What happens when global warming is seen to be real?

[ReserveGrowthRulz]

From NASA:

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/featu ... /page3.php

"Models predict that Earth will warm between 2 and 6 degrees Celsius in the next century. When global warming has happened at various times in the past two million years, it has taken the planet about 5,000 years to warm 5 degrees. The predicted rate of warming for the next century is at least 20 times faster. This rate of change is extremely unusual."

Except when it happens much faster.

[BritDownUnder]

Australia is currently at 50 C.

Assuming global warming is real, what will happen when we see enough bad weather/climate to make us suddenly realise we are stuffed?

Australia indeed reached a temperature of 49.9 C at the weather station at Nullarbor in a remote part of South Australia. I think the overall record is in the low fifties. It is also under drought and having bushfire events in many places.

I have not noticed more heat but it has certainly rained less this year. In fact I would go as far as to say it has stopped raining completely since February this year. The higher temperatures and the drought may be related and may also both be due to climate change. As far as I know the drought is supposedly caused by a combination of (1) cooler than usual Indian Ocean temperatures off the Western Australian coast - surprisingly most of the moisture making our rain even where I live less than 100 km from the Pacific Ocean still comes from the Indian Ocean - and (2) land clearing of bushland to make cropland.

I have no problem in agreeing that combustion of fossil fuels by humans is causing rapid temperature rise and climate change. I am also happy to have people posting links to scientific documents detailing even higher absolute temperature rises (maybe from a lower starting level though) at the end of the Younger Dryas period. I suspect humans burning things did not have a hand in this event but am happy to be proven otherwise.

This forum would be quite dull if it became the realm of just climate change believers who want to tax and spend their way to paradise. The ad hominem attacks get a bit annoying and have resulted in a lot of interesting posters leaving this forum.

[emordnilap]

The ad hominem attacks get a bit annoying and have resulted in a lot of interesting posters leaving this forum.

Very true.

As for CC, I know of people on the continent who at times are having to stay in, blinds drawn, aircon on, because it's impossible to go out. Some areas have permanent water restrictions. The heat is debilitating.

The effects of CC in these particular islands is stormy and disruptive.

No-one wants to be the the one to change. No-one wants to pay for past mistakes.

[kenneal - lagger]

Regarding the attacks on RGR for being a denier, I too wondered if you, RGR, had become a denier with one of your posts above. It may just be a case of misunderstanding based on "Two nations separated by a common language," your sense of humour or just, what I see as, your attitude which comes across as you looking down your nose at us "peak oilers."

Any way, the misunderstanding is all cleared up, sort of, so can we just get on with the discussions on what to do, when to do it and how to tackle the issues?

[Catweazle]

From NASA:

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/featu ... /page3.php

"Models predict that Earth will warm between 2 and 6 degrees Celsius in the next century. When global warming has happened at various times in the past two million years, it has taken the planet about 5,000 years to warm 5 degrees. The predicted rate of warming for the next century is at least 20 times faster. This rate of change is extremely unusual."

Except when it happens much faster.

And recently no less! How dare these things happen without people involved!!

The hubris of our species in general, and thermometer watchers in particular, thinking that only what we have seen in our modern industrial perspective matters. Sure...it matters to us...and who are WE but insignificant lifeforms on an insignificant planet revolving around an insignificant star.

Perspective folks...perspective. Smoke'im while you got'im, because REGARDLESS of what we are doing to our biosphere, none of us gets out of here alive.

That's interesting, thanks. I'd never heard of it, so I looked it up.

Perhaps I'm reading it wrong, but it looks to me as if many climate scientists regard this as being caused by an "event".

"The prevailing theory is that the Younger Dryas was caused by significant reduction or shutdown of the North Atlantic “Conveyor�, which circulates warm tropical waters northward, in response to a sudden influx of fresh water from Lake Agassiz and deglaciation in North America. Geological evidence for such an event is thus far lacking. The global climate would then have become locked into the new state until freezing removed the fresh water “lid� from the north Atlantic Ocean.
An alternative theory suggests instead that the jet stream shifted northward in response to the changing topographic forcing of the melting North American ice sheet, bringing more rain to the North Atlantic which freshened the ocean surface enough to slow the thermohaline circulation. There is also some evidence that a solar flare may have been responsible for the megafaunal extinction, but it cannot explain the apparent variability in the extinction across all continents."

https://cof.quantumfuturegroup.org/events/5365

Of course, I don't need to understand this, because people who are experts in this field do understand it, and mostly agree that current climate change is man-made.

[ReserveGrowthRulz]

Regarding the attacks on RGR for being a denier, I too wondered if you, RGR, had become a denier with one of your posts above.

I admit that because I don't respond to climate change threads with the normal, "UE required" mindless nodding of the sycophant, that I don't come across as one of the true believers.

[kenneal - lagger]

Judging by the amount of time you spend here you are not above a little time wasting your self, RGR.

[ReserveGrowthRulz]

From NASA:

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/featu ... /page3.php

"Models predict that Earth will warm between 2 and 6 degrees Celsius in the next century. When global warming has happened at various times in the past two million years, it has taken the planet about 5,000 years to warm 5 degrees. The predicted rate of warming for the next century is at least 20 times faster. This rate of change is extremely unusual."

Except when it happens much faster.

And recently no less! How dare these things happen without people involved!!

[ReserveGrowthRulz]

Judging by the amount of time you spend here you are not above a little time wasting your self, RGR.

Oh please.

[Mark]

Judging by the amount of time you spend here you are not above a little time wasting your self, RGR.

Oh please. A) We all have hobbies, B) my time spent on internet forums has dropped precipitously since peak oil doom became a punchline to resource economic jokes, and C) I love slumming with my old homies from back in the day!

Or he's paid to distract and disrupt ?
We know is that he comes from an Oil Industry background, so it wouldn't be unheard of....

[ReserveGrowthRulz]

Or he's paid to distract and disrupt ?

It was once claimed I was a CIA provocateur!!!

[woodburner]

Unfortunately round here “ad hominem� rules. OK?

[kenneal - lagger]

RGR, I think most of us can distinguish between instant events such as a meteor strike which can inflict catastrophic climate change on the whole earth within hours, flood basalts which might take a couple of weeks, months or maybe a year or two to affect the whole earth and changes in the Milankovich cycles which usually take several hundred or thousands of years to change the world's climate significantly.

Then there are localised changes such as the return to ice age conditions in Northern Europe after the end of the last ice age, thought to be caused by the breaking of an ice dam in North America which formed the St Lawrence river and which stopped the Gulf Stream and took only about 30 years to cool Europe again. The Medieval Warm Period was also a localised Northern European event although the cause of that is unknown as far as I know; the rest of the world was slightly warmer at the time.

When talking about current CO2 driven climate change climate scientists generally talk about the difference in the speed of change between the cyclical and the modern. So changing our climate drastically over 100 to 150 years is a sudden event compared with the natural cyclical changes but obviously not as sudden as a meteor strike would be.

[ReserveGrowthRulz]

RGR, I think most of us can distinguish between instant events such as a meteor strike which can inflict catastrophic climate change on the whole earth within hours, flood basalts which might take a couple of weeks, months or maybe a year or two to affect the whole earth and changes in the Milankovich cycles which usually take several hundred or thousands of years to change the world's climate significantly.

I believe you. What fascinates me is that those same people than use the word "fast" when describing current temperature trends.

[kenneal - lagger]

The difference, RGR, is that we can do something about Anthropomorphic Global Warming whereas we can't do anything about the natural events.