Climate Change: The Megathread - Read Post #1 before posting

dense · 11-11-2018 9:44pm

Akrasia wrote: »

That is absolutely nothing to do with the 'global cooling' as discussed before. That relates to the Holocene and Pleistocene epochs being unusually cool when compared to previous geological epochs where temperatures were much warmer.

There is no 'normal condition'. There are however conditions that are suitable for human life, and conditions that are unsuitable for human life. Humans evolve during the Pleistocena and have only existed during the Holocene when temperatures were stable within this interglacial cycle.
Human civilisation, in terms of our nations, infrastructure, history, heritage, culture, identity, technology etc has only existed during the holocene.

The previous Epoch, the Pliocene had an ice free arctic, and guess what was different back then? CO2 levels were above 400ppm

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ice-free-arctic-in-pliocene-last-time-co2-levels-above-400ppm/

Why did the WMO presume the earth has a normal temperature then, much warmer than the present?
On what scientific basis are you presuming the earth should be hospitable to human life in the first instance?

dense · 11-11-2018 10:23pm

Akrasia wrote: »

The calculations for climate sensitivity made by Arrhenius in 1896 was about 3c for a doubling of CO2.. This is smack in the middle of the IPCC projections for Climate sensitivity.

Because the IPCC endorses Arhennius' equations, so no surprise there.

Arrhenius identified the fact that the emissivity/absorptivity of the atmosphere increased with increasing greenhouse gas concentrations and this would affect the temperature of the Earth.

He understood that infra-red active gases in the atmosphere contribute both to the absorption of radiation from the Earth’s surface and to the emission of radiation to space from the atmosphere. These were competing processes; one trapped heat, warming the Earth; the other released heat, cooling the Earth. He derived a relationship between the surface temperature and the emissivity of the atmosphere and deduced that an increase in emissivity led to an increase in the surface temperature of the Earth.

However, his model is unable to produce sensible results for the heat flow quantities as determined by K & T and others.

In particular, his model and all similar recent models, grossly exaggerate the quantity of radiative heat flow from the Earth’s surface to space.

A new energy equilibrium model has been proposed which is consistent with the measured heat flow quantities and maintains thermal equilibrium.

This model predicts the changes in the heat flow quantities in response to changes in atmospheric emissivity and reveals that Arrhenius’ prediction is reversed.

Increasing atmospheric emissivity due to increased greenhouse gas concentrations will have a net cooling effect.

It is therefore proposed by the author that any attempt to curtail emissions of CO2 will have no effect in curbing global warming.

https://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=82087

I predict you will claim that paper is the worst you have ever read and is riddled with errors, it's what you do when you're presented with research which contradicts the IPCC's policies.

AngryHippie · 16-11-2018 3:52am

I would say interesting but drastically over-simplified.

It also fails to address the actual issue of Climate Change and is solely about global warming. We don't know how fast the reactions are in the system. And talking about planetary mean temperatures is so simplistic that it is virtually meaningless when interpolated to climatic patterns.

Its not full of errors, the basic premise is correct, but it assumes a uniform value for radiation instead of the swirling clouds of water vapour, highly reflective ice caps etc.

It is indicating that the big picture may be okay, but that doesn't mean our population growth is sustainable, our fossil fuel addiction is acceptable or our complete lack of action on both counts as a species won't result in catastrophe.

17-11-2018 5:28pm

https://watchers.news/2018/11/11/valentina-zharkova-solar-magnet-field-and-terrestrial-climate-presentation/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook

Valentina-Zharkova-The-Solar-Magnet-Field-and-the-Terrestrial-Climate.jpg

This prediction revealed the presence of a grand cycle of 350-400 years, with a remarkable resemblance to the sunspot and terrestrial activity features reported in the past millennia: Maunder (grand) Minimum (1645-1715), Wolf (grand) minimum (1200), Oort (grand) minimum (1010-1050), Homer (grand) minimum (800-900 BC); the medieval (900-1200) warm period, Roman (400-10BC) and other warm periods.

This approach also predicts the modern grand minimum upcoming in 2020-2055.

Climate change has F-all to do with CO2, it has everything to do with the terraforming of the planet which has completely destroyed the the local environment is so many areas. A large part of the so called climate change events are entirely caused by human activity, for example replacing a natural valley with houses, concrete and "water management", when the water management fails, it is blamed on climate change rather than the people who built the town. Humans really need to accept responsibility for the damage they are causing and not be duped into believing in false enemies. People are being duped into believing that spending money on reducing CO2 will solve climate change, complete rubbish!
The solution is to return most of the terraformed lands to their natural state, no one is going to admit that this is the correct solution as it is bad for business.

The sun is the prime source of energy on this planet (and all the other planets in the solar system) and any variations in its electromagnetic output will affect the Earth, and it is predicted that the next two cycles will continue to decline while the internal EM fields cancel each other out and then to start increasing again after about 2060.

It is in that unnatural environment that most of the AGW is present, so why do you think that is?
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/urban-effect-on-climate
Far too many people are looking at this issue from the wrong end!
It's a bit like looking at road safety and concentrating on making cars crash safer while ignoring the fact that the drivers are badly trained and the roads are badly engineered.

What has this to do with the changes in solar activity, nothing! But just to highlight the facts that the distraction tactics from those who want growth to continue indefinitely are working.

