Still think climate change is a hoax?

[SilverFang01]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/j...record-45c

I can’t even. 111.8 F. This will be the new normal.

[robkelk]

And that's a decade old.

[Rajvik]

Because it is not going to create a better world, in fact I feel it would create a worse one because of human nature.

That said, debunked again.
https://www.rt.com/news/464051-finnish-s...rming/amp/

[robkelk]

Because it is not going to create a better world, in fact I feel it would create a worse one because of human nature.

That said, debunked again.
https://www.rt.com/news/464051-finnish-s...rming/amp/

CalTech disagrees with that supposed debunking.
http://scrippsscholars.ucsd.edu/jnorris/...echweb.pdf

[Matrix Dragon]

"No point in trying to make the world a better place, we'd all fail miserably because people suck."

You're a ray of fucking sunshine.

[Rajvik]

And I have two to your one, main point being, as I have said before, it is not a given that climate change/global warming is because of mankind.

Let me put it bluntly matrix, I forget who said it but the problem with any society is the people. People are stupid, petty, greedy bastards who rarely look out for anyone but themselves, and all you ever get with a revolution of any kind is a change of the individuals in power. Even the supposedly altruistic, it could be argued, are operating power a level of self-interest because why do we have the next generation but to care for us when we can't do it for ourselves.

No matrix, I am not a ray of fucking sunshine as you so aptly put, I am the asshole that looks at the plan to fix a supposed problem and sees how many holes he can poke in it to see if it is worth a damn to try and implement

[hazard]

Overwhelming majority of studies still indicate that climate change has a major anthropogene component.

Also, increased cloud cover comes with its own issues. Only way to get it is by increasing water evaporation. Only way to increase water evaporation on a global scale is by increasing water temperature on a global scale. Only to increase water temperature on a global scale is by increasing global temperatures. A new equilibrium involving that increased cloud cover cannot be found without accepting there's a higher average planetary temperature.

This also comes with complications, with more water vapor in the atmosphere and higher ocean temperatures driving that evaporation you are likely to see more and heftier weather events of all sorts.


Also also, paper does not debunk climate change, it merely offers an alternate, not human centric explanation for climate change. It does not even attempt to debunk climate change, indeed it's a key underpinning of the paper. The only thing it may indicate is 'attempts to control climate change by changing CO2 and other green house gas concentrations will be insufficient'. You will still have to deal with climate change, and all that comes with that.

[classicdrogn]

The difference, hazard, is that if climate changed is not caused by human activity it's not their fault and they're victims and oh, incidentally it's just fine to go on doing the old messy inefficient things by putting some patches and lashings on past-designed-life equipment because it's cheaper than newer, cleaner kit and means not needing to change training or modify business models with a proven record of profits.

[Dartz]

The thing withj Global Warming is that we'll probably end up running out of suitable fuels in the next 50 to 100 years anyway.

Even if we're *not* cooking the planet, we're still going to need an alternative source of energy. People still need to go to work. People still need to move. Industrial civilisation will still need power. Unless you don't want industrial civilisation any more.

Also means we don't need to give money to Saudi Arabia anymore. Or Iran if they're the one you hate. Better to spend billiosns on fusion research than on whichever one your consider a terror-state.

[robkelk]

And I have two to your one ...

Overwhelming majority of studies ...

Both of you are committing the same logical fallacy here: Appeal to the Majority.

(And I'll admit that by linking to CalTech I was committing the logical fallacy of Appeal to Authority.)

Look at the evidence. Do the math yourself. Come to your own conclusions. "Don't let anyone think for you; most people can barely think for themselves."

[hazard]

Not just fusion research.

The problem with fusion is that it hasn't been proven effective yet.

We do however have a source of energy that has proven effective, much more so than fusion energy. It does come with the need to do some major rethinking in how we deploy that energy source, but nuclear fission power has the potential to bridge the gap between effective fusion power dependence and fossil fuel dependence. There are reactor designs that are passively safe after a SCRAM that currently in use reactors are not, and long term storage of the wastes is a solvable problem.

[robkelk]

The problem with fusion is that it hasn't been proven effective yet.

Well, fusion power technology hasn't been proven effective yet. Fusion itself... just step outside during the daytime when there are no clouds in the sky, and look up. We know it works, we just haven't figured how to do it ourselves on a scale of longer than a second or so.

[Dartz]

Wendelstein 7-X will be firing for about 30 minutes when it's completed. It's been built and is testing at the moment.

ITER Looks like science-fiction but is actually being built.

[classicdrogn]

Wendelstein 7-X will be firing for about 30 minutes when it's completed. It's been built and is testing at the moment.

At first glance I thought you wrote "in about 30 minutes" and was all "Like WHAAAT?"

