Climate Disruption.

A place to discuss politics and things related to Govts
Post Reply
Message
Author
User avatar
Alisoncc
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 4260
Joined: Sat Aug 22, 2015 7:20 am
Location: Arrakis
Gender:
Age: 80

Climate Disruption.

#1 Post by Alisoncc » Mon Jan 08, 2018 2:34 pm

On Sunday the temperature at Penrith, Sydney, hit 47.3 degrees Celsius, making it the hottest place on Earth during that 24-hour period. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, extreme cold and snow penetrated deep into the south-east United States. In normally sub-tropical Florida, frozen iguanas were falling out of trees from the extreme cold. "Give us a bit of that 'global warming'," President Trump thundered sarcastically.

Terms like "global warming" and the mental images they trigger can be misleading when people attempt to understand what is happening to the climate. A far better term is "climate disruption", which captures the real nature of the vast array of changes, many of them abrupt and unexpected, that are occurring.

Weather observers atop the Northeast's highest peak say the temperature has hit a record negative 34 degrees. Adam Gill of the Mount Washington Observatory in New Hampshire says the previous record of negative 31 degrees was set in 1933.

"Climate disruption" was often used by Professor John Holdren, science adviser to former US president Barack Obama, to emphasise that a 1 or 2 degree increase in global average temperature does not simply translate into modest, uniform warming but rather triggers surprisingly sharp changes in extreme weather and disrupts longer-term weather and climate patterns.

The world's ecosystems and critical human systems, such as agriculture, are adapted to the relatively stable climatic conditions of the past 12,000 years. These include not only temperature, but also the circulation patterns of the atmosphere and the oceans that move heat and moisture around the planet and deliver the seasonal and geographical patterns of rainfall, heat and storms that we consider normal. These normal patterns are increasingly being disrupted by what is often termed "climate change".

The climate disruption we are increasingly experiencing is not natural. It is caused by the heat-trapping gases we humans are pouring into the atmosphere primarily by the burning of coal, oil and gas.

This enormous increase in energy in the atmosphere is disrupting normal circulation patterns. In the northern hemisphere, the exceptional heating around the north pole – twice the global average – is breaking down circumpolar air flows that normally keep the cold air around the north pole and more temperate air to the south. Now icy polar air is penetrating as far south as Florida while balmy conditions linger north of Finland.

Southern hemisphere circulation is also being disrupted, although not so dramatically yet. The cool-season frontal systems that normally bring rain to southern Australia are slipping southwards, leading to long-term drying trends in both the south-west and south-east of the country.

Many animals and natural ecosystems are being hammered by climate disruption. Florida's iguanas are not the only creatures dropping dead from trees. In Western Australia over 200 endangered Carnaby's black cockatoos were killed by extreme heat in 2010. More than 45,000 flying foxes were killed on one unusually hot day in south-east Queensland in 2014.

Whole ecosystems are succumbing to climate disruption. In 2016 unusually dry and hot conditions triggered massive fires in Tasmania's World Heritage forests, while ocean circulation patterns have moved unprecedented underwater heatwaves around the world, driving the tragic coral bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef and the mass dieback of mangroves along the Gulf of Carpentaria.

Human systems are also at risk. The world's major agricultural zones have been developed around areas of good soils and predictable, stable climate patterns. These patterns are shifting as we continue to pour greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The north-east China food bowl is experiencing long-term drying while more erratic heat, rainfall/drought and storm patterns hit the central US.

Coastal cities have been built around stable sea levels and predictable storm patterns. These are both being disrupted. Global sea level is rising at an increasing rate, increasing the risk of coastal inundation. Intense tropical cyclone activity is projected to increase, a trend that has already been observed in the North Atlantic basin since the 1970s.

Climate disruption brings growing risks of large-scale migration and conflict as people, particularly the most vulnerable, are forced to deal with increasingly difficult conditions where they live. Some security analysts warn that climate disruption will dwarf terrorism and other conventional threats if present trends continue or worsen.

Fans were left high, dry and hot at the Sydney Tennis International as organisers ordered players off the court due to extreme heat.

Had enough of climate disruption? Then let's leave our 20th century thinking behind and get on with the job of rapidly building innovative, clever, carbon-neutral 21st century societies.

Will Steffen is a Climate Council of Australia councillor.


Professor Will Steffen is a climate change expert and researcher at the Australian National University, Canberra. He was on the panel of experts supporting the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee, has served as the Science Adviser to the Australian Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, and was chair of the Antarctic Science Advisory Committee.

