2017 was second hottest year on record, after sizzling 2016: report

[Scott]

I  came across this which may help to reconcile the debate about melting glaciers and sea levels that don't seem to be rising equivalently:

 

The Ocean Floor Is Sinking Under The Water Weight From Melting Glaciers, And It’s As Bad As It Sounds

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/ocean-floor-sinking-under-water-130002572.html

 

[Dumbastheycome]

9 minutes ago, Scott said:

I  came across this which may help to reconcile the debate about melting glaciers and sea levels that don't seem to be rising equivalently:

 

The Ocean Floor Is Sinking Under The Water Weight From Melting Glaciers, And It’s As Bad As It Sounds

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/ocean-floor-sinking-under-water-130002572.html

 

!

[boomerangutang]

On 1/6/2018 at 9:45 AM, canuckamuck said:

Just after the Younger Dryas period the warming was about 20 degrees Celsius in about a century and there are many more examples of rapid warming greater than what we are experiencing, and all of them with out the inputs of industrialization.

Imagine there is a team of detective investigating a serial killer.  One of the team pipes up, "Why are we pursuing this killer?  There have been hundreds of serial killers throughout history, going back thousands of years.  What's the big deal about this one?   Let him go."

[canuckamuck]

59 minutes ago, boomerangutang said:

Imagine there is a team of detective investigating a serial killer.  One of the team pipes up, "Why are we pursuing this killer?  There have been hundreds of serial killers throughout history, going back thousands of years.  What's the big deal about this one?   Let him go."

Except the climate is different thing than a criminal. You can't lock it up for being bad, so you got to learn what it has done in the past to know what it is capable of. That way you won't turn into Chicken Little when the temp goes up less than 2 degrees in a century. You can see that these things have happened before and humanity and the ecosystem adapted. Also it makes the case that there is a lot of money being wasted on prevention of warming, when it should be applied to preparation for warming.

Personally I am totally prepared for the next +/- 0.2 degrees change I will experience before I die. How about you?

[attrayant]

23 minutes ago, canuckamuck said:

Except the climate is different thing than a criminal. You can't lock it up for being bad, so you got to learn what it has done in the past to know what it is capable of.

 

[...]these things have happened before and humanity and the ecosystem adapted.

 

Meteors have hit the Earth thousands, no - millions of times in its history and the Earth did just fine.  The ecosystem adapted, as you put it.  So never mind that one that's heading for us now, right?

 

 

27 minutes ago, canuckamuck said:

Also it makes the case that there is a lot of money being wasted on prevention of warming, when it should be applied to preparation for warming.

 

I'd like to hear some ideas about how cities should prepare for more cat 5 hurricanes making landfall and arable farmland becoming unsuitable for growing crops.  I head that Greenland is going to be balmy in a few hundred years.  Maybe entire populations should move there?  Just the rich ones that can afford it, or course.  Maybe for the poor people we'll use the money for more swimming lessons.

 

23 minutes ago, canuckamuck said:

Personally I am totally prepared for the next +/- 0.2 degrees change I will experience before I die. How about you?

 

Where did you get that number from, and for what future decade has that projection has been made?  Is that the temperature change that's expected in the remainder of your lifetime?  Are you aware that there are other, much younger people on the planet, and that those people will have successive generations that will be seriously, maybe disastrously affected by climate change?

[canuckamuck]

14 minutes ago, attrayant said:

Meteors have hit the Earth thousands, no - millions of times in its history and the Earth did just fine.  The ecosystem adapted, as you put it.  So never mind that one that's heading for us now, right?

What you going to do about it then?

15 minutes ago, attrayant said:

I'd like to hear some ideas about how cities should prepare for more cat 5 hurricanes making landfall and arable farmland becoming unsuitable for growing crops.  I head that Greenland is going to be balmy in a few hundred years.  Maybe entire populations should move there?  Just the rich ones that can afford it, or course.  Maybe for the poor people we'll use the money for more swimming lessons.

Please provide evidence that hurricanes are increasing in number.

Greenland warming would be great, people could move their, but the next cooling would send them back in a short time. just like the vikings.

Do you think people need swimming lessons to adapt to 1.6 mm of sea rise per year? By the time they are 50 the water will up to their ankles 

 

22 minutes ago, attrayant said:

Where did you get that number from, and for what future decade has that projection has been made?  Is that the temperature change that's expected in the remainder of your lifetime?  Are you aware that there are other, much younger people on the planet, and that those people will have successive generations that will be seriously, maybe disastrously affected by climate change?

I made the number up of course, I don't know how long I will live and I actually expect cooling rather than warming to be the next trend.

