Scientists and Climate Change

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

Here is a refreshing scientific opinion...https://clashdaily.com/2019/07/scientists-call-for-an-end-to-climate-change-alarmism/

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

No doubt we will find out later that THESE scientists are less scientifically astute than THEIR scientists....wait for it...wait for it 😅

Edited September 30, 2019 by Douglas Buckland
Missing word

[El Nikko + 2,145]

I can't remember if I've posted this but the late Prof Bob Carter pretty much echoed the sentiments of all of our professors and lectures when I was at Uni. Well worth a watch for anyone interested.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZjVqnvFbak

[Guest]

I'm still waiting for the Millennium bug ... 

Edited September 30, 2019 by Guest

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

16 minutes ago, El Nikko said:

I can't remember if I've posted this but the late Prof Bob Carter pretty much echoed the sentiments of all of our professors and lectures when I was at Uni. Well worth a watch for anyone interested.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZjVqnvFbak

Absolutely brilliant!

[PE Scott + 563]

Thanks for this @Douglas Buckland and @El Nikko! I'm going to trigger some of my millenial friends with these articles, for sure.

They're all such parrots with absolutely 0 ability to critically think about a subject and come to their own opinion. Of course, that's most of society on most subjects.

Good thing the media is around to responsibly report on and inform the public of pertinent and accurate news. It would be a shame if sensationalism and click-bait ran the headlines.... 

[El Nikko + 2,145]

40 minutes ago, PE Scott said:

Thanks for this @Douglas Buckland and @El Nikko! I'm going to trigger some of my millenial friends with these articles, for sure.

They're all such parrots with absolutely 0 ability to critically think about a subject and come to their own opinion. Of course, that's most of society on most subjects.

Good thing the media is around to responsibly report on and inform the public of pertinent and accurate news. It would be a shame if sensationalism and click-bait ran the headlines.... 

I think the easiest arguement to use is this. When we look at sea levels, global temperatures and CO2 levels through the geological timeline there are events where an explosion of life coincides with high temperatures and much higher CO2 levels. The most obvious one was around the time when the dinosaurs were walking the earth. It implies that a warmer environment with more CO2 means bigger trees, more food which leads to much larger animals (See chart below). I've outlined two such events.

It would be a reasonable arguement to say cold is far more dangerous to life on earth, for example what killed off the dinosaurs was a meteorite impact which threw up millions or billions of tonnes of dust into the atmosphere blocking out the sunlight and causing extreme cooling and a mass extinction (yes a real one not a greta one).

This chart also shows the much tamer mini cycles of warming and cooling due to ice ages in the last million years. The problem I have with the global warming people is they look at data sets which are extremely short for a planet that has existed for 4.6 billion years, it's like looking at a painting with your nose almost touching it. They need to step back and look at the earths cycles over 10s of thousands, hundreds of thousands and millions of years not 120 years or 250. Also I have a big problem about how they select the starting point, I could pick a different one and show the oposite trend.

Edited September 30, 2019 by El Nikko

[PE Scott + 563]

8 minutes ago, El Nikko said:

The problem I have with the global warming people is they look at data sets which are extremely short for a planet that has existed for 4.6 billion years, it's like looking at a painting with your nose almost touching it, they need to step back and look at the earths cycles over 10s of thousands, hundreds of thousands and millions of years not 120 years or 250

I agree 100%. In fact, I think I mentioned that in another thread that got the axe recently, unrelated issues. 

I remember being in Beijing on a subway that had some state sponsored tv on it back around 2010. I don't understand chinese, but one of the short videos looped over and over was a cartoon about emissions. In the cartoon, factories are shown billowing dark clouds into the atmosphere. Then, the picture pans over to a nearby crop. The clouds descend on the crops, the crops grow rapidly and provide food for the populace. Everyone is happy.

My point to that is their has to be balance. I agree that global warming and the argument against CO2 has been massively inflated beyond reason. However, there are plenty of other harmful things in exhaust that still have to be addressed for the sake of local populace and enviroment. Should we shut down industry? Absolutely not. Should we continue to scrub exhaust from coal fired plants and try to capture or reduce harmful emissions? I don't see any harm in that provided it's done logically and reasonably in a way that's not too prohibitive to development.

[El Nikko + 2,145]

1 minute ago, PE Scott said:

I agree 100%. In fact, I think I mentioned that in another thread that got the axe recently, unrelated issues. 

I remember being in Beijing on a subway that had some state sponsored tv on it back around 2010. I don't understand chinese, but one of the short videos looped over and over was a cartoon about emissions. In the cartoon, factories are shown billowing dark clouds into the atmosphere. Then, the picture pans over to a nearby crop. The clouds descend on the crops, the crops grow rapidly and provide food for the populace. Everyone is happy.