From 1998 to 2004, Professor Steffen served as Executive Director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, an international network of scientists studying global environmental change based in Stockholm, Sweden. His research interests span a broad range within the fields of climate change and Earth System science, with an emphasis on sustainability, climate change and the Earth System. He is the author of numerous publications on climate science.


Food for thought, and rational discussion, perhaps?

Alison
Rev Mother Bene Gesserit.

Sent from my PDP11/05 running RSX-11D via an ASR33 (TTY)

User avatar
OFSO
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 18603
Joined: Sat Aug 22, 2015 6:39 pm
Location: Teddington UK and Roses Catalunia
Gender:
Age: 80

Re: Climate Disruption.

#2 Post by OFSO » Mon Jan 08, 2018 3:21 pm

A tornado (possibly more than one) struck Alt ('upper') Emporda in Catalunia last night causing widespread damage. Meanwhile heavy snowfalls left thousands of motorists stranded on the Madrid to Segovia motorway.

BenThere
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 3804
Joined: Sat Aug 29, 2015 12:54 am
Location: Michigan/Quintana Roo
Gender:
Age: 72

Re: Climate Disruption.

#3 Post by BenThere » Mon Jan 08, 2018 10:42 pm

I would accord more credibility to the global warming theorists if they warmed up to the obvious solution for C and C02 effluent mitigation - nuclear power, transmission efficiency, and mega battery technology development.

Instead we've spent an enormous amount of money on grants, skewed research with a focus on reaching foregone conclusions, investment in immature, inefficient and costly wind and solar white elephants, and of course, heavy taxation on the productive elements of our economies, including transfer of wealth to such as China, which emits more than ever. The results of the preponderance of this cost have been near zilch.

Consider, too, the fact that climate change, much greater in scope than any of us have ever experienced, has occurred regularly for eons. Weather records, dating back a hundred years or so, are frequently broken around the world as they have been since records have been kept. It's convenient for the climate change establishment to have dropped its former global warming moniker so that any change fortifies its argument, whether warming or cooling, and records of weather events can be counted on to occur around the world, playing into the guilt trip they're selling.

Go back and rewatch 'An Inconvenient Truth' and realize the folly of its prognostications in light of the reality we've experienced ten or so years on. One would come away thinking what a pompous fool Al Gore was to make that movie, which I do, but I can't help but hold a grudging respect for the man as it made him a centi-millionaire as he exploited the gullibility of the political masses, all trying to outdo each other to 'save the planet'.

BenThere
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 3804
Joined: Sat Aug 29, 2015 12:54 am
Location: Michigan/Quintana Roo
Gender:
Age: 72

Re: Climate Disruption.

#4 Post by BenThere » Mon Jan 08, 2018 11:23 pm


User avatar
Fox3WheresMyBanana
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 12987
Joined: Thu Sep 03, 2015 9:51 pm
Location: Great White North
Gender:
Age: 61

Re: Climate Disruption.

#5 Post by Fox3WheresMyBanana » Tue Jan 09, 2018 3:24 am

The official climate change models, and their forecasts, do not work.
Image

The measurement methods have screamingly bad justification, e.g. sea level rises in mm are being predicted from sea level gauges that were and are only accurate to cm

The data manipulation is not only highly questionable, but generally classified - i.e. one cannot check official "corrections" because they won't reveal how they are done. Furthermore, every published error correction enhances the case for AGW, whereas on average only 50% should do so.

AGW is a fix.

Boac
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 17210
Joined: Fri Aug 28, 2015 5:12 pm
Location: Here

Re: Climate Disruption.

#6 Post by Boac » Tue Jan 09, 2018 8:33 am

1) For those (like me) who did not know what "AGW" stood for here, it is 'Anthropogenic Global Warming' (aka 'Man-made').

2) I have for a long time held the belief that the changes in the earth's climate are cyclical, but aggravated by our emissions.

Looking at Fox3's posted graph, I find it 'interesting' that the predicted temperatutes amazingly follow almost exactly the observed during the period 1975-1995 where it departs significantly. What changed?

This piece (from http://www.freecriticalthinking.org/cli ... ing-theory has an interesting graphic.

8modelvsactual_troposphere_temps_620pixs.jpg
8modelvsactual_troposphere_temps_620pixs.jpg (53.26 KiB) Viewed 1713 times

"The left hand picture (courtesy of Dr David Evans' Missing Signature) is the climate model prediction of warming in the mid troposphere due to greenhouse gases from 1958 to 1999. The computer models predict most warming occurs at the mid troposphere at the Equator. The right hand picture shows actual temperatures measured over the same period by radiosonde (weather balloon). Actual balloon measurements show no increase in the rate of warming in the mid troposphere at the Equator, ie. no evidence of hot-spots in the troposphere and what is more none of the scientific papers supporting the AGW theory have claimed to have found such evidence.

