Are human activities influencing the climate?

Tayschren

The impact of human behaviors on climate and the environment is irrefutable. The question on how little or large it is impacting is valid even though all the evidence shows that on the current path the human effect on climate and the environment will be destructive and cause massive hardship and pain for the next generation.

Paddy Power would probably give odds that human impact will be negligible at 10,000/1 while the odds on future destruction like floods, famines and environmental collapse are 1/1.

Edit :-) the only solution is the human population goes into sharp decline, war is not enough any more, maybe a super flu ala the spannish flu.

dense

Samaris wrote: »

They're only useless if you don't know how to read them, although given you didn't post the links, I have to assume your charts exist in potentia.

The extreme weather page I linked to, with the graphs you didn't see?

I, like Mr. Gibbons in 2015, had expected Met Eireann to be far more enthusiastically riding the global warming rocking horse.

http://www.thinkorswim.ie/met-eireann-climate-change-time-to-break-the-silence/

cfuserkildare

This is sooo Funny,

The planet has been here for 4.7 Billion years,
Yet the whinging claim of " ...Since Records Began"
The climate of planet Earth has climbed and plummeted many, Many times since life first appeared here.
Example, 100 million years ago Earth was Much warmer and also had a far higher level of Oxygen, 15000 years ago the temperatures plummeted for the umpteenth time and Ice covered Northern Europe.
The industry connected to " Climate Change " reparation is a Fake News subject!!
Please wake up people??

dense

Akrasia wrote: »

In 1897 when Svante Arrhenius predicted that the greenhouse effect would warm the planet if humans continue to increase co2 emissions, it was based on the chemistry and physics involved. His prediction has been tested many many times and it is robust.

He also believed that an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide due to the burning of fossil fuels could be beneficial, making the Earth's climates “more equable,” stimulating plant growth, and providing more food for a larger population.

Celticfire

We were wrong — worst effects of climate change can be avoided, say experts

Climate change not as threatening to planet as previously thought, new research suggests

Settled science eh?

Tayschren

Celticfire wrote: »

We were wrong — worst effects of climate change can be avoided, say experts

Climate change not as threatening to planet as previously thought, new research suggests

Settled science eh?

This one is going to be fun, now my skeptical analysis is that this gives policy makers more opportunity to increase carbon based activities based on a singular model which has not been peer reviewed,

Another 700m tonnes of CO2 to spare, Oil in the arctic and trimming a few million acres of prime amazon. Nobody will benefit form this report


https://www.nature.com/news/limiting-global-warming-to-1-5-c-may-still-be-possible-1.22627

A team of climate scientists has delivered a rare bit of good news: it could be easier than previously thought to limit global warming to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels, as called for in the 2015 Paris climate agreement. But even if the team is right — and some researchers are already questioning the conclusions — heroic efforts to curb greenhouse-gas emissions will still be necessary to limit warming.

Published on 18 September in Nature Geoscience1, the analysis focuses in part on the fact that global climate models used in the 2013 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) tend to overestimate the extent of warming that has already occurred. After adjusting for that discrepancy and running further models, the authors of the latest study found that the amount of carbon that humanity can emit from 2015 onward while holding temperatures below 1.5 °C is nearly three times greater than estimated by the IPCC — or even larger if there is aggressive action on greenhouse gases beyond carbon dioxide.

The implications for global policymakers are significant. Humanity is poised to blow through the IPCC’s carbon budget for a 1.5 °C rise within a few years, leading many scientists to declare the goal impossible. But the new analysis suggests that it could be met with a modest strengthening of the current Paris pledges up to 2030, followed by sharp cuts in carbon emissions thereafter.

Related stories
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More related stories
“The Paris goal of 1.5 °C is not impossible — it’s just very, very difficult,” says lead author Richard Millar, a climate researcher at the University of Oxford, UK.

Akrasia

cfuserkildare wrote: »

This is sooo Funny,

Not really. The planet might be bllions of years old, but modern humans rely on a stable climate to survive.

Akrasia

Celticfire wrote: »

We were wrong — worst effects of climate change can be avoided, say experts

Climate change not as threatening to planet as previously thought, new research suggests

Settled science eh?

What's shocking is that the deniers are so dishonest that they can take a study that says 'if we take immediate action to curb our emissions, we might still have time to avoid dangerous climate change' and spin it into 'climate change models are wrong, it'll all be grand, we can carry on as normal.

The current state of opinion amongst climate scientists is that it's going to be extremely difficult (if not impossible) to limit temperatures to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. Our only hope is if we can somehow start reducing global ghgs by 2020, and be completely carbon neutral by 2050

The oxford study which you can read Here
allows us to peak sometime in the 2020s as long as we are back below the current emissions by 2030 and very steep declines in emissions after this.
The paper still says Paris is not enough, Nations need to commit to more rapid transitions away from CO2 emitting technology

This study still says that global CO2 emissions must be cut rapidly and that we should be fully carbon neutral by the middle of the century, and this scenario still requires us to become a negative carbon economy by 2080, something we don't actually know how to do.

The report also says we should front-load our reduction so that we have more leeway in case there are mechanisms that they don't include in their model.

Other climate scientists think that there is evidence that climate sensitivity is non linear, as the planet gets warmer, it responds more to the same amount of extra CO2. This paper doesn't seem to account for this, so it's a huge gamble to look at past rates of warming and extrapolate that this will be a linear trend into the future.

Mountainsandh

Akrasia wrote: »

Not really. The planet might be bllions of years old, but modern humans rely on a stable climate to survive.

Not really. The climate hasn't really been what you'd call "stable" since the advent of humanity.

https://www.britannica.com/science/climate-change/Climate-change-since-the-advent-of-humans

That abrupt changes may be more stressful to humans is obvious, but I agree with the other poster on the point that on a planetary scale, what is happening right now is, imo, probably insignificant.

I'm all for doing what we can, mind you, to let the planet manage itself as it did before us, then que sera sera.

But that narrative of hyping up catastrophic scenarios in the near future riles me up.

Humanity migrated before. Climate changes happened before, and humanity adapted, and evolved in consequence. These major changes, migrations, on the scale of human history, they're pretty likely to happen either way. Technological change is likely to happen also, so yes, it might as well happen in this manner, and aim to reduce human impact. Absolutely.

However imo it is naive to think that you can freeze the cultural, geopolitical state of humans in the 21st century and preserve this ad infinitum.
We are likely to also have to skirt around epidemics, volcanic/tectonic/space related activity, the impact of military intervention(s), natural climate events, you-name-it... either way.

Reading about climate change nowadays you'd swear that Earth was going to turn into Mars in the next 300 years if we don't do something before 2020.
It looks to me like positive change was underway, except now that the message is being hammered in the fashion it is on this thread, people are turning to Trumpesque positions.

Maybe it's time for scientists to reconsider the way they address the general public. Starting with little things, like communication on message boards for example.

Akrasia

Mountainsandh wrote: »

Not really. The climate hasn't really been what you'd call "stable" since the advent of humanity.

https://www.britannica.com/science/climate-change/Climate-change-since-the-advent-of-humans

There have been climate changes since modern humans evolved between 100k and 200k ago. But there has only been stable settlement and agriculture over the past 6 thousand years or so.

That abrupt changes may be more stressful to humans is obvious, but I agree with the other poster on the point that on a planetary scale, what is happening right now is, imo, probably insignificant.

