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We are Global Warming: 71 Months and Counting...
100 Months to Save the World
"You are not stuck in traffic," says the advert for a satnav system, "You are traffic."
The
doors of perception often hang heavy on rusty hinges. Regardless of
motivation, though, good advertising can work like good art. It issues
an irresistible invitation to see the world differently. Here we leap
from the familiar grumble about congestion, to the unsettling realization that we are the thing we grumble about.
Behind the advert is a familiar irony, that the solution proffered merely relocates the problem, or creates a new one (such as taking a large family estate car full of screaming children up a track fit only for athletic goats - well, it looked good on the computer's map). But, in well-crafted messages meaning can escape narrow motivation.
We are not hapless victims of circumstances, we are deeply complicit in creating them. At the heart of our complicity is how we allow ourselves, actively or passively, to accept versions of reality. These may be offered, or emerge as unintended consequences of what we do. Sometimes we are so biddable that we allow our perception of reality to bend to breaking point. It is not merely the fault of weak self-awareness: are we stuck in traffic or are we the traffic? It is also due to our poor judgment of risk and what will give us the world we really want.
John Lanchester's brief but magisterial account of the banking collapse provides a perfect example.
The financial system is the (shaky) foundation upon which the economy rests. In recent decades money became not just the medium, but the message, and excuse for all sorts of antisocial behavior. In turn, the financial system rested upon assessments of risk. To say that these, too, were shaky, doesn't quite capture the full picture. It mattered so enormously because - as we learned to our vast, incalculable cost - the foundations of our own livelihoods rested on this deeper foundation, understanding risk.
Here's what reality looked like down there. The edifice of modern, financial capitalism bet trillions of dollars and our collective economic future on the fact that people with often no income, job or assets were unlikely to default on large, relatively expensive mortgages.
To simplify, massively, after these debts had been chopped-up, sold-on and insured, the "masters of the universe" convinced themselves, using very impressive mathematics, that the chance of something going badly wrong (having lent lots of money to people with no obvious means of paying it back) would be, in Lanchester's words, "literally the most unlikely thing to have happened in the history of the universe".
The risks were, according to the CEO of Goldman Sachs, so-called "25 sigma" events. What's that? It's a number, a really big one, and worth quoting to demonstrate just how wrong the very influential and self-confident people who are running things can be. Imagine, says Lanchester, a number equal to 10 times all the particles in the known universe, and then move the decimal point 52 places to the right. Bang. We live with the consequences of a quite extraordinary collective delusion.
There were bad smells everywhere that should have alerted people in positions whose job it was to avoid collapse. But they hunkered down, ignored the signs. It was easier to go with the flow. Just like what we are doing now on the cusp of triggering potentially irreversible climatic upheaval.
What does it say when amid the global economic gloom a company like Control Risks, is handsomely in profit because it makes money by providing protection to oil companies in war zones?
Or, when measurements from the Mauna Loa observatory continue to show an inexorable rise of levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere? Bad smells, all.
Stick with those numbers. First, take the mega bank crisis, meant to be an unimaginably remote risk, but which happened. Second, roll the dice of potentially runaway global warming. Roughly, when this blog counts down to zero, the odds of getting "locked-in" to crossing the global warming danger line of temperatures rising by 2C becomes worse than 50/50. Not a number so large that only a savant could imagine it, but something more likely than coming up "heads" on the toss of a coin. With odds like that you might expect a flurry of activity, a rush to save energy, a great crushing of urban 4x4s, a drive to change the nations infrastructure. What we've had is a secretary of state for energy and climate change, reportedly suggesting that deficit reduction should come before financing a green investment bank.
For decades the financial sector demanded and received deference from virtually every government in the western world. It got its own way. In the UK we rolled out the red carpet. Yet their perception of risk and reality was so wrong that they wrecked the thing they were left in charge of.
If that is allowed to happen again with climate change, and the odds are looking a lot worse, there will be no way back. What can words do this new year? Perhaps, aid a simple shift of perception that may allow for change.
We are not stuck with global warming. We are global warming.
71 months and counting ...
- Take action and visit onehundredmonths.org
129 Comments so far
Show Allhttp://www.propublica.org/article/the-magnetar-trade-how-one-hedge-fund-helped-keep-the-housing-bubble-going
Unfortunately, this is just not true. Spreading the word and individuals changing their personal ways would not be nearly enough to even put a small dent in the climate change picture, at least not without a major human die-off. Not only do we have to feed seven billion people without using fossil fuels in the production and distribution of food, and get all the food production people to buy in and be on the same page, all over the world with nobody trying in even the slightest way to skew the system for either personal or tribal advantage, but the same process would need to be done for, among other necessities, electricity -- the global grid is in bad shape now and could go at any time.
