Climate deniers get even more ridiculous

[Borachio]

What I see is a constantly increasing yield, even as the Earth got warmer in the last decades. That yields don't like extreme conditions is rather obvious. But the trend is clearly positive (no, I'm not saying the warming was beneficial for production - though it might have been marginally beneficial. I'm saying it wasn't detrimental, and I don't think it will be in the future either).

That "trend" is further complicated by rising population, better agricultural techniques, and a growing demand for high input agricultural products, though.

 

[Gary Childress]

So should we not be concerned at all with mass extinctions of life on Earth? I think the big question mark that scientists are worried about is that we are all tied into the ecosystem and if we destroy that we may all be doomed.

I suppose it might be "possible" for humans to survive on a planet completely paved over with asphalt and extracting our food from some sort of "replication" machine. Would that justify paving over the planet and destroying all other life on Earth?

It just seems to me, and yes I realize it's just the opinion of a layman, that there is some joy and beauty to having wild places on the planet for no other sake than to have wild places on the planet. If we destroy all the habitats of all the other species on Earth, even though we survive, would it be "worth it"?

 

[Harv]

That should be clear to anyone with a view of climate change a bit more complex than "climate change = more CO2 = more plant food = more people food".

A statement like this should be followed with an explanation to benefit the rest of us.



I wonder what this chart looks like with atmospheric carbon dioxide on the horizontal axis.

What I see is a constantly increasing yield, even as the Earth got warmer in the last decades.

I would suspect this has more to do with agricultural technology than atmospheric carbon dioxide, but charts are still fun.

From NASA::

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which includes more than 1,300 scientists from the United States and other countries, forecasts a temperature rise of 2.5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century.

That would be 1.4 to 5.6°C warmer! 3.5±2.1°C! That's a lot! Where did the range of uncertainty come from? It looks like they are trying to hit the broad side of a barn with a shotgun.

I cannot understand a range of uncertainty covering 4.2°C. It is more likely that different people came up with different predictions using different assumptions and the predictions that are radically different.

I remember a day when NASA was synonymous with using many, many significant figures in their calculations. I remember (a long time ago) using all 8 significant figures in my calculator and being told, "How can you measure this? We are not NASA!"

A range of predictions that big means they have no idea how to predict the average surface temperature of the Earth.

Therefore, I do not believe this prediction. However, I do not think I will live long enough to see this prediction fall short. They predicted this change to occur over the next century.

And from National Geographic:

Sea levels are expected to rise between 7 and 23 inches (18 and 59 centimeters) by the end of the century, and continued melting at the poles could add between 4 and 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters).

How about a prediction over the next quarter-century or half-century? Then I can say I will believe it when I see it.

2007, Al Gore while accepting his Nobel Peace Prize
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_priz...ecture_en.html

Last September 21, as the Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun, scientists reported with unprecedented distress that the North Polar ice cap is "falling off a cliff." One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study, to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week, warns it could happen in as little as 7 years.

Seven years from now.

There. 2029. We can wait until 2029 and see if this happens. The as early as 2014 prediction did not happen. I say the 2029 prediction will not happen, either.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

So you think a few extra degrees Celsius will bring about apocalypse?

Depending on the species, yes. All it takes is for those "few extra degrees" to be the difference between a species getting the proper amount of moisture and heat to thrive or not getting the proper amount and dying.

All I know personally is that the glaciers are receding all over the planet. I think only some of them are growing - a very tiny amount. I know about this because I actually seek out glaciers, so I can go see them - and it's going to be harder and harder for people to do so. Which is a big shame, because they can be beautiful. That, and they are actually quite important.

The river that runs through my city is fed by a glacier in the Rocky Mountains. Every spring, we have to concern ourselves with when the annual snow/glacier melt is occurring, and how fast, because that makes a difference in whether or not we will get flooding, and what the water quality will be.

Warpus, have you been to the glaciers out here? They're considerably smaller now than they were when I was a child and my family traveled through the Rockies and the four National Parks (Banff, Jasper, Glacier, and Yoho). Some of the mountains that used to have snow in summer no longer do.

