The Time to Act Is Now- A great read about Global warming

[billvon 2,434]

>You are lookng at the last 1000yrs and are sying... "Hockey Stick"
>and then looking at the last Billion and saying "No hockey Stick"

No, I'm looking at the last thousand and saying "hockey stick." There WERE hockey sticks in the past; just look at the K-T extinction event 65 million years ago. We now think that was due to a massive change in the climate created by an asteroid impact.

So I don't think you want to say "hey, there were changes like that in the past and they were no problem!" They caused most of the species on the planet to go extinct. Surely something we should not try to emulate.

>What they really mean is "Try to keep the earth exactly how we
>humans want it even if that means changing the planet"

I am not saying that. I am saying minimize our impact, so it is not our CO2 emissions that are forcing the climate change. Allow the climate to change normally as it has done in the past. Life on earth adapted to such gradual changes. They have not adapted to rapid changes, as mass extinctions during those 'hockey sticks' have proven.

[storm1977 0]

Bill,

You may not choose to accept it, But most environmentalists have resorted to "Scare" tactics to get their point across. They claim huge climate change over a very short period of time. The global temperature change over the next 100 yrs, or even 500 yrs is not likely as drastic as some looneys would have you believe.

I have never debated the earth is currently heating up... or that 25yrs ago it was cooling off. What I have argued was the cause.

Models used to predict the future environment are piss poor at BEST. We meteorologist spend Billions every year studing models and creating new ones to mimic natural wx patterns, and we cant get that right. The truth about weather is this... Beyond a 4 day forecast there is 0% skill involved [Lee Grenci 2005].
That being said, it is these meteorological as well geological and biological funtions which will utimately determine the environment in 5yrs and 5 million yrs from right now.
1) we don't understand the processes.
2) we can not model the processes
3) we have little understanding of the logic of the output of the unreliable long term models...

It is a crap shoot at best.
Sorry to be negative, but that is the truth.

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Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

[billvon 2,434]

>But most environmentalists have resorted to "Scare" tactics to get
> their point across.

I know a lot of environmentalists; none of them have tried to scare me.

>They claim huge climate change over a very short period of time.
> The global temperature change over the next 100 yrs, or even 500
> yrs is not likely as drastic as some looneys would have you believe.

Most of the Siberian tundra has already melted. The Arctic will be ice-free in under a hundred years. I'm not sure what you would call "drastic." The world won't end, if that's what you mean. But we could surely make life miserable for people who live near oceans and in places they rely on rain.

>1) we don't understand the processes.
>2) we can not model the processes
>3) we have little understanding of the logic of the output of the
>unreliable long term models...

I don't buy the "since we don't know everything, we know nothing" approach. We DO know CO2 causes infrared re-radiation and subsequent warming when present in the atmosphere. We DO know that we have dramatically increased CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. We ARE heating the planet. The only way to dispute that this is causing the planet to get warmer is to claim that there is some unknown mechanism that reverses that effect - and for that, the burden of proof would be on you.

[storm1977 0]

So, this is where you and I differ i think. Correct me if I am wrong.

You thing Humans are speeding up a natual warming cycle.
I dissagree.

Because of this you also believe that Humans by doing the opposite of what they are currently are doing, can slow down the natual warming cycle.

I do not.

-----------------------------------------------------
Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

[storm1977 0]

Quote

Most of the Siberian tundra has already melted. The Arctic will be ice-free in under a hundred years.

See, this is where The models and speculation begin.
The evidence is not there to support the claim that the artic will be "Ice Free" in 100 yrs.
This is a "Scare Tactic" like I was talking about. The studies used and models used to Predict this are a crapshoot.

You believe the science because some guys selectively grabbed some ice samples and generated a few longterm model runs.
I don't believe the science because I compare these models to some of the ones I use everyday and help to develop for long term trending...

Your guess is as good as mine, but please.... Don't think for a minute that the Models are good predicters. First of all they are probabistic forecast anyway, not deterministic. Though listen to the creators of them would lead you to believe the opposite is true.

-----------------------------------------------------
Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

[Amazon 7]

Quote

In the Cretaceous there were almost no mammals and almost no trees we would recognize as trees. Is that where you want to live?

There were quite a few mammalian species in the Cretaceous. MOST of the trees in the Cretaceous would be very recognizable to us today.( not that a stroll in the woods would be quite as much fun as it is today) Cross sections of fossilized droppings ( coprolites)show quite a bit of plant matter from conifers and other trees.

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/dinosaurs/mesozoic/cretaceous/

Quote

OTHER ANIMALS AND PLANTS IN THE CRETACEOUS
The first placental mammals appeared at the beginning of the Cretaceous. The Cretaceous saw the rise and extinction of the toothed birds, Hesperornis and Ichthyornis. The earliest fossils of birds resembling loons, grebes, cormorants, pelicans, flamingos, ibises, rails, and sandpipers were from the Cretaceous.

