What climate change is not

Discussion in 'Earth Science' started by billvon, Jan 28, 2020.

  1. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    This is a theoretical possibility, maybe even supported by some research (if so, please refer to such research). But there are also other possibilities. Like the one that after the end of the CO2 boost the temperature goes down.
    Laughable. How many people live today in buildings build less than 50 years ago? And even if the buildings are older than 50 years - how much has been invested into these buildings during the last 50 years? In reality we live in a society where infrastructure is usually depreciated within a 25 years period (see https://financeandbusiness.ucdavis....-financial-reporting/cap-asset/infrastructure ). That it often holds much longer is fine, but with my 50 years this is already accounted.

    Then, how much of the infrastructure is really endangered by warming? If there is much more precipitation, it is essentially the regions near rivers, and that related to agriculture, that's all. So, most buildings are not even endangered. Even a lot of infrastructure directly related with rivers will require only standard maintenance and nothing new. Big dams will work nicely as they should even with much more precipitation. Same for infrastructure which takes water from rivers for agriculture. This type of agricultural infrastructure:

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    also works if there is more rain, even more heavy rain, and does not need to build new, only maintained and probably strengthened - things which can be done by those working there even now.
    It has nothing to do with climate science, it is about the existing technologies to handle such things like a warming as well as more precipitation. AGW is about the question if the climate is changing or not, and how it is changing, as well as what causes these changes.

    With "AGW researchers" you obviously mean alarmists. There has been one such paper about how the warming will influence crops, based on the influence of extreme weather events on crops today and extrapolating them. Which obviously cannot take into account that following a regular climate change people will switch to other crops which are more adequate for the new conditions. Laughable, but typical. Feel free to present something better.
    No. Learn the basics of nuclear winter starting with Wiki: "Nuclear winter is a severe and prolonged global climatic cooling effect hypothesized[1][2] to occur after widespread firestorms following a nuclear war."
    ??????????????????????

    Of course, people have to deal with weather, and with local climate and local temperature spikes in both directions. That you seem unable to understand elementary notions like global average temperature, and that it has an optimum which is well-defined by the condition that and the optimum temperature the largest number of human beings could survive on Earth, is your personal problem. What is your key concept I don't know, I see only a quite heavy sort of alarmism.
    Why do you repeat obvious lies? Links please, liar.
    No, I don't question the claimed nature, and I don't question the consequences, namely some warming and more precipitation in the average. I question that this will seriously harm humanity.
    You are a LIAR! I do not propose such a thing. Stop such defamation, or support it with explicit quotes.
    The increase in leaf area is already happening. And it is certainly something positive.
    Nonsense. Stability of equilibrium of a climate is something about at least thousands of years. To switch crops you need only a few years. At most tens of years.
    Feel free to refer to papers. (You don't do it because you know I will take a look into them and find that you have completely missed their point.)
     
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  3. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    So the Northern hemisphere is heading into what potentially could be it's hottest and longest Summer on record and has to deal with the COVID-19 outbreak as well...

    The combination of events is not going to be good.
    On top of that by the time the USA gets to November there may not be many people well enough or secure enough to turn out and vote in the Presidential elections.

    What else is coming?
    Massive wild fires, Hurricane season and no doubt a few other nasties....
     
    Last edited: Mar 10, 2020
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  5. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    I very much doubt a flu will prevent an election. (Unless, of course, someone uses that as an excuse to stay in office.)
     
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  7. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    lol
    so naive...
    Switching crops under a couple of meters of water with top soil washed away and contaminated and all this in the middle of an ongoing drought that appears to have no end to it...

    Extreme rain, storm (wind and rain) and heat events may last for only a few hours but have massive long term outcomes.
    This is one factor you still seem to fail to grasp.
    The dynamics of our weather has increased dramatically. ( as predicted )
     
    Last edited: Mar 10, 2020
  8. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,635
    Never mind; answered wrong post.
     
  9. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    November elections USA:
    Campaign rallies are already being scaled back...
    Banning gatherings of people will prevent voting unless online.
    Fear of contracting the virus alone will prevent people from turning up. Lock down or quarantined people not having access to voting etc...
    Congress is already impacted, White house Administration soon no doubt...