Some people complain about snow... personally, I'm grateful for every snowflake we get. We need snow in this part of the world for our ecosystem to function properly.

I have heard that receding snow lines could cause the mass extinction of many plants and creatures that will not be able to keep up with the rate of recession. So, yes, it sounds like that would be quite important to me also.

This is true. But I guess some people figure that these smaller species don't matter, because they're not human and don't provide the steak and salads on the humans' dinner table.

From NASA:

Increasing wildfire, insect outbreaks, and tree diseases are causing widespread tree die-off.

We've been having a lot of problems in B.C. and Alberta, with forest fires and pine beetles.

Maybe it will create problems in some places and alleviate problems in others?

I really see no evidence that the net result will be negative.

How about if you happen to live in one of the places where the problems will be created?

Really?

Don't you see that it will lead to mass migrations, the sea levels rising, ecosystems changing and driving various species out and forcing them to try to adapt to life elsewhere, how it will affect the food supply, and so on?

What good could possibly come out of it?

Climate refugees - it's no longer just a figment of Ben Bova's imagination (he's a science fiction author who is also a real scientist).

Mass migrations? What if there is a net increase in agricultural output? Wouldn't that lead to less migration? As for ecosystems changing, so what? Are their current form sacred or something? They'll be different, not any worse or better. Some species may suffer and others will thrive. I very much doubt there'll be any decrease in biodiversity, quite possibly the opposite will happen (warmer areas have higher biodiversity, all else being equal).

You mentioned food supply. Let's talk of food supply. Why exactly would a slightly warmer Earth compromise our food supply?

When people are no longer able to grow their own food supply (or raise animals) and they no longer have a reliable source of water, they tend to try to go where they can get food and water for themselves and their animals. This is not a new thing - it's happened numerous times in human history, and wars have been among the results.

What I see is a constantly increasing yield, even as the Earth got warmer in the last decades. That yields don't like extreme conditions is rather obvious. But the trend is clearly positive (no, I'm not saying the warming was beneficial for production - though it might have been marginally beneficial. I'm saying it wasn't detrimental, and I don't think it will be in the future either).

As for the positives, here are some:

Opening of shipping lanes in the Artic:

Spoiler :

The change here is quite striking. Right now, no commercial shipping goes through the Northwest Passage that hugs northern Canada. Yet by mid-century, those routes could potentially be clear for open-water vessels every other summer. Likewise, the Northern Sea Route that hugs Russia is projected to be open in late summer 90 percent of the time, up from 40 percent today.

That could transform shipping, at least during those summer months. As a news release from UCLA points out, it's 40 percent quicker to ship goods from Rotterdam, Netherlands to Yokohama, Japan along the Northern Sea Route than it is to take conventional shipping routes through the Suez Canal. That's still far from a given—it depends on how the economics evolve, since Arctic shipping will remain risky. But global warming will remove a key physical barrier here.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...pen-up-surprising-new-arctic-shipping-routes/

Increase in agricultural production on vast landmasses in places like Russia. Decrease in heating costs in those places, and of the cost of living in general. Opening up of new areas for resource exploitation. More frost-free harbors. Some benefits of GW for Russia (it is argued they're already benefiting from it):

Spoiler :

In addition to these efficiency costs, it is also expensive to live in the cold climates; for example, there are high heating and snow and ice removal costs. These costs affect Russia more so than other areas because communist planners have populated cities and built industries that are too big to be economically viable in the relative coldness of their locations.6 Thus, there is economic pressure because of the cold for many Russian cities to shrink (which has been difficult given the existing infrastructure of these cities). Russia’s increasing temperatures (which are probably the result of global warming) could relieve some the economic pressures that result from the cold climate. Warming will directly reduce the effects of cold on work efficiency in Russia and reduce adaptation costs. In fact, this is already happening. Rosgidromet (Russia’s Hydro-meteorology agency) stated in 2008 that average annual temperature in Russia has risen by 1.3 °C over the past 30 years and that winter temperatures in Siberia have increased 2-3 °C over the past 120-150 years.7 This is reflected in the agency’s estimate that there will be five fewer days that require heat in 2015 than in 2000. The agency also estimates that Russians could reduce heating costs by as much as 10 % by 2050.

