Slashdot Mirror
Burning All Fossil Fuels Would Scorch Earth, Says Study (phys.org)
mspohr quotes a report from Phys.Org: A new study published in the Journal Nature Climate Change shows our precarious climate condition: "Using up all known fossil fuel reserves would render Earth even more unlivable than scientists had previously projected, researchers said on Monday. Average temperatures would climb by up to 9.5 degrees Celsius (17 degrees Fahrenheit) -- five times the cap on global warming set at climate talks in Paris in December, they reported. In the Arctic region -- already heating at more than double the global average -- the thermometer would rise an unimaginable 15 C to 20 C." This would make most of Earth uninhabitable to humans (although the dinosaurs seemed to do fine with it 65 million years ago). The report also stated that if fossil fuel trends go unchanged, ten times the 540 billion tons of carbon emitted since the start of industrialization would be reached near the end of the 22nd century. For comparison, "older models had projected that depleting fossil fuel reserves entirely would heat the planet by 4.3 C to 8.4 C. The new study revises this to between 6.4 C and 9.5 C," writes Phys.Org.
If you burned it all tomorrow, yes the planet would burn.. burn it over a millennia, no, it won't. Something else might (and probably will at the rate we're going) do it in in that thousand years, but it would not be emissions from fossil fuels.
The article makes absolutely NO MENTION of time frame, and no mention of preventative measures that may be (and are) taken.
Looks like we are on track now.
Your statement, as reassuring as it sounds, isn't going to help us at all. At the current rate there is no way we would last a single millenium on the current reserves.
And I don't know where you get the notion that a slower release would make things better.
Just hoping??
What, get smaller and grow feathers?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Nope, 'Dino sludge' was a one-shot deal. On the timescales needed for new fossil fuel, the sun will have died to the extent that Earth CO2 levels will have dropped below the level needed to sustain plant life (and thus animal life).
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
Err, the "if nothing changed" scenario was kind of the point. And people modded this idiot up?
It is say that *if* we do nothing to reduce fossil fuel use and continue to emit as we do today, what is likely to happen. Its not predicting that we do nothing. The best guess is that at least some countries keep the Paris pledge and reduce emissions. But, if everyone decided that they could not be bothered to make the changes required, then we can expect significant warming.
Us humans are just another test run of this life.exe program
- and given our experiences with Windows (.exe, see?), we have little scope for optimism. Also, it shows that God is more a managerial type than an engineer, which explains a lot.
A serious question about the squabble. Even if GW is not AGW, even if GW is not real, why should we not as a species work to reduce our impacts everywhere?
Silence is a state of mime.
But "if nothing changed" is an absurd assumption, it's saying, "if there was no technological progress in the next 200 years". Its the same ridiculous assumption that all Malthusian predictions of disaster make, and why they never come true.
I get the vibe that Mdsolar really wants us to invest in Nuclear power.
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
. . . they are very difficult to get rid of. Give 'em a scorched Earth . . . they'll figure some way to survive in it.
Will a lot of folks suffer and die in the process? Hell, yeah. But there will still be some humans around who have figured out how to thrive in that environment.
People like to joke about cockroaches being the only living critter that will survive the nuclear apocalypse.
When I think of the post-nuclear apocalypse world, I see a creepy looking humanoid, munching on cockroaches.
McCockroaches, indeed.
"Would you like some fries with your roaches?"
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Wrong. Fossil fuels took about 300-400 million years to form according to the DoE, and your own link states that it'll be 600 million years before plants die off due to lack of carbon dioxide. Our successors will have another shot at destroying the world with fossil fuel.
You can advertise in this sig from as little as £99.99 a month!
Considering the rate at which new reserves are discovered as it becomes profitable to look for them in more difficult places, it wouldn't surprise me if we could find enough fossil fuels to last a millennium. That would of course make the Earth considerably hotter than this projection.
This space intentionally left blank
Seriously, I don't want to troll or anything but few years ago I asked similar question to a libertanian. What is going to happen when it all comes to an end [the fossil fuels]?
The answer was: the last barrel will cost infinite amount of money; the market will fix everything.....
How retarded you have to be to posit only one criteria for success or failure of any endeavor - the profit - is beyond me! It seems these people believe that as long as the market is fine, insignificant things like the laws of nature are not important...
Anyone who doesn't make predictions based on nothing changing for 200 years will never learn what changes are needed in the next 200 years.
This space intentionally left blank
If by "livable" you mean "pockets of humanity are able to eke out a subsistence living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland" then sure!
Because, the trend remained unchanged in their minds. Modeling and fortune telling are more art and religion than actual science.
Um, no, the study isn't predicting that fossil fuel usage will go unchanged, it's predicting what will happen IF fossil fuel usage goes unchanged. That's a very important difference.
Ok Mr smartypants, how would you come up with an informed energy policy without running models for different hypothetical future energy usage patterns?
"But "if nothing changed" is an absurd assumption"
Not necessarily. We've been burning fossil fuels on a large scale now since the mid 19th century and we don't appear to be letting up.
Anyway, how would you expect them to model it? What assumptions would you make about the future? Please, fill us in with your insight.
If we started using plastic as the primary product instead of fuel, and as a building material, we'd render the fossil fuels safe for the atmosphere by locking the carbon up into a stable structure that lasts for 50,000 years.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Hey, I live in Iceland, where the average January low is -3C and the average July high is 13C. Such warming would make us the new California. Bring it on ;) I own some land, you can start booking your timeshares now.
It's funny, when you hear people talking about forestry here, they talk about things as if they only apply to our current climate. They plant douglas fir, sitka spruce, etc, trees that can become true giants in the right climate, but insist that they'll stay (comparatively) short and grow slowly because our climate is too cool for their optimal growth. Yes, our current climate, but these are trees that can live for much of a millennium. Heat up the country 4-5 degrees and you've turned the climate into that of coastal Washington / British Columbia where they reach their record heights; we have similar sun, soil, precipitation, summer/winter temperature differences, etc (windier, but that's in large part due to the shortage of trees).
Iceland once even had redwood forests. Washington/British Columbia species are not going to stay short forever if the climate keeps warming.
Friends! Help! A guinea pig tricked me!