To successfully tackle climate change would require a reversal of much of the human activity over the past century, reversal of deforestation, reduction of population etc. We know that no one will agree to these steps, so they put up a smokescreen about the "enemy" being CO2!

dense · 18-11-2018 3:44am

Deleted User wrote: »

To successfully tackle climate change would require a reversal of much of the human activity over the past century, reversal of deforestation, reduction of population etc. We know that no one will agree to these steps, so they put up a smokescreen about the "enemy" being CO2!

Do you think it would be worth it?

The societal chaos that would be wreaked upon civilisation which would occur upon a rapid reduction in fossil fuel consumption leading to an intermittent global energy supply scenario limiting human activities and economic growth, in order to "fix" the perceived climate change problem?

Yes, if one wants to rapidly revert to 19th century ways.

It is possible, from official figures, publicly available from the CSO to determine that just 5% of Ireland's total energy requirements are supplied by renewable energies.

We purport to adhere to democracy.
There is no mandate to dispense with using fossil fuels, nor has Ireland's contribution to global warming ever been quantified.

Nor has any effect on climate change, should the country simply stop emitting any GHG's ever been quantified or analysed, not by the EPA, not by the Citizens Assembly on Climate Change and not by any of the multitude of climate related "charities", from An Taisce to Stop climate chaos.

Yet, we have foolishly and quite inexplicably signed up to impossible targets regarding future emissions, based on dubious moral grounds revolving around pretending to give a shït about Tuvalu, which was sinking once but is now not sinking, or Polar bears, which were allegedly going to suffer most from global warming, but whose numbers are now higher than ever.

Not forgetting the recent stupid and erroneous claims that the oceans have soaked up 60% more heat than was previously thought. Oohhh.

Let us face facts.

CAGW is a scam that entered public consciousness after the threat of nuclear annihilation receded, when activists once busy with the CND found a new activity to busy themselves with, with so much time on their hands from not being able to find a job that was suited to their lack of intelligence.

The test of the CAGW hypothesis lies with the inability to falsify it; for example, global warming is responsible for: too much rain, too much drought, the end of snow, too much snow, freezing winters, warm winters, wet summers, dry summers, summers too cold, summers too hot etc. etc.

Hands up who'd like to experience a rapid transition off of fossil fuels leaving you with a 95% energy deficit?

Thought so.
But while we don't want that, we'll silently and stupidly take a 400% increase in electricity prices in order to facilitate the false notion of "competition" providing choice to the consumer along with the added bonus of saving the planet.

Climate change, feel-good nonsense, put about by environmentalists who won't show their true hand or their hidden agendas.

We know our efforts won't make a blind bit of difference yet there's some weird moral thing which has nothing to do with science or facts permeating the whole climate change bandwagon here in Ireland.

Save yourself from yourselves and save the planet for your neighbour's grandchildren, the usual tripe.

Is it filling the vacuum left by the church's ignominious downfall here?

Looks like it's filling that gap from the quasi religious reasons being peddled regarding our "obligations" regarding climate change and the alleged but unquantified "damage" we're responsible for causing.
Sinning and absolution. Perfect fit.

When someone can demonstrate what percentage of the alleged point nine/point six/variable degree of global warming/climate change that has been observed in the 20th century has been caused by Ireland's use of fossil fuels, we can then move directly forward to debate how best to rectify it.

Climate science is, apparently, and quite uniquely, the settled, cut and dried science, where actual factual debate is supposedly welcome, as opposed to a religious cult where dissent is punished by excommunication.

I'll bookmark this post, it's such a good one

18-11-2018 11:39am

I agree, CAGW (and all its variants) is a scam as it ultimately results in extra taxes being imposed on the general population, remember Al Gore was a politician with many big business links and that they wanted to monetise carbon.

Having said that, I am very conscious of the environmental destruction that is going on, something that is far more dangerous, the elimination of natural habitat, bio-diversity will come back at our children/grandchildren when they find themselves waking up to silent dawns(no birds), no bees (or other beneficial insects) and the only animals in existence are either vermin, farm (for food) or in zoos.

I still firmly believe in the "limits to growth scenario", that was published in the 1970s and recently updated to show that the predicted trends are still on course for a future catastrophe for mankind.

As I have already said, it isn't fossil fuel consumption that is the primary issue, it is the destruction of the natural habitat on the planet that will ultimately doom us at some point in the future. EV's and renewable energy are a step in the right direction, but we really need to put an end to consumerism, this is the greatest waste of resources possible - so much crap is produced that is fit for landfill almost immediately it is removed from the (rubbish) packaging.

I know that people say we need to produce all this crap to keep people in jobs (keep them busy so they don't revolt) but with the high levels of automation we have available these days, we really should only need to work about 20 hours or less a week to earn a living.
It's time to re-evaluate work and money, as things currently stand, a very small number of people have accumulated about 50% of the total value of everything that the rest of the population have earned.

For these elite, CAGW is a great tool to distract the general population from this great imbalance.

Akrasia · 19-11-2018 5:23pm

dense wrote: »

Because the IPCC endorses Arhennius' equations, so no surprise there.

https://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=82087

I predict you will claim that paper is the worst you have ever read and is riddled with errors, it's what you do when you're presented with research which contradicts the IPCC's policies.

