Climate change will show no mercy to dithering Thailand

[DrDweeb]

Two interesting charts...

So, we have geological proxies for the most recent 50 years? Who knew? Or is the graph 100% from ice core samples?

Neither NASA nor NOAA are without sin in the data falsification game!

[DrDweeb]

I think you are doing quite well with what you are on now, if you honestly believe all bogus clap trap about global warming and the like.

while you might be right in the light of the great scheme, you are so obviously wrong in stating that both Arctic and Antarctic ice is growing. There has never in the recent few hundreds of years been so little arctic ice during the arctic summers , with the amount of ice shelves, polar ice and glaciers spiralling downwards. That's a FACT , prooven by satellite imageries, and not quite underlining your arguments

It is my understanding that one of the so called ice melts in Antarctica was caused by underwater volcanic activity.

Anyway at one point the arctic ice caps extended to nearly the central US, noted by most people in the flat landscape. I am not sure the scope of the ice caps in Europe and Asia. As I understand it human activity did not exist then and certainly satellites did not exist to prove it.

I am thinking that this phenomena does not quite underline your argument either.

Rakman said Arctic and Antarctic ice is growing. I say, that it's quite on the contrary. No more, nor less. You are trying to put things into my mouth which i never said. Fact is that since the "small ice age" all Arctic and Antarctic ice is dwindling. And please proove that the breaking off of large chunks of the Antartic Ice shelf was caused by volcanic activity ( ???? ) when in fact scientists understood that warmer currents had destabilizing effect onto the affected glaciers. I am not a believer of a gradually "global warming" theory,either, because there is so much more that has to be taken into account ( methane levels, currents relocating, weather patterns changing ) but fact is that Earth has always undergone climactic changes in a more or lesser degree. Our current changes are between mild and dramatic, so as to say. However, nobody, not even a computer model, can foresee and predict the exact future.

I am agreeing with Mr. Boon . . . you all better spend some time educating yourself and do some serious research

The subterranean thermal activity cause was published, on NASA site IIRC but I could be wrong. I forget the details, it was a while ago that I read it

[DrDweeb]

<..snip>

The climate IS currently rapidly changing and mankind has to deal with it. Why bother if the change is man made? Why bother if it was hotter 100.000 years ago. The world was different at that time and mankind was not even there... Its getting (global average) hotter right now than a few decades ago and we have to deal with the many consequences, and possibly reduce the impact when considered negative. And there are many where I like to put to attention that just a couple degrees Celsius permanent change favours other flora and fauna competition, and predictions of that is probably even more difficult than predicting the rise in sea level.

<../snip>

My greatest concern is rising sea level, however just one of many consequences - reduced inhabitable (fertile) land and derived relocation, fighting, war...

We haven't had a rise in global temperature in over 13 years.

In the 70's, the computer models gave us warnings of a new ice age. The current computer models predictions also don't match what is happening even with higher CO2.

Water vapor is a much bigger global warming gas than CO2.

Higher CO2 increases crop yields.

Can anyone name a place that hasn't had ground sinking that has real sea level rise?

Bkk isn't experiencing sea level rise, it's sinking.

Instead of yourself interpreting and picking which consequences fit your predetermined opinion, you could (critically) try relying on what specialised scientists, spending most of their awake hours investigating the topic, conclude.

One thing is prediction of the future, another thing is historical observations. Getting accurate data is an art in itself but let the thousands of nerds do their job and then try extract the consensus....

Warming is one thing, rising sea level is another... They are somewhat related, as increased melting of the huge amounts of ice stored at the poles and Greenland can dramatically change the sea levels, while heating the sea will also cause expansion of the already present sea (only valid for sea water being more than 4C). And salinity and other factors are involved...

But although I hold a Ph.D. in chemical engineering, I do not believe that I can contribute ANYTHING to the very complicated analysis and interpretations related to climate - I leave that to the nerds - or should I say those nerds as I myself could be considered being a nerd when focusing on another topic.

