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rushmc

"Study: Climate change is nothing new, in fact it was happening the same way 1.4 billion years ago"

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http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/03/06/1502239112.abstract
Quote

Significance

There is a wealth of evidence pointing to dramatic short-term climate change on Earth over the last few million years. Much of this climate change is driven by variations of Earth’s orbit around the Sun with characteristic frequencies known as Milankovitch cycles. Robust evidence for orbitally driven climate change, however, becomes rare as one descends deep into Earth time. We studied an exceptional record of climate change as recorded in 1.4-billion-year-old marine sediments from North China. This record documents regular changes in subtropical/tropical Hadley Cell dynamics. These changes in dynamics controlled wind strength, rainfall, and ocean circulation, translated into cyclic variations in sediment geochemistry, much like the orbital control on climate today and in the recent past.



http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/03/10/study-climate-change-is-nothing-new-in-fact-it-was-happening-the-same-way-1-4-billion-years-ago/

Studies just keep coming
"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

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BIGUN

The issue is not natural climate change, but human-induced climate change and its effect when compounded with natural change.



and as more is learned it becomes more clear that man induced CO2 have very very little to do with what is claimed


If anything at all

There are recorded periods of higher CO2 concentrations and higher temps

The part that the AWG crowd loves to leave out is that CO2 concentrations previously recorded lag temp changes

The current lag suggests we may be seeing this repeated today
"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

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>and as more is learned it becomes more clear that man induced CO2 have very
>very little to do with what is claimed

From Wikipedia:


============
Radiative forcing

In climate science, radiative forcing or climate forcing, is defined as the difference of insolation (sunlight) absorbed by the Earth and energy radiated back to space. Typically, radiative forcing is quantified at the tropopause in units of watts per square meter of the Earth's surface. A positive forcing (more incoming energy) warms the system, while negative forcing (more outgoing energy) cools it. Causes of radiative forcing include changes in insolation and the concentrations of radiatively active gases, commonly known as greenhouse gases and aerosols.

. . .

Forcing due to atmospheric gas

For a greenhouse gas, such as carbon dioxide, radiative transfer codes that examine each spectral line for atmospheric conditions can be used to calculate the change ΔF as a function of changing concentration. These calculations can often be simplified into an algebraic formulation that is specific to that gas.

For instance, the simplified first-order approximation expression for carbon dioxide is:

Delta F = 5.35*ln(C\Co)*W/M^2

where C is the CO2 concentration in parts per million by volume and C0 is the reference concentration. The relationship between carbon dioxide and radiative forcing is logarithmic, and thus increased concentrations have a progressively smaller warming effect.

. . .

Changes in radiative forcing

The table below (derived from atmospheric radiative transfer models) shows changes in radiative forcing between 1979 and 2013. The table includes the contribution to radiative forcing from carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH
4), nitrous oxide (N2O); chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs); and fifteen other minor, long-lived, halogenated gases. The table includes the contribution to radiative forcing of long-lived greenhouse gases. It does not include other forcings, such as aerosols and changes in solar activity.

1979 CO2 forcing - 1.027
2014 CO2 forcing - 1.884
==============
>The part that the AWG crowd loves to leave out is that CO2 concentrations
>previously recorded lag temp changes

And the part that deniers don't get is that since this time humans, rather than a dramatic and sudden climate change caused by (for example) meteor impeacts, is causing the CO2 releases this time, it precedes releases this time.

Believe it or not, the dinosaurs did not have coal power plants or SUV's. We do. That's why things are different this time around.

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There are studied indicating much much higher levels of CO2 in the planets past
Along with higher temps

It does no good to keep exagerating the effects


Models are shown as wrong and flawed
Predictions are not coming true
Alarmism is still rampant
And the most recent studies are indicating that other factors play a much greater role in climate change
Not man
"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

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Once again you post a link that states one thing but you misinterpret it and think it says something different.

Remind us again how many MILLIONS of TONS of CO2 the company you work for spews into the atmosphere each year.

'It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.'
...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

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kallend



'It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.'