You mean I actually read your source and check if it's reliable?

Maybe you should try doing this yourself first before posting junk science from 'journals' with zero credibility.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Research_Publishing#Controversies

Akrasia · 19-11-2018 5:35pm

There is no grand global conspiracy theory of scientists faking data and keeping the truth about the basic physics underpinning the greenhouse effect

Land use is a factor in climate change, mitigation and adaptation are huge areas of research in climate change and one of the 3 working groups of the IPCC, but the fundamental underlying cause of climate change is the addition of greenhouse gasses which are fundamentally changing the constitution of our atmosphere causing a smaller proportion of solar radiation to be radiated out to space.

The solar minimum may well be coming, but the actual drop in TSI will be tiny compared to the amount of extra heat trapped by our altered atmosphere.

If we could see the CO2 (if it was opaque to light in the visible spectrum) then people would believe that changes in concentration of this gas can have a big effect. But we can't so here's a video that shows the difference between 280ppm and 400ppm using ink as a stand in for CO2

19-11-2018 6:31pm

Which is approximately 0.041% of the atmosphere up from 0.028% 260 years ago.

Akrasia · 19-11-2018 9:07pm

Deleted User wrote: »

Which is approximately 0.041% of the atmosphere up from 0.028% 260 years ago.

Yes. And as I said already on this thread, the last time the atmospheric concentration of CO2 was this high, about 3 million years ago there were no permanent ice caps and sea levels were 15-25 metres higher and global average temperature was almost 3c warmer than they are today.
We're on course to have CO2 concentrations reach 600ppm by the end of the century. These are concentrations not seen in tens of millions of years when global conditions were unrecognisable compared to the conditions that have existed during the entire history of Homo Sapiens as a species.
https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-the-world-passed-a-carbon-threshold-400ppm-and-why-it-matters

And the sun was slightly cooler millions of years ago. As the sun ages, it's getting hotter. (very slowly)

Why do some people think that small concentrations of gases in the atmosphere must have a small effect?

This .028% of CO2 was enough to feed all the land based plants on the entire planet. If it wasn't for this 0.028% CO2, plants could not survive.

The concentration of Ozone is measured at 15 parts per million in the stratosphere where it is most concentrated, and if it wasn't for this very thin layer of very low concentration O3, there would be too much UV to sustain complex DNA structures above ground.

dense · 20-11-2018 1:15am

Akrasia wrote: »

You mean I actually read your source and check if it's reliable?

Please point out the errors you have identified in the paper?

If there are any errors I'm sure the author will welcome learning of them, just like the 60% ocean warming crew over at Nature.com

Akrasia · 20-11-2018 3:24pm

dense wrote: »

Please point out the errors you have identified in the paper?

If there are any errors I'm sure the author will welcome learning of them, just like the 60% ocean warming crew over at Nature.com

The error i have identified is the author needing to submit it to a chinese pay to publish journal which has zero impact factor and a reputation for publishing anything as long as they are paid their fee.

I can't find them listed on the master journal list and I can't find any references to them as a journal other than loads of discussion online about how dodgy they are and how they should be avoided.

I'm not a mathematician but given that his conclusions are pretty much the opposite of every other physicist and climate scientist, I suspect he might have made a few errors with his equations. I can't refer to any commentary on this in the scientific literature, because there doesn't seem to be any. He appears to have zero citations or mentions in the proper academic literature (real journals)

I have to ask Dense. Is this the best research you could find on this topic, or just the best you could find that you think suits your pre-existing bias?

dense · 20-11-2018 6:43pm

Akrasia wrote: »

The error i have identified is the author needing to submit it to a chinese pay to publish journal which has zero impact factor and a reputation for publishing anything as long as they are paid their fee.

Ok, twas just a bit of hand waving you engaged in.

Akrasia · 21-11-2018 10:58am

dense wrote: »

Ok, twas just a bit of hand waving you engaged in.

Yep. Loony papers with outlandish conclusions published in predatory pay to publish journals can be hand waved away.

Why do you think this paper is likely to be true while the vast vast majority of published science on this topic in real journals say the opposite?

dense · 21-11-2018 5:29pm

Akrasia wrote: »

Yep. Loony papers with outlandish conclusions published in predatory pay to publish journals can be hand waved away.

Why do you think this paper is likely to be true while the vast vast majority of published science on this topic in real journals say the opposite?

The abstract that I quoted seems quite reasonable.

The author points out the shortcomings in the GHG theory which go some way to explaining why climate models are overestimating sensitivity and for the missing heat that the proponents of the AGW theory are searching for.

Akrasia · 22-11-2018 11:20am

dense wrote: »

The abstract that I quoted seems quite reasonable.

The author points out the shortcomings in the GHG theory which go some way to explaining why climate models are overestimating sensitivity and for the missing heat that the proponents of the AGW theory are searching for.

Seems quite reasonable based on your own personal expertise on the matter?

The conclusions of the paper are that higher concentrations of GHGs actually cool the planet rather than warm it.

Increasing atmospheric emissivity due to increased greenhouse gas concentrations will have a net cooling effect.

It is the exact opposite of all the established science on the subject. If this paper had any merit, and it actually disproved global warming theory you'd think it would have had at least a few citations.

