[Tanada]

The middle of the road scenarios on climate change are scary enough. I think it will take longer to get to a new stable state, but we will get to a world at 5 or even 6 degrees. That means we'll have rendered the planet uninhabitable. I don't think it will happen until the end of the century, but that's actually in the lifetime of a child born now. Nature has a way of readjusting at another steady state. We have benefitted from a relatively stable climate for the past 10,000 years or so. Now it's going to change, and change quickly. Not as quickly as Dr. McPherson suggests, but in terms of adaptation, we may have to change everything.

What is it that causes you to believe a 6C global change is fatal to life, especially given that for most of the history of the planet the global average temperature was 8C above where we sit today, conservatively speaking. The overwhelmingly vast portion of that climate change is the melting of the poles and the attendant reduction in albedo in summer in those regions. Much of the rest is a simple 2C average increase in night time temperatures in the temperate regions.

Just because Maine will have a climate much like modern Florida does not mean eve5rything living in Maine is doomed to overnight death. In point of fact I have visited Florida and the last thing I would ever call it is 'lifeless'! Hot, steamy, muggy, covered in insects and fungi and molds with rampant year around growth of many plants. i would say all those things about Florida in the current era, but never lifeless. It is the epitome of life covered.

[dissident]

The past is not an argument. The Earth has not been 6 degrees warmer over the last 10 million years of human and human precursor existence. And most people use the current reality of 7 billion people in a technological global civilization as the reference point, not a few thousand apes running in the bush.

Life will survive. But not modern civilization and the vast majority of humans.

[Tanada]

The past is not an argument. The Earth has not been 6 degrees warmer over the last 10 million years of human and human precursor existence. And most people use the current reality of 7 billion people in a technological global civilization as the reference point, not a few thousand apes running in the bush.

Life will survive. But not modern civilization and the vast majority of humans.

Oh boo hoo!

Excuse the heck out of me but the folks who are actually too stubborn or too dumb to shift lifestyles as the climate shifts are doomed no matter how you slice it.

As for your 'past is no argument' thinking I totally disagree. From 34 million ybp up until at least 5 million and possibly 3.4 million ybp there was no permanent ice in the northern hemisphere that we can prove. Deciduous forests grew all the way to the coast of the Arctic Ocean and pine forests grew on the islands further north in that ocean like Banks Island Canada and Novy Zemlya off the coast of Siberia. Nothing about that climate state is deadly to humans or our suite of livestock and companion animals and crops. Those conditions prevailed when the world was roughly 3C warmer than today and when the world was 6C warmer than today the majority of the difference was Antarctica was temperate with semi-tropical conditions on the furthest north portions of the peninsula.

All this BS fear mongering really gets me PO'ed because it is totally lacking in justification, based on the most improbable nay impossible scenarios. When the Arctic Tundra become deciduous forest land that is not the end of survivable climate.

It is possible that the tropic strip withing 10 degrees north and south of the equator MIGHT become problematic for human habitation, but people take that possibility as the baseline condition and project the effect all the way to the poles! Not only is that reasoning by false analogy, its just plain absurd catastrophist wish fulfillment, not science.

[Sys1]

Tanada : So what? Let's pollute more and more as it's not big deal? Is that your point?

[Cog]

Tanada : So what? Let's pollute more and more as it's not big deal? Is that your point?

That is not his point and you know it isn't. His point, which is perfectly rational, is that a climate change, even to the degree postulated doesn't mean that humans and life is going to be wiped out. Doomers always go to the extreme on any of their doom scenarios.

IMO humans are one of the most adaptable creatures on the planet. If we can't adapt, we modify the environment so that we can. That can be as simple as earth built homes or how we ventilate our houses.

[Tanada]

Tanada : So what? Let's pollute more and more as it's not big deal? Is that your point?

So you have completely skipped over several years running of me posting over and over in as many variations as I can think of that its time to focus on adaptation because avoidance is no longer possible or realistic? Shame on you then. I will say it again though just to be sure you get it. Humans are obligate pyromaniacs as far back in evolution as you can reasonably label the ancestor 'human'. Even as low intelligence a creature Heidlebergensis used fire, and none of their descendants or close relatives have ever not used fire when they had access to a flammable material and desired light, warmth, or both. Believing modern humans will stop burning fossil fuels before all the easily accessible ones are gone is foolish in the extreme. Therefore all of the easily access coal, oil, natural gas, peat and biomatter will sooner or later be put to the flame and converted into more or less CO2 depending on the particulars of the substance in question. Hence atmospheric CO2 is going to keep going up, maybe faster, maybe slower, but constantly upward until those resources are no longer available. Thus climate change is going to happen and all the makey fakey conferences between so called political leaders don't make a dimes worth of difference in the long run.

So quit lying to yourself that climate change can be avoided and focus your brain power on adaptation. Humans are champions at adaptation, we found ways of living from the driest deserts to the coldest islands with per-industrial technology developed from intelligence and necessity. Thinking everyone is going to just roll over and die because the climate changes is a non starter because suicidal people take themselves out of the picture quickly while everyone else goes forward. Pretending that the hothouse climate that actually greatly increases the quantity of life on the planet equals death to all humans is also ignorant and foolish.

