Do you believe in global warming?

[Monte_RCMS]

The Apollo astronauts say AGW is bogus:

sepp.org/twtwfiles/2013/TWTW%204-20-13.pdf

summary of the summary:

TRCS: Without question, one of the most spectacular scientific accomplishments of the 20th century was the Apollo landing of humans on the moon and their return. The mission required exhaustive testing of the concepts, models, and equipment against all appropriate data. If the data did not exist, it had to be compiled. Last year, some retired members of the Apollo team, and others, formed The Right Climate Stuff (TRCS) research team, volunteering to apply their skills to examine the scientific basis of the claim that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are causing dangerous global warming and/or climate change, which they term as Carbon-based Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW).

Last week, TRCS team issued their findings: “Anthropogenic Global Warming Science Assessment Report.” This clearly-written 21 page assessment states that the empirical evidence of Carbon-based AGW is sorely lacking.

The major findings include:
� Carbon-based AGW is not settled.
� Natural processes dominate climate change (although many are poorly understood).
� Non-Carbon-based anthropogenic forcings are significant (land use change, urban heat island effect, black carbon, etc.)
� Carbon-based AGW impact appears to be muted.
� Empirical evidence for Carbon-based AGW does not support catastrophe.
� The threat of net harmful total global warming, if any, is not immediate and thus does not require swift corrective action.
� The US Government is over-reacting to concerns about AGW.

The report sharply differs from the 1100-plus page Draft National Climate Assessment issued by the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), which is heavy on computer-driven speculation, but exceedingly light on physical evidence on Carbon-based AGW.

Also, TRCS report illustrates that some of the threats exaggerated in the USGCRP report are without a scientific basis. For example, in the treatment of sea level rise, the USGCRP report projects, that due to uncertainty in the models, 21st century sea level rise will be anywhere between 7 inches to up to 4 feet, and even up to 6 feet. The TRCS report states that rapid sea level rise can only come from extreme melting of ice on Greenland and on Antarctica and such a melting would require centuries, not decades.

 

[Mark121359]

One of the things I’ve noticed, is that the treatment received by those who aren’t convinced by, or who disagree with AGW is similar to that received by those who are opposed to SSM, in both cases you’re ostracized and labeled a pariah.

Peace, Mark

 

[lynnvinc]

One of the things I’ve noticed, is that the treatment received by those who aren’t convinced by, or who disagree with AGW is similar to that received by those who are opposed to SSM, in both cases you’re ostracized and labeled a pariah.

Peace, Mark

The important point is to be on the right side of an issue, despite what others think or say. I’ve had it extremely hard time standing up for life re the AGW issue, not only here on CAF, but in other contexts. One has to stand firm for what is right, and I’d expect my spouse to do the same (bringing this back to the OP).

So, how do we decide a scientific issue? We have to look first at how it affects life, and only secondarily on how it might affect money (tho money is useful in our economy, but is only contingent and instrumental, not fundamental). And we should most certainly not let policy or financial implications determine scientific facts.

Here is something that helps – Pascal’s wager:

FALSE POSITIVE: If AGW is not happening and we (wrongly) mitigate it – we’ll save lots of $$ and lives by mitigating other problems that kill. It is a win-win-win-win situation.

FALSE NEGATIVE: If AGW is happening and we fail to mitigate it, we will be harming and killing lots of people and other’s of God’s creation, AND we will have failed to realize the savings to be had in mitigating AGW, and will be harming and killing people thru the concomitant local pollution and other harms. It is a lose-lose-lose-BIG-LOSE situation.

PANDERING THE FALSE NEGATIVE: If AGW is happening and we work vigorously to convince others it is not happening, all the negatives of the false negative above, plus we may end up in a place a lot hotter than a globally warmed world for all eternity. A GIGANTIC INFINITE LOSE.

And for those who understand this, If they do not inform their brothers about AGW, then the sins fall back on themselves. So whatever y’all lob at me, it doesn’t compare to the hell I’d go to for not informing you.

So think of righteousness that way…it’s worth the price in human scorn.

And I’d expect my spouse also to have a righteous backbone.

