Slashdot Mirror
"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'.
And NYC was supposed to be 3 feed underwater by 2015.
It was, briefly.
Chicken little's hypothesis was based on one data point though. Sadly, this is not the case for climate change.
for your Grandchildren. Those ignoring or making fun of it don't care about their
descendants. I guess Slashdotters may be clever, but not very respectful of science
itself. Very sad indeed !
John Eadie [JE46] http://www.c-art.com `one of these days the dogs aren't going to eat the dog food' - Bill Joy
I'm surprised about how Slashdot seems so overwhelmingly anti-science on this issue. Only a few posts in and I've already won ""idiotic anti-global warming arguments bingo".
I'm pretty sure some deniers conclusively proved that this is all bunk in the last article. The problem is that 1) the scientists didn't know that the station is on a volcano, 2) they did know it was on a volcano and they still put the CO2 detector inside the volcano right above the liquid-hot magma, 3) there are no ice cores on Hawaii, 4) ice cores are completely unreliable for anything anyway, 5) the CO2 monitored is only applicable to Hawaii, more specifically a few meters around the detector and does not register global CO2 levels, 6) China still exists thereby making all readings void, 7) these readings don't matter, 8) these readings are all faulty because I don't know how they get them, 9) these readings align well with other CO2 stations across the globe, and we all know that repeatable and reliable numbers are a sign of confirmation bias not accuracy, 10) these numbers are void because of Climategate probably, 11) these numbers are valid but don't matter because I don't know why, 12) plants like CO2 therefore any changes in the environment are offset by wonderful new foliage, and 13) these numbers are void because Al Gore still exists.
Why are we still even discussing this? It has been demonstratively proven false.
It seems that the 'talking point' of the eco-marxists today "unprecedented" levels of CO2...was actually disproven in 2008:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/08_Beck-2.pdf (from 2008)
"The record clearly demonstrates that [CO2 levels were] significantly higher than usually reported for the Last [Glacial] Termination, with levels of up to ~425 ppm about 12,750 years ago, which exceeds the present CO2 concentration of 395 ppm."
This explains thoroughly that
a) it's fundamentally a fallacy to compare Vostok data with Mauna Loa CO2 results (from 3000+ m altitude), and
b) that CO2 values frequently exceeded 400 in both this and the last centuries (as high as 480 depending on how you look at it).
-Styopa
Seems we're suffering from a bit of Climate Change Fatigue... which suggests that the less than 1% of credible scientists who doubt AGW have managed to sow enough seeds of dramatic dissent for the rest of us to lose interest.
Or perhaps, it is something a little simpler in the human psyche. Whilst we bemoan politicians who have no more future vision than the end of their current term, it seems that we too are particularly short-sighted about the future of this planet. I suspect that the majority of us look little further than how we're going to satisfy the physical aspects of Maslow's Heirarchy of needs.
When our life expectancies are extended to 1000 years (or more), and we face the very real prospect of living on the planet we are currently terraforming, we may take a slightly different view. Somehow, I doubt it. Most of the people alive today will live to see an increase of 4-6 degrees C... and yet, we're far more interested in gun control and the Kardashians.
I feel sad for our children (and their children) when I think about the world they will inherit from us.
"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?
so is yours. the forests of the world have been torn to shreds over the last 100 years, science says trees are the planet's lungs, and yet skyrocketing carbon has nothing to do with it? -_-
You mention cherry-picking, but seem to be doing the exact same thing yourself. Well, except you're not even providing citations so we know WHICH models you're talking about and can provide the dozens of responses refuting the claims you are making. So it's more like "talking about a cherry on a tree in a vast orchard without specifying which one."
IIRC, science says algae are (to use your expression) the planet's lungs, not trees.
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
A more recent poll showed that 2/3rd of statistics are made up.
How about you get labeled a Climate Hysteric? There are too many of those for my liking.
People who don't care one way or the other are not 'denialists' they just might have diferent priorities, and not consider GW the MOST IMPORTANT THING EVER, as opposed to, keeping their job, keeping their house, not getting cancer, etc.
"With us, or Against us" has been used many times in history; but it's not always true.
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!
