Climate Change

Comment on this topic using this as an anchor post.  pl

Comments

[Glenn G]

This 5-minute video is everything you need to know on the climate change issue. It's a Boston Globe interview with Richard Lindzen, an atmospheric physicist and professor of meteorology at MIT. And it's not friendly to the climate change crowd.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i1CR0v7dwXU

[Tyler]

Its always nice to see SST supporting fictional works.

[LeeG]

Homo Sap population has grown incredibly since fossil fuels started feeding its activities. Like yeast fermenting sugars, growth will hit limits as most accessible fossil resources are depleted and conditions for growth have changed. A yeast cell isn't going to change its behavior and neither will humans.

[LeeG]

This 75 minute lecture about humans and the quadratic equation is pretty good too.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O133ppiVnWY

[paulj]

https://www.skepticalscience.com/Richard_Lindzen_arg.htm

[turcopolier]

tyler

Ah, c'mon. I am just giving people a chance to discuss it. pl

[kao_hsien_chih]

Here's one thing that boggled me from the beginning.

Is there a good scientific foundation to worry about possible climate warming? Yes.

Are potential damages form climate change enormous, if it is happening? Yes.

Is there strong evidence for climate change? Maybe. Not slam dunk...but as they say, if we get slam dunk evidence, the damages will have been huge.

Is climate change, if it is there, the fault of humans? Impossible to say.

Of all these questions, the fourth is the most controvertible and least relevant. The bottom line is that there is good reason to believe that it might be happening and if it is, a lot of harm can be done. We would be wise to insure ourselves against the potential damage. Whose fault it is, however, is not obvious at all, or if indeed if it is anyone's fault.

BUT the important thing, for the advocates of the climate change is not that it might be taking place or that it can do tremendous harm if it is there. It's simply a tool to score political points, with which to hammer their opponents with and to advance their pet agendas which often have little or nothing to do with seriously combating the possibility of climate change. In other words, a lot of climate change advocates aren't acting like they are taking the dangers of climate change all that seriously. Not exactly something that makes people who don't buy into their worldview trust them or their proposals.

A useful contrast, admittedly based on a lot of secondhand information, is that, while combating the climate change propaganda on one hand, big oil corporations are also drawing up contingency plans and making investments in precautions in case of climate change--which is smart because a lot of their installations, in places like Louisiana, are greatly endangered by possible effects of climate change. This actually seems like something prudent that we might all consider, minus the wasted time on who's to blame nonsense.

[Tyler]

Sir,

Oh I know. I just wanted to see who might take my bait and start talking about "heat hiding in the deep oceans". I needed a laugh this morning.

[LeeG]

"It's only a few degrees"

It only took a few degree rise over a thousand years to exacerbate extinction of mega fauna in the Americas.
Some ecosystems, and human societies, are more vulnerable to disruption than others. We're looking at a rate of change in 100 yrs.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/06/rising-temperatures-and-humans-were-deadly-combo-ancient-south-american-megafauna

[Donald]

Well, if five minutes is all you nee to understand atmospheric physics, then the following link is all you need to refute Lindzen

https://www.skepticalscience.com/skeptic_Richard_Lindzen.htm

[Babak Makkinejad]

All:

The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

https://www.amazon.com/Moral-Case-Fossil-Fuels/dp/1591847443/ref=pd_rhf_sc_p_img_13?ie=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=5NVEEQRZPB9J95NRHKZJ

Yes, I know, the writer very likely could be working for the Oil Plutocracy, OPEC, Russia, Texas, Louisiana, Alaska, Canada, Norway etc.

[Tel]

John Cook has been debunked so many time it just isn't funny any more. By his own standards only trained and qualified scientists should be allowed to comment on science and Cook isn't one.

But anyhow, here goes nothing.

The "thermal inertia" argument is garbage. We know the Earth surface heats and cools rapidly (happens every year, known as "Summer" and "Winter"). If there was some deep state change somewhere it would be measurable, but no one seems capable of finding this.

