Carbon dioxide rise in the atmosphere

Discussion in 'Earth Science' started by timojin, Aug 27, 2015.

  1. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    No. Please pay better attention to what other people are saying:

    AGW will - by prediction, which is gathering increased data support every year - increase the severity and possibly the frequency of droughts globally, as well as change their timing and location and extent and so forth. The specifics are all matters of probability. The prediction for Syria and its neighbors was for a high probability of significantly increased duration and severity of the occasional droughts this dry and already drought-prone region suffers. That is exactly what happened, and the economic and social disruptions seem to have been a primary initial cause of the current civil war. But it was a probability, that's all. One cannot "attribute" the Syrian drought to AGW except as a probability, and so we don't.

    On the other hand, choosing that specific crisis or disaster as an example of something far more serious than anything one's "common sense" expects from AGW, as you in your ignorance did, pegs the irony meter. The people who discuss these things using information and research instead of "common sense" have been talking about the AGW contribution to the troubles in Syria and its neighbors for years now. It's a very poor (to understate) example of something more serious than what AGW can do. The odds are quite good that it is something AGW has already done, or at least contributed significantly to. It is definitely an example of the kinds of problems we should be ready for, from AGW - according to the standard predictions. And many of them are worse.

    So you think more water vapor in the air means more rain, and you think more rain means less drought. The first oversimplifies - "more" can mean "less frequent but much heavier", for example - the second is simply an error.

    No one is disagreeing with you about that, at least as it applies to temperate zone land life (your only visible concern). I'm not, the AGW alarmists are not, nobody is. Everybody knows that. All the AGW alarms and other bad consequences predicted from the CO2 boost include that fact.

    Analogy: the optimal air pressure in the lungs of a human being is about 1 atmosphere. So when a deep diver is surfacing, they are going from a non-optimal air pressure in their lungs (too high, requiring specialized gas mixtures etc) to an optimal one. So no problem, according to uninformed "common sense". And an increasing probability of debilitating injury or death with increasing rapidity of transition, according to research. Which way would you bet your civilization?
    You did not address the examples I handed you, or do any research into the matter. Instead, you repeated and elaborated your argument from ignorant incredulity - you don't know why the spread of bad animals and plants would likely outpace the spread of good ones, so it wouldn't, and anyone discussing one-sided examples of the problems we face from this consequence of AGW is dealing in propaganda. That is your notion of "common sense" - do no research, ignore conflicting information (you ignored the bad mosquito example, for example. Apparently you think there are just as many good mosquitoes down south as bad ones - Or was the implication completely lost on you?)
    That warmer air picks up and holds more water vapor is not in doubt. That higher temps and greater vapor pressure deficits and more severe droughts (and whatever higher rates of vegetation growth are brought by more rain and extra CO2) lead to wildfire trouble is not in doubt. And so forth. A reasonable doubt would be directed at the assumption these simple and straightforward consequences of boosting CO2 would somehow not happen.
    Nope. There aren't that many sources for your vocabulary and stances in this matter, and they are all liars.
     
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  3. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    And it will, at the same time, lead to more H2O in the atmosphere, because this is what gives the positive feedback, and without it we would have only a quite irrelevant 1 degree Celsius per doubling CO2.

    These are predictions where the predictions of the AGWP (AGW is propaganda) theory are better: Whatever is bad will be predicted by AGW. So, droughts are bad, severe droughts are even worse, so they will be predicted by AGW. Not?
    Because it is bad, it will be predicted. Fits.
    Of course, it is always a good idea to be prepared for problems.
    Ok, if you think that a forum post can be more than an oversimplification, ... It can mean, but that does not mean that it has to be, without further information it is as probable that it means more frequent and not that heavy. Why you think that the second is an error you would have to explain. Of course, in some sense droughts are relative - nobody talks about droughts in Sahara, but if there will be much more rain in Sahara, were may appear also some droughts. So, if you define droughts in a completely relative way - relative to what the crops need which are optimal for the average - you may have a point.
    As you may have seen, I have already acknowledged that fast change is more problematic than a smooth one. And I find it interesting that you agree that the temperature is below the optimum. This is something new, I have never have heard such a thing from any AGW proponent.
    Fine, you have written now a lot of bad words about me, but not a single argument. If you think I don't know something, why don't you tell me about this? If you think you have already explained this, so repeat it, which is what I also have to do all the time. Of course, this is the standard scientific way, also known as the null hypothesis, if we don't know what causes a difference between good and bad, we assume first that there is none.
    There was nothing to comment about. In fact, I'm not that afraid of mosquitoes going North, because I know that quite far in the North, on the Solowki Islands, it has been a form of death penalty in the Summer to fetter somebody over the night without defense against the local gnats. So there already is enough competition for mosquitos there. Personally I also prefer a mosquito bite to a bite of a German gnat.
    I wait, of course, for an explanation why more rain leads to more droughts. Of course, in a region where we have a lot of droughts there is a higher danger of wildfire. But up to now I'm not aware of big problems with wildfires in rain forests, except those caused by human slash-and-burn land clearance techniques.

