It's getting hot in here....

daheff

Firstly before I go any further I have to state that I do not think humans should be polluting the earth with all the hydrocarbons/methane/cfcs etc that we are.

But I'm not convinced about the (magnitude of) human influence on the global warming debate (or climate change as its now been renamed).

BorneTobyWilde wrote: »

Climate change, yet they always said things like this is hottest day since 1908 . So it was hotter back then eh ??????

Grayson wrote: »

This time they're saying hottest ever recorded. As they have been for the last year. If you want to find an example that's similar to this year you'd have to go back before humanity. To find a time when there's this much carbon dioxide in the air you'd have to go back millions of years.

Part of the problem is that we only have temperature records back to the late 1800s.

What was the average temperature of the Earth back when there were Dinosaurs roaming the lands? They were cold blooded reptiles (for the most part)....and if my zoology is any good cold blooded reptiles need hot sunshine to function. So by this example the temperature of the Earth was warmer than now in the past. But we also know that it was colder too (Ice ages & glacial lakes/valleys etc), so we can see it was also colder.

Maybe its a natural cycle that we are part of and haven't been around long enough to understand the length of the cycle yet?

Wibbs wrote: »

Or it could very easily go the other way. Fresh melt water pumping into the north atlantic drift that currently(ouch) keeps our weather extremely mild could shut off. Check out our latitude and compare us to places along a similar latitude. Warmer wetter summers and bitterly frigid winters would likely be in our future if that current slows or shuts down.

And maybe this is the Earths way or reregulating itself...more ice over the atlantic in winter would lead to suns rays being reflected off the surface of the earth and a slow down of global warming?

ardinn wrote: »

At one point during the last ice age where icewas 2 miles high over greenland - irelands shore on the west was 400 miles further out than at present - that was only 12,500 years ago! think about that for a second - 400 miles!!!

and where is this ice now? Stands to reason that the Earth has 'warmed' since then...and that can't be man-made...there weren't enough of us back then burning oil (or any).


Now personally, i think 10s of thousands of years ago comet strikes & large volcanic erruptions caused huge clouds to go into the atmosphere which reflected away the sun's rays -which led to cooling of the Earth. Not been so many large comet strikes lately...nor too many large volcanic erruptions (apart from that one in Iceland...and Krakatoa in late 1880s - both proven to have reduced the global temperature for a while).


Maybe the Earth is now moving back to where its natural temperature should be??

Austria!

daheff wrote: »

But I'm not convinced about the (magnitude of) human influence on the global warming debate (or climate change as its now been renamed).

Well fine, but you're disagreeing with all the experts, and clearly haven't even given the issue much thought.

"Hey maybe there's a natural cycle and we don't understand it."

That's a very interesting idea you just had. I wonder if any of the 1000s of scientists who work on the climate (and they are convinced about the magnitude of human influence btw) have ever had that idea and then found out anything about it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles

Oh hey, turns out yes.

Wibbs

daheff wrote: »

Part of the problem is that we only have temperature records back to the late 1800s.

Not quite. We can see temperature and carbon dioxide levels going way back. For example with ice cores. Even art can tell us a lot, EG the paintings of the "little ice age" in Europe. The archaeological and paleontological record also shows us good indicators of average temperatures when we look at the flora and fauna of times past.

What was the average temperature of the Earth back when there were Dinosaurs roaming the lands? They were cold blooded reptiles (for the most part)....

Warmer on average and with higher oxygen levels(and most weren't "cold blooded".

Maybe its a natural cycle that we are part of and haven't been around long enough to understand the length of the cycle yet?

Nope again. We can look at the long natural cycles and see we have had an effect. For a start it looks like we influenced the ice ages cycle as we should be in one now if the previous cycles are anything to go by.

And maybe this is the Earths way or reregulating itself...more ice over the atlantic in winter would lead to suns rays being reflected off the surface of the earth and a slow down of global warming?

Eh…nope. The ice melts and releases huge quantities of fresh water into the oceans. This is not good. Never mind less ice reflecting less solar radiation back into space.

Stands to reason that the Earth has 'warmed' since then...and that can't be man-made...there weren't enough of us back then burning oil (or any).

