Global Warming and Extinction

[El_Machinae]

I've gone through it in the past enough times but I'll throw an abridged version at you so you can make fun of it.


So, CO2 is an underachiever, the warming we had was due to natural events and trends. Those trends changed, climate change is quite normal, and now the warming is gone.

You're conflating air temperatures with whether there is more total heat within the system. I'm not denying that the air temperatures didn't do like we expected. But to suggest that CO2 is not retaining heat is ... well ... it's the most fundamental of denialism. I means you can dismiss nearly any piece of evidence, since it's such a foundational level of denialism.

The real question is tracking where the heat is going, and what the capacity of those buffers is. We'll only get extreme heat events every once in awhile, but those can be pretty damaging to ecosystems. We're about to exceed 1998.

 

[CavLancer]

Since I was voicing the opinion of the environmental scientists, by proxy it surely is.

And since your prediction is geared up to be so spectacularly far from the mark, I don't think it matters.

2011: "Listen Ziggy, by this time 2012, no one will be able to deny it, since you all be freezing your arse off"
2012: "Yeah, well maybe not one year, but with a 5 year trend, the cooling trend will be impossible to deny"
2015: "If Solar cycle 25 plays out as anticipated and 24 continues its long decline off a very low peak then I'd imagine that after this el nino people in the temperate zones will be wondering where the heat went. There will be no denying the true trend."

So, sorry if you being proven blatantly wrong for years while maintaining your obvious erroneous opinion on global warming and only having "you'll see!" as an argument doesn't give me great confidence you'll graciously admit being on the wrong side of the argument.

I'm expecting something along the lines of: "Ok, you were right, but I don't think our bet contained anything about whether your bunch of environmental scientists were closer to the mark. In 10 years when solar cycle 25 is really in effect you all be freezing your butts off. You'll see!"

And in a year it will be your chance to prove that cynical sentiment wrong, and teach me to have more faith in my fellow human beings. Which is a big deal actually, so there's quite a lot at stake


Cynical sentiment to Ziggy: "See!?"

You are such an ass to draw such conclusions and make accusations without the 5 years having played out. Such an ass. I honestly thought more of you, but I see you have changed.

My mistake was it was too short a time span so yes at this time you are correct, but I'm not yet giving up as I'm no quitter. The trends are quite clear but haven't played out far enough so any idiot can see them so yes, so far there is plenty of room to deny the true trend, but I have another year past this el nino. So take your accusations and stick them where the sun doesn't shine, k? What did you do, quit smoking? You are even more irritable than normal, but now with something new, making unfounded accusations of another man's character, that is low. I would not have made a good natured bet with you as you now are, but I did and will take my hat off to you if things aren't as cold as I predicted because I'm not full of <snip> no matter what your unwarranted opinion is. You have offended an honorable man.

Moderator Action: Infraction for flaming, name-calling, and language.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[CavLancer]

You're conflating air temperatures with whether there is more total heat within the system. I'm not denying that the air temperatures didn't do like we expected. But to suggest that CO2 is not retaining heat is ... well ... it's the most fundamental of denialism. I means you can dismiss nearly any piece of evidence, since it's such a foundational level of denialism.

The real question is tracking where the heat is going, and what the capacity of those buffers is. We'll only get extreme heat events every once in awhile, but those can be pretty damaging to ecosystems. We're about to exceed 1998.

Look back on this thread and others in a couple decades, see what you think. For now I think I've had enough of my opponents 'science'.

 

[Arwon]

5 years didn't work so why stop at 20 years? I'm sure you can kick that can down the road even further if you try. Go for 40, 50!

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

You are such an ass to draw such conclusions and make accusations without the 5 years having played out. Such an ass. I honestly thought more of you, but I see you have changed.

At least I'm an ass who knows what he's talking about.

The last 4 years have been so warm, that for a trend to establish for cooling the 5th (the next) year would have to be epically freezing. And I don't see that happening. And even if it did, it's a anomaly which is distrusted in trends.

Now continuing being an ass: I don't expect you to understand this, since you have shown to be completely oblivious to what a trend is.

My mistake was it was too short a time span so yes at this time you are correct, but I'm not yet giving up as I'm no quitter. The trends are quite clear but haven't played out far enough so any idiot can see them so yes, so far there is plenty of room to deny the true trend, but I have another year past this el nino. So take your accusations and stick them where the sun doesn't shine, k? What did you do, quit smoking? You are even more irritable than normal, but now with something new, making unfounded accusations of another man's character, that is low. I would not have made a good natured bet with you as you now are, but I did and will take my hat off to you if things aren't as cold as I predicted because I'm not full of **** no matter what your unwarranted opinion is. You have offended an honorable man.

I haven't made accusations, I have made observations. Based on past and present behaviour in your posts. I don't see you trying to refute them,

So its all baseless drama.

As you notice, all you claim to have done wrong was the short timespan. You weren't wrong about the Earth cooling, oh no. "The trends are quite clear but haven't played out far enough so any idiot can see them" The cooling trends are quite clear. Are they? Show me. But only non-idiots like you can see them. Idiots can only see them in a time in the future.

