Climate Change News collection

[Ender]

That does not answer the question I posed. A simple yes or no will do.

No, but then the way you phrased the question makes it pretty much answer itself, and thus pretty much meaningless. What your question doesn’t address is whether NASA projections should be given much weight in the first place. Here’s a different perspective from 50 former NASA employees:

As former NASA employees, we feel that NASA’s advocacy of an extreme position, prior to a thorough study of the possible overwhelming impact of natural climate drivers is inappropriate. We request that NASA refrain from including unproven and unsupported remarks in its future releases and websites on this subject. At risk is damage to the exemplary reputation of NASA, NASA’s current or former scientists and employees, and even the reputation of science itself.

The unbridled advocacy of CO2 being the major cause of climate change is unbecoming of NASA’s history of making an objective assessment of all available scientific data prior to making decisions or public statements.

NASA has become an advocacy group, and despite the undoubtedly fine scientific work they do the idea that we should simply accept whatever comes across their website is silly.

 

[graciew]

And be able to process the complex answers …

 

[Theo520]

I don’t think

You also don’t know. I’ll repeat, NASA is referencing Model forecasts.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

LeafByNiggle:

That does not answer the question I posed. A simple yes or no will do.

No, but then the way you phrased the question makes it pretty much answer itself, and thus pretty much meaningless.

It is not my fault that the answer to my question is obviously “no”. But it is still not meaningless because HS’s post to which I replied with that question would have him answering “yes” to that question.

What your question doesn’t address is whether NASA projections should be given much weight in the first place. Here’s a different perspective from 50 former NASA employees:

What this citation does not address is whether we should give much weight to an opinion by 50 former employees of an organization that currently employs over 17,000.

NASA has become an advocacy group, and despite the undoubtedly fine scientific work they do the idea that we should simply accept whatever comes across their website is silly.

You are entitled to your opinion. I obviously disagree.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

LeafByNiggle:

I don’t think

You also don’t know. I’ll repeat, NASA is referencing Model forecasts.

That alone does not discredit those forecasts. Let me remind you on the anniversary of the moon landing that the entire moon shot, its trajectory, its fuel consumption, etc., were based on models of the real thing.

 

[Theo520]

That alone does not discredit those forecasts. Let me remind you on the anniversary of the moon landing that the entire moon shot, its trajectory, its fuel consumption, etc., were based on models of the real thing.

Again, can you find anyone disputing what Curry projected for the near term future.

The NASA page was utterly useless in that it only spoke in generalities and lacked specificity. Yea, it’ll get warmer in the future but how much will depend on our CO2 output. They gave zero hard references or specific projections.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

Again, can you find anyone disputing what Curry projected for the near term future.

Ah, a new qualifier! “Near term”. Laying the groundwork for a walk back I see. And for someone concerned with specificity, I am surprised you didn’t say how many years is “near term.”

Theo520:

The NASA page was utterly useless in that it only spoke in generalities and lacked specificity. Yea, it’ll get warmer in the future but how much will depend on our CO2 output. They gave zero hard references or specific projections.

So I guess your objections to…
NASA:

By the end of this century, what have been once-in-20-year extreme heat days (one-day events) are projected to occur every two or three years over most of the nation.

Is that NASA didn’t say whether it was two or three years, and if “most of the nation” means 51% or 75% or 95%. Why the demand for such specificity before talking any projection seriously. How much specificity you need depends on what sort of decisions are going to be based on that projection. Since the decisions in question are of a very general nature right now, the level of specificity your seem to be demanding is just not needed and is also unreasonable.

 

[Theo520]

Stop deflecting, we haven’t changed nor qualified what Curry projected,

 

[DENNYINMI]

I just realized while reading where last left off that there are people that do not know the difference between CO2 emitted by trees/vegetation and carbon emissions created by people.