It's not insignificant, the rate that we are changing our environment is causing a mass extinction event similar to the 5 natural mass extinction events that happened over geological timescales. Previously it tens of thousands of years up to millions of years for a mass extinction to take place. Now, we're doing the same amount of destruction to biodiversity in only a few hundred years.

http://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/E6089

The population extinction pulse we describe here shows, from a quantitative viewpoint, that Earth’s sixth mass extinction is more severe than perceived when looking exclusively at species extinctions. Therefore, humanity needs to address anthropogenic population extirpation and decimation immediately. That conclusion is based on analyses of the numbers and degrees of range contraction (indicative of population shrinkage and/or population extinctions according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature) using a sample of 27,600 vertebrate species, and on a more detailed analysis documenting the population extinctions between 1900 and 2015 in 177 mammal species. We find that the rate of population loss in terrestrial vertebrates is extremely high—even in “species of low concern.” In our sample, comprising nearly half of known vertebrate species, 32% (8,851/27,600) are decreasing; that is, they have decreased in population size and range. In the 177 mammals for which we have detailed data, all have lost 30% or more of their geographic ranges and more than 40% of the species have experienced severe population declines (>80% range shrinkage). Our data indicate that beyond global species extinctions Earth is experiencing a huge episode of population declines and extirpations, which will have negative cascading consequences on ecosystem functioning and services vital to sustaining civilization. We describe this as a “biological annihilation” to highlight the current magnitude of Earth’s ongoing sixth major extinction event.

Billions of local populations of animals have been lost due to human activity. Not all due to climate change, but a lot of that is.

What we are doing is not insignificant on a planetary scale. But even if it was, and if the planet will recover most of that diversity over the next hundred million years. What we are doing could be devastating to the human capacity to survive and flourish on this planet. Humans probably won't go extinct, but if global average temperatures rise above 2 degrees celcius, it's hard to imagine a world with stable social and economic conditions. It's a dystopian future if not a post apocalyptic one.

I'm all for doing what we can, mind you, to let the planet manage itself as it did before us, then que sera sera.

But that narrative of hyping up catastrophic scenarios in the near future riles me up.

Don't blame me, Blame NASA
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2458/why-a-half-degree-temperature-rise-is-a-big-deal/

Humanity migrated before. Climate changes happened before, and humanity adapted, and evolved in consequence. These major changes, migrations, on the scale of human history, they're pretty likely to happen either way. Technological change is likely to happen also, so yes, it might as well happen in this manner, and aim to reduce human impact. Absolutely.

There is a massive difference between migration in the past people were hunter gatherers, nomads whose entire lifestyle involved following their source of food.
Modern society is based on settling down and building infrastructre to feed our population. If global rapid global warming means that all of our infrastructure is suddenly in the wrong place, we're faced with severe food shortages, severe droughts, severe flooding, severe heatwaves and billions of people all clambering over each other for somewhere to live over timescales measured in decades rather than centuries... It's an absolute disaster. Literally, this is the kind of thing that disaster movies are made about.

There is already an enormous amount of human suffering caused by changes in rainfall and increased flooding and droughts.
We're set to possibly double the amount of heating we've already caused to the planet by the end of this century. That misery is only going to get worse and spread, and further destabalise whole regions of the world, many of which are already civil wars waiting to happen.

However imo it is naive to think that you can freeze the cultural, geopolitical state of humans in the 21st century and preserve this ad infinitum.
We are likely to also have to skirt around epidemics, volcanic/tectonic/space related activity, the impact of military intervention(s), natural climate events, you-name-it... either way.

We can deal with them when they happen occasionally and are spread out over different regions of the world. But when these natural disasters happen much more frequently and affecting multiple regions of the world at the same time, humans have never had to deal with that kind of instability before with the possible exception of the two world wars of the 20th century.

And now we have nuclear weapons.

Reading about climate change nowadays you'd swear that Earth was going to turn into Mars in the next 300 years if we don't do something before 2020.
It looks to me like positive change was underway, except now that the message is being hammered in the fashion it is on this thread, people are turning to Trumpesque positions.

The majority of people are on board with how serious this is. We have a vocal minority of ideologues who are responsible for the vast majority of propaganda on the internet. These are the kinds of people who do support trump, but the majority of people are on board and realise that this is serious and we need to act asap.

Maybe it's time for scientists to reconsider the way they address the general public. Starting with little things, like communication on message boards for example.

Scientists have been far too reserved. Most of them will tell you face to face that they think global warming is a massive problem, but they are professionals who use the appropriate measured tone in their publications.

What the denialists do is make grand claims without any evidence. conspiracy theory claims, and assertions that their own version of the science is true and everyone else is wrong. This is the kind of propaganda that gets attention and makes headlines. This is why many of the denialists who oppose climate change were first employed by the tobacco industry as shills to deny the link with cancer.

Scientists have been too reserved. People need to be constantly reminded that everything that makes humanity so great, everything we value the most is at risk from global warming unless we do everything we can to stop it before it's too late.

cfuserkildare

I must state that I am not denying our Climate is changing,
I just reckon, (and a lot of evidence points to the same), that our climate change event is a natural cycle, just like all the previous Warming/Cooling cycles.
Our planet will get warmer, but our interference will probably have a neglible affect.

Akrasia

cfuserkildare wrote: »

I must state that I am not denying our Climate is changing,
I just reckon, (and a lot of evidence points to the same), that our climate change event is a natural cycle, just like all the previous Warming/Cooling cycles.
Our planet will get warmer, but our interference will probably have a neglible affect.

https://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-natural-cycle.htm

What the science says...
A natural cycle requires a forcing, and no known forcing exists that fits the fingerprints of observed warming - except anthropogenic greenhouse gases.

Climate Myth...
It's a natural cycle
"Global warming (i.e, the warming since 1977) is over. The minute increase of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere (0.008%) was not the cause of the warming—it was a continuation of natural cycles that occurred over the past 500 years." (Don Easterbrook)

"What if global warming is just a natural cycle?" This argument is, perhaps, one of the most common raised by the average person, rather than someone who makes a career out of denying climate change. Cyclical variations in climate are well-known to the public; we all studied the ice ages in school. However, climate isn't inherently cyclical.

A common misunderstanding of the climate system characterizes it like a pendulum. The planet will warm up to "cancel out" a previous period of cooling, spurred by some internal equilibrium. This view of the climate is incorrect. Internal variability will move energy between the ocean and the atmosphere, causing short-term warming and cooling of the surface in events such as El Nino and La Nina, and longer-term changes when similar cycles operate on decadal scales. However, internal forces do not cause climate change. Appreciable changes in climate are the result of changes in the energy balance of the Earth, which requires "external" forcings, such as changes in solar output, albedo, and atmospheric greenhouse gases. These forcings can be cyclical, as they are in the ice ages, but they can come in different shapes entirely.

For this reason, "it's just a natural cycle" is a bit of a cop-out argument. The Earth doesn't warm up because it feels like it. It warms up because something forces it to. Scientists keep track of natural forcings, but the observed warming of the planet over the second half of the 20th century can only be explained by adding in anthropogenic radiative forcings, namely increases in greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.....

cfuserkildare

But again, That is just another Theory, Not proven fact
Like most of the Major climate related events, We can only Theorise about them, There is not enough evidence in the current known Geological record to categorically state that THIS is how it is, and That is what happened etc.

Akrasia

cfuserkildare wrote: »

But again, That is just another Theory, Not proven fact
Like most of the Major climate related events, We can only Theorise about them, There is not enough evidence in the current known Geological record to categorically state that THIS is how it is, and That is what happened etc.

AGW is the best explanation there is for the current warming and therefore we should take it very seriously. The contrarians and skeptics haven't won the scientific argument because they haven't shown any mechanism to explain the warming we have been experiencing.

