Why worry about global warming?

[Mikecpking]

All of this is widely disputed but since I cannot post links, I cannot provide the counter arguments. To pick one,

The MWP was global according to data published by 983 individual scientists from 566 research institutions in 43 different countries ... and counting.

Google - "Medieval Warm Period Project"

So you think CO2 released by cars, powerstations, deforestation etc won't have an effect?

I hope you are wrong!

 

[Chalnoth]

So you think CO2 released by cars, powerstations, deforestation etc won't have an effect?

I hope you are wrong!

Why would you hope he's wrong? I mean, he is wrong, completely wrong. But the consequences of human release of CO2 are pretty darned dire. It would be nice if we lived in a world where those consequences weren't so dire. Alas, the world just doesn't care what would be nice for us.

 

[Mikecpking]

Why would you hope he's wrong? I mean, he is wrong, completely wrong. But the consequences of human release of CO2 are pretty darned dire. It would be nice if we lived in a world where those consequences weren't so dire. Alas, the world just doesn't care what would be nice for us.

There is a book called "Six degrees" which highlights AGW and there is no doubt what the consequences of large amounts of CO2 will do including acidification of the world's oceans.

It was a dig at him as if most people think their activities have no effect.

 

[Greatcloud]

The effect of CO2 release into the atmosphere is air pollution in big cities. Global warming is a natural occurance and in a while we will have global cooling. Indeed if AGW were true then why does the temp. not just go up as the CO2 level does.

 

[Chalnoth]

The effect of CO2 release into the atmosphere is air pollution in big cities. Global warming is a natural occurance and in a while we will have global cooling.

You do realize that you predicted this last year, and yet that year ended up being the warmest on record?

Indeed if AGW were true then why does the temp. not just go up as the CO2 level does.

Um, because there are a lot of other factors that affect global temperatures, and it is only relatively recently that the effect from CO2 has outstripped other effects (and it's still only around 60%-70% of the total warming effect).

 

[Greatcloud]

I'm not worried about Global Warming, indeed there have only been beneficial effects from it. Unless you count the number of heat deaths assoiated with it. Agriculture has seen an increase in production.

http://csccc.info/reports/report_24.pdf

http://www.foodstuff.org/benefits-of-global-warming-on-agriculture.htm​

 

[Chalnoth]

I'm not worried about Global Warming, indeed there have only been beneficial effects from it.

This is pure fantasy. What about the increase in severity of storms? The frequency of floods and droughts? The changing in growing seasons? These changes are far from benign.

Agriculture has seen an increase in production
http://csccc.info/reports/report_24.pdf

Yeah, um, actual scientific measurements of the effects of global warming on plants and agriculture disagree.

Nevertheless, even if you accept the thesis of the paper, what they explicitly say is that if we don't get rid of protectionism, agricultural markets will have a very difficult time adjusting and will suffer large losses. And guess what? The agricultural sector has massive protectionism worldwide, with no sign that this is going to change any time soon. So even if you accept the thesis of the paper (which I don't), in actual fact global warming is going to significantly harm food production.

Regardless, for a more comprehensive breakdown of the positive and negative effects of global warming, see here:
Positives and negatives of global warming

 

[Split Rock]

The effect of CO2 release into the atmosphere is air pollution in big cities. Global warming is a natural occurance and in a while we will have global cooling. Indeed if AGW were true then why does the temp. not just go up as the CO2 level does.

Extreme’ Heat Will Torment the U.S. Midwest Before Coming to East Coast

Temperatures may near 100 degrees as far north as Minnesota as a heat wave builds in the central U.S. this weekend, threatening to boost energy usage and damage crops before spreading to the East Coast.

An excessive heat watch, meaning temperatures will feel hotter than 105 Fahrenheit (41 Celsius), has been issued by the National Weather Service for eastern Kansas and Nebraska.

“The heat is the definite No. 1 market driver as far as fundamentals,” said Jim Rouiller, an energy meteorologist at Planalytics Inc. in Berwyn, Pennsylvania. “This will rival historic heat waves.”

‘Extreme’ Heat Will Torment the U.S. Midwest Before Coming to East Coast - Bloomberg

 

[Greatcloud]

‪Global Warming Hoax‬‏ - YouTube

Climate change is natural and has been going on ever since time began. The MWP and the LIA are examples of climate change before man came up with SUV's and coal power plants. These natural warming periods happen every 1,500 years and they are natural and this warm period we have now is a natural warming.

