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John Mason at 04:19 AM on 10 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
Climate Watcher, Your comments about cold fronts etc are entirely missing the point. In an area (e.g. your back yard) where the existing climate has such fluctuations, the ecosystem adapts to them. The problem areas are twofold. Firstly it is the movement of climatic zones through the latitudes, including precipitation, not just temperature. Secondly, it is the rate of such transitions that is absolutely critical i.e. if the rate of change outpaces adaptation, then decimation of ecosystems occurs. You should be concerned. Those self-same ecosystems make agriculture possible! Cheers - John -
Tom Dayton at 04:17 AM on 10 March 2011CO2 effect is saturated
tjfolkerts, you are correct. In that same Advanced tabbed page, look for the paragraph "There's one more subtle effect related to increased absorption. Upon increasing CO2 concentration, the layer at which the absorption coefficient at each wavelength is low enough to let the IR light escape will be found higher in the atmosphere. The emitting layer will then have a lower temperature, at least until the tropopause is reached, and hence a lower emitting power." A good source of more info are the RealClimate posts A Saturated Gassy Argument and the followup Part II: What Angstrom Didn't Know. -
Albatross at 04:08 AM on 10 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
Another thread, and yet more examples of 'skeptics' and contrarians talking through their hats, obfuscating, arguing strawmen and derailing the thread. The substance of their argument, if any, seems to boil down to it has happened before, it is not bad.....even the ostriches must be feeling threatened by this behaviour. How about actually making an effort to critique the methodology etc. (anything scientific) about Barnosky et al. (2011). And by critiquing i do not mean hand waiving, I mean substantive, scientific critique with supporting evidence and citations. Then, at that point you may perhaps consider submitting a comment to Nature demonstrating how they (allegedly) got it all horribly wrong. Phila@32, very insightful comments by Prof Hart. -
Gilles at 04:07 AM on 10 March 2011A Real-World Example of Carbon Pricing Benefits Outweighing Costs
JMurphy : do you call the Prius an EV ? surprising ... ANd I repeat : I do not take as granted the speculations about 2020. I'm just looking at ordinary people around me. I said a few hundreds of VE have been really delivered. There may be some thousands per year in the coming years, but it won't change anything to the CO2 world production. There are some specific uses for which electric cars may be interesting, but I bet that it will never be a majority of cars - and I maintain that the overall carbon budget is not that interesting : you'd better buy a small ,economic thermal engine car.Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] JMurphy clearly indicated that the Prius was a hybrid. -
RSVP at 03:52 AM on 10 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
nealjking #17 "Before expecting other people to come up with a recommendation, it's appropriate to recognize the problem." Paradoxically with overpopulation, as it becomes more real, you have that many more people to convince they are part of the problem. -
Phila at 03:51 AM on 10 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
Does it mean that we should abandon our cities and let bears and wolves come back? I've asked before, and I'll ask again: what is it with "skeptics" and strawmen? I can't be the only one who's sick of this inactivist boilerplate about how addressing a given environmental problem — i.e., acting like the responsible, intelligent people we claim to be — is going to force us all to gnaw roots while shivering in caves. If you ask me, people who find it emotionally easier to forfeit biodiversity and ecosystem services than to question economic dogmas founded on a basic denial of science and logic will probably do a lot more for the cause of city abandonment than anyone who's counseling climate action now. Several of the comments in this thread remind me of a passage from Dominion by Matthew Scully, who was one of George W. Bush's speechwriters: It is the same fundamentally vulgar vision of man that conservatives elsewhere so earnestly worry about....man the all-conquering consumer facing the universe with limitless entitlements and appetites to be met no matter what the costs.... My National Review colleague Jeffrey Hart, a professor at Dartmouth College, captured the attitude nicely...."It is depressing," he writes, "to hear cigar-smoking young conservatives wearing red suspenders take a reductive view of, well, everything. They seem to contemplate with equanimity a world without lions, tigers, elephants, whales. I am appalled at the philistinism that seems to smile at a future consisting of a global Hong Kong." -
Gilles at 03:49 AM on 10 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
