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World Is Finally Waking Up To Climate Change, Says 'Hothouse Earth' Author (theguardian.com)
The scorching temperatures and forest fires of this summer's heatwave have finally stirred the world to face the onrushing threat of global warming, claims the climate scientist behind the recent "hothouse Earth" report. Following an unprecedented 270,000 downloads of his study, Johan Rockstrom, executive director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, said he had not seen such a surge of interest since 2007, the year the Nobel prize was awarded to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The Guardian: "I think that in future people will look back on 2018 as the year when climate reality hit," said the veteran scientist. "This is the moment when people start to realize that global warming is not a problem for future generations, but for us now." The heatwave has dominated headlines across the northern hemisphere this summer. New temperature records have been set in Africa and cities in Australia, Taiwan, Georgia and the west coast of US. Heat stroke or forest fires have killed at least 119 in Japan, 29 in South Korea, 91 in Greece and nine in California. There have even been freak blazes in Lapland and elsewhere in the Arctic circle, while holidaymakers and locals alike have sweltered in unusually hot weather in southern Europe. Coming amid this climate chaos, the "hothouse Earth" paper by Rockstrom and his co-authors struck a chord with the public by spelling out the huge and growing risk that emissions are pushing the planet's climate off the path it has been on for 2.5m years.
https://xkcd.com/1732/
Yes, it has been changing. But if you can look at that and aren't the least bit alarmed, I'm not sure anything is going to ever get through.
Many businesses don't care about the environment, unless there is a direct cost. They are either to busy trying to survive or serve the demands of the shareholders. Add to that, when a business is not looking beyond a 5 year schedule, then the impact of climate is also not a direct impact.
Now, tell them their customers are going elsewhere because the environmental image of a company is important, then they will wake up. Of course this only works when said corporation is not in a monopoly position.
In the US a number of companies have been pushing back amount trying to play nice in terms of the environment, which in the end will give the benefit to foreign corporations that have already adapted to the reality that being energy efficient for the customer is important. Short term US companies don't have to play nice, because the government has been helping keeping energy artificially cheap, so the end-user has no interest to buy appliances that consumer less resources. In most of the world people are paying the real cost for resources, so they have had to adapt.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
The increase of forest fires is due to humans moving into forested areas and starting fires (inadvertently or on purpose). Yes, it really is THAT simple. If you start building in forested areas and bring more humans into forested areas then the number of forest fires will increase. This is another example how LOCAL environmental destruction has a huge impact. The same goes with flooding: the reason flooding seems to be getting worse is due to the destruction of marshlands and buffer areas and building hardscape surfaces on coastal areas. It has nothing to do with "rising sea levels" or anything else. You can't destroy the local environment and expect things to remain the same.
printed out the papers, so they can look through it one and then throw it away?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
...I'm not sure anything is going to ever get through.
I'm damn sure nothing is going to get through in the 'alternative fact" era.
intensity of forest fires are the result of decades of misguided policy of preventing all forest fires
Locally, yes, it certainly doesn't help. When fires are up in isolated arctic wildernesses, that's something else.
sudo ergo sum
Not quite true. Climate is changing weather patterns, such that summers are hotter and drier than they used to be. The problem is that areas that were once too damp to burn are now tinder-dry by August. In the past, it did not matter so much if somebody tossed a cigarette butt into some weeds because the area was sufficiently moist to not start up. That is no longer the case. Fires that would not have happened 50 years ago are happening now. Some is due to lightning, others are due to people.
Here we go again with the lazy dismissals.
Global weather is very much climate.
sudo ergo sum
Plenty of scientists are saying there is not a scientific link between the fires and climate change, even Vox ran a story with that.
Maybe they should go talk to the experienced firefighters that say that fire is behaving in ways they have never seen before. Things are changing and barring ALIENS! the only reasonable explanation is climate change, which we know to be occurring.
Denialists have now shifted from "there is no climate change" to "it's not our fault and anyway it's not causing any problems", and are now moving into "well even if it is our fault there's nothing we can do about it". You are behind even for a denialist.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Actually its the opposite. California stopped most logging and forest management activities decades ago at he behest of environmentalists. These fires are a result of that lack of management.
"It’s hard to quarrel with that ancient justification of the free press: “America’s right to know.” It seems almost cruel to ask, ingenuously, ”America’s right to know what, please? Science? Mathematics? Economics? Foreign languages?”
None of those things, of course. In fact, one might well suppose that the popular feeling is that Americans are a lot better off without any of that tripe.
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” - Issac Asimov
The full article can be found at https://media.aphelis.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/ASIMOV_1980_Cult_of_Ignorance.pdf
https://wattsupwiththat.com/20...
5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
Throw in entire forested areas where the mature trees have been killed by invasive beetles & turned into bone-dry kindling, a century of forest-fire prevention policy of fighting every forest fire, thus stopping nature from doing it's own 'controlled burns' to burn up small areas of old dry growth, and large-scale clear-cutting that dries out nearby forested areas, well of course forest fires will become more common.
It is not science, the science is mostly done. This is awareness and policy.
Even though I work with scientists, and one of my co-workers is an actual climate scientist(we discuss weather and climate a lot) I don't need scientists or science or empirical evidence. I've seen first hand how quickly the climate has changed.
A small town in the mountain west I grew up in was known for having very cold winters. Starting about 10-15 years ago, when I would visit in the winter I noticed it wasn't as cold. Anytime I mentioned this to my friends and relatives that lived there, they would say, "yea, isn't it great!". A few times I was there in January it rained, and not a little. Raining in January in a town that historically had brutally cold winters(avg high temp would be below 32 F, avg low temps between 0 and 10 F). This town used to have avg summer temps of around 85 F, now the last few years the avg summer temps in the 90s.
I've seen all kinds of new plants showing up, new weeds, just in the past few years. I've been landscaping and gardening for a long time and I take note of the weeds I have to deal with. I've noticed how bird migrations are changing, and different birds are showing up in my town.
If you live in the western US you've noticed that in the last 10-15 years the climate has markedly heated up and dried up. What used to be arid or semi-arid is now turning into full on desert.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
The same goes with flooding: the reason flooding seems to be getting worse is due to the destruction of marshlands and buffer areas and building hardscape surfaces on coastal areas. It has nothing to do with "rising sea levels" or anything else. You can't destroy the local environment and expect things to remain the same.
Whereas flooding IS made much worse nowadays compared to the past by the reasons you state above there is no reason to put "rising sea levels" in quotes. This is a known phenomenon. Even if you don't believe in global warming for whatever reason, sea levels are very accurately measured by satellites and unless all the global space agencies are conspiring to lie about sea levels*; sea level rising is a fact.
Coupled with sea level rising though, and perhaps a much bigger problem in most places is the fact that many coastal cities are sinking. With ground water being pumped out it causes subsidence- many cities are sinking at a much faster rate than sea level is rising.
* Which probably is more believable than believing global warming is fake- but still absurd.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Ummm, no.
We can measure with modern tools, the changes. The "fluctuations" as you term them, are data. With data, you can predict with reasonable certainty.
Over 100,000 scientists, WITH THAT DATA, have agreed on the outcome, given long history, and your "fluctuations".
If you're not alarmed, you're either ignoring the data, or your stupid.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Only when integrated over a suitable timeframe...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
"Stone age living"? What the fuck are you talking about? You mean driving a Civic instead of a Land Rover? You mean like using glass instead of plastic? What, exactly, are you talking about?
