Climate Change- A Serious Observation/Question

[Recyclersteve]

I want to ask a serious question about climate change while avoiding two things:

1) Political bitterness and heated debate; and
2) Conversation with tons of big words that most people don’t understand.

I’d like to keep this a peaceful discussion.

Here is my thought- we’ve heard tons of discussion about how carbon emissions are supposedly causing climate change. The global pandemic crisis must have greatly reduced carbon emissions by a substantial amount for about four months now. Assuming those two statements are true, how in the world could carbon emissions be the cause of global warming?

To add another point, we are currently having a major heat wave from California to at least Texas and this is expected to spread further by the end of the week. If we had a really COOL summer all summer long (not just for a few weeks), then I’d be more inclined to believe in the link between carbon emissions and global warming. How could we have an unseasonably cool summer? An example would be a major volcanic eruption (perhaps like the Yellowstone caldera)...

No offense to Al Gore (I’d feel the same way if he was a Republican or Independent), but I am so skeptical about certain so-called charities. I can’t help but think he (and likely others) are trying to skim money from the sum used to fund global warming initiatives. Of course, they wouldn’t like the term “skim”- perhaps they’d prefer to it as an administrative fee or overhead and expenses.

What does everyone else thing about this?

P.S. Not trying to offend any Gore fans. His was the first name I thought of regarding climate change.

[mtalbot_ca]

To me I regard carbon as stored energy. Carbon comes essentially from the sun’s energy that got stored by plants over millions of year. If you burn/use carbon, you basically are releasing the sun from eons ago. The planet had a way of dealing with that energy but we are removing its ability to cope.

Furthermore, the current slowdown influenced how much more energy we are introducing into our ecosystem. We never created any other way to absorb the sun’s energy. Using fossil fuel is basically releasing the sun’s energy from the past.

Cheers,

[TXSTARFIRE]

I am glad we have global warming. I live in Minnesota and if we did not have global warming a major part of my state would still be covered by glaciers. Obviously when the glaciers receded from Minnesota it was not Mans fault, is it possible that it is not Mans fault now? Could it be something like solar activity? I think it is all a scam to grab money and power.

[68Camaro]

Unfortunately like every cause that has a just start, the "stop man-made pollution" lobby has developed into a business into its own and as such it needs to justify its continuation. Thus there will never be "enough" reduction of whatever. The goal posts keep moving. The movement started at least 70 years ago with public awareness of the need to reduce and eliminate truly bad chemicals that were poisoning life. As goals and objectives were attained over time the people who drew their living from the causes had to continue to create new causes in order to support themselves.

The "ozone" problem had at least some scientific basis in fact. Since alternatives to the ozone destroying chemicals that were allegedly at fault were demonstrably available and the related technology was in flux anyway in order to improve efficiency of power use, that cause didn't get a lot if push back.

However the CO2 "problem" is far from proven. Cycles of change for the planet occur at many periodic frequencies simultaneously. In addition to one off events like major asteroid strikes there are shifts in the magnetic field, cycles of major volcanic activity, cycles of sun energy that affect the total available energy etc. The CO2 in the atmosphere due to regular activities of nature dwarf the manmade components, and the ability of the earth to "heal itself" is incredible.

For many years evidence has been available that the far greater correlation of weather change lies with sunspot activity. But that evidence has been drowned out by the professional lobbiests.

That said, I know that if the CO2 :problem" gets "resolved" then these crusaders will be off and running on the next manufactured crisis in order to sustain themselves, so perhaps I'm fine with them continuing to be distracted by CO2, as I think there are more important issues afoot at the moment (if not always).

[IdahoCopper]

Because its not like hitting a bell.

Hit the bell ... instant sound. No hit, no sound.

Lower human carbon emissions ... could take decades to see any effect on climate.

In any case, I don't believe any of it. We are not going to kill the environment on this planet, no matter what we do.

[Dr. Cadmium]

A good topic for discussion, Recyclersteve. I'll answer with an analogy.

If you live a life of poor health for 60 years (smoking, sedentary, poor diet) and then sudenly switch to a nutrious diet and work out vigorously for one week, would you expect a noticeable improvement in your quality of life or longevity? Almost certainly not. Similarly, expecting a few months of reduced human activity to drastically slow or stop over a century of environment altering behavior is naive.

I've watched An Inconvenient Truth and read the book, and while I'm not a fan of Al Gore, I think his points are well explained and I do give him credit for helping to bring the issue to greater public awareness.

My personal favorite book on the issue is The Legacy by David Suzuki. It's a quick read that you can get through in an evening. Does anyone here have children or grandchildren? One of the great advantages of human intelligence is the ability to plan ahead for the future - what kind of a life do we want the people who come after us to have?

