patrick.net

Quigley says

Hmm, I’m no meteorologist, but I’m pretty sure that things like:
1)rain
2)snow
3)evaporation
4)sublimation
All change the atmospheric water concentration.

They do and always did, so no change.

Quigley says

Can you explain the mechanism by which CO2 (alone) changes the water vapor in our air?

Because it increases temperature - which wasn't the case before it was added in the atmosphere.
Warmer means the air can contain more water vapor.

Yeah there is very likely a man-made effect, however CO2 concentrations have been much higher in the past and yet the earth still experienced harsh ice ages. The question remains if this is something to really worry about or just keep an eye on. My bet is on the latter. Compared to the sun activity and its maunder minimums this effect is likely negligible.

mell says

The question remains if this is something to really worry about or just keep an eye on.

IMO, we will not break the world. There is a very strong force (radiation) that will turn things around when it get's very hot. However, it's naive to think that we cannot engineer a huge temperature change on this planet. It's also naive to think that human populations will be fine at that extreme.
Most of our infrastructure would have to be rebuilt. We've already demonstrably changed the CO2 concentration radically. We have the power to blow the human population to smithereens (nuclear weapons), and we have the power to drastically reduce coral life (acidification). We had the power to blow a huge hole in the ozone layer, and then heal it by stopping emissions. This isn't something that should be ignored because it is hard to understand or doesn't seem likely.

FNWGMOBDVZXDNW says

and we have the power to drastically reduce coral life (acidification). We had the power to blow a huge hole in the ozone layer, and then heal it by stopping emissions. This isn't something that should be ignored because it is hard to understand or doesn't seem likely.

That's the issue here, you're referring to pollution NOT CO2, and using it to promote the hoax of GW. There's a big difference.

I'm referring to chemicals. Pollution is a made up categorization that has some utility. But chemicals don't always easily fit into one category or another. FYI, acidification of the ocean is due to CO2, which dissolves in water as HCO3. CO2 in the atmosphere causes warming. We categorize chemicals as pollution if they cause problems when emitted to the environment. Therefore, the word pollution fits CO2 on two fronts. The argument of whether CO2 is pollution is used for two reasons. First, it is a rhetorical shithole obfuscation scheme, and second, it has legal implications. For example, the clean air act allows the EPA to regulate pollution. The professional denial crowd (scientists paid by and advocating for fossil fuel interests) has used that argument to prevent various regulations.

mell says

Yeah there is very likely a man-made effect, however CO2 concentrations have been much higher in the past and yet the earth still experienced harsh ice ages. The question remains if this is something to really worry about or just keep an eye on. My bet is on the latter. Compared to the sun activity and its maunder minimums this effect is likely negligible.

Harsh Ice Ages AND Ice-Free Poles for millions of years, long before humans but well after advanced life. There are theories, but nobody knows how and why the PETM began, and from start to finish there were 20 million years without permanent polar ice-sheets, temps averaged 8C warmer than today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum

TwoScoopsPlissken says

Harsh Ice Ages AND Ice-Free Poles for millions of years, long before humans but well after advanced life. There are theories, but nobody knows how and why the PETM began, and from start to finish there were 20 million years without permanent polar ice-sheets, temps averaged 8C warmer than today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum

And how many humans were alive then?

FNWGMOBDVZXDNW says

Therefore, the word pollution fits CO2

So what is the relationship between co2 increase and warming? Is it linear? Exponential? Can you share the relationship formula?

And who else really thinks co2 is a pollutant and not essential for life on earth?

If you really believe humans are going to devastate the planet with CO2, best get to fucking work on cold fusion or some other source of limitless energy because people are not going to stop making fires. They’re just not.
And you really can’t make them.

Quigley says

If you really believe humans are going to devastate the planet with CO2, best get to fucking work on cold fusion or some other source of limitless energy because people are not going to stop making fires. They’re just not.

Yep--we're trying.

