Mitigation is very likely to be a joke until the consequences are being so painfully felt that they become the only priority. By then, it will be way, way too late. So, a zero mitigation strategy is correct for a model.
But business as usual is also a joke; Oil is running out, and in its wake we have centuries of coal left in the ground. And we will use it. We will make coal oil and coal gas and build more coal-electric plants and the CO2 per unit of work will increase markedly.
BAU is bad, but it may be the moderate/mid-line position, as it really isn't as bad as it could get. And if we do get into near-collapse situations, regulations and international agreements won't be worth the paper used to record them. We've seen how quickly one rogue administration can shred decades of negotiated agreements and treaties,...stressful times more often generate irrational actions and responses than reasoned and measured adaptations, unfortunately.
One can have all kinds of visions for the future, but your vision is based on the fantasy that some dream technology will save us all in the end. Are you a gambler?
So the "safe" money is on a wily beast that is hard to predict where it will go? And is it not a strawman to attack me for having forgotten existing technology when in fact I have only asked about why you think technology is such a safe bet?
I said the safe money is on a technology not even thought of yet. The problem is years away and technology moves at a pace hard to predict, suffice to say there will be more and more as time and the need progress.
Beyond what's being done right now, like wind farms, solar plants, stuff the economy can bare because the return on investment makes it feasible, there is only manipulating the economy, taxation, fees etc. Feel free to provide specific measures to discuss on a case by case basis if that's what you'd like.
Most of the "problem" resides solely in the minds of alarmists. Alarmists tend to forget the obvious advances in science and the benefits that came to us by way of burning fossil fuels and instead focus on ridiculous distractions like melting ice and polar bears.
That isn't a problem, that's an unfortunate result of enjoying a disease free life and the longest lifespan in human history.
The current rate of warming, as I said is considerably higher than the rate over the time period he cited, but he used the longer period deliberately so he could leave the impression the current rate of warming is much lower than the scientific consensus.
Because it's a deliberate lie to says they is "scientific consensus" on warming in the last 50 or 25 or 5 years.
There's 1 silly little opinion poll of American climate scientists and suddenly there's "scientific consensus" on AGW It's unbelievable just how desperate that is.
Mitigation is very likely to be a joke until the consequences are being so painfully felt that they become the only priority. By then, it will be way, way too late. So, a zero mitigation strategy is correct for a model.
There are no meaningful mitigation strategies in place yet (targets are not a strategy, and setting them does not constitute action ) and this is hardly a suddenly emergent problem. Nor are there mitigation strategies in prospect. All the real effort seems to be going into keeping it that way.
But business as usual is also a joke; Oil is running out, and in its wake we have centuries of coal left in the ground. And we will use it. We will make coal oil and coal gas and build more coal-electric plants and the CO2 per unit of work will increase markedly.
It's commonly thought that the Coal Age was superceded by the Oil Age, but this is only supercficially so. Oil has had a very visible impact through personal and military mobility, but coal was always carrying the big energy load for industry. The Coal Age never went away, but the Oil Age will be a passing phase.
The US military is supporting research into alternative fuels to maintain that mobility, which has always been key in warfare. As for personal mobility, it'll be back to bikes, public transport and urban living for most, and horses in the countryside. OK, that last is a bit fanciful ...
There's no need to build greenhouses on shield rock at the moment because there's more than enough fertile land. When and if it becomes cost effective to do so it it's just as easy to glass shield rock as it is the farm land we currently cover over.
I said dodge and red herring, I asked why our civilization would survive climate change when others have not and you have not answered that question other the to try and float the now disproved suggestion there have been no civilizations to collapse due to climate change.
So now you claim global climate change is ridiculously easy to mitigate (but somehow want us to believe more localized changes are not so easy to mitigate...) Since you can’t even seem to make an infernally consistent claim I’m sceptical of your ability to provide evidence for this claim but I’m going to have to ask for it anyway.
How about instead I point out recent theories that cite climate change as the biggest factor in the evolution of man from ape? There was a great special on NOVA recently and I'd be happy to discuss it.
What about it? I thought it was an interesting take, but you understand that if true it means pre-human populations were routinely decimated by climate change? Are you suggesting that having our population similarly decimated by climate change would be good because it’s a selective pressure forcing us to evolve?
The US military is supporting research into alternative fuels to maintain that mobility, which has always been key in warfare. As for personal mobility, it'll be back to bikes, public transport and urban living for most, and horses in the countryside. OK, that last is a bit fanciful ...
...Except a 900 ppm CO2 world isn't anywhere near "toxic". You obviously don't know much about growing and greenhouse (in some places called hothouses). A couple extra degrees and a little more CO2 is just going to help.
