Climate matters

[dspp]

(Reuters) - The last fully intact ice shelf in the Canadian Arctic has collapsed, losing more than 40% of its area in just two days at the end of July, researchers said on Thursday.
- https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-clima ... KKCN2523JH

(Reuters) - Last month was the world’s third-hottest July on record, new data show — the latest milestone in a global warming trend that has seen the three hottest Julys within the last five years.
- https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-clima ... KKCN2522XD

- dspp

[UncleEbenezer]

(Reuters) - Last month was the world’s third-hottest July on record, new data show
- dspp

Not unusually hot in Blighty. Spring was this year's exceptional weather.

I guess that shows the difference between the local/subjective experience and the global. And between "scorcher" headlines and a quiet report.

[dspp]

Greenland ice cap melting record
"The Greenland ice sheet lost a record amount of ice in 2019, equivalent to a million tonnes per minute across the year, satellite data shows. The climate crisis is heating the Arctic at double the rate in lower latitudes, and the ice cap is the biggest single contributor to sea level rise, which already imperils coasts around the world."
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... te-in-2019

- dspp

[dspp]

"Young activists from Portugal have filed the first climate change case at the European court of human rights in Strasbourg, demanding 33 countries make more ambitious emissions cuts to safeguard their future physical and mental wellbeing."

"The plaintiffs – four children and two young adults – want the standard-setting court to issue binding orders on the 33 states, which include the EU as well as the UK, Norway, Russia, Turkey, Switzerland and Ukraine,"

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2020/se ... pean-court

- dspp

[dspp]

For the first time, climate scientists have compiled a continuous, high-fidelity record of variations in Earth's climate extending 66 million years into the past. The record reveals four distinctive climate states, which the researchers dubbed Hothouse, Warmhouse, Coolhouse, and Icehouse.

https://phys.org/news/2020-09-high-fide ... 0the%20sun.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6509/1383

- dspp

[Sorcery]

For the first time, climate scientists have compiled a continuous, high-fidelity record of variations in Earth's climate extending 66 million years into the past. The record reveals four distinctive climate states, which the researchers dubbed Hothouse, Warmhouse, Coolhouse, and Icehouse.

https://phys.org/news/2020-09-high-fide ... 0the%20sun.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6509/1383

- dspp

To my mind and others, getting out of the ice-house state ought to be a goal. Cold kills.

[Nimrod103]

For the first time, climate scientists have compiled a continuous, high-fidelity record of variations in Earth's climate extending 66 million years into the past. The record reveals four distinctive climate states, which the researchers dubbed Hothouse, Warmhouse, Coolhouse, and Icehouse.

https://phys.org/news/2020-09-high-fide ... 0the%20sun.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6509/1383

- dspp

These authors attribute the heating/cooling stages entirely to the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. In the past, geologists have explained the steady Cenozoic cooling by the movement of Antarctica to cover the South Pole, the separation of the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean by Panama, and the growth of the unprecedented mountain range of the Himalayas - these changes having an overwhelming effect on World weather patterns.

So it is geologists versus climatologists.

[Gengulphus]

For the first time, climate scientists have compiled a continuous, high-fidelity record of variations in Earth's climate extending 66 million years into the past. The record reveals four distinctive climate states, which the researchers dubbed Hothouse, Warmhouse, Coolhouse, and Icehouse.

https://phys.org/news/2020-09-high-fide ... 0the%20sun.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6509/1383

To my mind and others, getting out of the ice-house state ought to be a goal. Cold kills.

So does heat! The Arctic and Antarctic are pretty deadly places to a human unless they have the right equipment and skills, and wildlife needs quite major adaptations to live in them, but the same can be said of the Sahara and various other hot deserts...

I do sympathise with your feeling that a bit of warming would be pleasant. But one has to remember that here in the UK, we live in a cool temperate part of the world, which is the sort of place where both warmer summers and less cold winters would be pleasant, and neither would greatly inconvenience us - which isn't to say that we wouldn't be seeing somewhat more people dying in heat waves, just that it wouldn't be a huge effect and would probably be (more than?) counterbalanced by fewer people dying in "Beasts from the East" and the like. For those living in the tropics, though, it could be seriously bad...

