Arguments
Recent Comments
Prev 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 Next
Comments 10401 to 10450:
-
Daniel Bailey at 10:51 AM on 1 July 2019Climate's changed before
England's climate today is far more conducive to growing grapes for the wine industry than at any point in recorded history.
I'll post the links tomorrow.
Your denier is clearly desperate and unencumbered by an education in the science in question.
-
nigelj at 10:01 AM on 1 July 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #26
jjworld @9
"I would recommend that a site focused on science not endorse political activism which this particular article clearly demonstrates."
Imho this website didn't endorse politicial arcivism. It's just presenting an article in the Guardian, and John Hartz expressed no opinion on the matter. The article in the guardian reports facts on what has happened in the lives of these people, and a record of the interview so is not really an opinion piece. It didn't endorse anything either. We need to know whats happening.
"AOC does not have a good record of embracing intellectual concepts much less scientific concepts."
Opinionated, and not backed up with any examples. According to her wikipedia entry "She graduated cum laude from Boston University's College of Arts and Sciences in 2011, majoring in international relations and economics." So she has rather good credentials to grasp concepts.
"This particular post suggests a clear bias..."
I dont see a bias: the website discusses different sides of issues. Imho this website treads carefully on political issues and just reports on what is happening. We are free to make up our own minds on the issues.
-
Philippe Chantreau at 09:53 AM on 1 July 2019Climate's changed before
What does wine making in England have to do with anything? The Romans brought it to England, so what? They liked it, and it was unknown there until then. The climate made it possible, although never ideal. It was cultivated in England almost without interruption until the tax laws of the 19th century discouraged production, and later WW1 activity demanded the land. It was cultivated throughout the so-called little ice age as well. What does that show? That England's climate was stable for about 2000 years. Big deal, like we didn't know that.
-
jjworld at 09:08 AM on 1 July 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #26
I would recommend that a site focused on science not endorse political activism which this particular article clearly demonstrates. AOC does not have a good record of embracing intellectual concepts much less scientific concepts.
This particular post suggests a clear bias which I thought the editors were trying to avoid. We must all remain skeptical of all the scientific efforts toward climate research in order to embrace new information and methods.
Embracing a political stunt on the front page of a science site by someone that clearly has no interest in science outside of its political benefit is a ding to the site's reputation.
-
TVC15 at 08:30 AM on 1 July 2019Climate's changed before
Here we go! My favorite denier is back to attacking me.
Why don't you tell us about the severe weather up through the 1700s? Oh, that's right, you can't, because nobody recorded it.
I'm guessing you're totally oblivious to the fact that the Romans grew grapes in Britain and made wine. The Emperor Hadrian was drinking and enjoying that wine.
I responded with a NOAA link that stated.
Clues about the past climate are buried in sediments at the bottom of the oceans, locked away in coral reefs, frozen in glaciers and ice caps, and preserved in the rings of trees. Each of these natural recorders provides scientists with information about temperature, precipitation, and more. Many of these have some type of layers, bands, or rings that represent a fixed amount of time, often a year or growing season. The layers vary in thickness, color, chemical composition, and more, which allows scientists to extrapolate information about the climate at the time each layer formed.
Moderator Response:[PS] Desparation to be retreading that old one. Try here.
-
RedBaron at 08:14 AM on 1 July 2019Why my fears about climate change made me cross the line that separates academia from activism
@13 3-d construct
It's fine but the reason is that seaweed digests/decomposes much easier.
I have explained multiple times here at skeptical science they (and many other climate scientists who are weak in biology) the issue with methane has nothing to do with the cow. It's the grass. Lignified carbon and celulose carbon are extremely difficult to break down and recycle. So whether it is a worm, or a caterpillar, or a termite, or a compost pile, or fire, or slow oxidation in standing dead material, or a cow, there will be some methane released. The cow and other wild ruminants with their highly evolved reticulorumen are actually some of the more efficient of the many ways to break down and recycle old biomass. Termites for example produce much more methane!
Nevertheless, a well managed grassland biome including att the various insects animals and worms are a net negative for methane and actually cool the planet. The only time a cow can be considered a net source is in the factory farming business model. So clearly this idea that livestock are causing AGW is highly misleading. And so what seaweed digests easier? All it means is something else will need you digest that grass besides a cow, something far less efficient and very likely to be a greater methane source that the cow would have been.
Meanwhile the real culprits to increasing methane are actually warming and melting permafrost and arctic ice along with natural gas leaks. And the largest agricultural emissions source for methane is paddy rice production, not livestock.
