Scientists: World likely won't avoid dangerous warming mark

[Exiled_Child]

One doesn’t need to read petrochemical company publications. One just needs to be outdoors a lot and see what plants and animals require in the way of climate. Nobody experiences global warming. I live in a very narrow climatic zone in which a number of plants and animals thrive in combination, but just a bit north and south of it, they don’t. It hasn’t changed since I was a child, decades ago.

This is an interesting article on just how fast things are moving, though it’s difficult or impossible for a lone individual to really grasp. When data from around the globe is collected and our lens widens though, we begin to get a sense of what is actually happening.

Humans have destroyed a tenth of Earth’s wilderness in 25 years – study

theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/08/humans-have-destroyed-a-tenth-of-earths-wilderness-in-25-years-study

 

[Ridgerunner]

This is an interesting article on just how fast things are moving, though it’s difficult or impossible for a lone individual to really grasp. When data from around the globe is collected and our lens widens though, we begin to get a sense of what is actually happening.

Humans have destroyed a tenth of Earth’s wilderness in 25 years – study

theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/08/humans-have-destroyed-a-tenth-of-earths-wilderness-in-25-years-study

Destruction of wilderness is a different thing from man-made global warming theories, the purpose of which is to discourage energy use.

Wilderness is not always a good thing, and development it for man’s use is not always a bad thing. Take Kansas, for instance. What would it be like if it was a true “wilderness”? Well, nobody knows for sure, because Indians used to burn the whole place off annually. But it’s fairly reasonable to believe it would consist in tall grass prairie in about the eastern half and short grass prairie in the western half. As a “wilderness”, it would abound in large ruminants and predators. As a “non-wilderness”, a good part of it is tall grass prairie and part of it is short grass prairie, both populated by large ruminants (cattle), with man as the primary “large predator”. Part of it is a “grass monoculture”, i.e., wheat, which is a grass. Some of it is in corn, which is also a grass.

Some years ago, anthropologists discovered that hundreds of years ago, vast portions of the Amazon rain forest were under cultivation by humans. Additional large segments were, in effect, “orchards” with fruit and nut bearing trees from as far away as Peru.

I recall when, a few years ago, the Dept of Natural Resources was thrilled to find “native pecans” in the Mark Twain National Forest. They excitedly studied the DNA, only to find that the trees had been brought from Oklahoma by Indians. It later turned out that the pecan trees in Oklahoma had been imported by Indians from TExas.

Nobody on this earth knows what a true “wilderness” is, inasmuch as the hand of man has altered every bit of it.

Mismanagement, though, is another thing entirely. Huge portions of China, for example, (same in Russia and Africa and other places) have been terribly mismanaged to the point that they’re “desertified”. Desertification itself is a powerful atmospheric warmer. There is a tremendous amount of mismanagement in the world. Temperature measurements taken anywhere near desertified places are going to show increases. Among other places, a great deal of the American West has been desertified due to BLM mismanagement.

 

[XndrK]

Walden Pond is only 15 miles from Boston so it suffers from the Boston urban heat island effect … AND is subject to invasive species.

Not exactly a wilderness.

It was 15 miles from Boston when it started.

Also, global warming, explained.

 

[Monte_RCMS]

junkscience.com/2011/10/study-misleads-on-urban-heat-island-effect/

Study misleads on urban heat island effect

Please read.

Global warming [AGW] … by definition … is a creation of IPCC computer models AND is ONLY about ONE DEGREE per CENTURY.

NOT ENOUGH TO FEEL.

 

[XndrK]

Destruction of wilderness is a different thing from man-made global warming theories, the purpose of which is to discourage energy use.

Wilderness is not always a good thing, and development it for man’s use is not always a bad thing. Take Kansas, for instance. What would it be like if it was a true “wilderness”? Well, nobody knows for sure, because Indians used to burn the whole place off annually. But it’s fairly reasonable to believe it would consist in tall grass prairie in about the eastern half and short grass prairie in the western half. As a “wilderness”, it would abound in large ruminants and predators. As a “non-wilderness”, a good part of it is tall grass prairie and part of it is short grass prairie, both populated by large ruminants (cattle), with man as the primary “large predator”. Part of it is a “grass monoculture”, i.e., wheat, which is a grass. Some of it is in corn, which is also a grass.

