@bcglorf Here's a tome for you....


It's certainly not (the only way). Converting to green energy sources stimulates the economy, it doesn't bankrupt it, and it makes it more efficient in the future thanks to lower energy costs. My solar system paid for itself in 8 years, giving me an expected 12 years of free electricity and hot water. Right wingers would tell you it will never pay for itself....utter bullshit.

Every gap in our knowledge I've ever seen that we have filled with data has made the estimates worse. Every one. Every IPCC report has raised the severity and shrunk the timeframe from the last report....but you stand on the last one that they admit was optimistic and incomplete by miles as if it's the final word and a gold standard. It just isn't. They themselves admit this.

The odds of catastrophic climate change is 100% in the next 0 years for many who have already died or been displaced by rising seas or famine or disease or lack of water or...... and that goes for all humanity in the next 50 because those who survive displacement will be refugees on the rest's doorsteps. Don't be ridiculous. If we found an asteroid guaranteed to hit in the next 50-100 years, and any possible solutions take a minimum of 50 years to implement with no surprises, and only then assuming we solve the myriad of technical issues we haven't solved in the last 100 years of trying and only if we can put the resources needed into a solution, not considering the constantly worsening barrage of smaller asteroids and the effects on resources and civilisation, we would put all our resources into solutions. That's where I think we are, except we still have many claiming there's no asteroid coming and those that already hit are fake news....including those in the highest offices making the decisions.

Every IPCC report has vastly underestimated their projections, they tell you they are doing it, only including data they are certain of, not new measurements or functions. They do not fill in the gaps, they leave them empty. Gaps like methane melt that could soon be more of a factor than human CO2, and 100% out of our control.

The AR5 report is so terrible, it was lambasted from day one as being incredibly naive and optimistic, and for not including what was then new data. Since its release, those complaints have been proven to be correct, in 5 years since its release ice melt rates have accelerated 60 years by their model. I wouldn't put a whit of confidence in it, it was terrible then, near criminally bad today. I'll take NOAA's estimates based on much newer science and guess that they, like nearly all others in the past, also don't know everything and are also likely underestimating wildly. Even the IPCC AR5 report includes the possibility of 3 ft rise by 2100 under their worst case (raised another 10% in this 2019 report, and expected to rise again by 2021, their next report), and their worst case models show less heat and melting than we are measuring already and doesn't include natural feedbacks because they can't model them accurately yet so just left them out (but noted they will have a large effect, but it's not quantitative yet so not included). Long and short, their worst case scenario is likely optimistic as reality already outpaces their worst case models.

Again, the economy benefits from new energy production in multiple ways. Exxon is not the global economy.

It took 100 years for the impact of our pollution to be felt by most (some still ignore it today). Even the short term features like methane take 25+ years to run their cycles, so what we do today takes that long to start working.

If people continue to drag their feet and challenge the science with supposition, insisting the best case scenario of optimistic studies are the worst we should plan for, we're doomed....and what they're doing is actually worse than that. The power plants built or under construction today put us much higher than 1.5 degree rise by 2100 with their expected emissions without ever building 1 more, and we're building more. Without fantastic scientific breakthroughs that may never come, breakthroughs your plan relies on for our survival, what we've already built puts us beyond the IPCC worst case in their operational lifetimes.

There's a problem with that...I'm good with using real science to identify them without political obstruction and confusion, the difference being we need to be prepared for decisive action once they're identified. So far, we have plans to develop those actions, but that's it. In the event of a "surprise" asteroid, we're done. We just hope they're rare.
This one, however, is an asteroid that is guaranteed to hit if we do nothing, some say hit in 30 years, some say 80. Only morons say it won't hit at all, do nothing.
Climate change is an asteroid/comet in our orbit that WILL hit earth. We are already being hit by ejecta from it's coma causing disasters for millions. You suggest we don't start building a defense until we are certain of it's exact tonnage and the date it will crash to earth because it's expensive and our data incomplete. That plan leaves us too late to change the trajectory. The IPCC said we need to deploy our system in 8-10 years to have a 30-60% chance of changing the trajectory under perfect conditions....you seem to say "wait, that's expensive, let's give it some time and ignore that deadline". I say even just a continent killer is bad enough to do whatever it takes to stop, because it's cheaper with less loss of life and infinitely less suffering than a 'wait and see exactly when it will kill us, we might have space elevators in 10 years so it might only kill 1/2 of us and the rest might survive that cometary winter in space (yes at exponentially higher cost and loss of life and ecology than developing the system today, but that won't be on my dime so Fuck it).' attitude.

