Merged Global Warming Discussion II: Heated Conversation

[Mikemcc]

btw , what do you mean with alarmists. wich scientist do you consider alarmist and wich studies?

i mean AGW is very very alarming, so every scientist should be an alarmist.

Generally I find climate scientists to be very conservative about outcomes. Folks like James Hansen tend to produce the more pessimistic forcasts, but not outragously. Myles Allen raised alarm bells about the volume of carbon emitted, but seems to have a rosy view on the likelyhood of human responses to the issue.

The biggest alarmists are the deniers who complain about the impact of mitigation, that carbon taxes will devestate economies. British Columbia has already shown that a revenue neutral carbon tax is entirely possible.

 

[DC]

Generally I find climate scientists to be very conservative about outcomes. Folks like James Hansen tend to produce the more pessimistic forcasts, but not outragously. Myles Allen raised alarm bells about the volume of carbon emitted, but seems to have a rosy view on the likelyhood of human responses to the issue.

The biggest alarmists are the deniers who complain about the impact of mitigation, that carbon taxes will devestate economies. British Columbia has already shown that a revenue neutral carbon tax is entirely possible.

haha, a very good point

 

[Red Baron Farms]

haha, a very good point

It seems to me that the biggest problem isn't the AGW deniers, the biggest problem is the deniers that the real problem is agriculture.

The carbon tax could be put to good use if it is to promote sequestration into the soil. In that case it isn't revenue neutral, it is actually profitable. This is because sequestering it into the soil increases productivity per acre as well as increasing the acres that are productive. Something like this:

Rangelands Rehabilitation and Carbon Credits in Kenya

Unfortunately there is huge Luddite like resistance to improve agriculture to the most modern scientific methods of management in the West. Unlike the original Luddites though, the people resisting it are very powerful, even more powerful than most countries. I don't see the political willpower for ending CAFOs and getting to work at actually solving the root problem. (pun intended )

 

[CapelDodger]

The biggest alarmists are the deniers who complain about the impact of mitigation, that carbon taxes will devestate economies.

And take us back to the Stone Age, remember.

British Columbia has already shown that a revenue neutral carbon tax is entirely possible.

Did BC ever come out of the Stone Age?

You're quite right, of course.

 

[aleCcowaN]

Generally I find climate scientists to be very conservative about outcomes. Folks like James Hansen tend to produce the more pessimistic forcasts, but not outragously. Myles Allen raised alarm bells about the volume of carbon emitted, but seems to have a rosy view on the likelyhood of human responses to the issue.

The biggest alarmists are the deniers who complain about the impact of mitigation, that carbon taxes will devestate economies. British Columbia has already shown that a revenue neutral carbon tax is entirely possible.

I'm sure how science and anti-science divide about this subject, but I'm not so sure about alarmism:

'Arctic Armageddon' Needs More Science, Less Hype - by Richard A. Kerr

The "warmer" type, the less science prone they are, the more they can become out of control alarmists. We've seen that a dozen times here and the fact that so many denialists are so capricious about what is going on in the climate front and so poor to argue their wrong notions, that doesn't make alarmists less inconvenient.

 

[lenny]

What is this graph really showing us?

aleCcowaN In a rush:

Kind 1 --->the one in each family of scenarios (equi-plausible scenarios by design) among six families (different scenarios) ---> what the future be (more the 'conceptual' kind)
Kind 2 --->for each family, the likely range of surface temperatures (more the 'mathematical' kind)

If you want to follow this line it's OK with me but, please, wait until I have answered several previous posts and lines of reasoning.

i fear i waited a bit longer than you intended. but i ran into the question again last week.

the graph is here:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=8819546#post8819546

full disclosure: my aim is an informed discussion of the pros and cons of "anomalies"; and to question if that role might prove rather different in mitigation than in adaptation.

 

[a_unique_person]

I'm sure how science and anti-science divide about this subject, but I'm not so sure about alarmism:

'Arctic Armageddon' Needs More Science, Less Hype - by Richard A. Kerr

The "warmer" type, the less science prone they are, the more they can become out of control alarmists. We've seen that a dozen times here and the fact that so many denialists are so capricious about what is going on in the climate front and so poor to argue their wrong notions, that doesn't make alarmists less inconvenient.

I know a climate scientist. He lived in the same low lying area I live in. I asked him about rising sea levels and he said we could just build a sea wall to hold it back.

Now we recently had a rain event that nearly had water coming in my front door, and while my neighbour did have water in his house because of the way the drainage works on his block.

The climate scientist, though, received an inheritance and bought a house that was still near the sea, but about ten meters higher above sea level than where he used to live.