Seems it takes an ass to know an ass

 

[brennan]

The trend since 1998 was 0.08 degrees of warming per annum as I recall. Even the 'pause' showed a warming trend. But people who draw trend lines in crayon never were terribly good at science...

 

[uppi]

I'll try to put things as simply as I can. If you turn off the heater in the winter does the house get cold?

I guess we have to take this apart very slowly:
You are saying the heater (the sun) is being turned off.
That would mean temperatures are going down.
Instead we are seeing a new temperature record this year.
So two possibilities remain:
1) The premise is wrong and the sun is increasing its output
2) The premise is right, but we have enough insulation (green house gases) to counteract it.

Yet you are claiming both things are right, which is a contradiction that defies fundamental logic.

 

[Berzerker]

Yes I know about the tilt, but how can the interglacials and glacial periods come with such regularity if that's what determines them? I think rather it depends on the sun, perhaps a cycle so long we haven't calculated it yet.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Milankovitch/milankovitch_2.php

They show the most relevant cycles, not that solar activity isn't relevant

The last ice age began ~110 kya but the coldest dips occurred at 70 kya and 30 kya, the Earth's tilt was at or near its minimum for all 3 dates. But 20,000 years before that ice age began and 20,000 years after the last cold dip we saw warming trends coincide with the maximum tilt.

 

[Kyriakos]

Regardless of whether it is mostly human-caused or not, seasons have been really messed up for virtually a decade now...
They surely are very different than while i was in school.

 

[brennan]

I guess we have to take this apart very slowly:
You are saying the heater (the sun) is being turned off.
That would mean temperatures are going down.
Instead we are seeing a new temperature record this year.
So two possibilities remain:
1) The premise is wrong and the sun is increasing its output
2) The premise is right, but we have enough insulation (green house gases) to counteract it.

Yet you are claiming both things are right, which is a contradiction that defies fundamental logic.

Then there is thermal inertia. The hottest part of summer in the UK is typically August... 2 months after the summer solstice - we should have been cooling by then were the amateurs correct...

 

[Berzerker]

I dont think thats analogous to reduced solar activity, the maunder minimum coincided with the coldest period of the little ice age but models show sunspot activity or the lack thereof don't fully account for the cooler temperatures.
Volcanic activity especially in the tropics was probably more responsible.

 

[brennan]

Evidence from mountain glaciers does suggest increased glaciation in a number of widely spread regions outside Europe prior to the twentieth century, including Alaska, New Zealand and Patagonia. However, the timing of maximum glacial advances in these regions differs considerably, suggesting that they may represent largely independent regional climate changes, not a globally-synchronous increased glaciation. Thus current evidence does not support globally synchronous periods of anomalous cold or warmth over this time frame, and the conventional terms of "Little Ice Age" and "Medieval Warm Period" appear to have limited utility in describing trends in hemispheric or global mean temperature changes in past centuries...

As well as this, short term variations in solar irradiance are miniscule in the grand scheme of things. Deniers screaming that 'climatologists have forgotten about the sun' are about as counter-factual as it gets. We know the sun is the biggest factor in climate overall, but local conditions make a huge difference as well - look at Venus for an extreme example.

 

[Berzerker]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141119204521.htm

that link says the cooling extremes coincided in both S America and Europe

and just how would volcanism cool Europe but not other regions at the same time?

higher latitudes not only warm more with global warming, they cool more with global cooling, so equatorial regions are buffered

Even your link says S America saw cooling, it just disagrees on the timing

 

[El_Machinae]

The article doesn't say anything about slowing extinctions, Berzerker. It mentions that some species are going to thrive, but we already knew that.

 

[warpus]

ITT: heads in sand

 

[Berzerker]

The article doesn't say anything about slowing extinctions, Berzerker. It mentions that some species are going to thrive, but we already knew that.

I didn't say the article mentioned extinction, I mentioned it in my OP and I cited the main causes - the article suggests the extinction (I mentioned) we're causing may be slowed because of a more thriving base to the food chain resulting from increased CO2.

 

[El_Machinae]

Oh, I see.

Habitat loss will be the biggest driver, mainly because the climate zones will shift and thus drive species towards areas that have already been co-opted. For example, if the current 'sweet spot' for a species is within the national park, but then AGW drives it 100 km North, then they find themselves within the middle of a cornfield.

 

[Berzerker]

just the amount of roadkill is terrible, and to think if everyone on the planet was consuming like us jerks.

and I'm one of the jerks

but global warming isn't a bad thing, life does better in a warmer world...unless we pave it over and replace everything with crops and fish "farms".

its a race, do we kill the planet or do we kill our selves first... If one or the other has to die I hope its us. Maybe that'll be judgement day, like the remake of the day the earth stood still

 

[El_Machinae]

The warming is bad, insofar as it speeds extinctions and steals people's property. If you were to move to a new planet that already has a settled response to a 2 degree warming, then yeah, you would probably prefer the warmer one.

 

[Lexicus]

You have offended an honorable man.

If only "honor" could prevent you from being wrong...