Below is a recent graph, just one of many, showing the MEASURED, averaged trend for global sea level, based on ultra precise satellite measurements, so only going back 20 years. So this research group in Colorado Uni finds that for the last 20 years the global sea level has increased 3.2 mm per year. And there is no sign of any levelling out, although I have heard others concluding that the RISE is levelling of (still rising but lower speed). Anyway, the sea level already rose 6.5 cm since 1994, and in 50 years when my kids coming kids (I can hope they want to reproduce themselves and I get to enjoy grand children) are going to settle down in their own house - together with probably 50% more people on the Earth than today which is another major challenge - the sea level has most probably increased further 15-20 cm.

IPCC and others predict far higher rise, due to predicted accelerated level increase but lets for the time being question if there will be an acceleration... Here is a slightly outdated graph comparing various research groups predictions, all predicting level increase around 1-1.5 m over the coming century.

Now, for most regions the land shrinkage only starts getting severe at 1 meter increase, but quite a lot highly fertile land will fast be affected (all the large river deltas). But also BKK, NYC and other metropolis will face giant challenges... If I am lucky it will be my grand-grand kids that will face those challenges :-)

We have very accurate tidal measuremnets from around the globe for several centuries. Try and find out what they tell you about sea level rise over centuries. You may be surprised at the answer.

[DrDweeb]

The oceans are becoming more acidic. It adversely affects the bottom parts of the food chain and corals - thereby affecting all organisms including humans (directly or indirectly), which rely upon the oceans for nutrition. Excerpts below are from; http://www.wunderground.com/climate/acidoceans.asp

"It is well known that burning of fossil fuels has increased CO2 in the atmosphere from about 275 ppm (.0275%) to 378 ppm (.0375%) since the Industrial Revolution began in the 1800s. This extra CO2 has contributed to the observed rise in global temperatures of 0.6° C via the greenhouse effect. What is less well known, and is discussed in a March 2006 article in Scientific American called "The Dangers of Ocean Acidification", is that a tremendous amount of the CO2 emitted by fossil fuel burning winds up in the oceans."

"When CO2 dissolves into the ocean, it creates carbonic acid. The oceans have dissolved so much CO2 during the past 150 years that the acidity of the oceans' surface waters has substantially increased. Before the Industrial Revolution, pH of the ocean surface waters ranged from 8.0 to 8.3 (pH decreases as acidity increases). Ocean pH has dropped a full 0.1 units since then, to the 7.9 to 8.2 range."

"Higher acidity in the ocean creates problems for a number of organisms. Corals and other creatures that build shells out of calcium carbonate are particularly vulnerable, since they cannot form their shells if the acidity passes a critical level--their shells will dissolve. Several shell-building planktonic organisms, such as coccolithophorids, pteropods, and foraminifera, form an important basis of the food chain in the cold waters surrounding Antarctica."

Of course! Understood! That's the negative aspect of acidification. If you mention just the negative aspects, or just the positives aspects of anything, then that's not impartial science. It's political.

Science is supposed to be impartial. I'm recommending a look at the facts on both sides. As I understand, from my research of scientific papers on the internet, the pH of the oceans varies considerably according to ocean depth, ocean locality, and season of the year. Most sea creatures are used to such variations and can adapt. However, I can understand that those who have been raised in the nanny state might be very concerned.

The oceans are alkaline. What is happening is that the oceans are becoming ever so slightly less akaline.

The oceans are not acidic and they have never been acidic.

Declaring ocean acidification, is a classic scare technique, manipulative use of language on the masses. Most of the unwashed know "acid" is bad from their own personal experience (bettery acid etc). Fewer know that strongly alkaline substances are equally unpleasant. "Increasing acidification" implies that (a) the substance is already acid, and ( that one should infer it is bad because acid is bad.

It is a manipulative crock of shit. The facts are clear, selling them as tghe end of the world as we know it by linguistic deceit is an appalling indictment of "science" and its misuse today.

[DrDweeb]

I don't care for 'carbon credits' but I do believe that our one species affects the climate. 1 ton of CO2 (and other exhaust gasses) on average, annually, per man woman child, is sobering statistic. That's roughly 7 billion tons of fossil fuel exhaust per year. Does that have any affect on one small rocky planet? Do you have better data? Let's see it.

