Slashdot Mirror
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."
The deniers do not care, they will be dead before the worst hits. As long as they can live high on the hog on their imaginary money until they die, they are happy. There is not one drop of concern for the future of humanity or life on earth in general.
This is not Reddit, FFS!
How about an article on the dozens of predictions made by climate scientists that never ended up happening? The ones like " No more snow by 2012" etc?
Why always toe the line?
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
...even before humans had any significant CO2 output.
Good to know. I'm sure someone out there will find some magical particle humans were emitting in the 1800s at a certain level that didn't scale with the massive growth in population of humanity.
Yeah, I don't know why Slashdot attracts these anti-science nutters that cannot understand the data has been totally blown on the whole global warming scam. Yes some warming is occurring, but not enough to matter in any way worth even getting excited about - at least that's what the hard facts and careful research tell us. Heck it's probably not even enough to counteract the next global cooling phase which is close at hand even in human turns, then will be the time to panic...
Now the soft facts and panicked revelations made by so called "scientists" who are backed by governments trying to bilk the people into more central control - isn't it astounding that after literally decades of being utterly wrong about long term climate forecasts, people still listen to them? But then I guess it's not since other religions have been around thousands of years as well.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Great Filter.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
"I know liberals would be happy killing off all the conservatives."
Don't think that. There's been a lot of demonization of liberals in US conservative media, but it's all bullshit. Liberals for the most part are the same as most conservatives. They love their family, their country, humanity. The want America to be good and great. They may disagree with you on the best way to go about it.
Part of a successful democracy is the concession that no single individual is wisest in all things, that no single outlook is right for all times. Given that, those of us who value democracy should value a diversity of opinion.
Play Command HQ online
They should have said 20,000 years ago, because that's when it started warming: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Except here they have it ass backwards with cause and effect, and need to read "The Critique of Pure Reason" from Immanuel Kant.
The industrial revolution was caused by the start of global warming. Before that, humans were huddling under blankets, complaining about how cold it was. When temperatures rose, the folks said, "Hey, it's warm outside, let's go out and build a factory or something!"
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
So many like to point to industrial revolution for causing this. Yet, what this study is really saying is that for centuries, if not millenniums, man had been overwhelming nature and slowly breaking down its ability to absorb the co2.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The Jurassic period. O2 in atmosphere was 130% modern levels. CO2 was at 1950ppm, 5-7 times modern levels. The temperature was a whole 3 DEGREES C over modern times!
That was 200 million years ago, even the days were 23 hours long and the years more than 20 days longer.
There's a reason scientists publish papers in peer reviewed journals, not every decision is as simple as jumping on the first convenient looking factoid.
I stole this Sig
The *planet* is clearly fine with high levels of CO2. The biosphere is fine with it too - given enough time to evolve and respond.
But we humans won't enjoy our cities getting flooded and our crops drying out (adapting will be very expensive). And a lot of the biosphere isn't being given time to respond either, since the temperature rise is happening so quickly. Those coral reefs can't just pick up and walk to a cooler area.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
jeez, yeah, all those thousands of scientists colluding to fool you. i bet you don't believe man landed on the moon either as that was a big conspiracy too
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Let's be realistic, there's lot of places especially here in Canada where there are no more weather monitoring stations. Then there are also lots of weather stations in bad places, seen plenty of those out in Alberta and in Ontario. My personal favorites? The one that was placed next to the 401(one of the busiest highway systems in the world), nothing like a pile of vehicle exhaust and hot asphalt to give accurate temperatures. The other, was out in Alberta which was in a valley, next to a river fed from mountain water run-off(roughly 4m away), which spent 2/3's of the day in the shade of a pine tree forest. Then there's all the weather stations that have only existed since 1980 or 1973ish when we had that series of really harsh winters and glaciers were growing at an incredibly fast rate.
Om, nomnomnom...
Did they place it next to the 401, or did they place the 401 next to the weather station?
There are a few weather stations in my home country (and during my studies I had to deal with them a lot), some of them having been in place for centuries, and many of them in rather unfortunate positions, mostly because when they were established it was a necessity to put them close to where people lived (so you could get there on foot), without considerations for projects that were decades or centuries in the future.
Moving those weather stations isn't a good idea either, though, because by taking readings where they are, you get a very good instrument for examining change over time. Moving the weather station would destroy that ability.
Of course such changes in the environment have to be taken into account. If you had a weather station in the middle of a sunny, grassy hill and a huge skyscraper is built in front of it so it's now permanently in the shadow of said building, it doesn't mean that the average temperature dropped by 5 or even 10 degrees Celsius.
Environmental impact on the weather stations have to be taken into account!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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
As always, TFA fails to look at the broader context. 200 years ago was the Little Ice Age", i.e., an unusually cold period in history. Much of the warming of the past 200 years is simply due to coming out of this cold period. Exactly how much, is difficult to say.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I'm old enough to remember the LA smog in the 80s.
That doesn't really happen anymore. The way climate change people talk, it would seem like there has been no environmental progress since the start of the industrial revolution.
Rivers used to catch fire in this country:
http://clevelandhistorical.org...
That doesn't seem to happen much anymore either.
I'm sure back then, people argued against smog and water pollution controls as well. These changes take time - but they eventually happen.
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! --
Humans adapt. Throughout history, there have been periods that have been frigid and periods that have been hot. People were able to adjust lifestyles and the human race went on.
However, equally true is the common narrative throughout history that nature will soon cause our end. There is just a subset of the population that will always fear what they do not understand. Not that fear is all bad, but some become obsessed with their fears to the point that they cannot see the tools they have at their disposal to adapt to the circumstances.
When the world went through the little ice age, lasting approximately 550 years (1300-1850), the world did not come to an end. Neither did it come to an end in the warm period preceding the little ice age.
The world is bigger than the time period that you have been a part of. The climate (and probably most things on earth) tends to work within the confines of a bell curve. Adjusting variables can have some effect. The further from the center you go, the harder it is to have an effect. As we move from the center, we run into bigger issues of which we have no control (i.e. planetary location, solar cycles, etc). The world has been through all sorts of climate patterns and temperature ranges in which adaptations were needed. The point is that Earth, and the species that exist on the planet, are well suited for such variances.