Solar system changes. Significant change is happening on all 9 planets, to their climates and magnetic signatures. People don't like to talk about this, and a lot of work has been put into twisting the data. It's all swamp gas, you see. The electric nature of the solar system, once one begins to understand this, becomes a key aspect in explaining all of this change. (Why is the heliosphere of the sun millions of time hotter than it is closer to the surface? The answer to that cannot be explained through conventional physics. But it can be explained when electrical properties are taken into account.)
You're literally insane. No, I mean .. you're insane.
So where are the extraordinary acts? Coal-fired power plants are somewhat on the wane in the US but there are still plenty of them around and they are clearly contributing in a significant way to atmospheric CO2. Here are a number of hard targets with little or zero in the way of real defenses against dedicated individuals and yet no person or group has attacked a power plant in the name of shutting it down to preserve the climate. Some dynamite in the right (wrong?) place could turn a functioning, CO2-spewing power plant into a building that is impractical to repair in a few seconds forever removing that as a source of CO2.
Why has there not been even a single such incident? Are the believers beliefs simply not strong enough when it comes down to it?
That is one of the most bizarre arguments I have ever seen. By your logic, because I haven't personally tracked down and assassinated any neo-Nazis I'm really nothing more than a fascist fellow traveller myself.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
If that was the case then the environmentalists wouldn't oppose going all nuclear immediately.
Did you Google "environmentalists support nuclear power to fight climate change" before you wrote this or is it just a Limbaugh-derived free floating assumption in your head that you carry around and whip out when it suits you?
Because if you had you'd find that there environmentalists who think nuclear is the way to go just for this reason.
But even more to the point it's not "nuclear vs coal" - that's a false dichotomy created by the right wing.
It seems to me that in this day and age, Googling to disconfirm your assumption- that is, actively looking for disconfirmatory evidence for your assumption- is the minimum amount of due diligence we can now expect from anyone who wants to be taken seriously.
Princeton's Wedges plan gets us to where we need to be using not a silver bullet "it's all going to be THIS from now on" approach but rather a mix of conservation, alternative energy, conventional energy including coal, gas and nuclear energy.
Google it.
The truth is even more terrifying and obvious, if you think about it. The IPCC reports (or better: the data they're based upon) that were finally published, were produced by scientists, but edited and agreed upon before publication by politians. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Climate_Change#Conservative_nature_of_IPCC_reports
Okay, I actually have to give you that one. However, I imagine that those who specialize in China, India, Russia, etc., do have similar records, and there are proxy studies from all over the world...
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
"I have to say I have a hard time taking anyone who cites WattsUpWithThat seriously."
Well, that's your problem - it gets people at the article content without having to deal with paywalls.
And, if I might make the observation, you may want to consider the content first, and then the source, rather than the other way around. One of the problems with this entire discussion is that is has become so politicized that valid points or data are being dismissed on the grounds of "it comes from X, so therefore it must be invalid," without ever having looked at it.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
Something that you seem to be overlooking is that there are rather more people on Earth than there were during the Little Ice Age or Medieval Warm Period. IN 1600AD there were about 500 million people on Earth (from a quick Google) which is about 7% of what we have now. There was an awful lot of uninhabited or very sparsely populated land on Earth for people to move into back then.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Well, that is a point, but at the same time, we're already in a situation where we're producing close to what we need to feed double the current population (I think we can feed 12 billion, and we've got 7 billion). And, when you look at where that population is located, what you tend to see are a couple of areas that are very heavily populated (like China, Indonesia, India, etc.), and a large areas that are very sparsely populated (like Canada, large parts of Russia, etc.). So, the wiggle room is there for some areas to become arable again while others become less fertile due to climate change.
So, yes, there is a much larger population now, but we are very far from bursting at the seams.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
You said:
I'm a skeptic on this, but this means my opinion on the matter is always changeable - I go where the evidence points me.
but now you say
However, I imagine that those who specialize in China, India, Russia, etc., do have similar records
So imagination trumps evidence?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Please do not put words in my mouth - you are exceedingly bad at it.
I already mentioned peer-reviewed proxy studies from around the world supporting a warmer MWP, as well as linked to an aggregator of them. That's evidence, and it supports what has been seen in Europe.
