Climate Change, 'Greenhouse' effects, Environment, etc part III

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Message 1269875 - Posted: 10 Aug 2012, 6:31:39 UTC - in response to Message 1269466.  

What the hell is a FUD?


Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.


Thank you. I think some of these forums need a glossary:)

How about PFUD....Polished Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt
Hey, James; that'll put a gloss on it..ha-ha.

The Kite Fliers

--------------------
Kite fliers: An imaginary club of solo members, those who don't yet
belong to a formal team so "fly their own kites" - as the saying goes.
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Message 1276661 - Posted: 28 Aug 2012, 12:43:40 UTC

... And so, just as in a Greek Tragedy, we 'watch the river flood':


Arctic sea ice reaches record low

The Arctic has lost more sea ice this year than at any time since satellite records began in 1979, Nasa says.

Scientists involved in the calculations say it is part of a fundamental change.

What is more, sea ice normally reaches its low point in September so it is thought likely that this year's melt will continue...

...this year's ice retreat was caused by previous warm years reducing the amount of perennial ice - which is more resistant to melting. It's created a self-reinforcing trend. ...

... "A number of scientists who have actually been working with sea ice measurement had predicted some years ago that the retreat would accelerate and that the summer Arctic would become ice-free by 2015 or 2016.

"I was one of those scientists - and of course bore my share of ridicule for daring to make such an alarmist prediction."

But Prof Wadhams said the prediction was now coming true, and the ice had become so thin that it would inevitably disappear. ...



All as predicted with painful accuracy.

We are long long overdue to remove all subsidies to the continued fossil fuels pollution.

We are also long overdue to counter the crass fug of the fossil fuels Marketing FUD.


This is our only one world,
Martin

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Message 1276663 - Posted: 28 Aug 2012, 12:50:37 UTC - in response to Message 1276661.  
Last modified: 28 Aug 2012, 12:53:05 UTC

And for those fond of fun fiction, here's a very topical adventure story that includes a small glimpse of some of the politics involved, woven around action on the ground and on the seas:


Clive Cussler and Dirk Cussler
Arctic Drift: The Dirk Pitt Adventures (Amazon)



Note the TWO authors... And both intriguingly have their namesake parts in the fictional story...

The book starts with a seemingly disjoint series of episodes from the 1850's nautical explorations for the fabled Northwest Passage through to today. Then a modern day far-flung treasure hunt ensues to race to piece together a surprising jigsaw...

A very good mix of adventure and intrigue, that includes plausible current events, that together make for compulsive reading.

There's not as much of the "action adventure" as for a purely "Clive Cussler" book (or he's getting older), which adds a new better grounding for the lead characters...


Believable?...

All on our only world,
Martin
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Message 1279594 - Posted: 3 Sep 2012, 10:39:11 UTC
Last modified: 3 Sep 2012, 10:40:04 UTC

Considering the ecology throughout the oceans and onto land:


'Unprecedented threat' for UK trees from pests

... "If you have got a changing environment, you cannot expect the communities and assemblages of species of past environments to survive."



That sounds like the next Clive Cussler / Dirk Cussler fiction novel. Except. That is very real and happening now on our only planet.

What does it matter that Human industrial pollution is directly responsible for 100% or 'perhaps' just 70% of those effects? We still control the majority effect that can turn the disaster around.

Industrial politics be damned?


All change? At what cost and to who? Who pays?...

All on our only planet,
Martin
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Message 1282644 - Posted: 11 Sep 2012, 14:35:30 UTC

There's lots in the news at the moment about our destruction of our climate and some ever more visible impacts in consequence...

This is one simple article where there is a particularly apt comment:


UK ice boffin: 'Arctic melt equivalent to 20 years of CO2

Older, more stable ice melting as well

A prominent British Arctic scientist and researcher says that the continued and accelerated melting of the polar sea-ice cap is not only a result of climate change, but is also a massive contributor to it.

To explain in an overly simplistic nutshell, sea ice is reflective, bouncing solar energy back into space. When it melts, the darker open sea absorbs more of that energy, increasing ocean temperatures.

How much more? According to Professor Peter Wadhams of the University of Cambridge's Polar Ocean Physics Group, that increased absorption has an effect that's "the equivalent of about 20 years of additional CO2 being added by man." ...



Climate-change sceptics

It still baffles me how anyone with a brain could believe something like 97% of scientists are engaged in a mega-conspiracy to defraud the public to gain research grants, and refuse to even CONSIDER the possibility that the people who make Billions selling oil and gas could be the ones lying to try to protect their profits.

