One of the biggest climate change threats -- Rain

Discussion in 'Earth Science' started by wegs, Jul 19, 2019.

  1. wegs Matter and Pixie Dust Valued Senior Member

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    I believe that rising temps (global warming) increases water evaporation. Increased evaporation will result in more storms, but also contribute to drying over some land areas. If that imbalance continues, I can see the future becoming more perilous for life on earth.

    Not to sound all end-of-times, but...
     
    Last edited: Jul 27, 2019
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  3. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    With higher temperature, there will be more storms, but this effect is not that horrible, one can compare this by comparing the regions where it is hot now with those where it is cold now.
    Of course, there may be regions where increased evaporation leads to less water on the ground. But in the average, there will be more water on the ground. Last but not least, the evaporation is the greatest over the water, the oceans. And most rain comes where there are mountains on the way of clouds, that means, on land. And more H2O in the air means more rain. More water on the ground means better conditions for life on Earth. Compare deserts with rain forests about this.

    Climate changes, with human influence as well as without, but live on Earth, and in particular humanity, can handle the related problems.
     
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  5. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    Do you know that water vapour is the greatest green house "gas" ( 65% plus)?
    More vapour more feedback, the hotter it gets...
    According to your assessment what sort of mortality rate are you talking globally?
    I am sure there are some preppers out there who are happy about being the only human survivors ( at least short term)
     
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  7. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    Of course I know. Without assuming this effect, the whole CO2 effect would be 1 degree for doubling CO2, not enough even to create such an unplausible hysteria which is created now. You have to assume a sufficiently large increase to get some increase able to impress at least the true believers.
    I see no base to talk about mortality rates. In comparison with the usual human-made wars, they will be negligible. If the dollar collapses, this will create much higher mortalities.
     
  8. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    8,476
    as/re more water vapour:
    unless:

    from Henrik Svensmark:

    "...cosmic rays are atomic fragments – mostly nuclei – blown into space from exploding stars that constantly bombard the Earth. When they enter the atmosphere, their electric charge helps form clusters of molecules – aerosols – that in turn act as seeds, or nuclei, for water droplets to condense around, creating clouds.

    More cosmic rays means more ‘cloud condensation nuclei’ (CCN), more clouds, and a colder climate. Fewer rays means a warmer climate.

    Which is where the sun comes in. At times of high solar activity, signified by higher numbers of sunspots, our own star’s magnetic field helps shield the planet from cosmic rays, meaning less cloud formation and thus higher temperatures. When the sun is ‘quiet’, there is more ionisation in the atmosphere, meaning more clouds and a cooler climate."
    ..................
    and, the sun seems to be going into a quiet phase
    when solar cycle 25 gets going it may well surprise many people
    and we'll most likely get to see if Svensmark's prognostication is accurate
     
  9. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    The social and political effects of climate change will of course be mediated through human institutions and so forth. People hard hit will not simply accept their fate, or even necessarily recognize its origin and cause - human made wars, human influenced economic collapses and screwups, human migration and conflict and disease, will be a large part of the effects of climate change.

    So the willfully ignorant will always have something else to "blame".
    And all of that will be overlaid on the larger trend driven by the CO2 boost, probably - by the research, in all probability, AGW will not go away during the future solar cycles any more than it did during the past ones. Probably.
    And these comparatively minor and temporary blips are nevertheless significant and should continue to be incorporated into projections and predictions and estimations, just as they have been if not better and more precisely.
    Which would be easier if the research and monitoring and so forth were not under political attack by the Republican Party in the US (the latest bad news coming from the Republican federal administration via Alaska: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Dunleavy_(politician) - https://www.newsmax.com/TheWire/mulvaney-climate-change-waste/2017/03/17/id/779382/ ).
    The size of the effect - which has been familiar in the climate change discussion for decades, and was among the first factors considered by researchers - depends partly on several other factors - cloud height (temp affected), water intrusion into the stratosphere, lower level greenhouse effects, convection strength in tropical storms, ocean absorption and transport, airplane contrails, particulates from industry and fire, ozone destruction, etc.

    But don't let the details bog you down - you were about to make a claim of some kind, right? Something one could compare with the data and assessments?
     
  10. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    And the willfull climate change believer anyway already today blames even the US-paid terror wars like in Syria on climate change. This is, in fact, an interesting point. Blaming climate change works forever. Because one can never clearly subdivide climate change effects from something else. So, this will become a religious question.
     
  11. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Partly.
    The degree to which the unusual severity and odd timing of the Syrian drought is likely to have been an effect of AGW is calculable, now - decades of accumulated data and research continues to build and provide greater insight into AGW.
    Although difficult and complex such analysis is now routine, wherever the necessary data has been compiled and the funding to analyze it is available. It's been possible in some circumstances for many years, and recent advances in technique on top of the steady accumulation of data have greatly expanded the scope of such analysis - to include even ordinary and daily weather in many places.

    You didn't know that?

