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Scientists: What We're Doing To The Earth Has No Parallel In 66 Million Years (washingtonpost.com)
mspohr writes from an article on The Washington Post: We haven't seen this much CO2 added to the atmosphere in 66 million years: "If you look over the entire Cenozoic, the last 66 million years, the only event that we know of at the moment, that has a massive carbon release, and happens over a relatively short period of time, is the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM)," says Zeebe. "We actually have to go back to relatively old periods, because in the more recent past, we don't see anything comparable to what humans are currently doing." [New research suggests, even the drama of the PETM falls short of our current period, in at least one key respect: We're putting carbon into the atmosphere at an even faster rate than happened back then.] "The anthropogenic release outpaces carbon release during the most extreme global warming event of the past 66 million years, by at least an order of magnitude," writes Peter Stassen, an Earth and environmental scientist at KU Leuven, in Belgium, in an accompanying commentary on the new study. "Given that the current rate of carbon release is unprecedented throughout the Cenozoic, we have effectively entered an era of a no-analogue state, which represents a fundamental challenge to constraining future climate projections," the study concludes.
Some will say "That's just, like, your opinion, man. You have no proof humans are causing this."
Some will say "God gave us the Earth, and the end is near anyway so what does it matter?"
Some will say "So it gets warmer, so what? I hate cold weather anyway."
Some will just say "Gee, that's interesting" and get into their SUV and drive off, leaving all the lights and heater running in their house, and they DGAF.
What an absurd thing to say. The total amount of CO2 is not the thing to pay attention to. That is a huge number. The thing to pay attention to is the CO2 level in the atmosphere which has gone from around 280 PPM range in the 1800s to over 400 PPM now. That released CO2 will eventually be processed by biology, but that takes time, and in the process the oceans will acidify, which screws up many organisms including coral and calcifying algae. It of course also forces warming and climate change. So stop talking nonsense about what percent of the total CO2 humans have generated relative to the amount in the whole world.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
C02 monthly mean concentration. Looks like we've gone from about 310 ppm to over 400 ppm.
From the wikipedia: Human activity since the Industrial Revolution has increased the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, leading to increased radiative forcing from CO2, methane, tropospheric ozone, CFCs and nitrous oxide. According to work published in 2007, the concentrations of CO2 and methane have increased by 36% and 148% respectively since 1750.
Of course, the next step is to claim that the Wikipedia + NASA + all scientists are in some kind of conspiracy to distort the truth according to a left-wing agenda. You may now proceed with this phase.
Science doesn't advance because people agree with the status quo. No, they point out where current theories are wrong. That's when science really advances. In most fields, dissenting views are welcome debate because it benefits science. But that doesn't happen with global warming. Dissenting views are silenced just like you see happening here. Not only can science be wrong, but it often is. Can you imagine if opponents to String Theory or General Relativity were silenced in this manner? Thankfully most branches of science don't act like this. When you silence criticism as is happening here, it ceases to be science. It's a religion. Remember, about five decades ago, scientists were concerned about global cooling. Before then, cigarettes were considered healthy. People twirled paintbrushes that were used with paint containing radium, blissfully unaware of the dangers. Diet and exercise science is far from settled, with new guidelines being released frequently. We shouldn't censor dissenting views; it's bad for science.
You have no fucking idea how science works. Science advances as data is gathered, theories are refined or new ones are proposed. It isn't some game of topplng windmills. If a theory is invalid, yes it will be rejected, but that is not the sole activity of science, nor, really is it the main activity of science.
Do you seriously think there are scientists in any great numbers running around trying to disprove QM or tectonic plate theories? Is that what you think physicists and geologists are doing? If that is what you think, then you are an ignoramus.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Then fucking read the science, for fuck's sake. Stop paying attention to the fucking pundits on either side of the debate. I care about as much about what Al Gore, George Monbiot or some Hollywood star thinks about climatology as I do the Wall Street Fucking journal. Jesus, this isnt' fucking hard, and it's not as if you have to go far to actually read what real scientists working in climatology and related fields are studying.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
No, it's really not hard to know who's telling the truth.
