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Climate change is real and the news is good!

Abdul Alhazred said:
Carbon dioxide - our salvation from a future ice age?
Space Daily
"We are probably entering a new ice age right now. However, we're not noticing it due to the effects of carbon dioxide", says researcher Professor Lars Franzen.
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As in: "We should be running into horrible rush hour traffic about now. However we are not noticing it because the bridge collapsed and we are falling into the river" ?

I wonder if we would cope better within +n degree worlds or within -n degree worlds... For moderate n, would cooling be worse? More stable?
 
Abdul Alhazred said:
Yes I am specifically talking about AGW.

Carbon dioxide - our salvation from a future ice age?
Space Daily



:clap:
Click to expand...

Hmm
"It is certainly possible that mankind's various activities contributed towards extending our ice age interval by keeping carbon dioxide levels high enough," explains Lars Franzen, Professor of Physical Geography at the University of Gothenburg.

"Without the human impact, the inevitable progression towards an ice age would have continued. The spread of peatlands is an important factor."
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So basically their arguement seems to be that without human interference peatlands would have sequestered enough CO2 to lower the levels in the atmosphere and sent the climate into an ice age.
Sounds plausable, not sure how it relates to the scientific consensus that glacial/interglacials are determined mostly by the Milankovitch cycles though. Even if true I don't see how this is good news afa GW is concerned as CO2 levels in the atmosphere have gone up from 280ppm to 400ppm and are still rising at about 2ppm per year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeling_Curve
 
This is not new news. However, I doubt there is a consensus as to when the next ice age is actually due. And I think the planet's wobble and orbit around the Sun are not aligned for said beginning of said ice age.

Carry on....
 
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Of course Earth would be heading toward the next glacial period... in the future, VERY SLOWLY. Avoiding it would be great. I support controlled, intentional greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the next glacial period when the time comes (I'll be dead then). Anyone in their right mind would.

But that's not what we're doing with greenhouse gasses now. And you know it.
 
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We could always solve global warming by initiating nuclear winter.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
This is not new news. However, I doubt there is a consensus as to when the next ice age is actually due. And I think the planet's wobble and orbit around the Sun are not aligned for said beginning of said ice age.

Carry on....
Click to expand...

We have been in an ice age for ~5 million years, he probably means a glaciation. Best curre3nt research suggests we were not due for a glaciation for at least another ~17K years, and if that missed the tipping point then we would have been in an inter-glacial for ~50K more years.

Since some percentage of CO2 would still be present in the atmosphere 100K years from now and many long term feedbacks have yet to kick in, we could well be looking at a half million year inter-glacial instead and that’s if we are lucky. If we are unlucky we could end up being kicked into a much warmer climate regime that is more or less permanent with most or all of Antarctica and Greenland melting and sea levels rising 70m (200+ feet) over the next few thousand years.
 
Abdul Alhazred said:
Yes I am specifically talking about AGW.

Carbon dioxide - our salvation from a future ice age?
Space Daily



:clap:
Click to expand...

Let me know how much carbon dioxide we must create every month during the next 50 years to keep the temperatures of our planet similar to those in 1970.

But you don't even imagine how convenient carbon dioxide is in case Yellowstone* decides to blow out and high again. I am prone to vote for someone who promotes banning wind power, nuclear and natural gas and replace it by peat, lignite and all the woodlands. Anthracite should also be banned because of its relative efficiency. In this case we can't make a plan: we have to burn it now. If we are not alert and we do not do this, volcanoes win!


*only volcanoes in USA or UK are admitted owing to contractual obligations
 
We could get lucky.
We may be inadvertently off-setting an unanticipated future disaster.

But that's only half of the issue:

Oil is too useful to be squandered the way we squander it.
It takes a long time to get another stash of it.
 
The ability of some people to switch between "it's not happening", "it is happening but it's natural", "it is happening and it's due to human activity but it's a good thing" (depending on which particular canard happens to be flavour of the month in the deniosphere) without showing the slightest awareness of how ridiculous they are being never ceases to amaze me.
 