In short the AGW theory is not borne out by the evidence. Had the AGW hypothesis been subject to the proper scientific method, the failure to substantiate this fundamental premise (of increased warming in the troposphere over the Equator) would have rendered the man-made global warming theory invalid."


However, as with all these pro and anti theories/'facts' it is impossible to determine who is right! The Evans' "findings" themselves are 'hotly' B-) disputed.

User avatar
Fox3WheresMyBanana
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 12987
Joined: Thu Sep 03, 2015 9:51 pm
Location: Great White North
Gender:
Age: 61

Re: Climate Disruption.

#7 Post by Fox3WheresMyBanana » Tue Jan 09, 2018 4:32 pm

The IPCC models fit the '75-'95 data because they have been fudge-factored to do so. This is not scientifically illegitimate, but does mean the models are effectively based on hypotheses, not theories, i.e. there is no strict justification from pure science to generate the causal factor weightings.
As an example, pure science told Einstein that E=mc^2, not E=3mc^2, however the weightings for the AGW models cannot be so rigorously justified.

Furthermore, when the model couldn't fit the data pre-1975, the data was 'adjusted' so it did. This means in practice means that the pre-'75 data has been made colder in order to make the projection post '95 look more dramatic.
If the raw data had been used, then the actual (low) temperature rise would be quite reasonable. However, this projection gives a much lower (if any) influence to man-made CO2.

For the bigger picture, the AGW models are completely useless for correctly predicting historical climate back more than 100 years, never mind the 5 million years for which we have some kind of reasonable geological record. (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record ).

In short, in the real world
1. The climate IS warming. The vast majority of objections are NOT by 'climate change deniers', they are by 'man-made climate change deniers'. The AGW crowd know this very well, as do the MSM, but are attempting to imply that the objectors are denying reality, when they are simply denying that the responsibility for climate change is man-made.
2. The change is much more gradual than the AGW crowd would have people believe. Without this imperative (it'll affect your grandchildren), the vast majority would not give a t*ss.
3. If man-made CO2 has a much lower influence in causing any rise, it must be true that reducing man-made CO2 will have a much lower effect on lowering the rise. Even if all man-made CO2 were eliminated tomorrow (at the cost of the total collapse of current civilization), it would likely not stop the rise.
4. The simple fact is we don't know enough about the influences on Earth's climate to make ANY predictions. We should be spending more on finding out about climate, not trying to effect man-made CO2 reductions. Politicians hate sponsoring pure science that might reveal things that they can't control/might be expensive.

User avatar
Alisoncc
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 4260
Joined: Sat Aug 22, 2015 7:20 am
Location: Arrakis
Gender:
Age: 80

Re: Climate Disruption.

#8 Post by Alisoncc » Tue Jan 09, 2018 7:40 pm

Re: item 4, sounds like you are proposing "Analysis - Paralysis", Fox. Do nothing until you have all the facts, when getting all the facts will never happen. There comes a time when the best minds we have reach a consensus that this is a likely outcome from our current actions, and something needs to change. Ben's apparent suggestion is that if it imposes any costs then nothing should be done.

When the hole in the Ozone Layer was initially detected, there was never any guarantees that it was caused by CFC's that derived from human activities. Yet by a concerted effort mankind were able to reverse the decay. So tell me, how many massive wildfires in California, cyclone "bombs" on the east coast or increases in hurricane activity will it take to persuade the deniers there may be something to the belief that man-made "climate disruption" is the likely cause?
Rev Mother Bene Gesserit.

Sent from my PDP11/05 running RSX-11D via an ASR33 (TTY)

BenThere
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 3804
Joined: Sat Aug 29, 2015 12:54 am
Location: Michigan/Quintana Roo
Gender:
Age: 72

Re: Climate Disruption.

#9 Post by BenThere » Wed Jan 10, 2018 6:26 am

Because, Alison, California has had wildfires every year, many of them exacerbated by federal mismanagement. Anecdotally, while I lived in Northern California for 28 years, I used to take my pickup truck and a chainsaw up into the Sierra Nevada mountains and come back with a cord or so of firewood from dead and fallen trees in the national forests. During the Clinton administration that practice was shut down by the EPA and Bureau of Land Management, and the dead trees were left to become tinder for forest fires of increased intensity.

As for hurricanes, we are coming out of a decade or so of historically rare benign hurricane activity. This year's hurricanes are the norm, not any sort of anomaly.

And take a look at the history of blizzards and adverse weather in the Northern US. This has been a cold winter, but not unprecedented, and doesn't represent cause for the extreme alarm gripping you. It was pretty hot in Sydney the other day, too.