    Blaming climate change for specific phenomena is difficult and sophisticated, and only works where the research has been adequate.
    And only where the climate is changing, of course.
    Only for the ignorant, the US Republican Party, and the financially corrupted.
    The rest of us will be reading peer-reviewed articles in the relevant journals etc, where the questions are methodological or statistical and concern physical fact.

    For example: The likely amount of extra rain on Houston from AGW's influence on Hurricane Harvey was estimated - quantified to the fractional centimeter - with an error range, of course, as in all such estimations. Likewise, the extra flooding in Houston from AGW's share of the local sea level rise and variation was quantified in estimation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Harvey

    The environmental damage from AGW's share of Harvey's rain and searise in Houston's industrial lowlands - hazardous, poisonous, poorly regulated or even documented, and vulnerable as they were - was not similarly estimated and quantified, in large part because the researchers were prevented from gathering the necessary data in the days and weeks after Harvey moved on. The Federal Republican administration denied researchers use of the airplanes and instrumentation that had been set up for that purpose.
     
    Last edited: Jul 29, 2019
  12. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,646
    On average there will be more water on the ground in the winter and less in the summer. That's generally bad for plant life, which cannot last months without water.
    ?? No. Floods kill plants and animals. Regular rain in the desert destroys the ecosystem there.

    Life on Earth has adapted to the current climate. It can adapt if the climate changes slowly. It cannot adapt if it changes rapidly. That's one reason we are seeing this mass extinction.
    Probably. But it will be cheaper to not have to "handle" them.
     
    origin likes this.
  13. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    Nice try. But the context is not science, but what the believer and the denier will claim. And if you think that such research is able to prove something to such people, ok, your choice.
    No, it is even easier than to blame Putin for specific phenomena.
    For those who claim to be victims of climate change it will change whenever necessary, don't worry.
    And, on the other side, the green parties all over the world, and the ideologically corrupted.
    This "rest of us" is an irrelevant minority. On all sides.
     
  14. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    For the alarmists, there will be only negative consequences. 100%. No way to show them even a single positive consequence. Seems like you try to fit into this category.
    It is adapted to a wide range of climates. And it can nicely adapt by migration if they have a few years of time for this. If necessary, humans can help the animals and plants to migrate, but
    Given what is proposed to reach this state, certainly not.
     
  15. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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  16. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Probably false in every detail, every claim, according to the researchers in the field:
    The probabilities now establish the greater likelihood of the following:
    There will be more intense storms, not necessarily more frequent ones.
    The effects will be locally horrible, and on average bad.
    What is came about through hundreds of thousands, even millions, of years of adaptation to small changes - comparing that with what will come about after mere dozens of years of adaptation to larger changes is a difficult and highly sophisticated task. It's not easy - or likely to teach us very much. A more likely informative comparison would be between more closely similar situations - current AGW with the effects of extreme volcanism in a small region, or a midsized meteorite impact.
    Being right is the claim - not being more numerous.
    But that claim is also false, and will become more obviously false as personal experience teaches even some Republicans certain facts of reality.
    The context is the nature of what will happen in reality, not anyone's claims.
    The context was an arena where evidence and "proof" mattered. Your claims were in that context, and due to your continued ignorance quite silly that context. False, and quite obviously false. Ignorant, and flagrantly ignorant - willfully ignorant.
    Then there are no alarmists.
    Because the frequently discovered positive consequences, though comparatively minor - such as more rapid initial regrowth of forests from lower latitude and altitude seeding in, greater vegetative growth of annual crops carefully moved and handled to match the new climate regimes, the suppression of malaria and dengue fever carriers in places now afflicted heavily, etc - are routinely reported in all my sources, sources you have labeled "alarmist".
    That's how good science, good intelligence, good discussion, is set up to work (and can still be found, for a while yet anyway). The Republican Party is currently continuing its fifty year effort to change the way US science in general (based in universities, from faculty with tenure, and therefore set up to work like that) is set up to work. The primary goal of this early/middle stage is to prevent scientists from communicating directly with the news media, to gain and keep political control of science news.
    Trump is currently making good progress in the continuing Reagan Republican Party efforts to suppress the influence of science on the public discussion, and replace it with influence from Partisan and ideological allies. In this effort - obvious and public, easily observed by the curious - the derogation of science to the sidelines, and the elevation of propaganda battles to the primary context of all discussion on any major topic, is a dream achievement of US rightwing (corporate) marketing professionals - cooperation with their attempts field marks the Republican parrotry.
    A few hundred thousand years, you mean, if the current AGW is slowed radically by governmental efforts.
    Not you. You actually meant "a few years" even without major governmental curbing and regulation of corporate capitalism.

    A "few years" and trees will adapt by migration, in Republican World. Rice will grow in sand and salt. Banana and rubber and coffee trees will become immune to disease. And humans also: currently vulnerable populations especially (US residents, third world slumdwellers) will become immune to the spread of tropical disease.

    Ignorant bullshit from someone who knows nothing about biology, ecology, or agriculture.
     