My studies have mainly been in regards to European history. However, I know for a fact that China and India did have a form of statehood or empire at that time, and Russia was not developing that far behind Europe. I also know that they all had writing of some sort, and from my dabbling in Babylonian literature and the ancient world, that much of early writing is tracking trade, crops, and inventories. That suggests that such records exist for places with civilization at the time, such as India, China, etc. Ergo, those who study China and India, etc., will likely have crop and taxation records to work with. That is an inference, based on evidence.
"I imagine" is a turn of phrase.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/3633447.htm
Examines the past 100 years of Australian climate data. Very interesting program and good to show to anyone who needs convincing that warming has already been taking place.
However, the GP clearly stated that anyone under the age of 27 would have never experienced a colder-than-average month.
So wich word would you have chosen instead of experienced?
As a non native english speaker I had choosen experienced, as in german we would use the same word, regardless whether I'm actually experiencing it while being present or if I experience it while reading it in the newspaper or sitting at a beach somewhere else. The month in question and the fact in question is still present, regardless where on the globe I reside.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Some additional thoughts on the subject of vested interest: http://scholarsandrogues.com/2010/05/05/industry-scientists-climate-profits/
Of course! Adaptation would consist mostly of moving people around or creating agriculture in new areas. We already know how to do that. And of course, we'd have more wealth with which to handle these "100% wrong" issues. ... sounds like a vicious circle.
Very likely there is already someone living. How do you get rid of them?
For finding new agricultural areas you likely have to kill more forrests
Why not doing the right thing and stop this?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I used to read WattsUpWithThat some 4 or 5 years ago but found it was mostly a waste of my time. Lindzen and Choi have a history that's not particularly encouraging so I take what they say with a grain of salt. Here's a critique of their 2009 paper.
Yeah, I've read RealClimate. Any time they try to tackle history, they end up misrepresenting it and flat out cherry-picking their data.
As I recall, the worst case I saw (before I personally wrote them off) was an article making claims about the British wine industry - which ignored the actual research on the extent of the wine industry prior to the Little Ice Age and the effect the LIA had on the English winemaking (research by, you know, HISTORIANS) so that they could claim the opposite to support their "we're in an unprecedented period of warming" narrative.
They may know how a proxy study works, but speaking as a trained historian, these guys don't have a clue of how the study of history works.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
And no, it's not the methane from the elephant's farts, although grain eating livestock *are* responsible for a large amount of it.. Rather, it's the seldom discussed methane that's bubbling up from the sea floor, and deep lakes all over the world, in ever increasing amounts. Methane is a *far* more serious problem than CO2, having far more of a greenhouse effect than CO2, even though it (carbon dioxide) is obviously a problem, particularly in the oceans, the fixes exist to lock it up. All the naturally stored methane however (as hydrates), is sufficient to create an extinction level event in a few short years, were it all released.. And, it *is* being released. Notice all the bubbling lakes and ocean lately? All it takes is a few degrees warming to the seas,to start thawing the Methane Hydrates currently frozen at the sea floor.Deep lakes can also have stores of methane in them.. same as permafrost.. I think the media's continual focus on carbon dioxide, to the exclusion of anything else, is doing the world a disservice.
Yes, because everyone knows that global plant coverage is increasing at an enormous rate and will continue to do so as the global population expands.[/sarcasm] All the plant growth of a decade wouldn't soak up the CO2 from a single year of our emissions, not to mention the fact that in 100 years when those plants die they'll release all that CO2 right back into the atmosphere.
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The world has to stop burning fossil fuels and find other means of generating clean electricity. Windfarms, solar panels, water. Add to that R40 insulation in homes in the south, to cut down on electrical consumption for air-conditioners, and heating.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
In many places, e.g. the US, plant coverage is growing, not shrinking.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10521-forest-growth-is-encouraging-say-researchers.html
This is mainly caused by advancements in agriculture, which include things that environmentalists hate, like genetically modified crops, and otherwise non-organic foods, the later of which has been proven to be insufficient for human needs in the long term - the time, resources, and eneergy required to produce organic foods is much greater than that of non-organic foods, and the landmass required to go all organic would require cutting down more forests. Ironic, isn't it? One thing they promote is at odds with another thing they promote.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
One thing to consider though, is that even if we were to disappear tomorrow...or better yet, even if we never existed to begin with, the climate will still change. It always has, and it always will.
The Pangaea theory holds that at one point we didn't have any ice caps. Pangaea Ultima predicts that it will be that way again. It wasn't just bacteria that lived in these much warmer climates either. At those times, large scale beasts like dinosaurs and giant insects roamed the earth, and in fact the earth was far greener than it is today.