    At the moment USA has 806 (JHU) confirmed cases and with a global, outside of China growth factor of about average 12% over the last 24 hours...with a longer term average of about 16% take a guess at what it's going to be like in 6 months or so...

    Hysteria is running high in the states as well, people are very scared. Fear of being forced to stay home or in lock down and so on....
    It is going to be a very difficult election time all things considered IMO
     
  10. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,635
    Voting does not generally involve large gatherings of people. Nor are large gatherings banned by the government.

    I think you're reading the wrong apocalypse novel right now. There were a grand total of 40 new Coronavirus infections in China this week. 4 of them came from Iran.
     
  11. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    That's not "another possibility" - it's in the range of the same one.
    During the centuries after the end of the CO2 boost the earth's climate is expected to approach a new equilibrium (a new stable or metastable cycle, that is - not a steady state). That's the theoretical best chance expectation. Along that line, theory predicts a gradual drop in CO2 concentration from the boost peak, and a consequent but lagging drop in mean global air temperatures (they may continue to rise for a bit, depending on the length of the boost era and the total size as well as timing of the boost, etc)
    Most of it. Most human infrastructure is near an ocean or other major body of water (including aquifers), dependent on agricultural surplus for its maintenance, designed for the local weather, and fitted to the local human economy - AGW will change all of those influences.
    You linked to your website yourself - why would I duplicate your link? I was warning people off of it, saving them the trouble.
    Now you are presenting government tax breaks for capitalists as predictive of future geophysical and meteorological reality. I couldn't make this shit up if I tried.
    Depends on the timing and distribution, like pretty much everything else involving rainfall.
    For example: Newly longer term - say: decadal - and more widely variable cycles of drought and torrent destroy that form of agriculture, in part by periodically depriving it of the surplus necessary for maintenance while simultaneously increasing the need - as the Mayans and a couple of other American civilizations discovered, while disintegrating.
    Thereby impoverishing themselves, blighting their lives, if unprepared or unable.
    And if they can't handle the new regime at all, they move or die. Hence the alarmist nature of even ordinary AGW research reports: they present us with a reasonable, nonzero, threatening probability that hundreds of millions of people are going to face that choice - move or die - suddenly and simultaneously and fairly soon. Within the lives of children already born.

    That's probability, btw - not certainty. It helps measure risk. Risk is something the rightwing propaganda victim has trouble incorporating into their thinking even when they try; you, like most, haven't been trying. The effort is overdue.
    Notice the syntax collapse when these guys get cornered.
    Continuing, after mentally copyediting for sense: There is no such thing. You are once again parroting Republican propaganda, US rightwing corporate "think tank" media product (that's where the notion came from - there is no scientific source)
    To repeat:
    1) There is no given "average" (mean?) global temperature that in itself predicts the size of the global human population that can survive during any of the several global climate regimes in which it can hold, never mind the human technological factor and so forth.

    - other features of the climate, such as precipitation distribution in time and space, matter more. Even other features of the temperature regime, such as its variability at different scales of space (latitude, altitude, extent, geographic feature) and time (day, month, season, year), matter more than the exact average temperature.
    If the air temp ever hits -40 three consecutive nights in a normal five year span, even once, for example, it doesn't matter what the average yearly temperature for that locale is - it won't support any of the common agricultural perennials outside of a greenhouse.


    2) No given "average" global temperature is or will be stable or persistent, even cyclically, during AGW - equilibrium is unavailable during a CO2 boost - or for a couple of centuries after it ends. So in addition to nonexistence, an optimal global average temperature features irrelevance.

    3) And so forth. All this and much more is among the routine findings of dozens of AGW research reports - these considerations are the substance of AGW as currently understood and described. They are AGW as we know it.

    Deny the research findings, deny the discovered and established physical facts, and you deny AGW.
     
    Last edited: Mar 11, 2020
  12. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    23,328
    Do you think the Chinese Governments dramatic response to this virus is possible in the USA? Quarantining 400million people may work out ok in China but I doubt the USA will get even close to be able to exercise that sort of oppression.
    It also took then over 3 months to contain it. It is now March and as yet we can not know what has actually happened in China anyhow...

    Regardless the USA and the rest of the Northern Hemisphere are going to have to cope some how with both Climate change events and COVID-19.
    best of luck! seriously.....and sincerely...
     
