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Climate change a different take on what to do about it.

#2761 User is online   hrothgar 

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Posted 2016-January-09, 22:12

View PostDaniel1960, on 2016-January-09, 11:20, said:

The other issue with climate change is whether the changes are more harmful or beneficial. There is no optimal climate for the planet, as some species will almost benefit preferentially over others as changes occur. That said, life tends to prosper during the warmer, wetter periods compared to the colder, drier ones. The real question, is at what point is too hot? This has not been adequately answered, although some scientists have stated that after a 1.8C temperature rise, the detriments begin to outweigh the benefits. There is little argument that life has benefitted from the recent temperature rise; plants have flourished, the growing season has expanded, and animals have not perished during bitter winters. I doubt that many humans wish to return to the colder periods either, except for some winter enthusiasts. Perhaps we should focus on maintaining the most reasonable climate for all.


For ***** sake Daniel, are you really stupid enough to be echoing arguments from "C02 is green".
There was a time when you at least pretended to be something other than a sociopathetic, brain dead troll.

No one other than trolls frames these arguments around the "optimum" temperature for the earth.
Its a meaningless construction and not conducive to an informed debate.

On the other hand, there is a lot of great discussion around the rate of speed at which the climate is changing and how this impacts the ability of species and population centers to adapt.

There's also a lot of really good discussion around the ethics of climate change and whether one relatively small group of people should be allowed to generate enormous negative externalities that impact everyone else on earth.
Alderaan delenda est
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#2762 User is offline   Daniel1960 

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Posted 2016-January-11, 12:45

View Posthrothgar, on 2016-January-09, 22:12, said:

For ***** sake Daniel, are you really stupid enough to be echoing arguments from "C02 is green".
There was a time when you at least pretended to be something other than a sociopathetic, brain dead troll.

No one other than trolls frames these arguments around the "optimum" temperature for the earth.
Its a meaningless construction and not conducive to an informed debate.

On the other hand, there is a lot of great discussion around the rate of speed at which the climate is changing and how this impacts the ability of species and population centers to adapt.

There's also a lot of really good discussion around the ethics of climate change and whether one relatively small group of people should be allowed to generate enormous negative externalities that impact everyone else on earth.


It would be nice if your posts on this thread were informative and respectful, rather than antagonistic and propaganda. Several scientists have investigated this issue, and I will link to a few of these articles.

http://onlinelibrary...07.01387.x/full
http://rstb.royalsoc...1554/2973.short
http://www.perc.org/...-climate-change
http://goklany.org/l...klany_WIREs.pdf
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#2763 User is offline   PassedOut 

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Posted 2016-January-20, 10:35

The chickens are coming home to roost: 2015 Was Hottest Year in Recorded History, Scientists Say

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“The whole system is warming up, relentlessly,” said Gerald A. Meehl, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

It will take a few more years to know for certain, but the back-to-back records of 2014 and 2015 may have put the world back onto a trajectory of rapid global warming, after period of relatively slow warming dating to the last powerful El Niño, in 1998.

Politicians attempting to claim that greenhouse gases are not a problem seized on that slow period to argue that “global warming stopped in 1998” and similar statements, with these claims reappearing recently on the Republican presidential campaign trail.

Statistical analysis suggested all along that the claims were false, and the slowdown was, at most, a minor blip in an inexorable trend, perhaps caused by a temporary increase in the absorption of heat by the Pacific Ocean.

“Is there any evidence for a pause in the long-term global warming rate?” said Gavin A. Schmidt, head of NASA’s climate-science unit, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in Manhattan. “The answer is no. That was true before last year, but it’s much more obvious now.”

Fortunately this has become clear to all, with the exception of a few knuckleheads.
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#2764 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2016-January-20, 20:26

From Tim McDonnell's story at citylab:

Posted Image

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Shattered global temperature records are becoming increasingly commonplace, thanks to climate change; with today's announcement, all five of the hottest years on record have occurred in the last decade. But the amount by which 2015 shattered the previous record, in 2014, was itself a record, scientists said. That's due in part to this year's El Niño, characterized by exceptionally high temperatures in the Pacific Ocean.

Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said the effects of El Niño only really appeared in the last few months of the year, and that 2015 likely would have been a record year regardless.

"2015 was warm right from the beginning; it didn't start with El Niño," he said. "The reason this is such a record is because of the long-term trend, and there is no evidence that trend has slowed or paused over the last two decades."