71 months isn't time enough to even formulate a plan much less persuade those who lead large institutions (corporate, military, and governmental) who command big scale resources this particular plan is the way to go and not somebody's ego trip.
The way things are going right now, we'll be lucky to make it to 12/21/12. The only hope is some sort of instantaneous spiritual transformation that hit the human psyche across the globe including all the elites. It could happen.
Happy New Year.
"We are not stuck with global warming. We are global warming."
No kidding. Check out the Bagger 288 at this link. It is the largest mobil land machine on Earth. It drives around Germany following coal veins then rips them from the Earth with a vengeance.
http://www.theoilage.com/wtf-is-that-t1445.html
I think this article is over my head. I am not getting it, for some reason. Is it me?
Anyway, i was under the impression that the banking/mortgage collapse was obviously intentional. No Mr. Simms, they didn't expect things to 'work' that way. They made bets on the collapse happening. Didn't you know that?
You got it. It's a manufactured crisis. It also has nothing to do with recession, and everything to do with intentional fraud.
Goldman Sachs is the financial backer of the AGW-promotion, which seeks to destroy western economies in favor of China.
Despite the burning of over 300 billion barrels of oil in the last decade, temperatures have not risen, but flatlined and slightly declined.
The real worry should be running out of oil, because once oil and gas are gone, so will, in rapid succession, billions of humans, who can only be alive today BECAUSE there is oil and gas. Oil is the hated lifeblood of humanity. Cut off oil, and 5-6 billion humans will be sentenced to death.
I think you may be wrong about what you say in your first paragraph, but I can't prove it and wouldn't dream of trying
the "peak oil" crisis is very real and even if climate change is somehow not the outcome of global industrialization, what you say about 5-6 billion people is absolutely true. Either way (or both, as I see it) the prospects are not good.
Do you have ANY clue what the draining of geothermal heat will mean to the planet and life on the surface? What I have learned from life is that everything - absolutely everything - has a pro and a con side to it. We may not yet know the con, but that does not mean there isn't one.
Likewise, geothermal energy cannot fertilize the soil and is no replacement for oil.
Human's cannot "manage" the world's climate. It is a ridiculous notion from the start. All we can do is manage how world population develops. The rest takes care of itself.
".....Nope; we cannot manage the world's climate, but we sure as Hell can alter it and cause global warming by burning fossil fuels....."
That is a superior summation of the current state of affairs.
Drilling rigs are virtually the same, whether used for oil or geothermal drilling.
As far as the effects of oil-based fertilizers on the ocean, of course I am aware of that. But again, the problem is not oil, but the demands that human population places on food production. As much as you hate the effects of oil and gas, you cannot feed 7 billion people without oil and gas. Without oil and gas, you'll be lucky to produce enough food for a billion, especially since the world has turned to monoculture farming and soil degradation. Soil management has been thrown out the window in favor of "fertilizing" the hell out of it. It is a vicious cycle. Population growth drives destruction. You cannot stop the destruction without population decline.
Also Dupont killed hemp.
The Feds keep attacking the Lakota farmers growing hemp.
Silver Fox -- Very insightful post on geothermal as an energy alternative. There are some areas of the world such as Iceland where this source offers fantastic prospects even with current technology.
"Using current technologies, geothermal power is primarily available where hot magma finds its way close to the surface and heats ground water to usable temperatures above 212F.
These hydrothermal hot spots don’t occur everywhere. In the U.S. they are located in the Western States, Alaska, and Hawaii."
Widespread geothermal would require major improvements in drilling technology but there is a huge potential and this would be a much cleaner energy source than fossil fuels. And of course the idea that using geothermal would somehow drain the heat reserves of the core of the earth is absurd.
After 4 billion years the earth's core should be much cooler than it is. Fortunately, radioactive breakdown is heating the interior and we are standing on an immense natural nuclear reactor offering a remarkable energy source.
http://www.energy-consumers-edge.com/pros_and_cons_of_geothermal_energy.html
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=iceland-geothermal-to-thaw-frozen-economy
I'll have to investigate Ford's hemp engine as I can't recall coming across that before. I knew that logging and paper interests viewed hemp farming as dangerous competition to their profits.
"Despite the burning of over 300 billion barrels of oil in the last decade, temperatures have not risen, but flatlined and slightly declined."