If it's a natural cycle, then there needs to be a natural forcing.

hytrogen

As beautiful a science as it is, it's is very very hard to get a precise answer for our planets climate change without general sweeping statements, you have to look at it at a macro eco-system case by case to understand it fully.
Yes we are over populating since there hasn't been a mass culling (war) in the last half century which as a resultant of urban sprawl and over crowded conurbations, each city needs to take charge of its emissions, waste and consumptions.
But another reason why we are the catalyst for this accelerated climate change is that we have become very settled in our modern ethos and civilised state. As Allan Savory explained, the lack of mass migration of herds has lead to widespread desertification in the subsaharan Africa for instance.
Therefore we need to act in a more symbiotic manor to our surrounding ecosphere, ie don't aspire to own a forever home, use multimodal public transportation commuting, Agri-forestry is the future in farming, and stop importing foods from far afield that can easily be grown locally. If you're not contributing to your local society you need to or else move on..

Mountainsandh

Akrasia wrote: »

There have been climate changes since modern humans evolved between 100k and 200k ago. But there has only been stable settlement and agriculture over the past 6 thousand years or so.

It's not insignificant, the rate that we are changing our environment is causing a mass extinction event similar to the 5 natural mass extinction events that happened over geological timescales. Previously it tens of thousands of years up to millions of years for a mass extinction to take place. Now, we're doing the same amount of destruction to biodiversity in only a few hundred years.

http://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/E6089


Billions of local populations of animals have been lost due to human activity. Not all due to climate change, but a lot of that is.

What we are doing is not insignificant on a planetary scale. But even if it was, and if the planet will recover most of that diversity over the next hundred million years. What we are doing could be devastating to the human capacity to survive and flourish on this planet. Humans probably won't go extinct, but if global average temperatures rise above 2 degrees celcius, it's hard to imagine a world with stable social and economic conditions. It's a dystopian future if not a post apocalyptic one.



Don't blame me, Blame NASA
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2458/why-a-half-degree-temperature-rise-is-a-big-deal/


There is a massive difference between migration in the past people were hunter gatherers, nomads whose entire lifestyle involved following their source of food.
Modern society is based on settling down and building infrastructre to feed our population. If global rapid global warming means that all of our infrastructure is suddenly in the wrong place, we're faced with severe food shortages, severe droughts, severe flooding, severe heatwaves and billions of people all clambering over each other for somewhere to live over timescales measured in decades rather than centuries... It's an absolute disaster. Literally, this is the kind of thing that disaster movies are made about.

There is already an enormous amount of human suffering caused by changes in rainfall and increased flooding and droughts.
We're set to possibly double the amount of heating we've already caused to the planet by the end of this century. That misery is only going to get worse and spread, and further destabalise whole regions of the world, many of which are already civil wars waiting to happen.


We can deal with them when they happen occasionally and are spread out over different regions of the world. But when these natural disasters happen much more frequently and affecting multiple regions of the world at the same time, humans have never had to deal with that kind of instability before with the possible exception of the two world wars of the 20th century.

And now we have nuclear weapons.


The majority of people are on board with how serious this is. We have a vocal minority of ideologues who are responsible for the vast majority of propaganda on the internet. These are the kinds of people who do support trump, but the majority of people are on board and realise that this is serious and we need to act asap.

Scientists have been far too reserved. Most of them will tell you face to face that they think global warming is a massive problem, but they are professionals who use the appropriate measured tone in their publications.

What the denialists do is make grand claims without any evidence. conspiracy theory claims, and assertions that their own version of the science is true and everyone else is wrong. This is the kind of propaganda that gets attention and makes headlines. This is why many of the denialists who oppose climate change were first employed by the tobacco industry as shills to deny the link with cancer.

Scientists have been too reserved. People need to be constantly reminded that everything that makes humanity so great, everything we value the most is at risk from global warming unless we do everything we can to stop it before it's too late.

To you I will appear too blinded by my own opinion to be able to comprehend yours.
To me you are too blinded by your own convictions to grasp what I was trying to tell you, and you are still alienating the very people you are attempting to convince. In fact in the one post you have encapsulated the stance that I was describing. I wasn't aiming my post at you in particular btw.

Mountainsandh

Akrasia wrote: »

There have been climate changes since modern humans evolved between 100k and 200k ago. But there has only been stable settlement and agriculture over the past 6 thousand years or so.

So humanity has been more settled. The climate has just been doing what it does, changing.

It's not insignificant, the rate that we are changing our environment is causing a mass extinction event similar to the 5 natural mass extinction events that happened over geological timescales. Previously it tens of thousands of years up to millions of years for a mass extinction to take place. Now, we're doing the same amount of destruction to biodiversity in only a few hundred years.

http://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/E6089


Billions of local populations of animals have been lost due to human activity. Not all due to climate change, but a lot of that is.

Let's rephrase so : some/a certain proportion of the extinction event can be attributed, among other things, to climate change ; or : climate change is partly responsible for some of the extinction event currently afoot.

A lot less drama with this phrasing.

What we are doing is not insignificant on a planetary scale. But even if it was, and if the planet will recover most of that diversity over the next hundred million years. What we are doing could be devastating to the human capacity to survive and flourish on this planet. Humans probably won't go extinct, but if global average temperatures rise above 2 degrees celcius, it's hard to imagine a world with stable social and economic conditions. It's a dystopian future if not a post apocalyptic one.

Drama.
Dystopian is all the rage, and I love myself a nice dystopian movie or book, because I know it could be partly true.
This is why we think, we talk, we discuss, we agree and disagree, we make decisions and we invent things, and finally we try and avoid the obstacles thrown in our way, confront them, or we change. Or we geoengineer, or we manage to get off the planet, the possibilities are many.
This is what we have been doing as humans since Africa, and it has worked very well.

A world with stable social and economic conditions is the ideal right now, isn't it ? Do we think we have that ? Is it really the only way to be humans on the planet ? Is it a constant struggle to maintain that, regardless of climate change ?
Is it possible that this ideal may change ?
What if we become this species of autarchic families, living in pods drifting or sailing on the ocean ?
What if the future of the species is really in returning to the state of hunter-gatherers ? what if agriculture had been the mistake ? https://livinganthropologically.com/archaeology/agriculture-worst-mistake/

You seem to assume the standpoint that "we have arrived, and we must stay there".
I don't necessarily think that humanity "has arrived".
Of course we want to preserve our current way of life, that's all we know, that, and a usually gloomy (but sometimes nostalgic, hey?) vision of the past.

Don't blame me, Blame NASA
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2458/why-a-half-degree-temperature-rise-is-a-big-deal/

They are less dramatic than your previous post, and yes, I read the article. .:p

There is a massive difference between migration in the past people were hunter gatherers, nomads whose entire lifestyle involved following their source of food.
Modern society is based on settling down and building infrastructre to feed our population. If global rapid global warming means that all of our infrastructure is suddenly in the wrong place, we're faced with severe food shortages, severe droughts, severe flooding, severe heatwaves and billions of people all clambering over each other for somewhere to live over timescales measured in decades rather than centuries... It's an absolute disaster. Literally, this is the kind of thing that disaster movies are made about.

There is already an enormous amount of human suffering caused by changes in rainfall and increased flooding and droughts.
We're set to possibly double the amount of heating we've already caused to the planet by the end of this century. That misery is only going to get worse and spread, and further destabalise whole regions of the world, many of which are already civil wars waiting to happen.


We can deal with them when they happen occasionally and are spread out over different regions of the world. But when these natural disasters happen much more frequently and affecting multiple regions of the world at the same time, humans have never had to deal with that kind of instability before with the possible exception of the two world wars of the 20th century.

And now we have nuclear weapons.