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#2765 User is offline   Al_U_Card 

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Posted 2016-January-21, 09:04

Would that be before or after (Gavin Schmidt's) "adjustments" to the historical record?

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Even a knucklehead has a head to use, whereas a true believer only has his faith that the high-priests would never lie about dogma...

Speaking of which, [CO2] FORCING of the climate is just what exactly? (From a comment regarding forcing efficacies and their "vagueness".)

"According to the IPCC, radiative forcing is defined as follows:

"The radiative forcing of the surface-troposphere system due to the perturbation in or the introduction of an agent (say, a change in greenhouse gas concentrations) is the change in net (down minus up) irradiance (solar plus long-wave; in Wm-2) at the tropopause AFTER allowing for stratospheric temperatures to readjust to radiative equilibrium, but with surface and tropo-spheric temperatures and state held fixed at the unperturbed values".
This is not the definition of a measurable physical quantity.

You can't measure the change in the radiation balance at the troposphere *after* the stratosphere has readjusted, but with the surface and tropospheric temperatures *held fixed*. The troposphere itself is an indeterminate thing. So yes, radiative forcing (as per the IPCC) cannot be measured. It can exist Only in climate models. It seems very strange that one of fundamental concepts of climate science cannot exist in the physical world only in computer models."

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#2766 User is offline   y66 

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Posted 2016-January-29, 20:03

Guest post from Piers J. Sellers, the deputy director of Sciences and Exploration at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and acting director of its Earth Sciences Division. As an astronaut, he visited the International Space Station three times and walked in space six times.

Quote

I’M a climate scientist who has just been told I have Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

This diagnosis puts me in an interesting position. I’ve spent much of my professional life thinking about the science of climate change, which is best viewed through a multidecadal lens. At some level I was sure that, even at my present age of 60, I would live to see the most critical part of the problem, and its possible solutions, play out in my lifetime. Now that my personal horizon has been steeply foreshortened, I was forced to decide how to spend my remaining time. Was continuing to think about climate change worth the bother?

After handling the immediate business associated with the medical news — informing family, friends, work; tidying up some finances; putting out stacks of unread New York Times Book Reviews to recycle; and throwing a large “Limited Edition” holiday party, complete with butlers, I had some time to sit at my kitchen table and draw up the bucket list.

Very quickly, I found out that I had no desire to jostle with wealthy tourists on Mount Everest, or fight for some yardage on a beautiful and exclusive beach, or all those other things one toys with on a boring January afternoon. Instead, I concluded that all I really wanted to do was spend more time with the people I know and love, and get back to my office as quickly as possible.

I work for NASA, managing a large group of expert scientists doing research on the whole Earth system (I should mention that the views in this article are my own, not NASA’s). This involves studies of climate and weather using space-based observations and powerful computer models. These models describe how the planet works, and what can happen as we pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The work is complex, exacting, highly relevant and fascinating.

Last year was the warmest year on record, by far. I think that future generations will look back on 2015 as an important but not decisive year in the struggle to align politics and policy with science. This is an incredibly hard thing to do. On the science side, there has been a steady accumulation of evidence over the last 15 years that climate change is real and that its trajectory could lead us to a very uncomfortable, if not dangerous, place. On the policy side, the just-concluded climate conference in Paris set a goal of holding the increase in the global average temperature to 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels.

While many have mocked this accord as being toothless and unenforceable, it is noteworthy that the policy makers settled on a number that is based on the best science available and is within the predictive capability of our computer models.

It’s doubtful that we’ll hold the line at 2 degrees Celsius, but we need to give it our best shot. With scenarios that exceed that target, we are talking about enormous changes in global precipitation and temperature patterns, huge impacts on water and food security, and significant sea level rise. As the predicted temperature rises, model uncertainty grows, increasing the likelihood of unforeseen, disastrous events.

All this as the world’s population is expected to crest at around 9.5 billion by 2050 from the current seven billion. Pope Francis and a think tank of retired military officers have drawn roughly the same conclusion from computer model predictions: The worst impacts will be felt by the world’s poorest, who are already under immense stress and have meager resources to help them adapt to the changes. They will see themselves as innocent victims of the developed world’s excesses. Looking back, the causes of the 1789 French Revolution are not a mystery to historians; looking forward, the pressure cooker for increased radicalism, of all flavors, and conflict could get hotter along with the global temperature.