It's important to comment for the benefit of those visitors who don't know these forums, that a membership agreement prevents us of evaluating the morals -or lack thereof- of other members and as a consequence you'll probably see some "debate" as coming from divergent opinions, when in fact the whole situation is probably more the like of "Dr H. Lecter, the alleged murderer".
 
Also for the benefit of eventual visitors: You have to read not only the whole thread but to look for the whole body of posts of a member. For instance, as the opener post has other participations involving the same subject, you may use the local search engine using the term "climate" and specifying the author "Abdul Alhazred" and you'll get posts like these:

Once "better Red than dead", now "climate change"

He knew it all along :D (thread creator)

More evidences about Al Gore! (thread creator)

and a lot more.
 
But we can't do so much work about a topic, can we? Then, there are some exploits (and the long way back on topic starts).

This thread has a typical structure that suits those who are in the denialist hype: a denialist starts a thread with either a "good news" statement or a controversial one. Then she or he leaves the thread alone as they hardly ever come back when there are knowledgeable people participating. They may have one or two interventions if the thread evolves further and contains social debate they can get advantage from.

The purpose of this has to do with a cost-benefit ratio: the thread opener sets the mood with "low costs", and no matter how stupid or clueless the content of the opening post, all the explanations following it -the more, the better- help to illustrate the existence of a "controversy" or a state of "things being not settled yet". In the end, this kind of publicity stunt appeals to a vast majority having no enough intellectual or educational means to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Other techniques include an "adjectivated opening post", that is, it's a debatable thing but it comes with a strong label attached

This thread and opener are an excellent example of those techniques. You may follow other thread of the same author:

example 1
example 2
example 3
example 4
 
Back specifically on the content of #1 (at last!). I'm very surprised that ScienceDaily (not Space Daily, as the opener wrote) has such an article. The source is available on line: not-peer-reviewed paper published on-line. It's key factors:

summary (not abstract) and conclusions

SUMMARY

Peatlands cover approximately 65,600 km 2 (16 %) of the Swedish land area. The available areas suitable for peatland expansion are far from occupied after ca. 12,000 years of the present interglacial. We estimate the potential extent of peatland in Sweden, based on slope properties of possible areas excluding lakes and glaciofluvial deposits. We assume no human presence or anthropic effects, so the calculation is speculative. It may have been relevant for previous interglacials. We calculate the potential final area of peatlands in three scenarios where they cover all available land with different maximum slope angles (1−3 º) using a Digital Elevation Model (DEM). The three scenarios yield potential peatland areas of 95,663 km 2 (21 % of total available area), 168,287 km 2 (38 %) and 222,141 km 2 (50 %). The relative increases from the present 65,600 km 2 are 46, 157 and 239 % respectively. The slope scenarios give CO 2 uptake rates of 8.9−10.8, 18.1−22.4 and 24.6−30.5 Mt yr −1 . Under global warming conditions with isotherms moved northwards and to higher altitudes, following an increase of raised bog area, the CO 2 uptake rates might increase to 12.2−13.8, 24.4−27.7 and 33.5−37.9 Mt yr −1 ; i.e. up to 4.3−4.9 vpb of atmospheric CO 2 . If we make the speculative extrapolation from Sweden to all high latitude peatlands, and assume that all suitable areas with slope angle ≤ 3 ° become occupied, the global peatland CO 2 sink might approach 3.7 Gt yr −1 (about 2 vpm yr −1 ) and potentially cause a net radiative cooling approaching 5 W m −2 .
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CONCLUSIONS

Our study shows that the potential area of peatland
in Sweden is more than three times the present area;
i.e. that the extent of peatland could increase from
about 65,600 km 2 to about 222,000 km 2 . Whereas
the present rate of CO 2 uptake by peatland has been
calculated as 4.2−5.3 Mt yr −1 , in our maximum
peatland extent scenario the CO 2 uptake would be
33.5−37.9 Mt yr −1 . Thus, on a global scale, carbon
sequestration in peatlands may have had important
climate cooling effects towards the ends of previous
interglacials as proposed by the P/IAH. It cannot be
ruled out that similar effects would be seen in a
hypothetical Holocene lacking human presence.
Click to expand...
That's why it's important to have both peer reviewed papers and educated numerate journalists.
 
