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estesbob
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What problems?
- Status
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JamesCaruso
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It was a hypothetical.
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Ridgerunner
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Oil companies don’t have to fake anything. Their product is going to be used no matter what. Perhaps in decreasing amounts here, but certainly not in other countries. Oil usage in any country is approximately the same as its percentage of production worldwide. Just because some politicians in the U.S. are willing to let productivity slip in the U.S. does not mean politicians in other countries are willing to do so. Look at the Canadian tar sand oil. Obama blocks the Keystone pipeline, so Canada looks to China for its market, and China wants the oil.
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Ridgerunner
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The “thousands of climatologists” are actually “thousands of people of every kind and education”. Some are dendrologists. Some are geologists. Some are simply commentators on the work of others. There are, however, scientists who believe in MMGW who don’t buy the notions that MMGW is due to burning fossil fuels. There are scientists who don’t think there is global warming going on at all. There are scientist who very obviously cheated, but whose work went into the background of the work of others.
There are graphs that show higher temps and higher CO2 concentrations in the past. There are graphs showing that “warming” depends totally on the years one uses for comparison; that you can show warming, cooling and no change depending on the years and data you use. There are entire national scientific groups as well as governmental scientific organizations that reject the MMGW doctrine prevalent in the U.S.
Against that, there is the absolute certainty of human hardship in this country if Obama has his way, and it is just as certain that he doesn’t act as if he believes in it himself. It is also certain that the environmentalist policies espoused for the U.S. will have no effect at all on CO2 emissions worldwide.
One the one hand, “record creep” and an untestable theory. On the other hand, indisputable harms.
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lynnvinc
Guest
What about our sinfulness…could that bring about disasters (or make God zap us)?
And if so, then I suppose we should not 2nd guess God, assume, or presume (as Jesus taught int he desert) about how He plans to do that…maybe directly thru our sinfulness and his laws of nature…such as the laws on physics on which the greenhouse effect is based.
It has also occurred to me that since we are full speed ahead on our project of destroying life on planet Earth thru AGW, perhaps before God intended to do so, He may just be sitting back and saying, “Oh, well, they beat me to it.”
However, the only glitch is that the ones who are perpretrating the harms will be suffering less, while those least responsible (esp the poor and future generations) will be suffering the most. That’s injustice. I don’t think God favors injustice.
OTOH, I just got some info from Munich RE (a reinsurance co that insures the insurers, so they really are concerned about AGW in a very special way). It is about the serious climate and weather-related disasters and risks to the USA and elsewhere – and acc to the report we’re getting our fair share in the USA – even tho the distribution of benefits and harms is still quite unjust.
“Natural catastrophes 2012: Analyses, assessments, positions, 2013 Issue” at munichre.com/publications/302-07742_en.pdf (you may have to register for free to get this pub).
…Overall, the natural catastrophe statistics for 2012 were largely dominated
by atmospheric events, with no catastrophic earthquakes. Due to a number
of major weather-related catastrophes, including severe tornado outbreaks
in the spring and a record drought in the US Midwest, the USA accounted
for an exceptionally high proportion of natural catastrophes. However,
Russia also experienced unusually hot, dry conditions, and vast tracts of land
were devastated by wildfires. In view of climate change, it is to be feared
that Russia will be increasingly affected by disastrous natural hazard events…
Our latest study, “Severe weather in North America”, analyses different weather phenomena and their consequences. We examine the reasons behind the increase in weather risks, including climate variability and climate change, and recommend risk mitigation and prevention measures designed to deal with extreme events…
Hurricane Sandy was the outstanding loss event of 2012 for the insurance industry. It made landfall …with wind speeds on the borderline between tropical cyclone and hurricane
strength. A storm surge of almost 3.5 m above mean sea level was measured… Several factors accounted for the height of this storm surge. Firstly, it was due to Sandy’s vast size combined with its near-perpendicular landfall. Secondly, there was a full moon, so that landfall coincided with a spring tide. Thirdly, the increase in water level was also due to a steady rise in sea level over a number of decades (roughly 35 cm in 93 years on this gauge)…In other words, Hurricane Sandy was just a foretaste of what the inhabitants of New York and other parts of the northeast US coast can expect to face more often in the future.
And now just when we thought AGW would only be causing more intense hurricanes (enough to huff and puff and blow the houses completely down), but fewer of them (a tiny silver lining), we now find out in the current issue of PNAS there may be actually more of them as well as increasing intensity.
