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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.
Only 60 million years?
Any living thing on Earth produce Plastic before human beings?
Or Open Pit Mining??
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
What the FUCK are you talking about? All the numbers have been released in copious detail over and over, as well as the sources for their models/trend estimators. Stop fucking lying you ignorant jackass. Here's the NOAA data for January (the second hottest on record) if you're actually serious.
"The slave who knows his master's will and does not get ready...will be be beaten with many blows."Luke 12:47-48
just goes to show those dinosaurs really weren't that great, all the wasted effort on museums and such not to mention the captain planets.
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.
There haven't been humans for 66 million years either.
I don't know where you're getting your numbers. Even if you want to be extremely generous in error margins, pre-industrial CO2 was still lower than 320ppm, and now it's at 400ppm. We know from looking at isotope ratios that more than half that difference was from humans. And even if it weren't human CO2, if we really really tried, we have (expensive) strategies that could reduce it back down to 240ppm.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Many people wrongly labeled as "deniers" aren't denying anything. They're merely taking a far more stringent and critical look at the data than those who have political agendas to push do. The wrongly-accused "deniers" are just doing science as it's meant to be done. Science inherently involves questioning absolutely everything, in every way possible. Science isn't about creating "evidence" that can be used to blame humans for naturally-occurring environmental phenomena so that they can be subjected to carbon taxes and other shenanigans. Science is about looking at the observations and evidence from all angles, without preconceived notions and without goals revolving around forcing a leftist philosophy on others. Science isn't about politics. Science is about the truth, regardless of how we may interpret that truth.
Hey, you want to know how much this car costs, okay no problem sir no problem! This chart shows that it costs 0.5% less than the national average for cars of this general make, model and condition! I think sir can agree, this is a fantastic deal, yes?
Oh, you want to know actual, real dollar values? I'm sorry, we don't provide those, just the "simplified" and properly adjusted comparison to our completely honestly determined average values. But according to this chart we have the best prices in town, best price guaranteed!
Sir? Where do you go, Sir? I shall await your return here, yes?
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
The author of the paper is Richard Zeebe, his main focus is drilling ocean cores. Here is a nice video of the guy, he seems like a straight-shooter and a reasonable scientist.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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.
We are screwed, blued, and tattooed.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
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.
We have been doing some serious damage. 4% is a meaningless number in and of itself.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Raw data is available here: http://www.realclimate.org/ind...
AGW is part of the observational science of climatology. The political effects that rise out of that are something else entirely. Claiming that it is "leftist politics" is fucking absurd. There's no reason that conservatives and libertarians couldn't put forward models that dealt with CO2 emissions, rather than acting like fucking retards and demanding that the laws of physics must somehow obey some set of political ideologies.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Yes, during the PETM, temperatures rose rapidly by 5-8C. Mind you, this temperature increase was on top of temperatures that were already a lot higher than today. There were lots of changes during that period, but no generalized mass extinction. Corals suffered but didn't die out. Land animals didn't see any significant extinction. Mammals did very well.
In addition, just to drive the point home, the carbon was then rapidly absorbed again and the temperature fell again, before slowly rising to the same level again during the Eocene optimum. So we have examples of both fast and slow, long duration and short duration increases in atmospheric carbon from the Eocene, and no massive global catastrophes.
The PETM to me always suggested that the concerns about climate change were overblown. Even if there are some negative short term effects, much higher temperatures and melting ice caps don't spell doom for the world. In fact, if anything, the Eocene climate may have been nicer than what we have today.
(Note also that when people claim that carbon release during the PETM "was" slower than today, that's based on various assumptions, not direct measurement. All we can say is that carbon release was very fast and took less than 20ka.)
...will make us stronger! All this worry over climate change is really silly. Adapt or die is the phrase for the day.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
It's the sun
The only problem with that theory is that solar output and temperature have been going in opposite directions for the last 40 years: http://woodfortrees.org/plot/g...
You use the word Fuck a lot.
Do you need some alone time or maybe a hooker?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The NOAA adjustments have REDUCED the warming trend evident in the raw data. Here's a comparison of the two: https://criticalangleblog.file... .
Here's the NASA land based measurements compared to the satellite temperature reconstruction by skeptics Spencer and Christy: http://woodfortrees.org/plot/u...
He is also NOT a millennial.
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!
Can you imagine if opponents to String Theory or General Relativity were silenced in this manner?
Don't conflate the theory of relativity with the string idea.
Remember, about five decades ago, scientists were concerned about global cooling.
That's a myth.
Before then, cigarettes were considered healthy.
That's also a myth. The tobacco industry did find some shills, though.
People twirled paintbrushes that were used with paint containing radium, blissfully unaware of the dangers.
Right, but science didn't say it was safe. It hadn't said jack on the subject yet.
We shouldn't censor dissenting views; it's bad for science.
That's OK, nobody is censoring the view that AGW doesn't exist. Nobody credible is putting it forward, either.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
do you fucking read before you link?, the data is not raw. you are the troll
From your link:
Methods for removing inhomogeneities from the data record associated with non-climatic influences such as changes in instrumentation, station environment, and observing practices that occur over time were also included in the version 2 release (Peterson and Easterling, 1994; Easterling and Peterson 1995). Since that time efforts have focused on continued improvements in dataset development methods including new quality control processes and advanced techniques for removing data inhomogeneities
no, not for NOAA links there, and they even explain their data is not raw but preprocessed for v2x and v3. they have no intent to deceive, not saying that, but only that the data is not raw.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The Earth was at an equilibrium before we got here. And "we" are a product of that equilibrium. Our bodies are the product of an evolution that depended on the state of the Earth at the equilibrium. By releasing 4% more than that amount by releasing carbon that's been stored for millions of years below the crust, it can't be reabsorbed, and builds up. 4%+4%+4%... adds up pretty quickly. The Earth will likely find a new equilibrium again, but our bodies won't fit it very well. Sure, humans can develop technologies to deal with an environment that largely doesn't fit our physiology, but that requires energy. And that energy (unless we make serious changes) comes from the use of fossil fuels which, (if we don't use them up first...) releases even more CO2, and pushes us further away from an environment which suits our meager bodies.
