Extreme is the New Normal

A place to discuss casual topics amongst spiritual friends.
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Kim OHara
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Re: Extreme is the New Normal

Post by Kim OHara »

Hi, Alex,
Kim O'Hara wrote:
Kim O'Hara wrote:Hi, Alex,
I asked you a question a while ago and said that I would ignore anything else you posted until you answered the question.
So far, I'm ignoring. Until we know why you reject the weight of genuine climate science, debating individual facts and factoids will get us nowhere.
:namaste:
Kim
I asked the same question in a slightly different way, too:
Why do you choose to believe one set of people you don't know rather than another set of people you don't know?

I am not going to pay any attention until you answer either or both of those questions, and I doubt that anyone else here will do so.
At the moment you are not asking questions, let alone smart questions. You are repeating other people's pseudo-questions and pseudo-science.

:namaste:
Kim
...and if you won't engage in a genuine dialogue, we might as well lock the thread.
:namaste:
Kim
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octathlon
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Re: Extreme is the New Normal

Post by octathlon »

Alex123 wrote:Kim,

The weather has been changing, sometimes drastically, for 4.5 billions of years. There have been MUCH warmer periods than today, and about 19 times as much CO2 than today.

We could say that climate today is more drastic, it is much colder than it used to be for millions of years when life flourished.
What does that have to do with anything, though? What people are worried about in regard to this is how the changes will affect our economies, food supplies, living conditions... IOW, our ability to maintain the lifestyles to which we have become accustomed.
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andre9999
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Re: Extreme is the New Normal

Post by andre9999 »

Alex123 wrote:Kim,

The weather has been changing, sometimes drastically, for 4.5 billions of years. There have been MUCH warmer periods than today, and about 19 times as much CO2 than today.

We could say that climate today is more drastic, it is much colder than it used to be for millions of years when life flourished.
Your argument seems to have no point. Much of humanity will cease to exist during these periods that you're talking about. So despite that the current warming period is not on schedule, and that all but of a few of the world's climate scientists disagree with your viewpoint, is your plan to just go down in flames?
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Alex123
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Re: Extreme is the New Normal

Post by Alex123 »

octathlon wrote:
Alex123 wrote:Kim,

The weather has been changing, sometimes drastically, for 4.5 billions of years. There have been MUCH warmer periods than today, and about 19 times as much CO2 than today.

We could say that climate today is more drastic, it is much colder than it used to be for millions of years when life flourished.
What does that have to do with anything, though? What people are worried about in regard to this is how the changes will affect our economies, food supplies, living conditions... IOW, our ability to maintain the lifestyles to which we have become accustomed.

It has everything to do with AGW argument that humans cause global warming (or change). If the nature was changing weather BEFORE humans and their factories, then human factor is not needed at all to explain changes in weather.

Today's change in weather is neither more rapid nor more severe than it was before. There is no need to add additional human factor if purely natural explanations can do, as they did for billions of years.


AGW can actually have bad consequences if its well intended but dangerous ideas are carried out.
Ex: If we are going to get into another major cooling period (as patterns suggest), then all the windmills, hydro-plants, etc will not be that useful. Furthermore if the houses are not designed for colder weather, it could make a lot of inconvenience. It is more likely to die in a cold climate than in a hot climate. One could freeze to death.

Using bio-fuels means that what could have been used as food, is now converted into a car fuel. With growing population, this would send the food prices up (the less supply and more demand, the higher the price). I'd rather have it that we use gasoline rather than corn (or whatever is used for bio fuels).

Until there is actual REAL scientific proof (there is none) that CO2 that humans emit has ANYTHING to do with warming, I'd rather not make people starve (and have other people taxed, and economic growth of emerging nations stifled).


"Even if CO2 levels were many times higher, radiative heating physics shows that it would make virtually no difference to temperature because it has a very limited heating ability. With CO2, the more there is, the less it heats because it quickly becomes saturated. For a detailed explanation go to:
"http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html


Cooling Global Warming Hysteria Just One Story Of '08

By Barry Cooper December 31, 2008

The scientific debate over climate change has entered a new phase. This change is reflected in, though hardly constituted by, petitions signed by natural scientists of various kinds disputing the so-called consensus that human-caused CO2 is responsible for global warming.

Two aspects of this story can be distinguished. As James Peden, an atmospheric physicist, said, many scientists "are now searching for a way to back out quietly" from global-warming fearmongering, "without having their professional careers ruined."

This is an ethical or political problem, not a problem in climate science. The crux of it is that major research grants and, in this country, prestigious Canada Research Chairs, have been awarded on the assumption something must be done to stop CO2 from destroying the world.

