R8Z wrote: ↑Mon Jan 31, 2022 3:02 am
Anyway, Earth is getting greener each and every day and I can't wait until this becomes a "bad thing" and turns itself into headlines and, of course, seed for more panic.
I mean, it's obviously more complex than that. It's the climate of an entire planet and it will be forever changing. It's the law of thermodynamics acting their way; our planet is actually surprisingly mild in its changes; we should count ourselves lucky for that (or not? Anthropic principle in action?). Thinking that climate would stay put in such a complex system is weird, and that's why I don't like the wording that is normally used by alarmists. It's ok for climate to change. Magnitudes are what matter.
R8Z wrote: ↑Sat Feb 19, 2022 2:35 pmI mean, it's obviously more complex than that. It's the climate of an entire planet and it will be forever changing. It's the law of thermodynamics acting their way; our planet is actually surprisingly mild in its changes; we should count ourselves lucky for that (or not? Anthropic principle in action?). Thinking that climate would stay put in such a complex system is weird, and that's why I don't like the wording that is normally used by alarmists. It's ok for climate to change. Magnitudes are what matter.
Anyway, a shame we aren't technologically advanced enough to modulate the climate as we wish. It's coming. It will come so let's at least avoid panic.
wjfox wrote: ↑Sat Feb 19, 2022 5:05 pmR8Z wrote: ↑Sat Feb 19, 2022 2:35 pmI mean, it's obviously more complex than that. It's the climate of an entire planet and it will be forever changing. It's the law of thermodynamics acting their way; our planet is actually surprisingly mild in its changes; we should count ourselves lucky for that (or not? Anthropic principle in action?). Thinking that climate would stay put in such a complex system is weird, and that's why I don't like the wording that is normally used by alarmists. It's ok for climate to change. Magnitudes are what matter.
Anyway, a shame we aren't technologically advanced enough to modulate the climate as we wish. It's coming. It will come so let's at least avoid panic.
The climate isn't "always changing". It was remarkably stable for thousands of years prior to the Industrial Revolution, which allowed our civilisation to flourish and our agriculture to become so widespread.
The climate doesn't just randomly decide to change. There are reasons why it does so. We know what those reasons are. Even before the advent of computer models, we had the basics figured out – thanks to the work of 19th century scientists who confirmed the physics and maths. Today we have a meticulously detailed vision of the processes involved, thanks to further advances in science, and supercomputers with quintillions of calculations.
Historical records don't suggest these changes will be "mild". In the case of the Ice Age, we're talking only a few degrees being the difference between a mile of ice over your head, or not. In a warmer world, we could see vast areas of land being simply uninhabitable. Even a 1.5°C warmer world is enough to virtually eliminate the coral reefs, which are home to 25% of marine species, and which 500 million people rely on for their livelihoods.
Yet you somehow feel you can reject almost 200 years of scientific canon. You are more qualified than the likes of NASA. You can simply dismiss decades of scientific progress, thousands of peer-reviewed papers, and painstainkingly reviewed observations. You can dismiss all of that, and are happy to literally risk our only home planet in the universe, for reasons I can't quite comprehend.
I wouldn't take too much stock into someone who isn't even an expert in climatology. Besides there is already a strong consensus among scientists in this field that climate change is man-made. A single person, no matter how smart or how deep his/her credentials, doesn't simply rationalize away against the commonly agreed findings unless there is reproducible experimental data that conclusively proves them wrong.R8Z wrote: ↑Sat Feb 19, 2022 7:29 pmwjfox wrote: ↑Sat Feb 19, 2022 5:05 pmR8Z wrote: ↑Sat Feb 19, 2022 2:35 pm
I mean, it's obviously more complex than that. It's the climate of an entire planet and it will be forever changing. It's the law of thermodynamics acting their way; our planet is actually surprisingly mild in its changes; we should count ourselves lucky for that (or not? Anthropic principle in action?). Thinking that climate would stay put in such a complex system is weird, and that's why I don't like the wording that is normally used by alarmists. It's ok for climate to change. Magnitudes are what matter.
Anyway, a shame we aren't technologically advanced enough to modulate the climate as we wish. It's coming. It will come so let's at least avoid panic.
The climate isn't "always changing". It was remarkably stable for thousands of years prior to the Industrial Revolution, which allowed our civilisation to flourish and our agriculture to become so widespread.
The climate doesn't just randomly decide to change. There are reasons why it does so. We know what those reasons are. Even before the advent of computer models, we had the basics figured out – thanks to the work of 19th century scientists who confirmed the physics and maths. Today we have a meticulously detailed vision of the processes involved, thanks to further advances in science, and supercomputers with quintillions of calculations.
