Boffin dubs global warming 'irreversible' Economies may rise and fall every few decades or so, but at least the hard work we've put into global warming is "irreversible" on the human time scale. That's according to research from a team of US environmental scientists published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The report claims that …
In planetary terms that's just a blip, a thousand years, the Earth all barely notice, mankind all disappear at somepoint and a after million years there'll be no trace we'd ever been here. Except maybe a few plastic bottles and a new source of fossil fuels for the next genetic experiment.
We're little more then a surface nuisance. A short lived surface nuisance.
Its been a good week for models 'o' doom. Got to love this classy byline from the BBC...
"A mathematical model based on fading sea ice and the population growth of emperor penguins suggests their likely demise. "
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7851276.stm)
Long live virtual science.
Well try some rugh n ready maths. If YOU know better then postr something more accurate, I'm no geologist...
Last ice age 'ended' so to speak circa 10k years ago.
Apparently we're warming up at about 1degC every 111-113 years (ish)
Arctic temperatures are around -60degC (?? wikiP reckons -40 to -68 degC for Arctic, -85degC for Antarctica)
Average temp around is the world is about 20degC (??)
20-(-60) = 80degC change which at current rate of change would take about 9000 years to happen or ~11600 years for the Antarctic (-85degC)...
Oh hangon, that's virtually a straight line back the the last ice age...
Paris cos she does 'other' stuff than maths
.. more climate change models - that is, simulations run on computers using some peoples ideas of what may or may not happen. NOT SCIENTIFIC FACT !!
As we are presently in an INTER-GLACIAL period I think I am quite happy for the planet to get a bit warmer to delay the inevitable !!
I do not understand why Global Warming / Climate Change pseudo-scientists do not look at the massive variations in climate over the past few billion years to see how little our climate is actually changing.
The planet and mankind have survived several years when light was reduced by a blanket of dust and particles from volcanic eruptions. The planet has survived multiple meteor impacts - it will continue to survive. The life that presently inhabits the planet may not - but some form of life will !
So who DO you believe, since you could be insane, you can't believe yourself. Since you can't believe people who look into this, and you can't believe someone who knows nothing, there's nobody left.
For you, EVERYTHING is a conspiracy!
NOTE: Funny thing about "AGW is a conspiracy" theorists. They are exactly the same people who reckon anyone thinking 11/9 was a government ploy to garner more power for itself as "complete whackjobs". That conspiracy is far, FAR smaller and far less complex than the "AGW is a conspiracy" demands.
"People have imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide that the climate would go back to normal in 100 years or 200 years," said study author Susan Soloman. "What we're showing here is that's not right. It's essentially an irreversible change that will last for more than a thousand years."
In geological time 1000 years is almost insignificant ! An ice age, which would cover the UK destroying every village, town and city and displacing a population of 55 million (or thereabouts) would last 80,000 to 100,000 years.
The warm inter-glacials have "been much shorter, lasting about 10,000 years. The last Ice Age or glacial period on Earth ended roughly 14,000 years ago." So, we're due another one !
Also, how do we know that this "irreversible change" would not, actually, be good !
Unlike humans, the planet does not maintain a "status quo" - it changes all the time. Rather than trying to force the planet to obey some "golden age" idyll, humans would be better to adapt with it (as they did in the past). When the ice age returns we'll all be nomads again !
Of course, nomads are people of no-fixed abode so governments CANNOT tax them! Perhaps this is the real fear of our governments !
BTW: I am NOT arguing for minimising human impact on the planet - I AM arguing that the planet is big enough to look after itself and ultimately will do so, no matter what the human race does.
Because I'm sick and tired of hearing people talk about fucking Carbon emissions being the be all and end all of the environment. If I gave a flying monkey's about the human race I'd also be very worried that we're not preparing for the climate change, that _will happen_, because people are too busy saving for Toybota Piuses.
Humans - who have not been around for long - seem to think the planet was built for thier sole use and enjoyment. Selfish buggers, the lot of 'em.