Abdul Alhazred said:
Hey! Just because I'm a fictional character ... :cool:
Click to expand...

Fictional character or not, can you please explain why you think this is good news given that
1)by suggesting that in the absence of mankind there would be far more peat bogs which would have sequestered a lot of CO2 thus lowering temperatures, this study actually confirms the scientific consensus that CO2 levels are an important factor in determining temperature.
2) CO2 levels are nearly 50% higher than pre-industrial levels and still rising.
 
Abdul is only taking advantage of what he or she could find in the webwoods, just by googling "global warming is good" and starting threads with the structure I described.

What is more impressive is Franzén talking in an article ("Forskare mot strömmen: Utsläpp av biogaser förhindrar ny istid", something like "scientist against the stream/tide: emission of biologic gases inhibits a new ice age") and even worse the "interview" in AlphaGalileo (not evidence of Gothenburg University really endorsing those words) which percolated into ScienceDaily (Space Daily, not surprised).

The stretch of the "conclusion" in the paper (" Thus, on a global scale, carbon sequestration in peatlands may have had important climate cooling effects towards the ends of previous interglacials as proposed by the P/IAH. It cannot be ruled out that similar effects would be seen in a hypothetical Holocene lacking human presence." ---> if people haven't understood yet, something that may have had importance can't be ruled out in an imprecise time in a world different than it really is ) that becomes (including built-in non-sequitur) in "Our calculations show that the peatlands could contribute towards global cooling equivalent to five watts per square metre. There is a great deal of evidence to suggest that we are near the end of the current interglacial." in one page, and even this -in Gothemburg University website-:

Så vi ska alltså fortsätta elda på och sprida hur mycket biogaser som helst?
– Nej, det menar jag inte. Vi bör istället använda kol, olja och naturgas på ett förnuftigt sätt, så att dessa värdefulla naturtillgångar gör bästa möjliga nytta för alla människor, också i den fattiga världen. Utan fossilt kol hade den moderna teknikutvecklingen inte ägt rum. Beter vi oss klokt kan vi i bästa fall skjuta upp nästa istid för kanske femtio generationer. Men inte hur länge som helst; till slut kommer nog verkligheten ändå ifatt oss.
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Use Google translate to find the explanation about the sensible use of fossile fuels to avoid a -in the end unavoidable, according to Franzén- new ice age for fifty generations.
 
I'd like to ask Franzen how he can justify such statements based on his research, where he only talks of climate cooling in a
hypothetical Holocene lacking human presence, but don't think he'll be reading this thread, though Abdul might be and want to see if he has any justification for calling this good news.
 
bobwtfomg said:
Fictional character or not, can you please explain why you think this is good news given that
1)by suggesting that in the absence of mankind there would be far more peat bogs which would have sequestered a lot of CO2 thus lowering temperatures, this study actually confirms the scientific consensus that CO2 levels are an important factor in determining temperature.
2) CO2 levels are nearly 50% higher than pre-industrial levels and still rising.
Click to expand...

Come on Abdul I'm still waiting for an answer or are you conceding that there is no good news and that AGW is a serious problem that needs to be addressed?.
 
bobwtfomg said:
Come on Abdul I'm still waiting for an answer or are you conceding that there is no good news and that AGW is a serious problem that needs to be addressed?.
Click to expand...

Well gee whiz. Sometimes I have better things to do than play with you guys.

Answer: Lighten up Francis.
 
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