Is Global Warming becoming unstoppable?

basilio said:

Sdajii I think that shot at Luutzu just blew up in your face.

Not true, not nice and certainly not a good look.

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The irony....

wayneL said:

The irony....

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Come on Sifu, you know I'm right at least half the time.

luutzu said:

Come on Sifu, you know I'm right at least half the time.

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I don't know, I'm just trying to "be like water, my friend".

Ya know, cups, bottles and tea cups etc

luutzu said:

Come on Sifu, you know I'm right at least half the time.

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I suggest being right on this forum is largely irrelevant.
Much more important to be "right".

Or perhaps Grasshopper, you are saying half the time you are right and the other half of the time you are also "right".

basilio said:

I suggest being right on this forum is largely irrelevant.
Much more important to be "right".

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True that, teacher.

I saw an interview today where they discussed the findings that C02 at 405 parts per million [?] is the highest it's been in 800,000 years.

That can't be good.

basilio said:

Or perhaps Grasshopper, you are saying half the time you are right and the other half of the time you are also "right".

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I just had a Heineken, and even if I didn't, that's too deep for me .

wayneL said:

I don't know, I'm just trying to "be like water, my friend".

Ya know, cups, bottles and tea cups etc

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Were you mocking our Chinese sages there Master Sifu?

Remember that in drinking, "... it is better to stop short than fill to the brim." That and use a coaster

Tao Te Ching:
"The highest good is like water.
Water give life to the ten thousand things and does not strive.
It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao.

In dwelling, be close to the land.
In meditation, go deep in the heart.
In dealing with others, be gentle and kind.

In speech, be true.
In ruling, be just.
In daily life, be competent."


Recently spent a few weeks finishing my brother's slabs and plumbing so have these audiobook version on repeat.

I read it at uni but got practically nothing out of it. Though Carl Jung's praise that it's the most insightful book in history a bit much... but man, it's quite something once you have it on repeat.

luutzu said:

I saw an interview today where they discussed the findings that C02 at 405 parts per million [?] is the highest it's been in 800,000 years.

That can't be good.

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You realise that means you are pointing out that only 800,000 years ago (long before humans existed but recently in the context of the planet's history), the CO2 levels were higher than they are today. This is only the most recent example.

Spoiler alert: It reversed. The world didn't end.

Again, this doesn't mean I am saying we aren't heading into catastrophe, just that the climate is still well within the natural range in every respect (temperature, CO2 levels, rate of change, etc). Everything happening now has happened many times before, and it has all happened to far, far greater extremes many times. And every time, it reversed.

The climate can get bad enough to wipe us out and it will still be reversible. To make it irreversible we would have to go far, far beyond the point at which humans would all be dead.

You are being completely irrational and twisting every piece of information to a ludicrous extent to unconditionally push your agenda, with no regard for trying to make sense.

Regardless of the causes there's also the question of our ability to adapt.

Considering weather events that have occurred in Australia since we've been keeping accurate records, and that only goes back to the 1800's, the following would all seem very plausible with only a fairly small change in climate needed to bring them about.

• Shade temperature in Adelaide reaches 50 degrees
• Direct cyclone hit to Brisbane
• More fire events of the "it just blew up" variety.

How would we go about coping with any of these?

As was the case with last week's floods in Hobart, there's no time to prepare once it arrives so if we're going to plan for Adelaide getting toasted or Brisbane being blown to bits then we'd better do it now not when it's already happened.

Smurf1976 said:

Regardless of the causes there's also the question of our ability to adapt.

Considering weather events that have occurred in Australia since we've been keeping accurate records, and that only goes back to the 1800's, the following would all seem very plausible with only a fairly small change in climate needed to bring them about.

• Shade temperature in Adelaide reaches 50 degrees
• Direct cyclone hit to Brisbane
• More fire events of the "it just blew up" variety.

How would we go about coping with any of these?

As was the case with last week's floods in Hobart, there's no time to prepare once it arrives so if we're going to plan for Adelaide getting toasted or Brisbane being blown to bits then we'd better do it now not when it's already happened.

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Curious post. Some of your questions and concerns may well be important, but interestingly, none of it is really relevant to the thread.

Yes, those are some of the more extreme *weather* (not climate) events recorded in the last 200 years or so. They are tiny compared to the most extreme we would have seen if we'd been observing for the last few hundred thousand years.

Obviously, if you observe anything for any amount of time, you will get the most extreme measurements ever recorded during that time! This says nothing about what things were like before you were recording.

