Is global warming even real?

This is a link to video of the firetornado: http://wildfiretoday.com/2015/08/17/fire-whirl-on-the-soda-fire/
Text below video is: "This sucker was shooting flames 100 ft in the air before it passed right in front of the line, all while dropping hot dirt and ash on our helmets." Voice is not fully intelligible, but presumably is one of the 30,000 fire fighters now in the field.

 

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I agree, but oil and coal have been sequestered for millions of years and were permanently removed from the air, which resulted in the evolution of the current natural balance of our ecosystem.

Now we come along and release that stored CO2, thus adding this to the "evolved balance" of CO2 emission and use of CO2 for organic growth and thereby creating an unbalanced ecosystem, which may become fatal to the majority of modern life on earth.

We can say that by releasing the stored CO2 we are creating the same air conditions which existed millions of years ago. But there are but few modern organisms which can re-adapt or survive those primal conditions.

The "waterbear" may be such an organism, fruitflies and ants may be such organisms. As Hellstrom so eloquently explained, if our current ecosystem collapses, the only survivors will be insects and some plants.

We'd be starting the evolutionary cycle all over again from primordeal conditions, but this time humans may not be part of the equation.

 

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Agreed. The carbon in forests has been sequestered for a lesser time - hundreds to thousands of years - but we can have similar problems when we release it all rapidly.

Given that we've had much worse climactic pertubations and not killed off all the mammals (or, really, any other class of life) I tend to doubt that. However, there's not much question that we have the power to make our own lives miserable.

 

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I agree with the gist of your argument, but I disagree with the assertion that "we" (humans) have experienced worse climatic conditions than what we may be about to experience, if we don't mend our ways.

 

We made it through the last ice age, a time when ice sheets (sometimes miles thick) covered much of Europe and North America. Temperatures were 12F lower - a change that is greater than even the worst-case predictions for climate change over the next century. Sea levels changed by 400 feet - again, far more than anything we predict will happen this time.

That's not to say that we have nothing to worry about, of course. But it's hard to wipe out homo sapiens; even an ice age couldn't do that.

 

True, we are inventive and persistent critters. Eskimos basically have lived in a semi ice age all this time.

I do wonder about the different dynamics of global warming compared to global cooling.

For one, what is more devastating ; a dying rotting surface mass for thousands of years, or a frozen surface mass which may remain dormant for thousands of years until thawed?

 

For very thourough discussion of factors in global warming (and cooling) see MIT's just rleased study at:
http://globalchange.mit.edu/files/2014 Energy & Climate Outlook.pdf

One thing well known is the strong negative forcing of the atmospheric sulphate aerosols. Suppressing them intentionally, or just due to global recession, will add to the global warming we experience.

 

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[/URL] Sadly three more fire fighters were killed today 20 August and area burning is expanding.

Map with click on fire (any one of the 80 named) for more data at http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.us/ will not copy here.

Also more, a "situation report" here: http://www.nifc.gov/nicc/sitreprt.pdf
It shows 114 new (but relatively small fires today) and 93 "large and uncontained" fires.

 

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Worth > 1000 words.

 

[right winger mode]Yeah, the alarmists are always talking about how bad the drought in California is and how it's related to warming - but I guess they're blind! They can't even see that small segment of the map near Parker Dam Road where it isn't even "abnormally dry" - it's white! They should buy reading glasses before they try to spin their alarmist lies.[/right winger mode]

 

Yes it is not uncommon for water flowing down a valley to locally raise the average humidity - even make condensing fogs. In this case 0.14% of California, this river valley, is escaping the 99.86% drought area. - so what? California still has a terrible drought, and historic forest fires.

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Parker Dam Road follows the Colorado River through an area commonly referred to as the Parker Strip. It travels through the wide river valley with views of surrounding mountains ...

Normally you don't post in "right winger mode" so I assume your post is sarcasm.

 

Now you cn add Washington to the list and as I understand it, there is a massive hurricane (100+mph) developing near Hawaii

 

Just being sarcastic, having dealt with a lot of climate-change deniers who say that there is no warming because their neighborhood got a lot of snow this year. (It will be interesting to hear how climate change denial changes if 2015 ends up being as warm as the first half of the year indicates it might be.)

I have often wondered how much worse the drought would be if not for the Salton Sea providing its millions of acre-feet of evaporated water to the local atmosphere every year. (Of course that won't last forever; its creation was a mistake and it is drying up rapidly.)

 

So your still in this " global warming thing " then .

It is climate change billvon. Get up to date.

 

I predict that water intensive crops and foods and neighborhoods will become status symbols rather than disappearing, while the domestic users who can't afford the price - poor people - will abandon such expensive luxuries as indoor plumbing, and make the kinds of arrangements we see in places where water is bought on an "open market" now.

 

Lets not get arrogant billvon.

 

I don't like the term "climate change" at all. It is a fatalistic outlook without identifying the causes for that climate change, which is GW.

Can't do anything about climate change can we? We'll just have to live with it and hope for the best.

OTOH, GW is in no small part due to human activity, which we can do something about, by curbing our excessive appetites and waste products.

Carlin did an entire skit on the "softening" of language to the point of meaningless abstractions.

 

Climate change is just a broader category which includes as subdivisions, local, regional and global long term weather changes. Not of as much use as more specific terms, like global warming or cooling, if you want attention focused better.

Like many "politically" correct euphemism, it seems its main purpose is to obscure understanding or "paper-over" problems.

 

Sorry, never been very politically correct. You can call it "climate change" if you like; it's not inaccurate.

 

No need; we will survive anyway.