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2020 officially saw a record number of $1 billion weather and climate disasters.

  • 12-01-2021 7:52pm
    #1
    Registered Users Posts: 5


    OAA has had a chance to look back on all the weather and climate disasters of 2020. And like many other aspects of 2020, the numbers we're seeing aren't positive.

    2020 officially broke the record for most $1 billion disasters. The 22 costliest events shattered numbers previously set by 16 separate billion-dollar disasters in 2011 and 2017.

    Note: the record here is for the number of events. In terms of cost, 2020's $95 billion price tag ranks as the fourth costliest.

    1-billion-dollar-disasters.png

    Hurricane Laura's damages came in at the highest price for 2020. In fact, seven of the 12 landfalling tropical systems caused at least $1 billion in damages, which is a record in itself.

    2020-landfalls.png

    Western wildfires were also extremely active in 2020, consuming nearly 10.3 million acres. This includes about 4% of California's total acreage.

    2020-wildfire-acres.png

    To top it all off, 2020 ranked as the 5th warmest year on record for the contiguous U.S.. Here in the District, 2020 ranked as the 3rd warmest year, tying 2019 with an annual average temperature of 60.6 degrees.


    2020-temperature-trend.png


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Comments

  • Registered Users Posts: 14,268 ✭✭✭✭M.T. Cranium


    Some of these events are being criticized for inflation on U.S. based weather forums. You also have to ask, what is the equivalent of one billion dollars (US) in 1995 or 1975 or 1955 dollars? My guess, 500 million, 200 million, 100 million respectively.

    I don't count wildfires as strictly weather caused disasters. There has been appalling forestry management in some parts of the west, prompted by overzealous environmentalist concerns about cutting any trees, including those growing along hydro-electric power corridors. California in particular has suffered a number of recent fire disasters from strong winds causing power lines to arc into these poorly situated trees.

    There is also the question of a growing phenomenon of deliberately set fires by eco-terrorists or unemployed men seeking work. Some may snicker at this but believe me, it's a real thing and well known in western Canada and the United States as a growing problem.

    Then there's the question of growing numbers of human targets of the sorts of weather-related occurrences, such as buildups of urban communities along subtropical coasts, and the "exurban" phenomenon where a preferred lifestyle is in a parkland setting well out of urban areas but near their margins. These settings unfortunately can accelerate the spread of forest fires and expose more people to them.

    However, for whatever reason these costs are going up, it does point to needs for mitigation strategies, but I am dubious about over-generalizing like "if we all drove electric vehicles, none of this would happen;" in fact, even if everyone just walked and biked to work, the weather would hardly change at all and these human factors (spread, poor siting, malfeasance) would continue presumably. So you would be left with much the same outcome only no cars to escape them in.


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,328 ✭✭✭Banana Republic 1


    Some of these events are being criticized for inflation on U.S. based weather forums. You also have to ask, what is the equivalent of one billion dollars (US) in 1995 or 1975 or 1955 dollars? My guess, 500 million, 200 million, 100 million respectively.

    I don't count wildfires as strictly weather caused disasters. There has been appalling forestry management in some parts of the west, prompted by overzealous environmentalist concerns about cutting any trees, including those growing along hydro-electric power corridors. California in particular has suffered a number of recent fire disasters from strong winds causing power lines to arc into these poorly situated trees.

    There is also the question of a growing phenomenon of deliberately set fires by eco-terrorists or unemployed men seeking work. Some may snicker at this but believe me, it's a real thing and well known in western Canada and the United States as a growing problem.

    Then there's the question of growing numbers of human targets of the sorts of weather-related occurrences, such as buildups of urban communities along subtropical coasts, and the "exurban" phenomenon where a preferred lifestyle is in a parkland setting well out of urban areas but near their margins. These settings unfortunately can accelerate the spread of forest fires and expose more people to them.

    However, for whatever reason these costs are going up, it does point to needs for mitigation strategies, but I am dubious about over-generalizing like "if we all drove electric vehicles, none of this would happen;" in fact, even if everyone just walked and biked to work, the weather would hardly change at all and these human factors (spread, poor siting, malfeasance) would continue presumably. So you would be left with much the same outcome only no cars to escape them in.

    The weather and climate are not the same.


  • Registered Users Posts: 8,219 ✭✭✭Gaoth Laidir


    The weather and climate are not the same.

