How Bad Is Global Warming?

[Luther Blissett]

[Luther Blissett]

Climate set to change “orders of magnitude” faster than at any other time in the past 65 million years
By Rebecca J. Rosen

Some of the earliest clues scientists had that Earth’s climate has changed over time were mismatches between the fossil record and a current ecosystem. How could this palm tree have grown in Wyoming? Why have fossils of the tropical breadfruit tree been found as far north as Greenland? These cold places must have once been warm and wet. The world is not as it has always been.

And somehow, despite the tumult, species adapted, moving thousands of miles to habitats where they could survive. Won’t species today just do the same as temperatures rise in the years ahead?

It seems they may not have the chance. A new paper in the journal Science finds that climate change is now set to occur at a pace “orders of magnitude more rapid” than at any other time in the last 65 million years. That breakneck speed may mean extinction for species that cannot keep up.

For example, the paper’s authors Noah S. Diffenbaugh and Christopher B. Field of Stanford write, consider the global cooling that took place beginning some 52 million years ago. That change was of a greater magnitude than even the worst-case global warming projections for the 21st century. But that transition occurred over a period lasting 18 million years, not a matter of decades. Similarly, the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, thought one of the more rapid climatic shifts, was 100-fold slower than the most dramatic 21st century scenarios, and 10-fold slower than the best-case ones. “Further,” the authors add, “the rates of global change during the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA), Little Ice Age (LIA), and early Holocene were all smaller than the observed rates from 1880 to 2005 and than for the committed warming calculated to occur over the 21st century if atmospheric concentrations were capped at year-2000 levels” [emphasis added because haha].

The specifics of how this “unprecedented rate of global warming” will affect terrestrial species are uncertain, and will likely vary region to region, habitat to habitat. For some species, hospitable environments may emerge just kilometers away. For others, the authors put it in words that conceal the turmoil, “the constraint may be no-analog climates.” Meaning, simply, that they’ll have nowhere to go.

[brainpanhandler]

Primitive thinking demands a single cause for a single effect.

Indeed. Thankfully we have systematic scientific methods which can gather data and analyze complicated sets of interdependent variables. Yay!

This in contrast to single cause statements like, "It's the sun stupid".

[Luther Blissett]

‘The Era Of The Lawn In The West Is Over’ As Drought-Weary Cities Urge Residents To Save Water
BY KATIE VALENTINE ON AUGUST 12, 2013 AT 5:34 PM

The southwestern U.S., an already arid region of the country, has been parched by droughts over the last few years. Now, a number of the region’s cities are cracking down on a feature of American households that the EPA says sucks up more than 15 percent of Americans’ overall water usage — the grassy lawn.
On Sunday, the New York Times documented the growing aversion southwestern cities have to grass, something city officials view as an impractical and water-intensive luxury. Los Angeles, a city that in 2007 experienced its driest year in 130 years, implemented a grass-removal incentive program in 2009 and has paid homeowners who tear up their lawns a combined total of $1.4 million since then. The city pays $2 per square foot of grass, a rate that increased from $1.50 this spring after the state experienced an unusually dry winter. In place of grass, the homeowners are encouraged to plant native, drought-resistant plants like California lilacs and species of succulents and cacti, creating a desert garden in the place of a standard, grassy lawn. Between 40 and 70 percent of the water consumed in Los Angeles goes to outdoor usage, according to the city’ Department of Water and Power, and most of that is used to irrigate lawns — statistics that make incentivizing lawn removal logical.

Los Angeles isn’t the only city to adopt tactics like this in the face of decreased water resources. The practice of replacing grass with turf or drought-resistant plants began in 2003 in Las Vegas, a city that, despite its lavish fountains, has been a pioneer in water conservation. The city pays homeowners $1.50 for each square foot of lawn they remove or let die — the climate is so dry in Las Vegas that grass will shrivel and die in less than a week if it isn’t watered. Las Vegas also has a tiered system for paying for water: up to a certain point, residents pay $1.16 per thousand gallons of water, but after that point is reached, water rates increase up to $4.58 per thousand gallons. In Austin and El Paso, Texas, residents can only water their lawns after the sun sets, and can be fined up to $475 if they’re caught watering during the day. And Mesa, Arizona’s Grass-to-Xeriscape program pays residents a $500 rebate if they replace 500 square feet of grass with a “water-thrifty landscape.”