-
scaddenp at 07:08 AM on 1 July 2019Humans are too insignificant to affect global climate
Should add to Eclectic that nothing special about earth in respect. You can calculate the surface temperature of any rotating planet, around any sun, knowing solar insolation at top of atmosphere (simple calculation from solar output and distance from sun), atmospheric composition, and aerosols. (Of course assuming that laws of physics dont vary with space and time).
-
nigelj at 07:00 AM on 1 July 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #26
Swampfox @1-7
"America displays the fascist variant...look at the voluminous Code of Federal Regulations telling everybody how they will behave in our "free" country.'
Mostly health and safety related regulations, environmental regulations, building codes, occupational licencing. Seems fine to me so I'm not sure why you would object to that? Not sure if I would categorise it as control of the economy.
Socialism doesnt work in dictatorships like the Soviet Union because leadership is not accountable for failures and so the system stagnates and environments get utterly trashed. State owned and controlled education and healthcare works quite well in democracies, because teachers and doctors are passionate about their jobs and governments can be voted out if performance of the education system falls. Industry works better in private ownership. I like systems that combine elements of capitalism and socialism, fwiw.
Agree with comment 7, all economies are going to have to change to become more environmentally sustainable.
-
Daniel Bailey at 06:28 AM on 1 July 2019CO2 lags temperature
Per David Archer's Nature paper 'Carbon is forever':
"The lifetime of fossil fuel CO2 in the atmosphere is a few centuries, plus 25 percent that lasts essentially forever. The next time you fill your tank, reflect upon this. The climatic impacts of releasing fossil fuel CO2 to the atmosphere will last longer than Stonehenge," Archer writes. "Longer than time capsules, longer than nuclear waste, far longer than the age of human civilization so far."
"The effects of carbon dioxide on the atmosphere drop off so slowly that unless we kick our "fossil fuel addiction", to use George W. Bush's phrase, we could force Earth out of its regular pattern of freezes and thaws that has lasted for more than a million years."
https://www.nature.com/articles/climate.2008.122
At the end of The Long Thaw, David Archer calculates that the amount of energy that is trapped by the CO2 produced by burning gasoline today is, over its atmospheric lifetime, 40 million times the amount of fuel energy released today.
"Longer than nuclear waste"...savor that thought.
-
Daniel Bailey at 06:25 AM on 1 July 2019CO2 lags temperature
"How long do human GHG emissions namely CO2 remain in the atmosphere?"
Let's ask ourselves:
"What would happen if we magically cease all CO2 emissions and hold them at zero, forever?"
What will happen is that the oceans and lakes will start "breathing out" the CO2 we are chemically overstuffing them with.
1. Normally, warming water holds less CO2. However, the partial pressure differential of CO2 in our atmosphere at the water:atmosphere interface (the thin skin layer of the waters) is such that our waters are forcibly having CO2 sequestered in them. This is the mechanism of action that is acidifying our waters.
2. As fossil fuel usages are eliminated, atmospheric levels of CO2 will stabilize. As levels then start to decline, the partial pressure differential of CO2 at the water:atmosphere interface will reverse...and the oceans and lakes will begin to give up the many gigatons of CO2 we have forced them to hold onto for us.
3. As a result, atmospheric CO2 levels will stay very stable for many decades before slowly declining. 300 years after the cessation of the usage of fossil fuels, more than 10% of the man-made rise in atmospheric CO2 will still be there. From the AR5, WG1, Box 6.1:
"15 to 40% of CO2 emitted until 2100 will remain in the atmosphere longer than 1000 years...10 to 25% of the original CO2 pulse [remains] after about 10,000 years"
-
swampfoxh at 04:42 AM on 1 July 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #26
But capitalism, fascism, socialism and autocracy will, all, have to be re-conceptualized if the human race is going to survive the coming climate future because nature is pitiously indifferent and won't save anybody or any thing in the coming future if organisms can't adapt to the conditions that will exist tomorrow.
-
TVC15 at 04:42 AM on 1 July 2019CO2 lags temperature
Sorry if this has already been answered before.
How long do human GHG emissions namely CO2 remain in the atmosphere?
-
swampfoxh at 04:36 AM on 1 July 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #26
Democrats just don't want to understand why socialism is a generally bad idea because they refuse to look at the Russian experience or the Chinese system. Republicans soothe their nerves thinking private ownership is always the "best" idea, the most moral, the only way to spread equal opportunity amongst the masses whom they are sure want to climb the ladder of success through efforts on their own. They can demonstrate that "effort on their own" axiom by citing Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, Facebook's CEO....accolades go on forever. Jonas Salk and MLK have done more for the welfare of Humanity than those Captains of Industry
-
3-d construct at 04:34 AM on 1 July 2019Why my fears about climate change made me cross the line that separates academia from activism
In regard to ruminant methane production, at University of California, Davis, studies are being done to address this problem. It had been reported that a type of red seaweed when added to supplemental feed greatly reduces it, in the high ninety percentile. I can't comment on the modality. I suppose that, if it supresses methanogenic microbes, it would interfere with nutrient uptake. If it fosters methanotrops on top of the normal digestion of celluose, it might be less so.