 

[lynnvinc]

The Apollo astronauts say AGW is bogus

So?

I wouldn’t go to a dentist if I needed brain surgery…

It is also interesting that certain astrophysicists and nuclear & theoretical physicists reject AGW. Aside from the fact that some receive money from the oil-funded denialist industry, it seems to be a matter of:

• subfield envy
• the tendency for highly educated people to think they know everything, including things outside their specialization, and to know it even better than the actual experts
• an aversion to money being reduced in their areas of study, and increased in other areas (e.g., climate science)

It used to be that our society thought two of the most important areas were to:

1. • explore the universe, far far away from earth
   • understand the smallest particles, smash and dash them, which would unlock all the secrets of the universe, including human behavior, and give us power over it – the single grand theory of the smallest particle explaining everything.
   So money was poured into both these endeavors, which is fine if a society has plenty of money to go on wild goose chases…just on the off-chance they actually can catch a wild goose or two.
   
   However, in our financial crunch times, now confronted with the very serious issue of AGW threatening to perhaps wipe out most of life on earth, we’ve come up against the wall of reality and responsibility. We have to grow up fast and deal with serious problems at hand.
   
   And I suppose that just rankles astronauts, astrophysicists, and particle and theoretical physicists.
   
   But I do hope those particle physcists, at least, can come up with fusion energy at a low cost and without risks and dangers to life. Until then we need to deal with real problems at hand, instead of living in Startrek and Back-to-the-Future fictionland.
   
   I’d also want my spouse to live in reality and deal with real problems in practical and effective ways.

 

[styrgwillidar]

thegwpf.org/category/false-alarms/

Well, here’s an organization which refuses to take any money from the oil industry. At the very least the science is unsettled and the AGW advocates have wildly overstated and misrepresented the scientific data. Unfortunately, it undercuts the credibilty of other very real and well documented environmental concerns.

 

[EasterJoy]

The Apollo astronauts say AGW is bogus:

sepp.org/twtwfiles/2013/TWTW%204-20-13.pdf

summary of the summary:

TRCS: Without question, one of the most spectacular scientific accomplishments of the 20th century was the Apollo landing of humans on the moon and their return. The mission required exhaustive testing of the concepts, models, and equipment against all appropriate data. If the data did not exist, it had to be compiled. Last year, some retired members of the Apollo team, and others, formed The Right Climate Stuff (TRCS) research team, volunteering to apply their skills to examine the scientific basis of the claim that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are causing dangerous global warming and/or climate change, which they term as Carbon-based Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW).

Last week, TRCS team issued their findings: “Anthropogenic Global Warming Science Assessment Report.” This clearly-written 21 page assessment states that the empirical evidence of Carbon-based AGW is sorely lacking…The report sharply differs from the 1100-plus page Draft National Climate Assessment issued by the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), which is heavy on computer-driven speculation, but exceedingly light on physical evidence on Carbon-based AGW.

Also, TRCS report illustrates that some of the threats exaggerated in the USGCRP report are without a scientific basis. For example, in the treatment of sea level rise, the USGCRP report projects, that due to uncertainty in the models, 21st century sea level rise will be anywhere between 7 inches to up to 4 feet, and even up to 6 feet. The TRCS report states that rapid sea level rise can only come from extreme melting of ice on Greenland and on Antarctica and such a melting would require centuries, not decades.

The Apollo program was 1963-1972, and the guys who ran it were experts in rocketry and space travel, not oceanography or meteorology. At any rate, suffice it to say that science has not stood still since they accepted their gold watches. When you say the Apollo astronauts ought to be believed over the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Meteorological Society, the American Physical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Chemical Society, and the Geological Society of America, you seem to be saying that the opinions of retired engineers and scientists from a different field ought to be believed over the scientists who are doing current field work in a wide variety of directly-related fields. Is that correct? If so, why do you want to believe the “authority” of a panel with a tongue-in-cheek name like the “Right Climate Stuff research team”, all of whom are well into retirement age, but do not want to believe people who are actually colleagues of those actively doing the science? I also have to wonder if results by any number of “Right Climate stuff research teams”, such as perhaps the emeritus faculties of major universities who knows what, could be ignored if the Science & Environmental Policy Project didn’t like their conclusions.