 

[Tenka]

All of the changes that climate scientists insist we make need to be done whether we are causing accelerated climate change or not because fossil fuels are non renewable and irreplaceable. Not to mention filthy.
Humans have a history of finding abundance and imagining an infinite.

 

[Chalnoth]

‪Global Warming Hoax‬‏ - YouTube

Glenn Beck? Seriously?

And surely you noticed the suspicious lack of any substance in that video? The whole thing was just a parade of long-discredited fallacies.

Climate change is natural and has been going on ever since time began. The MWP and the LIA are examples of climate change before man came up with SUV's and coal power plants. These natural warming periods happen every 1,500 years and they are natural and this warm period we have now is a natural warming.

While there is certainly natural climate change, just as there are natural forest fires, the current climate change is most definitely human-caused. And we've only scratched the surface as to the nasty effects that will be caused if we don't do something quickly to halt it.

After all, if it's natural, surely you can point out the cause?

Or are you still convinced that we've entered a cooling phase?

 

[Tim the Plumber]

Just to get my take on this out there.

The IPCC says that the worst case scenario for global warming is a sea level rise of 59cm (20 inches) by 2100. That requires a temperature rise of 6.4 degrees. (That is not at all believable.) We may be on track for a 2 degree increase, if you streach the figures, maybe..

No cities or any land of any value will be lost due to this.

If man made global warming is real it's very small. It's interesting in an accademic sence but that's all. Don't worry.

 

[Chalnoth]

Just to get my take on this out there.

The IPCC says that the worst case scenario for global warming is a sea level rise of 59cm (20 inches) by 2100. That requires a temperature rise of 6.4 degrees. (That is not at all believable.) We may be on track for a 2 degree increase, if you streach the figures, maybe..

No cities or any land of any value will be lost due to this.

If man made global warming is real it's very small. It's interesting in an accademic sence but that's all. Don't worry.

The problem is that the IPCC used a deliberate lowballing of the sea level rise estimates, by about a factor of two. See here:
RealClimate: Sealevelgate

In reality, better estimates frequently put the amount of sea level rise by 2100 at over 1m.

 

[Belk]

Just to get my take on this out there.

The IPCC says that the worst case scenario for global warming is a sea level rise of 59cm (20 inches) by 2100. That requires a temperature rise of 6.4 degrees. (That is not at all believable.) We may be on track for a 2 degree increase, if you streach the figures, maybe..

No cities or any land of any value will be lost due to this.

If man made global warming is real it's very small. It's interesting in an accademic sence but that's all. Don't worry.

I find your personal incredulity very convincing.

 

[Tim the Plumber]

The problem is that the IPCC used a deliberate lowballing of the sea level rise estimates, by about a factor of two. See here:

*****

In reality, better estimates frequently put the amount of sea level rise by 2100 at over 1m.

I can show you the results of the melting of land ice on sea level and the effects of increased temperatures on the thermal expansion of the oceans if you wish but it's all a bit physics heavy. The max rise in sea level from a 6.4 degree rise in temp is about 48 cm as far as I can see. The max temp rise from a doubling of CO2 (how the F. is that going to happen???) is less than a degree or may be 1.5 degrees if we hit some sort of "tipping point" that I don't understand. Look out for a 20cm sea level rise by 2100.

 

[Chalnoth]

I can show you the results of the melting of land ice on sea level and the effects of increased temperatures on the thermal expansion of the oceans if you wish but it's all a bit physics heavy. The max rise in sea level from a 6.4 degree rise in temp is about 48 cm as far as I can see.

That is certainly not what our best models say. See here, for example:
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/Publications/Journals/vermeer_rahmstorf_2009.pdf

And by the way, over very long time scales, the change in sea levels per degree C is of the order of tens of meters. So if temperatures changed by 6.4C, we'd not only have significant and damaging sea level rise over the next century, but continued and increasing sea level rise in following centuries.

The max temp rise from a doubling of CO2 (how the F. is that going to happen???) is less than a degree or may be 1.5 degrees if we hit some sort of "tipping point" that I don't understand. Look out for a 20cm sea level rise by 2100.