[Whitefang]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population

Ancient and Post-classical history
Main articles: Classical demography and Medieval demography
Estimates of the population of the world at the time agriculture emerged in around 10,000 BC have ranged between 1 million and 15 million.[18][19] Even earlier, genetic evidence suggests humans may have gone through a population bottleneck of between 1,000 and 10,000 people about 70,000 BC, according to the Toba catastrophe theory. By contrast, it is estimated that around 50–60 million people lived in the combined eastern and western Roman Empire in the 4th century AD.[20]

Modern we are a cult of grain based people, happy hunter gatherers before the holocene were a population of 15 million maximal.
We might be clever apes but this is going to hurt, bad. Say from 8 billion to 8 million, 1 promille.

Even a simple power down can cause the end of the world as we know it, let alone one of the fastest abrupt CC ever, from ice age to hothouse within a few generations.
It takes 3 hours to rob a supermarket.....supply is a few days of food and drinks.
How much forest left to live on, of the land? Mammals need shelter/drinkable water and some food to last.
Famous last words, we'll adapt

[Cog]

Can we just terminate this thread, having agreed that McPherson is essentially a wack environmental prof from a minor party school. And be done with it?

I do not think we have beaten this horse sufficiently yet.

[Fredrik]

About human survival with global warming of several degrees: this is pretty theoretical, but it might be feasible to turn at least some of the northern coniferous forest region into farmland. I know the main problem is acidic soil, but potatoes and oats grow in quite acidic soil too and the pH value of soil can be augmented with lime (current global production seems to be more than enough for pH improvement of a few million hectars of new farmland). Of course this would take time and further reduce the CO2 sink of the northern forest region.

[vtsnowedin]

About human survival with global warming of several degrees: this is pretty theoretical, but it might be feasible to turn at least some of the northern coniferous forest region into farmland. I know the main problem is acidic soil, but potatoes and oats grow in quite acidic soil too and the pH value of soil can be augmented with lime (current global production seems to be more than enough for pH improvement of a few million hectars of new farmland). Of course this would take time and further reduce the CO2 sink of the northern forest region.

Where it is feasible I'm sure it will be done but the consensus (did I say that?) is that the topsoil there is so thin and poorly drained over vast areas that you will not be able to replace more then a fraction of the now productive land that global warming will make unusable. Are there areas in Finland that are level enough for Ag machinery to operate on once the trees are cleared?

[Cog]

Terracing like they do in Japan and some Indonesian countries could probably be done in Finland.

[vtsnowedin]

Looking on Google earth Finland already has farm fields as far as 65 deg N. with just the bit called Lapland between there and the Norwegian border. Nowhere to go.
Looking over to Canada's Saskatchewan province the wheat belt extends from the N.Dakota border north to an abrupt end about 55 degrees N. Perhaps you could extend that a degree or two if the weather permits. Time will tell.

[Fredrik]

In Finland, some of the coniferous zone has already been turned into farmland (mostly forest patches with more deciduous trees like birches, with more fertile soil). Such patches with mixed forest probably also exist elsewhere in the northern taiga belt. The terrain is quite flat here, so no problem with slopes. The western part of the Eurasian coniferous zone (= European & West Siberian North Russia) is flat as well.

[vtsnowedin]

I would think it more productive to install climate controlled poly tunnels in areas that are desert or become so. The poly would prevent excess evaporation and part of the roof could be covered to control the amount of sunlight and internal temperature. Your not going to grow wheat or corn for five dollars a bushel but you could have intensive production on a square footage basis. Adjacent solar panels could provide the power for water circulation and cooling if needed making the whole operation renewable.

[vtsnowedin]

Millions of acres of poly tunnel plastic. What pray tell could be wrong with that picture?

Do I really post here?

We could go back to glass green houses of course if you want to be a purist. No shortage of sand to make glass.

[careinke]

Permaculture.

[vtsnowedin]

Permaculture.

All hype no fact.

[careinke]

Permaculture.

All hype no fact.

You are just not looking.

[derhundistlos]

"No shortage of sand to make glass."

In fact, a global sand shortage is so severe that many countries ban the export of sand and a thriving black market has developed. Ecosystems are being ripped apart to get at the sand. Like so many other developing shortages, the facts are being suppressed.

"When people picture sand spread across idyllic beaches and endless deserts, they understandably think of it as an infinite resource. But as we discuss in a just-published perspective in the journal Science, over-exploitation of global supplies of sand is damaging the environment, endangering communities, causing shortages and promoting violent conflict."

http://theconversation.com/the-world-is ... isis-83557

[vtsnowedin]

Permaculture.

All hype no fact.

You are just not looking.

When you can show me some large farms that are making a living off the food they are growing and not on the fees they charge to seminar attendees get back to me. Permaculture is the Amway of agriculture.