• Thanks for stopping by. Logging in to a registered account will remove all generic ads. Please reach out with any questions or concerns.

Global Warming/Climate Change Super Thread

Nemo888 said:
It is 22cm of sea level rise in the last 100 years. The sea ice diminishing is even visible from space now. We are developing new trade routes from Europe to Asia because the ice has receded so much. The cause of the problem may be controversial in this small corner of the internet, but not the fact that it is receding.
naam-ice-06.jpg


CFC's were causing UV light to sterilize much of the Southern Hemisphere. Translucent organisms like phytoplankton were being wiped out. Phytoplankton is the largest food source and carbon sink on the entire planet. Global warming was the least of our problems back then.

You really need to start reading more analysis from people who disagree with your positions, rather than just searching for then parroting a group of proven liars who happen to back up your world view.

You should also go pull the 2013 stats rather than referring to 2012, as in 2013 we're already 10% over the 2012 lows for the arctic, and the Antarctic is the 4th highest since 1979.

Germany just had the coldest March since something like 1812....

And always be mindful of 'why' some of the AGW sites use data sets that stop at dates earlier than this year.  It's not unintentional.  Michael Mann just got caught with another graph where he was fudging the data AGAIN.


Matthew.  :salute:
 
Cdn Blackshirt said:
You really need to start reading more analysis from people who disagree with your positions, rather than just searching for then parroting a group of proven liars who happen to back up your world view.
Good advice, you should take it. 
You should also go pull the 2013 stats rather than referring to 2012, as in 2013 we're already 10% over the 2012 lows for the arctic, and the Antarctic is the 4th highest since 1979.
Germany just had the coldest March since something like 1812....
And always be mindful of 'why' some of the AGW sites use data sets that stop at dates earlier than this year.  It's not unintentional.  Michael Mann just got caught with another graph where he was fudging the data AGAIN.
Cui Bono?  Good question.  Who benefits more, researchers or multinational corporations?

A good video of a talk by Dr Marshall Shepherd, President of the American Meteorlogical Society, Director of Atmospheric Studies at the University of Georgia and former NASA scientist.  He addresses many of your points.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O019WPJ2Kjs
 
The cost of saving Gaia . . . or  . . .  bend over Ontario, Dalton wants to make you suffer for your eco sins.

Over that period, about 4.8 terawatts hours (TWh) of surplus wind power was delivered to the grid, power the IESO promptly exported.  One TWh is enough to power over 100,000 average Ontario households for a year.  Effectively, the Ontario government system exported power to U.S. states at 2.4 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) while paying 13.5 cents to subsidize wind producers under the GEA’s feed-in-tariff regime. Since Ontario does not need this wind power, Ontario rate payers are paying $648-million for power that is exported for $115-million for a net loss to ratepayers of $533-million. For one year.


Do read the whole article. 

Helps explain why Ontario is now a Have Not province.



http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/06/27/ontarios-power-trip-mcguintys-bigger-debacle/

 
Sadly, "surplus" power must be exported or otherwise disposed of otherwise the grid would become destabilized and collapse. This has almost happened several times in Germany as their "green" energy program instals ever increasing amounts of wind turbines. Since the wind is variable, the energy is produced at effectively random intervals so far as the grid is concerned. In regular grids, baseline power is generated to cover the estimated basic load and various stand by options like gas fired turbines, hydro or buying and selling from other grids is used to balance the load and account for surges in demand during the 24 hr cycle.

Since there is no real technical or economical means of storing large amounts of electrical energy, this is an issue that literally cannot be solved for now, short of dismantling the wind turbines.
 
Even the warmists are starting to see the writing on the wall:

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/08/02/climate-caution-is-about-the-policies-not-the-science/

Climate Caution Is About the Policies, Not the Science
Earth-e1364501633968

Every few years the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change publishes a report that attempts to assess the state of climate science, as well as other technical and economic issues related to global warming policy. The last major report, the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), generated perhaps more controversy than was usual.

FT has an excellent profile on the IPCC, which is now gearing up for publication of the next report, AR5. The profile reveals a group with a rich diversity of personalities and opinions. It also shows that the scientists heading up this latest report are acutely aware of the need to say something about the warming slowdown of the past decade or so:

There is one thing the final version must include when it is published next month, according to Sir Bob Watson, the British scientist and climate action advocate who chaired the IPCC for nearly six years up to 2002. “I think the current Working Group I report must address in detail the slowing down in the last 10 years,” he said, adding that although the past three decades were probably the warmest in 1,000 years, “there is also no question that it would appear that the rate of change in the last decade or so is definitely slower than the previous two decades.”

“The IPCC must address this because the climate deniers are linking on to this as a reason to say we’ve got all the science wrong. So I think one of the very most important issues is indeed for them to address this issue absolutely head on.”