Some years ago, anthropologists discovered that hundreds of years ago, vast portions of the Amazon rain forest were under cultivation by humans. Additional large segments were, in effect, “orchards” with fruit and nut bearing trees from as far away as Peru.

I recall when, a few years ago, the Dept of Natural Resources was thrilled to find “native pecans” in the Mark Twain National Forest. They excitedly studied the DNA, only to find that the trees had been brought from Oklahoma by Indians. It later turned out that the pecan trees in Oklahoma had been imported by Indians from TExas.

Nobody on this earth knows what a true “wilderness” is, inasmuch as the hand of man has altered every bit of it.

Mismanagement, though, is another thing entirely. Huge portions of China, for example, (same in Russia and Africa and other places) have been terribly mismanaged to the point that they’re “desertified”. Desertification itself is a powerful atmospheric warmer. There is a tremendous amount of mismanagement in the world. Temperature measurements taken anywhere near desertified places are going to show increases. Among other places, a great deal of the American West has been desertified due to BLM mismanagement.

Why on Earth would a cabal consisting of literally every climate scientist on Earth that isn’t paid by an energy company (and quite a few of the people who are) decide to get together and give energy companies the axe by coming up with this marvelously-internally-consistent theory about Earth literally getting hotter? Is someone fudging the data at Mauna Loa? How about all the climate data on Earth? Why hasn’t someone gotten famous showing that global warming is bunk?

ALL THE QUESTIONS!

 

[Monte_RCMS]

Government grants are in the MANY billions each year.

AND there are GREAT trips and conferences.

AND you get to feel important.

AND you get to write the rules and regulations to tell everyone what to do!!

 

[XndrK]

Government grants are in the MANY billions each year.

AND there are GREAT trips and conferences.

AND you get to feel important.

AND you get to write the rules and regulations to tell everyone what to do!!

But everyone? Why is climatology the only science where this appears to happen?

 

[Ridgerunner]

But everyone? Why is climatology the only science where this appears to happen?

It isn’t, though. It’s true in all kinds of things. Certain ideas get accepted, and people write extensively on permutations of the accepted theme, getting money, perhaps fame, academic cred, etc, in the process.

“Outliers” don’t get a lot of access to the ears of those in the discipline, let alone of the public at large.

Look at the recent publication by that guy at Johns Hopkins. He did a study expecting to demonstrate that homosexuality and transsexuality are innate; that transsexual “conversions” are good for a person. What he found out was the exact opposite. He was attacked, not only by the media but by his own colleagues who immediately distanced themselves from him; not on the methodology, but on the conclusions themselves. Does that encourage or discourage unbiased research in the future? It discourages it.

And, as I mentioned before, Noam Chomsky dominated linguistics for decades with his Darwinistic theory of the development of language. Then along came this guy Everett and tossed it into a cocked hat by demonstrating that at least one language did not have the features Chomsky maintained was “innate” and “inevitable”. Everett was vilified, shoved to the sidelines. He couldn’t get published. But he got lucky, linguists started to pay attention because it got into the public domain, and now Chomsky’s theory no longer dominates linguistics.

I remember a physician I knew personally who did a study of thousands and thousands of people about upper extremity cumulative trauma disorders. Amazingly, she found that the number one common factor was actually smoking, with some outliers being caused by other circulatory disorders, and that almost every patient could be brought back from the brink without surgery with a fairly simple protocol. The surgeons, of course, let up a howl you could hear practically on the moon, and did anything change? No. In the course of it, she demonstrated the uselessness of the Purdue Pegboard test, used by all kinds of medical people. Do they still use it? Yes.

MMGW is not different, except that it serves a very high priority political purpose and has a lot of funding behind it. It is not unreasonable to expect it to have even more devotees that, say, linguistics or UECTDs or whether transgender surgery improves psych outcomes.

