It's all over but for the sweating?

[Arragonis]

Originally Posted by Occasionally6

The Australian government may have got the price wrong (we'll see if the EU recovers enough economically or they reduce the number of permits enough to push the price back up to near that level).

The "tax" "revenue" was, in part returned to individual taxpayers in the form of tax cuts, in part used to compensate some trade exposed emitters (who still had an incentive to reduce emissions but would be no worse off if they didn't) and in part made available to finance renewable energy/emission reduction projects.

If the EU deliberately push up the price then it will make more countries reconsider their memberships, especially if Australia goes ahead and gets rid of their which is the new government policy.

[Alteredstory]

Ok, so here's the thing about all this that often gets lost when talking about whether or not projections are accurate.

The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere IS trapping heat in our planet. First of all, it's physically impossible for it to do otherwise.

Second, the outer atmosphere is cooling, which means less heat is getting to it, and we KNOW that the sun hasn't dimmed that much - if it had, we'd ALL be feeling the effects.

From the beginning, we've known that the warming wouldn't progress in a steady line year to year or decade to decade to decade. We HAVE had a progression in which every decade has been warmer than the last, but there's no guarantee that we won't have a decade that cools for a bit, before going back up.

The physics of the situation remains the same - greenhouse gasses trap heat, more greenhouse gasses mean more heat.

The effects of more heat are also pretty straightforward.

As to whether or not drought has had an effect on food production, the 2010 drought was why Russia halted all grain exports.

Maybe there WAS a decline in productivity in the 1990's, but you know what? That doesn't change the fact that when we have a drought productivity goes down. Fast.

As has been mentioned in this very discussion, the effects of climate change don't happen overnight. The paleocene-eocene thermal maximum, which was enough of an event to be visible in the geological record, took 20,000 years to go through the whole warming, with a 10,000 year period for doubling CO2.

We're on track to double CO2 in a total of around 400 or 500 years, with warming continuing after that.

When you get into the specifics of what will or won't happen, there IS a lot that is unknown, but we DO know what happens when you raise CO2 levels (warming), and we DO know that unless there's some massive factor that nobody has thought of, that warming will continue as long as CO2 levels keep rising, and then for a while after they stabilize.

If the paper showing no significant change in drought patterns is right, then that's interesting, and worth looking it, but we haven't warmed all that much yet - we're right at the beginning of the warming - and our best understanding of how things work (which has accurately predicted a number of factors like the faster warming in the arctic, and the faster rise in average NIGHT TIME temperatures, and the melting of ice, and the changes to ecosystems, and the cooling of the outer atmosphere) indicates that drought and flood cycles will start to get more intense. Nothing has come along to indicate that that's not going to happen, or that something else IS going to happen.

[Arragonis]

Originally Posted by Alteredstory

Ok, so here's the thing about all this that often gets lost when talking about whether or not projections are accurate.

If the projections are not accurate then why are we here ?

Originally Posted by Alteredstory

The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere IS trapping heat in our planet. First of all, it's physically impossible for it to do otherwise...

Yes but not as predicted, in fact far less than predicted.

Originally Posted by Alteredstory

Second, the outer atmosphere is cooling, which means less heat is getting to it, and we KNOW that the sun hasn't dimmed that much - if it had, we'd ALL be feeling the effects.

Well actually the sun has been dimming, linky on the outer atmosphere please.

Originally Posted by Alteredstory

From the beginning, we've known that the warming wouldn't progress in a steady line year to year or decade to decade to decade. We HAVE had a progression in which every decade has been warmer than the last, but there's no guarantee that we won't have a decade that cools for a bit, before going back up.

The physics of the situation remains the same - greenhouse gasses trap heat, more greenhouse gasses mean more heat.

Yes but we don't know how much. This is pretty crucial - double CO2 resulting in 3 Deg C is worrying maybe, double CO2 resulting in 1.2 is not. The models are broken, we need new ones. Guy Calendar's made on paper is doing better than those built on multi £m computers - all consuming energy and belching CO2 BTW

Originally Posted by Alteredstory

The effects of more heat are also pretty straightforward.

