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Global Warming Started 180 Years Ago Near Beginning of Industrial Revolution, Says Study (smh.com.au)
New research led by scientists at the Australian National University's Research School of Earth suggests that humans first started to significantly change the climate in the 1830s, near the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The findings have been published in the journal Nature, and "were based on natural records of climate variation in the world's oceans and continents, including those found in corals, ice cores, tree rings and the changing chemistry of stalagmites in caves." Sydney Morning Herald reports: "Nerilie Abram, another of the lead authors and an associate professor at the Australian National University's Research School of Earth Sciences, said greenhouse gas levels rose from about 280 parts per million in the 1830s to about 295 ppm by the end of that century. They now exceed 400 ppm. Understanding how humans were already altering the composition of the atmosphere through the 19th century means the warming is closer to the 1.5 to 2 degrees target agreed at last year's Paris climate summit than most people realize." "It was one of those moments where science really surprised us," says Abram. "But the results were clear. The climate warming we are witnessing today started about 180 years ago."
Tim Flannery keeps being quoted by the ABC and Fairfax as a global warming guru. So it’s important that we keep confronting the Climate Council head with his spectacularly dud predictions.
In 2005:
I’m afraid that the science around climate change is firming up fairly quickly . . . we’ve seen just drought, drought, drought, and particularly regions like Sydney and the Warragamba catchment—if you look at the Warragamba catchment figures, since 98 the water has been in virtual freefall, and they’ve got about two years of supply left . . .
Maxine McKew: But. . . we won’t see a return to more normal patterns?
Flannery: . . . they do seem to be of a permanent nature. I don’t think it’s just a cycle. I’d love to be wrong, but I think the science is pointing in the other direction.
McKew: So does that mean, really, we’re faced with—if that’s right—back-to-back droughts and continuing thirsty cities?
Flannery: That’s right.
(UPDATE: HELP WANTED! THE VIDEO OF THE ABOVE INTERVIEW McKEW DID WITH FLANNERY NO LONGER APPEARS ON THE ABC SITE. DOES ANYONE HAVE A COPY OF IT FOR ME TO SHOW ON TV?)
In 2005:
Perth is facing the possibility of a catastrophic failure of the city’s water supply I’m personally more worried about Sydney than Perth. Where does Sydney go for more water? At least Perth has a buffer of underground water sources. Sydney doesn’t have any backup. And while Perth is forging ahead with a desalination plant, Sydney doesn’t have any major scheme in place to bolster water. It also has nowhere to put the vast infrastructure of a desalination plant.,,
There’s only two years’ water supply in Warragamba Dam If the computer models are right then drought conditions will become permanent in eastern Australia.
In 2007:
So even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and our river systems...
Since then, of course, there have been repeated floods with dams in Sydney, Brisbane and Canberra filled to overspilling.
UPDATE
Melbourne ABC presenter Jon Faine, a fervent warmist, has advertised he will later today discuss what the NSW rain says about changes to our climate. It is yet to be seen if he links global warming to this rain, but Melbourne readers might wish to ensure any scaremongering is challenged (1300 222 774). Here are some facts and admissions worth noting from the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Some key passages:
On thunderstorms:
In summary, there is low confidence in observed trends in small-scale severe weather phenomena such as hail and thunderstorms because of historical data inhomogeneities and inadequacies in monitoring systems.
On heavy rain events:
In summary, there continues to be a lack of evidence and thus low confidence regarding the sign of trend in the magnitude and/or frequency of floods on a global scale.
On cyclones and storms:
Over periods of a century or more, evidence suggests slight decreases in the frequency of tropical cyclones making landfall in the North Atlantic and the South Pacific Several studies suggest an increase in intensity, but data sampling issues hamper these assessments Callaghan and Power (2011) find a statistically significant decrease in Eastern Australia land-falling tropical cyclones since the late 19th century although including 2010/2011 season data this trend becomes non-significant ...
On extreme weather events:
For instance, evidence is most compelling for increases in heavy precipitation in North
It's true that really - it doesn't matter. On a geologic timescale, everything we do is happening quickly.
Regardless of how many electric vehicles we put on the road, or how much fuel efficiency we push, every, single, last, drop of gasoline on this planet will be burned in the next ~1000 years. On a geologic timescale whether we burn it all in 50 years or in 1000 it really isn't going to matter.