    You're going to have to expand on that a bit. Who said they were?

    A rake of weather events were listed in the OP as proof of climate change. MT has put forward reasons as to why it's not necessarily so.


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,855 ✭✭✭Nabber


    A rake of weather events were listed in the OP as proof of climate change. MT has put forward reasons as to why it's not necessarily so.

    OP might have edited their post?
    Although the construction of the post teases towards the correlation of global warming and weather diesters, I don't see that they have explicitly liked the two (?)

    The other note to make is that infrastructure and safe measures are installed to safeguard against human injury and casualties at the cost of finances. If the dollar figure is increasing and the death toll is reducing then the issue for me is moot.

    A warming planet would suggest that the planet is getting safer interns of human safety. Although this certainly due to better response teams, technology, engineering, warning systems, regulations and building materials.

    539411.JPG


  • Registered Users Posts: 8,913 ✭✭✭Danno


    Irish Mirror: Map shows how much of Ireland could be under water by end of decade - with one city in trouble.
    https://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/map-shows-how-much-ireland-23320870

    Little under 9 years left to go. Save the date. Can't wait to take the fishing boat out on main street Youghal.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,220 ✭✭✭Davaeo09


    People trying to talk down to MT need to have a look at who they are talking to haha


  • Registered Users Posts: 8,219 ✭✭✭Gaoth Laidir


    Interesting that the stats mention nothing of the 15 consecutive years (2006-2015, inclusive) without a Cat-3+ US hurricane landfall. Overall, there is no significant longterm trend in severity or number of landfalls, so measuring damage in monetary terms is pretty useless.

    https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/99/7/bams-d-17-0184.1.xml

    full-bams-d-17-0184.1-f2.jpg

    full-bams-d-17-0184.1-f3.jpg


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,328 ✭✭✭Banana Republic 1


    Danno wrote: »
    Irish Mirror: Map shows how much of Ireland could be under water by end of decade - with one city in trouble.
    https://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/map-shows-how-much-ireland-23320870

    Little under 9 years left to go. Save the date. Can't wait to take the fishing boat out on main street Youghal.

    Youghal is only a one horse town anyway shur.


  • Registered Users Posts: 14,268 ✭✭✭✭M.T. Cranium


    "weather not the same as climate" ...

    You hear this a lot in discussions of climate change. Usually, it's climate change believers talking to skeptics who have used a weather example as an indication that climate change is not real.

    That's not my position nor is it entirely valid. Climate at any point in time is the integrated totality of weather events over a defined period. The 30-year normal is something that developed in climatology before it was known as climate science, in the early 20th century (perhaps earlier, I know for sure it was used between the world wars in discussions of climate variability).

    What is climate? It's a blend of averages and extremes observed at a location. For example, I just finished a comprehensive study of 180 years of weather records at Toronto. In the 1870s, somebody might have written "the local climate consists of a long, cold and snowy winter, with an average of 100" of snow, and a short but relatively hot and humid summer with frequent heavy rainfalls. " They would have been essentially correct but that would not read very well since about 1920, at the present time, this would be more accurate ... "the local climate consists of a four-month winter season with mixed intervals of cold and mild, a wide variety of precipitation, and long warm to hot summers that alternate between hot and humid, and dry and pleasantly warm, with a few other types sprinked in."

    So there has been climate change at Toronto to make these two statements equally accurate.

    But even so, that didn't prevent anomalies like an April 1975 blizzard being worse than any recorded April snowfall since 1840, or a 1969 October snowfall coming earlier (10 cm+) than in any previous year. Feb 2015 was so cold that it beat all Februaries since 1840 except 1875 and 1885. And that's the kind of "weather" that climate change people don't want to hear about, but in fact what something like that does, is to change the running average, who knows whether there might be another really cold one in 2025 so that (2015,2025) looks like (1875,1885) to some future observer or analyst.

    But in any case, my objection to this news release is that it doesn't really report the facts in context of financial and human-target human-caused (non-atmospheric) factors. When those factors are understood, the meaning of the "finding" changes from alarming to perhaps pedestrian.

    Let's get back to the paradigm about weather and climate. They are not two different things. Climate can only be the integrated summary of averages and extremes of weather. Therefore it is always changing. Every day changes the climate incrementally. If you think climate is "normally the weather we get here" then what is that in a high variability climate zone like most of the U.S.A. has, the whole point of U.S. weather is that frequent large variations can be expected. Very few months come out very close to recent averages, and almost equal numbers of them are warmer or colder, wetter or drier.

