CC3 -- Why I believe that a third option is needed for climate change

Nabber · 27-03-2020 8:23pm

Akrasia wrote: »

have You been living under a rock?

I'm not sure there is damage directly related with climate change. Most of what I've seen is theorised damage predicted in the future or alarmist rhetoric claiming AGW is the cause of more tornadoes or forest fires with no supporting data.

The alarming and concerning damage humans cause is direct, resulting from construction developments, deforestation, farming, mining, drilling ect.
Climate change has distracted from these issues, to the point where the vast majority of the populace feel that reduction in carbon is the way to a clean and renewable living. This simple isn't true, the carbon and water consumption from renewable energy production is ignored, so too is the impact of renewable energy on the ecosystem.
There is also a relentless condemnation of nuclear energy, which is the cleanest safest energy source available.

Assume I do live under a rock. What is the answer to my question. What damage is directly caused by rising temperatures from AGW?

Akrasia · 29-03-2020 1:56am

Nabber wrote: »

I'm not sure there is damage directly related with climate change. Most of what I've seen is theorised damage predicted in the future or alarmist rhetoric claiming AGW is the cause of more tornadoes or forest fires with no supporting data.

The alarming and concerning damage humans cause is direct, resulting from construction developments, deforestation, farming, mining, drilling ect.
Climate change has distracted from these issues, to the point where the vast majority of the populace feel that reduction in carbon is the way to a clean and renewable living. This simple isn't true, the carbon and water consumption from renewable energy production is ignored, so too is the impact of renewable energy on the ecosystem.
There is also a relentless condemnation of nuclear energy, which is the cleanest safest energy source available.

Assume I do live under a rock. What is the answer to my question. What damage is directly caused by rising temperatures from AGW?

Tbh, there are so many examples that I would rather you google ‘ecological damage caused by climate change’ and then disprove the results

Every single biological system on the surface of the earth is being impacted by climate change

Birdnuts · 29-03-2020 2:26am

Akrasia wrote: »

Tbh, there are so many examples that I would rather you google ‘ecological damage caused by climate change’ and then disprove the results

Every single biological system on the surface of the earth is being impacted by climate change

Well thats not true - climate change didn't even feature on the top 10 current drivers of extinction as recently published by Birdlife international.

Akrasia · 29-03-2020 10:01am

Birdnuts wrote: »

Well thats not true - climate change didn't even feature on the top 10 current drivers of extinction as recently published by Birdlife international.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/10/bird-species-extinction-north-america-climate-crisis

Nabber · 29-03-2020 1:27pm

Nabber wrote: »

I'm not sure there is damage directly related with climate change. Most of what I've seen is theorised damage predicted in the future or alarmist rhetoric claiming AGW is the cause of more tornadoes or forest fires with no supporting data.

Akrasia wrote: »

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/10/bird-species-extinction-north-america-climate-crisis

The heading of the very first link you provide?

Two-thirds of bird species in North America could vanish in climate crisis

One of the biggest culprits of Alarm-ism doesn't call out any direct negative impact of AGW. All circumstantial with theorised out possibilities and effects.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/global-warming-effects/

Could you provide your sources Akrasia?

M.T. Cranium · 01-04-2020 11:36pm

Natural variability could always come along with an unexpected new trend, for example in my Toronto study, the decade of the 1850s had winters that were 2.0 C deg colder than the 1840s. The 1861-70 decade had snowfall that increased by 50% over the decade before that.

All it takes is a slight change in the positioning of hemispheric waves. I don't think that adding greenhouse gas to the atmosphere precludes that possibility from happening.

You have to wonder if there will be any faint signal from this coming economic slowdown. A lot fewer jet contrails may lead to clearer skies and possibly tilt the balance in winter towards cold slightly. If we live to see it.

Akrasia · 04-04-2020 10:56am

Nabber wrote: »

The heading of the very first link you provide?

One of the biggest culprits of Alarm-ism doesn't call out any direct negative impact of AGW. All circumstantial with theorised out possibilities and effects.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/global-warming-effects/

Could you provide your sources Akrasia?

This post illustrates exactly the my point. We have scientists warning of what can happen if we don’t take action, and non experts dismissing them as alarmists because there is uncertainty

I don’t consider your request for sources to be a genuine request, there are thousands of papers and an almost unanimous scientific consensus on the need to act to avoid dangerous levels of climate change

This is at a time when the world is in lockdown because of what a virus that could kill tens of millions of people if we don’t take action

At the time the country was ordered into lockdown only a few people had died and we had few confirmed cases. If we had waited until lots of people were already dying it would have been too late to avoid a disaster

Nabber · 04-04-2020 1:36pm

Akrasia wrote: »

This post illustrates exactly the my point. We have scientists warning of what can happen if we don’t take action, and non experts dismissing them as alarmists because there is uncertainty

The issue is you made a statement that we can't reverse the damage we have done now. Not warnings of predicted damages. Now you are twisting the argument.

I don’t consider your request for sources to be a genuine request, there are thousands of papers and an almost unanimous scientific consensus on the need to act to avoid dangerous levels of climate change

I did try find my own sources, please also remember I was challenging your statement that 'damages can't be reversed'. I was not challenging predicted damages.
I read the one you provided. I couldn't find any direct correlation between AGW and 'damages'. Lets be fair, you have used an open and broad statement, as damages could be biological, economic or geological.
The only damages to be found are political and societal.
I went with the famed polar bear population. That again was predicted decline, which never materialized.

No need to provide them at this stage, I'm sure they don't exist, it you have been easier for you to provide them. But alas you spun it aground to COVID-19 :rolleyes:

This is at a time when the world is in lockdown because of what a virus that could kill tens of millions of people if we don’t take action

At the time the country was ordered into lockdown only a few people had died and we had few confirmed cases. If we had waited until lots of people were already dying it would have been too late to avoid a disaster

AGW is not a pandemic. Relating them like this to build a straw man is typical of AGW extremists. Trying to associate the two and using human suffering and death to further your argument, shameful tactics.
Why not use global extinction from a comet? That is closer in alignment with AGW.

Akrasia · 04-04-2020 6:28pm

Nabber wrote: »

The issue is you made a statement that we can't reverse the damage we have done now. Not warnings of predicted damages. Now you are twisting the argument.

No i'm not
The damage we are doing is the act of raising the global average temperature (amongst other related consequences like ocean acidification)

The earth is not yet in equilibrium from the ghgs we have already emitted, even if we stop pumping GHGs into the atmosphere today, we will continue to see warming from our current emissions well into the next century.

We have no way to repair the damage we have done to the coral reefs that have already been destroyed, and are predicted to be completely lost within the next few decades, and we cannot bring back the countless species of flora and fauna that are going to go extinct due to climate change (as much as 1/3rd of all species may be wiped out within 50 year and a much higher percentage will become locally extinct having had to migrate to new areas to survive according to this recent study
https://www.pnas.org/content/117/8/4211/tab-article-info

I did try find my own sources, please also remember I was challenging your statement that 'damages can't be reversed'. I was not challenging predicted damages.
I read the one you provided. I couldn't find any direct correlation between AGW and 'damages'. Lets be fair, you have used an open and broad statement, as damages could be biological, economic or geological.
The only damages to be found are political and societal.
I went with the famed polar bear population. That again was predicted decline, which never materialized.

