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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 -
ClimateWatcher at 16:20 PM on 9 March 2011The Climate Show Episode 8: Kevin Trenberth
#22 I posted some graphics of the the numbers I was looking at here: http://climatewatcher.blogspot.com/ Click on the images for a better view. Notice for the Solar output numbers vary from 1361 W/m^2 from the latest SORCE measurements to 1367W/m^2 used in the NASA GISS models. It's really only one quarter of this value times albedo that matters so the uncertainty is not so bad for Solar output. But next notice the Albedo values. The range is from ~29% (from the numbers in the Trenberth papers) to more than 33% from the NASA model. Multiply those values by an average Solar load and by one fourth and you get a range of forcing in excess of 8W/m^2. Then reflect that the forcing of CO2 doubling is a little more than 3W/m^2 and you can see that the unknown exceeds the signal we are looking for. And that's just for a current estimate. There is no good way to even begin to estimate what albedo was a hundred years ago and how it may have changed. Lastly notice the outgoing infrared (longwave) radiation. The GISS model indicates a decreasing trend while the NOAA satellite data actually indicate an increasing trend. The values range from about 231 to 239 W/m^2, again about 8W/m^2. Only one of these data sets or values used may be right but it may be that all of them are wrong. The numbers come from: www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Trenberth/trenberth.papers/TFK_bams09.pdf http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Trenberth/trenberth.papers/10.1175_2008BAMS2634.1.pdf http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/modelE/ http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/index.htm http://climexp.knmi.nl/selectfield_obs.cgi?someone@somewhere -
Rob Honeycutt at 15:24 PM on 9 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
It's important to remember in all this that it doesn't take a large number of individuals to keep a species going. So, when we talk about an extinction event losing 80 or 90% of species, that is likely a much large percentage of the creatures on the planet. That's what gets me about the idea of "adaptation." Yes, humans are quite adaptable and we might very well not be one of the species that goes extinct. But it might very well involve the overall human population rapidly dwindling to a small fraction of the number of people alive today. Frankly, I'm not worried too much about humans going extinct. I'm concerned about the unprecedented misery inflicted upon people, who are yet born, in the transition to a dramatically reduced population. -
Tom Curtis at 14:39 PM on 9 March 2011Crux of a Core, Part 2 - Addressing Dr. Bob Carter
Jimwit @9, brilliant questions. -
Tom Curtis at 14:38 PM on 9 March 2011Crux of a Core, Part 2 - Addressing Dr. Bob Carter
I cannot describe accurately, and in detail my opinion of Carter's antics, and ethics, due to the comments policy of this blog. What I can say is that the best definition of an "expert" is somebody who knows all the obvious blunders in their subject, and how to avoid them. Carter, it appears, knows all the obvious blunders in his subject, and uses that knowledge as a play book. He is, therefore, no expert. -
Daniel Bailey at 14:32 PM on 9 March 2011Climate Emergency: Time to Slam on the Brakes
I'm afraid I must agree with James' reply to Agnostic above. When faced with an entire loss of their way of life, people will make choices they believe necessary to ensure that way of life. In a case of art predicting life, Asimov touched on this in Nightfall. Faced with the loss of daylight on a planet with multiple suns, people resorted to burning their entire civilization to avoid facing the dark. Faced with peak oil, mankind now is tasked with finding viable energy alternatives or faces having to retool society at large. At least initially, the tar sands will go into full production. Until enough permafrost melts, initiating the long-feared clathrate release. Then and only then will enough take AGW seriously. Pray that then there will be yet time enough. The Yooper -
Albatross at 14:19 PM on 9 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
Good point logicman....this is not my area of expertise. Are there other examples besides the Inuit? -
muoncounter at 14:19 PM on 9 March 2011Extreme weather isn't caused by global warming
From the disaster of US House of Representatives Climate Science/EPA hearings, some good arose: Francis Zwiers testimony Observational studies show that warm temperature extremes have become hotter since the mid 20th century, cold temperature extremes have moderated, and precipitation extremes have intensified ... ... human influence is now affecting the frequency and intensity of high impact events that put people and their livelihoods at risk. Moreover, studies of two specific events (the European 2003 heat wave, and flooding in the UK in the autumn of 2000) have shown that the odds of those events had been increased substantially relative to the world that would have been in the absence of human induced increases in atmospheric greenhouse gases. Zwiers was invited by the minority members of the committee, who issued their own memo summarizing the "background on the state of understanding of climate change science because the majority hearing memo failed to do so." -