As for humans, we'll either have to evolve or adapt, or both. In any case, it IS inevitable, no matter what we do. The only "environmental friendly" things we should worry about, in my opinion, are releasing contaminants into the soil and oceans. Though, strangely enough, life has a way of thriving in environments that we consider contaminated, such as Chernobyl.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
What, anywhere? Of course.
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." - Bob Dylan
You think the average person will somehow be wealthier while dealing with the effects of global warming?I
Of course. We'll have at least the better part of a century to build up that wealth.
?I think higher food prices alone could eat that up quickly
Only if higher food prices correlate with the effects of AGW. It's not clear to me that that will be the case.
Assuming again that the rich say "let them eat cake"
That merely describes greenhouse gas emission reduction. It's not a poor man's problem right now.
your plan will only give short-term gains.
Based on what evidence do you make that claim? I really tire of the empty assertions made here. At least, I know that normal economic development builds up long term infrastructure as well as short term gain. I have yet to run across any indications that AGW is a problem that is better addressed now rather than in 50 or more years.
Very likely there is already someone living. How do you get rid of them?
You buy the land from them. It's worth noting that the US routinely moves the equivalent of its entire population every six years. And there's no need for genocide or ethnic cleansing in order to do it.
For finding new agricultural areas you likely have to kill more forrests ... sounds like a vicious circle.
Except that the forests and tundra are just storing a little carbon for us now. They aren't feeding us. They aren't housing us.
All the wealth in the world won't do you much good if the infrastructure behind our civilization can't be maintained.
Well, what infrastructure can't be maintained or moved? And how did it get built in the first place, if it's so expensive now?
As I see it, there's far more than enough wealth in the world to manage the modest cost of moving stuff that is threatened by the effects of AGW.
And to follow up, how do you propose we not "intefere with the economy"
Don't impose AGW mitigation at this time, including any sort of energy subsidy or penalties. While we're at it, we could also eliminate other interference like flood insurance issues in the US (which incidentally are routinely confused for AGW "extreme weather" effects) and ethanol subsidies. I'm for eliminating nuclear power liability subsidies, but one would need to reform litigation as well.
If in a hundred years time we have a largely uninhabitable planet
"If". So why should we pay attention to your alleged concerns. Where' their basis in reality?
But let's suppose your conditional happens. At the least, we'd be have to afford more bomb shelters, food storage, and the other sort of apocalyptic infrastructure that helps more people survive these sorts of scenarios. And the people who end up dying anyway, would have a bit more wealth and a bit less poverty to enjoy in the decades before their deaths.
So you want to continue imposing the externalities of AGW on everybody except the polluters.
No interference in the economy there.
You can't avoid "intefering with the economy". We are the economy. Everything we do is "interference".
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Would the average person even receive any of the additional wealth generated by ignoring global warming? The lower classes haven't gained anything since the '80s.
I can't help you with your inability to find indications that AGW is better addressed now. Many studies are available for your perusal. I'm sure others have tried to lead you to water...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
No, we should stop eating meat raised in " a deviant, historically abnormal food and farming system." According to farmer Joel Salatin, "grass grazing herbibores are the foundation of how soil builds: herbivore pruning, perennial disturbance-rest cycles, solar-grown biomass, and decomposition." Without their activities and input -- no veggies! Also, "The rainforest, by the way, is not being cut to graze cattle. It’s being cut to grow transgenic corn and soybeans. North America had twice as many herbivores 500 years ago than it does today due to the pulsing of the predator-prey-pruning cycle on perennial prairie polycultures." http://grist.org/sustainable-farming/farmer-responds-to-the-new-york-times-re-sustainable-meat/
So you want to continue imposing the externalities of AGW on everybody except the polluters.
What externalities? What's the cost that is imposed?
You can't avoid "intefering with the economy". We are the economy. Everything we do is "interference".
There is a huge difference between "interference" from us acting as normal agents in the economy and someone using a giant mallet of regulation and similar tools to tweak things at the macroscopic level.
Would the average person even receive any of the additional wealth generated by ignoring global warming?
Given that they already do, even in countries that are imposing costs on themselves by attempting to address AGW, why would the answer be anything other than "yes"?
I can't help you with your inability to find indications that AGW is better addressed now. Many studies are available for your perusal. I'm sure others have tried to lead you to water...
