Wait a minute.... ice caps are not melting???

Norman said:
I attribute about as much credibility to that as the claim we were going to run out of oil back in the seventies.
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Currently 2/3rds of the world does not have sufficient clean water available, and consumption will only increase with population. The thing is, if we can reclaim it from the natural gas we turn to electricity, while making that electricity more fuel efficient than ever, and take the CO2 produced and direct it straight through algae reactors to store more energy for feed, food, and fuel consumption, as well as using the waste heat from that process to grow more food; why are we determined not to? :dunno:

Why do we insist on being sinfully wasteful? Look at the planet, forget the universe, just look at the planet itself. Look how all of nature is symbiotic, there is no waste, everything is used, all process wastes are regenerated into another process. That is thinking like God does, efficiency, waste nothing. The reason we do not is because being wasteful allows the generation of more slips of paper worth the heat they give when they burn.
 
Gary F said:
Humans are imperfect. At what point does wasteful become sinfully wasteful?
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When we have tons of plastic polluting the oceans, when we only harness 30% of our fuel's energy and none of the water or CO2, when we create lakes of toxic sludge that we allow to render entire watersheds unusable. The stuff we do now.
 
Henning said:
When we have tons of plastic polluting the oceans, when we only harness 30% of our fuel's energy and none of the water or CO2, when we create lakes of toxic sludge that we allow to render entire watersheds unusable. The stuff we do now.
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I was thinking of the individual. There is no question that as a country we are wasteful. Anybody who has been to Europe knows that.
 
Henning said:
When we have tons of plastic polluting the oceans, when we only harness 30% of our fuel's energy and none of the water or CO2, when we create lakes of toxic sludge that we allow to render entire watersheds unusable. The stuff we do now.
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Sounds like a business opportunity.

Butte's toxic pit/environmental disaster is now a tourist attraction. :D

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Pit
 
Gary F said:
I was thinking of the individual. There is no question that as a country we are wasteful. Anybody who has been to Europe knows that.
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There is no difference between me, you, we, them, the nation, the enemy, the other nation. We are one, and we live on a small planet with finite resources and a limited ability to replenish them. That ability is about 20% of our consumption, yet we do nothing to help replenish those resources, rather we just plain old **** away 70% of them. Our recycle and reuse is pitiful, we did better in the 70s with returnable glass bottles, it just wasn't as profitable. It's more profitable to be wasteful. We as a species not only condone this, we encourage it. It gets even worse, look at our packaging of products, sheer waste, often times the packaging costs more than the products we buy. We are stupid consumers as well, look at bottled water. You can buy Dasani water for about $1.29/.5L. This is just charcoal filtered tap water which you could have for about 2¢ per gallon., that's not the most ludicrous part though, the most ludicr part is this is the precursor liquid for Coke or Pepsi, I forget which, both do the same. After they add sugar, phosphoric acid, and all the rest of the ingredients, they'll sell you 4 times the volume at 99¢, and people buy it. This is willful stupidity and encourages business's Barnumesque business ethics.

The only power we have is the power of our pocketbooks, how we spend the money we are deigned to be given by those who have it. What we do with that power is amazing, like everything else, we waste it by buying stupid **** that we pay high quantities for stuff that is free because it comes in a plastic bottle that leaches poison into the water if it gets too hot or cold, then gets thrown into a landfill. Our buying habits encourage this wasteful behavior on the business end.

There is no 'one' that is the problem because there is no 'one', we are the problem, and our excess use of resources and apathy towards the suffering of others denies 2/3rds of the planets adequate food and water.

We are a failed species, and it's because we gave the greedy control of our society for a bunch of trinkets that are completely meaningless.
 
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PaulS said:
Turns out the ice caps are not melting????

http://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/548516/North-South-poles-not-melting-Dr-Benny-Peiser
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i have been flying from the states to europe since 1965 always over greenland. Always looking at that big island (continent?) and there is no way to deny that the artic weather is changing. In the 70' to 80's you could not see land anywhere there. Now on my last trip on a cj3 so much exposed land present. Maybe that guy needs to go back to school.
 
magyarflyer said:
i have been flying from the states to europe since 1965 always over greenland. Always looking at that big island (continent?) and there is no way to deny that the artic weather is changing. In the 70' to 80's you could not see land anywhere there. Now on my last trip on a cj3 so much exposed land present. Maybe that guy needs to go back to school.
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No no, don't you understand, the ice isn't melting, the island is growing.
 
