deGrasse Tyson & Nye on Climate Change

[Thor]

I love the word AssAssin though.

[ken0042]

Originally Posted by Thor

Sure the doom and gloom can be annoying, but lets be clear, there is a lot of scientists in many varying fields sounding alarm bells that we are on a trajectory towards doing massive harm to our planet, our species and our ecosystem. The costs of which in dollars will be beyond immense.
(snip)

Now we could tell people to not use scare tactics, to sugar coat this, but why? If you accept the science and understand what is at stake here then we need to speak truth to the masses.

Part of the problem is some of the notable scientists and public figures who are sounding the alarm bells are also hypocritical in their own carbon footprint. I'm not talking about travel, as that could be considered necessary to get the message out. We all know about how David Suzuki and Al Gore live in massive houses with huge carbon footprints; and more than one house in Suzuki's case.

I know there are also people like Bill Nye who have gone to great lengths to green their homes; so obviously it isn't everybody. However there are enough to give the people who doubt human involvement reason to pause. If the people advocating this can't be bothered to green their own homes, why should I?

[Slava]

Originally Posted by Daradon

<snipped to prevent wall of text>

To finish, we need to start changing now. No matter what the damage to the economy. Don't anyone fool themselves. There is nothing noble in prolonging this debate anymore. It's protectionism pure and simple.

<snipped to prevent wall of text>

Well suffice it to say that this is where you and I disagree. I read the report posted by troutman (which I read but didn't dissect entirely). I think that some pieces of that are questionable in how they're presented, and I don't think that is just stalling for the sake of stalling.

I just have the opinion that to entirely turn the economy on its head with no debate or questioning along the way would be just plain irresponsible. I don't think that is an anti-science point of view either. In reality its the heart of science to question things and examine them.

Originally Posted by Thor

<snipped to prevent a wall of text>

Emissions are going up, by a lot every year because of China, India's massive growth and the papers are coming out constantly about new and worrisome issues popping up.

The scariest things that have been a hot topic are the methane release happening in the Northern tundras of our planet, a greenhouse gas that is x10 worse than co2 and this has in the past been a signal that a speeding up of warming is coming as it acts as a multiplier to warming. They had predicted the tundra releasing methane wouldn't happen for another 50 years or more, but its starting now which is scary because of the possibility of what we call runaway warming which will happen at a tipping point as has happened in the past.

The point where we reach devastation is when the frozen methane in the bottom of the oceans starts to go is when we will start to see massive damage to our planet, and the eventual destruction of the ocean ecosystem and massive species die off; all while above land we will see massive droughts, extreme weather, more volcanic activity which is another huge kick in the nuts as the glaciers covering so many of the volcanoes in the northern tundra will no longer have the massive pressure on top of them to keep them in check.

<snipped to prevent a wall of text>

I think the generations 100 years from now will look back at this time with utter disgust at how we ignored all the signs, ignored those most trusted to warn us and did it out of greed, apathy, feelings of helplessness, and an unwillingness to change our ways because of how we are accustomed to low gas prices, and allowed the massive fossil fuel industry to obfuscate the issue like big tobacco did to delay us doing anything.

For the scientists that work with this stuff day to day, they are at a loss for what to do, all the consensus and honest analysis and prediction of what is to come is no small matter, its the survival of our species and nothing less.

I have snipped away here to prevent this post from being two massive quotes, and apologize if I was too drastic.

I wanted to ask about this point regarding the methane release though. I don't think that I can do this without coming across as a denier, even though its not my intention, so I'm just going to ask it anyway. Part of my reason for asking this is the read I did of the report that troutman posted wherein they talk about this issue a little and point to it causing the sea levels to increase by about 12 meters in the coming years. My questions on this are pretty basic, probably because I'm not well enough versed on the topic (and I'm sure someone will be happy to tell me that!):

a) how much of that change is natural cycle that we have seen and verified over the millions of years of the earths existence, and how much is attributable to man? I think that both sides agree that the planet has warmed and cooled over the millennia, and we haven't always had the polar ice caps on earth.

b) if the changes we see today are as a result of the greater natural cycles of the planet, is there much we can do about this? Are we at the point of peeing on a forest fire?

c) this is one that I will just get flamed for, but I'm genuinely curious and not trying to be obtuse. So how do we know that the cause of the increase in temperatures is due to carbon emissions? Carbon dioxide only makes up a miniscule percentage of the atmosphere (0.04%?), and the graphs in all of these reports love to show how emissions have increased...but temperatures don't seem to have increased along with the emissions?