The younger people will not have to worry about warming. Almost certainly the major issue of their lives will be war and authoritarianism.

[attrayant]

3 minutes ago, canuckamuck said:

What you going to do about it then?

 

Prevention or at least mitigation, of course.  Surely not your suggestion of "preparation". How do you prepare for a meteor strike anyway?

 

 

3 minutes ago, canuckamuck said:

Please provide evidence that hurricanes are increasing in number.

 

I said "more cat 5 hurricanes".  We don't know if there will me more hurricanes in total, but the number of stronger storms is projected to increase, and has already been seen to trend upwards since the 70s. From the Climate Change Special Report, chapter 9 (extreme storms):

 

"Both theory and numerical modeling simulations (in general) indicate an increase in [tropical cyclone] intensity in a warmer world, and the models generally show an increase in the number of very intense [tropical cyclones]."

 

This only makes sense since hurricanes get their energy from warm ocean waters, which there will be a lot more of in the future.  All of that energy has to go somewhere.

 

3 minutes ago, canuckamuck said:

Greenland warming would be great, people could move their, but the next cooling would send them back in a short time. just like the vikings.

Do you think people need swimming lessons to adapt to 1.6 mm of sea rise per year? By the time they are 50 the water will up to their ankles 

 

I made the number up of course, I don't know how long I will live and I actually expect cooling rather than warming to be the next trend.

 

I see.  Where did the 1.6 mm/year figure come from?  Here's a study that gives a range from .8 to 2 meters by 2100, and here's another that says 1-2 meters by 2100.

 

Even at the low end of .8 meters, here is just a tiny snapshot of the potential devastation: Ranking Port Cities with High Exposure and Vulnerability to Climate Extremes: Exposure Estimates (Nicholls, R. J. et al., 2008).  We can see that many assets (not just humans) that will be affected:

 

 

Eye-balling this chart, which is just the top twenty port cities, it looks like about $24.5 trillion in exposed assets at risk.  To put that into perspective, the CIA's world fact book reports the 2016 gross world product was US $75.5 trillion.  Based on that, I'm going to say that the old adage about an ounce of prevention being better than a pound of cure holds true for this issue. 

 

And "up to their ankles" in water might sound like a fun day at a water park, but on a national scale just think about the loss of farmland, disease and pestilence that comes with that.

 

3 minutes ago, canuckamuck said:

The younger people will not have to worry about warming. Almost certainly the major issue of their lives will be war and authoritarianism.

 

These problems will be made even worse by climate change.  I'm confident that we can address more than one or two problems at a time.

[canuckamuck]

Both your hurricane prediction and your sea level predictions come from computer modeling. Get back to me when the computer models start to get things right. So far real world warming is way off what the models predicted. Same same Hurricanes and water rise. You are just parroting predictions that computers were manipulated into producing.

[attrayant]

What you fail to mention is that most of the errors have been due to models being too conservative.  The rate of actual ice melting has been 40% faster than the early IPCC reports from the 90s.  

 

 

Going back to our meteor strike analogy, you would similarly dismiss my concern about the meteor strike by saying that my projection about the size of the meteor is too conservative, so we needn't worry about it.  Yes - we still need to worry about it.

 

Conservative modeling is done because when predictions are too severe, scientists are branded "alarmist".  The headline "effects of global warming not as bad as alarmist scientists thought!" always makes the Daily Mail (usually in all caps), while the headline "effects of global warming worse than scientists thought!" never does.

 

Climate science is still young; its projections are good and getting better over time.  We acknowledge this by putting error bars in graphs and making projections within a range of possibilities, such as saying .8 to 2 meters of sea level rise.  You didn't do that in your 1.6 mm per year sea level rise statement.  I'm still waiting to hear where that figure came from.  I hope it wasn't a computer model.

 

 

1 hour ago, canuckamuck said:

Both your hurricane prediction and your sea level predictions come from computer modeling. Get back to me when the computer models start to get things right.

 

 

This just in: computer models get things right.  Yes it's a youtube video, but I figured all these multipage studies I'm posting were drying out the discussion too much.  Hopefully a 90-second video will be easier to digest.  It shows the climate predictions made my scientists and their models, and how close to reality they ended up being.  Then, at the 1:10 mark, it shows predictions made by climate change contrarians, and how accurate they ended up being (spoiler alert: not very). 

