How Bad Is Global Warming?

[Iamwhomiam]

Just a tad more credible than any denialist's argument.

But then, they did deny membership to Mickey Mouse, who along with other toon town heroes signed The Oregon Petition that so impressed you.

It, the issue, like me, is getting old. The argument is tired and these days I tire quickly without stimulation, and Ben, ol' pal, you got nuthin. Never had, tbh. Been waiting for something from you, anything truly interesting that I would find provoking enough to challenge my understanding from my years of study of scientific data and reports of the issue prepared by climate scientists, solar scientists, environmental scientists, some of whom I've known personally and for many years and from others from many peripheral fields most would not assume to have any relation to climate change whatsoever, like epidemiologists, geologists and engineers, but in the end, you got Watt? or nuthin'.

Some may find this an amusing topic for discussion; others couldn't care less, perhaps because it's just another thing they feel powerless to change, or perhaps because they believe it will not impact them personally during their lifetime, I really don't know why some are more concerned than others. Perhaps some feel "locked-in" and are dependent upon the fossil fuel machine for their livelihood and believe any alternative impractical or impossible.

Lastly, I will leave you a link with much information from both point of view, but most could also be found were one to review this lengthy ancient thread. (I couldn't recall the name of The Oregon Petition and came across it while searching for it. I've never before read anything from this fellow that I can recall, but he mirrors my thought about arguing with denialists. But I've just a bit more to share first.)

Even Anthropogenic climate change denialist scientists agrees the earth is warming and our seas are rising. Those that support the status quo are enemies of humanity. I emphatically mean just that. Their supporters will watch without emotion as our island nations submerge and seaports become inundated and seaside populations are shifted forcefully. Floods and droughts area already causing shortages of food where once there was abundance. It will become worse. All commerce will become disrupted and chaos will reign. There is no medicine or healthcare available. Diseases now controlled will spread. Millions, if not billions, will die.

And still, they'll watch. And still they'll shout, "There's nothing to see here, please move along."

Here's that link: http://tinyurl.com/kgtwkkh

[Ben D]

Those that support the status quo are enemies of humanity. I emphatically mean just that.

Iam, the status quo is that the UNFCCC, and governments of the world, have in place an AGW strategy to get humanity to pay for a fix. Naturally, since I'm human, not a believer in AGW, and not an enemy of humanity, I do not support this status quo.

[Iamwhomiam]

You know, Ben, I really don't care why you don't believe in AGW.

Insofar as their having a strategy, well that's nice to know. Maybe someday they'll announce it. One way or the other, Ben, humanity will pay for it.

It a shame the most coddled generations of all time would be far too greedy to make the sacrifices now necessary to effect meaningful change to assure the continuity of human existence, but are more than willing to sacrifice others in order to maintain their imagined exceptionality.

You'll probably be reborn in the middle of its worst, poor guy.

[DrEvil]

Those that support the status quo are enemies of humanity. I emphatically mean just that.

Iam, the status quo is that the UNFCCC, and governments of the world, have in place an AGW strategy to get humanity to pay for a fix. Naturally, since I'm human, not a believer in AGW, and not an enemy of humanity, I do not support this status quo.

Uh, correct me if I'm wrong, but trying to fix something is the opposite of maintaining the status quo.

Maintaining the status quo is sticking your head in the sand and declaring you don't believe in AGW.

[Ben D]

^ Uh...trying to fix climate change on the basis of the false premise of humans being the predominate cause has become the status quo of UNFCC/World governments! When the UNFCC/world governments no longer are blaming humans for climate change, then, and only then it will be true that AGW is not the staus quo.

Humanity can never prevent global climate change that is predominately due to natural causes, and the UNFCCC AGW perps know this but are maintaining the status quo that it is humans who are the cause.

Here's a reality check....

[Luther Blissett]

NASA: Earth Just Experienced the Warmest Six-Month Stretch Ever Recorded
By Eric Holthaus

Our planet is on a hot streak.