I am sure you say this to your fellow profs that get billions in grants to support the AWG bs too

Correct?
"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

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rushmc

***

'It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.'



I am sure you say this to your fellow profs that get billions in grants to support the AWG bs too

Correct?

Well, since grants are public information, please post a list of profs who have some of these $BILLION grants, and where the money comes from.
...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

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kallend

******

'It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.'



I am sure you say this to your fellow profs that get billions in grants to support the AWG bs too

Correct?

Well, since grants are public information, please post a list of profs who have some of these $BILLION grants, and where the money comes from.

Actually, as I have linked before, they dont. Unless they get a FOIA request

And then THEY turn around and acusse others

Like you do
"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

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rushmc

*********

'It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.'



I am sure you say this to your fellow profs that get billions in grants to support the AWG bs too

Correct?

Well, since grants are public information, please post a list of profs who have some of these $BILLION grants, and where the money comes from.

Actually, as I have linked before, they dont. Unless they get a FOIA request

And then THEY turn around and acusse others

Like you do

Translation - you just make shit up and when challenged, start weaseling.
...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

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Re: the general theme of this thread.

Fires happen naturally (lightning strikes for example) and have for millions of years, so we should not be alarmed about the guy who just threw a Molotov cocktail through your window? Floods happen naturally, so we should not be concerned about that dam upstream that has developed major cracks?

I don't get the logic of the argument that just because something happened due to natural forces in the past we should look the other way when human activity is causing it today. What standard does that leave us with? Anything that is not quite as bad as the worst that occurred due to natural causes is OK? The worst mass extinction in Earth's history was caused by a run-away greenhouse event at the end of the Permian, resulting in the mass extinction of over 95% of all the species alive at that time. It was certainly a natural event (as there were no humans at the time), instead it was most likely caused by a massive volcanic eruption (the Siberian Trapps) through one of the largest coal deposits in the world, releasing huge amounts of CO2 and methane from burning coal and also releasing methane hydrides from the sea floor, which also made most of the ocean anoxic. Is this our standard, anything less is just "oh well, it happened in the past so we won't worry about it if it happens now"?

Marc, Iowa has been under water several times in the past. At one time (in the Late Cretaceous) there was an inland sea way that connected from the Gulf of Mexico all the way to the Arctic Ocean, completely bisecting the continent. That was due to natural forces. So, Marc, I assume you would not be disturbed at all if you woke up tomorrow to find your house was under several hundred feet of salt water. Because, you know, it happened in the past so it's no problem.

Don
_____________________________________
Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996)
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

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There is a bit of a difference. It isn't being suggested that humans are burning down forests with fires. Well, it is and that's why we've been fighting forest fires for the last couple of centuries. But the allegation is that we are conjuring lightning that would not have happened otherwise. The allegation is that we are causing nature to create lakes that would not otherwise have existed. Or that we are causing lakes to evaporate that would otherwise have still been there.


I find this to be rather difficult to establish. There is another reasonable explanation.

Mark my words, the hurricane drought in Florida is going to end. And when it does it will cause great destruction. And people will pounce on climate change as being the reason why a hurricane struck and caused more dollars of damage.

If we see a hunter set a fire and burn the forest we can easily attribute human activity. If we see a guy throw a Molotov cocktail, we now blame that on climate change. That's where the debate is. I have a hard time believing that climate change is causing youths in India to be sold by their families into slavery. But this is what is actually being put out there.

Does throwing a Molotov cocktail occur in the absence of climate change? Shall we see the fingerprints of climate change with every act of violence?


My wife is hotter than your wife.

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If we see a guy throw a Molotov cocktail, we now blame that on climate change. That's where the debate is.



In your head, yes, that's where the debate is. That's where "whatsupwSiththat.com" wants you to think that's where the debate is. But you know that's not really where the debate is.

Quote

I have a hard time believing that climate change is causing youths in India to be sold by their families into slavery. But this is what is actually being put out there.



Source, please.

- Dan G

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DanG

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If we see a guy throw a Molotov cocktail, we now blame that on climate change. That's where the debate is.



In your head, yes, that's where the debate is. That's where "whatsupwSiththat.com" wants you to think that's where the debate is. But you know that's not really where the debate is.

