Man Based Global Warming....

And in a week or month someone will start another one and we'll all be back to rehash it all again... till next time...

 

Yay! Yeah... the problem is, that's not the subject of this thread, unfortunately. The problem is that the solution, and the need for action, is the same no matter what. And I keep seeing that need for action getting burried in the details of WHY we need the action.

Let's stipulate that humans are not the cause of any climate change. Let's even pretend that there is no climate change issue. Guess what? We still need to make all the changes that have been discussed here.

So yeah. It drives me nuts to see all the effort wasted on figuring out who or what is causing this or that problem that we need to solve. We have problems that every living being can agree on: We import too much energy from countries that we wouldn't normally want to be friends with, we consume too much of a finite energy source, and we create too much waste (exhaust, for example). Wouldn't it be great to be in control of our energy future? To get the crap out of the air in our cities? Our water? Wouldn't it be great to have our foreign policy based on something OTHER than where we get our energy? How about creating new domestic jobs in the energy and efficiency fields? Have product and IP to export?

We can fix all these things because they need fixing. We can ignore climate change, because fixing that will come along for the ride if we ARE causing it. If we aren't cuasing it, well, then we've still done what we needed to do for other reasons.

Yeah. Let's start a new thread on this.

 

But there is an important distinction between "SHOULD" and "QUICKLY HAVE TO".

"We SHOULD make all the changes towards a carbon-free economy regardless of AGW", is different than, "we QUICKLY HAVE to make the changes to a carbon-free economy to prevent runaway warming". Different in an important way.

The next question is how do we get this to happen quickly. I think Better Place is a large part of the answer.... check it out..

 

Well I've listened to all 3 hours of Climate Wars. You're not going to like this but it reminded me of when I was 8 years old. At church we had a special guest that showed a move. The church was really full because we had been told to bring our friends for this very important message.

A Distant Thunder (A part of the Thief in the Night series.)​

The basic movie plot: Patty is all alone because her husband and extended family have disappeared when Jesus comes and raptures all the Christians to heaven. Patty had been taught the gospel but decided that there would always be time to repent before she died so she was left behind. The UN under direction of the anti-christ starts to require everyone to register and forces them to take the "mark of the beast" 666. Patty refuses and tries to hide out but is betrayed by her friends. This story is told as flashbacks. It starts with her locked in a church with all the captured christians as they wait their turn for the guillotine. Between the flashback the movie cuts to executions and ends with Patty led outside and put in the guillotine to be executed. The movie then heads into "I wished we'd all been ready" by Larry Norman

After the movie the preacher said that though the details of the movie are fiction the basis is a truthful predication of the very near future. He gives a "come to Jesus" message and the frighten people head up the aisle to be saved. (BTW, watch the YouTube video, it fits Climate Wars just as well as religious tribulation movies. The CBC could have ended each part of the series with this song)


Likewise Climate Wars starts out with a little introduction then jumps right into a "Scenario".

It is 2046, 12 years after the EU breaks up. Southern Europeans have been invaded by Africans and are in turn invading Northern Europe. Half the Chinese population has died and China is preparing to invade Russia to seize Siberia, the new breadbasket of the region. Bangladesh is flooded and northern India is a nuclear wasteland from the water wars between the nuclear armed India and Pakistan. All of this happens because global temperature have risen 2.8 C.

The host warns us against a possible conflict of interest from military think tanks, because it is their job to come up with threats. (Never ask you barber if you need a haircut) Then he completely ignores his own advice by relaying a highly speculative scenario. Yes, the host says that this is only a scenario because they can't predict the future, but gives every indication that this scenario isn't just possible it is the likely outcome "if we get it wrong fairly soon, say over the next 10 to 15 years".

Thus you have the pattern for all 3 shows. Intro, scary apocalyptical scenario, completely one-sided propaganda of why the even the climate experts at the IPCC are wrong and how an increase of 2 C is a magical tipping point that sets off abrupt uncontrollable climate change that destroys civilization.

The scenario in the second show is even more extreme. It is only 2024 but Mexico is a desert and Mexicans are trying to cross into the US but are meet by a deadly high-tech border fence complete with razor wire, electrification, and robotic machine guns. The US can't take Mexican migrants because the gulf cost has been abandoned due to hurricanes.

The host then jumps into a even more radical 2100 scenario where in entire Atlantic coast from Florida to New England is underwater.........

I'm sorry but it is very clear that the purpose of the Climate Wars series is not to educate but instead to scare the listener. I would guess that almost 1/3rd of the series is scary apocalyptical scenarios. It is full of wild speculations that predict ~3X warming and sea rise from the worst cause IPCC reports in half the time. The tidbits of educational material offered fails to go beyond the very basics that are already out there in other media.

The one redeeming bit of the series is the 3rd show. I found the topics of global treaties and some technologies that might be used mitigate climate change interesting. That and the entertainment value from the sci-fi future scenarios. It is an interesting series for those that might what to listen but again more for entertainment than education.

Again I like the section on Cap and Trade (by a different name). It is only logical that any global cap and trade system would need to give every country equal credits to pollute based on population. This will be absolutely necessary to bring in the developing countries. It also pretty much rules out developed countries from agreeing to the system because they would be the hardest hit by the regulations. Thus we are back to the classic "tragedy of the Commons".

 

Thanks :cheer2:.

Yeah it's scary, but as Dyer said, his scenarios are based on actual reports by military think tanks and high ranking, experienced military officers and public servants like former CIA director James Woolsey.

The point of the series is that 1) the range of possible outcomes starts at bad and ends at extremely bad, and 2) we have an "embarrasment of alternatives" to oil and coal.

 

I have a slightly different take. The point of the series to scare people into belief in Acute Climate Change.

Yes, the scenarios come from the military but that doesn't mean that they are in anyway likely to happen. I'm sure the military has a scenario on how to respond to a virus that turn us into flesh-eating zombies too.

The series focuses on doom and gloom with a tiny sprinkling of technological solutions. For example, discussion of technological solutions in part 2 doesn't start until 40 minutes into a 55 minute show. The first 40 minutes are apocalyptical scenarios and attempts to make them seem credible.

It reminds me of the the fringe groups around the peak oil issue: Peak Oil: Life After the Oil Crash

Step 1: Scare people
Step 2: Open website selling people survival stuff
Step 3: Money rolls in.

I prefer books like Twilight in the Desert to The Long Emergency. The former talks about the evidence for peak oil while the later widely speculates about the aftermath complete with apocalyptical predictions.

 

Well you have to look at the source too:

 

One dismisses Gwyn Dyer's insight at their own peril, IMHO. Sharp guy, well spoken, with a perspective on "big" issues that the powerful would be wise to listen to. Listen or read his insight on 911. Kinda different from "W" and Cheney!

Icarus

 

Dyer may be an expert on the military and causes of world conflicts but his predictions of global war depend theories of climate tipping points put forth by some scientists. I don't doubt some of his scenario's will come to pass if sea levels rise 15 feet by 2050 and crops fail all around the world due to a 5 C rise in temperature. (That is a rise of 1C per decade)

The probability of these conditions happening make worrying about their effect a waste of time. Lets get on with making the world better instead of worrying about the end of the world.

 

Thought I would follow up to see if this is the problem described. Went to the original articles and then found this writeup segment in Science to be the best summary:

"...Doubts about the correctness of the Pope et al. measurements are supported by the fact that they are at odds with a wealth of atmospheric observations suggesting larger cross sections (6, 9). Most observations of ClO and its dimer--measured in situ and from satellites-- are best explained by the cross sections published by Burkholder et al. (8), which are the largest in the wavelength region relevant for photolysis in the atmosphere (see the right panel of the figure). These cross sections also best reproduce ozone loss in model simulations (6, 10). In contrast, when the cross sections published by Pope et al. are used, only about half the observed O3 loss is reproduced (9).

If the Pope et al. results do turn out to be correct, then there must be missing reactions that remove the ClO dimer and eventually lead to ozone destruction. Obviously, any such reactions have so far gone undetected in laboratory experiments studying the formation and photolysis of ClOOCl. Therefore, any new or modified atmospheric mechanism would probably involve species additional to those present in these experiments.

Until the issue is completely resolved--either by refuting Pope et al. or by establishing modified ozone destruction mechanisms--modelers should probably not use the new photolysis rate for prognostic studies. Even if Pope et al. are correct and our current understanding of polar ozone depletion is incomplete, models using rate constants currently recommended by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration/Jet Propulsion Laboratory data evaluation panel (11)--the accepted standard for atmospheric modeling--adequately simulate observed past and present ozone loss and are thus likely to correctly predict future ozone loss....."

Still looks like we did the right things.

 

My read on it is "the jury is still out" - but I agree, until the research is replicated, it should not necessarily be assumed it is correct.

 

Interesting reading:

Climate Progress Blog Archive 2008’s top 10 climate stories

 

There could be yes. But not in this case. A case where these changes "should" have happened long ago.

Which one gets people motivated to actually do something? Which one has proven to motivate people to do nothing? The result of the former is that we can take our time and see how it goes. The result of the later is "you guys are screaming the sky is falling and you're wrong, so we don't really need to change anything."

So in the context of actionally getting things changed, what are the important differences you see? What I see is more arguing about why we should do things - than in action to make the changes.

I've been following them from inception. They have some good ideas, and some wildly impossible ones. If nothing else, they are truly DOING something, and not sitting around debating about why it needs to be done.

 

Scientists: Pace of Climate Change Exceeds Estimates - washingtonpost.com

 

FT.com / UK - Global warming closing in on 'critical threshold'

 

Biased, alarmist reporting, as noted here:

Dr. Fields is reported to have said
“We are basically looking now at a future climate that’s beyond anything we’ve considered seriously in climate model simulations”.
This claim, though, conflicts with real world observations!
For example, Climate Science has recently weblogged on the issue of global warming; see
Update On A Comparison Of Upper Ocean Heat Content Changes With The GISS Model Predictions.
Since mid-2003, there has been no upper ocean global average warming; an observation which is not consistent with the GISS model predictions over this time period.
The recent and current tropospheric temperature data (e.g. see Figure 7 in this RSS MSU data), also show that the global lower tropospheric temperatures today are no warmer than they were in 2002.

The recent global warming is less than the IPCC models predict, and, even more so, in disagreement with the news articles.

 

I would agree - global warming IS on a critical threshold...

If the real world data continue diverging from modeled predictions of dramatic warming for just a few more years, the whole concept of catastrophic global warming will be on the "threshold" of collapse.

 

Tim, are you a computer program sent to destroy us?

 

IMO we had better all hope that we are responsible for part of the planet's warming. If we aren't, then there is nothing we can do but build seawalls around our coasts. Just think about how many jobs building those will create, and how many taxes we will all have to pay for them!

 

Call me Terminator. Are you Sara Conner?