Is global warming even real?

The increasing world population and the climate change are having a very negative effect on the world fresh water supply and it looks like some areas of large population will be forced to relocate or die, and most likely be involved with war. Even the US is starting to feel the pressure of not having enough water. I think agriculture will have to start paying a great deal more for their water to compete with the demand from the cities. I do think I will start feeling that problem before I die in higher costs and restrictions.

 

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Aside from people caught in a volcanic extrusion or a poison lake turnover, no mammalian organism of genus homo has ever breathed air with over 400 ppm CO2 in it, until now. Most likely (odds > 95%) no mammalian biped has ever breathed air with more than 400 ppm CO2 in it. It's possible, though unlikely, that no mammal has ever breathed air at 400+, depending on exactly when mammals evolved. http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/images/CO2History.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth's_atmosphere

We are currently changing the composition of the atmosphere of the planet in a significant way. We are creating an atmosphere, and risking an associated climate regime, we were not born or bred in, and have zero "coevolutionary" experience with.

Our dependence on agriculture heightens the risk. No human being has ever tried to feed themselves by agriculture in air with more than about 280 ppm CO2, or the weather so governed.

The level of CO2 in the air is (among other roles, such as vis a vis oceanic acidity) one of the primary regulators of the surface temperature regime of the planet. Change it, and you change the local weather everywhere. The rapidity of the change then becomes the critical factor for humans - change the weather too rapidly somewhere, and the agriculture cannot adapt fast enough. Then the people have to leave, one way or another. That happened in Greenland, for example, a few centuries ago - the agricultural peoples were driven to local extinction, by local weather changes smaller than those we currently risk over many larger areas with much denser populations planetwide.

It's fine data, just in the wrong thread and argument. We weren't talking about the local weather cycles in Greenland, or somebody's back yard, except as effects of the larger, global, phenomenon of interest.

This, for example, is a serious misunderstanding of the situation:

Not globally, on average. The planet is mostly water thousands of feet deep, for starters - consider how unlikely such an assertion is, how obviously the poster has failed to address the matter at hand, in light of that fact.

 

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the US drought monitor at: http://www.drought.gov/drought/cont...itoring-drought-indicators/us-drought-monitor has a weekly up-dated map of drought condition, but I can't make it show here. Will try to find again the one I saw a few days ago - it was more seasonal and more scary.

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Here is one by counities (I'll try to get it larger)

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That map is very disturbing to say the least as I plan to move back to Arizona within 2 to 3 years.

You wouldn't have to know where an older map might be located so we can see how much change has taken place over time?

 

Yes I do. the same site as the big map is from:
http://www.wired.com/2014/05/drought-maps/ has a little farther down the page, same type of data map for each year starting with 2005.
Here is global data (a little old I think as Brazil is much worse off than shown, but Brazil has more fresh water than most if not all other nations - just not where it is most needed. - some cities already have water in their distribution system only intermittently! I have 90 liters stored in bottles as Sao Paulo's supply is down to a couple of months now. Californa is "mining water" as the surface replacement rate is less than half the demand.*)

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One below is form this site, with many others of interest: http://www.melanniesvobodasnd.org/2014/06/02/lets-look-at-some-maps-today/ including this one Showing China's rapidly growing import in world commerce

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Above is bad for Global Warming problem as China must burn more coal for decades even though they lead the world in investment in alternate energy systems.

* The ground water is now measured by gravitational sensing satellites and falling rapidly according to data a few months old. - search and you will find it.

 

Quite obvious to reasonably informed readers: both of you are posting data that does not support your claims. Or just lying and bickering since the data contradicts you. Informed readers see through all of that.

No, using that data to claim that natural cycles have not been perturbed by human impact. No one is buying that crap. But it alerts the readers to your collective ignorance and guilty conscience.

Four billion years ago volcanic outgassing produced CO2 levels 40,000 times greater than present day. As silicate rocks weathered, exposing metals such as calcium and magnesim, CO2 was taken up as carbonates and sequestered as sediment such as limestone and dolomite. Plants reduced about 25% of that amount. A fraction of this was converted to fossil fuels long before humans evolved from our common ancestor with chimpanzees. Paleolithic humans discovered renewable fuels, but with no net increase in CO2 since the emissions from burning them amounted to the same net amount as by gradual natural decomposition.