-
swampfoxh at 04:22 AM on 1 July 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #26
Clearly, the US Government doesn't own the means of P and D unless you just want to argue about the Tennessee Valley Authority, a dam on the Colorado, nuclear power stuff or the USPS...and a few other things. But control? Yep...lots of control emanates from the USG. LOTS!
-
swampfoxh at 04:14 AM on 1 July 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #26
America displays the fascist variant...look at the voluminous Code of Federal Regulations telling everybody how they will behave in our "free" country.
-
swampfoxh at 04:10 AM on 1 July 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #26
Hitler's cabal loved control so they didn't have to own the means of P an D...the Soviets wanted to own it. that led to a real hatred between the advocates of the two variants...like it still does.
-
swampfoxh at 04:03 AM on 1 July 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #26
The Republicans hate socialism because they practice its variant...fascism. I'm referring to Ayn Rand's classical definition and her distinction that the two systems only vary in whether there is only government control of the means of production and distribution (fascism) versus government ownership (socialism).
-
MA Rodger at 17:53 PM on 30 June 2019Sea level rise predictions are exaggerated
TVC15 @93,
The denialist's assertion that "sea levels always rise 3 meters to 14 meters" needs a little more nailing down to mean anything. Sea levels didn't rise by such an amount yesterday, for instance. So presumably this is about interglacials and their sea levels relative to today, the previous four interglacials being MIS-5, 7, 9 & 11 with the present 'interglacial' MIS-1.
So did all these four interglacials see "sea levels ... rise 3 meters to 14 meters" above today's values? This does rather depend on how you measure sea level. The reference to Lopes et al (2014) [Abstract linked @93] suggests three of them did. And there was a fourth high-stand at the site investigated by Lopes et al, MIS-1, the present 'interglacial'. But the data of Lopes et al is not global sea level rise but a regional measure. The Holocene high-stand in the tropics is indeed 3m above today (as explained by this SkS post). So it sounds like 'job done!' The +3m high-stand was delivered during this interglacial and now, having cancelled the next ice-age with our GHG emissions, if we keep up the GHG emissions we can look forward to a truly global +3m SLR, although it might take a couple of centuries to deliver.
-
Philippe Chantreau at 10:11 AM on 30 June 2019Sea level rise predictions are exaggerated
Good quality general discussion in the following link, with considerations on the current interglacial with and without anthro influences:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/2015RG000482
AS always, the weight of the evidence is what matters...
-
Philippe Chantreau at 08:43 AM on 30 June 2019Sea level rise predictions are exaggerated
More on the comparison of MIS 11 to present here:
-
TVC15 at 08:36 AM on 30 June 2019Sea level rise predictions are exaggerated
@ 94. Electric
I don't enjoy challenging this particular denier as he will come back hurling insults just as you can see in the condescending attitude displayed in my post. He also plays as if he's some sort of science genius. Sadly most Americans fall for such disingenuous displays due to many here not holding basic science literacy.
Instead of challenging him, I simply post evidence to refute his denier statements.
@ 95,96 Philippe Chantreau
Yes the "No severe weather" comment is baffeling indeed.
Thank you for the response and the link.
-
nigelj at 08:20 AM on 30 June 20192019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #26
Regarding the great interview with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Greta Thunberg. The considerable power of lobby groups and the lack of limits on campaign donations in America is because the constitution protects free speech and the courts have interpreted this to mean that there should be no limits on lobby groups and what people can donate to political parties. Refer this article. Changing the constitution is not easy.
It looks from various polls like the left mostly accept the science of climate change and want something done at both individual and government level, and the right largely still reject the overwhelming consensus on climate science, and see this issue as a socialist conspiracy to entrap them and attack their wealth and privilege, just for the sake of it, and to manipulate people like Greta. Unless this thinking of the right changes, we have a stalemate situation and probable environmental disaster of epic proportions. Yes all people and political parties need to find common ground, but the right have to shed some delusions.
-
Philippe Chantreau at 08:17 AM on 30 June 2019Sea level rise predictions are exaggerated
The "please do tell" condescending tone is quite typical. The selection of research that they think support their position but turns out somewhat different if you actually look into it, even more so. There is a pretty good literature on MIS 11, and the paper I linked below has a great bibiliography with links. It's not nearly as simple as your denier would have you believe.