Hmm, I guess we're just not burning enough oil in Northern Canada because the bloody sea ice keeps decreasing.
Jonathan Edwards, have you not been reading the science of this age's global warming?
Also, oil is not quite about to run out. There is enough; however, it's going to be dirtier and more difficult, hence more expensive to extract that which is left. When that happens, only a few will have access to oil.
As the story goes a woman of European heritage talked to me about something she called, Saving The Earth back in 1987. If I had been sitting I would have fallen out of the chair, rolled around on the floor, and perhaps died laughing. Which is as good as way to go as any I guess.
23 years later The Earth is still here, and I am still here.
All that has happened in 23 years is the Bills have come in, and the Bills needed to be paid. All that has happened in 23 years is my journey through the lunatic insane asylum world the Europeans built in our land has not yet been completed, but today is merely one more day closer to my journey through their world being completed.
71 months is only around 6 years. If I should live that long all that will happen is the Bills will come in and the Bills will need to be paid. The Constant in life under European rule and living the European way upon Creator's earth is that the Bills come in and the Bills have to be paid.
Within that Constant in this land the Europeans will hold another Election where either Obama will be Re-Elected or the people of their Nation will elect a Republican.
Within that Constant people of the European's Nation will discuss something they call "The Issues" when there aren't any "Issues" at all with the Banks and Corporations that rule over them. The only "Issue" the Banks and Corporations have is finding Puppets to do their Bidding while they are in office.
Life being a constant where every dog is always on someone else's leash.
The only slightly interesting thing to me is Articles about Iris Scans perhaps being made Mandatory down the road of time the European's call the Future. Then everyone's Iris Scan would be Computerized and linked to the File kept upon them.
It's interesting somewhat but not all that interesting at all.
Life is good. What an experience! It's always best to forgive.
"Despite the burning of over 300 billion barrels of oil in the last decade, temperatures have not risen, but flatlined and slightly declined." Where do you dip shits get off spreading this Reich wing manure around here? Read the IPCC's last report for some real science not the stuff the OILY cartels paid for shills fart out and then pay their media shills like you to spread. But u won't do that will you? Instead, you'll take your pay check and continue to spread these vicious lies everywhere.
Thanks for the insults. When you don't have fact in your corner, I suppose insults will do.
As far as your IPCC, they're a bunch of paid, data-manipulating liars, who will sell their souls to the highest bidders. The IPCC is linked to the UN is linked to Maurice Strong is linked to Goldman Sachs. Follow the money. There's huge money to be made in the perpetuation of the "Man-made" Global Warming myth.
Third, your "scientists" have been dropping more and more global temperature measuring stations from the record - now cherry-picking records from merely 40% of stations they used to get records from up until 20 years ago - in order to keep the trillion-dollar myth alive by all means.
Fourth, the data to establish that temperatures have indeed trended downward during the last 10 years comes from the same data records from which your "scientists" filter 60% of stations out.
Stuff that into your pipe and smoke it, you nasty excuse for a human being.
Oh there's plenty of facts. Those do no good with the likes of you.
(For example, you have been alerted to the reality of those weather stations, yet you repeat it as if it were some sort of "argument." You can look up the facts, but you will repeat the BS.)
It has long been understood that CO2 is a "greenhouse gas," meaning it retains heat more efficiently than the general mix of atmospheric gases. Remove the heat-retaining effect of atmospheric CO2 and watch life on Earth collapse.
Human activities, primarily burning of fossil fuels, have increased atmospheric CO2 by roughly 50% since the start of the industrial revolution.
Simple question: What is all that extra greenhouse gas in the atmosphere doing, if not retaining heat more efficiently than the general mix of atmospheric gases? Do you dispute that CO2 is a greenhouse gas?
Here's a slogan you can adopt, free of charge: "Either you are with me, or you are with the scientists!" We know which side you are on. Whether you are a paid shill, or just a useful idiot, is the only question.
You will experience the collapse of civilization and the ongoing degradation of the living Earth with those of us who do not live in your fantasy world. Biologically and physically, we all live in the real world, whatever our fantasies may be.
"Human activities, primarily burning of fossil fuels, have increased atmospheric CO2 by roughly 50% since the start of the industrial revolution."
No, it hasn't. The human component of atmospheric CO2 - which in it comprises less than 0.04% of the entire atmosphere - is a tiny fraction of overall annual CO2 output.