Actually, I'm selling their audience short. When real scientists present the real data dispassionately, I think the average person gets quickly confused and tunes out. Those that dumb it down enough to be understood invariably underrepresent or outright misrepresent the problems. With so many unscientific voices out there trying to out shout the real data for their own purposes, real scientists fudging the data is near criminal because it's only more ammunition for deniers.

Yes, if you or I heard them lecture, we would likely hear that and even more, but the average, unscientific American would hear "taking in more energy than is leaving" as a good thing, free energy. If they explained the mechanisms involved, their eyes would glaze over as they just wished someone would tell them it's all lies so they could ignore what they can't understand fully. These people are, imo, the majority in the U.S.. They are why we need emotional delivery of simplified science from a charismatic young woman who knows her stuff.
Edit: For example, I had read the published summaries of the recent U.N. report saying we had 12 years to be carbon neutral to stay below 1.5degree rise, they were far from clear that this was only a 50% chance of achieving that minimal temperature rise, or that we only had 8 years of current emission levels to have a 66% chance, still bad odds. I understood they were also using horrendous models for ice melt and other factors to reach those optimistic numbers, and didn't take feedback loops we already see in action into account, nor did they make allowances for feedbacks we don't know about yet. The average reader only got 12 years to conserve before we are locked into 1.5 degree. They don't even know that's when known feedback loops are expected to outpace human inputs, making it exponentially harder if not impossible to turn around, or that 1.5 degree rise by 2050 likely means closer to 3 degree by 2100, and higher afterwards.

Mating habits for European swallows?! How did we get from the relationship of climatology and sociology to discussing the red light district?

The wolf is not at the door, it's inside the house....you keep insisting that's just grandma with those big teeth....new dentures, you say....grandma has always been hairy, you say....wolves don't exist and are fake news, you say.

Once again you misunderstood and misstated the science....12 years (+-) before the feedback loops make reversing the trend impossible, not 12 years until all ice melts, not 12 years before everyone dies. You just can't help but shout your ignorance from the bell tower. Thankfully, most here know just how often you are correct and gauge your comments with that in mind.

"Literally doom the human race."

I used to be a global warming denier, then a skeptic. I've come around that it is real and that it is caused in large part by human actions. I do admit that I'm still a bit skeptical about how catastrophic it would be to do nothing. Doom the human race? Nah. Decimate the human race (literal/historical definition of "decimate" meaning 10% dead)? Possible, but I think unlikely -- extremely unlikely unless deaths by famine/disease are wholly attributed to climate change. Lots and lots of people displaced over the next 100-200 years if, say, all polar and glacial ice melted (resulting in a ~70 meter sea level rise)? For sure. But they won't drown unless they are incapable of moving away from the ocean at a rate of at least a few meters per year.

In climate terms, a 4 year presidential term is a fraction of a second. In geological terms, 4 years is absolutely nothing. If the (admittedly terrible) climate policies of any single person, even one as powerful as the "leader of the free world" President of the United States over 4 years could literally doom the human race, we'd have been dead a LONG time ago.

I'm not saying it isn't important, and that it won't matter at all what Trump does with regards to climate, the EPA, etc. But even if you limit the timescale to sensible human terms (say, since the Industrial Revolution roughly 250 years ago), another 4 years, no matter how bad, aren't going to throw us over some sort of unrecoverable tipping point.

Your video, What If All The Ice Melted On Earth? ft. Bill Nye, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

I don't know why we don't have people screaming this information on TV and the internet non-stop. I have to admit, this video was the first I had heard of how bad it actually is. If this methane releases in a burst due to seismic activity or continued ice melt, doomsday could actually happen in my lifetime.

The crazy thing is, we have multiple countries looking into under the arctic ice drilling for oil and other minerals, which could exacerbate seismic activity and/or ice melt.

Last two winters in Finland have been pretty black. Freezing in the night in to solid ice, melting during the day. There was a tiny sliver of cold air that arrived just days before christmas so it's white now, expecting to melt away before new year. Makes cycling pretty much impossible, they haul gravel on to the pavements, it falls thru the melting ice only to get trapped in it when the night comes and you got clear, solid sheet of ice again in the morning. I have never seen so much gravel in the streets in the spring as i did last year. Good news is that -20C only happens for two, three week tops.