You will need to be less, er, unspecific here.

Originally Posted by Alteredstory

As to whether or not drought has had an effect on food production, the 2010 drought was why Russia halted all grain exports.

No it was wildfires. Have you heard of Google ?

Originally Posted by Alteredstory

Maybe there WAS a decline in productivity in the 1990's, but you know what? That doesn't change the fact that when we have a drought productivity goes down. Fast.

Agreed. GM crops help here.

Originally Posted by Alteredstory

As has been mentioned in this very discussion, the effects of climate change don't happen overnight. The paleocene-eocene thermal maximum, which was enough of an event to be visible in the geological record, took 20,000 years to go through the whole warming, with a 10,000 year period for doubling CO2.

So why do these "scientists" keep making such stupid and clearly unfounded predictions - the arctic is supposed to be ice free right now.

Originally Posted by Alteredstory

We're on track to double CO2 in a total of around 400 or 500 years, with warming continuing after that.

You do know each doubling has a reduced effect ?

And what about the benefits of a little more heat ?

Originally Posted by Alteredstory

When you get into the specifics of what will or won't happen, there IS a lot that is unknown, but we DO know what happens when you raise CO2 levels (warming), and we DO know that unless there's some massive factor that nobody has thought of, that warming will continue as long as CO2 levels keep rising, and then for a while after they stabilize.

According to Mr, sorry, Prof. Flannery - the guy just sacked in Australia - temps will continue to rise for 1000 years after we stabilise CO2 - if we actually can.

Originally Posted by Alteredstory

If the paper showing no significant change in drought patterns is right, then that's interesting, and worth looking it, but we haven't warmed all that much yet - we're right at the beginning of the warming

Hang on, I thought we have had 100 years of super warming - remember that graph that reaches for the stars ?

Originally Posted by Alteredstory

- and our best understanding of how things work (which has accurately predicted a number of factors like the faster warming in the arctic, and the faster rise in average NIGHT TIME temperatures, and the melting of ice, and the changes to ecosystems, and the cooling of the outer atmosphere) indicates that drought and flood cycles will start to get more intense. Nothing has come along to indicate that that's not going to happen, or that something else IS going to happen.

You see, here's the thing...

[Alteredstory]

I'm here because there was a discussion of ice melt, and something I wrote was cited, and then attacked.

Many, many predictions have been made, some about atmospheric warming, some about oceanic warming, some about ice melt, some about ecosystem responses, and some about ocean acidification, among other things. Each of those predictions was made under a series of carefully defined parameters. If you want to understand any given trend, I suggest you read the papers. I should also mention that none of the predictions claimed year-to-year accuracy. Each of the lines in the graphs YOU have linked came with their own margin of error, which was NOT included in your graph.

Atmospheric warming has not, for the last couple years, gone as fast as some predictions thought. For others, it has been well within the margin of error.

Oceanic warming has been going as expected for some predictions, faster for some, and slower for others.

Arctic warming has, as expected, been happening far faster than the rest of the planet, which is why we're seeing so much ice melt, and so much melting of the permafrost.

Ocean acidification is proceeding about as expected, except that there are pockets where it is much HIGHER than expected - it's not even.

Sea level rise is about as expected, although I'm not sure anybody predicted the amount of gravitational release from lost mass on Greenland.

Upper atmosphere:
How will changes in carbon dioxide and methane modify the mean structure of the mesosphere and thermosphere? - Roble - 2012 - Geophysical Research Letters - Wiley Online Library

Global Change in the Upper Atmosphere

In the past, when CO2 levels have gotten this high (last time was 15 million years ago), temperatures were around 10 degrees higher, and sea levels were about 100 feet higher. Last Time Carbon Dioxide Levels Were This High: 15 Million Years Ago, Scientists Report

It should be noted that while the sun goes through cycles, and is not as hot as it has been in our lifetimes, it IS hotter than it was 15 million years ago.