Am I to believe that the founder of the SEPP, professor emeritus S. Fred Singer, didn’t ask anyone else his age besides the Apollo guys? I’m thinking not. After all, Professor Singer is also famous for his public denial of the health risks of passive smoking…and I’m pretty sure his field of expertise is not epidemiology. He has been paid to consult for ARCO, ExxonMobil, Shell, Sun Oil Company, and Unocal and is a self-proclaimed skeptic, so I’m not willing to leap to the conclusion that his assessments are untainted by any prejudice, either.

With regards to the actual topic of the thread, I don’t think it is so important exactly what you each believe. Although the debate gets very lively, very intelligent people come down on both sides of this question, and people who are strongly on both sides of this question have figured out how to be happily married to each other. This is not faith and morals–the Church does not insist we interpret the data we think we know one way or the other. This is about emerging understanding of how the physical world operates. All of the substance of the debate is important, but it is also new and still coming in. It is important that we care, it is of course very important what the actual objective truth is, but it is not a mortal sin to make a mistake about this that is truly an honest mistake. From a moral standpoint, it is better to be mistaken about the facts but to stick with the Golden Rule than to be completely right about the facts but to fail in the Christian life. It is particularly important that this question not be allowed to supersede the demands of the Christian life.

I think it is prudent to consider how you as a couple handle disagreements about how you are to establish your own household habits (such as recycling, composting, pesticide use in the yard, and so on) and how you handle it when you come to different conclusions about those truths about the universe that are yet to be fully revealed. It does not matter so much that you agree or disagree. How you agree or disagree and how much your guts get twisted up about any conflicts is probably more important. Better to marry someone you believe to be wrong about this but always charitable, faithful, and given over to hope than to marry someone who is occasional in their devotion to a life of virtue but is always right about this!

In our times, I say that if you find a particularly virtuous person who is out to lunch on this topic but who you can establish a peaceful household with, then marry them if they’ll have you. It is not as if you’re going to run into a person of virtue with whom you share a mutual desire to share a life so often that global warming belongs on your list of non-negotiable topics!

 

[lynnvinc]

thegwpf.org/category/false-alarms/

Well, here’s an organization which refuses to take any money from the oil industry. At the very least the science is unsettled and the AGW advocates have wildly overstated and misrepresented the scientific data. Unfortunately, it undercuts the credibilty of other very real and well documented environmental concerns.

Pascal’s wager.

I just will not gamble with people’s lives. Period.

 

[styrgwillidar]

Pascal’s wager.

I just will not gamble with people’s lives. Period.

Yet you are. Policies put in place based on global warming do affect economic activity and impact folks lives. The realloctaion of resources by politicians to their buddies in green industries comes at a cost to other functions. And all of those impacts aren’t benign.

 

[EasterJoy]

Pascal’s wager.

I just will not gamble with people’s lives. Period.

Don’t you see, though, that this is not possible? Whatever we choose to do or not to do as a country has effects. It is not possible to abstain from making a difference, and whenever we choose to make a difference in one place, we choose not to make a difference somewhere else.

No matter what we do, there is the possibility that through our well-meaning ignorance we will raise prices or else deny services to someone who is destitute, that we will deny someone the opportunity to honest labor, that we will waste resources trying to prevent something that was inevitable or not going to happen at all or that couldn’t be helped in the way we were trying to help or even made worse by our efforts to help, that we will have an effect on the land that will make it more or less fertile, that we will put stresses on someone’s family that could have been avoided.

Science is very important, because it helps to make our choices less blindly. We really do have to do our best to make observations in the most useful way and to try to find out what those observations have to say about the world around us. In the end, though, history teaches us that science will never completely lift the veil. It can make us wiser, but it cannot make us omniscient. We make better choices when we take the trouble to exercise prudence, but we have to make our choices as gamblers, because that is the only kind of choices we have.