Over the weekend, NASA announced that last month was the warmest September since global records have been kept. What’s more, the last six months were collectively the warmest middle half of the year in NASA’s records—dating back to 1880.

The record-breaking burst of warmth was kicked off by an exceptionally warm April—the first month in at least 800,000 years that atmospheric carbon dioxide reached 400 parts per million.

According to the National Climatic Data Center, which keeps a separate record of global temperatures, this April ranked as the warmest April on record. Followed by the warmest May on record. Followed by warmest June on record. (July wasn’t quite as hot—just the fourth-warmest July on record.) But August—again, you guessed it—was the warmest August on record. The NCDC will release its numbers for September later this month.

As I wrote last November, a trend toward El Niño may be helping to spark a massive heat release from the tropical Pacific Ocean, boosting 2014 into front-runner position for the hottest year ever measured—a phenomenon that may stretch into 2015 as well.
Recent research shows the current warm stretch is probably the planet’s warmest in at least 4,000 years. That means global temperatures may have already passed a level that human civilization has never experienced. The sheer size and depth of the world’s oceans means that most of global warming’s extra heat has been stored there. For the last decade or so, atmospheric warming has been playing catch up.

If the last six months are any indication, the pace of atmospheric warming may finally be picking up.

Update, Oct. 14, 10:15 a.m.: On Tuesday​, Japan's Meteorological Agency confirmed that last month was indeed the warmest September ever measured. (JMA's global instrument records date back to 1891.) According to JMA, every September in the 21st century has been above the long term increasing trend, a sign of accelerating warming.

[fruhmenschen]

http://vimeo.com/105722725

[stillrobertpaulsen]

File this under: Why climatologists prefer the term 'climate change' to 'global warming':

Global warming ‘will make our winters colder’

Climate scientists discover that melting Arctic sea ice is creating chilly winds
Steve Connor

Monday 27 October 2014

Britain can expect twice as many severe winters as usual over the coming decades, according to a study supporting the counterintuitive idea that global warming could lead to colder weather in some parts of the world.

Climate scientists believe they have found evidence to suggest that the loss of floating Arctic sea ice in the Barents and Kara seas north of Scandinavia can affect the global circulation of air currents and lead to bitterly cold winds blowing for extended periods in winter over Central Asia and Europe, including the UK.

The research, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, supports several previous studies published over the past few years that also indicate a change in the winter climate over Eurasia as a result of the loss of Arctic sea ice. Arctic sea ice has declined significantly over the past three or four decades.

However, the Japanese scientists who carried out the latest study said that the cooling effect is unlikely to last beyond this century. Rising global temperatures will eventually cancel out any localised cooling caused by loss of Arctic sea ice, although they said it is not possible to predict when this will happen.

Masato Mori, of Tokyo University, and colleagues from Japan’s National Institute for Environmental Studies and the National Institute of Polar Research, performed 200 slightly different computer simulations of the global atmospheric circulation based on actual sea ice measurements made since 2004, when there were years of high and low sea-ice cover in the Barents and Kara seas.

They found that a decline in sea ice was linked with a “blocking” pattern in the high-altitude atmospheric air currents. This blocking became twice as likely in low sea-ice years and it favoured the transport of cold, Arctic air south and west over Europe and Asia.

Colin Summerhayes, emeritus associate of the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, said: “This counterintuitive effect... makes some people think that global warming has stopped. It has not. Although average surface warming has been slower since 2000, the Arctic has gone on warming rapidly throughout this time.”

Professor Jennifer Francis, of New Jersey’s Rutgers University, one of the first researchers to make a link between loss of sea ice and changes to the jet stream, said: “Based on this new solid and convincing work, together with the other recent studies that support the existence of this particular mechanism, I think we can say this response is real.”

Big freezes: Britain at its coldest

2013: January and March brought two waves of heavy snow, causing chaos for travellers and closing schools.

2010: From late November to early December, heavy snow caused disruption across the country. Temperatures plunged too, with a low of -21.1C recorded at Altnaharra in the Scottish Highlands.