See grist.org/climate-energy/a-scientific-storm-is-brewing-over-the-hurricane-climate-connection/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed & pnas.org/content/early/2013/07/05/1301293110.abstract
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lynnvinc
Guest
Here’s something interesting I just read about one of the NATURAL CAPITALISM authors, Paul Hawken - a faculty appointment to a business college to teach on sustainable business: presidioedu.org/about/news-events/press-releases/paul-hawken-joins-faculty
At least some people don’t think he’s a flake just because he has great knowledge about reducing our environmental harm while helping businesses and the economy.
Hawken has authored articles, op-eds, and peer-reviewed papers, and has written seven books including four national bestsellers, The Next Economy (Ballantine 1983), Growing a Business (Simon and Schuster 1987), The Ecology of Commerce (HarperCollins 1993) and Blessed Unrest (Viking, 2007). Paul Hawken was voted in 2012 as the #1 author on business and the environment by professors in 67 business schools and the #1 person who influenced their career by Chief Sustainability Officers in corporate America. Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (Little Brown, September 1999), co-authored with Amory Lovins, has been read and referred to by several heads of state including President Bill Clinton who called it one of the five most important books in the world today. His books have been published in over 50 countries in 29 languages. Growing a Business became the basis of a 17-part PBS series, which Hawken hosted and produced. The program, which explored the challenges and pitfalls of starting and operating socially responsive companies, was shown on television in 115 countries and watched by over 100 million people. Hawken has been awarded seven honorary doctorates.
Maybe I should send a copy of NATURAL CAPITALISM to Obama
At least some people don’t think he’s a flake just because he has great knowledge about reducing our environmental harm while helping businesses and the economy.
Hawken has authored articles, op-eds, and peer-reviewed papers, and has written seven books including four national bestsellers, The Next Economy (Ballantine 1983), Growing a Business (Simon and Schuster 1987), The Ecology of Commerce (HarperCollins 1993) and Blessed Unrest (Viking, 2007). Paul Hawken was voted in 2012 as the #1 author on business and the environment by professors in 67 business schools and the #1 person who influenced their career by Chief Sustainability Officers in corporate America. Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (Little Brown, September 1999), co-authored with Amory Lovins, has been read and referred to by several heads of state including President Bill Clinton who called it one of the five most important books in the world today. His books have been published in over 50 countries in 29 languages. Growing a Business became the basis of a 17-part PBS series, which Hawken hosted and produced. The program, which explored the challenges and pitfalls of starting and operating socially responsive companies, was shown on television in 115 countries and watched by over 100 million people. Hawken has been awarded seven honorary doctorates.
Maybe I should send a copy of NATURAL CAPITALISM to Obama
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Slaney
Guest
Think that is the point, our sinfulness, problem is, the innocent as well as the guilty sometimes suffer.
Plagues of Egypt
1: Water to blood,2: Frogs 3: ,Gnats or lice, **4:**Flies,5: Livestock diseased, **6:**Boils,**7:**Thunder & Hail 8:,Locusts 9: darkness 10: death of first born …
Yes God has power over nature, Jesus calmed the sea when the apostles were frighted, he can calm the earth if we turn back to God…
But like the Pharaoh, men will mostly hardened their hearts until their backs are to the wall…& head like a snowball towards hell…
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Ridgerunner
Guest
I can’t say about Russia. But it may be considered that even the Tunguska explosion wasn’t known to the outside world for quite some time. Russia has not, until very recently, been very open to the knowledge of anyone on the outside.
But I have lived all my life in Southwest Mo, in the southern part of what one could call the Midwest (or perhaps the northern part of the South) right smack in tornado alley, and on the edge of the Southwest (it’s not for nothing that the call nearby eastern Ok the “Green Country” because none of the rest of Ok is, or ever was. Remember reading about “Okies”? The Dust Bowl?)
For every tornado that causes a human disaster in tornado alley, there are a hundred that don’t; that don’t make headlines and have always been a feature of the region. I can’t remember a year (and I’m not young) when no tornado passed within 15 or 20 miles of where I live, and I have had them go right overhead. But they’re not on the national news because they don’t hit population centers. There are no more of them now than there were when I was a kid. There is just a lot more population density now than there was then.
As for droughts, they come cyclically, but every summer that isn’t an El Nino year is droughty, and I have seen much worse ones than last year’s. My parents and grandparents talked of ones more remote in time that were even worse than the worst one I lived through.
And guess what? Most of us do “mitigate” the naturally occurring weather phenomena, and always have.
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10gr8kids
Guest
I live just to your south in NWA. I too have heard of many worse winter storms and droughts than I’ve ever lived through. The droughts in the thirties and fifties were much worse than the ones we’ve had in recent years. I’ve heard in the fifties the ground was so dry there where cracks in the ground you could put your forearm into. There was no grass or hay and people were cutting trees to feed their cattle. The govt. eventually had a buyout on the cattle, took them to Avoca, and shot and buried them.