There is nothing to be lost by personally deciding to use less resources–we would be very frugal indeed if our lack of personal consumption as an American was truly too low for the good of our neighbor!–but it something else again when we decide to penalize others for their use of natural resources. It is not even always better to do our own work than to give some of our work to someone else. Neither can we simply decide that the best action is inaction. We have to do our best to look at the data, bite the bullet, make a decision, and when the group decision doesn’t go our way, we have to make the best we can of the decision that the group made, at least until decision-making time comes around again.

 

[lynnvinc]

Yet you are. Policies put in place based on global warming do affect economic activity and impact folks lives. The realloctaion of resources by politicians to their buddies in green industries comes at a cost to other functions. And all of those impacts aren’t benign.

Yes, I’ll admit there are pollutions associated with my Chevy Volt battery – as there are at various levels with all manufacturing – and I have been concerned about that. I sincerely hope industries can do a cleaner, less harmful job in the future. However, I guesstimate that having and driving the Volt is causing less abortions from local pollution than driving an ICE car, less deaths, less health harms, less acid rain, less ocean acidification, less global warming – and its 1000s of negative repercussions, and possibly wiping out a huge chunk of the human population.

Yes, I will admit our 100% wind generated electricity has some downsides, as well as solar – we’ll be installing PV panels in a couple of months to generate about half our electricity, and I am well aware there is pollution involved in making those panels. However, again, I assess the harms to be much much less than harms from extracting, processing, and burning fossil fuels.

I just wonder if all you think about the harms you are doing every time you buy a product. Does anyone feel responsible for the recent deaths in the Bangladesh clothing factory and/or the myriad of other harms incurred in the products one buys every day? In the resource extraction, processing, shipping, manufacturing, consumption and disposal? We really should. We are all pretty much chips off the old Cain block.

RE financial and economic issues, I totally reject the notion that the environmental actions that I have taken over the past 43 years have had a net financial cost; they have indeed saved us an enormous amount of money and reduced possible health harms and costs and stress to us, while our living standard has steadily increased.

 

[Monte_RCMS]

Recently another poster stated that because of severe water shortages in the southwestern part of the United States and because I had said that where there are floods, there is plenty of water available to be managed … shipped, transported, piped or pumped from flood-prone areas to the drought-inflicted areas, … that I was being “flippant”.

My response was to post articles about the severe floods in the Missouri River areas, as well as the Red River. And to use as examples of the successful 50-dam development of the Columbia River and of the refusal of the local communities along the Ohio River to manage their flood situations.

However, in the mail the other day, there were some articles of extreme interest.

Here are some of their words mixed with some of mine.

The point is that innovative solutions … not all that difficult, in reality … the City of Rome has been using aqueducts for 2000 years or more.

In several, there were celebrations of the 100th anniversary of the 1913 completion of a 200+ mile aqueduct that still supplies the water used by the Los Angeles community. This is real and not flippant.

The Central Arizona Project (CAP), a 336-mile canal supported by a system of pipes and tunnels, was completed in the early 1990s and brings water from the Colorado River into Arizona. This led to a water rights legal battle … which is not over … the price that consumers would pay for this water would likely be astronomical—but they won’t have a choice. Difficult issues, but nevertheless, water is being moved to where it is needed.

Newer notions have played with the idea of augmentation, or importing water to the Southwest. A recent report from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation struck down a suggestion to build a trans-Kansas pipeline that would bring water from the Missouri River to Colorado River basin states. The citizen-submitted idea was dismissed on the basis that importing the water would be prohibitively expensive, politically divisive and take decades to pull off (although it was given points for “technical feasibility”). [These issues are always raised … nevertheless, these approaches are feasible … difficult discussion aspects, but still technically feasible.] [Bureaucrats are extremely susceptible to arguments involving “not invented here” or the difficulties they imagine of their having to control the project.]

Another more localized augmentation idea—touted in early March at the Global Infrastructure Leadership Forum—was the Augustin Plains Ranch project, which would transport 54,000 acre-ft of water from a massive underground lake in New Mexico to other communities in the state through a water reclamation system, which would have to be built. The project needs an official hearing by the New Mexico State Engineer, in accordance with the state’s water rights practices, for a full assessment to move forward.

The town of Tombstone, Arizona was defeated by Federal bureaucrats when they tried to repair their water supply pipeline.

