"But Global Warming is a HOAX!!!"

[newyorkguy]

Huh, maybe warming will be good for North Africa!...

I get the impression what Hercules56 is doing is, throwing everything at the wall to see what will stick. In order to 'prove', Global Warming might not be so bad after all.

Is that it, you think Global Warming may turn out to be vastly overstated and/or exaggerated?
Why is the future of the Sahara desert important in a thread about Global Warming?

But based on your part of the discussion, I don't expect you to answer either question, except to maybe state you're 'JAQing.'

 

[Lukraak_Sisser]

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590332220301007

"In the future, the Sahara and Sahelian regions could experience more rainfall than today as a result of climate change. Wetter periods, termed African humid periods, occurred in the past and witnessed a mesic landscape in place of today’s hyperarid and semiarid environment. Such large past changes raise the question of whether the near future might hold in store similar environmental transformations, particularly in view of the growing human-induced climate, land-use, and land-cover changes. In the last decades, geoengineering initiatives (in the form of active re-greening projects of the Sahara and Sahel) have been proposed and could have significant effects on the climate of the region"

Sure, and in time the soil might even become stable enough to support agriculture.
In a measly 500/1000 years or so if we actively work on it?

 

[Hercules56]

I get the impression what Hercules56 is doing is, throwing everything at the wall to see what will stick. In order to 'prove', Global Warming might not be so bad after all.

Is that it, you think Global Warming may turn out to be vastly overstated and/or exaggerated?
Why is the future of the Sahara desert important in a thread about Global Warming?

But based on your part of the discussion, I don't expect you to answer either question, except to maybe state you're 'JAQing.'

I think im somewhat skeptical that we will be able to stop the CO2 increase in any meaningful way. China, India, want our standard of living and quality of life and they cant get that without burning fossil fuels and destroying the world's forests.

 

[lobosrul5]

I think im somewhat skeptical that we will be able to stop the CO2 increase in any meaningful way. China, India, want our standard of living and quality of life and they cant get that without burning fossil fuels and destroying the world's forests.

Its too late to prevent the disaster, theres just not enough political will in the world to do so. I do, actually agree with you. We, are almost certainly, ******, even if the US and EU cut carbon emissions in half. And the former doing that is unlikely anyways.

ETA: OTOH, the impending resource wars that AGW is going to cause might cause a nuclear winter, so maybe they cancel each other out?

 

[newyorkguy]

Here's a look at a Worldometer chart showing, on the left, the top twelve nations with the highest per-capita CO2 emissions, with China and India listed on the right.

[IMGW=400]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=1474&pictureid=13629[/IMGW]

The United States ratio is 15.32; the UK is at 5.60.

Worldometer link CO2 per capita

 

[Carrot Flower King]

Its too late to prevent the disaster, theres just not enough political will in the world to do so. I do, actually agree with you. We, are almost certainly, ******, even if the US and EU cut carbon emissions in half. And the former doing that is unlikely anyways.

ETA: OTOH, the impending resource wars that AGW is going to cause might cause a nuclear winter, so maybe they cancel each other out?

Marvellous, isn't it?

On the one hand we are screwed, but on the other hand we are ******, except there might be a possibility of us being buggered...

I'm just shy of 65 and my heart is knackered in an unfixable way, so I'm gone anyway...Get the wine cellar drained first, eh?

 

[lobosrul5]

Here's a look at a Worldometer chart showing, on the left, the top twelve nations with the highest per-capita CO2 emissions, with China and India listed on the right.

[IMGW=400]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=1474&pictureid=13629[/IMGW]

The United States ratio is 15.32; the UK is at 5.60.

Worldometer link CO2 per capita

That linked chart is 7 years old

A quick google search, didn't get me exact the data I wanted, but it got me:

China and India both surpassed their 2019 emission peaks in 2021. Chinese emissions grew by 5.5% between 2019 and 2021, while Indian emissions grew by 4.4%.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/global-co2-emissions-have-been-flat-for-a-decade-new-data-reveals/

They are increasing, rapidly, because their nations are industrializing, and their citizens will vote for the party that allows for that. Coal, and oil are cheaper than clean energy, especially if you have coal that can be easily exploited in your country.