The "aerosol" argument only popped up after previous predictions of warming failed badly... it became the figure to balance allowing retrospective adjustments of the models. Industrial air pollution was much worse across Europe and North America during the late 19thC and early 20thC, (think all the coal burning, no filters, automobiles were less efficient, etc) and it's had much lower particulate matter since then. If anything the trend should be the other direction.

The "tipping point" argument has never been even slightly proven in a scientific manner. No one knows where these points supposedly exist, nor how to find them, it's entirely Fear Uncertainty and Doubt. In the past Earth's climate has been warmer for some periods and cooler for other periods than today. In addition we know there were times when Earth's atmosphere had higher CO2 and also times when Earth's atmosphere had lower CO2, but no sign of a tipping point triggering. It's just made-up garbage.

The "hottest on record" global temperature is full of adjustments, the past temperatures are regularly being re-calculated to different values, it is questionable whether the concept even makes sense of averaging together a bunch of surface temperature measurements, especially when various measurement techniques have been deployed, stations have moved, large areas of the Earth's surface are not being measured and anyway they only look at daily maximum/minimum values which are not particularly representative. Yet they still claim accuracy down to small fractions of a degree. This is not science. No other discipline would allow this type of fudgery.

The Phil Jones quote about "no statistically significant warming" was perfectly accurate, and the relevant context was perfectly well understood. I read through those emails myself. Cook is talking total BS, here is his explanation in detail:

"When you read Phil Jones' actual words, you see he's saying there is a warming trend but it's not statistically significant. He's not talking about whether warming is actually happening. He's discussing our ability to detect that warming trend in a noisy signal over a short period."

That's why we have tests of statistical significance, because the data is noisy and because possibly you could just be looking at natural variation. That's why something "not statistically significant" should never be used as the basis to taking action (especially expensive action), because there is a high risk of a mistake. Cook does not even understand the basic concepts, yet he pretends to be some sort of reference site on this.

Besides that, what the climate "scientists" were predicting was much more warming than ever happened. This tells you their models were wrong, because the predictions didn't come true.

We are supposed to have climate refugees all over the place by now, and accelerating sea level, and all of these disasters like hurricanes. Did you know that during the Obama Presidency the number of hurricanes hitting the USA has been at an all time low? Strange the newspapers aren't jumping all over that.

[Tel]

That's right, humans never change behaviour. The Internet never happened actually I'm communicating with you by beating my club on a hollow log.

Sheesh, here I am making that big presumption that communication is even possible under the circumstances.

[BraveNewWorld]

I would like to ask. How many people here have actually stopped and looked at the "science"? By that I mean how the raw data is collected, how it is packaged and how it is massaged. As opposed to just reading the headlines in the MSM.

[LeeG]

Or the young man with his degree in Philosophy and years working at the Ayn Rand Institute has found a niche. Good for him. Not sure of his relevance to the topic.

[LeeG]

By taking the word " behavior" from a specific context of fossil fuel consumption to a general meaning of all human behavior you are communication your intention just fine.. Someone has to be the 3%,

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2014/jan/06/climate-change-climate-change-scepticism

[HawkOfMay]

@LeeG Trends are already in place the contradict you. China has passed peak coal and is now on the down side of coal consumption. China made this choice despite the detail it would have been cheaper economically to continue to burn coal. They are betting big on alternative energy and are in position to be the new provider of energy to the developing world.

http://www.energypost.eu/chinas-electricity-mix-changing-fast-co2-emissions-may-peaked/

[HawkOfMay]

I much prefer the Republican (i.e. those who are willing to move on the issue) proposed solutions to the problem of climate change rather than the Democrats:

http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-07-23/republican-says-his-partys-denial-climate-science-courting-disaster-voters

[HawkOfMay]

No, not directly but I've worked with people who I trust who have done this leg work. One of my previous jobs was a software engineer at the Environmental Research Engineering Institute of Michigan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_Research_Institute_of_Michigan).