    Last edited: Jul 31, 2019
  17. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,646
    Right. But most people who understand climate science are not alarmists. They know there will be positive and negative effects. For example, Canadian wheat farmers might really appreciate warmer weather. But California central valley farmers will not. And people who live in Bangladesh by the water will DEFINITELY not.
    It has been proven that rapid climate changes cause mass extinctions. Thus, while you may imagine life can adapt "nicely" history shows that to not be the case.
    Really? It's cheaper to move most US agriculture to Canada than switch to electric vehicles? (to use a simple example) You know this . . . how? Wishful thinking? Talked to any US farmers about the practicality of your thinking?
     
  18. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    8,476
    Can you point to one that was caused by warming?
     
  19. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    no
    after listening to some physicists discuss the subject but not directly on this, what i suspect is that the total over all amount of water changing state may not change as this is probably linked directly to the basic heat exchange heat loss of the planet through water as a mechanism

    what is significant is that the altitude of where this normaly takes place may shift to be more concentrated inside the habitation zones of humans

    for the last 200 years humans have built large scale high density housing inside flood zones and flood ways.
    as water sources and water tables have been used up by industrial extinction of water sources, this has appeared to show a drying effect in urban areas.
    however...
    that water is simply small quantities when measured next to climate cycle processes.
    large storms picking up and dropping water has been happening for millions of years
    where humans live tends to be chosen for nicer climate conditions.
    as those areas become more saturated, some others shall become more dry.

    e.g
    a village network living in the mountains for the last 4 hundred years may not see anything defined as "climate change" and the people who live to about 50 years old may not notice any difference.

    the big problem with climate change is the vast quantity of propaganda that has been distributed and the human propensity to choose the information that suits their mental conditioning/indoctrination

    socio-anthrapology may find similarities between contentious objectors and pro war activists as a metaphor for human social co-excistance
     
  20. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,646
    Sure; the Permian-Triassic mass extinction - which coincidentally was also the biggest one in Earth's history. From a paper on the topic:

    "The largest biotic extinction event in Earth history occurred at the Permian-Triassic (P-Tr) boundary and affected both marine and terrestrial life (e.g., Erwin, 1993). . . . The coincidence of climate warming and the main pulse of extinction suggest that global warming was one of the causes of the collapse of the marine and terrestrial ecosystems."

    https://www.researchgate.net/profil...extinction/links/5576d30c08aeb6d8c01bd12a.pdf
     
  21. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    The one paper which computed something about averages suggesting an "on average bad" which I have seen I have considered, and it appeared to measure what would be the consequences if there would be no adaptation at all.
    No genetic adaptation is necessary - relocation to the region which is optimal for each particular species is essentially all one needs.
    Feel free to hope so. I would also hope my claim is false, but I have given up this hope.
    Given that this is only your claim, as usual not supported by any links, it is quite probable a lie. I have no doubt that scientific sources sometimes consider positive consequences, but I do not name scientific sources alarmist. What I name alarmism is what is presented in the mass media. There are, of course, some intermediate media which sometimes mention positive consequences (say, to argue that they are "comparatively minor") but which I nonetheless name alarmist. Like a website which claimed to compare positive and negative consequences, which tried to suggest on a quite primitive level (with the number of papers they linked) that the positive consequences are quite irrelevant, which was quite obviously alarmist. This is, in fact, what has to be expected - sites in the web cannot lie in such a stupid way as the mass media, because the reader knows how to use the web and has alternative sources which mention positive consequences. So, alarmists in the web have to "debunk claims" about positive consequences, and, therefore, to mention them. The almost complete silence about positive consequences is what characterizes the mass media presentation.
    Nice try. But not plausible. If they are not immune now, but survive nonetheless now, they will survive warming too. Some diseases will change their region of distribution? So what, those immune or not immune will also change it, for the same reasons in a similar way. Some problems of adaptation, without doubt, but not enough for something really catastrophic.

    You should try harder if you want to make catastrophic consequences plausible.
     
  22. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    I think so too. But the alarmists control the mass media.
    Can possibly cause. Not obligatory. Moreover, the most problematic rapid changings were coolings after big meteorites.
    Common sense. Doing the same what has been done already over centuries is certainly possible and also sufficiently cheap. If electric vehicles are efficient, they will be developed and used anyway, if not, they are an expensive loss of money.
     
  23. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,646
    Stick to Science and Nature, then.
    The extinction was the result of rapid climate change.
    And yet the Earth's largest extinction came after rapid warming.

    I would not argue that warming is terrible and cooling is fine. Both changes cause extinctions. Given that, we should not be seeking to change the climate as rapidly as possible by burning as many fossil fuels as possible.
    We have never moved American agriculture to Canada before.
    Slavery was quite efficient. So was child labor. So were CFC refrigerants. We ended those things - even though ending them was an "expensive loss of money" - because we did not want to live with the results of those "savings." That is the true characteristic of an enlightened society - being able to forego immediate gratification to benefit future peoples.
     

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