As to temperature and sun, while the sun DOES have a large effect on the climate, it stopped tracking closely with global temperatures a couple decades ago.

If the sun's variations were the primary forcer here, the atmosphere would warm and cool uniformly throughout - think of it like wearing a jacket. If you just put on a extra jacket, you get warmer. If you put on a jacket AND light a nice big fire, you'll get warmer, but the heat from the fire will warm the OUTSIDE of your jacket as much or more than the inside, hence the importance of what's happening in the upper atmosphere.

Effects of more heat:

-Hotter means more evaporation of water. More evaporation means there's more water in the atmosphere. That means that rainfall events are bigger, because when it rains, there's more water to fall. That works the same way for snow, by the way.

Hotter due to climate change means hotter night time temperatures - it's the jacket analogy again - we're warming because we're better insulated, so we don't lose the heat we get during the day. This means evaporation continues during the night, AND it means that when the sun rises again, and starts heating things again, it's starting with higher, so it get get hotter faster. This means more and faster evaporation.

Hotter, beyond a certain point, means that life stops working the same. Plants, when exposed to high temperatures and/or low water, stop photosynthesizing, and focus on survival. They also can't do things like pollinate as easily, which effects grain production, since we eat the seeds.

There are more connections to weather, but it's not my area of expertise, and I don't have time to hunt down information on that.

The wildfires in Russia were due to the drought and the heatwave, and while they did burn crops, crop production was suffering already, and areas that weren't burned had significantly reduced yields. Again - it's a matter of basic biology. If plants have less water, they don't grow. You should have learned that in elementary school, but if you want a lesson on basic botany, I can do that in a different post.

Yes, there have been advances in drought-resistant crops, but we're not there yet, and there are limits - we haven't gotten anywhere close to crops that magically don't need water.

Or any other form of life that doesn't need water, for that matter.

Scientists work on the cutting edge of their fields - that's where the interesting discoveries are made. The predictions they make are not made to advise policy makers, they're to say "this is the best we can do with THESE data and THESE methodologies, and this is where we think we need to focus in order to do more work. Can all you other people focused on this topic please check our work, point out flaws if you find them, and help us get to the next step in our understanding." That is the purpose of every peer-reviewed publication, and every research paper. That is why every research paper includes a section talking about what they can do better, and where more research is needed.

THAT is the research that gets published and talked about because the stuff that we already know really well isn't very interesting to people whose goal in life is discovering NEW stuff.

The fact that you expect it to somehow be spot-on and conclusive goes to show that not only did you miss the point of research, you also didn't actually read any of the papers associated with the publications.

No reason you SHOULD have, if that's not your area of expertise, but it means that you have a flawed understanding of what you're looking at, and certain people make a habit of capitalizing on that.

I already addressed your "graph that reaches for the stars" comment earlier, but I will once again reiterate - without the conditions on which that graph was based you don't actually know what it's predicting, which is why it's good to hear what the researchers who generated it have to say, rather than going to tertiary sources.

Your last link is interesting because, again, you seem to be confused about the nature of science.

Global climate change is GLOBAL. That means that it is affecting every single part of the planet, and so it is affecting every single organism on the planet, in one way or another. The question is HOW, so we take what we know about our areas of expertise and start looking into what might happen if we change things. There will be evolutionary changes, and chemical changes, and thermodynamic changes, and ecological changes, and many OTHER changes, and people are looking into them.

Then you get companies like WIRED magazine, or [insert news site here] whose job it is to get you to look at their story, see their ads, and make them some money.

So they go for what they think will attract attention. Here's an unrelated example - I live in the Boston area, and there's a forested area called the Middlesex Fells near here. A few years back, a graduate student did a survey of plant life there, and published the results. More recently, another scientist did a follow-up with the help of numerous volunteers, and published THEIR results, which were more thorough, and had some disagreements with the first survey.