First, I thought you gave up.
Second, the ten year period you mention APPEARED to show a slowdown in the rate of rise expected, because most models did not account for the rise in deep water oceans, nor did they account for 'global dimming', which is the sun's radiation being deflected by particulates in the upper atmosphere (and it's more of a data skewer than one might think, in 2001 it was estimated that it was causing up to 3 degree C COOLING globally, and China at least is producing WAY more particulates today than they did then...which could explain most if not all of the 'missing' heat, but I never hear it mentioned).
I would say that what it means is the models are not useful for short term (ie 10 year) samples, they are intended for longer time frames. In the short term, one expects the model to not follow the prediction exactly, but in the long term it will. As I read it, that's what they said too.
If stating that scientists often simplify and omit functions they either think are unrelated or simply don't know about is 'spreading doubt about the science', se-la-vie. I think it's explaining the science and the reasons it's imperfect while at the same time supporting it. Because I think, based on past and current models and data, that it's likely important things have been missed does not mean I disagree with them in a meaningful way, only in degree and time frame.
I began watching this issue in the late 80's, and at that time, ALL public models were predicting less warming than we were seeing. I fear, and assume, that they have continued that trend for the reasons I've stated above. (I know, you'll say it just said there was a decade where it was below predictions...but they don't include deep ocean temps or global dimming in that data (or do they? I didn't go through it all, admittedly, so I admit I may be wrong), so it's wrong).
To me, that's only logical to think that until proven wrong, and I've yet to see all inclusive data that proves my hypothesis (that we're going to see more warming faster than predicted) wrong, but have seen many trends that support it. When I see a study that includes air, surface, sub surface, ice melt/flow, and ALL water temps (including but not limited to surface ocean, mid ocean, deep ocean, lakes, rivers, and aquifers), mentions global dimming's effects, volcanos, planes trains and automobiles, factories, deforestation, phytoplankton, reefs, diatoms, algae, cows and other methane producers, other random 'minor' greenhouse gasses, etc. I'll pay closer attention to what they say, but without including all the data (at least all we have) any model is going to be 'light' in it's predictions in my opinion. There's a hell of a lot of factors that go into 'climate', more than any simple model can account for. That's why I say they're nearly all technically wrong, but are on the right track. That does not mean I don't support the science/scientists. It means I wish they were more thorough and less swayed by finance or politics.

Technically...

It's not the ice melting that will raise the water-level. It's the thermal expansion of the oceans.

>> ^criticalthud:

http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/368/1919/2317.abstract

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/03/080314-warming-quake
s.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/sep/08/climatechange
posted above if you took the time.
but happy to repost for you.
i'm just looking at this in a theoretical sense, based on mass ice melt and it's likely repercussions. apparently others have looked at this more thoroughly than i have. If i had known this earlier, it would have saved time pointing out fairly obvious things to rather confrontational people.
adieu

>> ^westy:
>> ^criticalthud:
>> ^westy:
>> ^criticalthud:
people.
Seismic activity has increased along with global warming.
Logic, physics, and probability all say that when you shift the mass of the earth (ice caps melting), seismic activity will increase. And it has, by a lot...in the last 30 years.
The poles are shifting.
This is the earth adjusting.
This is akin to shifting the mass of a spinning toy top.
It doesn't matter what you believe. You can believe in an invisible god-man in the sky too. This is about physics and reality. and it is going to get worse.

What you are saying might be true , but u have presented it in the most retarded way.
Also Evan though global warming is happening and ice caps are melting that does not necessarily mean there is causal link with seismic activity of curse there might be but its the kind of claim where u need to back it up with some evidence and sources.
"It doesn't matter what you believe. You can believe in an invisible god-man in the sky too. This is about physics and reality" ~ I think I get what you are trying to say with this but your communicating it all wrong, A christain could say exactly the same thing but focused on how god is real. Making a statment like that is uselss its the evidence and scientific method behind what is sead that will sway any sain person to believe in something or believing in something that is inline with reality.
Lol i Myself have not very clearly exsplaind why what u have said is retarded but im sure if you think about it you will see why what u said was not exactly cunstructive evan though im pritty sure u r on the right page with things.