Here's another version of the statistics. Whether it's 6 or 7 billion tonnes annually due to human activity, it's still a relatively small percentage of the total amount of carbon floating around.

"Of the 186 billion tons of carbon from CO2 that enter earth's atmosphere each year from all sources, only 6 billion tons are from human activity. Approximately 90 billion tons come from biologic activity in earth's oceans and another 90 billion tons from such sources as volcanoes and decaying land plants."

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html

... and the total amount of CO2 floating around is?

Amongst the pearls here (which did notinclude the number of tonnes of CO2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_atmosphere you will learn that, astonishingly, the global measuring point for CO2 is at Mua Loa, yes - right next to a volcano and downwind of China. Maybe we should have been measuring it somewhere else?

[DrDweeb]

... cut

I believe that Gaia has had enough of us destroying the treasure she has bestowed on humanity, and is warming things up to exterminate us, like I do a colony of ants invading my house. I'm just grateful every day that I didn't bring any children into the world to suffer.

A spot too much Christian guilt there methinks

[DrDweeb]

Vincent, that is a fair analysis as to the uncertainty as to what will prevail, BUT IT ISN'T NEWS.

RPCVguy,

That's exactly what I felt about your linked video, 'The Accelerated Crash Course'. Not only was there nothing new for me, it was terribly long and tedious. I waited to learn something new but most of the points made were very obvious. For example, does anyone really need to be told that there's no profit to be made in spending the equivalent of a barrel of oil in order to extract and process a barrel of oil?

The narrator also missed a few opportunities to describe more fundamental issues that climate change alarmists should take note of. It is clear to me that our wealth (in total, or on average) is entirely dependent on the true cost of energy plus the efficiency with which we use that energy, excluding natural calamities such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and meteorite collisions from outer space.

If the cost of energy increases without a commensurate increase in efficiency, then economic growth must slow. A popular way of increasing efficiency is to employ cheap labour, which is what China has offered, resulting in lots of companies transferring their operations there.

Other ways of increasing efficiency include reducing waste, reorganizing work practices and introducing more efficient machinery and/or robots.

In a competitive free market, with a bit of help from governments, there should be a natural progression from fossil fuels to renewable fuels as fossil fuels become more expensive due to increasing scarcity.

One of the roles of governments is to facilitate and encourage such a transition in an orderly and efficient manner. It makes complete sense to spend a portion of our current energy supplies from fossil fuels on research and development of alternative energy supplies.

Already we have a number of models of electric cars which work quite well but are currently more expensive than petrol and diesel operated cars, without a government subsidy. As petrol prices increase, and electric car technology simultaneously develops, the electric car should become more popular and desirable, which in turn will result in lower prices, eventually causing the demise of the petrol driven car.

Another point which was not raised in the video, is the role of energy from the sun via photovoltaic panels, solar farms and UHVDC transmission lines. Theoretically, there is no shortage of energy whatsoever, either now or in the future.

From the following Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power we have the following statement:

"Shi Zhengrong has said that, as of 2012, unsubsidised solar power is already competitive with fossil fuels in India, Hawaii, Italy and Spain. He said "We are at a tipping point. No longer are renewable power sources like solar and wind a luxury of the rich. They are now starting to compete in the real world without subsidies". "Solar power will be able to compete without subsidies against conventional power sources in half the world by 2015".

As I mentioned before in a previous post (I think), the Sahara desert alone, if covered with solar panels, could produce about 25 times the current world annual consumption of energy, converting all forms of energy into kilowatt hours. There are so many smaller deserts and uninhabited, arid regions throughout the world, including millions of square kilometres of blank roofs of houses and buildings, the potential for almost unlimited energy supplies is enormous. Of course, nothing is actually unlimited, except infinity, but how about a source of energy that could supply about 100 times what the whole world currently uses annually? Would you say that's sufficient to keep us going for a while?