Is the glass half empty? or is it half full? Instead of blaming emissions, you might want to look at the impact of razing trillions of acres of forest around the world, in response to the perceived needs of ever-growing population, as the reason why CO2 is rising. Population explosion is the reason/cause for all the symptoms you see. But the symptoms themselves are not the cause of any problem. Unless you find a way to get people to have less children, and that global human population recedes, you are pissing in the wind. Uncurbed human population growth WILL destroy the ecology HUMANS need for survival. The planet will not die.
CO2 is a greenhouse gas. So what? Be thankful it's there. Even in the last 2000 years global temperatures have been higher than today for several human lifetimes. The carbon from over 300 billion barrels of oil, not counting natural gas and coal, has been released into the atmosphere, and despite that, temperatures have not risen, which is consistent with sunspot activity, but not with the CO2-dogma.
And no, I am not with the IPCC [which you erroneously call 'scientists'. When money determines the outcome of 'science', it ceases to be such.]. The IPCC is inhabited by liars, deceivers and manipulators. And these liars "exonerating" each other doesn't change that fact.
I agree with your last paragraph, but not with the path how you arrive there. Humans are breeding this planet to destruction. That is the ONLY problem this planet has at this point.
Funnyman Edwards writes in reply to me:
*******************************************
"Human activities, primarily burning of fossil fuels, have increased atmospheric CO2 by roughly 50% since the start of the industrial revolution."
No, it hasn't. The human component of atmospheric CO2 - which in it comprises less than 0.04% of the entire atmosphere - is a tiny fraction of overall annual CO2 output.
*******************************************
Your esteemed dudeness, i am sorry to have to point this out, but your reply does not refute - does not even address - my statement. It has NOTHING TO DO with "annual CO2 output" nor with "the human component of atmospheric CO2." These are smokescreen distractions designed to dupe illiterates into doubt.
It has to do with the actual percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere - i see you do not dare to pretend that the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere hasn't gone up by roughly 50% since the onset of the industrial revolution after being very stable for many millennia before we started burning fossil fuels. And it has to do with the human contribution to that change in the atmosphere. This is settled science, and you are not even on the lunatic fringe of scientific thought on this matter: you are in your own bizarro world.
Human activity has increased atmospheric CO2 by roughly 50%. This is fact.
You are either a fool or a liar. i tend to believe you are a liar.
Thankfully, as you are aware, the vast majority of CD readers see your crap for what it is. Rave on, liar.
I stopped reading your post after the first paragraph. Get some manners, will you?
Go to hell, will you?
This is obfuscation with a bit of truth thrown in to make it look plausible. The 0.04% is irrelevant. It is the effects of CO2 over and above its ability to be absorbed that is relevant, and this is what we are seeing. It is very likely that human activities have pushed CO2 levels beyond the ability to be absorbed in carbon sinks. It is why the ppm is rising and why global warming is real. I suspect the steady, non-rising temperatures referred to is an example of "cherry-picking" which, in this case, is probably a matter of isolating a section of the temperature graph to "prove" a point when it is actually a sneaky way of avoiding the complete picture. But it could be one of a number of other methods of obscuring the relevant facts. Or it could be drawn from thin air. Who knows?
Those old lumpy denial terms like "dogma" are getting really worn.
Population and deforestation are relevant. Of course.
I repeat again. Animal and Plant Life on the planet flourished the most during periods when CO2 was between 2000 and 2500 ppm, and temperatures were 10 degrees warmer.
Warming has NEVER caused an extinction. Cooling has once, it is believed. The planet has only twice been as cold as it is today, and that was 450 million years ago [causing the first Extinction] as well as about 300 million years ago.
Rising CO2 levels are not a problem for plant and animal life. Cold temperatures are.
Do you click your heels every time you repeat it to make sure the magic works?
Yes, warming is considered a significant factor in the Permian extinction and others. No matter how many times you repeat yourself, the facts still exist.
As a matter of fact, we are well into another major extinction event (triggered by global warming and the linked environmental degradation) as we speak. This is not to say that at some future time, a few million years possibly, another flora and fauna will not evolve in a warm world (as it once did), but that's a bit off our current interest, I think.
Holy cow.
Really outdoing ourselves here today, aren't we, Jonathan Edwards?
CO2 "dogma"?
Blame the "breeders"?
Research community skewing empirical data for the massive cash reward involved?
You need some fresh material, pal.
Geez.
"The edifice of modern, financial capitalism bet trillions of dollars and our collective economic future on the fact that people with often no income, job or assets were likely to default on large, relatively expensive mortgages."
