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climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Tue 10 Apr 2018, 20:53:24

For the record, I was the oldest of six kids, trying to make it on a single military enlisted paycheck. My father eventually became a Warrant Officer, which is still a rank below Ensign, the most junior regular officer. But we are talking a step up to Lower Middle Class, both of my parents came from grinding poverty, a decade after WW2 ended the Great Depression.

Not only did my old man earn everything he had, I did too. I became (barely) worth over a megabuck because I progressed steadily up the corporate ladder from new guy to middle management, over 35 years, and following my own military service, which is how I paid for the engineering degree, and unlike many, I repaid my student loans in full, never a thought to any other alternative. Through the ups and downs of the economy I came very close to getting laid off twice, once found the letter and the seperation package waiting on my desk only two days after interviewing and accepting another job in California. That was the third time I uprooted my family and moved them for the sake of the company, which was not without personal cost. Then the third time the job reaper came within sight, I voluntarily took early retirement, which saved my new boss - a lady I never actually met in person - from having to lay off me or someone else in her group. By then I had laid off four of my own, others had transferred out, and some had retired in earlier downsizing rounds, and I was the last surviving member of my former group of 19 people.

My point would be, I don't feel especially priviledged. I retired and the Mother In Law died, and we inherited a second home on Nantucket, worth another megabuck or so. THAT represented the lifetime earnings of my Father In Law, less the trucking business he left his son a decade earlier, which was worth maybe twice what the house was. He owned four of the heavy truck plates for the island, out of approximately 30 such plates. "Heavy Truck" in this context means no more than 5 tons and 3 axles, semi trailers are allowed to make deliveries, but do not permanently exist upon Nantucket. The town limits the number of what are elsewhere considered medium trucks via the limited number of truck plates.

So we are trying to conserve this painstakingly earned wealth via a family trust, and we need to qualify for resident taxes as part of that. So my permanent residence and the place we live most of the year will be that island. I don't really care, and I distinctly dislike California, but the wife has a job and a health insurance plan that we would otherwise struggle to afford under Obamacare, since I am the only one old enough for Social Security and Medicare at this time - she has three more years.

Truthfully, all either of us want is to live near the grandkids at the moment. That means Wisconsin, not Nantucket, and definately not California. But you have to do what you have to do, versus what you really want to do, sometimes. A fool and his money are soon parted, as the saying goes. I'm NOT gonna sell the San Jose house and sit on the cash, not with Trump in office and a new Cold War seemingly starting.

Edit: Ibon, you get a pass this time, but note that I was not the only one that noticed the attitude, a couple of other members made comments. FWIW, if I offended anybody with my own attitude, I apologize. But lest you think I am taking on airs, I spent the day in the sticky muck in the backyard, chopping and sawing tree roots that were exposed in the backyard by the skid loader that filled in the pool. Then I stripped and hosed myself off and took a shower. Then I went grocery shopping. I don't feel priviledged, I feel exhausted and sore.
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby energy investor » Wed 11 Apr 2018, 00:55:50

I suppose there is a viable hypothesis that climate change poses an existential threat to humanity, but I cannot tell if in fact it is the prospect of warming or cooling that poses that risk.

If one is to rely upon the Milankovich cycles then we must expect an ice age to emerge within the next 2,000 years or so. That would certainly be existential as a threat, because all human history (anecdotal or recorded) relates to the period after the end of the last ice age some 11,700 years ago.

If one is to rely on the IPCC meme of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), then there must be some evidence that I am unaware of that proves first that CO2 is a cause of warming (AFIK it is only an unproven theory at this point), then if so, that our discharge of CO2 etc will dominate the succession of warming and cooling cycles that the sun, volcanoes and oceans have driven for the last 2.6 million years of the Pleistocene era.

The solar scientists tell us that we are already going into a grand solar minimum right now. Efforts to deny them air time with those theories failed - so most know about them. Further that this will last at least 30 or so years and that the effects are already present in today's weather. The snow in the Sahara desert for the last two years in March is the kind of evidence that is indicative but by no means conclusive. The snow in Saudi Arabia is a further indicative observation. This year the winter plantings of cereals will fail in most Northern hemisphere locations as a result of intense cold with further blizzards due before the end of April. The Spring planting may not do very well in April I suppose, because of the snow and ice.