I don't suggest that cost rules out wise policy. But it's true I recoil at throwing hundreds of billions of dollars down a rathole, as many of our nations have done regarding inefficient solar and wind policy and subsidies, while shutting down the cleanest and safest source of energy available, nuclear power.

John Hill
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 5696
Joined: Sun Aug 23, 2015 7:40 pm
Location: Aotearoa

Re: Climate Disruption.

#10 Post by John Hill » Thu Jan 11, 2018 12:54 am

BenThere wrote:............ while shutting down the cleanest and safest source of energy available, nuclear power.


Many countries are 'not allowed' to have nuclear power.
Been in data comm since we formed the bits individually with a Morse key.

User avatar
Bob
Capt
Capt
Posts: 1070
Joined: Mon Feb 20, 2017 3:38 pm
Location: Here

Re: Climate Disruption.

#11 Post by Bob » Thu Jan 11, 2018 3:06 pm

Don't worry John the days of the USA chest puffing, willy waving and telling the world what it can and can't do are well and truly numbered
I hereby declare the U.S.A. a Pariah state.
All U.S. Citizens or persons arriving from the U.S.A. will be denied access

User avatar
Fox3WheresMyBanana
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 12987
Joined: Thu Sep 03, 2015 9:51 pm
Location: Great White North
Gender:
Age: 61

Re: Climate Disruption.

#12 Post by Fox3WheresMyBanana » Sat Jan 13, 2018 11:33 am

Alison, your analysis of effects begs the question of the cause. The number of these events is immaterial. There could be a thousand of them tomorrow, but it would still not tell us the cause of the warming, just that there is warming. And I repeat the fundamental point I made earlier. We are man-made climate change deniers, not climate change deniers.
I also refer again to the evidence - the IPCC models that assume man-made CO2 is the cause do not work.

The last thing you would expect from a former fighter pilot is advocating analysis-paralysis, and I am not doing so here. That said, it is entirely wrong to head off without knowing the correct direction to go in. The primary influence on the Earth's climate is the Sun. NASA's forecast for the current Solar Cycle was horribly wrong. Their reaction has been to scrub it from the internet and replace it with a "forecast" that they wrote after the cycle was well established. That shows both a deep lack of understanding and flagrant scientific dishonesty. Solar research is the primary area I would focus scientific endeavour. In the meantime, there is much that can be done whatever changes the climate undergoes. The main one here is energy use reduction, about which I have been a strong advocate in many threads (especially building design and insulation). Governments ignore all the easy, big changes in favour of trivial ones that won't affect the money the major players give to their political parties. And I have made these reductions in my own homes, so I am practising what I preach.
I'm also with Ben on nuclear power, which I have also been promoting for decades, and I spent about 15 years teaching physics to try and get a few more able to contribute.

Slasher

Re: Climate Disruption.

#13 Post by Slasher » Sat Jun 23, 2018 3:01 pm

Another reason why man-made GW is a scam...



I like the way that bloody ranting Oz woman was STFU'd. :YMAPPLAUSE: No doubt to me a brainless left-wing ALP or greenie-voting idiot.

Can't speak for all banks but while on a visit to my Singapore bank HQ in 2016 after the main financial discussions were concluded, I enquired about this global warming rubbish and its prediction of rising sea level. Has it impacted on the bank's property loans and development policy? For example can I take out a 30 year loan on some property on Beach Rd even though water levels are expected to permanently flood the whole place in a couple of decades (as I understood it))?

He looked at me for a moment then got on the blower. After he hung up he said for the record there's no change to its loan policy and that GW may result "in a few extra thunderstorms each year."

Off the record he said all banks in Singapore and their overseas affiliates do not have any loan changes whatsoever with respect to GW predictions.

And that's in no-***** level-headed we-don't-take-silly-risks Singapore. I wonder what the response would be from banks in Frankston, Williamstown, Bondi, Cottesloe and Port Stanvac in Oz, as well as London and elsewhere? :-?

Edit: He was a bit out on the 13.8 billion years bit - that's actually the estimated age of the Universe. Our particular specie has only been around for what...100,000 or so? Anyway it doesn't detract from his argument.

Sisemen

Re: Climate Disruption.

#14 Post by Sisemen » Sat Jun 23, 2018 3:56 pm

Whilst in no way scientific, I would point to the wailings and gnashing of teeth from the erstwhile “expert” on climate change Professor Tim Flannery (a paeleontologist!) who predicted massive rises of sea levels within a few years. He bought a house on the banks of the swanky Sydney suburb of Hawkesbury River!