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."
[CITATION NEEDED]
... People twirled paintbrushes that were used with paint containing radium, blissfully unaware of the dangers. . .
They also licked their brushes' bristle-tips to keep them shaped into a fine point. That is, the watch-dial painters licked radium.
We learned from that. . . the hard way.
I can't wait for essentially unlimited energy. It might be wind+solar but I'm betting on safe forms of nuclear power within a century of now.
The gating factor will be the amount of investment into R&D and that depends on total wealth created, to enable the excess available foe investment. Right now that's roughly proportinal to total fossil fuel burned (productively, of course).
The very best that could be done for the environment would be to get rid of all the punitive energy taxes, all the free trade barriers, the migration barriers, and all the economic regulations that stifle wealth creation and create a massive wealth surge that will power the R&D we need to get over that hump.
The incentives are and will always exist for less expensive energy, so as long as the science isn't suppressed, and we don't think everything that will be invented has been, the path is clear.
But go ahead and tax the hell out of everything, crush progress, and act all surprised when people are still burning dung in huts in a hundred years. That's not the future most of us want, except for these whacky arch-conservatives who want to freeze time at 1970.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Processed data shows less warming than raw data: https://criticalangleblog.file...
NOAA data is available here: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-...
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.
Millions of years ago, the Silurians did everything we've done and more. Shows what you guys know.
Good one.
Please remind me: Are the Silurians from von Danniken, or from the Raelians?
Until the permafrost defrosts and starts releasing the real planet warming gas that is Methane
I know you're joking, but it occurs to me that there are currently practiced religions thousands of years older than that. Hinduism is the first one to come to mind, starting 11,000 years ago. Anyone who actually believes the earth is younger than Hinduism, probably believes their God did that (condemned a billion souls to damnation), specifically to challenge our personal belief here in God's country, (formerly the land of Native American nature spirits.)
Because we know what we're talking about and use facts, empiricism, and non-ideological approaches to reality?
What do I win?
The raw they have there is from July 1996 to December 2004, other sets have quality control procedures which is interesting topic.
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.
You must spend very little time around scientists. There is a tremendous amount of discussion and argument. Often the argument technique is used to work out the theory.
The problem with your thesis is that while there isn't a tremendous amount of argument today about AGW, it is not because of your odd conflation with religion, but it's because Scientists do not argue much about evolution or the idea that the earth is ony 6 thousand years old either. Or gravity, or nuclear fission and fusion for that matter. There aren't any scientists arguing for the Phlogiston theory, and that's a fact. There comes a point where someone who wants to claim that man and the dinosaurs lived at the same time, or that the sun is a lump of burning coal, are going to have a hard time being listened to.
As I've told many, put together a hypothesis, an experimental plan and look for funding. And if you are worried about the so called conspiracy of scientists, you could probably get the Koch brothers to fund the experiments at maybe Liberty University. Then after proving AGW wrong, the scientist who does will be in line for a Nobel prize.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
You use the word Fuck a lot.
Do you need some alone time or maybe a hooker?
I can haz hoooker? I don't swear as much, but I can haz one?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
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
Unless you think the atmosphere is growing or shrinking, these numbers mean the same thing.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Quality controlled data is from 1763 to present - depending on the station. Quality control just means it's flagged with one of the following markers:
I use it a lot to express my complete contempt for pseudo-science.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
There are small handful of scientists who question AGW, and of those, only a smaller group are even working scientists.
And if you think weather station data can't be calibrated, why don't you publish your scathing indictment of AGW?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"Anyone who actually believes the earth is younger than Hinduism"
Of course, Hinduism is a wrong faith that will throw its observants to Hell for the whole Eternity, so that doesn't say much.
"probably believes their God did that (condemned a billion souls to damnation), specifically to challenge our personal belief here in God's country"
Of course not. It's their own evil nature that makes them deaf to God Worship. Of course, God, being infinitely wise, has given us free will to choose. Bad luck they chose wrongly.
Of course, that there seems to be a strong correlation in having the "right" believings and Geography is just... well, I don't know, but it doesn't matter, as God knows better.
The Kochs wouldn't fund the experiment because they know what the answer would be. Heartland Institute cash is much better spent funding Frank Spencer's WSJ articles and speaking tours, or the even more delightful Judith Curry, who denies both evolution and AGW. The one time they did fund an actual study, Richard Muller's study, the result was a confirmation that climatological research was going in the right direction. They won't make that mistake twice.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I'm dubious of this claim that Hinduism is 11,000 years old. While there may be "native" (as in pre-Indo-Iranian) elements in Hinduism, much of it seems to be based on the Indo-Iranian, and ultimately Indo-European religion, neither of which could be said to be more than about 4,000 to 5,000 years old.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Oh fuck off, you halfwit. The post-Ice Age climate has been relatively stable, and it is during that period that H. sapiens first started developing agriculture, animal husbandry, urban living, writing, metallurgy, you know, the fucking things that we call "civilization". That higher temperatures were just fucking keen for T. rex means very fucking little in a world where the agricultural and aquicultural "belts" keep the overwhelming majority of H. sapiens alive.
But hey, I get it. You're a fucking coward and a retard, and think the universe modifies physics so we can just vomit hundreds of millions of years of sequestered carbon into the atmosphere in a few centuries, without any effect whatsoever.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
All true but there are some things which only humans have ever done to the Earth: CFCs which damage the ozone layer and thermonuclear weapons (there is evidence of a natural fission reactor about 1.7 billion years ago but natural nuclear fusion only occurs in the sun, not on Earth)
I take that pessimistic view, to a point. I think at some point the effects will become so pronounced that political forces will push governments to severe solutions.
And who do you want to bet will be selling those very expensive solutions to nations whose rainbelts just shifted several degrees out of their national boundaries. Believe me, we'll have Exxon tidal turbines and Royal Duct Mr. Fusion reactors.
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!!!
There are small handful of scientists who question AGW
Most of those scientists also believe in a god. So if we are basing truth on the percentage of scientists who believe in it then I guess God is also real and anyone who doubts it is an irrational, unscientific, nutjob who does not need to be taken seriously, right?