Um, where are you getting your numbers from? Our best estimates of the temperature sensitivity to CO2 are around 3C per doubling of CO2.

 

[Tim the Plumber]

From the pik-potsdam link

dH/dt = a(T T0).

This is quoted as the modeling used to derive sea level change. If you know any maths it's wrong so the only point of putting it in is to baffle with bull.

The Temperature chang figure I am quoting is from the figure of 2.5 watts per square meter of thermal forcing ( the extra energy incomming to the surface of the earth due to extra CO2 ) per doubling of CO2 from the Royal society. The background thermal input into the surface is about 340 watts per meter.

The rate of sea level rise from land ice melting is from using the figure of a net 660 cubic kilometers of such melting per year and working out how this will effect sea level over 100 years. The 660 Km3 is supposedly from Greenland today. If that is happening due to increased heat then it is presumably happening in the breif summer months. I would expect to see extreemly dramatic effects in terms of several extra Danube sized rivers flowing off Greenland each summer.

The Thermal expansion figure is derived from either working out the ammount of expansion from injecting 2.5 watts per meter into the top 100m of the ocean or by using a report that the IPCC commissinoed from a mechanical engineering department which gave a figure of about 14cm thermal expansion after 100 years if the temperature rose by 1 degree today. The engineer's report is less than the simple back of an envelope figure I came up with.

What level of thermal forcing are you expecting from a doubling of CO2 and over what time scale are you thinking that this might happen?

I do not have any confidence in my or anyone else's ability to predict the future use of fossil fuels in human industry over the next centuary. The idea that we can model the imact of human activity over thousands of years is........? Please somone supply the words, I would be banned from the forum for swearing.

 

[Chalnoth]

From the pik-potsdam link


This is quoted as the modeling used to derive sea level change. If you know any maths it's wrong so the only point of putting it in is to baffle with bull.

Uh, what? It's just a simple linear modeling of a system whose relaxation time is much longer than the change in temperature, which is the case here.

The Temperature chang figure I am quoting is from the figure of 2.5 watts per square meter of thermal forcing ( the extra energy incomming to the surface of the earth due to extra CO2 ) per doubling of CO2 from the Royal society. The background thermal input into the surface is about 340 watts per meter.

Where are you getting this number from? Because the change in forcing from CO2 alone is closer to 3.6W/m[sup]2[/sup] per doubling, as reported by the Royal Society:
http://royalsociety.org/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=4294972963
The 2.5W/m[sup]2[/sup] number appears to be the total forcing from current greenhouse gases.

The rate of sea level rise from land ice melting is from using the figure of a net 660 cubic kilometers of such melting per year and working out how this will effect sea level over 100 years. The 660 Km3 is supposedly from Greenland today. If that is happening due to increased heat then it is presumably happening in the breif summer months. I would expect to see extreemly dramatic effects in terms of several extra Danube sized rivers flowing off Greenland each summer.

That value isn't used in the paper I quoted, and it doesn't appear to be correct anyway.

The Thermal expansion figure is derived from either working out the ammount of expansion from injecting 2.5 watts per meter into the top 100m of the ocean or by using a report that the IPCC commissinoed from a mechanical engineering department which gave a figure of about 14cm thermal expansion after 100 years if the temperature rose by 1 degree today. The engineer's report is less than the simple back of an envelope figure I came up with.

Um, the IPCC used an estimate of sea level rise that underestimates the current measured rise by about 50%.

I do not have any confidence in my or anyone else's ability to predict the future use of fossil fuels in human industry over the next centuary. The idea that we can model the imact of human activity over thousands of years is........? Please somone supply the words, I would be banned from the forum for swearing.

That is a horrible excuse to do nothing to stop the damage we are doing to our own environment right now.

 

[SharonL]

There is only one answer to all this hype - $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

It is very profitable - Just ask the likes of Al Gore - lie after lie has been proven - yet they are still out there grabbing what they can before it is all proven a big lie.

 

[Chalnoth]

There is only one answer to all this hype - $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

It is very profitable - Just ask the likes of Al Gore - lie after lie has been proven - yet they are still out there grabbing what they can before it is all proven a big lie.

Exactly! Look at the money. It turns out that nearly all of the anti-AGW material that has been published has been funded, directly or indirectly, by the fossil fuel industry.

Hmm. I wonder why that would be?