The "silt" that has been stirred was purposeful. There are some very powerful forces that don't like the idea of consequences. The silt that has been stirred was not stirred by scientists, but by those who are threatened by science.
If you're having a hard time figuring out who's telling the truth, then maybe the problem is not the science, but your discernment capabilities.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You are talking nonsense. If you really believe that every university in the world has been somehow "compromised" by some kind of agenda that would cause scientists from those institutions to push a global warming agenda, then my guess is that you haven't met any scientists.
The only thing that's been compromised is your basic common sense.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It is literally impossible to claim that our rate of CO2 change over the past 100 years is unprecedented in the historical record because we have no proxy with that kind of resolution. We see the world today in the equivalent of 4k UHDTV in full color, our records from the past are equivalent to cave paintings, and we're claiming that the color of deer is unprecedented.
But don't let that get in the way of a good, scary, apocalyptic tale of warning!
Seriously? Do you even know why CO2 is a GHG? And if you say it's not, then please explain to me how CO2 doesn't absorb in regions of the IR spectrum that are otherwise transparent. Do you know how ENSO works, and why wind stress forcing from ENSO can help sequester heat into the intermediate and Deep waters of the western Pacific during normal, and with greater intensity during LA Nina years? Do you understand how that slowing of the walker circulation can reverse that downwelling and pull all that sequestered heat back to the surface where it is then available for the lower troposphere. Look, there are a number of climate skeptics in the Earth and Atmospheric sciences of various institutions, but even the out skeptical accept that *something* is happening. Hell I even managed to get Dr Judith Curry to agree with me in 2014, that the next few years would tell the story. If temps remained relatively level, then we were missing something. But if temps resumed their March upward, then even she said that would give strong evidence that the current models were more right than wrong. You want to challenge the science, go for it. You want to derive your own models and see what happens, go for it! Otherwise you're just flapping your gums and wasting time while the adults are trying to figure out what the hell is going on and what we can do to further improve the models and better understand how bad we are fucking the planet up, and maybe, convince enough people that, while mankind won't die off if the temps go up 5 degrees C (and just for you, that's 9 degrees Fahrenheit), you'll see some massive displacement of atmospheric patterns, wildlife, human population displacement, crop disruptions as regions of best growth of certain crops shift dramatically. So yeah, I doubt you'll listen, but maybe other people who read the thread will take it on themselves to look deeper, learn more, and decide based on accurate information. Things are grim enough I don't need to bias a damn thing to make my case.
"The bass, the rock, the mic, the treble. I like my coffee black, just like my metal" - Mindless Self Indulgence
Just wondering, do you accept the fact that the warming due to CO2 increases logarithmically? Since we've obviously both survived and thrived since the 1800s, and there's no realistic scenario where CO2 rises exponentially, isn't this a problem that solves itself with cold, hard math?
The 120ppm we've added so far (if you attribute 100% of it to humans) will have done more warming than the next 120ppm, which will also do more warming than next 120ppm, until the affect is too small to be measured.
Notice how all dissenting views get modded to -1
Frankly I think it's wrong even trying to divide the world into "dissenting" and "assenting." At least, it's not a very scientific way of looking at it. The author of the paper has a good discussion at the beginning of this paper.
You shouldn't mod people up based on whether you 'agree' or 'disagree' with them. Rather, mod them based on whether they've read the paper or not, and the quality of their analysis. Scientific thought should be respected.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
At this point, so much silt has been stirred, it's hard to know who's telling the truth, if anyone. If scientists want more credibility, they need to start flushing out the ideological charge embedded in universities where they study. Sure, Saud and Koch are hardly objective, but neither are the blowhards at the ivy league.
There is a lot of science out there to read. And trying to invalidate physics by casting aspersions on those who practice it is pretty disingenuous.
There really isn't much left to argue about, either greenhouse gases are greenhouse gases, or they aren't. With some 800 terawatts of radiative forcing in the atmosphere. (1.6 watts per square meter) since 1750, something happens somewhere.