Fixed that for you. I am never content when apologists assign stupidity to clever men as rationale for their actions.
Nor am I any more agreeable on the proposition that science is now spelled magic and has a crystal ball capable of predicting the future. The first nonsense was saying that a usable model of actions affecting climate was possible. The second was saying that this untestable hypothesis would be a basis for calculation which would give reliable results.
Dream on.
Same question for you:
It has long been understood that CO2 is a "greenhouse gas," meaning it retains heat more efficiently than the general mix of atmospheric gases. Remove the heat-retaining effect of atmospheric CO2 and watch life on Earth collapse.
Human activities, primarily burning of fossil fuels, have increased atmospheric CO2 by roughly 50% since the start of the industrial revolution.
Simple question: What is all that extra greenhouse gas in the atmosphere doing, if not retaining heat more efficiently than the general mix of atmospheric gases? Do you dispute that CO2 is a greenhouse gas?
Another simple question: Is CO2 concentration in the atmosphere the only variable in climatic temperatures?
Fact: The planet had the most animal and plant life on it when atmospheric CO2 concentrations were 5-7 times as high as today [2000-2500ppm], and average temperatures were 10 degrees warmer. You cannot deny that.
Jonathan, so you now accept that CO2 concentrations do INDEED raise global temperatures but that we should be pleased with this development.
We all need to buy Hummers and burn fossil fuels as rapidly as possible to usher in this new livelier world?
Please take a look at some of the research on the Permian-Triassic Extinction event before you wish runaway global warming on all of us:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian-Triassic_extinction_event
http://www.palaeos.org/Permian_extinction
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=impact-from-the-deep
Humans have developed over the last 10,000 years with a period of remarkable stability:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/30/era-of-climate-stability-end
This appears to be coming to an end due to our burning of fossil fuels, deforestation, etc. -- and aside from immense challenges for humans this rapid climate change will led to massive waves of extinction and ecosystem collapse.
Hard to think of this as a good thing but since the political & economic powers that run our institutions seem hellbent on continuing the experiment, I suppose you will get your wish.
Randy, I posted the scientific claims of 2000-2500 ppm atmospheric CO2 as well as 22C average global temperature during the time when this planet had incredible amounts of life, both flora and fauna. Today, the planet is in a phase of unusually low concentrations of CO2, only once before seen, during a period that lasted approximately 50 million years and preceded the dinosaurs. Likewise, the planet's normal average temperature is in the range of 20-22C, about 10C higher than today, and it is believed it has been this cold during only two prior periods, one of which coolings caused the First Extinction. Climate and temperature are determined by a myriad of factors. CO2 by itself determines very little in terms of what temperatures are going to be like. Sun activity has a much greater influence on that than CO2 could ever hope to have. While many factors shape climate, not one factor determines what will be. Beyond that, I make no claim as to causality.
This fact shows that neither higher concentrations of CO2 [at least to those levels] nor global warming, pose a problem. Quite the opposite. Warmth and higher CO2 concentrations are beneficial to life.
How humans - the destroyers of the biosphere - fare in all this is inconsequential as to its conclusion.
The planet's species' woes started when humans started to tear open the ground and started farming, long before the age of oil. That was the point when humans broke out of the equilibrium and began destroying it.
With oil, the planet can support 7 billion humans. Without oil, perhaps 1. Without farming, perhaps 50 million.
We can all become vegetarians, but that will not change the longterm effect that 7 billion will turn into 25 billion, and we'll be at the same point again as today. Humanity's inability to control it's numbers within the limits of natural sustainability will paint the planet into a corner every time a way gets found to get us out of "a crisis" [which is only a crisis for humanity, not for the rest of the species. The better humans do, the worse the rest of the planet.]. Instead of using the solution to get our numbers down gently, humanity uses the new development to bring us right back to an accelerated state of crisis by means of overpopulation. By all indications [1.167% annually], and unless oil production diminishes, human population will reach 10 billion within approximately 30 years. There will come a time when even 100% vegetarianism will not save humanity from the collapse we have been building toward for the last 150 years.
It's frustrating debating hot button issues such as global warming--especially when you suspect your 'opponent' is an idiot and/or liar -- but it probably won't undermine your arguments to retain some civil composure in the exchange.
I don't think there is anything one can offer to persuade someone like 'Jonothan Edwards' who is convinced that the IPCC--and the thousands of climate scientists who provide the scientific research and input-- are all liars.
Any scientific study you point to is simply part of the conspiracy to promote the myth of human induced climate change.