In general though when I see these dire projections and they're decades in the future it looks like a lot of extrapolation. Given how poor people are at forecasting and considering how many factors we have to model and predict here it seems almost impossible that someone is going to be accurate. We don't know as much as we think we do; we're basing these projections on a very small sample of roughly 100 years of observations. In general, the dire predictions that people seem to love to throw out there do as much damage to getting things done as anything else; we heard about how acid rain was going to kill all of our lakes, then the Amazon rainforest was going to be cut down completely. (Both deforestation an protection of water are absolutely critical in my personal opinion, but both have really fallen off the radar). Then we had the hole in the ozone layer and we were all going to be cancerous and a whole host of problems were going to happen. Interestingly though that problem is solved I guess, or at least it doesn't seem to be a concern, and in the report from troutman above it cites ozone as a GHG, so who knows what to do with that! I feel like we've been hearing about rising seas for years now, and same with the polar ice cap melting. I'm sure that if you were to go back you would see predictions that are dire and were supposed to happen by the year 2000, or 2010.

Anyway, I hope this comes across as intended, and that is genuinely curious and interested as opposed to argumentative. I guess I just think its an incredibly complex issue and taking a hardline position one way or the other seems very difficult to say the least.

[Fuzz]

One interesting aspect of sea level change is that it doesn't appear to be a universal rise. For instance, if you look at Alaska, you see that sea level has been dropping(top graph):
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/slt...ifictrends.htm
Yet further down the coast it is rising. On the global map:
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sl.../sltrends.html
The Scandinavian countries are seeing a large decrease yet just south it is increasing. Any idea on the reason for this? When you look at the average trends they look to be in the 0-3 ft/century range.

[troutman]

I'm fairly certain I provided information in answer to a) b) and c) in this or another thread. Will look for it . . .


http://www.skepticalscience.com/

A natural cycle requires a forcing, and no known forcing exists that fits the fingerprints of observed warming - except anthropogenic greenhouse gases.

Multiple sets of independent observations find a human fingerprint on climate change.

http://www.ipcc.ch/

http://climate.nasa.gov/

Most climate scientists agree the main cause of the current global warming trend is human expansion of the "greenhouse effect"1 — warming that results when the atmosphere traps heat radiating from Earth toward space.

In its Fourth Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of 1,300 independent scientific experts from countries all over the world under the auspices of the United Nations, concluded there's a more than 90 percent probability that human activities over the past 250 years have warmed our planet.

The industrial activities that our modern civilization depends upon have raised atmospheric carbon dioxide levels from 280 parts per million to 400 parts per million in the last 150 years. The panel also concluded there's a better than 90 percent probability that human-produced greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have caused much of the observed increase in Earth's temperatures over the past 50 years.

Several lines of evidence show that current global warming cannot be explained by changes in energy from the sun.

Is it too late to prevent climate change?

Even if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, global warming would continue to happen for at least several more decades if not centuries. That’s because it takes a while for the planet (for example, the oceans) to respond, and because carbon dioxide – the predominant heat-trapping gas – lingers in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. There is a time lag between what we do and when we feel it.