My point to that is their has to be balance. I agree that global warming and the argument against CO2 has been massively inflated beyond reason. However, there are plenty of other harmful things in exhaust that still have to be addressed for the sake of local populace and enviroment. Should we shut down industry? Absolutely not. Should we continue to scrub exhaust from coal fired plants and try to capture or reduce harmful emissions? I don't see any harm in that provided it's done logically and reasonably in a way that's not too prohibitive to development.

Yes I would especially agree with your second paragraph, it should be encouraged to protect the real environment from damage caused by industrialisation. Do you remember in the 80s or 90s we were told about acid rain and how it was going to destroy everything. Technology solved the problem and the acid rain didn't happen.

I believe that in Australia (and most likely many other countries) CO2 is pumped into greenhouses where tomatoes are grown, CO2 increases the yield and plant size and I believe that it also has the added benefit of reducing the amount of water the plants require which is especially important for a dry country. I think we're focusing on the wrong problem, it should be all about reducing polution and we should worry less about CO2.

[PE Scott + 563]

1 minute ago, El Nikko said:

I think we're focusing on the wrong problem, it should be all about reducing polution and we should worry less about CO2.

Absolutely. No argument here.

With that in mind, I would also argue that society has done a pretty phenomenal job of keeping itself in check through innovation and technological revolutions. It's not like we're still riding around on coal fired trains and burning coal to keep warm. Society has rapidly evolved to make increasingly more efficient use of energy and have learned to use better and cleaner sources of power to provide that energy. I don't think that trend is going to change regardless of the effect on the climate.

I sometimes wonder if in a distant future we'll, as a species, be worried about global cooling and lack of food production.

[Guest]

49 minutes ago, El Nikko said:

and a mass extinction (yes a real one not a greta one).

HOW DARE YOU!!

[PE Scott + 563]

While we're on the subject of humans effect on the climate, what about wind mills? I think they're poorly understood.

Here's my thing, in order to put energy into a system, it has to be taken from somewhere. In the case of windmills, that energy is being taken from the prevailing wheather patterns. Now, I'm not going to make any absurd claims about the effect, just that I don't know what it is and I haven't seen anywhere that it's been studied at length. I don't have enough confidence in science's current understanding of weather to say we can even accurately theorize on what the effect may be even if we tried. I can say that the energy being pulled from that sytem, as far as I've seen, is assumed to be inconsequential.

I find it amusing that our energy demands are just a drop in the bucket and meaningless when we look at wind but everything else is going to ruin the world. 

To rephrase, we're worried about the secondary effect C02 has on the ecosystem, but were not at all concerned about sucking energy directly out of our wheather because it doesn't put off CO2? 

And wind is just one, solar, tidle, geothermal.....the energy all comes from somewhere. Once that energy is captured, it's no longer available for whatever natural process it was part of before.

 

Edit: I took another look and came up with this:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.technologyreview.com/s/612238/wide-scale-us-wind-power-could-cause-significant-warming/amp/

So, I'm not completely crazy...someone else has thought of it too.

Edited September 30, 2019 by PE Scott

[PE Scott + 563]

Referencing the article I linked in my last post, I think it also serves as an indicator of just how easy it is to set up a model that will confirm whatever assumptions you're leaning towards. This is true everywhere and is a big part of the problem. It's hard to account for bias in science, I think.

[Guest]

43 minutes ago, PE Scott said:

So, I'm not completely crazy...someone else has thought of it too.

Comforting ...

No chance 2 people can have same idea and be nuts?

Phew   

[PE Scott + 563]

Just now, DayTrader said:

Comforting ...

No chance 2 people can have same idea and be nuts?

Phew   

Assuming I'm 1 person and you're the other......yeah, I'm going to have to rethink this. 

[Toranaga + 49]

From the Technology Review article, "The study, published in the journal Joule, found that if wind power supplied all US electricity demands, it would warm the surface of the continental United States by 0.24 ˚C. That could significantly exceed the reduction in US warming achieved by decarbonizing the nation’s electricity sector this century, which would be around 0.1 ˚C."   So why are we going to spend billions to decarbonize the electric supply?  0.1 C is nothing compared to predictions of 1-2 C temperature increase.

[Toranaga + 49]

7 hours ago, El Nikko said:

I think the easiest arguement to use is this. When we look at sea levels, global temperatures and CO2 levels through the geological timeline there are events where an explosion of life coincides with high temperatures and much higher CO2 levels. The most obvious one was around the time when the dinosaurs were walking the earth. It implies that a warmer environment with more CO2 means bigger trees, more food which leads to much larger animals."

And therefore, we must keep our guns because we will need them to ward off the forthcoming dinosaurs who will want to eat us for lunch. In fact, we will need even bigger guns.

[PE Scott + 563]

57 minutes ago, Toranaga said:

So why are we going to spend billions to decarbonize the electric supply?  0.1 C is nothing compared to predictions of 1-2 C temperatur

The whole argument relies on the accuracy of the models for CO2's impact on global warming. Of course, for the same reasons mentioned in the previous post about lack of data to accurately model global warming based on CO2 is basically true of everything, including "green" energy. 