These new ideas might not end up being solutions, but they are a step in the right direction. The innovative and proactive thinking behind them can evolve into concrete projects that will shape the future of water in the Southwest and around the world.

 

[lynnvinc]

Recently another poster stated that because of severe water shortages in the southwestern part of the United States and because I had said that where there are floods, there is plenty of water available to be managed … shipped, transported, piped or pumped from flood-prone areas to the drought-inflicted areas, … that I was being “flippant”.

My response was to post articles about the severe floods in the Missouri River areas, as well as the Red River. And to use as examples of the successful 50-dam development of the Columbia River and of the refusal of the local communities along the Ohio River to manage their flood situations.

However, in the mail the other day, there was a very short article, and here are a couple of excerpts:

Where’s the link?

Actually my husband was saying the same thing yesterday, since we have had such a severe drought here in the RGV of S. Texas, and just received a drought notice along with our water bill that residents could be fined $200 for watering their lawns on wrong days or not fixing leaks, etc. And there it is flooding like crazy in Houston.

Since AGW is happening and there are many more serious hazards already in the pipes, even if we reduce our GHG emissions to zero today, we will have to adapt to these increasingly serious problems. Experts have been warning about this, but no one listens; one National Weather Service hydrologist was warning years ago that GW would be bringing more serious flood hazards to the upper Midwest, and he was fired just a couple of years before retirement (and cannot get a pension) for mentioning global warming.

At first I told my husband that it would not be possible or feasible to bring excess water from flood to drought areas. That when you think of the mighty Mississippi and other rivers, and extreme deluges in short time periods there are just not enough trenches and canals to uptake that excess water. They’d just be better off building homes on pilings, like on an island off of Galveston – they use the space below as covered patios and to park their cars. Also, if we could get back to organic farming, that would soak up a lot more water than synthetic farming – which causes run-off into the rivers, and dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico, killing the fish.

We’re going to have to find many good adapation solutions, and not just let disasters catch us unaware and unprepared.

I think the North to South water system in California must be working now; when we left in 1971 they were just building it.

 

[styrgwillidar]

Yes, I’ll admit there are pollutions associated with my Chevy Volt battery – as there are at various levels with all manufacturing – and I have been concerned about that. I sincerely hope industries can do a cleaner, less harmful job in the future. However, I guesstimate that having and driving the Volt is causing less abortions from local pollution than driving an ICE car, less deaths, less health harms, less acid rain, less ocean acidification, less global warming – and its 1000s of negative repercussions, and possibly wiping out a huge chunk of the human population.

Yes, I will admit our 100% wind generated electricity has some downsides, as well as solar – we’ll be installing PV panels in a couple of months to generate about half our electricity, and I am well aware there is pollution involved in making those panels. However, again, I assess the harms to be much much less than harms from extracting, processing, and burning fossil fuels.

I just wonder if all you think about the harms you are doing every time you buy a product. Does anyone feel responsible for the recent deaths in the Bangladesh clothing factory and/or the myriad of other harms incurred in the products one buys every day? In the resource extraction, processing, shipping, manufacturing, consumption and disposal? We really should. We are all pretty much chips off the old Cain block.

RE financial and economic issues, I totally reject the notion that the environmental actions that I have taken over the past 43 years have had a net financial cost; they have indeed saved us an enormous amount of money and reduced possible health harms and costs and stress to us, while our living standard has steadily increased.

Well, your Volt is doing less damage in the long run if you’re charging it with solar vice petroleum off the national grid. The electrical vehicle batteries have a lot of unknowns in terms of world-wide, how much rare metals are there? Cost of mining, refining, disposing and the energy involved. I’ve seen some estimates that the supply is far less than oil reserves. Although the Japanese claimed to have found minable see deposits recently. I’m sure you’ve seen the stories showing that electric vehicles actually cause as much pollution over their lifetime as a Hummer/SUV due to the battery, transport of materials and expected shorter lifetime issues. I’d have to work the numbers myself to believe it.

Packaging bothers me a lot. It seems awful wasteful in terms of resources every time I open something- the plastic, paper etc. can be recycled but it cost energy to make and package. It just seems like we should be simplifying packaging to use less each time. So much of it ends up in the dumps, takes up space and for what- just to make a product look more attractive? Allow more labeling?

