Arctic ice melt could trigger uncontrollable climate change at global level

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SuperLuigi said:
The extraction of fossil fuels is a dirty business. I guess I’m more of an all of the above person on energy policy. I’d like to see more nuclear power plants built and the niche market for alternative energy get going.
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That’s a good approach. We can’t overnight switch to more benign tech, even if it’s available. It took us 20 years to implement various measure & finally get on to alt energy.

A good sign tho is that the US, as well as China, India & other countries, is quickly stepping up solar & wind. There is tremendous potential for these in conjunction with conventional energy.

Efficiency & conservation can also make getting into a higher proportion of alt energy more feasible.
 
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SuperLuigi:
I’d like to see more nuclear power plants built and the niche market for alternative energy get going.
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If only the nuclear waste could be dealt with without having to bury it in compounds deep underground that will be outlasted by the waste, which then has the propensity to seep into the groundwater and contaminate the area.

Otherwise, nuclear is certainly the answer to our energy crisis. Shame its so dangerous!
 
RE nuclear, I’m not completely opposed to it, but have some issues, in addition to safety of plants & disposal.
  1. There is much harm to the 3rd world & tribal peoples who mine uranium, and to their lands. This is rarely discussed. We need to ensure the have the best safety & are compensated for their losses.
  2. I’m not sure if there is much reduction in GHG emission when one considers cradle-to-grave production of uranium & nuke energy, including the huge amount of water used, commissioning & building the plants, etc.
There is one good idea the ComEd guy who came to our parish env group in 1998 & we came up with: Since nuke has to run fairly evenly 24 hrs a day, they need to run it at about 75% or 70% of the total demand, then bring coal-burning “peaking plants” on line during heavy demand times, such as during the day.

I suggested pumped-storage hydroelectricity - use the extra nuke energy at night to pump water into an elevated reservoir, the turn that into electricity durung the day, during high demand. see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity

We also got into talking about electric cars (I wanted to please the guy with thoughts of greater sales for their electricity). The guy got excited about the idea & said, if enough people had EVs & were charging them at night, they could lower their rates by half,
 
Loosing glacier on one end, gaining it on the other end. Yes there have always been climate changes. During the 80s we thought we were headed for an ice age. Now they compare data with 80s temps and come to their conclusions. I don’t believe our emissions are causing it. I think there is a flow of money going to progressive owned hip pocket scientists that will support global warming/change caused by emissions.

breitbart.com/big-government/2016/01/04/1001-reasons-why-global-warming-is-so-totally-over-in-2016/;)
 
abelville said:
Loosing glacier on one end, gaining it on the other end.
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This means nothing without consideration of the amount of gain and the amount of loss.
Yes there have always been climate changes.
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Not at the rate we are seeing today.
During the 80s we thought we were headed for an ice age.
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No, we didn’t. There was just that one Time magazine story. That was never a mainstream view.
Now they compare data with 80s temps and come to their conclusions.
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No, they compare much more data than that.
I don’t believe our emissions are causing it.
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Unfortunately science does not care what you believe.
I think there is a flow of money going to progressive owned hip pocket scientists that will support global warming/change caused by emissions.
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There is vastly more money available and being used to protect the interests of the fossil fuel industry.
 
Something that came to me in the car, the other evening whilst watching the onboard temperature display…

We focus a lot on the pollutants being put into the atmosphere, which theoretically will warm the planet.

Well, if you’ve even taken a drive into the countryside, particularly at night, you will notice the outdoor temperature is a few degrees lower. It goes back up again once you return to suburbia. All the concrete, asphalt and building materials in our cities do hold a lot of heat. Given the size of our cities, couldn’t this be contributing as well?
 
CuriousMike said:
Something that came to me in the car, the other evening whilst watching the onboard temperature display…

We focus a lot on the pollutants being put into the atmosphere, which theoretically will warm the planet.

Well, if you’ve even taken a drive into the countryside, particularly at night, you will notice the outdoor temperature is a few degrees lower. It goes back up again once you return to suburbia. All the concrete, asphalt and building materials in our cities do hold a lot of heat. Given the size of our cities, couldn’t this be contributing as well?
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The MMGW people will tell you they account for that. But I have never seen anything that absolutely convinces me of it.

But location can matter in other ways as well. Here in the Ozarks where I live, it gets significantly cooler in the hollows than on hilltops or prairies, and especially at night.

One of my favorite sights in the summer is to see the cool air flow down the stream valleys just after dark. It’s like a river, and fog flows downstream with it because the air above the stream is often cooler than the very top water. It’s like something in a fairy tale.