I don't respond to AC's.
There are multiple reasons for the fires, and climate change is undeniably one of them.
These forested areas are now developed with larger numbers of residences, there has been concerted effort to keep fires, which normally would have happened anyway, from happening.
The persistent drought conditions in the west and the heating up of the atmosphere have led to many forested areas being dried out, and the health of the forests lessened. The bark beetle infestation has taken its toll, due to warmer winters.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Everyone knows that. Question is, who really cares among the powerful? Does a 72 year old business man, mired in scandals and in lobbies commitments, eager to succeed politically at all costs, having a single (short-term) objective in mind to that end: 'improve his economy'... don't expect this man to care about something likely happening in the future to the planet, even if the proof was as clear as 1+1 = 2.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
How can it be taken seriously when they are constantly changing the historical temperature data to match their hypothesis?
"They" are not "changing the historical temperature data to match their hypothesis". That is a made-up alternate-fact being promulgated by the deniers.
You are referring, I assume to the Goddard Institute for Space Studies historical temperature record. The analysis of the data is exhaustively documented , including a FAQ giving an overview for popular audiences that are too bored to read the actual documentation. And the original data set, and all of previous historical analyses, are available on the web, showing that the changes in analysis technique don't alter the conclusion that the climate is warming. Here, for example, are the graphs showing the results of every different correction to the analysis, dating back to 1981.
In any case, you do know that several other groups, such at BEST, also analyze historical climate data, and come out with rates of warming that are essentially the same. So your conspiracy theory that scientists are altering their data in order to hoax the public is going to be a conspiracy of hundreds, and probably thousands, of scientists in independent groups on three different continents.
Both.
There are many factors involved. One is increased summer temperature (and concommitant drier forests) due to climate change.
Not the only factor. But one factor.
Yes, it really is THAT simple.
Few things are simple.
Yeah, you get rich by telling people that they're doomed if they continue to fuck up.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Ah, so we have arrived at step 3 already? Wow, didn't take long.
I'd guess step 4 is due in about 2-3 years, then?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Now that it's too late, we're starting to witness the results first hand, and there's no way to mitigate it without 100x the effort than it would have taken before (assuming it even CAN be mitigated...), what better time to accept that it's actually happening?
Climate change due to anthropogenic global warming is a long term problem. It does not happen overnight. It will require a long term solution. It will not be solved overnight.
Let's be honest here, it's not like anything is gonna change with the discussion here. You'll have two sides yell at each other and the ones they're trying to convince stopped caring either way a long time ago.
It's a bit like US politics, now that I think about it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Stone age living? Yeah, it's horrible that you might have to drive in a car instead of a land cruiser when you go pick up your mail, teh horrorz of stone age transportation!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Shut up, Kiwi, Europe is about to cook off.
Let's talk in February, ok?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Nuclear instead of coal.
Have gnu, will travel.
(1) without CO2's greenhouse effect, the earth's surface temp would be well below 0C on average. (2) We humans have seriously increased the amount of CO2. Both statements can be shown to be true. (1) can be shown through experimentation. If you have different results, show us. (2) amount of oil/coal/natural gas/wood burned can be estimated pretty accurately, and so the amount of O2 changed into CO2. (3) more CO2 does somehow not generate more heating?
I disagree. It's important in the vein of public discourse, to make it clear that these conspiracy theorists are in the minority, and their wackjob ideas are not mainstream.
I don't respond to AC's.
Yeah, you're right!! Pumping enormous quantities of green house gases into the atmosphere couldn't possible cause any climate changes. I don't know why they call them green house gases in the first place...might have something to with causing extra warming. Please ignore the Arctic melting, the fire in Norway, the heat wave in Europe, the Sahara marching south, etc. Nothing to see here, move along.
Rising sea levels is a fact, but it isn't causing massive flooding. That doesn't make any sense. The seas are not "rising" 30 meters above flood barriers because of climate change. The flooding is caused by runoff from hardscapes and no where for the water to go. It is ridiculous to think that rising sea levels measured in millimeters can cause massive flooding. But if you get rid of all the swampland and marshes where do you think the water is going to go???
What's happening? Jack shit is happening. A bunch of people finally woke up and noticed that we're fucked. But hey, since we're fucked, why bother trying to do anything? It's just so simple, no matter where you are in the realization chain, you can simply continue as usual with no reason to change your behaviour.
At first it's "there is no climate change" so there is no reason to do anything.
Then, when it's no longer possible to deny it, it's "well, climate has always changed", and since that's still nothing that I could possibly be blamed for, no reason to change anything.
Then we get to "well, we do affect it, but it's not gonna have any impact" which again gives you no reason to change anything,
only to finally arrive at "well, we did fuck up, but now it's too late anyway", which again is no reason to do anything since you can't do anything anyway anymore.
Ain't it great? No matter where we are in the climate change timeline, we have no reason to stop fucking the planet.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
No, it really IS that simple. Local environmental destruction is causing forest fires and flooding. But you can't write a paper about that, and no one is going to address it, so it is ignored. What do you think happens to water if you have no buffer lands to keep it contained?
Any solution will be technological;
Wow, at least the deniers finally acknowledge that it's actually real, and might be a problem. It's a start.
it will not be ham fisted attempts to force stone age living on the hoi polloi. (Notice that the elites like Al Gore never do the stone age living thing anyway. That's for you plebes.)
I don't have any idea why the deniers continue to shout over and over again that anybody who says that this is a problem are trying to "force stone-age living on the hoi polloi". I've never actually heard any climate scientists-- you know, the people who noticed that this was a problem that might need solution fifty fucking years ago-- say that, or anything like that.
Yes, I do think solutions will be technological, primarily improved energy supplies that don't produce large amounts of carbon dioxide.
California forest fires are mostly caused by idiots going into forested areas and setting fires (arson) or other idiots moving further out into what used to be wilderness and inadvertently setting them. Management only helps with the spread of the fires.
History has shown constant changes over time, often moving in cycles. We are currently in an interglacial. I know there are a lot of research funds and grant dollars riding on getting people to panic over this stuff, but please just stop.
I love how blatantly stupid, biased bullshit gets modded as "informative", presumably because it matches peoples "worldview".
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I don't have things shipped to my house.
I don't buy food in plastic, whenever possible.
I don't use plastic bags.
I ride my bike or walk, when possible. When not possible, I drive a high MPG small car.
I recycle aggressively.
I keep my house thermostat at 80 degrees, when AC is necessary.
I fix things instead of buying new things, whenever possible.
Go fuck yourself, troll.
I don't respond to AC's.
The threat of stone-age living is a common strawman employed by climate denialists and climate policy obstructionists. The idea is that stone-age living would be less carbon-intensive than modern living, therefore it could be a solution to climate change, therefore it's what imaginary environmentalists are proposing.
Of course the actual solutions to climate change involve greater technology and greater access to the products of energy use through better efficiency.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The question is, which one is the alternative fact? Is it their's or your's?
I'd go with the scientists, the ones with massive amounts of data and observations and well-verified models that have been vetted and analyzed and compared to observations for over fifty years, as the ones likely to be correct, rather than the ones that say "I don't trust science, I'm sure they're wrong, and we don't need any actual data or analysis or alternate hypotheses."
Science has a pretty good record that way.
