On January 24 2013 11:06 imallinson wrote: 1. You could say that about anything. Anything we do will probably be cheaper and easier in the future. However this relies on the fact that we continue to tackle problems now. As for whether it will be cheaper to deal with the problem or the consequences I think there have been a few studies which showed dealing with the problem will be the far cheaper alternative.
2. Why can't we deal with those problems and climate change at the same time? HIV, malaria and climate change all have a lot of research going into them currently. Also climate change can kill or adversely affect people's lives.
So where is the supposed warming?
If we were to trust all the global warming alarmists, half the land should have been under water by 2000, our fields and soil should have been deserts by now and we would have all been dying from heat waves by 40 if we'd reach that far.
Ever since the 80's we heard about this terrible global warming, this earth shattering warming and here we are 30+ years later and nothing has changed.
Statistically, historical, etc... we've had the calmest and most consistent 30 years of any period. We've had more food grow, more rain fall, more green fields, more great climate than ever before.
So where is it? Where are the continents covered in water, where are AT LEAST the small island that were supposed to be the first victims, why aren't at least they under water? Where are the deserts in our green fields? Where is the terrible heat that will have everyone die from it at summer?
Do you know there are tens of thousands of deaths every winter due to cold, but only about few thousand death every summer due to hot?
So I'd say it probably needs to get at least 3-4 degrees warmer to come to be equal in terms of deaths, but it won't.
The temperature has risen 0.8 degrees Celsius over the past 150 years. Okay? Its a non event. You get more temperature change going from Austin to New York.
edit: that's a graph of atmospheric co2. You would not expect noticeable weather effects to correlate directly with this. It's just measuring the amount of a certain input into a very complicated system. That input is going to catastrophically change the dynamics of the system, but not immediately.
edit: you guys are looking at this in a fundamentally wrong paradigm. You are expecting the dynamics of the system to be LINEAR. Climate is not a linear phenomenon - the negative effects of global warming are not going to gradually build up over time, sort of like a business that's gradually losing money. It doesn't work like that.
edit: check out this lorenz attractor. sorry for the terrible music
On January 26 2013 17:56 sam!zdat wrote: ^I don't follow your point
edit: that's a graph of atmospheric co2. You would not expect noticeable weather effects to correlate directly with this. It's just measuring the amount of a certain input into a very complicated system. That input is going to catastrophically change the dynamics of the system, but not immediately.
edit: you guys are looking at this in a fundamentally wrong paradigm. You are expecting the dynamics of the system to be LINEAR. Climate is not a linear phenomenon - the negative effects of global warming are not going to gradually build up over time, sort of like a business that's gradually losing money. It doesn't work like that.
I think you are overanalyzing what I was saying, I have read up on many of your posts in regard to chaos theory and complex systems already I was just simply agreeing with you that 30 years is not a long time in the grand scheme of things.
On January 24 2013 11:06 imallinson wrote: 1. You could say that about anything. Anything we do will probably be cheaper and easier in the future. However this relies on the fact that we continue to tackle problems now. As for whether it will be cheaper to deal with the problem or the consequences I think there have been a few studies which showed dealing with the problem will be the far cheaper alternative.
2. Why can't we deal with those problems and climate change at the same time? HIV, malaria and climate change all have a lot of research going into them currently. Also climate change can kill or adversely affect people's lives.
So where is the supposed warming?
If we were to trust all the global warming alarmists, half the land should have been under water by 2000, our fields and soil should have been deserts by now and we would have all been dying from heat waves by 40 if we'd reach that far.
Ever since the 80's we heard about this terrible global warming, this earth shattering warming and here we are 30+ years later and nothing has changed.
Statistically, historical, etc... we've had the calmest and most consistent 30 years of any period. We've had more food grow, more rain fall, more green fields, more great climate than ever before.
