Another sign of warming climate?

Paddlers' Place
#81

I will make a few points about this video. I have a question. How many years ago was this video produce?

1: He is certainly right about the news media playing alarmist with the scientific information, and it sells. He leaves out that some media outlets aren’t above misinforming people about the science. That outrage also sells.

2: The current science has been progressing more quickly in recent years. The current science has shown that through measurements that the Greenland ice sheet is melting faster than earlier information accounted for. Not through modeling

3: The cloud cover is a validly complex issue. However, Clouds are not the only thing that reflects sunlight. The ice cover at the poles and higher elevations is another. That was not mentioned and can easily be measured. It is decreasing at an ever-increasing rate. This is not modeling it is measurement.

4: He is correct about modeling being an inexact science in many cases. However, it must still be of some usefulness as long as you know its limits. Otherwise, why would it be used in economics, engineering, as well as in many of sciences if it wasn’t?

5: He is absolutely right about how long CO2 stays in the atmosphere. I even pointed that out earlier in this thread. His apparent conclusion is that if that is so why should we stop pumping even more into the air. Since we will only slow it because we can’t rapidly lower what is now there. Does that really make sense? because we can’t rapidly lower what is now there.

6: I don’t know of any climate scientist that says climate is not complex.

7: My personal observation is that weathermen and climate scientist do not say the weather events are created by climate change. In fact, they say these events are what normally occur. What they do say is climate change is impacting the severity and the latest science is attempting to place a value to that amount.

8: Also, he was not privy to what is happening now. Smoke from Canadian fires covering large areas of this country and even reaching Europe. The frequency of events rated once in a hundred or thousand years happening in greater frequency than that estimate. Heat waves may not be more common, but they are currently more extreme. The drought in the west hadn’t been seen as that severe in over 1,000 years. The number of record-breaking temps worldwide are more numerous than they have even been. He obviously wasn’t aware of what is currently happening or the current science when he made the video.

9: We are making rapid improvement in sustainable energy that isn’t fossil fuel based. The technology in the field is rapidly improving because money is being spent to do so. Because there is a will to lower the inputs of CO2 in the atmosphere. Planting trees and possible technologies of CO2 extraction are being developed. These are long range plans trying to amend the current situation.

In my opinion there is a hubris on displayed in video on totally discounting what others are presenting, and an apparent bias in the support of fossil fuels. He is correct that the economic impact of just going cold turkey with fossil fuels would be enormous but does not address the very real need to begin limiting their use.

Bud, have you looked at the 2 NASA video links I posted. I have watched 2 of the links you posted. I did so to get a handle on what you are saying and give it consideration. I think it is a good thing to be able to have this type of discussion. I would certainly like to hear your take on them.

In having posted again I will quote directly from the show “The Spranos”.
“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!” :laughing:

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#82

“Is this alarmism? Are we qualified to decide?
The world’s oceans are off-the-charts warm — and the worst could be yet to come

Two great questions.

I will start with the source NBC news. At one time maybe 45-50 years ago I would trust my life to the reporting of NBC news. Maybe I was naïve at that time. Today not so much in a general way because I see strong bias in their reporting in some areas. I wont delve into politics and because the topic here is climate change, they never miss an opportunity to point out after every major weather event that the flood, heat wave or cold wave, tornado, hurricane, etc is a result of overall manmade global climate change. Most of the time they will cut to a non-scientist political figure to verify this fact. I think you said in an above post that weather and global climate change is not the same thing but what I hear on NBCis they are one in the same in most cases depending on maybe the bent of the reporter or maybe the direction of the network.

So I would say alarmism sells for one and also pushes an agenda political or otherwise. The carefully mixing of facts with opinion is what modern news does best. When it comes to graphs I have seen all kinds of things done like compressing one scale or lengthen another to project a seemingly stronger trend. I have even seen logarithmic graphs shown and for people not used to this stuff it may just tilt the playing field a little.

As to are we qualified to decide?