 

[ucfengr]

Why on Earth would a cabal consisting of literally every climate scientist on Earth that isn’t paid by an energy company (and quite a few of the people who are) decide to get together and give energy companies the axe by coming up with this marvelously-internally-consistent theory about Earth literally getting hotter? Is someone fudging the data at Mauna Loa? How about all the climate data on Earth? Why hasn’t someone gotten famous showing that global warming is bunk?

ALL THE QUESTIONS!

Not “every single climate scientist in the world not paid by an oil company” believes in catastrophic man-made climate change. That’s a myth. And really, you don’t have to be a climate scientist to be skeptical of the assertion that raising atmospheric CO2 levels from 300ppm to 400ppm, in other words, from 0.03% to 0.04%, is going to cause the planet to be uninhabitable by humans. A normal amount of incredulity is sufficient.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

It isn’t, though. It’s true in all kinds of things. Certain ideas get accepted, and people write extensively on permutations of the accepted theme, getting money, perhaps fame, academic cred, etc, in the process.

“Outliers” don’t get a lot of access to the ears of those in the discipline, let alone of the public at large.

They do when they are right!

Look at the recent publication by that guy at Johns Hopkins. He did a study expecting to demonstrate that homosexuality and transsexuality are innate; that transsexual “conversions” are good for a person. What he found out was the exact opposite. He was attacked, not only by the media but by his own colleagues who immediately distanced themselves from him; not on the methodology, but on the conclusions themselves. Does that encourage or discourage unbiased research in the future? It discourages it.

You are trying to prove too much. You only want to prove that global warming is wrong. Instead you are trying to prove no published science is reliable. That is a much harder task, and frankly, doomed to failure.

 

[Ridgerunner]

They do when they are right!

You are trying to prove too much. You only want to prove that global warming is wrong. Instead you are trying to prove no published science is reliable. That is a much harder task, and frankly, doomed to failure.

It may be doomed to failure, all right. But I still have the right (for now, at least) to say things.

But regardless, I have no thought at all to “prove no published science is reliable”. That’s how you wish to characterize it. Someone opined that widely accepted opinions purporting to have a scientific basis automatically make their acceptance mandatory upon us. My point was that’s not necessarily correct. Being published a lot oftentimes just means they’re published a lot.

But I will admit you did shoot the straw man right between the eyes.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

It may be doomed to failure, all right. But I still have the right (for now, at least) to say things.

But regardless, I have no thought at all to “prove no published science is reliable”. That’s how you wish to characterize it. Someone opined that widely accepted opinions purporting to have a scientific basis automatically make their acceptance mandatory upon us. My point was that’s not necessarily correct. Being published a lot oftentimes just means they’re published a lot.

But I will admit you did shoot the straw man right between the eyes.

I think I quite accurately characterized your argument, so mine is not a strawman. Look at your own words:

Look at the recent publication by that guy at Johns Hopkins. He did a study expecting to demonstrate that homosexuality and transsexuality are innate; that transsexual “conversions” are good for a person. What he found out was the exact opposite. He was attacked, not only by the media but by his own colleagues who immediately distanced themselves from him; not on the methodology, but on the conclusions themselves. Does that encourage or discourage unbiased research in the future? It discourages it.

And, as I mentioned before, Noam Chomsky dominated linguistics for decades with his Darwinistic theory of the development of language. Then along came this guy Everett and tossed it into a cocked hat by demonstrating that at least one language did not have the features Chomsky maintained was “innate” and “inevitable”. Everett was vilified, shoved to the sidelines. He couldn’t get published. But he got lucky, linguists started to pay attention because it got into the public domain, and now Chomsky’s theory no longer dominates linguistics.