Science, especially theoretical science is based on probability. Probability is a a process comprised mainly of inductive reasoning. k? this is looking at trends and connecting the dots. Physics...and simple probability. There are no definitives, no absolutes. It is virtually impossible to create a hard science in this realm...we simply don't have the tools.
Einstein's theories were still "theories", and have been proven throughout time (mainly in the mathematical realm). But they were theories based on probability. Asking "what if" and looking at liklihoods.
Our beliefs, or our hopes for absolutes do nothing to affect probability. And scientific "proof" is often for sale.
thanks for the opportunity to clarify.

"Science, especially theoretical science is based on probability. Probability is a a process comprised mainly of inductive reasoning. k? this is looking at trends and connecting the dots. Physics...and simple probability. There are no definitives, no absolutes. It is virtually impossible to create a hard science in this realm...we simply don't have the tools."
Although yes on a quantum level things are bassed on probability and ultimetly u can keep asking why unttill nothing makes anny sense , Its a fact that on our scale of interaction with the world things can be prodicted and understood to a level that alows for us to utilise scence and prodict and understand things to a high level.
I dont evan understand the overall point you are making you are contradicting yourself and going all over the place .
Instead of spewing all this talk out next time you want to make an objective claim why dont you just stick to stating the claim and then backing it up with evidence ?
You saying "It doesn't matter what you believe. You can believe in an invisible god-man in the sky too. This is about physics and reality. and it is going to get worse." does nothing to help anyone you simply cannot make a claim and then say LOGIC AND REASON GO TO SHOW I AM RIGHT.
lol what u put is like me saying , "LOgic and resoin go to show that the sun is smaller than a bannana you can belive in an invisable sky god-man . this is about phiusics and reality and its only gona get more bananery."



MY issue was not with the ice caps melting thing , as i said that could be true ore false , i was just pointing out all the other stuff you typed in aditoin to that which was superfalouse and made little sense and if anything undermined the intail point u were getting at ,

you posted link to sauces after which is fine , i think if you had just done that on your first post , made objective statement x and posted suces to back it up , then people imideatly would have been able to just debate the sources and progress there knowlage.

Thing is you actually come across as a non native English speaker ( evan more so than me lol although im sure my spelling is worse)

and one more thing peeps. ice melt isn't "causing" earthquakes. The causation is in the structure of the earth, and it's tendency for movement. actually, it's continual movement. it's all about the triggering event, and how much it takes.

http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/368/1919/2317.abstract
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/03/080314-warming-quakes.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/sep/08/climatechange
posted above if you took the time.
but happy to repost for you.
i'm just looking at this in a theoretical sense, based on mass ice melt and it's likely repercussions. apparently others have looked at this more thoroughly than i have. If i had known this earlier, it would have saved time pointing out fairly obvious things to rather confrontational people.
adieu


>> ^westy:

>> ^criticalthud:
>> ^westy:
>> ^criticalthud:
people.
Seismic activity has increased along with global warming.
Logic, physics, and probability all say that when you shift the mass of the earth (ice caps melting), seismic activity will increase. And it has, by a lot...in the last 30 years.
The poles are shifting.
This is the earth adjusting.
This is akin to shifting the mass of a spinning toy top.
It doesn't matter what you believe. You can believe in an invisible god-man in the sky too. This is about physics and reality. and it is going to get worse.

What you are saying might be true , but u have presented it in the most retarded way.
Also Evan though global warming is happening and ice caps are melting that does not necessarily mean there is causal link with seismic activity of curse there might be but its the kind of claim where u need to back it up with some evidence and sources.
"It doesn't matter what you believe. You can believe in an invisible god-man in the sky too. This is about physics and reality" ~ I think I get what you are trying to say with this but your communicating it all wrong, A christain could say exactly the same thing but focused on how god is real. Making a statment like that is uselss its the evidence and scientific method behind what is sead that will sway any sain person to believe in something or believing in something that is inline with reality.
Lol i Myself have not very clearly exsplaind why what u have said is retarded but im sure if you think about it you will see why what u said was not exactly cunstructive evan though im pritty sure u r on the right page with things.