  13. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    Fine. And what's the problem with this?
    Sounds impressive but is not. With more precipitation, there will be all the water necessary for agriculture. Only a minor part will be endangered by too much precipitation.
    You write explicit lies about the content of my websites. I ask you to present explicit quotes with link to the source of the quote. This is something you cannot do because your claims are lies.
    I simply tried to find some explicit information about the time scale of depreciation of the infrastructure. Once only a very rough scale is necessary, that link with the explicit 25 years seems good enough to support what matters - namely that it is not much more than 50 years.
    Indeed, long term droughts may be deadly. Droughts combined with torrents, which gives sufficient water in the average, does not destroy agriculture. All one needs is the appropriate infrastructure.
    In alarmist fantasies, indeed. In reality, not.
    Most of the rural population we have today will move to towns anyway, simply by continuation of what has already happened in all industrial countries. Which was, as all people living in industrial societies know, something completely horrible, if they compare their actual horrible situation with the Golden Age when their ancestors lived yet in rural areas working in agriculture.
    LOL. It is much more the left which has a problem with risks. According to the right, risk is a normal part of life. If the left faces some risk, the result is alarmism.
    That the optimal temperature depends on a given level of human technology is something I have mentioned several times. That there may be, for a given average temperature, different climates, with different numbers of people which could survive on Earth, is a possibility, but it does make the notion of an optimal temperature nonsensical. Because it does not matter how you define that number in this particular situation - use the maximum, or some average, whatever. Every such definition will give some optimum. All one needs for this is some definition, and the fact that for -200 as well as for +200 degrees the number is with actual technology zero, but between these values there exist some positive numbers.
    So what? I have not made statements about what matters most.

    The point being? There are large areas which are not used for agriculture today, either because it is too cold or too arid. There are essentially no areas unusable now because it is too hot (but with enough precipitation) or because there is too much rain (but reasonable temperatures). Which is strong indication that we are yet far below optimal temperature and precipitation.
    If it varies only a few degrees during some hundreds of years this is quite sufficient for humanity to prosper during that period. Certainly no base for alarmism.
     
  14. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    You have yet to present a single scientific paper I deny, without giving explicit arguments which show that the particular paper is nonsense. The typical alarmist claims you have presented in this post, even if some of them would be really supported by scientific literature, are quite obviously irrelevant, given that you have not given numbers, say, about the relevant time scales.

    Your discussion technique is quite interesting. You try to delegitimize the use of notions which are dangerous for you. Say, all the alarmists cry about the average temperature increasing, and that being a problem. Seems, it should be a well-defined notion, and one can say something about it being problematic. But once I question that the actual average temperature, however defined, is optimal, and ask about the optimal one, it becomes obviously dangerous for alarmist positions, given that quite obvious answer is that we are yet below the optimal temperature. So, you try to delegitimize my way to use it, by delegitimizing the notion itself. If one would apply this criticism against the alarmists version of climate science itself, alarmism would vanish into thin air because it also uses average temperatures, but consistency is not a requirement for your argumentation.

    That I define the optimal temperature in terms of a stable temperature is reasonable and important. It allows to distinguish between the consequences of a particular temperature and the problems related with adaptation to a change of temperature. This is also dangerous for alarmism, given that as long as we are below the optimal temperature all the bad things are reduced to costs of adaptation. These costs depend on the time scale, and the time scale of such things is certainly to slow to justify the necessary hysteria.

    You also consistently fight against rough common sense approximations. Such things accessible to common sense are in general dangerous for alarmists because they allow average people to question alarmist claims. They are, of course, an important part of any scientific approach. Often enough the rough approximation is already quite good, at least for qualitative considerations. You like to present some quite arbitrary complications which may be important if one needs a quantitatively accurate expectation but without any consideration which shows that these complications are of relevant size for the result. The aim is not to present any minor corrections necessary for the rough estimate, but simply to reject it.

    Of course, one cannot exclude that you have simply misguided yourself. It may be sufficient to point out some second order effects to impress you in such a way that you think the question is far too complex for you to find anything yourself, so that you simply have to rely on authority. And who is the authority you accept follows from your ideology. But I have the impression that this is not your own confusion, but a deliberate attempt to confuse others.