    I follow U.S. weather closely and really, 2020 was a rather bland sort of year compared to many. Considering there were a record number of named storms, the actual landfalls did not add up to all that much compared to some other seasons -- there was no single extreme landfall event like 2018 (Michael in Mexico Beach FL) or 1992 (Andrew) or 1989 (hugo) etc.

    These derecho damage tolls are inflated, people make insurance claims on thousand dollar deductible policies and try to run them up so as not to lose a thousand bucks. And if a derecho goes through a number of towns and damages thousands of houses slightly, there's a lot of claims, but it doesn't really add up to much in economic impact. Half the companies weasel out of paying anything anyway. The homeowners have to fix their houses, so money changes hands between them and construction companies. Then there are ongoing droughts -- whose fault is it that people try to farm or ranch in land that has, for centuries, been arid and nearly useless for such purposes? There may have been a few better decades in the late 19th century and early 20th to lure people into such activities, but I'm a frequent visitor to archaeological sites in the southwest, and the native people who settled there faced the same problems in cycles, there was a whole culture in that region (Anasazi) that was wiped out around 1150-1200 AD, either by climate change (drought) or hostile invasion of other native tribes who didn't practice the same horticulture. We will never know for sure what caused them to disappear but we do know that there were many dry years after centuries of relatively favorable conditions. Those people may have migrated far to the north and reinvented themselves in the interior northwest, or they may have died out entirely. They left no written records so it's hard to trace them.

    There were weather events in the past that I know would create a firestorm of angst and concern in some circles if they happened nowadays. I would list these few examples:

    1900 -- A cat-4 hurricane made a direct hit on Galveston TX, wiped it out and killed 12,000 people. The city had to be rebuilt.

    1925 -- F4/5 tornado destruction through IL-IN-OH killed 750 people (March 18th) and wiped out several large towns (Carbondale IL).

    1926/28 -- Two major hurricanes struck south FL, if they happened today, damage tolls would be astronomical. Their death tolls would likely be lower due to better warnings, but still considerable.

    1929 -- Huge floods on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers were far greater than anything seen since that event, the economic impact was huge (probably about a ten billion dollar event in today's economy).

    1933-37 -- Devastating heat waves and drought hit large areas of the central and eastern U.S., temperatures hit levels not seen since, in some cases by 5 C or 9 F deg (NYC 106 F, Toronto 105 F, Steele ND over 120 F -- nowadays 105-110 is considered extreme there, and at Toronto, ten of eleven days that have exceeded 100 F were before 1953, only one in 2011 since then.

    1938 -- The Long Island hurricane, probably a 2-3 billion dollar impact in today's economy.

    1954-55 -- Two very active hurricane seasons with some high impact flooding events, Hazel (1954) reached Toronto as a tropical storm and wiped out rows of houses in a floodplain no longer inhabited, killing 80 people. Nothing like that has happened since.

    Those are just a few examples of high impact weather events from the so-called "normal" climate that the so-called "extreme" climate has replaced. This is why a lot of people are skeptical, because they don't recall all that many similar high impact events in more recent years.


  • Registered Users Posts: 8,913 ✭✭✭Danno


    "weather not the same as climate" ...

    Thank you for that summary, a very informed evaluation of past events that no doubt will encourage readers to take a broader look at Irish weather events and reach a self informed conclusion that harsh weather events occurred in the past and that storms tagged with colour-coded warnings in today's world are for the connoisseur of all things disaster.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 3,328 ✭✭✭Banana Republic 1


    "weather not the same as climate" ...

    You hear this a lot in discussions of climate change. Usually, it's climate change believers talking to skeptics who have used a weather example as an indication that climate change is not real.

    That's not my position nor is it entirely valid. Climate at any point in time is the integrated totality of weather events over a defined period. The 30-year normal is something that developed in climatology before it was known as climate science, in the early 20th century (perhaps earlier, I know for sure it was used between the world wars in discussions of climate variability).