No need to provide them at this stage, I'm sure they don't exist, it you have been easier for you to provide them. But alas you spun it aground to COVID-19 :rolleyes:

I don't believe you tried very hard to find any evidence of current impacts of climate change. The IPCC, you may have heard of them, have produced 5 major reports that summarise the main research in this area. Working Group 2 specifically looks at impacts and mitigation strategies.

Their last report is a bit out of date now and is due to be updated next year, but even data from 6 or 7 years ago shows widespread negative impacts of climate change that have already been observed, and this is not even the start of what we're going to see if we don't act and we see climate change of greater than 2c in the next few decades

Climate change was initially reported as a serious concern in the 70s, so compared to the pandemic, that was like December 2019, when the virus was first reported and some doctors had concerns but we did not take them seriousy

The current climate change is where we are starting to see some big impacts, wildfires, hurricanes, floods, heatwaves that appear to be getting worse, but some people still think it is within the normal bounds of a viral outbreak and we don't need to be concerned. In the Virus timeline, this was about the middle of February

In 10 or 15 years, we're likely to have added another half a degree of warming to the biosphere, storms, droughts, wildfires, heatwaves etc will continue to get worse, and people will start to agree to spend the resources to take drastic action to prevent further damage. At this point, the costs of action are much much higher than they would have been if this had been limited back in the 70s. or 90s, and the outcomes are that a certain amount of permanent severe damage will already be unavoidable so we'll just have to adapt to those new conditions and hope that they don't get as bad as the worst possible scenarios (because the worst case plausible outcomes are very very bad indeed)

We should learn from this pandemic to trust the experts and when they warn us that something is coming, and we need to act to avoid it, that we take it seriously when there is still time to act and not wait until the only action we can take is to treat the victims of climate change as best we can and hope it blows over sooner rather than later (global warming won't blow over)

AGW is not a pandemic. Relating them like this to build a straw man is typical of AGW extremists. Trying to associate the two and using human suffering and death to further your argument, shameful tactics.
Why not use global extinction from a comet? That is closer in alignment with AGW.

No its not, not even in the slightest. I am relating the current acute medical crisis to the ongoing chronic environmental crisis

I am comparing the reaction of the public, and global governments, on their willingness to believe expert advice in the early stages (low willingness) and their willingness to take economically challenging measures to tackle the crisis at an early stage (low willingness) and then pointing out that the countries who acted earliest have the best outcomes, and those who tried to ignore reality will be the worst hit, economically, socially and politically and in lost human life.

Danno · 05-04-2020 11:46am

Akrasia wrote: »

We should learn from this pandemic to trust the experts and when they warn us...

Seriously?

https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152?s=20

Really?

and

screenhunter_7460-feb-26-19-37.gif?w=640&h=743

There is tons more out there. The lesson is not to put trust in everything the "experts" say.

Akrasia · 05-04-2020 12:44pm

Danno wrote: »

Seriously?

https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152?s=20

Really?

and

There is tons more out there. The lesson is not to put trust in everything the "experts" say.

Or don’t trust sensationalist media misreporting of science, and don’t take preliminary findings to be the final verdict

People need to be taught how to critically assess claims that they see in the media and how to tell good sources from junk.

A few lone voices are not enough to change a paradigm on their own, those voices need to convince other experts to pay attention to them and they need to provide evidence to support their claims

When a large percentage of experts in an established scientific field get together and collectively warn of a major threat, the public should pay attention.

We did it with CFCs, the millennium bug, acid rain, the coronavirus, and we need to step up any act seriously on Climate Change. (By we, I mean the governments of the world need to enact policies to transition off fossil fuels)

Danno · 05-04-2020 2:06pm

Akrasia wrote: »

Or don’t trust sensationalist media misreporting of science, and don’t take preliminary findings to be the final verdict

People need to be taught how to critically assess claims that they see in the media and how to tell good sources from junk.

Colour me shocked - to have you regard "The Guardian" as a junk source! :eek:

Akrasia wrote: »

A few lone voices are not enough to change a paradigm on their own, those voices need to convince other experts to pay attention to them and they need to provide evidence to support their claims

We have circled on this before - much of the evidence is based on satellite temperature measurements, much of the sparse land based data is homogenised and altered.

Akrasia wrote: »

When a large percentage of experts in an established scientific field get together and collectively warn of a major threat, the public should pay attention.

They can't even agree on what they are warning about collectively. Some of them have made predictions such as "British kids just won't know what snow is..." and so forth.

Akrasia wrote: »

We did it with CFCs, the millennium bug, acid rain, the coronavirus, and we need to step up any act seriously on Climate Change. (By we, I mean the governments of the world need to enact policies to transition off fossil fuels)

Many people see the merits in moving away from fossil fuels, however if this move away or transition comes at a financial burden or a quality of life reduction then it will be met with increasing opposition.

Secondly, the replacement for fossil fuels must be of a similar quality to them. For example, EVs must cost the same as their ICE counterparts, and using taxpayers money to subsidise the rich to purchase EVs is a non-runner.

Destroying the countryside with windmills is another concern with alternatives to fossil fuels. We have damaged alot of our countryside with one-off scattergun housing, we don't want another round of this with turbines.

Akrasia · 09-04-2020 8:59am

Danno wrote: »

Colour me shocked - to have you regard "The Guardian" as a junk source! :eek:

did you read the bit I said about preliminary findings???

Scientists will often announce the results of a small scale study into a new drug or technologically or scientific hypotheses, these are not established scientific findings until they have been validated and repeated and independently tested

We have circled on this before - much of the evidence is based on satellite temperature measurements, much of the sparse land based data is homogenised and altered.

All of that circling comes down to you believing that untrained bloggers with obvious biases or vested interests are a better source for information than all of the worlds most forefront scientists in their own fields of research ( or at least the overwhelming majority of them)

They can't even agree on what they are warning about collectively. Some of them have made predictions such as "British kids just won't know what snow is..." and so forth.

Here the analogy with the pandemic becomes apt again, there is huge uncertainty over what the exact future outcome of the virus will be, will it kill a few hundred thousand people, will it kill millions, will it come back on waves, will the vaccine work, will survivors have long term health complications....
The fact that there is uncertainty about the future impact does not mean that our knowledge of the existence of the virus and the need to prevent it from spreading is invalid
You can find individual doctors making outlandish clams, that does not invalidate the existence or severity of the virus.

Many people see the merits in moving away from fossil fuels, however if this move away or transition comes at a financial burden or a quality of life reduction then it will be met with increasing opposition.

Just because we don’t like the solutions to a problem doesn’t mean we don’t have to address it. Nobody wants to be on chemotherapy
But I agree that governments need to make it as painless as possible to avoid pushback from the population that prevent the solutions from being effective

Secondly, the replacement for fossil fuels must be of a similar quality to them. For example, EVs must cost the same as their ICE counterparts, and using taxpayers money to subsidise the rich to purchase EVs is a non-runner.

Destroying the countryside with windmills is another concern with alternatives to fossil fuels. We have damaged alot of our countryside with one-off scattergun housing, we don't want another round of this with turbines.

The solutions are already almost as cheap as fossil fuels when you take away the subsidies that oil and gas gets and the benefits of cleaner air and water far far outweigh the impact of a few wind farms either onshore or offshore

People in the mega cities are seeing the sky for the first time in years because polluting industry and cars are shut down.

Danno · 09-04-2020 10:51pm

Akrasia wrote: »

did you read the bit I said about preliminary findings???