1963: The coldest winter since 1740. The sea froze in places, with blizzards and snow drifts across the country. Winter didn’t fully relax its grip until early March.

[fruhmenschen]

http://www.bostonherald.com/business/bu ... sea_levels


Boston contest to combat rising sea levels

WATER SOLUTION: Mayor Martin J. Walsh launches a design competition at the ABX Convention in Boston yesterday to address the threat of rising sea levels.
Thursday, October 30, 2014

Boston is launching an international design competition to come up with solutions to combat rising sea levels after narrowly averting catastrophic flooding from Hurricane Sandy two years ago and two more recent powerful storms.

Mayor Martin J. Walsh yesterday announced “Living with Water” — a program that will solicit ideas to address three threats posed by encroaching sea levels to the city:

• How to safeguard the 97-year-old Prince Building in the North End.

• The best way to redevelop Fort Point, an area undergoing significant construction.

• Devising a plan to address the recurring flooding on Morrissey Boulevard in Dorchester.

“There’s no issue more urgent in a lot of ways than climate action,” Walsh said. “We need to do everything possible.”

[stillrobertpaulsen]

File this under: It Gets Worse

Mitch McConnell Says His Top Priority Is To ‘Get The EPA Reined In’

by Ari Phillips Posted on November 7, 2014


Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of KY, joined by his wife, former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, celebrates with his supporters at an election night party in Louisville, KY, Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2014. CREDIT: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

On Thursday, incoming Senate Majority Leader and Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell said that when it comes to serving his home state, his top priority is “to try to do whatever I can to get the EPA reined in.”

In his first one-on-one interview since his landslide re-election for a sixth term, McConnell told the Lexington Herald-Leader that he is convinced that coal has a future and that he feels a “deep responsibility” to stop the EPA from regulating carbon dioxide emissions at coal-burning power plants. He said he won a number of coal-producing counties for the first time this election, but that it was a “disappointment” that the state House didn’t go to the GOP on Tuesday night as it would have helped him in his crusade to block the Obama administration’s efforts to promote low carbon, clean energy.

As it stands, McConnell said the only good tool with which to stifle the EPA “is through the spending process, and if (President Barack Obama) feels strongly enough about it, he can veto the bill.”

What this means is that McConnell will have a hard time killing the EPA’s carbon pollution regulations without shutting down the government, a thing he has already pledged not to do.

McConnell, who recently used the “I’m not a scientist” line to avoid taking a stance on climate change, decided to focus on the future of coal rather than that of the climate.

“I’m absolutely convinced from the people I talk to around the country, not just here but around the country, that coal has a future,” McConnell said. “The question is whether or not coal is going to have a future here. It’s got a future in Europe. It’s got a future in China, India, Australia. But not here?”

A recent investigation by the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute found that much of McConnell’s vast personal fortune comes via his wife, Elaine Chao, whose father founded a shipping company, Foremost Maritime Corporation, that ships commodities, including coal, all over the world. Notably, the investigation found that the company ships cheap coal from Columbia — coal that can undercut the more costly production in Kentucky.

McConnell consistently places blame for the declining fortune of Appalachian coal squarely on the Democrats’ shoulders, but the real story is much more complicated and entails mechanization, natural gas, international trade, and much more powerful forces than EPA regulations.

Nonetheless, the Kentucky Opportunity Coalition, a Karl Rove-linked group, supported McConnell’s protection of the coal industry from the “Obama’s war on coal” this election with ad buys.

In both Thursday’s interview and a post-election speech, McConnell made the war on coal a high-profile talking point and his renewed war on the war on coal as Senate leader the rejoinder.

“I think it is reasonable to assume we will use the power of the purse to push back against this overactive bureaucracy,” McConnell said in a post-election speech November 5. “Of course, we have a huge example of that in this state with the war on coal.”

