Anybody want to argue global warming?

[BlackCat]

I'm skeptical of this claim.

How do you dare to question IPCC ??? IPCC clearly states that their claims are beyond any doubt !!!

[Thoth]

If you really want to make me happy Doc you will figure out the "your" vs "you're" issue. I personally find it quite annoying and with all respect, it makes your posts less credible on their face. It is very hard to take you seriously when you make such a basic mistake.

Doc is a product of the Yankeestanian education system. It's a wonder he can even spell his own name.


Cut him some slack.

[Al B. Sure!]

Al, don't listen to rumors. There are no findings of roman relicts under retreating glaciers they have been there forever and only AGW are to blame for glaciers retreating - trust MikeH while he speaks the thruth !!

I don't know about Roman ruins underneath glaciers but between historical documents corroborating that it was once warmer (like Greenland being named GREEN, grapes and wine being produced in Northern Germany, etc.) and analysis of tree rings and flora/fauna, I thought it was well-established that things were warmer between 2000 and 700 years ago.

[Al B. Sure!]

The reconstructions used, in order from oldest to most recent publication are:
(dark blue 1000-1991): P.D. Jones, K.R. Briffa, T.P. Barnett, and S.F.B. Tett (1998). , The Holocene, 8: 455-471. doi:10.1191/095968398667194956
(blue 1000-1980): M.E. Mann, R.S. Bradley, and M.K. Hughes (1999). , Geophysical Research Letters, 26(6): 759-762.
(light blue 1000-1965): Crowley and Lowery (2000). , Ambio, 29: 51-54. Modified as published in Crowley (2000). , Science, 289: 270-277. doi:10.1126/science.289.5477.270
(lightest blue 1402-1960): K.R. Briffa, T.J. Osborn, F.H. Schweingruber, I.C. Harris, P.D. Jones, S.G. Shiyatov, S.G. and E.A. Vaganov (2001). , J. Geophys. Res., 106: 2929-2941.
(light green 831-1992): J. Esper, E.R. Cook, and F.H. Schweingruber (2002). , Science, 295(5563): 2250-2253. doi:10.1126/science.1066208.
(yellow 200-1980): M.E. Mann and P.D. Jones (2003). , Geophysical Research Letters, 30(15): 1820. doi:10.1029/2003GL017814.
(orange 200-1995): P.D. Jones and M.E. Mann (2004). , Reviews of Geophysics, 42: RG2002. doi:10.1029/2003RG000143
(red-orange 1500-1980): S. Huang (2004). , Geophys. Res Lett., 31: L13205. doi:10.1029/2004GL019781
(red 1-1979): A. Moberg, D.M. Sonechkin, K. Holmgren, N.M. Datsenko and W. Karlén (2005). , Nature, 443: 613-617. doi:10.1038/nature03265
(dark red 1600-1990): J.H. Oerlemans (2005). , Science, 308: 675-677. doi:10.1126/science.1107046
(black 1856-2004): Instrumental data was jointly compiled by the w:Climatic Research Unit and the UK Meteorological Office Hadley Centre. Global Annual Average data set TaveGL2v [2] was used.

As you can see, we're still way higher than typical but it looks like warming was a natural process anyway that humans just compounded.

[Riesstiu IV]

Does it really even matter at this point? I expect humans will eventually burn up all known coal and oil reserves only because it is there and an economic necessity for industrial civilizations. With a world population nearing 7 billion people, it's simply unavoidable. It's too late.

Maybe global warming won't be the end of the earth but humans will be living on a planet that will be diminished of life and resources. The legacy of the great Holocene extinction.

[Thoth]

Does it really even matter at this point?

No. We are all going to be dead from radioactive swine flu in the next couple of years so GW is irrelevant.

[ricketyclik]

Temperatures change all the time. I think you're selling the ecosystem short here. Besides, the point is that there's an opportunity cost. "Fixing" global warming means that you can't do countless other things.

You're not listening (reading). It is the rate of change that is of concern. When they have changed at the rate and magnitude forecast, they have been accompanied by biomass collapse.

[ricketyclik]

WRT Alby's picture, note that temperatures changed 0.8 degrees over 600 years. We're looking at potentially 7 degrees over 200 years. (And so far we're outstripping the worst of the predictions from 40, 30, even 5 years ago).

[Felch]

Potentially is the key word. There's this little thing called opportunity cost. If you spend trillions to fix a "problem" that might not even be such a big deal, then you can't spend trillions to fix other problems. I personally don't think it'll be a big deal, because science moves quicker than geology. Of course, you might think differently. In that case, where would you raise the trillions it would take to stop global warming?

[ricketyclik]

Potentially is the key word. There's this little thing called opportunity cost. If you spend trillions to fix a "problem" that might not even be such a big deal, then you can't spend trillions to fix other problems.

We currently spend trillions on fossil fuels. One could argue that the opportunity cost is there, where the cost is non-investment in renewables.

As for the idea that it will be a huge cost to switch, most cases of major economic and systemic reform create economic opportunity, not remove it.