DM : the fact that even you -and all climatoalarmists - do not reduce the problem to a simple minimization of CO2 production is proven by the simple observation that the minimum is very easy to compute : it's zero. But , as everybody knows , "nobody claims we should stop totally using FF just now", and "nobody claims we should go back to Dark Ages". Okaaay. If nobody claims that, it means that everybody is in favor of some kind of compromise between burning fossil fuels, but not too much. So it is NOT a simple minimization.it's a matter of compromise. Just as nobody urges to leave our cities and go back into the woods. Or stop using cars. Or kill all babies to stop demographic expansion. It's ALWAYS a matter of compromise. Now the real question is : if it is all matter of compromise, do you have a definite answer of WHERE the compromise lies exactly ? Mr J.H. says 350 ppm ? Mr XYZ says 450 ppm are ok? some think that 550 ppm or even 700 ppm maybe not that bad after all? Mr KA says that there is no risk anyway that we could reach more than 500 ? do you have a SCIENTIFIC answer ? I'm afraid not. Because who can the hell say how mankind will live in 50 or 100 years? just now, you have mainly billions of people either starving for death or just being hungry, subject to all kinds of diseases because they just don't have drinkable water, and so on. WTF do they care about who will live in 100 years nears seas they will never know ? they don't know where their children will live , or even if they will live. Mucounter : "Then you turn around and suggest "reducing the use of FF may be much more destructive for them than GW," which is either blatant speculation or the result of some detailed knowledge of the human condition now and in the future. If you have that knowledge, please share; absent that, I assume speculation is the case." This knowledge is not difficult to get. http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE "Growth of about 9 percent per annum since the late 1970s has helped to lift several hundred million people out of absolute poverty, with the result that China alone accounted for over 75 percent of poverty reduction in the developing world over the last 20 years. Between 1990 and 2000 the number of people living on a dollar per day fell by 170 million, while total population rose by over 125 million. China's market-oriented reforms over the last two decades also dramatically improved the dynamism of both the rural and urban economies and resulted in substantial improvements in human development indicators. Official estimates of the adult illiteracy rate fell by more than half, from 37 percent in 1978 to less than 5 percent in 2002, and, indicative of health indices, the infant mortality rate fell from 41 per 1,000 live births in 1978 to 30 in 2002. China has entered the World Trade Organization, shifted its policy orientation from pure growth to overall well being (a xiaokang society), and made the historic switch from net taxation of agriculture to net subsidization."Response: This conversation has gotten far enough off topic to be moved to the thread "It’s too hard." Everybody, not just Gilles, please do so. -
Climate Emergency: Time to Slam on the Brakes
Gilles - Reply to your first question is on It's aerosols. I'm not certain what your second question actually is (as the image did not come through, and it lacked context). Perhaps you could post it on either an aerosol or PDO thread? -
It's aerosols
Gilles "was there a sudden burst of sulphate aerosols in the 40's ?" - Yes. If you were to read the article I linked to, you would have seen that as the second figure:
Since such aerosols are fairly short-lived (removed by precipitation), their influence dropped off rapidly once emissions started reducing.
Not that this was the only factor, but it was a major one, and also explains hemispheric differences in the temperature anomaly record:
All credit goes to Tamino for these images and data.
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Rob Honeycutt at 03:36 AM on 10 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
ClimateWatcher @ 27... Your arguments here are essentially the same as to say, "Well, humanitarian atrocities are a normal process that humans go through once in a while, so what-the-heck." Regarding keeping temperatures below the HCO, that's not the concern here. We are currently about 1C below the HCO. If we could hold global temperatures steady at 2C over preindustrial, that's is essentially right about the danger point. The concern here is the business-as-usual scenario that puts us at 2 doublings of CO2 over preindustrial. Add in slow feedbacks and permafrost melt and that, my friend, has the ring of "game over" written on it. If you're of the DEVO generation (as I am) then you and I are going to have no problem. This is unlikely to affect us in a dramatic or catastrophic way. But my kids, who are currently 5 and 7, when they are my age this issue is going to be the only thing they are dealing with. Unless we do something about it now. -
muoncounter at 03:25 AM on 10 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
Gilles, "many people adopt (over)simplified thoughts, reducing all the problems to a simple numbers" I suspect that if we did not discuss such numbers, you would object that since we don't know an 'average temperature' or 'co2 concentration,' we can do nothing about them. Your arguments are tending more and more to the non-scientific: 'I live in the real world,' 'who tells what the planet wants?' etc. Then you turn around and suggest "reducing the use of FF may be much more destructive for them than GW," which is either blatant speculation or the result of some detailed knowledge of the human condition now and in the future. If you have that knowledge, please share; absent that, I assume speculation is the case. Some would argue that we are an intelligent species; certainly we know how to count and therefore how to measure. Without measurement and 'indices,' we cannot make educated decisions. In the context of this post, without a count of living species, we cannot determine the ecological consequences of our actions. Because in the real world, actions have consequences; some are beneficial, others tragic. If the part of the real world in which you live does not work that way, I envy your position. -