Quigley says

If you really believe humans are going to devastate the planet with CO2, best get to fucking work on cold fusion or some other source of limitless energy because people are not going to stop making fires. They’re just not.
And you really can’t make them.

This.

Not Carbon Trading, which makes Wall Street slaver with the potential for greed and abuse.
Not Recycling Cardboard, which produces more CO2 from all the garbage scows going around collecting it.

4th Gen Nukes and hopefully Fusion is the solution.

I'm not opposed to spending billions annually on new nuclear plants.

TwoScoopsPlissken says

Not Recycling Cardboard, which produces more CO2 from all the garbage scows going around collecting it.

Was recycling cardboard supposed to reduce CO2 emissions? I thought it was to reduce solid waste as our landfills are full.

Strategist says

I would like to see you on Sharktank.

Sharktank California, I'd make a killing!!

TwoScoopsPlissken says

Not Recycling Cardboard, which produces more CO2 from all the garbage scows going around collecting it.

Where do you get this stuff? Are you really referring to boat transport?

What good does recycling cardboard in a fraction of the world going to do for CO2 emissions? Trees are renewable to begin with.

You support nuclear power as the only way to currently handle the replacement of fossil fuel burning power generation that is actually demonstrated to produce in quantities both at scale and all-day-long, yes?

Speaking of garbage scows, anybody remember this story from a while ago, that seemed to 'prove' we were running out of space for landfills?

http://www.nytimes.com/1987/05/23/opinion/a-garbage-scow-as-paul-revere.html

Quigley says

If you really believe humans are going to devastate the planet with CO2, best get to fucking work on cold fusion or some other source of limitless energy because people are not going to stop making fires. They’re just not.

Stop making fire? what do you mean? Like burning wood? Or you think we can't stop burning fossil fuels? Why?

TwoScoopsPlissken says

Harsh Ice Ages AND Ice-Free Poles for millions of years, long before humans but well after advanced life.

Oh Please.
You are not TPB. You know full well that the entire human civilization took place after the ice age in a period of very stable climate.
You probably know that minor variations of climate caused major civilizations collapses in the past.
The end of the bronze age circa 1200BC (drought, sea people).
The end of the Roman empire (variability of third century, climate displaced Huns, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/climate-and-the-fall-of-the-roman-empire-42171285/ , https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/10/30/16568716/six-ways-climate-change-disease-toppled-roman-empire )
The French revolution: https://hubpages.com/education/Effects-of-Climate-on-the-Origins-of-the-French-Revolution
These were minor variations.

On what legs could one stand to claim our civilization is so strong it won't be affected by the more important climate instability that are foreseen, I don't know. I see Europe already thrown in disarray by 1 million Syrian migrants. A joke compared to what could happen.

The argument that "Yeah, it's been warmer before" is silly at best.

Heraclitusstudent says

You are not TPB. You know full well that the entire human civilization took place after the ice age in a period of very stable climate.

The examples you give of climatic changes are all disastrous COOLINGS. The Minoan Warm Period, the Roman Warm Period, and the Medieval Warm Period ending is what caused trouble, not warming.


I also know that the Cenozoic Era hasn't been stable, and that once homo sapiens (not Lucy from 4 mya) walked across the North Sea and/or Channel without getting their feet wet and other humans walked across the Bering Strait when it was above water. Did the erection of monoliths make the oceans rise hundreds of feet?

The climate changes that ruined societies generally happened when they were at their maximum population load relative to their pre-science production. For example, the end of the Medieval Warm period was already at the tail-end of years of rural expansion and then-maximal drainage and deforestation when the NAO got all messed up.

We've been oscillating back and forth between an Ice World and a Temperate One for many millions of years now, multiple times. Why should we have expected it to have stopped? What percentage of Global Warming is or isn't anthropogenic? Given the tendency to ice-ball hood over the past few million, maybe pumping up the temps a few degrees permanently is a good idea.