I will never understand people who base their beliefs on popularity contests. I base my beliefs on evidence. Direct empirical evidence. Not computer simulations (gigo) or opinion polls. I will accept that climate warming is linked to human action as soon as evidence shows that. All I have seen so far in terms of evidence is that CO2 is rising and that the temperature of the earth seems to be slowly rising as well. I have not seen any direct evidence connecting the two. We know that higher CO2 levels leads to higher atmospheric temperatures of course, but what we don't know is exactly how much CO2 is required for how much of a rise in temperature on planetary scales. We also don't know if human beings are really the cause of the higher CO2 levels. Maybe we are, but it hasn't been proven beyond any doubt.
Also even if it is proven, and it may be at some point, it does not mean that everyone is going to agree about what if anything should be done about it. There are good arguments for nuclear power generation and highway electrification based on clean nuclear power from one of the newer, safer types of nuclear reactor designs even if it turns out that the amount of CO2 we are currently producing is not warming the climate to a dangerous degree as so many seem to believe at the moment. We are going to run out of fossil fuels eventually anyway and switching to fission (fusion is always 10 years away) power generation may be our only choice. Use of nuclear, hydro, wind, and photovoltaics is inevitable as soon as we run out of things to burn. The only problem with switching to those methods now if it isn't necessary yet is that nuclear, solar, and to a lesser extent wind power all are generally more expensive than coal. So poor people are often left not being able to afford to use much of it. Particularly in countries where almost everyone is poor this can be a big problem.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Even neutral water will slowly dissolve coral, living or dead. The major problem is the extra energy it takes to deposit coral in a less alkaline ocean. Eventually it can't survive.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
Yes, but the decline in effectiveness is not all that fast. The second 120 ppm will do 80% much as the first 120 ppm (I think). It will get rather unpleasant before the warming really slows.
That only applies to temperature, though. Ocean acidification doesn't slow down, at least not soon.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
We also don't know if human beings are really the cause of the higher CO2 levels. Maybe we are, but it hasn't been proven beyond any doubt.
Whut!!!??? We know approximately how much CO2 we are emitting. It's pretty easy to calculate based on fossil fuel usage. We know that the year to year rise in CO2 in the atmosphere is a bit less than half of year to year anthropogenic emissions of CO2 (most of the rest is absorbed by the oceans). Given that, how can human beings not be the cause of higher CO2 levels?
Only 4% of global CO2 is attributable to humans. 96% of it is naturally occurring, and we couldn't do anything about it if we tried.
Have you ever heard of the Carbon Cycle? For many thousands of years the CO2 level hovered around 280 ppm despite a similar level of natural CO2 emissions every year. That's because the other side of the carbon cycle naturally absorbed a similar amount CO2 every year. It's only after humans started burning a significant amount of fossil fuels that CO2 levels started to rise significantly.
It's dishonest to talk about natural emissions of CO2 without also mentioning the natural sinks of CO2.
thank goodness, we were heading to 140ppm which stops plant life, then we are really fucked.
And the ocean is alkaline, not acidic, it got slightly more neutral, blimey Slashdot nerds have really gone down in intelligence.
What makes you think we were heading to 140 ppm? In 800,000 years of ice core records the CO2 never dropped below 180 ppm. If CO2 levels ever started to head drastically downward we know how to fix that. Just dig up fossil fuels and burn them.
Acidification in a solution just means the pH is dropping. It doesn't say anything about where it started.
those really are not raw temperature data though. Those are all the products of analysis. You really are spewing in ignorance
Have you looked at Berkeley Earth? They have links to their source files here. They take raw data and apply their own set of adjustments that are different than the adjustments applied by NOAA or NASA.
Slashdotter gets old, discovers kids seem dumb when he's old, but fails to maintain historical perspective. Ironic!
Play Command HQ online
And how much snow did you shovel in December, January & February? I'll bet it was a shit ton less than you normally do in those months.
You know there are a couple of pretty good natural thermometers on Earth, sea level and ice volume. Both of those metrics both are pretty definitively pointed toward a warming world.
"Slashdotter unsure if climate scientists have heard of the Sun."
Thanks for letting them know, just in case.
Play Command HQ online
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.
Two of several problems with your taxation idea.
How does one keep ANY government from using it as a piggy bank for various pork projects (like Social Security was)?
And how does it help alternative forms of energy development when the legal framework has already been poisoned against just such a thing?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
"I'll build a fantastic carbon wall, and make the dinosaurs pay for it!"
Table-ized A.I.
The AGW industry is worth $29 Billion / annum. If you want to play Quo Bono? then you should start there.
The AGW hypothesis makes the specific prediction that the Tropical Lower Troposphere (TLT) will warm faster than the Earth's surface. The opposite is seen in reality. Thus, the Scientific Method REQUIRES you to accept the Null Hypothesis instead. Will you use the Scientific Method or are you anti-scientific ?
Furthermore the observed TCS and ECS are of the order of 4 -7 C / doubling of CO2 according to the IPCC. This is based on guestimates of the effect of water vapor. The observed reality is that the TCS is around 1.2 C, which means water vapor has little effect over CO2's direct effect (which itself is quite small at the current concentration of CO2 - the effect diminishes logarithmically). Again, will you accept observational reality over a hypothesis whose predictions are not only not true, but the opposite is seen?
You mean their own statements?
http://green-agenda.com/
Only 4% of global CO2 is attributable to humans. 96% of it is naturally occurring, and we couldn't do anything about it if we tried.
This is no different from, say, a budget: if you make $100M each year, and have $96M in expenses, then you accumulate $4M per year. If you eat 2100 kcal per day, but only use 2000 kcal, then each day your body grows that little bit heavier. And so on; in the end, it makes a big difference. If nature is only able to absorb 96% of the CO2 produced, then the 4% that are left over will accumulate in the atmosphere end so on.