And for anyone living in low-lying areas, whether in this country or elsewhere, there's the insidious and slow (so far!) problem of the sea level rises caused by a warmer climate melting ice sheets. Both protecting the low-lying areas and moving to higher ground have high costs, and there's the danger of incurring both if the sea level rises overwhelm the protection attempts... And even for those living on higher ground, there might well be problems in the longer term if too many end up trying to move to higher ground...

Gengulphus

[Sorcery]

For the first time, climate scientists have compiled a continuous, high-fidelity record of variations in Earth's climate extending 66 million years into the past. The record reveals four distinctive climate states, which the researchers dubbed Hothouse, Warmhouse, Coolhouse, and Icehouse.

https://phys.org/news/2020-09-high-fide ... 0the%20sun.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6509/1383

To my mind and others, getting out of the ice-house state ought to be a goal. Cold kills.

So does heat! The Arctic and Antarctic are pretty deadly places to a human unless they have the right equipment and skills, and wildlife needs quite major adaptations to live in them, but the same can be said of the Sahara and various other hot deserts...

I do sympathise with your feeling that a bit of warming would be pleasant. But one has to remember that here in the UK, we live in a cool temperate part of the world, which is the sort of place where both warmer summers and less cold winters would be pleasant, and neither would greatly inconvenience us - which isn't to say that we wouldthen't be seeing somewhat more people dying in heat waves, just that it wouldn't be a huge effect and would probably be (more than?) counterbalanced by fewer people dying in "Beasts from the East" and the like. For those living in the tropics, though, it could be seriously bad...

And for anyone living in low-lying areas, whether in this country or elsewhere, there's the insidious and slow (so far!) problem of the sea level rises caused by a warmer climate melting ice sheets. Both protecting the low-lying areas and moving to higher ground have high costs, and there's the danger of incurring both if the sea level rises overwhelm the protection attempts... And even for those living on higher ground, there might well be problems in the longer term if too many end up trying to move to higher ground...

Gengulphus

I agree with you about the ice caps, especially Greenland and the Antarctic, the North Pole is sea ice so while totemic, it's not going to change sea levels. It was the graph from phys.org that prompted my reply. It looks like temperatures now do not yet exceed the icehouse maximums. Regarding deaths from heat, one is normally ok with shade. Deaths from cold such as being wet and in sub zero temperatures you get hypothermia very quickly without a fire.
I have heard arguments that in the tropics temperature is self limiting. As heat increases >> evaporation >> clouds (reducing sunlight) >> rain in the evening.

[dspp]

To my mind and others, getting out of the ice-house state ought to be a goal. Cold kills.

So does heat! The Arctic and Antarctic are pretty deadly places to a human unless they have the right equipment and skills, and wildlife needs quite major adaptations to live in them, but the same can be said of the Sahara and various other hot deserts...

I do sympathise with your feeling that a bit of warming would be pleasant. But one has to remember that here in the UK, we live in a cool temperate part of the world, which is the sort of place where both warmer summers and less cold winters would be pleasant, and neither would greatly inconvenience us - which isn't to say that we wouldthen't be seeing somewhat more people dying in heat waves, just that it wouldn't be a huge effect and would probably be (more than?) counterbalanced by fewer people dying in "Beasts from the East" and the like. For those living in the tropics, though, it could be seriously bad...

And for anyone living in low-lying areas, whether in this country or elsewhere, there's the insidious and slow (so far!) problem of the sea level rises caused by a warmer climate melting ice sheets. Both protecting the low-lying areas and moving to higher ground have high costs, and there's the danger of incurring both if the sea level rises overwhelm the protection attempts... And even for those living on higher ground, there might well be problems in the longer term if too many end up trying to move to higher ground...

