Mod+ 234. GLOBAL WARMING, CLIMATE CHANGE AND OUR ILLUSION OF CONTROL

One of the arguments used to argue that global warming is caused by humans is that the rate of change is happening faster than can be explained by natural causes.

An episode of Nova about the cause of the extinction of large North American mammals 12,900 years ago tells of a two year period where the temperature fell 18 degrees Fahrenheit.

the ice cores proved that the Earth's
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climate can change extremely rapidly
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sophisticated molecular analysis of the
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ice can reveal the temperature at the
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time it formed the ice from this time
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animals went extinct shows a very
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unusual change temperatures plummeted it
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happened so fast when you think about it
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it's it's unbelievable it's a complete
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change in the state of the climate
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system it would be the equivalent of
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going from maybe to three months of
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winter in in northern New England let's
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say to 11 or 12 months of winter
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throughout the year
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in possibly less than two years the
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annual temperatures in North America
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dropped up to 18 degrees Fahrenheit
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which may not sound like a lot but the
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last time it got that cold in what is
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present-day Chicago it was buried under
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a mile of ice
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throughout much of the world climates
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changed some places got colder others
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dried out causing more fires
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was this sudden climate change
The Nova documentary explains that this episode might have been caused by a comet impact. However:
Gary Haynes says that's true [that animals went extinct because of climate change] but there
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were other similar periods of climate
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change

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Measuring oxygen isotopes in ice cores provides information on the temperature of the climate at the time the ice was formed.

iceage.GIF
 
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It is unquestionably true that mean temperatures on Earth have fluctuated over geological time; sometimes catastrophically for some environments and life forms.
Likewise the biology of life has also changed over geological time; and also catastrophically for some environments and life forms.

In all cases where there were catastrophic environmental changes on Earth there were causes for those changes.
But those causes have not been uniform; they have been many and complex.

The Earth's first mass extinction event may have been the emergence of oxygen producing and using life forms;
which was an environmental catastrophe for the dominant anaerobic life forms at that time.
In the case of the oxygenation crisis and mass extinction it was the life processes and life activity of newly emerging species which caused the event.
Their life processes and activity altered the chemical composition of the atmosphere.

In other words the activity of life forms on Earth can have planetwide environmental impacts and this can be shown to have happened in the deep past.
In fact the Earth's atmosphere today is in its composition the product of life on Earth.

So what is my point?
Showing that there have been changes in the past prior to human dominance does not show or prove that human activity today is not impacting the planet.
On the contrary it can be shown that the life processes and activity of life forms do have environmental impacts.
And therefore it is not unreasonable to suggest that human life processes and activity can have environmental impacts.
And as a planetary species whose life processes and activities are now operating at an exponential industrial level it is inevitable we are impacting the environment.

Just as we have to take into account how we live in our personal lives and homes; and how we deal with the products of our life processes and activity (eg waste)
likewise as a species we must take into account how we live on our planetary home; and how we deal with the products of our life processes and activity.

In my opinion the environmental crisis, or biospheric crisis, is the defining issue of the 21st century
The transition to a sustainable and fully integrated planetary civilisation is our primary task in this century
 
In my opinion the environmental crisis, or biospheric crisis, is the defining issue of the 21st century
The transition to a sustainable and fully integrated planetary civilisation is our primary task in this century
Well the rise in temperature since 1880 (the accepted zero point for these measurements is 0.8 C.

Think of all the things already blamed on that tiny rise of temperature - does that really make sense? Here is a Nobel phsicist who has stuck his neck out to tell the truth:

https://www.mediatheque.lindau-nobe...ver-global-warming-revisited/laureate-giaever

What is the real defining environmental issue for the 21st century? I guess my list would be:

1) The danger of nuclear war.

2) Runaway population increase.

3) Possible pollution from plastics and other unnatural things (CO2 is a natural - indeed vital - plant food.

David
 
Hi David
Personally I am not at all concerned with the temperature debate because it is such a mess and is only one aspect of the real issue.
The real issue is biospheric poisoning, and CO2 if it is an issue at all would only be part of that broader issue.
The points that you list 1 - 3 would all be part of my concerns about the broader biospheric crisis our globalising industrial civilisation is generating.
 
Small point David, but worthy of consideration...
Just as CO2 is a vital plant food, likewise oxygen is a vital animal food. But oxygen can become toxic if there is too much of it.
The problems arising from an excess of oxygen in the atmosphere are many; not just biotoxicity to animals, but also ecotoxicity, for example wildfires.

The issue with CO2 is not the chemical itself but rather the relative quantity in the atmosphere.

Life on Earth as we know it today is reliant on a specific homeostatic balance in the chemical composition of the atmosphere; within a range of tolerance. That balance is maintained in part by the living processes of the biosphere. Biospheric poisoning in my thinking means that balance being altered significantly to a sufficient degree that life as we know it might no longer be sustainable.

Life itself would probably survive and adapt to the new conditions; new life forms would emerge; but we might not survive.

I made this point to a German engineer once and he replied that people have lived on the moon for a time and there are no trees on the moon.
I asked him, so will we all go around in space suits?
 
