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Climate Change in a Nutshell: The Gathering Storm [pdf]

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Re: Climate Change in a Nutshell: The Gathering Storm [pdf]

#131
post #62

I'm in my thirties. I don't have kids, but want them. I don't want to admit to them that I did nothing about global warming when it counted. The thing is that I don't know what I should do; it seems so big, so intractable. Articles like these stir me to action, but what action? Where's the mass movement on this? Where's the group, the party, the leadership?

Buy up the cheap land that will become the next water front property.

I'm serious. If businessmen really are taking climate change seriously, we'd see them speak with their pocketbook, as there are numerous ways they can profit by being able to predict future massive global change.

The fact we do not see such a buy up of future water front property means they either don't think the evidence is there, or they are extremely optimistic about our ability to reverse climate change, or extremely pessimistic about the future such that humankind will be wiped out or something.

Re: Climate Change in a Nutshell: The Gathering Storm [pdf]

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Gradual relocation" of several billion people will be extremely challenging and unfathomably expensive even on a half-century timescale. Barring a way to physically transport entire cities along with buildings, roads, and infrastructure, I don't see any way that "technological progress" can substantially change that.

Buildings don't last forever. "Ideally, the average lifespan of any concrete structure is 75-100 years. But, it is considered that the average life of an apartment is 50-60 years while of a house it is 40 years." [1] Older buildings have been actively maintained. Designing new cities without the cruft of older ones is a huge opportunity. However, it's likely that most building owners will just add couple extra meters…

Moving a city is not as simple as saying "any time a building wears out, rebuild it 100/500/1000 miles away, repeat until finished." At the very least, there's logistical issues and economic disruption at both ends. It may be possible in theory, but, again, extremely challenging and unfathomably expensive. And humanity has a well-established track record with anything that involves committing vast amounts of money now to save a bunch of people, mostly strangers, in a few decades.

Re: Climate Change in a Nutshell: The Gathering Storm [pdf]

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you need to watch it again, because your summary sounds just wrong. Both scientists agreed completely that humans caused CO2 raise and it caused warming. All the actual arguments are way way past those basic facts that are agreed upon. Did you listen when they agreed that proposed measures will not stop ocean water levels from rising? Did you listen to the cost-benefit analysis and socio-economic impact? Why…

No, obviously ocean waters can't be stopped from rising. The question is all about how much they're going to rise. It really annoys me when people treat global warming as an all or nothing quantitative affair. Yes, every climate model overshot air warming leading up to 2014. But they also all undershot ocean warming. That's because, for some reason nobody understands, from 1998 to 2014 all the extra thermal energy ca…

I am sorry but this is ridiculous, ignorant and condescending. Every single thing you said was addressed in the video already and all facts are agreed upon by both parties. You keep bringing up things that are well agreed upon by both scientists. You keep ignoring the socio-economic topic which is the central idea here.

You can't just say Christy was dishonestly cherry-picking, because those data points are what was represented in the IPCC reports as concerning. They are the important data points that dictate the policy, not the undershooting data points. IPCC already cherry-picked these data points with the overshoot to raise the alarm.

Things I found persuasive? You are suggesting the the video represents only one side. This is a debate and both sides raised valid questions. You are exactly what they talked about when asked if they feel embarrassed by the tribal behaviour on either side.

Re: Climate Change in a Nutshell: The Gathering Storm [pdf]

#134
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is overwhelming consensus that the current rate of climate change, which by the way is totally unprecedented in history, can be from no other source than anthropogenic CO2. You can read the research and see how thoroughly and completely every possible confounding variable was accounted for. The scientists who claim "current changes are, like all past changes, caused by other factors than the man-made" are not t…

Let them be wrong then. But science is not a democracy. You can have overwhelming expert consensus and still be completely wrong. You can get experts to hold a vote and agree some new idea is complete garbage but that vote does not change immutable truth. It's happened countless times in history. For example, Ignaz Semmelweis (from wiki): > Despite various publications of results where hand washing reduced mortality…

The problem is that a mountain of evidence stands against climate deniers and your example "could offer no acceptable scientific explanation for his findings."

Re: Climate Change in a Nutshell: The Gathering Storm [pdf]

#135
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please abstain from propagating the "both sides" nonsense. One can admit to degrees of model uncertainty without insinuating that climate change is a matter of opinion.

How can you even say that? Climate science has uncertainty. There are definitely still things being debated.

Everything has uncertainty, even the reality of the world. We usually don't debate things which are "certain enough".

Re: Climate Change in a Nutshell: The Gathering Storm [pdf]

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if we were to stipulate his 10% number, that's 4.3% of cloud formation based on cosmic rays. Not insignificant. Your repeated contention that pollution aerosols are of equal magnitude to cosmic rays contribution requires a large helping of evidence to back it up, given the huge quantity of cosmic rays that impact the troposphere.

