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Is Global Warming becoming unstoppable?

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Carbon Dioxide Levels In Earth's Atmosphere Reach 'Highest In 800,000 Years'
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Mike Wood in NEWS


"The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be." So wrote hitchhiker, science fiction author, environmentalist and general genius Douglas Adams of the Earth's position in the universe.

Bear that in mind, then, as we tell you that the Earth has now passed a carbon threshold from which there is no return.


For the first time since records began, atmospheric carbon has exceeded 410 parts per million - which won't mean that much to you, but trust me, it's bad.

In fact, don't just trust me as climate scientist, Katharine Hayhoe, also tweeted: "As a scientist, what concerns me the most is what this continued rise actually means: that we are continuing full speed ahead with an unprecedented experiment with our planet, the only home we have."

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Credit: PA

410 parts per million is closer than ever to the level that scientists begin to classify as unsafe. "It's another milestone in the upward increase in CO2 over time," said Ralph Keeling, head of the CO2 programme at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

"It puts us closer to some targets we don't really want to get to, like getting over 450 or 500 ppm. That's pretty much dangerous territory."

The Earth's CO2 levels have been this high before, but only when sea levels were far higher. Back then, Antarctica didn't exist because the Earth was so warm, so you can imagine the potential for disaster that exists should we continue on the path that we're on.


The last time the Earth's CO2 levels were pushing 450-500 parts per million, it 'was sustained over long periods of time, whereas today the global CO2 concentration is increasing rapidly', according to a report co-authored by Hayhoe.

The huge increase in our current CO2 level dates back just 200 years - in fact, before the Industrial Revolution in the late 19th century, the level was just 280 parts per million.

If you're feeling terrible about this, then perhaps we can look again to the incomparable Douglas Adams. On the subject inevitable death, he wrote the following: "Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far.

"Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far, which given your current circumstances seems more likely, consider how lucky you are that it won't be troubling you much longer."

Featured Image Credit: PA
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Tisme said:
Humans started meddling in climate change when they started burning the bush 70k years plus ago for game and consequently deserts. When they started oak building sailing ship armadas. When imbeciles cleared the prairies for dust storms and tornadoes. When they built huge dams in China that buggered up the reliability of monsoons. When they sealed up the ozone hole over antarctica which caused it to warm up ever since.
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Okay, so if you want to say humans started interacting (meddling implies it was deliberate) with the climate 70k years ago, look at what was happening before that. 100,000 years ago there were massive natural fluctuations taking place, including the same old things like tremendous sea level changes, enough to create land bridges between Australia and PNG, UK and mainland Europe, etc. This isn't something which only happened recently, it isn't something which only happened after humans first started lighting fires or walking upright. It has been happening for billions of years.

Yes, absolutely, since the industrial revolution humans are obviously interacting with the climate significantly, but it's by means unprecedented in pretty much any respect (you point out that the CO2 levels are the highest in a period of thousands of years, less than one million. Climate change has been occurring for *billions* of years: skip straight past the millions and go to billions. We don't even need to go to a million years ago to get the last time CO2 was this high, and CO2 levels are the biggest thing the alarmists are squawking about. If it last happened less than a million years ago and the climate has been there doing its thing for billions of years, it's obviously not that significant and even in terms of the entire history. It has happened many, many, many, many times before.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting this means it doesn't matter or isn't a problem or we shouldn't be concerned or do anything, but if it was 'unstoppable', whatever it is you say can't be stopped would have happened countless times before, but obviously it's just part of the big cycle and we haven't thrown it outside of those limits. Far far from it. Even if we went far enough to wipe out most life on the planet and completely destroy the place, it wouldn't make any climate pattern unstoppable. This catastrophic type event has already happened a small number of times over the planet's history, and even that is not unstoppable; in terms of climate it can and has been something which comes back to the normal range of the fluctuations.