I remember a physician I knew personally who did a study of thousands and thousands of people about upper extremity cumulative trauma disorders. Amazingly, she found that the number one common factor was actually smoking, with some outliers being caused by other circulatory disorders, and that almost every patient could be brought back from the brink without surgery with a fairly simple protocol. The surgeons, of course, let up a howl you could hear practically on the moon, and did anything change? No. In the course of it, she demonstrated the uselessness of the Purdue Pegboard test, used by all kinds of medical people. Do they still use it? Yes.

So, instead of showing how MMGW research is unreliable, you cite examples in social science, linguistics, and medicine where scientific research ignores the outliers who happen to be correct. What do these examples have in common with MMGW? They are instances of scientific research. How can you use these examples to cast doubt on MMGW without simultaneously casting doubt on any other scientific research? So rather than try the tedious job of arguing the case for MMGW - a case which you failed to address directly in that posting, it I just used reductio ad absurdum on your whole approach. It is absurd to believe that all scientific research should be mistrusted, therefore your argument that depends on that assertion must therefore be wrong.

You did go on to mention MMGW, only to say

MMGW is not different, except that it serves a very high priority political purpose and has a lot of funding behind it. It is not unreasonable to expect it to have even more devotees that, say, linguistics or UECTDs or whether transgender surgery improves psych outcomes.

These conclusions are also unsupported. There is not an obviously high political purpose for MMGW - not as high anyway as the obvious political purpose for the opposing position which has the incentives of the whole fossil fuel industry as compared to the miniscule financial capability of the fledgling renewable energy sector - a fact which undermines your conclusion.

 

[lmachine]

And really, you don’t have to be a climate scientist to be skeptical of the assertion that raising atmospheric CO2 levels from 300ppm to 400ppm, in other words, from 0.03% to 0.04%, is going to cause the planet to be uninhabitable by humans.

It’s not going to make the planet uninhabitable, but it is going to have drastic effects on where and how many humans can inhabit it.

 

[Monte_RCMS]

It’s not going to make the planet uninhabitable, but it is going to have drastic effects on where and how many humans can inhabit it.

The only effect from that increase in carbon dioxide would be a huge increase in agricultural production.

 

[XndrK]

Not “every single climate scientist in the world not paid by an oil company” believes in catastrophic man-made climate change. That’s a myth. And really, you don’t have to be a climate scientist to be skeptical of the assertion that raising atmospheric CO2 levels from 300ppm to 400ppm, in other words, from 0.03% to 0.04%, is going to cause the planet to be uninhabitable by humans. A normal amount of incredulity is sufficient.

Okay, the idea that Earth is going to be completely uninhabitable doesn’t give humans enough credit. But it is going to mess a lot of things up.

And a jump from 300 to 400 ppm is huge. Granted, CO[sub]2[/sub] isn’t a big part of our atmosphere to begin with, but if it was 0 ppm, then Earth would be too cold to live on.

And a jump from 300 to 400 ppm is an increase by a third of what it was before, and we’re not done as far as we can tell. And Earth’s climate has already warmed by about a degree and a half Fahrenheit since the late 1800s, most of that since the 1970s. For the record, the Ice Age was a difference of about 8 degrees Fahrenheit, which we as a world are on track to break, but going the other direction, by 2100.

The Northwest Passage reliably opened for the first time in history in 2013. The government of Kiribati is already planning mass evacuations to get everyone out of the country before it sinks. St. Louis has already lost its below-zero days. As mentioned before, Walden is blooming two weeks early.

There is a mountain of evidence that global warming is happening. Pretending it isn’t will simply make it worse.

Then again, it might be fun.

 

[lmachine]

The only effect from that increase in carbon dioxide would be a huge increase in agricultural production.

And massive sea-level rise that will displace hundreds of millions of people.

 

[ucfengr]

The Northwest Passage reliably opened for the first time in history in 2013. The government of Kiribati is already planning mass evacuations to get everyone out of the country before it sinks. St. Louis has already lost its below-zero days. As mentioned before, Walden is blooming two weeks early.

Really? In the whole 4.5 billion years of the Earth’s existence, the Northwest Passage was never reliably open until 2013? And in the entire 4.5 billion year history of the Earth, Walden Pond bloomed on exactly the same day every year until a couple years ago, when it suddenly started blooming 2 weeks early? Really?