It seems it was "man made" or enough to head off another cooling period and extend the interglacial. Burning oil not required. Europe was covered in forest from the arctic circle to the Mediterranean. Where do you think that all went? Answer we cleared it and burnt it in huge quantities since the neolithic(late stone age). When you see those story of Jesus films around Easter on the telly and they show him preaching the epistles to the apostles in dry arid near desert? When he was actually around it was far more covered in trees and shrubs. Go to Greece, especially some of the islands and you'll see large expanses of ancient terraces that once grew food, now barren and rocky. One of the biggest reasons the Romans kept expanding their empire was in the search for more timber for the empire. Their scholars wrote countless reports and books on the subject. They were increasingly running out of their own supply. The famous "cedars of Lebanon"? Only a small handful left. Humans have left a huge impact on the landscape and have been doing so for many thousands of years.

Special Circumstances

HellSquirrel wrote: »

I...don't follow any of that. What?

Ah, feigned incomprehension. Avoid the awkward bits. You relied to my earlier account of the last time I asked why the fck aren't we doing anything significant if we are on track for 6degrees in 80years time. You saw that I was met with vague vague answers on what will happen and what we should do.


I'm saying if it's so serious, why aren't we treating it seriously? It's either serious and we should do something, or its not and we can kick the can down the road.

Instead what we seem to have is high priests who like preaching to everyone out of a sense of self righteousness rather than any practical call to action.

It seems certain people want there to be """""climate deniers"""""" so that they can feel better about themselves without actually having to forego any comforts or conveniences.


Predicting temperature X for year Y is the difficult part to get right, the consequences should be much less vague than people on here make out- is it going to be catastrophic on global terms or not???? Will it make the current influx of refugees to Europe look like a trickle? Where will we put all these people? How will we feed them?

Dr Crayfish

No one is willing to give up anything or live with less stuff, so it's a pointless conversation at this stage. How can a politician get voted in if he promises that we'll need to buy less things or bring in population control?
We will keep going until all hell breaks loose and then try and plaster over the cracks, but eventually I believe this will lead to probably billions of lives being lost through war and starvation, and society taking many steps backwards until we learn to live in a new environment, and then doing it all over again until the planet is f*cked yet again.

gctest50

daheff wrote: »

..........

And maybe this is the Earths way or reregulating itself...more ice over the atlantic in winter would lead to suns rays being reflected off the surface of the earth and a slow down of global warming?

.......

It's iffier than that afaik, the water up there is a halocline - water comes in the Bering strait and the rivers up there
and covers the warmer saltier water coming up from the Atlantic - like a cocktail made of layers of colouredy drinks - this keeps the deep warmer water away from the ice

proper screwed if all that goes wrong


.

HellSquirrel

There are a few misconceptions there though.

daheff wrote: »

Part of the problem is that we only have temperature records back to the late 1800s.

Not quite true; we have regular written records going back to the late 1700s (obviously the further back you go, the more hit and miss they are). We have further chronicaled records going back to the 1100s and before (mostly monks and diarists).

However, that's only a small part of it. And a human in 1690 can only address what he sees in front of him. We also have dendrochronology, which goes back many hundreds of years and in some places, even a thousand or more. We have palynology (the study of pollens), and smart sods can work out growing seasons from that (I never understood palynology that well). Ice-coring is important because as the water freezes, it locks in particles of the atmosphere. From that, it can be ascertained how much CO2 was in the atmosphere. There's a continuous ice core record from Antarctica going back some 800,000 years. And at a much broader scale, there's the geological temperature record which goes back millions of years. So the temperature record (which is just one part of the data available) is a lot more extensive than a couple hundred years!

What was the average temperature of the Earth back when there were Dinosaurs roaming the lands? They were cold blooded reptiles (for the most part)....and if my zoology is any good cold blooded reptiles need hot sunshine to function. So by this example the temperature of the Earth was warmer than now in the past. But we also know that it was colder too (Ice ages & glacial lakes/valleys etc), so we can see it was also colder.

Maybe its a natural cycle that we are part of and haven't been around long enough to understand the length of the cycle yet?

and where is this ice now? Stands to reason that the Earth has 'warmed' since then...and that can't be man-made...there weren't enough of us back then burning oil (or any).

Absolutely, regarding both the heat of the earth during the Cretaceous period (the peak and endpoint of the dinosaur dominant period) and previous ice ages. At a very large scale, the earth's climate is cyclical in nature. It's affected by several things, including planetary movement (how tilted on its axis it is, which results in some latitudes getting consistently more energy from the sun and some less), whether the point in its elliptical orbit around the Sun is closer to or further away from it, and its eccentricity (how circular is its orbit at the moment) all contribute to whether the earth is having a cold period or a warm one.