There are plenty of reasons to conserve, to be good stewards of resources without hanging are hats on unproven phenomena and extremely speculative projections/claims. As I’ve said before, it then damages our credibility on other issues.

 

[EasterJoy]

Where’s the link?

Actually my husband was saying the same thing yesterday, since we have had such a severe drought here in the RGV of S. Texas, and just received a drought notice along with our water bill that residents could be fined $200 for watering their lawns on wrong days or not fixing leaks, etc. And there it is flooding like crazy in Houston.

Since AGW is happening and there are many more serious hazards already in the pipes, even if we reduce our GHG emissions to zero today, we will have to adapt to these increasingly serious problems. Experts have been warning about this, but no one listens; one National Weather Service hydrologist was warning years ago that GW would be bringing more serious flood hazards to the upper Midwest, and he was fired just a couple of years before retirement (and cannot get a pension) for mentioning global warming.

At first I told my husband that it would not be possible or feasible to bring excess water from flood to drought areas. That when you think of the mighty Mississippi and other rivers, and extreme deluges in short time periods there are just not enough trenches and canals to uptake that excess water. They’d just be better off building homes on pilings, like on an island off of Galveston – they use the space below as covered patios and to park their cars. Also, if we could get back to organic farming, that would soak up a lot more water than synthetic farming – which causes run-off into the rivers, and dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico, killing the fish.

We’re going to have to find many good adapation solutions, and not just let disasters catch us unaware and unprepared.

I think the North to South water system in California must be working now; when we left in 1971 they were just building it.

Yes. The science seems to say that the Western United States has been unusually wet in the last 150 years or so. On top of that, ground water in the Midwest comes from an aquifer that was probably laid down during the last Ice Age…in other words, it is exhaustible. So even if the internal combustion engine had never been invented or there was no warming, we might well be facing those same water issues in the US. Research into the most frugal and least polluting forms of water use is very important, especially on the need and use scale of industrial farming, and that has nothing to do with whether or not one believes that CO2 levels are getting too high.

I’d be surprised if Northern California has consented to give a drop of water to Southern California, though. The general feeling during the drought that I witnessed was that the North was careful with water, while the Southland was oblivious that there even WAS a water shortage going on. It was “look what they did to the Colorado and Mono Lake! Don’t let them get their hands on our rivers, too!” sentiment.

 

[lynnvinc]

…I’m sure you’ve seen the stories showing that electric vehicles actually cause as much pollution over their lifetime as a Hummer/SUV due to the battery, transport of materials and expected shorter lifetime issues. I’d have to work the numbers myself to believe it.

No, I obviously don’t look at the same webpages you look at, tho I am aware of battery pollution & finite resource issues (tho “rare earth” minerals are not really rare…but polluting). These problems will probably be solved in the future; I’ve read about new break-thrus in that direction.

I’ve been into EVs for over 20 years, and even if one does their own conversion (without regenerative breaking, etc), and gets their electricity via coal power plants, they are still only about 2/3s as polluting as comparable ICE cars, and power plants have better ability to control their pollution.

However with wind now competitive and solar about to become competitive with fossil fuel energy, I imagine more of those buying EV (at least those who have environment concerns and/or like to save money on their electric bills) will be getting into solar and wind more and more…esp if they take away the subsidies and tax breaks from fossil fuels.

Packaging bothers me a lot. It seems awful wasteful in terms of resources every time I open something- the plastic, paper etc. can be recycled but it cost energy to make and package. It just seems like we should be simplifying packaging to use less each time. So much of it ends up in the dumps, takes up space and for what- just to make a product look more attractive? Allow more labeling?

Yes, good point. Buying things with less packaging is calle “precycling.”
However, I understand some of it is for security purposes, to prevent shoplifting, but surely we can do much better.

There are plenty of reasons to conserve, to be good stewards of resources without hanging are hats on unproven phenomena and extremely speculative projections/claims. As I’ve said before, it then damages our credibility on other issues.