Russia will further gain from the warming of the ground and water in and around its territory. The UN sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted in 2001 that if average air temperature increased by 2-3.5 degrees, a quarter of the earth’s permafrost would melt.8 This is already happening; Greenpeace’s 2009 report on Russia states that over the past 35 years the southern boundary of permafrost has moved north by 18-25 miles in European Russia and 50 miles near the Urals. Rosgidromet predicts that by 2050 the permafrost boundary would shift north by another 95-125 miles. The retreat of permafrost will make extraction of raw materials easier; Victor Mote wrote; “In Siberia standard mining and excavation machinery may be used for only three to four months a year in northern Siberian tin and gold operations.9 In addition, most of Russia’s gas and oil comes from Arctic regions, as well as “considerable quantities of the world’s nickel, cobalt, copper and diamonds.” Observers are tracking additional warming trends like the spread of trees and shrubs northward, which implies an increase of habitable land. Warming will also allow agriculture to spread north, extend the growing seasons, and perhaps increase overall agricultural yields—Russia has recently marked yield records.

In addition, Russia’s chief forecaster, Alexander Frolov, said that the North Pole may be completely ice-free in the summer within a few decades. The retreat of Arctic ice will reduce the cost of extracting natural resources from Arctic waters, which contain large reserves of oil, gas, gold, diamonds, nickel and tungsten. One concern for such extraction has been icebergs. A reduction in Arctic ice is also opening up a trade route which would be an alternative to the Suez Canal; the distance between Rotterdam and Yokohama is about one-third shorter via the Northern Sea Route—along Russia’s north coast and then south through the Bering Strait. Rosgidromet has stated that Russia is close to opening “almost the entire Northern Sea Route to icebreaker-free shipping [from August to September].” In fact, representatives of the eight Arctic powers are already discussing the development of the route. The Northern Sea Route’s freight consisted of about 110,000 tons this year. By 2020, some predict freight will increase to 64 million tons. Additionally, Siberia contains eleven of the world’s fifty longest rivers—all of them flowing into the Arctic Ocean, except the Amur that flows to the Sea of Okhotsk (to a port that is unusable for five months out of the year because of the ice). As the Arctic sea-ice retreats, the settlements along these rivers will no longer be on waterways that essentially come to a dead end. It will become possible to transport cargo from these rivers to ports around the globe, which could lead to a decrease in transport costs and an increase in trade volume from the interior of Siberia. David Lempert and Hue Nhu Nguyen write in The Ecologist that “the biggest winner from global warming is going to be Russia.”

http://csis.org/blog/might-russia-welcome-global-warming

Canada, Russia, and Denmark are already exchanging tense words over the control of the Arctic. What do you suggest we do - stand there on the melting permafrost and wave to the American and other ships as they wreck the Arctic ecosystem even more than it already is?

 

[bhsup]

I would think TRUE environmentalists would want to drive SUVs and push the planet to the brink. The sooner we wreck the current planetary system, the sooner we humans can be driven to extinction. The sooner that happens,the sooner mother earth can begin the long process of cleansing herself of our filth and pollution. The sooner that happens, the sooner a truly lush and wonderous living environment can again come about without us humans being around to muck things up.

 

[luiz]

Depending on the species, yes. All it takes is for those "few extra degrees" to be the difference between a species getting the proper amount of moisture and heat to thrive or not getting the proper amount and dying.

Yeah, and other species will thrive. Some will win and some will lose, just like always.

How about if you happen to live in one of the places where the problems will be created?

I'm from the Tropics so according to several researchers I'm from a "probable loser" region. Still I think any impacts of a slightly warmer Earth will be small.

When people are no longer able to grow their own food supply (or raise animals) and they no longer have a reliable source of water, they tend to try to go where they can get food and water for themselves and their animals. This is not a new thing - it's happened numerous times in human history, and wars have been among the results.