Then I read it again and was disappointed. It's still pretty nifty, though, and as migrating caterpillars prove, everyone taking small steps forward gets you places fast when you're standing on each other's shoulders. (As long as that guy at the back doesn't freeze everyone where they are, anyway. Carl.)

[hazard]

As I said, we're not there yet.

[Labster]

The thing withj Global Warming is that we'll probably end up running out of suitable fuels in the next 50 to 100 years anyway.

That's a nice thought but is not bloody likely.  2018 still hit a record for global oil production; peak oil is probably only going to happen once demand swaps to renewable energy.  The coal reserves would last about a millennium still, but right now, even a subsidized coal industry is far more expensive than any other option.  The only thing stopping us from burning the planet is the fact that renewable power is cheaper, and getting cheaper still.

[Epsilon]

And I have two to your one, main point being, as I have said before, it is not a given that climate change/global warming is because of mankind.

Anytime you want to start Epsilon/Rajvik discuss basic science again, let me know. Until then, your decision to bias your view of the human race without evidence says more about your faith than it's nature.

[Black Aeronaut]

I've said word to this effect elsewhere, and I feel it bears repeating.

I simply just don't get the sheer hubris and insanity that's at work here.

Now, Raj, I know you think climate change is a hoax and all.

But what about improving air quality in places like Los Angeles or New York City? Because in these places, where they've implemented moves to renewable energy - or at least energy sources that are not as detrimental to the air quality - there has been noticeable and quantifiable changes in the air quality in these areas.

You cannot honestly tell me that cleaner air in general isn't a good thing.

I mean, this kind of thinking hearkens back to the PG&E case where they told the residents "Our chromium is safe so you don't have to worry!"

There's a reason why it's called "pollution" in the first place. If it's just a little, okay then. The Earth can handle little stuff - even the occasional big nasty like a huge volcanic eruption like Krakatoa. But when you're burning energy that outpaces the energy released by things like volcanic eruptions? You're gonna throw some shit out of whack, one way or another.

What, think I'm just screwing around? Talking out my ass?

Okay.

It's estimated that Mt Saint Helens put out somewhere in the neighborhood of 24 megatons of energy released in just in the initial blast of it's eruption in 1980.

24 megatons is about 100.4 BILLION Megajoules.

100.4 Billion Megajoules is about 95.2 Trillion BTUs of energy.

And in 2017, the USA expended about 97.7 Quadrilllion BTUs of energy. About 80% of that was in the form of fossil fuels.

That's a little more than 1000 times the energy Mt Saint Helens released.

This is just basic math. There's no massaging of the figures here - the math is sound, even if it's the 'back of a cocktail napkin' variety - it's accurate enough to give you an idea of what we're doing to our planet.

Over 1,000 Mt Saint Helens eruptions per year. Yes, the particulates are nowhere nearly as bad. We're not throwing thousands of tons of dust up into the air. But that kind of burning of fossil fuels is the very opposite of "sustainable".

Sources:
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/?pag...nergy_home
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_erupt...St._Helens

[Matrix Dragon]

I just remember how, a few short decades ago, America had a number of rivers with a bad habit of catching fire. A lot. Those rivers currently do not catch fire, because steps were taken. Those steps started with 'stop people from throwing their industrial waste into the river!'

[Black Aeronaut]

Hmmm. IIRC, they removed those restrictions out over by Ft Lauderdale. Imagine how surprised those folks over at Pinellas Beach were when a red tide came in.

[hazard]

In the 1960's, the waters of the Rhine were so severely contaminated that by the time they flowed into the North Sea by Rotterdam the river was effectively dead, with no to extremely limited life in it.

It wasn't even the fault of Rotterdam's nature as Europe's biggest port and a key oil refining city, with multiple, massive oil refineries build on the river shore.

Rather, it was the cumulative effect of municipalities, industries and the general public dumping waste and waste water directly into the river along practically the entire length of the river.


It took decades of activism and legislative effort across three countries (France, Germany and the Netherlands) to clean the river up, and it has cleaned up quite well now. I wouldn't advise drinking it without some proper filtering, but at least it won't poison you when you fall in.

[robkelk]

Recent warming over the past 100 years is not part of a natural process, studies find

In one of three new studies published in the journals Nature and Nature Geoscience, researchers found that previous periods of climate change such as the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warming Period were regional and not a global phenomenon.

In contrast, the warming that has occurred over the past century has been far-reaching and global in nature.

"In this paper, what we do is look at climate over the past 2,000 years — and traditionally the understanding of climate over this period is that there were globally coherent periods of climate variability," said Nathan Steiger, co-author of the paper and an associate researcher at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University. "But what we show is that these periods are not globally coherent, as previously thought."

I think 2,000 years is a pretty good baseline - that should be long enough to filter out any natural causes of climate change. And over those 2,000 years, the researchers were not able to find any event that affected the entire planet at the same time, the way the current event is affecting the entire world now.

