[onlooker]

Quite correct that human and animal waste and also fertilzer runoff contribute to algae blooms which then create anoxic ocean conditions. That dranatizes how bad overpopulation is now and our over reliance on a polluting energy source that is steadily changing the chemical composition of our planet's Biosphere

[kublikhan]

I see. So real greening deserts, actual greater agriculture output and healthier forests don't count? Not when you can beat the drum for theoretical acid oceans, potentially failing fishing industries and higher sea levels. And killer hurricanes.

What a drag to be you. Oh, and by the way . . . the Great Killer California Drought is over. And the forest fires are a consequence of bad logging. This is tiring.

I did not say they don't count. Of course they count. One in the win column. Hurray! However, there is also a growing list of items in the loss column as well.

Ocean acidification is hardly theoretical. It is happening right now:

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the pH of surface ocean waters has fallen by 0.1 pH units. Since the pH scale, like the Richter scale, is logarithmic, this change represents approximately a 30 percent increase in acidity (see our pH primer web page for more information).

What is Ocean Acidification?

And there is nothing theoretical about sea level rise. It is here now:

* Miami and Miami Beach already struggle with serious flooding related to sea-level rise — even when there is no rain.
* The ground under the cities of South Florida is largely porous limestone, which means water will eventually rise up through it.
* The cities are taking flood-control measures like installing pumps, raising roads, and restoring wetlands.
* Coastal cities around the world face similar problems.

Beyond the damage to homes, roads, or other infrastructure, the flooding also threatens drinking water and plant life. Ultimately, of course, it means large parts of the city could become permanently uninhabitable.

Water is coming for Miami from all sides
You can break the major water challenges that the region is facing into three parts, or “whammies.”

The first is sea-level rise. Because of ocean currents and Miami's location, sea levels are rising in and around the city and Miami Beach faster than in most of the world.

The second problem facing South Florida is a vexing geological one. “Our underlying geology is like Swiss cheese.” The solid ground under South Florida — Miami, Miami Beach, the Keys, and much of the rest of the peninsula — is mostly limestone made of compressed ancient reefs that are full of tiny holes. That means salty water is rising up through the ground itself, not just in the waters surrounding Florida. The water could start intruding on drinking-water reservoirs (it already has in some areas) and killing off non-salt-tolerant vegetation, including shade-providing palm trees. It’s impossible to wall South Florida’s water out with levees or giant gates — as other cities have done — if the water rises up through the ground. When I asked one architect what the solution might be, she threw her hands up in the air.

Obeysekera said the third whammy, the effect of future storms, is still an unknown. The consequences of a warmer world on hurricane season are uncertain, but many scientists agree that we can expect storms to be more intense, which could mean higher storm surges and more rainfall.

Miami is racing against time to keep up with sea-level rise

Also, don't project your doom fetish onto me. Unlike you, I never spent all day fanasizing about doom. Never have, never will.

And as for weather and droughts, you appear to not know the difference between weather and climate:

Climate change affects a variety of factors associated with drought
When considering the relationship of drought to climate change, it is important to make the distinction between weather and climate. Weather is a description of atmospheric conditions over a short period of time, while climate is how the atmosphere behaves over relatively long periods of time. Individual drought periods can be understood as discrete weather events. Climate changes occur over longer periods and can be observed as changes in the patterns of weather events. For instance, as temperatures have warmed over the past century, the prevalence and duration of drought has increased in the American West.

Global climate change affects a variety of factors associated with drought. There is high confidence that increased temperatures will lead to more precipitation falling as rain rather than snow, earlier snow melt, and increased evaporation and transpiration. Thus the risk of hydrological and agricultural drought increases as temperatures rise. Much of the Mountain West has experienced declines in spring snowpack, especially since mid-century.

Causes of Drought: What's the Climate Connection?