Maybe that's not the case, maybe all the climate-change sceptics are just people paid to sow doubt...but it does seem that there's plenty of people around utterly convinced that oil barons are decent, honest people, and it's the climate scientists who are the greedy, money-grabbing liars. Very weird.




Looks like we've tripped one of what various 'Denialist Skeptics' claim are non-existent positive feedback tipping points. We're not doomed yet, but this makes things a LOT more expensive...


All in our only one (corrupt?) world,
Martin


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Message 1282913 - Posted: 12 Sep 2012, 16:52:44 UTC

I thought this might be of interest to the topic of Climate change and our effect on it as a human race:

It's all a giant conspiracy! (To some readers of climate blogs)

The resistance to the findings of climate scientists can be a bit difficult to understand. Most evidence points to a human role in driving climate change, and a large majority of scientists are convinced by that evidence. Do people think that the scientific community is making things up?

According to a study that has been accepted (but not yet published) by Psychological Science, the answer is yes, at least for some of those who frequent climate blogs. The study finds, as other studies have, that a strong free-market ideology correlates with a lower acceptance of climate change. But it also finds that, among readers of popular climate blogs, a tendency toward conspiracy theories plays a role in fostering doubt of the scientific community.

Because blogs have become a focal point for the discussion of climate change, the authors decided to recruit their study population through them. The authors succeeded in having links to their survey posted by eight blogs that take a generally pro-science slant. Attempts to get it posted at climate skeptics blogs failed (although that's a topic that has since sparked its own controversy, as we'll get to later). Over 1,300 people completed the survey.

A series of questions in it assayed a tendency toward favoring a laissez-faire, free-market economy. Another set handled basic climate literacy, while a third set asked about a variety of conspiracy theories. These ranged from checking for fears of global government to the Moon landings being faked, with questions about Area 51 and 9/11 being an inside job interspersed. The authors figured out which of these questions showed the greatest variation among those filling out the surveys, and used them to create aggregate scores for further analysis.

As expected from other studies, "endorsement of free markets was highly predictive of rejection of climate science." But, more weakly, it also predicted a rejection of other scientific propositions.

But completely independently, so did a tendency toward believing conspiracy theories. Why would this be? "If an overwhelming scientific consensus cannot be accepted as the result of researchers independently converging on the same evidence-based view, then its very existence calls for an alternative explanation," the authors argue, "a function readily fulfilled by the ideation of a complex and secretive conspiracy among researchers." And, since conspiracy theories tend to be equally appealing to those who subscribe to them, that means rejection of climate change groups with all sorts of oddities—faked Moon landings, the belief that the FBI killed Martin Luther King, Jr., and so forth.

Both a laissez-faire attitude and conspiracy tendencies separately predicted the rejection of a variety of other scientific findings, like the fact that HIV causes AIDS, or smoking causes cancer.

It's important to note (as the authors themselves do) that this is not a general cross-section of society. These people read climate blogs and, based on their participation in this study, are willing to share their thoughts on this and other matters.

We also talked to Yale's Dan Kahan, who studies how culture influences our willingness to accept scientific information. He emphasized that the study looked at the impact of two different things: tendencies toward thinking in conspiratorial terms, and a cultural identity that included favoring free markets. As far as the latter group, the results were consistent with previous research, which showed the importance of their cultural leanings. "Members of the public who are culturally predisposed to be doubtful about climate change are just as science literate as ones who are culturally predisposed to accept evidence of climate change," Kahan said.

But cultural biases don't make these individuals as unreliable as conspiracy theorists. "Neither cultural subpopulation is perfectly well-informed, obviously, but I suspect each is a much more reliable source of information than people who dispute whether human beings walked on the Moon," Kahan told Ars.

What to make of the fact that, in this survey, the free-market fans were a bit more prone to doubt other well-established scientific findings? The simplest explanation is that the population of blog-readers isn't completely representative of the larger cultural group, which Kahan and others have found are scientifically literate.

If the study's conclusions suggested that the climate-blog-frequenting community might be a bit loose in its thinking, said community did not take it well. The people who run various self-labelled skeptic sites talked among themselves, and nobody could recall being invited to participate by hosting a link to the survey. This quickly fostered its own conspiracy theory: no invitations had been sent. Freedom of Information Act requests were supposedly filed, and questions of whether fraud might be involved were mooted.