Currently, we're in an interglacial period. The last ice age ended 20,000 years ago. Eventually, the planet will enter another ice age, whether humans existed or not. However, all the signals from every known influence on these cycles indicate that we should be very slowly cooling from an averagely warm interglacial.

Instead, we appear to be driving multiple causal factors of warming unnaturally high over a very short time. These factors have their own feedback loops and if they hit a tipping point, can self-perpetuate.

And maybe this is the Earths way or reregulating itself...more ice over the atlantic in winter would lead to suns rays being reflected off the surface of the earth and a slow down of global warming?

It is, yeah. Some of them are negative feedback loops. And that some effects have a counterbalance on some others makes the pattern more complicated.

Now personally, i think 10s of thousands of years ago comet strikes & large volcanic erruptions caused huge clouds to go into the atmosphere which reflected away the sun's rays -which led to cooling of the Earth. Not been so many large comet strikes lately...nor too many large volcanic erruptions (apart from that one in Iceland...and Krakatoa in late 1880s - both proven to have reduced the global temperature for a while).


Maybe the Earth is now moving back to where its natural temperature should be??

Yes, that has been a forcing factor in glacial/interglacial periods before; it's strongly influenced by Milankovitch cycles, but they're by no means the only forcing mechanism. And bear in mind that the last ice age was by no means the first one; it's unlikely that the earth would have such a pattern of bombardment, the more likely reason is that there can be a number of causes.

In -this- case, the cause isn't a massive bombardment, or chronic sunspots or high eccentricity; the cause is the massive imbalance we as a species have caused, particularly since the Industrial Revolution, although on a smaller scale before that. Humans have artificially released an incredible amount of carbon in a period so short that the earth's natural balancing mechanisms couldn't cope with it. Instead of that carbon being kept out of the atmosphere, it's been added to it, and that has consequences in terms of the earth's climate.

Just because it happens normally over thousands of years doesn't mean we shouldn't be worried about us doing it. This planet's pretty good to us as it is, it's a "goldilocks" planet. Fcuking around with that is ridiculously dangerous and right now, we're starting to see the consequences.

Sam Kade

Grayson wrote: »

It's nuts. A 20 degree increase. 20 fcuking degrees.

It's more bullsh1t than nuts.

HellSquirrel

Special Circumstances wrote: »

Ah, feigned incomprehension. Avoid the awkward bits. You relied to my earlier account of the last time I asked why the fck aren't we doing anything significant if we are on track for 6degrees in 80years time. You saw that I was met with vague vague answers on what will happen and what we should do.


I'm saying if it's so serious, why aren't we treating it seriously? It's either serious and we should do something, or its not and we can kick the can down the road.

Ah, no, that was actually honest incomprehension. I didn't follow what you said. As for the rest, yeah, good questions. Why the hell aren't we doing something about it, when island nations are already having to evacuate because soon their country won't exist, or when heatwaves kill thousands across Europe and the US (and various other places, but given we're not reacting when it's at home..) Why the unholy hells are people in positions of power downright -lying- about this? How do these people get to smear scientists because they don't like what they're saying when a really unsurprising amount of them are heavily linked to the fossil fuel industries? What's this obsession with eternal economic growth at the cost of many of us being able to live on this planet? And the answer is fcuked if I know.

SEPT 23 1989

I think Ireland will do very well out of this

Dr Crayfish

HellSquirrel wrote: »

Ah, no, that was actually honest incomprehension. I didn't follow what you said. As for the rest, yeah, good questions. Why the hell aren't we doing something about it, when island nations are already having to evacuate because soon their country won't exist, or when heatwaves kill thousands across Europe and the US (and various other places, but given we're not reacting when it's at home..) Why the unholy hells are people in positions of power downright -lying- about this? How do these people get to smear scientists because they don't like what they're saying when a really unsurprising amount of them are heavily linked to the fossil fuel industries? What's this obsession with eternal economic growth at the cost of many of us being able to live on this planet? And the answer is fcuked if I know.

How can they do anything? If the government said we've to use less oil or electricity or purchase less junk, the people would go nuts. As I said in my earlier post, how can a politician be popular if his policies are for us to have less stuff? Some kind of totalitarian state is required to get real results unfortunately which will probably happen as soon as people are starving.