So where is it? Where are the continents covered in water, where are AT LEAST the small island that were supposed to be the first victims, why aren't at least they under water? Where are the deserts in our green fields? Where is the terrible heat that will have everyone die from it at summer?
Do you know there are tens of thousands of deaths every winter due to cold, but only about few thousand death every summer due to hot?
So I'd say it probably needs to get at least 3-4 degrees warmer to come to be equal in terms of deaths, but it won't.
The temperature has risen 0.8 degrees Celsius over the past 150 years. Okay? Its a non event. You get more temperature change going from Austin to New York.
I'm sorry...did you actually have an argument in this rant somewhere? Or even a valid target for the rant?
Great thread, this, and kudos to the guy who's running it. I find it instructive to point out that you don't even need the sophisticated models and huge body of scientific literature to entertain severe doubts as to whether Earth has a future if we continue to pump CO2 into the atmosphere without taking any steps to reduce its build-up.
The greenhouse effect was discovered in the 1820s by Fourier (the scientist who also discovered the infinite series that's named after him). It's quite easy to establish whether CO2 absorbs heat. Once you have that fact, the greenhouse effect follows quite naturally.
When you're faced with a phenomenon that might destroy the Earth, you don't need to prove it conclusively before you begin to take precautions.
The idea that it conflicts with the interests with "businesses" says a lot about who pulls the strings of power. Civilization existed long before big business and will, if necessary, continue to exist long after. On the other hand, we only have one Earth.
On August 18 2013 21:25 Catch]22 wrote: Environmentalism conflicts with the interests of business? It is one of the fastest growing businesses...
Which isn't nearly as big as the oil industry, as it happens.
More generally, environmentalism is a major thorn in the side of many big businesses. Take the proposed third runway on Heathrow. Environmental groups hate it. It likely wouldn't even be on the table if the UK didn't have a Tory government. (Only the UKIP is worse in this regard.)
The pro-business people in every country are more inclined to climate change denial. It's not coincidence. It's because the powers of big business want absolute unfettered liberty to build wherever they like, and do whatever they like, regardless of whether it harms the environment.
It's the role of these institutions to maximize short term profit. If someone at the top refuses to fund climate change denial propaganda, they will replace them with someone that will.
It is the role of any human being that wants the species to survive to interfere with these institutional roles and hinder them in some way.
the news for climate change seems to be getting worse all the time, i just read a study done at MIT(2012 outlook) that predicated a scenario that was worse than the worst case scenario in the IPCC 2007 report. Namely, the A2 scenario done by the SRES team.
and we seem to be going full steam ahead into an age of unconventional fuels, ones that have more carbon in them than the current conventional fuels we use.
There is no 2 sides to the argument that climate change denial presents, there is only facts, researched by climatologists, with a 97% consensus that global warming is anthropogenic.
Where I live it is fairly cold and we are at a pretty high elevation, so global warming seems like a net positive for us. But I've heard people say that global warming will also increase the volatility of weather patterns. Does anyone know if this is part of the scientific consensus or not?
On August 18 2013 23:48 ziggurat wrote: Where I live it is fairly cold and we are at a pretty high elevation, so global warming seems like a net positive for us. But I've heard people say that global warming will also increase the volatility of weather patterns. Does anyone know if this is part of the scientific consensus or not?
I am not all that much into it, but as far as i can tell there is no such thing as global warming. The right name is climate changes, because while we are indeed (at least in Europe) breaking the heat record almost every summer, we are also having the coldest winters. I just googled "coldest" and "warmest" and in Denmark we had the coldest May and April in 17 years and the warmest August in 12 years. In regards to volatile weather you just need to turn in the TV to see what is going on around the world.
Another reason that climate changes is a better name than global warming, if because we don't know how the changes is going to affect us. As you may know the weather is heavily influenced by sea currents, but if the temperature changes we don't know how this is going to affect sea currents, and therefor don't know how it is going to affect the weather. Another thing to keep in mind is that even small temperature changes may be a tipping point.