Unless his findings get reproduced in a respectable journal, then this paper can sit alongside all the 'expanding earth' papers that are published in these kinds of fake journals all the time.

dense · 22-11-2018 1:07pm

Akrasia wrote: »

The conclusions of the paper are that higher concentrations of GHGs actually cool the planet rather than warm it.

It is the exact opposite of all the established science on the subject.

Not quite, climate scientists have it covered, saying that GHGs have been observed causing localised cooling as well as warming and that excess C02 atmospheric is now cooling outer space having left the lower atmosphere

Rising atmospheric carbon dioxide actually cools part of Antarctica

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/12/rising-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide-actually-cools-part-antarctica

Carbon dioxide occurs naturally throughout Earth’satmosphere. In the thermosphere, CO2 is the primary radiative cooling agent and fundamentally affects the energy balance and temperature of this high-altitude atmospheric layer1,2. Anthropogenic CO2 increases are expected to propagate upward throughout the entire atmosphere, which should result in a cooler, more contracted thermosphere3,4,5.

https://m.phys.org/news/2012-11-atmospheric-co2-space-junk.html

During the latest three millennia, one can observe a clear cooling trend in the Earth’s
climate (Keigwin, 1996; Sorokhtin and Ushakov, 2002; Gerhard, 2004; Khiyuk and
Chilingar, 2006; Sorokhtin et al., 2007). During this period, deviations of the global
temperature from this trend reached up to 3ıC with a clear trend of decreasing global
temperature by about 2ıC. Relatively short-term variations in global temperature are
mainly caused by the variations in solar activity and are not linked to the changes in
carbon dioxide content in atmosphere.

Accumulation of large amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leads to the cool-
ing, and not to warming of climate, as the proponents of traditional anthropogenic global
warming theory believe (Aeschbach-Hertig, 2006). This conclusion has a simple physical
explanation: when the infrared radiation is absorbed by the molecules of greenhouse
gases, its energy is transformed into thermal expansion of air, which causes convective
fluxes of air masses restoring the adiabatic distribution of temperature in the troposphere.

Our estimates show that release of small amounts of carbon dioxide (several hundreds
ppm), which are typical for the scope of anthropogenic emission, does not influence the
global temperature of Earth’s atmosphere.

https://www.google.ie/url?q=http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download%3Fdoi%3D10.1.1.306.3621%26rep%3Drep1%26type%3Dpdf&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwi5s8P88ufeAhXKK8AKHYOOCDsQFjAAegQICxAC&usg=AOvVaw0XWfmFJlMx8sK701MKPAaG

Akrasia · 22-11-2018 6:46pm

dense wrote: »

Not quite, climate scientists have it covered, saying that GHGs have been observed causing localised cooling as well as warming and that excess C02 atmospheric is now cooling outer space having left the lower atmosphere

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/12/rising-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide-actually-cools-part-antarctica

https://m.phys.org/news/2012-11-atmospheric-co2-space-junk.html

https://www.google.ie/url?q=http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download%3Fdoi%3D10.1.1.306.3621%26rep%3Drep1%26type%3Dpdf&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwi5s8P88ufeAhXKK8AKHYOOCDsQFjAAegQICxAC&usg=AOvVaw0XWfmFJlMx8sK701MKPAaG

Wow, you've discovered something that no physicist or atmospheric scientist has ever thought of before....

Now, do you mind explaining what this process is in your own words so we can be sure that you understand it?
Just in case you don't, here's a nice discussion on the Adiabatic lapse rate and how this effect cannot overcome the greenhouse effect.
https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2014/02/23/the-lapse-rate/

BTW, CO2 causing slight cooling in the upper stratosphere is mostly irrelevant to us because we live in the troposphere where extra concentrations of CO2 definitely increases the ambient air temperature.

The fact that CO2 has been mixing more than we had previously thought with the upper atmosphere is actually bad news because it means that the residence time for CO2 in the atmosphere is probably longer than we had thought before.

Also, cooling in the stratosphere is predicted by the greenhouse effect. Less heat escapes to higher altitudes which cools the stratosphere. And when CO2 interacts with IR frequency radiation, it absorbs it and emits it in all directions, so when this happens where the atmosphere is very very thin and low density, the process acts to cool the atmosphere, but down where we live, the atmosphere is much much denser and more than 10 miles thick, so the photons get re-absorbed and re-emitted many times before they eventually work their way out of the atmosphere.

Before we had confirmed that the stratospheric cooling effect was actually happening, genuine skeptics and deniers could still point to the stratosphere not cooling as expected, and use this as evidence that climate change isn't happening as predicted. When the stratosphere was finally confirmed to be cooling, suddenly the deniers start using this as evidence that CO2 actually causes cooling and therefore the greenhouse effect can't be real.

It's almost as if evidence or physics don't matter.

23-11-2018 6:02pm

I see another "false flag" was raised the other day with the news that CO2 levels were higher again last year and all the scare stories about global warming climate change being a major issue again!

While ignoring and diverting attention away from the real dangers the planet faces, loss of natural habitat, destruction of natural forestry (etc) and mass extinction of many diverse species. Plus the ever increasing human population that is "demanding" more and more "stuff", of should that be big business creating the demand to enrich themselves and to hell with the planet!

Humans terraforming the planet is causing more affects to weather (local climate) and generating extra CO2, than CO2 from industry alone.