A Boston newspaper did an article about it, the author of which tried to portray the whole thing as a conflict or controversy, based on the assumption that this was some sort of argument, rather than two successive studies building on each other. Why? Because controversy is more fun - it attracts attention.

That is why news sources are BAD sources for scientific knowledge - their primary goal is entertainment and ad revenue, NOT accuracy, so they inflate the significance of findings on a REGULAR BASIS.

In other words, your last link is based on personal incredulity - in this case, disbelief that a global phenomenon will affect everything on the globe - coupled with sensationalism DRIVING that incredulity, misinterpretation of the actual research, and a desire to foster incredulity in others.

This is, of course, leaving out the fact that some "news" sources blatantly mis-represent research in order to support a pre-determined position.

[P-hack]

If you are so sure of all this then why do you live in Boston?!? How does that affect your perspective of the problem and your tendency to be an alarmist in telling everyone they have to stop what they are doing just because you don't want to move when the sea levels rise (per your fears)? I see a conflict of interests here.

[Alteredstory]

Originally Posted by P-hack

If you are so sure of all this then why do you live in Boston?!? How does that affect your perspective of the problem and your tendency to be an alarmist in telling everyone they have to stop what they are doing just because you don't want to move when the sea levels rise (per your fears)? I see a conflict of interests here.

And I see either a lack of cognitive reasoning skills, or an unwillingness to engage in any sort of honest discussion.

Don't know if you noticed, but none of the projections said sea levels are rising 10 feet in the next 10 years, nor have I said that anybody needs to drop everything and flee the coast right now.

Nor have I told you to do a thing.

You seem to be imagining statements that neither I, nor anybody else I can think of, have made.

It seems that you see yourself as a voice of reason in the face of unhinged environmentalist hypocrites, but at this point, you seem to be interacting with lunatics that don't exist.

[P-hack]

It is funny watching crazy people reason

[Alteredstory]

Says the person arguing with hallucinatory opponents...

[Arragonis]

Originally Posted by Alteredstory

I'm here because there was a discussion of ice melt, and something I wrote was cited, and then attacked.

That is debate I suppose.

Originally Posted by Alteredstory

...Each of the lines in the graphs YOU have linked came with their own margin of error, which was NOT included in your graph.

Please post a chart that includes them, I searched for one but they didn't include all the models. I have to ask though if the errors are so wide why FGS are we basing future policy on them? This does come under the term of "bollocks" IMHO. That's a specific "bx" not a general one in science in case Neil is reading.

Originally Posted by Alteredstory

Atmospheric warming has not, for the last couple years, gone as fast as some predictions thought. For others, it has been well within the margin of error.

Oceanic warming has been going as expected for some predictions, faster for some, and slower for others.

Arctic warming has, as expected, been happening far faster than the rest of the planet, which is why we're seeing so much ice melt, and so much melting of the permafrost.

Where? Global ice coverage is pretty high, we have records for the Arctic since 1979. Are you claiming that the period since then is significant? Really?

Originally Posted by Alteredstory

Ocean acidification is proceeding about as expected, except that there are pockets where it is much HIGHER than expected - it's not even.

Sea level rise is about as expected, although I'm not sure anybody predicted the amount of gravitational release from lost mass on Greenland.

A quick google greenland photos 1930s proves this to be nonsense.

Originally Posted by Alteredstory

Upper atmosphere:
How will changes in carbon dioxide and methane modify the mean structure of the mesosphere and thermosphere? - Roble - 2012 - Geophysical Research Letters - Wiley Online Library

Global Change in the Upper Atmosphere

At last a link - I'm off to bed, I'll take a look tomorrow.

Originally Posted by Alteredstory

In the past, when CO2 levels have gotten this high (last time was 15 million years ago), temperatures were around 10 degrees higher, and sea levels were about 100 feet higher. Last Time Carbon Dioxide Levels Were This High: 15 Million Years Ago, Scientists Report

Have you looked at how they know this ?