There is even an kind of "interest" to keep the money metaphor: when CO2 levels increase, ice melts, which releases CO2 and methane that was previously bound in permafrost, which adds to the overall effect. These things really are happening, and it really is our fault. This isn't about blaming anybody, but we have to face up to reality, otherwise, how can we hope to even begin to think about solving the problem? It strikes me as common sense to stop pissing in the well that we're all drinking from, if you'll excuse the expression.
Nice.
So everyone, please stop asking for the accuracy of the models. We have now 'proven' that nothing like now has ever happened so whatever our models of climate change say, they can't be refuted. Of course the models can't accurately model past events because, hey, nothing like this has ever happened.
So there you have it. The models are completely correct:
- the climate will be very bad in future (ie. not like it is now); and
- humans are the problem
Thank you for blindly accepting these pronouncements.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
and that 96% was in equilibrium.
it doesn't matter if you add 1% or 20%, you've still upset the equilibrium, upsetting the balance of the climate.
and that bit you add every year is like an investment in the future, only this case its a bad one, as it just keeps compounding and compounding.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
the only one round here typing with any sort of religious fervor... ... is you
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
I'm willing to listen, but I don't like reading just people's conclusions, I want to see an authority and how they came to that conclusion.
Source?
Source?
Source?
Source?
Hasn't Earth always had climate change?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Well I did a bit more research on the CO2 issue, and I find the evidence convincing enough that the rise in CO2 is caused by humans through combustion, but not due the logic you've just presented. I read that the human contribution to the carbon cycle is less than 4% of the total amount however it seems that the total amount of CO2 in the cycle is generally quite steady except on geologic time scales. So the rise in CO2 levels coinciding with the industrial revolution and rising continuously until now is pretty convincing evidence that we are the cause. It is 'circumstantial' evidence, but it does seem to be by far the most likely cause.
Having said that the question still remains as to how much CO2 is too much. At an increase of say 4ppm per year how long will it take before we start to see a significant warming effect? There have been large variations in CO2 in the past. Do we know how temperatures fluctuated in response to those much larger variations? That would be at least some evidence.
Because, aside from that sort of analysis it seems that the only way to be certain is to wait and see what happens. So far the warming, if it has indeed all been caused by the increase in CO2 levels, does not seem particularly worrisome. Certainly not catastrophic. If it continues at less than 1 degree celsius per century I think we can probably handle that for another millennium by which time we probably wouldn't be still burning coal or oil or natural gas for electricity.
We might not even have any fossil fuels left to burn in as little as a century according to some estimates. We'll have to mostly be using nuclear (ideally fusion) generated electricity and electric ground transportation. In terms of politics I would support a gradual phasing out of oil and natural gas in favor of nuclear or hydro or wind generation in the few places they are appropriate. I think coal, where economically feasible is just too cost effective to abandon without some very clear evidence of immediate harm. Perhaps it could be justified based on other forms of pollution which are easier to show as being harmful. Heavy metals perhaps. Hopefully, given a century or two, one of those miracle improvements to photovoltaic cells will actually make it to market at a reasonable cost.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
"... fundamental challenge to constraining future climate projections"
I'd think they'd be celebrating?
I mean, they essentially are saying there's no reason to temper the FUD. All projections of panic, fear, misery, and terror are hereby justified.
-Styopa
Pretty much every point is summed up here
All of the above climate info in the op is extremely basic. I'm surprised you haven't seen any sources of this. And no the earth has never seen this rapid climate change except perhaps from extinction event impacts, basically the entire point of this article. I know, no one reads these.
I'm open minded, I'm willing to accept another 'truth' if people can provide the source data, I don't push my own view on to others.
In a world where everyone gives you conclusions instead of data, it becomes hard to believe any one side.
Given there has been warming for 300 years, are you saying in the last 25 years, we have done something that really changes the climate?
I've been previously told there was unusual melting of ice at the poles. But I then checked the data directly, in the last ten years global temperatures have decreased 0.05 degrees. I know that from plotting the least squares regression trend using satellite data. It showed in the last decade, there had been no significant increase in temperature at all. Given that we haven't had any for the last decade and we've had cooling for the last 15 years, what data are you actually looking at?
When I look at data from say, the University if Illinois, which takes the arctic and antarctic ice movements and it plots a global sea ice extent, which shows no change in the last 35 years.
Every time I check the data instead of trusting conclusions, I find it's simply not true. Perhaps you could show me your data that shows otherwise?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
The Kochs wouldn't fund the experiment because they know what the answer would be. Heartland Institute cash is much better spent funding Frank Spencer's WSJ articles and speaking tours, or the even more delightful Judith Curry, who denies both evolution and AGW.
Its the same tactics as used by Creationists and ID'ers.
Cerry picking, false dillemmas, like there were some discrepencies between balloon tropospher measurements and satellite measurements so AGW has to be false right? Then even though the data has long since been reconciled, parroting the long discredited discrepency.
It was hilarious (or sad) that while doing my research on the matter, finding the paper bringing all that into agreement was buried in the midst of hundreds of websites citing the original issue. Not a one cited the later research bring the two together - by the way one that the author of the original paper said was true and correct after the reconciliation.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Ok so look at it as a balance. If you have ten pounds of sand on each end of a fulcrum point so that the system is balanced. If you add half a pound of sand to one end what happens? It couldn't really be the cause of much since it is 4% added weight right? Also, in the new unbalanced system taking away that extra half pound couldn't possibly re-balance the system since it only accounts for 4% of the total (your situation of "96% of it is naturally occurring, and we couldn't do anything about it if we tried."). Just because humans only contribute a small percentage of the total doesn't mean that that contribution is meaningless.
I'm not just talking the US. Yes, we're one of the worst.
But if we decrease and China just takes up the slack, plus emerging third world countries...
1: Interesting.
2: Not sure this would fly (if you'll pardon the pun).
3: This'd never fly. EVER. Nobody would come within a light year of the liabilities this would introduce.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
While I'm sure there's concern over linear rises (whatever the nature of the line), I think there's more concern over "tipping point" events and the impacts they may have - beyond just changing the slope of the line.