Fossil fuel usage won't go unchanged. It also won't be used as fuel 40 years from now, but rather as building materials.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
300-400 million years to form supposedly. The Oregon Rainforest Coal Deposits tell a different story- they're only a few feet down, possibly two or three millenia old, and are constantly replenished by the living forest sitting on top of them.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Why, given advancing technology in a variety of other energy sources, do you assume exponential growth in fossil fuel usage?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Maybe do it the way the IPCC does it by creating multiple scenarios based on sets of realistic assumptions.
Stop peddling your bullshit anon:
They can't explain the mechanism
Bullshit: http://scied.ucar.edu/carbon-d...
nor can they explain why Earth was so much colder during times when CO2 concentration was 10 times what it is today.
Bullshit: https://www.skepticalscience.c...
They talk out of both sides of their mouths and are bullshitting for money, lots and lots of taxpayer money. Why do they need taxpayer money?
Bullshit: Fossil fuels recieve considerably more taxpayer money than renewables, and they only reason climate science needs funding is that fossil fuel interests insist on continuously pushing back on scientists recommendations.
You think there would need to be reports like this if, in the 70s, governments had simply agreed that yes, they do need to reduce and stabilise CO2 production? The only reason climate scientists continually need to prove themselves is because of big oil shills and IDIOTS LIKE YOU who are drinking their koolaid.
I mean hell you're not even honest enough to use your account.
"If you don't stop eating all that junk food you're going to get fat and probably die of a heart attack"
"OK, the sky is falling... Got it."
[...]it wouldn't surprise me if we could find enough fossil fuels to last a millennium.
Me neither. I think we are getting nearer to the turning point where fossil fuels are not seen as viable anymore. Demand will start to drop rapidly such that, in the end, most of the remaining reserves will simply stay where they are...
IPCC Emissions Scenarios
Models being too extreme? Hardly.
Forecast: 1990 IPCC sea level rise predictions vs. actuality
Forecast: 1988 Hansen temperature predictions vs. actuality (Scenario B was described as most likely)
Forecast: IPCC temperature predictions vs. actuality vs. contrarian models
Backtest: IPCC AR1 sea ice loss models vs. actual
Temperatures are tracking, on long running average, right on what has been forecast. Sea level rise is well on the high end. As it stands, our arctic sea ice models predict significantly less loss than we actually see (we're not very good with sea ice right now, and this is well acknowledged by the IPCC).
I know there's been this contrarian myth circulating claiming that climate models predicted warming that never occurred. There's a nice, well-referenced debunking of it here.
Friends! Help! A guinea pig tricked me!
So, what, research teams aren't allowed to publish single scenario papers so they can be integrated into the wider body of research? Are you going to raise the funds required to run multiple scenarios for them?
Well you'd hope not, but papers like this might be necessary to make that actually happen.
Those who are in "policy making" are bad at math and physic. I always get a sense that low IQ or low persistence people become politicians that always want to control others. It was always like that through ages, since the times when everyone knew that earth is being held by three giant whales or elephants.
Most of fossil fuels represent energy of sun converted to carbohydrates or coal. Of course burning all of it would heat up mother Earth. But burning it slowly, won't.
Those models that calculate carbon dioxide emitted to earth always, and I say, always, fail to take into account intricacies on how fast carbon dioxide is consumed by the oxygen making living organisms of the earth. Have there been any studies that demonstrate marginal increase in carbon dioxide absorption compared to the increase of the output of carbon dioxide.
If there are any serious studies, such studies will never be mentioned by policy makers. Nobody is denying that a lot of carbon dioxide is emitted to the atmosphere, and that the climate is changing (it always changing).
To battle climate change by wearing green shirt and driving Prius, is similar to the rainmaking rituals of Zuni: one most wear blue feather and avoid staring to the buffalo on the day of the ritual. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Yes indeed, if only scientists could establish a mechanism.....
You mean the Precambrian? Where every bloody factor involved in our planet's climate system was also different? Or were you under the impression that there's only one factor that determines Earth's surface temperature, carbon dioxide?
The most important factor is that the sun emitted much less light early in Earth's history. Here's a graph. Lest you think that those sorts of differences don't matter much, it should be pointed out that a 10% increase in solar radiation is predicted to be capable of boiling off Earth's oceans. Over the scale of hundreds of millions of years, the light from the sun changes by quite relevant amounts, as it slowly progresses towards its inevitable end as a red giant. Over the scale of hundreds of years? Not so much. It's also one of the most observed objects in the universe; when something changes with the sun, we know about it, and have for quite a long time.
I'm sorry, I interrupted your rant about all those idiot scientists and their pre-kindergarten education... please continue.
Friends! Help! A guinea pig tricked me!
Burning all the fossil fuels on the planet at once in a large thruster will SAVE the planet. All we need to do is move the planet further out in orbit from the sun and it will counteract all effects of global warming.
These scientists today are only looking for problems and not solutions.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Should read "Burning all fossil fuels will improve UK temperatures immensely!" -How soon can we start?
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
Could Germany be having second thoughts about setting fire to that 85 square kilometers of lignite?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It's a problem today, but in 20-50 years, solar-powered nanomachines will suck carbon from the air, creating cheap diamond bricks that could be used for building material.
And I don't know where you get the notion that a slower release would make things better.
I'm not a denier, by any means, but it does make some sense that a slower release would be better. There are processes (photosynthesis being the most obvious) that take CO2 out of the atmosphere. Conceivably, there is some rate of fossil fuel use that is sustainable, but maybe that rate is so low that it's irrelevant on a global industrial scale.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
AFIAK, we have passed peak coal, where anthracite (the highest quality coal) is almost impossible to find, so a lot of coal plants burn lignite (one step up from peat.) Peak oil is long since behind us, especially with the pushback from fracking. Then, you get reports of solar actually being cheaper than fossil fuels, especially for maintenance.
There are three things which would kill fossil fuels dead that are still out there:
1: Nuclear power becoming accepted, or re-accepted.
2: Battery density getting near current fossil fuels.
3: A usable, efficient way to put energy in, suck out CO2 from the air, and make an easy to store fuel like synthetic diesel, fuel, ethanol, or even propane. Hydrogen is mentioned, but that is not a real soliution as making it requires a lot of energy, and storing it for the long term is difficult due to how it embrittles tanks and has a tendency to escape.
>> This would make most of Earth uninhabitable to humans
Are you sure you're counting the large landmasses in Canada and Siberia?
Yup. Slashdot.
300-400 million years to form supposedly. The Oregon Rainforest Coal Deposits tell a different story- they're only a few feet down, possibly two or three millenia old, and are constantly replenished by the living forest sitting on top of them.