MattJ at 03:25 AM on 10 March 2011Examining Hansen's prediction about the West Side Highway
The diffidence of the conclusion of this post typifies why we are losing this debate. Why, you make it sound like Hansen said the highway would be under water in 40 years given doubled CO2 instead of in only 20 years. That still sounds implausible, not at all helpful to getting people to take the issue and the predictions seriously. -
Rob Honeycutt at 03:24 AM on 10 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
ClimateWatcher @ 10... Do you honestly not understand the difference between weather and climate? It's really hard to take you seriously on anything when you don't even understand such elemental aspects of climate. -
RickG at 03:13 AM on 10 March 2011Climate Emergency: Time to Slam on the Brakes
@ Gilles #63 Could you add a little context to that post? -
ClimateWatcher at 03:10 AM on 10 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
#19 Bern, You don't seem to be all that bothered by the prospect of species extinction & natural selection. Extinction and natural selection are, of course, how we and every other creature came to be. Thing is, homo sapiens is nothing special, such evolutionary pressures apply to us, too Now you're gettin' it. What makes you so sure that your grandchildren & great-grandchildren will be in the "fit" category and not the "non-fit" one? Nothing. That's what being a life form entails. The thought that we might see that kind of evolutionary pressure on the human race again saddens me, Evolutionary pressure is what lead to human brain size and opposable thumbs! Be glad for evolution! You are probably too young to remember the rock group Devo, which was short for DE-volution - a lament that evolutionary pressures were lacking not too high. even more so that many "skeptics" don't seem to care about the hundreds of millions of people whose lives are at risk if even half of the IPCC projections come to pass. The observed trends in temperature increase are all below even the rate of the 'Low Scenario' from the IPCC. And even if temperature reached the 'Low Scenario' that's still less than the temperatures of the Holocene Climatic Optimum. It was during the HCO that human civilization advanced! Remember the Mesopotamian 'Cradle of Civilization?'.Moderator Response: [DB] You are incorrect on many counts.Firstly, current temperatures have already equaled those of the HCO, AKA the Holocene Altithermal (Hansen, 2011). Secondly, emissions are trending at the IPCC "High" emissions level. Lastly, it was exactly the climate stability of the HCO that allowed the development of agriculture. With the warming of the planet still in the pipeline, and the ensuing desertification to come as a result, all that remains is to update the following graphic with an arrow and the label "Agriculture Ends Here":
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Gilles at 03:01 AM on 10 March 2011Climate Emergency: Time to Slam on the Brakes
2 questions, KR : 1) was there a sudden burst of sulphate aerosols in the 40's ? 2) is the PDO index sensitive to sulfate aerosols, according to actual physics ? ( -Broken image deleted- ) (source : http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/)Moderator Response: [DB] The PHP here doesn't take kindly to TIF's; PNG or GIF is preferred. Also, your comment is too far off-topic of the post; please separate your questions and post them on the appropriate post and then place a comment here linking back to them. KR will see them there. -
JMurphy at 02:32 AM on 10 March 2011A Real-World Example of Carbon Pricing Benefits Outweighing Costs
Gilles wrote : "As I said, I live in the real world and not in the world of experts and scientific publications..." That is surprisingto read, because you seem to be missing out on all those hybrids too : As Gas Prices Rise, Toyota's Hybrid Sales Pass 3 Million As for electric cars, the article linked to above also claims that electric cars will account for 7.3% of all light vehicles sold in 2020. And how about this from last September : The good news is that the electric LEAF seems to be very hot. Nissan was expected to reach 20,000 reservations around the time of launch in December, but interest has been so high that they've reached that milestone 3 months in advance. The bad news is that if you are interested in getting a Nissan LEAF but were indecisive about reserving one, it's now too late. Nissan won't take any new reservations for the LEAF until 2011. I think everything suggests that there are quite a few more than the "few hundreds" out there (even now) than you reckon. -
Dikran Marsupial at 02:10 AM on 10 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