Beginning in the early Industrial Age human activity developed a dependency on coal and lignite, and eventually petroleum and natural gas. Thus the recoverable fraction of that 40,000x sink of sequestered carbon, naturally managed over four billion years, has been recklessly dumped into the atmosphere mainly in the past century, with wanton disregard for the scientific evidence available throughout that time advising against it.

Now show that graph, and your attempt to extrapolate pre Industrial Age data -- as proxy for the actual data collected during the Industrial Age, until present day -- is exposed as a sham.

So why don't you and Sculptor both get off the gas and belly up to the bar here. Just admit what the readers already know: that you became members for the sole purpose of posting pseudoscience, with the deliberate intent of agitating informed readers against the most dishonest kind of climate denial yet invented: the one that tries to misrepresent actual evidence as something it's not, to shore up the phony foundation of lies climate denial is built on.

By rule, no. You should both be permabanned.

Ah yes. Blame-shifting, the quintessential element of the pathological personality type. Of course your deliberate lies are obvious to readers, so playing the victim won't win you any points.

Judging by the assumption that the readers are supposed to accept your posts as a matter of faith, that conjecture would be reasonable.

BTW did you complete the 7th grade? I remember the Keeling curve from 9th grade, so at best I would rate you two at about an 8th grade level, except I'm pretty sure the Industrial Age was covered before that.

Pretty picture. Now if you can just learn a little science, you will be one step closer to correctly interpreting it. Alas, but science is heretical to your faith, isn't it. QED

 

I liked this since I otherwise would have overlooked that by "coevolution" Sculptor was conflating CO2 levels at the outset of atmosphere-building with the levels after oxygenation.

I think your post has revealed a motivation for climate denial never before obvious to me: the interlocking of Earth sciences and evolution requires that anti-evolutionists attack climate science.

Thanks, and good points.

 

Oh hey there KJ, long time no see.

I think we will see perhaps a decade or more of hardcore climate denial, mostly from the US right wing, before the public rallies behind the science. The midterm elections proved that the denialists are still gaining ground.

When the polar bear becomes extinct even they will probably sit up and take notice. Other ecosystem crashes are not as widely publicized, and people tend to romanticize one species over another. Even though it is a ferocious predator, the polar bear is widely regarded as cute and cuddly. So that will create a public uproar.

Coastal flooding is initially too gradual for most folks to notice. And of course the haters here are still trying to claim that global ice is not receding. But some of them weren't even born when oceanographer Roger Revelle estimated, in his 1965 report to LBJ, that at the conditions that then existed, the ice caps would probably melt in about 400 years.

So much hoopla was made in Hollywood thrillers based on apocalyptic weather events that another Katrina, or the next mammoth tornado, will probably not spur voters to throw the bums out.

But while complacency is reinforced by disinformation such as the posts by Photizo, Sculptor and milkweed (one might suspect that they are political operatives, Beta-testing proposed claims to add to next year's anti-science political platform), there is still hope. The next generation of high school graduates will have pretty good critical thinking skills, and will probably understand the science well enough to recognize tell the difference between right wing propaganda and credible science.

Unfortunately, this amounts to kicking the can down the road. But as long as the propaganda still draws in the gullible voters, we have no choice but to wait for a renaissance of science and academia. Until then I doubt there will be much headway, although the green laws and regulations are an excellent precursor to that a proactive scenario.

And of course there is no panacea.

 

Well I'm back, but will probably be very selective in the topics I'll be willing to post in. Yes if we get a republican president I have little hope that our climate problems will be any kind of priority.

As far as polar bears are concerned they've been spotting hybrids that come from polar bears and grizzly's getting together. So much of the polar bear DNA should survive for the colder cycles sure to come again.

As far coastal flooding goes I think 400 years is a bit optimistic. When you consider that when we continue having super storms which have already caused some very nasty flooding. About the rising ocean, we may not have as many years as people think. I do have my reasons for that belief, but I don't think I want to open that can of worms at this time.