Now, you're probably going to accuse me of trying to dismiss massive catastrophe or say it's acceptable or some such nonsense I didn't actually say. I am not belittling catastrophe, it would be by definition catastrophic and we must do everything possible to ensure it doesn't happen. My point is that even that is not unstoppable. Even if it gets that extreme, it's not like the climate goes into some positive feedback loop and turns the world into a lifeless irradiated rock and nothing can stop that. As soon as whatever has caused the climate to become radically out of the normal range (we're still well within the normal range at the moment), whether it's an asteroid or human interference or massive tectonic activity or anything else, once that influence stops, the climate will return to normal. To get to a point where 'global warming' or any other climate change was actually unstoppable, that is, even if the unusual influence, in this case human land clearing and fossil fuel burning etc was removed, it would continue, you would need to go way beyond the point where humans could not live on this planet. So, without some sudden impact such as setting off all the world's nukes simultaneously (even that may not be enough to cause unstoppable climate change), we can't cause unstoppable climate change which will permanently take the planet outside its normal climate range.

Again, don't accuse me of saying things I'm not saying. The title of the thread asks if global warming is becoming unstoppable. All I am really saying here is that the answer is a very clear and obvious no. This doesn't mean I'm a 'climate denier' (sic) or saying there is no problem or that we shouldn't be concerned or anything of the sort. Just that if humans stopped pushing the climate in the direction they currently are, the climate would just continue on in the current range, and even if we pushed it well outside its normal range (which we haven't yet done, but possibly will, but even that won't be as extreme as what has happened before, because if it was we'd almost all have died before we got there and before the time most of us were dead we'd stop, even if just because most of us were dead so we couldn't keep doing it, and even that wouldn't be taking the planet to unprecedented levels), it would then return to the normal range.
 
I can see (maybe) how people can continue to dismiss global warming as serious. But now scientists using the most sophisticated tools ever created can map the undermining of glaciers over time, work out how much the glacier has thinned down, calculate how quickly the glacier is now moving (compared to only a couple of decades ago and present all this information as hard facts.

Not models. Not maths. Just reality.

And this reality has them all so concerned about a catastrophic near term collapse of the Thawaites glacier they have agreed to spend ungodly months on and under the glacier to get some certainty about the likelehood of such an event.

What are the stakes in this game ? The end of the world as we know it. The universal collapse of our current societies and world order.

Does that sound too alarmist ? Just check out the effects on the worlds cities with a 2 metre rise in sea levels. And remember that this would just be the beginning of a relentless increase in sea levels as more ice sheets become unstable.

How do you decide where to build new cities (sounds simple in a sentence doesn't it..) to house a few hundred million people when you have absolutely no idea when the new sea level will finally settle?

And yet these facts and the concerns they raise are treated with the same disregard that the last 10,000 papers on global warming have been given.

http://www.news.com.au/technology/e...s/news-story/2cd13d732b102365c9c708c4a223961f
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/18/climate/antarctica-ice-melt-climate-change.html
 
explod said:
Forget the models...
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If only I could! The esteemed climate cardinals, keep reminding me of their prophetic powers and decrying as heretics those daring to turn their eyes aside.
...
With a watery bottom it's all just going to slide off and a 2 or 3 metre sea level rise will occur very quickly from there.
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So I take it that boat will need to be built, after all!
Better let others know. (Basilio seemed to think that it was "game over" inside the decade, for most of the human populace.)
 
If only the alarmists would change their ways like we "deniers" have.....
 
luutzu said:
Deniers have changed?

So CC exists now, just alert rather than alarmed Sifu?
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Yep its call the weather and its been changing in response to numerous cycles of varying duration throughout the entirety of Earth's history, some deniers have held this view from inception and therefore haven't changed, others have chosen to await confirmation via the results reported from application of the empirical scientific method.
 
cynic said:
Yep its call the weather and its been changing in response to numerous cycles of varying duration throughout the entirety of Earth's history, some deniers have held this view from inception and therefore haven't changed, others have chosen to await confirmation via the results reported from application of the empirical scientific method.
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You know everyone know that the weather changes right? It's the magnitude and frequency that's the problem.

Has the world always had 7Billion people, and growing?
Deforestation was on the same scale?
Energy uses? Pollution? Roads? Industries? Mode of travel? etc. etc.

Isn't there some theory of thermal dynamics; Newton's laws of things remaining the same unless something else acted on it.