Scientists will often announce the results of a small scale study into a new drug or technologically or scientific hypotheses, these are not established scientific findings until they have been validated and repeated and independently tested

That is the point - Anthropogenic Global Warming claims are being based upon small scale studies and hypotheses and the projections of such cannot be validated or independently tested - yet we are being asked to "have faith"

Akrasia wrote: »

All of that circling comes down to you believing that untrained bloggers with obvious biases or vested interests are a better source for information than all of the worlds most forefront scientists in their own fields of research (or at least the overwhelming majority of them)

I have never linked to "untrained bloggers" to back up any counter-claim to alarmist Global Warming, in fact if you double-check any of my postings you will see that they are directly from institutions of high repute - unlike some of your sources such as "The Guardian" which you now scoffed in the previous two posts. Gaoth Laidir, MTC, Oneric3 amongst others do so too (sorry if I'm leaving anyone out here).

Akrasia wrote: »

Here the analogy with the pandemic becomes apt again, there is huge uncertainty over what the exact future outcome of the virus will be, will it kill a few hundred thousand people, will it kill millions, will it come back on waves, will the vaccine work, will survivors have long term health complications...

I highlight the above, in your reply to show how much correlation there is in the two points you make despite the contrast in what you are trying to say.

Akrasia wrote: »

The fact that there is uncertainty about the future impact does not mean that our knowledge of the existence of the virus and the need to prevent it from spreading is invalid
You can find individual doctors making outlandish clams, that does not invalidate the existence or severity of the virus.

In terms of Climate Change the "outlandish claims" have been more than just "individual". If you actually read what you are saying when you say...

Akrasia wrote: »

When a large percentage of experts in an established scientific field get together and collectively warn of a major threat, the public should pay attention.

...that we are headed for disaster - but they keep pushing out the expiry date :rolleyes:

Akrasia wrote: »

Just because we don’t like the solutions to a problem doesn’t mean we don’t have to address it. Nobody wants to be on chemotherapy
But I agree that governments need to make it as painless as possible to avoid pushback from the population that prevent the solutions from being effective

I find the highlighted bit intriguing... I guarantee most people want to be on chemo if they have cancer. However, cancer is not a guaranteed result of a "unhealthy" lifestyle. I can personally account for many non-smokers, tee-totalers and health-conscious people who have unfortunately lost their life to this dreadful disease. As regards Governments making solutions being painless as possible, you don't really understand the concept of modern governments in the western world democratic sense, they create the problems in order to sell the solutions to the voters. I genuinely thought this would have been realised in this information age - obviously not!!! :pac:

Akrasia wrote: »

The solutions are already almost as cheap as fossil fuels when you take away the subsidies that oil and gas gets and the benefits of cleaner air and water far far outweigh the impact of a few wind farms either onshore or offshore

What subsidies? In Ireland right now what subsidies does Oil and Gas get?

Akrasia wrote: »

People in the mega cities are seeing the sky for the first time in years because polluting industry and cars are shut down.

Sure it's great, looking at extra stars at night is wonderful (because you're unable to sleep wondering where next month's rent is coming out of) cold comfort.

Hooter23 · 11-04-2020 6:43pm

They're saying pollution makes clouds brighter which could reflect more of the suns rays and help with so called climate change...but those negative scientists have already dismissed this and say it wont have the effect people might think it would...but these same scientists think carbon taxes are great and can help fund their own bank account for their research sure...

Akrasia · 12-04-2020 2:29pm

Danno wrote: »

That is the point - Anthropogenic Global Warming claims are being based upon small scale studies and hypotheses and the projections of such cannot be validated or independently tested - yet we are being asked to "have faith"

Thats blatantly not true. There are multiple independent temperature reconstructions that use various methodologies to analyse various datasets and they are in broad agreement with each other about the requirement to act on climate change.
There are also multiple computer models that also validate historical data and project future scenarios for climate change

I have never linked to "untrained bloggers" to back up any counter-claim to alarmist Global Warming, in fact if you double-check any of my postings you will see that they are directly from institutions of high repute - unlike some of your sources such as "The Guardian" which you now scoffed in the previous two posts. Gaoth Laidir, MTC, Oneric3 amongst others do so too (sorry if I'm leaving anyone out here).

There have been pages after pages of me and others challenging 'skeptics' posting absolute nonsense from those blogs I referred to. I'm glad that you do not contribute to that noise by posting such rubbish yourself.

In this thread there were weeks of 'Debate' where Gaoth Laidir said he couldn't find any scientific flaws in a series of papers that said there were no such thing as greenhouse gasses and that the atmospheric density alone dictated global average temperature on celestial bodies (including earth)
I noticed that you thanked a lot of the posts supporting Nikolovs theory, so even if you do not actively post pseudoscientific rubbish linked to the denial blogsphere, you do little to challenge it, and cheer on others who buy into it wholeheartedly.

These pseudoscientific papers get spread by those bloggers I mentioned before

I highlight the above, in your reply to show how much correlation there is in the two points you make despite the contrast in what you are trying to say.

The uncertainty in climate change is in whether we're going to have a manageable level of global economic and environmental desctruction, or whether it's going to be overwhelming

The uncertainty is with the timing and the magnitude of some of the impacts, the geographic spread, and the feedbacks that it may cause both positive and negative, not with the question of whether climate change is real or problematic or whether greenhouse gasses are actually a thing

I want to push this back onto you again. Why were you prepared to act on reducing the spread of this virus, even at huge economic cost when there is huge uncertainty about the outcome of this disease. It could kill a few million, or it could kill hundreds of millions?
Is it because the experts in epidemiology told us that by not acting, we are basically guaranteeing the worst outcomes, and by acting, and taking extreme measures to stop the spread, while we cannot guarantee success, we have the best chance to reduce the impact of the disease

In terms of Climate Change the "outlandish claims" have been more than just "individual". If you actually read what you are saying when you say...

...that we are headed for disaster - but they keep pushing out the expiry date :rolleyes:

Again, this is another distortion of the argument.
Scientists originally wanted to keep CO2 to below 350ppm to avoid any real impact on the environment. They were ignored and we are now over 400ppm. The warnings about climate change were always that the impacts pile up the more warming we allow to happen. We are already seeing many impacts that would have been considered catestrophic if they had happened suddenly in a short timeframe, but because they've been building up over decades, people are getting used to them and do not see the true impact that they are having.
If in one or two years in the 1980s:

* Global sea levels had increased by 10cm, half of the great barrier reef died https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0041-2

* Millions of acres of forestry in the US and Canada suddenly died due to insect infestation https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20170012143.pdf

* The global wildfire season increased by months in duration with huge additional areas of land burned that were not previously vulnerable to wildfire

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2015.0178

* Hurricanes and tropical storms moved further north and also began to stall in the gulf of causing enormous flooding
https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/rapid-attribution-of-the-extreme-rainfall-in-texas-from-tropical-storm-imelda/
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa9663

* Heatwaves suddenly doubled in duration and had higher maximum temperatures
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/understanding-climate/uk-extreme-events_heatwaves,

* The arctic had lost 75% of it's summer sea ice and huge ice shelfs had collapsed in antarctica
(and these are only a tiny siice of the changes we have seen over the past 40 years)
then it would have looked like the beginning of the apocalypse and people would immediately see the impact of climate change

The only reason its not seen for what it is by so many people, is that it is happening more slowly

I find the highlighted bit intriguing... I guarantee most people want to be on chemo if they have cancer. However, cancer is not a guaranteed result of a "unhealthy" lifestyle. I can personally account for many non-smokers, tee-totalers and health-conscious people who have unfortunately lost their life to this dreadful disease.