"requires a large helping of evidence to back it up" Those are available at http://cloud.web.cern.ch/content/publications . The experiments are started back in 2009. See Wikipedia for a simplified description of the results so far. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_experiment Even if you think that cosmic rays are the bread and butter of cloud formation, the net effect would be global cooling. Clouds reflect more e…

This is new. Coauthored by a NASA scientist. Check it out, I think you'll be interested. ;-)

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1812.02692.pdf

    4 Conclusion
    We have shown a strong correlation between solar and 
    tropospheric variability, in that swings from El Ni˜no 
    to La Ni˜na are related to the phase of the solar 
    cycle’s “fiducial clock,” and that that clock does not 
    run from the canonical solar minimum or maximum, but 
    instead resets when all old cycle flux is gone from the 
    solar disk. While the exact mechanism remains to be 
    elucidated, changes in cosmic ray flux appear to the be
    the driver of these ENSO swings.
    
    Finally, in the absence of sensitivity to solar-driven CRF 
    variations in current coupled climate models, we have a year 
    or so to wait to see if this indicator pans out. However,
    should the coming terminator be followed by such an ENSO 
    swing then we must seriously consider the capability of 
    coupled global terrestrial modeling efforts to capture
    “step-function” events, and assess how complex the Sun-Earth 
    connection is, with particular attention to the relationship 
    between incoming cosmic rays and clouds/ precipitation over 
    our oceans.

Re: Climate Change in a Nutshell: The Gathering Storm [pdf]

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those warming periods are either local, are much, much slower and they are not supposed to be in sync with human activities either. This one is much faster. Not everyone sees it of course. Change blindness is what they call it. https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2014/02/05/257046530/b...

This is not a correct description of past climate changes. The glacial and interglacial periods of the last 2.5 million years have been global and swinging temperatures by 6-9°C in either direction, with periods between 40-100k years. During the last interglacial (Eemian, ca. 129–116k years ago) sea level was 6-9 meters higher than today; Scandinavia was an island. The water temperature of the North Sea was about 2°C…

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05314-1#ref-CR8

The Eemian was caused by reduced North Atlantic ocean circulation, a courtesy of the previous Saale glaciacion period, too much fresh water, and continued transfer of heat from the south.

It produced abrupt effects localized to high altitude areas. Most of what you described occured in the later stages of this 15000 year long period.

The Eemian cannot be really compared to the current global warming, a potential AMOC (Atlantic meridional overturning circulation) instability is just one out of the thousand problems we are facing.

Re: Climate Change in a Nutshell: The Gathering Storm [pdf]

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"requires a large helping of evidence to back it up" Those are available at http://cloud.web.cern.ch/content/publications . The experiments are started back in 2009. See Wikipedia for a simplified description of the results so far. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_experiment Even if you think that cosmic rays are the bread and butter of cloud formation, the net effect would be global cooling. Clouds reflect more e…

This is new. Coauthored by a NASA scientist. Check it out, I think you'll be interested. ;-) https://arxiv.org/pdf/1812.02692.pdf 4 Conclusion We have shown a strong correlation between solar and tropospheric variability, in that swings from El Ni˜no to La Ni˜na are related to the phase of the solar cycle’s “fiducial clock,” and that that clock does not run from the canonical solar minimum or maximum, but instead res…

This is a great paper actually. It depends directly on the premise that cosmic rays cause drastic changes in cloud microphysics. The proof presented for this is a statistical correlation between termination points of sun activity and ENSO (El Nino, La Nina).

They plan to establish causation by predicting ENSO changes based on solar activity, which is good. Once they do that, they will need to prove that cosmic rays are more important in cloud microphysics than the CERN CLOUD experiments suggests so far.

This is what real science is. Great find.

Re: Climate Change in a Nutshell: The Gathering Storm [pdf]

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buildings don't last forever. "Ideally, the average lifespan of any concrete structure is 75-100 years. But, it is considered that the average life of an apartment is 50-60 years while of a house it is 40 years." [1] Older buildings have been actively maintained. Designing new cities without the cruft of older ones is a huge opportunity. However, it's likely that most building owners will just add couple extra meters…

Moving a city is not as simple as saying "any time a building wears out, rebuild it 100/500/1000 miles away, repeat until finished." At the very least, there's logistical issues and economic disruption at both ends. It may be possible in theory, but, again, extremely challenging and unfathomably expensive. And humanity has a well-established track record with anything that involves committing vast amounts of money no…

Moving to better cities does not require intervention. People will do it naturally over time.

Re: Climate Change in a Nutshell: The Gathering Storm [pdf]

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moving a city is not as simple as saying "any time a building wears out, rebuild it 100/500/1000 miles away, repeat until finished." At the very least, there's logistical issues and economic disruption at both ends. It may be possible in theory, but, again, extremely challenging and unfathomably expensive. And humanity has a well-established track record with anything that involves committing vast amounts of money no…

Moving to better cities does not require intervention. People will do it naturally over time.

Are you now claiming that climate change isn't a big deal because the billions of people whose homes are flooded, or too hot to survive, or otherwise uninhabitable can just...go somewhere else?

In today's world, we see (much smaller) groups of people trying to relocate as their homes become intolerably dangerous. The press calls it "the refugee crisis" and it's causing massive tension all over the world. What do you think will happen if the flow of refugees continues increasing, year after year, for decades?

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