It is, however, not the only factor.
The rate of change is important, and it can be seen that since industrial age the rate is increasing. Of course, population is a factor as well, because more people consume more ruminant products (meat, cowmilk, ...), and the animals produce methane which is a factor for global warming. We better use the handbrake now, after living in ignorance for so long. It is not really important if humans are guilty for global warming, we have to to ehatever we can to stop it. This is possible without living in caves. For example, one can use a bike instead of a car, or stop eating meat. We need incentives for that, for example a carbon tax. Most people only look at money, so they need to feel an expense for inappropriate behavior. We only have this earth, it is too much to ask for care of our living space?
The GISS temperature history, with the graphs showing the results of every to their analysis dating back to 1981, is here.
That is total BS. If you look at where forest fires start it is in areas populated by humans.
Seem to be all over the place: https://fsapps.nwcg.gov/google...
the party in complete power of all branches of Government has called global warming a hoax. Is he from a different timeline than I am? I can go there?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Speak for yourself. Me and my family are doing everything we can to lower our energy and plastic consumption.
You could get off your ass and do something, too, if you really wanted to. It sounds like you're just making excuses for yourself.
I don't respond to AC's.
You AC trolls are really sucking wind today. Try again.
I don't respond to AC's.
Any solution will be technological; it will not be ham fisted attempts to force stone age living on the hoi polloi.
(Notice that the elites like Al Gore never do the stone age living thing anyway. That's for you plebes.)
Perhaps you should do some research on the technologies that have emerged in the last few years.
New developments in solar, geo-thermal and wind energy.
New insulation techniques and technologies.
New transportation technologies.
As some leaders(and many people) have been saying for the last 20 years, this is a huge business opportunity.
However the entrenched carbon extraction lobby has fought the change to the bloody end, to the detriment of all.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
The increase of forest fires is due to humans moving into forested areas and starting fires (inadvertently or on purpose). Yes, it really is THAT simple.
Well, you know, there's also climate change disrupting weather patterns causing warmer, drier air that both increases the likelihood of fire starting but also helps spread them. This is why fires in places that normally get fires are getting worse, and places that don't normally get fires are starting to see them.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Speak for yourself. Me and my family are doing everything we can to lower our energy and plastic consumption. You could get off your ass and do something, too, if you really wanted to. It sounds like you're just making excuses for yourself.
I agree, though with the recent revelations about recycling, it seems to be a losing battle, and that we need a different method of dealing with waste products. I remember years ago hearing about a guy who invented a "refinery" of sorts to recycle ALL refuse in garbage dumps. So instead of all this extra work we do to recycle, it all goes into the dump, then gets ground up and "recycled" on an industrial scale at one location.
No extra recycle truck pickups, no extra recycle facilities with people sorting by hand, no massive container ships taking trash to China.
Why aren't we doing this now?
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
In terms of personal change, you can do a lot. You can eat less meat; meat consumption is a major driver of CO2 production and methane in the atmosphere https://skepticalscience.com/animal-agriculture-meat-global-warming.htm. You can also drive less, walk places or use public transit. If you need to buy a new car, try to buy a hybrid or an electric car. If you own a house, make sure it is well insulated; don't put the air conditioner on to any colder than you need to in the hot months, and don't heat it more than you need to during the winter. Consider buying solar panels for your house. All of these are things which not only help the environment, they save you money.
Politically, the primary thing you can do is either donate to or vote for candidates who support dealing with climate change. Much of Europe is doing the right things already regarding this (with the exception of Germany's really bad decision to turn off their nuclear plants). But both the US and Australia currently have governments who are substantially not helping matters. In the US, this means generally one should be voting for Democrats. While there are some Republicans who take climate change seriously like Christie Todd Whitman and Arnold Schwarzenegger they are a functional minority which has been pushed out of the party to a large extent.
The third thing you can do is directly donate to charitable causes which help with renewable energy or otherwise help with climate issues. Everybody Solar https://www.everybodysolar.org/ buys solar panels for non-profits like homeless shelters and science museums. The Solar Electric Light Fund https://www.self.org/ gets solar panels for parts of the developing world; this not only helps the very poorest in the world, it also helps make sure that when Africa's economy comes more online they do so in a way that doesn't immediately involve massive CO2 production. For wind power, I recommend the New England Wind Fund https://www.massenergy.org/the-wind-fund which builds wind in the North East of the US (which currently has very little wind power and can definitely use more). Finally, in terms of immediate effects of CO2 offset per a dollar spent, Cool Earth is by many measures the most efficient way to do so https://www.coolearth.org/. Remember, every little bit helps.
The best thing to do is to created less waste, to begin with. We, for example, take reusable containers for carry-out, whenever possible. We do our best not to buy food that comes in single-use plastic containers. I agree 100% that it's better to make less waste in the first place, than to try to recycle it afterwards.
I don't respond to AC's.
But, we've had the hottest years on record just about every year the last decade or so. I think this year is going to be somewhat cooler and just the 4th hottest year on record.
Weather is what we see, but it's those changes over time that are ultimately critical. One year of extreme weather in either direction wouldn't be climate change, but the fact that we're seeing this all over the world and year after year ought to be something of great concern to anybody not planning on dying in the next few years.
I keep my house thermostat at 80 degrees, when AC is necessary.
Ceiling fans work wonders.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Sorry, not BS. About 50% are caused by people, the other half by lightning. The difference now is that fires take longer to extinguish because the climate is getting hotter and drier. We have seen record temperatures set in BC and are experiencing longer summers with little precipitation. Hot and dry conditions mean the fires do not go out until they run out of fuel.
... and do you have any info on that single point dump recycling idea/inventor? I think that's super interesting. I would imagine that at some point in the future, when some resources start to get more scarce, that we might see people mining garbage dumps for materials, too.
I don't respond to AC's.
Ceiling fans work wonders.
Absolutely, they do. Along with some strategically opened windows, too, when possible.
I don't respond to AC's.
They're WAY ahead of you on this one.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/1001356/alien-spaceship-bermuda-triangle-discovery-channel
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
I just tried googling it and didn't find it. It seems like I read about this probably around 2006-2008.
I remember that the process ended up with three categories:
1. metals 2. compost like materials from the paper and food waste 3. various refined carbon fuels, which is where the "refinery" part of the facility happens. All the plastics are essentially refined/recycled back to another form of usable fuels of some kind.
I remember the proof of concept plant they built to test this was in Missouri.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
It's certainly more likely to be science than the bletherings of 100,000 non-scientist fuckwits with financial and psychological interests in the status quo.
I want to believe this headline and I'll go ahead and accept it for sake of argument -- but is it too little too late? Or are we going to become a living (dying?) example of why we haven't been able to detect signs of alien civilizations out there among the stars?
Let me think about why I might not give a shit about the climate changing 100m years ago and the climate changing today. Oh yes! I'm alive today, and dependent on a complex and fragile civilisation, along with the rest of humanity.
Christ but you people are stupid
Actually its the opposite. California stopped most logging and forest management activities decades ago at he behest of environmentalists. These fires are a result of that lack of management.
I understand that black and white/0-1 answers are easier to deal with. However I would encourage you to try to have a more nuanced and well researched view of the situation.
I agree that part of the issue is the lack of management, another important factor is that fires haven't been allowed to burn in many of these areas because there are now lots of people, and lots of homes in those forests.
