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The POSITIVE side to Global Warming...

Re: The POSITIVE side to Global Warming...

Unread postby Timo » Mon 29 Sep 2014, 15:32:12

The biggest positive in Alaska, i presume, would be a complete outdoor mites and bantam level hockey season. In years past, in Fairbanks, anyway, the games would be played outdoors until the mercury reached 25 below zero. 24 below was all right. 25 below is an entirely different story. That's just too cold for the parents to sit through in the stands. Now that the polar vortex is an actual thing, that might just make it easier for kids to get out and skate. Well, assuming that it's still cold enough to freeze the ice. All they need now is daylight, and it might become a habitable place.
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Re: The POSITIVE side to Global Warming...

Unread postby Subjectivist » Mon 29 Sep 2014, 16:10:40

AgentR11 wrote:Around Alone, Northern Hemisphere Version.

I don't get the reference? Can you expand on what you mean?
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Re: The POSITIVE side to Global Warming...

Unread postby AgentR11 » Mon 29 Sep 2014, 16:44:51

Around Alone is a sailboat race around Antarctica.
Yes we are, as we are,
And so shall we remain,
Until the end.
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A welcome dose of environmental optimism

Unread postby Graeme » Sun 05 Jul 2015, 19:38:01

A welcome dose of environmental optimism

From rainforest revival and green technology to social changes, the age of humans is not necessarily a one-way ticket to eco-disaster, argue three new books

OPTIMISM is in the air. Some environmentalists are shrugging off their perennial doom and gloom, and daring to think the possible – that we are not done for. After half a century of despair since the publication of Silent Spring, The Limits to Growth and The Population Bomb, the green shoots of ecological redemption can sometimes be seen between hard covers. It is a welcome relief.

In On The Edge, Claude Martin, former director of environmental group WWF International, remembers that back in the 1980s, forest biologists like him warned that the loss of pristine rainforests was driving tens of thousands of species to extinction. Yet it wasn't so. His magisterial review of the state of those forests concedes that the "pessimistic projections", which assumed that species would be lost as fast as forest area, have proved false.

Most species in these habitats survive even in the face of rampant deforestation. Puerto Rico lost 99 per cent of its primary forests but just seven bird species, and today has more species than before, he says. And thanks in part to reseeding by alien species, old forests are starting to grow again.


Last year, fewer countries were tied to legally binding international targets for cutting carbon emissions than for almost two decades. Even so, a record 60 per cent of new investment in electricity generation was spent on renewables. Fixing climate change, Stern says, is no longer a "zero-sum game". There is no burden to share; played right, everyone can win.

The trouble is that many people haven't noticed. Too many governments pump trillions of dollars into subsidies to prop up uneconomic fossil-fuel industries, and then turn up at international negotiations convinced that every cut in carbon emissions they concede will be a defeat for their national interests. Stern doesn't say so, but it may be that the language of burden-sharing at the core of UN climate talks is becoming part of the problem rather than the solution.

In End Game, academics Anthony Barnosky and Elizabeth Hadly eloquently lay out the ecological perils we face, deftly showing how they might segue into food and water shortages, disease, resource wars and mass migrations. "Life would go on, but there would be a lot more losers than winners," they write. But they, too, conjure good news from the crisis. Their subtitle, "Tipping point for planet Earth?", refers not just to nature's potential implosion under human assault, but also to positive tipping points in human responses.

Like nature, we can fight what once seemed inevitable. As the authors explain, family sizes have become radically smaller, defusing population bombs; rich societies are reaching "peak stuff" as people spend spare cash on "experiences rather than things"; agriculture can become far more efficient; and recycling can both end pollution and stem resource shortages.

Political will has produced major changes for the better before, they note. Slavery mostly ended in the 19th century, and the 20th century brought a green revolution that doubled global food production in a generation. Now we know the challenges for the 21st century; we just need to act.


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Re: A welcome dose of environmental optimism

Unread postby Apneaman » Sun 05 Jul 2015, 21:14:42

Optimism, like pessimism, is an emotional state of mind and neither one has any bearing on the laws of physics, chemistry or biology. I look at the data and changes I can clearly see from paying attention and not one bit of it makes me feel optimistic, but I'm open. I will just need to see the proof. Something like the laws of physics magically reversing themselves and/or a vent hole opening up in the sky so the CO2 can exhaust into space and then a super wizard who can stop the planetary inertia that is already baked in and restore the oceans Ph. If anyone actually drops any cash on those environmental cargo cult fairy tale books, please bump me hip to the happy facts I missed. I bet they are just full of words and phrases like "we must" "we need to" "political will" "Policy change" "by 2100" "technology" (not yet invented) and If If If if if if...