Responding to climate change will involve a two-tier approach: 1) “mitigation” – reducing the flow of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere; and 2) “adaptation” – learning to live with, and adapt to, the climate change that has already been set in motion. The key question is: what will our emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants be in the years to come?

http://www.skepticalscience.com/empi...t-advanced.htm

The amount of warming caused by the anthropogenic increase in atmospheric CO2 may be one of the most misunderstood subjects in climate science. Many people think the anthropogenic warming can't be quantified, many others think it must be an insignificant amount. However, climate scientists have indeed quantified the anthropogenic contribution to global warming using empirical observations and fundamental physical equations.

Humans have increased the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere by about 40% over the past 150 years.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-...termediate.htm

That carbon dioxide causes warming is well established by physics theory and decades of laboratory measurements. This is confirmed by satellite and surface measurements that observe an enhanced greenhouse effect at the wavelengths that carbon dioxide absorb energy.

So we see that climate isn't controlled by a single factor - there are a number of influences that can change the planet's radiative balance. However, for the last 35 years, the dominant forcing has been CO2.

[Slava]

That ipcc site is so bad. There might be good information there, but the NASA page is much more user friendly.

[troutman]

I found this brochure last week that is a good introductory point for lay-people:

http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/educati...e_literacy.pdf

[Daradon]

Originally Posted by Cube Inmate

I recognize your passion for this issue. I can be equally ardent when I see an issue clearly, yet "others" refuse to agree with me. But by putting forth an argument in this manner you are widening the gap. To say "no matter what the damage to the economy" is extreme, and opens you up to being attacked as a one-sided zealot. Economy, production, standard of living...it matters A LOT, and you'll have to face the fact that your "simple truth" is not the least bit simple at all. There is a balancing act to be done, and unfortunately some people are urged to go to the opposite extreme in order to balance extreme statements like yours above.



I do not deny that there is profit to be made in "green energy." But it needs to be pointed out that "profit" in this case refers only to wealth re-distribution, not wealth creation. Energy is the "lever" we use to take basic human productivity (wealth creation) and make it industrial (MORE wealth creation). Hydrocarbons are a dense source of energy, and relatively cheap to obtain. The difference between the energy needed to extract the oil and the energy we can obtain from the oil is available to magnify our productive efforts and actually produce wealth.

"Green" energy does the same thing, as long as it costs less to harvest than it provides. But if the difference between production energy and usable energy is less favourable than for hydrocarbons, then the choice to pursue these sources will be negative in terms of wealth. Sure...some people will profit, but humanity as a whole will produce less.

That is...util the "green" energy balance legitimately exceeds that of oil...without the artificial impacts of subsidies, carbon taxes, etc.

I get that argument far more than you know. I have struggled with the balance between moderation and extremeism on this issue. I have posted many moderate calls to action.

No one listens. Same lies from O&G, same apathy from people who need to see a problem to believe it exists.

I lived moderism on this issue. So have mant others who know the problem better and can do more.

As I mentioned this problem was brought up 45 years ago. There was a general public desire to do something about it 25 years ago. The reason action has been so slow is greed and protectionism, pure and simple.

Meanwhile, 8 of the hottest years on record were in the last 10.

Tired of being moderate. Moderation got us nowhere. And loudness seems to win the day in this age. I wonder if there is a good fight anymore.

If I'm going to be proven right, which there is no scientific doubt that I will be, I'm gonna go out with my arms flailing, my middle fingers raised, chanting 'I told you so' the whole way.

Moderation has not worked.

[Daradon]

Originally Posted by Cube Inmate

To tack on one more thought... the climate-change activist method of making this a "moral" issue further widens the gap I mentioned above. Their attempts to make me feel ashamed about my lifestyle (especially when it's hypocrites like Suzuki) also provokes an over-reaction. Consider two approaches:

"Pacific atoll is at risk of drowning...would you be willing to pay an extra $0.10/litre to help prevent this from happening?"
"Well, maybe. But I want to see that money carefully accounted for, and invested in Canada to work on technological development, not sent to some banana-republic slush fund."

vs.

"Pacific atoll is at risk of drowning because of your lavish lifestyle. Since you have no conscience, we're going to tax your gas, ban your air conditioner, and pay $100B to Tonga so they can cope with what we've done to them."
"Eff you and eff them. Let them drown..."