Gengulphus

I agree with you about the ice caps, especially Greenland and the Antarctic, the North Pole is sea ice so while totemic, it's not going to change sea levels. It was the graph from phys.org that prompted my reply. It looks like temperatures now do not yet exceed the icehouse maximums. Regarding deaths from heat, one is normally ok with shade. Deaths from cold such as being wet and in sub zero temperatures you get hypothermia very quickly without a fire.
I have heard arguments that in the tropics temperature is self limiting. As heat increases >> evaporation >> clouds (reducing sunlight) >> rain in the evening.

Spot any problems with heat ? Humans cannot adapt as fast as this can move, nor can the general ecosystem that humanity relies upon.



(credit & licence per wiki: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fire-Forest.jpg)

[Sorcery]

For the first time, climate scientists have compiled a continuous, high-fidelity record of variations in Earth's climate extending 66 million years into the past. The record reveals four distinctive climate states, which the researchers dubbed Hothouse, Warmhouse, Coolhouse, and Icehouse.

https://phys.org/news/2020-09-high-fide ... 0the%20sun.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/369/6509/1383

- dspp

There is a really interesting alternative interpretation of the high fidelity earth climate history article. Willis Eschenbach on Watts up with that writes here https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/09/15/ ... -hothouse/

He has downloaded the data and rearranged it into a much more informative graph. See figure 5 isolated here https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/w ... C692&ssl=1

Let's assume he has done it correctly for the moment. What does the graph imply?
The present is dated from the year 1950.
a) The present 1950 has the lowest CO2 levels of the the last 67 million years.
b) The present 1950 has the lowest temperature levels of the the last 67 million years.
c) Temperatures can be static for millions of years despite CO2 levels ranging from 300ppm to 800ppm (see turquoise line).
d) CO2 and temperature do not appear linked.
e) Temperature looks like it's chaotic (or possibly geologically driven) with several stable levels over time until 3,3m years ago when we descended into an ice-house climate and have not yet recovered from.

What happened 3m years ago? Central America formed joining South and North america which prevented currents to/from the tropical Atlantic & Pacific. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/image ... -the-world
Just another coincidence perhaps.

It's a stunning graph which if correct tells us much more about climate than the original paper. Well done Willis EschenBach.

[XFool]

There is a really interesting alternative interpretation of the high fidelity earth climate history article. Willis Eschenbach on Watts up with that writes here https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/09/15/ ... -hothouse/

Yeah?

“Dire” … here’s their alarmist graphic, showing the temperature since dinosaurs 67 million years ago (or “67 mya” as they say, which actually means 67 million years before 1950 … go figure).

So that would be 67 million and seventy years ago then.

Sorry! Couldn't resist that one.

[Sorcery]

There is a really interesting alternative interpretation of the high fidelity earth climate history article. Willis Eschenbach on Watts up with that writes here https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/09/15/ ... -hothouse/

Yeah?

“Dire” … here’s their alarmist graphic, showing the temperature since dinosaurs 67 million years ago (or “67 mya” as they say, which actually means 67 million years before 1950 … go figure).

So that would be 67 million and seventy years ago then.

Sorry! Couldn't resist that one.

You are welcome, XFool. I don't understand what you mean by your word "Yeah?" or your insert of "dire" in an apparent quote, when as far as I can see the word dire has not been used. As for

So that would be 67 million and seventy years ago then.

yes, 67,000,070 years ago from 2020. I am not sure an imprecision of 1 in a million matters much in this context. Cheers.

[Gengulphus]

“Dire” … here’s their alarmist graphic, showing the temperature since dinosaurs 67 million years ago (or “67 mya” as they say, which actually means 67 million years before 1950 … go figure).

So that would be 67 million and seventy years ago then.

Sorry! Couldn't resist that one.

You are welcome, XFool. I don't understand what you mean by your word "Yeah?" or your insert of "dire" in an apparent quote, when as far as I can see the word dire has not been used. ...

It is a genuine quote, but not from this thread - instead, it comes from the link https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/09/15/ ... -hothouse/ that you (Sorcery) gave...

By the way, XFool, if you quote from anywhere other than the thread you're posting in, it's a good idea to say where you're quoting from - three words "From your link:" or "From Sorcery's link:" before the quote are all that would have been needed to avoid being suspected of inventing quotes, not just by Sorcery but also by me yesterday and quite possibly by other readers as well...