As above with all of this. There is an anthropological question there, and maybe an ideological one. Is the future of mankind to prolong the present way of life, again, to freeze the state we are in and defend it no matter what, or are we destined to change, migrate, evolve ?
Because of this amazing evolution to being the developed civilizations we so enjoy, overpopulation is a massive issue.
Have we made a mistake ? Is "modern civilization" not so modern anymore ?

Are fatal events that are about to happen part of the equilibrium required for the survival of the species ? I would place population displacement events due to climate change, such as, say, the flooding of Florida, on a par with major volcanic or tectonic activity in an area, or a meteorite wiping a small country off the map, or an epidemic.
Let's do what we can to avoid these fatal events, climate related or not. Because like you, I like the way we're living right now, and anyway, evolution/change to humanity will take time.

Scientists have been too reserved. People need to be constantly reminded that everything that makes humanity so great, everything we value the most is at risk from global warming unless we do everything we can to stop it before it's too late.

Again, everything "we value the most" right now (at this moment in time, particularly in our developed civilizations, ie I doubt Amazonian tribes spend any time pondering this) is at risk from a lot of disasters, all the time.

I agree, this is something we can do something about, and I like the present state, so let's try and reduce our impact.

But what the scientific stance above is achieving, is to give an image of a tunnel-visioned, self-imbued, controlling elite, heavily embroiled in politics, that cannot relate to the general public.

And I love science, Nasa, and the general sense of enlightenment of this era ; but even I, with my interest and respect for it, get a whiff of this new "science" persona I described above.

One thing that strikes me in all the links provided to great interesting articles, is the elephant in the room, the unwillingness to acknowledge that possibly, while Florida might be submerged with global warming and rising ocean levels, possibly some other areas will benefit from the run off of monsoon-like precipitations, and new river plains where there once was desert might develop (as in the case of Arabian plains at one stage, if I recall reading right somewhere).
After all, I think I remember reading too, that the Saharan desert was once fertile. The planet evolves, and we may have to evolve with it. How shocking.

dense

It's worse than what we thought:

"Climate scientists may have been underestimating global warming, finds study"

Preventing global warming from becoming “dangerous” may have just got significantly harder after new research suggested climate scientists have been using the wrong baseline temperature.




https://uk.news.yahoo.com/climate-scientists-may-underestimating-global-150047680.html

No it isn't:

"The world has warmed more slowly than had been forecast by computer models, which were “on the hot side” and overstated the impact of emissions, a new study has found.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/we-were-wrong-worst-effects-of-climate-change-can-be-avoided-say-scientists-k9p5hg5l0

Akrasia

Mountainsandh wrote: »

So humanity has been more settled. The climate has just been doing what it does, changing.

Not all change is the same. The current change is driven by human activity according to the best information that we have.

Let's rephrase so : some/a certain proportion of the extinction event can be attributed, among other things, to climate change ; or : climate change is partly responsible for some of the extinction event currently afoot.

A lot less drama with this phrasing.

When you know that a 2 degree warming will almost certainly wipe out the coral reefs which 1/4 of all marine life rely on to survive.. That's pretty dramatic.

If the warming was slower, on a more geological timescale, the corals would be able to migrate and reestablish themselves as the water warms, but at the rate we're heating the planet, there isn't enough time for these populations to adapt or move. Remember, We're talking about a minimum of a half a degree warming in just 80 years in the best case scenario, up to a possible 6 degrees of warming in just 80 years!
If that's not dramatic, then what is?

Drama.
Dystopian is all the rage, and I love myself a nice dystopian movie or book, because I know it could be partly true.
This is why we think, we talk, we discuss, we agree and disagree, we make decisions and we invent things, and finally we try and avoid the obstacles thrown in our way, confront them, or we change. Or we geoengineer, or we manage to get off the planet, the possibilities are many.
This is what we have been doing as humans since Africa, and it has worked very well.

That's what I'm arguing for. For us to fix the problem, we need to identify it properly. Anyone who still thinks that this global warming is natural is in the way of implementing the solution.

The solution to climate change doesn't have to even involve that much pain, but ideological opposition to the right course of action can delay action until the harm is already done.

If the governments of the world borrowed heavily to transition their infrastructure from fossil fuel based, towards renewables, the investment would pay for itself many times over, but to get the investment through, we'd have to run the gauntlet of ideologues and vested interests trying to block it at every avenue.

A world with stable social and economic conditions is the ideal right now, isn't it ? Do we think we have that ? Is it really the only way to be humans on the planet ? Is it a constant struggle to maintain that, regardless of climate change ?
Is it possible that this ideal may change ?
What if we become this species of autarchic families, living in pods drifting or sailing on the ocean ?
What if the future of the species is really in returning to the state of hunter-gatherers ? what if agriculture had been the mistake ? https://livinganthropologically.com/archaeology/agriculture-worst-mistake/

You seem to assume the standpoint that "we have arrived, and we must stay there".

You seem to have pegged me as some kind of a conservative or luddite, or end of history fellow.
I'm all in favour of advancing technology, social change, political change etc, but I'm not a nihilist. I don't think we should just be rolling the dice and accepting whatever outcome emerges. Humanity has gone through very dark times in the past and it takes deliberate collective action create a better world. We are at a crossroads now. We can either acknowledge that we're responsible for climate change and do something about it, or we can pretend that it's all just natural, that our ship is unsinkable, and sail directly towards the iceberg

I don't necessarily think that humanity "has arrived".
Of course we want to preserve our current way of life, that's all we know, that, and a usually gloomy (but sometimes nostalgic, hey?) vision of the past.

I don't want to preserve the ways of the past, I want to leave the world a better place for my kids. At the very least, I don't want to leave my kids with a world in ever increasing strife, war and famine.

They are less dramatic than your previous post, and yes, I read the article. .:p

Not by much, they're talking about whole-scale crop failures, extreme temperatures increasing 5-10 degrees, Florida being wiped off the map (and everywhere else that's not high above the current sea level).

As above with all of this. There is an anthropological question there, and maybe an ideological one. Is the future of mankind to prolong the present way of life, again, to freeze the state we are in and defend it no matter what, or are we destined to change, migrate, evolve ?
Because of this amazing evolution to being the developed civilizations we so enjoy, overpopulation is a massive issue.
Have we made a mistake ? Is "modern civilization" not so modern anymore ?

Ok, here's a little thought experiment. If your house burns down in an accident. Do you rebuild it, or do you decide to move to the jungle and eat berries and sleep under the stars.

I'm not saying human civilisation is perfect. Not by a very long shot. One of the causes of the current environmental crisis is our broken economic system, and if humans are to survive and flourish in the medium term, we're really gonna need to reexamine that, but that's a seperate argument. Again, I'm not a nihilist. I don't think we should just allow everything to fall apart without planning for the future. If we are to plan a better future, we need to sort out our climate change problem. It's going to be a lot easier to improve civilisation if we aren't facing critical land food and water shortages.

Are fatal events that are about to happen part of the equilibrium required for the survival of the species ? I would place population displacement events due to climate change, such as, say, the flooding of Florida, on a par with major volcanic or tectonic activity in an area, or a meteorite wiping a small country off the map, or an epidemic.
Let's do what we can to avoid these fatal events, climate related or not. Because like you, I like the way we're living right now, and anyway, evolution/change to humanity will take time.

This is where stability comes in. If you want society to evolve in a way where humans can flourish in harmony with non human species, this can only be achieved where there are stable conditions. If people are constantly displaced and if there is war and shortages of essential resources, we're not going to flourish, the most violent and most selfish will win.