Those scientists who are the current beneficiaries of a moral panic they help sustain are squirming not because of their ethical transgressions but because of scientific facts. Facts are fragile because they could always be different, but stubborn because they are what they are, independent of opinions, including any "consensus." In this context the big inconvenient fact is that for almost a decade, ice-core data have shown climate cycles antedate changes in atmospheric CO2.

There was even worse news for those who believed in human-caused climate change. Up to now most of the debate, including the notorious intellectual swindle of the hockey stick graph, amounted to what paleoclimatologist Ian Clark called "wiggle watching" --matching the ups and downs of temperature with the ups and downs of CO2 or, say, sun spots. Until recently there was no experimental evidence to decide which wiggle was worth watching.

In 2006, experiments at the Danish National Space Center provided evidence that changes in the magnetic field of the sun can affect not CO2 but water vapour--clouds--which are responsible for up to 95 per cent of the warmth that keeps Earth habitable. Last year the implications finally sunk in.

The original experiment is being replicated by CERN, the European Organization for Nu-clear Research, so stay tuned.

Remember, there is no experimental evidence--none at all--that an increase in CO2 can increase greenhouse warming, and that ice-core evidence indicates the causal arrow does not go from changes in CO2 to changes in climate.
http://www.calgaryherald.com/Cooling+gl ... story.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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Alex123
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Re: Extreme is the New Normal

Post by Alex123 »

Kim O'Hara wrote: ...and if you won't engage in a genuine dialogue, we might as well lock the thread.
:namaste:
Kim

As long as you don't answer my specific questions, and simply call everything that I quote (but not your quotes) as "junk science", there won't be meaningful dialogue.

We could start with this:

Considering that climate was changing for billions of years prior to humans, and the changes were as extreme and rapid as today, and even if humans would vanish from the planet, the Earth would still change climate as it did for billions of years, what proof is there that todays climate change is significantly due to humans and poses real danger?

Even if we would drop dead, the CO2 would still rapidly go up and down, and so would the temperature.
Last edited by Alex123 on Sat Feb 19, 2011 6:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Justsit
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Re: Extreme is the New Normal

Post by Justsit »

Actually, that's two questions....

1. what proof is there that todays climate change is significantly due to humans ?

and

2. what proof is there that todays climate change poses real danger?

Perhaps these should be addressed separately??
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octathlon
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Re: Extreme is the New Normal

Post by octathlon »

Alex,
To figure out whether the global warming that is occurring is caused by, worsened by, or unrelated to human activity is kind of like figuring out whether smoking contributes to lung disease, cardiovascular disease, etc. In other words, if a smoker gets lung cancer or has a heart attack, you can't say for sure that in that case it was caused by their smoking, or if would have happened anyway but maybe was worse or happened sooner because of it, or if it was unrelated. You can't conclude anything from individual cases of disease (or individual weather events).

Instead, you have to do studies and statistical analysis on a lot of complicated data like number of cancers and other diseases in smoking and non-smoking populations, and you have to try and control for other contributing factors like diet, genetics, other environmental factors like radon. That's why there used to be so much controversy about dangers of smoking. It takes a long time to collect sufficient data and do rigorous analysis to prove it, especially when profit-making enterprises have a vested interest in dismissing the idea. Eventually enough studies were done and reviewed until finally it was accepted that smoking really is harmful.

I think that's a pretty good parallel with the study of global warming/climate change that has been going on for the last few decades. The question of how much human activity contributes to it has to be estimated by statistical analysis that corrects for other contributing factors. And we don't have a "control planet". The subject is even more politically charged than smoking was, and it's probably already too late by now to reverse the human contribution in time to help much (see this for example). But I think we should be able to agree that smoking isn't good for us and neither is polluting our environment, can't we?
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octathlon
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Re: Extreme is the New Normal

Post by octathlon »

Justsit wrote:Actually, that's two questions....

1. what proof is there that todays climate change is significantly due to humans ?

and

2. what proof is there that todays climate change poses real danger?

Perhaps these should be addressed separately??
Yes, good point, and I would add:

3. Regardless of the answer to #1, and if the answer to #2 is "it does", then: What can we do about it that we know will help? (I've heard some crazy ideas that might do much more harm than good)
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Alex123
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Re: Extreme is the New Normal

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Hello Octathlon,

The thing about Climate change is that it was happening for 4.5 billion of years before human's industrial activity. If an explanation is sufficient to explain something (such as climate change), there is no need to complicate it further. If nature by itself could change climate as it did, it is not required that some new external cause plays any or significant part in changing the climate.


The problem is that AGW's solutions are not as harmless as they seem. First of all, additional taxes (Carbon tax) is not what I think is good for us.

Bio-fuels have drawbacks as well. The food that could have been used to feed people (or animals) could be converted to car fuel. This would reduce food supply, and drive the prices up. What about all the poor people who can barely afford food? Now that is something to worry about.