We are not going to kill the environment on this planet, no matter what we do.

Agreed. However, we can alter it enough to make it uninhabitable to the human race. Other forms of life will outlast us.

[knibloe]

I am glad we have global warming. I live in Minnesota and if we did not have global warming a major part of my state would still be covered by glaciers. Obviously when the glaciers receded from Minnesota it was not Mans fault, is it possible that it is not Mans fault now? Could it be something like solar activity? I think it is all a scam to grab money and power.

[knibloe]

The fact is that there are many green house gasses. CO2 is one of them. However there is another that is much more prevelant that we can do absolutely nothing about. .It is H2O. Yes, water vapor. Cloudless night in the winter will be absolutely fridgid. Take the same night and add cloud cover and it will be 20 degrees warmer. Its a fact! Now where do the clouds come from? Evaporation from the 71% of the worlds surface covered by water.

[IdahoCopper]

We are not going to kill the environment on this planet, no matter what we do.

Agreed. However, we can alter it enough to make it uninhabitable to the human race. Other forms of life will outlast us.

No, that will never happen. If 2500 humans survive, the human race won't die out.

Its sheer hubris to think that humans are so powerful that they can disrupt or destroy a billion year old self-regulating ecology. That will never happen.

[Dr. Cadmium]

No, that will never happen. If 2500 humans survive, the human race won't die out.

Ask yourself, do you want to live in a future where only 2500 humans have survived? I certainly do not.

Its sheer hubris to think that humans are so powerful that they can disrupt or destroy a billion year old self-regulating ecology. That will never happen.

Destroying the ecology is a much more implausible scenario and very different from making the environment inhospitable or unsupportive to billions of humans. Look at the paleontologic record: large and widely distributed organisms have become extinct before, and I think you would agree with me that human race is unparalleled in its ability to change its enviroment.

[68Camaro]

Humans should be reasonable stewards of the environment. But it is clear (to me) from 5 decades of watching the debate and reading the data that climate is one of several issues that have become dominated by emotional and political issues, with actual science too often being secondary. Few scientists involved in the climate discussion correctly follow the scientific method any longer, if at all. Those that attempt to discuss alternate points of view or ask why published studies appear to have predetermined conclusions and don't match other available data that suggest other causes are threatened with "cancellation" (which has been happening for 20 to 30 years - since well before that was the label used for destroying someone's career for daring to not follow the accepted dogma).

Can humans damage the environment? Of course - not really debatable. Would we be able to do that to the point where the earth can no longer self correct? Probably, if we really made a concerted effort. Have we done so, and are the existing recent weather patterns the result of human activity as well as not reversible? Not even remotely decided in my view, and further I think the odds favor our weather being dominated by larger natural cycles such as sunspot activity, that humans are too close to to understand correctly.

If humans are damaging the environment, over the past 20 years the bulk of that has been occurring outside of the western world - in China and India - and any further environmental stewardship improvements we might make in the West are already mostly at the point of diminishing returns.

[Treetop]

One big thing most dont realize is that the dangerous range of the warming predictions happens when a range of feedback loops all go the same direction, and build on themselves. We have NO proof whatsoever this will happen and in fact lots that this is unlikely. Methane leaking out of warming soils is the biggest. In reality the same biological processes that put it there start up in real time as soils melt.

The amount of energy co2 can even trap is ALREADY trapped, about 85% of it anyway if our models are close to right. We wouldnt expect immediate changes with short term changes to co2 because the amount of additional energy stored is pretty low year over year. What is more interesting is we have several other cycles in our records with as wild or much more extreme changes then we are seeing right now. Including the 30s-40s, when according to russians the arctic was nearly as melted as it is now and we simply ignore their data, and draw a straight line pretending it never changed until 1979 when we had satellites on it. We could not explain those past warming periods so it seems we simply changed the data. According to ALL sources pre mid 90s and most on up through 2010 the warming in the 40s peaked slightly HIGHER than today. The algorithms we use also make it seem like current warming is higher than it is because of how it works and more data points.

What else interests me heavily on this topic is how silly the papers are that push the idea a few degrees of warming is even that dangerous, especially for humans. The only issue Ive even seen here that seemed supported by data is that our cities and such will be in the way of animals moving a bit north for colder climates. Most species it wont matter but some it will.

The other thing I find very weird about this is undeniably without changes over fishing WILL threaten over a billion people in my lifetime. (if I live to life expectancy). The UN level groups tell them to just not eat so many fish. Which is impossible choice in many asian nations. They dont have the land to grow other foods. Meanwhile we know artificial reefs can do fine deeper than natural ones and with buffering the bottom of the food chain it supports the rest of the food chain. We could likely solve this issue pretty cheaply. 100% it will be a MAJOR issue in coming decades. Yet 99% of what we h3ear about is something with a weak premise, where they even argue against undeniable facts. (an example is saying tropical storms will be worse. The data we have from centuries shows us these storms are worse when its colder. On models there is more heat so more energy. In reality it is hot and warm air colliding that drives them most of all and those extremes are wider when its colder).