If these people would start treating this as a practical problem, rather than some quasi-religious moral imperative, there could be less extremism both ways.

False dichotomy. A had been proposrd for a while and roundly crushed by O&G lobbyists, greedy politicians, and derp voters.

(A) was always on the table. It became (B) after common sense and moderation got crushed by power and stupidity.

Your post leads me to believe you'd pick (A) now? You can contact me on ways to get involved. Course, if you don't, you are by your own logic agreeing we can go (B) on you and lifestyle shame you.

[Daradon]

Originally Posted by Cube Inmate

To tack on one more thought... the climate-change activist method of making this a "moral" issue further widens the gap I mentioned above. Their attempts to make me feel ashamed about my lifestyle (especially when it's hypocrites like Suzuki) also provokes an over-reaction. Consider two approaches:

"Pacific atoll is at risk of drowning...would you be willing to pay an extra $0.10/litre to help prevent this from happening?"
"Well, maybe. But I want to see that money carefully accounted for, and invested in Canada to work on technological development, not sent to some banana-republic slush fund."

vs.

"Pacific atoll is at risk of drowning because of your lavish lifestyle. Since you have no conscience, we're going to tax your gas, ban your air conditioner, and pay $100B to Tonga so they can cope with what we've done to them."
"Eff you and eff them. Let them drown..."

If these people would start treating this as a practical problem, rather than some quasi-religious moral imperative, there could be less extremism both ways.

False dichotomy. A had been proposrd for a while and roundly crushed by O&G lobbyists, greedy politicians, and derp voters.

(A) was always on the table. It became (B) after common sense and moderation got crushed by power and stupidity.

Your post leads me to believe you'd pick (A) now? You can contact me on ways to get involved. Course, if you don't, you are by your own logic agreeing we can go be on you and lifestyle shame you.

[calgarygeologist]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

One interesting aspect of sea level change is that it doesn't appear to be a universal rise. For instance, if you look at Alaska, you see that sea level has been dropping(top graph):
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/slt...ifictrends.htm
Yet further down the coast it is rising. On the global map:
https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sl.../sltrends.html
The Scandinavian countries are seeing a large decrease yet just south it is increasing. Any idea on the reason for this? When you look at the average trends they look to be in the 0-3 ft/century range.

My first thought would be isostatic rebound in those regions. As the ice packs/glaciers melt in regions like Alaska or Scandinavia the weight on the land mass is reduced and as such sea level drops relatively.

[rubecube]

I think a big problem with this debate is how people consume information on it. I go to university at the moment so it's easy enough to access scientific journals on the topic and see the resounding consensus regarding man-made climate-change. However, if I have questions like Slava did, and I Google them, I have to wade through whole bunch of bull####, at which point I might start to get a little sceptical. It's too bad Google doesn't have something built into their algorithm that would allow the most scientifically-supported articles to appear at the top of the search. Mind you, that probably opens whole can of worms regarding free speech, net neutrality, etc.

[T@T]

February shatters heat record.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/17/weathe...nth/index.html

[calgarygeologist]

Originally Posted by rubecube

I think a big problem with this debate is how people consume information on it. I go to university at the moment so it's easy enough to access scientific journals on the topic and see the resounding consensus regarding man-made climate-change. However, if I have questions like Slava did, and I Google them, I have to wade through whole bunch of bull####, at which point I might start to get a little sceptical. It's too bad Google doesn't have something built into their algorithm that would allow the most scientifically-supported articles to appear at the top of the search. Mind you, that probably opens whole can of worms regarding free speech, net neutrality, etc.

Google has Google Scholar which returns only published journal results. Not all the articles are available for free though but at the very least it is possible to read an abstract.

[Thor]

Originally Posted by Slava

Well suffice it to say that this is where you and I disagree. I read the report posted by troutman (which I read but didn't dissect entirely). I think that some pieces of that are questionable in how they're presented, and I don't think that is just stalling for the sake of stalling.