Well I thought it was commonly known that people are cutting and burning the rain forest, so let's not blame that on CO2. If climates move further toward the poles due to "warming" species may be able to migrate, but that leaves one to wonder what happens in the areas that are warmest already. Many think those areas turn to desert, but we know that doesn't have to be the case: Reversing desertification In fact we've been causing it, just not with CO2. And if you don't like the sea level rising, you should look at a map that shows bathymety - the continental shelf areas used to be above water, but the level has been rising since the glaciers started melting. There really is no reason to think we're at the high water mark just because people decided to build cities on the present-day coast.
Besides, I think it would be a good idea to get out of this ice age before another glaciation comes along. Yes, we're still in "the ice age" look it up, we're near the end of an interglacial period. I'd rather give warming a shot than let the ice come back.
No, "they" didn't 400 ppm has always been the big concerning level, after which positive feed back systems may be triggered. The truth is nobody really knows - although we are about to.
The statement that 'plants breath CO2 so extra CO2 is good' indicates that you've been smoking way too much of your ganga to understand that an ecosystem is a bit more complex than your hydroponics setup.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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
And how were mammals handling those environmental conditions? What's that? They didn't exist yet? I'm sorry, what? Yes, apology accepted. No, no, it's okay, we put up with demonstrations of subpar intelligence around here all the time. All is forgiven. :)
People who don't care one way or the other are not 'denialists'
Indeed; people who don't care one way or another are people who don't care one way or another, and people who don't care one way or another don't generally bother posting. People who post endless screeching copypasta rants denying overwhelming scientific evidence, on the other hand, are best described as denialists.
and not consider GW the MOST IMPORTANT THING EVER, as opposed to, keeping their job, keeping their house, not getting cancer, etc.
All of these are important things. So is global warming. See, it's actually possible for many things to be important at the same time. Welcome to reality--take a look around, and be warned that some of it may be a little confusing, but it's in your interest to try to figure it out.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Allan Savory gave a really good Ted Talk a few months ago backing up that claim with a substantial amount of science and experience. I hope you're not too lazy to watch all twenty-two minutes of it, but if you are, let me give you a quick synopsis. Dr. Savory states that the majority of our global warming issues are due to desertification (the destruction of grasslands and their transformation into desert areas), and he claims that 50% of the CO2 in the atmosphere can be removed simply by ceasing unsustainable agriculture practices and converting these lands into grasslands for grazing.
Convince the movie studios that carbon dioxide causes increased piracy (and therefore loss of income) and you'll start to see effective strategies and International Treaties put in place to manage or even reduce it: DMCA == DRM Millennium Carbon Act; ACTA == Anti Carbon Trading Alliance; COPA == Carbon Obliges Piracy Act; ad nauseam.
http://redd.it/1cswmm http://redd.it/1b6roo read these please.
NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER GIVE UP! "No limitations, no boundaries, there is no reason for them."
And yet.... your insurance company IS taking this seriously. THEY have access to a whole pile a data too showing how often floods, tornados, storm surges etc etc occur and they see a trend of them happening more often which is why insurance premiums are increasing.
You can deny all you want, they will on the other hand look after themselves and charge accordingly , and if they decide large parts of the populated USA are too high a risk they WILL pull out or make the premiums so expensive that it amounts to the same thing.
Thats is the nice side of the free market, they are free to make their own assessment, and they are. They are changing policies, making things like fences, driveways, pools, etc uninsurable, they are putting up premiums, putting up excesses.
Insurance companies are not in either camp of denial or belief in global warming, they are in the business of risk management and at the moment the facts are telling them global warming is producing higher risks, so they are managing their risks accordingly. So one way or another, those who deny global warming is happening WILL pay for it because the increased insurance costs for businesses will get passed on, lower crop yields means higher food prices, more frequent more severe storms means more social disruption and costs, higher crime, etc etc etc, all of which will cost in taxes,insurances, etc.
Thing is, if global warming is WRONG, the worst that can happen is we end up with a cleaner planet.
Look for dead zones in ocean. That scares me more than anything else.
Tomorrow is another day...
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.
The interesting part is that they looked at the "habitats that these species now live in". They did not look at habitats that are not currently suitable for the species to live in. For all we know there could be more area that species could live in when the climate changed. By concentrating on current species ranges the scientists are skewing the results. One should look at the whole system before coming to a conclusion.
I had put this as an article but it was declined.