    This combination of horrors already becomes funny.
    Whatever - it is clear that for alarmists only nasties come.
    No. I simply have enough common sense to have some expectations about the size of this effect. You have differences in volatility of temperature and rain events, and with higher temperature the weather becomes more volatile. But this effect is already present in the different climate zones we have now. So, if you want to know about the seriousness of this effect, look at regions where we have today such a climate which is predicted for your region in the future. So, if I compare with tropical climate, I see indeed some more heavy rain events, but nothing really horrible.

    Then, learn a little bit history, namely how the Ancient Egypt became a powerful state. There is essentially no rain there at all, and once a year all the land which could be used for agriculture was under a couple of meters of water by a flood of the Nile river. So, the horrors you described where the standard weather there. It did not prevent them from impressing a lot of tourists with their pyramids even today.
     
  15. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    I would strongly recommend that you do some research on the current state of the Nile River before you attempt to use it as an example to support your unrealistic position.
    Google Nile river + drought
    Just one of over 2 mil results:

    Climate change is primed to increase tensions over Nile water. By 2030, the Dartmouth researchers write, the flow of the Nile will regularly fail to meet demand, and between 20% and 40% of the population will face water scarcity even during “normal years.”

    By the 2080s, things could get much worse. According to the study’s projections, roughly 170 million people will face water scarcity during normal years. During hot and dry years, that already-reduced water supply will be cut by approximately 20%—events the researchers call “negative shocks.” During these periods, which will increase with frequency and duration as the century advances, between 30% and 55% of the population won’t have enough water.
    https://qz.com/1709757/climate-change-threatens-the-niles-critical-water-supply/

    and of course it is a complex issue due to dam building, mass irrigation and extreme weather events.
    Either way climate change is making the flow of the river unreliable and highly variable with extreme drought/flood cycles..
    Rising sea levels will probably wipe out most of the Nile delta area due to salinization. So say good bye to any agriculture....

    https://e360.yale.edu/features/vanishing-nile-a-great-river-faces-a-multitude-of-threats-egypt-dam
     
    Last edited: Mar 11, 2020
  16. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    oh the size of this dynamic effect is already huge...and getting bigger all the time.
    You consider your self to be a scientist yes?
    Consider the current ocean evaporation rate that is increasing as temperatures rise. Ask you self:
    1. What happens to the weather patterns when the amount of mass is constantly being increased in the atmosphere by way of water vapor?
    2. When will this massive and increasing injection of water vapor (suspended mass) stop increasing?
    3. How does constantly increasing mass in the atmosphere effect weather dynamics?
    Compare the momentum of a mini minor with 32 wheeler truck.
    ..and that is just one aspect of the problem...

    Do you realise that all weather patterns are changing?
    Do you understand that agriculture requires certainty and climate stability to plant crops and successfully harvest?
     
    Last edited: Mar 11, 2020
  17. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    If it varies as the AGW researchers think is most likely, humanity will not prosper without taking expensive, global, and very well coordinated measures beginning now. And even that will probably not be enough to maintain industrial civilization on a planetary scale, if the AGW researchers are anywhere near correct in their findings and calculations.
    Yes, they do.
    It doesn't exist. Whether it can be invented and then built fast enough and cheaply enough to keep up with AGW is unknown.
    Your photo shows inappropriate infrastructure, part of an irreplaceable agricultural system that AGW can destroy in less than a decade at any time between now and a century from now - at which time everyone dependent on it would have to move or die.
    There is no optimal temperature or precipitation. Those concepts are confusions, and in this case they are also propaganda memes from US rightwing media feeds - you got suckered again.
    You appear to be assuming that an increase in global average temperature would be evenly distributed and affect most strongly those regions currently too cold for optimal human life or whatever, that droughts can be made more severe without long term damage to agriculture, that the torrential rainfall expected can be contained and saved for later use in normal circumstances and with known technologies such as exist now, that current high temperatures are not damaging agriculture anywhere, that there is room for the temperature spikes expected from AGW without destroying agriculture over large areas currently being farmed, and so forth.
    You don't know what you are talking about, in other words. You don't know what the current situation is, you don't know what changes would do more harm than good, and you don't know what changes AGW is expected to bring.
    (What you would need, for a reasonable argument, is 1) an estimation of how much currently unfarmable land would be made fit for agriculture by being warmed only, or by having its current rainstorms made heavier and its droughts longer only; and 2) an estimate of how much of that land area would be warmed without increasing aridity, or brought heavier rain in capturable circumstances without being unduly warmed or subjected to severe drought (which would increase the demand for water, etc). )

    You have claimed the existence of an optimal global average temperature, based on considerations that are not governed by average global temperature but by other factors you ignore.