That’s an individual question and should be (Am I qualified to decide?) directed to everyone out there. It is clear I’m not qualified as I’m discussing the issue trying to figure out what I can believe or not. It is a little like going to your doctor and them recommending a medicine for something like I have factor 5 blood clotting disorder. I trust my doctor but also had a desire to understand more so I dug in. It quickly became apparent why I’m not a medical doctor, but I did improve my understanding enough to ask a few questions at my next appointment that seemed to change my doctors willingness to explain more. That lead to a place where my qualifying understanding of the issue was brought up to a point my doctor could come down to and we were able to improve my course of treatment immensely and hopefully improving my life span and quality of life a little.

The issue of climate change is very similar there is a gap of knowledge between the average person and the most knowledgeable on the subject and the bridge between the two is filled with lots of opportunity to direct the course of the world we live in when relaying the information top down. Doing the right thing for the wrong reason is not always a good solution or at least the best solution.

There is always unintended consequences to every problem/solution. So say the solution to attempting to solve climate change also reverses the path of technology and results in famine or something worse. I don’t have the abilities to see any such line of thought to the end. I get small snippets of info though locally. I have a close friend and relative that he and his son just two people farm well over 1000 acres here mostly corn and soybeans. Some goes into food and some goes into fuel. They have a few dozen large and expensive pieces of equipment that mostly sit waiting for the exact day or week they are put into service. Last year they were contacted to long term lease their property to be converted to a solar farm. They were given an 80 page contract to look over full of fine print. The monetary was such that they could sign the paper and sit on their butts the rest of their lives pretty much in luxury. They took the contract to a lawyer and he studied it and said well I don’t really know what to tell you. This could be the best thing since sliced bread or they could hold you off forever after they pay you what comes up front. They opted to keep working as they couldn’t see themselves not working. Six months later the JD equipment guy stops and tells them how would you like to get rid of all your power equipment and get on an all electric program? They said what! Is there even such a thing? the guy tells them well not yet but it is coming and the government is looking for people to get involved. First question was how big a battery will it take to power a monster tractor like they use? Answer is we don’t know yet. Question how long will it take to charge and how will we charge it in a field 25 miles away from our equipment building? Answer it will charge overnight in your building. They responded you know when we plant and harvest we work 24-7 in shifts working around the weather and when we refuel we have a fuel truck we own that fills the tractor in 20 minutes. The reply was I don’t have all the answers yet but we want you in on the ground floor as if you wait it will cost you a lot more.

I don’t know how much impact taking 1000 acres of corn out of the picture will cause or how much impact switching to a new way of farming will slow down the process of feeding the world. The average guy farming by hand might be able to take care of a 100’x100’ family garden working without power tools. 10,000 square feet. An acre is 43,560 sq ft so one acre could keep 4.356 people going doing it the hard way. My friend farm lets say 1000 acres freeing up 4,356 people to do other things. The father is a full time farmer but the son along with farming is a full time ER doc so his contribution to farming is less but his contribution to society maybe more. They do hire a couple local kids to help out at peak times. My back yard garden is pretty productive and it is only 15’x25’ and I do use a gas powered tiller and it is all I want to manage. The tiller adds some greenhouse gasses but then again I also add additional CO2 when I’m hoeing by hand and maybe even consume more calories in the process. The 100x100 garden would be closer to what my grandparents or great grandparents would have done trying to put away enough food to really make it thru the year. Mine is fun and helps a little during the summer. I wonder how many people could actually do something as small as a 100x100 garden along with the million other things we go to Wal-Mart to buy mass-produced using fossil fuel as the driver. As a kid my mother and sisters made our clothes as an example not all but some. Who makes their clothes today? Even the Amish here are paying for a car ride to Wal-Mart to shop as it’s better than wearing the horse out on the long ride.

I don’t say there isn’t a problem, just that there is a lot more to it than people think going way past the science.

#83

Yes I have watched every video posted in this thread and the ones you posted several times. I do have a question as you agree CO2 lingers a long time the NASA video shows the CO2 going up each winter months and dropping very much during the summer thru plant life absorption and the production of O2 in the process. For me this looks more like a rapid sinking of CO2 rather than a slow building. I have also read reports of the increased greening of some areas on the planet fueled by more rain and more CO2. i seldom see this talked about.