2-3 million years ago 300km inside the arctic circle CO2 levels were 400 ppm and temps were 8C above present. This according to an article published last week in the journal Science covered by Scientific American (link to journal in that article). Lake sediments find 7 varieties of fir tree pollen. This verdant period doubtless had countless bacteria, plants, insects, mammals now extinct because between then and now have been a whole lot of very cold years interspersed with some brief 10-15000 year periods of temperatures like the current. These species failed to adapt to the climate that is our current day. Firs don't grow there now. Humans are not to blame for that - there weren't any. This condition had likely persisted for millions of years prior, though intermittent rapid cold/hot spells did punctuate the climate cycles and cause widespread extinctions.
Life adapts. That's what it does. Life is a plague that cannot be stopped short of a supernova or the impact of something the size of Mars that sterilizes the entire surface by turning it to magma to 4km depth - and I'm not even sure about the latter as such an impact will kick the life off to circle the sun to land again when the planet has cooled enough to accept it. Species go extinct all the time and new species are born every minute. Every corner that has any form of energy will be populated by forms of life that use that energy and higher forms that feed on those, ultimately capturing carbon in stable forms. That is another thing that life-as-we-know-it does that has led to our current bitterly cold climate.
Humans use intelligence and common effort to surmount environmental challenges - that's what we do. There are humans that live on Antarctica and in the furthest terrestrial reaches of the arctic circle. If the Arctic Circle rises in temperatures by 8C again - or even 16C - then Mankind gets more arable land and living space, not less, because polar temps increase disproportionately to equatorial temps. Plants and animals move north quite rapidly. The vast Alaskan, Canadian and Russian permafrost becomes cropland. We move freight over the poles year-round, opening ports and resorts on the northern shores. And we lose Florida, New Orleans and South Texas. That's inconvenient. People have to move. The US probably has to annex Canada. I'm not buying the whole coral reef thing since those reefs are over 3 million years old and have survived the descent into the cold and back again very many times. That means they evolved in a climate that wasn't as crisp as our current era and should thrive when their natural habitat is restored.
You can complain about this if you want to but you cannot change the outcome. For every person on Earth who cares enough to act to reverse climate are fifty who either stand to benefit from climate change or have too many more pressing issues to care, and their efforts are more than enough to counteract any green movement that could occur short of a world government with levels of control that is not to be wish'd. Do you think Canadians and Russians live in fear of global warming? Do you think if the US converts entirely to hydro, nuclear, geothermal, solar and gas that we will stop digging up the coal? No. We will just export it to absolve ourselves of the guilt of burning it and the CO2 will still happen someplace where our clean burning regulations don't apply. Those coal mines have debts to pay. Same with high-sulfur oil.
These cycles are how nature motivates humans to evacuate equatorial regions and inhabit a wider world. It's what drove us out of Africa time and again. And the relapses to the cold drive local populations to equatorial regions for long times, increasing differentiation in the isolation periods, which leads to competition and strife when warmth and commerce resumes and finds a winner amongs
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Um, we're killing off plant cover, while increasing CO2. So there IS a problem.
HOWEVER, I fail to see how being fixated on a single source of CO2 measurements (Mauna Loa) is helping the issue.
I was on the island which houses the Mauna Loa observatory last month. There has been a recent (since the last 2-3 years) rise in emissions from volcanoes some miles adjacent to the observatory (so much so, there is an issue with 'vog' -- volcanic smog -- on the island).
Now, I've read about techniques the observatory uses to sidestep that issue, but ...
What is the *global* (not just Mauna-Loa) CO2 average? Is it rising precipitously? How fast? Its hard to get a straight answer for these questions from Google.
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.
At some point, a guy starts to ask himself if there might not be something else going on.
You're absolutely right. People love to complain about Big Industry concerns related to fossil fuel production and consumption, but they don't seem so inclined to talk about the sprawling industries built around various forms of alternative energy production (with all their spectacular fiscal abuses, corruption, and failures of other sorts), climate change studies, government programs to research and produce reams of new legislation every few years, etc. Meanwhile, our society continues to be okay with current death rates from an assortment of diseases and widespread famine. People say they care about those things, but their focus and money say otherwise. Apparently, it's cooler (no pun intended) to care about CO2 levels in the atmosphere than it is to do a better job of dealing with things that are killing millions of people right now.
Write failed: Broken pipe
"The US probably has to annex Canada."
Speaking as a Canadian, on behalf of Canadians, you can go fuck yourself.
Trees don't hold a candle in oxygen production compared to sea plants. It is not even close ...
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
Matching the right's hyperbole with bigger hyperbole makes the right look more sane as a result.
