Climate change

Use this board for general non-cycling-related chat, or to introduce yourself to the forum.
roubaixtuesday
Posts: 5815
Joined: 18 Aug 2015, 7:05pm

Re: Climate change

Post by roubaixtuesday »

pwa wrote:According to one credible theory there very much is a tipping point, where methane locked up in the permafrost in arctic regions is released due to thawing and itself accelerates the thawing. If that happens the process will speed up and be beyond pulling back.


Here's a blog post written by a leading scientist in the area. Have a read, the bottom line:

The methane hydrates in the ocean, in cahoots with permafrost peats (which never get enough respect), could be a significant multiplier of the long tail of the CO2, but will probably not be a huge player in climate change in the coming century.


http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar ... t-methane/
User avatar
gaz
Posts: 14649
Joined: 9 Mar 2007, 12:09pm
Location: Kent

Re: Climate change

Post by gaz »

landsurfer wrote: ... climate change happens ...

Image
landsurfer
Posts: 5327
Joined: 27 Oct 2012, 9:13pm

Re: Climate change

Post by landsurfer »

roubaixtuesday wrote:
pwa wrote:According to one credible theory there very much is a tipping point, where methane locked up in the permafrost in arctic regions is released due to thawing and itself accelerates the thawing. If that happens the process will speed up and be beyond pulling back.


Here's a blog post written by a leading scientist in the area. Have a read, the bottom line:

The methane hydrates in the ocean, in cahoots with permafrost peats (which never get enough respect), could be a significant multiplier of the long tail of the CO2, but will probably not be a huge player in climate change in the coming century.


http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar ... t-methane/


Do you think this process may have happened before ? In human history?
“Quiet, calm deliberation disentangles every knot.”
Be more Mike.
The road goes on forever.
roubaixtuesday
Posts: 5815
Joined: 18 Aug 2015, 7:05pm

Re: Climate change

Post by roubaixtuesday »

landsurfer wrote:Sorry, thats a rather garbled response .... not sure what what your saying ???


I think you're very sure.
roubaixtuesday
Posts: 5815
Joined: 18 Aug 2015, 7:05pm

Re: Climate change

Post by roubaixtuesday »

Do you think this process may have happened before ? In human history?


Which process?
landsurfer
Posts: 5327
Joined: 27 Oct 2012, 9:13pm

Re: Climate change

Post by landsurfer »

Sorry i'm getting confused ..... would someone explain the DIFFERENCE between climate change and global warming ?
“Quiet, calm deliberation disentangles every knot.”
Be more Mike.
The road goes on forever.
landsurfer
Posts: 5327
Joined: 27 Oct 2012, 9:13pm

Re: Climate change

Post by landsurfer »

Garbled quotation removed. Use the EDIT button if you want to correct it yourself


Is this not the famous "hockey stick" graph ?
Is it still accepted as fact ... or a device to extort funding from governments for academics ?

"Since 2001, there have been repeated claims that the reconstruction is at best seriously flawed and at worst a fraud, no more than an artefact of the statistical methods used to create it" ... New Scientist.

No one can disagree with Climate Change .... thats reality !
Global Warming ???
“Quiet, calm deliberation disentangles every knot.”
Be more Mike.
The road goes on forever.
roubaixtuesday
Posts: 5815
Joined: 18 Aug 2015, 7:05pm

Re: Climate change

Post by roubaixtuesday »

Garbled quotation removed. Use the EDIT button if you want to correct it yourself


Obviously, it's a device to extort funding.

Every temperature gauge on the planet has had a microchip implanted in it. These chips respond to a signal from UN headquarters in New York. There, every year, 0.02 degrees is added to the reading from every gauge.

Similarly, an army of elves sets out after dark every night to the world's glaciers. They melt the ice using magic ray guns, ensuring that the world's glaciers retreat as if temperatures were really rising. Clever, no?

As a result of this, scientists extort huge funds from unsuspecting governments. This is obvious, how else would they afford the Lamborghinis they all drive??

[short version: Your conspiracy theory is beyond ridiculous]
pwa
Posts: 17371
Joined: 2 Oct 2011, 8:55pm

Re: Climate change

Post by pwa »

Nobody has ever disputed that climate change happens naturally. Indeed, the same scientific bodies that have been predicting man-made climate change are the bodies that told us about natural climate change in the first place. But any sane person would ask, if climate changes through natural processes, doesn't that make it possible that things we do to the atmosphere might change the climate too? It was that sort of thinking that had climate scientists looking at carbon emissions as a potential source of change. And yes, if the so-called "greenhouse effect" that works in a laboratory also works in the atmosphere in the real world, that would mean global warming. Some places on the planet might get colder as climatic patterns shift, but overall there would be warming.

To anyone who doubts this, how sure are you? How much will you stake on it? If there is only a 20% chance that current behaviour will result in a disastrous outcome for our grandchildren, is it a risk worth taking?
landsurfer
Posts: 5327
Joined: 27 Oct 2012, 9:13pm

Re: Climate change

Post by landsurfer »

pwa wrote:Nobody has ever disputed that climate change happens naturally. Indeed, the same scientific bodies that have been predicting man-made climate change are the bodies that told us about natural climate change in the first place. But any sane person would ask, if climate changes through natural processes, doesn't that make it possible that things we do to the atmosphere might change the climate too? It was that sort of thinking that had climate scientists looking at carbon emissions as a potential source of change. And yes, if the so-called "greenhouse effect" that works in a laboratory also works in the atmosphere in the real world, that would mean global warming. Some places on the planet might get colder as climatic patterns shift, but overall there would be warming.