Some examples of possible/expected events are temperatures rising enough to free trapped methane (under permafrost, but also locked up in methane clathrates), ice-free summers in the Arctic ocean (dark water warms in the sun where ice reflects it) and influxes of cold fresh water from ice melt interfering with ocean currents that do a lot of distribution of heat around the world (thermohaline circulation). None of these are things that are going to happen overnight, but the impacts of them aren't all well understood and there's a lot of concern that we may be past the point of preventing them.
fencepost
just a little off
Clinton doesn't shoot squares.
She has people for that.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Only if you can guarantee that she (or he) has chosen that profession in an open and non-coerced decision, has full autonomy in how their actions and has no constraints beyond the usual governmental ones on what they do with the money you pay them.
Oh, and if you have the money to pay them.
That aside, sure, go for it. Might as well get laid before the world ends.
No. No, we haven't been doing any damage at all.
We've been changing the state. That isn't damage.
The Earth will survive. We'd have to do something spectacular to destroy the Earth.
Human civilisation may not survive but fuck that, it's not worth saving. If it was we'd be working hard to get off planet anyway, as the planet's doomed in the long run whether humans are around or not.
Me, I'll be dead long before the planet. Count me in the "don't give a shit" camp.
"People" have provided the source data. If you don't agree with the data or the context that it is placed in, then the discussion is over and completely useless. Back when scientists were saying that the world was a globe and not flat... there was a TON of data provided to support that theory. The ideologues and skeptics at the time simply would not believe it. It took suicide ship voyages across the ocean to prove it. Nobody believed the data because they didn't trust the source of the data. It wasn't until these ships didn't fall off the edge of the earth that the skeptics and doubters believed the earth was spherical.
This is no different. The skeptics and ideologues will believe in the causes, effects, and presence of global warming/climate shift when they see it happen with their own eyes. When they truly have to deal with it. Not one minute before.
The problem with scientists is that they are too idealistic and believe that merely producing a hypothesis, supporting data, and conclusions are enough. Even if thousands of scientists do independent studies confirming the same hypothesis, producing the same data, and coming to the same conclusions... it is not enough. Scientists have not learned their lesson. The world cannot be saved until the world is ready to be saved. A country cannot have freedom until its people are ready to have it.
To me, scientists really just need to stick with near-term science. Research for advances in technology or the treatment of disease. Research for advances in farming. This kind of research produces simple, immediate results that are visible to skeptical non-scientists. But long-term global science is pretty useless. It doesn't matter how much data is produced. Skeptics believe what they see with their own eyes... and models are not enough.
Oh Slashdot, et tu brutus? Carbon issues are ALL part of Agenda 21. This is ALL junk pseudo science. And altho we are a CARBON BASED LIFE, of course too much of it is bad, but has NOTHING to do with men made carbon. The Sun, yes, the Sun is the major factor here. As temperatures rise, oceans release more of it, and the rates gets higher... and NOT the other way around, as it was "exposed" by Mr. Al 'Nefarious' Gore.
That's irrelevant if the 96% was in equilibrium.
A thought experiment. You find a funnel which will allow 1 litre of water to pass through per second. So you start firing water into this funnel at 1 litre per second. The level of water sitting in the conical part of the funnel will remain pretty much static - as much water is entering as is exiting.
Now increase the rate you're pouring water in from 1 litre per second to 1.001 litre per second - just 0.1% more. Inexorably and inevitably, the water level funnel will rise, and eventually the funnel will overtop.
The natural CO2 sources have been balanced with natural CO2 sinks for millenia. Now we're adding a few percent more, but without increasing the CO2 sinks - in fact, we've been doing the opposite and actively removing CO2 sinks. This will cause CO2 to accumulate instead of remain in equilibrium.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Any of those imagined "tipping points" would have already happened in the past, and it's pure speculation that *anything* we could do (or not do) could prevent them from happening in the future. It's also quite possible that these drivers overwhelm any anthropogenic signal, and are indeed the root *cause* of our observations, rather than simply the effects of some anthropogenic signal.
Given the incredible amount of uncertainty, it seems the only logical pursuit is adaptation, rather than mitigation.
The measure the temperature increase via CO2 *per doubling*, so in fact, the effectiveness falls *incredibly* fast.
As for unpleasantness, I think we can all say the world is thriving more in 2016 than it was in 1850.
And for ocean *neutralization* (remember, it's basic, not acidic), it's almost impossible to find *any* signal there, much less an anthropogenic one. The ocean is *way* bigger than you imagine, and has pH fluxes *way* bigger than any asserted long term trend.
Well, in the case of CO2, the de facto asymptote is simple - 100% CO2 atmosphere, or 1,000,000 parts per million.
Or do you think we can have more than 100% atmosphere? :)
Here, as an exercise, calculate the temperature increase due to the last 500 ppm from 999,500 ppm to 1,000,000 ppm, assuming a sensitivity of 1C per doubling. Does your calculator even have enough digits for that? :)
The reason for having a nick is not e-peen waving about how many likes you have on Slashdot. It's about being accountable for what you say and giving people the ability to hold rational dialogue with another person. If it was an e-prickle waving contest it would be real names, not nicknames. If there was no desire to hold dialogue there would be no login at all and everyone would be anonymous.
Anonymous has a purpose too, but it used to be advertised as "Anonymous Coward" very intentionally.
You don't want to own up to what you say that's fine, but don't try and belittle people who do.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Seriously? Is your knowledge base so small that you can't possibly think of another analogy other than Nazis? I cry for your inanity.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I don't have it, yet again.
What data? I don't have it.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
That noone seems to want to talk about is that every geological record of a massive CO2 release is accompanied by evidence of a simultaneous oceanic anoxic event and large scale dieback of megafauna (which includes animals our size)
There's evidence that this may have already started and started spreading.
You got it exactly right....well done.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
wait, you have evidence of Hinduism before 5500 B.C.? do tell
Seriously, how much do you or your consulting company make from this courageous "Anonymous Coward" commenting?
Are you paid by the hour?
By the post?
By the word?
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Last I heard (and I could easily be wrong) about half of all scientists believed in a God or something similar. The believers know that their beliefs are unscientific, and they do not claim they are or try to advance them in that way.