Thanks for the info - Is this the Coos bay deposits? a 15 by 30 mile area of subbituminous deposits. As well, it's interesting - normally a millennia or three only produce peat, not that.
https://pubs.usgs.gov/bul/0982...
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Anyone who makes predictions based on nothing changing for almost 200 years is an idiot.
You're right. We should always assume something will change. And that something is .... nothing, because we have no data on what changes need to be made because no one did a study examining the status quo.
(Also, by the way, the highest temperatures in the Jurassic were about 10 warmer than the current era. So, 15-20C would, in fact, be higher than temperatures in the era of dinosaurs.)
But "if nothing changed" is an absurd assumption, it's saying, "if there was no technological progress in the next 200 years". Its the same ridiculous assumption that all Malthusian predictions of disaster make, and why they never come true.
Hyperbolic histrionics much? Using present trends is a time honored way showing what happens if present trends are followed.
Tell me of the scientific value of these technological progress events and exactly what the progress consists of. As well, tell me of the political climate and exactly how it will unfold in the future.
They extrapolate something, your version of science involves knowing the details of the future.
Has nothing to do with Malthus.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Ok Mr smartypants, how would you come up with an informed energy policy without running models for different hypothetical future energy usage patterns?
You are asking someone who probably believes that the laws of physics has a liberal bias, so my guess id "Drill Baby Drill!"
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Maybe do it the way the IPCC does it by creating multiple scenarios based on sets of realistic assumptions.
And you pick the one you like best and declare a winner? It's obvious you don't like this scenario, so tell us one that is acceptable.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
They are also basing their claim on simple linear models, not the current CMIP5 simulations; which basically says, "our peers thought so little of our grant proposal, we didn't get funding for real computer time."
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Not to mention: it is incredibly unlikely that we could survive in Dinosaur climates - or they in ours. Plenty of things have existed in the past which could not possibly exist now. In the Carboniferous we had dragonflies with 1m wingspans. That could not possibly exist today - because their booklungs are just not efficient enough to get enough oxygen for a body that big in a climate where the oxygen concentration is around 21%, when they lived it was more like 40% - nearly twice what it is now. But - chances are - we could not have survived then anymore than they could survive now (for different reasons).
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
The point of the pseudo-skepticism is put off that day as long as possible. There are great fortunes founded on fossil fuels, and those that have those fortunes want to maximize profits. Of course, they have a lot of witless mindless soldiers who they've convinced that climatology is really a communist fantasy, and those brainless idiots run around the intertubes with oft-repeated memes and a near total ignorance of the actual science (though some of these people are a little more capable and thus have rehearsed a somewhat more complex version of the pseudo-scientific drivel).
But make no mistake, when Saudi Arabia is creating the largest sovereign wealth fund in history, it's not because it sees a bright future for oil.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Most of fossil fuels represent energy of sun converted to carbohydrates or coal. Of course burning all of it would heat up mother Earth. But burning it slowly, won't.
Define "slowly". Show your working.
You seem to be using a couple of standard tropes as your argument - all of which are false.
>Here's the problem: our temperatures aren't at the high end of the projections. Instead, they're at the bottom end. Yes, the Earth has gotten warmer, but not nearly to the extent the models have already projected.
False claim, long since debunked and fully disproven. There was never a "gap" in warming. Just a lie based on a deliberately trying to deceive people.
>If the models aren't accurately predicting our temperatures now, why should we believe their predictions for farther in the future?
Because it's EASIER to predict the longer the timeframe. Nevermind that your claims are false, they wouldn't support this assertion anyway. That's how averages work - the larger the dataset becomes, the more accurate your predictions becomes and the easier it is to make accurate predictions. In climate - the timeframe is the dataset you're averaging over. Predicting the temperature tomorrow is difficult and we often get it wrong. Predicting the average temperature for a year is easer and we're usually pretty close. Predicting it for a decade is even easier and we're usually much closer. Over a century, it becomes almost ridiculously simple.
Let me explain by analogy to another example of this problem. J. is a highschool senior, please predict J's final grades. Well obviously that's just guess work, I didn't give you any information that is really helpful. if you get any right it would be sheer dumb luck. I didn't even tell you what subjects J are taking. Okay, so I give you some more information - I tell you J stands for Janice and give you her entire academic record. Now you have a lot of data on this person - can you predict her final grades ? Actually you will probably get several of them pretty close. She may surprize you though. It's not that unusual for somebody to get a wake-up call in senior year and raise their grades several points after all. At this point, it's hard, but doable - and your odds are pretty good.
Now I say to you: please predict the average grade distribution for all seniors finishing high school this year. Suddenly it becomes ridiculous easy. It will be a typical normal distribution. It is ALWAYS a normal distribution. We are SO certain of that, that if any school does NOT follow a normal distribution that is considered legal proof that there was cheating in the exams !
The average is infinitely easier than the specific, and the larger the sample you are averaging, the easier it gets. That's how climate works too. Predicting what will happen to the average temperature over the next 100 years is a LOT easier than predicting what will happen over the next 2 days.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Yeah, but that increased plantlife is most likely to be ragweed.
Also, any intelligent inhabitants of Earth millions of years from now will not find coal deposits created during our era.
The reason we have great deposits of coal is that they were accrued before fungus with the ability to break down lignin evolved. That was a one-shot deal. Unless those breeds of fungus go extinct.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I don't know about solar being cheaper maybe as a solar farm but after considerable research I found that a solar grid tie system could supplement or even power my house but it would have to run without occurring additional costs for 12-15 years before it would have produced enough kwh for them to cost the same as I'm currently paying. Wind would be a better choice for me thanks to a good location unfortunately local regulations prohibit it.
Central heat and air account for a large amount of my homes energy use, upgrading the windows and insulation would be a much better investment.
I believe the future is also the past and batteries will eventually replace gas in our vehicles.
My understanding is that much of the coal is from when plants evolved lignin but before microbes evolved enzymes that could digest it. So, lots of carbon was sequestered in indigestible compounds that couldn't break down except via geology, like the floating plastic junk in the oceans. In that sense, then, no amount of time would recreate the fossil fuel reserves again.
Don't forget Sawyer, 1972, although I don't think he used a GCM. His prediction was right on the money. Arrhenius was pretty accurate too, on the high side of current forcing estimates, but still within the likely band.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
And I don't know where you get the notion that a slower release would make things better.