Giles@24 The key issue is weighting our short term interests against our long term interests (sadly human nature generally tends to focus on our short term interests as individuals at the expense of our long term interests as a society/species, which is why we are faced with the problem under discussion). Whether you can convert that into a simple maximisation/minimisation problem depends on the level of abstraction/complexity at you need to work. Focusing on CO2 emissions, for the vast majority of us, is entirely sensible. While CO2 is not the only problem, it is the one we can control most easily as individuals; the problem of climate change can be considerably alleviated by focussing on that one issue first. It is a matter of prioritization; it is much better to take action that solves most of the problem, than doing nothing to address the problem because we spend all our time worrying about the complexity of the fine details. So, no, I don't agree - single indices are useful and have their place. -
littlerobbergirl at 02:01 AM on 10 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
oops 'nutrient' cycling web. dana, it's possible all the extinctions are down to co2, even the impact(s); the deccan traps were opposite the k/t impact site, and there seems to be a depression in eastern antarctica that might be a truly huge crater directly opposite to where the siberian traps were at the time of the permian extinction. -
Gilles at 02:01 AM on 10 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
DM : I can totally agree with what you're saying - the only thing we'll do is managing the planet in our own interest. Do you agree at turn that it cannot easily converted into a "simple" minimization/maximization of a single index like those I mentioned above ? -
Watson at 01:58 AM on 10 March 2011Crux of a Core, Part 2 - Addressing Dr. Bob Carter
With respect to 'legitimate' credentials of climate scientists, I attended a Monckton presentation in Noosa, Qld, in January, 2010, where Monckton was introduced by Dr Carter. Carter announced to that credulous audience that Lord Monckton's qualifications as a MA (Classics and Maths) were ideal to equip him to speak on the subject of Climate Change - so I guess that makes anyone and expert. -
Gilles at 01:55 AM on 10 March 2011A Real-World Example of Carbon Pricing Benefits Outweighing Costs
Thanks all for your answers. As I said, I live in the real world and not in the world of experts and scientific publications (which I read professionally when it is about real science, however). I do not know anybody owning an electric car. I perfectly know that many electric models are proposed on the market, and even that a few hundreds have been sold. I'm just saying it has not changed an inch in the oil consumption - the only visible reduction has been through a massive economic recession , that's all. And the next crisis is about to come with the again climbing to heaven oil prices - you know crisis because of inflation, debts, unemployment, all these dirty things that won't be solved by the nice EV you can see just above, nor by thousands of windmills. -
littlerobbergirl at 01:50 AM on 10 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
sob! pikaia, more species means more resilience, more 'redundancy' or 'slack' in the system. a system of many species eating many others in a varied cycling web is going to be much less likely to collapse than one of just a few components. that's why i'm keeping a close eye on krill. -
Climate Emergency: Time to Slam on the Brakes
gallopingcamel - Tamino is very aware of pre-1975 temperature records. I would recommend looking at his article on Anthropogenic Global Cooling:
Here he discusses the sulfate aerosols in mid-century that caused a climate cooling - said aerosols being cleaned up in the early 70's due to pollution controls.
Again, accounting for the forcings on the climate, and using actual physics, it's possible to clearly identify the trend in average temperatures caused by increasing greenhouse gases.
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Dikran Marsupial at 01:45 AM on 10 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
Giles@21 Yes really, we manage the planet primarily in our own interest. Who told us that? Nobody, we as a species have decided that we are in charge. Who tells us what the planet wants? Nobody, and we probably wouldn't listen anyway. However, we are managing the planet in our interest and it happens to be in our long term interest to preserve the natural environment in a state that best supports us. That happens to include avoiding mass extinctions. No "anthropomorphic projection" is required, just thoughtful self-interest (as a species rather than as individuals) will do nicely. "So how far do you think we have to go to let "nature" go back to its original state?" As far as it is prudent for our long term interests as a species. As to "simple thoughts" the underlying "simple though" is that we should avoid unnecessary change in our environment, as change requires adaption, which may not be pleasant. The numbers help focus on what we need to do to avoid unnecessary change, but that is about all. -
Gilles at 01:29 AM on 10 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