logicman at 14:01 PM on 9 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
I wasn't going to comment agin for now, but ... #6@Albatross says: " ... humans may not go extinct, but the hurting will start a very long time before event that is on the horizon. " For communities who rely on particular species to support their traditional way of life, climate shift may not eradicate species, but may so modify the environment as to make those species unreachable by traditional means. For many Inuit communities, the hurting started a while back. -
Albatross at 13:50 PM on 9 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
Well, this is depressing. ClimateWatcher seems to think there is only something to worry about if we lose most of the species. Losing 75-95% sounds pretty damn scary to me, and worse yet is preventable to some degree. Also, one of those species may even be Homo Sapiens, but I understand that that possibility is of little concern to someone who will unlikely be around after 2050.....Anyhow I was being facetious, humans may not go extinct, but the hurting will start a very long time before event that is on the horizon. -
logicman at 13:47 PM on 9 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
I have linked to this article in a recent comment on science20.com. I am interested to see what is said about this by people here and at science20.com before I comment further. -
scaddenp at 13:19 PM on 9 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
ClimateWatcher1 - adaptation/migration are slow processes. What matters is rate of change. Current rate is 0.8/century. LGM to HCO is say 6000, 8 degrees of change so only around 0.1/century. -
dana1981 at 13:18 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. -
Jimwit at 13:06 PM on 9 March 2011Crux of a Core, Part 2 - Addressing Dr. Bob Carter
I'm fairly new to the whole AGW topic. I've always wondered, though, when people dismiss AGW because it's been hot before, and there's been a lot of variation in the temperature record, have any gone on record as saying how hot it would have to be to "prove" the anthropogenic part? i.e. by their own criteria (no science, no models, no measurement of forcings, etc) just statistics of past variation, how hot is hot enough? And if they've figured that out, are they willing that humanity should wait until it's that hot? Isn't that a fair set of questions to ask them? -
ClimateWatcher at 13:02 PM on 9 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
.... 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? Since most species present today evolved through numerous glacial/interglacial cycles, it's pretty obvious they have evolved to a higher degree of tolerance of climatic conditions. -
WSteven at 12:27 PM on 9 March 2011The Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction May Be Underway
Read this the other day on Nature. Sobering stuff indeed. -
muoncounter at 12:14 PM on 9 March 2011Climate Emergency: Time to Slam on the Brakes
Fred S, That's quite a set of statements. You seem to be denying just about everything. I suggest doing some research on these questions; there's a lot you can learn. If nothing else, it would help you understand what's going on so you could ask better questions. To take just a few points: "The best we can do is to monitor changes at varying points across the globe, at more or less regular times, day and night..." Yes, lots of places; at lots of times, more or less. How, exactly, is that different from determining the global average temperature? "To relate the variations in this data to cause and effect is impossible" In a word, no. Of course, the relevant variations are not the day-to-day changes you may be describing. But cause and effect is clear: the global temperature warms when there is more heat coming in than going out. "I do not know why the medieval warm period happened. I have no idea why the globe then descended into the little ice age... " There are indeed folks who know quite a lot about these things. So the meaning of this statement is unclear. I do not know how (other than in general terms) a nuclear power plant works; does that mean I cannot use the resulting power? "no sign of any relationship to the increase in CO2 until the late 70's, by which time the CO2 concentration had increased from 280 to 350 ppm." CO2 forcing is nonlinear; proportional to the natural log of the ratio of CO2 at any time to the pre-industrial level (280 ppm). Ln(1)=0; at 350ppm, ln(1.25)=0.223. At 380ppm, ln(1.36)=0.305. So in that last 30ppm (its a mere 9% increase from 350 to 380), forcing increases by more than one third. "responsible for monitoring temperature and humidity in a nuclear power plant. The idea that it could be done with any degree of accuracy ... was, believe me, absurd." That is the biggest stunner of them all. Are you telling me that the safety inspectors at nuclear power plants cannot make accurate measurements? I'm choking on my donut, turning off the lights and moving to Shelbyville right now. -
