patrick.net

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.

Solar and wind power are poised to become the cheapest forms of new electricity across large swaths of the globe.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-19/tipping-point-seen-for-clean-energy-as-monster-turbines-arrive

Heraclitusstudent says

Solar and wind power are poised to become the cheapest forms of new electricity across large swaths of the globe.

And they give off reliable power, with no need for very expensive and environmentally hazardous-to-produce batteries?

I know in advance that three days from now that I will have X input that will produce Y output at 7PM?

Heraclitusstudent says

Onvacation says

People got matches and want to stay warm.

Burning wood alone wouldn't cause global warming.

Really??

" However, many other chemicals are produced when wood is burnt, including one of the most potent greenhouse gases, nitrogen dioxide; although the amounts may be small (200 g of CO2 equivalent per kg of wood burnt), the gas is 300 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and lasts 120 years in the atmosphere."
https://www.transitionculture.org/2008/05/19/is-burning-wood-really-a-long-term-energy-descent-strategy/

Heraclitusstudent says

building better solar panels and batteries,

Does the process of manufacturing them give off pollution and greenhouse gases?

TwoScoopsPlissken says

Heraclitusstudent says

Solar and wind power are poised to become the cheapest forms of new electricity across large swaths of the globe.

And they give off reliable power, with no need for very expensive and environmentally hazardous-to-produce batteries?

Exactly... I think that part is somehow neglected by the alarmists.

Heraclitusstudent says

CO2 greenhouse effect in details

Science ?

Science is religion. Kill all the intellectuals. Ignorance is intelligence. Only by finding bs on the internet to back what you fantasize to be true can we overtake the elite establishment types.

Only by making lies the truth can we ever live up to Orwell's predictions.

Seatbelts are a religion.

Can you offer proof that I am going to be in a fatal accident that wearing seatbelts would make less injurious ? I don't think so. The jury is still out over how much seatbelts might lower the number of accident fatalities. There are models that can predict the number of car accident fatalities, but different models come up with different numbers. We don't really know how many car accidents there will be let alone how many where seat belts would make a difference.

All forms of risk analysis are actually just religion. Risks can not be known. Nothing can really be understood with certainty. Knowing something within some kind of range of possibilities is obviously no different than an article of faith.

anon_d58f8 says

" However, many other chemicals are produced when wood is burnt, including one of the most potent greenhouse gases, nitrogen dioxide; although the amounts may be small (200 g of CO2 equivalent per kg of wood burnt), the gas is 300 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and lasts 120 years in the atmosphere."
https://www.transitionculture.org/2008/05/19/is-burning-wood-really-a-long-term-energy-descent-strategy/

I didn't say that it is a replacement energy, or that it is a good idea to burn wood. No one is trying to power the world by burning wood. I know very few people heating their homes by burning wood.
Nonetheless the carbon in the wood is taken from the atmosphere. No extra CO2 in the atmosphere from burning wood.

anon_d58f8 says

Does the process of manufacturing them give off pollution and greenhouse gases?

So we should reject any solution if it's not perfect?
I know some people don't like change - any kind of change - but too bad... change happens. Deal with it.

anon_d58f8 says

However, many other chemicals are produced when wood is burnt, including one of the most potent greenhouse gases, nitrogen dioxide;

One of several sort things about that site is that this is incorrect. They are referring to nitrous oxide not nitrogen dioxide. Heraclitusstudent says

No one is trying to power the world by burning wood.

Europe subsidizes it. The us ships wood to Europe to be burned in power plants.
The bigger problem (rather than methane or nitrous oxide emissions) has to do with the length of time required to sequester all of that carbon in a new tree.

Heraclitusstudent says

I know very few people heating their homes by burning wood.

I doubt you'll see that in downtown LA.

ever visited anyone in flyover country?

Oh, but here's the dirty secret liberals won't tell you and won't even admit to themselves. They don't give a shit about the third world (neither do conservatives to be fair), but deep in their hearts, they are glad those people are dying because the earth is overpopulated and they need to die. Liberals have 90% of the media under their thumb, if they gave as much of a shit about preventable 3rd world diseases as they do about global warming we'd do another live aid concert and have this shit knocked out by Tuesday.

But they don't, and people are dying, and fucking hypocrites having the vapors about Donald Trump calling shitholes, shitholes are responsible for the shitholes, because we could fix them if we wanted to, yet we waste our resources building windmills and solar panels that we know for a fact won't solve the problem. Because they want them to die. Fuck you.