So far, despite some residents’ attachments to the idea of a grassy lawn, the programs seem to be working. From 2000 to 2010, the average per-person water use in Las Vegas declined by 30 percent, with the grass-removal program alone saving 9.2 billion gallons of water. The average square foot of grass in Las Vegas, a city which typically only gets about 4 inches of rain each year, takes 73 gallons of water to keep alive, and so far, the city has paid residents and business-owners $200 million to remove 165.6 million square feet of grass. About 848 Los Angeles households have participated in their city’s rebate program so far, converting 1.15 million square feet — about 26 and a half acres — of grass into drought-resistant landscaping.

But an ongoing, severe drought in much of the Southwest could force many other southwestern cities to adopt similar practices. After three years of drought, over-consumption of water and the natural gas industry’s heavy water demands, 30 communities in Texas could run out of water completely by the end of this year. Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the two largest reservoirs in the U.S., could soon be required to reduce the amount of water they release to southwestern states, and Elephant Butte Reservoir in New Mexico is at its lowest water level in four decades after three years of extreme drought. These drier-than-usual conditions have made one expert declare the “era of the lawn in the West” to be over.

[Project Willow]

Nice. I wanna do one of these about the FMSF versus those conspiring therapists.

[Ben D]

Primitive thinking demands a single cause for a single effect.

Indeed. Thankfully we have systematic scientific methods which can gather data and analyze complicated sets of interdependent variables. Yay!
This in contrast to single cause statements like, "It's the sun stupid".

“The data doesn’t matter. We’re not basing our recommendations on the data. We’re basing them on the climate models.” Prof. Chris Folland, Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research.

The models are convenient fictions that provide something very useful.”Dr David Frame, Climate modeler, Oxford University

“It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.” – Paul Watson, Co-founder of Greenpeace”

“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony … climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world. – Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment

“We may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse…isn’t it our job to bring that about” - Maurice Strong, senior advisor to Kofi Annan, U.N. Secretary-General who chaired the gigantic (40,000 participants) “U.N. Conference on Environment and Development” in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 , who was responsible for putting together the Kyoto Protocol with thousands of bureaucrats, diplomats, and politicians, stated.

“We have got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.” - Timothy Wirth, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Global Issues, who seconded Strong’s statement.

[Rory]

"It's the sun, stupid" - 'Ben D', talking from his own arsehole

[JackRiddler]

‘The Era Of The Lawn In The West Is Over’ As Drought-Weary Cities Urge Residents To Save Water
BY KATIE VALENTINE ON AUGUST 12, 2013 AT 5:34 PM

For fuck's sake, an opportunity to turn'em all into forest-farm plots!

[Ben D]

"It's the sun, stupid" - 'Ben D', talking from his own arsehole

Rory, RI admin. have recently warned members to comply with the rules, if you want to discuss serious Solar science with me, do it within the accepted rules of discussion,...or be quiet.

[Rory]

redacted - Ben D is a bad faith actor

It's the sun, stupid

[Ben D]

bwahahahaha

Namaste, bungalow, Gymkhana, Om shiva om

Deep science...

[wintler2]

Here's an interesting bit of info, Gaia breathes...levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rise and fall each year as plants, through photosynthesis and respiration, take up the gas in spring and summer, and release it in fall and winter.
..

What BenD would eventually learn & hopefully pass on: When its summer in northern hemisphere, its winter in southern, so why don't they balance out? Because theres more land=forest in n.hemisphere, meaning n.hemisphere dominates seasonal carbon flux.

Charles Keeling is the guy whose work BenD has just discovered a fragment of, he was first to collect long term data proving rise in atmospheric co2 (starting 1958), they were teaching it in highschools in the 80's, its in every global warming explanation ever written.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeling_Curve



I suppose it is unsurprising that an AGW denier doesn't know about carbon flux, same way catholics aren't good sources on birth control.

[Ben D]

^ Thank you wintler2 (despite the snark). Yes, there is much for me to learn about planetary science, and much more about this awesome existence, happily retirement allows such opportunity. Btw, though I came across that at WUWT, I posted it here simply with good intent, presuming I was not the only RI member not aware of it, not to make any point about CO2 levels or forcing in the context of climate change.

[wintler2]

Yes, there is much for me to learn about planetary science ..

Yet for 5? years now you've been insisting on [bog standard AGW denier] lines of "its the sun/a nwo communist plot/corrupt climate scientists".

Do you have time in your retirement to offer any apologies for your illinformed arrogance?

Sorry Rory, but it seems you are out of your depth, your posts are not sufficiently coherent and relevant science wise to make sense.

[JackRiddler]

Goddess, keep my mind flexible and my soul open as I age!