Freedom Gas!

[DonaldD]

Linking to a 4-year old article that was debunked within 3 days... at least you're consistent.

https://skepticalscience.com/kevin-cowtan-debunks-christopher-booker-temp-conspiracy-theory.html

[rightleft22]

Watched the mini series Chernobyl. Not sure how accurate everything was however its clear that the world got lucky as the disaster could have been so much worse.
Maybe we will get lucking again....

“The lesson of Chernobyl isn’t that modern nuclear power is dangerous,” he tweeted. “The lesson is that lying, arrogance, and suppression of criticism are dangerous.” - Craig Mazin

Of course i guess both sides of the climate debate assumes the other side is doing the lying.  If there was hope in the show its was that after *censored* happens there were those that did what had to be done to limit the damage but wouldn't it have been nice if for once we didn't wait for the *censored* to happen in the first place.

Climate change or not as the population grows and builds in areas of higher climate risk we should be talking about how to better manage that risk. Or is weather related desasters good for the economy?

[Crunch]

Linking to a 4-year old article that was debunked within 3 days... at least you're consistent.

https://skepticalscience.com/kevin-cowtan-debunks-christopher-booker-temp-conspiracy-theory.html

Claiming it was debunked is not debunking. It’s the firdt one I found, how many would it take you?

[Crunch]

Of course i guess both sides of the climate debate assumes the other side is doing the lying.  If there was hope in the show its was that after *censored* happens there were those that did what had to be done to limit the damage but wouldn't it have been nice if for once we didn't wait for the *censored* to happen in the first place.

Ever try to convince a Jehovah’s Witness that carbon dating was accurate? That’s what talking to a warmist is like. The difference is the warmist is more than willing to use force to make you submit to their ideas of how to live. They’ll happily destroy you if you deviate even slightly from their “science” or even question it. Ever notice how they aggressively attack when asked simple questions? Why do you think they do that?

Climate change or not as the population grows and builds in areas of higher climate risk we should be talking about how to better manage that risk. Or is weather related desasters good for the economy?

Weather disasters occurred long before the warmist cult came on the scene. People have always lived in areas where there are weather threats. By the way, have weather disasters increased or decreased in the last decade or so?

[Pete at Home]

How is it that you don't know this has been going on for over 30 years? Seriously, you're knee deep in the cult of global warming and don't know it started over 30 years ago telling the same stories it's telling now? It's always the end of the world, just 10 or maybe 15 years away. It's literally been like that for over 30 years.

Unfortunately Crunch is correct about this part of it. It may or may not be the case that climate science is accurately predicting our doom, but if so the social regime has helped cause it by crying wolf one too many times. I've read stories dating back to the 70's about the end is nigh, from high profile climate sources.

I think the word is precision, not accuracy.
Afaik crunchs argument here is akin to denying the holocaust because "about six million" isn't precise enough.

[Crunch]

How is it that you don't know this has been going on for over 30 years? Seriously, you're knee deep in the cult of global warming and don't know it started over 30 years ago telling the same stories it's telling now? It's always the end of the world, just 10 or maybe 15 years away. It's literally been like that for over 30 years.

Unfortunately Crunch is correct about this part of it. It may or may not be the case that climate science is accurately predicting our doom, but if so the social regime has helped cause it by crying wolf one too many times. I've read stories dating back to the 70's about the end is nigh, from high profile climate sources.

I think the word is precision, not accuracy.
Afaik crunchs argument here is akin to denying the holocaust because "about six million" isn't precise enough.

Then you don’t know very much. But you do demonstrate my points quite well so please continue. 

[Crunch]

Here’s something to consider.

According to IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, “it is very likely that the rate of global mean sea level rise during the 21st century will exceed the rate observed during 1971–2010 for all Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenarios due to increases in ocean warming and loss of mass from glaciers and ice sheets.”

A major prediction is sea levels will rise.  What’s happening?

The Policy Brief, titled “Global Sea Level Rise: An Evaluation of the Data,” authored by Dr. Craig Idso, chairman of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, Dr. David Legates, professor of climatology in the Department of Geography at the University of Delaware, and Dr. S. Fred Singer, is taken from a chapter of Climate Change Reconsidered II: Fossil Fuels, a report fromthe Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC).

They found:

Instead of accelerated sea-level rises, the authors find “the best available data” shows “evidence is lacking for any recent changes in global sea level that lie outside natural variation.” They point out that if the negative effects of the claimed accelerated rise in sea level, such as a loss of surface area, were to be visible anywhere, it would most likely be in the small islands and coral atolls in the Pacific Ocean. However, research indicates many of these islands and atolls are actually increasing in size. Simply, they are “not being inundated by rising seas due to anthropogenic climate change.”