Historical records don't suggest these changes will be "mild". In the case of the Ice Age, we're talking only a few degrees being the difference between a mile of ice over your head, or not. In a warmer world, we could see vast areas of land being simply uninhabitable. Even a 1.5°C warmer world is enough to virtually eliminate the coral reefs, which are home to 25% of marine species, and which 500 million people rely on for their livelihoods.
Yet you somehow feel you can reject almost 200 years of scientific canon. You are more qualified than the likes of NASA. You can simply dismiss decades of scientific progress, thousands of peer-reviewed papers, and painstainkingly reviewed observations. You can dismiss all of that, and are happy to literally risk our only home planet in the universe, for reasons I can't quite comprehend.
An international team of scientists including Rutgers researchers has found that modern rates of sea level rise began emerging in 1863 as the Industrial Age intensified, coinciding with evidence for early ocean warming and glacier melt.
The study, which used a global database of sea-level records spanning the last 2,000 years, will help local and regional planners prepare for future sea-level rise. The study appears in the journal Nature Communications.
Sea-level rise is an important indicator of broader climate changes. By identifying the time when modern rates of sea-level rise emerged above natural variability, the researchers were able to pinpoint the onset of a significant period of climate change.
By examining the worldwide records, the researchers found that globally, the onset of modern rates of sea-level rise occurred in 1863, in line with the Industrial Revolution. At individual sites in the United States, modern rates emerged earliest in the mid-Atlantic region in the mid to late 19th century, and later in Canada and Europe, emerging by the mid-20th century.
The study is especially timely given NOAA's recently-released report detailing the rapid acceleration of sea-level rise on U.S. coasts.
Look, maybe let's lower the weapons down and set the premises first so that we can debate without name calling each other:
Researchers have observed extremely high rates of melting at the bottom of the Greenland Ice Sheet, caused by huge quantities of meltwater falling from the surface to the base. As the meltwater falls, energy is converted into heat in a process like the hydroelectric power generated by large dams.
An international team of scientists, led by the University of Cambridge, found that the effect of meltwater descending from the surface of the ice sheet to the bed—a kilometer or more below—is by far the largest heat source beneath the world's second-largest ice sheet, leading to phenomenally high rates of melting at its base.
The lubricating effect of meltwater has a strong effect on the movement of glaciers and the quantity of ice discharged into the ocean, but directly measuring conditions beneath a kilometer of ice is a challenge, especially in Greenland where glaciers are among the world's fastest moving.
This lack of direct measurements makes it difficult to understand the dynamic behavior of the Greenland Ice Sheet and predict future changes. With ice losses tied to both melting and discharge, the Greenland Ice Sheet is now the largest single contributor to global sea level rise.
R8Z wrote: ↑Mon Feb 21, 2022 1:39 pmLook, maybe let's lower the weapons down and set the premises first so that we can debate without name calling each other:
Did I miss anything? What am I a denier of?
- You're correct, climate is changing (that's ok) BUT it's changing faster than we would expect (not ok);
- Most probably we've caused this increase in the rate of change for the climate and CO2 is big factor in that (not that it matters that 99% whatever agree)
- Most of the data we've had for climate predictions were junk (non-homogeneous, bad accuracy, tampered datasets) as it wasn't made for climate prediction but actually for weather. The data is still good enough on average to assess the above two points; it's not that the models aren't good, it's just that "junk in, junk out". We're getting better in this within the past few years (e.g. we ain't predicting global cooling anymore).
- Climate alarmism in the main-stream media continues to fuel divisive narratives while advocating for things like "less energy usage" and diminishing the quality of life for the average citizen to solve the climate. This won't do shit as the problem isn't even on the average joe. Whoever has done their reading knows that it rhymes perfectly with same alarmism that has been proven wrong time and time again.
- Science and technology has solved the above (food shortages) and will solve climate problems once there is enough reason and feasibility to do so.
Your citation does not apply. The argument is that 99.9% of climate scientists agree. These are people with expertise in the subject matter. So it is not just a “majority of the people agree.” It is that an overwhelming number of the experts who, having reviewed a vast amount of evidence available in their field, have all reached a broad agreement. Expert opinion is, among other things, admissible as evidence in a court of law.