In his post-election speech, McConnell refrained from throwing any major punches, and took a more conciliatory tone, as did President Obama in his speech shortly thereafter. But as Evan Osnos noted in the New Yorker this week, if McConnell has a deep instinct to rise above his penchant for political calculation now “in a bid for comity and history, he hides it well.”

In so many ways, McConnell is the leader that this U.S. Senate deserves, Osnos continued. “He is a pure political being: he entered politics as a center-leaning, pro-environment, pro-choice Republican in a Democratic state; year by year, he has marched to the right in step with his Party,” he wrote.

For a glimpse into the incoming Senate Majority Leader’s plans for the next two years, McConnell has told his donors that he will work hard to thwart the Obama agenda, including pushing coal, moving forward with the Keystone XL pipeline, and stopping the EPA from doing anything to confront climate change.

[Iamwhomiam]

I was wondering how soon the onslaught would begin. (as if it ever ended)

Mitch McConnell and his lovely Lady Dai.

I'm impressed by his new found leadership status, it's like Jesus has forgiven him his (Tea Party) sins.

I know it's RI and all, but in future it's really going to be difficult to discern reality from psy-ops imposed reality, as the right knows now the value sensational falsehoods have in riling and rallying their 'intelligence is skin deep' base to do their bidding. (I know, I know same ol', same ol'-- same as it ever was.) But they've adopted Alinsky, so it will be different, more well-organized than ever before and more dangerous than ever before.

Since Nixon signed the EPA into existence in 1972, the far right of the party has always sought to diminish the agency's regulatory authority, if not outright de-fund it, even though it was created with the bipartisan support of both parties. I'm sure some then on the right believed it was never meant to be effective, but to act more as a shell of illusion feigning governmental concerns for the populace's well-being and to perhaps demand occasional corrective actions unenforced with rare minimal fines occasionally levied only to show the public how effective a regulatory body they are. Kinda like how it works now.

Industry wants nobody tellin' 'em how to run their businesses - free market; God-given right to exploit - whatever the hell they want to, wherever they want to, whenever they want to. Get in their way and you will have your reputation crushed, if not your bones - same ol', same ol'.

"Just bury that out back, Joe. We'll both be long gone before it ever gets traced back to us."

Rush Limbaugh, et al, have paved the way; the Radical Right is born anew.

Some of you might have read this NY Times article published on October 30, 2014.

If you haven't visited Big Green Radicals, (or recently watched a Twilight Zone episode), enjoy the fantasy world we're now entering. Here's my local paper announcing the headline speaker at an upcoming annual meeting of the Independent Oil and Gas Association of New York will be Vice President of Berman and Co., Jack Hubbard:

Frack attack likely in talk
Speaker at next week's gas, oil meeting expected to vilify industry's foes

By Brian Nearing
Published 7:59 pm, Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Albany

A Washington, D.C., operative from the sharped-elbowed world of political and personal attack ads will make his pitch to the state's frustrated oil and gas industry next week in Buffalo.

Annual meetings of the Independent Oil and Gas Association of New York usually feature technical experts, lobbyists and politicians, but this year is different, as the industry faces entrenched public opposition to allowing natural gas hydrofracking to start in the state.

Headlining next week's conference is an official from a veteran political consulting firm that specializes in recasting high-profile political debates through media campaigns that portray environmentalists, unions, climate change scientists, teachers, vegetarians and other progressive opponents as immoral and hypocritical.

Last month, the firm, Berman and Co., made national headlines after The New York Times published a leaked speech made by its founder, Richard Berman, to fossil fuel executives in Colorado about a multimillion-dollar campaign to attack natural gas fracking opponents by tagging individual environmental leaders as mentally unhinged and untrustworthy.

Speaking in Buffalo will be Berman Vice President Jack Hubbard, who also attended the June event in Colorado. Berman has operated a network of dozens of not-for-profit groups, funded clandestinely with millions of dollars from various industries, that create campaigns on hot-button political issues like fracking, unions, secondhand cigarette smoke, public school teachers, minimum wages and meat consumption. "They characterize us in a campaign as being the guys with the black helicopters. And to some degree, that's true," said Berman, according to the Times transcript. His firm is running campaigns that target anti-frack groups in Pennsylvania and Colorado.