Exactly who has claimed that 900ppm of CO2 is "toxic" and under what circumstances, or with what qualifications was this stated? (though I must appluad you for recognizing that 900 -1200ppm CO2 is the increasingly likely result of human activities over the course of the next several decades.)
...Although the thousand-grain weight remained unchanged, size distribution was significantly shifted towards smaller grains, which may directly relate to lower market value. Total grain protein concentration decreased significantly by 7.4% under elevated CO2, and protein and amino acid composition were altered. Corresponding to the decline in grain protein concentration, CO2 enrichment resulted in an overall decrease in amino acid concentrations, with greater reductions in non-essential than essential amino acids...
And this doesn't even touch upon all the various open-air studies demonstrating everything from increases in cyanogenic compound production to reduced defense against insect predation.
150 years ago there were no crops "where crops grow now". We change where crops grow all the time. You couldn't grow crops here 200 years ago, but we changed that. That's what we do. It's such an absurd notion to think that because crops grow here now they have to grow here 100 years from now. And where there are no crops now we can't grow crops in 100 years. If we have to change the place in order for us to grow crops that's what we do.
You said you wanted to grow stuff on the Canadian Shield for some reason. I said "no problem, I'll put up a greenhouse and start growing as soon as it's feasible".
Alarmists have some absurd notion that farmland is some god given miracle. Like people just walked up and dropped a seed in the ground and poof, 300 acres of wheat. It took hundreds of years in some places to drain off swamps and dig out trees, heck they're still pulling rocks out of fields that have been growing for 100 years.
Now all of a sudden because of Global Warming you think people are complete idiots, incapable of turning land that can't grow into farmland As if there's no technology and no machinery to do in a fraction of the time what took farmers and a few mules their entire lifetime?
It's been a period of relative ease for farmers in the last 100 years. They haven't had to do the hard work to make the land arable in a while. If Global Warming necessitates it that's what they will do, they will make land that isn't currently arable arable.
Maybe prices will go up and we won't have to subsidize the farming industry. So what? I don't have a problem with people paying and honest price for their food.
I said dodge and red herring, I asked why our civilization would survive climate change when others have not and you have not answered that question other the to try and float the now disproved suggestion there have been no civilizations to collapse due to climate change.
No you're trying to say civilizations collapsed from climate change when they didn't. The cause for the collapses you mentioned are well documented. If you have a specific civilization that collapsed due to climate change then say which one it is and why it collapsed so I can tell you why it won't happen again. Trying to say the Egyptian empire collapsed due to climate change when it's well documented that the Romans invading was the reason is ridiculous. Saying the great civilization of Easter Island collapsed due to climate change is funny on so many levels. I can't help but think of Lord of the Flies and wonder if that great civilization didn't collapse due to climate change as well.
So now you claim global climate change is ridiculously easy to mitigate (but somehow want us to believe more localized changes are not so easy to mitigate...) Since you can’t even seem to make an infernally consistent claim I’m sceptical of your ability to provide evidence for this claim but I’m going to have to ask for it anyway.
lol, only if you live on Easter Island is localized climate change going to be hard to mitigate. Oh and if it was 1000 years ago and there were no planes. And if greenhouses somehow got uninvented. Then, yes, your great civilization on Easter Island would be screwed.
What about it? I thought it was an interesting take, but you understand that if true it means pre-human populations were routinely decimated by climate change? Are you suggesting that having our population similarly decimated by climate change would be good because it’s a selective pressure forcing us to evolve?
You realize if not true it means we'd still be monkeys? If as proto-humans we didn't have the common sense to get up and move or adapt or learn to cultivate land we'd still be monkeys?
Come on, even you have to find it funny that the ones that sat around screaming about climate change and throwing poop didn't evolve.
Because it's a deliberate lie to says they is "scientific consensus" on warming in the last 50 or 25 or 5 years.
There's 1 silly little opinion poll of American climate scientists and suddenly there's "scientific consensus" on AGW It's unbelievable just how desperate that is.
Desperation is trying to claim that there isn't a scientific consensus that AGW is real, and has been for 25 years. Not 50, but nobody really talked about climate change in those days - it's not a common experience in historical times.
Fifty years ago some scientists were aware of the issue and found that the numbers looked a little alarming. They asked other scientists to run the numbers as well, and much the same results obtained. Gradually the subject spread through the scientific community as scientists asked their friends "can you find me an error in this?", eventually leaking into political ears and from there onto the world stage - famously, via Margaret Thatcher (not via some US American senator and vice-president), who has a science degree herself. She had some very powerful things to say about stewardship and other Tory ideals.