The lead author in question, Stephan Lewandowsky of the University of Western Australia, had to wait while his University's Human Research Ethics Committee determined whether it was appropriate for him to release the names of the people he contacted (while he was waiting, one of the recipients of the original invitation e-mail located it). The University has since given him the go ahead, and Lewandowsky has now identified the remaining four, indicating that at least two of them had replied to the initial invitation.

Lewandowsky doesn't assume malice on the part of the people who couldn't remember or find their invitations—he ascribes it to human error—though he's asked for an apology from those who made what appear to be unfounded accusations against him.


Reposted without permission from ArsTechnica.com.
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Message 1287260 - Posted: 24 Sep 2012, 0:14:54 UTC

Could the lack of concern about climate change in the US be a reflection of the amount of news coverage.

Even as evidence for climate change mounts and the consequences of the phenomenon become more severe, the amount of climate coverage on broadcast networks has plummeted. According to a stunning analysis by Media Matters, the Sunday morning current affairs shows averaged about one hour each on climate change in 2009, compared to averaging 21 minutes apiece in 2010 and only 9 minutes per program in 2011. In 2011, Fox News Sunday covered climate change the most (just under an hour), "but much of the coverage promoted the 'Climategate' controversy and downplayed the threat of climate change," reports Media Matters.

At the other end of the spectrum, CBS had the least climate change coverage, devoting four minutes to the topic in three years. Altogether, in 2011, ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox spent twice as much time discussing Donald Trump's "will he, won't he" run for president rather than climate change. In fact, NBC's Meet the Press devoted 23 minutes to Trump that year – but not a single minute to climate change


From America's miasma of misinformation on climate change
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Message 1295764 - Posted: 15 Oct 2012, 22:00:23 UTC

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2217286/Global-warming-stopped-16-years-ago-reveals-Met-Office-report-quietly-released--chart-prove-it.html

Hmm...
https://youtu.be/iY57ErBkFFE

#Texit

Don't blame me, I voted for Johnson(L) in 2016.

Truth is dangerous... especially when it challenges those in power.
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Message 1301047 - Posted: 1 Nov 2012, 18:24:50 UTC

Sandy the storm is connecting the dots for lots of people.
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Message 1301071 - Posted: 1 Nov 2012, 19:39:07 UTC - in response to Message 1301047.  
Last modified: 1 Nov 2012, 19:40:33 UTC

Sandy the storm is connecting the dots for lots of people.

The people say 1 thing and the science another ...
Sandy soaked the East Coast -- but is global warming to blame?

New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Mayor Mike Bloomberg told the country in no uncertain terms on Tuesday that devastating superstorm Sandy was clear proof of climate change.

'Anyone who says there's not a dramatic change in weather patterns, I think is denying reality,” Cuomo said in a press conference. "What is clear is that the storms that we've experienced in the last year or so, around this country and around the world, are much more severe than before," Bloomberg agreed.

But scientists say the evidence is far less concrete than the politicians appear to believe.

Martin Hoerling, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said Sandy wasn’t boosted by global warming -- the storm merely revealed natural forces at work.


It reminds me of saying that we must have angered the rain god and we need to sacrifice virgins to him!
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Message 1301219 - Posted: 2 Nov 2012, 10:09:38 UTC - in response to Message 1301071.  

Dang it where is my Carpet cleaner.
Pluto will always be a planet to me.

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Not to late to order an Anni Shirt
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Message 1301255 - Posted: 2 Nov 2012, 13:33:22 UTC - in response to Message 1301071.  
Last modified: 2 Nov 2012, 13:35:04 UTC

Sandy the storm is connecting the dots for lots of people.

The people say 1 thing and the science another ...

The science remains consistent. Shame the sponsored media FUD and sensationalism continues.


Sandy soaked the East Coast -- but is global warming to blame?

New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Mayor Mike Bloomberg told the country in no uncertain terms on Tuesday that devastating superstorm Sandy was clear proof of climate change.

'Anyone who says there's not a dramatic change in weather patterns, I think is denying reality,” Cuomo said in a press conference. "What is clear is that the storms that we've experienced in the last year or so, around this country and around the world, are much more severe than before," Bloomberg agreed.

But scientists say the evidence is far less concrete than the politicians appear to believe.

Martin Hoerling, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said Sandy wasn’t boosted by global warming -- the storm merely revealed natural forces at work.


It reminds me of saying that we must have angered the rain god and we need to sacrifice virgins to him!

Turn up the gas and indeed your pan of water boils more vigorously and generates more steam more quickly. You then get more condensation more quickly on your kitchen ceiling that then rains down upon you...