Hubbard's appearance in Buffalo is not a signal that New York's industry, frustrated over the state's indecision after six years of study, is seeking to boost its political leverage by targeting the moral underpinnings of anti-frack groups, said IOGA New York Director Brad Gill on Tuesday.

"We had Berman lined up long before this broke," said Gill. He said the association is not a client of Berman and is "still in our holding pattern" awaiting a state decision on hydrofracking. " They have a lot of heavy-hitter clients, but we are not one of them," he said.

During a pitch for up to $3 million in funding from the Colorado gas industry, Hubbard and Berman described their latest public relations campaign, run through the website Biggreenradicals.org, against environmental groups that oppose fracking in Colorado and Pennsylvania.

"We wanted to brand the entire movement behind this as not being credible and anti-science," said Hubbard, according to the Times transcript. This campaign uses the "typical Berman and Co. model, in terms of undermining these folks' credibility and diminish(ing) their moral authority." A picture of a purported environmentalist on the website shows a man wearing a metal colander and old-fashioned TV antennas on his head.

Berman did not return a telephone call seeking comment for this article, but the company did confirm to the Times that the speech was given and did not dispute the transcript, which is posted to the newspaper's website.

Berman told Colorado executives that to be effective, messages to diminish fracking opponents must target emotions of fear, love, anger and greed because "emotions drive people much better than intellectual epiphanies."

http://www.timesunion.com/business/article/Frack-attack-likely-in-talk-5870251.php

[Ben D]

Wow...quite a polarization.....



https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/529837691278733312

[Lord Balto]

Those that support the status quo are enemies of humanity. I emphatically mean just that.

Iam, the status quo is that the UNFCCC, and governments of the world, have in place an AGW strategy to get humanity to pay for a fix. Naturally, since I'm human, not a believer in AGW, and not an enemy of humanity, I do not support this status quo.

Uh, correct me if I'm wrong, but trying to fix something is the opposite of maintaining the status quo.

Maintaining the status quo is sticking your head in the sand and declaring you don't believe in AGW.

I would just like to point out to those who haven't noticed it, that the truth often does not reside somewhere between the two extreme views held by the vast majority of humanity, whether one side or the other is more "scientific" than the other and can martial more footnotes and articles in scientific journals. Commonly, the truth is located somewhere on the Y-axis of possible viewpoints. As I have pointed out somewhere above, the evidence is fairly clear and "scientifically" established, to the point that the relevant data has appeared in orthodox scientific journals, that there have been many climatic changes, many of which have lasted for hundreds and even thousands of years, in the history of the Holocene Period. The Roman Age Optimum, for one, comes to mind. The real question is whether these changes resulted from human activity--all those campfires being lit by the Mithra-worshipping soldiers on the borders of the empire?--or whether they result from external causes like comets and asteroids, and whether, in our infinite naked ape hubris, we should be trying to do something about it.

Again, since there seems to be a knee-jerk reaction to anyone who doubts the high priests of the Church of Scientism, I will reaffirm that I do not, and never have, doubted the existence of climate change. The last glacial period ended with vast climate change. What I doubt is the notion that we are being punished by God, or Mother Nature, or the gods of entropy, for having had the audacity to leave our hunter gatherer existence and congregate in cities where we committed the unpardonable sin of inventing the light bulb, an attitude that would be positively hilarious--one sees with one's mind's eye a bunch of chimpanzees dressed up in professorial robes proclaiming in Latinized ape-speak that the world is flat--if it weren't being used to promote a primitivist agenda that would have us growing "forest gardens" in our backyards and wearing bear skins.

[DrEvil]

^^No one is disputing that the climate has natural variations over large time-scales. The problem is that we are currently messing up those natural variations to the point where we might destabilize the whole cycle, with potentially catastrophic results.
All the natural variations (that we know of) are accounted for in the current research, and they can't explain the current warming. 2014 is on track to be the warmest year on record.