In WW2, the Nazis were defeated but not by kindness, by blowing the sh1t out of them and nuking Japan. After WW2 it took decades to re-unite europe and start to get back to the enlightenent values that, while not perfect, seem to be superior to the heartless dictatorships that exist in other places and at other times. War and instability make things worse. not better.

Again, everything "we value the most" right now (at this moment in time, particularly in our developed civilizations, ie I doubt Amazonian tribes spend any time pondering this) is at risk from a lot of disasters, all the time.

Yep. And that's why we build flood defences and insure our homes and our cars and provide healthcare etc And thats why we need to take anthroprogenic climate change seriously. We've already proven that it's real, it would be stupid and irresponsible to ignore it.

I agree, this is something we can do something about, and I like the present state, so let's try and reduce our impact.

ASAP

But what the scientific stance above is achieving, is to give an image of a tunnel-visioned, self-imbued, controlling elite, heavily embroiled in politics, that cannot relate to the general public.

And I love science, Nasa, and the general sense of enlightenment of this era ; but even I, with my interest and respect for it, get a whiff of this new "science" persona I described above.

Nobody likes being preached at. But the softly softly approach has been tried, and what happened was the false balance where we have professional deniers on one side being given equal status to experts, and the public stop taking it seriously. They elect climate change deniers to political office, those people deliberately delay green technology for ideological and selfish reasons.

One thing that strikes me in all the links provided to great interesting articles, is the elephant in the room, the unwillingness to acknowledge that possibly, while Florida might be submerged with global warming and rising ocean levels, possibly some other areas will benefit from the run off of monsoon-like precipitations, and new river plains where there once was desert might develop (as in the case of Arabian plains at one stage, if I recall reading right somewhere).
After all, I think I remember reading too, that the Saharan desert was once fertile. The planet evolves, and we may have to evolve with it. How shocking.

It actually has been acknowledged. Global warming has been studied very carefully and there are lots of people looking as hard as they can for the bright side of global warming. Some places will be more hospitable than they are now, but those places are more than offset by the places that will become uninhabitable.

Individuals might profit, but humanity, and non human species will all be much worse off.

Akrasia

dense wrote: »

It's worse than what we thought:

"Climate scientists may have been underestimating global warming, finds study"

Preventing global warming from becoming “dangerous” may have just got significantly harder after new research suggested climate scientists have been using the wrong baseline temperature.




https://uk.news.yahoo.com/climate-scientists-may-underestimating-global-150047680.html

No it isn't:

"The world has warmed more slowly than had been forecast by computer models, which were “on the hot side” and overstated the impact of emissions, a new study has found.

"https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/we-were-wrong-worst-effects-of-climate-change-can-be-avoided-say-scientists-k9p5hg5l0

You're desperately grabbing onto marginal aspects of global warming research which are still being worked out and trying to use this to deny the elephant in the room.

You cannot see the wood for the trees.

dense

Akrasia wrote: »

You're desperately grabbing onto marginal aspects of global warming research which are still being worked out and trying to use this to deny the elephant in the room.

You cannot see the wood for the trees.

A. One gang says it's worse than we thought/whip up some hysteria.

B. Another camp says, it's not as bad as what we thought/the predictions are wrong.

Now please, either critique the headlines in The Times and The Independent or continue on with the ad hominem garbage.

Akrasia

dense wrote: »

A. One gang says it's worse than we thought/whip up some hysteria.

B. Another camp says, it's not as bad as what we thought/the predictions are wrong.

Now please, either critique the headlines in The Times and The Independent or continue on with the ad hominem garbage.

Thats your problem. You think the headlines are the story

I wasn't using an ad hominem by the way, I said you were focusing on small details and ignoring the fact that both of these stories are about research that confirm that global warming is real.

Imagine you have been given a diagnosis of cancer. One expert says you'll be dead in 9 months, the other says you'll be dead in 10 months. Both agree you have cancer, but you're taking their disagreement about when you'll die as evidence that you don't have cancer or that it's not that serious.

dense

Akrasia wrote: »

Thats your problem. You think the headlines are the story

I wasn't using an ad hominem by the way, I said you were focusing on small details and ignoring the fact that both of these stories are about research that confirm that global warming is real.

Small details, like the very temperatures at the core of the hypothesis?

I thought we were supposed to focus on it.........

Akrasia

dense wrote: »

Small details, like the very temperatures at the core of the hypothesis?

I thought we were supposed to focus on it.........

Temperatures aren't the core of the hypothesis. The physics and chemistry are. temperature measurements are a way of measuring the phenomenon, but the greenhouse effect can be demonstrated just by looking at radiative forcing and how greenhouse gasses trap radiation and accumulate energy over time.

The atmospheric temperatures are only a small part of global warming, 90% of all that energy is going into heating our oceans. (And that is causing all kinds of problems, as the people of Dominico, the Virgin Islands, Barbuda, Houston etc are all finding out about this month)

The small details here are how long it will take to reach 2 degrees of atmospheric warming (or 1.5 degrees), and where we ought to have been counting that 2 degrees from.

In any scientific field there is always debate around marginal details. Even evolution still has many areas of debate and uncertainty. What is not under debate, is whether evolution is true.

AGW is real, those papers both agree it is real, they both agree it is related to human emissions of greenhouse gasses, and they both agree that if we don't reduce our emissions, we're in for a bad time.

What you're doing is anomaly hunting. Anyone can always 'disprove' any theory by looking for slight discrepancies between different accounts or different lines of evidence. This is what drives conspiracy theories and it works because people who want to believe something develop tunnel vision, they focus on details that they think are out of place, and ignore the mountains of evidence that doesn't agree with their world view.

dense

Akrasia wrote: »

AGW is real, those papers both agree it is real, they both agree it is related to human emissions of greenhouse gasses, and they both agree that if we don't reduce our emissions, we're in for a bad time.

Only 'related' to human emissions.
That's very careful wording isn't it?

Is it not "caused" by human emissions?

Akrasia

dense wrote: »

Only 'related' to human emissions.
That's very careful wording isn't it?

Is it not "caused" by human emissions?

Yes, it is.

Akrasia

According to the Scripps institute of Oceanography, they have calculated that there is a one in 20 risk of catastrophic effects of global warming by 2050.

"Even if that objective is met, a global temperature increase of 1.5°C (2.7°F) is still categorized as “dangerous,” meaning it could create substantial damage to human and natural systems. A temperature increase greater than 3°C (5.4°F) could lead to what the researchers term “catastrophic” effects, and an increase greater than 5°C (9°F) could lead to “unknown” consequences which they describe as beyond catastrophic including potentially existential threats. The specter of existential threats is raised to reflect the grave risks to human health and species extinction from warming beyond 5°C, which has not been experienced for at least the past 20 million years."
https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/new-climate-risk-classification-created-account-potential-existential-threats

I'm constantly being told I'm an alarmist and that I'm exaggerating the risks attached to global warming. But here we have a hugely respected institution publishing a paper in one of the best science journals PNAS (hehe) that outlines a very real risk of human extinction by the end of the century.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/09/14/1618481114.abstract

The current risk category of dangerous warming is extended to more categories, which are defined by us here as follows: >1.5 °C as dangerous; >3 °C as catastrophic; and >5 °C as unknown, implying beyond catastrophic, including existential threats. With unchecked emissions, the central warming can reach the dangerous level within three decades, with the LPHI warming becoming catastrophic by 2050.

"This report shines a bright light on the existential threat that climate change presents to all humanity," said Calif. Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr., who has collaborated with Ramanathan on carbon neutrality measures in the state. "Scientists have many ideas about how to reduce emissions, but they all agree on the urgency of strong and decisive action to remove carbon from the economy."