MIS 11 is interesting for a number of reasons. Astronomical forcings were quite similar to those of the present; however, the interglacial lasted a long time and saw the collapse of the Southern Greenland ice sheet. The regime of galcial/interglacials definitely changed afterward and the cycles that have dominated until our interglacial are different. There is strong support for the trigger/feedback idea put forth by Hansen in the literature on the subject of glacial/interglacial.
Kleinen et al (2014) has produced successful reconstitutions of MIS11 using intermediate complexity and general circulation models. The high sea levels are owed to the loss of the ice sheet, and that is not at all an automatic feature; however, there were some possible large regional variations. They also mention the existence of quite variable climate regimes over short periods of time.
From their discussion section: "numerous colder oscillations (up to 2 °C below the present) appear in the reconstruction, suggesting some climate instability during this long interglacial interval."
Furthermore, some regions experienced only mildly different climate than modern pre-industrial, even though they were located in the Northern hemisphere (where the astronomical forcing was acting). They cite la Cote, in the Western French Alps: "Coleoptera- and pollen-based climate reconstructions suggest conditions similar to present or even slightly warmer during the interglacial optimum, up to 18 °C in July compared to the modern value of 16.4 °C. However, pollen-derived mean January temperatures did not exceed the modern value (−0.7 °C) by more than ca. 1 °C, with the exception of one pollen spectrum (Field et al., 2000)."
This leads to a much more nuanced interpretation. There is evidence that MIS11 is a good fit for modern time comparisons as they pertain to astronomical configuration. However, The fact that temperatures were slowly going down for thousands of years before modern times points to a marked difference between MIS 11 and present.
Kleinen et al:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1040618213009622
-
nigelj at 07:25 AM on 30 June 2019Why my fears about climate change made me cross the line that separates academia from activism
In all these well intended discussions about global warming and animial agriculture you have to look at what people are most likely to do. There is no point living in a fantasy land of expecations.I can see people reducing meat consumption for a variety of well known reasons, and I hope we all do this, but its really hard to see the whole world becoming vegan or something reasonably close to this, even if there was some theoretical case in favour of it. Humans are omnivores by nature, something we should always remember. People like eating meat and its a good source of energy.
This being the case we should do all farming including cattle farming in environmentally sustainable ways and that sequesters soil carbon. Not sure that I go along fully with Red Barons big claims and I have to be true to my own reading of the evidence, but there is still some significant potential there to sequester soil carbon and regenerative agriculture makes a good case for itself in terms of general environmentalism with soil carbon as a side benefit. We should use all the tools we have when they make sense like this.
-
RedBaron at 06:18 AM on 30 June 2019Why my fears about climate change made me cross the line that separates academia from activism
@9 Swampfoxh,
Animal agriculture is about 5% of global emissions, but it could potetially sequester all emissions from all agriculture, if changes were made in the methods used.
“The number one public enemy is the cow. But the number one tool that can save mankind is the cow. We need every cow we can get back out on the range. It is almost criminal to have them in feedlots which are inhumane, antisocial, and environmentally and economically unsound.” Allan Savory
The way the majority of animal husbandry is done today is indeed a net emissions source. So sure boycott it now. That's fine. But please don't stand in the way of people attempting to change the methods by which we do agriculture. It's counter-productive. Regenerative agriculture is the only proven technology with the potential to be a large enough to reverse AGW. And regenerative agriculture needs animals used properly to complete many key ecosystem functions we lost when we killed off all the wild animals.
“As the small trickle of results grows into an avalanche — as is now happening overseas — it will soon be realized that the animal is our farming partner and no practice and no knowledge which ignores this fact will contribute anything to human welfare or indeed will have any chance either of usefulness or of survival.” Sir Albert Howard
Without those key ecosystem services, nothing we do will have any chances at all of reversing global warming. Yes we still need to reduce fossil fuel emissions. But alone the evidence shows it will not be enough. This is what we are locked into unless we drawdown massive quantities of legacy carbon into the soil and lock it in there for hundreds if not thousands of years.
Climate urgency: we've locked in more global warming than people realize
Arctic now locked into devastating temperature rise, UN report says
Evolution of global temperature over the past two million years
There is only one. I repeat only one technology we have today that is capable of sequestering that quantity of legacy carbon at a fast enough rate to "unlock" global warming, and that is regenerative agriculture.
Can we reverse global warming?
How to fight desertification and reverse climate change.
'In the early 1970s, it dawned on me that no one had ever applied design to agriculture. When I realised it, the hairs went up on the back of my neck. It was so strange. We’d had agriculture for 7,000 years, and we’d been losing for 7,000 years — everything was turning into desert. So I wondered, can we build systems that obey ecological principles? We know what they are, we just never apply them. Ecologists never apply good ecology to their gardens. Architects never understand the transmission of heat in buildings. And physicists live in houses with demented energy systems. It’s curious that we never apply what we know to how we actually live.'-Bill Mollison
-
swampfoxh at 05:11 AM on 30 June 2019Why my fears about climate change made me cross the line that separates academia from activism
"The Race Is On" didn't speak a word about Animal Agriculture, or did I miss that somewhere?