#84

Bud, I do understand what you are saying I appreciate the thought you have put into it. I won’t go point by point in response but do want to make a couple of comments.

We do not fully understand the consequences of our actions down the road otherwise we might not be dealing with human impacted climate change today to begin with. Are you including the calories the tiller burned, and the ones you burn when using it. Don’t forget you are also producing CO2 when you use the tiller and burning calories. Do they equate to you just hoeing? Much of this seems to me looking for excuses, but understand you want to point out that other aspects are also important in this discussion. Indeed, they are. What it comes down to is what will be worse (not a scientific term but a personal one) allowing runaway climate change or trying to offset it the best we can.

#85

The answer to that is easy curtailing runaway climate change, as it exists.

I’m not looking for excuses but also looking at the biggest picture possible.

The solution to many is based in a utopia picture of what can be. Something like comparing today’s reality to the 1933 Chicago Worlds Fair vision of today. Much of our world surpassed the 1933 dream and much hasn’t changed at all. I think our carbon neutral future will be kind of like that. Just hoping the downside won’t outweigh the upside.

There is science and there is economics and the two don’t always play well together but will always be tied together. When economics is in play and the problem is global there will always be a transfer of wealth. In a perfect world this could be a good thing, but we don’t live in anything close to a perfect world.

I’m trying to be smart and at the same time aware. Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.

#86

It points to the amount being added at any one time to the background CO2 in the atmosphere. You are correct in that there is an appearance of it looking like the total is decreasing at times. What is happening is it constantly mixes with the current level of total atmospheric CO2 which is considerably more than the annual amount of CO2 being pumped at any given time. What is decreasing in the video is the amount being added at the monthly time frame over the year. Think of it as a tub of water with water constantly being added. The video shows when it is dripping and when it is pouring. You are seeing the rate at which that it is happening. Once it mixes the actual change is hard to see because of the ratio of what is already there when compared to what is being added.

One of the things I found interesting was how even though the production of human CO2 is fairly constant over the year is that it appears to go down in the summer in the Northern Hemisphere. This is due to the growth of plants consuming much of what is being produced. They point this out in the video. That is an illustration of how the balance of nature works.

This is a related but different topic from the impact of climate change. We disrupt that balance at our peril. Trees are a major carbon sink. Much more than are agricultural plants. Many of the grains are grasses, and many vegetables small shrubs. The more land that is turn from forest to agricultural production the less carbon is capture and the more we disrupt the balance of nature by reducing the overall biodiversity of the land being used.

This is an aspect of humanities impact on the planet that we view as beneficial for us but is not necessarily so for life on the planet as a whole. Much like overfishing the oceans for our benefit. We see the land as a commodity for human use with often little regard for the rest of life on the planet. In so doing we are radically changing this balance that has taken eons to develop. It is never static this balance and does change over time, but the time it takes is very long. the climate might be complex, but the complexity of life on this planet is an order of magnitude more and even influences the weather. It is certainly hubris to think we have fully grasped that complexity.

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#87

There is evidence that there is a tipping point, that no matter what we do we will be unable to stop further global warming. That is the main reason for the urgency. The warming of the oceans and the melting of the permafrost would be the primary reason for this runaway global warming. We are currently pushing the planet in that direction.

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#88

I feel the same way about The Economist … truthfully, I don’t always end up more optimistic, but better informed for sure. It’s another UK-based weekly. Environmental coverage is extensive, but from a global economic perspective rather than an ideological (drill baby, drillers vs tree huggers) one.

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#89

I would like to thank everyone on a lively but sociable discussion on this subject.

I’m sure folks in China and India are having similar open and honest talks on this subject and their governments will be fully supportive in doing whatever it takes to solve the climate issue. After all we all live on the same planet.

Great talk.

#90

Why don’t you guys write a book? Wait! Publish it!

