Miami

why retweet when the guv keeps paying the big bucks?

 

New flood maps for Miami and a much wider area:

Increasing flood risk: '100-year' floods will happen every 1 to 30 years, according to new flood maps -- ScienceDaily

 

might be a good thing. every 100 years, we get too complacent

 

If only we had all been driving Prii 20,000 years ago. We could have kept earth in the cyclical Glacial Period and prevented 450 feet of sea level rise and the coastline of Florida from retreating. But then much of North America would be uninhabitable, no Great Lakes, no Niagra Falls, no New York city. Paleoclimatology is so confusing.

 

If someone was burning fossil fuels 20k years ago, that ice would have melted faster.

 

Technically correct, just like lighting one match causes climate change.

 

It melted without much human presence at all. It was destined to melt regardless, just as it had done repeatedly numerous time before.

But we would have had Lake Bonneville, Lake Missoula, and plenty of other natural features not present today. Woolly mammoths, saber tooth tigers, etc.

Absent the current massive human presence, it appears likely that we would be turning very slowly into a new ice age right now. But instead, it seems that we have yanked the steering wheel very sharply the other way.

 

But Bernie told me that 97% of scientists say that humans are a primary cause of climate change.

"Primary"

• adj.
  First or highest in rank or importance; principal. synonym: chief.

• adj.
  Occurring first in time or sequence; earliest.

Senator Bernie Sanders on the 97% expert consensus on human-caused global warming | C-SPAN.org

 

Now, yes. The apparent change is moving much much faster, and in the opposite direction of, what nature would be doing on its normal cycle.

It seems that the next normally scheduled ice age, which which would be about a hundred millennia in the making, has been cancelled. With a vengeance. It is much too early to estimate the overshoot.

 

Somebody said the next Glacial Period is cancelled? Enlighten me with facts.

 

I'm not going to take on a Gish Gallop, so you'll have to read up for yourself.

 

The last time the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was climbing this fast, the source was a lava field the size of Poland. If the CO2 source today isn't man, then what is it?

 

For those expressing interest, it's certainly worth the effort to become aware of research into future glaciations.

Will There Be Another Ice Age? - Science Friday

 

I'm suspicious when I see "CO2 concentrations—the primary driver of climate change" in the article. Stated as if it's a fact.

 

There have been times and time scales where CO2 concentrations were not primary factor. If this is a topic of interest for you and 'Science Friday' does not satisfy, you could move up a notch:

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature16494
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature18452

 

Tochatihu, so do you believe CO2 is the highest rank of importance in climate change? Bigger than earth surface factors, oceanic factors, atmospheric factors, extraterrestrial factors?

Those factors, of course, were big enough to cause huge swings in global climate, with multiple ice ages, hot periods, glacial periods, interglacial periods. All without any influence from humans. But now, humans have added 25% more CO2 to the atmosphere, so CO2 becomes more important than all of the other huge factors that have caused climate change over billions of years?

 

No doubt that humans have increased CO2 in the atmosphere. The debate becomes the importance of CO2, whether or not it is a driving climate factor or a result of a hotter climate. And its relative importance to other established drivers of climate change.

 

my advice is to err on the side of caution

 

You are a bit behind. It is now up 30% at the Mauna Loa measuring station since it began operation in 1958. It is up almost 50% since the pre-Industrial era. And it is up more than 100% since that ice coverage map you copied at post #24.

Conditions billions of years ago aren't relevant now. 'Life' then was vastly different, extremely simple, and hadn't yet much modified the planet. The vast bulk of life that we can see around us could not survive in the conditions back then.

 

do you believe@36. This is not the verb I would use. I count. For any time period for which data are available, I count infrared trapping by CO2 (and its changes if it is changing). I count solar energy source (and its changes if it is changing). Changes in atmospheric aerosol 'shading' are not well known but they are relatively small (absent large volcanoes). Changes in cloud cover are complicated because clouds at different heights can either warm or cool.

Largest and most difficult to count changes are oceanic heat content. Most of the net heating caused by infrared trapping of CO2 increase from 280 to >410 ppm is in ocean water. But high accuracy there requires more thermometers than are currently employed. Moderate accuracy, we have.

Earth ocean is neither a vast unknown, nor is it accurately described by current global models. They do not do 'El Nino' or other similar oscillations without being given a kick, and that does not speak well of them.

On the other hand, we know very well that oceans previously flatted air-temperature increases about every 60 years, and most recently they do not. In brief, there is a great need to understand oceans better, or we won't understand climate dynamics better.

I accept validity of spectroscopy and Beer's Law based on overwhelming evidence. I don't 'believe' them. I further have good fortune to have and use a Licor 840 (made with pride in Lincoln Nebraska). Not only can you see invisible things (CO2 absorption of infrared) you can cuont it very accurately. Long ago this would have been a matter of magic, witchcraft or belief.

Perhaps for some it still is, but share my optimism that reading and reasoning are available to all.