    What is climate? It's a blend of averages and extremes observed at a location. For example, I just finished a comprehensive study of 180 years of weather records at Toronto. In the 1870s, somebody might have written "the local climate consists of a long, cold and snowy winter, with an average of 100" of snow, and a short but relatively hot and humid summer with frequent heavy rainfalls. " They would have been essentially correct but that would not read very well since about 1920, at the present time, this would be more accurate ... "the local climate consists of a four-month winter season with mixed intervals of cold and mild, a wide variety of precipitation, and long warm to hot summers that alternate between hot and humid, and dry and pleasantly warm, with a few other types sprinked in."

    So there has been climate change at Toronto to make these two statements equally accurate.

    But even so, that didn't prevent anomalies like an April 1975 blizzard being worse than any recorded April snowfall since 1840, or a 1969 October snowfall coming earlier (10 cm+) than in any previous year. Feb 2015 was so cold that it beat all Februaries since 1840 except 1875 and 1885. And that's the kind of "weather" that climate change people don't want to hear about, but in fact what something like that does, is to change the running average, who knows whether there might be another really cold one in 2025 so that (2015,2025) looks like (1875,1885) to some future observer or analyst.

    But in any case, my objection to this news release is that it doesn't really report the facts in context of financial and human-target human-caused (non-atmospheric) factors. When those factors are understood, the meaning of the "finding" changes from alarming to perhaps pedestrian.

    Let's get back to the paradigm about weather and climate. They are not two different things. Climate can only be the integrated summary of averages and extremes of weather. Therefore it is always changing. Every day changes the climate incrementally. If you think climate is "normally the weather we get here" then what is that in a high variability climate zone like most of the U.S.A. has, the whole point of U.S. weather is that frequent large variations can be expected. Very few months come out very close to recent averages, and almost equal numbers of them are warmer or colder, wetter or drier.

    I follow U.S. weather closely and really, 2020 was a rather bland sort of year compared to many. Considering there were a record number of named storms, the actual landfalls did not add up to all that much compared to some other seasons -- there was no single extreme landfall event like 2018 (Michael in Mexico Beach FL) or 1992 (Andrew) or 1989 (hugo) etc.

    These derecho damage tolls are inflated, people make insurance claims on thousand dollar deductible policies and try to run them up so as not to lose a thousand bucks. And if a derecho goes through a number of towns and damages thousands of houses slightly, there's a lot of claims, but it doesn't really add up to much in economic impact. Half the companies weasel out of paying anything anyway. The homeowners have to fix their houses, so money changes hands between them and construction companies. Then there are ongoing droughts -- whose fault is it that people try to farm or ranch in land that has, for centuries, been arid and nearly useless for such purposes? There may have been a few better decades in the late 19th century and early 20th to lure people into such activities, but I'm a frequent visitor to archaeological sites in the southwest, and the native people who settled there faced the same problems in cycles, there was a whole culture in that region (Anasazi) that was wiped out around 1150-1200 AD, either by climate change (drought) or hostile invasion of other native tribes who didn't practice the same horticulture. We will never know for sure what caused them to disappear but we do know that there were many dry years after centuries of relatively favorable conditions. Those people may have migrated far to the north and reinvented themselves in the interior northwest, or they may have died out entirely. They left no written records so it's hard to trace them.

    There were weather events in the past that I know would create a firestorm of angst and concern in some circles if they happened nowadays. I would list these few examples:

    1900 -- A cat-4 hurricane made a direct hit on Galveston TX, wiped it out and killed 12,000 people. The city had to be rebuilt.

    1925 -- F4/5 tornado destruction through IL-IN-OH killed 750 people (March 18th) and wiped out several large towns (Carbondale IL).

    1926/28 -- Two major hurricanes struck south FL, if they happened today, damage tolls would be astronomical. Their death tolls would likely be lower due to better warnings, but still considerable.

    1929 -- Huge floods on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers were far greater than anything seen since that event, the economic impact was huge (probably about a ten billion dollar event in today's economy).

    1933-37 -- Devastating heat waves and drought hit large areas of the central and eastern U.S., temperatures hit levels not seen since, in some cases by 5 C or 9 F deg (NYC 106 F, Toronto 105 F, Steele ND over 120 F -- nowadays 105-110 is considered extreme there, and at Toronto, ten of eleven days that have exceeded 100 F were before 1953, only one in 2011 since then.

    1938 -- The Long Island hurricane, probably a 2-3 billion dollar impact in today's economy.