As far as AGW goes, there is a vast amount of raw evidence and published papers to look through, and it basically points to AGW happening. Look through as much as you like. You can do this in pretty much any science. Since you can't do it for all science, either you don't believe in things like the Standard Model in quantum physics or General Relativity or evolution or a whole lot of other things, or you accept stuff on authority.
What to do about AGW is of course a political and economic decision, but if we don't use the best approach to the truth we can find our decisions will be worse than they need to be.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
People have given you links to follow up. Do you expect them to hack into your computer and enter the URLs into your browser themselves?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Your comment history is fascinating. You comment on few stories, but on the ones you do comment on you're *everywhere* with "there's no proof of climate change causes and we can't do anything about it anyway" and "gun grabbers" and straw man arguments.
I saw a few places where you seem to take an approach of "we can't fully fix this, so let's not even try to do anything" which seems to me like a rather defeatist attitude.
Anyway, regarding tipping points and whether they'd have happened in the past, it's entirely possible that they did happen and that over time things worked their way back down. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to mitigate the impacts of those, because the interim time period may REALLY SUCK in a "be glad the wars will kill you or your children before starvation" kind of way that lasts for thousands of years while natural selection selects for algae and plankton that thrive in the new conditions.
fencepost
just a little off
They didn't answer the specifics things I asked for which I clarified in a follow up post.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I should also add, that it was on a completely different thread that wasn't even referring to the points I am talking about here.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
So we're adding CO2 like no other time in history, let's believe that. We have had a period for over 15 years where we haven't seen an increase in temperatures. The UN simply admitted it and said they didn't know why. Well this is a classic case of the scientific method. Their hypothesis is CO2 causes GW. Since it didn't, and isn't based on the numbers it's time to admit they're wrong and CO2 isn't the cause. It's not even a contributor. What the history record tells us is CO2 always follows warming events, not causing them. What a lot of us scientists have said for decades. It's just those trying to profit off of us say co2 causes GW because man makes CO2. Not hard people. Admit it or reject science.
Yeah, come to think of it I might be mistaken. It's exactly 5999.9 years old. Damn, you got me.
On a serious note, Hinduism claims to be 111.5 trillion years old, and that the Earth is even older than that at 155 trillion. Seems we have a disagreement brewing on the origin and the age of this rock. Rather than have our greatest scientific minds look into it, lets just pull everyone together from various religions for a friendly debate and exchange of information.
I find evil as defined by certain camps of Christianity fascinating. It enables an annoying self-righteous attitude... yet the same people are supposedly born damned because of something an ancestor did, and the same people who needed someone innocent to die for them just to have a chance at avoiding Hell.
I don't know for sure, but I think the rules that govern the religious world you live in are evil - not all the other people.
Yeah you're probably right. What I read didn't have any sources cited.
Short of kidnapping people, owning a spaceship and a radio telescope, and flying them all 6001 light years away to look back on the Earth, - assuming we didn't hit a massive ceiling mural of the galaxy - I probably couldn't prove to them that the Earth is older than that.
Waste of time is a waste. But it doesn't matter, in 6000 years we won't exist anymore because these people will have forgotten the actual year the Earth was supposed to have been created, and they will still be citing that factoid of theirs.
We're causing previously unseen conditions because we are engaged in previously unseen activities.
Never in the 4.5 billion year history of this planet has a species done any of the things we're doing (to the best of our knowledge). Driving cars, farming, surfing a massively interconnected network of computers while pooping. It's all uncharted territory for our dear planet Terra. So I'm not terribly surprised to hear that these events are causing some changes.
The real question is whether or not these changes will make the planet inhospitable to life.
This signature is false.
One other piece of evidence for the rise in CO2 being caused by humans is the ratio of carbon13 to carbon12 in the atmosphere. Fossil fuels are higher in carbon12 than the atmosphere because life prefers the lighter isotope. There has been a measurable decrease in the C13/C12 ratio of CO2 in the atmosphere as you would expect from fossil fuels being burned.
The carbon cycle is the key to it all. The carbon is distributed through the carbon cycle but the ratio between the various sinks remains about the same. So as you add carbon it increases in all of the sinks, the main ones being the atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere.
There have been large variations of CO2 in the past but little evidence of it changing as fast as it is at the present time. I think there has already been significant warming and it's just going to get worse as long as CO2 continues to increase.
Ok Alarmists. As a denialist I propose a wager. I will bet you that in 100 years the global temperature will have increased by less than 1 degree celsuis and that in 1000 years temperature will have increased by no more than 10 degrees celsuis.
Here is what there is actually evidence for:
1) The rise in CO2 since industrialization is due to human activities: basically burning stuff, making cement, and cutting down (killing) vegetation. Lots of evidence for that. No problem.
2) The earth has warmed by less than 1 degree celsuis since industrialization. The evidence for this isn't as strong and some sources are inconsistent, but there is a significant amount of evidence to support this view.
Maybe there is a causal relationship between the CO2 and the warming. There probably is. To say any more than that you will have to find evidence. Empirical, experimental data which I have not seen presented. Computer simulations are not science. You cannot prove anything with them. You need actual experiments for that and that's fine, because what we are doing is an experiment. Let's all sit back and see what happens.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
One other piece of evidence for the rise in CO2 being caused by humans is the ratio of carbon13 to carbon12 in the atmosphere.
Yeah I saw that too. Thanks. The evidence for the CO2 increase being caused by us seems pretty solid. It's the rest that is shaky. As in how much warming will an additional x ppm of CO2 cause. That's what we really need to know and I don't see any way for us to determine that accurately except by waiting to see what happens next. I guess the next best thing would be looking into the past when CO2 levels were as high as 7000ppm and try to see how much that warmed the atmosphere. I don't know if we have methods for plotting temperature vs CO2 with enough accuracy going back so far.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
In 2009 Richard Alley gave the Bjerknes Lecture at the American Geophysical Union's annual meeting. Its title was "The Biggest Control Knob: Carbon Dioxide in Earth's Climate History". In it he explains how you can't understand temperatures in Earth's history even going back over 4 billion years without understanding carbon dioxide. The video is 57 minutes long but it's well worth watching.