So the solar scientists assertion that Solar cycle SC24 has started the new minimum has some evidential backing at this point. As we go into SC25, the sun will cool to the point where the planet will get colder to a level that cannot be ignored, if their claims are to be proven. (yes, there is a lot more snow in the Antarctic and Arctic this year but what will happen during the summer melt?)

The problem with the cooling theories is that they cannot be ignored if the evidence is already before our eyes, affecting our near term harvests and the death of North African tribesmen.

The solar cycle theories were first developed in Russia and now even NASA agrees that the solar minimum will reach a low at about 2030 during SC25. In NASA's case they believe AGW will overcome the effects of a cooler sun. No matter, it will soon be proven, one way or another, and probably for certain by 2020-2025.

So before entering into your debate, does anyone posting here know whether there is a gas that is essential to plant life that exists in the atmosphere at a level of 0.04% (based on 410ppm), that can possibly have a greenhouse effect? I am rather ignorant because I do not.

If CO2 is eventually proven to be in that category (which I doubt), then one form of existential threat would be for us to find a means to reduce greenhouse gases to below 200ppm.

Our demise would be rapid in that event because all plant life on earth would die.

My questions are posed because there are signs that the solar scientists may not just be right, but their observations are already coming into line with their theories. Within the next year we may know the answers. But those answers may not be what any of us like.

Professor Valantina Zharkova (University of Northumbria) believes from her analysis of the solar magnetic dynamo, that we may only have a cooling cycle of 30 years whereas the length of cooling duration during the Maunder Minimum was 60 years. If so then the cooling phase that we already may be going into (from current observations) should not lead to the mortality rates of the Mini Ice Age.

Perhaps it may also be moderated by human action. So in the short term I don't foresee an existential problem. But the Algerian tribesmen, some of whom have frozen to death in 2017 and 2018 in the Saharan snows, may have some deep ongoing winters to prepare for.
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby Plantagenet » Wed 11 Apr 2018, 01:14:49

energy investor wrote:If one is to rely on the IPCC meme of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), then there must be some evidence that I am unaware of that proves first that CO2 is a cause of warming (AFIK it is only an unproven theory at this point)


Actually, the physical properties of CO2 and other greenhouse gases are well understood, and their relationship to global warming isn't open to question. CO2 and other greenhouse gases allow solar radiation to pass through the atmosphere, but then capture the heat that is radiated back into space from the earth. The presence of more and more CO2 and more of the other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere means more of the energy that would normally be radiated into space is captured in the atmosphere where it warms the planet. This is just basic physics and atmospheric science---its not really open to question at this point.

Image
As this diagram shows, CO2 and other greenhouse gases absorb a small percentage of the solar radiation coming from the sun to the earth, but they absorb a greater percentage of the energy being radiated back into space from the earth. Adding more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere increases the amount of black body radiation from the earth (i.e. heat) that is trapped in the atmosphere, thereby warming our amazing and lovely planet.

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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby dohboi » Wed 11 Apr 2018, 08:15:29

Thanks, P.

Sounds like we have another denialist troll (or sock puppet?) on board.

Can't even manage to be creative enough to come up with something new...just the same old denialist retreads.

https://www.skepticalscience.com/future ... ooling.htm

Claims have recently surfaced in the blogosphere that an increasing number of scientists are warning of an imminent global cooling, some even going so far as to call it a "growing consensus". There are two major flaws in these blog articles, (i) there is no scientific basis for claims that the planet will begin to cool in the near future, and (ii) many of the listed scientists are not predicting global cooling.
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby Ibon » Wed 11 Apr 2018, 13:19:24

dohboi wrote:Thanks, P.

Sounds like we have another denialist troll (or sock puppet?) on board.

Can't even manage to be creative enough to come up with something new...just the same old denialist retreads.

https://www.skepticalscience.com/future ... ooling.htm

Claims have recently surfaced in the blogosphere that an increasing number of scientists are warning of an imminent global cooling, some even going so far as to call it a "growing consensus". There are two major flaws in these blog articles, (i) there is no scientific basis for claims that the planet will begin to cool in the near future, and (ii) many of the listed scientists are not predicting global cooling.