Of course slower release is better. The atmosphere is not a bottle! There are many feedback mechanisms, both positive and negative, at work. The danger is not the total amount released, but entirely the speed.
The major carbon cycle for the earth is the geological cycle. All the carbon in the air, water, all life, and all fossil fuel reserves, all of that is a rounding error compared to the carbon bound up in the crust, slowly released by volcanic activity and reclaimed by erosion. That's a feedback loop that brings temps and CO2 levels away from extremes, and one that wouldn't even notice if we burned all the fossil fuels. Sadly, it's a geological cycle, so it might take 100M years to recover, but that's just the biggest such cycle.
At every time scale, there some feedback mechanism. The problem is that we're overwhelming those in human timescales, and we care more about the climate in 100 years than 100k or 100M years.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
What you do is take the last record heat way you had and add 9.5C/17F to it. For example Texas had an heat way in the tripe digits : 104F, so with that you get 121F. You tell yourself that ain't that hot it gets like that in Kuwait. But you forget in Kuwait the humidity is low. In Texas it is high. Let we explain it to you at 121F for a week anyone who ain't got air conditioning is dead. Any large animal like cows, horses, even dogs outside are dead.
Here is the press release from the University of Victoria:
www.communications.uvic.ca/releases/tip.php?date=23052016
and here are some sources that discuss the paper without quite as much in the way of scare words and hype:
www.reportingclimatescience.com/2016/05/23/unmitigated-emissions/
www.metronews.ca/news/vancouver/2016/05/23/uvic-researcher-models-worst-case-climate-change.html
Jevon's paradox : increase the efficiency of a process that uses some resource and more of that resource will be used.
Well, I'll make a quick and dirty point : if at the end of a decade your economy went 10% more carbon efficient but it grew by 11%, that's exponential growth. Silly numbers but to make the point.
Well put! Your post is well reasoned enough to entertain the thought of sustainable fossil fuel use. However I'd have to add one more condition. For additional photosynthesis needed to offset the additional CO2, the current deforestation trends would also have to be reversed. I suppose massive algae blooms could also take care of it but that would cause a whole host of other problems.
Off by a factor of 100.
---- Sig. gone.
Touche', but going from being called "TYRANNOSAURUS REX!!!" to "bird brain" is a pretty sad fate....
"at least some countries keep the Paris pledge and reduce emissions"
Only the western countries are supposed to do that and "restructure" their economies according to government edict, silly. Everyone else can continue BAU.
Don't forget the vast majority of coal deposits come from trees that existed for about 50M years before bacteria evolved to digest lignin. Now trees mostly just rot. I suppose alge will still create oil deposits but half of our easy fuel will probably never be replenished.
And how is 300M years from now even relevant? We need to make some major changes in the next 30 to make it through the next 300 if we want to maintain (or improve) current standards of living.
Yes. That was my point. Photosynthesis was what locked the CO2 we are currently releasing into the ground in the first place. But we all know that took hunderd of milions of years. Not a few millenia like the poster suggested.
So the question put forth by the original poster is: what is best release the remaining CO2 in the next 100 years or the next 1000?
The answer is that it won't make a difference at all for the end state of the climate. And if we don't switch away from fossil fuels soon we won't need anything close to 1000 years to burn what remains...
Plants grow and remove CO2 from the atmosphere, but then they die, and when they decay the CO2 goes back in.
Back in geological time when the coal was being made from plants, bacteria and fungi had not yet evolved the ability to break down certain tough parts of the plants, and therefore dead plants built up and up and up and over geological time were compressed and ended up underground. Today, these are known as coal mines.
Since then, these microbes do have the ability to break down and decay the dead plants fully, the CO2 will never ever leave the atmosphere in the long run.
To reduce CO2 climatically, it has to go somewhere which is entirely out of the biosphere and stay there. For instance, coal is excellent carbon sequestration.
In 100 years, the uncontrolled mining and burning of coal will be regarded like civilization today sees slavery: a revoltingly immoral abomination, and yet once was legal, accepted and a major commercial activity. Except that the ill consequences of past evil people would continue to hurt them indefinitely.
It's a little more complicated... Photosynthesis isn't enough.
We need need to alter the balance of the cycle, we need that photosynthesis to turn that CO2 into a nice green carbon sink. That is- we need to increase the amount of biomass on the planet. If we're pulling the shit out of the dirt- we need to be increasing biomass, or we're fucking with the planet's thermodynamic equilibrium.
Simply replanting what we cut down isn't enough- we need to offset what we pull out of the dirt with an increase in overall biomass. I really, really, really don't see that happening.
In fact, it would make earth's climate more uniform, more mild, and generally wetter.
For niche places on earth perhaps. In general: no.
If a cloud has a hard time to reach Arizona from the Pacific or Nevada: it will have a similar hard time when it is just bigger as in wetter.
There is a damn reason why places on earth are dry, and the least relevant point is humidity.
Warmer climate in north america has the first effect of less snow in the mountains. Less snow in the mountains means less water in the plains in summer.
This idea that a temperature increase is good, is utter nonsense.
Second, among large land animals, humans are the most adaptive to different climates: we can live from the Arctic all the way down to the Sahara.
No we are not. No single human is adapted to live in the arctics or the deserts or the jungle. we use technology to do that. Can't be so hard to grasp the difference.
Around 45C - 50C humans can not survive outside. The only way is short term and drinking really a lots of water. As long as you sweat you cool ... 2 hours without water and you are dead. Can't be so hard to grasp that either.
If the planet heats up by 10C or more, we have a death stripe 1/3 of the circumference around the equator, plus selected areas like central north america, central siberia, central africa, and probably Australia is gone completely.
On top of that in the long run we have a sea level rise of 20 - 30 meters (to lazy to google, can be even 50).
I can't understand how a guy who is obviously capable of writing good english can be so stupid and write nonsense like you did.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Uh?
Rightists/Exponentialists don't want to control the wealth, they control it.
Their idea of healthcare is endless bureaucracy, price gouging and denial of care, and bankruptcy of insured people by medical bills.
They determined that you deserve to eat pink slime and steroid beef.
Rightists/Exponentialists want you to pledge allegiance to "free trade", Wall Street, the European Union and so on. If your country lacks "compliance" the US of A and its numerous allies will target it for "regime change" (also now called a "political transition") through various means including firing over a hundred cruise missiles, snipers that fire both at the crowds and the police or sending weapons and money to Al Qaeda so that they fight for "freedom" and "democracy".