More violent storms and more violent hurricanes (and a greater proportion of storms becoming hurricanes) have long been predicted as one of the consequences of Global Warming/Heating. You might not necessarily get more of them, but the one's you do get have a greater tendency of being ever more violent.

Even just a small rise in average temperatures mean you get much more evaporation and 'more energy' let loose in the atmosphere and weather systems.

Unfortunately, the story remains the same.


All on our only planet,
Martin
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Message 1301257 - Posted: 2 Nov 2012, 13:42:35 UTC - in response to Message 1301255.  

At least we know you believe yourself to be spreading FUD. Say the media story on Sandy is FUD, deny a NOAA scientist and spread the same FUD yourself. Good job Martin. Good Job!

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Message 1301292 - Posted: 2 Nov 2012, 15:59:39 UTC
Last modified: 2 Nov 2012, 16:04:57 UTC

To an extent I can understand that, as the turbines (due to their size) are a massive blot despoiling the landscape. But, sticking with wind power, then the answer is off shore. Also, turbine construction, compared to the cost per KW output of gas and coal, is very expensive and would not happen but for the UK subsidy on our power bills towards the larger turbine farms.

I think a number of other options should be driven as hard as wind as a renewable -

1. Tidal, with 3 options to choose. First: Wave power, after all the UK has the best open shores (West coast in particular) in the world; Second:Tidal power from the rise and fall of the tide. The UK has the second highest tidal rise and fall after Newfoundland, and capturing this would provide serious capacity through low speed reversible turbines; finally, Third:Capturing the power from tidal races a number of which exist in the Irish Sea. This would be via an underwater version of the larger land/off shore wind turbines.

2. Tidal from the rise and fall (via hydro power) by damming across estuaries, like the Wales to Devon part where the Severn Bore runs.

Finally, to encourage micro power generation from individual homes, which is currently dominated by solar voltaic. These installations, despite the large drop in panel costs, are still expensive @ £12,000 to £14,000 for a 4KW installation.

Why not utilise innovative, and much more efficient micro wind generation, like Power Collective's Ridge Blade capping tile roof mounted wind system (Power Collective and Ridge Blade). This system is has more than 3 times the efficiency of the large wind turbines and costs between £8,000 to £10,000 for a 4KW install. It produces usable power for between 60 and 70 days per 100 days available, unlike the industrial wind turbines that produce usable power for between 25 and 30 days per 100 days available. Ridge Blade uses the natural aerofoil action of a pitched roof.
It's good to be back amongst friends and colleagues



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Message 1301349 - Posted: 2 Nov 2012, 18:17:24 UTC - in response to Message 1301071.  

It reminds me of saying that we must have angered the rain god and we need to sacrifice virgins to him!

We're stuffed. Where are you going to find a virgin these days ?

On a more serious note and with all due sympathy to those effected by "Sandy". If you build a city on a flood plain, you have to expect that YOU might be the one to be be effected by by the one in 1,000 year flood, if you build a home in a known bush fire area, you should be aware that YOU might be the one effected by the one in 100 year firestorm. If you live in a cyclone/hurricane prone area, YOU might be the one to be effected by a Yasi, Katrina, Tracy or Sandy. If the city you live in is located near a major fault, one day YOU might find your house shaken to rubble by an earthquake.

If you live in an area that is on the fringes of a natural disaster prone area, one day a "Big One" will cross into your area.

People memories are short, or they take a gamble that the disaster will not occur while they live in an area where there is a known risk. e.g. In the outer western suburbs of Sydney, Australia, if there is a flood of the same magnitude that occurred in 1955, over 100,000 people will have to be evacuated because the water will be over the roof of their house. In Brisbane (also in Oz), people paid exorbitant amounts of money for land "with a river frontage" either ignoring, or in ignorance of, the fact that in 1974 that patch of land was under 25 feet of water and in 2011 they paid the price.

People still buy houses located on the San Andreas fault. They just hope "The Big One" will not occur until they have moved on.

Just because you live in a big city doesn't mean you are immune to natural disasters. It's one of the immutable laws of nature. If there is a possibility of something happening, one day it will happen.

T.A.
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Message 1301364 - Posted: 2 Nov 2012, 18:43:56 UTC - in response to Message 1246905.  

Keep the windmills and solar panels going up. Tidal and wave energy can also be harnessed.

There is a backlash in the UK to onshore and offshore wind farms. The NIMBYS are in full cry.