And what hyperbole on the "right" is that exactly?
It's easy enough to find older papers saying that the tip off point was a time that was in the future then but is now in the past.
Proclaiming the tip-off points were no-where near those points before the time had past, WAS considered hyperbole - before it was shown to be wrong.
Was is so wrong about wanting careful scientific study or merely wanting to open data-sets to confirm theories based on them? There is no hyperbole in that, or at any rate NOTHING approaching the level of hyperbole in a statement like "we are all going to die when Co2 crosses point X". All anyone on the other side has ever said is along the lines of "are you sure it's actually warming even though CO2 levels are increasing" and "how exactly will we all die again"? and "why should we spend billions that could otherwise go to advance medicine or poor people when we can't accurately predict how climate change will affect us"?
And going back to your fist point, this is not "right" vs. "left". This is about conformists vs. individual thinkers. It's about people who simply believe whatever "science" tells them to say, filtered through politicians and the media - with no question. It's about that kind of person vs. the kind of person who gets told at some point food X is bad for them and says "why" and "are you sure", then eventually comes up with new scientific research showing the old models of thought were totally backwards.
Always be suspicious of anyone who claims you are stupid for asking questions and not believing outright what they say.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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
I'd have simply modded down but I didn't have points
Response is always better than modding down because if one person said it, other people are thinking it, and your response will help educate all of them (unless it's GNAA, mod them down). That's why there's no "-1 Wrong" mod.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Back in 1975 we were supposed to be freezing by now. Anyone remember that?
As in some scientists asked the question, studied it, and rejected the theory after 5 or so years. There was never consensus, but the story was too good not to run in major newspapers.
Do YOU remember it?
More Big Scare tactics. These articles belong in the Science Fiction category so far. We don't know what's going to happen, we've never been there before, but we're assured that it's going to be bad and only by taking and transferring hundreds of billions of our tax dollars to someone else who is more Progressive than ourselves can we save us all.
The only big scare tactics I see are those who preach that the economy was crash if we tax pollution. It is baloney of course. There is empirical data that shows that the effect on the economy is * negligible*. The effect on the Koch brother's political influence will be non-negligible, but that's crony capitalism for you.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Guess who are developing their prediction models? The same people who make global warming predictions. It's no surprise they support each other.
You think you know that, but if you think about it, you don't know that they are the same people at all. Acturies calculate risk for insurance companies. They aren't authors in IPCC reports.
Birds and plants aren't authors either, and they're moving/changing. So are glaciers. That's one hell of a conspiracy you got to explain there.
But yeah, some guys working for "big-eco" are making the models deciding the fate of the world and you're fighting the good fight, right?
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 am not talking about evolution but that other areas will support plants and animals that it currently can not. There are areas where it is currently to cold to support Maize. When it warms up it will be hot enough. The point is the old area will be unsuitable but other areas will be suitable. Since this study did not look into new areas that can support the plants it only shows part of the picture. I live in Canada and global warming will lengthen our growing season and broaden the kinds of food we can grow here. The study concentrated on decreased suitability of current ranges and ignores increased suitability of currently unsuitable ranges.
"Life adapts. That's what it does."
Actually the fossil record suggests otherwise, if the amount of change is too abrupt. In that case most higher life forms go extinct because they are too dependent upon specific lower forms of life that often can not adapt. Most organisms have very specific environmental requirements. Go outside of those physiological limits and they die. Humans aren't much different in many respects. We do a lot of things, but seldom do we really get too far out of our physiological comfort zone. A world that in 80-100 years has temperatures of 130-140 degrees F in the shade for weeks on end will be a whole experience.
Keep in mind that this time its totally different, because of the rate at which CO2 is rising. Its going up more than 26 times faster than during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal maximum, which changed the forests of what is now northern Wyoming from redwoods to palm trees in a couple of thousand years. It will be hard to imagine many organisms surviving that kind of change over the course of a few hundred, much less most of their pollinators.
"Do you think Canadians and Russians live in fear of global warming?"
They should. The vast bulk of the warming that will be seen is occurring in the Arctic and generally speaking even Russians and Canadians need to eat. With food crops under threat, they may well find themselves stressed as well. Some 56,000 Russians died in the heat wave in 2010. Some 40,000-50,000 Europeans died from a similar heat wave in 2003. If the Lake El’gygytgyn results are a direct indication that the global climate sensitivity is 8 degrees Celsius which it appears to, rather than what people have been indirectly inferring and using in their climate models, then its pretty clear that we can expect many more to die as we now move into the Arctic amplification phase of global warming.