You've completely missed my point. The point was that nobody wants to have cancer, but people will go on chemotherapy if that is what it takes to beat the cancer. (not everyone, some people die in denial of their disease or because they do not want to take the medical advice they are given)

Why do you go to 'blame' on this? It doesn't actually matter who is to blame for anything once the problem is identified, the focus should be on fixing it, not pointing fingers and blaming people

As regards Governments making solutions being painless as possible, you don't really understand the concept of modern governments in the western world democratic sense, they create the problems in order to sell the solutions to the voters. I genuinely thought this would have been realised in this information age - obviously not!!! :pac:

I do not share such a over simplistic juvenile analysis of global politics

What subsidies? In Ireland right now what subsidies does Oil and Gas get?

According to our own CSO
Table 1 shows our initial estimates for the period 2012 to 2016. In 2016, €2.5 billion in direct subsidies and
revenue foregone due to preferential tax treatment supported fossil fuel activities in Ireland, while a further
€1.6 billion supported other potentially environmentally damaging activities. Total potentially environmentally
damaging subsidies were estimated at €4.1 billion in 2016. Supports to fossil fuel activities increased on a
year by year basis from 2012 to 2016 from €2.3 billion in 2012 to €2.5 billion in 2016.
https://www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/releasespublications/documents/rp/fossilfuelandsimilarsubsidies/Fossil_Fuel_and_Similar_Subsidies.pdf

But globally, about 5 trillion dollars a year
https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2019/05/02/Global-Fossil-Fuel-Subsidies-Remain-Large-An-Update-Based-on-Country-Level-Estimates-46509

"
Sure it's great, looking at extra stars at night is wonderful (because you're unable to sleep wondering where next month's rent is coming out of) cold comfort.

Again, demostrating the human tendancy to prioritise immediate concerns over future consequences. If you you are worried about paying rent on friday, it is indeed going to keep you awake, where will your children sleep if you cannot pay.
But where will those same children sleep in 30 years time if their city is swamped by the rising seas ("For one moderate future scenario, sea levels projected by 2050 are high enough to threaten land currently home to a total of 150 (140–170) million people to a future permanently below the high tide line"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12808-z)
It is unsustainable to continue to rely on fossil fuels for so many reasons, The fact that people have been exposed to so many VOCs in their breathing air for decades such that they cannot even see the sky (not just at night, all day as well) should be reason enough to transition away from this technology as a matter of urgency, climate change just makes that more urgent given that every year we delay action, we doom the planet to more extreme consequences in the future

Oneiric 3 · 16-04-2020 6:10pm

Wanderer78 · 16-04-2020 6:18pm

^^^^ this is exactly why I vote for the Greens, now buy me a new electric car, and where's my fcuking free house!

M.T. Cranium · 17-04-2020 8:30am

I have been busy in past two weeks looking over the new maps available from wetterzentrale (NOAA 1836-50 now added) and trying to establish when snowfall events in the Toronto records might have occurred (for whatever reason, monthly totals were preserved but for several years, not consecutive but 1840-45 then parts of 1848) on a daily basis. They also lost the daily rainfalls with monthly totals available for the winter of 1844-45. And there were some fairly impressive looking storms that might have set daily records if we had the precise numbers.

Anyway, in doing that, I was also keeping track of the weather journal for Providence RI to see how accurate I thought the maps were, because his weather journal is quite detailed and has three pressure readings a day. In general I thought the maps were fairly good, noting one or two cases where a deeper low may have existed than shown on the maps (since his pressure readings went 15-20 mbs lower than any isobar on the maps) but the tracks appeared to be more reliable than perhaps the intensity. What's depicted on these maps from the Great Lakes to the Pacific coast appears to be based mainly on climatology with some attempt to pre-fit east coast events that are documented, with some sort of buildup phase but the maps don't always look realistic to me. So I would caution anyone who ever uses them to avoid drawing any conclusions from them at all, they are basically a bit better than no map at all, but for at least that large area, pretty much in the realm of speculation.

Now going through the process of quality control on my excel file but also adding some precip values to the daily temperature tables. This is going to take a while, so the excel file won't be ready for sharing until maybe late May or June. If anyone wants to know anything about the data beyond what has been shared on the net-weather thread, ask away. I think it's all fairly straightforward and you can see the historical data for yourself on the EC website. This is a link to January 1853 which happens to be where I am now in my work on the precip tables. I was slowed down at first by all the missing daily data that I have reconstructed to give a better idea of how various months got to their totals. Have to say that worked out fairly well, I didn't have any cases where I was puzzled by the total vs the maps, just the odd time I got to the known total before the last possible event and had to scale back a few to let that one into the table. A storm around Feb 5, 1845 was particularly intense looking and might have been a paralyzing blizzard for the community (which was then just a small town). Unlike most of the early archive maps, this one has lots of isobars over the eastern coast and Providence got nailed by it also.

Here's that link,

https://climate.weather.gc.ca/climate_data/daily_data_e.html?hlyRange=1953-01-01%7C1969-05-31&dlyRange=1840-03-01%7C2017-04-27&mlyRange=1840-01-01%7C2006-12-01&StationID=5051&Prov=ON&urlExtension=_e.html&searchType=stnName&optLimit=specDate&StartYear=1840&EndYear=2020&selRowPerPage=25&Line=0&searchMethod=contains&txtStationName=Toronto&timeframe=2&Day=1&Year=1853&Month=1#

you can figure out how to navigate to other years and if you go forward past 2003 you'll run into the two-station situation I described in my introductory post, then past mid-2017 it's only one station again, this time without daily snowfall amounts. The long-long-term station is called "Toronto" and the more recent secondary one that persisted past station closing in 2017 is "Toronto City." They are both within a five minute walk of where the weather station always was located (except I learned in 1840 for a while it was down by the lakeshore, then it moved up to the 1841-1907 location that had to be closed due to university construction, but that happens to be just a few hundred metres south of where it ended up after 2003, the 1907-2003 location being just a few tenths of a km northwest on Bloor Street West. The 1840 lakeshore location may have been the reason why summer 1840 never got above 82 deg F despite having a lot of 80 deg type highs, that always puzzled me considering most summers back then that failed to reach 85 had generally cool synoptics. The lake breeze around western Lake Ontario is quite shallow and inland penetration is never very robust, and has been altered by the wall of skyscrapers in the downtown core since the 1960s. I think it's a minor issue that is partly subsumed into the urban heat island question (as in how large a value to assign). Still not 100% satisfied with 1.1 C deg and it could be a bit higher which would reduce the implied impact of natural or human caused (on a larger scale) climate change. But if I were to go larger I think I would also need to refine my adjustment technique to include rainfall amounts since a wet month is likely to be less affected than a dry month (more clear skies at night etc).

Akrasia · 18-04-2020 10:32am

Hooter23 wrote: »

They're saying pollution makes clouds brighter which could reflect more of the suns rays and help with so called climate change...but those negative scientists have already dismissed this and say it wont have the effect people might think it would...but these same scientists think carbon taxes are great and can help fund their own bank account for their research sure...

Hey hooter, what color are those clouds at night

Also are you seriously saying that climate scientists are in it for the money?

Any climate scientist could probably double their income overnight by switching sides and working for the energy industry having’changed their mind’ about climate change

https://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-scientists-in-it-for-the-money.htm

Akrasia · 18-04-2020 10:37am

Oneiric 3 wrote: »

This is why collective action is necessary. Climate change requires global collective action, just like the Coronavirus

Pointing fingers at individuals is pointless and counter productive, it’s a numbers game. Measures need to be taken to change public behavior from the top down.