-
swampfoxh at 05:09 AM on 30 June 2019Why my fears about climate change made me cross the line that separates academia from activism
Eliminating Animal Agriculture from the planet would buy a lot of time since its contribution to the climate problem is so large. We can do without animal agriculture much easier than we can do without fossil fuels, although the elimination of both, with large population reductions, could put us back on track to a survivable future.
-
campcarl at 02:52 AM on 30 June 2019New Research for week #25, 2019
Thanks to this service, I discovered a new study that has profound significance in the palaeo category, having full access but not one iota of publicity when searched. Can someone give it a good review?
"Evidence for fire in the Pliocene Arctic in response to amplified temperature"
-
MA Rodger at 02:06 AM on 30 June 2019Humans are too insignificant to affect global climate
Duke @31,
You mention "4+ billion years" and for much of that time the Earth's climate is little understood. So perhaps a few words about climate prior to the ice-age/interglacial cycles of the last 3 million years.
The speculation for the very early ages is that there had to be a very strong greenhouse effect because the Sun was much fainter and there had to be liquid water for life to evolve. So that is all very tenuous stuff.
It is perhaps the last 500 million years that the geological record remains complete enough to have a good stab at global climate. I say "stab" as, for instance, the gaphic below taken from Wikipedia only provides a relative δ18O record. (A long-term trend has to be subtracted from the data. Here an imprecise method is used and that means δ18O levels (temperature) more than 100 million year apart start to become difficult to directly compare.) So the wobbles are there but the relative maxs & mins should not be compared.
Research suggests causes for the various wobbles. For instance, the Ordovician-Silurian glaciation (450My bp) is seen as resulting from the erosion of large fields of volcanic rock that proved particularly good at sucking CO2 from the atmosphere. By modern standards, CO2 levels were still sky-high but the Sun was much weaker, requiring something like 4,000ppm CO2 to give a modern global temperature.
But note such wobbles were very slow compared with today's AGW, these ones being measured in millions of years. Others measure in tens-of-thousands of years, as do the recent ices-age/interglacial transitions.
And none of this research would make any sense whatever without CO2 as a greenhouse gas and the present human-caused rise being a serious climate-changer.
-
Eclectic at 18:43 PM on 29 June 2019Humans are too insignificant to affect global climate
Duke @31 ,
first go back to basics. The major factors determining the Earth's climate are :-
1. The insolation: level of shortwave energy coming from the sun.
2. The level of Greenhouse Gasses ~ most significantly, CO2.
3. The level of aerosol particles reflecting sunlight.
During the past almost 1 million years, the "Milankovitch cycle" of slight Earth axial & orbital changes has initiated/triggered a half-irregular series of glaciations & (briefer) de-glaciations. Currently we are on a gradual downward path of cooling (of about 5,000 years' duration) . . . and with more cooling still to come for 20 or so millennia. Or at least, that was the path, until recent events of the past 2 centuries. (Please note that the so-called Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period have been fairly minimal wiggles on that long-term cooling background.)
However, against this background pattern of cooling, there has been an extraordinary (and continuing) upward spike of global temperature during the past 100 - 200 years. What has caused this remarkable change? #The analogy might be: a small-town police chief is used to seeing 3 - 6 house burglaries per year . . . but now he has just had 80 burglaries on one weekend ~ so, obviously, there's been a drastic change of some sort, and he has to figure out what has caused the extraordinary change.
For the scientists, they have to figure whether the rapid/huge temp spike ( currently about half a degreeC above the warmest level of the Holocene's previous 10,000 years ) has been caused by changes in insolation and/or GHGasses and/or aerosols. ( Other causes: cosmic rays, cloud changes, etcetera, have been checked out . . . and are clearly not a contributing factor in the climate change. )
Duke, you probably know most of that. And the evidence points to a single "culprit" for the spike. #Though I'm not sure what you mean by "dooming" ~ after all, the present & future consequences of global warming are 95% bad and 5% good (which is kind of okay for those in the 5% category!)
-
Duke at 15:38 PM on 29 June 2019Humans are too insignificant to affect global climate
As has been stated above, I truly appreciate the respectful tone with which the commenters have been making their arguments and asking questions. It’s a refreshing change to be able to sort through information without being hit over the head with politics.