So basically, we just cross our fingers and hope that by the time we dump all the available CO2 into the atomosphere that's it's not borked to the point that the planet won't recover.
Truly - the only solution we're going to have to global warming is to hope that eventually we just run out of fossil fuels and clean energy is all that's left.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
My belief is that there's an overwhelming consensus amongst scientists who are experts in this field that man-made climate change is real and worth taking action to mitigate.
Some basics for you:
1) humans do better in warmer climates
Apparently, they don't. Global population density is highest between the 30th and 50th latitude. If you get into warmer climates, population density shrinks.
2) crops grow better
Most food crops are harvested between 30th and 50th latitude too. Around the 23th latitude (both north and south) you have either large deserts, where nothing grows, or you have the rain forests, which don't have any meaningful soils to put food crops on.
3) a warmer earth has more farmable pand
No, it hasn't. Most farmable land today (90%) lies at less than 100 ft above sea level. If sea levels rise, a large portion of it will be subdued. Yes, Siberia might lose its permafrost. But most of Siberia is either montainous (the whole east of Siberia), or it is far away from any oceans and thus doesn't get much rain. In fact, a Siberia without permafrost will probably turn into a steppe fast (the southern part of Siberia is a steppe already), and finally into a desert, similar to Australia. Thus, no additional farmable land in Siberia.
4) less enerygy, not more is required to live in warmer climates
Because of 1), much more energy will be spend on air conditioning, while many buildings in today's colder climates don't need much heating even during winter season, because they are built as low energy houses, where just the short sun period during the day is sufficient to heat the house enough for the inhabitants.
Global warming is a *good* thing.
We are perfectly adapted to today's warming levels. Global warming above today's levels is a bad thing.
Actually, did you not know the Minoan Warm Period, Roman Warm Period and Medieval Warm period were warmer than today? This is why Vikings farmed in Greenland and wine grapes could be grown as far north as York in England. Now the graves of the Vikings are under 'permafrost', but it wasn't frosty in their day, because it has been much hotter in the past ! You talk about 'nutters' yet seem to be defending a position for which you don't even understand even the basic counter evidence. Furthermore, I would hope you would look at the statement of the leaders of the CAGW movement:
http://green-agenda.com/
but if you asked every parent if they'd want a safer world for their kids and grandkids etc, they would all say "yes"
They'd all say 'yes'. Around 90% of them would actually mean it (you'd have thought that sociopaths would be a lower percentage of the population of parents than the general population, but apparently not). Of those, a very small percentage would honestly be able to say that they also want a safer world for everyone else's children. If your children are going to inherit a survivable part of the world, then why should they care that if a billion or two other people that they've never met will suffer and / or die? Herd mammals did not evolve to have an emotional response to that (and, for the most part, that's a good thing - you couldn't function if you had an empathic response to all of the suffering in a world of over 6 billion people). That's why appeals to emotion in things like this are a waste of time.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Focussing on a single argument, even if I could argue on others:
2) crops grow better
Most food crops are harvested between 30th and 50th latitude too. Around the 23th latitude (both north and south) you have either large deserts, where nothing grows, or you have the rain forests, which don't have any meaningful soils to put food crops on.
Pretty much naive picture here. First of all, this should be weighted by the amount of land available for the considered latitudes. Second, desertification has many causes which are not related to the temperature itself. For exemple, the Himalayas prevent clouds from the Indian Ocean to reach Tibet on the other side creating large dry areas and deserts. To summarize, your arguments aren't any better than the points you are trying to defeat.
Achille Talon
Hop!
Because of 1), much more energy will be spend on air conditioning, while many buildings in today's colder climates don't need much heating even during winter season, because they are built as low energy houses, where just the short sun period during the day is sufficient to heat the house enough for the inhabitants.
To add to that:
Air conditioning works by pumping heat out of buildings. There was an article in The Guardian earlier this week pointing to a study that had found that use of air conditioning had raised the temperature of some cities by 2 degrees (centigrade), which meant that people ran their air conditioning more, leading to a vicious cycle.
In contrast, keeping a house warmer than the outside is much cheaper. Humans with no technology are 100W heaters. All other machines that we put in a house generate heat as a waste product. With modern insulation, it's very easy to reduce the outflow of heat. Heating a house for a day can easily consume less energy than cooling it for a week.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
There are many people here who talk about CAGW (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming) but don't understand the hypothesis at all.