There are also 23 times more people in India than the UK... just an example. Theres also a reasonable chance that the US elects someone in a year who will actively try and increase our carbon emissions, just to pwn the libs.

ETA:https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/india#per-capita-how-much-co2-does-the-average-person-emit

Some good charts there especially the chart of India's worldwide share of C02 emissions its rapidly climbing, but 2021 is the most recent year they have data.

https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news...-2022-global-emissions-highest-in-india-85928

Yes another good source. So, worldwide we aren't doing nearly as good as were supposed to per COP27. That also makes me wonder how unrealistic future estimates are.

ETA2: also those charts are in a way... total BS. They count all C02 in a country INCLUDING those used in the manufacture of goods for export. Its kind of thumbing our noses unfairly to say, look how bad India is, while we buy good made there instead of making them in our own countries.

 

[bruto]

I get the impression what Hercules56 is doing is, throwing everything at the wall to see what will stick. In order to 'prove', Global Warming might not be so bad after all.

Is that it, you think Global Warming may turn out to be vastly overstated and/or exaggerated?
Why is the future of the Sahara desert important in a thread about Global Warming?

But based on your part of the discussion, I don't expect you to answer either question, except to maybe state you're 'JAQing.'

I suppose it would be handy if the Sahara gets more habitable so all the people who are flooded out by the rising oceans will have somewhere to go.

 

[Hercules56]

Its too late to prevent the disaster, theres just not enough political will in the world to do so. I do, actually agree with you. We, are almost certainly, ******, even if the US and EU cut carbon emissions in half. And the former doing that is unlikely anyways.

ETA: OTOH, the impending resource wars that AGW is going to cause might cause a nuclear winter, so maybe they cancel each other out?

I think the only thing that will convince the world to seriously reduce carbon emissions and stop destroying the rainforests, is if we start seeing literally catastrophic weather all over the place or if seas start rising one foot a year.

I think absent some real catastrophic change really quickly society is just not going to have the will to do anything.

Yeah, absent a Hollywood style disaster, Michael Bay-like, we are doomed.

 

[lobosrul5]

I think the only thing that will convince the world to seriously reduce carbon emissions and stop destroying the rainforests, is if we start seeing literally catastrophic weather all over the place or if seas start rising one foot a year.

I think absent some real catastrophic change really quickly society is just not going to have the will to do anything.

Seas wont ever rise that fast, not like overnight... besides which a foot is nothing, there are spring tides higher than that. Crazy bad weather events will always be at least somewhat localized. Its an unprecedented, holy **** this is bad year for forest fires in Canada, also some islands in the Med. Previously it was California (but thats because they don't rake leaves or something), and previous to that, it was Arizona/NM. I know of this last one because it looked like Blade Runner Part 2 where I live for about a month. But all those things only effect a small % of the worlds population at any given time.

 

[lomiller]

It seems to run counter to his other declarations on the subject:





https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/19/climate-crisis-james-hansen-scientist-warning

Maybe it's a deliberate misunderstanding of something he's published in order to support continued use of fossil fuels ?

He's discussing a fairly well known effect. Sulfur dioxide has a very strong cooling effect on the earths climate but it's short lived compared to CO2. There is currently ~1% less sunlight reaching the earth than in per-industrial times, sometimes this is called global dimming.

Since the life span in the atmosphere for sulfur dioxide is ~10-15 years while CO2 lasts 100-200 years (with a "long tail" that can extend up to 100K years) CO2 accumulates and eventually CO2 warming dominates, but on a decade time scale the cooling from sulfur dioxide actually wins out.

What this means is that a new coal plant actually cools the earth over the first 20 or so years of it's existence. When the plant is retired the opposite happens, the cooling form Sulfur Dioxide emissions stop and you get a warming spike over the next decade or two.

Long story short, there is a substantial amount of global warming being masked by the short term cooling caused by aerosols like SO2. As we decrease fossil fuel use the Aerosols will decline quickly causing a short term warming spike.

 

[lomiller]

So as the world was getting cooler, the deserts in Africa expanded. Does that mean that as the world gets warmer the deserts will contract?