It’s just not happening like they try to scare you with.

How about glaciers? They’re disappearing according to warmists. Are they?

A major Greenland glacier that was one of the fastest shrinking ice and snow masses on Earth is growing again, a new NASA study finds.

The Jakobshavn glacier around 2012 was retreating about 1.8 miles and thinning nearly 130 feet annually. But it started growing again at about the same rate in the past two years, according to a study in Monday’s Nature Geoscience.

How bad is it for warmists?

May 30, 2019. St. Mary, Montana. Officials at Glacier National Park (GNP) have begun quietly removing and altering signs and government literature which told visitors that the Park’s glaciers were all expected to disappear by either 2020 or 2030.

Look at that, gone in only 11 years! Weird right? Always 10-15 years away. Apparently scientists had a vote and reached consensus that these would disappear on that schedule. But, nature just ain’t cooperating with computer models so they gotta sneak those signs out.

But, never fear, the fear must be maintained:

The centerpiece of the visitor center at St. Mary near the east boundary is a large three-dimensional diorama showing lights going out as the glaciers disappear. Visitors press a button to see the diorama lit up like a Christmas tree in 1850, then showing fewer and fewer lights until the diorama goes completely dark. As recently as September 2018 the diorama displayed a sign saying GNP’s glaciers were expected to disappear completely by 2020.

But at some point during this past winter (as the visitor center was closed to the public), workers replaced the diorama’s ‘gone by 2020’ engraving with a new sign indicating the glaciers will disappear in “future generations.”

Future generations? At least they dumped the 12 year fear mongering but now it’s future generations? What, like 10? 20? More?

I’d be willing to believe their global warming theory but it keeps getting things wrong. Over and over again. When scientific theories are contradicted by evidence, the theory is flawed, perhaps fatally so.

[DonaldD]

Claiming it was debunked is not debunking. It’s the firdt one I found, how many would it take you?

The irony here is delicious - in that you somehow thought that linking to a crank article in The Telegraph, penned by a man who also disputes the negative health effects of asbestos, would somehow be convincing to anybody who had not already made up their minds on the topic.

[Crunch]

The irony is the raft of logical fallacy in your response.

[TheDrake]

I'm going to go with NASA on sea level data. The rate of change is 3.3mm per year, a total of about a centimeter since 1993. I don't think a methodology from Gilligan's Island is going to work for that level of precision.

The study actually shows 74% increasing, and 27% decreasing, making it clear that climate change may only sink some of the islands. The other problem here is that the time period for their observations was from 1971-2014. The authors also give many plausible reasons for the growth, none of which involves denying sea level rise.

Significantly, our results show that islands can persist on reefs under rates of sea-level rise on the order of 3.9 ± 0.4 mm yr−1 over the past four decades (Supplementary Note 2, Supplementary Fig. 3) equating to an approximate total rise of ~0.15 m. This rate is commensurate with projected rates of sea-level rise across the next century under the RCP2.6 scenario mid-point rate of 4.4 mm yr−1 (range 2.8–6.1 mm yr−1)48.

[DonaldD]

The irony is the raft of logical fallacy in your response.

"You keep using that word.  I do not think that word means what you think it means."

[DonaldD]

Originally posted by Crunch:
How about glaciers? They’re disappearing according to warmists. Are they?

A major Greenland glacier that was one of the fastest shrinking ice and snow masses on Earth is growing again, a new NASA study finds.

The Jakobshavn glacier around 2012 was retreating about 1.8 miles and thinning nearly 130 feet annually. But it started growing again at about the same rate in the past two years, according to a study in Monday’s Nature Geoscience.

A more complete reading of the study, however, puts that in context:

NASA's Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) project has revealed Greenland’s Jakobshavn Glacier, the island’s biggest, is actually growing, at least at its edge. In research published Monday in Nature Geoscience, researchers report that since 2016, Jakobshavn’s ice has thickened slightly, thanks to relatively cool ocean waters at its base—which have caused the glacier to slow down its melt. This reverses the glacier’s 20-year trend of thinning and retreating. But because of what else is happening on the ice sheet, and the overall climate outlook, that’s not necessarily a good thing for global sea level.

That's because, despite the fact that this particular glacier is growing, the whole Greenland ice sheet is still losing lots and lots of ice. Jakobshavn drains only about seven percent of the entire ice sheet, so even if it were growing robustly, mass loss from the rest of the ice sheet would outweigh its slight expansion.