During the Cretaceous, primitive flowering plants (anthophytes, also called angiosperms) continued to develop (they evolved about 140 million years ago, during the late Jurassic period). Flowering plants (like magnolia, ficus, credneria, sassafras, viburnum) quickly outnumbered the other plants (mostly ferns , horsetails, trees (like conifers and gingkos), and cycads ), changing the environment tremendously.

And apparently there were carnivorous mammals that did their munching on dinosaurs as well
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6874

[billvon 2,434]

>The evidence is not there to support the claim that the artic will be "Ice Free" in 100 yrs.

This is the same claim made about the tundras melting. Yet melt they did. Arctic ice is currently melting. Barrow is now exposed most of the year, and is getting pounded by storms that used to blow ineffectively against an ice-bound shore. Fairbanks is sinking into the permafrost because it's not permafrost any more.

So in years past, people who disputed climate change could say "all that science isn't provable" and people believed them. But there is no way you can talk to a resident of Alaska today and tell them there's no such thing as climate change. They just have to look out their window to know that statement is wrong.

Besides, above you said that you believe the climate really IS changing, but man isn't causing it. Here you imply the climate really is NOT changing, and the Arctic ice is safe. Which do you believe?

[storm1977 0]

yes, but again my arguement was not whether it was happening. Like I said... you claim it is humans speeding up a normal cycle. I disagree and say warming and cooling are larger cycles that we reall do not affect.

Truthfully the data which suggests to you that next yr will be warmer than this one and warmer still the yr after that is not a good predictor, in reality, the next 10yrs could be cooler than average in the artic. Why? Because the modeling is no good.

A good example is the one that claims that the earth is warming even fast than the models predicted...
Well, if that is the case, then the model didn't do a good job on the short term did it? If it didn't initiallize correctly and got the very short term wrong, then how can we expect it to get the long term correct?

Do you know with any certainty that current trending in global temperature will continue past the next solar cycle? If so, how do you know that?
FYI - The major long term climate models do NOT even factor in Solar Cycles.... Strange since this is a well documented creator of temperature fluctuations and storm severity on earth.

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Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

[billvon 2,434]

>Truthfully the data which suggests to you that next yr will be warmer
> than this one and warmer still the yr after that is not a good
> predictor, in reality, the next 10yrs could be cooler than average in
> the artic. Why? Because the modeling is no good.

The modeling is not perfect. However, it does give us good results; even today, we can predict what a warmer ocean will mean for a hurricane season or an el nino.

It's like trying to predict the course of a disease. No one knows if you get lung cancer if you will die or not. But we can make better and better guesses, and can do more and more things to change that outcome. Just because we can't predict what will happen 100% of the time does NOT mean "medicine is no good."

>Do you know with any certainty that current trending in global
> temperature will continue past the next solar cycle? If so, how do
> you know that?

Because the increase in CO2 will not be reversed by next solar cycle, and CO2 forces increases in heat retention. Do the math; if you have 4 watts/sq m forcing from CO2 and aerosol contributions, and lose 3 watt/sq m from insolation changes, you still get warmer overall - even if you assume we are as high as we will ever get in terms of solar variability. (I assume you are referring to Milankovitch solar cycles.)

[billvon 2,434]

>There were quite a few mammalian species in the Cretaceous.

Very few compared to today's standards, and they were mostly rodent-like. The sauropods were the primary top-of-the-foodchain animals.

>During the Cretaceous, primitive flowering plants (anthophytes,
>also called angiosperms) continued to develop . . .

I agree; towards the end things would start looking more familiar. But overall it was a quite different looking place.

[storm1977 0]

You still are assuming that the only result of more CO2 would be an increase in Global temperature... But you do not assume that the increase could reasonably cause other unforseen changes because you have already assumed the result...

So, millions of years ago when CO2 was 20x higher than now, what happened and why? Pretend we as humans were there at the time with the same technology we have today.... Do you think we would have been able to reasonably predict the future of the environment from an atmospheric stand point?

-----------------------------------------------------
Sometimes it is more important to protect LIFE than Liberty

[billvon 2,434]

> You still are assuming that the only result of more CO2 would be an
>increase in Global temperature...

There are a lot of results, not just an increase in global temperature. Increasing CO2 has an effect on carbonate formation and photosynthesis speed, for example. My assumption is that since CO2 concentration will increase the heat retention of the earth, the _primary_ result will be an increase in average temp. There will no doubt be secondary effects.

One thing I do not understand about the climate change deniers is that they don't believe CO2 concentrations will increase forcing (which is pretty well proven science.) But they DO believe that some poorly-understood mechanisms will certainly cut in and mitigate any possible effects of increasing CO2 concentrations. I think they need to do a lot more homework on what those mythical mechanisms are before they can say that with any credibility - especially given how much scorn they show the more established science.

>So, millions of years ago when CO2 was 20x higher than now, what
>happened and why?

We don't know. Several possibilities exist.

>Do you think we would have been able to reasonably predict the future of
>the environment from an atmospheric stand point?

Nope, nor can we predict what will happen millions of years from now. Which is fine - what matters to us is what happens in the next year, ten years, hundred years or thousand years.