We ARE the "management of the planet." Really? first, who told that ? and second, who tells what the planet wants ? as far as I can see, our vision of the planet is mainly our own anthropomorphic projection. We care about mammals, some birds, some other vertebrates, not so much about microorganisms for instance. But ok, let's assume we have to take care of all these species. Does it mean that we should abandon our cities and let bears and wolves come back? or not? why not ? Bern : i just notice that GW is a minor component of species extinction, and that the main reason is just demography - and the need to feed billions of people, plus all the minerals we extract from the earth to make all the gagdets of civilization. For instance, electric cars need as many roads and as oil powered ones, and a lot of metals or plastics and so on. And if you want to spare lives of hundreds of millions of people (barring the fact that reducing the use of FF may be much more destructive for them than GW), this will eventually WORSEN the demographic pressure on natural resources. So how far do you think we have to go to let "nature" go back to its original state? The whole picture for me is that many people adopt (over)simplified thoughts, reducing all the problems to a simple numbers ("average temperature", "CO2 concentration", "number of living species") and basically saying that the only thing to do is minimizing (or maximizing) these numbers, whatever the consequences are. Reality is much more complex - which explains that these people persistently complain about the fact that nobody seems to obey their simple thoughts. -
ClimateWatcher at 01:26 AM on 10 March 2011The Climate Show Episode 8: Kevin Trenberth
Alexadre, No one knows what the albedo is much less was. The entire signal of a CO2 doubling can submerge within the fuzzy noise of the albedo uncertainty or within the uncertainty of outgoing radiation. That does not mean CO2 forcing doesn't exist, just that we cannot measure it. -
pikaia at 01:19 AM on 10 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
Don't mock mass extinctions, without the last one we wouldn't be here! I am not clear why people regard mass extinction as a bad thing. While mass extinction would make the world less interesting, with fewer of the charismatic megafauna to see on TV and in the zoos, the species that are useful to us should survive as long as we do, with our protection. So would another mass extinction do us much harm compared to all the other damage we are doing to ourselves? We don't particularly need millions of species, and neither does the Earth. -
JMurphy at 00:48 AM on 10 March 2011Crux of a Core, Part 2 - Addressing Dr. Bob Carter
Very commendable, Rob. Although you state that you're not a scientist, you obviously are scientifically competent enough to put to shame the likes of those, such as Carter (I'm loath to dignify him with his scientific title), who are willing to misuse/abuse/misinform/disinform - whatever his excuse is. -
Bern at 00:37 AM on 10 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
To ClimateWatcher & Gilles: You don't seem to be all that bothered by the prospect of species extinction & natural selection. Thing is, homo sapiens is nothing special, such evolutionary pressures apply to us, too (although we are capable of modifying our environment somewhat to suit us). The thing is, as I saw it put recently: Evolution works by death. "Survival of the fittest" means the non-fit don't survive to breeding age - in the case of humans, that's about 12-16 years of age. What makes you so sure that your grandchildren & great-grandchildren will be in the "fit" category and not the "non-fit" one? The thought that we might see that kind of evolutionary pressure on the human race again saddens me, even more so that many "skeptics" don't seem to care about the hundreds of millions of people whose lives are at risk if even half of the IPCC projections come to pass. We've just spent the past couple of centuries battling to decrease mortality rates, especially in children. It seems more than a shame to throw that progress under the "business as usual" bus. -
Alexandre at 00:27 AM on 10 March 2011The Climate Show Episode 8: Kevin Trenberth
ClimateWatcher #24 Have you noticed the references to Trenberth's recent work discuss the differences to his earlier '97 paper? About TSI differences: the absolute amount of solar irradiance may have a larger uncertainty due to differences from sattellite to sattellite. But the TSI variation have a much narrower uncertainty, and that already allows us to rule out the "warming caused by the sun" hypothesis with a lot of certainty. I don't know much about albedo changes, and I would not pull the D-K card here. Please don't do that yourself either. -
michael sweet at 22:57 PM on 9 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
This post does not even mention the extinction of large mammals caused by humans in the past. Most of hte lare mammals in Europe, the Americas and Australia were hunted to extinction by humans. Now the small animals are following in the path. -
nealjking at 22:21 PM on 9 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