 

Predicting sea level rise isn't too hard.  We know the thermal expansion coefficient of water.  We have a good idea of how much cap ice here is.  The hard part is quantifying the input variables such as the levels of CO₂ that will continue to be pumped into the air, the rate of ice melt, changes in solar irradiance and other human variables.  There may still be some variables we haven't considered.  It was mentioned earlier than ocean floor topography might be changing.  That's yet another input variable to consider.  With all these input variables, I'm surprised the models have been so accurate.

 

 

 

Edited January 9, 2018 by attrayant

[ilostmypassword]

1 hour ago, canuckamuck said:

Both your hurricane prediction and your sea level predictions come from computer modeling. Get back to me when the computer models start to get things right. So far real world warming is way off what the models predicted. Same same Hurricanes and water rise. You are just parroting predictions that computers were manipulated into producing.

Well, if you hadn't supported this assertion with such good data I wouldn't accept it. But as it now stands...

[canuckamuck]

Oprah Winfrey is going to run for president. America will vote for her of course. All the computer models in the world can't save us now.

[ilostmypassword]

18 minutes ago, canuckamuck said:

Oprah Winfrey is going to run for president. America will vote for her of course. All the computer models in the world can't save us now.

Thanks for providing us with your idea of what relevant data is. No wonder you disbelieve in human caused global warming.

[canuckamuck]

3 hours ago, ilostmypassword said:

Thanks for providing us with your idea of what relevant data is. No wonder you disbelieve in human caused global warming.

Your humor impairment has increased I see. You should have that looked at.

[Auriane]

This is only the beginning of global warming

[canuckamuck]

13 minutes ago, Auriane said:

This is only the beginning of global warming

Actually it began about 12,000 years ago, at least this round.

[ilostmypassword]

27 minutes ago, canuckamuck said:

Actually it began about 12,000 years ago, at least this round.

Once again, the semantics game. Let's revise the sentence in question to say that this is only the beginning of human caused global warming.

[RickBradford]

7 minutes ago, ilostmypassword said:

Once again, the semantics game. Let's revise the sentence in question to say that this is only the beginning of human caused global warming.

Actually, we're near the end of human-caused global warming. I know, because the great and good said so.

 

Global warming received its marching orders at the Paris conference in 2015, when: " A historic, legally binding climate deal that aims to hold global temperatures to a maximum rise of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, staving off the worst effects of catastrophic global warming, has been secured."

 

The noted economist Lord Stern was equally effusive:  “This is a historic moment, not just for us but for our children, our grandchildren and future generations. The Paris agreement is a turning point in the world’s fight against unmanaged climate change which threatens prosperity. "

 

Former UK PM David Cameron agreed: “We’ve secured our planet for many, many generations to come – and there is nothing more important than that.”

 

Francois Hollande, the-then French president, put the agreement on a par with the moon landings. “This is a major leap for mankind."

 

To suggest that we are only at the beginning of human-caused global warming would be to say that the Paris agreement was a colossal failure, and that all these noble politicians are ignorant blowhards and gullible dupes. That surely can't be true.

[ilostmypassword]

5 minutes ago, RickBradford said:

Actually, we're near the end of human-caused global warming. I know, because the great and good said so.

 

Global warming received its marching orders at the Paris conference in 2015, when: " A historic, legally binding climate deal that aims to hold global temperatures to a maximum rise of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, staving off the worst effects of catastrophic global warming, has been secured."

 

The noted economist Lord Stern was equally effusive:  “This is a historic moment, not just for us but for our children, our grandchildren and future generations. The Paris agreement is a turning point in the world’s fight against unmanaged climate change which threatens prosperity. "

 

Former UK PM David Cameron agreed: “We’ve secured our planet for many, many generations to come – and there is nothing more important than that.”

 

Francois Hollande, the-then French president, put the agreement on a par with the moon landings. “This is a major leap for mankind."

 

To suggest that we are only at the beginning of human-caused global warming would be to say that the Paris agreement was a colossal failure, and that all these noble politicians are ignorant blowhards and gullible dupes. That surely can't be true.

Up to your usual nonsense of distorting what was said and/or not citing climatologists.  Such obviously misleading tripe.

[RickBradford]

3 minutes ago, ilostmypassword said:

Up to your usual nonsense of distorting what was said and/or not citing climatologists.  Such obviously misleading tripe.

All from easily checkable sources, I'm afraid. You'll have to do better than that.

[ilostmypassword]

Just now, RickBradford said:

All from easily checkable sources, I'm afraid. You'll have to do better than that.

The point isn't whether or not the quotes are genuine, but the sources of the quotes.

[attrayant]

47 minutes ago, canuckamuck said:

Actually it began about 12,000 years ago, at least this round.