    There is no such thing as an optimal global average temperature.
    Government tax breaks for capitalists have nothing to do with the useful life span of infrastructure during AGW.
    Not to towns nearby.
    When their agricultural base is ruined, and their heat waves become unsurvivable, and their water supply is destroyed, the people in the affected towns and cities will move or die. If the AGW researchers are right, the expected number of climate change refugees will be in the hundreds of millions during the lifetime of children already born.
    That increasing the average temperature via AGW will not necessarily - or likely - create productive farmland where it is now merely too cold.
     
    Last edited: Mar 11, 2020
  18. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    I repeat the assertion that your "approximations" are ignorant bs you got from Republican Party media feeds.
    That guarantees irrelevance to AGW, even if the concept made sense - which it does not.
    As long as AGW is happening there is no stable climate regime - which means no stable average global temperature.
    There will never be an optimal global average temperature for people, because there is no such thing.
    I'm not discussing anything with you, or arguing, in my replies to your posts. My "technique" - continual repetition of plain physical fact, repeatedly reminding you of your ignorance and gullibility - is boring and simple.
    There is no optimal temperature.
    Meanwhile: Almost all the bad things are costs of adaptation, of course. You post truism.

    Those costs are likely to be very, very high; the adaptations they pay for are likely to be partial, meagre, and inadequate, is the issue at hand. That has nothing to do with any fantasy of an optimal temperature. It is a consequence of the rapidity and severity of the onset of AGW (along with the other effects of the CO2 boost), and the poor preparation undertaken so far.
    I'm not - and you have namecalled me an "alarmist" many times.
    So you are still posting bullshit from wingnut media feeds, instead of dealing with the matters in front of you here.
    - - - - -
    Briefly, once again, because Schmelzer did not learn anything from the months of previous postings:

    AGW is one of several complex and multifaceted problems caused by the CO2 boost, of which two or three are serious. The most harmful aspect of AGW is the rate - if AGW were slow it would not be a problem, but AGW is very fast (about ten times as fast as the natural climate changes of the past, except the meteor strike extinctions). The second most harmful aspect of AGW is the size - the increase is going to be much larger than the increases in the fossil record. There are a couple more harmful aspects, such as the distribution and timing of the temp increases, that I mostly ignore here.

    So: not the increase itself, but the rate and size and consequent effects of the increase, is most of what the alarmists like me are sounding the alarm about. Schmelzer does not know that, because like the rest of the denialist crowd he gets all his "information" on the topic from the US wingnut media feeds.

    Anyone reading this forum will find other posters talking about the benefits of a warmer planet, whether warmer would be better for humans, whether the planet is too cold, etc - all such posting comes originally from the US wingnut media feed, which is financed by the fossil fuel industry and serves the political interests of the Republican Party. It ignores rate, which is the most dangerous and harmful aspect of AGW. That is of course deceptive, even dishonest - but it's easy to spot, once pointed out.
     
  19. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    Which is nothing but an empty accusation.
    I have not claimed that what I write is relevant to AGW itself. It is relevant only for the evaluation of the consequences of AGW.
    The point being? Don't you understand that understanding the stable configuration is a presupposition for understanding more complex configurations which are unstable?
    There is such a thing, and I have defined it sufficiently well.
    Indeed, you don't argue. You simply repeat stupid attacks against me.
    If the average temperature would increase to 60 degrees Celsius, the costs would be almost completely costs caused by the temperature being much higher the optimal one. And this would heavily decrease the number of people which could survive on Earth. This would happen even if the increase would be very slow, so that adaptation costs would be irrelevant.