The question is whether Crunch only read, copied and pasted the edited excerpts he sees in the right-wing echo chamber, or whether he consciously misrepresented the study to support his position...

[Crunch]

So instead of all glaciers melting that proves global warming, it's some will melt and some will grow.  Damn, everything proves your theory.

[DonaldD]

It doesn't "prove the theory".  Of course, one could say that since "the whole Greenland ice sheet is still losing lots and lots of ice", the fact that one of the many Greenland ice sheets is gaining ice is not particularly important - and it is really not evidence against a general warming of the planet as you were trying to argue.

But pointing out that you were misrepresenting the evidence also does show that you were misrepresenting the evidence.

[TheDrake]

Binary crunch thinks all glaciers must grow or shrink at an identical rate.

So according to that methodology, the economy is not growing because Louisiana and Connecticut had shrinking growth rates.

[Pete at Home]

How is it that you don't know this has been going on for over 30 years? Seriously, you're knee deep in the cult of global warming and don't know it started over 30 years ago telling the same stories it's telling now? It's always the end of the world, just 10 or maybe 15 years away. It's literally been like that for over 30 years.

Unfortunately Crunch is correct about this part of it. It may or may not be the case that climate science is accurately predicting our doom, but if so the social regime has helped cause it by crying wolf one too many times. I've read stories dating back to the 70's about the end is nigh, from high profile climate sources.

I think the word is precision, not accuracy.
Afaik crunchs argument here is akin to denying the holocaust because "about six million" isn't precise enough.

Then you don’t know very much. But you do demonstrate my points quite well so please continue. 

Please identify what I said that you claim to be responding to. Because your response is as vague and handwavibg as an 8-ball.

[Crunch]

It's always the end of the world, just 10 or maybe 15 years away.

Except this is not what you quoted:

He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control.

The latter quote does NOT mean that the "end of the world" would occur within that ten year period, but that there would be unavoidable effects that would eventually occur if actions to reduce emissions had not been taken by then.  Was what was written hyperbolic? Yes. But Crunch's characterization of the quote is again a non sequitur.

Right, it’s the end of the world in 30 years now!

A harrowing new climate change report warns we may be on the way to extinction, claiming there is a “high likelihood” human civilization will come to an end by 2050 unless action is taken on greenhouse gas emissions.

The dire paper, which predicts a biblical-like scenario of devastating floods, drought, famine and a breakdown in international order, has been endorsed by the former chief of Australia’s military.

The analysis, published May 30 by Australian think tank the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration, calls for a new approach to climate change and paints a bleak picture of the world in 30 years if nothing is done to combat greenhouse emissions.

How bad will it get?

Meanwhile, 55% of the global population would be subjected to more than 20 days a year of lethal heat conditions, “beyond the threshold of human survivability.”

Beyond the threshold of human survivability? Jesus Christ, how hot is that? Looking around there have been high temperatures in the 150’s. So above that. There’s a record of 183 in Port Sudan and they survived so above that too.

So it looks like more than half the planet will spend about a month a year with temperatures exceeding 150 degrees, maybe exceeding 183! Scorching! That’s what you guys are saying is coming.

Won’t go much highe before the rivers and lakes start to boil. Literally.

North America will suffer from devastating weather extremes including wildfires, heatwaves and drought — while other places in the world such as the Middle East and West Africa will become unlivable.

I’ve heard of those kinds of weather extremes. Never thought we’d experience them in my lifetime. Wildfires, heatwaves, drought, that’s the stuff of myth.

The entire Middle East and a good chunk of Africa will be so hot it’ll kill every single person there. All of them.

If we don’t dismantle the US economy by 2000, 2005, 2012, 2018, 2025, 2030. Then it’s the end of the world. I’m super serial, end of the world.

[TheDrake]

Binary crunch thinks it's either an apocalypse or everything is fine. No room for any other scenario.

[Crunch]

Do you disagree that report?

[Crunch]

Lets see what CNN says just this week

In 2018, the UN International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned the planet only has 11 years to prevent catastrophic climate change.

Are we back to that? So, 2029, it’s game over. No going back.

Every day that we don't act is another day that more people will die, more species will become extinct and more likely we will be heading to a completely uninhabitable planet.

That’s not me saying that. It’s you guys, it’s warmists. The planet will be uninhabitable.

Instead, the study suggests society should focus on reducing the carbon footprint we already have and limiting per-capita consumption.

"If everyone consumes the way the US did, we would need another four to six earths," said Meghan Kallman, co-founder of Conceivable Future. "It's not actually about the number of people. It's how those people consume."