Neither is likely true. What happens is that as as the climate warms monsoon bands in the Northern Hemisphere migrate north while monsoon bands in the Southern Hemisphere migrate south. This creates dearests in places that are currently wet but also brings more moisture to places that are currently deserts. Over the long term some deserts will turn green but the shorter term effect is catastrophic flooding.

 

[dann]

Since the life span in the atmosphere for sulfur dioxide is ~10-15 years while CO2 lasts 100-200 years (with a "long tail" that can extend up to 100K years) CO2 accumulates and eventually CO2 warming dominates, but on a decade time scale the cooling from sulfur dioxide actually wins out.

The cooling effect of the Mount Pinatuba volcano explosion in 1991 didn't last very long in spite of the 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide it added to the atmosphere.
From the chapter The Pilot Light and Somebody's World, p. 169-176 in The Parrot and the Igloo:

The Pinatubo sulfur would reflect about 2 percent of the sun's radiation back into space.

James Hansen used the event to test his model.

Temperatures would drop one degree Fahrenheit; then warming would pick up right were it left off. "We should see it," Hansen said, "or theres's something wrong with the models."
As Newsweek wrote, Hansen had just "put his reputation on the line," by making " a testable prediction." The skeptic Pat Michaels went after the ideas on CNN. "When the Earth does not show one or two degrees of cooling - which would be a massive amount - it's going to be said, 'Oh, look, in spite of the volcano the globe is still warm,'" Michaels explained. "This thing is going up as a smokescreen."
By fall of 1992, the cooling trend was in. "It's not a home run yet," Hansen told climate writer Bill McKibben. "The temperature still has to start coming back the way we've said it will." 1990 had set the record as the warmest year in measurement history. In 1992 and 1993, the planet cooled one degree; 1994 logged in as history's fourth-warmest year, and 1995 re-broke the record.

But at that point, the media had already been convinced that global warming didn't exist:

As the Washington Post explained, "Mount Pinatubo not only temporarily cooled down the climate, it blotted the issue off the national media map."

 

[newyorkguy]

As world temperatures increase will deserts contract. Scientists use the word "disrupt, that as the world warms desert ecosystems will be disrupted. One scientist noted in 2018, "The trends in Africa of hot summers getting hotter and rainy seasons drying out are linked with factors that include increasing greenhouse gases and aerosols in the atmosphere," says Ming Cai, a program director in NSF's Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences. That doesn't sound too good for the Sahara.

I Googled, "As world temperatures increase will deserts contract?" and here's what I found in a 2000 study by a University of Nevada, Las Vegas research team.

Desert plants go wild during wet years when treated to excess carbon dioxide, researchers say. The finding backs up climate change models, which predict that rising levels of atmospheric CO2 will disrupt the ecology of sensitive desert ecosystems. Experts fear that the change will favor invasive plants given to triggering wildfires. Plentiful CO2 helps plants use water more efficiently, and atmospheric levels of CO2 are expected to double, relative to preindustrial times, by 2050. Global-warming researchers predict that such massive increases will eventually transform desert ecosystems. The boom in plant growth is expected to upset delicately balanced desert ecosystems--changing the nutrient cycle, fire cycle, and distribution of water. Link to Science dot org

Invasive plants given to triggering wildfires? At any rate, I wouldn't expect to see this. ↓

[IMGW=700]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=1474&pictureid=13631[/IMGW]

 

[dann]

Big Oil 'repositioning global warming as theory (not fact),

Why is meaningful action to avert the climate crisis proving so difficult? It is, at least in part, because of ads.
The fossil-fuel industry has perpetrated a multi-decade, multibillion dollar disinformation, propaganda and lobbying campaign to delay climate action by confusing the public and policy makers about the climate crisis and its solutions. This has involved a remarkable array of advertisements - with headlines ranging from "Lies they tell our children" to "Oil pumps life" - seeking to convince the public that the climate crisis is not real, not human-made, not serious and not solvable. The campaign continues to this day.
As recently as last month, six big oil CEOs were summoned to US Congress to answer for the industry's history of discrediting climate science - yet they lied under oath about it. In other words, the fossil fuel industry is now misleading the public about its history of misleading the public
We are experts in the history of climate disinformation, and we want to set the record straight, so here, in black and white (and color), is a selection of big oil's thousands of deceptive climate ads from 1984 to 2021.
The forgotten oil ads that told us climate change was nothing (The Guardian, Nov 18, 2021)

