Arguments
Global weirding with Katharine Hayhoe: Natural Cycles
Posted on 14 September 2017 by Guest Author
All this worry about warming when it’s just a natural cycle. The climate is always changing and today’s no different — right? Global Weirding is produced by KTTZ Texas Tech Public Media and distributed by PBS Digital Studios. New episodes every other Wednesday at 10 am central. Brought to you in part by: Bob and Linda Herscher, Freese and Nichols, Inc, and the Texas Tech Climate Science Center.
Very good video, but it missed cosmic rays which sceptics claim are a factor in global warming. But the trend in these over recent decades should have been causing a cooling, according to a SkS article:
www.skepticalscience.com/cosmic-rays-and-global-warming.htm
I also think this was a very good video; only one quibble. For eliptical orbits around the sun, the sun would be at one focus of the elipse, not the center.
Related to purrmonster's minor nit-pick I would add that the magnitude of the difference of annual solar energy received by the Earth between the circular and maximum ellipse orbits should have been briefly explained along with how long it takes to transition between the two limits of orbit behaviour and where we are right now.
To be clearer, the presentation included the timeline between ice ages, but it would be helpful to have included the relative global average temperature change between Ice Age and non-ice age periods compared to the magnitude of warming impacts being created.
One little niggle. If we are going to call the period between the Eemian warm period and our present warm period an ice age then we need another word for the approximately 3m year span we are in at present with it's glacials and interglacials. Why don't we just stick to glacial or perhaps glacial period and reserve Ice Age for the long spans of time in which there are numerous gacial and interglacial periods. I don't care what we decide but it doesn't help to educate the lay public having this confusion of terms.
One other slight niggle. Read Ruddiman's book, Plows, Plagues and Petroleum. The reversal most likely started to occur around 6-8000 years ago, now 200 years ago.
Thinking about the upcoming glaciation event ... future generations of humanity would love to have easy to get buried ancient hydrocabons they could burn to take the edge off of that event, rather than have nearer term future generations stuggle with the rapid climate change challenges being imposed on them by the selfish unjustified rapid burning up of non-renewable material that could have such a helpful future use.
OPOF @7
Good conservation strategy, but may not be required. Reseach suggests the 1.5 - 2 degrees of warming we pretty much have locked in already would stop or hugely reduce the next ice age as below.
www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/01/13/scientists-say-humans-have-basically-canceled-the-next-ice-age/?utm_term=.fd0fd9bf5ab2
nigelj@8,
My summary take-away from the article is that the timing and rapid rate of CO2 addition currently occurring is not helpful.
The increase of CO2 from 240 ppm to 280 ppm that occured before the 1800's is indicated to be sufficient to delay glaciation for 50,000 years.
What is currently being done is Too Much, Too Rapidly, Too Early to be beneficial.
So, the maximum amount of Fossil Fuels needs to be kept in the ground to give future generations the best opportunity to sustain advancements/development.
Perceived advancements that cannot be sustained are delusions. And some of those popular delusions about 'advancement of properity' are understandably very damaging yet remain popular and profitable, continuing to be encouraged or 'permitted' to be gotten away with.
I consider the desires to abuse the 'increased understanding of how to Win through misleading marketing' to be the greatest threat to the future of humanity that humans have ever developed.
SkS is well focused on the real problem as it relates to climate science - diminishing the ability of people to Win by abusing the science of marketing.
Every group pushing for one or more of the Sustainable Development Goals needs to have the same focus on misleading marketers. And all of those different groups need to support each other so that their collective 'pursuit of increased global awareness and better understanding to sustainably advance all of humanity' can Win over 'the United Groups trying to Win the Right to benefit from the understandably harmful things they want to prolong their ability get away with through the abuse of Poor Excuses to Temporarily Regionally Tempt people to support things that do not deserve to be Popular or Profitable'.