As for the high latitude North providing more arable land, don't count on it for several reasons. 1) Arctic soils are very poor, 2) few commercial plants can tolerate the long winters so most crops that require more than one year to produce, such as fruit trees won't be among them, 3) just because the Arctic is warming doesn't mean that it may not yet see many days with freezing temperatures, so most plants adapted to more southern latitudes simply won't be able to adapt to growing conditions which are interrupted by severe frost in an unpredictable way, 4) it may be almost impossible to take pollinators with them given the different wind and percipitation/abruptly changing temperature regimes. Keep in mind many plants used for human consumption, such as corn, rice, coffee are tropical or tropical highland species, 5) many others such as wheat are highly susceptible to rusts and fungi and will likely fare poorly as there is too much moisture in the atmosphere such as in early spring, and 6) simply because you have high latitude does not mean that abundant, year around sources of freshwater will be uniformly available throughout the entire landscape.
Obviously, a lot depends on how fast the change.
Yeah, it does. Life will survive this as it survived worse things than that.
But our societies and economies as they are will not. That's the point. You can have "life" adapt perfectly well in the long run and still have global mayhem happening while it is adapting.
Also, "life will adapt" just ignores the fact that changes that happen over thousands of years are easier to adapt to than changes that happen within decades. There's no time for slow migration, ecosystems and economies gradually changing and adapting. Fast changes are incredibly hard to adapt to and the changes we're looking at are happening really quick.
It's the typical jump from "nothing is happening" to "life will adapt" while totally ignoring all the major shit happening to real people and real economies that makes me wonder about the will to face reality in many people. First they close their eyes while pretending "it's a lie, nothing is really happening", then they jump to "life will adapt". Yeah, but life may adapt by you and your children starving.
That's not what our intelligence tells us.
Our intelligence tells us that if we were to annex Canada, most Canadians would welcome us with open arms.
Sterilized scalpels. They are clearly on earth. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Life adapts, but only given the opportunity. There are 5 massive epochal die-offs that prove your point. They also prove that you're not thinking this through very well. Many of the humans you're talking about adapt using rather violent tactics. It's called war. If you believe that the geopolitical considerations will just sort themselves out, then you haven't read much history. The logical limits to growth are also the logical variables that lead to armed conflict if and when diplomacy fails.
Currently a good portion of the cause for the success of the world's dominant economic powers revolves around the development of technology, but it's also predated by the accident of unimpeded access to abundant natural resources. Accidental in the sense that water, arable land, lumber and minerals existed as those political powers developed their technologies. The modern construct of ownership has always been enforced through warfare.
What do you think will happen when climate challenges the ability of the current geopolitical regimes? It's not going to be orderly or pretty if, "humans (attempt) to evacuate equatorial regions and inhabit a wider world." The Maldives and other island populations are the first to confront such a reality, but they'll easily be able to integrate into other areas. What do you think will happen if most of the existing population below 30 degress latitude in both hemispheres is forced to evacuate?
Therefore in effect our civilization is RETURNING the carbon into the air. Therefore, when the fossil fuels were formed it must've been much warmer than today, but not warm enough to harm life on earth. Most living things generally do better in warmth that in freezing cold. Therefore if mankind managed to liberate ALL carbon now stored as fossil fuels, the cycle would repeat itself.
You are completely ignoring the speed this change happened in the past (geological scale, millions of years) and the speed global warming is moving now (tens or hundreds of years). Yes, in the past earth was indeed warmer. Antarctica was a green continent full of life but also areas around equator were dry deserts without life.
Note that there were also periods of time when earth was much colder then today. Even equator was frozen and life survived only in oceans. See Snowballl earth on wiki.
Whenever in the past, there was sudden change of temperature like we are seeing today, it was accompanied by massive extinction of species (90%+ of species died, generally everything larger then mouse). Sure, live will probably prevail but if we don't prepare for this change it will cause big problems. Large areas of the earth will become uninhabitable, nations will move, territorial wars will erupt, seaside cities will be slowly flooded etc.
In my opinion it is very reasonable to study climate changes, the implications they will have on life on earth and try to adapt to them or prevent the biggest problems if possible.
Morale of the story, planet gets hotter, planet gets colder. Everything else sorts its self out.