Smoke and mirrors, to avoid any action that would actually prevent a future catastrophe.

dense · 23-11-2018 7:28pm

[Deleted User] wrote: »

I see another "false flag" was raised the other day with the news that CO2 levels were higher again last year and all the scare stories about global warming climate change being a major issue again!

While ignoring and diverting attention away from the real dangers the planet faces, loss of natural habitat, destruction of natural forestry (etc) and mass extinction of many diverse species. Plus the ever increasing human population that is "demanding" more and more "stuff", of should that be big business creating the demand to enrich themselves and to hell with the planet!

Humans terraforming the planet is causing more affects to weather (local climate) and generating extra CO2, than CO2 from industry alone.

Smoke and mirrors, to avoid any action that would actually prevent a future catastrophe.

See this??

https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/skyscrapers-hurricane-harvey-houston-princeton-university-flooding-wind-a8633781.html

Akrasia · 24-11-2018 10:22am

Deleted User wrote: »

I see another "false flag" was raised the other day with the news that CO2 levels were higher again last year and all the scare stories about global warming climate change being a major issue again!

While ignoring and diverting attention away from the real dangers the planet faces, loss of natural habitat, destruction of natural forestry (etc) and mass extinction of many diverse species. Plus the ever increasing human population that is "demanding" more and more "stuff", of should that be big business creating the demand to enrich themselves and to hell with the planet!

Humans terraforming the planet is causing more affects to weather (local climate) and generating extra CO2, than CO2 from industry alone.

Smoke and mirrors, to avoid any action that would actually prevent a future catastrophe.

Seriously mate. It's a false dichotomy

Next you're gonna say that CFCs and the Ozone layer were a false flag too?
What about acid rain?
Is Polio eradicaion a false flag? I mean, why spend money vaccinating against polio when there's malaria and TB out there causing problems as well?

Land use is part of the problem that needs to be addressed, we definitely need to cut down on the waste and do more to preserve habitats and replant native woodlands. The fact that climate change is a huge problem makes these initiatives more likely to receive funding than otherwise, given that these would also contribute towards reducing/mitigating the impact of climate change.

Akrasia · 24-11-2018 10:28am

dense wrote: »

See this??

https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/skyscrapers-hurricane-harvey-houston-princeton-university-flooding-wind-a8633781.html

You have this amazing ability to filter out the information that you don't like from any news source don't you.

Half of the links you post support the consensus on climate change but you just ignore those parts, the other half of your links are from extremely unreliable sources.

24-11-2018 11:59am

Akrasia wrote: »

Seriously mate. It's a false dichotomy

Seriously, you're looking at the wrong problem, This is the real issue.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-46327634

Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil has hit its highest rate in a decade, according to official data.
About 7,900 sq km (3,050 sq miles) of the world's largest rainforest was destroyed between August 2017 and July 2018 - an area roughly five times the size of London.
Environment Minister Edson Duarte said illegal logging was to blame.
The figures come amid concerns about the policies of Brazil's newly elected president, Jair Bolsonaro.
During the 2018 election campaign, Mr Bolsonaro pledged to limit fines for damaging forestry and to weaken the influence of the environmental agency.
An aide for the president-elect has also announced the administration will merge the agriculture and environment ministries, which critics say could endanger the rainforest.

Couple this with similar terraforming in many other areas on the planet and you'll see that the CO2 stuff is just a diversion, one that suits the people in power.

Akrasia · 24-11-2018 12:10pm

Deleted User wrote: »

Seriously, you're looking at the wrong problem, This is the real issue.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-46327634

Couple this with similar terraforming in many other areas on the planet and you'll see that the CO2 stuff is just a diversion, one that suits the people in power.

There can be more than one 'real issue' at a time.

The Amazon is under threat from logging and also from climate change. Because of the global focus on climate change, we are more likely to direct the necessary resources required to protect it than if we just focus on the logging alone.

The logging interests are hardly jumping up and down about climate change to distract us from their logging. These interests are just as opposed to acting on climate change because they know that the actions required to reduce climate change will also impact on their own industry.

What you're arguing is like saying:
'we shouldn't try to save the giant panda, we should save it's habitat'
when in fact the focus on saving the panda is much more likely to result in it's habitat being preserved than just focusing on the forests themselves

24-11-2018 1:18pm

Akrasia wrote: »

.

What you're arguing is like saying:
'we shouldn't try to save the giant panda, we should save it's habitat'
when in fact the focus on saving the panda is much more likely to result in it's habitat being preserved than just focusing on the forests themselves

If you preserve their habitat, you're also preserving the forests they live in and the Panda will look after itself.

Same with climate change, look after the planet and the climate will take care of itself, concentrating on CO2 is a diversionary tactic and the world leaders know it as doing things this way is better for business than tackling the real issue.

Akrasia · 24-11-2018 1:41pm

[Deleted User] wrote: »

If you preserve their habitat, you're also preserving the forests they live in and the Panda will look after itself.

Same with climate change, look after the planet and the climate will take care of itself, concentrating on CO2 is a diversionary tactic and the world leaders know it as doing things this way is better for business than tackling the real issue.

You're completely missing the point of what I'm saying

24-11-2018 1:50pm

Akrasia wrote: »

You're completely missing the point of what I'm saying

I get the point alright, you just don't like the answer.