Good luck forcing China and India to go along. Speaking of China

So, should everyone in industrialized countries consider having fewer children, to reduce emissions? It might not be that simple.

A 2014 study concluded that reducing the human population is "not a quick fix for environmental problems." Using models, it found that even a worldwide one-child policy would give a global population of around 7 billion by the end of the century -- much the same as today's population.

Capping human population, there’s a great idea. They’re not saying anyone should be coerced into not having children....not yet:

In March, US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told her 3 million Instagram followers, "there's a scientific consensus that the lives of children are going to be very difficult... is it still ok to have children?"

A US congresswoman who many of you think is a genius is asking. What’s your answer?

As we approach the deadline to save the planet in 2000, 2005, 2012, 2017,2023, 2029 and people are not complying sufficiently, should we take up the idea of mass sterilization?

[Crunch]

Watched the mini series Chernobyl. Not sure how accurate everything was however its clear that the world got lucky as the disaster could have been so much worse.
Maybe we will get lucking again....

How surprised are you, end anyone else, that HBO completely misrepresented the radiation impact? The series is essentially a propaganda piece for being anti-nuclear power. It consistently depicts things that can’t happen and never happened to make you think how bad it is.

Any ideas why they did that to you?

[rightleft22]

We are living in a time were we can believe nothing. Debate is dead. Dialog is dead. Every one has access to 'all the information' and gets to pick what bests suits their agenda. Everything is a cover-up, everyone is out to get you, fool you, manipulate you.
Maybe its always been this way. ignorance is indeed bliss.

I have little hope for the future.  I used to think that just maybe humanity as a whole might learn better, and learning better do better. But we wont'. We can't help it

[TheDrake]

This is a point that the creator of “Chernobyl,” Craig Mazin, has stressed. “The lesson of Chernobyl isn’t that modern nuclear power is dangerous,” he tweeted. “The lesson is that lying, arrogance, and suppression of criticism are dangerous.”

Representatives of the nuclear industry agree. “Viewers might see the Hollywood treatment and wonder what the relevance is outside the USSR,” writes the Nuclear Energy Institute. “The short answer is: not much.”

Crunch, your own source disagrees with your premise.

[Crunch]

I think what you’re experiencing is something called “anomie”

Anomie, also spelled anomy, in societies or individuals, a condition of instability resulting from a breakdown of standards and values or from a lack of purpose or ideals.

The term was introduced by the French sociologist Émile Durkheim in his study of suicide. He believed that one type of suicide (anomic) resulted from the breakdown of the social standards necessary for regulating behaviour. When a social system is in a state of anomie, common values and common meanings are no longer understood or accepted, and new values and meanings have not developed. According to Durkheim, such a society produces, in many of its members, psychological states characterized by a sense of futility, lack of purpose, and emotional emptiness and despair. Striving is considered useless, because there is no accepted definition of what is desirable.

Obviously we are going through a breakdown of standards and values where common values are no longer acceptable to a large swath of the population and they strive to replace those values with something else, often deviant. Perhaps reason will win or the emotionally driven people will, we’ll see.

[Crunch]

This is a point that the creator of “Chernobyl,” Craig Mazin, has stressed. “The lesson of Chernobyl isn’t that modern nuclear power is dangerous,” he tweeted. “The lesson is that lying, arrogance, and suppression of criticism are dangerous.”

Representatives of the nuclear industry agree. “Viewers might see the Hollywood treatment and wonder what the relevance is outside the USSR,” writes the Nuclear Energy Institute. “The short answer is: not much.”

Crunch, your own source disagrees with your premise.

And yet, all the “science” of it slants only one way. You believe anything people tell you without any notice of what they actually do. No wonder you’re so lost.

[TheDrake]

I haven't yet watched it, so I can't comment first hand. I'm hard pressed to understand why I should be suspicious of an expert in the field of nuclear energy. He's secretly trying to destroy his own profession?

[TheDrake]

You should avoid watching Sully. It's anti air travel. Apollo 13 is anti space flight.

[Crunch]

I’m gonna recommend a book for you.

This book is a crash course in effective reasoning, meant to catapult you into a world where you start to see things how they really are, not how you think they are.

You need to read that. Seriously.

[TheDrake]

It is entirely laughable for you to give advice on reasoning.

[Crunch]

smh

[rightleft22]

Anomie - Never heard that term before.
 

Perhaps reason will win or the emotionally driven people will, we’ll see

I'd like to hope so but but can't.