 

And that meteor that's heading for us?  That's been on its way for 12 thousand years too, so there's no reason to worry about that either.

 

 

9 minutes ago, RickBradford said:

To suggest that we are only at the beginning of human-caused global warming would be to say that the Paris agreement was a colossal failure, and that all these noble politicians are ignorant blowhards and gullible dupes. That surely can't be true.

 

You're right, it's not true!  I suspect what the poster meant by the "only the beginning" comment was 'this is only the beginning of how screwed we're going to be'.  Had there been cities and populations of current magnitude during the previous warming periods, and if they had the technology and intelligence to understand what was happening to them, they would have been just as alarmed and rightfully so.

[canuckamuck]

7 minutes ago, ilostmypassword said:

Once again, the semantics game. Let's revise the sentence in question to say that this is only the beginning of human caused global warming.

By all means dismiss the fact that the warming has been on going for 12,000 years, raising the sea level hundreds of feet. Meanwhile humans thinking that those crazy kids and their wheels had no respect for the ways things are done.

let's assume that something has occurred without man's intervention is no being caused by it. In fact why don't you go a step further and claim man somehow ruined the ice age retroactively.

 

You warmies should keep this chart in mind every time you think the end is near. Because the end looks just like the beginning of this chart, and every honest scientist knows that cooling is the danger, and it is coming back. If we had anything to do with holding back the next ice age, we should be grateful.

We are barely a few degrees above the point where we can support our population.

[RickBradford]

26 minutes ago, ilostmypassword said:

The point isn't whether or not the quotes are genuine, but the sources of the quotes.

If you'd read my post you would have seen the names of the (then) French president, and the (then) UK prime minister, sprinkled alongside the quotes, assuring us that the planet was safe for many, many generations. All due to the fabulous Paris agreement.

 

Either they were right, and we've conquered global warming, or they were wrong, in which case the Paris agreement was colossally over-hyped by the politicians, media, bureaucrats and media.

Edited January 11, 2018 by RickBradford

[boomerangutang]

On 1/9/2018 at 10:27 AM, canuckamuck said:

Except the climate is different thing than a criminal. You can't lock it up for being bad, so you got to learn what it has done in the past to know what it is capable of. That way you won't turn into Chicken Little when the temp goes up less than 2 degrees in a century. You can see that these things have happened before and humanity and the ecosystem adapted. Also it makes the case that there is a lot of money being wasted on prevention of warming, when it should be applied to preparation for warming.  Personally I am totally prepared for the next +/- 0.2 degrees change I will experience before I die. How about you?

I used the criminal investigation comparison, if you read it correctly, to show how denialists keep acting like there's nothing significant going on with rising world temps.  In other words, denialists are acting like, "Climate changed in past eons, so what's the big deal if it's changing now?"

 

You last sentence relates to social strata.  I imagine you, like nearly everyone on ThaiVisa live comfortable lives with sufficient money.  We're not the average.  The majority of people ww, particularly those who are and will be affected by CC, are too poor to plausibly move their families to better places.  That's a big motivator for mass human migrations going on now, which will increase in intensity year by year.  

 

I'm in the final tri-mester of my life.  Even if my immediate environment jumped up an average of 5 degrees year 'round, it wouldn't bother me.  I like the heat.  I could afford to buy one or more air-conditioners (I don't have any now).  If I was residing in a place which flooded, I could move to higher ground (I'm already at 1500 ft.).  ...and so on.  

 

Thaivisaites aren't going to be badly affected by desertification and floods, but tens of millions of people are.  I guess it boils down to how selfish a person is, compared to how much one cares about fellow humans and other species.  .....and projections into the future.  

 

I give a hoot for coming generations. That's part of the reason why I plant trees - many of which won't be useful for me in my lifetime.  But the trees I plant today will likely be useful for future generations.  Besides dozens of fruit and lumber trees, I've developed genetically unique strains of pink grapefruit and avocado.  .....some folks, who are now babies, or not yet born, might look back from the future and think, "wow, these are some pretty cool trees. Yum." 

 

On 1/9/2018 at 12:39 PM, canuckamuck said:

Both your hurricane prediction and your sea level predictions come from computer modeling. Get back to me when the computer models start to get things right. So far real world warming is way off what the models predicted. Same same Hurricanes and water rise. You are just parroting predictions that computers were manipulated into producing.

Actually, scientific predictions, in the past 2 decades have been too conservative.  Temps have been rising at a faster pace than predicted.

2 hours ago, Auriane said:

This is only the beginning of global warming

Welcome to the club, Auriane.