    And the point that an increase of material for the wildfires to burn leads to more wildfires is a really funny one. Because such an increase needs CO2. And it needs more CO2 than is lost by wildfires burning, because a lot of it is transformed into earth and coal and so on.
    The Big Brother has catched me reading wrong literature. I have to admit, I have really read some of that wrong literature. Give me a just penalty and forgive me.
     
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  5. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Yes. Of course you left out methane etc, and you are assuming the low end of the prediction from CO2, but essentially that's reasonable. We have, as always, agreement on that matter. Every time you post it, we agree. Every. Single. Time.
    The argument here is that you are basing your entire thesis on AGW - probably the most important of the near certain effects of the CO2 boost - on assumptions about reality that you have made in almost complete ignorance of that reality. That is a fact you are in full possession of, and can verify immediately by rereading your own posts - the stuff you have claimed other people do not know, such as the likelihood and nature of the water vapor feedback in the CO2 boost warming, is stuff you don't know. There's quite a bit of it.

    In the process of posting these ignorant assumptions, dozens of them, you of course post falsehoods, dozens of them (mere chance determines much of that, and beyond chance your preconceptions lead you farther astray) and demand that other people take the time and trouble to attempt to provide you the education you have not the common sense to obtain for yourself. And when they go out of their way to do you that unnecessary favor (say when somebody looks up and hands you examples of three different kinds of bad animal spread not balanced by good animal spread, as a starting point for your investigations and a correction for one of your sillier assumptions) you dismiss it as propaganda and curl back up with your preconceptions.
    Like this:
    Not.
    1) Predictions don't count unless they have been made about the future. Your "AGW is propaganda" theory has made only retroactive predictions. 2) Horrible cold and a new ice age would be very bad, erratic frosts in the Brazilian rain forest or southern India and so forth would be bad, droughts in places where they will not occur would be bad, floods where they are impossible would be bad, sea levels rising at tidal surge rates would be bad, loss of both the Antarctic ice sheets would be bad, and they are not predicted by AGW. Bad stuff not predicted by AGW, in general, is bad and is not predicted by AGW. So one direction is falsified.
    3) AGW's predictions of more and more steady rain in places currently desert, warmer temperatures in places currently frozen, etc, are not all bad. So the other direction is falsified.
    So your hypothesis there, that whatever is bad will be predicted by AGW, is disproven.
    Another in the long list of basic information gaps you explicitly base your entire thesis on. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-west-is-so-dry-even-a-rainforest-is-on-fire/
    So get "further information", and correct the misconceptions that led to your oversimplification.
    I have. And I have insufficient time to deal with your standard responses.
    Such as this beauty:
    It doesn't. CO2 is predicted to lead to AGW, which is predicted - as among the most likely consequences globally - to lead to more rain and worse droughts. Both. And great instability in both. That's the prediction. It has been the prediction for years now, and has been accumulating data support all those years - because we have actually seen, in line with the AGW probabilities, more rain and worse droughts. Globally. And unpredictable - sometimes even in the same place in the same year (compare the rain forest link posted earlier with this news item from the same area: http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/article/20151210/NEWS/312109984 ).
    So have I - that's how I recognize it. And I was lied to, just as you have been. You yourself pointed to the insight one can gain from being lied to and discovering the fact. So - how long is it going to take you to discover the fact? You're the self-proclaimed expert in recognizing propaganda, after all.

    Not to mention the more comical stuff:
    Living and learning about Aedes aegypti (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aedes_aegypti) - not to mention what AGW is predicted to do to ecological "competition". (FYI: You'll still have the gnats).
     