I have had these discussions with my niece and her husband about Darwinian evolution-- as they are both 'born again' Baptists who believe that evolution is a secular humanist conspiracy against Jesus. Any scientific research I point to in genetics or evolutionary biology that demonstrate evolution is dismissed as part of the conspiracy.
They have also picked up the same right-wing meme pushed by conservative Christians such as James Inofe that 'global warming' is a hoax pushed by conniving scientists, environmental radicals, and socialists.
http://inhofe.senate.gov/pressreleases/climateupdate.htm
We know that immensely wealthy corporations such as Exxon fund climate change denial--but who is bribing 97% of climate scientists to promote it as a threat? Greenpeace? Soros? Hippies collecting spare change on Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley?
http://motherjones.com/environment/2009/12/dirty-dozen-climate-change-denial-exxon
Jonathan may be getting his information from sites such as this one:
http://www.conservativeforchange.com/2010/03/global-warming-shut-down-ipcc.html
The IPCC is fairly cautious in its pronouncements and in fact may be understating the real challenges:
http://planetsave.com/2008/09/10/new-studies-conclude-the-ipcc-sea-level-rise-projections-are-too-conservative/
"The IPCC does not carry out its own original research, nor does it do the work of monitoring climate or related phenomena itself. A main activity of the IPCC is publishing special reports on topics relevant to the implementation of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC),[4] an international treaty that acknowledges the possibility of harmful climate change. Implementation of the UNFCCC led eventually to the Kyoto Protocol. The IPCC bases its assessment mainly on peer reviewed and published scientific literature."
There is no absolute certainty in climate change research--at least until you reach a point where you are living in a world transformed by greenhouse gas emissions.
At that point it will be utterly impossible to prevent or reverse the worst consequences of flooding, drought, heat waves, super-storms, etc.
Is it more plausible that the 97% of climate researchers who consider human induced global warming as real are correct-- or that James Inofe & the Exxon Corporation will be validated in the long run?
If there is even a 17% chance that 97% of climate researchers are correct than wouldn't that compel us to take serious precautions since the consequences are so potentially catastrophic?
http://news.mongabay.com/2009/0122-climate.html
How would you rank the intelligence of a smoker who says there is only a 17% chance of me developing lung cancer-- so why worry about it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lung_cancer
How would you judge a parent who said, "I don't care if my kid plays Russian Roulette because there is less than a 17% chance of her blowing her brains out."
Imagine an engineering study that claims that there is a 5% chance that a freeway overpass will collapse on a local pre-school. What would you think of a city council that decided it would be too expensive to reinforce the overpass or move the school, and instead denigrated the motives of the engineers involved in the study?
http://www.startribune.com/local/11558136.html
>>Randy G wrote: How would you rank the intelligence of a smoker who says there is only a 17% chance of me developing lung cancer-- so why worry about it?<<
I wouldn't give the least bit of a damn if the said smoker lives somewhere far from me, smoking away. But I WOULD give a damn if he shares my office space - because then I would have to worry about MYSELF affected by secondhand smoke.
I wish the deniers live some place else and spew forth their theories without having an effect on me or the other human beings. I wish I could be one of those warning a bus full of drunken idiots warning that the road ahead is dangerous, visibility poor, and so to slow down, ***while standing outside*** the bus. Suppose those idiots say that there was nothing to worry, it's all a liberal hoax and that they know what they were doing. Then I could be concerned, as a fellow human being, but not alarmed about my own safety. The situation would be entirely different if I happened to be stuck as a fellow passenger along with these maniacs.
That is what is happening today with the deniers. They lack the basic intelligence as to how to handle uncertainty in scientific research and findings (even assuming that this so-called "uncertainty" is not manufactured in the first place). There is the precautionary principle. Instead, some people seem so willing to conduct the damn experiment while sitting INSIDE the test tube and have the audacity to tell everyone else to go along. BTW, "In the Test Tube" is the opening video in an excellent video series on climate change and decision-making, put together by an Oregon science teacher:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF_anaVcCXg
or
http://highintel.com/content/how-it-all-ends
In other words Hello Goodbye!
Corps want to melt the caps for resources and sea routes.
J.E. sounds like a closet exterminator.
And you sound like a hysterical idiot. :-)
That's Jonathan Edwards talking to himself.
Triggering this positive feedback loop is frightening. Once it starts it will keep warming up the planet, sending out more trapped CH4, and warming it more, and sending out more CH4 etc, etc....
