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> As a result, if we cut our carbon foot print to zero, we are still 100% at risk of extinction from climate change. No, not in the comparable time frames. Pl

by acqq 10y ago

> As a result, if we cut our carbon foot print to zero, we are still 100% at risk of extinction from climate change. No, not in the comparable time frames. Please do see that https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/ if you haven't. > we don't have the necessary understanding, and models, needed to drive it in one direction or another. No. We know that we drive it to very fast warming with filling the atmosphere with CO2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujkcTZZlikg&t=4m24s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujkcTZZlikg&t=4m24s > we don't have one of those models. We do. See above. See the bloomberg article to which we comment -- the effects are confirmed with the models. > I haven't looked recently but the literature on what might be the factor behind the cycle of warm and cold cycles is still unknown. Or maybe you haven't looked carefully enough? The cycles are, unsurprisingly, connected to how much the Sun warms the Earth (that's not a constant): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujkcTZZlikg&t=18m05s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujkcTZZlikg&t=18m05s Milankovitch was aware and slowly calculated the periods at the times when the computers didn't exist (he started some 100 years ago) knowing the exact astronomical behavior of the Earth. Now we can do it much easier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles We have less exact models the further we move in the past, but that's irrelevant. It's like complaining that you don't know who was the wife of Socrates' second uncle, and that therefore we can't talk about the son-in-law of Donald Trump. You know less the more you move in the past, but it's not the argument to ignore what's going up now. > there isn't a climate scientist out there who has ever gone on the record to say "do this and it will 'end' global warming." It's completely the opposite. All the IPCC messages of all the world scientists were always "cut the CO2 emissions if you don't want huge increase in the average Earth temperature so fast like it never happened in the history of Earth, you are not going to like the effects." If anything IPCC reports are made to sound less "alarming" than they should be, given what we know. The most recent: http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg3/ http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg3/ Specifically: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg3/WGIIIAR5_SPM_TS_Volume.pdf http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg3/WGIIIAR5_SP...

ChuckMcM 10y ago
I love Randall's illustrations. And to be clear I don't have any argument at all with the data that shows humans dumping lots and lots of CO2 into the air. I wish it went back 40,000 years though. My interest is about the systemic response of the planet to heat. Not CO2, heat. Because over time the planet has gone from very hot to very cold and back again. Richard Alley in that youtube video makes this point nicely where he points out that if Ice Ages were just caused by the tilt of the planet, you would expect they would either oscillate from pole to pole, or from equator to pole. And yet they don't, they take the whole planet with them. Why? One of the papers I read discussed the notion of water vapor and its effect on global temperatures. Its hard to get right for the models since it doesn't leave a good footprint and it is difficult to evaluate using gas bubbles in ice cores. In the current models if you add clouds to the stratosphere you get more warming (it traps heat) if you add clouds to the troposphere you get cooling. The basis for the nuclear winter argument is the obscuring of the troposphere. So one of the big wild cards in climate science is this, as the atmosphere warms it can hold more water vapor, that is basic physics. But if that water vapor condenses in the troposphere it cools the planet, if it condenses in the stratosphere it warms the planet. So you can start the next ice age using the existing models of climate that we've built, by assuming a large fraction of the additional water vapor becomes clouds in the troposphere. Is that the future? Or is it desertification? Or is it something else? To reiterate, I completely agree with every climate scientist who says you won't like the result, and that is what they say. You wrote it in your comment: "cut the CO2 emissions if you don't want huge increase in the average Earth temperature so fast like it never happened in the history of Earth, you are not going to like the effects." But they don't say "cut the CO2 emissions and the climate will moderate to a comfortable stability." Because from a systems perspective the climate always changes. Everyone who understands the argument understands humans are destabilizing the climate, but we haven't yet figured out how the Earth is going to react to that destabilization. I agree with you that "we're not going to like it." And I mourn that when people talk about the climate it gets immediately politicized (by both sides). The Earth is an amazing system and we have a lot to learn about it, it is a shame that talking about what we know and what we wish to know sets up such emotional debate.
- acqq 10y ago
  > we haven't yet figured out how the Earth is going to react to that destabilization. Oh yes we did. It will get warmer. And remain much longer warmer than we'd like. Unless the CO2 production is cut. It's that simple.

by acqq 10y ago

ChuckMcM 10y ago

I love Randall's illustrations. And to be clear I don't have any argument at all with the data that shows humans dumping lots and lots of CO2 into the air. I wish it went back 40,000 years though. My interest is about the systemic response of the planet to heat. Not CO2, heat. Because over time the planet has gone from very hot to very cold and back again. Richard Alley in that youtube video makes this point nicely where he points out that if Ice Ages were just caused by the tilt of the planet, you would expect they would either oscillate from pole to pole, or from equator to pole. And yet they don't, they take the whole planet with them. Why? One of the papers I read discussed the notion of water vapor and its effect on global temperatures. Its hard to get right for the models since it doesn't leave a good footprint and it is difficult to evaluate using gas bubbles in ice cores. In the current models if you add clouds to the stratosphere you get more warming (it traps heat) if you add clouds to the troposphere you get cooling. The basis for the nuclear winter argument is the obscuring of the troposphere. So one of the big wild cards in climate science is this, as the atmosphere warms it can hold more water vapor, that is basic physics. But if that water vapor condenses in the troposphere it cools the planet, if it condenses in the stratosphere it warms the planet. So you can start the next ice age using the existing models of climate that we've built, by assuming a large fraction of the additional water vapor becomes clouds in the troposphere. Is that the future? Or is it desertification? Or is it something else? To reiterate, I completely agree with every climate scientist who says you won't like the result, and that is what they say. You wrote it in your comment: "cut the CO2 emissions if you don't want huge increase in the average Earth temperature so fast like it never happened in the history of Earth, you are not going to like the effects." But they don't say "cut the CO2 emissions and the climate will moderate to a comfortable stability." Because from a systems perspective the climate always changes. Everyone who understands the argument understands humans are destabilizing the climate, but we haven't yet figured out how the Earth is going to react to that destabilization. I agree with you that "we're not going to like it." And I mourn that when people talk about the climate it gets immediately politicized (by both sides). The Earth is an amazing system and we have a lot to learn about it, it is a shame that talking about what we know and what we wish to know sets up such emotional debate.

acqq 10y ago
> we haven't yet figured out how the Earth is going to react to that destabilization. Oh yes we did. It will get warmer. And remain much longer warmer than we'd like. Unless the CO2 production is cut. It's that simple.