    Last edited: Jan 9, 2016
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  7. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    "You are stupid" rants don't give you any points. What is certain, and what is uncertain, is extremely difficult to decide. It starts with CO2 itself, because there also is a feedback which decreases it (oceans, plant growth). One can qualitatively have a good point about the direction of feedback - that there will be more H2O in the air. But how much more? This is something we (you and me) are unable to check even if we would have all the data. One decimal point placed wrong and you obtain a completely different picture.

    But there are things we can check using common sense. Or the scientific method, which is, essentially, the same. Like the rough qualitative picture. In particular that in the actual situation warmer is better. Or the point that the distribution of bad animals will not differ from the distribution of good animals: This is simply the null hypothesis. And two or three data points will not change this:
    Sorry, no, what I dismiss as propaganda was a particular presentation which focused only on the negative. Where what has been chosen to present to the public was, quite obviously, chosen by the principle "only the bad". Of course, bad animals will go North too, as well as goods. And the null hypotheses tells me they will go with equal temps. And further consideration shows me that human influence - which clearly prefers the good ones - gives the good ones an advantage. You have not presented a single general reason, which would, in general, give the bad ones some advantage. I do not doubt that there may be reasons why some particular nasty beasts can distribute faster than its good counterpart. But I see no reason to expect that there will be other good animals distributing better than their bad counterparts.

    You have, indeed, successfully falsified an obviously polemically exaggerated phrase, congratulations. But:
    But, may be I don't look enough TV for this (ok, that's easy, I look almost none), but I have somehow never seen these good news mentioned anywhere in the media if climate change is discussed.
    And I have simply to accept this, and say Amen.
    And that's why I don't trust such sources too. From the start. They are, for me, one side in the discussion. The big advantage of discovering of being lied is, unfortunately, restricted to those who believe one side without even looking what the other side says. For those, the whole life can change by this. I expect from the start to be lied by above sides. And extract information from above sides - with techniques I have learned already in my childhood.
    So what does AGW tell me about ecological competition? Except that I'm stupid?
     
  8. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    Confusing ignorance with stupidity is something I don't do.
    The vast preponderance of evidence, on the other hand, is a few clicks away at any time - in matters as well researched and monitored and publicly available as the dewpoint of the air you breathe.
    They both involve evidence, experience, observation over time, and analysis of that evidence via theory. Without that essential component - reality check - neither one works.
    But AGW is not.
    And it has been falsified. Overwhelmingly. I handed you three examples. I handed you information, suggestions, pointed out that even the definitions of "bad" vs "good" animal depended partly on context, and would change with migration. I mocked the naivety of your response. Stubbornness in ignorance, willful ignorance, is not common sense.
    And there is where you lose track of reality.
    That's an error. We are talking about selection, not preference - AGW is a human influence, for example, and it selects in favor of disease carrying mosquitos and other bad insects, and in favor of maybe one "good" insect (the honeybee, and the matter is uncertain there). (I speak as one fond of moths, for whom AGW does bring some potential reward - but not enough to make up for yellow fever).
    You can't think a minute from example? Ok: 1) The current comparative freedom from disease and parasites enjoyed by humans who live in colder climates. 2) The fact that "weeds"and "pests" - far more than "good" beings, which produce items of value requiring investment - tend to be high r and mobile beings who travel light, opportunistic and fecund, as one would expect from beings that depend on rapid recolonization and spread into disturbed landscapes, and beings whose survival has always depended on recovery from suppression and release by colonization. There's two. There are dozens.
    So? You have a media problem, then. If it gives you a reality problem, it's not by common sense.
    It was two links, to events in the real world. You do have to accept the occurrence of events in the real world. In this case, we have an example of drought and heat causing wildfires in a rain forest (which you had not heard of before, so I posted it for you) in the same time frame as we had extreme rainfall events causing flooding in that same area (which is notable, right?) This pointedly agrees with the global probabilistic predictions of AGW, which in turnwas predicted from CO2 boosting.
    Reality is not a side in a discussion.
    Mistaking ignorance for stupidity - what I call the "bluecollar glitch" - creates a barrier to learning.

    btw: "predicted to do to" does not mean the same thing as "tell you about". Watching how every time you change my wording and rephrase what I say in your replies the alteration in meaning is in one particular direction, I don't mistake what's going on for stupidity.

