The climate change consensus extends beyond climate scientists

[oil pan 4]

Riddle me this.
What do you think the land area of permanent frost was 15,000 years ago, when sea levels were 300 feet lower and the permanent frost extended down at least as far as new York. Then a perma frost area probably up to the size of Russia melted and the world didn't end.
And now we are supposed to believe that if a little bit more melts we all die.
Your problem isn't that the solution to fix global warming is obviously a scam, or that the temperature data has been falsified again and again, or that every single dooms day climate change computer model for the past 20 years has failed. It's these ridiculous claims that if it gets a tiny bit warmer that pretty much we all die.
No ones buying it any more. It's starting to souls like crazy talk. The man made alarmist/dooms day global warming people are starting to look, sound and maybe even smell exactly like the homless guy on the street corner holding up a sign saying "the end is near" written on a dirty piece of cardboard.

99.9% of all species that have ever existed are extinct.
Again not worried about extinction either.
Since it like climate change are natural.

[redpoint5]

When I consider a subject, I give my best attempt at being an alien. What I mean by this is that I attempt to understand things as an alien visiting Earth with no vested interest would observe and report.

I just read a horribly nonobjective article on cleantechnica.com about the difference in overall subsidy paid to the fossil fuel industry compared to the alternative energy industry. The article made no attempt to be honest about what a subsidy is. It considers tax deductions due to business expenses as a subsidy. In that case, the government subsidizes the porn industry since paying the "actors" is a business expense that is tax deductible.

Anyhow, this alien perspective got me thinking about how to observe the impact of global warming on humans. As an alien observer, I would make note of things such as human life expectancy, infant mortality rates, overall standard of living, death rates due to violence and such to determine if GW is a net negative to humanity.

It isn't useful to look at a single instance, such as 1 hurricane, or 1 war and proclaim it as the result of global warming. If GW is a net harm to humanity, the 50,000 ft view will bear that out. Life expectancy will drop, or economic prosperity, or violence will be on the rise. If the warming trend strongly correlates with these negatives, then it would be very difficult to have alternative theories to explain them.

Is there currently a correlation of warming with a decline in human life expectancy, prosperity, or increasing rates of violence? If not, at what level of warming would we expect to begin seeing this correlation?

[oil pan 4]

Then you have to wonder are people's life's being shortened by gmo foods, pesticides, hormone filled milk or meat, the government making health care more unaffordable, more expensive energy ect.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Then you have to wonder are people's life's being shortened by gmo foods, pesticides, hormone filled milk or meat, the government making health care more unaffordable, more expensive energy ect.

I have wondered all those things. An alien would look and be puzzled as to what our concept of GMO is. Organisms have constantly modified themselves by nature, which brings the diversity of life. Man has modified organisms since the beginning of agriculture, and you could argue from the beginning of hunting/gathering.

Pesticides and hormones have allowed the US to become the food producing powerhouse that it is. We can afford to throw away 1/3 of the food we produce because of the relative abundance and low cost. The waste of which is a real shame.

We've mostly got the worst aspects of both socialized medicine and privatized medicine. It wouldn't have been as bad had insurance been tied to the individual, tailored to their needs and risk tolerance. At some point it became commonplace for employers to include insurance as a perk, and I think it's even government law for businesses of a certain size to provide that perk. Instead we should be getting that enormous amount of money in the form of increased pay, and be responsible to select the individual insurance. Perhaps there is a case that the government should require at least a high deductible plan for everyone, because insurance doesn't work if only sick people are buying it. The "Adverse Selection" problem and all.

Individualized insurance, divorced from whether you keep your current job or not, wouldn't solve everything, but it's a good place to start.

[NeilBlanchard]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

Riddle me this.
What do you think the land area of permanent frost was 15,000 years ago, when sea levels were 300 feet lower and the permanent frost extended down at least as far as new York. Then a perma frost area probably up to the size of Russia melted and the world didn't end.
And now we are supposed to believe that if a little bit more melts we all die.
Your problem isn't that the solution to fix global warming is obviously a scam, or that the temperature data has been falsified again and again, or that every single dooms day climate change computer model for the past 20 years has failed. It's these ridiculous claims that if it gets a tiny bit warmer that pretty much we all die.
No ones buying it any more. It's starting to souls like crazy talk. The man made alarmist/dooms day global warming people are starting to look, sound and maybe even smell exactly like the homless guy on the street corner holding up a sign saying "the end is near" written on a dirty piece of cardboard.