"The Biggest Control Knob: Carbon Dioxide in Earth's Climate History"
calm down, the planet is warm enough as it is.
And for the sake of argument:
take a piece of paper or go to the nearest whiteboard and draw a line, that represents 4.5 billion years, so lets say 45 cm (or inches, if you prefer)
now mark where we started to make records of temperatures. Note: the thermometer was invented in the early 1600's
It doesn't even matter if these records were accurate or not. You know what? assume that the Early egyptians had a thermometer they got form the aliens
and make it 2000 years b.c.
Now draw your conclusions if last January was actually the warmest month in the history of the earth.
I hope you agree that it would be the same as to predict the outcome of a marathon, 2 meters after the start.
Stop discussing numbers and who's a scientist and who's a denier, or even who causes what, and start thinking about solutions, for our own sake.
I'm not worried about the planet, that will survive, I'm worried about humanity.
I think the solution is rather simple: 1. have the planet breakdown more CO2 and 2. make our footprint more efficient.
or just carry on as usual and let nature find it's way. Which will undoubtedly work, just not to everyones liking.
And, of course, it's up to everyone else to FTP massive amounts of data to you? The obvious null hypothesis is that the scientists know what they're talking about that, and if you reject that you're not going to be convinced by anything.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
... which is precisely why historical scientists have over the last couple of centuries developed a whole series of what we call "temperature proxies." For example, if you find billion year old rocks made of silty mud and with raindrop impressions on some bedding surfaces, then you know that the temperature was between 0degC and 100degC. If you find gypsum crystals pseudomorphous after anhydrite, then you know that they were deposited at temperatures above 57degC. As time has gone on, the proxies have got more accurate.
But hey, that's science. It's time consuming and difficult to understand. But it is the only effective method we have for advancing knowledge.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
I think that for anyone that claims to have seen the data, it shouldn't be a problem to provide the data they've seen so I can come to a similar hypothesis instead of just relying on their comment
I have no idea if Javabandit is a scientist, all I see is him saying "I definitely understand the impact that global warming is having. I see the data. I know it is there." and for me to come to a similar conclusion, I should see the same data he's seen, no?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Perhaps "inflection point" where the slope of a line changes direction rapidly would be more accurate, but tipping point is more widely comprehended in conversation. In any case, I'm not necessarily talking about a permanent change when we talk about massive time scales, I have no idea what the environment of the planet is going to look like after millions of years of evolution particularly by short-lived organisms. In fact, I'm also not talking about an inflection point in CO2 concentrations - I'm talking about inflection points in other things affected by CO2 (among other things).
Bill McKibben actually has an interesting take on it in Eaarth - it's not that the world will end or that humanity will die off, it's that the world will no longer have the conditions that humanity and many other plants and animals have evolved with, and we and the rest of the ecosystem may have problems adapting as fast as the changes are happening.
fencepost
just a little off
that only works if you have a spaceship that goes c or a transporter that converts or scans humans to rest-mass zero particles for reassembly or duplication at that place. Then when you get there, 6001 years from now, you ask them what they saw 6001 years ago from the light that left earth 12,0002 years before.
Agreed, although these numbers should be taken with a bit of a margin, I think.
After all, they are assumptions, based on how materials react or are deposited under current environmental circumstances.
So the conclusion that temperatures in January have never been higher, is a bit of a stretch, in my opinion.
That being said: I do think were burning through our resources in a very high pace and that should change, if we plan to live on this planet for a million years to come.
Or we just tell the last ones to turn off the light, so to speak
We've had less than half a doubling so far. That's not fast. It's too slow to help much.
Coral bleaching is increasing, and that is partially due to acidification (it's still called 'acidification' even when the pH doesn't go above neutral), although the temperature also plays a role. The ocean is much more sensitive to pH changes than you imagine.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
As far as AGW goes, there is a vast amount of raw evidence and published papers to look through
As far as the 'raw evidence' perhaps you could link to just a single example. Since the data is so overwhelming. As for reading papers excuse me if I don't find a lot of interest in climate scientists preaching to the choir of other true believers. They tend to treat AGW as if it is fully settled.
You don't tend to find a lot of religious people arguing with each other over whether their beloved god really exists. Their arguments are more about disagreements about the details about what their god actually wants. For climate scientists what they generally want represents a political agenda of some kind.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Well I'll give them that usually the rhetoric is something like "OMG, coldest/hottest day/year in the last 100 years!"... At least with 66 million they are starting to talk a bit more in geologic time scales... However, for perspective, life on earth has been around producing CO2 for approximately 3.5 to 4 BILLION years. For the numerically challenged that is 3500-4000 million years. So the last 66 million is about 1.5% of that period of time.
Not trying to downplay what they are trying to say, only trying to give some perspective as to what that 66 million number actually means, Also CO2 levels are also influenced by other geologic events such as active periods of vulcanization (not sure if I am using that word correctly), would obviously spew out large amounts of CO2, just like periods of glaciation which likely involve large die backs of life would certainly limit CO2 production.
I have no doubt that human industrialization has certainly had an impact, perhaps even a very large one, however the big question I thing we struggle with is what does this all mean really, and it isn't helped by dealing with scales of time we usually don't deal with and many have a hard time conceptualizing.
So, from the 1800s to 2016, we've had less than half a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere, and the biosphere has gotten more vibrant, and humans have become better off with a minor global average temperature rise. ...so then what's the problem? Why do we expect the beneficial warming of the last 150 years to become painful in the next 150 years? We can't possibly emit enough CO2 to beat the logarithmic nature of the CO2 absorption curve, so where is the emergency?
Of course it is, because that's scarier :) But don't let the fact that the ocean is incredibly *insensitive* to pH changes, and varies orders of magnitude more than any predicted average increase:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/201...
Hourly?
It appears the parrot persona you have put on for laughs does not have a grade school geography education and know the difference between weather and climate. I very much doubt that you are so stupid and ignorant as you are pretending to be.
So far it's been about a draw. Many plants are growing better, but we're getting more droughts. The developed world can handle droughts (deionized ocean water) while the developing world can't, at least not for now.