In that case, where would you raise the trillions it would take to stop global warming?

By pricing carbon emissions.

1st there is a market incentive to invest in renewables, as they become economically competitive, and 2nd the revenue can be directed to a) offsetting the economic hardship on those marginal businesses and individuals whose initial additional costs (in the space between creating the market incentive and the market responding) would be too onerous, and b) investment in renewables to accelerate the switch over that the costing of carbon has already initiated.

I personally don't think it'll be a big deal, because science moves quicker than geology.

That doesn't seem to have been the case to date, where millions of hectares of previously arable land have been rendered otherwise by mismanagement like over-clearing and over-irrigation. Seems to me like it's far, far easier to f*ck up productive soil than it is to rehabilitate it.

[BlackCat]

WRT Alby's picture, note that temperatures changed 0.8 degrees over 600 years. We're looking at potentially 7 degrees over 200 years. (And so far we're outstripping the worst of the predictions from 40, 30, even 5 years ago).

Ehrmn, 40 years ago an ice age was predicted at the end of the century, mid 90'ties Al Gore predicted that New york would be under water and suffering under extreme heatwaves in 2010 etc.

[ricketyclik]

Ehrmn, 40 years ago an ice age was predicted at the end of the century,

We've already covered that in another thread BC, I'm not going to jump through the hoops again on that with you. You claim to be a rational sceptic, and yet you mindlessly repeat already discredited reasoning.

...mid 90'ties Al Gore predicted that New york would be under water and suffering under extreme heatwaves in 2010 etc.

If you read my post that you're responding to very, very, very carefully and in context, you will (possibly) understand that I'm talking about degrees of warming.

[BlackCat]

We've already covered that in another thread BC, I'm not going to jump through the hoops again on that with you. You claim to be a rational sceptic, and yet you mindlessly repeat already discredited reasoning.

Noone claimed 40 years ago that temperatures would rise, but still you claim it, and I can really not remember that we have had a debate where it was proven wrong that the ice age theory was the mindset of the 70'ies.

If you read my post that you're responding to very, very, very carefully and in context, you will (possibly) understand that I'm talking about degrees of warming.

Eh, are you joking ??? Those effects are the result of temperature rising. You are talking about a 7 degree raise wich no sane climate scientist are advocating for.

[ricketyclik]

Noone claimed 40 years ago that temperatures would rise, but still you claim it, and I can really not remember that we have had a debate where it was proven wrong that the ice age theory was the mindset of the 70'ies.

OMFG Must we go over this again? Don't you retain anything?

Global warming theory is over 100 years old. It wasn't known to the palaeontologists who raised the alarm re. the overdue ice age.

Palaeontologists realised in the 70's that we are overdue for an ice age, a fact later confirmed by analysis of earth orbit cycles. The fact that we haven't entered one could very well be because of AGW.

Eh, are you joking ??? Those effects are the result of temperature rising. You are talking about a 7 degree raise wich no sane climate scientist are advocating for.

I have no idea what Al Gore was claiming, but it's far more likely he said that if we don't substantially reduce emissions by 2010 then heat waves etc would be subsequently suffered. That was the concept being pushed by scientists in the early noughties, and they were right.

Understand this: each molecule of CO2 will last, on average, in the atmosphere for decades. It will continue to contribute to warming over that period. So it's not like, ah, CO2 is up to 350 ppm now, so the the temperature will be this now as a result. The thermal balance of the planet's surface takes decades to equilibrate.

Even linear increase in CO2 concentration results in exponential temperature rise, and we are increasing CO2 concentration exponentially. Join the dots.

As for the 7 degrees, take a look at the projections out for 200 years, upper envelope. And then consider that we've been tracking above the upper envelope for some years now.

[I can't readily find a 200 year projection, but I've seen them before. 100 years projections give 4 degrees (upper envelope).]

[BlackCat]

OMFG Must we go over this again? Don't you retain anything?

Global warming theory is over 100 years old. It wasn't known to the palaeontologists who raised the alarm re. the overdue ice age.

Palaeontologists realised in the 70's that we are overdue for an ice age, a fact later confirmed by analysis of earth orbit cycles. The fact that we haven't entered one could very well be because of AGW.

What are you talking about ???? We are nearing the end of an interglacial period (approx 11.000 out of 12.000 years) - we are not overdue.

Belive me, you must mix me up with another person that you have discussed this subject with, because I would never have accepted such a stupid claim .

I have no idea what Al Gore was claiming, but it's far more likely he said that if we don't substantially reduce emissions by 2010 then heat waves etc would be subsequently suffered. That was the concept being pushed by scientists in the early noughties, and they were right.

Nope. He was quite precise in his "predictions" - I don't have the link at hand, so belive me/wait to I find it.

Even linear increase in CO2 concentration results in exponential temperature rise, and we are increasing CO2 concentration exponentially. Join the dots.

No. It's actually quite opposite. You need exponential rise in CO2 to get linear rise in temperature.