If the climate is a bridge, we're a unit of soldiers marching in lockstep across it. Get the tempo just right and the whole bridge collapses.

And just from a personal, non-scientific viewpoint: The weather where I live is going haywire.
This February my neighboring village almost burned to the ground (40 buildings lost) because from new-year till the end of February we had constant winds and dry weather (and no snow whatsoever).
Same thing happened twice in northern Norway a couple of weeks later, with a few hundred buildings lost.

About two weeks ago we had severe flooding that washed away acres of farmland (and six houses) that's been there for centuries. It ain't normal.

[Iamwhomiam]

Lord Balto, with all due respect, the histories of past epochs endings and beginnings is little understood. We can flow all across the board with opinions believed to be truth, especially about this very subject - the cause of the end of any epoch. We have those such as yourself and also me, too, who believe the earth has suffered past catastrophic events repeatedly, whether from slow or fast internal "natural" geological processes or from sudden external extraterrestrial body impacts with Earth that probably ended one epoch and birthed another, and we have others who believe it's all God's doing for some reason or another and still others who feel perhaps as you might, that aliens were to blame and will be the cause of the next. And not just the lizard-types, but all sorts of creatures, material and not. Everyone has opinions.

But as our kind Dr. Evil has pointed out, that's not the issue. The issue is the argument as to whether human activities are causing irreversible harm to Earth's bio- and ecosystems, causing unnatural warming unattributable to natural events.

Evidence-driven scientific consensus from myriad fields of study says human activities are indeed causing the observable warming and acidification of our oceans, the accumulation of incredible levels ( in gigatons ) of toxic pollutants in our ocean of air that have thousands of times the warming potential of Carbon Dioxide being introduced annually, warming it while poisoning us all with every breath we take. Humans are causing the present changing climate patterns, not a meteor. And to the best of my knowledge, alien vehicles are pollution-free and they aren't known to build campfires.

For those who have studied the subject, the scenario is indeed frightening, like standing nearby watching while someone you love in peril slips from your view before you've reached them, not knowing their true fate but fearing the worst...

It's not my fight anymore. You own your future.

One of the ironies I see in Ben's comments is he cannot understand that even if he were to be right, (something I assure you he's not), he'd be wrong.

It was assumed by most scientists that sometime in the 1960s we should be entering a period of cooling, the beginning of the ending of an epoch, that of our civilization's history of relatively mild climate extremes, as we entered a new Ice Age. That's how the impacts of anthropogenic pollutants began to be questioned.

Believe what you will, LB. Ben seems to now believe the warming is only natural, making him rather unique among denialists, as all have recognized human contributions do indeed warm our climate, but can't explain why it's not cooling as had been expected.

Lord Balto, if I may, allow me this: Take the well known Barringer Crater

Many scientists have extensively studied this crater, its rim and ejecta. They've identified all the signs known to be present in meteorite impacts, microscopic diamonds, rare metals and isotopes not found naturally on earth and they proclaim the crater to have been caused by the impact of a meteorite of such and such size at some possible speeds. And most look at the evidence and agree, but not everyone. Not Jake. He thinks the scientists are out of their mind.

So resident goatherd Jake doesn't believe teh scientists and dismisses their work out of hand, declaring, "Don't you know the work of God when you see it?" And there's just no arguing with Jake, cause he knows what's up. "It's those damned atheists, doomed servants of Satan, trying to undo God's good works."

The impact of rising waters upon our most populated seacoasts is not avoidable and populations should now be being relocated far inland. Crises caused by flooding when it's everyone for themselves will not be pretty, now matter what you or anyone believes.

What are you doing to minimize the very real future risk to your progeny? Complaining about asteroids and meteorites?

Frankly, Reality is happening right now and if you wait, you'll be washed away in the rising tide of human depravity that's sure to follow the rising waters.

Besides, soon after the flood induced rush-hour crush kills millions, a large asteroid will impact and utterly destroy the earth. I read the script.