Yes, but this time we're doing it deliberately and we have a lot of people/cities on the coasts.
Does that seem smart to you?
Living on the coast might have its benefits but it certainly also have its drawbacks. I'm constantly amazed at the countless number of people that keep coming back to areas repeatedly hit by massive flooding. Unless you have gills you really should stay out of the path of massive amounts of water.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
Carbon dioxide is a green house gas, this is a scientific fact. We have more and its getting hotter, its not hard to deduce whats going on. The arguments always make it more complex then it is, bringing up this or that, but the fact remains, the more Carbon Dioxide we got in the air the hotter it gets, because Carbon dioxide traps more heat, like the laws of physics state that it will. If you don't believe that carbon dioxide is not a green house gas then that is one thing, but you would need science to back up that argument and well its kinda easy to prove.
Let me just say again, as carbon dioxide increases, so does are average temperature the two are not independent because they cannot be, physics dictates that the earth will get hotter the more carbon dioxide there is, just like if you throw a ball eventually its going to land.
However, there is other reasons to cut back on fossil fuels, for one its a limited supply, whether you think it will happen in 50 or 200 years, its going happen, the sooner we start transitions the better for everyone, stop talking like the oil company's sent you a check, they did not and they certainly have every reason to distort facts; clearly your falling for it
Also, these things have proven health problems with a whole host of people, its air we all breathe, maybe your lucky enough to live in a place where there is little smog so lets just hope they put up the next refinery in your back yard. Ya, deal with that shit.
Also, oil has been proven to be very hard to clean up and when its spilled its devastating to everyone in the area, its not clean so maybe your beach or land will get the next oil spill, how would you like your house to be ground zero for spilled oil...permanently? im sure you wouldn't
And if your anywhere in the world, you realize that we kiss the ass of oil rich country's for a reason, you like being a bitch? i certainly dont, i hope my country can tell those fucked up dictators who allow women to get stoned to death to go fuck themselves and not have a 10.00 a gallon price tag to show for it.
What that man above you was referring to is that there is a whole host of issues and reasons to get off fossil fuels, just because your not a scientific man who doesn't know basic physics and believe in global warming, and hey maybe you still think the earth is flat, thats fine, you can still find other reasons to want to get off fossil fuels, stop looking at one view of it and see the bigger picture...We need to move off that shit for a whole bunch of reasons, and you cannot deny most of them.
He's not getting anything you're trying to say, so you might as well give up on him now.
Write failed: Broken pipe
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.
I'm struggling to understand how evidence that some extreme bacteria can survive in extreme circumstances in any way helps your case unless your suggestion is that it doesn't matter if all complex life dies, at least there will still be bacteria?
You do realise that just because extremophobes have adapted to far reaching circumstances doesn't mean that anything more complex can right?
The jury is still out how much is natural and how much is man made.
If the jury is still out, it's because someone put Anthony Watts on it. Turns out, the natural component is about -5% of the warming, and the man-made component is about 105%. Seriously it doesn't get much clearer than that.
The planet was already warming anyway (kinda occurs after ice ages) remember.
Actually, we were on a long term cooling trend and we're still in the ice age. Never the less, the warming after a glacial period occurs immediately after that period ends and then a slow decline begins that eventually leads into another glacial period.
As for the people on the coast, we are talking about 50 - 100 year time frames. No house is going under tomorrow.
It's not usually a matter of sea level rise submerging a city, it's the effect of repeated flooding which becomes more common as sea levels rise. Usually, it won't be the evacuation of a city but a thousand unnoticed tragedies as individual residents and businesses are forced out by a combination of flooding damages and insurance costs. You might only notice the effects during events like Hurricane Sandy and Hurricane Katrina, if then.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
I would add that this is only one of the ways we are screwing up various critical equilibriums of the planet. A year back, New Scientist published an article indicating 7 different ways we are destroying the planet. But if you can't get the population on board with the simplest of them, we are far more screwed than previously thought.
And you better believe the scientists will be the first against the wall when it is all inevitably and irretrievably obvious.
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
Germany is now about 25% renewable, and their economy grew relative to the rest of the world. OBVIOUSLY their policies have no impact, and just benefit a few corrupt individuals.
Like the IPCC, the RGGI make up all of their data, for Agenda 21 purposes. OBVIOUSLY we cannot believe that this has any impact on reducing peoples energy bills whilst reducing carbon usage.
You're really that guy, aren't you.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right