I was in Lithuania the other day and observed large swathes of the otherwise lovely landscape coved with PV panels. It is a long time since I have seen anything quite so ugly. These PV farms are probably the result of govt. subsidies via over market valuation of the elecricity generated. In any case, covering the landscape with PV panels is not a "solution" imho.

[DrDweeb]

cut ...

At least the Chinese made a real attempt to limit population growth and good on them for having a sane population policy. The west should be so intelligent, but they'll never do it, because the pollies are too gutless to even try.

... and the Chinese have several hundred million males with zero prospect of ever finding a mate. This is the largest ticking bomb under Chinese society. They may have made an effort, but not all the outcomes were intended, or indeed desitrable!

[Jim walker]

Put up the price of gasoline more and more tax and get all the cars off the roads all over the world problem solved everyone just stay at home and all will be well and we shall miss the next ice age out, or is this just a UK idea.

[VincentRJ]

Vincent, that is a fair analysis as to the uncertainty as to what will prevail, BUT IT ISN'T NEWS.

RPCVguy,

That's exactly what I felt about your linked video, 'The Accelerated Crash Course'. Not only was there nothing new for me, it was terribly long and tedious. I waited to learn something new but most of the points made were very obvious. For example, does anyone really need to be told that there's no profit to be made in spending the equivalent of a barrel of oil in order to extract and process a barrel of oil?

The narrator also missed a few opportunities to describe more fundamental issues that climate change alarmists should take note of. It is clear to me that our wealth (in total, or on average) is entirely dependent on the true cost of energy plus the efficiency with which we use that energy, excluding natural calamities such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and meteorite collisions from outer space.

If the cost of energy increases without a commensurate increase in efficiency, then economic growth must slow. A popular way of increasing efficiency is to employ cheap labour, which is what China has offered, resulting in lots of companies transferring their operations there.

Other ways of increasing efficiency include reducing waste, reorganizing work practices and introducing more efficient machinery and/or robots.

In a competitive free market, with a bit of help from governments, there should be a natural progression from fossil fuels to renewable fuels as fossil fuels become more expensive due to increasing scarcity.

One of the roles of governments is to facilitate and encourage such a transition in an orderly and efficient manner. It makes complete sense to spend a portion of our current energy supplies from fossil fuels on research and development of alternative energy supplies.

Already we have a number of models of electric cars which work quite well but are currently more expensive than petrol and diesel operated cars, without a government subsidy. As petrol prices increase, and electric car technology simultaneously develops, the electric car should become more popular and desirable, which in turn will result in lower prices, eventually causing the demise of the petrol driven car.

Another point which was not raised in the video, is the role of energy from the sun via photovoltaic panels, solar farms and UHVDC transmission lines. Theoretically, there is no shortage of energy whatsoever, either now or in the future.

From the following Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power we have the following statement:

"Shi Zhengrong has said that, as of 2012, unsubsidised solar power is already competitive with fossil fuels in India, Hawaii, Italy and Spain. He said "We are at a tipping point. No longer are renewable power sources like solar and wind a luxury of the rich. They are now starting to compete in the real world without subsidies". "Solar power will be able to compete without subsidies against conventional power sources in half the world by 2015".

As I mentioned before in a previous post (I think), the Sahara desert alone, if covered with solar panels, could produce about 25 times the current world annual consumption of energy, converting all forms of energy into kilowatt hours. There are so many smaller deserts and uninhabited, arid regions throughout the world, including millions of square kilometres of blank roofs of houses and buildings, the potential for almost unlimited energy supplies is enormous. Of course, nothing is actually unlimited, except infinity, but how about a source of energy that could supply about 100 times what the whole world currently uses annually? Would you say that's sufficient to keep us going for a while?

I was in Lithuania the other day and observed large swathes of the otherwise lovely landscape coved with PV panels. It is a long time since I have seen anything quite so ugly. These PV farms are probably the result of govt. subsidies via over market valuation of the elecricity generated. In any case, covering the landscape with PV panels is not a "solution" imho.

I agrre that covering a lovely landscape with solar panels is ridiculous. It prevents such land from be used for other productive purposes, such as farming, or housing, or being kept as a natural haven for wildlife.