    1954-55 -- Two very active hurricane seasons with some high impact flooding events, Hazel (1954) reached Toronto as a tropical storm and wiped out rows of houses in a floodplain no longer inhabited, killing 80 people. Nothing like that has happened since.

    Those are just a few examples of high impact weather events from the so-called "normal" climate that the so-called "extreme" climate has replaced. This is why a lot of people are skeptical, because they don't recall all that many similar high impact events in more recent years.

    What is your opinion on this, it’s a report from channel 4 news last night, link contain 4min clip.
    https://www.channel4.com/news/oceans-hit-highest-ever-temperatures-in-2020


  • Registered Users Posts: 22,052 ✭✭✭✭Akrasia


    Danno wrote: »
    Irish Mirror: Map shows how much of Ireland could be under water by end of decade - with one city in trouble.
    https://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/map-shows-how-much-ireland-23320870

    Little under 9 years left to go. Save the date. Can't wait to take the fishing boat out on main street Youghal.
    Did you read the article that you decided to post, or just the headline?


  • Registered Users Posts: 8,913 ✭✭✭Danno


    Additionally, global heating caused by climate change leads to warmer water temperatures, which in turn causes the water to expand and for sea levels to rise.

    As sea levels rise, certain parts of Ireland that are currently on land may soon find themselves at risk of severe flooding as the coast line encroaches inward, with some urbanised areas of the country even expected to be entirely below sea level as soon as 2030.
    Yes. Hence why I posted the link. Highlighted above is the complete hyperbole of a prediction made. Let's check back here in little under 9 years to see if its hyperbole or truth.


  • Registered Users Posts: 8,219 ✭✭✭Gaoth Laidir


    Danno wrote: »
    Yes. Hence why I posted the link. Highlighted above is the complete hyperbole of a prediction made. Let's check back here in little under 9 years to see if its hyperbole or truth.
    with some urbanised areas of the country even expected to be entirely below sea level as soon as 2030.

    Entirely, mind. Maybe that film Waterworld was not far off the mark afterall.


  • Registered Users Posts: 6,235 ✭✭✭Oneiric 3


    Oh I do want to be beside the seaside...

    sea-levels2.jpg

    New Moon



  • Registered Users Posts: 6,235 ✭✭✭Oneiric 3


    The weather and climate are not the same.

    They actually are. Consider, for example, when the hurricane season gets going and anything passed Cat 3 develops, or a heatwave in Europe occurs, or we get a few windy and wet days here in Ireland. These weather events become further proof that climate change is happening and not about weaving up a lucrative narrative at all.

    New Moon



  • Registered Users Posts: 3,328 ✭✭✭Banana Republic 1


    Additionally, global heating caused by climate change leads to warmer water temperatures, which in turn causes the water to expand and for sea levels to rise.

    As sea levels rise, certain parts of Ireland that are currently on land may soon find themselves at risk of severe flooding as the coast line encroaches inward, with some urbanised areas of the country even expected to be entirely below sea level as soon as 2030.
    Danno wrote: »
    Yes. Hence why I posted the link. Highlighted above is the complete hyperbole of a prediction made. Let's check back here in little under 9 years to see if its hyperbole or truth.

    You wrote the first quote yourself, put that text in quotations to make it seem like you read the mirror article and not just the headline.


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,328 ✭✭✭Banana Republic 1


    Oneiric 3 wrote: »
    They actually are. Consider, for example, when the hurricane season gets going and anything passed Cat 3 develops, or a heatwave in Europe occurs, or we get a few windy and wet days here in Ireland. These weather events become further proof that climate change is happening and not about weaving up a lucrative narrative at all.

    NASA piece on the difference between weather and climate.
    https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/noaa-n/climate/climate_weather.html


  • Registered Users Posts: 8,913 ✭✭✭Danno


    Oneiric 3 wrote: »
    Oh I do want to be beside the seaside...

    I'm still well inland and away from those nasty marine layers turning my snow to rain under that scenario. :D


  • Registered Users Posts: 14,268 ✭✭✭✭M.T. Cranium


    What is your opinion on this, it’s a report from channel 4 news last night, link contain 4min clip.
    https://www.channel4.com/news/oceans-hit-highest-ever-temperatures-in-2020

    My views were laid out in another thread, climate change 3 -- an alternative to both orthodox climate change and skeptical positions commonly taken.