Gilles (15): "So what?": It's not a question of "guilt," it's a question of responsibility. We ARE the "management of the planet." Whatever happens, we're going to have to deal with it. We need to start taking seriously that responsibility now. RSVP (16): Before expecting other people to come up with a recommendation, it's appropriate to recognize the problem. That's going to take some public discussion, as there are still many people willing to claim that it's "no big deal," as evidenced on this very page. An appropriate analogy comes to mind: If we were on a spacecraft journeying to another star-system and planet, and we saw these sorts of shifts and extinctions going on, would it be prudent to worry? You betcha. Well, we ARE on a spacecraft (Spaceship Earth) journeying into the future. Things are beginning to go tilt, and the captain hasn't shown up to fix things. That's no mystery, because we've just gotten the memo: "Congratulations for deciphering this message! You're no longer just the passengers, you are the crew!" -
Kooiti Masuda at 21:22 PM on 9 March 2011Crux of a Core, Part 2 - Addressing Dr. Bob Carter
Many numerical data sets from paleoclimate research, including GISP2, are archived at the Paleoclimatology division of the National Climatic Data Center (of NOAA, USA) at http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/ . (I used data from that archive when I made some figures for a textbook to be published in 1996. Then the division was a part of the National Geophysical Data Center.) The data center requests the users to cite data contributors, and usually the recommended way is to refer to the original publications. So, it may be legitimate that a presentation referring to a scientific paper contains graphs different from those which appear in the paper. It is expected, of course, that the user correctly understands and represents the data. (I think that such procedures of scientific data management have been designed on the assumption that no one will misuse them deliberately. This may a problem nowadays.) As far as I know, their documentation is not so more than what the scientists submitted, and it may use technical terms and conventions (e.g. what "before present" means) specific to the discipline of the authors. Better documentation will help, but the bottleneck seems to be human resources rather than information technology or standardization. To avoid misuse, we, the data users, should not be overconfident about our own understanding about technical terms and conventions. We should first consult reference books or textbooks of the relevant discipline, and if we are still not sure, we should perhaps ask either the data center staff or the author of the original study. -
RSVP at 19:55 PM on 9 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
"co-opting resources, fragmenting habitats, introducing non-native species, spreading pathogens, killing species directly, and changing global climate" Hard to believe that the probability of controlling these factors could possibly go up with the global population, and perhaps reducing the discussion on the whole to a simple formula that relates bio-stability to world population. Since global warming is only one factor contributing to a possible mass extinction of species, (and as I have been told over and over that global warming is not a matter of over population), it would seem that by now someone (in this climate science community) has recognised this "minor detail" and come up with an acceptable figure (or recommendation)... peer reviewed and all. Or is that asking for too much? -
Gilles at 19:40 PM on 9 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
Rob, I think your analysis is objectively correct (and GW is only a very minor component of the anthropic influence, if any). But .. so what ? we KNOW that the industrial civilization has profoundly impacted the environment. After all, it is enough to walk in a large city to see that natural systems have been fundamentally altered, there is no need for CO2 to explain that. But what is your conclusion ? that we should all abandon our cities and become again hunters and gatherers (finding a way to reduce the world population by a factor of 100 or so?) Human civilization is also part of the nature, like giant meteorites or hypervolcanoes. Should we really feel guilty about it ? nature doesn't know anything of what happens. Most planets to not harbour life AT ALL - and even life on the Earth is , by far, dominated by microorganisms and worms that don't care the hell what is happening with mankind. Mankind is exactly like other species - trying to survive and reproduce. It is much more successful than many other (although ants are not that bad) ... so what ? -
villabolo at 19:12 PM on 9 March 2011Climate Emergency: Time to Slam on the Brakes
Fred Staples @49: "Even if you accept, 47, the AGW theory, you must accept that not much happened while CO2 increased from 280 to 350ppm." Fred, you are not taking into consideration the time delay between the intial release of CO2 and the full temperature rise. There is also the issue of aerosols diminishing somewhat in our atmosphere at about that time period. -
Rob Painting at 19:11 PM on 9 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
Climate watcher -Cold fronts can change temperatures by 20 C in a few hours.
You must find it truly bewildering that the Earth's glaciers and ice sheets are disappearing, if that's the extent of your watching. Remember we are concerned about climate - the weather averaged over longer time frames. It can cause changes in environmental conditions which are essentially permanent relative to the lifetimes of many species. Not just the lifetimes of bacteria.Were species actually to be so sensitive, one would ask the obvious question, why didn't they all go extinct at the end of the last ice age? or at the Holocene optimum?