To be clear, I'm all for a diversified energy grid relying on multiple sources to provide that energy and mostly driven by the free market, ie. Profitability/efficiency of resources. We've already seen a massive drop in the cost of solar and other "renewable" energy sources. This is good and I hope it continues as we will use ever increasing amounts of energy as a society.

I also think it's only fair that the impact of each of these energy sources is honestly reviewed and considered. Additionally, this all has to balance with the needs of society and be realistic. 

So, I wasn't really trying to bash on wind, all though it's my least favorite "renewable", I was trying to illustrate that none of these means of producing energy are without impact and the scope and seriousness of that impact is not well understood because we simply haven't been keeping track long enough or we lack the type of precision models neccessary to make predictions with a high degree of confidence long term. 

The other thing that's nuts is people seem to have such a narrow scope on things. If not for technology and increases in efficiency, every where would be smoggy and there wouldn't be a tree left in earth. Oil and gas has already saved us from extinction and will serve as an excellent transition into whatever is next.

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

This weekend, I got to shovel global warming off my driveway and sidewalk. I also got to pull up my tomatoes and other veggies buried under 4-6 inches of "global warming".

[ronwagn + 6,290]

9 hours ago, PE Scott said:

I agree 100%. In fact, I think I mentioned that in another thread that got the axe recently, unrelated issues. 

I remember being in Beijing on a subway that had some state sponsored tv on it back around 2010. I don't understand chinese, but one of the short videos looped over and over was a cartoon about emissions. In the cartoon, factories are shown billowing dark clouds into the atmosphere. Then, the picture pans over to a nearby crop. The clouds descend on the crops, the crops grow rapidly and provide food for the populace. Everyone is happy.

My point to that is their has to be balance. I agree that global warming and the argument against CO2 has been massively inflated beyond reason. However, there are plenty of other harmful things in exhaust that still have to be addressed for the sake of local populace and enviroment. Should we shut down industry? Absolutely not. Should we continue to scrub exhaust from coal fired plants and try to capture or reduce harmful emissions? I don't see any harm in that provided it's done logically and reasonably in a way that's not too prohibitive to development.

Good comments but I think we should try to maximize natural gas use and minimize coal use whenever and wherever possible. Renewables will also do what they can affordably. 

Edited October 1, 2019 by ronwagn

[ronwagn + 6,290]

27 minutes ago, Ward Smith said:

This weekend, I got to shovel global warming off my driveway and sidewalk. I also got to pull up my tomatoes and other veggies buried under 4-6 inches of "global warming".

https://news.yahoo.com/historic-winter-storm-dumps-2-194258253.html

'Historic' winter storm dumps 3 feet of snow, smashes records in West

[cbrasher1 + 272]

[PE Scott + 563]

3 hours ago, ronwagn said:

Good comments but I think we should try to maximize natural gas use and minimize coal use whenever and wherever possible. Renewables will also do what they can affordably. 

Yeah, I was thinking more globally where coal plants are still in use and just as a generalization. I absolutely support transitioning, wherever feasible, from coal to natural gas.

Natural gas is the best choice in the U.S. We should be doing more to encourage pipelines and infrastructure to utilize the massive amounts of natural gas produced in America. 

Also, that we take advantage of technology like the link below where its economically beneficial/feasible. It gives people the warm fuzzies wheather or not the CO2 is actually bringing about Doomsday.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/amp/Experimental-Texas-power-plant-aims-to-make-13654087.php

I think the abundant use of natural resources in the U.S. to RETAIN energy independence is vital to our national security. In that regard, I will support concessions like 0 emission natural gas plants if it helps people embrace it. 

[ronwagn + 6,290]

2 minutes ago, PE Scott said:

Yeah, I was thinking more globally where coal plants are still in use and just as a generalization. I absolutely support transitioning, wherever feasible, from coal to natural gas.

Natural gas is the best choice in the U.S. We should be doing more to encourage pipelines and infrastructure to utilize the massive amounts of natural gas produced in America. 

Also, that we take advantage of technology like the link below where its economically beneficial/feasible. It gives people the warm fuzzies wheather or not the CO2 is actually bringing about Doomsday.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/amp/Experimental-Texas-power-plant-aims-to-make-13654087.php

I think the abundant use of natural resources in the U.S. to RETAIN energy independence is vital to our national security. In that regard, I will support concessions like 0 emission natural gas plants if it helps people embrace it. 

Biogas is also a good way to dispose of a lot of feedstocks and makes greenies feel better. 

[PE Scott + 563]

3 minutes ago, ronwagn said:

Biogas is also a good way to dispose of a lot of feedstocks and makes greenies feel better. 

Oh no, if you start telling me you wrote a 643pg book about it.....