Even if we solve the problem of anthropogenic climate change there's probably already at least 10 feet of sea level rise built into the current conditions. It takes centuries for major ice masses (Antarctic, Greenland, etc) to fully adjust to new temperature regimes.
And I would throw your observer bias comment back in your face. You appear eager to accept anything that appears to be evidence against the effects of CO2 on our climate and oceans.
As far as the oysters, if it's a recurring problem how come it doesn't appear to have been a problem until recently for oyster farms that have been in existence for decades?
Mod parent up. I was going to post the same thing. You can see the effect in North America because land north of New Jersey on the East Coast is still rising from the end of the last glaciation while south of NJ land is sinking in a seesaw effect.
The Canadian Shield is still rising from the end of the last glaciation around 12,000 years ago. Lake Champlain used to be part of the Champlain Sea until isostatic rebound caused it to rise above sea level around 10,000 years ago.
I was merely pointing out that without other information calling it a trace gas that has minimal effect is unscientific and meaningless. If you have science based information that climate scientists are wrong in their estimation of CO2's effects let's hear it.
The problem is an issue from British Columbia through Washington into Oregon but I suppose you would consider all of that area local too. Here is an article from Yale360 on the subject. If you read the comments though you'll like the ones from Patric Moffitt as he supports your position. There are a number of factors in oyster larvae mortality, acidification being only one of them. Since I'm no expert on the subject I'll continue to listen to what scientists studying the problem have to say but there appears to be no doubt that acidification is going to affect ocean ecosystems as it progresses.
I probably shouldn't bother because I think your mind is made up but I'll mention a few.
First, the reduction in Arctic summer sea ice is affecting northern temperate zone weather and is probably a factor in the weird weather we've experienced over the past several years.
Ocean acidification is starting to affect crustaceans in the oceans such as oyster farms on the Oregon coast having trouble with larvae mortality. A just published paper in Nature finds that acidification will reduce the release of dimethylsulphide (DMS) by phytoplankton. DMS is an aerosol that helps in forming clouds and generally has a cooling effect so less of it will be a positive feedback of global warming.
There have been drought conditions most years in the American Southwest since 2000, so much so that both Lake Powell and Lake Mead on the Colorado River are around 100 feet below full pool now. They are cutting releases from Lake Powell for the first time in response. This is a predicted effect of global warming.
Those are just a few of many examples that could be listed.
It's not enough to just bring up volcanoes, water vapor, solar activity, etc. Those are all factors in the climate and no climate scientist has ever said they aren't. What you have to show is that changes in those factors are enough to drive the majority of observed changes in climate and they haven't been enough. At best maybe 20% of the observed changes can be attributed to natural factors over the past 30 years.
So when you say "It's volcanoes or the Sun" and we say "No it's not" it might be better to answer "Those are possibilities but we haven't seen enough variation in them to account for the observed changes".
So far almost none of the predictions have "completely failed to pan out".
Even if Antarctica becomes ice free it's still going to have several months of near total darkness every winter and it will still get cold because of that. I'm not sure how attractive a place it will be. With 220 feet of sea level rise the hill I live on in the Willamette Valley becomes an island in Willamette Sound and Oregon loses a substantial amount of agricultural land. Florida disappears and the shore along the gulf coast moves tens or hundreds of miles inland from its present location.
It's already reached the point where it's disrupting oyster growers in my state.
I doubt you or anyone else has even the least bit of evidence for that.
I find the IPCC reports are pretty conservative in general. Yes, there's the infamous incident about the Himalayan glaciers but that's just one piece of information out of thousands provided. It was corrected once the error was found.
Your "pea souper" comment reminds me that one other point that gets missed in these proposals to inject SO2 and other aerosols into the atmosphere is that it will reduce solar radiation at the surface which will be detrimental to plant growth and crop yields.
I've never seen why cutting CO2 has to "halt" the economic progress of the world. It certainly changes it and I think that's what a lot of contrarians are afraid of. They lack the imagination to see how we can make those changes. But for the most part energy is energy and it doesn't matter so much how it is generated.
Well, one reason might be that the last time CO2 levels were over 800 ppm there were no ice caps and sea level was over 200 feet higher than now. Admittedly that would take several thousand years to come to pass but it will be inevitable at those C02 levels. Another reason would be the ocean acidification that would accompany the rise in CO2. It's already reached the point where it's disrupting oyster growers in my state. It could reach the point where it seriously messes up the phytoplankton which supply 2/3 of the oxygen to the atmosphere. We just don't know but I think it's better to be safe than sorry. For a more complete listing of the possible effects you can read the IPCC Working Group II reports, a new on which is due out in the next year.