Anyway I was thinking about my impressions of the series Chernobyl and anti nuclear wasn't one of them. Actually I was impressed by how hard they had to work to screw it up. It was also interesting that the radiation did not appear to have caused the amount of damage feared. But then there have been no long term studies. - ignorance is bliss. 
The Series was certainly anti communist however what struck me most was the men and woman that stepped up to clean up the mess, even if they had a choice or not.

The troubling part I was thinking about when I mentioned the the show was that the flaw in the reactor was known but ignored. (Which from what I can tell was not made up for the show) Had the plant director followed protocols the exposition would not have happened. I suspect the reason the bureaucrats made to avoid fixing the flaw. Even after the event it took years for them to address the flaw.
If this qualifies as hope...  I'm pretty sure that when disasters strikes their will be people that step up. It would be nice if we prepared ahead of time and or  didn't override 'safety protocols' (metaphor) just because we think we can deal with the problems after they arise  and 'shut it down' before it gets really really bad. However we wont, our arrogance will see to that.

[TheDeamon]

While methane in the atmosphere is marginally better for global warming than CO2 (it is a more potent greenhouse gas, but only lasts around 7 years in the atmosphere), burning methane converts it into CO2, thus increasing the atmospheric concentration, which is already way too high.

If it’s too high, what is the correct atmospheric concentration of CO2?

How about not the highest level in the past million years, aka human history?

Preferably back to pre-industrial levels, but I think everyone would settle for simply "not higher than right now". For which, we have to turn to Freedom Panels or Freedom Turbines - not Freedom Gas.

Hope you're ready for mass famines then, because pre-industrial levels of atmospheric CO2 isn't going to be able to grow the crops needed to sustain a population anywhere close to what we have.

[TheDeamon]

The "right amount" is less right now.  A crashing drop to offset the current repercussions of these levels.  That seems a ridiculous hope, so the "realistic amount" is... Less.  Not trying to be smarty pants here.  In fact, it's pretty a fairly K.I.S.S. response.

Uh, by the numbers they were hoping for targeting by 2050, but have since started to back off from?

They'd have be a net-zero emissions by the 2030's and negative emissions by the 2040's.

It isn't happening, unless society decided to go full nuclear in a very major way, but the eco nuts don't want that, so the goal posts are moving again.

[TheDeamon]

If you don’t know what it should be, how do you know it’s too high? What should it be?

It should be what the unbroken planet would have it.

And what is that?

A low enough level of CO2 that was on course to likely kill off most currently existing plant life on earth in the next million years or less, more likely than not.

[NobleHunter]

Hope you're ready for mass famines then, because pre-industrial levels of atmospheric CO2 isn't going to be able to grow the crops needed to sustain a population anywhere close to what we have.

Are you referring to the effect of CO2 on plant productivity or just that pre-industrial levels of CO2 implies pre-industrial agriculture? Because it would be pretty neat if there was actual data on the effects of CO2 on agriculture separated out from all the other improvements over the last couple of centuries.

[Crunch]

There is data on that and it's definitive that increased CO2 increases crop yields and reduces water consumption. There is a reason commercial greenhouses pump CO2 levels up to 1200 or even 1500 ppm.

However, at around 700 ppm, CO2 is no longer the limiting factor:

In an email, Frances Moore, an assistant professor studying climate change’s impact on agriculture at the University of California, Davis, put it this way: “My research does show that higher CO2 concentrations are beneficial to crops, but this effect quickly declines at higher and higher concentrations because plant growth becomes limited by other nutrients.”

So what this makes clear is that plant growth throughout the planet is currently limited by the very low CO2 levels we are experiencing - it is the limiting factor right now.

The paper about sour oranges, published in the journal Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment in June 2002, found that when a 75 percent increase in CO2 levels — from 400 ppm to 700 ppm — doubles fruit production, it also increases the vitamin C concentration of the fruit’s juice by 7 percent.

From a purely plant/agriculture perspective, CO2 levels in the 700-1000 ppm levels are pretty good.

[TheDeamon]

If sea levels wipe out coastal population centers, or weather systems become more destructive, or we are having massive species die-offs, or major population centers have air that is killing people, or our ability to feed people due to failed or unplanted crops are on the rise…  It’s “too high”.

Population centers move as the environment(and economy--which was historically highly agrarian and thus very sensitive to environmental changes) changes, this is the story of human history, it has changed before, it will change again, without human involvement. I'm also not fully sold on the idea of more destructive/severe weather being as big of a problem as many people want to make it out to be.