LordSutch

Grayson wrote: »

So the arctic is 20 degrees higher than it should be for this time of year and we have republicans who don't believe in climate change going into government in the US. I wonder if this will change their minds? Probably not.....

Thing is I might also be called a climate change denier (even though I believe in climate change).

Let me explain.

Many people believe in climate change as pert of the natural cycle of the planet, yet these people are called "climate change deiniers" because they don't buy into the 100% 'man made' mantra. Personally speaking I dont believe that man is 100% responsible for this current global warming, because like many others, I believe that the current warming of the globe is a natural occurance as part of a natural cycle of planet Earth & the Sun 'enhanced' & speeded up by man made pollution. < Apparently this opnion makes me a climate change denier too.

K-9

SEPT 23 1989 wrote: »

I think Ireland will do very well out of this

Won't cost us a cent.

HellSquirrel

Dr Crayfish wrote: »

How can they do anything? If the government said we've to use less oil or electricity or purchase less junk, the people would go nuts. As I said in my earlier post, how can a politician be popular if his policies are for us to have less stuff? Some kind of totalitarian state is required to get real results unfortunately which will probably happen as soon as people are starving.

Honestly? Lie their socks off, which they have been doing for a solid thirty years. Like evolution, they tried to teach a controversy that just didn't damn well exist. With evolution, they pretty much failed, but at least that was just nonsense and not dangerous. They succeeded with climate change, because changing how we live on this planet is expensive and difficult. There was a lot more vested interest economically and politically in preventing a forceful push for alternative energy that didn't pump carbon into the atmosphere to the point of a chain reaction. Similarly tobacco big businesses kept the lie that smoking didn't cause cancer going for years after medical science proved it.

Dr Crayfish

HellSquirrel wrote: »

Honestly? Lie their socks off, which they have been doing for a solid thirty years. Like evolution, they tried to teach a controversy that just didn't damn well exist. With evolution, they pretty much failed, but at least that was just nonsense and not dangerous. They succeeded with climate change, because changing how we live on this planet is expensive and difficult. There was a lot more vested interest economically and politically in preventing a forceful push for alternative energy that didn't pump carbon into the atmosphere to the point of a chain reaction. Similarly tobacco big businesses kept the lie that smoking didn't cause cancer going for years after medical science proved it.

Wait what? You don't believe in evolution or am I picking you up wrong here?
What should the Government lie about to fix our planet??

HellSquirrel

Dr Crayfish wrote: »

Wait what? You don't believe in evolution or am I picking you up wrong here?
What should the Government lie about to fix our planet??

No, didn't you ask how anyone could convince people not to do anything about it if it's so bad? And they have lied about it or else deliberately closed themselves off from the evidence and allowed lies and misinformation to spread. The government has to stop fcuking about with politicizing the climate change crisis and do something about it.

gctest50

HellSquirrel wrote: »

Instead, we appear to be driving multiple causal factors of warming unnaturally high over a very short time. These factors have their own feedback loops and if they hit a tipping point, can self-perpetuate.

....................

Jakobshavn glacier got a bit bored in 2001 and decided to head off on it's holidays :

Between 1850 and 1964 the ice front retreated at a steady rate of about 0.3 km/yr, after which it occupied approximately the same location until 2001, receding 10km in three years.

10 meg image : http://go.nasa.gov/2goYOmr

http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/details.cgi?aid=3806

Dr Crayfish

HellSquirrel wrote: »

No, didn't you ask how anyone could convince people not to do anything about it if it's so bad? And they have lied about it or else deliberately closed themselves off from the evidence and allowed lies and misinformation to spread. The government has to stop fcuking about with politicizing the climate change crisis and do something about it.

I said they can't do anything about it because the people just wouldn't have it. The only way we can help the planet is by consuming less stuff. That's the total opposite of how society works now, it's all about consumption.

Austria!

LordSutch wrote: »

Thing is I might also be called a climate change denier (even though I believe in climate change).

Let me explain.

Many people believe in climate change as pert of the natural cycle of the planet, yet these people are called "climate change deiniers" because they don't buy into the 100% 'man made' mantra. Personally speaking I dont believe that man is 100% responsible for this current global warming, because like many others, I believe that the current warming of the globe is a natural occurance as part of a natural cycle of planet Earth & the Sun 'enhanced' & speeded up by man made pollution. < Apparently this opnion makes me a climate change denier too.