About others that don't agree with any position that you believe is the right one. That should only provide you with an opportunity to present what you think is right and then let the reader's make up their own minds. The more you take up that challenge the better you will get at it. If you find yourself getting frustrated maybe your taking it a bit personally and should back off a bit. I know when I see another poster getting emotional about any subject that they are leaving themselves open for some grief. Don't let that be you.

 

Billy T
Both those maps, the US & world maps look like big trouble to me. I'd be very interested in following those trends every year.

 

@ sculptor

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A new Geophysical Research Letters paper:
"Here, we critically evaluate this network's temperature observations and show that extreme warming observed at higher elevations is the result of systematic artifacts and not climatic conditions. With artifacts removed, the network's 1991–2012 minimum temperature trend decreases from +1.16 °C decade−1 to +0.106 °C decade−1 and is statistically indistinguishable from lower elevation trends. Moreover, longer-term widely used gridded climate products propagate the spurious temperature trend, thereby amplifying 1981–2012 western US elevation-dependent warming by +217 to +562%."

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/doi/10.1002/2014GL062803/

 

milkweed

They used the term "systematic artifacts" without really defining what they meant by that. If I had to guess I would say they consider methane in the atmosphere to be a systematic artifact. But you posted the article, so could you please provide some info that might clarify that subject a bit.

 

Milkweed,

Read the link that you provided again. It does not say what you think it says. Maybe you know that and that's why you only quoted what you did.

 

One of the important traits that adapted polar bears to the Arctic is their ability to live on fatty seal meat without developing heart disease. As conditions warm, large game hunted by grizzlies will probably venture farther north. It's hard to imagine how any bears will be able to reach seals without the sea ice to give them access. So if some fraction of the Northern Grizzly DNA does become hybridized with polar bears, then this particular adaptation (high fat diet without heart disease) may or may not survive as a recessive trait as all of the remaining northern bear population is left with game like caribou as their main food source.

That was the 1965 estimate done by Roger Revelle, who will probably someday have folk hero status for his pioneering work in global warming. I think it was a fairly conservative estimate for all the ice to melt. By that time the seas will have risen about 40 feet. So flooding would be expected long before then. So yes, I think you are probably right. I probably should have said 40' foot flooding in 400 years, with 10 to 20 foot flooding within 200 years. And I suppose that is subject to adjustments for the accelerated rates of global ice melt already being reported from Greenland as well.

Several years ago I decided to be frank with members who I believed were imposters -- to confront them once they responded negatively to facts and evidence. One of my goals in doing this is to encourage the cranks to back down before taxing the mods with the extra work of investigating and adjudicating punishment. Another goal is to find out what their game is. In my mind these people are either being programmed by FAUX News, Rush Limbaugh, etc., or else they are actual operatives of political groups, sent here or sent to sites like this in general to egg us on. There are a few other motivations that have crossed my mind but those are the ones that seem the most likely to me.

If a person says "no, I am simply motivated by the desire that my children will not live in a petroleum starved future" which was the answer I got from one of the adversarial voices here, then that sets my radar off. (You want them to be able to run their air conditioners cheaply, while the natural resources that provide their basic survival needs are crashing?) At some point the rationale becomes so bizarre that it sort of opens up a worm hole, and I guess I am one of those people who is just curious about where it all leads.

Also, I have an interest in the behavioral issues presenting in some answers, particularly the ones pretty clearly showing pathological traits. Blame-shifting, playing the victim, denial . . . all of those manipulative deceptions of the wolf in sheep's clothing, coupled with lack of empathy for the victims of climate change, and often religiosity (esp. the pretentious display of religious beliefs) are also factors that stick out. Also: grandiosity and lashing out at strangers are seen in the attacks on science and academia. These are cynical people who like to label every member with a background in science as "sheeple" following some dogma (code word for "education") . . . and so on.

At the same time I am trying to cut to the chase, with the most direct evidence rather than superfluous and moot information like "wow it's really cold now in the US compared to the heat wave we had last summer; global warming must be reversing!" No, the Earth's axis is tilted 23°; there will still be seasonal variations even as the global average surface temp climbs higher. But since these are diversions from the main point, that CO2 is the main pollutant which is driving those averages higher. I tend to criticize the use of diversions, to encourage them to stop. And I try to keep reminding them that teh basic science is rather simple and straightforward: if you burn fossil fuels, you are accelerating global warming. And that is the main issue that keeps getting diverted.