Want to hurricane proof your home? Building to the higher standard typically only adds a few thousand dollars to the cost of the home, mostly in the form of needing more nails. Now tidal surge and the resultant flooding is another matter entirely, but we know how to engineer solutions to that. It also isn't THAT cost prohibitive, it just happens that people are lazy. Let us hear it for advanced societies.

But getting back to "it will be unsurvivable" if you get to 600PPM. Weird, I could swear that the CO2 levels seen on planet earth over the past 800 thousand years are historically abnormal on the geological time scale. I could also swear that life on earth wasn't just simply eeking out a meager existence during that time either. Life seemed to be more than capable of thriving in that kind of environment. The Jurasic Period is now currently believed to have had 4 to 5 times the CO2 levels seen on Earth as of 2014(as per a google search and a 2014  article on LiveScience). While we're reasonably certain we know how that ended, I'm not aware of anyone advocating that those dinosaurs, or other plant/animal life were constantly suffering from the ill effects of unpredictable erratic and extreme weather events brought on by high concentrations of Greenhouse gasses.

Which brings us back around to "Okay, the change itself may not be world ending, but the rate of change is going to cause all kinds of problems" which is valid enough, but that's an engineering problem that society is more than technically proficient at addressing, it just has to be willing to do so.

The right question to ask is what changes / costs are we willing to accept to improve things?  This isn’t about (or shouldn’t be about) quelling fears or convincing deniers.  It’s about environmental mastery.  Do we really want to just roll the dice on what this dirt ball comes up with once it reaches its own “new normal”?  As do-nothing-ist love to point out, the global climate has changes plenty over its time spinning.  As someone reaping the benefits of the western world… I like what we got now.  If we can make improvements, even better but let’s not make a mess of it and go, “well *censored*, guess it falls into the act-of-god category”.

This is valid, the problem at this point cycles into "The loudest voices in the room" on the subject. And sadly, those voices seem to be predominately left-wits who want to use the entire situation to do some grand-scale social engineering with little or no regard for the rest of the picture. They're not even seriously concerned about the environment, as their favored solutions aren't anywhere close to the most viable answers to the current problem. But those options are not to be spoken of because well, they have an agenda that doesn't work if you do that(go nuclear).

[NobleHunter]

There is data on that and it's definitive that increased CO2 increases crop yields and reduces water consumption. There is a reason commercial greenhouses pump CO2 levels up to 1200 or even 1500 ppm.

But TheDeamon said there'd be starvation if we dropped CO2 down to pre-industrial levels. That could be implying we know how much of modern increases in agricultural productivity can be traced to increasing levels of atmospheric CO2. Which is a more difficult claim to support than "CO2 is good for plants."

Population centers move as the environment(and economy--which was historically highly agrarian and thus very sensitive to environmental changes) changes, this is the story of human history, it has changed before, it will change again, without human involvement. I'm also not fully sold on the idea of more destructive/severe weather being as big of a problem as many people want to make it out to be.

I suggest checking out what's happened to corn harvest planting this year. Flood proofing a house is simple. Flood proofing crops is less so.

[TheDrake]

How much Co2 is best for crops

Norby notes the results scientists produce in labs are generally not what happens in the vastly more complex world outside; many other factors are involved in plant growth in untended forests, fields and other ecosystems. For example, “nitrogen is often in short enough supply that it’s the primary controller of how much biomass is produced”

Scientists have observed the CO2 fertilization effect in natural ecosystems, including in a series of trials conducted over the past couple decades in outdoor forest plots. In those experiments artificially doubling CO2 from pre-industrial levels increased trees’ productivity by around 23 percent, according to Norby, who was involved in the trials. For one of the experiments, however, that effect significantly diminished over time due to a nitrogen limitation. That suggests “we cannot assume the CO2 fertilization effect will persist indefinitely,” Norby says.

So there is that effect, certainly.

Doubling CO2 from pre-industrial levels, she adds, does boost the productivity of crops like wheat by some 11.5 percent and of those such as corn by around 8.4 percent.

Less good:

On top of all that, Moore points out increased CO2 also benefits weeds that compete with farm plants.

“We know unequivocally that when you grow food at elevated CO2 levels in fields, it becomes less nutritious,” notes Samuel Myers, principal research scientist in environmental health at Harvard University. “[Food crops] lose significant amounts of iron and zinc—and grains [also] lose protein.” Myers and other researchers have found atmospheric CO2 levels predicted for mid-century—around 550 parts per million—could make food crops lose enough of those key nutrients to cause a protein deficiency in an estimated 150 million people and a zinc deficit in an additional 150 million to 200 million.