Akrasia · 24-11-2018 6:28pm

Deleted User wrote: »

I get the point alright, you just don't like the answer.

You clearly don't get the point.

Giant Pandas are iconic animals that the Chinese government are heavily invested in preserving. Preserving them requires preserving their habitat. If it wasn't for the Panda, the habitat would have been gone decades ago even if all the chinese environmentalists had campaigned day and night to save those bamboo forests.

Panda preservation efforts resulted in Panda reserves which exist only because of the pandas, and if those places weren't protected, they would have been lost decades ago. The Chinese implemented logging bans in these areas in 1998 specifically to protect Pandas.

Similarly with climate change and land use and deforestation. People have been campaigning against deforestation for decades and they have been ignored because their voices were weak and there are profits to be made, and governments viewed these as national natural resources to be exploited as they see fit.

Enter climate change, and we have a global focus on keeping GHG concentrations low, and this means both reducing emissions, and also pulling carbon dioxide from the air. Maintaining rainforests is a crucial part of this process and we are much much more likely to have global treaties to preserve nature reserves if they are tied to global warming, than if they are left up to sovereign governments to decide on their own.

24-11-2018 6:46pm

Akrasia wrote: »

You clearly don't get the point.

Giant Pandas are iconic animals that the Chinese government are heavily invested in preserving. Preserving them requires preserving their habitat. If it wasn't for the Panda, the habitat would have been gone decades ago even if all the chinese environmentalists had campaigned day and night to save those bamboo forests.

Panda preservation efforts resulted in Panda reserves which exist only because of the pandas, and if those places weren't protected, they would have been lost decades ago. The Chinese implemented logging bans in these areas in 1998 specifically to protect Pandas.

So you agree that preserving the habitat, safeguards the Pandas - which is exactly what I said.

Akrasia wrote: »

Similarly with climate change and land use and deforestation. People have been campaigning against deforestation for decades and they have been ignored because their voices were weak and there are profits to be made, and governments viewed these as national natural resources to be exploited as they see fit.

Enter climate change, and we have a global focus on keeping GHG concentrations low, and this means both reducing emissions, and also pulling carbon dioxide from the air. Maintaining rainforests is a crucial part of this process and we are much much more likely to have global treaties to preserve nature reserves if they are tied to global warming, than if they are left up to sovereign governments to decide on their own.

It's not working though, as you can see those treaties have done little to improve things, with the exception of the bank balances of those who benefited from the "green policies", make more stuff than ever before but put a "low carbon" label on it to sell even more.

Akrasia · 25-11-2018 11:36am

Deleted User wrote: »

So you agree that preserving the habitat, safeguards the Pandas - which is exactly what I said.

That's what I said too, but I said it as an analogy to say that the habitat is saved because of the panda, not because of the habitat itself. In the same way preserving the rainforests can be done as a consequence of dealing with climate change, and not because of the rainforests themselves.

It's not working though, as you can see those treaties have done little to improve things, with the exception of the bank balances of those who benefited from the "green policies", make more stuff than ever before but put a "low carbon" label on it to sell even more.

I know it's not working. We need to take climate change seriously. There need to be binding targets with penalties for not meeting them. When policies are announced, they need to be implemented fully, not given lip service

International treaties need to have monitoring built into them to make sure that everyone is abiding by them

Thats what the Montreal protocal did and that was successful (although depressingly, CFCs are beginning to return as some unscrupulous companies are ignoring the regulations. Thankfully, these companies can be held to account by the mechanisms in the Montreal protocal once they are identified, they can be sanctioned and fined.

dense · 26-11-2018 11:20am

Akrasia wrote: »

You have this amazing ability to filter out the information that you don't like from any news source don't you.

Half of the links you post support the consensus on climate change but you just ignore those parts, the other half of your links are from extremely unreliable sources.

Let's look at what was being claimed before this study was published, that global warming was responsible for rainfall stalling over Houston, causing flooding, and rising sea levels.

Now it's skyscrapers that are being blamed.
Probably something in that seeing as it's been documented that wind farms are also causing climate change on a local level.

Akrasia · 26-11-2018 5:16pm

dense wrote: »

Let's look at what was being claimed before this study was published, that global warming was responsible for rainfall stalling over Houston, causing flooding, and rising sea levels.

Now it's skyscrapers that are being blamed.
Probably something in that seeing as it's been documented that wind farms are also causing climate change on a local level.

First of all, this is an initial study based on a single storm using a single model. It needs to be verified before it becomes a robust finding. There probably is an effect from urbanisation on rainfall, it's just exactly how much needs to be narrowed down through further study.

Secondly, They don't say that climate change isn't also having a serious impact on rainfall. In fact, the extra heat allows the air to hold more water, so if urban landscapes can concentrate rainfall onto the urban center, then extra water content in the atmosphere due to climate change is a very bad thing and it means we could be underestimating the risk of flooding on cities due to climate change if this effect has not been included in the models.

And thirdly, arctic amplification is also affecting the jet stream which is causing atmospheric blocking which affects the path of storms and can cause them to stall for a long period. This study does not contradict this.

06-12-2018 11:16pm

https://redpilledamerica.com/blog/demo-home/episode-7/

CHERRY PICKING

Why did Donald Trump say a lot of global warming was a hoax? We follow the biggest science heist in history to find the answer.