    It has been locked recently after about the fourth off-topic bun fight between the two groups I am trying to join with my third option. That third option basically says considerable warming seems inevitable, whether it's the fault of human beings or not, and the best response is mitigation, not economic disruptions on a huge scale.

    So without watching the link, I can already tell you that I accept it's quite likely that ocean temperatures are rising, and I don't think that in realistic terms there's much if anything we can do to prevent it.

    As to one-metre, three-metre or ten-metre sea level rises, let's take each in turn. Considerable land ice marginal melting in Greenland, arctic Canada, Svalbard, northern Russia etc will likely raise sea levels one metre to 1.5m.

    That amount of sea level rise can be mitigated by coastal defensive installations. Just raise the existing seawalls or build new ones where that level of increase would cause problems. A lot of shorelines can handle a 1.5 m rise without anyone noticing much change. When you get to three metres, that's more like a third to a half of Greenland ice gone, that would take the rest of this century probably, if not longer. Defensive measures plus staged moving away from coastlines well in advance would be my suggestion there.

    A ten metre sea level rise would require all northern ice gone and a considerable start to Antarctic ice melt (if all that goes, then I believe we're looking at 17 metres). That would obviously have major impacts around the world. I don't think things will get that bad, whether it's human caused or natural variability, I think the atmosphere has certain limits beyond which natural feedback processes would kick in, such as enhanced arctic snowfall which would partly slow down the process.

    I don't claim to be clairvoyant or have definitive answers. My approach is more holistic -- do we prefer to mitigate or destroy the existing economic structure in favour of drastic changes that might not even have any actual effect?

    The one good thing about the COVID emergency is that it rather answers my question indirectly.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 14,268 ✭✭✭✭M.T. Cranium


    I could add that I am very concerned about recent news reports that Bill Gates and others want to fund aerosol based solutions to climate change. The last thing we need is some impossible-to-research engineering solutions to problems that might have other causes. A decrease in the incoming solar radiation might plunge the northern hemisphere into a little ice age or even a big ice age, some people say we shouldn't play God, and I add we shouldn't play Milankovitch.

    If one wanted to try a major engineering solution, damming the Bering Straits might be less risky. That should have some of the desired effects, while being reversible if it then became obvious that the move had resulted in unintended consequences. I would envisage a pair of dams on either side of the Diomede islands at the narrowest point of the Bering Straits, whereas some other proposals call for a longer and deeper based dam two hundred kilometers south of that. My concept (not very much developed to be honest) would include locks for the passage of ocean vessels, and perhaps variable flow gates if some predictive science developed about the cause and effect created. Basically the idea is that if the Beaufort, Chuckchi and Laptev Seas froze sooner and remained frozen longer, arctic air masses might be stronger, and the circulation as a whole might cool down slightly. Although there would be little direct effect on the eastern arctic or the north Atlantic sectors, some symmetry of response could be expected as processes already underway responded to that new variable. The arctic circulation would try to balance the new disparity introduced, meaning there should also be stronger arctic air masses at times in the rest of the subarctic.

    A dam across the Bering Straits also has benefits for world trade and international co-operation should it be integrated into new road or rail links between Asia and North America.

    Not sure how easy it would be to remove the Bill Gates aerosols if we didn't want them around after half a century, I suppose they would be designed to settle out over time or to require periodic reinforcement. My guess is that it wouldn't do what the designers think it might do, a criticism that also applies to the Bering Straits concept.

    It has to be said that sea level rises so far have been relatively subtle and nowhere near as large as some that occurred after the peak of the Little Ice Age.


  • Registered Users Posts: 8,219 ✭✭✭Gaoth Laidir


    We should be alright for now, though, as the Greenland mass balance shows no increasing trend for nearly two decades now. This is somewhat at odds with what we tend to hear in the propaganda and it was of course not mentioned in the C4 clip. Like the Svalbard sea ice trends, Greenland melt seems to follow the sign of the AMO trend, increasing as the AMO becomes positive, which is what happened in the mid-late '90s.

    539840.PNG

    539841.png


  • Registered Users Posts: 8,913 ✭✭✭Danno


    If one wanted to try a major engineering solution, damming the Bering Straits might be less risky. That should have some of the desired effects, while being reversible if it then became obvious that the move had resulted in unintended consequences. I would envisage a pair of dams on either side of the Diomede islands at the narrowest point of the Bering Straits...