You can maybe sorta say that if all you do is pay attention to some of the surface temperature records. But when you include the oceans and take account of the total energy in the complete system the warming pretty much continues unabated. The fact that the last 7 or 8 years includes the lowest solar cycle in a century and that La Nina's have dominated during that period helps explain the leveling off of surface temperatures.
A trace change in a trace gas will not cause exponential changes. It never has and it never will.
Then you'll have no objection if I force you to breath a 270 ppm concentration of cyanide*. After all it's far less than the 400 ppm concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.
*270 ppm of cyanide gas will kill you within minutes. Now that's what I call an exponential change.
What is the societal cost of cutting energy usage?
Wrong question. It should be "What is the societal cost of transforming our energy production from primarily fossil fuel based to primarily renewable based?". I think it takes lack of imagination to believe it's not possible to do that.
Oh Snarfy, you don't have a very good sense of time do you? You really haven't paid much attention to the time scales the scientists attach to those predictions. For instance most cryologists forecast an ice free Arctic ocean in the 2040's but at the rate it's been going since 2007 maybe sometime in the 2020's is more realistic. 30 feet of sea level rise is probably at least 200 years out and the complete melting of Greenland's ice caps at least 500 years. But why get in the way of a good snark?
Those volcanic gases are only transient in the atmosphere and wash out after a few years. Who's going to pay for the continued pumping of those gases into the atmosphere in perpetuity, increasing as the amount of CO2 increases?
It's more like people on the contrarian side are scared spitless of what the required changes in the economy will entail. Their current comfortable lifestyle is more important to them than the potential destruction of human civilization 50 years from now.
Scientific consensus comes when the scientists stop arguing about something because none (or at least very few) disagree about a subject and it's time to move on to other things they can argue about. It's not something that is imposed but instead it just develops organically.
Slashdot Mirror
Even if we solve the problem of anthropogenic climate change there's probably already at least 10 feet of sea level rise built into the current conditions. It takes centuries for major ice masses (Antarctic, Greenland, etc) to fully adjust to new temperature regimes.
Growing tobacco is not difficult. Lots of people brew their own beer and wine.
Quantum mechanics begs to differ with you.
And I would throw your observer bias comment back in your face. You appear eager to accept anything that appears to be evidence against the effects of CO2 on our climate and oceans.
As far as the oysters, if it's a recurring problem how come it doesn't appear to have been a problem until recently for oyster farms that have been in existence for decades?
Of course not. What makes it real is empirical evidence in the real world.
That's nothing. On Antarctica the ice is up to 4.8 km thick.
Mod parent up. I was going to post the same thing. You can see the effect in North America because land north of New Jersey on the East Coast is still rising from the end of the last glaciation while south of NJ land is sinking in a seesaw effect.
I think you'd have to say it was a marginal farming colony. I've never heard any indication they had enough surplus to export.
The Canadian Shield is still rising from the end of the last glaciation around 12,000 years ago. Lake Champlain used to be part of the Champlain Sea until isostatic rebound caused it to rise above sea level around 10,000 years ago.
I was merely pointing out that without other information calling it a trace gas that has minimal effect is unscientific and meaningless. If you have science based information that climate scientists are wrong in their estimation of CO2's effects let's hear it.
The problem is an issue from British Columbia through Washington into Oregon but I suppose you would consider all of that area local too. Here is an article from Yale360 on the subject. If you read the comments though you'll like the ones from Patric Moffitt as he supports your position. There are a number of factors in oyster larvae mortality, acidification being only one of them. Since I'm no expert on the subject I'll continue to listen to what scientists studying the problem have to say but there appears to be no doubt that acidification is going to affect ocean ecosystems as it progresses.
I probably shouldn't bother because I think your mind is made up but I'll mention a few.
First, the reduction in Arctic summer sea ice is affecting northern temperate zone weather and is probably a factor in the weird weather we've experienced over the past several years.
Ocean acidification is starting to affect crustaceans in the oceans such as oyster farms on the Oregon coast having trouble with larvae mortality. A just published paper in Nature finds that acidification will reduce the release of dimethylsulphide (DMS) by phytoplankton. DMS is an aerosol that helps in forming clouds and generally has a cooling effect so less of it will be a positive feedback of global warming.