Last year may also be seen in hindsight as the year of the Death of Denial. Globally speaking, most policy makers now trust the scientific evidence and predictions, even as they grapple with ways to respond to the problem. And most Americans — 70 percent, according to a recent Monmouth University poll — believe that the climate is changing. So perhaps now we can move on to the really hard part of this whole business.

The initial heavy lifting will have to be done by policy makers. I feel for them. It’s hard to take a tough stand on an important but long-term issue in the face of so many near-term problems, amid worries that reducing emissions will weaken our global economic position and fears that other countries may cheat on their emissions targets.

Where science can help is to keep track of changes in the Earth system — this is a research and monitoring job, led by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and their counterparts elsewhere in the world — and use our increasingly powerful computer models to explore possible futures associated with proposed policies. The models will help us decide which approaches are practicable, trading off near-term impacts to the economy against longer-term impacts to the climate.

Ultimately, though, it will be up to the engineers and industrialists of the world to save us. They must come up with the new technologies and the means of implementing them. The technical and organizational challenges of solving the problems of clean energy generation, storage and distribution are enormous, and they must be solved within a few decades with minimum disruption to the global economy. This will likely entail a major switch to nuclear, solar and other renewable power, with an electrification of our transport system to the maximum extent possible. These engineers and industrialists are fully up to the job, given the right incentives and investments. You have only to look at what they achieved during World War II: American technology and production catapulted over what would have taken decades to do under ordinary conditions and presented us with a world in 1945 that was completely different from the late 1930s.

What should the rest of us do? Two things come to mind. First, we should brace for change. It is inevitable. It will appear in changes to the climate and to the way we generate and use energy. Second, we should be prepared to absorb these with appropriate sang-froid. Some will be difficult to deal with, like rising seas, but many others could be positive. New technologies have a way of bettering our lives in ways we cannot anticipate.

There is no convincing, demonstrated reason to believe that our evolving future will be worse than our present, assuming careful management of the challenges and risks. History is replete with examples of us humans getting out of tight spots. The winners tended to be realistic, pragmatic and flexible; the losers were often in denial of the threat.

As for me, I’ve no complaints. I’m very grateful for the experiences I’ve had on this planet. As an astronaut I spacewalked 220 miles above the Earth. Floating alongside the International Space Station, I watched hurricanes cartwheel across oceans, the Amazon snake its way to the sea through a brilliant green carpet of forest, and gigantic nighttime thunderstorms flash and flare for hundreds of miles along the Equator. From this God’s-eye-view, I saw how fragile and infinitely precious the Earth is. I’m hopeful for its future.

And so, I’m going to work tomorrow.

If you lose all hope, you can always find it again -- Richard Ford in The Sportswriter
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Posted 2016-March-15, 12:20

"Is out-gassing another fart joke?"..at 3:13.. Sorry, couldn't resist.
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#2768 User is offline   PassedOut 

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Posted 2016-March-31, 13:41

A sobering article from Nature: Contribution of Antarctica to past and future sea-level rise

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Antarctica has the potential to contribute more than a metre of sea-level rise by 2100 and more than 15 metres by 2500, if emissions continue unabated. In this case atmospheric warming will soon become the dominant driver of ice loss, but prolonged ocean warming will delay its recovery for thousands of years.

And this is Antarctica alone, ignoring Greenland. Of course we can expect that emissions will not "continue unabated," but the current acceleration in sea level rise is already unstoppable for many years.
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#2769 User is offline   blackshoe 

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Posted 2016-March-31, 15:03

It is estimated that once upon a time, the water level in the Mediterranean Sea rose some 2500 feet over the course of a couple of months. Of course, that was several million years ago, so there were no humans around to stage protests or lobby for lots of government money to "study" the phenomenon.
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#2770 User is online   hrothgar 

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Posted 2016-March-31, 15:32

View Postblackshoe, on 2016-March-31, 15:03, said:

It is estimated that once upon a time, the water level in the Mediterranean Sea rose some 2500 feet over the course of a couple of months. Of course, that was several million years ago, so there were no humans around to stage protests or lobby for lots of government money to "study" the phenomenon.