On global warming some people made millions of dollars :lol:
 
magyarflyer said:
i have been flying from the states to europe since 1965 always over greenland. Always looking at that big island (continent?) and there is no way to deny that the artic weather is changing. In the 70' to 80's you could not see land anywhere there. Now on my last trip on a cj3 so much exposed land present. Maybe that guy needs to go back to school.
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Hey, no fair. You're trying to confuse us with evidence. Here in the spin zone we prefer to operate based on rumors. We've already learned that we can double the world's population and still have plenty of resources and that the supply of fossil fuels is infinite. Oh, also a really new one. The green house affect is a hoax perpetuated by hundreds of thousands of left-wing academics and scientists.
 
write-stuff said:
Hey, no fair. You're trying to confuse us with evidence. Here in the spin zone we prefer to operate based on rumors. We've already learned that we can double the world's population and still have plenty of resources and that the supply of fossil fuels is infinite. Oh, also a really new one. The green house affect is a hoax perpetuated by hundreds of thousands of left-wing academics and scientists.
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You tryin' to tell us that's not true? :lol:
 
write-stuff said:
Hey, no fair. You're trying to confuse us with evidence. Here in the spin zone we prefer to operate based on rumors. We've already learned that we can double the world's population and still have plenty of resources and that the supply of fossil fuels is infinite. Oh, also a really new one. The green house affect is a hoax perpetuated by hundreds of thousands of left-wing academics and scientists.
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you want facts? This thread isn't in the spin zone.
 
Shark fin soup comes to mind. Apex predator, millions killed. And we still hunt whales.
 
Can I ask an honest question?

Is it not a good thing for humanity that the glaciers are retreating? Are we not getting more arable land? As we not getting healthier with less disease spread by cold?

Lower death rates from preventable disease.

Lower death rates from cold.

Less need for energy to keep warm [energy use to keep warm exceeds by an order of magnitude that used for cooling]

why is warmer bad?

Also - the Romans made wine in Britain - thus it HAD to have been warmer for hundreds of years than it is now. Why? A few million humans burning wood to stay warm? How do we explain the cooling? And the warming before that?

Look - we have NO idea whats going on, on what time scale and why. The models are crap and all wrong. Can't run them backwards - and reproduce what we KNOW happened . . .
 
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Warmer is bad because weather is getting more severe, both in strength of storms, and drought. It's a matter of increasing energy inthe environment, he energy that runs the climate.
 
comanchepilot said:
Can I ask an honest question?

Is it not a good thing for humanity that the glaciers are retreating? Are we not getting more arable land? As we not getting healthier with less disease spread by cold?

Lower death rates from preventable disease.

Lower death rates from cold.

Less need for energy to keep warm [energy use to keep warm exceeds by an order of magnitude that used for cooling]

why is warmer bad?

Also - the Romans made wine in Britain - thus it HAD to have been warmer for hundreds of years than it is now. Why? A few million humans burning wood to stay warm? How do we explain the cooling? And the warming before that?

Look - we have NO idea whats going on, on what time scale and why. The models are crap and all wrong. Can't run them backwards - and reproduce what we KNOW happened . . .
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This is all thoroughly analysed by Bjørn Lomborg in his work and books. He shows how global warming will actually save lives (fewer people die from heat than cold) and help feed the world because if more arable land. He also points out the stupidity of spending kabillions of dollars on a Sisyphean effort the alter the climate, when, for a minuscule fraction of the money spent on nonsense like Kyoto, we could wipe out Malaria and cure AIDS.
 
Henning said:
Warmer is bad because weather is getting more severe, both in strength of storms, and drought. It's a matter of increasing energy inthe environment, he energy that runs the climate.
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It must be great when you just know stuff.
 
Henning said:
Warmer is bad because weather is getting more severe, both in strength of storms, and drought. It's a matter of increasing energy inthe environment, he energy that runs the climate.
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BUNK!

Keep digging Henning. The hole is getting deeper.
 
comanchepilot said:
Can I ask an honest question?

Is it not a good thing for humanity that the glaciers are retreating? Are we not getting more arable land? As we not getting healthier with less disease spread by cold?

Lower death rates from preventable disease.

Lower death rates from cold.

Less need for energy to keep warm [energy use to keep warm exceeds by an order of magnitude that used for cooling]

why is warmer bad?

Also - the Romans made wine in Britain - thus it HAD to have been warmer for hundreds of years than it is now. Why? A few million humans burning wood to stay warm? How do we explain the cooling? And the warming before that?

Look - we have NO idea whats going on, on what time scale and why. The models are crap and all wrong. Can't run them backwards - and reproduce what we KNOW happened . . .
Click to expand...