Another major factor is that in the western US the climate is heating up and drying up. This negatively impacts the health of the forests, and when fires do start, they are worse, and the forests are primed for burning.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
No, it really IS that simple. Local environmental destruction is causing forest fires and flooding. But you can't write a paper about that, and no one is going to address it, so it is ignored. What do you think happens to water if you have no buffer lands to keep it contained?
Actually it isn't that simple.
In a perfect world, answers to big problems are simple.
We don't live in that world.
Do yourself a favor and research and read about how the heating and drying of the climate in the western US are impacting forests. Read about the damage beetles have done to western forests, and why those beetle infestations are happening.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
... and sadly, the 'other partys' plan to "fix climate change" was to sell "carbon credits" to big polluters, so they could pollute even more, but pay for the privilege.
I, too, would like to visit this alternate Earth.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I'm not sure of the situation in California, but where I live in the Pacific Northwest we have tons of wildfires and most of the are sparked by lightning. I can't imagine that California is somehow immune to lightning.
Plenty of scientists are saying there is not a scientific link between the fires and climate change, even Vox ran a story with that.
Maybe they should go talk to the experienced firefighters that say that fire is behaving in ways they have never seen before. Things are changing and barring ALIENS! the only reasonable explanation is climate change...
Surprisingly, Aliens or climate change aren't the only possible explanations. I know, hard to believe but hear me out.
It's beginning to be widely accepted that fighting forest fires has contributed to making the big ones worse. When we stop small forest fires, that means dead fall and dried planet matter continue to accumulate. It turns out, larger trees used to survive small forest fires, and the smaller fires cleared out the dead fall and dried material. With us stopping those fires though, enough tinder is accumulating that when a fire does hit, it's bigger, stronger and worse than ever before.
I know, citation please, so here's a fire forest researcher from UBC from a region of Canada where we fight multiple forest fires every year saying the same thing.
Before you get too sad though, there is a silver lining. The faculty member mentions that changing forest fire management might be opposed by standard logging industry practices, so we can still hate on corporate/industrial causes for the problem, hurray!
We all know it rains from time to time. But if I were to hose you down with a fire hose. You are not going to just sit there and say it is just the weather, when there was someone actually causing the problem of getting wet.
The climate does change. But not at this rate, The reasons for the change are pointing to human activity.
What would be the benefit of people panicking over climate change? For politicians on both sides not worrying about climate change would make their jobs easier, want to subdue a population, giving the big Trucks and SUV's and make them feel like a tough rouged individual. Having factories that pump out exhort without having to worry about the peoples health, dealing with lawsuits with the state and companies over problems.
If government wants tight control of peoples lives, then they are easier ways then bring up a climate change conspiracy. Heck throwing a dart at a world map and going to war with them is much easier, as it is easy to explain why someone else culture is full of inhuman monsters. Using Climate Change as an excuse to control peoples lives, as for some grand conspiracy would be extremely hard to pull off. Because environmental control and regulations are complex and requires a balancing act.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Except those last ten years have been completely and utterly debunked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Nuclear power.
When I see new nuclear power plants getting built then I will believe that politicians and the public are taking global warming seriously. I have read some encouraging news recently that US federal regulators are making real investments in the future of nuclear power. There's already been a shift in how nuclear power is viewed, and people are starting to embrace it again. One real reason people are embracing it is very self serving, a lot of nuclear power plants are reaching end of life and will be shut down soon and without a new reactor in its place a lot of jobs will be lost as well as a large source of electrical generation capacity in that region.
I don't much care why people are embracing nuclear power, only that people embrace it. Nuclear power is safe, low carbon, domestically sourced, and inexpensive.
Say what you will about past accidents with nuclear power, like Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island, all of them are irrelevant to embracing third and fourth generation nuclear power. All of those past accidents were with second generation nuclear, and as safe as second generation nuclear power has been on the aggregate we will see even safer power with third generation nuclear that is being built now. Fourth generation nuclear, such as molten salt reactors, will be safer still.
I've seen the numbers and models on a national grid based on wind, water, and sun. This is not a future with inexpensive, reliable, and safe electricity. It's quite likely not low in CO2 either. There is no future with inexpensive, plentiful, safe, clean, and "green", electricity that does not include nuclear power.
Here's a couple websites that do the numbers:
http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co...
http://withouthotair.com/
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I think you missed the entire point of Opportunist's post. We need to find a way to get more people to act. You determined it was worth the effort. Unfortunately, there seem to be human-nature level arguments against actually effecting change. That was the point of the post. It is so much easier to just rationalize your way into the status quo. I try to drive less, and use less plastic. Nevertheless, I can't convince my wife to turn the AC up, nor do I ever remember to bring reusable leftover containers to restaurants, so I end up with their single-use polystyrene. These are easy. I want to do them. But I'm a lazy, forgetful, conflict-averse human just like everybody else.
A common mistake is comparing destitute sheep (post WW1) with people that are trained to think for a living. Hitler was able to rally people (bad shepherd problem) and convince them of false rubrics. The sheep followed the false rubrics, believing they were empowered.
Does this sound a lot like modern politics?
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Yes. Humans are now "all over the place".
That isn't true. 90% of all forest fires are by humans. You can look it up yourself.
Another major factor is that in the western US the climate is heating up and drying up. This negatively impacts the health of the forests
And yet climate scientists think it's valid to use increased tree ring growth as a proxy for rising temperatures.
You're welcome to hire commercial loggers to come in and clear out the underbrush and small trees. You won't get anyone to do it, because they want to haul out the tallest, largest diameter wood that they can get their hands on, and leave that nuisance non-commercial crap behind, but you're welcome to try.
Of course, just like the wood that you throw in your fireplace, the big stuff doesn't burn without a lot of kindling around it. The small stuff burns like gangbusters. So there's no reason to take out the tallest, largest diameter wood absent the nuisance non-commercial crap, and there's nobody who wants to deal with the nuisance non-commercial crap to begin with, much less without the big stuff.
"Lack of management" my ass.
aha... an alternative facts fan
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
That explains the west portion of the US, and Canada, atleast in areas where the right kind of trees grow for said beetles to kill. But those beetles are becoming a problem mostly because of how mild winters have become -> allowing for longer breeding seasons -> allowing their population to explode -> spreading out as more trees are needed to support the growing population of beetles. These beetles aren't an invasive species. They've been here all along, with their native habitat ranging from Mexico to Canada.
What we're seeing now was predicted as far back as 2009. This was hardly unexpected - experts had told us growing beetle populations were going to increase the number of wildfires we would see.
Now as far as the fires breaking out in Europe and Asia... I know less about. But the beetle issue is probably just a North American thing.
well-verified models that have been vetted and analyzed
The models have consistently over-predicted temperatures.
to the contrary, the models have fit the data to well within confidence limits, and continue to do so.
Here's an article from Forbes about the very first Global Climate Model, Manabe and Wetherald 1967, looking back at how well their predictions from fifty years ago compared to data: https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/03/15/the-first-climate-model-turns-50-and-predicted-global-warming-almost-perfectly/
And here are graphs, showing that the prediction from fifty years ago (red line) fits the data (blue line) almost exactly. https://climategraphs.wordpres...
Later models have refined Manabe and Wetherald 1967, incorporating other effects than simply carbon dioxide and water vapor, but haven't changed the answer. Here is the Berkeley Earth page comparing climate models used in the IPCC report against data: http://berkeleyearth.org/graph...