I know, another dire prediction that Crunch will be sure to ignore, because scientists are always lying to advance their agenda of trying to destroy humanity.

It may be true that pre-industrial levels are not optimal. If we have adjustment mechanisms in place, we can make that decision based on empirical measurements of crop yields.

[TheDeamon]

I've noticed the same type of high pressure sales tactic in play as well. Buy now before it's too late. Limited time offer! Call within the next 30 minutes or you'll miss your chance. The same slick tricks used to sell a $20 piece of junk are being used to sell trillion dollar wastes of money in the scam belief that we can keep the climate from changing. The hucksterism involved is just so transparent. The boys and girls who cried wolf.

 "Ocasio-Cortez: "The World Is Going To End In 12 Years If We Don't Address Climate Change"

I'd like to put that to the test. Let's not do anything and see what happens.

My favorite still has to be Senator Al Gore's statements on the Senate Floor about how the world was doomed in just a dozen years if we didn't take drastic actions to avert Global Warming. Then about 14 years later he produces An Inconvenient Truth where he doubles down on that statement, only he forgets to mention his earlier comments. Now here we are, about 14 years after An Inconvenient Truth came out, and we're hearing yet again, "We're less than 12 years away from unavoidable disaster."

And of course, these guys never refer back to the previous time frames they specified for when the apocalypse was due.

But at least Al made a rather significant amount of money in the interim sounding the alarm.

[TheDeamon]

Climate change or not as the population grows and builds in areas of higher climate risk we should be talking about how to better manage that risk. Or is weather related desasters good for the economy?

People building in vulnerable areas because they "like the aesthetics" is not a climate problem, or really an engineering problem. That's a social problem. Now the better example would be the ones living in areas that weren't at risk previously which are now becoming at risk due to changes in various other factors.

Of course, there are ways to engineer new construction to make it more resilient against what their new risks are, but that points back to the "social problem" of people wanting to live in aesthetically pleasing environments, and their tendency towards being lazy(taking the easier/cheaper route).

[rightleft22]

Either way, a social problem or climate problem we should be starting to look at ways to deal with the problem.

What I have found that many people link the social problem to the climate debate and a excuse to avoid addressing the social problem   
If you can't prove climate change there is no need to address social policy.

[Crunch]

If you can't prove climate change there is no need to address social policy.

That's not what has to be proven. Climate changes. It always has, it always will. The planet should be warming right now since we're exiting an ice age - hopefully. Anyone arguing for a static climate is arguing against planetary history.

What has to be proven is the theory that human activity is the primary, or sole driver, of climate change now.

[rightleft22]

What has to be proven is the theory that human activity is the primary, or sole driver, of climate change now.

But why does that have to be proven before a debate on social policy can be had. Even without proof a green economy has a lot going for it.
My guess is that the countries that get their first are going to be the 'winners' as it concerns future economic power

And if water levels are increasing should we not be thinking of ways to better protect the coast lines. Or do we wait until we have proof that human activity caused it?

[TheDrake]

Anomie - Never heard that term before.
 

Perhaps reason will win or the emotionally driven people will, we’ll see

I'd like to hope so but but can't.

Anyway I was thinking about my impressions of the series Chernobyl and anti nuclear wasn't one of them. Actually I was impressed by how hard they had to work to screw it up. It was also interesting that the radiation did not appear to have caused the amount of damage feared. But then there have been no long term studies. - ignorance is bliss. 
The Series was certainly anti communist however what struck me most was the men and woman that stepped up to clean up the mess, even if they had a choice or not.

The troubling part I was thinking about when I mentioned the the show was that the flaw in the reactor was known but ignored. (Which from what I can tell was not made up for the show) Had the plant director followed protocols the exposition would not have happened. I suspect the reason the bureaucrats made to avoid fixing the flaw. Even after the event it took years for them to address the flaw.
If this qualifies as hope...  I'm pretty sure that when disasters strikes their will be people that step up. It would be nice if we prepared ahead of time and or  didn't override 'safety protocols' (metaphor) just because we think we can deal with the problems after they arise  and 'shut it down' before it gets really really bad. However we wont, our arrogance will see to that.

I agree with that assessment. Important points include a delay in the test so that factories can meet production quotas. Fear of central committee retribution if the test is delayed more. Hiding design flaws from engineers because it could embarrass the state. Building cheaply and unsafely compared to western reactors. Refusing to ask the US for help because it would be bad propaganda. Jailing or ruining the lives of anyone dissenting against the official accounts.

This should be a series you would love, Crunch, if you watched it. There is never a question raised about the wisdom of building reactors in general.