Gengulphus

[XFool]

There is a really interesting alternative interpretation of the high fidelity earth climate history article. Willis Eschenbach on Watts up with that writes here https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/09/15/ ... -hothouse/

Yeah?

“Dire” … here’s their alarmist graphic, showing the temperature since dinosaurs 67 million years ago (or “67 mya” as they say, which actually means 67 million years before 1950 … go figure).

So that would be 67 million and seventy years ago then.

Sorry! Couldn't resist that one.

You are welcome, XFool. I don't understand what you mean by your word "Yeah?" or your insert of "dire" in an apparent quote, when as far as I can see the word dire has not been used. As for

So that would be 67 million and seventy years ago then.

yes, 67,000,070 years ago from 2020. I am not sure an imprecision of 1 in a million matters much in this context. Cheers.

Thank you for your reply, Sorcery, I will attempt to explain my post.

WRT my "Yeah?", I think you may take it as both an acknowledgement of your reference to Willis Eschenbch's post on Watts Up With That - as in a simple "Yes" - with the question mark possibly indicating a slightly quizzically raised eyebrow. Or, more boldly, perhaps even a soupçon of sarcasm. i.e. I know, in general terms, what is coming...

Regarding the strange occurrence of "Dire" in my quote, it was, as Gengulphus has already posted, in the article you linked to. My quote was a straight copy of an entire, short, paragraph from Eschenbch's post. I made no alteration to his text beyon emphasising the last phrase (see below). It is confusing because the word at the start of the paragraph is itself a quote ("Dire") by Eschenbach from the previous paragraph in his own article - which itself is a quote by Eschenbach from elsewhere, which he doesn't attribute.

Searching on the text in bold at the start of Eschenbergs's article: "Earth barreling toward ‘Hothouse’ state not seen in 50 million years,epic new climate record shows" reveals it to be from an article in Live Science:

https://www.livescience.com/oldest-climate-record-ever-cenozoic-era.html

The final part of the second paragraph there is that quoted by Eschenbach, with the offending word shown:

Now, in a new study published today (Sept. 10) in the journal Science, researchers have analyzed the chemical elements in thousands of foram samples to build the most detailed climate record of Earth ever — and it reveals just how dire our current climate situation is.

Now, if I had been Eschenbach, I would have quoted the word accompanied by a question mark, as "Dire"? Similarly to my own use of a question mark in my original post on here - "Yeah?"

Regarding my comment "So that would be 67 million and seventy years ago then." You say "I am not sure an imprecision of 1 in a million matters much in this context."

Quite so! That was my very point. Why worry about 70 years in 67 million years? It was the very comment "... go figure" in Eschenbach's paragraph -

(or “67 mya” as they say, which actually means 67 million years before 1950 … go figure)

that I highlighted in my quote, precisely because I thought it both an odd and rather funny point to make!

There are other slight strangenesses in the Eschenbach article, IMO. For instance, he refers both in his text and in the legend on his chart Fig 5. to "the blue dots" for individual data points. There are no blue dots, I see only clear yellow dots. Is Eschenbach colour blind? (One of us must be!)

I hope this helps.

[XFool]

By the way, XFool, if you quote from anywhere other than the thread you're posting in, it's a good idea to say where you're quoting from - three words "From your link:" or "From Sorcery's link:" before the quote are all that would have been needed to avoid being suspected of inventing quotes, not just by Sorcery but also by me yesterday and quite possibly by other readers as well...

Gengulphus

Thank you for your sage advice, Gengulphus.

It is often difficult when posting - because one is too close to the intended meaning - to fully appreciate possible ambiguities or potential for misunderstanding. It did briefly occur to me at the time to attribute it, inline, to Eschenbach. But as he isn't AFAIK a TLF member I felt that might look 'dodgy'! So I just left it, feeling the source was obvious, in context. The tangled history of how "Dire" came to be there didn't help.