His other predictions have equally been a total crock, and yet he still gets lauded as a guru!! Go figure.

Slasher

Re: Climate Disruption.

#15 Post by Slasher » Sat Jun 23, 2018 4:08 pm

Fox3WheresMyBanana wrote:
Sat Jan 13, 2018 11:33 am
We are man-made climate change deniers, not climate change deniers.
I do not class myself as a denier Fox3, but a disagreer using the fundamental Science principles to separate fact from *****. As you are no doubt well aware Science, unlike organised Religion and its similar institution Politics, is by its very nature free enquiry and debate so that the absolute facts and truth can be established and then acted on. To be labeled a denier has a religious overtone which the zealots like to psychologically do. But indeed this AGW crap has gone from being a scientific enquiry in the late 70s (first asked by Dr Carl Sagan IIRC) to an imposed 21st century religion for the gullible masses (eventual aim of course is a redistribution of Global Wealth in accordance with the SI manifesto).

Yes indeed the holy GW church clerics and adherents brand us as deniers - "blasphemers" would be more accurate - but in scientific circles no.

As an aside I've oft lamented it's an unfortunate fact of life that we have to share the world with f**kheads whether we like it or not, and there's nothing we can do about it. But when these dicks take aim at our wallets it ceases to be a joke. This is yet another reason I believe my decision to permanently settle down in a non-Western country was the right one.

Edit: See Sise? Buying property on the Hawkesbury proves even Tim the Dickman doesn't believe his own *****.

Magnus
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 3484
Joined: Thu Sep 10, 2015 12:42 pm
Location: Edinburgh
Gender:
Age: 71

Re: Climate Disruption.

#16 Post by Magnus » Sat Jun 23, 2018 4:37 pm

Did Gore not buy a beachfront house in CA while he was touting his "inconvenient truth" *****?

AtomKraft
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 2549
Joined: Wed Aug 26, 2015 8:05 am
Location: Planet Claire
Gender:
Age: 63

Re: Climate Disruption.

#17 Post by AtomKraft » Sun Jun 24, 2018 1:02 am

My manager told me, that change is good.

User avatar
Fox3WheresMyBanana
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 12987
Joined: Thu Sep 03, 2015 9:51 pm
Location: Great White North
Gender:
Age: 61

Re: Climate Disruption.

#18 Post by Fox3WheresMyBanana » Sun Jun 24, 2018 9:03 am

..for him ;)

AtomKraft
Chief Pilot
Chief Pilot
Posts: 2549
Joined: Wed Aug 26, 2015 8:05 am
Location: Planet Claire
Gender:
Age: 63

Re: Climate Disruption.

#19 Post by AtomKraft » Mon Jun 25, 2018 10:12 am

What do we actually KNOW about our planets temperature?

Well, we know that without influence from us, it's been a lot hotter and also a lot colder than it is now.

So we know it's always changing, but the position of the AGW brigade is that we'd prefer it to stay just like it is at the moment.

We know the temp. is slowly rising, but we'd like it to be rising ever so slightly more slowly. Hands up anyone who know the change in temp over the last 100 years?


Just for a minute though, let's accept that our industrial activity is influencing the Global temperature.
So the observed rise in temp must be comprised of an AGW component and the natural component, ie the change that would have taken place naturally had we been absent.

Hands up anyone at the back of the class who knows the natural, non anthropogenic value?

Anyone?

Fair enough, that's because it is an unknown value.

But for us to know the anthropogenic value, ie the bit that we wish to fiddle with, first we need to figure out how much the Global temperature has changed.

So,first we need to measure the Global temp today. To within 0.1 degree Celsius. It's no use measuring just to the nearest whole degree, because we know the change in temp over the last 100 years is LESS THAN ONE DEGREE CELSIUS!

Then we need to figure out the same value, to the same accuracy, say 100 years ago.....(really?).
We can then subtract one from the other, which will give us the observed change.
I believe this comes out at 0.6 - 0.8 Celsius over the last 100 years- hardly a knicker moistening number IMHO- but most AGW proponents don't know ANY of the numbers.

Now, from our 0.6- 0.8 C, we must subtract the natural component-whatever it is, which will leave us the AGW component to fret over. But wait! We don't know the natural value, so we cannot subtract it!

For all we know, the natural inclination of the Earth might be a steep cooling trend, and it's only our industrial activity saving us from slipping into a catastrophic new ice age!

Knickers not needing untwisted yet....

Sisemen

Re: Climate Disruption.

#20 Post by Sisemen » Mon Jun 25, 2018 11:36 am

There really ought to be a “like” button to save writing posts. Atom :-bd :-bd

Post Reply