99.9% of all species that have ever existed are extinct.
Again not worried about extinction either.
Since it like climate change are natural.

The sea level changed because a lot of ice melted. Right now, almost all the rest of the ice in the world is melting. The sea level is probably going to rise at least 6 feet, and possibly 10 feet in just the next 80 years.

How many people will be massively affected by that one change? Considering that about 2/3rds of the world's population live pretty close to the coast.

We had about 170-280ppm of carbon dioxide over the last 800,000 years or so - EXCEPT since about 1850. We are now well over 400ppm and climbing about 2-2.5ppm per year - and this is accelerating.

If all that change happened with a stable level of carbon dioxide, then your personal guess about the seriousness of what will happen with a rapidly increasing greenhouse gases - methane and nitrous oxide at orders of magnitude "stronger" greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide - is meaningless.

This is exactly what scientific models are for.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

The sea level changed because a lot of ice melted. Right now, almost all the rest of the ice in the world is melting. The sea level is probably going to rise at least 6 feet, and possibly 10 feet in just the next 80 years.

How many people will be massively affected by that one change? Considering that about 2/3rds of the world's population live pretty close to the coast.

We had about 170-280ppm of carbon dioxide over the last 800,000 years or so - EXCEPT since about 1850. We are now well over 400ppm and climbing about 2-2.5ppm per year - and this is accelerating.

Appreciate your posts Neil.

6 foot gain in 80 years is about 10x the rate of the previous 80 years. Not saying it isn't possible, but it just doesn't seem probable to me. Still, that's 3 generations of people, and we're very good at adaptation.

[NeilBlanchard]

The increased melting in Antarctica and Greenland has surprised / shocked everyone. We now know of several mechanisms that are melting the ice much more quickly that we thought possible. The main one is warm water under the projecting ice floating the ice (because of the rising sea level) and this is a strong feedback.

Dark snow is another unexpected factor - lower albedo of darker snow is caused both by ash from wildfires and volcanoes and pollution, and by cyanobacteria, and simply by accumulation of these, as the surface melts.

Another factor is changes in the jet stream and / or ocean currents due to the increased melt. The jet stream is weakening, and getting quite wobbly, and the salinity of the surface water is dropping due to the melt water.

Because of science, you don't have to take my word for it.

[freebeard]

Today on Suspicious 0bservers the stories were about
earthobservatory.nasa.gov:Another Accountant for the Energy Budget

Accounting can be a tedious job, but it is absolutely critical for keeping track of a budget. The Earth science community has been monitoring Earth’s energy budget—tracking the transactions between the Sun and Earth—for nearly 35 years. NASA has just hired a new accountant for the job.
....
Scientists have been working for decades to understand how the Earth’s energy budget changes in response to other changes in the system, such as those associated with temperature, water vapor, clouds, snow, and tiny suspended particles called aerosols. CERES measurements allow atmospheric scientists to monitor the push and pull between absorption and reflection.

And a 450-day cycle in cosmic radiation that turns out to be coming from Jupiter:
UNEXPECTED CYCLIC BEHAVIOR IN COSMIC RAY PROTONS OBSERVED BY PAMELA AT 1 AU.

Protons detected by the PAMELA experiment in the period 2006-2014 have been analyzed in the energy range between 0.40-50 GV to explore possible periodicities besides the well known solar undecennial modulation. An unex- pected clear and regular feature has been found at rigidities below 15 GV, with a quasi-periodicity of ∼450 days. A possible Jovian origin of this periodicity has been investigated in different ways. The results seem to favor a small but not negligible contribution to cosmic rays from the Jovian magnetosphere, even if other explanations cannot be excluded.

...and yes, undecennial is a word.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

the salinity of the surface water is dropping due to the melt water.

Now I'm curious if the decrease in ocean salinity would allow more of it to freeze, since the freezing point of water increases as salinity decreases (inverse relationship). Perhaps this would be one type of stabilizing mechanism?

At any rate, it wouldn't counteract sea rise since floating ice has no effect on that.

... and I just found this:

It may seem paradoxical, but while the sea ice in the Arctic is rapidly shrinking, the sea ice surrounding the Antarctic continent is actually expanding, despite global warming. Satellite observations show that the maximum ice cover in the Southern Ocean now extends further north than it did 30 years ago. This expansion is mainly due to a stronger transport of sea ice that has pushed the sea-ice edge further to the north.

[freebeard]

Probably no connection to the wandering magnetic poles. Probably.