My husbands grandpa told of the “Brightwater” tornado that happened when he was young and the devestation it caused. His aunt and her young child were killed in it. Both of his parents had died by the time he was seven and he lived with an older sister for awhile, but he set out on his own when he was a young teen. He lived in one of the Dakatos for awhile with a farm family and worked in the fields. One day a storm came up and the farmer and “Pa” headed back to the barn with one team of mules, and the farmer told his son to bring the other team of mules in. I guess the son dawdled too long and got caught in the storm. It started hailing and the hail was so big it killed the mules. I can’t even imagine that kind of a hail storm.
I believe if more people listened to stories from “old timers”’ they wouldn’t be so easily convinced that the extreme weather we sometimes have is a new phenomena.
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lynnvinc
Guest
Personal observations are important. They are using information from elderly Inuits and other tribals in the arctic.
However, good stats are also important, and in the Munich RE study, they are keen to ferret out whether the increasing damage from extreme weather events is being caused by larger populations and structures being built in those areas affected, or an increase in severe weather events, and they have found that it is both, including the latter.
Insurance people are really into getting things right, and in this case they are promoting mitigation of AGW, as well as adaptation to it, to prevent insurance claims from escalating too much.
Surely people here are not suggesting the insurance industry is part of some vast conspiracy involving 1000s of scientists and 100,000s of environmentalists to hoodwink people. If so, I have a bridge in Area 51 I can sell.
The ultimate solution of the insurance industry is unfortunately to not insure people and property in extremely high risk areas – such as S. Florida. “No business” is not good for business. It would be better if such catastrophes were not increasing so the insurance industry could continue doing business in those areas.
A “no coverage” situation could eventually happen in my area as well, being a hurricane area. As it is, our insurance costs are skyrocketing.
The new study that just came out in PNAS projecting not only increased intensity of hurricanes from GW (which has been established for the past 8 years), but also increased frequency is not good news, See pnas.org/content/early/2013/07/05/1301293110.abstract & an article about it at grist.org/climate-energy/a-scientific-storm-is-brewing-over-the-hurricane-climate-connection/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed
But luckily we’ve paid off our mortgage (partly from the great savings we’ve been realizing over the past 23 years from doing the environmentally correct (EC) things), so at the least we wouldn’t be paying a mortgage for the next 20 years on a home that was smashed to smitherines. Another good reason to do the EC things.
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Ridgerunner
Guest
Insurance costs go up when insurers sustain heavy losses. They certainly did, locally, after the Joplin tornado among insurers that sustained big losses, but not among those that didn’t. Had the tornado gone through just a few miles north or south of where it did, (which happens every year) there would have been no reaction from any of them because there would have been no losses.Personal observations are important. They are using information from elderly Inuits and other tribals in the arctic.
However, good stats are also important, and in the Munich RE study, they are keen to ferret out whether the increasing damage from extreme weather events is being caused by larger populations and structures being built in those areas affected, or an increase in severe weather events, and they have found that it is both, including the latter.
Insurance people are really into getting things right, and in this case they are promoting mitigation of AGW, as well as adaptation to it, to prevent insurance claims from escalating too much.
Surely people here are not suggesting the insurance industry is part of some vast conspiracy involving 1000s of scientists and 100,000s of environmentalists to hoodwink people. If so, I have a bridge in Area 51 I can sell.
The ultimate solution of the insurance industry is unfortunately to not insure people and property in extremely high risk areas – such as S. Florida. “No business” is not good for business. It would be better if such catastrophes were not increasing so the insurance industry could continue doing business in those areas.
A “no coverage” situation could eventually happen in my area as well, being a hurricane area. As it is, our insurance costs are skyrocketing.
The new study that just came out in PNAS projecting not only increased intensity of hurricanes from GW (which has been established for the past 8 years), but also increased frequency is not good news, See pnas.org/content/early/2013/07/05/1301293110.abstract & an article about it at grist.org/climate-energy/a-scientific-storm-is-brewing-over-the-hurricane-climate-connection/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feed
But luckily we’ve paid off our mortgage (partly from the great savings we’ve been realizing over the past 23 years from doing the environmentally correct (EC) things), so at the least we wouldn’t be paying a mortgage for the next 20 years on a home that was smashed to smitherines. Another good reason to do the EC things.
It is true that “thousands” of people of various backgrounds have signed on to MMGW. However, thousands have also spoken out against it. One example is the following, and it is not the only one.