Humanity to keep tweeting positive slogans until point of extinction


http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/envi ... 5062299489
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Re: A welcome dose of environmental optimism

Unread postby americandream » Sun 05 Jul 2015, 21:22:52

Apneaman wrote:Optimism, like pessimism, is an emotional state of mind and neither one has any bearing on the laws of physics, chemistry or biology. I look at the data and changes I can clearly see from paying attention and not one bit of it makes me feel optimistic, but I'm open. I will just need to see the proof. Something like the laws of physics magically reversing themselves and/or a vent hole opening up in the sky so the CO2 can exhaust into space and then a super wizard who can stop the planetary inertia that is already baked in and restore the oceans Ph. If anyone actually drops any cash on those environmental cargo cult fairy tale books, please bump me hip to the happy facts I missed. I bet they are just full of words and phrases like "we must" "we need to" "political will" "Policy change" "by 2100" "technology" (not yet invented) and If If If if if if...

Humanity to keep tweeting positive slogans until point of extinction


http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/envi ... 5062299489


Yep. Anything to avoid facing up to the sacrifices that really need to be made.

Ah well, positive tweeting, bud.
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Re: A welcome dose of environmental optimism

Unread postby Apneaman » Sun 05 Jul 2015, 21:47:59

As Alaska burns, Anchorage sets new records for heat and lack of snow


http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/cap ... ign=buffer


Arctic temps warmer than Miami? We have a serious methane problem!

"Current Arctic Weather Conditions

According to Arctic News, as of July 2nd, “While the media gives wide coverage to the heat waves that have been hitting populous countries such as India, Pakistan, the U.S., Spain and France recently, less attention is given to heat waves hitting the Arctic.”

Furthermore, “The heat waves that hit Alaska and Russia recently are now followed up by a heat wave in East Siberia… a location well within the Arctic Circle… temperatures as high as 37.1°C (98.78°F) were recorded on July 2, 2015.”

And, even more, “With temperatures as high as the 37.1°C (98.78°F) recorded on July 2, 2015, huge melting can be expected where there still is sea ice in the waters off the coast of Siberia, while the waters where the sea ice is already gone will warm up rapidly. Note that the waters off the coast of Siberia are less than 50 m (164 ft.) deep, so warming can quickly extend all the way down to the seabed, that can contain enormous amounts of methane in the form of free gas and hydrates.”

Also, on July 1, 2015, a temperature of 36°C (96.8°F) was recorded near the Kolyma River that flows into the East Siberian Sea.

The Arctic is hotter than Miami!

Somehow or other, 98°F in the Arctic makes the world seem upside down/sideways. Is it?"



http://www.ukprogressive.co.uk/arctic-t ... 40671.html
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Re: A welcome dose of environmental optimism

Unread postby Apneaman » Mon 06 Jul 2015, 00:55:25

Germany Breaks its All-Time Heat Record

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMa ... rynum=3034
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Re: A welcome dose of environmental optimism

Unread postby Apneaman » Mon 06 Jul 2015, 01:38:04

Graph of the Day: World arable land per capita, 1961-2012

http://www.desdemonadespair.net/2015/07 ... d-per.html
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Re: A welcome dose of environmental optimism

Unread postby Apneaman » Mon 06 Jul 2015, 01:39:58

The oceans can’t take any more: researchers fear a fundamental change in the oceans – even if greenhouse emissions are successfully reduced

http://www.awi.de/en/news/press_release ... 5aedb5f5ee
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Re: A welcome dose of environmental optimism

Unread postby onlooker » Mon 06 Jul 2015, 04:37:32

Sorry to say these positives referred to are just sporadic trends in a cascading and accelerating set of doom trends. As AP stated optimism and pessimism are just state of minds we should endeavor to dispassionately analyze the facts and data. Upon doing so many here realize that Earth is in bad shape and getting worse. Until I see a complete halt and reversal in the way humans are acting rather then talking , I see no reason to be optimistic.
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Re: A welcome dose of environmental optimism

Unread postby americandream » Mon 06 Jul 2015, 04:43:56

onlooker wrote:Sorry to say these positives referred to are just sporadic trends in a cascading and accelerating set of doom trends. As AP stated optimism and pessimism are just state of minds we should endeavor to dispassionately analyze the facts and data. Upon doing so many here realize that Earth is in bad shape and getting worse. Until I see a complete halt and reversal in the way humans are acting rather then talking , I see no reason to be optimistic.


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Re: The POSITIVE side to Global Warming...

Unread postby Tanada » Sat 12 Nov 2016, 10:54:32

Watch and think about this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCcLggcPcj0
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
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Re: The POSITIVE side to Global Warming...

Unread postby kiwichick » Sat 12 Nov 2016, 13:26:49

Thanks t.......but seeing Lawson doing the intro was sickening enough for me...........
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Re: The POSITIVE side to Global Warming...

Unread postby dissident » Sat 12 Nov 2016, 14:36:23

Tanada wrote:Watch and think about this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCcLggcPcj0


Parade of tropes from an ex-journalist.

1) Dangers overblown and policies to remedy climate change doing more harm than good.