We tried leaving the pubs open and asking people to be responsible. How did that work?

Oneiric 3 · 18-04-2020 1:03pm

Akrasia wrote: »

This is why collective action is necessary. Climate change requires global collective action, just like the Coronavirus

Pointing fingers at individuals is pointless and counter productive, it’s a numbers game. Measures need to be taken to change public behavior from the top down.

We tried leaving the pubs open and asking people to be responsible. How did that work?

Looks like there is some concern now that this virus may have been lab created. If this turns out to be the case, then this is not going to look well for your beloved scientists, is it? Over 150,000 deaths now and counting, and as for the W.H.O..

And you demand for 'global collectivism' is not going to work. I posted a link, a while back, which you may have missed, detailing that the climage change issue is only of concern to those in already affluent countries.

Akrasia · 18-04-2020 5:04pm

Oneiric 3 wrote: »

Looks like there is some concern now that this virus may have been lab created. If this turns out to be the case, then this is not going to look well for your beloved scientists, is it? Over 150,000 deaths now and counting, and as for the W.H.O..

And you demand for 'global collectivism' is not going to work. I posted a link, a while back, which you may have missed, detailing that the climage change issue is only of concern to those in already affluent countries.

There is absolutely no evidence that this virus was created in a lab and released either by accident or on purpose, and there is strong evidence tha the virus originated naturally
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9

The US investigation is based on some security concerns a couple of years ago but there is no direct link between this virus and anything that was being studied in that lab in Wuhan, nor any evidence that the chinese would use this lab to deliberately engineer human viruses from animal viruses

When this investigation eventually finds that the virus was not created in a lab, will you come back here and apologise to those scientists, the people who sequenced the Coronavirus and allowed for the creation of the PCR tests, and will you apologise to the scientists all around the world who are currently working on a vaccine?

I didn't demand or even argue for 'global collectivism', Why did you put those words inside quotes?

I said we require global collective action, and this can take the form of proper treaties where individual states make the necessary committments to tackle this crisis, and the countries who lack the resources to do so, are supported to allow them to make those changes for the benefit of the everyone on this planet.

The kind of cooperation that allowed the WHO to eradicate smallpox, yes that WHO, and the knd of cooperation and solidarity that has allowed the WHO to oversee programs that have cut TB infections in half during the first 2 decades of this millenium, and has saved over 50 million lives

M.T. Cranium · 19-04-2020 7:28am

So it's all one big giant coincidence that Chinese government researchers were in the Canadian lab studying viruses similar to this, and that they were kicked out of Canada for violating agreements, and that these and other viruses were shipped to Beijing, and then on to Wuhan, then a bat bit some guy at a wet market across the road, and then they moved the position of the lab twenty miles on google earth to make it look as though it wasn't there??

Settled science indeed. A medal awaits anyone who believes it all.

M.T. Cranium · 19-04-2020 7:51pm

Following is the most significant finding from my Toronto temperature study, the after-UHI corrected version of temperatures, averaged over the entire data set for anomaly values ...

1840-1899 .. -1.17 C (-1.67 C)

1900-1959 .. +0.42 C (+0.42 C)

1960-2019 .. +0.75 C (+1.25 C)

The actual anomalies from the data set increase faster than shown here because more of an urban heat island is subtracted from the values towards the third portion. The raw values before UHI correction are shown in brackets.

This shows that the increase in temperatures without the urban heat island contribution was 1.59 deg (of the 2.09 observed) from the 1840-1899 portion to the 1900-59 portion, and only 0.33 deg (of the 0.83 observed) from that middle portion to 1960-2019.

(note that these portions ran one year later for Jan, Feb data, so Jan 1841-1900, Feb 1841-1900, Mar 1840-1899 etc)

This shows that most of the warming from the 19th to the 20th century in the Toronto data occurred some time near the transition from the first to the middle third of the data (I have been postulating the 1890s) and just coincidentally hit around the time the urban heat island began to become a factor, so that basically doubled the signal in decades from 1901 to 1940. The signal then went more steady-state, actually backed off slightly for a part of the 1970s and 1980s, before resuming an upward climb (even against slight gains from UHI) into the recent decades.

I am going to analyze the CET data for the same three time frames, just comparing the raw data as the managers of that data set claim to have removed the UHI factor, so the raw data there are comparable to my adjusted data set (the last portion of what I published on the Net-weather thread). Here are the averages for the same periods (including the jog in months so from March 1840 to Feb 2020) ... These are basically the differentials in mean annual temperatures in these periods with a very slight adjustment for the two month jog (taking out the unused JF and substituting the utilized JF data) ...

1840-99 (1841-1900 JF) _ 9.13 (-0.36)

1900-59 (1901-1960 JF) _ 9.46 (-0.03)

1960-2019 (61-20 JF) ___ 9.88 (+0.39)

You can see that the increase in the CET numbers is greater in the recent interval than it would be for Toronto. I think this makes sense given the fact that the natural variability warming in North America was probably considerably larger and may be due to the proximity to the rapidly retreating north magnetic pole, a factor more subtle in terms of organizing circulation patterns from the Atlantic into Europe. If you don't like my paradigm, then think of it more as a continental climate responding rapidly to increased solar constant vs a maritime climate locked more into a long-term relationship with sea surface temperatures (I view these two paradigms as two sides of same coin so matters not to me which one you prefer).

In each case the second half of the last third (1990 to 2019) has warmed considerably more than the period 1960 to 1989 did. For the CET, the average from 1960 to 1989 was no warmer than the sixty years before it (9.48 vs 9.46). For Toronto, the interval was also similar, the value of the before-removed-UHI anomaly was 0.47 higher and the UHI factor in the interval averaged 1.0 vs 0.55 so the net difference was +0.02 deg. In other words, for both data sets, there was no real increase in adjusted (after UHI) temperatures until after 1989.

Akrasia · 19-04-2020 8:30pm

M.T. Cranium wrote: »

So it's all one big giant coincidence that Chinese government researchers were in the Canadian lab studying viruses similar to this, and that they were kicked out of Canada for violating agreements, and that these and other viruses were shipped to Beijing, and then on to Wuhan, then a bat bit some guy at a wet market across the road, and then they moved the position of the lab twenty miles on google earth to make it look as though it wasn't there??

Settled science indeed. A medal awaits anyone who believes it all.

Yes it is a giant coincidence. But some people see conspiracies everywhere they look. What a coincidence that the same people who think the evidence for climate change is being deliberately exaggerated also think that the current viral pandemic was a weaponised virus created by the chinese

Whats your opinion on 9/11 out of curiosity?

Thargor · 19-04-2020 9:24pm

Akrasia wrote: »

Yes it is a giant coincidence. But some people see conspiracies everywhere they look. What a coincidence that the same people who think the evidence for climate change is being deliberately exaggerated also think that the current viral pandemic was a weaponised virus created by the chinese

Whats your opinion on 9/11 out of curiosity?

Dont forget you're speaking to the genius who came up with the theory of David Attenborough being a twisted sadist travelling the world laughing at the suffering of penguins for his own sick pleasure...

Oneiric 3 · 19-04-2020 10:10pm

Doesn't take much to upset our resident unthinking neoliberal bots, spouting all their embarrassingly predictable garbage like the good, compliant little citizens they are.