You have to wonder about these trolls, where they sit in their organic lives, what physical space they occupy, the psychology that would produce an individual who feels his time and space is worthy in occupying a niche in the eco system of humanity by being a digital troll and perpetuating lies.

He or she looks in the mirror in the morning and looks forward to a productive day of trolling.

Humans never fail to amaze me in their delusions.
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby ozcad » Wed 11 Apr 2018, 13:48:25

Gotta cut him a bit of slack. (from Wikipedia)
Joseph Fourier, in 1824, found that Earth's atmosphere kept the planet warmer than would be the case in a vacuum. Fourier recognized that the atmosphere transmitted visible light waves efficiently to the earth's surface. The earth then absorbed visible light and emitted infrared radiation in response, but the atmosphere did not transmit infrared efficiently, which therefore increased surface temperatures. He also suspected that human activities could influence climate, although he focused primarily on land use changes.

John Tyndall took Fourier's work one step further in 1859 when he investigated the absorption of infrared radiation in different gases. He found that water vapor, hydrocarbons like methane (CH4), and carbon dioxide (CO2) strongly block the radiation.

In 1896 a Swedish scientist, Svante Arrhenius... ...calculated that cutting CO2 in half would suffice to produce an ice age. He further calculated that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 would give a total warming of 5–6 degrees Celsius.


It's only been 30-ish years since James Hansen went public on the issue, barely enough to grok 'wandering jet stream'.
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby GHung » Wed 11 Apr 2018, 14:10:01

ozcad wrote:....

It's only been 30-ish years since James Hansen went public on the issue, barely enough to grok 'wandering jet stream'.


Fourier, et al, didn't have satellites and super computers. Just sayin'.
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby energy investor » Thu 12 Apr 2018, 19:16:35

Thanks for the mix of informative, amusing and derogatory responses. I particularly liked the idea that I may soon be unable to afford an internet connection or computer due to my inept investment strategies - it is going to be a tough year for investors so you may be right by 2019. Perhaps I am more at risk from my renewable investments and I am a user and investor in wind and solar.

I try to minimise my carbon footprint and if I wake up to find myself a sock puppet, it would need to be a large sock. I have been matching the tit for tat of the orthodox and the sceptics for 14 years and trying to inform myself as best I may.

I note that oil demand is increasing and yet the IEA is concerned that reinvestment is inadequate.

I agree that our emissions are very polluting. Our oil, gas and coal are finite and at some point we must transition away from them. Simply put, that isn't happening and yet the hard core orthodox purists demand that we act as if it were. Now that won't end well!

But for me, the AGW science is not "settled" and I have a feeling that the Grand Solar Minimums of SC24,25 and 26 may soon shake up the world of orthodoxy. If that happens, it will likely happen very soon, unlike the theories of a super heating world.

As long as the "denier" label is thrown around and the efforts to marginalise the serious scientists continues, I suppose I will maintain my scepticism until I have proof positive.

So please feel free to poke fun at me because I don't share your convictions (or perhaps I may just be more ignorant than you). You are most welcome to continue to trying to educate me. But thus far, and until I see anything that persuades me otherwise, I am happy to err on the denier side of the fence until about 2020-25 when we will either be very cold and the IPCC will be forced to change its tune, or I will be obliged to accept that the orthodox position is the correct one.
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby jedrider » Thu 12 Apr 2018, 21:29:58

Energy Investor wrote:So please feel free to poke fun at me because I don't share your convictions (or perhaps I may just be more ignorant than you). You are most welcome to continue to trying to educate me. But thus far, and until I see anything that persuades me otherwise, I am happy to err on the denier side of the fence until about 2020-25 when we will either be very cold and the IPCC will be forced to change its tune, or I will be obliged to accept that the orthodox position is the correct one.


Too funny that you are waiting to be 'cold!' Wishing to be 'cold' will be more like it. If we know something in 2020-25 that we don't know today, that will be too bad. That would be like turning around the curve to see what awaits us.
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby Newfie » Fri 13 Apr 2018, 13:30:44

Energy Investor wrote:

“I agree that our emissions are very polluting. Our oil, gas and coal are finite and at some point we must transition away from them. Simply put, that isn't happening and yet the hard core orthodox purists demand that we act as if it were. Now that won't end well!”

I’m confused, what is not happening yet. The transition? Or the resource exhaustion?