Uh, didn't you get the word? There was no Roman warm period or Medieval warm period. Temperatures were very stable until the latter part of the 20th century, then they shot up like a rocket. To think otherwise would be to believe that civilizations flourished during periods warmer than ours.
 
comanchepilot said:
Can I ask an honest question?

Is it not a good thing for humanity that the glaciers are retreating?

why is warmer bad?
Click to expand...

Not necessarily good or bad in the cosmic sense.

But more arable land in one spot can be offset by loss in another. Google "desertification" and "China". While you're at it, try "dust bowl".

But it is what it is.
 
comanchepilot said:
Can I ask an honest question?

Is it not a good thing for humanity that the glaciers are retreating? Are we not getting more arable land? As we not getting healthier with less disease spread by cold?

Lower death rates from preventable disease.

Lower death rates from cold.

Less need for energy to keep warm [energy use to keep warm exceeds by an order of magnitude that used for cooling]

why is warmer bad?

Also - the Romans made wine in Britain - thus it HAD to have been warmer for hundreds of years than it is now. Why? A few million humans burning wood to stay warm? How do we explain the cooling? And the warming before that?

Look - we have NO idea whats going on, on what time scale and why. The models are crap and all wrong. Can't run them backwards - and reproduce what we KNOW happened . . .
Click to expand...

A most excellent post, and exception point of fact that I have highlighted for posterity.

We don't really know for certain what causes gravity, yet the left knows for certain raising taxes on carbon emissions will save the world. :rolleyes:
 
I do not have a problem with the climate change folks (well, except for Fat Al Gore)
And I suspect some of the so called 'deniers' are just hoping they are right without going to the miserable effort of doing some actual thinking

Me?
I'm an agnostic.

Fact: The Climate has been getting warmer overall for some 15,000 years now, putting us roughly in the middle of an Interglacial Warming Period between Ice Ages
(the ice is coming the ice is coming!)
(but not in my lifetime - whew)

Fact: Glacier melting rates in our lifetimes, or the lack thereof, are not proof of anything - remember, they have been melting for 15,000 years. It is not a linear process (nothing in natural science is linear) It goes by fits and starts
Fact: Mans use of fire is putting CO2 into the air and raising the local air temperature
(as well as his habit of paving or roofing over every square inch of ground that he can)

"Wait" you say, clutching at your heart. "Are you, an admitted agnostic, admitting that man is causing global warming?"
I say, "I will answer your question with a question."
For the sake of this discussion let us premise that man's generation of CO2 and the local temperature rises off his house roof and his driveway and the street out front, is driving the existing Interglacial Warming Period pendulum to swiwng faster than it otherwise would.

Now, the question:
If man is driving the climate THEN he has been doing so for some 270 years since the advent of the Industrial Revolution. So the swinging pendulum has 270 years worth of excess kinetic energy built up.
So what do we do with the barn door now that the horse has left?

If we were to suddenly shut off every vehicle, every furnace, every source of energy that releases CO2 due to its generation, then by simple laws of physics it will take 270 years for the pendulum to blow off the excess kinetic energy and slow back down to the rate of swing that it had initially.
(this reduction in our energy production is simply not possible - but this is a discussion)

Aha, BUT what if we reduce our CO2 output (and the heat that goes with it) by some lower percentage figure (let us say 30% - extreme but maybe it's possible) then by logical process it will take 270 years divided by 30% or 900 years for the pendulum to blow off the excess kinetic energy. (actually far longer than that because of the continued 70% input that is larger than the input was over the first 200 years of the revolution, but this is just a discussion)

So the reality is that even slowing the rate of climate change back to some mythical point of perfection has an extremely low rate of return on the investment

And we have those pesky roofs/roads/parking lots all over the developed countries being giant heat radiators. What will you do with those?
(changing this, to my mind, has a far greater ROI for much lower cost out of pocket)
And then there are the billions of Asia who now firmly expect/demand a chicken in every pot and a motor vehicle in the driveway
(this is 5 to 6 people with these demands for every one person in the more Westernized countries)
I expect that your telling them they cannot have a rising standard of living for their children, or forever, will be met with cold, stony silence, - if not outright war.

Let the spittle flying, red faced, fist shaking, outrage begin. My only armor is fact and logic.
 
Dr. O said:
[snip] It is not a linear process (nothing in natural science is linear) It goes by fits and starts
[snip] So the swinging pendulum has 270 years worth of excess kinetic energy built up.
So what do we do with the barn door now that the horse has left?