Yes, and? My point is that food production is not falling at all even as the Earth gets warmer.

Canada, Russia, and Denmark are already exchanging tense words over the control of the Arctic. What do you suggest we do - stand there on the melting permafrost and wave to the American and other ships as they wreck the Arctic ecosystem even more than it already is?

No, I expect you to use the new shipping lanes to save money (and reduce fuel consumption!).

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Yes, and? My point is that food production is not falling at all even as the Earth gets warmer.

Reduced rain/no rain = less/no food being grown. How does that equal more food production? Not everyone has a local grocery store handy, or could afford to shop there if there was one.

No, I expect you to use the new shipping lanes to save money (and reduce fuel consumption!).

So instead of loading/unloading ships in Vancouver and the ports on the Atlantic side of the country, we're supposed to somehow tote everything up north and load/unload there?

Uh-huh...

 

[Bootstoots]

One point of confusion I'm seeing in this thread is that people are focusing whether a warmer climate would be a better or worse thing for humans in some absolute way. That's not the issue on timescales we care about. It could quite easily be that a world that is 3 C warmer ultimately leads to more crop productivity and a variety of other benefits once agriculture, human settlement patterns, and so on have adapted to the new climate regime. It is quite true, for example, that Earth has been a lot warmer in the past and that life thrived - all or almost all of the time between the start of the Jurassic and the end of the Eocene (between 201 and 34 million years ago) featured climates with no permanent ice anywhere on the planet except maybe small glaciers on extremely high mountains, and mean temperatures that were warm enough for reptiles to survive at the Arctic Circle.

That's not especially relevant because most of the problems stem from an extremely rapid change from the current Holocene climate to a regime we've never experienced in our existence as a species. Given the significant adaptability of humans to climate extremes it's quite unlikely that this would be a threat to the survival of humans as a species (it won't be the apocalypse), but modern civilization is much more "rooted" in the status quo and will face huge costs in trying to adapt our agriculture and settlement patterns to a very different reality, in which precipitation patterns have shifted in unpredictable ways and caused some places to experience perpetual drought while others see flooding, sea level is higher, the temperature regimes are very different from what we've adapted to, and so forth. Abrupt climate change will also put more stress on vulnerable species and ecosystems, which will tip some of them into collapse and extinction when combined with all the other environmental damage humans continue to cause.

It's not the final temperature that matters in this debate, it's how you get there. A change of 2-4 C in about a century is so abrupt that it can't avoid causing substantial damage by its rapid onset.

 

[warpus]

Warpus, have you been to the glaciers out here? They're considerably smaller now than they were when I was a child and my family traveled through the Rockies and the four National Parks (Banff, Jasper, Glacier, and Yoho). Some of the mountains that used to have snow in summer no longer do.

I haven't, but I do have the Berg Lake trail on my list of things to do. I can't remember which exact glacier that is though. One day I'll be there, hiking that trail. Hopefully the glacier is still there when that happens.

Found a picture of Berg lake:

Spoiler :

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I came thisclose to getting to go out onto the glacier at the Columbia Icefield. Unfortunately, though, it was decided we couldn't spare the time.

 

[luiz]

It's not the final temperature that matters in this debate, it's how you get there. A change of 2-4 C in about a century is so abrupt that it can't avoid causing substantial damage by its rapid onset.

Hum, you think a 2-4 degrees change in a Century will cause substantial damage to our food supply & etc? Why? Seems to me that bigger fluctuations can occur on any given year.

Granted, a 4 degrees increase would lead to some significant changes, but I don't see we needing to change our crops or anything like that.

 

[warpus]

I looked it up, and a 4C increase in average global temperature would lead to a 2-7 metre increase in sea levels.

There would be huge groups of people trying to relocate, tons of refugees, a lot of flood plains and cities would be under water, and I do believe that a lot of farming happens closer to sea level too - doesn't it? The impact would be huge.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I looked it up, and a 4C increase in average global temperature would lead to a 2-7 metre increase in sea levels.