I have a lingering question that I hope someone can address or provide a theory about. Since the earth has been in many states over its 4+ billion years of existence - having had several ice ages and heat waves that thawed the landscape and made life possible - how does one account for/explain the other major climate shifts, given there were no humans around to make an impact? How can we be so certain that our actions alone are dooming is, rather than it just being another temperature or climate change cycle of our very active planet?
This is a serious question that has always plagued me when discussing this issue. I hope to get some feedback from this well-informed group.
Thank you in advance-
-
Philippe Chantreau at 14:02 PM on 29 June 2019Sea level rise predictions are exaggerated
No severe weather? So what has been experienced by US Midwest farmers this year does not count? Houston getting 500 years rain events 3 years in a row doesn't either? France recording its highest temperatures since record keeping began, yesterday, and then again today, on the heels of last year's severe thunderstorm activity? The successive Australian heat waves and associated fires? Last summer global heat wave spanning from Canada to Japan, with fires across the polar circle in Scandinavia? The hyperfast intensification of hurrican Michael? Last Austral summer with the highest recorded temperatures in Southern Chile? What rock do these people live under?
-
Philippe Chantreau at 13:15 PM on 29 June 2019Why my fears about climate change made me cross the line that separates academia from activism
And that's without even trying hard...
-
Philippe Chantreau at 13:15 PM on 29 June 2019Why my fears about climate change made me cross the line that separates academia from activism
True that
Some good news, however.
-
Eclectic at 12:33 PM on 29 June 2019Why my fears about climate change made me cross the line that separates academia from activism
Philippe Chantreau @5 ,
yes, it is all a matter of attitude.
A golden cartoon from 1970-ish ( Punch magazine ) shows two plump middle-aged businessmen (cigars & Homburgs) in the back seat of a Rolls-Royce driving through central London. One says to the other: "Yes, I am grossly over-remunerated . . . but I am not grossly over-remunerated enough."
-
Eclectic at 12:22 PM on 29 June 2019Sea level rise predictions are exaggerated
TVC15 @93 ,
I would say that your denier friend believes in magic, not science. In the current situation (the Holocene) the world has been slowly cooling for around 5,000 years, and the sea level has been falling slowly . . . until the past 150 years of rapid warming, of course. Lower temperature, more land ice, lower sea level. Higher temperature, less land ice, higher sea level. Does he have any scientific evidence to counter those basic physics? . . . no, of course he doesn't. Challenge him !
-
TVC15 at 07:57 AM on 29 June 2019Sea level rise predictions are exaggerated
A denier stated this:
So, how many dozens and dozens of peer-reviewed scientific papers will it take to convince of the Truth, which is that sea levels always rise 3 meters to 14 meters?
Please, do tell. Why do you reject science?
At those times, CO2 levels were 260 ppm - 280 ppm CO2.
Whether CO2 levels are 260 ppm or 460 ppm, your sea levels are going to rise 3 meters to 14 meters and there ain't a damn thing you or anyone else can do to stop it.
So, get over it already.
And, severe weather?
Not gonna happen. They've been making those claims for decades and list of failures is long. That's because there isn't a single shred of scientific evidence to support claims of severe weather. It's all fear-mongering to mislead people.
This denier used these links to try and support their denier claims.MIS-11 duration key to disappearance of the Greenland ice sheet
Greenland ice cores reveal warm climate of the past
Do sea levels always rise 3 to 14 meters regardless of the amount of CO2 levels? -
Philippe Chantreau at 03:56 AM on 29 June 2019Why my fears about climate change made me cross the line that separates academia from activism
Salience at #2,
Wars are objectionable on numerous grounds, and it is likely true that the total money spent on the Iraq war could have financed a global energy transition. However, the problem is even deeper.
There is enough money now that can be freed up to accomplish that transition, without even imposing beyond a moderate burden on anyone. The problem comes from the priorities and mindset of those who hold power. The 2008 financial crisis cost somehwere around 15 trillion to the World economy; likely enough, once again, to perform an energy transition. At any given time, the rich and ultra-rich have something like 7.6 trillion stashed away in tax havens, hidden for the exclusive purpose of not having to give up a portion of it.
That behavior comes from people who have no material worries whatsoever. If I had a bad cancer diagnosis, despite living in the most privileged part of the world, obtaining and undergoing the treatment would drain all my resources, require me to sell my house and possibly use my retirement savings, even though I have a good profession, savings, and a credit rating in the mid-800s. The rich and ultra-rich would experience none of that. They would only have to endure the distress of the disease and treatment.
Despite the fact that their position is privileged to this historically unprecedented extent, they are utterly convinced that they must not have even a litle less money than the theoretical maximum they can possibly extract from this world. That's the real problem. Of course, some of them enagage in philanthropy, but even they would not be ready to a profound change that would render it impossible in the first place to obtain wealth expressed in a high power of 10 of that of the lowest paid employee in their empire. Historically, they all have pushed very hard to outsource all activity to places where they did not have to play a fair role in the game, paying people miserable wages, having little to no tax liabilities, no environmental or social responsibility and generous lattitude to obtain favor from local officials. Philanthropy seems kinda cheap after that goal is realized.