    Except in the Forrest Gump sense: stupid is as stupid does.
     
  9. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    Once you have the links, why don't you give them, instead of your "you don't know anything" repetitions?
    Don't you get it or don't you want to get it? There are many thousands of species. Of course, they all will react differently. Of course, one can easily find among them three bad which have some advantages over their good competitors. The null hypothesis does not claim that this is impossible. it claims that you can as well find among them three good which have some advantages over their bad competitors.
    I don't remember this, but, again, why would there be a preference for the bad in this? Here I would also see a null hypothesis.
    That's the problem of this discussion until now, you mock around instead of presenting arguments. But it seems to change, at least now arguments start to come. Fine.
    For yellow fever there is vaccination, I have one.
    If the climate changes, one can expect that the humans will move toward the North too. Except they prefer the warmer climate - in this case, they will find ways to live with the diseases which are more common in warmer climate. At least the ignorance for tropical medicine once it is relevant only for poor Africans will finally stop.
    So, ok, high r will distribute faster. That this favors bad animals/plants is not completely unreasonable. One has to think about this.
    Fine, present them.
    Two events in the world, which has weather every day everywhere, and where the media like to write about extremal cases, are nothing which could prove anything. Anecdotal evidence.
    I'm unable to make sense of this, so, cannot answer it.
     
  10. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    For the last time: you have been handed examples of kinds of species. Kinds.
    And that was contradicted. Because you can't find three such kinds of good animals among those likely or observed to spread rapidly due to AGW. There are hundreds of species of mosquitos, thousands of species of rapidly spreading insects, tens of thousands of rapidly spreading arthropods - almost none of them are newly "good" from a human perspective in any way significantly countering the new misery of the hundreds, thousands, of "bad" ones.
    Of course they will find ways to live with the dozens of new diseases. People already live with them, after all - now lots more people will be living with them. Living with dozens of serious new diseases is a hardship, however. It is "bad".
    Why do I have to do yet more work, to counter stuff that I have shown to be based in willful ignorance? You are claiming "common sense" for stubborn and empty assertions concerning which you have been provided counterexamples and pointed toward areas of your ignorance. You should provide some evidence for your counterintuitive and improbable claims.
    Anecdotal evidence you pointed to the absence of, in ignorance. Drought caused wildfires in rain forests, you said you had not heard about. More rain coupled with more drought, one of the standard AGW predictions you found incomprehensible and contrary to your "common sense".
    Ok, there is some evidence for "stupidity" - although strong, even blinding, political bias still enjoys the preponderance.
     
    Last edited: Jan 11, 2016
  11. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,635
    You are completely, utterly wrong here. Common sense is the antithesis of the scientific method.

    Which way are the electrons flowing in an electrical circuit? They must flow from a high potential to a low potential, because that is the direction that current flows in. Just common sense - and completely wrong.

    Does the Earth orbit the Sun or does the Sun orbit the Earth? Is the Earth spinning at 1000mph while shooting through space at 67,000mph? It is just common sense that it is the Sun moving, not us; after all, common sense would tell us that we'd feel the Earth spinning that fast.

    Were we created or did we evolve? There's no way the human eye with all its complexity, sensitivity and resolution, could have evolved through random errors in genetic code. There must have been some sort of intelligent designer planning it. That's just common sense.

    Common sense has been the enemy of science for centuries - and it can take centuries to overcome commonly-held errors that common sense would lead us to. Science is not like talking to your friends; the world does not always work like our life experiences would lead us to believe.
     
  12. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    You mingle completely different things. Namely what common sense tells us how to acquire knowledge, and some primitive theories. How many people believe today in what you have named "common sense"? Almost nobody. Thus, this is not common sense. Because common sense tells people to learn from teachers and the wise.
    No. These primitive theories have not played a big role, if there was sufficient evidence to refute them they have been rejected. This remembers the fairy tails about Columbus being the only one believing in a round Earth against Flat Earth believers, where in fact the difference was that everybody else had a more accurate idea about the size of the Earth and, therefore, known that Columbus would be unable to reach India, because it is too far away.
     