This reduces population but not by very much, about a million per decade these days. Rightists/Exponentialists are content with that since they can sell weapons, provide "security guards" and "reconstruction" services.
And I forgot, to find crackpots listen at presidents, prime ministers, secretaries of State, foreign ministers, the mainstream media.
Of course slower release is better. The atmosphere is not a bottle! There are many feedback mechanisms, both positive and negative, at work. The danger is not the total amount released, but entirely the speed.
You're right, of course... But the rate of slow in order to make your correctness relevant is... unrealistic.
It's not going to take humanity millions of years to burn through our fuels, and plate tectonics simply aren't going to work on a human timescale.
Maybe you were just being pedantic, but for the purposes of the article, slower (at least on human timescales) just isn't going to make a lick of difference.
I'm having trouble with this part: "This would make most of Earth uninhabitable to humans."
But I guess maybe most of Earth is uninhabitable by humans now? The oceans cover 71 percent of the Earth's surface, right? Are they saying that more than 50% of what is now habitable will be covered with water and will become uninhabitable? What about the currently uninhabitable parts that will become habitable?
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-B.Franklin
But you aren't increasing the efficiency, you're usually coming barely close to matching the efficiency.
Still, what it does is *decentralize the energy production*. Which is of course, bad for big business and great for small businesses and families, so it won't be done.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Coos Bay and southern coastal range- ODOT ran into a vein trying to build a bypass on 38 between Elkton and Green Acres. They were trying to take the loop out of the road by going on the other side of the mountain, but the coal turned out to be a rather unstable road bed in places; the project went way over budget and had to be abandoned.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
nor can they explain why Earth was so much colder during times when CO2 concentration was 10 times what it is today. ... how could it?
Because it was not
Why do you have that idiotic idea?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Of course, they have a lot of witless mindless soldiers who they've convinced that climatology is really a communist fantasy
You mean like the United Nations Climate Chief?
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Not just pedantic: there are many such feedback cycles, it just happens that the big one is fairly well understood. The cycles on shorter time-frames aren't so well understood, let alone well modeled (e.g., ocean mixing which is key to CO2 dissolution, the plankton-krill interaction with temp and CO2, etc). The scary part is the positive feedback loops, of course.
The amount of carbon in all known fossil fuels is larger than what's in the atmosphere and ocean today, IIRC. It probably matters whether we're burning through it in 100 or 1000 or 10000 years.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
It is generally accepted that all long term economic growth comes from technological innovation. If you want to extrapolate from current trends you have to factor in economic growth and therefore some technological progress. To assume we will be using the same energy generation methods in 200 years is ludicrous. I don't need to know what the technological progress will be to know that there will be progress.
Not exactly a "call for depopulation" but a number of sources have comments like:
"Our species’ demographic growth since its birth in Africa 200,000 years ago clearly contributed to this crisis. If world population had stayed stable at roughly 300 million people—a number that demographers believe characterized humanity from the birth of Christ to A.D. 1000 and that equals the population of just the U.S. today—there would not be enough of us to have the effect of relocating the coastlines even if we all drove Hummers. " [Scientific American]
The implication is strong that we'd be better off with dramatically reduced population.
As noted by others, the Georgia Guidestones have it as a commandment:
Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity.
Unite humanity with a living new language.
Rule passion — faith — tradition — and all things with tempered reason.
Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
Balance personal rights with social duties.
Prize truth — beauty — love — seeking harmony with the infinite.
Be not a cancer on the earth — Leave room for nature — Leave room for nature.
It can be hard to find the original sources outside of conspiracy sites, but there are things like The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement: "Phasing out the human race by voluntarily ceasing to breed will allow Earth’s biosphere to return to good health. Crowded conditions and resource shortages will improve as we become less dense." "The sooner we go extinct, the greater the biological diversity we’ll leave behind to carry on." "[O]ur voluntary phase out, begun soon enough, would avoid the tragic collapse of both our global civilization and the biosphere. Humanity could improve conditions for all life while enjoying renewed bounty from restored ecosystems. Abundant resources would make world peace possible, and our shrinking human family could grow closer together."
Not to mention environmental fascist wackos like Pentti Linkola:
"If there were a button I could press, I would sacrifice myself without hesitating, if it meant millions of people would die." "We even have to be able to re-evaluate Fascism and recognize the service that philosophy made 30 years ago when it freed the Earth from the weight of tens of millions of overeating Europeans, six million of them by an almost ideally painless, environment-preserving means."
...make anyone who didn't already care about it suddenly want to care more, and most of the people that would want to do something to prevent this are powerless to do so because of a lack of economic and/or political influence. Barring completely unprecedented action by everybody, everywhere when it is unrealistic to expect even half if the world to agree on any single thing, this planet is doomed. Enjoy it while it lasts. It's only good for another couple of centuries at most.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Perhaps you would like to argue the points I made rather than guess at my understanding of the laws of physics.
These are the points I would have made if I had more time. I believe in man made climate change but these sort of studies make it easy for those who don't to point and laugh. The idea that there will be no progress in energy production in 200 years is such a silly assumption it means that this study can only be used for scaring the incredulous.
If I were to point to the fact that vinyl record sales are the fastest growing segment of music purchases and concluded that they would eventually overtake downloads the slashdot crowd would shout down my faulty reasoning pretty quickly. But because this study is about climate change the faulty assumptions get a free pass.
There's a link to the online, scientist only, real time editor for climate publishing at ClimateFeedback.org. If you install the browser extension, you will be able to see the edits, with redlines, and links to sources including name and bio of the posting climatologist, geologist, paleontologist or other reputable, published scientist with academic credentials (this leaves out the charlatans at Heartland, of course, none of them are academically qualified to comment on climatology)
When you're burning the results of millions of years of biomass accumulation on century scales it's not possible living biomass to come anywhere close to keeping up with current emissions.
I'm having trouble with this part: "This would make most of Earth uninhabitable to humans."
I do want to point out that this line comes from the sensationalist slashdot summary. It's not in the article being discussed.
(Also, the number quoted is "15 to 20C"-- not the 10 you have in your post's headline.)
When you're burning the results of millions of years of biomass accumulation on century scales it's not possible living biomass to come anywhere close to keeping up with current emissions.