“There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide…is causing or will in the foreseeable future cause catastrophic heating of the earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the earth’s climate.”
That was “signed on” by 30,000 scientists of various backgrounds, including over 9,000 PhDs. www.petitionproject.org.
There are other, similar views expressed. MMGW theorizing actually seems to be on the wane except among those politicians who promote it (but don’t live as if they believe it) and those millionaires and billionaires from Al Gore to Bill Gates (who also don’t live as if they believe it) who have heavily invested in “mitigation” or “alternative energy” projects.
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Ridgerunner
Guest
Your part of the country and mine (one region, really, bisected by a state line) was, long ago, very lightly populated. Today, if you draw a flat oval including Springfield, Mo on the NE and the contiguous towns of Bentonville, Springdale, Rogers, Fayetteville Ar on the SW, swinging through the lake country and bounded on the north by I-44, and not even including the Joplin area, a million people live within that rather smallish oval.
That greatly raises the potential for serious storm damage. Fortunately, that country is also almost entirely grassland and forest now, so the effects of the drought cycles at least are not as severe as they were back when people tilled the land.
All the same, my own father cut down trees in the 1950s so cattle would at least have green leaves to eat. That drought permanently ended not only most row cropping but also the dependence on northern grass species like brome and timothy.
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tomarin
Guest
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Ridgerunner
Guest
I would have to look it up, but there is a good number of them. I do recall, however, that one of them is a governmental scientific institute of India. Apparently the Indian government once went along with the MMGW theory, but then rejected it. I do realize India has a reason to do that; specifically that it doesn’t want any international restrictions on its own use of fossil fuels. I’m not sure how close India is to surpassing the U.S. in the use of fossil fuels, but it’s close and gaining if it hasn’t already surpassed the U.S. China, of course, surpassed the U.S. some time ago and is still increasing.
I’m not a MMGW cultist either way, so I don’t do a lot of research on the subject. But one does run across things now and then. One sort of interesting thing is that some scientists have concluded experimentally that plants thrive best at a concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere that is considerably higher than it is at present. It has been at that optimal concentration before, but isn’t right now.
Also of some interest to me at least is that the “equalization” of average wordwide air temperatures to surface oceanic water temperatures is measured in days whereas that of deep water temperatures to atmospheric temperatures is measured in thousands of years. Some scientists believe that atmospheric temperature increases following the Little Ice Age were due to gradual “equalization” of atmospheric temperatures to ocean temperatures dating back to the Medieval Warming Period. Of course, there have not been atmospheric temperature increases worldwide for a number of years now.
That’s at least somewhat troubling, because if the warming of the atmosphere following the Little Ice Age into the late 20th Century really was due to heat release from the oceans dating back to medieval times, we might be at the end of the equalization.
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Ridgerunner
Guest
I just remembered this one. About 700 scientists signed onto this. climatescienceinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=37&Itemid=1
You can read their declaration and there is a button you can hit to see the names and backgrounds of the signers.
There are more, but I can’t recall them right now.
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qui_est_ce
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:yup:
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estesbob
Guest
Too Much Rain? Global warming!
Not enough rain? Global warming!
Major Storm? Global warming!
Lessening of major storms? Global warming!
Excessive heat? Global warming!
Excessive cold? Global warming!
10 years of increase temperatures? Global warming
13 years of no increase? Global warming
Sun comes up in the east? Global warming!
Sun sets in the west? Global warming
Not enough rain? Global warming!
Major Storm? Global warming!
Lessening of major storms? Global warming!
Excessive heat? Global warming!
Excessive cold? Global warming!
10 years of increase temperatures? Global warming
13 years of no increase? Global warming
Sun comes up in the east? Global warming!
Sun sets in the west? Global warming
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qui_est_ce
Guest
That sums it up well.
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styrgwillidar
Guest
You missed the memo, now its ‘Climate Change’, even the true believers got tired of seemingly every one of their conferences happening when that city experiences historic lows. God really does have a sense of humor.
Conservation, affordable economically viable alternate sources of energy make sense. But governments don’t enact plans to actually achieve those goals. They are simply ways of asserting power or rewarding/taking care of their buddies. Just a good excuse they seize for crony capitalism.
- What’s the rate of failures of green companies we’ve given billions?
- How much energy was actually produced for the amount of money and subsidies that GE was given for energy programs?
- How much mony went to those failed green company CEOs, board members, suppliers, investors
- How much did those companies contribute to politicians, and which ones?