    I think this would be a worthwhile project, it would be relatively easy to hit the "undo" button on this one.

    If it meant returning Arctic Sea Ice levels to 1970s levels it would be a great achievement.


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,328 ✭✭✭Banana Republic 1


    There was 13 paragraphs to your response to my question so Im going to respond in this post to several points raised.
    climate change 3, has been locked recently after about the fourth off-topic bun fight between the two groups .
    The reason for this was that the climate change skeptics on that thread were resorting to personal attacks and insults, trying to solicit documental proof from the "orthodox" crowd and then refusing to read same afterward. Also the "moderator" used a racial slur, and a third moderator had to be brought in to mop up after his/her underlings transgressions. Interestingly that "moderator" is modding this thread also. People are entitled to their opinions but to spew them out in that fashion is totally counter to the role of a moderate.
    So without watching the link,
    Sounds familiar but at least you admitted it, however you couched your follow up with
    it's quite likely that ocean temperatures are rising
    .
    My approach is more holistic
    Not a scientific one? I admit I use a sarcastic tone.
    do we prefer to mitigate or destroy the existing economic structure in favour of drastic changes
    Our current economic structure is what's causing the problem.

    I looked into the Bearing Straits proposal and while it appears legitimate in the sense that the guy works at Utrecht University a search of him brought to his web page were the main image is of him in a topless Vlad Putin pose.http://www.rolfschuttenhelm.nl

    That said I read through what was proposed, unusual perhaps for this forum to exaim opposition suggestions, in a paper called "Diomede Crossroads
    Saving the Arctic sea ice? Thoughts on plausibility", published in 2008 and several things stood out.

    On page 3, Schuttenhelm, the main guy, laid out three things damming would change and three engineering solutions to achieve same. There are of course several negative effects that could occur from damming the 85km wide Bearing Straits.
    Ive taken this extract from an Anchorage Daily News article
    Still, perhaps anticipating the public reaction to meddling with Mother Nature on such a scale, Schuttenhelm realized that it might be hard to tell whether blocking the gap between North America and Asia is an exercise in stupidity -- or one of simple genius. Acting rashly with too many unknowns wouldn't be wise, he acknowledged.
    . Several are listed in Schuttenhelm paper as mentioned above.

    The above section brings me to this point,
    the last thing we need is some impossible-to-research engineering solutions to problems that might have other causes.

    How can you then dump on the aerosol solution whist at the same time advance an another perhaps outlandish plan, they are researching not implementing it. The reason its has advanced is exactly because they a getting private investment and not waiting for the cooperation of international players, which consistently fails, as per the Straits idea. Speaking of International players, the first guy to come up with the idea of damming the Bearing Straits was a a Soviet lad called Petr Michailovich Borisov in the 60s who offered it as a solution to the difficulty of extracting oil and gas from the Sakhalin oil fields.

    Post Script: From all that Ive read a watched about the aerosol plan it is consistently said that there is no money to be made from it hence it may not actually happen.


  • Registered Users Posts: 8,219 ✭✭✭Gaoth Laidir


    The reason for this was that the climate change skeptics on that thread were resorting to personal attacks and insults, trying to solicit documental proof from the "orthodox" crowd and then refusing to read same afterward. Also the "moderator" used a racial slur, and a third moderator had to be brought in to mop up after his/her underlings transgressions. Interestingly that "moderator" is modding this thread also. People are entitled to their opinions but to spew them out in that fashion is totally counter to the role of a moderate.


    Sounds familiar but at least you admitted it, however you couched your follow up with .


    Not a scientific one? I admit I use a sarcastic tone.


    Our current economic structure is what's causing the problem.

    I looked into the Bearing Straits proposal and while it appears legitimate in the sense that the guy works at Utrecht University a search of him brought to his web page were the main image is of him in a topless Vlad Putin pose.http://www.rolfschuttenhelm.nl

    That said I read through what was proposed, unusual perhaps for this forum to exaim opposition suggestions, in a paper called "Diomede Crossroads
    Saving the Arctic sea ice? Thoughts on plausibility", published in 2008 and several things stood out.

    On page 3, Schuttenhelm, the main guy, laid out three things damming would change and three engineering solutions to achieve same. There are of course several negative effects that could occur from damming the 85km wide Bearing Straits.
    Ive taken this extract from an Anchorage Daily News article

    . Several are listed in Schuttenhelm paper as mentioned above.