[onlooker]

True, that AGW drastic effects MAY not affect most of us currently alive. But, it should not be a either/or argument. I am not necessarily in the camp of the fast climate doom proponents. On the other hand, saying we are not unleashing epic forces of environmental disruption related to changing of the climate is also not true. I ultimately am a doomer because, I do see the convergance of all these consequences to our Overshoot as something that can bring down all aspects of our Civilization and leave but a pathetic small remnant of humans driven back to stone age conditions.

[jawagord]

To astronomers and odd ball NASA types Earth is a Goldilocks planet -"the late astronomer Carl Sagan’s classification of Earth as “a Goldilocks planet” — not too hot, not too cold; just right". In this view warming is dangerous as it pushes the earth towards too hot.

But for most of us non astronomers the earth is not "just right", much of it is too cold or too hot or varies from the extreme to just right due to geography and the seasons.

The earth has many climatic categories so this notion of doom for large portions of the populous due to climate change is ridiculous. There will always be huge habitable climatic areas in a warming climate, and generally warmer is better as the earth has larger land areas which are cold that will benefit from warming more than hot land areas or low land areas that will become uninhabitable.

And I think we've all seen there is no shortage of fossil fuels if we want to keep using them. So the only doom I see is the self fulfilling kind where the Gore's and Obama's of the world push us into a green energy economic collapse.

Köppen said that when observing these, all climates around the world fall into one of five major types:
* Tropical (A)
* Dry (B)
* Temperate/Mid-latitude Humid (C)
* Continental/Mid-latitude Dry (D)
* Polar (E)
Instead of having to write the full name of each climate group type, Köppen abbreviated each by a capital letter (the letters you see next to each climate category above).  

Each of these 5 climate categories can be further divided up into sub-categories based on a region's precipitation patterns and seasonal temperatures. In Köppen's scheme, these are also represented by letters (lowercase), with the second letter indicating the precipitation pattern and the third letter, the degree of summer heat or winter cold.

https://www.thoughtco.com/the-worlds-ko ... es-4109230

[Plantagenet]

The earth has many climatic categories so this notion of doom for large portions of the populous due to climate change is ridiculous.

Have you ever seen refugees? They often don't do very well. Well, when coastal cities and huge areas of farms on deltas are flooded as sea level rises, there are going to millions and millions of refugees. Chances are they won't do very well.


Okay all you refugees. Get in line for your daily cup of gruel. Boston, get in line here. Manhattan line up over there. Washington DC refugees----its your turn to clean the commodes. No cleanie no foodie.

the earth has larger land areas which are cold that will benefit from warming

I dont see how warming and destroying the current environment in Arctic areas benefits anyone, especially the frozen ground is loaded with carbon and methane. As it thaws the CO2 and CH4 trapped in the Arctic will be released, kicking global warming to even hotter levels.

I think we've all seen there is no shortage of fossil fuels if we want to keep using them.

More fossil fuel use means even more CO2 and CH4 released into the atmosphere and EVEN MORE global warming.

I don't think we want more global warming---not if we're going to drown low lying parts ofcoastal cities around the world and drown low lying deltas populated by millions of farmers and burn up huge areas of California every summer.

Cheers!

[Subjectivist]

Sea level rise at worst is a slow mtion disaster. It won't be BAU one day and Bostone flooded the next like a horror movie, such events are the realm of hollywood. The same goes for deltas like the Nile and Ganges, so long as the rivers are allowed to transport silt the altitude of the delta will increase with sea level. Delta formation is a natural function of silty water hitting calm ocean and dropping its load of soil. Sea level goes up the delta edge floods but then new silt builds the delta higher. This would happen in Mississippi except the US army built levees preventing natural forces from building the delta. Like idiots they direct the silt off the edge of the continental shelf.

[Newfie]

Jawagord’s post made me think of “Boiling a Frog”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog

The boiling frog is a fable describing a frog being slowly boiled alive. The premise is that if a frog is put suddenly into boiling water, it will jump out, but if the frog is put in tepid water which is then brought to a boil slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death. The story is often used as a metaphor for the inability or unwillingness of people to react to or be aware of sinister threats that arise gradually rather than suddenly.