- What policies? Where? When? Nothing of significance is being done to cut CO2 emissions whatsoever and the empirical evidence (observations of annual increase) prove it.

2) Models are consistently wrong.

- Shyster BS. They address the primary energetics of the system. The processes they miss do not nullify the basic conclusions. No amount of dicking around with cloud albedo will save us. The atmosphere is grey even on Venus which has 100% cloud cover. As long as the atmosphere remains grey, CO2 will do its job of accumulating heat energy. The biggest failure of climate models has been lack of sophisticated representation of land and sea ice. And it is only recently that coupled ocean-atmosphere climate models are being used. This is due to the advent of faster computers so this clown's yapping about 30 years means jack.

3) Climate sensitivity is low.

- Oh my, so that means that we can spew as much CO2 as we please. What a retard/liar. Even if the sensitivity is taken as some ridiculous value, say 1 C/CO2 doubling, we still have enough warming to release CH4 from the cryosphere reservoirs. As I posted elsewhere, climate sensitivity is some contrived relation that cannot be derived from the underlying governing equations and means different things on different timescales and under different boundary conditions. We have radiative transfer calculations based on fundamental physics and laboratory data that tell us enough about what spewing CO2 does. Believing in magical mitigating factors that always act in concert to mitigate CO2 release is anti-scientific superstitious nonsense. There is clearly no constraint the ocean-atmosphere system that would impose such a balance. Enough empirical evidence and physics theory development has occurred for us to know this. So don't even try to hide behind model deficiencies. (As an example of the absurdity of this magical thinking, consider trying to impose processes in the climate GCMs that would act in this magical way. One can't even get started since it is like whacking a mole. If you try to offset a local temperature anomaly with enhanced albedo from clouds you get a cooling overshoot that drives a circulation that together with the cooling reduces the cloud formation in this region.)

4) Climate science "establishment" has a vested interest in alarm.

- Drivel for the ignorant. Atmospheric science post-doctoral fellows doing most of the research (professors are like supervisors and not the backbone of science work) can in no way be described as any sort of establishment. They are typically on soft money and have no job security. The whims of some fucktard Prime Minister as our previous dear leader in Canada, Harper, can rob them of their jobs and their futures but cutting off the research funding. An establishment by definition is financially secure and is able to control government policy to its own benefit. To claim that post-docs can do this is grotesque nonsense in the extreme. Politicians pay lip service to climate change if they believe in it. They call it a hoax if they do not believe in it. It is obvious that politicians are not bending to accommodate climate scientists at all. If climate science was an establishment the politicians would be dancing to its tune. So f*ck off, Ridley you lying sack of sh*t.

5) Global greening.

- This was the subject of my post on another thread. I have seen no evidence that the satellite products used to derive the alleged greening trend were calibrated by ground level studies. This includes accounting for changes in the optical depth of trace pollutants and aerosols. So this whole story is nowhere near finished and some seriously dicey modeling is done to leap form spectral measurements by orbiting instruments and actual physical changes at the surface. At the very least there should have been an attempt to correlate this data with precipitation trends since we know that vegetation is super-sensitive to rainfall. Precipitation trends are not frozen in perpetuity. We could be experiencing an initial surge of rain fall in the weak warming limit to be followed by drought when the warming crosses some amplitude threshold.

- The mid-latitude measurements are also misleading because vast swaths of formerly cleared for farming real estate has been left to overgrow with forest. This is true in Ontario and in Ukraine. Grassland to trees is a dramatic change in green pigmentation coverage.

Here I got tired of listening to this codswallop.
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Re: The POSITIVE side to Global Warming...

Unread postby dohboi » Sat 12 Nov 2016, 15:27:02

dis has pretty well demolished this piece of nonsense already, so not much more needs to be said.

Do we really have to be treated to an endless train of mis-information on these threads?

It gets rather tiresome.

I'm actually fine with legit articles that show where some species or other is managing to adapt well so far, or where some particular area is (so far) getting greener. But this kind of tripe full of the same old long-debunked bs is quite a bit worse than worthless, imvho.
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Re: The POSITIVE side to Global Warming...

Unread postby kiwichick » Sat 12 Nov 2016, 18:35:35

@ pstarr.....all the deserts are greening........funny I haven't heard anything about this from our nearest neighbor, Australia.....

sure the northern and northwest are getting more rain......but temperature is also increasing , so the changes are giving on one hand and taking away on the other

and on the other end of the continent , the southwest and southeast are seeing both reduced rainfall (over the last 50 years ) and increased temperatures......and that's where most of Australia's agriculture is

The Millenium Drought , from the late 1990's to 2009/10 was Australia's worst drought on record with many grain farmers struggling to grow enough viable seed to resow the crops the next season, interspersed with seasons where they did ok.

They have since had some good season's with wetter, cooler La Nina years but the long term future doesn't look good .......that's why we came back to New Zealand
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