Global Warming: loading the extreme weather dice

Actually the public is onboard with the scientists. It is the political leaders who are financed by various special interests that keep us from addressing the problem.

If by extreme weather events you mean snow storms, hurricanes and tornados, they would be wrong most of the time as the IPCC reports. If by extreme weather you mean rising temperatures, rising sea levels and melting ice caps and glaciers, those are the extreme weather events linked to global warming.

It is best to stick to the science that is frightening enough vs. giving the climate deniers a talking point by making non-scientific claims that global warming is responsible for tornadoes and such.

 

I'll not participate in FUD to convince the electorate that AGW is real and very dangerous, but I don't feel any particular need to correct them that they got the specifics of extreme weather events wrong.

As of now, the best evidence of AGW related extreme weather is flooding of coastal areas from sea rise;
the next best evidence is extreme precipitation events and drought.
Between the three, linking "Extreme weather" with AGW is quite OK.

The majority of the US electorate DOES NOT accept that AGW is real, let alone a danger that requires action yesterday. I wish you were right, but the non-partisan polls say otherwise.

 

The smarter skeptics (as opposed to the idiotic denialists) are still hoping that the Earth has a self-regulating mechanism that will establish climate change equilibrium despite ongoing additions of CO2 to the atmosphere.

Fwiw, I would not be surprised if they turn out to be right, although a large swatch of humanity is not going to like the setpoint. From my POV, most of humanity is either ignorant (AGW what ? ) or arrogant (don't worry, future generations can deal with it.)

I think the much closer truth is that 90+% of humanity lives in a precarious ecological niche, and civilization ignores AGW at it's peril.

 

The earth (by mineral weathering, mostly) is perfectly capable of pulling down CO2 from whatever fossil-fueled heights we send it to. The bad news is that 1000's to 100,000's years are required. Biology (generally speaking) will hum right along in the interim as is has before.

The only problem is that we humans depend upon particular kinds of biology working in very particular ways. If it can continue to do so during the anthropogenic carbon spike, great. If it changes too much during that time, people in the future will surely wish that people of the present had not made that spike so large.

Extreme weather (tails of the distribution) are part of that. As are the means of the distributions (climate). Change any of those, and...well, we'll just have to see how it goes.

There was a great study from Taiwan a few years ago. Strong hurricanes (taifeng) transfer a lot of plant and mineral matter to the oceans. This removes CO2 from the atmosphere, on balance. They did not claim any connection between high CO2 and stronger storms, but if such exists, it constitutes negative feedback overall. Sort of a Gaia thing. There may be many others like that, not yet recognized.

Missing feedbacks (positive and negative) limit modeling accuracy. We can make many different CO2 projections into the future, but we really don't know how they will turn out for human occupancy. I hate to diss the entire effort, but the only thing we know for sure is that CO2 levels about like current ones work out well for global agriculture.

If it works well, maybe not a good idea to change it.

 

Your poll asks about global warming; I said AGW. You and I know it is the same thing, but the electorate does not.

 

I read Doug's post to obliquely say that we are rolling the dice wrt widespread famine as climate change progresses.

 

AGU says CO2 is plant food | Watts Up With That?

 

Lots of CO2 is of no use if the plant can't photosynthesis it. Which happens IIRC around 105°F.

 

You and that Watts fool may not have grasped the larger picture: a lot more happens with climate change than just CO2 increase. Think drought, flooding, invasive micro for a start.

 

Not my poll, Gallup poll showing substantial and continuing majority of US electorate are very concerned over global warming.

What was interesting is the peaks and valleys of the concern and that it never drops below 50% which is good. It means there is a solid political base for US dealing with global warming problems even if the corrupt political system that gives more weight to special interest money than US national interest is able to thwart the will of the people.

 

Enough with the "watts up" and the Piers Corbyn crackpot stuff!

Icarus

 

Ask the electorate how much money per capita they think should be spent, commensurate with their concern and their estimation of mankind's ability to alter the course of climate change.

Look at this poll:
It was taken shortly after Hurricane Sandy. 68% of those polled thought climate change was a serious problem, while 41% thought climate change was caused by humans. That is as good as it gets, for now.

 

Actually the CO2science (Idsos') website links to a lot of CO2 physiology research. Not quite so assiduous about studies stressing colimitation by water and nutrients, but you must 'manage your expectations' about what affinity websites can supply. It is a fine source of lit, and it is tiatally up to you whether you buy the interpretations also freely supplied.

Crops are actually very difficult to assess in this regard, because there have been simultaneous changes in varieties planted, fertilizer applications, and water supply. It seems not easy to disentangle all that.

Brand-new paper on arid-lands productivity increases tracking CO2

Elevated carbon dioxide making arid regions greener

That aspect is reasonably definitive. Desert plants hate having their stomates open and a bit more CO2 allows them to shut the doors earlier each day.

Actually, the SE Asian tropics have a strong dry season, and even when soils are wet, the water-supply system to the leaves gets maxed out. Some trees here seem to take the afternoon off, photosynthetically speaking. This is what the physiologists and 'eddy tower' people tell me, but it is not clear that they have worked out changes through time that may correlate with CO.

If your particular crop field has a drought, there is simply no amount of CO2 you can supply that would save the yield. That is a matter of concern, and I hope I have not been too coy about saying so.

 

First came "Global Warming" then when it refused to warm it became "Climate Change" but that just didn't have the "zing" or sense of urgency to spend hundreds of billions of dollars upon. Now the hoax has been renamed once again to "Severe Weather" hoping to regen the hype and the hope of more $$$. But is the weather actually getting worse? Nope, but the occurrence of the term "Severe Weather" sure is getting "worse" LoL!

 

Well, that and insurance losses.

North America most affected by increase in weather-related natural catastrophes | Munich Re

But yeah, I bet this weather isn't worse for the oil companies. They're making a ton of money.

 

Boy it must just be an amazing experience to be you TREB!

Icarus

 

^ My "Thread by Thread" stalker, rarely responds to the point just "ad hominem" "ad nauseium!" LoL!