While some 19th-century experiments suggested that the underlying premise is true if the heating is sufficiently gradual,[1][2] according to contemporary biologists the premise is false: a frog that is gradually heated will jump out.[3][4] Indeed, thermoregulation by changing location is a fundamentally necessary survival strategy for frogs and other ectotherms.

So I guess that settles it, humans ARE stupider than frogs.

OF COURSE:
We are polluting the atmosphere
We are polluting our land
We are polluting our seas
We are extracting finite resources which will run out
We are planning for the party to carry on forever

All of this will have dire consequences wherein human population will be drastically reduced (along with much other life).

Humans are the meteor we seek to deflect in our SciFi wet dreams.

One energy should be put to solutions rather than quibbling. There are so many things we agree upon, so many opportunities for improvement. Pops sit line used to sum it up pretty nice, something like:

REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE

[rockdoc123]

The same goes for deltas like the Nile and Ganges, so long as the rivers are allowed to transport silt the altitude of the delta will increase with sea level. Delta formation is a natural function of silty water hitting calm ocean and dropping its load of soil. Sea level goes up the delta edge floods but then new silt builds the delta higher. This would happen in Mississippi except the US army built levees preventing natural forces from building the delta. Like idiots they direct the silt off the edge of the continental shelf.

sea level rise is extremely difficult to ascertain in delta areas as they are subject to a lot of subsidence. As an example, the whole Mississippi Delta area in the US has been subject to a large amount of subsidence from sediment loading as long as the Mississippi River has been there. As a consequence structure built on delta sediments subside as well, sea level gauges suggest rising sea level but in fact, it is lowering land levels that are causing the problem. The exact opposite is noted in parts of Alaska and Western Canada where the isostatic response to subduction of the Pacific plate has resulted in negative apparent sea level rise (land rising faster than the sea).

[Tanada]

I grew up with parents who survived the Great depression, so you never threw away a machine that still worked or could be repaired some time in the future. In fact when our first color TV had to go to the shop for a repair (remember electronics repair services?) my dad pulled the vacuum tube circuit B&W set out of the attic and we watched that for a couple weeks while the other set was waiting for a part from Japan to be fixed.

So for our family the rules were Retain, Reuse, Repair and when all else failed Recycle.

[Newfie]

Wash and reuse plastic bags? My Wife does that also.

[jawagord]

Jawagord’s post made me think of “Boiling a Frog”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog

The boiling frog is a fable describing a frog being slowly boiled alive. The premise is that if a frog is put suddenly into boiling water, it will jump out, but if the frog is put in tepid water which is then brought to a boil slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death. The story is often used as a metaphor for the inability or unwillingness of people to react to or be aware of sinister threats that arise gradually rather than suddenly.

While some 19th-century experiments suggested that the underlying premise is true if the heating is sufficiently gradual,[1][2] according to contemporary biologists the premise is false: a frog that is gradually heated will jump out.[3][4] Indeed, thermoregulation by changing location is a fundamentally necessary survival strategy for frogs and other ectotherms.

REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE

And your post reminded me of a grade school lesson learned long ago:

A false analogy is a logical fallacy that occurs when someone applies facts from one situation to another situation but the situations are substantially different and the same conclusions cannot logically be drawn.

Sometimes these differences are outright ignored by the person presenting the fallacy; other times, they may not be aware of the differences.

I have no quibble with REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE

[Newfie]

Jawagord’s post made me think of “Boiling a Frog”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog

The boiling frog is a fable describing a frog being slowly boiled alive. The premise is that if a frog is put suddenly into boiling water, it will jump out, but if the frog is put in tepid water which is then brought to a boil slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death. The story is often used as a metaphor for the inability or unwillingness of people to react to or be aware of sinister threats that arise gradually rather than suddenly.