From a few million monkies swinging in the trees to DiCaprio and his jets... it's fair to say the world aren't exactly in the same condition as it was when we got it.

But then there are those eggheads with their fancy lab coats and decades of knowing what the heck they're talking about... trying to be all smart and telling us about the weather like we can't switch on the TV or read the news to see with our own eyes.

Oh wait, you're saying that the scientific studies on CC so far aren't conclusive, more need to be done to be absolutely sure 100% that we're screwed.

As my mother always say, you wait until the flood reaches your ankle then you jump.
 
luutzu said:
You know everyone know that the weather changes right? It's the magnitude and frequency that's the problem.

Has the world always had 7Billion people, and growing?
Deforestation was on the same scale?
Energy uses? Pollution? Roads? Industries? Mode of travel? etc. etc.

Isn't there some theory of thermal dynamics; Newton's laws of things remaining the same unless something else acted on it.

From a few million monkies swinging in the trees to DiCaprio and his jets... it's fair to say the world aren't exactly in the same condition as it was when we got it.

But then there are those eggheads with their fancy lab coats and decades of knowing what the heck they're talking about... trying to be all smart and telling us about the weather like we can't switch on the TV or read the news to see with our own eyes.

Oh wait, you're saying that the scientific studies on CC so far aren't conclusive, more need to be done to be absolutely sure 100% that we're screwed.

As my mother always say, you wait until the flood reaches your ankle then you jump.
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Thanks for the sermonising.

Why would the fact of casually observable changes, equate to the imminent doom of the human populace?

Why is every noticeable variation in the weather, automatically deemed to be evidence of imminent catastrophe?

Where is empirical science to be found within the Climate religion?
 
luutzu said:
Has the world always had 7Billion people, and growing?
Deforestation was on the same scale?
Energy uses? Pollution? Roads? Industries? Mode of travel? etc. etc.
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Well over half of all oil and gas ever used by man has been used in my lifetime.

At current rates of use we'll use as much oil in the next 11 years as we did for all time up to 1973.

And however many other such statistics one chooses to look at. It all comes down to this whole thing of mass consumption of resources being far more recent than most realise.

Whatever the effects are going to be, there's going to be a time lag and that's the scary bit. Assuming that increasing CO2 leads to higher temperature, it would continue warming for quite some time even if all man-made emissions were stopped completely literally right now. So whatever effects we're seeing now, there's more to come that's 100% certain no matter what we do.

My own views on the subject haven't shifted greatly over the years and I say that as someone who's taken a pretty keen interest in it since the 1980's.

We don't have a full understanding of natural processes and thus do not know with certainty what the effects of adding CO2, CH4 and other gases to the atmosphere is going to be.

Commonsense says that changing the composition of the earth's atmosphere will have some effects including on temperature.

It is established fact that CO2 does act as a thermal insulator. This is well understood and has been since at least the late 1800's.

Given there is no practical means of reversing the change in the atmosphere and we do not fully understand the consequences it is rational to apply the precautionary principle.

CO2 and climate change are most certainly not the only environmental issues. It is arguable whether or not they are the most important, even that is not clear.

In practice humans will not act until presented with overwhelming evidence of a problem. This is the same sort of behaviour which leads to other preventable disasters such as financial crashes and property being destroyed by floods or fires which could have been avoided with appropriate actions. This mode of thinking is inherent to human nature and won't change so it's unwise to expect it to.
 
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cynic said:
Where is empirical science to be found within the Climate religion?
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Increasing world evidence of droughts, fires, floods, cyclones( or hurricanes what ever you want to call them), plus the record breaking temperatures around the world that have been occurring over the last decade or more.
 
On the topic of sea level rising, I think we're looking at it in the wrong way. In completely natural, normal, standard scenarios, the sea level fluctuates radically. People talk about a 1-2m sea level rise like it's the end of the world. That's stupid.

Consider that the last time Australia was connected to PNG by land, and the UK was connected to mainland Europe (and many other examples all over the world) was very, very recently. Don't believe me, google it. Over the last 100,000 years it happened *many* times. And before that, and so on. It's just what naturally happens. Imagine being able to walk to PNG. That's not a trivial difference in sea level.