If we were to suddenly shut off every vehicle, every furnace, every source of energy that releases CO2 due to its generation, then by simple laws of physics it will take 270 years for the pendulum to blow off the excess kinetic energy and slow back down to the rate of swing that it had initially.
(this reduction in our energy production is simply not possible - but this is a discussion)

Aha, BUT what if we reduce our CO2 output (and the heat that goes with it) by some lower percentage figure (let us say 30% - extreme but maybe it's possible) then by logical process it will take 270 years divided by 30% or 900 years for the pendulum to blow off the excess kinetic energy. (actually far longer than that because of the continued 70% input that is larger than the input was over the first 200 years of the revolution, but this is just a discussion)
[snip] My only armor is fact and logic.
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But your math (fact and logic) is in fact assuming a linear dissipation which you said doesn't happen in nature.

Otherwise a pretty reasonable post. And the cultural impacts of trying to keep the rest of the world from having the economic benefits of more energy are a real and significant problem. I read an article a couple of years ago about washing machines. The premise was that of all the technological items of western civilization the washing machine had the most day to day impact on work load and THAT's what the third world is going to clamor for. Pretty good article.

John
 
Gary F said:
It must be great when you just know stuff.
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:confused: This is common knowledge, this is basic thermodynamics. Heat=Convection, Heat=Pressure, greater differential in pressure = greater wind strength, greater differential in heat = greater force trying to equalize. The climate is nothing but energy trying to equalize across the surface of the planet. When the water temperature rises, that means there are a crap load more BTUs of heat that want to balance, and that heads to the poles since heat travels to cold. So we end up with a triple whammy warming everything up and turning our fresh water reserves into salt water.
 
jsstevens said:
Otherwise a pretty reasonable post.
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Agreed. I saw a streaming video of a talk at the AGU conference a couple of weeks ago that argued that a zero carbon footprint society at present rate of energy consumption was possible entirely through use of renewables, primarily solar and wind, with minor help from geothermal and increased hydro. The "footprint" of the solar panels, windmills, etc. in terms of the total area of surface set aside for generating energy was shown on a map of the North American continent and amounted to about 10% of the land surface (by Mark I eyeball, could have been more). I sat and scratched my head. Couldn't believe these people were serious.

Practically speaking, zero carbon footprint means either turning to nuclear energy, or drastically lower energy consumption. We don't have the political will to go nuclear, and there is no way that modern man is going to give up the benefits of technology to stave off a disaster that perhaps only our remote descendants will have to face. As I think you were trying to imply, trying to keep the rest of the world from reaping those benefits is geopolitical suicide, not to mention hypocritical as hell. So we are stuck with 7, soon 8 billion human beings burning fossil fuels in a basically business as usual scenario for the foreseeable future, or at least until those fuels run out. The best we can hope for is to postpone the inevitable by a few years by substituting biofuels were it's feasible to do so.

I think a lot of climate scientists realize the futility of mitigation as a strategy, which is why people like Judith Curry put more emphasis on adaptation.

Which IMO is a pretty sound argument, even if you think AGW is bunk. As Denny wrote, the climate is ALWAYS changing, regardless of what we do. Civilizations have risen and fallen because of that, and ours has exploded on a timescale short in comparison with that in which major climate fluctuations (talking about local changes, appreciating that global ones are harder to pin down) have taken place so far in the Holocene. We've settled and built our infrastructure on an assumption of stability which the record shows us is anything but justified.
 
Henning said:
Warmer is bad because weather is getting more severe, both in strength of storms, and drought. It's a matter of increasing energy inthe environment, he energy that runs the climate.
Click to expand...

Let's see.... Yep... I'm convinced :mad2:

2014 a quiet year for weather disasters in the U.S.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2014/12/29/natural-disaster-report/20853795/

Tropical forests are growing faster than scientists thought due to rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
A Nasa-led study has found that tropical forests are absorbing 1.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year as they photosynthesise and grow.
And this is far more than is absorbed by the vast areas of boreal forest that encircle the Arctic.

Global Sea Ice Breaks Record High For The Day – Antarctic Sea Ice Also Breaks Record High For the Day

http://www.climatedepot.com/2014/12...tic-sea-ice-also-breaks-all-time-record-high/
global-sea-ice-extent-for-day-363-from-1978-infilled.png
 
Sea Ice will INCREASE with increased glacial ice loss as it calves off into the sea. Try to understand the difference in glacial and sea ice and how the two form. Surface coverage of sea ice is not indicative of volumes of ice as sea ice varies in thickness, and the ice sheets are thinning. Also much sea ice is salt water ice, useless to us, while glacial ice is fresh water, an accessable reserve.
 
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