Quote

I have a hard time believing that climate change is causing youths in India to be sold by their families into slavery. But this is what is actually being put out there.



Source, please.



I'm sure he's in reference to things like this: http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/study-climate-change-will-caus/25310658

"The study, published in the "Journal of Environmental Economics and Management," showed that climate change will cause an additional 22,000 murders, 180,000 cases of rape, 1.2 million aggravated assaults, 2.3 million simple assaults, 260,000 robberies, 1.3 million burglaries, 2.2 million cases of larceny and 580,000 cases of vehicle theft in the United States between 2010 and 2099."
You stop breathing for a few minutes and everyone jumps to conclusions.

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Hmm, maybe. But he used the present tense. Not, "may cause youths in India to be sold into slavery," but, "is causing youths in India to be sold by their families into slavery."

Big difference.

Also, it should be noted that the quoted study about crime increases due to climate change assumed that a temperature rise will occur. It was not a scientific paper arguing that climate change is real. It was a sociology and economics paper that asked, "if climate change occurs, what would the impact on crime rates be." Logically, a very different argument than what lawrocket claimed is currently being attributed to climate change.

- Dan G

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My point was simply to point out the logical fallacy, often presented by Marc and by others, in the argument that the climate changed in the past due to natural forces and therefore any change now must be due to natural forces. I also take issue with the implication that climate change is not a problem because the planet has seen change in the past. There have been some pretty devastating natural events in the past. Read up on the Permian extinction; the biosphere came amazingly close to the complete extinction of multicellular animal and plant life, and it took over 15 million years before biodiversity recovered to anything close to the level it was at before the extinction event (actually a series of events spaced at intervals of a few thousand years). If we say "it's no big deal as it happened before and the planet survived", that implies that it is OK to screw up the biosphere to the point where multicellular life (including us) is only viable in a few spots (high arctic, and high elevations) that escaped the heat and low oxygen levels.

This is not an argument that the current round of climate change will progress to such a point. It is just my reason for discounting the argument (as for example presented in Marc's original post) that past natural events allow us to disregard current climate change and humanity's role in causing it.

I agree that hyperbolic statements about the short term consequences of climate change (crime in India, extinction of polar bears in the immediate future) are not helpful to the discussion. I think that reasonable people can disagree about what the probable consequences of climate change will be, and we can disagree about the relative risks of doing nothing and costs of doing something. Those are useful discussions to have. Saying "it happened before so it's no big deal" reflects ignorance of what happened before, and is not useful.

Don
_____________________________________
Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996)
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

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GeorgiaDon

My point was simply to point out the logical fallacy, often presented by Marc and by others, in the argument that the climate changed in the past due to natural forces and therefore any change now must be due to natural forces. I also take issue with the implication that climate change is not a problem because the planet has seen change in the past. There have been some pretty devastating natural events in the past. Read up on the Permian extinction; the biosphere came amazingly close to the complete extinction of multicellular animal and plant life, and it took over 15 million years before biodiversity recovered to anything close to the level it was at before the extinction event (actually a series of events spaced at intervals of a few thousand years). If we say "it's no big deal as it happened before and the planet survived", that implies that it is OK to screw up the biosphere to the point where multicellular life (including us) is only viable in a few spots (high arctic, and high elevations) that escaped the heat and low oxygen levels.

This is not an argument that the current round of climate change will progress to such a point. It is just my reason for discounting the argument (as for example presented in Marc's original post) that past natural events allow us to disregard current climate change and humanity's role in causing it.

I agree that hyperbolic statements about the short term consequences of climate change (crime in India, extinction of polar bears in the immediate future) are not helpful to the discussion. I think that reasonable people can disagree about what the probable consequences of climate change will be, and we can disagree about the relative risks of doing nothing and costs of doing something. Those are useful discussions to have. Saying "it happened before so it's no big deal" reflects ignorance of what happened before, and is not useful.