Thanks for your feedback. They probably will just adapt a little to what I posted without really changing their main line of attack.

 

I can see where you were confused. I posted the methane with this abstract and they are two separate pieces of info, not a combination. Sorry for that.

From Abstract link (truncated):

Observations from the main mountain climate station network in the western United States (US) suggest that higher elevations are warming faster than lower elevations...

Here, we critically evaluate this network's temperature observations and show that extreme warming observed at higher elevations is the result of systematic artifacts and not climatic conditions.

Moreover, longer-term widely used gridded climate products propagate the spurious temperature trend, thereby amplifying 1981–2012 western US elevation-dependent warming by +217 to +562%.

/abstract

A different article on the above abstract:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150112141313.htm

The interesting thing about this revelation is last summer as I was wandering through GISS online temps I came across the same thing at MSP (minneapolis/st paul airport):

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/show_station.cgi?id=425002154350&dt=1&ds=14

You can see the break in the station data, and I am kinda familiar with this change because my ex husband did work on the runways (familiar in the sense that his working at night affected our household so I remember it well) and I remember the weather reports being affected as they had no readings from the airport and used other data. They commented each night about how "this isnt the temperatures from the airport because..."

Anyways the point of introducing the MSP GISS data is the newer thermometers are introducing a warming at least in some locations.

 

It seems to me that an awful lot of locations would need to have faulty data to throw off world averages.

 

http://www.newsmax.com/t/newsmax/article/618147

Who do you think the target audience is here? sadly, this is where some people get their science news.

 

Not to mention the satellite readings, phenomenological records, model software corrections for the known location biases, etc.

It's not an honest argument.

Note that the correction in the data is one of degree, not kind - the higher elevations in the western US are warming faster than the lower ones, and all elevations are warming quite rapidly; the corrected temps at the MSP airport do still indicate rapid and significant warming; etc.

It's rained in January in the MSP airport general region (east and central MN) every year for a long time now (I lost count around 14 consecutive years). That used to be very rare - one year in seven, was the rule of thumb. (This year may feature the first January in the 21st Century that sees no rain in central MN). The last January low temp record there was set in 1977. Last winter was about the coldest in 30 years, and set no record lows anywhere in the State that I can find. Most of them were set in the 1800s, a few during the Dust Bowl years, etc. The overnight MSP airport lows are not getting anywhere near those old records, even in this latest cold snap - if it's not real that's not a calibration issue, that's a broken thermometer.

So what's the argument?

 

A local newspaper gave the Cantareira data yesterday as: Only 59.6mm* of rain in January (our rainy season peak month) when normally average for January is 271.1mm. Water level in all but the Guarpirnge reservoir are still falling. It increased insignificantly - from 39.8% to 40.0% of capacity. Finally after the election has passed, the government has put a 20% cost/liter increase on those who consume 20% more than in same period a year ago & 100% higher price for those who consume more than 1.2 time as much as they did back then.

More than 25 million people may be without water in the homes by mid March, at present rate of consumption and rain falling into the reservoirs. Ironically Sao Paulo has had three serious flooding of low areas. - Several hundred cars filled with water and many over turned by the "run off" currents. My 90 liters will last wife and self about 2 months. That with stock of food, mainly beans and rice, for 2 months also will allow us to hermit in our 14 floor apartment of a fenced in and guarded condo complex until the water riots and killing in them stops. Then we go in very early AM, while still dark to her daughter's farm. They have just put in a new well next to small, fish filled lake on it.

If drought is the "new norm" then Sao Paulo will need to do as Californinia already does - "mine water" CA gets more than half of its water needs that way and the water table is falling so many private wells are now dry. Sao Paulo never had to "mine water" before.

* Even less than Yahoo's quote of AP's values.

 

That's quite a story Billy, really sorry to hear that. However I have a feeling things all over the world are going to get much worse before governments get really serious about doing more to help fix the problems. But back to the current water problem you are talking about. You can't relocate all those millions of people, so you need to come up with a solution. I don't know much about that region, but what would you think needs to be done starting ASAP?