AGW passed the .05 on the null back in 1995 and has become ever more robust since, and is based on theories well accepted for over 100 years and laws of physics. NO ONE has any doubts about it, except denialist machine henchmen and I sorta think they also do know it is happening.

However, you are very right that there are many many reasons beyond AGW to be good stewards.

 

[Monte_RCMS]

Where’s the link?

Actually my husband was saying the same thing yesterday, since we have had such a severe drought here in the RGV of S. Texas, and just received a drought notice along with our water bill that residents could be fined $200 for watering their lawns on wrong days or not fixing leaks, etc. And there it is flooding like crazy in Houston.

Since AGW is happening and there are many more serious hazards already in the pipes, even if we reduce our GHG emissions to zero today, we will have to adapt to these increasingly serious problems. Experts have been warning about this, but no one listens; one National Weather Service hydrologist was warning years ago that GW would be bringing more serious flood hazards to the upper Midwest, and he was fired just a couple of years before retirement (and cannot get a pension) for mentioning global warming.

At first I told my husband that it would not be possible or feasible to bring excess water from flood to drought areas. That when you think of the mighty Mississippi and other rivers, and extreme deluges in short time periods there are just not enough trenches and canals to uptake that excess water. They’d just be better off building homes on pilings, like on an island off of Galveston – they use the space below as covered patios and to park their cars. Also, if we could get back to organic farming, that would soak up a lot more water than synthetic farming – which causes run-off into the rivers, and dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico, killing the fish.

We’re going to have to find many good adapation solutions, and not just let disasters catch us unaware and unprepared.

I think the North to South water system in California must be working now; when we left in 1971 they were just building it.

Massive water supply management and aqueduct projects are totally normal. But they get taken for granted by non-engineers. Most people give their water supply no thought at all. “Laypeople” think water comes from a faucet in the wall.

Most probably aqueducts were the first major civil engineering projects in world history. People recognized early-on that moving vast amounts of water was vital to survival. Move it from where it is plentiful to where the people prefer to live. Nothing new there.

Sorry, no link. Many sources. These are “common knowledge” among engineers; non-engineers will have to do some looking-up.

Hard copy magazines and references.

Use Google to search for each of these projects.

Visit ABEbooks and order a Marks Mechanical Engineers Handbook. $5 to $35 for a previous edition, which is almost as good as the most recent. Tremendous detail in there.

The official name for that 100-year-old California aqueduct is “Owens River-Los Angeles Aqueduct”. You can also look up William Mulholland, who designed and built it. When “people” [bureaucrats] insist it would take too long … that Mulholland project took upwards of ten years. [Probably nobody has any idea any more where the infamous Mulholland Drive got its name.]

New York City NEVER STOPS working on their water supply. They spend billions of dollars tunneling continuously to bring water in from upstate New York. Been doing that for decades and decades and decades.

New Jersey, on the other hand, tries hard … but accomplishes almost nothing. The ill-fated Tocks Island project is but one of many failures. There was a previous effort in … from memory … the Pascack Valley … that also failed. They have predictable droughts, every ten or so years … following the solar sun spot cycle … check it out. But the NJ politicians merely complain … and do nothing. Well, actually, what the NJ politicians do is to cancel their projects after the land acquisition has been completed. So basically, they spend most of the money, and then … cancel the project, so they have nothing to show for all the work and effort and money.

In the case of the Missouri and Red Rivers, for example, you just dig a variety of diversion channels to low spots where they serve as ground water recharge sources or as basins to supply large pumps.

Not a big deal. Well … the technology is not a big deal; nothing has changed there for several thousand years.

Very feasible.

Keep in mind that many river systems in the U.S. western states have huge systems of dams and pipelines.

 

[Monte_RCMS]

Final fatal graph for global warming believers … 44 computer models versus real life:

drroyspencer.com/2013/04/global-warming-slowdown-the-view-from-space/

global-warming-slowdown-the-view-from-space/

Maybe someone with better computer skills than me can paste the illustration on here.

 

[lynnvinc]

Final fatal graph for global warming believers … 44 computer models versus real life:

drroyspencer.com/2013/04/global-warming-slowdown-the-view-from-space/

global-warming-slowdown-the-view-from-space/

Maybe someone with better computer skills than me can paste the illustration on here.