Interesting podcast with a group of sceptics who didn't trust the original "hockey stick" analysis and went to great lengths to try to verify the original data and methods to prove or disprove the results.
They were to first to receive the "climategate" files and how these revelations influenced Trump.

Akrasia · 08-12-2018 3:09pm

[Deleted User] wrote: »

https://redpilledamerica.com/blog/demo-home/episode-7/

Interesting podcast with a group of sceptics who didn't trust the original "hockey stick" analysis and went to great lengths to try to verify the original data and methods to prove or disprove the results.
They were to first to receive the "climategate" files and how these revelations influenced Trump.

I listened to the whole episode and it was really one sided and misleading. What parts of it do you find convincing and we can talk about those

08-12-2018 3:19pm

Akrasia wrote: »

I listened to the whole episode and it was really one sided and misleading. What parts of it do you find convincing and we can talk about those

The refusal to release the source data alone is telling, and then the refusal to divulge exactly how they came to the conclusions.

Don't get me wrong! Human activity is screwing the planet, most of the damage is being caused by terraforming natural habitat into farmland, towns & cities and many other examples that result in the local climate now being vastly different to what they were in pre-human times.

Carbon emissions are only an indicator of this activity, therefore raising taxes on this is simply a scam as it does not address the underlying problem.

What it does do in fact is simply make the elite wealthier while spoofing the general population into believing they're paying more "for the greater good", we're still buying stuff that has a very short life before going to landfill for example.

Akrasia · 08-12-2018 11:40pm

[Deleted User] wrote: »

The refusal to release the source data alone is telling, and then the refusal to divulge exactly how they came to the conclusions.

The podcast never mentioned the fact that there were multiple enquiries that exonerated CRU of any wrongdoing apart from a failure to respond properly to all of the FOIA requests. The podcast glossed over the fact that McIntyre orchestrated a nuisance FOIA campaign against CRU with them receiving 80 requests over the span of a few weeks.

The podcast also never mentioned that the raw data McIntyre was requesting was already publicly available to anyone who was qualified to analyse it and anyone could have reproduced the Datasets and verified the CRU data that way instead of badgering them with FOIA requests instead.

The podcast never mentioned that Mcyntire's published studies have been discredited due to basic errors in his methodology or that Anthony Watts surface stations project has been wound down because even he had to admit that poor citing of some stations has a negligible effect on the overall temperature record.

Most of all, what the podcast fails to mention is that all of the concerns raised by skeptics have been taken seriously by climate scientists, studied in depth, and found to be baseless.

The skeptics never mention all the work done by others attempting to verify their claims and instead finding that they hold little water. For them, the claims raising doubts about climate science on their own are the end product. They're selling doubt, not producing science.

Wanderer78 · 26-01-2019 12:46pm

an astonishing speech, apologies for the video dump

26-01-2019 1:47pm

Wanderer78 wrote: »

an astonishing speech, apologies for the video dump

Yes, the economic requirement for infinite growth to maintain functionality of the current economic system coupled with excessive consumerism and planned obsolescence ARE the biggest contributors to the manmade element of climate change.
But I simply don't expect any business or political leader acting upon this as it is against their lifetime conditioning for growth, growth at any and all costs, coupled with a mindset that lack of growth is an indication of failure.

They'll need to put some really strong substances in the water there to get a change of mind.

Capt'n Midnight · 01-02-2019 10:10pm

Our planet only receives a small part of the sun's energy.

Roughly speaking if we could harness all of it then each human would have as much energy as our entire planet.

There's lots of resource rich asteroids and comets out there.

Wanderer78 · 10-03-2019 12:10pm

is there any information on the possible school marches this friday 15th, thank you?

cnocbui · 05-09-2019 12:03pm

Well that's simply unacceptable. A network of NOAA temperature monitoring stations built across the US in non urban locations, have recorded no warming for the last 15 years. Those figures must be wrong and should be adjusted immediately.

https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2019/08/23/climate_alarmists_foiled_no_us_warming_since_2005.html

ohographite · 05-09-2019 11:57pm

I am terrified to see an article with such content. Is the website where this article comes from trusted and/or famous?

06-09-2019 5:39pm

ohographite wrote: »

I am terrified to see an article with such content. Is the website where this article comes from trusted and/or famous?

Done some (shallow) digging, and it appears to be a right leaning news agregator, possibly sympathetic to the fossil fuel industry.

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

But the article itself is repeating what has often been stated by sceptics when it comes to using data from locations that have been terraformed by humans. It is obvious to anyone who wants to look beyond the headline temperature readings that the local environment will have an affect on the figures.

A weather station that was rural 50 years ago could be surrounded by concrete and tarmac today so it will show higher readings than another station that remained rural. These figures will inflate the warming, no doubt about that at all.

Urban areas are far warmer than they were in the past for many reasons, a fact that should always be considered before claiming global warming.

Akrasia · 07-09-2019 12:43am

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Done some (shallow) digging, and it appears to be a right leaning news agregator, possibly sympathetic to the fossil fuel industry.

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

But the article itself is repeating what has often been stated by sceptics when it comes to using data from locations that have been terraformed by humans. It is obvious to anyone who wants to look beyond the headline temperature readings that the local environment will have an affect on the figures.