Originally Posted by Alteredstory

It should be noted that while the sun goes through cycles, and is not as hot as it has been in our lifetimes, it IS hotter than it was 15 million years ago.

How do we know this ? - Linky. Just 'cause you say so doesn't make it so. Thats the skeptical way, the scientific way - or it was...

Originally Posted by Alteredstory

As to temperature and sun, while the sun DOES have a large effect on the climate, it stopped tracking closely with global temperatures a couple decades ago.

Two decades in how long ? By the way did you notice that those "proxies" that were used to estimate historical temps also "diverged" about 4 decades ago - do you know what "hide the decline" means in terms of this debate ?

Originally Posted by Alteredstory

If the sun's variations were the primary forcer here, the atmosphere would warm and cool uniformly throughout - think of it like wearing a jacket. If you just put on a extra jacket, you get warmer. If you put on a jacket AND light a nice big fire, you'll get warmer, but the heat from the fire will warm the OUTSIDE of your jacket as much or more than the inside, hence the importance of what's happening in the upper atmosphere.

I think that is the approach of most models - guess what, the world works differently so they don't match reality. There is a reason that most model authors refuse to do "hindcasts". Ponder that carefully.

Originally Posted by Alteredstory

Effects of more heat:

-Hotter means more evaporation of water. More evaporation means there's more water in the atmosphere. That means that rainfall events are bigger, because when it rains, there's more water to fall. That works the same way for snow, by the way.

Feedbacks - the models include them. Guess what, the real world is more complex so they don't match. The Calendar model I posted earlier has none of them - guess what, it matches more closely.

Why ?

Originally Posted by Alteredstory

Hotter due to climate change means hotter night time temperatures - it's the jacket analogy again - we're warming because we're better insulated, so we don't lose the heat we get during the day. This means evaporation continues during the night, AND it means that when the sun rises again, and starts heating things again, it's starting with higher, so it get get hotter faster. This means more and faster evaporation.

Hotter, beyond a certain point, means that life stops working the same. Plants, when exposed to high temperatures and/or low water, stop photosynthesizing, and focus on survival. They also can't do things like pollinate as easily, which effects grain production, since we eat the seeds.

There are more connections to weather, but it's not my area of expertise, and I don't have time to hunt down information on that.

So this is happening where ?

Originally Posted by Alteredstory

The wildfires in Russia were due to the drought and the heatwave, and while they did burn crops, crop production was suffering already, and areas that weren't burned had significantly reduced yields. Again - it's a matter of basic biology. If plants have less water, they don't grow. You should have learned that in elementary school, but if you want a lesson on basic botany, I can do that in a different post.

Google is your friend here - they have happened a few times. Is the frequency increasing or not - over how long a period ?

Originally Posted by Alteredstory

Yes, there have been advances in drought-resistant crops, but we're not there yet, and there are limits - we haven't gotten anywhere close to crops that magically don't need water.

Or any other form of life that doesn't need water, for that matter.

Do I have to define drought, it doesn't mean no water.

Originally Posted by Alteredstory

Scientists work on the cutting edge of their fields - that's where the interesting discoveries are made. The predictions they make are not made to advise policy makers, they're to say "this is the best we can do with THESE data and THESE methodologies, and this is where we think we need to focus in order to do more work. Can all you other people focused on this topic please check our work, point out flaws if you find them, and help us get to the next step in our understanding." That is the purpose of every peer-reviewed publication, and every research paper. That is why every research paper includes a section talking about what they can do better, and where more research is needed.

Yep more research is needed. What is missing from this research is any doubt. In fact people who suggest doubt or question the idea of "we're" fried are subject to gatekeeping in the science literature. Take a look here.

Originally Posted by Alteredstory

THAT is the research that gets published and talked about because the stuff that we already know really well isn't very interesting to people whose goal in life is discovering NEW stuff.