Nothing wrong with that graph. Just do a mental regression line thru it and it shows warming.

Also notice the wild zig-zag fluctuations. We just happen to be in a zag right now, which puts us at the low end of projections, probably due to the temporary cooling effect of China’s greater aerosol emissions as they build a new coal-fired plant every week (which was not expected), a very deep solar irradiance minimum (that was not expected or included in the ccomputer models - solar irradiance generally fluctuates between maxima and minima every 11 years), and greater deep ocean uptake of the warming (which was also not expected).

The laws of physics and the greenhouse effect theory, on which our current global warming projections is founded, are still just a valid as they have been for over 100 years. When China cleans up its act, when the sun gets more strongly into its next irradiance maximum, and when the deep ocean gets more fully “saturated” with warmth, we can perhaps expect the zig to go way up, maybe at the high end of projections.

There is another thing climate computer modellers have not put in their calculations – positive feedbacks from melting permafrost and ocean hydrate carbon release (which causes more warming, which causes more carbon release, which causes more warming, and so on until that carbon “shotgun” is fully discharged and the climate has warmed some 6C or more). But I’m not calling them nincompoops for that omission (they are doing the best they can), only that we lay people should at least be aware of it.

Another thing is climate modellers are mainly focusing on ground level temps, while Spencer is focusing on higher level temps, which I believe mixes in some temps from the stratosphere (since the stratosphere’s height varies from pole to equator); also his data is inaccurate.

As the greenhouse effect is warming the troposphere, it actually has a cooling effect on the stratosphere, so it’s better to rely on ground level temps. Re Spencer’s ideas, see skepticalscience.com/satellite-measurements-warming-troposphere.htm

 

[Monte_RCMS]

Nothing wrong with that graph. Just do a mental regression line thru it and it shows warming.

Also notice the wild zig-zag fluctuations. We just happen to be in a zag right now, which puts us at the low end of projections, probably due to the temporary cooling effect of China’s greater aerosol emissions as they build a new coal-fired plant every week (which was not expected), a very deep solar irradiance minimum (that was not expected or included in the ccomputer models - solar irradiance generally fluctuates between maxima and minima every 11 years), and greater deep ocean uptake of the warming (which was also not expected).

The laws of physics and the greenhouse effect theory, on which our current global warming projections is founded, are still just a valid as they have been for over 100 years. When China cleans up its act, when the sun gets more strongly into its next irradiance maximum, and when the deep ocean gets more fully “saturated” with warmth, we can perhaps expect the zig to go way up, maybe at the high end of projections.

There is another thing climate computer modellers have not put in their calculations – positive feedbacks from melting permafrost and ocean hydrate carbon release (which causes more warming, which causes more carbon release, which causes more warming, and so on until that carbon “shotgun” is fully discharged and the climate has warmed some 6C or more). But I’m not calling them nincompoops for that omission (they are doing the best they can), only that we lay people should at least be aware of it.

Another thing is climate modellers are mainly focusing on ground level temps, while Spencer is focusing on higher level temps, which I believe mixes in some temps from the stratosphere (since the stratosphere’s height varies from pole to equator); also his data is inaccurate.

As the greenhouse effect is warming the troposphere, it actually has a cooling effect on the stratosphere, so it’s better to rely on ground level temps. Re Spencer’s ideas, see skepticalscience.com/satellite-measurements-warming-troposphere.htm

Stunning, isn’t it, that the 44 top climate scientists and modelers omitted all that stuff.

 

[lynnvinc]

Stunning, isn’t it, that the 44 top climate scientists and modelers omitted all that stuff.

Bec it isn’t all quantifiable. But they know certainly know about it…and that’s why they are worried for their children and grandchildren, and others as well.

They admit there are “known unknowns” and there could also be “unknown unknowns.”

They are not lame-brains as people think they are.

Another issue is that computer power was very less decades ago, and it is really tremendous, but still not high enough for everything in the world that has impacts on climate…

That’s why climate science is NOT based solely on computer models, but also evidence, including current evidence and paleoclimatology…