    So, the point that almost all the bad things are adaptation costs is far from trivial. It destroys most of the alarmism, given that once the adaptation costs have been paid we will be in an even better situation than before.
    Ok, you are an exception here. A sort of exception which proves the rule (this refers to the German proverb "Ausnahmen bestätigen die Regel"). To classify someone who makes claims like "costs are likely to be very, very high" an alarmist is justified even if this person admits that some typical alarmist claims are wrong.
    You compare with natural climate changes of the past. Which is irrelevant, given that these have very long time scales. You have to compare with the time scales which lead to high adaptation costs. Some hundreds of years may be very fast in comparison with natural climate changes, but in comparison with what is relevant for human infrastructure investment it is, today, simply irrelevant.
    The pure CO2 effect is 1 (one) degree per CO2 doubling. This size would be almost irrelevant. Add some more H2O in the air to enhance this, which is quite plausible given that higher temperature increases evaporation, so that I do not question it at all, gives you more. Say, 3-4 degrees per doubling. This is certainly nothing catastrophic in itself. This gives more precipitation as an obligatory positive side effect.

    Methan coming into the atmosphere via melting permafrost gives only a short term effect - when it starts, the temp will be enhanced, but when it simply continues because more permafrost melts there will be no more enhancement, and once the permafrost melted away there will be even a deceleration, maybe even some cooling.

    As usual for alarmists, you ignore the positive effects. More CO2 leads to more plant growth, especially in arid regions, which is already observable today and obviously positive. More H2O in the air leads to more precipitation, which also leads to more plant growth. Both positive effects appear immediately and without any human investment.
    Because you know that it is easy to show that they are almost irrelevant, given that we can see the size of these effects already today, comparing the volatility of the weather in different climate zones today.
    Of course, I don't even know those effects, given that I'm already bored to repeat my comments about these effects, lol.
    Given that it is quite trivial and obvious that the Earth as a whole would become better with some warming, and worse with cooling, it is not an argument at all that some other people, which are evil subhumans in iceaura's ideology, also give this argument. The same problem as with Hitler claiming that 2+2=4.

    In my argumentation, which is the only one which matters in my argument with iceaura here, I do not ignore the rate at all. I simply subdivide the problem into the part which depends on the rate and the part which depends on the temperature reached.
     
  20. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,635
    It will certainly be different. They won't be able to quarantine people as effectively - but won't have to worry about wet markets, information will flow more quickly and more medical support will be able to be mobilized more quickly. Whether all that is a net positive or negative remains to be seen.
     
  21. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    My argument was about Ancient Egypt, not modern Egypt. Once a new dam will be build upstream and has to be filled with water, this decreases the amount of water at least for the time of filling the dam, but also beyond this, given that such dams are also build to use some of the water for irrigation. This problem is a simple human-made problem.
    Sorry, but this is irrelevant. The flow of a river below a dam is regulated by humans. The volatility of the rain becomes irrelevant, all that matters is the average amount of water.
    Depends on the sea levels. If they rise as actually, this will not matter at all.
    It will rain more. Quite plausibly the volatility increases. But, as I have repeatedly explained, you can estimate the size of this volatility effect by comparing different climate zones today. (Except, of course, for the hottest ones, where you have no hotter to compare with).
    Whenever the temperature stops increasing.
    No, it does not require certainty. You can plant crops even if you have uncertainty, and sometimes you will nonetheless successfully harvest. There has never been such certainty. Fortunately, globalization has decreased the corresponding risks. Failed harvests have been always local phenomena, in the global average they are not really important.
     
  22. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    This is what I name alarmism.

    Industrial civilization is not even endangered. Except those nations who go insane following the climate religion and destroy themselves.

    Adaptation for climate change does not require global coordinated measures. Infrastructure improvements are a local thing, forestation and similar measures are also local, changing crops is local. The techniques for handling such things are well-known and old, and therefore also sufficiently cheap.
    They don't destroy agriculture with sufficient infrastructure support. Which collects the water if it comes down to use it during the drought, and protects the fields from too much water with appropriate drainage.
    It exists. As everything, it needs improvements, that's all. Not much need for inventions.
    Alarmist fantasies. It needs some maintenance, and if the rains become much heavier it must be strengthened. But the basic principle is ok, if too much water comes down, it immediately flows down at places where it should, no loss of soil because there is no erosion (the water velocity is low in the fields, and there the water flows down there are stones). If there is not enough water, no water flows down.