There have been drought conditions most years in the American Southwest since 2000, so much so that both Lake Powell and Lake Mead on the Colorado River are around 100 feet below full pool now. They are cutting releases from Lake Powell for the first time in response. This is a predicted effect of global warming.
Those are just a few of many examples that could be listed.
It's not enough to just bring up volcanoes, water vapor, solar activity, etc. Those are all factors in the climate and no climate scientist has ever said they aren't. What you have to show is that changes in those factors are enough to drive the majority of observed changes in climate and they haven't been enough. At best maybe 20% of the observed changes can be attributed to natural factors over the past 30 years.
So when you say "It's volcanoes or the Sun" and we say "No it's not" it might be better to answer "Those are possibilities but we haven't seen enough variation in them to account for the observed changes".
So far almost none of the predictions have "completely failed to pan out".
Even if Antarctica becomes ice free it's still going to have several months of near total darkness every winter and it will still get cold because of that. I'm not sure how attractive a place it will be. With 220 feet of sea level rise the hill I live on in the Willamette Valley becomes an island in Willamette Sound and Oregon loses a substantial amount of agricultural land. Florida disappears and the shore along the gulf coast moves tens or hundreds of miles inland from its present location.
It's already reached the point where it's disrupting oyster growers in my state.
I doubt you or anyone else has even the least bit of evidence for that.
Evidence here.
I find the IPCC reports are pretty conservative in general. Yes, there's the infamous incident about the Himalayan glaciers but that's just one piece of information out of thousands provided. It was corrected once the error was found.
Your "pea souper" comment reminds me that one other point that gets missed in these proposals to inject SO2 and other aerosols into the atmosphere is that it will reduce solar radiation at the surface which will be detrimental to plant growth and crop yields.
I've never seen why cutting CO2 has to "halt" the economic progress of the world. It certainly changes it and I think that's what a lot of contrarians are afraid of. They lack the imagination to see how we can make those changes. But for the most part energy is energy and it doesn't matter so much how it is generated.
Well, one reason might be that the last time CO2 levels were over 800 ppm there were no ice caps and sea level was over 200 feet higher than now. Admittedly that would take several thousand years to come to pass but it will be inevitable at those C02 levels. Another reason would be the ocean acidification that would accompany the rise in CO2. It's already reached the point where it's disrupting oyster growers in my state. It could reach the point where it seriously messes up the phytoplankton which supply 2/3 of the oxygen to the atmosphere. We just don't know but I think it's better to be safe than sorry. For a more complete listing of the possible effects you can read the IPCC Working Group II reports, a new on which is due out in the next year.
You can maybe sorta say that if all you do is pay attention to some of the surface temperature records. But when you include the oceans and take account of the total energy in the complete system the warming pretty much continues unabated. The fact that the last 7 or 8 years includes the lowest solar cycle in a century and that La Nina's have dominated during that period helps explain the leveling off of surface temperatures.
A trace change in a trace gas will not cause exponential changes. It never has and it never will.
Then you'll have no objection if I force you to breath a 270 ppm concentration of cyanide*. After all it's far less than the 400 ppm concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.
*270 ppm of cyanide gas will kill you within minutes. Now that's what I call an exponential change.
What is the societal cost of cutting energy usage?
Wrong question. It should be "What is the societal cost of transforming our energy production from primarily fossil fuel based to primarily renewable based?". I think it takes lack of imagination to believe it's not possible to do that.
Oh Snarfy, you don't have a very good sense of time do you? You really haven't paid much attention to the time scales the scientists attach to those predictions. For instance most cryologists forecast an ice free Arctic ocean in the 2040's but at the rate it's been going since 2007 maybe sometime in the 2020's is more realistic. 30 feet of sea level rise is probably at least 200 years out and the complete melting of Greenland's ice caps at least 500 years. But why get in the way of a good snark?
Those volcanic gases are only transient in the atmosphere and wash out after a few years. Who's going to pay for the continued pumping of those gases into the atmosphere in perpetuity, increasing as the amount of CO2 increases?
It's more like people on the contrarian side are scared spitless of what the required changes in the economy will entail. Their current comfortable lifestyle is more important to them than the potential destruction of human civilization 50 years from now.
When the effects of anthropogenic climate change starts hitting you in the wallet, maybe then you'll wake up, but of course it'll be too late.
FTFY
Scientific consensus comes when the scientists stop arguing about something because none (or at least very few) disagree about a subject and it's time to move on to other things they can argue about. It's not something that is imposed but instead it just develops organically.