The planet does not need 'saving', the planet continually belches and gets rid of the scum on the surface. Global warming won't be 'irreversable', just that humans won't be around for the next big change of climate - not that they'd survive it anyway, delicate little things that they are.
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! it's bloody big rock and it's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.
Seems to me that whenever it looks like the evidence won't support their models, the greenhouse gassers find excuses to shift the goalposts rather than admit that the evidence suggests CO2 does not drive global temperature. They do it when CO2 goes up and temperature doesn't, and now they are covering their arses in case CO2 drops and the temperature doesn't. So whatever the climate does they will say it is somehow due to anthopogenic CO2. This isn't science, it is hokum.
Anonymous because I am a PhD Scientist with a hard (i.e. not "environmental studies" or some other mickey mouse course) science background and 30 years Energy and Environmental experience in academia, industry and consultancy, but publicly saying that you don't believe in anthopogenic CO2 driven climate change makes you a heretic against the current dogma and blows your career. I am not alone in keeping my head down because of the baying mob.
"global warming is "irreversible" on the human time scale"
So.
Does that mean there's Sweet FA we can do about it.
Great.
Lets all stop worrying about it happening then. If this *is* the case, we should be expending more effort on planning for a future that's going to be very different from the world we have now, rather than thinking like King Canute that buying a Toyota 'Pious' or any other hybrid/leccy vehicle is going to stop the water rising.
But what is normal? The climate we are prepared to cope with in our modern lifes? The climate we built our houses* for and designed our ACUs?
Or 'normal' such as in the past period of a couple of million years with hugh recurring changes?
We are definitely not doomed, no matter how real or irreversible or human-made global warming is. It is simply a question of natural selection: those who are able to fit with the change will survive - be it animals, plants, human beings or politicians and journalists.
EA
*not exactly in the UK. British houses were surely built for the warm future climate which we will soon suffer from or enjoy; all depends on the individual attitude.
Once upon a time, the atmosphere of the Earth was almost entirely CO2, there was no Oxygen at all. Then, as bacteria came along it changed. The Earth didn't explode or melt, it was fine.
Before the last ice age kicked in, the level of CO2 was 17 times higher than it is now, and guess what, it didn't blow up then either.
If CO2 affected the temperature then the IPCC, NOAA or the BBC would be able to show a graph that illustrates this, but as it doesn't, they can't. Occasionally it follows a similar path but the CO2 level lags behind the temperature.
If man-made CO2 affected the temperature then again they'd be able to show a graph but they can't because it doesn't (10 years of cooling despite CO2 rising).
So it can be illustrated that our CO2 emissions have no affect and that CO2 doesn't cause catastrophe to the planet so there's no need to save it.
The IPCC warns that if we carry on for another 200 years (despite having run out of oil & coal long before that) then the sea level could rise 1M which would be terminally bad also (I'm sure it wouldn't take that long to build a wall in areas liable to flooding).
Essentially they've no evidence it's man made, no evidence it can be stopped, no evidence it's really a problem. You don't need to be a scientist, you just need to look at what these people are saying to see how it just doesn't add up.
I'm just glad that more and more scientists are distancing themselves from this.
Please tell me where the scientists are here that are informing you? Because there aren't many and most of them are saying "It's real".
What you have here mostly is a lot of people saying "Scientists say it isn't real, I read about it on the interwebs" and other nonscientists (I assume) saying "Scientists will make any shit up to get the result they want".
So apparently if people come here only to be informed by scientists, they mistyped www.realclimate.org.
Why do you mention the 3%? That is irrelevant. All that means is that out of the 100% of CO2 that is taken up each year, 103% is released into the atmosphere.
do you know what happens then?
Year 1: 103% CO2
Year 2: 106.09% CO2
.
.
.
Year 20: 180.61112346694% CO2
.
.
.
The "CO2 was 17 times higher than today" claim for the Ice Age is simply bogus - in fact it was lower than today, and the curve you asked for is well known, as is the cause of the lag in it (which is to do with the solubility in the oceans of CO2 varying as the temperature varies). Probably too complicated for you, but that has no effect on its validity
You can go and live on Venus if you think CO2 has no effect; let us know how that works out for you.