Wanderer78

Akrasia wrote:

According to the Scripps institute of Oceanography, they have calculated that there is a one in 20 risk of catastrophic effects of global warming by 2050.

Well done akrasia, some great research done on this topic, very impressive

Mountainsandh

Akrasia wrote: »

According to the Scripps institute of Oceanography, they have calculated that there is a one in 20 risk of catastrophic effects of global warming by 2050.


I'm constantly being told I'm an alarmist and that I'm exaggerating the risks attached to global warming. But here we have a hugely respected institution publishing a paper in one of the best science journals PNAS (hehe) that outlines a very real risk of human extinction by the end of the century.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/09/14/1618481114.abstract

Of course scientists can highlight risks that are "very real".
The risk of an aircraft crashing is very real.
The probabilities are what help us make decisions on how we wish to live our lives.

Akrasia

The risks of Climate change are very real too.

Here's the Keeling Curve. In the last 50 years, we've increased the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere from just over 300ppm to over 400ppm

https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/wp-content/plugins/sio-bluemoon/graphs/mlo_full_record.png

That's a fundamental change in our atmosphere.

It's undeniable that we need to reduce our emissions ASAP

This means that the majority of Oil Coal and Gas reserves still underground need to be left where they are.

dense

Akrasia wrote: »

It's undeniable that we need to reduce our emissions ASAP

No panic according to a 2015 study.

"One of the world's most firmly global-warmist scientists says that even if humanity deliberately sets out to burn all the fossil fuels it can find, as fast as it can, there will be no troublesome sea level rise due to melting Antarctic ice this century.

Dr Ken Caldeira's credentials as a global warmist are impeccable. He is not a true green hardliner - he has signed a plea to his fellow greens to get over their objections to nuclear power, for instance, and he doesn't totally rule out geoengineering as a possible global-warming solution. But that's as far as he'll go: in Dr Caldeira's view, it is plain and simple unethical to release greenhouse gases into the air. There's no middle ground on that as far as he's concerned - he's not OK with gas power as an alternative to coal, for instance.

But he's a scientist, and like all proper scientists he's willing to admit inconvenient truths. In this case, the truth in question is his own prediction that no matter what humans do in the way of carbon emissions, sea levels are not going to rise by more than 8cm this century due to melting Antarctic ice. For context, the seas have been rising faster than that for thousands of years.

They rose 17cm just during the 20th century, and the Antarctic cap is far and away the biggest body of ice on the planet."




http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/15/no_sea_level_danger_from_antarctic_this_century_even_if_all_coal_and_oil_burned/?mt=1442346532031



http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/8/e1500589.full

cfuserkildare

Currently watching Secrets of The Underground, seems that the Volcanic Activity in Mammoth Lakes alone is enough to affect our climate,
10s of thousands of tons of CO2 daily.
That is monsterous!!

Akrasia

dense wrote: »

No panic according to a 2015 study.

"One of the world's most firmly global-warmist scientists says that even if humanity deliberately sets out to burn all the fossil fuels it can find, as fast as it can, there will be no troublesome sea level rise due to melting Antarctic ice this century.

Dr Ken Caldeira's credentials as a global warmist are impeccable. He is not a true green hardliner - he has signed a plea to his fellow greens to get over their objections to nuclear power, for instance, and he doesn't totally rule out geoengineering as a possible global-warming solution. But that's as far as he'll go: in Dr Caldeira's view, it is plain and simple unethical to release greenhouse gases into the air. There's no middle ground on that as far as he's concerned - he's not OK with gas power as an alternative to coal, for instance.

But he's a scientist, and like all proper scientists he's willing to admit inconvenient truths. In this case, the truth in question is his own prediction that no matter what humans do in the way of carbon emissions, sea levels are not going to rise by more than 8cm this century due to melting Antarctic ice. For context, the seas have been rising faster than that for thousands of years.

They rose 17cm just during the 20th century, and the Antarctic cap is far and away the biggest body of ice on the planet."




http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/09/15/no_sea_level_danger_from_antarctic_this_century_even_if_all_coal_and_oil_burned/?mt=1442346532031



http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/8/e1500589.full

I thought I had seen intellectual dishonesty before, but this takes it to a new level.
Antarctica will contribute to global sea level rises, but none of the models have it as a major factor this century. It's possible that Antarctica have a few dramatic abrupt melting events as individual ice shelves collapse into the water, and some papers show evidence of abrupt sea level rises linked to antarctica breaking up. But the entire antarctic continent won't fully melt or thousands of years. It is a long term risk and a hugely significant one for future generations but a low probability high impact risk for abrupt change in our lifetime.

The main driver of sea level rises this century, is thermal expansion of the water in the ocean, as well as the greenland ice sheets, which are already losing 200 billion tonnes of ice a year, and if they start to break apart, we could see several feet of sea rises by the turn of the century

Akrasia

cfuserkildare wrote: »

Currently watching Secrets of The Underground, seems that the Volcanic Activity in Mammoth Lakes alone is enough to affect our climate,
10s of thousands of tons of CO2 daily.
That is monsterous!!

10s of thousands of tonnes of Co2 a day certainly is a lot
Not quite as much as the 80 million tonnes of CO2 that humans emit a day though

dense

Akrasia wrote: »

I thought I had seen intellectual dishonesty before, but this takes it to a new level.
Antarctica will contribute to global sea level rises, but none of the models have it as a major factor this century. It's possible that Antarctica have a few dramatic abrupt melting events as individual ice shelves collapse into the water, and some papers show evidence of abrupt sea level rises linked to antarctica breaking up. But the entire antarctic continent won't fully melt or thousands of years. It is a long term risk and a hugely significant one for future generations but a low probability high impact risk for abrupt change in our lifetime.

The main driver of sea level rises this century, is thermal expansion of the water in the ocean, as well as the greenland ice sheets, which are already losing 200 billion tonnes of ice a year, and if they start to break apart, we could see several feet of sea rises by the turn of the century

Speaking of dishonesty, what do you make of the claim that Artic sea ice has gained 40% since 2012?






There has always been scare stories about the world drowning due to ice melting.

Here's one from 1922:

Akrasia

You're just gonna keep hopping from one dishonest claim to the next aren't ya.

This is (yet more) cherrypicking. The record minimum ice extent in the arctic was in september 2012, so every year until there is another record minimum extent the deniers can claim that ice is recovering. If next year the ice extent beats 2012's record, no denialist ever goes back and says 'oops we were wrong, ice isn't really recovering after all.'

Even the image you posted still shows that despite the 'recovery' in ice extent, the ice this year is still significantly below the median ice edge. If you want to claim that ice is recovering, you should wait until the ice extends past the long term average, rather than comparing it to the record minimum.

Here's the PIOMAS sea ice volume graph ending June 2017

http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2017/06/piomas-june-2017.html#more

Clearly Arctic sea ice volumes are declining.

And as for your clipping of a regional newspaper from a hundred years ago. I hope those Norweigan Fishermen managed to catch those seals in the end.

If they thought glaciers were retreating back then, they would be shocked by what is happening today

Akrasia

And just a postscript to the round of BS articles misrepresenting the Oxford study that deniers tried to spin as 'climate models are disproven' from last Monday

The lead author was so annoyed with the misrepresentation of his paper by the likes of James Dellingpole of Breitbart and the Daily Mail (formerly the telegraph where he was just as dishonest) that he wrote a piece for the Guardian clarifying the many ways the 'sceptics' falsely and inaccurately reported his research and the general science around climate change and how scientists perceive the problem.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/21/when-media-sceptics-misrepresent-our-climate-research-we-must-speak-out

So after reasonably accurate initial reporting, suddenly our paper was about a downgrading of the threat of climate change, when it was actually nothing of the kind: our predictions for warming rates over the coming decades are identical to those of the IPCC, and we do not assess the impacts of climate change for any warming level. And then, of course, these ideas were picked up by sympathetic editors all over the world.