Much of the coral on this planet appears to be near it's limit, but not all. I think it's worth a lot to keep it healthy, but I can't say destroying it will affect you in any major way.
Florida appears to have no way to adapt to rising sea level except by evacuation. There is plenty of time for people to move but it gets expensive.
If we keep burning a lot of coal we will have a major extinction event, but it will take tens of thousands of years to occur. Stopping it will at least be expensive.
Overall that's the main point: It's more expensive to fix it later than to do something about it now. Personally, I'm not going to live long enough to see the problems and in the mean time I get to grow mangoes. Yumm!
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
Wow, that's a lot of apocalyptic thinking to wade through :)
Since warming increases water vapor, and increased water vapor means more precipitation, you've got to be making an argument that this more precipitation magically happens only over the ocean causing more droughts over land. I don't think there's any reasonable proposed mechanism for that kind of peculiar distribution.
As for coral, human run off impacts matter, CO2 levels don't. pH levels around corals vary *hugely* on a daily and even hourly basis, so imagining some nearly immeasurable average pH change as having any sort of real effect is again, mistaking "average" as being useful at all.
Blaming a major extinction event tens of thousands of the years in the future on coal plants today is like blaming hurricane strikes on florida on the gays - it's laughable.
Now, given that you're at least willing to consider costs, would you change your mind if it was shown that it is more expensive to try and fix a "maybe" now, rather than invest in adaptation for *any* change that comes, regardless of its origin?
Some places get wetter, some get drier. It's hard to be certain where it will be drier, but it will some places. Note that the warming is greatest over land and rain prefers to fall where it is cooler, but this may not be a large effect.
Many corals do not face huge daily pH changes. These are most at risk.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
If you ever saw a number without a confidence interval on it (you know - the plus-or-minus figures, not necessarily symmetrical about the most-likely value), then you were looking at reportage, not the actual science (or approximately pre-WW2). Some journalists are better than others about preserving the necessary caution, but they very rarely get past the sub-editor.
Errr, no. You do dozens or hundreds of experimental runs to determine (for example) that 57degC upper limit for the precipitation of the gypsum (monoclinic) calcium sulphate mineral instead of the anhydrite (orthorhombic, anhydrous) form. You also checked if that value changes significantly with the ionic composition of the precipitating solution. (Incidentally, the crystal class gives you the information you need to distinguish the crystals under the microscope, should you feel the need to replicate the experiment.)
That phase diagram is the result of hundreds of measurements. Not assumptions.
Are you reading the reportage, or the science? In fact, even from the reportage, I'm not seeing that claim. I'm seeing things like "Earthâ(TM)s warmest month in the satellite record," which is not the same thing at all as what you're claiming to see.
Evidently. We're burning stored sunshine, and unless we get fusion going on Earth, we're ultimately limited to the rate of energy production by the sun at this time.
Those are policy decisions which I don't think humanity has made yet. In fact, I don't think that "humanity" as a whole actually has a unified communication system, let alone has reached an informed consensus on the question.
Of course, before we get to there, we may well be committed to 3, 4 or 10 degrees of centigrade temperature increase over pre-industrial levels for thousands of years.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Name a single coral reef on the planet that doesn't have pH changes greater than .1 every day.
And that can happen with or without any global average temperature change.
Think about it for a moment - I give you ten six-sided dice - the average of which, is 3. This could be half of them 4s, and half of them 2s. Or it could be half of them 5s, and half of them 1s. Without changing the average, I could have specific distributions which vary wider than others.
So, I could go from half 5s, half 1s, with an average of three, and then move the average up to 4 with every die being a 4, and have *less* variation with a higher average.
Put another way, nothing about the average gives you any information about the distribution.
Think about that for one more moment.
Nothing about the average gives you any information about the distribution.
The mathematical exercise of generating an average *destroys* information. It literally wipes out usable information in turning thousands of numbers into a single representative number.
What matters for temperature isn't the global average, it is the specific distribution - and none of the climate models are any good at that yet.
As for "rain prefers to fall where it is cooler", I think you misunderstand precipitation - what you're looking for is warm, soggy air hitting cold air. What matters isn't "where it is cooler" but where the boundaries of hot and cold collide. Again, it is the specific *distribution* of heat which is important here, not the average temperature of one site to another.
The bottom line is this - the weather of the planet earth is well beyond our capacity to reliably predict much more than a few days at any given point in time, and it is *weather* that matters, not some artificial average derived over space and time.
Doesn't matter. There is plenty of evidence of increased coral bleaching now. Whether it is from increased temperature or acidification, I don't really know.
We can't be sure what will happen in a specific place, but we expect that at the poleward ends of the Hadley cells to generally get drier. That's where many people live. These long term droughts will be caused by anthropogenic global warming.
Air flows over a mountain so it gets cooler. That's where the most rain falls. There are other reasons for rain to fall in other places, but that doesn't invalidate this one.
It's our inability to accurately predict the consequences that is most worrying. Uncertainty is not our friend.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
Well, it could also be from nitrogen run off, or other local factors separate from temperature or a slight change in pH.
http://www.reefresilience.org/...
That all being said, coral bleaching isn't an unprecedented phenomenon, and in fact, corals regularly recover from such events:
http://www.theguardian.com/env...
The key statement you've got here is "you don't know", and if you can hold that thought in your head, you'll do yourself a favor :)
Pure speculation - we've got a sparse dataset polluted by modeled data that is purely imaginary:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/p...
"The NCEP/ NCAR reanalysis data is not a purely observed data set. It is a mix of real observations with model simulations using the method of temporal and spatial assimilation in an atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM). Insofar as different data platforms have been used in construction of the reanalysis, long-term trends calculated from it may be non-physical."
We have programmed a model that hard codes generally drier poleward ends of Hadley cells - we don't have sufficient observational data to state that this has already happened, or will happen in the future, under any conditions.
Agreed - and we must admit that we have the same inability to predict the consequences of increased human CO2 emissions as we have the consequences of dramatically reducing human CO2 emissions. Uncertainty is not our friend, but it is our constant companion, and all of our choices, even the ones we prefer, are subject to its whims.