While some 19th-century experiments suggested that the underlying premise is true if the heating is sufficiently gradual,[1][2] according to contemporary biologists the premise is false: a frog that is gradually heated will jump out.[3][4] Indeed, thermoregulation by changing location is a fundamentally necessary survival strategy for frogs and other ectotherms.

REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE

And your post reminded me of a grade school lesson learned long ago:

A false analogy is a logical fallacy that occurs when someone applies facts from one situation to another situation but the situations are substantially different and the same conclusions cannot logically be drawn.

Sometimes these differences are outright ignored by the person presenting the fallacy; other times, they may not be aware of the differences.

I have no quibble with REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE

Analogies only work if you look at both things side by side

Jawagord wrote:

And I think we've all seen there is no shortage of fossil fuels if we want to keep using them. So the only doom I see is the self fulfilling kind where the Gore's and Obama's of the world push us into a green energy economic collapse.

“No shortage of fossil fuels if we want to keep using them.” Really? As if they are an infinite resource. Do you not notice that the fuels we use are more and harder to extract? It may not appear so at the pump, but at the well head it does. So your perception is faulty if all you look at is your personal effort, not that the resource is depleting.

Now I suspect you may be honest in not being concerned with an economic collapse. No matter how honest and sincere your conviction it is at odds with all of history, where every previous major economic system has collapsed. How do I know? Because the once did exists and they now do not exist.

Your investments and 401 may be doing well, as they did in 2006. They may do well for some time in the future. But at some point the situation will change. Unless you find a way to readjust your portfolio and learn to think more in terms of advanced planning you will likely be in for a financial shock.

There is no perpetual motion machine.

It’s good we find some common ground on REDUCE,DEUSE, RECYCLE

[onlooker]

Jaw, you may be on the wrong site. Because here, people absolutely believe and know that Peak Oil is a clear and present danger even if we do not fully agree on the exact timetable or full severity of the consequences. And as for FF being still in abundance , well better hope that is not true because we will be setting in motion a Climate Armageddon perhaps worse than any ever seen on Earth.

[dohboi]

(dftt)

On climate change, it’s time to start panicking

The crisis over global warming warrants an unparalleled response

https://www.salon.com/2018/08/05/on-cli ... panicking/

It is time for us to panic about global warming.

Indeed, a proper state of panic is long overdue.

... If we do not resolve the problem of man-made climate change, it could quite literally spell the end of human civilization.

"There will be and already is major consequences and they grow over time. It does not look good," Kevin Trenberth, a a Distinguished Senior Scientist in the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research at the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, told Salon by email. "The effects are always local but there are more and more of them and the consequences are major. These includes floods and drought, heat waves and wild fires." He also pointed Salon in the direction of a paper he co-authored that elaborated on how Hurricane Harvey in particular could be linked to climate change.

Indeed, the California wildfires that ravaged America's most populous state last month provide a major example of the dangers of man-made climate change discussed by Trenberth. A number of scientists have come out to argue that the devastating blazes were at the very least exacerbated by climate change, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. As Jennifer Francis, a professor at Rutgers University who studies atmospheric circulation, told the newspaper regarding the searing heat wave and weaker wind patterns, "We’re seeing this mix of conditions across North America and Europe, but they’re all connected. The weather patterns are just stuck. They’re trapped."

[vox_mundi]

Land Transitioned From Green To Brown In a Matter of Months

Dramatic satellite images of Europe show how this summer's heatwave scorched entire countries


European Space Agency satellite images show how drastically the heat has altered the earth's surface in just a month.


Denmark, Sweden and Germany all saw similar changes over the same period

Grasslands up to 37% Less Green than Normal

Tropics Face Massive Rise In Heatwave Deaths

Unless tropical countries adapt to warmer temperatures caused by climate change, they are bound to see more heatwave-related deaths, with Brazil, Colombia and the Philippines predicted to have close to 2,000 per cent increase in excess mortality by mid-century, says a new study.