  13. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    Ok, if almost all insects, except may be some bees, are bad IYO, then, there will be, of course, no good insects. My consideration was, of course, based on the starting assumption that you have 50% bad 50% good. Of course, if you start from the assumption that almost all the animal world is bad, then almost all change toward more animals will be bad too.

    Nonetheless, I think a tropical rainforest, containing a lot more of your bad animals, is much better than Sahara for human survival, not?
    Somehow more people prefer, if they have a choice, vacation under palms to vacations in the polar ice. Obviously because they are completely stupid, not thinking about the hardships of more dangerous diseases under palms.
     
  14. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    23,198
    Yes and you should try it some time - most like learning from those who know or even experimenting themselves. For example which does your common sense tell you has the higher heat capacity: aluminum or lead? By the first method look answer up in a handbook. By the second method, place equal mass cubes of each in boiling water for a while then set them on a block of paraffin wax to see which melts deeper into it.
     
  15. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    You really think this is helpful for a civilized discussion?
     
  16. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    23,198
    I had little hope of it influencing one who values "common sense" more than confirmed scienific fact when they conflict.
     
  17. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Worldwide rates of belief in creationism range from 10% to over 50%. Taking 35% as a mean, that means about 2.5 billion people believe in the "common sense" doctrine of creationism. Hardly "nobody."

    To counteract that we need scientific research (which we have done) and science education (which we haven't done such a good job of.) That's because common sense often leads you to the wrong conclusion.
    No, that's education. "Common sense" refers to a basic, innate ability, common to most people, to perceive, understand and judge things. It is effectively the opposite of education, which is the process of learning new skills and knowledge without regard to "common" knowledge.

    Now, common sense might tell you that education is a good thing, since educated people make more money, and that might entice you to become more educated. Great. Often you will then have to discard your common sense to learn effectively, since many facts in science run exactly counter to common sense.
    Tell that to Giordano Bruno, Lucilio Vanini and Cecco d'Ascoli (among many others.) They were executed for questioning "common sense" conclusions.
    What the heck are you talking about? Columbus was funded by Spain to find a new route to the East Indies. That means that the entire Spanish government understood the Earth was round.

    Did you just make that up?
     
  18. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    In this case it would be better to correct your trivial misunderstanding. It makes no sense to value one more than the other. Common sense is the base of the scientific method, so without it there simply would be no science. And it is, of course, part of common science to accept confirmed scientific facts.

    The only problem in this particular science is that it became politically important. And unfortunately in politically important sciences it is extremely difficult to identify genuine scientific facts and to get rid of political distortions. A problem which has nothing to do with a rejection of scientific results.

    It is not common sense which supports creationisms but religion.
    Same error. Their teachings were in contradiction with religion, not with common sense.
     
    Last edited: Jan 11, 2016
  19. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,635
    Which were based on common sense arguments. "Evolution is like a hurricane hitting a junkyard and accidentally building a 747" is a common argument against evolution. Note no mention of religion; just an appeal to "common sense."
    I'd advise you to stop digging this hole you are in.
     
  20. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    So what? It is, essentially, a scientific argument. And the science of evolution theory had to work hard to meet it, in its many different instances.
     
  21. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,635
    Again, it is the opposite of a scientific argument.

    Common sense argument: "That sounds right; that's what I expect."
    Science based argument: "We constructed a hypothesis and tested it with these experiments, and thus validated our hypothesis - even though it was the opposite of what you might expect."
    Right. It had to overcome the common sense argument that evolution - "creation by accident" - was impossible.
     
  22. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    No, it is a scientific argument.

    First of all, because creation by accident is indeed impossible. What can be created by evolution is not everything, but only things which can be created by a lot of minor improvements. Evolution theory is a quite simple theory, everyone can understand the basic idea. But it works only in a very special way. And if you have something which cannot be created in many small steps, with any step defining an improvement so that the modified genes can win, then this something cannot be created by evolution.

    And so a lot of quite complex things define serious scientific problems for evolution theory - to find a way how it is possible to create such things with a lot of small improvements.

    That evolution theory has solved these for almost all the known problems, is a quite big success of evolution theory.
     
  23. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,635
    It is a common sense argument that is both unscientific and incorrect. You can choose to believe whatever you like (and you clearly do) - but you will find it difficult to communicate with other people on line if you use your own definitions for things. Words mean things.
     

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