The fact that you expect it to somehow be spot-on and conclusive goes to show that not only did you miss the point of research, you also didn't actually read any of the papers associated with the publications.

The press release had this bit that was wrong. When you look past the press release it's a nice bit of work. But the press release and what is reported all over the place is, sorry to repeat, bollocks. Take that "graph to the stars" we had a few tens of pages ago - it is still being posted by Joe Romm even though the paper's authors have said the data behind it is "not significant".

Originally Posted by Alteredstory

No reason you SHOULD have, if that's not your area of expertise, but it means that you have a flawed understanding of what you're looking at, and certain people make a habit of capitalizing on that.

I can read papers, I even know some R. I've done models too. I can read graphs. Most people can. You ?

Originally Posted by Alteredstory

I already addressed your "graph that reaches for the stars" comment earlier, but I will once again reiterate - without the conditions on which that graph was based you don't actually know what it's predicting, which is why it's good to hear what the researchers who generated it have to say, rather than going to tertiary sources.

No, I read what the authors stated.

Originally Posted by Alteredstory

Your last link is interesting because, again, you seem to be confused about the nature of science.

Did you follow any of the links themselves ?

Originally Posted by Alteredstory

Global climate change is GLOBAL. That means that it is affecting every single part of the planet, and so it is affecting every single organism on the planet, in one way or another. The question is HOW, so we take what we know about our areas of expertise and start looking into what might happen if we change things. There will be evolutionary changes, and chemical changes, and thermodynamic changes, and ecological changes, and many OTHER changes, and people are looking into them.

It is also key to science to question anything and everything, if there is a consensus then this is not science.

Originally Posted by Alteredstory

Then you get companies like WIRED magazine, or [insert news site here] whose job it is to get you to look at their story, see their ads, and make them some money.

So they go for what they think will attract attention. Here's an unrelated example - I live in the Boston area, and there's a forested area called the Middlesex Fells near here. A few years back, a graduate student did a survey of plant life there, and published the results. More recently, another scientist did a follow-up with the help of numerous volunteers, and published THEIR results, which were more thorough, and had some disagreements with the first survey.

A Boston newspaper did an article about it, the author of which tried to portray the whole thing as a conflict or controversy, based on the assumption that this was some sort of argument, rather than two successive studies building on each other. Why? Because controversy is more fun - it attracts attention.

That is why news sources are BAD sources for scientific knowledge - their primary goal is entertainment and ad revenue, NOT accuracy, so they inflate the significance of findings on a REGULAR BASIS.

Thats a bad source, quickly debunked by questioning and challenging - what is not to like ? Maybe the original authors might make a follow up. That is science - put up an idea, the evidence, challenge it, prove it, disprove it, debate it.

Originally Posted by Alteredstory

In other words, your last link is based on personal incredulity - in this case, disbelief that a global phenomenon will affect everything on the globe - coupled with sensationalism DRIVING that incredulity, misinterpretation of the actual research, and a desire to foster incredulity in others.

Try again, see above.

Originally Posted by Alteredstory

This is, of course, leaving out the fact that some "news" sources blatantly mis-represent research in order to support a pre-determined position.

Absolutely agree 100%.

And on that bombshell, I'm off to bed.

[Occasionally6]

Originally Posted by Arragonis

{re. desal. plants}That's a wacking lot of cash for a wealthy but small country. Money which could be used for quite a lot of other very useful things - probably more useful.

Exactly. Which is why the cause of the need to build them is better avoided.

Ultimately though, we know from previous times in the Earth's past when CO2 was as high as it could be if we don't stop increasing it, it will not be viable to try to adapt; the effects are too great.

Originally Posted by Arragonis

If the EU deliberately push up the price then it will make more countries reconsider their memberships, especially if Australia goes ahead and gets rid of their which is the new government policy.

For any economy that removes pricing, it will be revealed as an error and only a short term pause in pricing. It is likely to damage those economies long term. When global emissions reduction is implemented they will have more to do in taking their economy into low emissions.