Based on what? What scientific articles have you read saying that? What respected scientific bodies have published guides to global warming saying that?
Do you believe that's what's happening based on anything stronger than, sure why not?

You don't have to guess this stuff. There are 1000s of really smart people who's only job is to know these kind of things. Any disagreement with them by someone who isn't also an expert is hubris.

HellSquirrel

Well, no, he's right. Just he's not the only right. He's saying that there are causal factors to glacial/interglacial swings. The experts are pointing out that what we've been up to is one of them and it's working.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

LordSutch

Austria! wrote: »

Based on what? What scientific articles have you read saying that? What respected scientific bodies have published guides to global warming saying that?
Do you believe that's what's happening based on anything stronger than, sure why not?

You don't have to guess this stuff. There are 1000s of really smart people who's only job is to know these kind of things. Any disagreement with them by someone who isn't also an expert is hubris.

You are totally missing my point.

Yes of course I agree with climate change/global warming, but what I am pointing out is that man is only partially responsible, while the rest is down to non man made factors, like the natural cycle of the planet.

Question 4u: Does the scientific community specify that man is 100% responsible for climate change?

SEPT 23 1989

What Trump is saying is that why should the US be hamstrung with climate change regulations and taxes while China is banging out coal powered stations to beat the band

Austria!

LordSutch wrote: »

Question 4u: Does the scientific community spsecift that man is 100% responsible for climate change?

I don't know, and because of that I won't just guess. A complete guess is all you have to back up your claim that some of the warming is natural, right?

K-9

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

Its a funny one, when I brought up the point that oil prices had dramatically dropped from 08 levels, it had nothing to do with Obama apparently!

It's the political pressures. Many involved in the oil industry are suffering because of those low prices while greener industries are booming.

HellSquirrel

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

It goes to show the power of the industry and the vested interests of many politicians, in the case of the US, especially the Republicans, to keep levying to their own advantage. Maybe Obama should have fought it harder, maybe he did his best and failed, maybe in the short term he had to prioritise and hope later wasn't too late, dunno.

But this controversy is insane, it really is. It -has- been cynically manufactured and it is causing actual damage. I realise if you're still looking for lies this sounds a bit hysterical, but it is ugly enough to see the signs I studied in theory actually forming. It's a lot uglier to understand even the partial effect of the projected physical consequences. Some will be unpredictable. Others have already started to trend.

ardinn

Austria! wrote: »

What field is that exactly?

"“Randall Carlson is a master builder, architectural designer, teacher, geometrician, geomythologist, explorer, and renegade scholar. For over forty years, he’s researched the interface between ancient mysteries and modern science."

Renegade scholar? You're out of line scholar, turn in your microscope. And the other one. Your Mass Spec privileges are revoked.

You didnt watch is what your trying to say then yeah?

ardinn

Austria! wrote: »

Based on what? What scientific articles have you read saying that? What respected scientific bodies have published guides to global warming saying that?
Do you believe that's what's happening based on anything stronger than, sure why not?

You don't have to guess this stuff. There are 1000s of really smart people who's only job is to know these kind of things. Any disagreement with them by someone who isn't also an expert is hubris.

I posted a video on page 1 or 2 that gives you the exact science - but pick and choose your sauce accordingly there einstein!

Earthhorse

Obama happened to preside over the US during a time when fracking enabled the domestic industry to rapidly expand its production. Maybe he should have sought to curb that harder, I don't know, but it's not like the president is some omnipotent being who can halt all progress.

The important thing about the US position is they can act a s a leader on climate change. The Paris accord isn't enough but at least it's something to build on and Trump is already talking about ignoring it. The Republicans will almost certainly be worse on climate change too. To get some idea of how intractable they are read the following:

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-11-01/jay-faison-s-expensive-maddening-quest-to-save-the-planet-and-the-gop

Of course climate change isn't a US only issue but they are hugely important in reversing or stalling the trend. China may well take over as the leader in this regard as it is not a political issue there, at least in part because the pollution problem they're facing acts as an everyday reminder so the issue seems less abstract to them.

RayCon

Consumption (Consumerism - capitalism - the markets - economies) are in direct competition with conservation .... you can't have both and unfortunately no one wants to do without their "sh!t" .... lets consume ourselves to extinction.

Martin Luther King, Jr. 1967

we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.