And that is the same oregon petition that included names of people who have asked to be removed? The same petition that has names of people who are dead, fictional characters and not scientists?
That petition?
Or do you only check up for lies when the statement disagrees with your preconceptions?
Yet another report/study predicting doom and gloom, based on studying facts, figures, other peoples work, whispered comments, runes and chicken entrails.
Lets get things straight. Is there climate change ? Yes. Is there anthropogenic climate change ? jury's still out.
If there is such a large concensus on everything being really bad and we need to do something, why isn't all the money being funnelled to these "scientists" who write the doom and gloom papers, not being given to physicists, biologists and chemists to work out a solution to the problem ? Like zero pollution energy production, tanks of hybrid algae (one of the larger consumers of CO2 I believe) and ways to collect and store (cheaply and efficiently) all the excess CO2.
No, both sides of the argument are paying for reports to say whatever they want, with precious little actually being spent to find a solution.
"Please tell me how many millions of years that CO2 was from?"
Your missing the point, even if we turned *all* 100% of biomass & oil and coal from plant material to CO2, NOW, in zero seconds, the earth would still not suffer runaway global warming.
Because when all the carbon that we're creating from plant material WAS in the form of CO2, the earth didn't suffer runaway global warming. i.e. there isn't enough CO2 from all plant material, petroleum, coal biomass etc. to cause runaway global warming.
"Jesus, you'll grab anything to make it better, won't you."
It is better, Global Warming may be real, runaway global warming certainly isn't.
Once again, I'm not a scientist. At least I admit it, unlike a lot of the posters here who submit their half baked comments here. Maybe if I claimed to be a scientists it would be worse, as some half wit even went as far as saying that no scientists (except of course computer scientists) produce anything of any use.
I merely put forward that I tend to believe the published opinions of the Royal Society, the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, International Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences, the InterAcademy Council, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, the Geological Society of America, the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, etc etc etc
(The list is long)
...not to mention the IPCC
I read popular science journals and the web.
Because I don't run with the herd of Reg readers I get flamed.
Bugger that.
So you don't like hippies and don't trust THE VAST MAJORITY of scientists.
Get over it.
Actually, I think you'll find it's bullshit.
Yes, bullshit, and sheep-shit, goat-shit, chicken-shit, and yes, to a lesser extent horse-shit, hell even the camel-shit. Actually, it's ALL shit.
Common element here - methane.
Animals (and people) fart millions of tons of it every year, and methane is a considerably more effective greenhouse gas than CO2. Combine that with the methane from rotting garbage...
"Your missing the point, even if we turned *all* 100% of biomass & oil and coal from plant material to CO2, NOW, in zero seconds, the earth would still not suffer runaway global warming."
Please show your workings.
Since you have stated this as evident truth, you must have done so.
So, please. Show us.
Or tell us the journal you have written that has this in.
We await your magnificence to be revealed...
The sun IS the problem!
NASA are looking for volunteers for a manned mission, it's objective is to put an object large enough between the sun and the earth to reduce solar radiation just enough to slow down the naturally occurring warming cycle at the present hospitable temperature range.
I have it on good authority that you were put forward for this mission, but your skull was deemed to be to large and dense and it's shadow would plunge the earth and all its inhabitants into an immediate ice-age, forcing us to burn even more precious fossil fuel, and/or all the lentil munching eco-nazis just to keep warm.
I'm afraid I'd have to reject any call to participate, as I'm far too busy adding copious quantities of CO2 and methane into the atmosphere. Perhaps you'd care to join me for a large curry this evening. I'll send my driver round in the Hummer. Best bring your coat, apparently it's going to get really chilly.
The paper's up for free at the PNAS site:
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/01/28/0812721106.full.pdf+html
Denialists who would like to put their money where their typing fingers are invited to visit http://www.longbets.org/196 , where we can make the question of whether AGW is real or some vast conspiracy by liberal book-laarnin' "scientists" and their grant-hugging tree-knitting yogurty friends, or the scientific method actually works. I know which side my money's on.
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