A weather station that was rural 50 years ago could be surrounded by concrete and tarmac today so it will show higher readings than another station that remained rural. These figures will inflate the warming, no doubt about that at all.

Urban areas are far warmer than they were in the past for many reasons, a fact that should always be considered before claiming global warming.

And scientists know about this, so the UHI effect has been accounted for.

Anthony Watts had a site years ago called Surfacestations.org dedicated to the Urban Heat Island effect. Berkeley Earth tested their hypothesis and found it was completely unfounded
https://skepticalscience.com/WattsandBEST.html
Every now and then Watts will try to reinglate his old canard, he never mentions the BEST data that proves him wrong

07-09-2019 1:03am

Akrasia wrote: »

And scientists know about this, so the UHI effect has been accounted for.

Anthony Watts had a site years ago called Surfacestations.org dedicated to the Urban Heat Island effect. Berkeley Earth tested their hypothesis and found it was completely unfounded
https://skepticalscience.com/WattsandBEST.html
Every now and then Watts will try to reinglate his old canard, he never mentions the BEST data that proves him wrong

The UHI is real and it also includes areas that have agricultural influences, the main issue is that a large percentage of the planet's surface has been terraformed by humans to a greater or lesser extent over the past century, all forms of terraforming will have an affect on local climate.

To say that global climate change is driven primarily by humans is not proven, but local climate changes are close to 100% caused by human activity is proven by the differences in change between urban monitoring stations verses rural ( non agricultural areas) stations.

The unanswered question is still what percentage of global climate change is directly caused by human activity. Something that is very hard to accurately determine when most of the data is collected from sites that are "tainted" by the affects of direct human activity.

Akrasia · 08-09-2019 6:04pm

Deleted User wrote: »

The UHI is real and it also includes areas that have agricultural influences, the main issue is that a large percentage of the planet's surface has been terraformed by humans to a greater or lesser extent over the past century, all forms of terraforming will have an affect on local climate.

To say that global climate change is driven primarily by humans is not proven, but local climate changes are close to 100% caused by human activity is proven by the differences in change between urban monitoring stations verses rural ( non agricultural areas) stations.

The unanswered question is still what percentage of global climate change is directly caused by human activity. Something that is very hard to accurately determine when most of the data is collected from sites that are "tainted" by the affects of direct human activity.

Hold on, on one hand you said that global climate change is not proven to have an anthropogenic cause, and in the same post, you say that a large percentage of the world has been terraformed by humans and that any change to local environment definitely has an effect on it's climate...

Look, you may or may not trust climate monitoring stations, but there are so many other reasons to believe that global climate change is real and primarily caused by greenhouse gasses

1. The Arctics are melting (yes even antarctica https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190114161150.htm)
2. Glaciers all around the world are melting (not all of them, just the vast majority of them)
3. The coral reefs are dying because temperatures are rising
4. There are heatwaves of previously unprecedented intensities happening on a regular basis (are you surprised anymore when temperatures in France reach 40c?
5. Animal and plant species are migrating
6. Rainfall patterns are changing
7. The physics behind the greenhouse effect are undeniable and accepted by pretty much every single qualified physicist
8. All of the predictions by the few scientists who oppose the consensus on climate change have been proven to be false (you can disprove this by finding me a prediction from 5 or more years ago that has come true)
9. Satellite measurements confirm global climate change. These measurements are completely independent of the network of weather stations (even the 'skeptics' at UAH show significant global warming despite their datasets fundamentally understating the increases in global average temperature)
10. Global sea levels are rising
.... I could go on and on and on and on

Capt'n Midnight · 08-09-2019 6:29pm

ohographite wrote: »

I am terrified to see an article with such content. Is the website where this article comes from trusted and/or famous?

it points to wattsupwiththat.com which has been doing that story for years and years

ESA and NASA are doing satellite measurements of things like temperature, wind , waves and altitudes globally.

you can argue about heat islands both ways but you can't argue with radar measurements of the whole of Greenland.

meanwhile the Greenland ice cap melt has added another millimetre to sea levels

Recent years have seen hundreds of billions of tonnes of ice lost - and a rough guide to the effect on sea level is that 362 billion tonnes of melt raises the average ocean level by a millimetre.

SlowBlowin · 16-09-2019 8:45am

cnocbui wrote: »

Well that's simply unacceptable. A network of NOAA temperature monitoring stations built across the US in non urban locations, have recorded no warming for the last 15 years. Those figures must be wrong and should be adjusted immediately.

https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2019/08/23/climate_alarmists_foiled_no_us_warming_since_2005.html

Have a read here:

https://www.noaa.gov/education/resource-collections/climate-education-resources/climate-change-impacts

It explains the readings and how they concluded climate change is real and happening now (see "is it happening everywhere" section and heatmap).

magicbastarder · 03-12-2019 10:01am

https://twitter.com/boucherhayes/status/1201596326590525443

i've certainly noticed a jump in the 'cattle are not a source of greenhouse gases' articles in the last few weeks.

03-12-2019 1:14pm

magicbastarder wrote: »

i've certainly noticed a jump in the 'cattle are not a source of greenhouse gases' articles in the last few weeks.

Well compared to the CO2 from Industry, it's a small drop in the balloon.
Fossil fuel consumption is still rising quite rapidly in some parts of the world.

Climate Change: The Megathread - Read Post #1 before posting

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