#91

Wouldn’t be sure if it was fiction or non-fiction. Might end up like the book I wrote on the world ending at midnight of Y2K. :roll_eyes:

#92

Yes, The Economisr is also an excellent source for reality check news on the global scale and I subscibed for many years — pricey, though.

As for Y2K, what a ludicrous “chicken little” non-event that was. I knew there was no “there” there because I had friends in the upper levels of software tech who knew this was not an issue. But there were plenty of people and businesses who profited from that manufactured crisis. In 1999 I was a senior project manager with a large electrical contractor and we were besieged with panicky commercial and institutional customers demanding to have emergency generator systems installed or extisting and long neglected ones tested and serviced. Prices for every type of generator soared, even doubled, and we had crews working overtime to meet the end of year deadlines that everyone was in a tizzy about.

Many companies and facilities were even demanding that we send our electricians out to remain on call at their locations on New Year’s Eve. I suggested to my employers that we make that a voluntary option for individual workers who might relish earning triple time just to hang out somewhere until nothing happened, and maybe 10% of the sparkies took us up on that. I assured all our ckients that they could reach me by phone 24/7, but was so confident nothing was going to happen that I planned to drive 50 miles out of town to spend New Years with cousins.

But just as I was halfway there I got a call from the head of a large nursing home where we had recently installed a gigantic Caterpillar diesel generator in their mechanical room, saying they had just tested it in advance if the “event” and it had faiiled to fire up. I tried to call several of my electricians to go check it out but the few I reached were already half drunk and not fit to drive, let alone trouble shoot a balky genset. So I turned around, stopped at my house for tools and test gear (i was a licensed electrician myself at the time) and headed to the nursing home. Got there shortly after 11:00 PM to be met with angry staff railing at me about how we had made a defective installation and it would be our fault when the whole place went down and residents died in the cold and dark of the Y2K apocalypse. I had been present for our multiple start up tests on this system and knew it was solid.

As soon as I walked towards the mechanical room I saw the problem — did not even have to go inside. being as a diesel generator throws noxious exhaust, any indoor one has to be connected to an external exhaust. When an emergency or test kicks the unit on a link triggers the big louvers on the 8’ square metal louver over the exhaust port to open. For safety reasons, if it won’t open, the engine shuts down to avoid exhaust backing into the building. Despite my having made sure there were huge signs in the outside louver wanting not to block anything in front of it, there sat two steel trash dumpsters right up against the louvers. Once we got those moved the generator fired right up. I did get an embarassed apology from the staff, anyway.

By then my evening was ruined so I figured I might as well stick around for the “apocalypse”. Since there was none coming (had anything actually transpired we were 5 time zones past the Greenwich meridian so the news of England, Spain and New York having melted down due to digital time stamping would have already broken) I just waited and then smiled and wished them all Happy New Year when I left them with a peacefully sleeping untripped generator 20 minutes into 2000.

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#93

Well, taking a shallow dive into PragerU, I find this:

What Is PragerU?

We promote American values through the creative use of educational videos that reach millions of people online. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, Prager University Foundation (“PragerU”) offers a free alternative to the dominant left-wing ideology in culture, media, and education. Whether you’re searching for a deeper understanding, a new perspective, or a way to get involved, PragerU helps people of all ages think and live better.

Watching it frustrating as it cherry picks, mis-states things, and uses evocative wording, etc. Since it does not have references, one cannot go back to the source to verify the claims it makes that are contrary to what is well known. But it certainly does a good job of giving a viewer a way to feel good about not trusting science and scientists, and using uncertainty in science and what we know to sow doubt.

In fact, a book was written about how effectively the overemphasis of uncertainty has been, and continues to be used to sow doubt, another book well worth a read to add to your growing library, smile:

Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Climate Change: Oreskes, Naomi, Conway, Erik M.: 9781608193943: Amazon.com: Books

The book looks at the strategy used in several campaigns to stop or reduce action on hot issues, starting with the health effects and proposed regulations on tobacco smoke and a few other issues, and even includes climate warming. It is out of date regarding the science of climate warming, as it was published a while ago, but it is spot on with regard to how well sowing doubt works to undermine trust in scientists and their findings.