The problem with the deniers, on the other hand, is that they don't have a prediction. They don't have an alternative model, they don't have anything.
People will accept nuclear power when everyone advocating it move to within a few kilometers of a nuclear reactor and settle there, along with their entire family.
And yes, that includes you.
I do in fact live near a nuclear power plant. Like many across the USA it is scheduled for being shutdown in the next 10 years or so. Given how long it takes for the federal government to issue a license for building a new reactor we'll need to start planning for a replacement now.
I remember growing up during the Cold War and hearing people talk about how the local nuclear power plant was supposedly a secondary target for the Soviet nuclear missiles. Also nearby are vital dams for navigation and hydroelectric power, these were also secondary targets if not primary targets. In the local phone directories are evacuation plans in case of a meltdown at the power plant, and how the public would be notified of an emergency.
After growing up in the shadow of a nuclear power plant I do not fear nuclear power. What I fear more is a future without nuclear power.
Don't give me shit about "not in my backyard". I'd be quite pleased with a nuclear power plant in my back yard. Here's the problem I have, it's not the NIMBY crowd that bother me, it's the BANANA crowd. (That's "build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything" for the acronym impaired.) Every state in the USA has a nuclear energy commission of their own, let's put the states in charge of nuclear power instead of the federal government dictating this from afar. I don't want some "left coast" politician tell me that I can't have nuclear power in my backyard.
I suspect that given enough feet dragging by federal regulators that the states will in fact start to issue nuclear power licenses on their own. Some DC politician from some other state doesn't like this? Well, it's not in their backyard, why should they care?
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I'm not sure why you bothered to respond. However, for predictions, I posted this to a different subthread:
Here's an article from Forbes about the very first Global Climate Model, Manabe and Wetherald 1967, looking back at how well their predictions from fifty years ago compared to data: https://www.forbes.com/sites/s...
Consider that there is a class of people who are believers, believing what they're told, as a matter of their circumstances. There are many people who are destitute, perhaps poor, and they struggle. I won't correlate this to IQ or ego, just cite it as an observation.
They believe in magical things. They do it in groups, even mobs. There are those that will lead those tribes, finding boogeymen to blame for their apparent woes. These leaders find themselves liking their power to be believed, and add more magical thinking to their repetoire.
After WW1, the Germans were looking for solutions to their rotten state: horrific economy, worthless currency, and very wounded pride after the failure of Bismarkism. The barely unified Germany needed ego, and someone to blame. Taking notes from other successful recent "revolutions", Nazism rose to power. Books were burned. Jews, Roma, and homos were blamed for the ills of the German people, who should be Aryan, etc.
Today in America and other parts of the world, there are again woes. 1% of the population controls about 99% of the wealth. Once again, strong leaders promise to rise them from their poor state and misery, eager to cite immigration problems, and (take your choice) Jews, Muslims, Africans, Mexicans, etc. as the source of their misery. Oh, and I forgot trans people. OMG.
As knowledge advances, and learned people come to concurrence that climate change is a reality, and it's anchored on the effects of many man-made evils, those profiting from continuing bad practices continue to fight the science, bribe the legislatures and candidates, create their own mythos defending their poor practices, and the planet starts to burn.
A choir of believers (the sheep), identify with those amazing rich folks, the 1%ers. Wannabe sheep, led by wolves, become supper, eventually. History is full of repetition, and those unable to shed their bias and accept realities.
When I was a kid, long ago, I believed adults. I trusted them. Understanding science and skepticism and excepting real data was a stretched, but I stretched. Others are unable or unwilling or don't have the circumstances to stretch. They are sheep. There is a responsibility to help them. Read the evidence. A staggering amount of it is available to you.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
just did. Where I live, it is 50%.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/almost-half-of-fires-burning-across-bc-caused-by-humans-province/article35652545/
Actually, most forest management is driven by logging interests, even in California, because these are National Forest Service lands. Also, the areas that are burning are not logging forests, they are mostly Chaparral and Oak: https://www.researchgate.net/p...
> fifty fucking years ago
Thanks for bolding that.
It emphasizes the point that the understanding of the effects of carbon dioxide on the climate is not something new, it's been understood for over half a century.
You're welcome.
When you consider that the number of people directly killed in Nuclear power station accidents is less than 500, it does seem strange that people are so scared of it. Indirectly, perhaps 10,000 people were killed. To replace 10,000 people takes 10,000/(250 babies born per minute) = 40 minutes. Therefore, it takes less than 1 hour to compensate for these deaths. In other words, Nuclear power is safe. I expect more people are killed world-wide per year on transport than in the whole history of Nuclear power.
I would like to see Nuclear power, renewables and energy storage be the final solution. Lets hope Nuclear fusion power becomes a thing sooner rather than later.
Note that Nuclear power stations require cooling water and this is one reason they are located near the coasts and rivers. However, the recent heatwave caused several European Nuclear power plants and coal fired power plants to be temporarily shutdown or run at reduced power because the outside water was too hot to be effective at cooling for the steam turbines. This means electricity generated using steam turbines is not immune from the effects of climate change.
... says "Boiling Pot" Author.
Still have idiots/trolls running around claiming that China and 3 Rd world nations should be able to add a bunch more coal. Likewise, Germany , Japan, etc adding coal. Most of Europe is shutting down their nukes, without anything solid to back it up. America , is moving off coal, but rather than doing nukes, Geothermal, and hydro, we are moving to wind, solar, and Nat gas. Like China with coal plants, we in America will run our Nat gas plant for the next 50 years. Gov lie constantly to force other nations to clean up, which is why we need OCO-3 to show absolute numbers.
So no, we are not improving. We have a long ways to go.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Rising sea levels is a fact, but it isn't causing massive flooding.
Ahem. Have you read the news today? Or last week? Or last year? Or 10 years ago?
"Massive flooding" is far more frequent in monsoons, hurricanes, and regular-old thunderstorms.
You are wrong.
I keep saying this, but somewhere between 60-80% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. That doesn't leave any room to worry about climate change. You're worried about paying rent that month, buying food and keeping your car running so you can make it to work one more day.
If you want people to think and care long term you have to make sure their short term needs are taken care of. Otherwise they're vulnerable to being manipulated into doing terrible things that are perfectly rational when taken in the context of their completely messed up and irrational lives.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The increase of forest fires is due to humans moving into forested areas and starting fires (inadvertently or on purpose). Yes, it really is THAT simple.
Incorrect... The cause of forest fires changes depending on location. In North-West Canada, the current forest fires are almost all caused by lightning. Where climate change comes into play is that in the previous decade, temperatures never really dropped in the winter. Because of this, the population of pine beetles exploded and killed all the trees. Entire forests turned red / brown in the course of a few years. Now 10 years later, those trees have dried out and are the perfect fuel for lightning strikes.
It is the change in the climate that generated the conditions required for the fires. How they were started is irrelevant - the starting of a fire is impossible to avoid. If it is not lightning it will be a spark from a tire. What we must avoid are the underlying conditions that allow the fire to be destructive. Climate change plays a big part in these conditions.
But if you can look at that and aren't the least bit alarmed
If you can look at XKCD and take it seriously, you're already done.
