Damn that Global Warming...

[Rwy in Sight]

I thought it was Global warming until it couldn't be supported any more (for reasons I don't remember) and then it turn to climate change.

[Cukup Sudah]

I see that some people still don't understand the difference between climate and weather. Those who haven't understood by know should probably just claim their certificate from the J. Imhofe School of Science and let the rest of humanity pass them by.

[BenThere]

So if, as current data suggests, we are probably entering into a new ice age, shouldn't we be pumping out all the CO2 we can muster? Just to save the planet, you understand.

[Chuks]

Great idea, Ben! If we get that wrong we can just swap things around, I suppose. It's not as if we ever managed to mess things up terminally in our environment before, is it? (Joking again, me. There are plenty of examples of humans doing that which should serve as warnings.)

Let's see what approach Donald takes, assuming that Donald even understands that we might have a problem, that it's not the Chinese faking it to destroy American business with unnecessary restrictions on CO2 emissions.

[Sisemen]

That's an assumption that there actually is a problem Chuks. Yeah, yeah, I know ..... those of us who are as thick as pig ***** don't understand; stick heads in sand; believe in fairies etc etc. The problem is I've done an awful lot of reading on the matter, listened to the views of a wide variety of people both for and against, sorted out in my own mind the wheat from the chaff and have arrived at a measured and logical position. Happy to change that though if I hear anything convincing.

[Chuks]

There's no convincing someone who has a closed mind.

Read up on climate change in Siberia and Greenland, just for starters, though. If you think crooked climate scientists are faking all of that then, yeah, you might go down the bottom of the garden checking for fairies.

[Magnus]

Chuks, you may wish to go down to the bottom of the glacier, check for exposed settlements, and explain why those Danish and Norwegian explorers decided to tunnel under the ice to build farms in the 13th century when CO2 was lower than today.

[Chuks]

Yerss ... and then you can go digging for mammoths in Siberia, to explain how they ended up deep-frozen for far longer than those farms had existed, now being exposed by the thawing of the permafrost.

Thanks to early writers such as Snorri Sturlasson we have written records of the settlement of Greenland and North America by the Vikings, when the Arctic and sub-Arctic climate did change to play a role in wiping out those settlements, change by growing much colder. (That way the Vikings had with strangers also played a role, but that's sociology, not climatology.) So today that climate is changing much more rapidly by growing much warmer, when CO2 might be playing a role in that rapid rate of change.

[Magnus]

So, Chuks, how do you explain the lack of Greenland ice when the atmospheric CO2 was much lower than today? Why did the temperatures drop to allow the extension of the ice cover?

[Chuks]

What "lack of ice" would that be? The Greenland Ice Cap is formed of ice that's about 400,000 years old. That ice advanced on parts of the coast, covering areas once farmed by the Vikings is a relatively minor fact compared to the vastness of the ice cap itself. Compare the minor advance then to the much larger retreat of the ice now to see what I am getting at.

The Greenland climate has always been harsh, with the name probably more an attempt to entice people to settle there than a suggestion that it enjoyed a mild climate when it was discovered. The Vikings attempted and failed to survive using standard methods of farming that work on (really green) Iceland, which should suggest something about the climate in the first place. It's not as though they went there and thrived. Their Inuit neighbors have survived to this day by having a completely different way of life, one adapted to harsh conditions, rather than attempting as the Vikings did to keep sheep and cattle. (It must have been a cultural thing, but the Vikings did not go fishing, sealing, or whaling as the Inuit, whom they despised as "skraelings," did. Instead they starved, along with the livestock they depended upon.)

You could turn this one on its head to ask, "Why is the ice receding on Greenland, exposing areas on the coast that had been covered in ice for a thousand years?"

[Magnus]

Oh, Chuks, Chuks, Chuks. Dearie me. You haven't addressed the fact that there was less ice on Greenland in the C13th when CO2 was lower. Care to comment on why?

[Chuks]

If you read what I wrote at all closely I was saying that there probably was not significantly less ice on Greenland then, when one considers the total mass of ice on Greenland. Given that the ice on the ice cap is 400,000 years old, it was there when the Vikings were farming.

I assume that you have read up on how rapidly the ice is melting nowadays.

How about telling us about the melting Siberian permafrost, exposing stuff that had been frozen solid for, what, ten thousand years? More, even, because I think they found a mammoth that had been frozen for almost forty thousand years.

If you want to line up with Donald Trump to tell us that it's the Chinese faking climate science, do not let me impede you in that.

[BenThere]

So in your view it's still Global Warming, is it?

[Chuks]

It is climate change, not Global Warming, Ben. Why not read what I post, where I stated what my view is, instead of having to ask, getting it obviously wrong?

If climate change causes the Greenland Pump to shut down, for instance, it's going to get damned chilly in the UK! No more Gulf Stream, you see, when a brief look at a map will show you that London is surprisingly far north for the relatively mild winters it enjoys. That won't be Global Warming but climate change, and in a very big way.

North Germany will be living out of cans until the food runs out because we'll have to forget most farming in sub-Arctic conditions then.

"Yeah, Mr White! Yeah, science!"

[BenThere]

So what evidence is there of the Gulf Stream shutting down? And if the Greenland experience over extended time, before man's industry intruded, shows variance, why would we assign any variance now more significance than we have?

Climate does change. We can all agree on that. My question is why should we punish our economic well-being on a scheme to transfer and diminish wealth on the basis of theoretical, politically-driven dogma? And are you aware that most prosperous economies are in temperate zones that would be even more prosperous if warmed by a few degrees? Not that I'm suggesting that as solution, but I do live in Michigan, and it is January.

[Chuks]

https://www.pik-potsdam.de/news/press-r ... eady-today

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shutdown_ ... irculation

http://sciencenordic.com/greenland-melt ... pe-and-usa

All fake, of course. Just ask Donald Trump, climate scientist.

[OFSO]

So what evidence is there of the Gulf Stream shutting down?

Diving deep into my memory, didn't I see a report that it's more subtle than 'shutting down' ? More like with the change in melting ice, the gulf streams content of salt v. fresh water picked up on route may change, causing it to go deeper ?

(Or am I thinking of the ducks in my bath last night).

[Chuks]

It's like anything else to do with climate change, everything from some sort of climate apocalypse that sees the Gulf Stream blink out of existence to just mild temperature changes that might even be beneficial.

In the same way, you can go with Trump and claim that it's Global Warming and it's fake, or you can choose to think that honest climate science is coming up with evidence that we might be getting ourselves into serious trouble here. There's enough information out there to support either opinion held by non-specialists. Climate scientists themselves, though, mostly seem to think that climate change might become a serious problem.

Who gets into science wanting to fake it and make the big bucks? That's Donald Trump you are thinking of there!

[Magnus]

Gosh, and there was I thinking it was Al Gore. Does he still have his beachfront house, bought after he was screaming hysterically about rising sea levels?

[Pinky the pilot]

it was Al Gore. Does he still have his beachfront house, bought after he was screaming hysterically about rising sea levels?

Out here in Australia it was a bloke called Flannery who was always screaming about rapidly rising sea levels. Who then went out and bought a beachfront house!

The Media always describe him as a 'Climate Scientist' whereas, if I'm not mistaken, he is actually an Economist!