- What was the ratio of energy produced to the amount of greenhouse gases released in the solar industry? How much of it from failed companies like Solyndra whose products ended up producing little if any energy? (Those gases being considered to be several orders of magnitude more harmful to the environmnent as ‘warming’ contributors)
" Solar cells contain heavy metals, and their manufacturing releases greenhouse gases such as sulfur hexafluoride, which has 23 000 times as much global warming potential as CO2, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.’ - How much more are Californians paying for ‘sustainable energy’ vice conventional, from where, at what environmental costs in the areas its produced? We kill a lot of birds. Tore up a lot of desert in the name of environmentalism.
- How much did the taxpayers give folks to make wind turbines which are now abandoned? Who benefited from that money? Not the environment.
mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/horrified-birdwatchers-see-rare-white-throated-2003724
- Germany has finally realized the cronyism isn’t affordable. Taxpayers caught on it was just a boondoggle to transfer money to connected green manufacturers.
- Spain has come to the same realization.
blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/07/15/spain-cuts-green-energy-losses/
Lynvic, concern for the environment is great apart from the religion of Glo… sorry, Climate Change. But government action isn’t the way it is going to get done.
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lynnvinc
Guest
Yes, that’s so true. And it may sound weird, but when one understands the science behind it the mysteries get solved.
There are increasingly more droughts AND more deluges of biblical proportions. (and plagues) And that is because warming air holds more water vapor – sucking it out of water bodies, soil, and plants – desiccating them, leading to greater wildfire risk. Then under certain weather conditions that water up there can come down as a extreme precipitation event (blizzard, deluge), flooding out places. Add to that greater snowfall, then greater and earlier spring melt, and Upper Midwest, you’ve got problems. And in drought-stricken places where the plants have died back or been wiped out by wildfires, that could lead to severe mudslides when that all water up there comes down as a severe deluge.
These are all noted to be on the increase globally: ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/ and ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/images/uploads/SREX-All_FINAL.pdf
The most recent tragedy in Uttarakhand, India: english.irib.ir/subcontinent/news/regional/item/87672-around-3000-still-missing-in-india%E2%80%99s-uttarakhand-state-official
Here is part of the reason: more heat and water in the atmosphere, the greater potential for that to be turned into kinetic enegry in the form of fiercer storms and hurricanes.
Also in order for a hurricane to even form, the sea-surface temps need to be high…which is why you usually don’t get hurricanes hitting California – due to the cold Humbolt current – unless they come up thru the hot Sea of Cortez.
This is a necessary, but not sufficient cause, since there are other factors (e.g., re wind sheer, etc) that need to come into play, so it has been difficult to say whether there will be more frequent storms, only that they will be more intense…until now, with Emanuel’s new study, which projects they will be more frequent, as well.
Some helpful studies and sites with info and/or links to studies:
- pnas.org/content/early/2013/07/05/1301293110.abstract
- atmosedu.com/ENVS109/articles/Emanuel05-hurricanes.pdf
- ucar.edu/news/releases/2005/trenberth.shtml
- climatecentral.org/news/heat-wave-spawns-deadly-severe-storms/
Now this is one of the most disturbing developments for me, bec when moving to the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas in 2002, I was thinking the one silver lining to AGW is that we will have less killing freezes (that kill our tropical garden and winter veggie crops…since summer is too hot and dry to grow them).
Then come to find out AGW is also increasing negative Arctic oscillations, bringing cold snaps from north to south (making the Arctic warmer than usual, but killing my garden), rather than the more usual west-to-east pattern. However, studies are coming in showing that these Neg AOs are increasing due to GW factors:
- journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2010JCLI3372.1
- climatecentral.org/blogs/closer-look-at-arctic-sea-ice-melt-and-extreme-weather-15013?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+climatecentral%2FdjOO+Climate+Central±+Full+Feed
- onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2012GL051000/abstract
- tos.org/oceanography/archive/25-2_greene.pdf
- tos.org/oceanography/archive/26-1_greene.pdf (re Superstorm Sandy)
One has to understand that there are many factors impacting climate, the enhancing greenhouse effect being just one. For instance the short-term fluxes in solar irradiance, and the sun having been in a deep “solar minimum” for the past 13 years… which if it were not for the enhancing GH effect would have brought the global average temp down to pre-1970s levels.
So the time-temp chart is like a saw blade, but that blade is pointed upwards.
Also it has actually continued to warm over the past 13 years, if one includes the various places on earth the heat is being stored, such as the oceans.
http://westcoastclimateequity.org/w.../Ocean-Heating-Total-Heat-Content-300x228.jpg
Hope this post helps to clarify some of the mysteries re AGW.
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