And I have perused them. The studies that aren't in error or outright deceptive, don't show this alleged urgency. For example, neither of the two studies mentioned in this story which allege considerable temperature increase by 2100, have been tested again real temperature data that extends more than a century and a half (and of that data, global mean temperature hasn't been measured directly from before the late 1970s). That is because there is no such data from before the 19th century. So they are untested models outside of the modern age. And we're supposed to just buy the extrapolation to almost 90 years from now?
Similarly, "extreme weather" is another rationalization for acting on global warming. Here, there's some remarkable deception such a study on insurance claims (which does show that more damage claims from extreme weather events are being made) being used commonly as support. The only problem is that most of the study's effects can be explained by US flood insurance policy (which at the federal level currently encourages building in dangerous flood prone areas and leads to more damage claims from extreme weather events).
My view is that sure, these various studies can be considered our "best guess". But they're not at all good guesses. So it is foolish to make long term plans on the basis of inadequate studies. Since these studies generally indicate problems on or after 2100, it makes sense to pause a bit, collect more real data, before making decisions that can have profound negative impact on us.
The problem with that attitude is the many of the effects of global warming are not reversible on any human time scale. Once we see what happens we can't really fix it. On top of that even once we get to net zero CO2 emissions it will take 20-40 years for actual temperatures to catch up to the forcing and reach a new equilibrium.
It's worth noting that this hasn't been shown to be an actual problem.
Oh I didn't read the article, my bad. The summary makes it sound like the earth is suddenly 4 degrees warmer TODAY, which doesn't magically happen, and if you missed the earth slowly getting warmer and you wake up and it's 4 degrees warmer and your job and life is tracking the earth's temperature you're a moron.
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Maybe because scientists have actually been UNDERESTIMATING THE DAMAGE so people like you don't call them "alarmist".
So the scientists are manipulating the numbers and producing fake scientific data?
Seems like the scientists are manipulating the numbers and producing fake scientific data to me.
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However, the GP clearly stated that anyone under the age of 27 would have never experienced a colder-than-average month. So wich word would you have chosen instead of experienced? As a non native english speaker I had choosen experienced, as in german we would use the same word, regardless whether I'm actually experiencing it while being present or if I experience it while reading it in the newspaper or sitting at a beach somewhere else. The month in question and the fact in question is still present, regardless where on the globe I reside.
I would not word it like that at all. The GP used experience as a verb, which implies:
to have experience of; meet with; undergo; feel: to experience nausea.
The only way to clearly state what the GP meant is to say that "There has not been a record low in the global average in 27 years." Trying to suggest that any one person hasn't experienced a record low, even as a global average doesn't make any sense. The reason being that no one is omnipresent, and therefore cannot experience a global average. They can only experience local climate/weather. The other definitions imply learning through common knowledge or human experience, but that doesn't make much sense in this context either.
For example, neither of the two studies mentioned in this story which allege considerable temperature increase by 2100, have been tested again real temperature data that extends more than a century and a half(...)So they are untested models outside of the modern age.
This model is intended to make short-term predictions within the modern age so the test case seems sensible and sufficient.
I think you continue to underestimate the damage and difficulty of reversing problems caused by climate change and vastly overestimate the costs. There are no do-overs or emergency options, to me it's the kind of problem you act on early and don't dick around with. The rise in temperature and sea level rise itself are small problems compared to ocean acidification and methane clathrate release.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I think you continue to underestimate the damage and difficulty of reversing problems caused by climate change and vastly overestimate the costs.
That's your opinion. Give a reason why I should share your opinion.
The rise in temperature and sea level rise itself are small problems compared to ocean acidification and methane clathrate release.
No one has demonstrated that ocean acidification is a problem. And those methane clathrates recently had a hundred meters more water poured on them. Higher pressure means more stable clathrates.
This doesn't demonstrate that ocean acidification is a problem?
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/341465/description/Calcium_offers_clues_in_mass_extinction
I can't make you share my opinion, you have access to all the same facts as me, you're just reckless. I have similar conversations with text n' drivers.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
This doesn't demonstrate that ocean acidification is a problem?
Why would you think it does? There's idle and unfounded speculation in the story that acidification from the Permian extinction is equivalent to what happens from AGW. One would expect idle speculation even when the analogy is completely spurious.
I can't make you share my opinion, you have access to all the same facts as me, you're just reckless. I have similar conversations with text n' drivers.
As do I. They tend to dump a couple of irrelevant googled links and waste my time.