I also find many of our datasets very peculiar to say the least. Take fressh water mixing into oceans from melting seaice for example. We dont even account for sea salts people collect, or the rivers we dont even let make it to the oceans. They arent even part of the data. With methane, most comes from natural sources, mostly swamps and bogs. Humans drained most of these. We dont even include this in our data at all so by FAR the biggest way humans changed the methane levels isnt even included. How could our math possibly be right? Lots of other things clearly off about this field, lol. I better stop now though or Ill go on for hours.

One last thing though, at the UN level going back to the 80s literally hundreds involved in pushing this have openly said this is more about wealth redistribution and related things then the climate. They openly say we cant fix it with capitalism. We could have come close to balancing out green house gas levels with the money spent pushing this by building nuclear long ago. We could have just had each power plant replaced by nuclear over the last few decades. Without changing much else. We could replant the deserts with trees, and charcoalize them as they are replaced and stored any level of co2 we wanted with ease while making marketable products. Heck we even found a GM rice that lowers methane from rice fields to near zero but enviro groups tell us its bad. We found a seaweed that mowers methane from cattle by 99% but no major calls to use it. We could solve this easily with market driven solutions. That is clearly NOT the goal of those pushing this however. Even if their claims are 100% right they are using this as a vehicle for other things. Its highly unlikely their claims are right though.

[Rosco]

Wait a sec we as a Group belive that a Copper cent has value

WE are Not Mainstream. And I think We are correct about PMs.

Enjoy Peace

[Lemon Thrower]

Unfortunately like every cause that has a just start, the "stop man-made pollution" lobby has developed into a business into its own ....

Not only has it developed into a business, that particular viewpoint, just like Kenysian economics versus Austrian economics, tends to empower governments. Of course governments and big business are going to embrace this, because it means more power for them.

Science tells us that the planet is warming, very gradually. Science cannot tell us reliably the extent to which this is man's fault. Science also cannot tell us the extent to which, on balance, this is more negative than beneficial. For example, with a greater amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, gardens and farms and forests become more lusch. Scientists have mearsured the biomass per acre in the Amazon and has found that it has increased, which offsets to some degree the loss of acreage. But realize that the increase in biomasss is worldwide, and the loss of acreage is confined to the Amazon. So one benefit of global warming is that farms are more productive, and forests more lush. Another is that land that previously was not good for farming becomes viable. A third is that transportation routes, such as the Northwest Passage, open up. Curiously, there is little mention or consideration of these benefits of climate change.

Nor is there little mention of non-human factors, such as solar cycles.

[Treetop]

Apparently we cannot yet detect the difference in co2 in the atmosphere due to corona shutdowns. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/09/22/ ... tmosphere/

I find it interesting they saw it doesnt show up despite claiming to have highly accurate measurements because human released co2 is long lived in the atmosphere. We actually have no idea if that is true. A number of 100 years was made up for this decades ago and most just pretend it is true. Heck could be 0, could be 1000 we dont know. One theory that used to be kicked around in the past but you dont see often anymore is that co2 levels might have much more to do with overall temps globally. Officially we started measuring atmospheric co2 in 57. One family has a patent on the method actually, its kinda weird. That wasnt our first source of co2 measurements though. I forget the guys name off hand, but we have measurements taken with an older method known to be accurate IF you have clean equipment. He was well known and well aware of the need to clean his gear. According to his datasets co2 rose to over 440 ppm through the 40s when before our records were changed the 40s were warmer than now and we are at a bit over 400ppm right now.

We know for sure overall temps do have atleast some relation to overall co2 levels. As the oceans warm they release it, and as they cool they can hold more. Think of opening a warm soda versus a cold one. The warm one releases its co2 quickly. The idea our co2 goes into the atmosphere to stay at all used to be in question. They proved it does by showing that one type of co2, (I forget the numbers off hand) is lowering slowly over time. The international teams that established this "forgot" that c4 plants, which have a different pathway are capable of using this kind of co2 unlike most plants. Only like 3% of plants are c4 plants. Namely things like corn, sorghum, sugar cane and other food crops humans now grow vast swaths of that we never accounted for. Meaning it might not be human released co2 lowering the % overall of the other type of co2 that c4 plants readily use.

So.... round about way of saying.... its possible that instead of the lower co2 not showing up yet in measurements because human co2 lasts long, which frankly makes NO sense, its possible that an older theory younger people in the field might never even have heard of just got some more support.