I just have the opinion that to entirely turn the economy on its head with no debate or questioning along the way would be just plain irresponsible. I don't think that is an anti-science point of view either. In reality its the heart of science to question things and examine them.

But its not necessary to turn the economy on its head. What we are talking about is a new deal level of commitment from the government and a leadership role in being aggressive in research and technology which will lead to breakthroughs in helping us combat the damage. Its not an either or proposition, and the few nations that are doing great things like Germany are doing so without harm to their economy, quite often the opposite; plus they will position themselves to be in the leadership of future technology.

a) how much of that change is natural cycle that we have seen and verified over the millions of years of the earths existence, and how much is attributable to man? I think that both sides agree that the planet has warmed and cooled over the millennia, and we haven't always had the polar ice caps on earth.

We can't be sure how much is natural, and how much of it is man made. What the issue is not % of which is because of us, but at the speed of the change. Natural cycles take a long time and that gives the ecosystem and species time to slowly adapt, natural cycles will self correct easier and the earth has many triggers in climate which are part of this complex cycle.

The issue is we know now with the hockey stick example that the speed is disturbingly fast, and increasing. The term runaway heating is an excellent way of putting it, we are starting a small snowball at the top of a slope and its starting to become something we can't stop at this point, but hopefully start to slow its growth so to speak.

The key with the past warm periods and cold periods is the time frames it took for those to occur, naturally. What we are seeing now is light speed compared to slow changing climate, and that is frightening.

b) if the changes we see today are as a result of the greater natural cycles of the planet, is there much we can do about this? Are we at the point of peeing on a forest fire?

Quite a bit actually, I honestly think technology will be the savior for us, to help us clean up the mess and create new ways to create energy, pollute less and clean up the messes we've already made.

There was a terrific article many years ago (I will try to find) about the need for us to terraform and engineer the earth to sustain the billions we have and will have in the future living on earth. To stop that natural cycle of warming and cooling to ice age. We will have to have a Goldie locks zone of temperatures which will be controlled by man, using technology to monitor and keep us at a constant.

Right now we are "peeing on a forest fire" you are not wrong to make that point. However we have to start, and speed up our battle against this warming in order to avoid a disastrous next 500 years. Little changes help, but we have to deal with the big issues first, energy obviously being huge, our farming is another big one, this will happen but it will take time.

c) this is one that I will just get flamed for, but I'm genuinely curious and not trying to be obtuse. So how do we know that the cause of the increase in temperatures is due to carbon emissions? Carbon dioxide only makes up a miniscule percentage of the atmosphere (0.04%?), and the graphs in all of these reports love to show how emissions have increased...but temperatures don't seem to have increased along with the emissions?

Its minuscule but its impact is huge on earth's temperature. Small changes have significant impact, its well understood and we have a long historical understanding of the impact it has as a green house gas. The carbon cycle is massive, the earth recycles huge amounts of co2, that balance started to change 200 years ago and we've seen the tiny change in co2 in the atmosphere cause the warming we see now, and as I mentioned before the speed of it is the thing that is very alarming.

In general though when I see these dire projections and they're decades in the future it looks like a lot of extrapolation. Given how poor people are at forecasting and considering how many factors we have to model and predict here it seems almost impossible that someone is going to be accurate.

We don't know as much as we think we do; we're basing these projections on a very small sample of roughly 100 years of observations.

We do actually know way more than 100 years, we can look back 100,000s of years with ice cores, we know about ice ages and warm periods throughout millions of years thanks to samples we've studied.

In general, the dire predictions that people seem to love to throw out there do as much damage to getting things done as anything else; we heard about how acid rain was going to kill all of our lakes, then the Amazon rainforest was going to be cut down completely. (Both deforestation an protection of water are absolutely critical in my personal opinion, but both have really fallen off the radar). Then we had the hole in the ozone layer and we were all going to be cancerous and a whole host of problems were going to happen. Interestingly though that problem is solved I guess, or at least it doesn't seem to be a concern, and in the report from troutman above it cites ozone as a GHG, so who knows what to do with that! I feel like we've been hearing about rising seas for years now, and same with the polar ice cap melting. I'm sure that if you were to go back you would see predictions that are dire and were supposed to happen by the year 2000, or 2010.