 

[lenny]

I asked him about rising sea levels and he said we could just build a sea wall to hold it back.

think about florida or the netherlands: walls that hold the sea out hold rivers in...

 

[aleCcowaN]

I know a climate scientist. He lived in the same low lying area I live in. I asked him about rising sea levels and he said we could just build a sea wall to hold it back.

Now we recently had a rain event that nearly had water coming in my front door, and while my neighbour did have water in his house because of the way the drainage works on his block.

The climate scientist, though, received an inheritance and bought a house that was still near the sea, but about ten meters higher above sea level than where he used to live.

General mean sea level will rise 0.30 metres by 2060 according to the upper value in the error interval of RCP8.5 scenario -the worst among the classical scenarios-. Some 0.90 m by 2100, and you need to add yearly some 40 ppm of CO2 -or the equivalent in other greenhouse gases- by that year. You need some 13,000 GT of CO2 added by then, or roughly some 350 GT of methane (almost a triple of all proven natural gas reserves in the world, or some 75% of all methane trapped in shale according to recent estimates).

So I can safely say that your problem is just drainage and I can safely assume that the normal city taxes you and your neighbours pay from now to 2100 will suffice to have that draining system updated and running, including dams, water gates, reservoirs and pumps wherever necessary.

If you wanted to worry about tens of millions living in the Nile and Ganges deltas, ah! that's a horse of a different colour. India had two weeks ago a category-5 hurricane in her shores and they manage to had less than 50 dead because they evacuated almost a million people. Twenty years ago the casualties would have been in the thousands, so it looks like the ability of people to organize themselves may compensate what climate change does. But, if taxes are to be paid to do that, I'd rather prefer it is the carboniferous tycoon lady living in your shores the one to oblige.

And about the ill-fated by human action, today I was walking by an avenue and I reached some corner where I decided to take the opposite sidewalk because of me being sick of a complicated pedestrian crossing they created to speed up a highway access. When I was looking the sidewalk I should have taken in the old circumstances, I noticed all the shops closed or with "final sale" signs. There's a non-stop chain of collective or public actions that ruin the life of many people and AGW is not a special exception.

IMO, that's the difference between serious problems, some of them pressing, and chemically pure alarmism.

 

[Turgor]

think about florida or the netherlands: walls that hold the sea out hold rivers in...

True, but the land in that picture would be under much more of a threat from the sea than from the river, were it not for the Deltawerken (like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhttThYR4ys ). Most of the river flooding happens further upstream and is the result of restricting the river too much so we get more valuable farmland and real estate.

The increased rainfall due to AGW in a large part of Europe that all has to drain out through the rivers that end in The Netherlands is probably a bigger threat to my nation as a whole than the sea level rise though, at least in the short to mid term.

 

[CapelDodger]

think about florida or the netherlands: walls that hold the sea out hold rivers in...

And walls which hold rivers in hold rainfall out. Streams back up, so you build walls around them. It's called "adaptation".

 

[Frozenwolf150]

In continuing the discussion in posts 378-380, I would like to pose the question to everyone else who has responded. Since AGW is a given, what can each of us do, both on an individual level and as a community, to mitigate the effects on the environment? I'm interested more in action, and less in armchair projections. What can we do, to take an active role?

 

[Red Baron Farms]

In continuing the discussion in posts 378-380, I would like to pose the question to everyone else who has responded. Since AGW is a given, what can each of us do, both on an individual level and as a community, to mitigate the effects on the environment? I'm interested more in action, and less in armchair projections. What can we do, to take an active role?

You can reduce your carbon footprint by the traditional things like insulation, fuel efficient cars, solar panels, using car pools, mass transit etc.... that lower emissions.

You can also do simple things around the house if you have the room and the zoning. Grow a garden, maybe even raise some chickens to eat your kitchen scraps instead of them being thrown in the municipal dump, a composting toilet. There are several things that help fix the carbon cycle like that.

Avoid all CAFO products as much as humanly possible. A complete boycott if you can manage it.

And of course there are many non profits working on the problem. You could help support them financially. There are a bunch of good ones here:

Winning solutions are regionally specific yet globally applicable and present a truly comprehensive, anticipatory, integrated approach to solving the world's complex problems.http://challenge.bfi.org/

The Buckminster Fuller Challenge The advantage being of course that if it won the challenge, it has been fairly thoroughly investigated by knowledgeable people and unlikely to contain "woo" solutions. It is my dream to one day win that challenge. We will see.