    The definition of an optimal temperature requires no such assumptions. But let's mention here a positive change: In the past, iceaura would have plainly lied "you claim", now we read "you appear to assume". This at least makes clear that what follows is iceaura's fantasy.

    The only thing which I indeed assume is that with appropriate infrastructure the water coming with torrential rainfalls can be contained and saved for later use. One such technology doing this is named reservoir dam.

    The land in Northern Russia as well as Canada/Alaska is unused because it is too cold. Warming will make those lands usable for agriculture, and we do not have to speculate in this case about aridity or the volatility of water supply. This is a lot of land.
    The second point is complete nonsense. I have never assumed that the increase in volatility (that means, heavier torrents combined with droughts instead of nicely distributed rain only) is something positive. It is clearly and obviously a negative side effect. But it will not destroy agriculture as long as there is enough rain. And if heavy torrents appear once a year in areas which are actually deserts then agriculture will become possible there if necessary.

    The positive effect is the increase in average precipitation. Then, you use the predicted increase in volatility to paint extreme pictures. There is no base for presenting such extreme pictures as if they would define the weather everywhere.
    You construct thousands of imaginable scenarios and ask me to develop estimates how often they will appear? WTF? In the average, there will be more precipitation. This is the base for all estimates, this is what matters.
    They are certainly and obviously dependent on the average global temperature too. Of course, I ignore a lot of other factors, and I can do this without any problem. Those other factors, if fixed, will probably have some influence on the optimal temperature. If not fixed, there will be some probability distribution over them (Bayesian interpretation), and we can integrate over them.
    I have not claimed they have something to do with AGW. But they have something to do with the useful life span of infrastructure, simply because governments which have tax rules based on estimates close to reality will have better tax incomes. Of course, that's nonetheless heavily distorted, but in this case a factor 2 or so is not a problem at all because all I looked for was the order of magnitude.
    Why not? This is what peasants have done all the time.
    In some alarmist scenarios that's possible. But look at Arabia. It has a lot of towns in desert areas, and the citizens are not in a "move or die" situation, despite the impossibility of agriculture nearby.
    The number of peasants moving to towns will be anyway greater even without any climate change. That's simply by continuation of the standard urbanization. Let's see:
    "Rural population (% of total population) in India was 65.97 as of 2018. Its highest value over the past 58 years was 82.08 in 1960, while its lowest value was 65.97 in 2018.". So down by 16% during 58 years. Population 1.330 millions. Take for simplicity further 15% during the next 60 years and you have 200 million in India alone. Compare with China, which came down from ~ 80% to ~40%. If they go down another 30% during the next 60 years, this gives another 600 million. If India reaches something similar to China, during the next 60 years, 30% instead of 15%, China and India alone give 1 billion. So I'm not impressed.

    My "your point" question was answered with
    In this case, you have failed. Of course, which of the imaginable farmland will be really used depends on a lot of things. So I would expect a lot of usable land remaining unused. But in the catastrophic alarmist scenarios they could be used.
     
  23. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    Yep.
    Thereby revealing your ignorance of AGW, and your denial of the findings of its researchers etc.
    Yes, it does.
    They will destroy the agriculture in your photo, and in several of the most productive agricultural regions on the planet (such as the central valley of California and the Great Plains mollosoil regions ).
    That's not expected to be positive, in many places. It's predicted to be negative.
    No, it won't. Not for hundreds of years, anyway.
    Or you could just read up on what the AGW researchers are doing and finding.
    Or you could just quit posting from such abysmal ignorance.
    That's irrelevant. In the regions where agriculture and human habitation has been destroyed by climate change there will be no towns.
    If climate change destroys the agricultural source of their food, and they can't replace it, they will have to move or die.
    In the places whose agriculture was destroyed by climate changes in the past - such as the Mayan regions of southern North America, the Norse settlements in Greenland, the early civilizations of the eastern Mediterranean regions, etc - the opposite happened: the townfolk migrated to distant areas of countryside where there was still some food to be found, and the survivors reverted to nomadic foraging of various kinds.

    The problem now is that there will be - by prediction and expectation - nowhere to go. There are no unpopulated frontiers, newly warmed lands will be many years and much weather instability away from being able to support farming, etc.
     

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