Weather/climate fluctuates on cycles ranging from the daily cycle where it gets warmer by day and cooler by night, yearly seasonal cycles, multi year cycles (eg El Nino/La Nina), unnamed but observable cycles over thousands of years (of the magnitude of causing massive sea level changes), hundreds of thousands of years, millions of years, tens of millions of years (eg around 50 million years ago the arctic had a tropical climate!) and perhaps longer, but the planet hasn't been around for long enough to show it.

To try to extrapolate anything from the last 200 years is like taking measurements between 10am and 11am and from that alone predicting what the climate will be like next month. Obviously you'd be predicting armageddon in that timeframe, but you'd be wrong, because you're ignoring the cycles of periods far longer than your reference range.

Even if we were having no impact on the climate and even if the climate was not changing and even if there was a baseline climate which we always stuck to, over the next 300 years, most of the climate/weather records we have taken so far would be broken by greater extremes. This is basic statistics and people on an investment forum should be able to grasp this simple concept.

Since we've only been recording for around 200 years, even if there was zero climate change (I'm not at all saying that's the case by the way), we would recently have seen all manner of records being broken.

Since the climate always changes, always has and probably always will, if you were to start taking measurements at any point over the last billion years, over the following 200 years you would almost always have the climate changing in the same direction over that short 200 year period, so at the end of that period, you would be at the most extreme level ever recorded. You could literally do that for the vast majority of random points over the last billion years. We just happen to have started recording where we did.

It's amazing that even in a forum where statistical analysis is a key focus, most people overlook this basic mathematical reality, and misuse the data to justify playing Chicken Little.

Sdajii said:

Since we've only been recording for around 200 years, even if there was zero climate change (I'm not at all saying that's the case by the way), we would recently have seen all manner of records being broken.

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Actually, they can go back 800,000 years using ice core samples.

https://www.bas.ac.uk/data/our-data/publication/ice-cores-and-climate-change/

SirRumpole said:

Actually, they can go back 800,000 years using ice core samples.

https://www.bas.ac.uk/data/our-data/publication/ice-cores-and-climate-change/

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Ice cores don't tell us how hot it was on October 7 1232 or whether or not a cyclone hit where Brisbane now is in 51 BC.

Your words are irrelevant and demonstrate that you totally miss the point and fail to understand the concept.

I should have known better than to join a climate change discussion. Have fun, folks! I'm out!

Looking at data from CSIRO, the sea level increase has been fairly consistent over the last ~150years @ ~1.5mm/annum.

Average rate of increase of average global temperature is 0.007degC/annum over last ~140 years

Sdajii said:

Ice cores don't tell us how hot it was on October 7 1232 or whether or not a cyclone hit where Brisbane now is in 51 BC.

Your words are irrelevant and demonstrate that you totally miss the point and fail to understand the concept.

I should have known better than to join a climate change discussion. Have fun, folks! I'm out!

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Don't let he door hit you on the way out.

Or perhaps Grasshopper, you are saying half the time you are right and the other half of the time you are also "right". bas

I just had a Heineken, and even if I didn't, that's too deep for me .[/QUOTE]

There is right (in reality) and then Right in political views.
Liked the Tao Te Ching quote. Simple, elegant, timeless, useful.

_______________________________________________________________
Re the question of CC being unstopable. I opened this thread on the basis that regardless of what is done in terms of reducing CO2 and other emissions there will be a continued effect on our climate of the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere. Temperatures will continue to increase but to what level is still open to many possibilities. The extent of global warming is also open to how much extra greenhouse gases are emitted. Unfortunately we may have lost control of this factor as a number of tipping points in our climate start start to take effect.

Sjaii is quite right in saying "the world won't end" with CC. But as Smurf points out the world we live in will change drastically and in ways that will certainly undermine our current civilisations.

Probably the most concrete near term consequence of CC would be the collapse of the Thwaites glacier and subsequent release of the West Antarctic ice cap. That will change world coast lines for millenia. Whatever we do to respond to that event can't happen in a decade.

Do we want to know what the risks are or is it easier to keep the blindfolds in place and plead ignorance if/when it all turns over ?

http://blogs.edf.org/climate411/2017/11/01/everything-you-need-to-know-about-climate-tipping-points/

Sdajii said:

You realise that means you are pointing out that only 800,000 years ago (long before humans existed but recently in the context of the planet's history), the CO2 levels were higher than they are today. This is only the most recent example.

Spoiler alert: It reversed. The world didn't end.

Again, this doesn't mean I am saying we aren't heading into catastrophe, just that the climate is still well within the natural range in every respect (temperature, CO2 levels, rate of change, etc). Everything happening now has happened many times before, and it has all happened to far, far greater extremes many times. And every time, it reversed.