 

[Theo520]

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Issues New Clean Air Rule - The Heartland Institute

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced it has formally replaced the prior administration’s Clean Power Plan, to reduce power plant greenhouse gas emissions, with the Affordable Clean Energy rule.

www.heartland.org

 

[HarryStotle]

I just realized while reading where last left off that there are people that do not know the difference between CO2 emitted by trees/vegetation and carbon emissions created by people.

CO2 is not emitted by trees and vegetation. It is primarily absorbed by trees and vegetation so that carbon can be used as a building block for vegetative matter. If more CO2 was emitted by trees and vegetation than was absorbed trees and vegetation would diminish materially rather than grow and develop.

A recent study – coincidentally by a team of NASA scientists – showed that forests use up approximately 30% of CO2 emitted by fossil fuel use.

The CO2 effect likely acts as a significant negative feedback in today’s global carbon cycle, absorbing up to 30% of fossil fuel CO2 emissions. Uncertainty in the strength of this effect contributes significant variability to projections of future atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Process models, forest inventories, forest NPP time series (38) and a data-constrained subset of atmospheric inverse models lead to a carbon budget consistent with a significant CO2 effect. Further, assuming uptake due to the global CO2 effect of −2.5 Pg C⋅y−1 (text above) and total land sinks of −4.2 Pg C⋅y−1 (Table 1), this implies that up to 60% of current terrestrial sinks are due to this single feedback. For reasons stated above, this is likely an upper bound, as the atmospheric and forest inventory data include fluxes not due to the CO2 effect. Including estimates for these new process-specific gross fluxes in the GCP (27) global carbon budget results in a bottom-up budget including the CO2 effect estimated as described above (Table 1 and SI Text). This budget is not forced to balance by the traditional “residual terrestrial flux” and so does not sum to zero but rather (encouragingly) balances within the uncertainty of the other fluxes.
https://www.pnas.org/content/112/2/436

This would imply that the increase in the availability of CO2 to current levels has resulted in something like a 30% increase in plant growth.

Now it is true that plants emit CO2 through decomposition and burning, but it isn’t plant growth that emits CO2, it is plant death that does. If forests are negative contributors to CO2 to the extent that they use up 30% of human produced CO2 at current levels of plant abundance, that would mean their negative contribution could increase substantially more if desert areas, for example, became more plant abundant.

 

[DENNYINMI]

CO2 is not emitted by trees and vegetation. It is primarily absorbed by trees and vegetation so that carbon can be used as a building block for vegetative matter. If more CO2 was emitted by trees and vegetation than was absorbed trees and vegetation would diminish materially rather than grow and develop.

The Term soil respiration. Then equate and correlate the term deforestation.

How will we continue with an eco-system that can do what it was intended to do if it is deconstructed from the bottom up? Everything is inter-related, vegetation relies on us, we rely on it…unless of course it’s up for profit then there is no concern, cut away, drill away, roll-back that beautiful been footage…haha, no that would be the environmental regulatory roll backs that directly affects water, and in speaking of water with the highest amount of water we’ve seen in over 2 decades (no doubt due in part to ice caps melting) we are changing the oceans eco-system and will eventually loose entire species, good bye…Forever.

Can’t get behind you. I’d betray the earth, my Christian faith and all I know to be true. Your party lied. Truth is not alternative.

 

[Ender]

The Term soil respiration. Then equate and correlate the term deforestation.

How will we continue with an eco-system that can do what it was intended to do if it is deconstructed from the bottom up? Everything is inter-related, vegetation relies on us, we rely on it…unless of course it’s up for profit then there is no concern, cut away, drill away, roll-back that beautiful been footage…haha, no that would be the environmental regulatory roll backs that directly affects water, and in speaking of water with the highest amount of water we’ve seen in over 2 decades (no doubt due in part to ice caps melting) we are changing the oceans eco-system and will eventually loose entire species, good bye…Forever.

Can’t get behind you. I’d betray the earth, my Christian faith and all I know to be true. Your party lied. Truth is not alternative.

Then you should be happy to know that the world is greening at an increasingly rapid rate. Plants love the extra CO2.