There would be huge groups of people trying to relocate, tons of refugees, a lot of flood plains and cities would be under water, and I do believe that a lot of farming happens closer to sea level too - doesn't it? The impact would be huge.

Climate change alarmist nonsense! There is no proof that warmer temperatures lead to melting ice.

NOTE: If such proof exists, showing it to the government is a criminal act punishable by law.

 

[FriendlyFire]

You mentioned food supply. Let's talk of food supply. Why exactly would a slightly warmer Earth compromise our food supply?

Syria civil war was triggered by the drought
Egypt revolution was triggered by the drought
Yemen civil war triggered by the drought

These were not even serious droughts either.

 

[El_Machinae]

- The benefits of cheap energy far outweigh the potential environmental costs

Oh, holy moley, no. The potential environmental costs are enormous. Like, omg-bad. The viable worst-case scenarios are really gross.

What's not known is the relative risks of each 'cost'. Is there a 10% chance of real awfulness? A 5% chance? Is a 10% risk at 500 ppm more acceptable than a 5% chance at 450 ppm?

These worst-case scenarios are on top of the damage that we're already accepting in the model. A meter's sea rise is non-trivial. Wide-spread coral death is non-trivial. The loss efficacy of c3 crops is an issue, etc.

Now, if we were just looking at the 'regular' damage predictions on top of the presumed economic benefits, I'd agree. At that point, it just becomes a justice issue, where one cohort of people is destroying another group's property.

But, throw in the word 'potential' and I totally disagree. The risk of serious problems is like what is seen in any buffered system, where the risk is rising exponentially with concentration, but people assume it's flat.

But, to use the 'regular' damage predictions requires that we only cause the Earth to warm slightly

-It's not at all certain that a slightly warmer Earth would cause more harm than good.

What's "Slightly"? Business as Usual doesn't have us warming 'slightly'. It doesn't have oceanic pH changing 'slightly'. This is the problem!

We're going to get slight warming if we really try to slow down our pollution. We're not going to get slight warming if we don't.

.....

The meat of the OP's quoted article is right about one thing, GDP does correlate very well with energy consumption. He pretends its with oil consumption, but that's the trick. What he doesn't mention is that there are many ways to keep growing GDP independent of fossil carbon use, and that decoupling from carbon itself would create GDP growth.

As always, the trick is to treat fossil carbon like a trust fund. You use it in such a way so that you're actually better off by the time the trust fund runs out and through investment continue to be better off than when you were first living off the trust fund.

In this case, the trust fund is the remaining CO2 ppm in our buffer.

 

[Tee Kay]

El Machinae 2016 pls

 

[Ajidica]

Considering the really quite nasty effects of climate change on just about every aspect of life, I would think this is one area where we try to err on the side of "let's not screw things up".

 

[Bootstoots]

Hum, you think a 2-4 degrees change in a Century will cause substantial damage to our food supply & etc? Why? Seems to me that bigger fluctuations can occur on any given year.

Granted, a 4 degrees increase would lead to some significant changes, but I don't see we needing to change our crops or anything like that.

A change of 2 degrees in the global average surface temperature average in the span of about a century is huge; 4 is enormous. It's amplified over land and at high latitudes so that the Arctic, in particular, is warming much faster. Entire patterns of precipitation change under this scenario: the globe on average becomes slightly wetter in absolute terms but deserts shift poleward (e.g. southern Europe and the southern and southwestern US become much drier under most models), the frequency of extremely high temperatures, forest fires, and the like goes up, sea level rise of several meters becomes very likely (although this is a slower process probably taking several centuries to play out entirely), and the list goes on from here with a lot of poorly understood risks that haven't been priced in appropriately.

I'll echo what El Mac said: if fossil fuels are used irresponsibly, it results in a scenario where a few generations burn through our 'trust fund' recklessly and waste the easily accessible fossil fuels while passing extremely disruptive problems (enough to make growth shudder to a halt, and quite possibly reverse) to the next generation.

 

[Tee Kay]

"Only" 4 degrees is a small deal with weather variations, huge in terms of climate variations.

 

[MilesGregarius]

Stop trying to confuse the issue with accurate terminology!