Thus I’m confused by the following statements also.
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby onlooker » Fri 13 Apr 2018, 13:45:03

Yes EI , are you validating Kaiser's view that we cannot disengage from FF, because that would condemn billions to die?
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby energy investor » Fri 13 Apr 2018, 18:56:49

Personally I would rather face a warming future than an ice age, but that doesn't mean I believe the orthodox IPCC sponsored argument is correct at this point.

I think a lot of folk will die prematurely either way.

I am also aware that we know more now than we did when the IPCC report #4 was promulgated. I think we now know that solar cycles SC24, SC25 and SC26 will likely have a profound cooling effect on our weather within the foreseeable future. But what happens after that? ie. after about 2050?

I understand that ice core samples now tell us that movements in the change in both CO2 and temperature follow the change in atmospheric temperature. If one accepts that, then one must accept that CO2 doesn't cause much if any warming. But is that right? Please provide me with evidence to the contrary if you disagree.

In the case of NASA, they readily accept the likelihood of a pronounced solar minimum affecting temperatures in 2030. However they still argue that CO2 trumps the sun's effects.

In Prof Fagan's book, "The Mini Ice Age..." written in 2000 he wonders what will happen in future solar cycles. We now know that and while he accepted major solar cycle changes could have an impact on our climate, it wasn't until about 2008 that the solar scientists became excited about the prospect of a grand solar minimum. Now they all expect it to happen. But will they be proven right?

I consider the current NASA position may perhaps be a case of simple denial of logic in order to protect their pre-existing global warming beliefs. But I accept perhaps as they know more than I, perhaps they are right? They (in fact we all) may get lucky and find our temperatures warm. If so then my view that AGW is a theory with nothing to substantiate it is fundamentally wrong. But why would anyone presume that after 2.6 million years of the sun, the volcanism and ocean currents being the absolute drivers of climate change, this is now being altered because we puny mortals discharge a lot of CO2?

After all, the solar scientists tell us the preceding cycles may well account for the warming of the 20th Century.

CO2 is after all still less than 0.05% of the atmosphere and it is less than 4% of the water vapour which many atmospheric chemists argue has a more profound effect on warming/cooling. Also there have been times during ice ages when CO2 levels have reportedly been 5,000ppm.

Anyone trying to look dispassionately at climate change faces a barrage of conflicting and imperfect data. There are many people like me who take the sceptic viewpoint. We are considered deniers and it is open season to call us negative and in the pay of oil companies, yet it will be easy for many of us to change our positions if found wrong.

I don't know anyone who is a sceptic who is in the pay of big oil. But I could be wrong. My main beef is that I would like to see an electrical energy storage system that allows a transition away from many uses of fossil fuels. That is where my money is placed - at high risk perhaps. That is my bias.
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby Plantagenet » Fri 13 Apr 2018, 19:37:55

energy investor wrote:
I understand that ice core samples now tell us that movements in the change in both CO2 and temperature follow the change in atmospheric temperature. If one accepts that, then one must accept that CO2 doesn't cause much if any warming. But is that right? .


No. That isn’t right.

The ice core records of climate change during the ice ages do indeed show the climate starting to change before the CO2 and CH4 levels change, but that doesn’t mean that greenhouse gases have no effect on climate change. In fact, quite the opposite.

Climate change during the ice ages was triggered off by earth’s orbital geometry which in turn caused very small changes in the distribution of solar insulation. These tiny changes are much too small to cause the huge climate changes that started and ended ice ages. So what happened? The tiny changes in solar insulation caused various feedback factors to start to act on the climate, including things like increased snow cover, changes in atmospheric dust levels, and CHANGES IN ATMOSPHERIC CO2.

And when you do the math, it becomes clear that the bulk of natural climate change is related to the feedback effects, not to orbital insulation that started the natural climate change.

Get it now?

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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Fri 13 Apr 2018, 20:07:36

energy investor, Understand that the AGW/CC fanboys here at Peak Oil are an extreme fringe group. What is so odd is that they have all of the information they need to understand that our very existence at this point in history depends upon producing cheap energy by burning fossil fuels.

They also understand intellectually that the present circumstances are unique, that there never has before been a time in recorded history when so many fossil fuels were burned and so much carbon dioxide injected into the atmosphere. Yet they would confidently predict the impact upon global climate due to human activity.