Oneiric 3 · 19-04-2020 10:13pm

Thargor wrote: »

Dont forget you're speaking to the genius who came up with the theory of David Attenborough being a twisted sadist travelling the world laughing at the suffering of penguins for his own sick pleasure...

That was me, not M.T,, so please get your facts straight. And I recall posting the actual evidence that Attenborough and his crew deliberately worried those animals in order to capture their miserable demise.

And they were seals, not penguins.

Akrasia · 19-04-2020 10:18pm

Oneiric 3 wrote: »

Doesn't take much to upset our resident unthinking neoliberal bots, spouting all their embarrassingly predictable garbage like the good, compliant little citizens they are.

Lol

This is a science forum, you're in the erong place for this kind of post

Thargor · 19-04-2020 10:19pm

Oneiric 3 wrote: »

That was me, not M.T,, so please get your facts straight. And I recall posting the actual evidence that Attenborough and his crew deliberately worried those animals in order to capture their miserable demise.

I dont remember that evidence, sounds like a career destroyer, got a source for that by any chance?

And they were seals, not penguins.

:P

Oneiric 3 · 19-04-2020 10:26pm

Akrasia wrote: »

Lol

This is a science forum, you're in the erong place for this kind of post

Hardly, since it is you that throws politics into all of your guff.

Akrasia · 19-04-2020 10:47pm

Oneiric 3 wrote: »

Hardly, since it is you that throws politics into all of your guff.

Examples please

watlantic · 20-04-2020 2:20am

We seem to be obsessed with 'our modern scientific world' ... and short term memory of just a very few generations, i.e. mainly ours. Nature knows better than sponsored 'science'. Example:
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/storms-reveal-7-500-year-old-drowned-forest-on-north-galway-coastline-1.1715303
That was land only 7500 yrs ago. Up and down the tide goes, and if your toes get wet, don't blame the weather ;-)

...and I forgot to add: if the super-volcano Laacher See (VEI 7 and ranking nr. 12 in the world's most dangerous) in Germany's Rhineland-Palatinate should erupt which it did 12,900 years ago, throwing rocks and debris as far as Sweden, we can forget about ALL mod cons. Could happen sooner or later. Nobody knows. We know f*ck all, but pretend to know.

Oneiric 3 · 20-04-2020 6:51pm

watlantic wrote: »

We seem to be obsessed with 'our modern scientific world' ... and short term memory of just a very few generations, i.e. mainly ours. Nature knows better than sponsored 'science'. Example:
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/storms-reveal-7-500-year-old-drowned-forest-on-north-galway-coastline-1.1715303
That was land only 7500 yrs ago. Up and down the tide goes, and if your toes get wet, don't blame the weather ;-)

...and I forgot to add: if the super-volcano Laacher See (VEI 7 and ranking nr. 12 in the world's most dangerous) in Germany's Rhineland-Palatinate should erupt which it did 12,900 years ago, throwing rocks and debris as far as Sweden, we can forget about ALL mod cons. Could happen sooner or later. Nobody knows. We know f*ck all, but pretend to know.

Or Yellowstone Park. A few little rumbles have occurred around that general region over the last couple of months. Nothing to worry about but if and when that ever does go, we can forget about 'the biggest crisis ever to face mankind', because we'll be having something far more serious to deal with.

Akrasia · 20-04-2020 7:37pm

Oneiric 3 wrote: »

Or Yellowstone Park. A few little rumbles have occurred around that general region over the last couple of months. Nothing to worry about but if and when that ever does go, we can forget about 'the biggest crisis ever to face mankind', because we'll be having something far more serious to deal with.

Ok, but given that these events are once in a 50 thousand year events (for the smaller ones, closer once in 750000 years for Jellystone) and humans can do absolutely nothing to prevent them or prepare for them, it is a completely different scenario than human caused climate change that is happening right now, and will have impacts directly related to actions we take now

It's blatant whataboutery of the order of "I shouldn't bother brusing my teeth, sure I could be struck by lightning and killed tomorrow"

M.T. Cranium · 20-04-2020 8:34pm

Akrasia wrote: »

Yes it is a giant coincidence. But some people see conspiracies everywhere they look. What a coincidence that the same people who think the evidence for climate change is being deliberately exaggerated also think that the current viral pandemic was a weaponised virus created by the chinese

Whats your opinion on 9/11 out of curiosity?

Most of the people holding a conspiracy theory view of 9/11 tend to be leftists in my limited experience. I see some cause for skepticism about a few parts of the official narrative. I have suspected since it happened that the last plane was shot down and the "let's roll" narrative was invented later. I wonder why a country with the sophisticated intelligence operations of the U.S., with one of their own in the guiding position of presidential minder, failed to see any signs of the attack and responded so slowly to it. But I don't go into the "faked collapse" portions of conspiracy theory. The most common of those is the later collapse of a secondary building, but I have seen convincing explanations to counter well-known theories about that.

As to the coronavirus release, there is something very dodgy about the whole chain of events leading up to its appearance, but even if no deliberate release is involved, there are questions about what happened and why such a virus might exist in the first place. As with all things that invite alternative viewpoints, I know what I don't know ... and that is quite a bit in these various areas. But as I've explained throughout the thread, I am not skeptical about global warming, I am trying to communicate that I think its future course is almost inevitable. I just happen to think that more of the cause lies in natural variability than AGW alone. But AGW exists as a significant entity too. The question is, what is the balance, what is the realistic chance of any solution, or should we be more concerned about mitigation of the nearly inevitable at this point?

On the virus question, there are people who know what happened, and we may hear from them at some future time. I don't find it remotely likely that there is no involvement whatsoever by the government of China but at what stage, release, cover-up, deliberate failures to warn or communicate in a timely way -- that remains to be determined.

Gaoth Laidir · 21-04-2020 9:28am

More lies in the press yesterday. Deliberately no mention of the lack of ice loss over the past 13 years. The great unwashed will again be left with the impression that we're in a death spiral.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/techandscience/climate-crisis-north-pole-soon-to-be-ice-free-in-summer-scientists-say/ar-BB12WNZF?ocid=spartanntp

Climate crisis: North pole 'soon to be ice free in summer', scientists say

The Arctic Ocean will likely be ice-free during summers before 2050, researchers say.
Amid rapid global warming – with average Arctic temperatures already 2C above what they were in the pre-industrial era – the extent of the sea ice is diminishing ever faster.
As the climate crisis worsens, scientists say it is now only the efficacy of protection measures which will determine for how many more years our planet will continue to have a northern ice cap year round.
A major new piece of research involving 21 leading institutes and using 40 different climate models has found that whatever action is taken, we are on course to see ice-free summers in the coming decades.
The research is published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
The scientists considered the future of Arctic sea-ice cover in scenarios with high future CO2 emissions and little climate protection – as expected, Arctic sea ice disappeared quickly in summer in these simulations.
But the study also found the Arctic summer sea ice also disappears “occasionally” if CO2 emissions are rapidly reduced.
Dirk Notz, who leads the sea-ice research group at University of Hamburg, said: “If we reduce global emissions rapidly and substantially, and thus keep global warming below 2C relative to preindustrial levels, Arctic sea ice will nevertheless likely disappear occasionally in summer even before 2050. This really surprised us.”
Currently, the North Pole is covered by sea ice year round. Each summer, the area of the sea ice cover decreases, in winter it grows again.