I know. But it's a step in the right direction, and it's the only realistic way to move the needle in the other direction once we've stopped injecting fossil carbon into the atmosphere.
I still go by the report that came out in 1978 by the UN that stated scientists concluded that all fossil fuel reserves planet wide would be depleted in 30 years. So there you go. No problem here. Move along.
I know there's been this contrarian myth circulating claiming that climate models predicted warming that never occurred. There's a nice, well-referenced debunking of it here [skepticalscience.com].
I see your ancient blog debunking, and raise you actual science:
Overestimating Global Warming Over the Past 20 Years
"much work remains before we can model hydroclimate variability accurately".
And here's a graph because pictures are fun!
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I don't know where the heck you saw this claim: citation needed.
Your not one of the 500M, please proceed quietly to the nearest recycling center.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Politicians are often smart, although not typically up on hard science. It's one of the more competitive pursuits, and stupid politicians are going to have trouble surviving.
You mean "hydrocarbons or coal" in your second paragraph. It really won't matter to the atmosphere whether we burn it all now, or relatively slowly, we're still screwed. We have to leave most of that stuff in the ground.
I believe (not that I've checked it myself) that the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been going up less than our fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions, so there are feedback mechanisms. They aren't enough, and they have other issues (for example, the pH of the oceans has been changing significantly). You do realize that, since atmospheric CO2 levels have gone from 280ppm in 1850 to over 400ppm now, it should be clear that we are increasing the concentration significantly.
The climate is changing very fast, and it's changing to be well outside the normal variation that human civilization has developed in.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Scientists tend to be conservative in their projections, so we'd expect the current situation to be worse than the general predictions of twenty years ago.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The good news is that it will be warmer in Iceland.
The bad news is that Iceland will be under water.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
You are asking someone who probably believes that the laws of physics has a liberal bias, so my guess id "Drill Baby Drill!"
Do you guys ever get tired of spouting this crap? Coming off as a child right off the bat does not help your argument.
Not until you stop spouting your own crap. If you want to bring reasoned science based arguments to the table, I'm happy do discuss like an adult.
But if yoou stick your fingers in your ears and deny basic physics, I reserve the right to make as much fun of you as the clown and denialist that you are. I can argue th ecase with intelligence. You however, cannot.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
There is no need to guess or engage in your weird kind of pseudoscience, we can actually just look at climate history to see what the planet is like when it is much warmer.
Inuit and Berber don't use "technology", they just use their brains, their skills, and simple tools.
And that is relevant to climate change... how? Climate increases global average temperatures mostly by increasing temperatures in cold regions. It also causes increased precipitation. Both of those are positive changes.
In fact the absolute maximum is about 80m. It will take about 1-2 millennia for that kind of sea level rise, which means that it is so slow that it simply isn't a problem.
Inuit and Berber don't use "technology", they just use their brains, their skills, and simple tools.
Yes they do, or is a sledge and a sewn warming west and a spear not technology?
And that is relevant to climate change... how
The article is not about climate change per se, but about a catastrophic one where average increase is over +10C. Perhaps you should at least read the summary before commenting?
In fact the absolute maximum is about 80m. It will take about 1-2 millennia for that kind of sea level rise, which means that it is so slow that it simply isn't a problem.
That is nonsense. Under a runaway greenhouse effect that wont even take 100 years. Add a few earth quakes and a vulcano below antarctica and it might be as quick as 10 years. There only needs to be an effect that makes the ice slide into the water, does not even need to melt.
There is no need to guess or engage in your weird kind of pseudoscience, we can actually just look at climate history to see what the planet is like when it is much warmer.
There are no maps included on your climate history. So how do you know how warm and how the climate was at your place?
Simple answer: you don't.
As the maps are not changing quickly, a temperature increase of +10C in the next decades, hundreds or thousands of years makes basically everything in north america that is east of the rockies and not close enough to the east coast: uninhabitable. And to understand why you simply should have listend in six or sevens grade when "geography" and "weather" and "climate" was taught.
Well, perhaps in your country you don't leant that in school, then I forgive your slack.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
In that sense, your distinction is meaningless because people require technology to survive everywhere. That is, climate change then changes nothing.
I can only point you in the right direction; you need to learn this stuff yourself and do your own reading.
The article is about a 9.5C average global temperature increase due to burning all fossil fuel. I'm pointing out that that "average" increase is mostly due to cold areas getting warmer, and that that is a good thing.
It is physically impossible to melt the polar ice caps in 100 years with a 9.5C average temperature increase.
If you really live in Iceland, that kind of climate change would put you below sea level. You'd need to move to Greenland.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
It is generally accepted that all long term economic growth comes from technological innovation. If you want to extrapolate from current trends you have to factor in economic growth and therefore some technological progress. To assume we will be using the same energy generation methods in 200 years is ludicrous. I don't need to know what the technological progress will be to know that there will be progress.
There is a saying in the intel field "You don't know what you don't know."
It pretty much fits in with trying to figure out what energy will look like in the future. Will it be nuclear? will we be using solar, wind, coal? NatGas? Will we exhaust the fossil fuels before then? Will some of us use renewables and some not? Will it be fusion? Will someone finally figure out how to make Lepcon solar cells? Will someone figure out how to burn cannel coal with 0 pollutants?
We don't know. But that doesn't mean that we say "We don't know, so don't even speculate.
Scew that Because it's not really hard to figure out percentages of production and population growth. You or I could come up with 50 different scenarios with 50 different assumptions. and calculate the radiative forcing.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Coos Bay and southern coastal range- ODOT ran into a vein trying to build a bypass on 38 between Elkton and Green Acres. They were trying to take the loop out of the road by going on the other side of the mountain, but the coal turned out to be a rather unstable road bed in places; the project went way over budget and had to be abandoned.
Oh yeah, Even anthracite coal is brittle, and the Subituminous stuff brittle and soft at the same time. I appreciate the reference to coal in Oregan - being from coal country, I'm interested in mining and it's sordid history. I've always offered to take people on tours of the upper parts of our county - red rivers, abandoned high banks totally destroyed lands that won't be useable for any purpose other than 4 wheeling and bike riding - but be careful because going over a high bank is forever - for some thousands of years before a new Gossan cap is formed, and new topsoil accumulates. note: I bitch, but the reclamation has become much better. It looks kinda like a prairie on some of the mountaintop's but nothing like the previous destruction, and even some falcons have moved in - wonderful to watch them hunt.
And I see I've started to prattle on.....