The cynic in me saw the connection between AGW and the UK Coalminer's Union (the destruction of which fitted another Tory ideal, the necessity of revenge) but I was gradually persuaded otherwise. We have Margaret Thatcher (and, tangentially, Reagan for not preventing it) to thank for the IPCC. Ronnie had a lot of time for Maggie, and while he was for oil he wasn't against science. Of course, his was a very different Republican Party from today's.
...Except a 900 ppm CO2 world isn't anywhere near "toxic". You obviously don't know much about growing and greenhouse (in some places called hothouses). A couple extra degrees and a little more CO2 is just going to help.
Sorry, positive proof that I shouldn't post whilst drunk!
I don't know why but I got it into my head that you were referring to algal production of hydrocarbons, which is very much in it's infancy because of the toxic conditions. In terms of CO2 we actually incubate cells with a 5% CO2 atmosphere - levels that are nigh on toxic to a human.
While slightly higher CO2 levels would be helpful for plant growth (with all other factors being equal), it's hardly the governing conditions. Those are mainly soil quality, fertilisation and availability.
On a somewhat higher trajectory, "where the great populations of the world developed" - India, China, and Indo-China. Populations which have grown consistently since the development of agriculture early in this inter-glacial. All of them dependent on rivers which flow from the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau, said flow being buffered by permanent ice which is rapidly disappearing. Monsoons depend on the same geological eminence; it really is the navel of the world in some senses .
The Chinese in particular have screwed up much of their river-system themselves in recent decades, but the decay of permanent ice-cover is the real kicker. A result of climate change which will cut the sustainable populations deeply and permanently enough to count as collapse. Something unprecedented in human history.
Climate changes all the time, but it doesn't change this much this fast for this long, and there's no sign at all of it stopping.
There's 1 silly little opinion poll of American climate scientists and suddenly there's "scientific consensus" on AGW It's unbelievable just how desperate that is.
...The US military is supporting research into alternative fuels to maintain that mobility, which has always been key in warfare. As for personal mobility, it'll be back to bikes, public transport and urban living for most, and horses in the countryside. OK, that last is a bit fanciful ...
...What about it? I thought it was an interesting take, but you understand that if true it means pre-human populations were routinely decimated by climate change? Are you suggesting that having our population similarly decimated by climate change would be good because it’s a selective pressure forcing us to evolve?
(an interesting side note, climate change is supposedly having a positive effect on the Nile basin, returning it to the fertile place from biblical times. Or so I heard)
Where do you listen out? I thought I'd heard most of the nonsense out there, but this is new to me.
The major determinant of the Lower Nile Basin has long been the Aswan Dam. The Upper Nile basins (also known as the Nile's sources) are currently suffering rather nasty droughts.
Egypt was a very fertile place before and after Biblical times, but very narrowly, between a hot barren desert on one side and the same on the other, until it gets down to the Delta. Mark Anthony was very aware of this, being of a practical mind.
How about instead I point out recent theories that cite climate change as the biggest factor in the evolution of man from ape?
All very interesting (if unlikely), but not at all relevant to a mature agricultural society. Six billion and rising, I think we can say we've arrived. In your face, predatory cats! You survive only on our sufferance!
There was a great special on NOVA recently and I'd be happy to discuss it.
Could you kick things off by telling us what evolutonary impact you expect from AGW? How do you think our successor species will differ from us? A bit smarter, so they don't do it again? A bit smugger, so they do do it again, in a different manner? A bit more nervous of any change?
Eugenics is a dirty word these days, but the idea of a random challenge gets around many of the problems while still suggesting an improvement in the gene-pool. I don't mean to suggest that you've thought things through that deeply, but you might want to now.
The fact is climate change is what we make of it. Historically it would seem those that sat on their butts and complained about it perished and those that embraced it grew stronger.
No doubt you're replete with examples of which I'm unaware, but history teaches us that those who deny there's even a problem do not come out well, while those who recognise and cope with the problem go on to glory. Which is to say, write the subsequent history.
Best of luck with your approach, but when the JREF Forums become a minor research source for the turn-of the-century zeitgeist you're likely to be lumped in with the butt-sitting know-nothings. I'm not saying it's fair, but there it is.
The warming trend for the last 25 and 50 years is well into statistical significance, obviously you can't get a statistically significant result over 5 years, but all this tells us is that there is no evidence the pre-existing trend changed.
IOW you have it precisely backwards and but I have to wonder if it's because you simply didn't do your homework whether you though you would get away with just making stuff up...
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It's unbelievable just how desperate that is.
) and this is hardly a suddenly emergent problem. Nor are there mitigation strategies in prospect. All the real effort seems to be going into keeping it that way.
.