[Sorcery]

There are other slight strangenesses in the Eschenbach article, IMO. For instance, he refers both in his text and in the legend on his chart Fig 5. to "the blue dots" for individual data points. There are no blue dots, I see only clear yellow dots. Is Eschenbach colour blind? (One of us must be!)

I hope this helps.

Fine, I think the blue dots are clearest at the bottom left of figure 5. Elsewhere they merge into a solid blue, The points outside the thick xxxxhouse lines are the individual data ponts, the average of which informs the thick house lines.
The yellow dots relate to the dates eg "55 mya".

Hope this helps too.

[88V8]

Well we can't even bring ourselves to fix the problem we think we've got - excess C02 - let alone trifling impedimenta such as mountain ranges and Panama.
But all this, as usual, ignores the fact that what's currently wrong with the planet is the imbalance arising from the excessive human population and consequent erasure of nature.

It profoundly depresses me that so few people are willing to air the issue. Perhaps because most people live in cities and know little of nature, think everything is fine because they can see elephants and harvest mice on the tele.
Even Attenborough, who is a patron of Population Mattters, of which I am a member https://populationmatters.org/, has pretty much given up on public discussion due to the hate mail he gets from nasty people who pretend that unlimited population growth is a good thing.

V8

[Sorcery]

Well we can't even bring ourselves to fix the problem we think we've got - excess C02 - let alone trifling impedimenta such as mountain ranges and Panama.
But all this, as usual, ignores the fact that what's currently wrong with the planet is the imbalance arising from the excessive human population and consequent erasure of nature.

It profoundly depresses me that so few people are willing to air the issue. Perhaps because most people live in cities and know little of nature, think everything is fine because they can see elephants and harvest mice on the tele.
Even Attenborough, who is a patron of Population Mattters, of which I am a member https://populationmatters.org/, has pretty much given up on public discussion due to the hate mail he gets from nasty people who pretend that unlimited population growth is a good thing.

V8

Well that seemed to have put a stop on any debate. I sympathise with your views, regarding environmental damage to the rainforests and seas. The green movement ought to concentrate on those. I am not so sure about CO2, we know we are adding it to the atmosphere, yet from the Eschenbach's graph there have been million year+ periods where changing CO2 levels have not had temperature effects. We think that additional CO2 levels are greening the Sahel. More food (CO2) for the plants while they lose less water in the process of extracting it.
The current icehouse climate that we are living in, has the potential to create the population disaster that will rectify the problem (of overpopulation) that you desire. Another ice age will almost certainly do it for us. Yet at great cost in terms of suffering and possible loss of civilisation. Best to do it voluntarily with no exceptions for the religious.

I am not sure I understand the CO2 = heating argument. The 800 pound gorilla in the room is water vapour which is also a greenhouse gas, not as powerful as CO2 or methane, but there is a lot more of it and it cannot be eliminated while retaining seas. There seems to be a Gaia like symmetry about heat with water present. More warmth tends to more water vapour tends to more clouds tends to more rain. Clouds restrict the sun's light. Condensation and rain are exothermic processes releasing heat to space.

[UncleEbenezer]

I am not sure I understand the CO2 = heating argument. The 800 pound gorilla in the room is water vapour which is also a greenhouse gas, not as powerful as CO2 or methane, but there is a lot more of it and it cannot be eliminated while retaining seas. There seems to be a Gaia like symmetry about heat with water present. More warmth tends to more water vapour tends to more clouds tends to more rain. Clouds restrict the sun's light. Condensation and rain are exothermic processes releasing heat to space.

On the contrary, water vapour has by far the biggest single effect.

But it's weather, not climate. The key point is that there's a water cycle in long-term balance. Burning hydrocarbons generates water vapour, but there's somewhere for it to go (the oceans) where its volumes are utterly negligible and there's no long-term adverse effect.

Methane is something of a red herring too. It has a natural cycle on something like a 20-year timescale, so intermediate between water vapour recycling in days and CO2's geological timescales of millions of years.

CO2 also affects the metabolism. Have you ever suffered in a stuffy room?