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Perhaps you would like to argue the points I made rather than guess at my understanding of the laws of physics.
I think I did in other posts. To recap, assumptions have to be made in any science. And it isn't that you are wrong, it's just that we don't know about certain things.
And it's pretty difficult to decide matters like population, technical advances, and issues such as peak fossil fuel. So you make certain assumptions.
This one made some assumptions that we would continue on the same path as we are on today. If your technology increasing examples happen - what are they? So you either go out on a limb like predicting exactly what you think will happen - which opens up another round of arguments, or you guess at percentages of changes by unknown technology, or you do as tehy did, which is to assume stasis in use. That in itself makes for some argument, but if some politicians and their owners have their way stasis is exactly what they want.
Now between you, me, and the chachalacas on the back porch - status quo is very unlikely, bought off politicians or their owners regardless. If the USA tries to maintain energy production with a great emphasis on fossil fuels, we'll likely fall behind the countries that move on. We probably will as well, only with a lot of waster human energy in the process,
But there is nothing at all wrong with a study that points out what happens if we stay on the road we are on.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The scarcer a resource is, the most lucrative it is to the owner. Considering that fossil fuels are an incredibly rich supply of concentrated biochemical resources, why would anyone want to sell as much as possible today, using up their supply of the non-renewable resource? I understand short-term profits and quarterly shareholder reports. But I can't help comparing this situation to a person or family who sells off all of their resources for short-term gain. Is that ever good for the family or the fossil fuel company? Part of me is a deep "conservative" in that I think we need to conserve resources so that they are there when we REALLY need them. ~ just a naive thought ...
A chart with just says "reality" seems to strongly suggest it is about a measured temperature anomaly. Well let us look at the actual data https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming which says something very different to the preposter's suggestions.
Are you a brain-washed nazi or a deliberate liar?
Iceland is a wee bit more rugged than you're envisioning ;)
My land is within a stone's throw of the coast, for example, but is still at 100m altitude.
Friends! Help! A guinea pig tricked me!
Iceland is in no danger of going underwater, even if every last drop of ice on Earth melted; it's not some coral atoll, this is one of the most volcanically active places on Earth. 90% of the country is "hálendið" (the Highlands), an area generally at least 1km over sea level, that in particular could use some warming.
And what's with the "If you really live in Iceland" stuff anyway? Shocked that we own computers? : (we actually have one of the highest broadband connectivities on Earth.... Facebook ranks as #1 per capita in usage of their site, as do many other sites)
Friends! Help! A guinea pig tricked me!
The link I posted was specifically to debunk BS like the graph you posted. You can't just draw a line on a chart, call it "reality", and let that be that. Here's actual reality. Over 0.8 degrees since 1976, not 0.2.
Your Nature links demonstrate your complete lack of understanding of the topic. The second article, first off, is about the northern hemisphere. Are you under the impression that the northern hemisphere is the entire planet? Secondly, the article is about precipitation, not temperature, so I don't think you even read it. Concerning both of them: there are literally tens of thousands of climate papers out there. You may feel smug by handpicking the few contrarian ones, but that's not how actual science works.
Friends! Help! A guinea pig tricked me!
I have no reports on whether or not this guy is also a flat-earther.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
I doubt the Southern Oregon forest coal will ever be touched- got too many environmentalists in this state, and even then, the forest sitting on top of the coal is way more valuable to the timber industry than mining the coal ever could be.
Just pointing out that coal formation is a few thousand years, not millions.
Though, as somebody who appreciates Kalapuya Chinook culture, what little we know about it, returning this land to Oak Savanna and Pyroculture hunting/farming/gathering would be an extremely neat idea.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Seems like we are hopelessly done: Even though it is prudent to err on the side of caution, especially since this is a matter of survival, the majority of humankind still refuses to take remedial action. Thus, we are a self-sabotaging race of idiots that deserves the extinction we are headed for. We empower dangerous people: Hitler, Stalin, Trump, ... We ignore scientific data that clearly suggests steps to taken immediately. Are you angry enough to do something radical yet?!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
"but it would have to run without occurring additional costs for 12-15 years before it would have produced enough kwh for them to cost the same as I'm currently paying."
The current crop of chinese solar panel will last 7-8 years before being effectively dead
And "dead" is a pretty apt description of the areas where they're being produced. Solar PV production is an environmental toxic disaster. It's not "Green" to simply shift your pollution somewhere else.
"I'm not a denier, by any means, but it does make some sense that a slower release would be better."
You're 100% correct.
The problem is that in order for emissions to be balanced by absorbtion, human carbon emissions will need to drop at least 80%
Rapidly ending the use of fossil fuels *without* something to replace them would result in a world wide famine. Fusion or some large number of fission plants could replace fossil fuels, or there is this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Shorter version that was shown a the White House recently
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
It's about power satellites as a solution for CO2
Keith
End MGM. Get prospective parents of boys to Google: Men do complain
Fossil fuels are by definition created from fossils. So burning them is making the earth like it used to be before they were created. And it must have supported life back then or there wouldn't be fossils.
I don't think you realize how much complete melting of the ice would raise sea levels. I've seen estimates that it would raise is nearly a kilometer. I find this hard to believe, but expect it to be substantial, not just a meter or so. There might be a few ex-mountain peaks left of Iceland after the complete melt, but not many.
The "If you really live in Iceland" is because your answer sounded like a joke. I was actually assuming that you lived in some place that was fairly cold, like, say Newfoundland. But a complete melt would put almost anywhere that people currently live in large numbers under water. California could expect the re-appearance of the Tethys Sea. The Great Salt Lake in Utah would probably be re-connected to the Mississippi River. Other things in other places. Central South America would again be flooded by the oceans. Etc. I can't be very explicit because I don't know most of the world that well, but even if the rise was only a couple of meters, no place that people live would be unaffected. In fact, no place on the surface of the earth.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
You can't just draw a line on a chart, call it "reality", and let that be that. Here's actual reality [nasa.gov]. Over 0.8 degrees since 1976, not 0.2.
Where are the error bars on your chart? Real scientists post error bars.
Looking more deeply, the graph you linked to is one measurement (an estimation based on averaging land based thermometers), whereas the one I linked to shows two different satellite measurement sequences. Unless there is a way to prove that one of these is more accurate than the other, then we have to say that the error in our measurement is at least as big as the difference between the two records.