There is a beauty to them as well. I have mental images of wind turbines that would be to me more beautiful, less obstructive, bird safer, and potentially more efficient. I am sure others have plans to put in place as well.

But some times, people just need to have a good cry. Buy them an ice cream when they are done. Are oil wells or nuke stacks really that much prettier?

We are at a point where energy capture is beyond everything else.
This will continue until we consume everything on this planet we can burn.
One day soon, the tipping point will come.\\

And on that day, there WILL be no tomorrow.

It is coming soon.........nothing to do with the tree huggers or harbringers of global warming. Just the usual climatic cycles that we, as casual bytanders have no say in.

He said it before, and he was correct.

Carlin........before he passed, rendered his opinion on the planet.\
The planet is fine, it's it's inhabitants that are fukayed.

Save the WHAT?
Well, kitties, we happen to risk being here for the next millenium or two.


"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

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Message 1301751 - Posted: 3 Nov 2012, 17:59:26 UTC - in response to Message 1295764.  

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2217286/Global-warming-stopped-16-years-ago-reveals-Met-Office-report-quietly-released--chart-prove-it.html

Hmm...

Daily mail doesn't understand long term trends. 16 years is not a sufficiently long data sample.

Even this rag of a so called Newspaper ends it's article with: 'So let’s be clear. Yes: global warming is real, and some of it at least has been caused by the CO2 emitted by fossil fuels. But the evidence is beginning to suggest that it may be happening much slower than the catastrophists have claimed"

I've always understood to the science to be agreed that climate change is real, happening and caused my humans. The only debate that there has been on on the science is whether it's going to be really bad, or really F**king bad. So when people say "climate science is not settled yet" they are correct because we still don't know how bad it's going to be and quickly it's going to happen. This is still not enough data to say which one it's going to be.

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Message 1301785 - Posted: 3 Nov 2012, 19:15:39 UTC - in response to Message 1301751.  
Last modified: 3 Nov 2012, 19:17:58 UTC

I've always understood to the science to be agreed that climate change is real, happening and caused my humans. The only debate that there has been on on the science is whether it's going to be really bad, or really F**king bad. So when people say "climate science is not settled yet" they are correct because we still don't know how bad it's going to be and quickly it's going to happen. This is still not enough data to say which one it's going to be.

The problem is Es that the "warmists" shot themselves in the foot early on by making such dire, and obviously inaccurate (but "headline grabbing") predictions as "Sea levels will rise by by 100 Metres" and "40% of the world's population will be dead by 2012" (I've posted links to these stories in previous versions of this thread) and obviously these predictions have not come true.

Add to this their fetish for wind and solar power, which are probably the most inefficient ways to generate bulk "Green Power" (the average output of a wind turbine or solar farm is around 35% of its rated capacity). Along with the predicted extinction of species that have been around for millions of years, conveniently ignoring that said species have survived both hotter and colder climate conditions in the past and therefore must have some method of coping.

It all became just too much for the average Joe. On one hand it overloaded their BS filters and secondly predictions such as "If the world went to zero emissions tomorrow it would take hundreds of years for the CO2 levels to drop back to "normal" (whatever that is) just introduced a feeling of "why bother, we're stuffed anyway".

Of course climate is changing, it is a dynamic system, it has never been static, temperatures, rainfall patterns and sea levels have always varied. Remember, even in historical times crops were being grown in what is now the Sahara desert and it was once possible to walk from England to France.

I don't see that it's really such a "big deal" and I don't think that anything humanity can do will have an effect anyway,

T.A.
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Message 1301795 - Posted: 3 Nov 2012, 19:44:46 UTC - in response to Message 1301785.  

+1
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Message 1301797 - Posted: 3 Nov 2012, 19:48:30 UTC - in response to Message 1301751.  

I've always understood to the science to be agreed that climate change is real, happening and caused my humans.

You should say "may be caused in part by humans" to be completely accurate.
The only debate that there has been on on the science is whether it's going to be really bad, or really F**king bad. So when people say "climate science is not settled yet" they are correct because we still don't know how bad it's going to be and quickly it's going to happen. This is still not enough data to say which one it's going to be.

Quite. Not enough data. And then there is the time scale. 16 years too short. Is 1000 years a better scale?

This is part of the FUD being spread by the FUDists. Whatever gets them press at the moment. They are worse than the race for the president. Total attention whores!

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Message boards : Politics : Climate Change, 'Greenhouse' effects, Environment, etc part III


 
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