Even an 8C change in global temperatures isn't going to destroy human civilization at this point. It wouldn't kill off all the humans even if we weren't post-scientific.

TwoScoopsPlissken says

once homo sapiens (not Lucy from 4 mya) walked across the North Sea and/or Channel without getting their feet wet

Sure it didn't bother humans too much back then. But imagine the same thousands of meters thick glaciers over north America and Europe. This is what severe climate change means and I'm not sure you can count on the opposite warming to be beneficial. At the very least it won't be for everyone.
And you can make it as large as you wish because it won't stop until we stop.

TwoScoopsPlissken says

The climate changes that ruined societies generally happened when they were at their maximum population load relative to their pre-science production

And you wouldn't say we are there at 7 billions going toward 9 billions in the next 30 yrs? With most of the increase in the warmest areas?

TwoScoopsPlissken says

Even an 8C change in global temperatures isn't going to destroy human civilization at this point.

We will get 8C eventually if we don't stop burning fossil fuels. And I don't see where this number came from. The episodes I mentioned before were much more mild and still had huge impacts.

A simple property of bell curves is that the probabilities of extreme events increase rapidly if you move even a little in the tail end toward the center.

Heraclitusstudent says

Stop making fire? what do you mean? Like burning wood? Or you think we can't stop burning fossil fuels? Why?

People got matches and want to stay warm.

Heraclitusstudent says

But imagine the same thousands of meters thick glaciers over north America and Europe. This is what severe climate change means and I'm not sure you can count on the opposite warming to be beneficial. At the very least it won't be for everyone.

If I had to choose between thousand meter thick glaciers and a tropical rain forest, I will take the rainforest. Even a desert would be better than the frozen ice.

Heraclitusstudent says

And you can make it as large as you wish because it won't stop until we stop.

What?

Worst-case global warming scenarios not credible: study

Earth's surface will almost certainly not warm up four or five degrees Celsius by 2100, according to a study released Wednesday which, if correct, voids worst-case UN climate change predictions.

"Our study all but rules out very low and very high climate sensitivities," said lead author Peter Cox, a professor at the University of Exeter.

But uncertainty about how hot things will get also stems from the inability of scientists to nail down a very simple question: By how much will Earth's average surface temperature go up if the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is doubled?

Up to now, attempts to narrow down the elusive equilibrium climate sensitivity have focused on the historical temperature record.

Cox and colleagues instead "considered the year-to-year fluctuations in global temperature," said Richard Allan, a climate scientist at the University of Reading.

By analysing the responsiveness of short-term changes in temperature to "nudges and bumps" in the climate system, he explained, they were able to exclude the outcomes that would have resulted in devastating increases of 4 C or more by 2100.

https://www.afp.com/en/news/2265/worst-case-global-warming-scenarios-not-credible-study-doc-wx0de1
Cancel the Alarm, nothing to see here.

Onvacation says

People got matches and want to stay warm.

Burning wood alone wouldn't cause global warming.

anon_10ddb says

Cancel the Alarm, nothing to see here.

Keep burning fossil fuel: the change may not be fast but will get you eventually. 200, 300 yrs? A blink in the history of mankind.

Heraclitusstudent says

Burning wood alone wouldn't cause global warming.

People dig coal, pump oil, they even burn dung to keep warm. Otherwise they would freeze to death.

Onvacation says

People dig coal, pump oil, they even burn dung to keep warm.

And they exhale co2!

Heraclitusstudent says

200, 300 yrs? A blink in the history of mankind.

300 years ago we were burning wood to keep warm.
If we focus our resources and rein in the idiocracy the cold fusion revolution will make power "too cheap to meter". (Anybody old enough to remember that promise?)

Alternatively, in 2 or 3 centuries we may live in a post cannibal anarchy world where small tribes fight mutant cockroaches over giant rats as we carefully tend our yam gardens.

I have not given up refuting alarmist arguments. Time may not change the minds of the holdouts, but time has and will continue to refute their apocalyptic predictions of exponential temperature and sea rise.