I am sorry your deep dive was so daunting that you abandoned it. Maybe a shallower dive would be sufficient? Depends upon your objective(s), of course. For those who may have visited the IPCC site and gotten lost in the various reports, here is a link to their “Summary for Policy Makers”, which is relatively short and summarizes things, rather than wading into the details. One difficulty for those who want quick answers is that the science is both clear and well supported by a large body of evidence, so it simply takes time to wade through all the evidence as presented in the report.

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#94

Agree that the subscription is pricey, and I’ve come close to cancelling a few times. Not so much lately though as most web-based news sites are now so cluttered with ads that it’s hard to find and follow the article. And written stories are disappearing in favor of bone-head videos because they’re cheap to make … require little research and production time … rarely go beyond the most superficial treatment of a subject … and most importantly, create an opportunity to force-feed us even more advertising. I simply will not watch a 30 second advert to see a 17 second video, no matter how adorable the cat.
But I digress. Sound background research, thoughtful analysis, and really good writing is expensive, but it’s worth the cost to me. Turning off the screen and reading The Economist print edition, completely free of electronic distractions, is a simple pleasure I would miss.

#95

The beauty of rising sea levels is that there will be that much more water to paddle in. :wink:

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#96

:laughing: that’s a good one. I’m going to have to use it with some of my contrarian buddies

#97

good news

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#98

I can’t speak to individuals but as to politicians and government, climate change, aliens, etc. are part of what political call the strawman ploy. It’s pretty simple, a politician scares the population by warning of impending danger (strawman) , then implies that he will save all, if they will vote for him or his policy. Al Gore said in 2006 the earth will be uninhabitable by 2013. Duh

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#99

Point source cleanup of rivers is the best way to reduce plastic pollution in the oceans. I get to see how a small un-damned river coming out of the Greenville area of SC is constantly floating trash down river after every rainstorm. The Name of the Enroee River is Cherokee, meaning “River of Muscadines” which are wild grapes growing along the banks. I have renamed it the “River of Balls” because every child that leaves a ball in the yard might lose it after a heavy rain that will float it into a ditch and eventually down the Enoree toward the Atlantic. Perhaps a better name might be the “River of Plastic Bottles”. However, they are intentionally thrown down on the ground or out of a car window when empty, and the balls are probably lost unintentionally. A few photos from an attempt to reduce some of the river trash in the river.

Notice the balls

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It is a massive problem even in the US.

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We focused on the foam as it rapidly turns into microplastic particles. The blue bottle with the tube may have been used in making Meth.

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Just the stuff I could fit in the back of my car. Brant had even more in his Van that day.

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When the river floods it tends to clean out much of the trash temporally as it spreads it out over the banks into the woods and down river to the Broad River.

There are more ocean garbage patches than just the Great Pacific one. There are six major ones the North Atlantic, South Atlantic, Indian Ocean Gyre, North Pacific Gyre, South Pacific Gyre, and Arctic Ocean Gyre.

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#100

Of course PragerU is a conservative leaning on line think tank. It was started because there are many media outlets of every type that have a liberal or progressive lean. It is also geared to many times condense or even for some over condense information in appealing to say a high school type audience. The world of information for better or worse today has a lean to it and it is up to us to at least understand and try and filter that. Unfortunately most no longer do that and only relate to information that is biased in the direction they are influenced.

The PragerU video I linked did not have sub sources and foot notes back to additional data. It was just a simple little video of one mans opinions based on the research he had done and the books he had written that do link his opinions to data and facts. His name is Steve Koonin and they provide a link to his bio on the page.
Steve Koonin | PragerU
For more information on him:
Steven E. Koonin - Wikipedia

His book was sternly rebuked by Scientific America in a piece by Gary Yohe . Who is a professor of economics and also a lead author of many of the IPCC reports 1990-2014.

Here is a better video of Professor Koonin addressing a college level function on his views in greater detail with graphs and sub sources.

Unsettling Climate Science - Steven E. Koonin - YouTube