That was also the result of an outburst flood rather than ice melt / thermal expansion

Its about as relevant to this discussion as hockey scores from 1954
Alderaan delenda est
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#2771 User is offline   Zelandakh 

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Posted 2016-April-01, 02:56

View PostPassedOut, on 2016-March-31, 13:41, said:


The link is not opening for me so I cannot check more than your quote but if the suggestion is that a quarter of the Antarctic ice sheet will melt (SLR from the entire sheet is ~60m) then I would like to see what evidence they provide for such a scenario as that seems somewhat unlikely based on current evidence. The entire Greenland ice sheet represents a potential of ~7m SLR, so probably another 2 or 3 metres in this (seemingly ridiculous) scenario. Perhaps the 15m is made up of thermal expansion as well as ice melt but if that were the case the quote is obviously flawed and simply alarmist.
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#2772 User is offline   Al_U_Card 

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Posted 2016-April-01, 05:50

Likely has to do with the 2 models that they used. (Surprise, surprise!)

More tangible measurements from the previous inter-glacial (Eemian) showed that a thousand years or so of 4-5 deg. C greater warmth than today actually provided quite a bit less SLR than what this study suggests for the current inter-glacial.

May have something to do with the inability of [CO2] to either affect or control the climate. It does, however, coincide causally with increased energy availability as well as a greener planet that can provide more food for its inhabitants but we can't have that, now, can we?
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#2773 User is offline   PassedOut 

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Posted 2016-April-01, 07:15

View PostZelandakh, on 2016-April-01, 02:56, said:

The link is not opening for me so I cannot check more than your quote but if the suggestion is that a quarter of the Antarctic ice sheet will melt (SLR from the entire sheet is ~60m) then I would like to see what evidence they provide for such a scenario as that seems somewhat unlikely based on current evidence. The entire Greenland ice sheet represents a potential of ~7m SLR, so probably another 2 or 3 metres in this (seemingly ridiculous) scenario. Perhaps the 15m is made up of thermal expansion as well as ice melt but if that were the case the quote is obviously flawed and simply alarmist.

For those who can't access the actual paper, here are some links that fairly (IMO) describe the analysis.

From Nature: Antarctic model raises prospect of unstoppable ice collapse

Quote

DeConto and co-author David Pollard, a palaeoclimatologist at Pennsylvania State University in University Park, developed a climate model that accounts for ice loss caused by warming ocean currents — which can eat at the underside of the ice sheet — and for rising atmospheric temperatures that melt it from above. Ponds of meltwater that form on the ice surface often drain through cracks; this can set off a chain reaction that breaks up ice shelves and causes newly exposed ice cliffs to collapse under their own weight.


From the Guardian: Sea levels set to 'rise far more rapidly than expected'

Quote

Sea levels could rise far more rapidly than expected in coming decades, according to new research that reveals Antarctica’s vast ice cap is less stable than previously thought.

The UN’s climate science body had predicted up to a metre of sea level rise this century - but it did not anticipate any significant contribution from Antarctica, where increasing snowfall was expected to keep the ice sheet in balance.

According a study, published in the journal Nature, collapsing Antarctic ice sheets are expected to double sea-level rise to two metres by 2100, if carbon emissions are not cut.

Previously, only the passive melting of Antarctic ice by warmer air and seawater was considered but the new work added active processes, such as the disintegration of huge ice cliffs.

“This [doubling] could spell disaster for many low-lying cities,” said Prof Robert DeConto, at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who led the work. He said that if global warming was not halted, the rate of sea-level rise would change from millimetres per year to centimetres a year. “At that point it becomes about retreat [from cities], not engineering of defences.”

As well as rising seas, climate change is also causing storms to become fiercer, forming a highly destructive combination for low-lying cities like New York, Mumbai and Guangzhou. Many coastal cities are growing fast as populations rise and analysis by World Bank and OECD staff has shown that global flood damage could cost them $1tn a year by 2050 unless action is taken.

The cities most at risk in richer nations include Miami, Boston and Nagoya, while cities in China, Vietnam, Bangladesh and Ivory Coast are among those most in danger in less wealthy countries.

The new research follows other recent studies warning of the possibility of ice sheet collapse in Antarctica and suggesting huge sea-level rises. But the new work suggests that major rises are possible within the lifetimes of today’s children, not over centuries.


From the NYT: Climate Model Predicts West Antarctic Ice Sheet Could Melt Rapidly

Quote

The new research, published by the journal Nature, is based on improvements in a computerized model of Antarctica and its complex landscape of rocks and glaciers, meant to capture factors newly recognized as imperiling the stability of the ice.