Heatwaves have already been deadly this century, claiming thousands of lives. The 2003 European heatwave led to the deaths of 35,000 people while the 2010 Russian heatwave killed an unprecedented 55,736 people. In 2015, an estimated 5,000 people died from heatwaves in India and Pakistan. And in recent weeks, heat waves are sweeping through the northern hemisphere, killing dozens of people mostly in Japan and Canada.

We're Going to Die in Record Numbers as Heatwaves Bake The World, First Global Study Shows

Halfway to Boiling: The City at 50C

It is the temperature at which human cells start to cook, animals suffer and air conditioners overload power grids. Once an urban anomaly, 50C is fast becoming reality

Imagine acity at 50C (122F). The pavements are empty, the parks quiet, entire neighbourhoods appear uninhabited. Nobody with a choice ventures outside during daylight hours. Only at night do the denizens emerge, HG Wells-style, into the streets – though, in temperatures that high, even darkness no longer provides relief. Uncooled air is treated like effluent: to be flushed as quickly as possible.

School playgrounds are silent as pupils shelter inside. In the hottest hours of the day, working outdoors is banned. The only people in sight are those who do not have access to air conditioning, who have no escape from the blanket of heat: the poor, the homeless, undocumented labourers. Society is divided into the cool haves and the hot have-nots.

Those without the option of sheltering indoors can rely only on shade, or perhaps a water-soaked sheet hung in front of a fan. Construction workers, motor-rickshaw drivers and street hawkers cover up head to toe to stay cool. The wealthy, meanwhile, go from one climate-conditioned environment to another: homes, cars, offices, gymnasiums, malls.

Asphalt heats up 10-20C higher than the air. You really could fry an egg on the pavement. A dog’s paws would blister on a short walk, so pets are kept behind closed doors. There are fewer animals overall; many species of mammals and birds have migrated to cooler environments, perhaps at a higher altitude – or perished. Reptiles, unable to regulate their body temperatures or dramatically expand their range, are worst placed to adapt. Even insects suffer.

At 50C – halfway to water’s boiling point and more than 10C above a healthy body temperature – heat becomes toxic. Human cells start to cook, blood thickens, muscles lock around the lungs and the brain is choked of oxygen. In dry conditions, sweat – the body’s in-built cooling system – can lessen the impact. But this protection weakens if there is already moisture in the air.

Not long ago, 50C was considered an anomaly, but it is increasingly widespread. Now, several cities in the Gulf are getting increasingly accustomed to such heat. Basra – population 2.1 million – registered 53.9C two years ago. Kuwait City and Doha have experienced 50C or more in the past decade. At Quriyat, on the coast of Oman, overnight temperatures earlier this summer remained above 42.6C, which is believed to be the highest “low” temperature ever recorded in the world.

... “We must hope that we don’t see 50C. That would be uncharted territory. Infrastructure would be crippled and ecosystem services would start to break down, with long-term consequences.”

Even under the most optimistic predictions for emissions reductions, experts say almost half the world’s population will be exposed to potentially deadly heat for 20 days a year by 2100.

2017 One of Three Warmest Years On Record, International Report Confirms – Greenhouse Gas Concentrations, Sea Level Reach All-Time Highs

... Notable findings from the international report include:

- Levels of greenhouse gases were the highest on record. Major greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere -- including carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide --reached a new record highs. The 2017 average global CO2 concentration was 405.0 parts per million, the highest measured in the modern 38-year global record and in ice-core records dating back as far as 800,000 years.
- Sea level rise hit a new high -- about 3.0 inches (7.7 cm) higher than the 1993 average. Global sea level is rising at an average rate of 1.2 inches (3.1 cm) per decade.
- Heat in the upper ocean hit a record high, reflecting the continued accumulation of thermal energy in the uppermost 2,300 feet of the global oceans.
- Global land and ocean combined surface temperature reached a near-record high. Depending on the dataset, average global surface temperatures were 0.68-0.86°F (0.38-0.48°C) above the 1981-2010 average. This marks 2017 as having the second, or third, warmest annual global temperature since records began in the mid- to late 1800s.
- Sea surface temperatures hit a near-record high. While the global average sea surface temperature (SST) in 2017 was slightly below the 2016 value, the long-term trend remained upward.
- Drought dipped and then rebounded. The global area of drought fell sharply in early 2017 before rising to above-average values later in the year.
- Arctic maximum sea ice coverage fell to a record low. The 2017 maximum extent (coverage) of Arctic sea ice was the lowest in the 38-year record. The September 2017 sea-ice minimum was the eighth lowest on record, 25 percent smaller than the long-term average.
- The Antarctic also saw record-low sea ice coverage, which remained well below the 1981-2010 average. On March 1, 2017, the sea ice extent fell to 811,000 square miles (2.1 million square kilometers), the lowest observed daily value in the continuous satellite record that began in 1978.
- Unprecedented multiyear coral reef bleaching continued: A global coral bleaching event spanned from June 2014 through May 2017, resulting in unprecedented impacts on reefs. More than 95 percent of coral in some affected reef areas died.
-The total number of tropical cyclones were slightly above average overall. There were 85 named tropical cyclones in 2017, slightly above the 1981-2010 average of 82 storms.

[vox_mundi]

2018-2022 Expected To Be Abnormally Hot Years

This summer's worldwide heatwave makes 2018 a particularly hot year. And the next few years will be similar, according to a study led by Florian Sévellec, a CNRS researcher at the Laboratory for Ocean Physics and Remote Sensing (LOPS) (CNRS/IFREMER/IRD/University of Brest) and at the University of Southampton, and published in the 14 August 2018 edition of Nature Communications. Using a new method, the study shows that at the global level, 2018-2022 may be an even hotter period than expected based on current global warming.

... The new method predicts that mean air temperature may be abnormally high in 2018-2022—higher than figures inferred from anthropogenic global warming alone. In particular, this is due to a low probability of intense cold events. The phenomenon is even more salient with respect to sea surface temperatures, due to a high probability of heat events, which, in the presence of certain conditions, can cause an increase in tropical storm activity.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05442-8

Diving Robots Find Antarctic Winter Seas Exhale Surprising Amounts of Carbon Dioxide

A new study from the University of Washington, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, Princeton University and several other oceanographic institutions uses data gathered by the floating drones over past winters to learn how much carbon dioxide is transferred by the surrounding seas. Results show that in winter the open water nearest the sea ice surrounding Antarctica releases significantly more carbon dioxide than previously believed.

"These results came as a really big surprise, because previous studies found that the Southern Ocean was absorbing a lot of carbon dioxide," said . "If that's not true, as these data suggest, then it means we need to rethink the Southern Ocean's role in the carbon cycle and in the climate."

- lead author Alison Gray - UW Assistant Professor of Oceanography

The paper is published Aug. 14 in Geophysical Research Letters.

Looking at circles of increasing distance from the South Pole, the authors find that in winter the open water next to the sea-ice covered waters around Antarctica is releasing significantly more carbon dioxide than expected to the atmosphere.

"It's not surprising that the water in this region is outgassing, because the deep water is exceptionally rich in carbon," Gray said. "But we underestimated the magnitude of the outgassing because we had so little data from the winter months. That means the Southern Ocean isn't absorbing as much carbon as we thought."

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com ... 18GL078013

[onlooker]

As spring temperatures in the UK inched above 20C in recent weeks, air conditioners in offices across the country will have rumbled into life after a silent winter.
But while these machines cool our buildings and cars, they could be having an increasing warming effect on the planet, a new study says

Hydrofluorocarbon emissions up 54% with air conditioning on the rise

https://www.carbonbrief.org/hydrofluoro ... n-the-rise