In a second study, researchers examined Earth's rate of surface warming — the global mean temperature — and its drivers. They found that the rate of warming over periods of at least 20 years was fastest during the late 20th century.

"We find that at pre-industrial times … major volcanic eruptions were the major drivers of temperature fluctuations," said co-author Raphael Neukom, a scientist at the Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Bern. But external forces such as variations in the sun's output did not have "a significant influence" on temperatures.

I've already posted a link to solar output fluctuations to this forum, although not to this particular thread - it shouldn't be too difficult to go look at those numbers yourself.

The third paper also concluded that volcanoes played a role in climatic upheaval in the past.

It's this agreement between the three separate studies that the teams of researchers believe is an important indicator of the climate state the planet is currently experiencing.

"The basic conclusion is that what's happening today is anomalous, and we understand why it's anomalous — it's not a mystery," said Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist and director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who was not involved with the study.

But, he said, while the findings may not be entirely new, it's encouraging to have the new research to support other studies, and to offer it up to people who are "grasping at straws to avoid" dealing with climate change.

And thus we see independent teams arriving at the relatively same conclusion.

Nature is a peer-reviewed journal - any glaring flaws in the methodology should have been spotted, and would have blocked publication of any of the studies. The fact that all three were published should tell you something.

[Labster]

So I'm visiting Amsterdam, and it got to 40.5° today.  Still humid, mostly calm winds.

And everything is freaking breaking.  Trains can't be run as fast, let the rails expand right off the track.  I think all of the Intercity Direct trains were cancelled today.  Several bridges had to be closed downtown for the same reason, thermal expansion of metal drawbriges.  The hotel I registered claimed to have air conditioning -- which made it all of 4° cooler than outside.  So only 35° in the room.    The airport had issues with the tarmac starting to melt, and lots of flights were cancelled.  They broke a fuel pump yesterday, which means that some flights couldn't refuel.

In my hotel, a guy walked by me talking to his girl.  He said, "If it's like this for one day, how bad is it going to be when the apocalypse comes?"  How bad indeed.

Summer is coming.

I think 2,000 years is a pretty good baseline - that should be long enough to filter out any natural causes of climate change. And over those 2,000 years, the researchers were not able to find any event that affected the entire planet at the same time, the way the current event is affecting the entire world now.

I had just been talking about how bad the Roman Empire was on the environment.  There should still be a little anthropogenic signal in there at 2000 years, mainly from land use change in North Africa.  This is not global, but would be a strong enough effect to change the global heat balance a little.

Nature is a peer-reviewed journal - any glaring flaws in the methodology should have been spotted, and would have blocked publication of any of the studies. The fact that all three were published should tell you something.

Nature and Science are the sensationalist media of the science publishing world.  I know it has so-called impact factor, but they've had some major retractions lately.  Appeal to authority doesn't work well in this case.

[hazard]

Something to be understood is that the Netherlands have not really been thinking about what it means that the global average temperature is rising.

That's not to say there hasn't been some thought on it, but there has been little practical thought put into it, especially when it comes to adjusting to the fact that this also means that temperatures in the Netherlands will be higher during the summer.

Because of this, modern day construction is extremely well isolated with high energy retention, which is useful during the average dreary, chilly winter as it saves on heating costs (we don't get long periods below zero day temperatures anymore it seems). Less so during the summer, as I've been noticing for years, because modern day residential construction does not have integrated air conditioning systems even though that means that if I didn't pull some shenanigans it'd be 30+ degrees C in my home right now, and it'd also be so tonight. And tomorrow, and tomorrow night and quite likely until Wednesday evening at the earliest, because heat is retained so well.

And that's even though by Monday temperatures are expected to drop to the high 20's during daytime.

[Matrix Dragon]

Something to be understood is that the Netherlands have not really been thinking about what it means that the global average temperature is rising.

That's not to say there hasn't been some thought on it, but there has been little practical thought put into it, especially when it comes to adjusting to the fact that this also means that temperatures in the Netherlands will be higher during the summer.

Because of this, modern day construction is extremely well isolated with high energy retention, which is useful during the average dreary, chilly winter as it saves on heating costs (we don't get long periods below zero day temperatures anymore it seems). Less so during the summer, as I've been noticing for years, because modern day residential construction does not have integrated air conditioning systems even though that means that if I didn't pull some shenanigans it'd be 30+ degrees C in my home right now, and it'd also be so tonight. And tomorrow, and tomorrow night and quite likely until Wednesday evening at the earliest, because heat is retained so well.

And that's even though by Monday temperatures are expected to drop to the high 20's during daytime.

I know people around here that are confused by the European 'record highs'. One of my coworkers is British and was able to explain a lot of reasons it's so bad over there, as opposed to somewhere like here in Australia, which has different requirements for everyday living. Imagining our summers without air conditioning as standard, or stores being able to handle it, roads, traffic, guh.