Who really loses from all this? While Delingpole and Stringer were making out that our paper was about something it wasn’t, it seems to have prompted much more interesting conversations among scientists around the world about what the true level of human-induced warming really is, and what the Paris goal actually means.

These are important questions. For such a tight target, the actual remaining carbon budget is sensitive to a number of assumptions, including even how we define global average temperature. Significant uncertainties remain, and while we believe our paper improves on previous estimates, it is by no means the last word. But debating the current level of human-induced warming and how it relates to the 1.5C goal feels a bit like discussing how best to steer a spacecraft into orbit around Saturn while Delingpole and Stringer are urging their readers to question whether the Earth goes round the Sun.

Critics of mainstream climate policy frequently complain that they feel excluded. The real problem is that they exclude themselves, and their readers, from the discussion as soon as it starts to get interesting

If you take your information on global warming from sources like these, then you should be aware that there is a very very high chance that they will misrepresent the science.

dense

Akrasia wrote: »

Clearly Arctic sea ice volumes are declining.

The volumes rise and fall:



And according to NASA: Study: Mass Gains of Antarctic Ice Sheet Greater than Losses.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-mass-gains-of-antarctic-ice-sheet-greater-than-losses

When your own "cherry picked" graph is placed beside the one above, look what happens:





But this is my favourite graph at the moment.

This is what all the fuss is about.

Samaris

http://www.newclimatemodel.com/why-the-radiative-capabilities-of-gases-do-not-contribute-to-the-greenhouse-effect/

After some hunting, that graph came from newclimatemodel, by Stephen Wilde in 2013. Jays, you did some digging for that. Want to explain it now? Don't just show a picture, you are making a radical claim, so back it up if you want it to be taken seriously. I've even given you the link.

Akrasia

Samaris wrote: »

http://www.newclimatemodel.com/why-the-radiative-capabilities-of-gases-do-not-contribute-to-the-greenhouse-effect/

After some hunting, that graph came from newclimatemodel, by Stephen Wilde in 2013. Jays, you did some digging for that. Want to explain it now? Don't just show a picture, you are making a radical claim, so back it up if you want it to be taken seriously. I've even given you the link.

It would be nice if the 'sceptics' could provide links to their sources rather than just posting images hosted in image hosting sites.

Maybe they're a bit embarrased about where they get their information from?

I always try to use the best source I can find and link to the source. That's good manners if nothing else, it saves the other people a lot of time an effort

Akrasia

dense wrote: »

The volumes rise and fall:




When your own "cherry picked" graph is placed beside the one above, look what happens:

because you didn't bother to give us a link to your source, I found the 'notrickszone' blog post that you got these graphs from.

If I were you, I'd be embarassed.
Do you trust the 'notrickszone'?
Do you think they are providing you honest, accurate analysis of the data?
The first graph is an out of date, cherrypicked graph that suited their purpose, but that 2nd graph is a thing of beauty. They shoehorned two graphs together, one of them measures the sea ice extent, the other measures the sea ice extent anomaly. They're looking at two different things the graphs don't go together.


It is never good practice to just stick two different graphs together with photoshop. No credible scientist would ever do such a thing.

In fact, this blog entry routinely confuses anomaly data with raw data. And then they plot their own tend lines over the graphs to make it look like there is an upward trend, when the data shows the exact opposite.

This blog was written by someone who has no idea how to read graphs, or he is deliberately faking his data to trick his readers. You decide which.

And according to NASA: Study: Mass Gains of Antarctic Ice Sheet Greater than Losses.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard...er-than-losses

As for this. Did you actually read it. Do you understand what it means?

Antarctica is one of the Driest places on earth. The reason it's dry is because it's so cold. The air cannot hold moisture. There has been an increase in snowfall because the air is warmer now. The ice is melting but there is also increased snowfall to offset this. The problem is, the rate of ice melt is increasing rapidly, and there will come a point when the extra ice melt is greater than the increased snowfall. The conclusions of the paper are not on your side of the argument

dense

Akrasia wrote: »

because you didn't bother to give us a link to your source, I found the 'notrickszone' blog post that you got these graphs from.

It's not detective work, the URL would have told you where they came from.

Akrasia wrote: »

Do you trust the 'notrickszone'?

That's a silly question, like, do you trust boards.ie?

Akrasia wrote: »

Do you think they are providing you honest, accurate analysis of the data?

On that page, yes I do.

http://notrickszone.com/2016/11/28/there-has-been-no-significant-net-change-in-arctic-sea-ice-extent-in-the-last-80-years/#sthash.w7Y3AVx3.dpbs

Or should I just row in behind nasa's analogy on the whole thing:

The size of the greenhouse effect is often estimated as being the difference between the actual global surface temperature and the temperature the planet would be without any atmospheric absorption, but with exactly the same planetary albedo, around 33°C.

This is more of a "thought experiment" than an observable state, but it is a useful baseline.

Akrasia wrote: »

The first graph is an out of date, cherrypicked graph that suited their purpose, but that 2nd graph is a thing of beauty. They shoehorned two graphs together, one of them measures the sea ice extent, the other measures the sea ice extent anomaly. They're looking at two different things the graphs don't go together.

Why don't you log on there as Akrasia and challenge that very point then?

Correct them? Call them out as being dishonest and misleading.

Akrasia wrote: »

If I were you, I'd be embarassed.

Are you not embarrassed about obsessing about an insignificant 0.8 degree temperature rise over 150 years?

What should that +0.8c degree figure really be today?
If we'd burnt no fossil fuels since the late 19th century, what would the figure be?

Akrasia

dense wrote: »

It's not detective work, the URL would have told you where they came from.

It didn't link to the blog entry, I had to wade through that blogs archive to find it.
It would be polite to link to the actual source of your information.

That's a silly question, like, do you trust boards.ie?

It's not a silly question. you either trust this source or you don't. If you don't trust it, then you shouldn't use it as a source to back up your position. If you do trust it, then you should be very concerned that they are cobbling together graphs that do not fit, they're either incompetent, or dishonest.

Boards.ie isn't a source. Anyone who cites boards.ie as a source in any scientific debate doesn't understand how sources are supposed to work.

http://notrickszone.com/2016/11/28/there-has-been-no-significant-net-change-in-arctic-sea-ice-extent-in-the-last-80-years/#sthash.w7Y3AVx3.dpbs

Even though they jam together two completely different graphs to make it look like ice has not been declining in the arctic when all the real data shows a very significant decline over the course of the 20th century and into the 21st century.

Or should I just row in behind nasa's analogy on the whole thing:

where did you get that fragment from? if you're going to quote someone, you need to provide the link. Nevermind, I found it here
https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/schmidt_05/
I honestly have no idea what your point is here. Are you denying that there is such a thing as a greenhouse effect at all? Are you trying to make it look like Nasa don't use measurements, that they just guess these things???
From that link, Gavin Schmidt goes on to explain (in simple terms for public education) how the greenhouse effect is measured and how the warming is attributed to each component of the atmosphere. Turns out Water Vapour is 50% of the greenhouse effect, CO2 is 20%, clouds are 25% and the rest is divided up between other gasses and particles and aerosols

The reason climate change is a problem, is because increasing CO2 raises the temperature of the atmosphere. Warmer air holds more water vapour (about an extra 6% per degree C of warming) so water vapour is a positive feedback that makes global warming worse.