CAGW posits that as humans emit CO2 that there will be a logarithmic increase in temperature. The current estimate of CO2s direct effects is a rise of 1.1K per doubling of CO2 (which means, the effect of CO2 decreases logrithmically as you linearly increase CO2 concentration). No one disputes this, not the CAGW proponents nor the skeptics. So let us get past this. Temperature rises caused by this direct effect are NOT catastrophic, and given plants are starved of CO2 and grow better in higher temperatures the gradual temperature increase caused by the direct effects of increasing CO2 are beneficial. Already we see the planet is 'greening' as plants can grow in areas with less water if they instead get more CO2. This is Freeman Dyson's position, and has been confirmed by recent satellite observations.
The next effect is sometimes called the 'Enhanced Greenhouse Effect'. This is the temperature increase caused by non-CO2 greenhouse gases - primarily water vapor (since water vapor is THE dominant greenhouse gas; a 2% increase in water vapor is equivalent to a 100% increase in CO2). The computer simulations made by the IPCC and others estimate the most probable value of this Enhanced Greenhouse Effect is around 3 C as a result of increased water vapor per doubling of CO2. This is a decrease from earlier models where it was estimated as 4-5 C per doubling of CO2. HOWEVER, this is based on computer simulations, but unfortunately the simulations cannot model the water vapor cycle accurately - very important heat transfer mechanisms like convection simply are not modeled correctly. As a result, the computer simulations have not been able to predict the observed climate changes. The computer simulation keep having parameters adjusted to try fit the observed data, but their forward predictions have NEVER matched observed reality once time has passed and the predictions can be checked. Thus, the computer simulations (which according to the Scientific Method are 'hypothesis' and NOT 'observation') are said to have 'no skill' in prediction.
What is ACTUALLY observed by two independent satellite data sets, as well as thousands of balloon observations for the 'Enhanced Greenhouse Effect' is that the 'feedbacks' mostly due to water vapor are around 1 C and possibly zero or even very slightly negative. However, many people cling to the flawed computer simulations and reject the observed reality which shows a vastly more gradual rise (punctuated by spikes caused by El Nino, which happens approximately ecer 4 years, and is usually followed by La Nina cooling).
So, the difference between CAGW proponents ('alarmists') and CAGW opponents ('skeptics') is NOT a dispute about the mild, and mostly beneficial direct effects of CO2, but a dispute about the severity of the 'Enhanced Greenhouse Effect' (as measured by the Transient Climate Sensitivity and Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity). The computer modelers have public faith in their models (although in the various 'Climategate' releases of emails the modellers understand their simulations don't match reality, check out the Climategate emails sometime) despite the fact the models do not match observed reality. The 'skeptics' point to the observed reality and show that the dire predictions made in the past don't come close to observed behavior, therefore the 'Enhanced Greenhouse Effect' is MUCH (by a factor of three at least) smaller than the IPCC has claimed (despite the IPCC adjusting the claim down from outrageously bad to merely silly with the release of each report). This is what is being debated: do you trust computer simulations, or the satellite and balloon observations. Note: surface observations are so sparse as to be worthless, have a large and increasing proportion of estimated data (which are not observations but guesses), and the bad effect of the Urban Heat Island (UHI) Effect - when UHI and es
We're not really overdue for the next ice age, just headed that way based on Milankovitch cycles. But we've pumped enough excess greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere lately to overcome that and any solar minimum that may occur. There will be no prolonged cooling period in your lifetime.
The tragedy here is that the children of those predominantly responsible for creating the mess are most likely to survive it.
In other news, altruism does have a function on evolutionary scale. That is why it exists.
Carbon Dioxide is the foundation of the world's food chain. It's not pollution. Try studying some geology courses. The earth has had climates in the past with CO2 concentrations 10x higher or more than current levels, and life was thriving. Our planet is still stuck in a glacial climate. People don't realize how close our planet actually came to complete extinction a mere 20,000 years ago when the CO2 concentration was under 200ppm. This is approaching the lower boundary for plant life to survive.
Without the 90 percent massive subsidies that fossil fuels get, in depreciation, cheap federal and state lands (mining regs), escaping penalties for pollution by bankruptcy, and literal cash infusions for fossil fuel industries, they would be bankrupt today.
Let's help them along and get rid of all fossil fuel vehicle and business tax exemptions, tax deductions, regulatory escapes, and all the other things that subsidize these inefficient fossil fuel dinosaurs.
Literally.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --