Example of hubris regarding climate change!

that was a great take. i especially appreciated how they defined it as an economic 'bubble'. and i thought our generation was the first. i suppose climate change is the same way. probably been happening to some extent since life first formed and continued to get worse as populations grew.

 

The climate has been changing since the world has existed The great migrations of early man had to do with climate change.

Local man made climate change has been written about for at least 2,000 years when the greeks were writing about draining swamps and clearing forests changing local temperatures. It is likely this was known much earlier, but we simply don't have the books anymore.

Easter Island is an old example of man destroying his ecosystem by chopping down most of the trees. This resulted in huge depopulation, as boats were difficult to build, so fish became more scarce as a food source.

When people talk about climate change solutions like biofuels, they often ignore the climate change accelerators like deforestation and land and water pollution.

 

There is no unimaginable scale, unless you ignore our mythology. The flood story and the story of atlantis talk about extremely fast time scales. The difference between these stories and the current ones is we consider the older stories myth and/or religion where god or gods punish man for how he acts. The new climate change mythology is that nature punishes man for the way he acts. We are just changing explanations from the divine to science but the stories remain the same.

There is scientific evidence of great floods. I suppose its comforting to some to believe that man caused them by their actions and thus we bear the mythologies and/or religious explanation.

Certainly we have had high priests blaming hurricanes on evil people -
Hurricane Katrina as divine retribution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Are hurricanes hitting New York in October a sure sign of global warming? | SciGuy | a Chron.com blog

But this is just more of the religion.

Finally, to get out of the religious theme, we could turn to science instead.

Waters are rising
This has precedent
Man is contributing to the rise.

 

Well yes, mankind is emitting more ghg than ever before.

The net impact on climate change in the past by deforestation and agricultural practices may have been much greater than today. The dust bowl mentioned in the OP is a good example. I have not seen the burns documentary, but I have read about the issues. Ground cover was removed and habitats destroyed. This created a regional warming and large changes in precipitation patterns. The Chinese 3 gorges dam has a huge negative environmental impact while insignificantly reducing ghg production.

Its all on how you look at it. Many solutions to reducing ghg will have no net effect on climate change. It will have a large effect on bank accounts.

There is definitely progress that can be made, but the myth makers don't seem to be proposing these, only large scale government programs.

Vehicle electrification can have a major impact in the long run, but the ghg focused often look at short term production and want fewer cars

algea and celuthistic alcohol could have a a large impact, but the government seem to focus on corn, soybeans, and canola. Things that are unlikely to reduce ghg, but are likely to increase the cost of food and help deforest the planet.

carbon sequestration on igcc plants could greatly reduce ghg, but oponents to using coal want to slow research.

The european cap and trade system somehow has recently reduced ghg percentage less than inexpensive natural gas has in america. The big rise in emission is coming from china, yet the european solutions will not help there at all.

Its not that people don't see the problem. Its that many fight against the proposed solution. Some legitimately some to increase their own profits. This is much like the mythology of atlantis, where the greed of the green politically connected companies and the greed of the energy companies make sure the the logical solutions are missed.

 

Let us look at why sandy was more expensive than say the 1938 hurricane. The 1938 hurricane did cause more deaths and injury.
1) There are many more people that have built in harms way thinking that another hurricane will not hit again, since its been so long. PBS news hour interviewed some people that were alive during that last big one, but had no concept of rare weather events.

2) Cheap compared to risk government insurance encourages people to build and live in harms way.

3) Sea level is higher than 100 years ago, but burms, like the one that failed in NJ and Sea walls have not been built to protect all this new development.

4) Chance and other factors we do not understand provides the timing. Huricanes like Sandy along with Katrina were expected and predicted. Only a fool would think the 1938 new england huricane would be the last big one to hit the north east.

Which means yes more expensive storms will occur. Would you call all that development in harms way hubris I fully expect that the next IPCC report will include the more recent research that warming moves where strong hurricanes occur, but will not likely create more of them. I will be quite happy if the report does not include the non-peer reviewed insurance company take that warming is making more storms.

Now let us look at the solution proposed by the EU cap and trade off carbon emissions It has been in place for years and did not prevent sandy. The US has reduced ghg faster than the congressional cap and trade bill called for, and still sandy occurred. Was there a correlation in reduction of ghg in the US and the hurricane. No that would be silly.

The question is what does actually reduce the effects of climate change. Some pretty common sense things like expensive insurance for folks in harms way, and building up of marshlands, burms, levy's and sea walls.

Removing grandfathering from all power plants would reduce ghg gasses in the US much faster than any congressional cap and trade. Removing governmental red tape to building wind turbines and grid improvements also would help.

I don't think we can afford the hit the economy would have taken to the congressional cap and trade. It was a major give away to coal utilities and the nuclear industry while doing little to actually reduce ghg.

Now the economy would be strengthened by a cap and trade bill that removes the loopholes and give always to the corporate bribers of congress. Byrd one of the biggest road blocks to real reform is now dead, but McConnell is still hugely powerful. An oil tax, along with regulation reform could speed ghg in the US. Global ghg are still likely to rise even with strong US action.

 

It is also not at all what I said.

What I did say is that the EU cap and trade, as well as the bill approved by congress but not enacted into law would/will do little to effect climate change. They are heavily flawed instruments. The promise of both is some magic happens in the future. That does not mean that good measure can not be taken, only these don't make much sense.

The problems with both congressional and EU cap and trade have been heavily documented. Both are political systems set to reward certain groups. A cap and trade that does not try to be fair - to the most connected bidder - but actually set to reduce ghg may help.

Ah, but one must also look and see that under the EUs cap and trade significant ghg emissions will still occur. They have been shifting from germany to eastern europe, and china, but the bill locks in a certain amount of increased ghg in the atmosphere.

I reject this mann garbage that its the fastest ever. How do we know. Lots of radical climate change in the ice cores. The last interglacial had much higher water levels. What is the point of continuously repeating crap that doesn't really have a scientific basis. How about the fastest in the last couple thousand years. Ever is a long time.

The ice caps are going to continue melting if we produce current ghg or 80% less. That seems to follow the scientific facts. We don't know what stopped them in the past. If we reduce emissions it may slow down the melting. I doubt anything man can do with stop them. So are you with me to reject the political give aways and enact legislation that actually does something. Or do you like the faux cap and tax plan that likely will just transfer wealth.

Switching to natural gas and building wind turbines is much more productive than passing a very flawed give away to duke and shell incorporated in the government graft system.

The EU pats themselves on the back and feels smug, but not much has been done.

Cap and trade without wealth transfer to those that congress favors would be great. I mentioned a number of significant things we can do. I find it bad to blindly follow the politicians to help the folks that line their pockets. When will the democratic leaders in congress just say no to their polluting contributors and remove grandfathering.

Why give duke and tva money in cap and trade. Shouldn't the polluter pay?

 

Theres Hansen and Trenberth.Other than them, I doubt you can find more than a hand full of Climate scientists who would completely disregard the data.
Hurricane activity has not increased, its decreased.
If you want to blame hurricane inactivity on global warming ,then at least youd be factual.

 

As regards to Trenbleth, he does not believe you actually need any scientific basis for blaming anything on warming. He has published papers saying if you can't prove it is not warming it must be warming. In 2004 when he claimed that hurricane frequency rise was caused by global warming, he had published no papers on hurricanes, nor is there any evidence he had done any scientific research at all before claiming causation.
Landsea, the IPCC & the Union of Concerned Scientists « NoFrakkingConsensus
At the time people claimed the IPCC would never put someone unqualified in charge of a section. We saw with the Himalayan fiasco, that Trenberth putting himself in charge of the section and the news conference was pretty much business as usual in IPCC climate politics. Politics comes before the science. I hope the next report gets more on track.

We do have peer reviewed research saying hurricane storm surges will cause more monetary damage in the future. The two keys are there is more expensive stuff for them to hit, and sea level is higher than it has been in the past.

 

Hansens paper is "pal reviewed" junk science.He used a cherry picked time period of low weather activity to contrast todays "extreme " weather.
Just blatent BS and the media eats it up.
As for sea level.
Seas have risen 125 meters during our cozy interglacial period over the past 18,000 years.
Sea level rise has lessened over the past 100 years,NOT accelerated.
Seas have risen, just not due to AGW.

 

I am not sure what Hansen paper you are referring to in this post.

There is broad scientific consensus that human generated ghg contributes to rising sea levels. I am not saying that sea levels would not be rising without human generated ghg, but they are rising faster because of human generated ghg and its effect on solar radiation. Sea level changes need to be looked in in broad strokes. If something is low lying like Galveston, TX or NYC, then higher levels definitely make damage from a major storm worse.

 

If the seas have risen for the past 15000 years at a faster rate than today,how much of that rise can be attributed to man?15000 years ago the seas rose
14 mm a year.
If the rise has been 2 mm for each of the past 100 years ,how can a 2mm rise today be attributed to man?While in 1890 it was a 2mm rise occurring naturally?
Attribution to AGW has to be so miniscule it cant be measured,only imagined.

 

Here is the imagined AGW sea level rise.
Starting last year 0.3 mm/year will be added to sea level data to compensate for "isostatic" land rise.
What is glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA), and why do you correct for it? | CU Sea Level Research Group

 

While there are differences of opinion on how much aghg contriburte, the some mechanisms are understood

ghg warm the planet unevenly, more at the poles, causing an acceleation of ice melt.

Ghg also warm the oceans, increasing thermal expansion and ice melt from bellow.

precipitation over land and ice sheets has natural variability leading to variable sea level rise

What is not well understood is ice sheet dynamics and how ghg will accelerate these.
Future Climate Change | Climate Change | US EPA

As you can see from the above graph, different levels of ghg should contribute to different levels of sea level rise. Taking a slightly pessimistic estimate, we get these rises

 

Just to inject some hurricane frequency science into this discussion - here is Landsea's noaa page about strong huricanes not increasing in the US. Please read it with an open mind. If the IPCC really has reformed, they will throw out the non-peer reviewed speculation they based the last report on, and include only the real peer reviewed papers.

http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/gw_hurricanes/index.html