 

[Exiled_Child]

Americans are absolutely 100% hellbent on shirking all responsibility for their actions.

It’s the defining attitude and belief-system of our nation.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I think I quite accurately characterized your argument, so mine is not a strawman. Look at your own words:

So, instead of showing how MMGW research is unreliable, you cite examples in social science, linguistics, and medicine where scientific research ignores the outliers who happen to be correct. What do these examples have in common with MMGW? They are instances of scientific research. How can you use these examples to cast doubt on MMGW without simultaneously casting doubt on any other scientific research? So rather than try the tedious job of arguing the case for MMGW - a case which you failed to address directly in that posting, it I just used reductio ad absurdum on your whole approach. It is absurd to believe that all scientific research should be mistrusted, therefore your argument that depends on that assertion must therefore be wrong.

You did go on to mention MMGW, only to say

These conclusions are also unsupported. There is not an obviously high political purpose for MMGW - not as high anyway as the obvious political purpose for the opposing position which has the incentives of the whole fossil fuel industry as compared to the miniscule financial capability of the fledgling renewable energy sector - a fact which undermines your conclusion.

There are plenty of counter-studies, and they have been posted on here many times. Perhaps a couple of years ago, I cited some of them myself. But it gets nowhere because there are so many MMGW articles, and it ends up like a high school debate; “my quote is better than your quote”. You have participated in it, and you know what I am saying.

Anymore, quite frankly, I simply state that I am skeptical of any alleged “settled science”, particularly when it consists in interpretations of data collection and computer projections, because such things have a way of being tossed aside from time to time when better information is discovered.

And through it all, there’s no climate change going on that anybody experiences. Certainly I don’t experience it even though I really do live in a zone in which even a small change in climate would be very apparent to anyone who works on the land as I do. Possibly that’s why belief in MMGW is slipping and has slipped below 50% with the American public.

And this government spends vastly more on pushing MMGW in one way or another than, say, the oil companies or coal companies do. With people like Obama, it’s apparently either ideological on his part or on the part of people who support him, despite the fact that in no way does he live as if he believes it.

Unfortunately, sometimes the ideological fixations end up harming people. In my state, the anti-coal regs are said to result ultimately in a $1500/year increase in utility costs. I can afford that, but some people can’t. If it served a genuinely useful purpose, I could see it. But forcing that on people just because of a bunch of computer projections and anti-energy ideology, to me, is simply wrong.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Okay, the idea that Earth is going to be completely uninhabitable doesn’t give humans enough credit. But it is going to mess a lot of things up.

And a jump from 300 to 400 ppm is huge. Granted, CO[sub]2[/sub] isn’t a big part of our atmosphere to begin with, but if it was 0 ppm, then Earth would be too cold to live on.

And a jump from 300 to 400 ppm is an increase by a third of what it was before, and we’re not done as far as we can tell. And Earth’s climate has already warmed by about a degree and a half Fahrenheit since the late 1800s, most of that since the 1970s. For the record, the Ice Age was a difference of about 8 degrees Fahrenheit, which we as a world are on track to break, but going the other direction, by 2100.

The Northwest Passage reliably opened for the first time in history in 2013. The government of Kiribati is already planning mass evacuations to get everyone out of the country before it sinks. St. Louis has already lost its below-zero days. As mentioned before, Walden is blooming two weeks early.

There is a mountain of evidence that global warming is happening. Pretending it isn’t will simply make it worse.

Then again, it might be fun.

The University of Missouri disagrees with the proposition that there are no below zero days in St. Louis. There are, despite the fact that St. Louis is a “heat island” like all major cities are, and it’s warmer there than in the surrounding rural areas.

climate.missouri.edu/climate.php

And one degree change since the 1880s is not greatly surprising since the “heat islands” would have been few to non-existent, and the beginning of the century was still in the “Little Ice Age” and the “little Ice Age” lasted until 1850.