The new version of the model allowed the scientists, for the first time, to reproduce high sea levels of the past, such as a climatic period about 125,000 years ago when the seas rose to levels 20 to 30 feet higher than today.

That gave them greater confidence in the model’s ability to project the future sea level, though they acknowledged that they do not yet have an answer that could be called definitive.

No one claims that this is the last word on the matter, and we all hope things don't get that bad. But, for anyone with children, it would be foolish to ignore it. We're getting record warm years with increasing frequency, and the collapse of the permafrost would release enough methane to escalate the problem further.
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Posted 2016-April-01, 08:16

Not so for methane nor for "extreme" weather. Perhaps our children and theirs as well would rather we improve economic well-being rather than spending our resources foolishly trying to change the weather by controlling something which has little or no effect. People, OTOH appear to be amenable to such control if you scare them enough....
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#2775 User is offline   Daniel1960 

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Posted 2016-April-04, 10:01

View PostPassedOut, on 2016-April-01, 07:15, said:

For those who can't access the actual paper, here are some links that fairly (IMO) describe the analysis.

From Nature: Antarctic model raises prospect of unstoppable ice collapse



From the Guardian: Sea levels set to 'rise far more rapidly than expected'



From the NYT: Climate Model Predicts West Antarctic Ice Sheet Could Melt Rapidly


No one claims that this is the last word on the matter, and we all hope things don't get that bad. But, for anyone with children, it would be foolish to ignore it. We're getting record warm years with increasing frequency, and the collapse of the permafrost would release enough methane to escalate the problem further.


Their results are based upon modeled ice loss forecasted due to warming waters. NASA has data on the actual growth of Antarctic sea ice. So yes, this is not the last word on the matter.

http://www.nasa.gov/...ter-than-losses
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Posted 2016-April-04, 11:34

View PostDaniel1960, on 2016-April-04, 10:01, said:

Their results are based upon modeled ice loss forecasted due to warming waters. NASA has data on the actual growth of Antarctic sea ice. So yes, this is not the last word on the matter.

http://www.nasa.gov/...ter-than-losses

Thanks for the link, which makes perfectly clear the need to get emissions under control.

Quote

According to the new analysis of satellite data, the Antarctic ice sheet showed a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001. That net gain slowed to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008.

So the gain was slowing between 1992 and 2008. The last I looked, we've reached the year 2016.

Quote

“If the losses of the Antarctic Peninsula and parts of West Antarctica continue to increase at the same rate they’ve been increasing for the last two decades, the losses will catch up with the long-term gain in East Antarctica in 20 or 30 years -- I don’t think there will be enough snowfall increase to offset these losses.”

Or sooner, but the trend is clear. As you've made clear once again, only the most irresponsible people now deny that action must be taken to slow emissions.
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Posted 2016-April-04, 13:58

To what extent will those reductions reduce global temperatures? How much reduction by the west is needed to counteract the ever-increasing emissions of the Chinese? Why are they not "concerned". (In both meanings of the word.)
Praying for divine intervention would be almost as effective and much less expensive...
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Posted 2016-April-04, 14:12

Using RCP 8.5 without specifying its need to ensure alarming results is at the heart of the matter. Apparently, imaginary tripling of CO2 effect on water vapour (the real ghg) is still not enough to generate the fear required.
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Posted 2016-April-09, 08:37

Daniel's favorite, Nasa, is in the news again: Melting ice sheets changing the way the Earth wobbles on its axis, says Nasa

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Since 2003, Greenland has lost on average more than 272 trillion kilograms of ice a year, and that affects the way the Earth wobbles in a manner similar to a figure skater lifting one leg while spinning, said Nasa scientist Eirk Ivins, the study’s co-author.

On top of that, West Antarctica loses 124 trillion kgs of ice and East Antarctica gains about 74 trillion kgs of ice yearly, helping tilt the wobble further, Ivins said.

They all combine to pull polar motion toward the east, Adhikari said.

And they all combine to push sea levels higher and higher.
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Posted 2016-April-09, 09:14

Not to mentiom the adjusments to the SLR that take it from the 1.7 mm/yr to that whopping 3.2 which comes in at less than a foot by 2100....oh noes!
A quick glance at holocene SLR puts the whole thing in proper perspective.
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