To anyone who doubts this, how sure are you? How much will you stake on it? If there is only a 20% chance that current behaviour will result in a disastrous outcome for our grandchildren, is it a risk worth taking?


Thanks pwa ... that makes sense ....
“Quiet, calm deliberation disentangles every knot.”
Be more Mike.
The road goes on forever.
PDQ Mobile
Posts: 4659
Joined: 2 Aug 2015, 4:40pm

Re: Climate change

Post by PDQ Mobile »

I always took the view there was a "middle way".
That is we could enjoy the benefits of fossil energy but we should not be profligate with it.
Use small cars, cycle lots, leccy trains running on sustainable energy and carrying a fair bit of goods.
Low energy homes using local fuel sources. Grow some veg, that sort of thing.

Try to make a finite resource last as long as possible.
In the end we may need it for food production above all else, for a good deal of the (cheap) food on the plate is very oil dependent.
Leave a bit for future generations, and slow the greenhouse effect and the unpredictable effects.

A win /win I always thought it. Cake and eat it.

But nobody listened.
kwackers
Posts: 15643
Joined: 4 Jun 2008, 9:29pm
Location: Warrington

Re: Climate change

Post by kwackers »

PDQ Mobile wrote:I always took the view there was a "middle way".
That is we could enjoy the benefits of fossil energy but we should not be profligate with it.
Use small cars, cycle lots, leccy trains running on sustainable energy and carrying a fair bit of goods.
Low energy homes using local fuel sources. Grow some veg, that sort of thing.

Try to make a finite resource last as long as possible.
In the end we may need it for food production above all else, for a good deal of the (cheap) food on the plate is very oil dependent.
Leave a bit for future generations, and slow the greenhouse effect and the unpredictable effects.

A win /win I always thought it. Cake and eat it.

But nobody listened.

That was always my view. Every day I use my bicycle I save roughly a gallon of petrol which can be had by some future generation or better still not pumped into the atmosphere at all.
That's not to say my lifestyle is brilliantly green - it isn't, not by a long way. There's only so much I can do, the rest requires an effective government.
For all the flack China gets it spends far more per head on green technology than we do and that despite having less pollution per head.

The other point is that as green tech matures that's where the money will be made, getting in on the ground floor is important. The Chinese already know this, the Americans on the other hand seem to be reinvesting in coal - except nobody actually wants it.

As for global warming, had we not done our bit we should be cooling at this point, potentially heading for another ice age.
Of course stopping the ice age is probably a good thing for the same reasons as stopping the planet overheating but there's no need to overdo it.

Overall though it's not just climate. We're heading for a perfect storm as cheap energy in the form of fossil fuels runs out, water tables fall, bio diversity falls, weather patterns shift and become more extreme, populations grow etc etc.

All of this can be managed but it requires us all to get behind it. There's so much disinformation out there its hard for anyone to dig through it all, but the main point the naysayers have is that it's too expensive except of course it isn't. Moving over to a green economy is not only cheap, its fast becoming cheaper than not doing anything whereas not doing anything isn't just expensive in the long term its fast becoming so expensive that we can't afford it.
User avatar
661-Pete
Posts: 10593
Joined: 22 Nov 2012, 8:45pm
Location: Sussex

Re: Climate change

Post by 661-Pete »

landsurfer wrote:lets separate "Climate Change" from "Global Warming" ... one is scientific fact the other is a religion ....
Denial of verified scientific observation is nothing new - though it seems odd to conflate the denied facts with 'religion'. Religion and Science have for long had an issue of incompatibility - at least that was certainly the case in the days of Galileo!

And even the eminent scientists often get it wrong, big-time! Consider one Professor Simon Newcomb (1835-1909) who famously predicted:
"Aerial flight is one of that class of problems with which men will never have to cope...Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible."
He did live long enough to learn of the Wright Brothers' first successful experiments...

Ah well... Let's just say, Global Warming is an established fact and is measurable. Science is strongly biased towards measurable data. The explanation for these data comes later, and can be argued about (e.g. Relativity, Quantum Mechanics).

For the anthropogenic origins of Global Warming, we have a very strong scientific case. To argue against it is equivalent to arguing against, say, the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Cue monkeys, typewriters, complete works of Shakespeare, etc. etc....
Suppose that this room is a lift. The support breaks and down we go with ever-increasing velocity.
Let us pass the time by performing physical experiments...
--- Arthur Eddington (creator of the Eddington Number).
User avatar
Cugel
Posts: 5430
Joined: 13 Nov 2017, 11:14am

Re: Climate change

Post by Cugel »

roubaixtuesday wrote:
Garbled quotation removed. Use the EDIT button if you want to correct it yourself


Obviously, it's a device to extort funding.

Every temperature gauge on the planet has had a microchip implanted in it. These chips respond to a signal from UN headquarters in New York. There, every year, 0.02 degrees is added to the reading from every gauge.

Similarly, an army of elves sets out after dark every night to the world's glaciers. They melt the ice using magic ray guns, ensuring that the world's glaciers retreat as if temperatures were really rising. Clever, no?

As a result of this, scientists extort huge funds from unsuspecting governments. This is obvious, how else would they afford the Lamborghinis they all drive??

[short version: Your conspiracy theory is beyond ridiculous]


I don't fink it's his conspiracy theory. I suspect it was avidly gobbled up from a-one o' them alty-righty websites, where loons go to play, gurn and run about yelling incomprehensible slogans provided by Bannon the Banshee.

Cugel, quite fancying the elf-with-a-magic-ray-gun job.
“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”.
John Maynard Keynes
Post Reply