I am not sure what planet you are living on to come to that conclusion, but there are all sorts of studies indicating 1) that the problem of food shortages has not been resolved, and 2) that climate change will worsen the problem, and 3) that existing technology is not and will not be enough to overcome the shortage problem, at least not in the short and medium run when many will suffer the consequences.same alarmism (a link discussing Malthusianism).
6. Science and technology has solved the above (food shortages) and will solve climate problems once there is enough reason and feasibility to do so.
Source: Eighty million more to starve: leaked U ... lnews.com)The forthcoming report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, obtained by AFP, offers a distressing vision of the decades to come.
Policy choices made now, such as promoting plant-based diets, can limit these health consequences, but many are unavoidable in the short term, the report says.
It warns of the cascading impacts that simultaneous crop failures, soaring inflation and the falling nutritional value of basic foods are likely to have on the world’s most vulnerable people
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It predicts that up to 80 million more people than today will be at risk of hunger by 2050 and that disruptions to the water cycle will cause rain-fed staple crops to decline throughout sub-Saharan Africa.
https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/chapter/chapter-5/Observed climate change is already affecting food security through increasing temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, and greater frequency of some extreme events (high confidence)
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Food security will be increasingly affected by projected future climate change (high confidence).
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Vulnerability of pastoral systems to climate change is very high (high confidence).
From Concern USA:In the next 30 years, food supply and food security will be severely threatened if little or no action is taken to address climate change and the food system's vulnerability to climate change. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the extent of climate change impacts on individual regions will vary over time, and different societal and environmental systems will have varied abilities to mitigate or adapt to change.
https://www.concernusa.org/story/climat ... 20systems.Since the early 1990s, the number of extreme weather-related disasters has doubled. This has reduced the yields of major crops and contributed to an increase in food prices and a decrease in income.
These disasters have also disproportionately harmed low-income people and their access to food, which is why we have chosen to focus on the connection between climate change and food security in the 2019 Global Hunger Index (GHI), prepared by Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe. Sadly, this is not a trend that appears to be going away any time soon. Looking ahead, climate models predict higher average temperatures in most land and ocean regions, hotter extremes in many inhabited regions, and both heavy precipitation and an increasing probability of drought in some areas. These are all additional challenges for reducing hunger.
https://www.usda.gov/oce/energy-and-env ... d-securityClimate change is likely to diminish continued progress on global food security through production disruptions that lead to local availability limitations and price increases, interrupted transport conduits, and diminished food safety, among other causes.
https://www.globalhungerindex.org/issue ... /2019.htmlPreviously on the decline, the number of hungry people has been rising since 2015, a shift that the Food and Agriculture Organization has attributed to persistent instability in conflict-ridden regions, economic slowdowns in more peaceful regions, and adverse climate events (FAO 2018b).
Food production is likely to fall in response to higher temperatures, water scarcity, greater CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, and extreme events such as heat waves, droughts, and floods. Already, yields of major food crops such as maize and wheat are declining owing to extreme events, epidemics of plant diseases, and declining water resources. In semi-arid regions, 80 percent or more of year-to-year variation in cereal production can be attributed to climate variability (FAO et al. 2018). In Africa, the relationship between production and various aspects of climate, such as rainfall patterns or temperature, is much more complex, showing high regional variation and demanding location-specific adaptation measures.
Sea-level rise poses a particular risk to food security on small islands, in low-lying coastal areas, and in river deltas. Not only are large populations exposed, but given the high productivity of deltas, such as the Mekong Delta, which accounts for 50 percent of Viet Nam’s national rice production, any change in production patterns would have a substantial impact on food availability and the national economy (Gommes et al. 1998).
https://www.csis.org/analysis/climate-c ... gile-worldThe impacts of climate change threaten a complex global food system that is already struggling to meet the needs of a growing and changing population. After great progress over the last decade, the number of chronically hungry people around the world has grown in each of the last three years. Today, 821 million people—one in nine—are undernourished. These people experience a shortage of food each day, while over twice that number face moderate food insecurity and frequently compromise on the quality or quantity of food they consume.
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Slow economic recovery from the 2008 global financial crisis (and food price spikes) and the increasing frequency and magnitude of climate-related extreme events have helped reverse years of progress fighting global hunger.
How climate change threatens food secur ... rnusa.org)Since the early 1990s, the number of extreme weather-related disasters has doubled. This has reduced the yields of major crops and contributed to an increase in food prices and a decrease in income.
These disasters have also disproportionately harmed low-income people and their access to food, which is why we have chosen to focus on the connection between climate change and food security in the 2019 Global Hunger Index (GHI), prepared by Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe. Sadly, this is not a trend that appears to be going away any time soon. Looking ahead, climate models predict higher average temperatures in most land and ocean regions, hotter extremes in many inhabited regions, and both heavy precipitation and an increasing probability of drought in some areas. These are all additional challenges for reducing hunger.