    The above section brings me to this point,


    How can you then dump on the aerosol solution, they are researching not implementing it. The reason its has advanced is exactly because they a getting private investment and not waiting for the cooperation of international players, which consistently fails, as per the Straits idea. Speaking of International players, the first guy to come up with the idea of damming the Bearing Straits was a a Soviet lad called Petr Michailovich Borisov in the 60s who offered it as a solution to the difficulty of extracting oil and gas from the Sakhalin oil fields.

    Post Script: From all that Ive read a watched about the aerosol plan it is consistently said that there is no money to be made from it hence it may not actually happen.

    That and it's nigh on impossible, but don't let that get in the way.

    But going back to your first graceful paragraph above, I'd suggest you have a rethink about exactly who is resorting personal attacks and insults. That's almost the only thing that you did.
    Also the "moderator" used a racial slur, and a third moderator had to be brought in to mop up after his/her underlings transgressions. Interestingly that "moderator" is modding this thread also. People are entitled to their opinions but to spew them out in that fashion is totally counter to the role of a moderate.


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,485 ✭✭✭Pa ElGrande


    Danno wrote: »
    Irish Mirror: Map shows how much of Ireland could be under water by end of decade - with one city in trouble.
    https://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/map-shows-how-much-ireland-23320870

    Little under 9 years left to go. Save the date. Can't wait to take the fishing boat out on main street Youghal.

    That's the usual scaremongering with computer models using representative concentration pathway (RCP) 8.5 radiative forcing scenario. The diminutive Eva links to a site that claims to use projections based on Kopp et all 2014.. The truth is, we don’t know what the climate will be doing, any time you see scary headlines about future climate, it's going to be assumptions based on RCP 8.5, the media never cautions about the limits of knowledge or accurately relays the caveats tied to highly abstract computer models.

    Net Zero means we are paying for the destruction of our economy and society in pursuit of an unachievable and pointless policy.



  • Registered Users Posts: 13,498 ✭✭✭✭Thelonious Monk


    My approach is more holistic -- do we prefer to mitigate or destroy the existing economic structure in favour of drastic changes that might not even have any actual effect?

    The one good thing about the COVID emergency is that it rather answers my question indirectly.

    The existing economic structure will spell the end of the world as we know it anyway. The current model is constant growth and consumption of resources.
    So if we want to keep going we have to do something differently.


  • Registered Users Posts: 3,485 ✭✭✭Pa ElGrande


    The existing economic structure will spell the end of the world as we know it anyway. The current model is constant growth and consumption of resources.
    So if we want to keep going we have to do something differently.

    Constant growth and consumption of resources has been the human model for at least 12,000+ years.

    When I first came to Ireland it was to a farmhouse with no central heating that used an open fire burning turf and wood with a bit of coal thrown in, cooking was done on Calor gas. The house was modernised and oil fired central heating installed, they even had a solid fuel range installed at one stage, over the years the house has been knocked and rebuilt using better insulation methods, heating using back burner boilers and wood pellets. In that period of time efficiency gains have changed consumption patterns, we use less energy to heat our houses and live much more comfortable lives. There is no one size fits all solution, Ireland is a cold and damp island for much of the year, we will continue to adjust in the future, without economic growth our energy consumption patterns must logically revert to those of a prior economy. With global warming we can reduce our energy consumption further, something to think about, it not a one way trade.

    Net Zero means we are paying for the destruction of our economy and society in pursuit of an unachievable and pointless policy.



  • Registered Users Posts: 9,580 ✭✭✭Birdnuts


    The existing economic structure will spell the end of the world as we know it anyway. The current model is constant growth and consumption of resources.
    So if we want to keep going we have to do something differently.

    Maybe - but I would rate the likes of plastic contamination of the worlds oceans, degradation of soil via intensive farming, loss of biodiversitry via habitat destruction etc. as far graver threats in that space than the hysteria generated by climate alarmists.


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  • Registered Users Posts: 3,328 ✭✭✭Banana Republic 1


    Birdnuts wrote: »
    Maybe - but I would rate the likes of plastic contamination of the worlds oceans, degradation of soil via intensive farming, loss of biodiversitry via habitat destruction etc. as far graver threats in that space than the hysteria generated by climate alarmists.

    All those things you mentioned are part and a result of the current economic structure.


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