My job was to support the software that the remote sensing engineers and statisticians used. Lots of PHDs in the hard sciences running around in that group. Their job was working on automatic target recognition algorithms. I've contacted those folks with exactly the same question you just asked, they did that legwork and they are convinced that climate change is real.

I would like to do that same work and follow through with my own investigations.

[oldephartte]

I've seen such allegations before. Historically, coal has been a fuel of choice for centuries despite problems with fly ash. Collecting that to alleviate acid rain looks to have been a momentous exercise in shooting oneself in the foot if you check the Sourcewatch data on degraded retention facilities. New plants are being built. http://cornerstonemag.net/the-development-strategy-for-coal-fired-power-generation-in-china/

[oldephartte]

Hawk of May I was started enough to note the exact day that the anthropogenic global warming / climate change representation caught my attention ( Nov 30 2009 ) to find it had been going on for years. In fact, both the first two directors of the Climate Research Unit of Climategate fame were tarred with the 'Denier' label for their opposition to the CO2 as driver of climate and warming alarm recurring representations. It is the hallmark of propaganda to beat down alternate analysis through sheer repetition. The UN's IPCC does not even pretend to be a scientific research utility, but rather a provider of position papers to government issued under a presumption that there is no need to prove their case. This has meant the abandonment of reasoned discussion in favour of browbeating and silencing dissent - which would otherwise be the default exercise under scientific method.

[Grizziz]

It appears that in this thread most commentators have picked their side and are looking for allies or evidence to support their argument. Investigators are trying to model a complex system which is not going to give up a simple cause.The economics profession was so bad at this statistical modeling that its hard not to be skeptical.

Most everyone is a stakeholder in the climate and it is hard to know if it is a zero-sum game or less. IMO it is hard to imagine that the overall benefit to humanity of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere in some immediate to long term.

It is the length time for this process unfolds which seems to be the most contentious, i.e., do we act now or never? You can only eat and excrete in a single spot for awhile.

Was it the drought or Turkey damming the rivers or global climate change that drove the tribal rural folks into the cosmopolitan cites of Syria to create the environment for the rebellion? Each part had an effect, but in which proportion? No one wants to take a crack at that without looking un-empirical.

I take it as a fact that the sea level on the East Coast of America, that snow packs are shorter in the mountains of the West and that glaciers are shrinking everywhere. My observations of all these so-called empirical events is third or fourth hand, but oddly enough I believe it and think that when I drive my car to the grocery store and buy heavily packaged products that I am adding to the problem. Call me naive.

And by the way the acidification of the oceans caused by increases in atmospheric CO2 which may be a nearer problem:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/What+is+Ocean+Acidification%3F

[Babak Makkinejad]

Our Anthropogenic Global Warming friends are after the chimera of alternative energy sources, largely "renewables" and are opposed to burning of the fossil fuels.

That their policy preferences and choices would condemn 4/5 of mankind to short brutish lives does not prick their pink ticklish consciences.

There lies the relevance to the topic.

[Charles Michael]

China has been cutting its use of coal first and all to limit the huge thick fog in its major cities, as suppose everybody has seen the darkness of the sky, some may have experienced the breathing hazard.
Not much related to climate change.

My opinion on the climate change with anthropic cause is modest: who am I to contest the scientifics ? but personal opinion is of absolutely no relevance or in fact importance. Rigth or wrong, nothing substantive will be done.

Renewable, I mean new ones solar and wind are no realistic mass solutions IMO; in fact there is actually no solution to the depletion of natural fossil ressources. That means a futur of scarcity.

There migth be a link with the sorry state of the economy and some explanation to the belligerant moods here and there.

[LeeG]

That article talks about energy sources for electricity not total fossil fuel consumption. Look at a chart for oil consumption. That carbon goes out a tailpipe .