So everyone is acting like if what happens completely routinely and naturally happens now, we're all going to be screwed and it's the end of the world. The sea level isn't supposed to be stable and it never has been stable. And it often naturally occurs quite quickly.

So, even if humans were having zero impact on the climate, this is an issue we would need to be dealing with. The fact we are probably making it zig rather than zag or zig or zag a little differently doesn't really change that much. Either way, the only possible way we could ever have stable sea levels and stable coast lines would be through human induced stabilisation, with a deliberately engineered climate. We are still a long long way away from that capability. Most people still seem to think that without human influence the climate would be stable!

Another thing I find very amusing is that virtually all of the very wealthy high profile climate alarmists own beachside properties. Let that sink in.
 
SirRumpole said:
Increasing world evidence of droughts, fires, floods, cyclones( or hurricanes what ever you want to call them), plus the record breaking temperatures around the world that have been occurring over the last decade or more.
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I agree that there is empirical evidence of an increased amount of sensationalised media reporting!
 
Sdajii said:
The climate has never stopped changing. It has been warmer than at present (many many times, including recently - only a few thousand years at most), it has changed at a faster rate than it currently is, and has always been in a chaotic cycle.

'Unstoppable' implies that it 'should' or was sitting stable, at some baseline, until humans started playing around. No climate scientist says this, and most of the people saying it are the climate alarmists. If it was currently 'unstoppable' (stoppable from doing what exactly?), whatever couldn't be stopped would have happened hundreds of millions/billions of years ago.

I am not a climate denier (sic), no doubt humans are interacting with the climate, but what the vocal folks say about it is complete nonsense. The actual climate scientists, biased as they are, mostly don't agree with the full on alarmists you hear from on social and mainstream media. They're inherently biased and no doubt their predictions will turn out to be massively exaggerated, just as their previous predictions which have had time to play out were seen to be. Yes, we are playing with the climate, but no one seems capable of being rational about it. They're either irrationally alarmist or playing ostrich. Anyone anywhere in the middle is accused by everyone else of being at their opposite extreme.
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You are referring to the ice age.
This is quite a different scenario.
 
luutzu said:
Deniers have changed?

So CC exists now, just alert rather than alarmed Sifu?
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Sigh, such a hard Grasshopper to teach.

Did you not read the research I posted about relative behaviours?

My views on cc are well documented I won't go through the tiresome process of repeating them for the millionth time for them to be disingenuously ignored and/or misrepresented... again.

Irrespective of co2 emissions, there are 1001 other ways gratuitous consumption is polluting our planet, which the alarmists seem intenr on ignoring in favour of the CC political agenda.

Meanwhile, absurdly, grotesquely, CC "warriors" are flying about in private jets and psrtying on megayachts and preaching to the great unwashed and collecting environmental prizes.

It's you alarmists who turn out to be doing the most damage. Do you not find the hypocrisy totally nauseous?
 
e.g., Grasshopper

http://calgaryherald.com/opinion/co...his-hypocrisy-gives-the-finger-to-his-message
SNIP: Suzuki, who did not return calls to respond, spends a lot of time hectoring others about over-population (but he has five children), reducing our carbon footprint (he has a jet-set lifestyle of the rich and famous), living smaller (he owns four houses in B.C. and an apartment in Port Douglas, Australia) and much else besides. So much hypocrisy from this guru of green.

If Suzuki was really convinced that the Earth is going to perish because of increasing amounts of man-made carbon being released into the atmosphere, would he seriously own a vacation getaway in Australia, so far away from Vancouver?

The amount of CO2 created by one economy airfare from Vancouver to Cairns, Australia, is 4.5 tonnes, according to an online carbon calculator, or one-third of the total amount the average British Columbian produces in an entire year (13.7 tonnes), according to a report called By the Numbers: Canadian GHG Emissions.

In short, David Suzuki doesn’t live like he believes his own press releases. He’s essentially told his message to F-off by the way he lives. When faced with a choice, he chooses his comfort over his convictions. It’s long past time we all stopped believing his press releases, too
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