 

[lenny]

And walls which hold rivers in hold rainfall out. Streams back up, so you build walls around them. It's called "adaptation".

i don't disagree, but managed retreat is also adaptation and may be much more practical. buying sand from the sea floor and raising the country is yet another option for the netherlands.... the magnitude of the challenge that comes along will determine which option they end up with.

in the fens, where the land has sunk, they've been pumping drainage ditches up into rivers for quite some time, no? the rainwater has to be lifted up over the walls that contain the rivers... i was in a pump house near cambridge once: it had five disused coal bays, two of which now have disused diesel fuel tanks, and one working electric pump... adaptation is not new.

 

[lenny]

True, but the land in that picture would be under much more of a threat from the sea than from the river, were it not for the Deltawerken

apologies, i went for the easiest picture to find. i know florida better than europe.

The increased rainfall due to AGW in a large part of Europe that all has to drain out through the rivers that end in The Netherlands is probably a bigger threat to my nation as a whole than the sea level rise though, at least in the short to mid term.

i expect we know little more about the most likely changes in rainfall than we did fifty years ago ("warmer wetter winters", warmer oceans leading to more evaporation).

the point i aimed to clarify was that that tidal barriers cannot be raised for extended periods of time: they can help with transient storm surge and extreme tides, but one must make provision to store an even increasing volume of river water building on the landward side of the barrier. when the river flow is high and the local land is flat that becomes impractical in a very short time.

 

[macdoc]

Basically reduce your carbon footprint individually ( not all that hard )

http://ecowatch.com/2013/10/07/calculate-carbon-footprint-reduce-climate-change/

google this reducing your carbon footprint 2013 for many more approaches.

Vote in politicians that acknowledge the reality of AGW and are willing to address the problems it is causing both near term and long term with sensible programs on a national, state/provincial and even city level ( Portland Oregon notably ).

http://www.portlandoregon.gov/bes/47203

 

[macdoc]

Might be a repeat but so much for the Cosmic Ray hypothesis

New light from CLOUD on climate change

In a paper published in the journal Nature, the CLOUD experiment at CERN reports on a major advance towards solving a long-standing enigma in climate science: how do aerosol particles form in the atmosphere? It is known that all cloud droplets form on aerosols: tiny solid or liquid particles suspended in the air. However, how these aerosol particles form or “nucleate” from atmospheric trace gases – and which gases are responsible – has remained a mystery.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), aerosol particles and their influence on clouds constitute the biggest uncertainty in assessing human-induced climate change. Understanding how aerosol particles form in the atmosphere is important since in increased concentrations, they cool the planet by reflecting more sunlight and by forming smaller but more numerous cloud droplets. That, in turn, makes clouds more reflective and extends their lifetimes. These poorly-understood processes currently limit the precision of climate projections for the 21st century.

Thanks to CERN expertise in materials, gas systems and ultra-high vacuum technologies, the CLOUD team was able to build a chamber with unprecedented cleanliness. This enabled them to introduce minute amounts of various atmospheric vapours into an initially “pure” atmosphere under carefully controlled conditions, and start unravelling the mystery.

The researchers made two key discoveries. Firstly, they found that minute concentrations of amines can combine with sulphuric acid to form aerosol particles at rates similar to atmospheric observations. Secondly, using a pion beam from the CERN Proton Synchrotron, they found that cosmic radiation has a negligible influence on the formation rates of these particular aerosol particles.

more

http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2013/10/07/new-light-from-cloud-on-climate-change/

That said it raises a new set of quandaries....

 

[CapelDodger]

i don't disagree, but managed retreat is also adaptation and may be much more practical. buying sand from the sea floor and raising the country is yet another option for the netherlands.... the magnitude of the challenge that comes along will determine which option they end up with.

in the fens, where the land has sunk, they've been pumping drainage ditches up into rivers for quite some time, no? the rainwater has to be lifted up over the walls that contain the rivers... i was in a pump house near cambridge once: it had five disused coal bays, two of which now have disused diesel fuel tanks, and one working electric pump... adaptation is not new.

Much of the Netherlands is pretty new, and the Fenlands were a waterworld before Dutch engineers got brought in, so water-management is pretty well established in such places. Where flood risk is normally from run-off, river defences become a problem when sheer volume of rainfall is an added risk. Pumps can be put in, of course, but it's quite an investment for an intermittent problem. Still, needs must when the Devil drives.

 

[CapelDodger]

Might be a repeat but so much for the Cosmic Ray hypothesis

I never gave it much credence myself, but it's great that this basic research is being done. Had cosmic rays not been hyped as an Anything But Carbon hypothesis it might not have been. The upside of the "more research is needed" policy is that more research has actually been funded.

 

[Lennart Hyland]

Might be a repeat but so much for the Cosmic Ray hypothesis

more

http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2013/10/07/new-light-from-cloud-on-climate-change/

That said it raises a new set of quandaries....

So this means that cosmic rays doesnt effect global warming?