Why would you accept that obscure, anonymous blog as a credible source? I can't find any reference to this "Global Climate Change Organization" elsewhere. It doesn't even provide any contact or other details, just an email. This is why I say you need to improve your critical thinking skills.R8Z wrote: ↑Mon Feb 21, 2022 1:39 pm Most of the data we've had for climate predictions were junk (non-homogeneous, bad accuracy, tampered datasets)
Yeah, well "mainstream media" is not the same as "dispassionate, objective, peer-reviewed studies in thousands of academic journals."
Is that even a bad thing? Better insulated homes can save tons of money, for example. Office lights that automatically switch off when there's nobody around can save money, and perhaps reduce light pollution too. All sorts of devices, vehicles, and other technologies can be made more efficient.
Not at all. Air pollution is a gigantic health problem that kills 7-8 million each year, and is responsible for a whole array of other societal issues, e.g. birth defects, mental health issues, biodiversity loss. In some countries, the economic impacts account for several percentage points in lost GDP.
Well, we agree on something here. Surely the solution is to end the vast subsidies we pour into the fossil fuel industry each year ($0.5 trillion according to one estimate), alongside better environmental regulations, and other incentives to transition away from fossil fuels.
I refer you to caltrek's excellent list of citations.R8Z wrote: ↑Mon Feb 21, 2022 1:39 pm Whoever has done their reading knows that it rhymes perfectly with same alarmism that has been proven wrong time and time again. Science and technology has solved the above (food shortages) and will solve climate problems once there is enough reason and feasibility to do so.
You dismissed 99.9% of peer-reviewed studies by experts in climate science, published in leading academic journals, including the likes of Nature. Instead you prefer to trust a few paragraphs from some obscure, anonymous blog, which apparently is all it takes to convince you.
The global water cycle—that is, the constant movement of freshwater between the clouds, land and the ocean—plays an important role in our daily lives. This delicate system transports water from the ocean to the land, helping to make our environment habitable and soil fertile.
But rising global temperatures have been making this system more extreme: water is moving away from dry regions towards wet regions, causing droughts to worsen in parts of the globe, while intensifying rainfall events and flooding in others. In other words, wet areas are getting wetter, and dry areas are getting drier.
Up until now, changes to the cycle have been difficult to directly observe, with around 80 percent of global rainfall and evaporation happening over the ocean.
But a new UNSW-led study, published today in Nature, has used changing patterns of salt in the ocean to estimate how much ocean freshwater has moved from the equator to the poles since 1970. The findings show that between two and four times more freshwater has moved than climate models anticipated—giving us insights about how the global water cycle is amplifying as a whole.
A new study led by Prof. Liang Eryuan from the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research (ITP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) shows that global warming has suppressed shrub recruitment in Greenland and the Tibetan Plateau.
This paper was published in PNAS on Feb. 21.
Scientists assume that warming-triggered tipping points related to cold biomes are very likely to occur in the Arctic Region, such as Greenland, and alpine regions in the Tibetan Plateau. The two regions are characterized by similar cold-adapted shrubs.
Shrub recruitment, a key component of vegetation dynamics beyond forests, is a highly sensitive indicator of climate and environmental change. It can act as an indicator of the tipping point of cold biomes.
The research team, from ITP/CAS, the University of Arizona, Instituto Pirenaico de Ecología (IPE-CSIC), and the University of Cambridge, used two long-term shrub recruitment datasets of 2,770 samples from the Tibetan Plateau and Greenland dating back to 1871 to identify trends in shrub recruitment.
The world's largest lakes are hit by severe lake heat waves—when water temperatures soar far above normal—six times as frequently as they were about two decades ago, according to a new study. Nearly all severe lake heat waves occurring over the past 20 years were due in some part to climate change, and could become between three and 25 times more likely by the end of the century, according to the new research.
A new study analyzed over two decades of surface temperature data from the world's largest lakes to find out how frequently lake heat waves occur and modeled how much anthropogenic climate change has contributed to their occurrence.
Researchers found severe lake heat waves are twice as likely to occur, on average, as they were during a pre-industrial climate. Lake heat waves can change water conditions, stress aquatic plants and animals, and lead to algae blooms and other water quality issues.