Why don't you log on there as Akrasia and challenge that very point then?

Correct them? Call them out as being dishonest and misleading.

There are lots of places on the internet where rational discourse goes to die. Youtube comments, twitter and the comments section of global warming denial blogs are amongst these places.

Are you not embarrassed about obsessing about an insignificant 0.8 degree temperature rise over 150 years?

If the global average temperatures were projected to stop at .8 degrees C I would not be overly concerned. The problem is that global warming is going to accelerate and while it took a hundred years to raise the temperature by .8 to 1 degree, if we don't cut our emissions drastically, we will see up to 6 more degrees of warming in the next 80 years.

What should that +0.8c degree figure really be today?
If we'd burnt no fossil fuels since the late 19th century, what would the figure be?

Slightly below the pre-industrial temperature according to NASA

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/climateqa/if-earth-has-warmed-and-cooled-throughout-history-what-makes-scientists-think-that-humans-are-causing-global-warming-now/

Samaris

dense wrote: »

It's not detective work, the URL would have told you where they came from.

No it didn't, I had to do a reverse google image search for that last one.

http://catallaxyfiles.com/files/2012/05/Mean-Temp-1.jpg That was your link. I even typed out that whole address under your graph and surprise, surprise, it wasn't there.

dense wrote: »

That's a silly question, like, do you trust boards.ie?

*facepalm*

I didn't realise the explanation of what a forum is versus what is a source of scientific data is was needed but actually, that does explain a lot of the "man in the pub" style of argument.

By the way, I tend to generally trust Akrasia's info and analysis because I have seen her/him link reputable sources, acknowledge them and explain them in a factual and truthful way, with backup that can be looked over again to ensure that nothing is being misrepresented (over a long period of time at that, I have, if you like, plenty of data to work with regarding his/her competence and trustworthiness). I've had one or two minor debates on points, but I have never seen her/him deliberately mislead on scientific data.

I wrote a long and irritated screed as to why your sources and what passes for explanations don't match up, but in the interests of remaining somewhat polite, I deleted it again. But here's a bone - there are places in the science - particularly the extrapolation that has to take into account thousands of factors, where effects and results are arguable. I would love to discuss those, I really would. But at the level you are arguing, you don't know where they are. You are doing the equivalent of arguing that flight isn't possible because metal weighs more than air rather than arguing if the propellers on this model are the right shape.

That is what is so madly frustrating with debating your sources. You throw out bull**** when you could contribute actual, defensible, debate and data. It's like arguing about vaccines or evolution. There's plenty of interest to get the teeth into, but not when you have to spend the entire damn time explaining the absolute groundwork in terms of chemical and physical reactions.

dense

Akrasia wrote: »

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/climateqa/if-earth-has-warmed-and-cooled-throughout-history-what-makes-scientists-think-that-humans-are-causing-global-warming-now/

I wouldn't put too much store in the "reported" rising temperatures you're being fed given that 59% of so called US "weather stations" weren't even calibrated for correctly collecting temperature data.

For the US, adjustments alone account for 0.5°c of their alarming global warming between 1900 and 1990. Anyone like to tell me what they report their warming was for that period?

https://www.gao.gov/assets/70/68746.tx



https://www.gao.gov/mobile/products/GAO-11-800

Considering your temperatures are coming from an ever dwindling number of sources, with decreasing global coverage, you'd be well advised to take claimed tenths of a degree temperature rises with a grain of salt.


https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data/stations.gif





https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Historical_Climatology_Network
The anthropological fossil fuel burning global warming theory is driven by data* from just 226 stations with records longer than 150 years, and 1656 with records of 100 years or more. There is in total 2,277 active stations globally.

Most are located in the United States, while Antarctica is the most sparsely instrumented land area.
(We recall the Climategate emails confirming that data from the Southern Hemisphere is so sparse it was of no use.)

*Data is regularly "adjusted" by nasa to fit the narrative.

Urban adjustment for example is one claimed by nasa to have been introduced as an improvement in 1998 to compensate for weather stations affected by miriad location issues.

Notice that in 2011 the same issues still affected almost 60% of stations in the US rendering them useless according to the GAO.GOV report linked to above.

One can only speculate about the accuracy prior to 1998 if thirteen years later the US was relying on the remaining 40% of weather stations being accurate, or delivering the desired data.



https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/


https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/faq/#q204

A Little Pony

People should be encouraging climate change and large disasters. Too many people on the planet and it is only natural for the earth to redress the balance.

Mountainsandh

A Little Pony wrote: »

People should be encouraging climate change and large disasters. Too many people on the planet and it is only natural for the earth to redress the balance.

George ? George H ? Is that you ?

Your phrasing is pushing it a bit imo, but there's an element of truth in there. I often think of these fish which get sick and die when their population reaches a certain threshold in a lake for example. That used to happen regularly at a place near where I grew up.
It wasn't so much that they ran out of space, but I think it was more once resources were getting scarce in proportion to numbers that the inbuilt extinction system kicked in.

Akrasia

A Little Pony wrote: »

People should be encouraging climate change and large disasters. Too many people on the planet and it is only natural for the earth to redress the balance.

As long as it happens to other people....

Akrasia

Mountainsandh wrote: »

George ? George H ? Is that you ?

Your phrasing is pushing it a bit imo, but there's an element of truth in there. I often think of these fish which get sick and die when their population reaches a certain threshold in a lake for example. That used to happen regularly at a place near where I grew up.
It wasn't so much that they ran out of space, but I think it was more once resources were getting scarce in proportion to numbers that the inbuilt extinction system kicked in.

Life adapts to the resources that are available. Humans could reach the limit by either pushing our population higher than our planets carrying capacity, or by pushing our planets carrying capacity below our population.

Population growth is projected to plateau as human development drives down average fertility rates voluntarily (through educating women and contraception) but if we fail at this, it will plateau in other ways that are not so nice and have much worse long term outcomes.

If we modernise our planet, ie, adopt modern attitudes towards procreation, modernise our energy use, modernise our political structures to allow for new ways of wealth distribution (whatever they may be) then there is a chance that our species will emerge as an enlightened and advanced civilisation.

If we cling to old 'traditional' structures of society, economics and politics, we're just going to overshoot our ability to sustain ourselves and collapse into a period of environmental and social crisis beyond which anything could emerge (But I would be pessimistic)

Mountainsandh

Akrasia wrote: »

Life adapts to the resources that are available. Humans could reach the limit by either pushing our population higher than our planets carrying capacity, or by pushing our planets carrying capacity below our population.

Population growth is projected to plateau as human development drives down average fertility rates voluntarily (through educating women and contraception) but if we fail at this, it will plateau in other ways that are not so nice and have much worse long term outcomes.

If we cling to old 'traditional' structures of society, economics and politics, we're just going to overshoot our ability to sustain ourselves and collapse into a period of environmental and social crisis beyond which anything could emerge (But I would be pessimistic)

No **** Sherlock.

If we modernise our planet, ie, adopt modern attitudes towards procreation, modernise our energy use, modernise our political structures to allow for new ways of wealth distribution (whatever they may be) then there is a chance that our species will emerge as an enlightened and advanced civilisation.

Or there's a bit of both going on, a bit of good, a bit of bad, a bit of nature doing its thing, and a bit of humans showing some cop on, and we trundle along, get bruised and battered as we have always been, since the advent of humanity, and emerge enlightened and advanced either way.

Enlightened and advanced could happen in a scenario where most of humanity is wiped out leaving a core of survivors to forcibly change for the better.

(unless of course, your version of enlightened and advanced involves technology and riches as a basis)