What if humans prepare for warmer climate (build houses suitable for warmth and not arctic weather) and we get another ice age instead? People could freeze to death, or at least heating bills would really go up without properly insulated houses.

Any human change (if they could really) could easily be reversed by nature. Why add additional taxes, and add inconviniences to humans, if nature could always get a last say in any climate change?



The argument that humans burn CO2, and CO2 causes GW is flawed:


...CO2 lags an average of about 800 years behind the temperature changes-- confirming that CO2 is not the cause of the temperature increases. One thing is certain-- earth's climate has been warming and cooling on it's own for at least the last 400,000 years, as the data below show. At year 18,000 and counting in our current interglacial vacation from the Ice Age, we may be due-- some say overdue-- for return to another icehouse climate!
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_400k_yrs.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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octathlon
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Re: Extreme is the New Normal

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Alex123 wrote:If an explanation is sufficient to explain something (such as climate change), there is no need to complicate it further. If nature by itself could change climate as it did, it is not required that some new external cause plays any or significant part in changing the climate.
I disagree with that. Using the smoking analogy, "people have been getting cancer and cardiovascular disease all along, so therefore smoking is not a factor" is not valid logic.
Alex123 wrote: The problem is that AGW's solutions are not as harmless as they seem. First of all, additional taxes (Carbon tax) is not what I think is good for us.
I havent' researched the various proposals on that or their implications so I haven't formed an opinion on it yet...
Alex123 wrote:Bio-fuels have drawbacks as well. The food that could have been used to feed people (or animals) could be converted to car fuel. This would reduce food supply, and drive the prices up. What about all the poor people who can barely afford food? Now that is something to worry about.
Agree. Plus using food crops for fuel is not efficient anyway. A variety of switchgrass is being developed that is easy to convert, but still not efficient enough, and it would require land that could be used for food crops. But there is good work being done on improving the efficiency of producing hydrogen from water directly from sunlight, and other promising research to create fuels without using food crops or cropland.
Alex123 wrote:What if humans prepare for warmer climate (build houses suitable for warmth and not arctic weather) and we get another ice age instead? People could freeze to death, or at least heating bills would really go up without properly insulated houses.
Those aren't the effects of GW that we are worrying about, but more extreme weather events (stronger storms, increased flooding, increased periods of drought), rise of sea level affecting coastal cities where most people live, etc. etc. It will still get plenty cold in winter at your house.
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Alex123
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Re: Extreme is the New Normal

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octathlon wrote:
Alex123 wrote:If an explanation is sufficient to explain something (such as climate change), there is no need to complicate it further. If nature by itself could change climate as it did, it is not required that some new external cause plays any or significant part in changing the climate.
I disagree with that. Using the smoking analogy, "people have been getting cancer and cardiovascular disease all along, so therefore smoking is not a factor" is not valid logic.
Your analogue is not perfect. There are different kinds of cancers, and cardiovascular disease can also be due to numerous factors.

When it comes to "temperature rise/fall" - it was occuring for billions of years without humans. So humans are NOT required for drastic temperature rises and falls. And neither are humans the only required cause for extinction of life. In the past 540 million years there have been five major events when over 50% of animal species died. . Whether humans exist or not, bad stuff will occur.

Considering the past kind of climate- today's climate isn't extreme by a long shot. If past climate change occured without humans, then human influence is NOT required to explain climate change.
octathlon wrote:Those aren't the effects of GW that we are worrying about, but more extreme weather events (stronger storms, increased flooding, increased periods of drought), rise of sea level affecting coastal cities where most people live, etc. etc. It will still get plenty cold in winter at your house.
Weather cataclysms, mass die offs, hot/cold weather, happened dozens/hundreds of millions years ago. This is samsara. Bad stuff happens.


Some scientists suggest that 99% of documented species that were on Earth, have extinct. This is bad, but this is life.
Over 99% of documented species are now extinct...
Since life began on Earth, several major mass extinctions have significantly exceeded the background extinction rate. The most recent, Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event, which occurred approximately 65.5 million years ago (Ma), was a large-scale mass extinction of animal and plant species in a geologically short period of time. In the past 540 million years there have been five major events when over 50% of animal species died. There probably were mass extinctions in the Archean and Proterozoic Eons, but before the Phanerozoic there were no animals with hard body parts to leave a significant fossil record.