The climate can get bad enough to wipe us out and it will still be reversible. To make it irreversible we would have to go far, far beyond the point at which humans would all be dead.

You are being completely irrational and twisting every piece of information to a ludicrous extent to unconditionally push your agenda, with no regard for trying to make sense.

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No one's arguing about the fact that the Earth and the universe will still be around no matter what level CO2 or if the planet completely freezes over.

Like I said before, the various human races and their recorded history... i.e. they came to be developed and organised enough to form states, pass laws, slaughter each other and know how to write about it... That kind of history has only been, at best, 5,000 years.

Most recorded, formal, history that I'm aware of dates back maybe 3,000 years. Anything before that are guesses, imagined or just made up.

During the same period - 3,000 years - scientists worked out that sea level rises were practically zero.

But maybe it's just a coincidence. We human are so superior we can take on anything and all live.

Just look at the Pacific Islands... some of them are seeing their island being taken away by the sea, with water lapping at their feet and yet some of them are cracking jokes about it. Oh wait, a few idiot on higher ground did that.

Sand deposition offset sea rise?

Sinking’ Pacific nation is getting bigger, showing islands are geologically dynamic: study

AFP-JIJI


WELLINGTON – The Pacific nation of Tuvalu — long seen as a prime candidate to disappear as climate change forces up sea levels — is actually growing in size, new research shows.

A University of Auckland study examined changes in the geography of Tuvalu’s nine atolls and 101 reef islands between 1971 and 2014, using aerial photographs and satellite imagery.


It found eight of the atolls and almost three-quarters of the islands grew during the study period, lifting Tuvalu’s total land area by 2.9 percent, even though sea levels in the country rose at twice the global average.

Co-author Paul Kench said the research, published Friday in the journal Nature Communications, challenged the assumption that low-lying island nations would be swamped as the sea rose.

“We tend to think of Pacific atolls as static landforms that will simply be inundated as sea levels rise, but there is growing evidence these islands are geologically dynamic and are constantly changing,” he said.

“The study findings may seem counter-intuitive, given that (the) sea level has been rising in the region over the past half-century, but the dominant mode of change over that time on Tuvalu has been expansion, not erosion.”

It found factors such as wave patterns and sediment dumped by storms could offset the erosion caused by rising water levels.

The Auckland team says climate change remains one of the major threats to low-lying island nations.

But it argues the study should prompt a rethink on how such countries respond to the problem.

Rather than accepting their homes are doomed and looking to migrate to countries such as Australia and New Zealand, the researchers say they should start planning for a long-term future.

“On the basis of this research we project a markedly different trajectory for Tuvalu’s islands over the next century than is commonly envisaged,” Kench said.

“While we recognize that habitability rests on a number of factors, loss of land is unlikely to be a factor in forcing depopulation of Tuvalu.”

The study’s authors said island nations needed to find creative solutions to adapt to climate change that take into account their homeland’s evolving geography.

Suggestions included moving populations onto larger islands and atolls, which have proved the most stable and likely to grow as seas rise.

“Embracing such new adaptation pathways will present considerable national scale challenges to planning, development goals and land tenure systems,” they said.

“However, as the data on island change shows there is time (decades) to confront these challenges.”

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luutzu said:

Were you mocking our Chinese sages there Master Sifu?

Remember that in drinking, "... it is better to stop short than fill to the brim." That and use a coaster

Tao Te Ching:
"The highest good is like water.
Water give life to the ten thousand things and does not strive.
It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao.

In dwelling, be close to the land.
In meditation, go deep in the heart.
In dealing with others, be gentle and kind.

In speech, be true.
In ruling, be just.
In daily life, be competent."


Recently spent a few weeks finishing my brother's slabs and plumbing so have these audiobook version on repeat.

I read it at uni but got practically nothing out of it. Though Carl Jung's praise that it's the most insightful book in history a bit much... but man, it's quite something once you have it on repeat.

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Mocking?

Not in the slightest Grasshopper, merely paraphrasing Bruce Lee's paraphrasing of our friend Lao Tzu.

FWIW, I think the TTC is a very interesting document.

basilio said:

There is right (in reality) and then Right in political views.

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Ah yes, and of course any person with the temerity to debate the philosophical poison that is postmodernism, is "alt right". Isn't that "right" bas?

Left and right,
postmodern the frequency,
there is a wall,
can we see,
from which side,
do we want to?

Uh oh,, getting hard, might lose so throw in some mud as confusion deters and usually wins.