One of the slogans, is also mentioned in The Parrot and the Igloo (p. 177):

In 1991, about two dozen coal-burning electric utilities - plus some big coal producers, and the National Coal Association - devised what they called a "creative strategy." There goal, as expressed in a planning document, was to "reposition global warming as theory (not fact)."

In The Guardian:

'Reposition global warming as theory (not fact)'
In 1991, Informed Citizen for the Environment, a front group of coal and utility companies announced that "Doomsday is cancelled" and asked, "Who told you the earth was warming ... Chicken Little?" They complained about "weak" evidence, "non-existent" proof, inaccurate climate models and asserted that the physics was "open to debate".

There are several attempts at repositioning global warming as theory in this thread. It isn't very different from the attempts of Creationists to reposition evolution as theory and to 'teach the controversy' - except that capitalism has no real interest in the latter.
(Speaking of fossils ...)

 

[The Great Zaganza]

There is a lot of resignation when it comes to fighting climate change, and the reason is obvious: the result of massive efforts to stabilize the climate won't bear fruits for a couple of generations.
We are entering a time of war the current generations won't see the end of.

So why fight if you won't be among the victors no matter what ?

 

[Samson]

There was a New Zealand scientist in the 70s who started catching air/CO2 and he made predictions, that have broadly come to pass.
I will try to find his body of work, but since he framed it as a scientific experiment, I always describe it to deniers.

 

[dann]

So why fight if you won't be among the victors no matter what ?

To prevent Earth from turning into Venus. The weather has already become intolerably hot in some areas even though I personally can't complain until the waters begin to rise. The Ben Shapiro solution/(exacerbation) won't work for everybody/(anybody).

 

[The Great Zaganza]

To prevent Earth from turning into Venus. The weather has already become intolerably hot in some areas even though I personally can't complain until the waters begin to rise. The Ben Shapiro solution/(exacerbation) won't work for everybody/(anybody).

unless you make me amortal first, I won't be around to see that.

 

[dann]

I Googled, "As world temperatures increase will deserts contract?" and here's what I found in a 2000 study by a University of Nevada, Las Vegas research team.

Invasive plants given to triggering wildfires?

I am not sure if this is one of the those invasive plants:

its ability to burn slowly made it an ideal source for high quality charcoal – its most widespread use.
Managing the Invasive Marabou Weed in Cuba: How to Make the Best of the Worst (The International Model Forest Network (IMFN), Jan 25, 2016)

As a fuel source, at least it's renewable ...

At any rate, I wouldn't expect to see this. ↓

[IMGW=700]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=1474&pictureid=13631[/IMGW]

It also isn't what's actually happening:
The fight against the fires on Rhodes are made difficult by powerful wind: Is expected to continue (DR.dk, July 23, 2023)
Mayor on Rhodes encourages locals to house evacuees (DR.dk, July 23, 2023)
North Jutland Danes on Rhodes evacuated: Now we just want to get home (DR.dk, July 23, 2023)

Meanwhile in Northern Europe, where hardly anyone ever heard of Ben Shapiro:
Heat indoors made Dennis and his family sleep outside on the trampoline: More people buy air conditioning for their homes
Which will obviously only exacerbate the general problem - at least as long as 100 percent of the power doesn't come from solar or wind.


ETA: From The Parrot and the Igloo, p, 180:

"A doubling of CO₂," he [Dr. Idso, a global-warming skeptic] promises, "will produce a tremendous greening of planet Earth." (In 2001, Duke University scientists ran the experiments on an actual forest. The big winner turned out to be poison ivy, spreading 77 percent faster.) Dr. Isdso gave and interview to the power industry organ Electric Utility Week. "I believe that the worst thing we can possibly do to the planet," the scientist said, "is to try to limit emissions of CO₂."