Note that Nuclear power stations require cooling water and this is one reason they are located near the coasts and rivers. However, the recent heatwave caused several European Nuclear power plants and coal fired power plants to be temporarily shutdown or run at reduced power because the outside water was too hot to be effective at cooling for the steam turbines. This means electricity generated using steam turbines is not immune from the effects of climate change.
Any steam based power plant will need access to water for cooling, this includes current second generation nuclear and most or all third generation nuclear. Many fourth generation nuclear reactor designs have the option for air cooling, the turbines don't run on steam but on hot air. By running at much higher temperatures, temperatures that water cooled plants can not safely attain, brings the option for cooling by forced air while producing power and unpowered convection cooling in a shutdown. Without water there's no reduction of power output because the water reservoir gets too hot. Without water there is no possibility of a flash boil explosion like at Chernobyl, or a hydrogen gas explosion like at Fukushima.
Just because fourth generation nuclear promises so much does not mean we should not invest in third generation nuclear. In fact it is quite possible we will need the third generation nuclear reactors to breed the fuel for "jump starting" the fourth generation reactors. Solid fuel heavy water moderated reactors are very safe, and offer fuel breeding capability that in some cases outperform fourth generation molten salt reactors. These "gen 3+" or "gen 3.5" reactors is where we should be heading in the short term, while we prototype fourth generation reactors that free us from the need for water cooling.
I would like to see Nuclear power, renewables and energy storage be the final solution.
I have to wonder about the value of wind and solar power in an age with inexpensive energy storage. I keep hearing on how once we figure out how to build grid scale electrical batteries that wind and solar power will be able to replace base load power like coal and nuclear. I find the opposite to be true, once we have grid scale batteries then base load power will be able to displace wind and sun through lowered costs. I believe that wind will have a place on the future electrical grid as it is quite inexpensive. Solar on the other hand will likely be in the realm of off grid power, like satellites and pocket calculators.
Lets hope Nuclear fusion power becomes a thing sooner rather than later.
Fusion has been proven to be so elusive that I find little reason to consider this viable within the lifespan of anyone alive today. There is simply too much we must learn and in the mean time we have ample supply of cheap and clean fission power. I can see value in doing research in fusion for the sake of discovering how the universe works, just not much value as any kind of energy source. I have seen consideration of fusion as a source of neutrons to breed fuel for fission, and/or disposing of some of the more problematic fission products, so that alone might make it very valuable in energy. Getting fusion to be energy positive is likely to require a reactor so large that we simply cannot afford to build one, even with the financial backing from the government of a large nation.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Plenty of scientists are saying there is not a scientific link between the fires and climate change, even Vox ran a story with that.
Maybe they should go talk to the experienced firefighters that say that fire is behaving in ways they have never seen before. Things are changing and barring ALIENS! the only reasonable explanation is climate change...
Surprisingly, Aliens or climate change aren't the only possible explanations. I know, hard to believe but hear me out.
It's beginning to be widely accepted that fighting forest fires has contributed to making the big ones worse. When we stop small forest fires, that means dead fall and dried planet matter continue to accumulate. It turns out, larger trees used to survive small forest fires, and the smaller fires cleared out the dead fall and dried material. With us stopping those fires though, enough tinder is accumulating that when a fire does hit, it's bigger, stronger and worse than ever before.
I know, citation please, so here's a fire forest researcher from UBC from a region of Canada where we fight multiple forest fires every year saying the same thing.
Before you get too sad though, there is a silver lining. The faculty member mentions that changing forest fire management might be opposed by standard logging industry practices, so we can still hate on corporate/industrial causes for the problem, hurray!
The question isn't whether there are other contributing factors to the California wildfires, I'm pretty sure I've been hearing about the deadfall thing for the past 20 years.
It's also not a question whether the recent hot and dry climate in California is a significant contributing factor, because the answer is obviously.
The question is whether climate change is a significant contributing factor to the recent hot and dry climate in California, and that's a somewhat trickier question.
First you need to decide whether climate change really does make events like that more likely, and if you've made that determination you need to decide how comfortable you are trying to justify it in a peer-reviewed paper. Not all climatologists are agreed that the science is quite at that point.
I stole this Sig
Stand back, I'm going to try SHOWING MY IGNORANCE WITH A SHITTY T-SHIRT.
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
But if you can look at that and aren't the least bit alarmed
If you can look at XKCD and take it seriously, you're already done.
Randall Munroe, the author of XKCD, has scientific credentials. He majored and graduated in physics and worked for NASA before devoting himself full-time to his web comic.
Munroe's style is whimsical and sometimes irreverent, but he does take considerable effort to get the science right. So yes, I can look at XKCD and take it seriously.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
That isn't true. Binary asshole over there said is was 90%, so it's 90%.
Wrong, jackass. The fires in CA are an issue because we no longer properly manage the land. Everything is protected bullshit full of nothing but dead, dry plants ready to burst into flame. Even if you want to assume they're all caused by humans, the fact is our policy of INACTION is what turns a small fire into hundreds of thousands of acres of hell.
Maybe they should go talk to the experienced firefighters that say that fire is behaving in ways they have never seen before. Things are changing and barring ALIENS! the only reasonable explanation is climate change
Please try to keep up. It's DEWs.
The fires in CA are being set intentionally. They burn incredibly selectively, and much hotter than any natural fire or any of the fuel in its way.
Why is this not modded up? Why is it so hard for people to understand that belief in AGW is compatible with dismissal of hysteria over weather and relatively short term climate changes? Too many "sciency" techies that really don't have perspective on the science.
Perspective, by the way, means here to step back, out of your bubble, and see the bigger picture -- what the science of climatology is really like, and most importantly, the larger time scales involved in measuring this effect.
This whole issue is getting so warped by politics, lazy journalism, and semi-religious fervor. The news people could just go ask a decent climatologist, "Hey, is this hot summer due to AGW?", but the answer is too complicated for a news bite, so they re-ask "Well could it be related to AGW?", and the answer is "well, sort of...", and then that becomes "Climate Boffin Blames Humans for Summer Swelter".
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
I can't believe you got modded up for such a lazy answer. Meta-moderation badly needed.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
Question: which number is larger: the amount spent in the U.S. on all government-funded research in a month, or the amount spent on oil in the U.S. in a day?
Trick question because these numbers are roughly comparable. In other words, the amount of money in oil dwarfs the amount in research, not even counting all the oil-related spending.
So, who has the most incentive to lie?
Oil, gas and to a decreasing extent, coal companies have a sweet deal: Ongoing revenue from drilling, fracking, digging and processing to convert raw material into convenient packaged products (gas, gasoline, electricity, etc.). All that increasingly automated "work" is crazy profitable.
Renewable sources do not have that benefit. Other than equipment maintenance and fees charged for managing storage, there is no charge for the inbound energy. All those watts are streaming into the the PV cells or through the turbines without digging or processing.
The incumbent energy "providers" understand this economic reality and will kill to preserve their hold on it.
That means literally nothing in terms of validity of the content.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Temperature of the planet 20K years ago:
grain of salt.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Evidence please?
Of course we don't have the luxury of taking 1000 Earths with slightly different conditions and measuring their climates over centuries. But there are established approaches that apply in this situation. As one very oversimplified idea among many, you can exclude part of the data you do have, use the rest to initialise your model and see how accurately it reproduces the missing data. You can repeat this by excluding a different part of the data and running the same process. Your hypothesis is that your model tracks reality within quantified limits. This can be disproved.