In response to ongoing global warming, the overall area of the Arctic Ocean covered by sea ice has rapidly been reduced over the past few decades. This substantially affects the Arctic ecosystem and climate. The sea-ice cover is a hunting ground and habitat for polar bears and seals, and keeps the Arctic cool by reflecting sunlight.
How often the Arctic will lose its sea-ice cover in the future critically depends on future CO2 emissions, the authors said.
If emissions are reduced rapidly, ice-free years will only occur occasionally. With higher emissions, the Arctic Ocean will become ice free most years.

Oneiric 3 · 21-04-2020 6:00pm

Akrasia wrote: »

Ok, but given that these events are once in a 50 thousand year events (for the smaller ones, closer once in 750000 years for Jellystone) and humans can do absolutely nothing to prevent them or prepare for them, it is a completely different scenario than human caused climate change that is happening right now, and will have impacts directly related to actions we take now

It's blatant whataboutery of the order of "I shouldn't bother brusing my teeth, sure I could be struck by lightning and killed tomorrow"

The chance of anyone being struck by lightning in Ireland is pretty slim to be honest, given that we are one of the least thundery countries on the planet.

Yes, an eruption at Yellowstone might not occur for another 1000 years, but at the same time, and just as easily, it could all go kaboom tomorrow. Either way, we must think of our great grandchildren, their great grandchildren and their great grandchildren too by making preparations now.

Akrasia · 21-04-2020 11:44pm

Gaoth Laidir wrote: »

More lies in the press yesterday. Deliberately no mention of the lack of ice loss over the past 13 years. The great unwashed will again be left with the impression that we're in a death spiral.

Why did you pick the last 13 years as your baseline. Just out of curiosity, would there have been a significant decline if you had picked 14 years as your baseline?

You would never dream of cherry-picking data would you?

Akrasia · 21-04-2020 11:57pm

Oneiric 3 wrote: »

The chance of anyone being struck by lightning in Ireland is pretty slim to be honest, given that we are one of the least thundery countries on the planet.

Yes, an eruption at Yellowstone might not occur for another 1000 years, but at the same time, and just as easily, it could all go kaboom tomorrow. Either way, we must think of our great grandchildren, their great grandchildren and their great grandchildren too by making preparations now.

This is actually quite a useful post. It establishes your threshold of risk. If, on any given year, there is a 1 in 1000 chance of catastrophe, you think it is worth preparing adequately for it, even if that cost is huge and the actual chances of successful mitigation of said catastrophe are negligible at best?

in order to convince you of the need to act in climate change, I only need to establish that climate change could have civilization ending consequences within the next thousand years. This is a depressingly low bar to hurdle.

Up to now we’ve been focused on realistic consequences by 2100 or 2050 or other human timescales, which are pretty bad, but climate change doesn’t stop at 2100, it amplifies over time, the seas keep rising, the feedbacks get worse
Do you really want an analysis of the world at the year 3000 on a ‘business as usual scenario?

Oneiric 3 · 22-04-2020 6:20pm

Akrasia wrote: »

This is actually quite a useful post. It establishes your threshold of risk. If, on any given year, there is a 1 in 1000 chance of catastrophe, you think it is worth preparing adequately for it, even if that cost is huge and the actual chances of successful mitigation of said catastrophe are negligible at best?

in order to convince you of the need to act in climate change, I only need to establish that climate change could have civilization ending consequences within the next thousand years. This is a depressingly low bar to hurdle.

Up to now we’ve been focused on realistic consequences by 2100 or 2050 or other human timescales, which are pretty bad, but climate change doesn’t stop at 2100, it amplifies over time, the seas keep rising, the feedbacks get worse
Do you really want an analysis of the world at the year 3000 on a ‘business as usual scenario?

I take your points but these are points rooted in a certainty that does not exist. The end of civilisation as we know it could come from many sources within the next 1000, 100 or even 5 years, for example war, famine, some cataclysmic naturel disaster and so on and on. 'Civilisation', and particularly our familiar Western form of it, is really nothing more than a glossy veneer that can be easily destroyed in an instant.

Akrasia · 23-04-2020 7:09pm

Oneiric 3 wrote: »

I take your points but these are points rooted in a certainty that does not exist. The end of civilisation as we know it could come from many sources within the next 1000, 100 or even 5 years, for example war, famine, some cataclysmic naturel disaster and so on and on. 'Civilisation', and particularly our familiar Western form of it, is really nothing more than a glossy veneer that can be easily destroyed in an instant.

Do you really believe this? The same logic applies to your own personal existence, do you ever build anything? Why bother , it could collapse tomorrow. Do you exercise? Whats the point you could die of an aneurysm in the morning, do you educate yourself or learn new skills? Whats the point, you could get parkinsons or alzheimer's and those skills and learning could mock you

Do you have a family? Why? They could leave or die or both....

The end to your life could come out of the blue, in an instant beyond your own control, but that is not a good reason to not strive to better yourself, to look after yourself and your family and to try to live a good life with considereation for others, including the next generation who are cimpletely vulnerable to the actions taken by this generation

It is generally considered to be noble to devote your life to making the world a better place, it is less noble to just say F*ck it lets just take whatever we want because the worlds gonna end some day

I dont base my world view on certainty, i base it on evidence that is irrefutable.

The only way to refute the evidence for climate change is to deny it, to pretend that it has been fabricated or exaggerated. You can easily convince yourselves of this by granting yourself greater knowledge and expertise than all of the experts who you disagree with, while elevating contrarians to the level of propheric whistleblowers

Gaoth Laidir · 23-04-2020 9:14pm

Akrasia wrote: »

Why did you pick the last 13 years as your baseline. Just out of curiosity, would there have been a significant decline if you had picked 14 years as your baseline?

You would never dream of cherry-picking data would you?

With all the talk of flattening curves, this is a good example. The last third of the satellite record has shown no loss of ice, and the trend is flat. It is significant, yet gets no airtime and is classed as cherrypicking. No, the sience is settled.

The "study" above is the umpteenth to warn us of ice-free summers. We should be almost going on September beach holidays to Ellesmere Island in Canada if the first of those studies are to be believed. 2008, 2014, 2018, 2020...goalposts shifting all the time. No, again, the science is settled.

M.T. Cranium · 24-04-2020 4:50pm

I live a lot closer to Yellowstone, not sure about the validity of the thousand year countdown to oblivion -- the supervolcano eruptions in the past have been over a highly irregular timetable of large variations in their intensity. There is nothing going on now to indicate any particular elevated risk. But I believe the chances of a major event are probably spread out over a longer time frame than 1,000 years, which is not to say they will be.

This is a volatile region and even a relatively minor volcanic event like Mt St Helens in 1980 caused significant ash fall in the region. Mount Rainier is thought to be the biggest real-time risk for catastrophe, although that would be limited to the Seattle-Tacoma area. That dormant volcano could have a major eruption melting all of its extensive glaciers and sending catastrophic mudflows and floods down several rivers that reach Puget Sound in populated areas. There would be perhaps one or two hours of warning plus whatever scientists could add on with pre-eruption notification.

Mount Baker near the U.S.-Canada border erupted several times before the modern settlement era, and there are signs that it sent a large enough flood downstream within the past two thousand years that the Nooksack River diverted through the Sumas plain into the Fraser River (these being two parallel rivers about thirty miles apart). That would be a mass casualty event in the modern context, not sure what impact it had on aboriginal communities at the time. The volcano had a violent enough eruption to dump pumice stones in the vicinity of a golf course where I used to visit, and that would be approximately 50 miles northwest straight-line.