Hi David
Personally I am not at all concerned with the temperature debate because it is such a mess and is only one aspect of the real issue.
The real issue is biospheric poisoning, and CO2 if it is an issue at all would only be part of that broader issue.
The points that you list 1 - 3 would all be part of my concerns about the broader biospheric crisis our globalising industrial civilisation is generating.
If the real issue is biospheric poisoning with CO2, then why is the 'problem' framed in terms of global warming - even if it is called 'climate change', the only mechanism for that change that is discussed is the supposed greenhouse effect!

I am not averse to arguments about pollution in general, but in the case of CO2, I just think the argument is spectacularly weak. I take your point that just because something is vital, doesn't mean you can't get too much of it - the best example is water - if you drink enough water over a short period of time, your blood gets too diluted, and water osmoses into the brain, and the pressure can kill.

However, CO2 levels have varied over geological time, and I have even seen arguments that the current rise in CO2 is not man-made - that our addition isn't enough to cause the observed rise in CO2.

The only other feature of atmospheric CO2 that gets talked about is ocean acidification. This doesn't seem to be a problem because the ocean is well buffered. People shreik about coral bleaching due to this effect or global warming, and yet there are examples of corals growing in volcanic zones with neat CO2 bubling through them!

I think this absurd 'danger' has been used for politics, and to distract people from real issues. I mean nuclear weapons just have to count as a the largest danger to humans and the biosphere. Also loss of habitat is very real and doesn't need a dubious scientific argument to justify it. There may also be real pollution issues - most certainly in Third World countries that now make so much of our goods (parly because we have made our electricity expensive to avoid climate change!) .

I am somewhat wary of this topic (which is not really central to Skeptiko), because I fear some people join and flood the forum with this one topic - as they have in the past. However, I had an interesting discussion with someone else on here by PM, and I will add you to that conversation if you like.

David
 
I'm wary of the topic too. I'm not at all an expert on it; and I dont want to argue for either side in the mainstream debate.
So I dont know what I could contribute to the discussion you mention.
But if you like to add me I will have a look and see have I anything worth adding.

I'm not interested in the mainstream debate about CO2, global warming and climate change.
My opinion of that debate is not positive of either side.
I think it is a deeply corrupted and agenda ridden debate; and at its worst, irrational hysteria on both sides.

Carbon taxes and the trading and derivatives speculation involved is in my opinion an invention of the big banks in Wall Street and the City.
It has zero to do with the real issues underlying any legitimate concerns about the environment.
It's about private profit and control; what Obama used to refer to as a 'market solution'.

Carbon taxes are the first step towards the breathing tax.
We already know the corporate elites want to privatize the world's water supplies; so why not privatize the atmosphere.
Then the free market will end climate change and guarantee the highest breathing services to customers!

Like with CO2 and oxygen, acidity levels in the ocean have homeostatic tolerance levels for current life forms.
Our globalised industrial civilisation may be able to impact the oceans sufficiently to push them beyond their tolerance levels in multiple factors; not just acidity.
That's what I mean by biospheric poisoning; disrupting biospheric homeostasis.
The oceans are large; not infinite.

I think our globalised industrial civilisation is reaching a scale of productivity that we must take cognizance of the consequences for our home - the Earth and Her living systems.
Just like we take cognizance of the consequences of how we live for our personal homes and our local communities.
We can no longer treat the biosphere as an infinite sump.
 
Hello, yep I'm back.

There seems to be some big developments in climate science that is going on behind the scenes.

Climate forcing. 2 years ago data sets were released to the public that now include solar particles and cosmic rays (due to be included in ipcc 2022 report), this undermines every single climate model up until that time. Since that time not a single peer reviewed paper using these data sets has been able to show any human influence on the climate.
Here's is a short summary.


The full documentary.


A surprising about face from The UN secretary general, perhaps because the inclusion of particle forcing.

A key paper in the latest IPCC sub report had to be retracted.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1585-5
 
Alex,

If we are going to debate this in the forum again, fine, but please ensure that pre-vetting of newcomers is enabled. Last time we got a group of people on the forum that were really about disrupting debate and concealing the truth. Their actions included:

Pasting pages and pages of bumf into threads, with no attempt on their part to discuss the relevance of their material.

One guy reported about 100 innocuous posts in one evening just for the sake of disrupting the moderation process. It took several hours for me to clean up afterwards.

David
 
Hello, yep I'm back.

There seems to be some big developments in climate science that is going on behind the scenes.

Climate forcing. 2 years ago data sets were released to the public that now include solar particles and cosmic rays (due to be included in ipcc 2022 report), this undermines every single climate model up until that time. Since that time not a single peer reviewed paper using these data sets has been able to show any human influence on the climate.
Here's is a short summary.


The full documentary.


A surprising about face from The UN secretary general, perhaps because the inclusion of particle forcing.

A key paper in the latest IPCC sub report had to be retracted.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1585-5
hi LS... welcome back. I have scheduled a great guest to revisit this topic but I figure there's a 50% chance he'll back out of the debate.
 
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