This is why deserts and arid, unproductive areas of land are far more suitable for the generation of solar electricity. Such areas also have much greater periods of direct sunlight throughout the day, on average.

We currently ship billions of tonnes of oil and gas around the world, through long pipelines from Russia to Europe and/or along shipping routes from desert areas such as Saudi Arabia. Surely it could be far more efficient to transport electricity from such desert areas, along both overland and undersea Ultra-High-Voltage-Direct-Current cables which have a transmission loss of less than 3% per 1,000km.

http://www.energy.siemens.com/hq/en/power-transmission/hvdc/hvdc-ultra/

Of course, the infrastructure required would initially be expensive, just as Oil Tankers and Oil Refineries are expensive to build. But once the solar farms and UHVDC transmision lines are in place, the electricity production, transportation and maintenance costs should be very low compared with coal and oil processes.

The problem is in the paradigm shift. The jobs and skills of millions of workers are employed in the extraction, transportation and processing of coal and oil. Millions of petrol stations throughout the world service and maintain petrol-operated cars (which have different maintenance requirements to electric cars), and trillions of dollars of financial investments in the coal and oil infrastructure would be at stake if the transition from fossil fuels to renewables were rushed, due to exaggerated claims about the consequences of CO2 emissions.

We should make a gradual transition towards renewable forms of energy, not because of some imaginary scare about rising CO2 levels, or rising sea levels, but because certain forms of renewables have the potential to be a lot more efficient, and better in general for the environment, once the infrastructure is in place.

For example, if we have to contend with rising sea levels in the future, whether due to natural causes or land sinking, we need energy supplies to build dikes and levees. Wouldn't it be ironic if governments were to force up the price of energy in an attempt to stop sea levels rising (by imagining CO2 levels as some sort of control knob), only to discover decades later that the sea levels were unavoidably rising largely due to natural causes, and that we couldn't afford to do much about it because we were saddled with expensive, renewable energy.

Edited July 28, 2014 by VincentRJ

[thaibeachlovers]

cut ...

At least the Chinese made a real attempt to limit population growth and good on them for having a sane population policy. The west should be so intelligent, but they'll never do it, because the pollies are too gutless to even try.

... and the Chinese have several hundred million males with zero prospect of ever finding a mate. This is the largest ticking bomb under Chinese society. They may have made an effort, but not all the outcomes were intended, or indeed desitrable!

It is exactly such a scenario that is humanity's only hope for survival. It will be difficult for them in their older years, but dying of war, thirst, starvation or disease caused by overpopulation is equally unpleasant.

Don't forget that India faces the same situation in some areas, thanks to the use of gender related abortion to breed only males.

BTW. The gender imbalance in China is also man made as they prefer to breed males over females- ie self inflicted.

[VincentRJ]

I don't care for 'carbon credits' but I do believe that our one species affects the climate. 1 ton of CO2 (and other exhaust gasses) on average, annually, per man woman child, is sobering statistic. That's roughly 7 billion tons of fossil fuel exhaust per year. Does that have any affect on one small rocky planet? Do you have better data? Let's see it.

Here's another version of the statistics. Whether it's 6 or 7 billion tonnes annually due to human activity, it's still a relatively small percentage of the total amount of carbon floating around.

"Of the 186 billion tons of carbon from CO2 that enter earth's atmosphere each year from all sources, only 6 billion tons are from human activity. Approximately 90 billion tons come from biologic activity in earth's oceans and another 90 billion tons from such sources as volcanoes and decaying land plants."

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html

... and the total amount of CO2 floating around is?

Good question. I get a sense of a degree of confusion here, at least in the mind of the layperson. The proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere is about 400 parts per million by volume. However, by mass it's 591 ppm. Also, the total weight of Carbon Dioxide is over 3 times greater than the total weight of Carbon.

According to the following Wikipedia article, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide , the total mass of atmospheric CO2 is about 3,000 gigatonnes. A gigatonne is one billion tonnes, so 3,000 gigatonnes is 3 million, million tonnes.