There is no "cheap" nuclear power. Fission is a disaster from mining start to disposal four million years end.
Now, fusion, and we developed working fusion reactors, which you're not supposed to know about, is actually fairly reasonable, other than the radioactive reactor shell and some of the salts.
Stop pretending otherwise, n00b
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
How much coal would you like to burn mining the uranium and refining it? Solar/wind are *far* better options.
Citation needed.
Here's mine:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The IPCC has shown that nuclear has a smaller footprint than any form of solar power. Nuclear is marginally worse than onshore wind, as soon as you run out of land to plant windmills the carbon footprint for wind grows considerably for the concrete and steel needed to anchor those windmills to the floor of the bay. Hydroelectric beats them all, which is great until you've dammed up all the rivers and are still needing more power.
Seriously, this carbon footprint claim against nuclear power is really old and tired and easily proven false. Even the biggest advocates of solar and wind find it very hard to "prove" that nuclear has a larger CO2 footprint.
I know that much of the CO2 output for nuclear comes from the concrete used to build it. This is also true for wind and solar thermal. If we can reduce the CO2 footprint of wind and solar through low carbon sources of concrete, such as mining basalt instead of limestone for making it, then those same processes can be applied to the concrete for nuclear. Mining the steel, aluminum, copper, silicon, or whatever for the windmills and solar panels has a CO2 cost. Same for mining the uranium for nuclear power. If there is a means to reduce the CO2 footprint for mining then this can be applied equally to nuclear, wind, and solar.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I agree, though with the recent revelations about recycling, it seems to be a losing battle, and that we need a different method of dealing with waste products. I remember years ago hearing about a guy who invented a "refinery" of sorts to recycle ALL refuse in garbage dumps. So instead of all this extra work we do to recycle, it all goes into the dump, then gets ground up and "recycled" on an industrial scale at one location.
I suspect the problem was he didn't actually invent it, IOW it didn't work.
In Southwark, we have the waste management facility (fun visit for a nerd on an open day). It takes in the mixed recycling collected in the borough (residents need to separate waste into compostable, recyclable and rubbish with no finer gradation) and sorts it into glass, paper, plastic, aluminium, steel and rubbish mostly automatically.
The machines get it to abut 97%, then a relatively small number of hand sorters pick out the rest getting it to about 99.5%.
These sorting machines exist now and are operational on a city scale. I'm sure if someone had something better, they'd switch over.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
nuclear power (which doesn't work well when the water heats up a lot)
This is true of any thermal power plant. But when it happens to a nuclear one, people panic and run aronud in circles with their hair on fire.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Why? Whether it's caused by humans or not, it is still changing. Doesn't it make sense to try and adapt? At the very least, buying a beachfront house might be a bad idea.
They're called democratic facts, we get to vote on them.
As was evidenced by the recent heatwaves in Europe, this is far more critical than those not in the energy industry realize.
They literally had to shut down a few in multiple countries.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I'll never get over AL Gore's $20,000 a month energy bill for his mansion. What a fucking douche. The Nobel prize is trash. In one swoop they award the peace prize to a war a president who oversaw the worst escalation of world strife, directly resulting from his policies and to another mainstream politician who rode the curtail of environmental fear mongering to gain control over people while he sucked down enough gas, coal, electricity to power 100 wasteful American families for a year.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Mod correct
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Ocean turns out far more green house gases than we ever could hope to. Phase of natural warming causes and combines with methane release from the ocean and ice sequestered carbon. Your little tailpipe boogie man is not the problem. Leave people alone.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Lost me at the beginning of your second stupid paragraph. You will never convince enough people to alter behavior in any appreciaable way. Switch gears.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Yours. The one who glibly ignores all context and pretends the two sides are equivalent. That's the one who's dealing in "alternative facts". (Also, the one who can't use apostrophes -- that's usually a good clue.)
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
Of course the actual solutions to climate change
Are a lovely mix. You don't need to be living in the stone age, but you don't need to go rolling coal down the street, leaving your A/C on 20C while you're out, and have the TV running in an empty room either.
We can do with a lot more waste while we adopt our newer technology.
*less waste. Fuck it's 3am and bedtime.
Most of the fires here in BC are being started by lightning and many of them are in places where there are very few people and in the north, there hasn't been much forestry to change things. Not everywhere is highly populated like the USA.
Two things have been happening, moist springs causing lots of undergrowth and dry summers turning all that undergrowth into tinder.
Now whether it is weather or climate, only time will tell.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
What about in the extreme north where people haven't been doing anything? Not sure about this year but the last few have seen quite a few fires in the North West Territories and the radio reports that a lot of the smoke around here is blowing in from Siberia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Trees do most of their growth in the spring. Lately, at least where I live, the springs have been pretty warm and wet. It's one of the causes of all the fires, lots of undergrowth in the spring then hot summer turns it into dry tinder just waiting for a lightning stroke or cigarette butt to ignite it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Itâ(TM)s not about getting through, most do believe that there is a problem. The solution space however is less defined. Short of killing off a lot of people there is not much of a permanent solution. Technology is helping us, although a lot of extremists want us to go back to 80% of the population farming (which would bring back the feudal systems).
Other solutions are leftist âtake everything from everyone and let the government do its thingâ(TM) (aka communism/Marxism) which if you havenâ(TM)t figured it out yet is always going to end up worse except for the people killing parts, we cannot trust the government do to the right thing and do it efficiently.
So is there an economically sound policy that would help? So far we havenâ(TM)t found it yet. It must be a solution that is cheaper (for it to be more energy efficient). Short of taking away regulations to make more and cheaper nuclear power there isnâ(TM)t much.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
You really are something else aren't you.
You're straight back at it again, patting America on the back for being twice as dirty as China.
Focusing on coal and China again when there are far bigger problems, and far dirtier countries.
If you really cared about AGW you would be focusing on the highest emitting people not the least.
So, was Galileo an intellectual or an anti-intellectual in your mind? If he was the intellectual, what does that make the established intellectuals?
I am sleeping sooooo peacefully.
It's not climate change as much as the environmental assholes that will do anything to prevent logging. I've seen it in Flagstaff. Ponderossa Pines, they are normally about 50' from each other and they wouldn't let the forest service thin them out after the 1980s fires. So they grew up thin and spindly and inevitable catch fire again. Sierra club is a big problem. An organization that depends on donations, so they lie about this.
Let the people that know about this do their job and we won't have this. Listen to people like the Sierra Club and you'll have more of this.
40 years ago it was an earth wrecking ice age coming our way - and proven by science. 18,000 years ago a mile thick chunk of ice that covered all of Canada and much of the northern U.S. - I LIKE warm, much better, thanks to all who have helped warm the planet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... (and Mr. Spock wouldn't lie!)
As I said in a previous post, I only accept data presented in peer-reviewed papers.
Really. That link I posted had a reference section with eight peer-reviewed publications; did you read them? Did you even look at the link?
Even some NASA data has not been reviewed.
Really. Let's start with GISS: 2018: https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/yea...
2017: https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/yea...
2016: https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/yea...
2015: https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/yea...
That's just four years.
I wonder also how many of these scientists are climatologists and of the climatologists what percentage are dependant on government grants.
So, you won't read papers about climate that are written by climatologists. You are working very hard to avoid reading any data at all, I see. So, you must like the data from the Berkeley Earth project, which is independent: http://berkeleyearth.org/
First I will state that I have not looked at the data. I caution others to make sure that they reference peer-reviewed studies before making claims.