It makes me wonder if the planet has ways of regulating temperatures in response to climate changes. Perhaps if the earth warms up too much it will affect ocean currents which will trigger an ice age. Either way there is that common cliché "It is not wise to mess with Mother Nature".
The abundance of methane in the Earth's atmosphere in 1998 was 1745 parts per billion (ppb), up from 700 ppb in 1750. By 2008, however, global methane levels, which had stayed mostly flat since 1998, had risen to 1,800 ppb.[6] By 2010, methane levels, at least in the Arctic, were measured at 1850 ppb, a level scientists described as being higher than at any time in the previous 400,000 years.[7] Historically, methane concentrations in the world's atmosphere have ranged between 300 and 400 ppb during glacial periods commonly known as ice ages, and between 600 to 700 ppb during the warm interglacial periods.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane
The carbon atom is the sixth element on the periodic table and it has six electrons and six protons.
I am not superstitious but wasn't there some myth about people who were marked with the number and would be the one's suffering?
666
"Global wamring is a very rare event on Earth. We are in the midst of only the third such event during the past 251 million years. The last two tmes it got pretty nasty after atmospheric Co2 levles reached the 400 ppm range."
Was the warming caused by increased CO2 levels, CO2 increases caused by warming, or were both caused by a third, unrelated event?
Same to you as to Funnyman Edwards.
This is settled science. If you are "seriously" proposing these questions with regard to the present instance of warming, you are not on the lunatic fringe of scientific thought on the matter. You are in your own bizarro world.
Regular CD readers have seen your idiocy on CD climate threads before. Rave on, Dimmwit.
Actually, these very questions are listed as items for continued research on most of the scientific websites (as opposed to the activist sites) for climatology. Scientists are doing their best to describe the natural processes of climate without the benefit of being able to test their models. Their most honest assessment is that their current models accurately describe the past, based on their observations of historical evidence. All honest scientists will admit that correlating ice layers from polar ice caps with fossil and sediment layers from oceanic and continental sources is not accurate enough to determine whether CO2 rose before or after atmospheric temperatures, prompting the question I posed. Indeed, the latest assessment I read showed that the precision of layer analysis was on the order of about 600 years, once past the last 30,000 years or so. That means that layer A in the ice (source of CO2 level analogs) and layer A in the sediment (source of temperature analogs) happened within 600 years of each other. Pretty good correlation for something that happened 250,000 years ago, but alas, there is not enough data to tell which came first.
The current climate models more or less accurately depict past temperature changes, showing that the scientists have correlation down pretty well (the settled part of the science). The further back they look, the better the models work. Much like a TV picture, the further away you stand the better the picture looks because the details fade into irrelevance. The models are based on a set of assumptions that can only be tested by matching the models' predictions with future climates. Since few are willing to wait 30 years to find out if they are right, they prudently propose immediate prophylaxis. The specific solutions proposed vary from the sensible to the downright absurd, and most are reflected here at CD.
Regular CD readers will have noticed -- if they will -- that my comments tend toward the skeptical when it comes to things that are "common knowledge". I suppose my scientific background, engineering mindset, and contrarian personality tend to challenge the unproven, no matter how "settled" the issue seems. If nothing else, the challenge to common knowledge leads others to learn and discuss the issues, and lets me learn from other thoughtful, intelligent posters, no matter how few they be.
Some of the most regular CD readers might also profitably spend more time reading non-CD and non-progressive materials. It would certainly broaden some horizens and might cut down on some of the adolescent name-calling that is so rampant on CD.
i accept the charge of name-calling. i have been sitting here with my housemate bemoaning the fact that i can't seem to stop.
That doesn't change the facts of climate science. i appreciate that you do not attempt to deny that humans have caused the current spike in atmospheric CO2, whatever debates you may cite about the chronology of past spikes relative to past warming catastrophes.
If i accept your skepticism as sincere, based in your own engineering background, i sincerely wonder how you can actively promote a do-nothing attitude on issues of human disruption of the climate. We need to slash our extraction of fossil fuels. Frankly it's too late to avert catastrophe, but still we need to do what we can.
Maybe name-calling is not worthy, but your promotion of "debate" while we evade this very practical matter of transforming human economic activity, is worthy of the disdain i feel.
How about you promote 30% unemployment instead? That'll take care of the CO2 emissions you are so worried about because, let's face it, the real result of your CO2 policy will be exactly that outcome.
While you're at it, I suggest you promote a policy to immediately raise the price of food by 500% or more. That too will be a result of the end of oil and of CO2 policy.
Without oil, the world is going to experience rapid and violent change beyond your wildest imagination.