Where I live, if you want an apple orchard, you’ll plant it on hilltops. But if you want peaches, you’ll plant them in the bottoms because the ground stays cooler in the bottoms longer and you don’t get peach trees blossoming in February only to get the blossoms killed by frost. Or at least that’s your intent. Doesn’t always work.🙂

But if you put your temperature measuring device in any kind of flow-way, you’ll get average lower temperatures year-round than if you put it on a hill top where there’s no downward flow of cool air and more retained radiation from the sun.

Also, strangely enough, rocks matter too. If you measure temperature on rocky ground, you’ll get higher temperatures on average than you will on clearer soil. Same with western slopes versus eastern slopes. Western slopes here are always warmer. So if you want early strawberries here, you’ll plant them on a rocky western slope. But you do run drought risk. If you want walnut trees or pecans, you’ll plant them on an eastern slope. Deeper soil, less droughtiness.

Maybe the people who do all this temperature measuring take those things into account, but I don’t know for a fact that they do.
 
Ridgerunner said:
Maybe the people who do all this temperature measuring take those things into account, but I don’t know for a fact that they do.
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Taking into account the things you mention would come up very rarely. It only matters if were to move a temperature monitoring station from one location (say a flow-way) to another location (say a hilltop). Then and only then would you have to take that kind of difference into account. One way they could to that would be to set up the new station in parallel with the old only for a few years to learn the offset, and then decommission the old one. But as long as temperature monitoring stations stay put, their temperature readings over time will accurately represent the changes.
 
Unless a parking lot is built around it.
Or buildings put it in shade.
Or any number of things that effect temperature in a local area.

Monitor station placement is a problem.
 
abelville said:
…I think there is a flow of money going to progressive owned hip pocket scientists that will support global warming/change caused by emissions…
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For the umpteenth time… here is how research funding goes:

A scientist gets a grant to do research – after his/her proposal goes thru and arduous process of selection, with only the best proposals getting funded.

That grant money goes to his/her institution or university, and they only give the researcher time off for the research and compensation money for that equal to his/her salary. Some funds may also go to pay for attending scientific conferences to present their findings, or workshops. NO NET GAIN! The rest of the grant money goes for equipment, travel to research sites (if required), research assistant salaries (usually grad students, which helps pay their way thru college), and a portion goes to the institution/university to compensate for use of their facilities.

Now some top climate scientists may get some speaker fees above their salary. However, it often works out that they are only compensated for travel, meals, and lodging. I know our little and tiny-funded Env Studies Program brought in someone to talk about climate change and we paid him $50 (which about covered his car expenses to drive to and from our university), and we provided a meal.

On the other side there are $billions being poured into the denialist industry to fund fake scientists (or corrupted real ones) to do fake science – that is create twisted and wrong interpretations of climate science so as to fool the public into thinking there is no climate change, or that it is not caused in any way by humans.

Those fake scientists (weathermen, dentists, anthropologists, scientists who are not in the field of climate science and do not do real climate science research) are the ones who make really big bucks.

There just is no climate science research being done that disproves anthropogenic climate change – it is all smoke and mirrors and voodoo tricks and deceptions. But they get really big bucks for that.
 
abelville said:
…I think there is a flow of money going to progressive owned hip pocket scientists that will support global warming/change caused by emissions…
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And I might add that aside from climate scientists not making big bucks (beyond the usual university/institution salaries), they have to suffer all sorts of evil harassment by the climate denialists, including death threats and death threats to their small children. And piles of fallacious lawsuits which the oil/coal industries can afford to file and maintain with big fancy attorneys, but stagger the beleaguered climate scientists who can ill afford to combat these, false tho the claims against them be. Some fall into depression, even to the point of suicidal thoughts, yet most keep on with the extremely important research. However, I imagine all this may be diverting some grad student who were thinking of going into climate science into other fields where they won’t be attacked.

The climate scientists who stick it out are the true heroes of our time.

I think those who follow the lead of the denialist industry hacks and continue to attack and impugn climate scientists “know not what they do” and some may need forgiveness for their wrongdoings. They are likely feeding into the harassment, and some among them with “loose screws” might even do some crime or harm against some climate scientist.
 
I will respectfully disagree.

The possibility exists any sort of science can be influenced by those who have necessary funds. Before any fingers point at me, I’m not talking about one side or another.
We simply have to accept corruption exists in this world, whether from “BigOil,” “BigPharma,” The Government or interest groups, it pays to investigate who instigates research.

A quick Google search revealed an LA Times article on this very topic. Is it perfectly accurate and free from bias? Probably not. But it was written in conjunction with a retired Professor.
 
CuriousMike said:
I will respectfully disagree.