We disagree with the way Watson is framing the issue here. The problems that serious critics of the IPCC have had with its work isn’t about getting “all the science wrong.” To be sure, there were some flaws and errors of scientific fact in the last IPCC report, and there will certainly be errors (though hopefully fewer and less tendentious ones) in this report. But errors aside, the pattern seems even clearer now than it did a few years ago: the overall, long-term trend, notwithstanding with a more recent “hiatus” or “pause” as climate researchers are calling it, points to rising temperatures ahead. There are lots of ways this basic understanding still needs to be fleshed out, and it should be fleshed out in an environment of open, vigorous and contentious debate among scientists, without one side trying to throttle the others. The tendency in any establishment to suppress or marginalize dissent needs to be resisted. But as we’ve repeatedly said, it seems clear to us that the fundamental case for global warming is solid.

What isn’t solid, however, are all of the “fiddly bits.” How fast is warming happening? Will it speed up, and by how much? What the economic and environmental impacts be? What other factors besides anthropogenic ones might be contributing to the warming?What complex little mechanisms might slow the process down, or speed it up? And so on. It’s inherent in the nature of a system as complex as climate that these questions will be hard to pin down.

Because the uncertainty is about these “fiddly bits,” and not about the fundamentals, the worry is not about what the science says but about what the policy should be. The process by which greens dream up and then implement policies to address the problem of global warming makes the sometimes messy IPCC process look like a finely tuned, well-oiled machine by comparison.

Global greens develop stupid, horrible, expensive, counterproductive climate policy agendas, and then try to use the imprimatur of “science” as a way to panic the world into adopting them. All too often, in other words, they fall prey to the temptation to make what the science says “clearer than truth” in Acheson’s phrase, in order to silence debate on their cockamamie policy fixes. A favorite tactic is to brand any dissent from the agenda as “anti-science.” It is not only a dishonest tactic; it’s a counterproductive one, generating new waves of skepticism with every exaggeration of fact.

We need a deep rethinking on the policy front. The problems of climate science need to be disaggregated. How do we help China and India move from coal to less carbon-intensive forms of energy use. How do we accelerate the US shift from coal to cleaner natural gas? How can we accelerate the shift from an industrial economy to an information economy in ways that allow the economy to grow and living standards to rise without making the environment worse off.

Environmental policy thinkers almost always begin with statist, top-down fixes, and quickly embrace crony capitalist ideas that involve subsidies for certain types of energy production, such as the ethanol abomination. Powerful economic lobbies then run with these ideas, perverting them until their environmental benefits take a back seat to their usefulness as tools of wealth capture.

This leaves environmentalists increasingly frustrated, increasingly panicked, and with increasingly little to show for it. More than anything else on the energy front right now, the world needs some out of the box thinking about energy policy.
[Earth image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons]
 
Another high profile right wing Bush and Reagan appointee has jumped ship. Climate change is settled science if you actually follow real science, not tv news. More at the link. http://www.jamespowell.org/PieChart/piechart.html

stacks_image_733.png


 
Nemo888 said:
Another high profile right wing Bush and Reagan appointee has jumped ship. Climate change is settled science if you actually follow real science, not tv news. More at the link. http://www.jamespowell.org/PieChart/piechart.html

stacks_image_733.png

That was then......This is now.  Climate change is nothing new.  The history of the earth has thousands of climate changes, predating man.  Man is an insignificant contributor to climate change.
 
And how many question whether the global warming is anthropogenic (human-induced) or is a result of natural cycles?  If it's NOT human-induced (or not primarily human-induced) then the strategies to deal with global warming are very different (prevention vs. mitigation of the effects).  The cause IS very important.  If it's due primarily to natural cycles then money spent on CO2 reduction are dollars wasted instead of spent on mitigating the effects.

Nice headline though.
 
GR66 said:
And how many question whether the global warming is anthropogenic (human-induced) or is a result of natural cycles?  If it's NOT human-induced (or not primarily human-induced) then the strategies to deal with global warming are very different (prevention vs. mitigation of the effects).  The cause IS very important.  If it's due primarily to natural cycles then money spent on CO2 reduction are dollars wasted instead of spent on mitigating the effects.

Nice headline though.

And the good news is that mitigation dollars are equally valuable regardless of the cause of the change.  By contrast preventive dollars rely on being able to read the crystal ball accurately.
 
Nemo888 said:
Another high profile right wing Bush and Reagan appointee has jumped ship. Climate change is settled science if you actually follow real science, not tv news. More at the link. http://www.jamespowell.org/PieChart/piechart.html


Then explain to me why in the 70s scientists thought we were headed for another ice age... and that science was settled too!
 
When it comes to the earth, whatever man does, nature will rectify.

We don't control her, we can't predict her.

Any scientist that believes they can predict the future is on a fool's errand.

The earth will do what it wants.

Stopping coal emissions, CFCs, etc, is only prolonging the agony, and in the big scheme of millions of year, means bupkiss.

In the middle ages and at the start of the industrial revolution, we were already spewing carbon into the atmosphere in numbers that make today look like a girl scout campfire.

Nothing happened.

Climate change scientology is there not to make changes, but to make money.