But we can't just discard the data because some of the past predictions on other issues were not bang on, don't forget that sheer massive amount of data, observation and what we've learned in the last 10-20 years.

Anyway, I hope this comes across as intended, and that is genuinely curious and interested as opposed to argumentative. I guess I just think its an incredibly complex issue and taking a hardliner position one way or the other seems very difficult to say the least.

You are one of the good ones, with a genuine curiosity and not refusing to consider the question, so let me do some digging for stuff I think you need to read or even better watch on youtube, some terrific stuff that will help answer all these questions.

[Enoch Root]

Originally Posted by Daradon

I get that argument far more than you know. I have struggled with the balance between moderation and extremeism on this issue. I have posted many moderate calls to action.

No one listens. Same lies from O&G, same apathy from people who need to see a problem to believe it exists.

I lived moderism on this issue. So have mant others who know the problem better and can do more.

As I mentioned this problem was brought up 45 years ago. There was a general public desire to do something about it 25 years ago. The reason action has been so slow is greed and protectionism, pure and simple.

Meanwhile, 8 of the hottest years on record were in the last 10.

Tired of being moderate. Moderation got us nowhere. And loudness seems to win the day in this age. I wonder if there is a good fight anymore.

If I'm going to be proven right, which there is no scientific doubt that I will be, I'm gonna go out with my arms flailing, my middle fingers raised, chanting 'I told you so' the whole way.

Moderation has not worked.

Exactly what are you going to be proven right about?

[GaiJin]

Originally Posted by Thor

The key with the past warm periods and cold periods is the time frames it took for those to occur, naturally. What we are seeing now is light speed compared to slow changing climate, and that is frighteningWe do actually know way more than 100 years, we can look back 100,000s of years with ice cores, we know about ice ages and warm periods throughout millions of years thanks to samples we've studied.



But we can't just discard the data because some of the past predictions on other issues were not bang on, don't forget that sheer massive amount of data, observation and what we've learned in the last 10-20 years.

The problem goes on and on and on with the trust of the data, is it robust or is it bunk even though its peer reviewed? There are a lot of credible people calling bull on the warming data who have no financial or political skin in the game. Some of these people are just stats junkies who have repeatedly shown the warming data or the timeline of warming to be skewed.
Climateaudit.org is an interesting site to read to dig down below the headline grabbing nonsense that is often pushed out.

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by Thor

Its not an either or proposition, and the few nations that are doing great things like Germany are doing so without harm to their economy, quite often the opposite; plus they will position themselves to be in the leadership of future technology.

Germany is a terrible example and shows what happens when you let politics and ideology determine electricity generation.

In the last decade or so, all Germany has done is replace CO2-free nuclear and lower CO2 emission natural gas with biomass, wind and solar, while electricity generation from high CO2 emission coal has remained pretty much the same. It's also led to the idiocy of Germany, a relatively high latitude and cloudy country, building up 40 GW of solar capacity which produces less than half the electricity of the 10 GW of nuclear of capacity it still has in 2015.

[Dan02]

I think you can blame Fukushima for that though. They want to phase out nuclear over safety concerns whether those concerns are really reasonable or not.

[troutman]

Not knowing about climate audit, I searched for info:

http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/20...earch-history/

http://www.skepticalscience.com/curr...-accuracy.html

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Steve_McIntyre

https://www.skepticalscience.com/bro...ckey-stick.htm

Since the hockey stick paper in 1998, there have been a number of proxy studies analysing a variety of different sources including corals, stalagmites, tree rings, boreholes and ice cores. They all confirm the original hockey stick conclusion: the 20th century is the warmest in the last 1000 years and that warming was most dramatic after 1920.