Don



My overall point is meant to be that the climate changes
It has changed
I will change
It is what climate does

IMO mans impact in minimal
The push to say it is more that this is a politcal tactic to force changes on those who chose not to live as the green alarmist think we all should
It is also to counter the science is settled bs
Why? As my post proves there is much to learn and much more to take into consideration

And having this position causes the visral arlarmists to lable me

Except that does not work with me anymore
"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

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SkyDekker

It is one man's opinion, not a scientific study, nor representative of the whole debate/study.



I know this. But they put that he's a Nobel Laureate. And the actual science gets lost in the rhetoric. For example, there is a drought going on where I live and the President paid us a visit and told us that it is the fault of climate change. And people believed him. Still do.

It's gone too far with the rhetoric. Scientists also aren't out there too often calling bs. Instead, many of the most prominent are egging it in and doing it themselves. See Mann blaming 34 degree seawater as being 16 degrees above normal due to climate change causing the Bostin snowfall. There was so much scientifically wrong with his statement but it fit the rhetoric.


My wife is hotter than your wife.

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GeorgiaDon

My point was simply to point out the logical fallacy, often presented by Marc and by others, in the argument that the climate changed in the past due to natural forces and therefore any change now must be due to natural forces. I also take issue with the implication that climate change is not a problem because the planet has seen change in the past. There have been some pretty devastating natural events in the past. Read up on the Permian extinction; the biosphere came amazingly close to the complete extinction of multicellular animal and plant life, and it took over 15 million years before biodiversity recovered to anything close to the level it was at before the extinction event (actually a series of events spaced at intervals of a few thousand years). If we say "it's no big deal as it happened before and the planet survived", that implies that it is OK to screw up the biosphere to the point where multicellular life (including us) is only viable in a few spots (high arctic, and high elevations) that escaped the heat and low oxygen levels.

This is not an argument that the current round of climate change will progress to such a point. It is just my reason for discounting the argument (as for example presented in Marc's original post) that past natural events allow us to disregard current climate change and humanity's role in causing it.

I agree that hyperbolic statements about the short term consequences of climate change (crime in India, extinction of polar bears in the immediate future) are not helpful to the discussion. I think that reasonable people can disagree about what the probable consequences of climate change will be, and we can disagree about the relative risks of doing nothing and costs of doing something. Those are useful discussions to have. Saying "it happened before so it's no big deal" reflects ignorance of what happened before, and is not useful.

Don



If it happened before and wasn't a big deal then no problem. Is anyone predicting a Permian type event? No. In that case, mention of a Permian type event is not helpful. I compare it to images of what the earth would look like with an extra 30 meters of sea level increase. It isn't going to happen for the next several hundred thousand years and well after all fossil fuels are used up. But this is stated frequently as a whole "if" scenario. To illustrate the dangers of carbon pollution.

My thing is that if they are putting forth impossible scenarios to illustrate the danger then there is a problem.

As another aside, that something has happened before is also important scientifically. There is not a teenager in the US who has experienced a Category 5 hurricane hitting their hometown. So when it happens (and it will) they will have experienced something that is brand new to them. Naturally, they will ask whether anyone has seen anything like this before.

Yes. It happens. This kid will have seen things worse now than before. And it would be natural to assume that the climate is changing. Does the fact that it happened before make it good? No. But it does provide an alternative explanation to "this unprecedented event is caused by human sins."

I'm sure that in your line of work you see new strains of pathogens being identified. In your line of work, is there a null hypothesis that human induced climate change causes pathogens to mutate? Or is the mutation of various bugs considered to be a natural process?

Obviously, it doesn't excuse making weapons grade anthrax. Nor does it mean that humans aren't genetically engineering new organisms. But seeing the natural adaptations of things to resist things like human eradication I would think that natural processes are going to be viewed as primarily responsible.


My wife is hotter than your wife.

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Is anyone predicting a Permian type event? No.

Peter Ward, as paleontologist who specializes in mass extinction events, has in several "popular science" type books described the outcome of global warming in just those terms.

Quote

If it happened before and wasn't a big deal then no problem.

