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"Dramatic Decline" Warning For Plants and Animals
An anonymous reader writes "Worldwide levels of the chief greenhouse gas that causes global warming have hit a milestone, reaching an amount never before encountered by humans, federal scientists said. Carbon dioxide was measured at 400 parts per million at the oldest monitoring station in Hawaii, which sets the global benchmark. More than half of plants and a third of animal species are likely to see their living space halved by 2080 if current trends continue."
Isn't it about rising temps and sea levels? THAT'S what's supposed to reduce habitat. Not just CO2 levels by itself. Just sayin'.
"so I dont see how more co2 will harm plants". Yes you do, you just wanted to do a quick denial thing. From the article:
"An international team of researchers looked at the impacts of rising temperatures on nearly 50,000 common species of plants and animals."
"They looked at both temperature and rainfall records for the habitats that these species now live in and mapped the areas that would remain suitable for them under a number of different climate change scenarios."
"The scientists projected that if no significant efforts were made to limit greenhouse gas emissions, 2100 global temperatures would be 4C above pre-industrial levels."
"In this model, some 34% of animal species and 57% of plants would lose more than half of their current habitat ranges. "
So the models very much in line with the UN one at 4 degrees, it will expand the dessert along the equators and push species north into a smaller area presumably. But hey, if you deny it, it won't happen right?
CO2 levels of more than 4000 parts per million (ppm) occurred during the Ordovician-Silurian (450 million years ago). There is also evidence of a glacial event occurring during this period. from: http://www.climatechange.gov.au/climate-change/understanding-climate-change/understand-cc-long-term.aspx
I tried to think, but nothin' happened!
You missed three very important points that the global warming denialists have made over the last decade or two:
* Global warming isn't real.
* Global warming *is* real, but it's completely natural and not at all man-made.
* Global warming is real and man-made, but it's good.
TFS:
[...]reaching an amount never before encountered by humans, federal scientists said.
There weren't any humans around 450 million years ago.
Furthermore, you copy-and-pasted directly but left out the rest of the paragraph
CO2 levels of more than 4000 parts per million (ppm) occurred during the Ordovician-Silurian (450 million years ago). There is also evidence of a glacial event occurring during this period. This has been used by some to attempt to disprove the link between temperature and CO2. Royer et al. (2006) considered the CO2 forced climate thresholds over the Phanerozoic eon (the last 545 million years). It was found that there is insufficient proxy data to determine that a high CO2 event coincided with the Ordovician-Silurian glacial event. The only proxy CO2 data near this glacial event could be up to five million years younger than the event. Further, the Earth was a very different place during this period including differences in solar luminosity, albedo, distribution of continents and vegetation, orbital parameters and other greenhouse gases.
You should try to think more, brah. It can actually save you from embarrasment.
there's not one D thing that we can do about it anyway. Stop burning fossil fuel? Sure, if you want to kill millions of humans
This is just simply wrong. A carbon tax would (in part) account for the cost of pollution, and encourage the search of alternatives. Works overseas. Works in the USA. Don't be so glum. The only thing stopping change is the stranglehold of big carbon on republican politics.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Well, I think it would be prudent to widen the field of research to other factors in climate change than only CO2.
You'll find information about solar, methane, cosmic rays, and the full gamut of what *science* knows about climate change in the, wait for it, IPCC 2013 report.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
This is what counts as evidence for you. Did you ever find some counter evidence? Almost certainly not, right?
For those who are interested, you can read about Beck 2008 here, here, and here.
For the full effect, make sure you actually read through Beck 2008.
Proof that you only need a few bits of junk our there, and that's enough for politics.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
In my experience people are fine to talk about the industries built up around alternative energies. You talk of "spectacular" fiscal abuses, but it's almost certainly overblown in your imagination. For example, Solyndra was just a small blip in the larger loan guarantee program. It is peanuts compared to $4 billion that is *given* to big carbon each year in tax breaks. Note, it costs the government more to give away $4 billion each year, than to offer loans to start-ups which have a bankruptcy rate of 11%. Not all money is lost when a company goes bankrupt -- only 4% of it is at risk.
But I'm sure that's a *spectacular* fiscal abuse, and just forking $4 billion a year over to big carbon, because otherwise the the most profitable industry in history wouldn't have enough money to line the pockets of conservative think-tanks and politicians.
Do you see the double-standard there?
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I live in New Mexico. We're already in the worst drought that we've ever recorded. The water we pull from the ground is so contaminated by arsenic that we're probably poisoning ourselves just by drinking it. We had a really dry winter, with little to no snowpack. We're going to have the shortest watering season ever (40 days, its usually 120). This basically means that no farmer is going to be able to grow jack shit, which means a whole shitload of plants and animals are going to die. You thought that last years' summer was bad, you just wait.. Your premise on this argument is that more land will become arable. You might be right, but animals are really dumb and don't listen to logical arguments in a language they can't comprehend, so its not like they're just going to up and move to canada when the going gets tough. No, they're going to die off and become extinct. You seem to be thinking the only creatures that matter are humans.
CO2 levels were up to 400ppm about 800 years ago. They've since dropped, but are now up again. Not exactly thousands of years.
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Gee... an IPCC report will tell you the pretty-exact accounting.
But will it try to tell the truth? People forget that there are massive conflicts of interest present among the sponsors of the IPCC and its reports. And these have resulted in deceptions which exaggerated the extent and impact of AGW in the past.
Consider this: CO2 lasts 1000s of years in the atmosphere
That hasn't been demonstrated.
This argument of "all scientists will not tell the truth" has about as much credibility as a conspiracy theory as 9/11 being an inside job.
That hasn't been demonstrated.
Riiiggghhttt. Do you even know how the carbon life cycle is studied? Have you ever read an academic article on the matter? I suppose you don't have to, since it is all lies.
And what is being protected? It is the political influence of big carbon. The actual economic impact of doing something about climate change is negligible at most. There is empirical data for that as well, but I suppose all the economists are lying to, right?
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
No, they weren't.
The "greenhouse effect" of CO2 is dwarfed by the effect of water vapor
Yes, yes it is. It's what's called a Feedback Loop. Take a balanced seesaw with 1 lb on one side and 10 lbs on the other at distances that make the forces equal.
Now move the 1lb weight outward a bit or add a some weight. Once the 10lb ball starts rolling it's going to be 10x harder to stop.
Now multiply by the scale of an atmosphere and it's *really* a bad idea to play chicken with that type of situation.
If we nudge water vapor to increase more heat, it keeps getting stronger as more water evaporates due to the higher temps...
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people