Science, especially theoretical science is based on probability. Probability is a a process comprised mainly of inductive reasoning. k? this is looking at trends and connecting the dots. Physics...and simple probability. There are no definitives, no absolutes. It is virtually impossible to create a hard science in this realm...we simply don't have the tools.
Einstein's theories were still "theories", and have been proven throughout time (mainly in the mathematical realm). But they were theories based on probability. Asking "what if" and looking at liklihoods.
Our beliefs, or our hopes for absolutes do nothing to affect probability. And scientific "proof" is often for sale.
thanks for the opportunity to clarify.

"Science, especially theoretical science is based on probability. Probability is a a process comprised mainly of inductive reasoning. k? this is looking at trends and connecting the dots. Physics...and simple probability. There are no definitives, no absolutes. It is virtually impossible to create a hard science in this realm...we simply don't have the tools."
Although yes on a quantum level things are bassed on probability and ultimetly u can keep asking why unttill nothing makes anny sense , Its a fact that on our scale of interaction with the world things can be prodicted and understood to a level that alows for us to utilise scence and prodict and understand things to a high level.
I dont evan understand the overall point you are making you are contradicting yourself and going all over the place .
Instead of spewing all this talk out next time you want to make an objective claim why dont you just stick to stating the claim and then backing it up with evidence ?
You saying "It doesn't matter what you believe. You can believe in an invisible god-man in the sky too. This is about physics and reality. and it is going to get worse." does nothing to help anyone you simply cannot make a claim and then say LOGIC AND REASON GO TO SHOW I AM RIGHT.
lol what u put is like me saying , "LOgic and resoin go to show that the sun is smaller than a bannana you can belive in an invisable sky god-man . this is about phiusics and reality and its only gona get more bananery."

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

I remain cautiously agnostic for several reasons. I think mostly, though, is that it has never been sufficiency shown to my liking that warming temperatures are bad.

You should read up some more on the concept of climate change feedback. Ice and snow are more reflective than open ocean and land, if it all melts, it will make the planet warmer.

The polar caps are also known to have large bubbles of methane and CO2 in them, if the ice melts, they will be released into the atmosphere, adding to the warming effect.

As for government's involvement, what supposed small government people are prioritizing is making gas and electricity as cheap as possible, by trying to stop attempts to price carbon, limit pollution, and limit environmental risks by putting moratoriums on deep water drilling.

There is a big agribusiness lobby that pushes ethanol (whose environmental pluses are marginal to nonexistent), but there are much still much bigger subsidies for oil and coal.

Most environmentalists want to end the subsidies of oil and coal (and ethanol for that matter) and replace them with wind and solar subsidies -- and we're stopped by conservatives and corporatists screaming about how statist and tyrannical that would be because it would distort the market.

To really let the government get out of way, you need for the government to create a market for carbon and pollution credits and let the free market find the true price of environmental damage. Insisting that pollution should remain an unowned communal dumping ground is not a free market policy at all -- it's communism, plain and simple.

kitty aint fishing, it's called windowshopping

when the ice melts, the biggest and fattest ones will be in a pond of trouble

O shit, they had climatologists in the 300,000BC! Hell, they even measured CO2 and ice levels in the dark ages, black plague don't slow those folks down for science! The chart don't lie, we are all screwed! Let us consume our way out of this problem quickly!

I hope your sarcasm detectors are ringing, I was being quite hyperbolic. Measurements from prehistorical record are always intriguing to me, people can be very smart at finding the marks of the distant past in rocks or ice. However, you have to take that evidence for what it is it is, unverifiable. You can make neat models and predictions off it and try and get a sense of scale and scope for current models; trying to balance the equations that aren't working now with a window into the past. But you are peaking into what is essentially unscientific (I mean unverifiable). There is simply no way to be certain that evidence left behind in ice or certain geological formations hasn't undergone massive change over the hundreds of thousands or even hundreds of millions of years that the evidence sample is supposed to represent empirically (or the extrapolations gained from this are accurate).

The bits of wisdom uncovered from the vast long history of this world are vital, but you always have to weight that with your rational skepticism which I feel is lacking in most summations of doomsday scenarios. To believe that no such levels of CO2 or ice melt values have EVER existed places far to much credibility on something that is essentially unverifiable (that isn't just for 100k years ago, but 500).

I think concern is wise, I think prudence is advised, I think writing a paper saying we are all fuxed and run for the hills is irresponsible. Empiricism is dead, long live manipulated staticism. (assuming a spherical cow, let us calculate its volume)