There have been several less extreme climate events in the Earth's history that seem to most people to be "no big deal" now (tens or hundreds of millions of years later) but they were a big deal to the species alive (and afterward not) at the time. What is your definition of a "big deal"? Certainly the extinction of humanity would be a "big deal", but no-one realistically expects that to happen. A sizeable fraction of the human population lives on river deltas, and those areas are also some of the richest farmland (think of Bangladesh for example). A sea level rise of 30 meters would displace hundreds of millions of people and cause the loss of a significant fraction of the arable land. Would that be the end of humanity? Obviously not. Would it be a big deal? I'm inclined to think so. You may think otherwise.

Quote

It isn't going to happen for the next several hundred thousand years and well after all fossil fuels are used up.

Is that a prediction? Based on what model? Or is it your opinion?

We've been around this before, and we probably just need to agree to disagree. My perspective is that past events have included some rather fast and significant shifts in climate, many of which we do not understand the cause (and some we do, such as Milankovitch cycles). The historical record suggests that feedback controls on climate are complex and poorly understood (as evidenced by the lack of precision of current climate models) but also that there seems to be various stable equilibria for the climate, so that once pushed beyond a threshold (which we do not know) the climate can shift to a new pattern and remain stable there until something else forces it to shift to a different equilibrium point. The alternative model is that climate responds slowly and linearly to inputs, which suggests it is a simple system regulated by only a small number of direct inputs.

Lets illustrate it this way. Imagine an increasing concentration of a greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Which model will best fit the climate response?
Model A: a linear temperature increase over time.
Model B: a series of steps, with relatively flat spots (where feedback controls can stabilize temperature and maintain an equilibrium), interspersed with sudden jumps to the next equilibrium point (when feedbacks can't contain the forcing and the system shifts to a new equilibrium).

Which model is more accurate? I guess we are doing that experiment right now.

Quote

In your line of work, is there a null hypothesis that human induced climate change causes pathogens to mutate?

Nope, I have never heard that suggested

On the other hand, there is a lot of discussion of the consequences of climate change for the distribution of vector-borne diseases, such as malaria. Last year I was invited to give a talk about that at an ecology meeting. I think they were taken aback by what I had to say, and I noticed I wasn't invited back this year. Here's a quick synopsis of what I told them:

1) The prediction that increasing temperatures will cause malaria to spread in the US and Europe is based on the assumption that malaria is a tropical disease and unsuitable climate is what currently keeps it out of those areas. In fact up until the 1930s or so there was a lot of malaria in the US, and malaria was common in Europe up as far as the Scandanavian countries up until a century or so ago. In the 1870s about 40,000-50,000 people died each year in the US from malaria. The climate here is already quite suitable for malaria. The factors that led to the elimination of malaria in the US and Europe have nothing to do with climate (they involve economic development, human behavior, public health and health care), and a warming climate will likely have no impact on malaria in the US or Europe. However malaria in Africa may decrease because there is such a thing as too hot for malaria transmission (basically, mosquitoes don't live long enough when it is too hot).

2. You can't prove an epidemic happened because of warming climate, so the best you can do is to eliminate all the other possible causes. Epidemics of some previously tropical diseases (such as Chikungunya fever) have recently occurred in southern Europe. The actual reason for this is that the Asian Tiger Mosquito was introduced into Europe a few years ago, and this mosquito is an excellent vector for Chikungunya and other diseases such as Dengue. Before that, there were no good Chikungunya vectors in Europe. The Tiger mosquito is well adapted to temperate and subtropical climates; it does well in Europe because Europe already has a favorable climate, not because of any warming. So the spread of these diseases into Europe has nothing to do with warming climates, and everything to do with us moving insect vectors around the world. Interestingly, the same mosquito was introduced to the US in the 1980s and has spread throughout the Gulf states, up the eastern seaboard to Delaware/New Jersey, and up the Mississippi valley. In the meantime Chikungunya virtually exploded in the Caribbean in 2013 (about a million cases in 2014) and has started to pop up in southern Florida, as has another disease, Dengue. You can expect epidemics of both on the US mainland in the near future.

But, again, not due to climate change, but because we are very good at transplanting mosquitoes and other vectors to new areas all over the world.

Don
_____________________________________
Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996)
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

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