Which is to warn people, then, to pay attention to the actual climate scientists, who are doing careful and well-documented work, and not the various bloggers who post all sorts of garbage with no review at all.
It is very difficult to hypothesis climate change since the earth continuously goes through climatic cycles.
And understanding what causes these climate changes is the actual genesis of climate science. This is what climate scientists do.
So 1 or 2 seasons of fires in California do not represent an irreversible trend. There are other factors affecting the fires in California that will be identified once a root cause forensic review has been completed.
True enough. One hot summer doesn't mean anything, nor, for that matter does one cold winter. And one or two seasons of hot dry weather in California doesn't indicate global warming either; climate is long term. So I'll agree with you on this one.
40 years ago it was an earth wrecking ice age coming our way - and proven by science.
Except the myth that 40 years ago science was warning the world about a coming ice age is just that; a myth: http://web.archive.org/web/201...
https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/that-70s-myth-did-climate-science-really-call-for-a-coming-ice-age/
http://science.time.com/2013/06/06/sorry-a-time-magazine-cover-did-not-predict-a-coming-ice-age/
The first link was to a Goddard press conference. The next four links were to the list of all publications that Goddard published in each of the last 4 years. The last link was to the Berkley site pointing to no papers because the link was to their home page. So if you want me to spend days trawling through documents because you decided to send me on a snipe hunt (google it). No not me, I'm stopping here.
Clearly everyone should do their part. But some people play a much bigger part in causing the problem than others. If an Ethiopian halves his CO2 is anyone going to notice? If an Indian a Chinaman and an American halved their CO2, which is best for the environment? Who has the most fat to cut, who can best afford it?
Some people, Windy especially, think there should be differing standards people should live by. If you are already rich you should be entitled to a better lifestyle than poorer countries, and there is no leeway for them to catch up and be like him.
Take cars for example. Americans have 910 cars per 1000 people. China 154 India 50 Togo 2. How many cars should be 'allowed'. Windy will tell those people they aren't allowed to have cars because it will make the CO2 go up. He will also praise the US if it's cars go from 910 to 900 because it's going in the right direction. But he never asks Americans to take 7 or 8 out of every 9 cars off the road, and he would never allow China to have 5x as many cars or India 10x as many, even if they still had less. He's entitled and those other people aren't.
Someone will say just get electric cars, which China is trying to do. But they still need to be produced, the electricity still needs to be provided etc.
And that's just a simple example with easy to find numbers. Take any other form of consumption to compare and it will be the same.
Air conditioning
Food
Housing
Consuming junk in general.
Western lifestyles and America in particular, produce more CO2. Why should some people be allowed to have a western lifestyle while telling others that they cant. It's completely hypocritical, and just reeks entitlement.
It's not possible to have any significant effect by some biggest actor alone.
But it is. If America was more like China and dropped from 16 t per person down to 7.5 like China. It would drop total world CO2 levels by about 7%. A bit more than 7 UKs, or 3 Germanys, or an India. That's a noticeable change. But they will never do it, they are entitled to their stuff. Better to try and force someone else to make the sacrifice on their behalf, all while pretending they are helping by cutting a tiny bit.
The first link was to a Goddard press conference.
The first link was this one. I said "That link I posted had a reference section with eight peer-reviewed publications; did you read them?".
Here, copied cut-and-past from that link, are those references listed in the link.
You said you only read peer-reviewed papers. I told you that the link I had posted had a reference list of peer reviewed papers. So: read them.
The next four links were to the list of all publications that Goddard published in each of the last 4 years.
Yes, that's right. You wanted peer-reviewed papers, there's a list of several hundred.
The last link was to the Berkley site pointing to no papers because the link was to their home page.
You asked about climate science funded y government grants, so I posted a link to the BEST group, which is independently funded.
What you seem to be doing is coming up with any possible excuse to dismiss the science. First you dismiss science because you "only accept peer reviewed papers", but when I send links to peer reviewed papers you come up with other excuses. It's pretty clear that your only actual objective is to avoid actually learning anything about the science.
You seem to have gotten very worked up at someone's response to an XKCD comic. Settle down, take a deep breath, and get some perspective. No scientists were harmed in the posting of that comment. No one's data was fondled in an untoward manner.
If you want to be alarmed at science, go ahead. But to get alarmed at THAT XKCD graph is a matter of faith in the impending doom of climate change, more than the science.
I didn't say he has the same gravitas as a climate scientist who has spent her/his career studying climate change, and has multiple refereed papers to her/his name. I said I'm willing to take him seriously. His word alone obviously is not enough to inform public policy. However, he does illustrate the issue in a way that is useful.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
If you're not alarmed, you're either ignoring the data, or your stupid.
Why do you need the other person to be alarmed? That person has no control over anything except their own self. Even if all humans decided to impoverish themselves and not eat any food, not use HVAC to modify temperatures, etc., it would not stop the pollution. Energy will be used, regardless of any individuals. Governments will continue using computers to control their populations and weapons in an attempt at controlling their neighbors. Businesses that provide services to those governments need electricity and to emit more pollution in the creation of those services to the governments.
Long story short, the individual has jack and shit they can do about pollution other than minimizing what they throw away... but even then, planned obsolescence guarantees the individual will have to throw stuff away.
I have no control over how the energy that I use is created. Supposedly, I could buy "pure" wind or solar, but as a consumer, the prices do not reflect any such choice. The cost has been manipulated until there is no value or negative value in choosing alternative energy.
Go ahead and keep screaming at individuals. It makes no difference other than to make you look like a zealot trying to convince everyone that the Second Coming is at hand. I can't make any company, much less all of them, change how they do things. Climate change is occurring and there is nothing any average individual can do about it. This is purely in "government controlled" territory, mostly because the individual has been disenfranchised. If the government (whichever government you look at) doesn't care, then nothing is going to happen.
Go ahead and tell me to write my congressional representatives. I will tell you that I get smarmy form-letter messages thanking me for my support of whatever it is that the congress person is doing, not even addressing my concerns.
I guess I could run for office, but I am not a pure snowflake fallen from heaven, nor the money to make it seem like I am, so there is zero chance of me winning any significant office.
So yeah, go ahead and keep trying to convince individuals that Climate Change is a thing and that they can do something about it. Even the fuckfaces who roll coal aren't having a significant effect on the environment.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
But if you get rid of all the swampland and marshes where do you think the water is going to go???
To a lake or ocean, through a river? Was that a trick question? ;)
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
Intentional? Nah. Oil companies are not run by mustache-twirling evil overlords hellbent on destroying earth. They're just run by people who care about profit. If it was profitable to protect the environment, they'd do that, unfortunately it's profitable to turn the planet into an uninhabitable hellhole. That's basically all there is to it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The XKCD image shows the time that I care about: The time humans populate the planet. Ya know, in the Hadean period the earth was mostly still made of molten lava, and certainly hotter than today, with LOTS more CO2 and practically no O2 in the atmosphere. But guess what: No humans tried to survive on that planet.
Aside of that, I don't care. I'm on my way out and I don't have kids. If you do, well, I'd prepare some sort of good excuse if I was you. You'll need it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What the fuck are you talking about? I don't know whether you have noticed it, but the world's moving right, not left.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.