Estimates of the number of major mass extinctions in the last 540 million years range from as few as five to more than twenty. These differences stem from the threshold chosen for describing an extinction event as "major", and the data chosen to measure past diversity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_extinction" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

So Extreme weather, extreme die-offs, extreme cataclysms have occured before humans, millions of years ago. IMHO, the climate change will happen even if humans were to completely disappear off the planet. I don't believe that this AGW scare should be used to justify additional taxation, additional technological restrictions, etc.
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octathlon
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Re: Extreme is the New Normal

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OK, so your final position is that because climate change can and does happen naturally, you therefore will not consider any possibility that human activity could be a contributing factor to the current warming trend, no matter what evidence may be found through all the studies and analysis I described earlier. Smoke 'em if you got 'em.
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Alex123
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Re: Extreme is the New Normal

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octathlon wrote:OK, so your final position is that because climate change can and does happen naturally, you therefore will not consider any possibility that human activity could be a contributing factor to the current warming trend, no matter what evidence may be found through all the studies and analysis I described earlier. Smoke 'em if you got 'em.
If someone can prove (please write it in this thread) that current climate change is due to humans as opposed to nature - I will accept that. I prefer the truth.

First, CO2 is not the cause of global warming:
...CO2 lags an average of about 800 years behind the temperature changes-- confirming that CO2 is not the cause of the temperature increases. One thing is certain-- earth's climate has been warming and cooling on it's own for at least the last 400,000 years, as the data below show. At year 18,000 and counting in our current interglacial vacation from the Ice Age, we may be due-- some say overdue-- for return to another icehouse climate!
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_400k_yrs.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

"Even if CO2 levels were many times higher, radiative heating physics shows that it would make virtually no difference to temperature because it has a very limited heating ability. With CO2, the more there is, the less it heats because it quickly becomes saturated. For a detailed explanation go to:
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Second, Millions of years ago, extreme cataclysms have been occurring causing up to 99% of documented species to go extinct.
Over 99% of documented species are now extinct...
Since life began on Earth, several major mass extinctions have significantly exceeded the background extinction rate. The most recent, Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event, which occurred approximately 65.5 million years ago (Ma), was a large-scale mass extinction of animal and plant species in a geologically short period of time. In the past 540 million years there have been five major events when over 50% of animal species died. There probably were mass extinctions in the Archean and Proterozoic Eons, but before the Phanerozoic there were no animals with hard body parts to leave a significant fossil record.

Estimates of the number of major mass extinctions in the last 540 million years range from as few as five to more than twenty. These differences stem from the threshold chosen for describing an extinction event as "major", and the data chosen to measure past diversity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_extinction" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
The Kyoto Protocol calls for mandatory carbon dioxide reductions of 30% from developed countries like the U.S. Reducing man-made CO2 emissions this much would have an undetectable effect on climate while having a devastating effect on the U.S. economy. Can you drive your car 30% less, reduce your winter heating 30%? Pay 20-50% more for everything from automobiles to zippers? And that is just a down payment, with more sacrifices to come later.

Such drastic measures, even if imposed equally on all countries around the world, would reduce total human greenhouse contributions from CO2 by about 0.035%.

This is much less than the natural variability of Earth's climate system!

While the greenhouse reductions would exact a high human price, in terms of sacrifices to our standard of living, they would yield statistically negligible results in terms of measurable impacts to climate change. There is no expectation that any statistically significant global warming reductions would come from the Kyoto Protocol.
==================================================================================================================

There is no dispute at all about the fact that even if punctiliously observed, (the Kyoto Protocol) would have an imperceptible effect on future temperatures -- one-twentieth of a degree by 2050. "


Dr. S. Fred Singer, atmospheric physicist
Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia,
and former director of the US Weather Satellite Service;
in a Sept. 10, 2001 Letter to Editor, Wall Street Journal

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
So whether there are or aren't any humans, climate will change, cataclysms will still occur, and some (many or all) species could die off. In the meantime, lets not impose additional taxes, additional inconveniences, and lets not stifle economic growth. Natural variability of earth climate could be the sole and sufficient cause to make drastic and catastrophic climate change.
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Kim OHara
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Re: Extreme is the New Normal

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Hi, Alex,
In one more attempt to show you why we don't take much notice of some of your sources, I took one of your favourite graphs (you have uploaded it several times, so you must like it) and added a red rectangle (near the right hand end, where it belongs) to which is (as close as I can make it) 6 million years wide. It therefore represents the period since our evolutionary line split from that of all the other apes - not just the time since our ancestors learned to walk on two feet, not just the time since they discovered fire, waaaay longer than the time since they first built houses.
Here it is. I had to stretch the image a bit from side to side so that you can see the red rectangle clearly. I'm sorry that makes the text a bit hard to read, but you can refer to your own copy if you need to.
co2AlexMY long.jpg
co2AlexMY long.jpg (356.19 KiB) Viewed 2656 times
Two questions:
1. Where did those sudden, catastrophic, changes go?
2. Can you add, at the same horizontal scale, a rectangle showing the time since the Egyptians built the pyramids?
:namaste:
Kim
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Kim OHara
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Re: Extreme is the New Normal

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If you want to get more technical (about the OP, not AGW in general), here http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar ... -extremes/ is a nice article I have just come across.
:namaste:
Kim
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