The technologies exist for accomplishing at least a partial energy transition that could dramatically reduce emissions at the 15 years horizon. It is not happening because governments are at the back and call of people for whom short term profits are more important than anything.
-
cpske at 01:41 AM on 29 June 2019Why my fears about climate change made me cross the line that separates academia from activism
Welcome, James Dyke. Climate scientists have certainly sounded the alarm for mankind. Your film will only help. So, thank you for this.
But, did you realize that climate scientists do a disservice to the cause when they keep telling politicians there still is a 'pathway' to 1.6C (or whatever)? First, all they hear is they can keep burning fossil fuels, and second, you have stepped outside your expertise and into the political space.
With your estimates, if you factor in the time for politicians and the global economy to change we are OUT OF TIME NOW (reduce fossil fuels to zero in the next ten years).
-
ContextPro at 23:15 PM on 28 June 2019Why my fears about climate change made me cross the line that separates academia from activism
I think that perhaps more than education, documentaries to combat misinformation that teach topics like:
- political/economic biases & propaganda
- free market fantasies that underlie them
- fact-checking
- basic logic, recognition of fallacies & categorization
Websites exist to counter deniers claims, but after using them most days for over a year now, there don't seem to be any that are both complete and very importantly: convenient enough to understand and counter fossil fuel propaganda and denier ideologies...and insults! :)
I would be very interested in working on such a project, if others were interested. -
Salience17308 at 22:59 PM on 28 June 2019Why my fears about climate change made me cross the line that separates academia from activism
Considering that WAR is the #1 guilty party in climate degradation,
"The money misspent on the Iraq War—a war for oil let's not forget— could have purchased the planetary conversion to renewable energy... The Pentagon uses more petroleum per day than the aggregate consumption of 175 countries (out of 210 in the world), and generates more than 70 percent of this nation's total greenhouse gas emissions, based on rankings in the CIA World Factbook. LINK
And considering that the #1 perpetrator of war on the planet is the USA, we may quite logically conclude that to avoid total climate meltdown and probable extinction of most life forms, the ability of the USA to continue its Masters of War strategy must be rapidly and radically reduced, i.e., eliminated. Warfare must be our first target, for all other measures to ensure continued survival, even taken together, if warfare continues, will not meet with overall success.
And considering that those who now wield military power in the USA have not the least intention of reducing war at all, much less radically and rapidly, it is therefore imperative that a newly invigorated, well-financed, anti-war movement be a primary project for all biophiles, those who love life. So where is the anti-war, peace movement today? Submerged in protests for a dozen comparatively unimportant issues, I fear. LINKAn excerpt from my book https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07KSDSF72?ref_=pe_3052080_276849420
Moderator Response:[DB] "The Pentagon uses more petroleum per day than the aggregate consumption of 175 countries (out of 210 in the world), and generates more than 70 percent of this nation's total greenhouse gas emissions"
As others have noted, this doesn't pass the sniff test. While the US Military is the US Government's biggest emitter, if the US military were a country, it would only be about the 55th-biggest emitter.
Shortened and activated URLs. Self-promotion link to your book snipped.
-
nigelj at 13:11 PM on 28 June 2019In 1982, Exxon accurately predicted global warming
During the 1970's there was also a scare about a possible impending ice age or cold period, as temperatures had fallen a bit, although this was only a view among a minority of scientists. In the original research Svante Arrhenius envisaged deliberately burning fossil fuels to stop an ice age.
The point being perhaps as industry knowledge of global warming increased in the 1970's 1) the full implications were not apparent and 2) it was brushed off as a useful way of preventing an ice age. Eventually the problems of global warming sunk in and recent research indicates 1.5 degrees of warming is quite enough to stop the next ice age. It's a silly idea anyway because even if we could prevent the next ice age, its unlikely we could do anything about the one after that and so on. The current warming issue is the real problem, and we can do something about it.
-
donfit at 12:20 PM on 28 June 2019In 1982, Exxon accurately predicted global warming
In approximately 1972-73 I attended a seminar at St. Louis University presented by their Physics Department. I was working for an HVAC manufacturer and was mainly interested in ideas to help model and forecast what type of furnaces we would need by fuel source, oil, natural gas, or electric. It was well understood at that time that burning fossil fuels increased earth's temperature. The extent and the possible ramifications would come later. Of course, this was pre Chernobyl (and Three Mile Island) so the recognized alternative to meet growing energy needs was predicted to be nuclear, with a strong preference for solar if storage solutions could be developed.