Not one of those 'scientists' or Al Gore, would be in the business if they weren't making money off of fear mongering.

Mother nature will do what she wants, when she wants.

We don't have a say in the matter.
 
You can believe in the global warming/climate change/extreme weather/Ack! We are all gonna die eco greenie fear mongering, or you can buy long underwear so you are ready for what's coming.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2013/05/26/to-the-horror-of-global-warming-alarmists-global-cooling-is-here/

Whatever.

 
Nemo888 said:
Another high profile right wing Bush and Reagan appointee has jumped ship. Climate change is settled science if you actually follow real science, not tv news. More at the link. http://www.jamespowell.org/PieChart/piechart.html

You could meet and shake hands with 1000 drug dealers all smiling and claiming to be your friend.  Still doesn't make it so.  I am a denier of global warming.  In the worlds of late George Carlin. 

"The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles … hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages … And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isn’t going anywhere. WE are!"


Where is the statistics proving global warming? The raw data on paper for the world to see?  Opinion articles are meaningless to me without hard data to back it up.
 
recceguy said:
When it comes to the earth, whatever man does, nature will rectify.
We don't control her, we can't predict her.

Any scientist that believes they can predict the future is on a fool's errand.

The earth will do what it wants.

Stopping coal emissions, CFCs, etc, is only prolonging the agony, and in the big scheme of millions of year, means bupkiss.

In the middle ages and at the start of the industrial revolution, we were already spewing carbon into the atmosphere in numbers that make today look like a girl scout campfire.

The first part of the statement seems to be opinions. I could claim the opposite  and I don't think either of use could find anything to back up our statements.

Though you could be referring to Lovelock and his Gaea self-aware self healing planet hypothesis?

That line about the middle ages though ... In Europe the population in the 1400's was deforesting the environment at an unsustainable rate, so much so that their would be more  wood in the foreseeable future.  Some speculate, and this might fit in with Lovelock, that the Black Death was the cure for the problem. Population plummeted, many towns and villages abandoned. Nature got the breathing space to recover. 

Regarding carbon release though not nearly as much as today. For example until fairly recent times, 1800's? the planet Venus, the day star was visible during the day.  Actually it still is. I should say much more visible without all the industrial smoke from the 1800's

Suggestion: Could we rename this the Climate Change Superthread?  It might help favor several reasons:

Take some heat out of the discussion. e.g. I for one used to think Warming was real. Now not so sure.

I think most people agree that climate change is happening and something should be done but by who, how and who pays are far from settled.

For example: ERC posted on the Africa thread an article forecasting a grim long term outlook for Africa.

There did not seem to be a solution, perhaps apart from the West withdrawing into fortress zones.

I suggest a better response may be that if there is a broad consensus that climate change is happening, then a better solution might be something like a new Manhattan project to mitigate/reduce the effects. Fast forward development of technologies like "Frankenmeat", mass water desalinization, mass indoor farming and others on the horizon such as cold nuclear and advanced nanotech.

Part of my source for this was an article by Spider Robinson, a SF writer/futurist, published immediately after 9/11 speculating the embarking on a path like this might lead to a better future. 

 
ModlrMike said:
Then explain to me why in the 70s scientists thought we were headed for another ice age... and that science was settled too!

I seem to recall that centered around the amount of smoke, ash and debris that would be lifted very high into the atmosphere in the aftermath of anything other than a very limited nuclear exchange. Source data seemed to be based on very large Volcanic events such as Krakatowa.

Some still believe and seem to make a good case that a supervolcano such as Yellowstone erupting, there are many others could still have such affect, and there is active debate about what to do about this as well. 
 
Here's another example:

At one time everyone believed the world was flat and that the science on that topic was settled.

Of course the the deniers and heretics Copernicus, Galileo came along...
 
It is actually ironic that you mention that :nod:

I was thinking of making the same comment, of course no one will know for some time, perhaps a long time.

I do suggest though the climate change is a reality, heck its always changing.

What,  if anything to do to mitigate effects is  up in the air.
 
I will provide some examples of where public action was useful in mitigating a perceived theat.

Phosphates in detergents - 70's

Acid Rain

Chemicals in Great Lakes - Love Canal

Elimination of certain chemicals damaging the Ozone layer.
 
Inquisitor said:
I will provide some examples of where public action was useful in mitigating a perceived theat.

Phosphates in detergents - 70's

Acid Rain

Chemicals in Great Lakes - Love Canal

Elimination of certain chemicals damaging the Ozone layer.

Chemicals are obvious.  Putting burnt fuel into the air is obvious.  The less we do it equal better.  The guys beating the global warming drum come up with all kinds of examples but no proofs.  I particularly like the carbon dioxide one.  It's a green house gas!  Well.  I guess I better stop breathing since each breath I exhale I'm emitting a green house gas.

Another great one. the Ice Caps are melting!!  Meanwhile this photo and graph from NASA shows the Antarctic Ice cap. Yup it's growing.  See Link.  http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=79369&src=twitter-iotd.

 
Back
Top