There is goofiness and inaccuracy, like the inexplicable "her baby absorbed the radiation and saved her". They compress some time frame between exposure and consequence. They shift some events in time, crashing a helicopter much earlier in the timeline.

None of this muddied the main theme, which is that a communist police state has no business building dangerous technology.

[DonaldD]

Climate changes. It always has, it always will. The planet should be warming right now since we're exiting an ice age - hopefully. Anyone arguing for a static climate is arguing against planetary history.

What has to be proven is the theory that human activity is the primary, or sole driver, of climate change now.

Impressive - a Gish gallop of a bunch of thoroughly discredited denialist talking points.

• "Climate changes. It always has, it always will." - yes, it does. Nobody in climate science disputes that.
• "The planet should be warming right now since we're exiting an ice age" - Yes - and geologic history would suggest that the rate of temperature would be on the order of 4-7 degrees per 5000 years - the rate of increase for the past century is 10 times that.  Of course the current rate of increase is even higher, and is projected to continue to increase so we'll see a rate of increase between 30 times and 100 times that of previous ice-age recoveries.
• "Anyone arguing for a static climate is arguing against planetary history." It's a good thing that nobody working in climate science is arguing for a static climate then (whatever "arguing for" means in this context)
• "What has to be proven is the theory that human activity is the primary, or sole driver, of climate change now." Right.  Done and done.  You don't buy it, but then you also quoted a guy above who disputes the carcinogenic properties of tobacco and asbestos...clearly, you carefully choose what to put stock in and what to ignore.

[TheDrake]

Let me explore that premise. If a thing has happened to the Earth before, we shouldn't worry about it and its impact on humanity? So we should stop tracking asteroids, because hey, they have hit the Earth before. Avalanches have happened before, so we shouldn't actively attempt to reduce the chances of them happening. Forest fires have happened, so we shouldn't plan on them and take measures to mitigate them?

[DonaldD]

Oh, and before anybody foolishly jumps on my wording above - currently, human activity is the primary driver of climate changes today - recent changes in temperature are estimated to be caused mostly by increases in GHGs.  That's primary, not sole driver.

[Fenring]

One interesting question that sort of links Crunch's arguments with the AGW arguments, is if were granted with certainty that humans are causing greater than normal warming, whether in fact this is a problem. For instance if it could be shown that our current global temperature is a bit lower than historic average (due to coming out of a mini ice age for instance) then would it not follow that increasing it a bit will not be harmful to the planet, even if we know we're the cause?

Now there are different factors in play here that go beyond what's "good for the planet", whatever that means. We have built up certain infrastructure such as beachfront property and settlements on islands, whose existence is more or less predicated on constant stable conditions. The logic of that may well be questions, just as many people raise an eyebrow when they hear talk of people building on faultlines or in hurricane zones. If we're going to be discussing long-term strategy on a species level (rather than municipal or even national) then these building strategies should be just as much open to discussion as altering the basic foundations of how we use power and resources. Another topic, which does get discussion, is how to bolster our existing infrastructure so that it can withstand natural phenomena better. An example of this issue has occurred semi-recently in respect to solar flares and whether they could potentially knock out our power grids and electrical infrastructure. The short answer to that one is "not really at this point, but less vital systems and areas would still be affected". But a similar analysis could be done regarding anything from earthquake-based architecture to hurricane-proofing future developments. As for building right on the edge of slowly eroding land areas, maybe there's no simple answer to that one other than "be careful about expecting your oceanside home to last 100 years."

One other issue frequently brought up is he polar bears, and how the warming can cause either problems for animals or else even extinctions. This is a concern that actually stirs me, but it must be weighed against the possibility that even without our intervention the climate may have been (more slowly) getting hotten, in which case the animals would have been facing the same situation, albeit later. It's a bit of a problem to ignore the impact of our actions, but also on the other side of it to give ourselves sole credit for things that were going to be inevitable sooner or later. But there are ways we can help the animals to cope with global climate changes and I would be all for these.

But these particular conversations, while they may happen, are not the ones that are sensationalized. We can see that even here on Ornery the discussion tends to revert back to the AGW vs hoax argument, and goes little further than that on either side.

[DonaldD]

You also have millions of people in drought zones who will become increasingly at risk of food and water shortages, leading to things like civil and international wars and mass human migration.  Beachfront property is the least of 'our' concerns as are polar bears. If you think refugees are straining US resources today, this should really be what you focus on... that is, if the idea of tens of millions of additional people being displaced, starving and dying doesn't do it for you.