Icarus at 12:05 PM on 9 March 2011Crux of a Core, Part 2 - Addressing Dr. Bob Carter
My review of the first few minutes of that video went like this: Professor Carter gets off to a bad start by asking "is the climate warming?" in the context of the last 16,000 years. No-one is suggesting that anthropogenic global warming was occurring 16,000 years ago, so this is a pointless diversion from the question of whether the planet is warming today, as a result of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions since the start of the industrial revolution, approximately 250 years ago. Then he looks at the last 10,000 years - same problem. Then he looks at the last 2,000 years - same problem again. Then he looks at the last 700 years - same problem again. Finally he looks at the last 100 years and acknowledges that in the only timescale that matters for anthropogenic influences, yes the global climate is warming. Does this sound like an unbiased and honest approach so far? Indeed not. Any reasonable person with a little understanding of climate science would already be suspecting an attempt to deceive the uninitiated. It gets worse. The professor then cites the last 8 years of temperature 'stasis', clearly implying that anthropogenic global warming should be a continuous, monotonic process which erases all natural interannual variability in global temperature, and that any failure of each year to be warmer than the preceding year must be a refutation of anthropogenic global warming. Well, anyone who knows anything about climate knows that the oceans continue to circulate, the sun continues its regular ~11-year cycle of varying irradiance and so on. It's simply a nonsense to imply that these things are going to cease to exist just because human activity is causing long-term global warming, and Professor Carter knows this, so already (only 5 minutes into the first video) we know for certain that his intention is to deceive, not to present an honest assessment of the topic. His next point is to say that 100 years is "too short a period of time over the dataset" to be statistically significant, but this again is nonsense - climate scientists work with 30 years of data on the basis that this is a long enough period for long-term global temperature trends to be distinguishable from natural interannual variability. 100 years is certainly long enough and the professor knows it - again, an attempt to deceive. He continues by pointing out other places in the 2,000-year record where global temperature rise is comparable in rate and magnitude to the rise of the last century. What is the significance of this? No-one is arguing that the climate never changed before as a result of natural forcings, so this has no bearing on whether or not human activity is causing warming now, as a result of greenhouse gas emissions. Another red herring. Nor does the current warming have to exceed previous warmings in either rate or magnitude in order to be anthropogenic. The professor says "Is warming happening? It depends". Well, no, it doesn't depend - warming *is* happening on the only timescale that is significant for the issue of *anthropogenic* influences, i.e. since the start of the industrial revolution. The intention is clearly to mislead the audience. The next illustration displayed by the professor shows the last 5,000 years or so, highlighting previous warm periods. He says "there is nothing unusual about the late 20th Century warm period", as if comparing the rate or magnitude of recent warming to past climate changes is enough to confirm or refute its anthropogenic origin - it isn't. Nothing about past climate changes has any bearing on whether or not we are causing the current warming - it only has relevance for the *consequences* of that warming, how easily we will cope with it and so on. The professor actually claims that "it's not going to get warmer next, it's going to get colder", on the basis that it has been colder in the past (during the several ice ages of the last 400,000 years), but in making this claim he completely ignores the fact that human activity has dramatically increased the atmospheric concentration of global warming gases and that this will inevitably continue for decades to come. I could go on, but really we've seen more than enough already. Professor Carter is clearly only interested in hoodwinking his audience by presenting them with arguments which he knows are misdirections, because he knows that all the palaeoclimate he is presenting has no bearing whatsoever on the issue of recent anthropogenic warming. [Note: I haven't attempted to 'tone down' my review of Carter's shoddy video - I hope it's acceptable here] -
Rob Honeycutt at 12:03 PM on 9 March 2011The Climate Show Episode 8: Kevin Trenberth
ClimateWatcher said... "Right. That means we cannot ascribe the observed warming to anything because the current budget cannot account for where the energy is going." Where do you get that? Have you read Trenberth's papers on this issue?
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