Why would you expect them to all go extinct?. Seems like a strawman argument to me. Regardless many species did go extinct during the ice ages . Seen any woolly mammoths walking around lately?. The problem with the Anthropocene extinction is that we have fundamentally altered so many natural systems. Chopped down many of the world's forests and converted them into grassland., thereby removing a large chunk of natures natural sediment filter. On top of that, to feed humanity's rapacious appetite, much of the land has been converted to grow monoculture, or farmland to feed grazing animals used for food. In order to achieve high productivity we have used fossil fuels to manufacture artificial fertilizers. These artificial fertilizers, which boost plant growth, contain high levels of nitrogen & phosphate which leaches readily into rivers and streams (remember we've crippled nature's natural filter). The excess nitrogen and phosphate boosts algal growth in waterways, because algae are essentially water-living plants. This causes eutrophication, i.e. we get algal blooms, which chew up oxygen in the water, when the algae die (they have short lifetimes) bacteria break down the algal remains and in the process further deplete oxygen in the water. It just so happens to be inconvenient to many species to not have any oxygen - if they can't escape they die. This is also happening in coastal waters because ultimately the nitrogen and phosphate run-off ends up in the ocean. Guess what?, the coastal seas are becoming eutrophied as well, and there's the additional impact of those land use changes letting more sediment reach the coast, it blankets and chokes marine life in near-coastal waters in extreme cases (I've witnessed it for myself over the last 3 decades where I live). This is a world-wide problem. Harmful algal blooms are increasing, hypoxic and anoxic zones in the ocean are increasing (although not solely because of eutrophication) And that's just one consideration. What about land use changes impeding species migration?. Toxic man-made chemicals in the environment?. Groundwater extraction?. Introduction of invasive species on a worldwide scale?, ocean acidification? (not a problem during the last few million years - no industrial civilization back then), the speed of warming? (much higher than the glacial/interglacial rate) The speed of change and the numbers of changes we have made to natural systems should be of concern, but that's a value judgement I guess. These changes are well outside the conditions experienced on Earth for millions of years. Your frenetic hand-waving changes none of this. When you start to understand how things operate in the natural world. It's hard not to worry. And personally I don't find this study wholly convincing, but hey, that's just one take. -
Paul D at 19:09 PM on 9 March 2011Interactive animation of the climate change impact on agriculture
johnd: "What percentage of trees in what percentage of sites worldwide have been able to provide suitable trees?" Please refer back to an earlier comment, where I suggested wider reading. It is a suggestion to broaden the reading material. The original commenter that I responded to suggested that all research pointed to only positive outcomes as a result of increased CO2. That is incorrect. Skeptics spend plenty of time saying the climate system is to complicated to understand. Yet instantly put forward statements that contradict that philosophy. -
Gilles at 18:56 PM on 9 March 2011Climate Emergency: Time to Slam on the Brakes
agnostic : look at that : http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-june-16-2010/an-energy-independent-future -
Gilles at 18:53 PM on 9 March 2011Climate Emergency: Time to Slam on the Brakes
Moderator : "I hope that peak oil will wake us up, but I fear the response is more likely to be burning tar sands and/or liquefying coal" I would stress again that known facts do not support this fear. Tar sands will never exceed a few Mbl/d and are quite unable to compensate for losses of a few Mbl/d every year that should follow conventional peal oil (remember that N years of reserves really means 1/N loss in production each year after the peak). Concerning CTL, there hasn't been any massive CTL plant built during the 2008 burst of oil price, for a simple reason : coal has also spiked, and so have all commodities. CTL is not cheap, and won't be cheaper than oil, because oil prices impact all industrial processes (including extraction of oil itself). That's why peak oil occurs, despite high prices make unconventional resources more profitable : because this is offset by the increase of extraction costs and because demand is also lower. Nobody will ever build expensive plants for an expensive fuel that nobody will buy. "BAU" is just a silly idea, "B" will never be "AU" after the peak of conventional resources.Moderator Response: [Dikran Marsupial] italics fixed -
Riduna at 18:27 PM on 9 March 2011Climate Emergency: Time to Slam on the Brakes
Canadian oil sands may well be exploited initially and sell where there is no alternative. But who will buy their product at >$5/litre ($20/gallon), a price dictated by increasing demand for a decreasing product when electricity will be available to provide the same energy at a price equivalent of $2-$3/litre? We tend to judge the future on the basis of what exists at present, assuming technology remains unchanged but it changes all the time. Five years ago, who would have imagined the use of energy efficient LED’s? Daniel @ 56 In 5 years time the big revolution may have developed – production of relatively cheap, light, high density batteries able to recharge rapidly many thousands of times and hold sufficient energy to meet household and our transport needs. We may well have developed super-efficient photovoltaics which can be sprayed on surfaces, generating all the energy needs of buildings, even entire cities. The impact of such developments would make use of fossil fuels archaic globally. It is not beyond the wit of humans to make such break-throughs. The problem is our ability to do so in time to avoid the worst of global warming but it is said that desperation is the mother of invention. -