The most amazing greening on Earth – thanks to increased Carbon Dioxide

by Patrick J. Michaels We’ve long been fond of showing the satellite evidence for planetary greening caused by increasing carbon dioxide, particularly the work of Zhu et al.(2016): Figure 1: Trends…

wattsupwiththat.com

 

[Ender]

Again, can you find anyone disputing what Curry projected for the near term future.

This whole line of discussion is a deflection from the point I raised, which is that the public has been deliberately mislead about the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events as they occur today. Every organization that pushes that line of argument - including NASA - is doing so despite the existence of data that either refutes the claims outright or (best case) simply don’t support the claims.

Arguments about whose projections ought to carry more weight are futile. Explanations of which assertions about actual historical events are more accurate are not.

 

[HarryStotle]

Since the decisions in question are of a very general nature right now, the level of specificity your seem to be demanding is just not needed and is also unreasonable.

In the early 1970s over 40 of the world’s leading climate scientists gathered in Bonn, West Germany and came to the unanimous conclusion that the earth’s climate was getting colder and that we were potentially heading into another ice age. Today, scientists are reporting that we are and were – even, supposedly, at that time – warming.

Seems to me that if a consensus of scientists cannot properly predict, in general terms, whether the earth is cooling or warming, expecting them to be accurate to a specificity of any degree whatsoever would seem quite unreasonable.

 

[HarryStotle]

HarryStotle:

CO2 is not emitted by trees and vegetation. It is primarily absorbed by trees and vegetation so that carbon can be used as a building block for vegetative matter. If more CO2 was emitted by trees and vegetation than was absorbed trees and vegetation would diminish materially rather than grow and develop.

The Term soil respiration. Then equate and correlate the term deforestation.

How will we continue with an eco-system that can do what it was intended to do if it is deconstructed from the bottom up? Everything is inter-related, vegetation relies on us, we rely on it…unless of course it’s up for profit then there is no concern, cut away, drill away, roll-back that beautiful been footage…haha, no that would be the environmental regulatory roll backs that directly affects water, and in speaking of water with the highest amount of water we’ve seen in over 2 decades (no doubt due in part to ice caps melting) we are changing the oceans eco-system and will eventually loose entire species, good bye…Forever.

Can’t get behind you. I’d betray the earth, my Christian faith and all I know to be true. Your party lied. Truth is not alternative.

The ice caps are not melting, at least not to anything like an excessive amount.

The historical record shows that between 1920 and the early 1950s, the Arctic sea ice lost about half its mass, then gained a good portion of that back between 1950 and the 1970s. Since then the sea ice mass has increased and decreased somewhat, but the amount of sea ice today is about what it was 60 years ago.

 

[HarryStotle]

Here is the historical situation with regard to sea level.

There has been a consistent but small increase in sea level since the 1860s. No sharp upward trend in recent years, except where the data has been altered to make it appear that there has been a sharp rise.

Tide gauges and historical photographs demonstrate the data has been manipulated for ideological reasons. Speaking of alternative truth.

 

[DENNYINMI]

The deniers of global warming that fight so hard and adamantly against a real threat to our eco-system in the future are the same that don’t see the actual harm being done to our eco-system now.

While the goal is to make sure that California rakes more so as not to bring about forest fires, or being thankful that we aren’t generated by wind because sometimes the wind isn’t blowing, I’ll march with the other drummers…The Holy Father is too…hahaha

You don’t want to listen to the sound of the alarm that is your business, but one can’t expect others to be so unaware.

 

[DENNYINMI]

Reference:

Deforestation: Facts, Causes & Effects​

By Alina Bradford, Live Science Contributor | April 3, 2018 08:30pm ET

 

[Ender]

The deniers of global warming that fight so hard and adamantly against a real threat to our eco-system in the future are the same that don’t see the actual harm being done to our eco-system now.

There are warnings, and there is evidence. So far the evidence, as HarryStotle has been pointing out, does not support the alarms. It is not a question of caring or not caring for the ecosystem; it is a question of believing or disbelieving the evidence.