May I suggest that, if you will still be one of the "have's", you arm yourself heavily and get yourself a lot of ammunition to fend off the "have not's", because the effects of your envisioned policy will not be pretty.
If you think we can just 'slide' into a non-carbon age, you're dreaming.
Food yields are ONLY as high as they are, because there is oil and natural gas input. Remove that component, and food yields will crash. What will your answer be to the poor of the planet, why they can no longer afford to even eat rice?
Your envisioned policies are horribly misguided. There is no geological evidence that rising CO2 levels would lead to extinction. Quite the opposite. Rising CO2 levels are incredibly helpful for plant life, which in turn produces more food and more oxygen.
There was only one time when CO2 levels were as "low" as they are today, from about 315-270mya, and global temperatures were believed to have fallen from around 20C to 12C [where it is today]. When CO2 levels and temperatures rose again to the normal 2000ppm and 22C respectively, the planet again teemed with life.
During the times when life flourished on the planet, atmospheric CO2 levels were between 2000 and 2500 ppm, average temperatures were 10 degrees warmer than today, the planet was basically tropical [even in what is now Canada], and there was far more animal and plant life than today. It was collision with comets and asteroids, as well as the onset of COOLING/ICE AGE, that are believed to be the culprits in all the previous extinctions. Global Warming has never, in the past, caused an Extinction or been detrimental to life on the planet.
In geological terms, that is irrelevant. Life has flourished at CO2 levels 5-6 times as high. Higher CO2 is like fertilizer to plant life.
Anyway, why do I have to keep repeating myself?
Off to bed. Sleep well.
...I sincerely wonder how you can actively promote a do-nothing attitude on issues of human disruption of the climate. We need to slash our extraction of fossil fuels. Frankly it's too late to avert catastrophe, but still we need to do what we can.
Maybe name-calling is not worthy, but your promotion of "debate" while we evade this very practical matter of transforming human economic activity, is worthy of the disdain i feel.
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True.
The impression I get from climate change skeptics like our very own, Jonathan Edwards, is that all the effort that goes into research, the inconveniences we are faced to confront, and all the action to reform/ transform economies and lifestyles are all in vain. Do people understand that the climate crisis is in fact the amalgamation of environmental crises? Do we really have to prove that global warming is upon us beyond reasonable doubt before we actually do something about it - and I don't mean false market solutions? I guess Jonathan and all the rabid climate deniers out there just don't want to disturb life as they know it.
Who is a climate denier? Certainly not me. I know as well as the next person, that the climate is in a constant state of change. What I deny is the conclusions the climate-multi-billionaires propagate, in order to steer humanity into position, so they can enrich themselves even more, and create human catastrophe.
Luckily, the vast majority of humanity is not buying into AGW, and no matter how upset you get, it looks like at least right now your billionaires are not making headway - though I do not like the success of Goldman Sachs in plundering national treasuries -, and hopefully the world can work on energy-solutions that do not involve knee-jerk reactions from the hypocritical "peanut gallery", which condemns oil while happily using it on a daily basis themselves.
Brilliant frame! Multi-billionaires! Nobody trusts them!
Here's what the multi-billionaires in the American Geophysical Union have to say:
"The Earth's climate is now clearly out of balance and is warming. Many components of the climate system—including the temperatures of the atmosphere, land and ocean, the extent of sea ice and mountain glaciers, the sea level, the distribution of precipitation, and the length of seasons—are now changing at rates and in patterns that are not natural and are best explained by the increased atmospheric abundances of greenhouse gases and aerosols generated by human activity during the 20th century."
Goddamned elitist hate mongers! Those - er - working geophysicists are only in this for the billions of dollars they have invested in their, er, something. They certainly do not hold these solid beliefs for any reason having to do with their own research! The only people driving the lies about climate change are, er, most working climatologists, and the majority of scientists in every field, with highest majorities in fields directly related to specific expertise in climate.
Your tiresome dissembling is, well, tiresome. Rage on, Funnyman.
Scientists are for sale to the highest funder. You can get scientists to poison the planet or kill humanity, if you pay them enough. They are doing it right now. :-)
And no, I am not talking about the AGU. I am talking about their handlers: Maurice Strong, Bill Gates, Ted Turner, Richard Branson, the House of Rothschild, Goldman Sachs, the Club of Rome, the Rockefeller Foundation. These people are organizations determine the course of these scientists, not science. They will manipulate the data until it fits the budget of their sponsors.
Demonstrate it. Show me that the AGU has handlers.