Here's one report - http://news.mit.edu/2010/expla... - where is the blowhardism in it? It's about as simple as can be made. I see no political or monetary agenda. Do you?
what is more, the denialists tend to dreadfully underestimate the money for the research and the scientists salaries. That's a hilarious excuse.
But really, it is becoming increasingly difficult to deny. The basic physics is irrefutable, you can prove the energy retention characteristic of the chemical composition of an atmosphere in your basement. Grade school children do it all the time in school science fairs.
Really, all you are left with is proving that the effect doesn''t exist in large scale systems.
And the research for that is vanishingly small. Even one of the last gasp "refutations" of AGW is the measurements of air temperatures in the troposphere versus satellite discrepancies. Which have long since been brought into correlation, but are still being drug up as a strange sort of false dilemma by deniers.
which by the way, the troposphere is not the surface.
I've always challenged deniers to provide the cites for the refutation of AGW. So far, everything has been pretty easy to refute, either by later research, or sad to say, sometimes deliberate falsification.
And no, the kooks who say the world will end are almost certainly wrong - Something will be here until the sun goes red giant. But things will change. We have a sneak preview of it going on right now. The city of Miami in Florida is already undergoing flooding every spring tide at present levels. The water is there - that cannot be denied. You can walk in it on the street, and it's salt water. http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/H...
http://www.local10.com/news/lo...
These are not from storm surges, these are from a completely natural event. Just higher than it used to be.
And that's just one part of it.
So if you actually are interested in real research, with none of the blowhardism you hate, it's all out there. But the denialists are pretty much now relegated to the same part of humanity as creationists and it's brother Intelligent design, Vaxxers, moon landing conspiracists, and tobacco industry lawyers.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Yes, let the people have their say in the vetting of science. This is a democracy! So long as brother John down the road is unconvinced, and so long as local channel 8 (sponsored in part by Exxon Mobile) gives him a mic to debate these important issues, it's unsettled and there's no cause for alarm. Keep doing what you're doing. No one has to adjust. Nothing is wrong. Everything is fine.
Who said I don't believe in science? Who said I was a denier?
I did. "Contaminated institutions." "You have to flush the marxism out of the ivy leagues" "left wing propaganda".
Here's a challenge. Michael Mann (apologies if I made you foam at the mouth there) works at the Pennsylvania state University. Now tell me about their "contamination and their left wing leaning and their Marxism.
Any citations yet?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
So let's get this straight, by questioning the data, you mean you're questioning the physical properties of CO2, right?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Seriously.
"The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"
Okay. Stop fucking screaming about it already. We get it, atmospheric carbon is ridiculous now.
But that simply isn't important.
How do we address the problem in a way that doesn't destroy modern civilization, kill off a large percentage of the world population and send us back to the Stone Age?
And how do we get universal buy-in from other governments?
That's the important part.
What we have now are a bunch of armchair "research scientists" competing for funding so they can continue to bleat on about how "bad" things are. Like nobody else in the world can read automatically collected data. It's like a bunch of bazaar vendors scrambling over a lucky "first customer of the day".
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Translation: Stage 5 of climate change denialsim: okay, climate change was a hoax, and no it's not being caused by the sun, or volcanoes, or whatever stupid bullshit you guys drag up to deflect from your own responsibility. Now we're at, okay, AGW is happening, but it's toooo haaaard to do anything about it!
Problem: the costs of mitigating climate change are insignificant next to the costs of ignoring it.
We could have solved this problem decades ago, by moving to renewable energy sources. But nooooooo, we had to listen to the apologists for Philip Morris first. Sorry, that autocorrected from Exxon for some reason.
Listening to climate change deniers now makes as much sense as listening to people who were chickenhawk warmongers on Iraq for what to do about ISIS or Syria.
> Hell, the university where I worked is considered by the lefties as being in bed with the energy industry. Only difference is, the scientists believe in science, which you do not.
Ironically so do even the scientists who are directly employed by the energy industry. ExxonMobil's own scientists told them that fossil fuels would cause warming in the late 80's already. They always knew it. They just weren't allowed to talk about it - and the company told the public something that radically differed from what they discussed internally (which, by the way, is criminal fraud).
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