[attrayant]

2 hours ago, canuckamuck said:

You warmies should keep this chart in mind every time you think the end is near.

 

I'm not going to keep any chart in mind that is unsourced and looks like it was done by a preschooler.  You know how to participate in this discussion if you want to be taken seriously.

[ilostmypassword]

2 hours ago, RickBradford said:

If you'd read my post you would have seen the names of the (then) French president, and the (then) UK prime minister, sprinkled alongside the quotes, assuring us that the planet was safe for many, many generations. All due to the fabulous Paris agreement.

 

Either they were right, and we've conquered global warming, or they were wrong, in which case the Paris agreement was colossally over-hyped by the politicians, media, bureaucrats and media.

And not the names of even one climatologist. Of course politicians exaggerate. It was a first step. A beginning. The agreement only runs to 2030. At which time it's expected more stringent goals will be set. And given that China and to a lesser extent India are already way ahead of where they were predicted to be at this time, it seems a safe bet that further progress will be made.

[ilostmypassword]

2 hours ago, canuckamuck said:

By all means dismiss the fact that the warming has been on going for 12,000 years, raising the sea level hundreds of feet. Meanwhile humans thinking that those crazy kids and their wheels had no respect for the ways things are done.

let's assume that something has occurred without man's intervention is no being caused by it. In fact why don't you go a step further and claim man somehow ruined the ice age retroactively.

 

You warmies should keep this chart in mind every time you think the end is near. Because the end looks just like the beginning of this chart, and every honest scientist knows that cooling is the danger, and it is coming back. If we had anything to do with holding back the next ice age, we should be grateful.

We are barely a few degrees above the point where we can support our population.

Somebody put together a chart with lots of false or misleading information. It's called global warming for a reason. Most of the figures there are cherry picked from locales that showed unusual warming. But are definitely not global averages. More lies from the denialists.

[sirineou]

On 1/4/2018 at 9:10 PM, canuckamuck said:

I think everyone should be happy that we live at a time where global temperatures continue to be slightly warmer than average and changing only so slightly that even in a century you can't even notice the change. Warmer is better. We don't know when the cooling will begin, and no one will be happy when it comes. In so many ways this is a wonderful time to be alive.

 Yes indeed , 

I know when I am in Thailand I always wish it was warmer.

[attrayant]

Well I managed to find out where this chart came from.  Surprisingly, the emoticons and fuchsia finger-painting don't appear on the original study.  Odd, that.

 

The source is a geologist (not a climatologist) who got his data from a 1997 study by Cuffie & Clow on the temperatures of the Greenland ice sheet. THE GREENLAND ICE SHEET. Not global temperatures.

 

What is worse, the chart claims to depict the present warming period, but the GISP2 data set that was used by Cuffie & Clow stops at 1855, well before the current warming trend.

 

In short, the chart is a deception with a few bald-faced lies sprinkled in.  Now I know why you didn't source the chart.

[canuckamuck]

7 hours ago, attrayant said:

Well I managed to find out where this chart came from.  Surprisingly, the emoticons and fuchsia finger-painting don't appear on the original study.  Odd, that.

 

The source is a geologist (not a climatologist) who got his data from a 1997 study by Cuffie & Clow on the temperatures of the Greenland ice sheet. THE GREENLAND ICE SHEET. Not global temperatures.

 

What is worse, the chart claims to depict the present warming period, but the GISP2 data set that was used by Cuffie & Clow stops at 1855, well before the current warming trend.

 

In short, the chart is a deception with a few bald-faced lies sprinkled in.  Now I know why you didn't source the chart.

You are missing the point. The chart of course is Easterbrook's chart ( the warmies hate him, so I am sure you will find a lot of claims against him. And by the way geologists are a big part of climate science) I picked it because I wanted to show 12,000 years, because that is the length of time necessary to give us a full range of temperatures. Although I knew you guys would jump all over the guy and not the data. If you have a concern with the end date off the chart just cut the whole thing right off at the little Ice age, just after the medieval warm period. You will still see that warming and cooling occurs without industrial levels of CO2. And if you go back 100,000  years or more you will see that the crushing horror of the glacial periods, which would be absolutely apocalyptic to modern earth, happen about every 10,000 years. And those  happen in 100,000 year clusters with very rare breaks where the climate is similar to what we have today.  Which means the respite we are currently enjoying is not going to last. And there is real historical evidence to back that up not just computer models that spit out support for whatever agenda they are programmed to support.

 

But just in case  you still don't understand I will leave out the distracting emojis and give you another chart which shows once again that we are living on borrowed time. Because the climate apocalypse is coming  and it is late.  source link