Right now a big concern is that the Siberian tundra is melting. The problem is that there is currently a lot of methane hidden under the tundra that will cause even bigger changes if it is released into the atmosphere.
DISCLAIMER: I am by no means an expert on this subject so take everything i say with a grain of salt.
On August 18 2013 23:48 ziggurat wrote: Where I live it is fairly cold and we are at a pretty high elevation, so global warming seems like a net positive for us. But I've heard people say that global warming will also increase the volatility of weather patterns. Does anyone know if this is part of the scientific consensus or not?
Before I try to answer your question I'll addressee my one concern for you. Your assumption of a positive net plus from a warmer local standpoint may have some really horrible side effects. Water is always being pulled down by gravity and being at a higher elevation you may be more susceptible to water loss. So a lot of your living water may be attributed to precipitation. If your area gets warmed up, then the amount of water the air can hold before precipitating is a lot more. Therefore you and your area may not get the same very important amounts of water precipitation that the colder air you used to have provided.
A lot of weather patterns has to do with current conditions of the earth. I could go into more details about the past, but atmospheric and oceanic changes by any number of causes (continents moving, volcanoes, and even life: as examples) have changed weather patterns.
This comes back to your question and that when the ocean/atmosphere is changing from climate change (generally warmer, or steeper temp gradient) is stimulating the ocean and atmosphere. Generally you can think of higher temperature gradients as more volatile because it has more energy.
It hard to model currents and air patterns to know how exactly the gradient will change and I'm surely no expert on climate change myself, if anything has more to add that would be great.
On August 18 2013 23:48 ziggurat wrote: Where I live it is fairly cold and we are at a pretty high elevation, so global warming seems like a net positive for us. But I've heard people say that global warming will also increase the volatility of weather patterns. Does anyone know if this is part of the scientific consensus or not?
you gotta find out for yourself. If you take the attitude of listening to people instead of questioning them and searching for answers it's going to be harder to find out whats going on.
the IPCC synthesis report is a good place to look at.
@ increased volatility (people call it variability in the climate sciences, but thats just language): current state of the art models implicate not a general massive increase of variability, but enhancement of certain types of extremes (i.e., not necessarily more strong storms, but the few strong storms will be stronger than today's, same for precipitation and temperature extreme events). so yes, in general we expect patters of variability to change, and more likely than not not to the better @ bad news for climate: while it is true that most current research of our emission trajectories points in a very dark direction indead (coal consumption has now been increasing for years, oil is not dead, yet, too), there are good news. on the energy front (renewables get cheaper way faster than people expected), the renewable front (gas is much better and gets cheaper every day), and also on the science front: there are _some_ indications that climate sensitities (i.e., how much the climate reacts to more co2) are a little bit less likely to be very large. so at least thats something that could give as a decade or two more time (if true). @ climate change instead of global warming: true, it is the much better term because global warming does not mean that it gets warmer everywhere at the same pace. still, global warming will fit quite nicely if current emission trajectories will be followed through, it will be _on a spatial average of countries and temporal scales of decades - be warmer more or less everywhere in 2100. @ necrothread: everyone should be aware, that a new wave of climate policy related propaganda will be flooding the internetz in the coming weeks in preparation of the release of the new IPCC report end of september. this has started already in Germany on a small scale. everybody should be careful if uncertainties in climate science (which there are many) are used to propel a specific policy point of view. both discussions (on climate science and on related policities) need to be had, one in the science community + enthusiasts, one in the public domain with all invested agents, but both should not be mixed as it is done so many times unfortunately.
so, everyone who reads this: keep up being attentive and inform yourself, climate change and related policy will continue to shape our century no matter if we choose to do this in public or let it be done behind closed doors.
EPT![[image loading]](http://climate.nasa.gov/system/content_pages/main_images/evidence_CO2.jpg)
I was just simply agreeing with you that 30 years is not a long time in the grand scheme of things. 