Concerning both of them: there are literally tens of thousands of climate papers out there.
Then post them. Don't rely on crap blog posts: you're better than that, I know you are.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I can't read the report. I think you have pay for information and that is just unethical.
"Fuel Reserves" usually includes deposits still buried underground. And those deposits are HUGE. There is tons and tons of fuel down there, but most of it will never be used, because it takes more energy to get it then the value someone will pay to use it.
The other usage of "fuel reserves" could mean that we are talking about fuel that is housed and reserved by nations for emergency or in storage for later sale into the market. I don't think this is what the article is talking about, but if so... we are in big trouble. Still I think this report is nonsense because we will never use all that fuel.
Did you seriously just request that I post tens of thousands of papers? Was that some kind of a joke?
Here, want starters? Open the reference section of the IPCC WGs. Or a climate journal. There have been ample metastudies assessing the percentage of climate papers supporting AGW - it's the 97% range, ex. ref and ref. So sure, you can go and cherry pick to your heart's content from that remaining three percent. But that just makes you a kook, akin to someone who goes to 33 doctors, is told by 32 of them that he has late-stage cancer and needs immediate surgery, but decides "Nah, I'm going to listen to Dr. Nick over here instead...."
All of the actual climate records track each other closely - GISS, HADCRUT, NOAA, RSS, UAH, etc. If you're posting something that significantly different, you're posting something not in line with actual science.
You're free to claim otherwise. Your claim would be wrong.
Friends! Help! A guinea pig tricked me!
To put it another way: about as many people live here as live in Anaheim, California. Would you think it a joke if someone posted that they live in Anaheim?
Friends! Help! A guinea pig tricked me!
Depending on context, yes. Here the context was "It'll get hot, but I live in a small cold place".
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
66 feet is much more believable, but 66 feet wouldn't affect Iceland? 66 feet would affect California, and much of the rest of the US. I don't really know how elevated Iceland is, but a quick look at a map of elevation shows that it's likely to be strongly affected. Probably half the living area would go away, unless the shore is extremely steep. (The map said 0-500 feet, which makes this a guesstimate.) But the edges are nearly certain to be lower than the more central part, and the edges are larger than the center. I would guess that people generally live where the slope is less steep, and those are the areas most likely to be flooded. It's also probable that storm surges will be stronger, which means that the rivers will flood more often, but if the land is steep enough that may not be significant. (OTOH, I do remember fighting a flood on a hillside about 50 years ago, so with a really hard rain, steep hillsides aren't invulnerable.)
And the fact that the CURRENT average midsummer high at the South Pole is -26C doesn't imply that it's going to stay that cold if the ice starts melting from the edges in. Which it's already doing.
It's a lot easier to be cold if the area around you is cold. The melting of the Arctic should be seen as a clear warning of what is in store in the long term for Antarctica unless something changes. Oceans just move heat around faster than solid chunks of ice, and Antarctica just has more thermal mass. So the changes will be slower. If you go back far enough there were temperate style forests growing in Antarctica, and the continent was then in the same position.
I did overstate the case when I said the Tethys Sea would reform in California. The land has risen where the Tethys Sea used to be (now it's the central valley), but it *would* be under water, just not very deep water. Probably no more than 15-30 feet on the average. It's hard to tell because searches for maps of elevation just gives me maps of subsidence.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
66 meters. That would certainly "affect" Iceland if it happened all of the sudden, but in terms of the amount of land we'd lose, it's quite little, and from the perspective of "timeframes involved" vs. "land lost", pretty insignificant. And as mentioned, that's not in actual risk of 66 meters happening. As per the study, the planet would warm about 10 degrees if all fossil fuels were burned (the arctic more, but not the antarctic - they're very different environments, the antarctic lacks the arctic's sea ice feedback mechanism and has somewhat of an inverted one). At a 10 degree temperature rise, the average midsummer high at the South Pole would still be fifteen degrees below freezing. Furthermore:
1) Nobody's ever going to burn "all the fossil fuels", even if there was no attempt to control fossil fuel consumption and no technology changes, because the vast majority are simply inaccessible.
2) Burning "all the fossil fuels" would take centuries; and
3) Sea level rise lag times are huge, many centuries, compared to planetary temperatures, as there's a very large mass of water to heat (and mass of ice to melt).
But even ignoring all of that? Even with a 66 meter sea level rise, the ocean would barely top the glacial moraine at the end of my valley. It might reach a bit into my canyon... that would be pretty cool, actually ;)
FYI, river floods are not a significant threat here. Well, one special kind is, but global warming has no impact on that ;) (jökulhlaups**) Our land is in general quite steep and well drained; rivers rip themselves nice canyons through the soft basalt and glacial sediments to flow in. Our biggest summer threat from water is landslides, as our soils are poorly anchored. But increased plant growth would run counter to that.
The concept that "warming is bad for everyone everywhere on the planet" is false. Iceland's carrying capacity would rise dramatically, as we go from "almost no arable land" to "the whole country arable". Even if fish stocks collapsed (which is hard to say, they're just as likely to rise, although fish populations will certainly change - and more to the point already have), it'd be a massive boon for us. Environment-wise, we'd lose our glaciers (some will be gone soon, and we've gotten a new highest waterfall out of the deal), and some of our bird species may suffer (potentially enough to put them under threat), while others would thrive. It should have no effect on our (very limited) land mammal populations, although it might put us at more risk for introduced species. But economically - and in terms of temperature "comfort levels" - warming would greatly benefit Iceland.
That said, we still don't want it, for the sake of the world and its ecosystems.
** Re: jökulhlaups: Then again, rebound volcanism appears to probably be a real thing. Of course, that's only over long timespans.
Friends! Help! A guinea pig tricked me!
There have been ample metastudies assessing the percentage of climate papers supporting AGW - it's the 97% range, ex. ref [iop.org] and ref [iop.org].
So what question are you asking exactly lol? If you are asking whether human-released CO2 warms the atmosphere to some degree, then I have no contention with you. There is convincing evidence on that point, just as there is fairly convincing evidence that the climate models are not very accurate. Up to now we've been talking about climate models, but if you want to change th topic, that's fine.
All of the actual climate records track each other closely - GISS, HADCRUT, NOAA, RSS, UAH, etc. If you're posting something that significantly different, you're posting something not in line with actual science.
I didn't take either graph very seriously, but look up UAH and compare it to GISS, it accounts for the discrepancy between the two graphs.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."