-
David Kirtley at 09:52 AM on 28 June 2019If growth of CO2 concentration causes only logarithmic temperature increase - why worry?
Further to scaddenp's comment...the science behind the log relationship between CO2 concentration and rediative forcing can be found in Myhre et al 1998. There must be earlier papers on this but I'm not sure what they are...the refs in that paper would probably help with that.
Here are a few more helpful links:
Science of Doom: CO2: An Insignificant Trace Gas - Part Seven
RealClimate: The CO2 Problem in 6 Easy Steps and Part II of A Saturated Gassy Argument: What Angstrom didn't Know.
-
scaddenp at 09:32 AM on 28 June 2019CO2 effect is logarithmic
Useful paper here.
-
scaddenp at 07:52 AM on 28 June 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Richieb1234, I have tried to address your question on CO2 logarithmic relation here. Such questions are offtopic here.
-
scaddenp at 07:50 AM on 28 June 2019If growth of CO2 concentration causes only logarithmic temperature increase - why worry?
Answering from here. This seems a better place for comment. See also article here. First, lets be clear about what is logarithmic. Doubling the concentration of CO2 from pre-industrial will increase the surface irradiation by ~4W/m2. To get another 4W/m2 of irradition, then you would have increase atmospheric concentration of CO2 to over 800ppm.
Note that is the relation between CO2 concentration and increased surface irradiation that is logarithmic - not the relationship between CO2 and temperature. Confusion of this results in a lot of strawman-arguments.
The relationship between CO2 and temperarure is much more complicated because of the various feedbacks that cut in. By itself, doubling CO2 would only raise temperature 1.1C but you cannot raise temperature without increasing the water vapour (a powerful greenhouse gas) in the atmosphere and melting ice (reducing albedo). Feedbacks work at very different timescales. Over a scale of hundreds to millenia, rising temperatures will cut in natural CO2 feedbacks (warm oceans cant hold as much dissolved CO2 and melting permafrost and clathrates release CO2 and methane). This is problem of climate sensitivity and it remains a tough problem to nail down.
Why the log dependence of irradiation on concentration. Short answer is that falls out of radiative transfer equations. For longer answer, try this paper.
-
nigelj at 07:41 AM on 28 June 2019Why my fears about climate change made me cross the line that separates academia from activism
Advocacy by climate scientists on the climate issue sounds great to me, whether in interviews with scientists, books or movies. Especially if we get to hear little bit of their own take on the issues and their worries about the future, as well as the facts and figures, because this will really connect with people by personalising it.
People don't trust media journalists reporting on the science and will trust scientists more. However going on protest matches would probably alienate the public, and making movies leaves you open to accusations of being in it for the money, so profits should go to charity.
-
michael sweet at 03:50 AM on 28 June 2019Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Ritchieb1234,
Sorry about the rant concerning safety. Obviously I have strong feelings about safety.In this article James Conca says:
"There is no, and never will be, a Fukushima Death Toll. No one received enough radiation to change the background cancer rates that normally exist in Japan."
My citation stated (Beyea) in the abstract:
"The purpose of their article [Hoeve and Jacobson) was to evaluate the contention that the accident would have no health effects."
Hoeve and Jacobson reported 600 deaths in the evacuation plus 1000 (center of range) from Beyea.
Do you agree with Conca that there is no and never will be a death toll from Fukushima or is the estimate of Beyea closer to the true, worldwide death toll?
“ We need to ask the more general question: did anybody die because of Fukushima? Yes they did. Why? The Japanese government introduced a forced evacuation of thousands of people living up to a couple of dozen kilometres from the power station. The stress of moving to collection areas induced heart attacks and other medical problems in many people. So people died because of Fukushima hysteria not because of Fukushima radiation.”
The Breakthrough Institute and Conca say:
“ Instead of requiring people to leave, it could make more sense to give them the information they need on radiation exposures and likely health risks, and let them make their own decisions.”
And “despite the fact that the radiological impacts of Fukushima will have effectively zero impact on human health.”
And "is the Fukushima exclusion zone doing more harm than radiation?"
"In my opinion yes it has," radiation expert Dr. Geraldine Thomas ibid"Except for a relatively small region around the reactors, the risk of evacuees moving back to their homes are the same as driving a car"
Do you agree with Conca and the Breakthrough Institute that the safety officers who ordered the evacuation of Fukushima are responsible for all the deaths or is the Nuclear Industry responsible?
Would you clear the area around Fukushima for people to return and allow farmed products to be sold in Tokyo without regard to radioactive contamination?
Would you dump all the tritium they have stored in the ocean and say there is no pollution since it is diluted so much?
Prev 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 Next