Then there's Crater Lake in central Oregon which is the only remnant of Mount Mazama, formerly higher than most peaks in the Cascades, which totally blew apart around 7500 B.C., spreading massive amounts of ash east across the states downwind. Mount Hood near Portland seems to be a friendly giant by comparison to these others. There are a lot of minor volcanic vent sites scattered around central British Columbia but these seem to be less risky.

Nobody really has much of a clue what the future prospects are for Yellowstone. There is no real plan in the works -- if that went off at its maximum theoretical strength, there would be regional devastation on a totally unmanageable scale. Although you would think that being northwest of it might be a good thing, the problem would be that it would go on for many weeks and eventually all sorts of weather patterns (not to mention ones that it created) would spread the ash in all directions. I would imagine that large parts of the northern U.S. and adjacent southern Canada would be entirely uninhabitable and those who weren't able to flee the zone quickly would eventually die of starvation if not from the direct impacts. But you never know, the thing might go off at a lower intensity and restart the process with a relatively contained disaster that maybe just wiped out the park and Jackson Wyoming areas, maybe parts of Idaho and southern Montana. Nobody gives it much thought here, it's just part of the background, almost like that random asteroid strike that could do this or that.

On the arctic warming questions, my own research certainly shows an upward trend especially around 1998 to 2012, that seems to have slackened more recently, but it would take a tremendous further amount of warming to alter the arctic nature of the climate up there, the "warmed up" cold season mean temperatures are still below -30 C and the summers "warmed" to means closer to 8 C than 5 C. Basically the climate shift is that winters are a bit shorter now, what used to happen in early June now typically happens in mid to late May.

There are also unanswered questions about how milder temperatures will feed back into the annual snow-ice cycles, if for example they lead to heavier winter snowfalls in what is essentially a cold desert climate in some parts of the region.

I was watching a documentary about the ice fields on Devon Island, which have been somewhat reduced in recent decades. But it was stated that at some point after the peak of the glacial episode, a climate warmer than the present set in for several hundred years, as shown by fossil plants trapped in ice layers dated to just after that time. So the current ice levels in the Canadian arctic are not the lowest ever seen since the glacial era, and apparently nor is the sea ice minimum in recent years the greatest in that entire period. Atlantic whales had full access to Lancaster Sound at several times in the neolithic and were hunted by primitive ancestors of today's Inuit population. So ice extent has evidently been oscillating rather than steadily decreasing over the full length of time since the peak of what we call the Wisconsin glacial era. (in Europe I believe it has the name Wurm-Riss). Then there are the big oscillations of the Dryas period. I think those should at least point us to an understanding that climate in the arctic and subarctic have always been prone to wide swings over short time scales. Just because we've introduced a human signal to this complexity does not mean that the rest of the complexity has gone away. And since we only partly understand that complexity, we should be humble about projections. Once again, we don't really know all that much about the future of arctic climate. I am simply saying that a prudent approach would take into account the probability that it will warm up rather than cool off. That doesn't mean I know this to be true. But it's like a big football tournament, would you bet Germany might make the finals, or Paraguay?

Oneiric 3 · 25-04-2020 2:21pm

Akrasia wrote: »

Do you really believe this? The same logic applies to your own personal existence, do you ever build anything? Why bother , it could collapse tomorrow. Do you exercise? Whats the point you could die of an aneurysm in the morning, do you educate yourself or learn new skills? Whats the point, you could get parkinsons or alzheimer's and those skills and learning could mock you

Do you have a family? Why? They could leave or die or both....

The end to your life could come out of the blue, in an instant beyond your own control, but that is not a good reason to not strive to better yourself, to look after yourself and your family and to try to live a good life with considereation for others, including the next generation who are cimpletely vulnerable to the actions taken by this generation

It is generally considered to be noble to devote your life to making the world a better place, it is less noble to just say F*ck it lets just take whatever we want because the worlds gonna end some day

I dont base my world view on certainty, i base it on evidence that is irrefutable.

The only way to refute the evidence for climate change is to deny it, to pretend that it has been fabricated or exaggerated. You can easily convince yourselves of this by granting yourself greater knowledge and expertise than all of the experts who you disagree with, while elevating contrarians to the level of propheric whistleblowers

Bad analogies all round which does nothing but show your lack of understanding of what a society is, what it is founded upon and how it is all held together.

As for this quote of yours:

"The only way to refute the evidence for climate change is to deny it, to pretend that it has been fabricated or exaggerated"

Better known as 'false dichotomy'. Oldest political trick in the world.

M.T. Cranium · 25-04-2020 9:09pm

Anyways, isn't most of the disagreement about climate change related to its forecasts of temperature trends over the next 10-50 years? So how can there be irrefutable evidence of something that hasn't happened yet? A forecast is a forecast. I'm sure the IPCC put all the work they can into making their forecasts, but then two questions -- are the doomsayer predictions really quoting the IPCC forecasts or just making stuff up? And if they are quoting them, do they understand the concept of margin of error?

I have become skeptical of the IPCC forecasts mainly because I don't accept their analysis that all of the recent changes are AGW signals, so that logically means that if they were wrong about that, their projections would be wrong for the same reason. But it doesn't mean that their projections are wrong overall, just wrong in their logic. Quite possibly we get to similar outcomes by different processes. The difference, however, is one of potential for us to change that outcome.

Oneiric 3 · 27-04-2020 5:26am

Gave this documentary a watch yesterday evening, and while there is nothing unsurprising in the least contained within it, it is still absolutely shocking:

Narrator really exposes the so called 'green movement' and, as I have more than once alluded to myself on here, the capitalist class that controls it. And yes, that includes the curiously labelled ' Union of Concerned Scientists' and the so-called 'liberal' press.

Video also contains very disturbing footage of environmentally friendly animal cruelty. But yeah, neoliberals, you keep swallowing everything you are told by these soulless monsters, because you are the very useful idiots they depend on to keep their dream alive..

Who knows, maybe there will be another 'scientific paper' released soon to offer you some sort of reassurance for your deluded beliefs.

If there is some good news to come out of all of this, is that this doc has already gained over 2.5 million views since it was put up on youtube just 5 days ago.

27-04-2020 2:20pm

So called "Green" energy isn't the solution in isolation, it is obvious that biofuels can rob agriculture of food producing lands to grow biofuels, it is different when the land is very poor that food crops are not viable
The main issue is as always, the "human footprint", that really needs a political solution that overrides the "money, money, money" infinite growth economic model that produces products for consumption and discardation.

As we are now proving in this COVID-19 induces economic coma, life goes on and can exist with less economic activity, Just that business & politicians just need to "re-jig" the hard coded growth only economic model to one that can support far fewer full time workers, where UBI is acceptable and the 0.001% do not hoover up most of the global capital.
They should recognise the work that automation actually archives as opposed to seeing it as free labour, which has displaced paid labour.

Won't affect climate change much, but it would make the world a far better place to live.

Oneiric 3 · 27-04-2020 7:13pm

I agree in part with what you say their DolanBaker, but for me, there is no going back from what was exposed in that documentary. 'Biofuels', is, as the narrator himself said, just code for trees, and entire ecosystems are being wiped out because of vested capitalistic interests who prey on middle-class virtuousness. This is the same method that was promoted in no small measure by that 'EcoEye' Duncan fella, as were solar panels, which depend on vast amounts of fossil fuels and environmental destruction to produce.

The whole thing is a con; there is simply no other way to describe it.

CC3 -- Why I believe that a third option is needed for climate change

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