Mike Palin at 18:05 PM on 9 March 2011Crux of a Core, Part 2 - Addressing Dr. Bob Carter
Miller, G. H., J. Brigham-Grette, R. B. Alley, L. Anderson, H. A. Bauch, M. S. V. Douglas, M. E. Edwards, S. A. Elias, B. P. Finney, J. J. Fitzpatrick, S. V. Funder, T. D. Herbert, L. D. Hinzman, D. S. Kaufman, G. M. MacDonald, L. Polyak, A. Robock, M. C. Serreze, J. P. Smol, R. Spielhagen, J. W. C. White, A. P. Wolfe, and E. W. Wolff. 2010. Temperature and precipitation history of the Arctic. Quaternary Science Reviews 29(15-16): 1,679-1,715, doi: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2010.03.001. 6.5 Mb download available from: http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/robock/MillerArctic.pdfModerator Response: [DB] Hot-linked URL. -
From Peru at 17:32 PM on 9 March 2011Crux of a Core, Part 2 - Addressing Dr. Bob Carter
The "Miller 2010" link doesn't work. It leads instead to the following message: "Sorry, your request could not be processed because the format of the URL was incorrect. Contact the Help Desk if the problem persists. [SD-001]" What is the TITLE of the Miller's article to search it on google? (searching just the author's name is useless in google)Moderator Response: [DB] Fixed links in post. The title is Temperature and precipitation history of the Arctic. -
dana1981 at 17:05 PM on 9 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
ClimateWatcher:But there's not much evidence that the current extinction rate is anything other than the background rate.
Let me guess - you didn't bother to actually read the article you're commenting on? -
ClimateWatcher at 16:55 PM on 9 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
ClimateWatcher - you seem to be missing the point that these species are already going extinct. It's an observational reality. And climate change isn't the only anthropogenic factor behind the accelerated rate of extinctions, as the article notes Species are always going extinct at the background extinction rate. Do consider that extinction is part of evolution. (traits that are liabilities are extinguished only by the extinction of those bearing the genes for those traits). But there's not much evidence that the current extinction rate is anything other than the background rate. And evidently, the revival rate seems to be increasing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_taxon -
Albatross at 16:54 PM on 9 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
ClimateWatcher @10, Please tell me that post was in jest? If not, you are missing the point (and the science, and what 2-4 K warming of global temperatures translates into) by galactic proportions. Feel free to write a rebuttal to Nature refuting Barnosky et al. -
Mike Palin at 16:47 PM on 9 March 2011Crux of a Core, Part 2 - Addressing Dr. Bob Carter
Carter has excellent credentials in sedimentology and paleo-oceanography, but multi-disciplinary quantitative climate science is clearly beyond him. That's OK, we can't all be experts in everything. Unfortunately, he apparently thinks he has a place at the table to comment when he simply doesn't have the goods. This is probably a source of frustration that drives him to more and more extreme contrarian rants - a vicious downward cycle. The good news for science is that it moves forward in spite of the best or worst efforts of individual scientists. Carter's activities may be distressing and sad, but ultimately they are unimportant. Although the meme of the individual genius having brilliant insights that move science in great leaps forward is popular, it is an illusion. Science moves forward only when the community of scientists is prepared to accept and apply new knowledge. To paraphrase the bard, "Genius, is not in our stars, But in our ourselves, that we are underlings." -
ClimateWatcher at 16:44 PM on 9 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
adaptation/migration are slow processes. What matters is rate of change. Cold fronts can change temperatures by 20 C in a few hours. Sunshine can warm by 20 C from morning to afternoon. Seasons change temperatures by 40 C in half a year. The 1 to 2 C change over a century is just not that significant, particularly when life forms have already evolved to endure much larger changes. -
gallopingcamel at 16:41 PM on 9 March 2011Climate Emergency: Time to Slam on the Brakes
muoncounter @45, While Tamino can prove almost anything to his own satisfaction there are many who disagree with his analyses. Tamino is very careful to choose 1975 as his start date because things might look a little different if he chose 1957 instead. I believe this is called "cherry picking" when your opponents do it. Here is my first attempt to post an image as a "live link". If it fails you should still be able to see the URL as a text string:
Moderator Response: [DB] Remember to use the img width="450" src= tag when posting images. Also, it is considered "good form" to also provide a link to the source image for those who want to see it larger than can be shown here. Example: Source Image
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