I remember as a child being alarmed to learn that the World's human population had gone through the three billion milestone. I had faith that the seemingly kindly UN Secretary General U Thant, who spoke softly and with grave concern, would solve this problem for us.

Now, with 7.7 Billion humans and the population number still exploding upwards, I just don't know what to think. The climate models are actually useless, none of them work in the sense that they can relate recorded temperatures to recorded atmospheric carbon levels, either long or short term. Knowing this, the prediction of future temperatures via such models is extremely silly.

Truthfully, there is not anyone here at Peak Oil who has an open mind on this topic. Virtually every member has consciously decided to reject all data and models that dispute their position that the burning of FF's dooms us. Never mind that to stop such FF consumption would abruptly starve over 3/4ths of the humans, that is less important in their fevered obsessions than "halting AGW".

Never mind that the Scientists whose speciality is weather and climate are not certain of anything. The Peak Oil members don't have any doubts, and are ready and willing to label anybody not sharing such delusions "deniers", "trolls", and other names. Meanwhile, most of them will not even acknowledge the deadly and immediate consequences of halting petroleum-fuelled mechanized agriculture, boosted by petrochemicals.

I'm with you, I'm ready to adapt to a changing climate. I don't know how to feed 7.7 billion people without burning FF's, so the Grim Reaper is coming, because before we really can convincingly prove or disprove the climate theories, we are going to run out of FF's to burn. If as many believe we are otherwise in a mini climatic cooling event such as the 17th Century Maunder Minimum, then the most likely result would be a sudden onset of glaciation in the Temperate regions.

Either way, the human species will evolve rapidly, both culturally and phyically. Evolution accelerates in times of stress is the prevailing theory.

Planty: Learn the difference between the words "insolation" and "insulation". The majority of the impact of what you said was removed by this mistake.
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby onlooker » Fri 13 Apr 2018, 20:35:41

energy investor, Understand that the AGW/CC fanboys here at Peak Oil are an extreme fringe group.


That is outright untrue. https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/s ... tFLQS7wb3g
The scientific consensus is clear. Building on two previous studies, a landmark 2013 peer-reviewed study evaluated 10,306 scientists to confirm that over 97 percent climate scientists agree, and over 97 percent of scientific articles find that global warming is real and largely caused by humans.

A more recent peer-reviewed paper examined existing studies on consensus in climate research, and concluded that the 97 percent estimate is robust.

This level of consensus is equivalent to the level of agreement among scientists that smoking causes cancer – a statement that very few people, if any, contest today.

And as to potential severity one need only know that GW is implicated in the biggest mass extinction event in the entire history of Earth
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Fri 13 Apr 2018, 21:07:19

I noticed that you left off the "A" in AGW in your last statement. Just exactly which anthropoids were involved in the Great Permian Extinction of 251 million years ago, and how much burning of FF's of what types?

What lessons are to be learned from such early and presumably unwise consumption of FF's?
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby rockdoc123 » Fri 13 Apr 2018, 22:15:29

And as to potential severity one need only know that GW is implicated in the biggest mass extinction event in the entire history of Earth


certain authors point to an extreme release of CO2 or CH4, others look to a bolide impact and there are other theories. There is no consensus. It is a scientific debate, as it has been for decades.

And that extinction event took place over tens of thousands of years in phases, and when you look at the uncertainty of our geochronology for that time period that ends up being much longer with certainty.
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby Ibon » Sat 14 Apr 2018, 01:17:15

KaiserJeep wrote:
Either way, the human species will evolve rapidly, both culturally and phyically. Evolution accelerates in times of stress is the prevailing theory.



Perhaps the inverse is also true. In times of opulence and abundance without the honing effect of external constraints humans have begun to culturally and physically degenerate.
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Re: climate change "existential" threat to humanity

Unread postby onlooker » Sat 14 Apr 2018, 06:39:20

"humans have begun to culturally and physically degenerate."
Bingo! Ibon makes a great point there. The rich country denizens are into numerous unhealthy physical habits. And culturally the collective fixation of many in rich countries is subsumed into an addictive/obsessive relation with personal pleasure gratification. My own outlook is to reject much of this to instead value peace of mind. Thus, my icon of a person sitting and staring out into the ocean captures this intended attitude
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