Onvacation says

HEYYOU says

Everyone in this country should be required to spend one day in a landfill each month,
not at the entrance gate but in close proximity to the trash.

Had a classmate that worked at the local landfill. He died of some strange cancer at the age of 35.

We are poisoning the world. Imagine the carbon footprint of an aircraft carrier group?
This consumer driven debt and death economic paradigm has to shift before we will ever "save" the world.

Onvacation says

Time may not change the minds of the holdouts, but time has and will continue to refute their apocalyptic predictions of exponential temperature and sea rise.

There won't be anything dramatic in the near term. No one says there will be. It's just catastrophic in the longer term, which clearly you won't see and you don't care about.
So it's not worth discussing with people who don't believe in the laws of physics. We just need to continue doing the changes what we are doing now: replacing fossil fuels with renewables, building better solar panels and batteries, etc... and ignore the barking dogs.

Heraclitusstudent says

There won't be anything dramatic in the near term.

Agreed.
Heraclitusstudent says

No one says there will be. It's just catastrophic in the longer term,

No doubt we have to change our polluting ways.

Heraclitusstudent says

you don't care about.

Don't get personal. You have no idea how I make the world a better place.
Heraclitusstudent says

replacing fossil fuels with renewables, building better solar panels and batteries, etc...

and nuclear!
Heraclitusstudent says

and ignore the barking dogs.

At the risk of getting bit.

We don't seem to be too far off in our beliefs.

Heraclitusstudent says

Sure it didn't bother humans too much back then. But imagine the same thousands of meters thick glaciers over north America and Europe. This is what severe climate change means and I'm not sure you can count on the opposite warming to be beneficial. At the very least it won't be for everyone.

The beneficiaries will most likely be those who don't dwell at the equator. Most of those folks are already pretty unhappy.

Looking forward to two crops in Svalbard.

Heraclitusstudent says

And you wouldn't say we are there at 7 billions going toward 9 billions in the next 30 yrs? With most of the increase in the warmest areas?

Build the wall and toughen the USCG and immigration laws, now.

Heraclitusstudent says

We will get 8C eventually if we don't stop burning fossil fuels. And I don't see where this number came from. The episodes I mentioned before were much more mild and still had huge impacts.

In 2016, Germany increased the percentage of wind farms (I believe by 11%) and solar by several percentage points, yet overall had reduced electrical output from both. Germany's average KW/cost is dramatically higher than France. Just because the sunny days were reduced, didn't mean it got windier.

What I'm saying is, the path to getting off fossil fuels is Nuclear power. Instead of billions for solar, we should be rapidly building Gen 3+ and Gen 4 Test Reactors left and right. And of course, the car must go, because batteries are far, far, far from being viable and we can't both go to renewables/zero CO2 emissions while switching to electric vehicles, not to mention the horrific pollution from refining rare earth metals.

TwoScoopsPlissken says

What I'm saying is, the path to getting off fossil fuels is Nuclear power.

Arguing about the solution means accepting that there is a problem.

TwoScoopsPlissken says

What I'm saying is, the path to getting off fossil fuels is Nuclear power. Instead of billions for solar, we should be rapidly building Gen 3+ and Gen 4 Test Reactors left and right. And of course, the car must go, because batteries are far, far, far from being viable and we can't both go to renewables/zero CO2 emissions while switching to electric vehicles, not to mention the horrific pollution from refining rare earth metals.

Every choice is flawed. We still have nowhere to dispose of nuclear waste and the cost of nuclear is high as well.

Heraclitusstudent says

Arguing about the solution means accepting that there is a problem.

Well yeah, fossil fuels are eventually going to become very expensive, even if there was no Greenhouse Problem. Nuclear and hopefully Fusion is the way forward, only way to reliably generate electricity, esp. in the absence of batteries.

California has 23 minutes of electricity storage at normal use rates, IF you chain every car and truck and marine battery together and nobody drives.