The possibility exists any sort of science can be influenced by those who have necessary funds. Before any fingers point at me, I’m not talking about one side or another.
We simply have to accept corruption exists in this world, whether from “BigOil,” “BigPharma,” The Government or interest groups, it pays to investigate who instigates research.
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If you investigate that you will quickly find that Big Oil has vastly more money invested in pushing their view than say the fledgling solar or wind energy producers who might benefit from findings about global warming. It’s just no comparison.
 
CuriousMike said:
I will respectfully disagree.

The possibility exists any sort of science can be influenced by those who have necessary funds. Before any fingers point at me, I’m not talking about one side or another.
We simply have to accept corruption exists in this world, whether from “BigOil,” “BigPharma,” The Government or interest groups, it pays to investigate who instigates research.

A quick Google search revealed an LA Times article on this very topic. Is it perfectly accurate and free from bias? Probably not. But it was written in conjunction with a retired Professor.
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I remember when a study came out claiming chocolate was good for the health, the heart, I think. I said to my husband, “I wonder who funded that, the Chocolate Institute?!!” Later it did prove to be correct – that is, chocolate before it is heavily processed and sweetened too much is good for the health (which Woody Allen should appreciate bec in his futuristic 1973 film Sleeper they say just that in contradiction to the health food wisdom of the70s) .

The point is, if a study comes out saying everything is fine, don’t worry, I get suspicious. As much as I’d like science to definitively say there is no global warming, everything is fine, I need to know the truth, which is not always pleasant.

I knew some 25 years ago that big oil was funding climate change denial & impacting politicians. At the time I feared that most or all of the climate scientists would be bought off and go over to the dark side. Or at least pull a “Judith Curry” and say “we really don’t know nada about nada, the error bars are just way too big, so forget the issue & just go on about your happy-go-lucky lives…”

For a moment my heart almost stopped when I read Real Climate’s “Farewell to our Readers (because GW isn’t happening after all)” at realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/04/farewell-to-our-readers/ … until I checked the date of the post. 🙂

When I realized the climate scientists were not caving, and even maintained a healthy sense of humor, even in the face of severe adversity imposed by the denialists, I really developed a deep respect for them. They are heroes.
 
LeafByNiggle said:
If you investigate that you will quickly find that Big Oil has vastly more money invested in pushing their view than say the fledgling solar or wind energy producers who might benefit from findings about global warming. It’s just no comparison.
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Both are dwarfed by government spending on “alt energy” and in promoting MMGW as an ideology.

If the costs of government regulations aimed at the environment are totted up, they’re staggering. Well over a trillion per year. And a great deal of it is all for an ideology.
forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2011/08/23/the-alarming-cost-of-climate-change-hysteria/#798973636f70
 
LeafByNiggle said:
Except that there is no obvious motive for government to favor one industry over the other. Compare that with Big Oil that does have an obvious motive.
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Of course Big Oil has an obvious motive.

Government as such doesn’t, but those who run the government can, and do. One remembers Obama’s pre-election promise long ago to “bankrupt” the coal industry, and he got it done, for the most part. Arch Coal, Peabody Coal. Both in bankruptcy. Some still survive, but they’re shaky, like ARLP, and tend to be specialty producers.

At the same time, the government under this administration has poured money into solar and wind, and has given subsidies and tax credits to all sorts of efforts at “mitigation”; the absurd “Cash for Clunkers” being but one… If that isn’t government favoring one industry over another, I don’t know what is.
 
lynnvinc said:
For the umpteenth time… here is how research funding goes:

A scientist gets a grant to do research – after his/her proposal goes thru and arduous process of selection, with only the best proposals getting funded.

That grant money goes to his/her institution or university, and they only give the researcher time off for the research and compensation money for that equal to his/her salary. Some funds may also go to pay for attending scientific conferences to present their findings, or workshops. NO NET GAIN! The rest of the grant money goes for equipment, travel to research sites (if required), research assistant salaries (usually grad students, which helps pay their way thru college), and a portion goes to the institution/university to compensate for use of their facilities.

Now some top climate scientists may get some speaker fees above their salary. However, it often works out that they are only compensated for travel, meals, and lodging. I know our little and tiny-funded Env Studies Program brought in someone to talk about climate change and we paid him $50 (which about covered his car expenses to drive to and from our university), and we provided a meal.

On the other side there are $billions being poured into the denialist industry to fund fake scientists (or corrupted real ones) to do fake science – that is create twisted and wrong interpretations of climate science so as to fool the public into thinking there is no climate change, or that it is not caused in any way by humans.

Those fake scientists (weathermen, dentists, anthropologists, scientists who are not in the field of climate science and do not do real climate science research) are the ones who make really big bucks.

There just is no climate science research being done that disproves anthropogenic climate change – it is all smoke and mirrors and voodoo tricks and deceptions. But they get really big bucks for that.
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Really? Billions from who? To create false data so they die with the rest of us?

Ed
 
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