The study was published in the AGU journal Geophysical Research Letters. The study is the first to quantify how anthropogenic (human-induced) climate change has influenced lake heat waves, offering a critical new perspective on one way the world's lakes are responding to the warming climate.
(EurekAlert) Human-induced climate change is causing dangerous and widespread disruption in nature and affecting the lives of billions of people around the world, despite efforts to reduce the risks. People and ecosystems least able to cope are being hardest hit, according to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, released today.
The IPCC Working Group II report examines the impacts of climate change on nature and people around the globe. It explores future impacts at different levels of warming and the resulting risks, and offers options to strengthen nature and society’s resilience to ongoing climate change; to fight hunger, poverty, and inequality; and to ensure that Earth remains a place worth living on for current as well as for future generations.
The report introduces several new components: One is a special section on climate change impacts, risks and options to act for cities and settlements by the sea, tropical forests, mountains, biodiversity hotspots, dryland and deserts, the Mediterranean, as well as the Polar Regions. Another is an atlas that will present data and findings on observed and projected climate change impacts and risks from global to regional scales, thus offering even more insights for decision makers.
“This report is a dire warning about the consequences of inaction,” said Hoesung Lee, Chair of the IPCC. “It shows that climate change is a grave and mounting threat to our wellbeing and a healthy planet. Our actions today will shape how people adapt and how nature responds to increasing climate risks.”
IIASA Systemic Risk and Resilience Research Group Leader, Reinhard Mechler, is a lead author on Chapter 17 of the report, which focuses on decision-making options for managing risk. Mechler, whose work for the IPCC focusses on how climate risk management and adaptation help to reduce and address the risks to society and ecosystems across the globe, also contributed to the summary for policymakers, which was approved by 195 member governments of the IPCC on Sunday, 27 February 2022, through a virtual approval session held over two weeks. His work includes assessments of methods and tools to support planning and implementation, governance issues, and the international dimension with regard to policy dialogue on adaptation and Loss and Damage.
The Amazon rainforest is likely losing resilience, data analysis from high-resolution satellite images suggests. This is due to stress from a combination of logging and burning—the influence of human-caused climate change is not clearly determinable so far, but will likely matter greatly in the future. For about three-quarters of the forest, the ability to recover from perturbation has been decreasing since the early 2000s, which scientists see as a warning sign. The new evidence is derived from advanced statistical analysis of satellite data of changes in vegetation biomass and productivity.
"Reduced resilience—the ability to recover from perturbations like droughts or fires—can mean an increased risk of dieback of the Amazon rainforest. That we see such a resilience loss in observations is worrying," says Niklas Boers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the Technical University of Munich, who conducted the study jointly with researchers from the University of Exeter, UK.
"The Amazon rainforest is home to a unique host of biodiversity, strongly influences rainfall all over South America by way of its enormous evapotranspiration, and stores huge amounts of carbon that could be released as greenhouse gases in the case of even partial dieback, in turn contributing to further global warming," Boers explains. "This is why the rainforest is of global relevance."
Maybe I was too harsh to jump on this discussion with empty hands and got the response I deserved. I am very convinced on most points you've sourced. On some which I still have some doubts I think are now irrelevant to the discussion.
(The Verge) Ports around the world stand to suffer billions of dollars in losses if greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow, a new report finds. Extreme weather, flooding, and rising sea levels would all damage vital seaport infrastructure, disrupting global supply lines.
Losses from storms and climate-related port disruptions could near $10 billion a year by 2050, according to the report, commissioned by the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). By 2100, without action on climate change, those costs could balloon to more than $25 billion a year. For context, that last figure is more than the total operating profits for the entire global container shipping industry in a year.
Many ports are already overwhelmed after the COVID-19 pandemic exposed weaknesses in global supply chains. Now, ports and the shipping industry have a lot of work ahead of them to cut down their own planet-heating pollution and avoid the worst-case scenarios outlined in the report, its authors warn.
“Just as the COVID-19 pandemic threw our ports and the global supply chain into crisis mode, the climate emergency will have major consequences for international shipping,” Marie Hubatova, senior manager of EDF’s global transport team, said in a press release. “In the face of climate breakdown, however, the shipping industry has an early warning bell and an opportunity to act.”
Severe storms are one of the biggest threats outlined in the report, particularly when stormwaters mangle infrastructure and vessels. The damage they do to ports accounts for the majority of the losses forecasted in the report. Evidence is piling up that tropical cyclones are becoming more intense in a warming world. That means more rainfall and even stronger hurricane-force winds. Then there are rising sea levels: when sea levels are higher, destructive waves and storm surges are bigger.
