Global warming - more bad news !

[Winston001]

And again much sense Ocean, such that it is a shame to cut it up but needs must if the Devil drives........

Any system that's been around for as long as those that make up our ecology is an internally stable negative feedback system. If it's not then there's simply no way it would last as long as it has. This means that every significant change which can affect those systems has so far failed to destroy the global ecology.....

Exactement. No-one except maybe James Lovelock is predicting the end of life on Planet Earth. Indeed Gaia will prevail - including an ecological slot for humans. The problem is that there will be far fewer if climate change reaches a tipping point.

Now that isn't necessarily a bad thing. I firmly believe our population is triple what Earth can sustain.

What is a bad thing is the misery and turmoil faced by billions of people moving back from flooded cities, starving because clean water has run out, dying because diseases gain a hold on weakened people. The wars for land and water might be a bit harsh too.

The changes we have made and continue to make to the systems which make up our environment are historically tiny. The worst we have done so far is nothing compared to the changes some of the larger solar events, meteor strikes or massive volcanic activity have made. The planet's ecological systems have responded by changing, adapting, in short the system corrects those changes. Sanx has already pointed to the effect temperature has on Co2 absorption, one of the more powerful self correcting mechinisms which protect our climate from dramatic change. Not in fact the cause of global climate catastrophy, simply part of a very complex maplum Asimeteror strike dinasaurs
chine.

Yes and no. I'm unaware of any similar release of carbon and greenhouse gases within the geological instant of 150 years. Humanity is running a vast experiment. Have a look at the plume of pollution over Asia and its effects. http://online.wsj.com/public/article...996069354.html

Certainly there have been cataclysmic events in Earth's history with dramatic effects on the ecology and the climate. No argument. The best known is the meteor strike that may have wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

In fact 99% of all species which have ever lived are extinct. Which means what we see today including ourselves has come from a huge and brutally winnowed genetic pool.

However we rather like our small place at the end of pre-history. It behoves us to look after the planet for our own sakes as well as the biology. Our puny efforts may just be enough to cause many more extinctions and kill many humans. That some will survive is little consolation to my own modest contribution to the gene pool.

[Ocean1]

And again much sense Ocean, such that it is a shame to cut it up but needs must if the Devil drives........

You planning on out-surviving me in this thread too dude? Shouldn't be hard, I'm fooked. Last shot eh?

The Gaia hypothesis is a wonderfuly romanticised biological version of the concept of negative feedback systems control. I like it, but it ain’t practically useful as a theory, no numbers. In any such system the so called tipping point you refer to represents the introduction of an input variable larger that that which the system can manage. As I stated earlier, the group of inter-related systems we call our ecology have sustained far larger variations than those we are responsible for. It’s ticked along quite nicely for far longer than we’ve been here sustaining an environment, parts of which we would have happily survived in.

Volcanic events have in the past produced Co2 levels within the span of mere months we couldn’t hope to match in centuries no matter how much evil technology we employed. Yes, the climate was affected, but not to the extent of any “tipping point”. Those puny efforts you refer to are just that, too minor to produce anything approaching instability.

I’d love to know exactly which variables might affect which outcomes, and which species would suffer as a result. I simply don’t have time to wade through all the bullshit. Still, I’m comfortable that a planetary climate system as sophisticated and powerful as ours won’t be damaged by us to the extent that we won’t be able to survive. I believe the scale and complexity of our planet genuinely confuses people's sense of scale. I’m not saying you’re all stupid, it’s just that we’re not experienced in thinking in terms of planetary engineering, it’s fucking scary huge.

Minor climate changes are inevitable, and won’t necessarily be contributed to by us to any great extent. They will however produce change that will require significant large scale intervention to minimise the loss of existing habitat and take advantage of new ones. Very small changes in cyclic oceanic currents can change atmospheric climate dramatically. We may over the next few centuries find whole ecologies changing or migrating, the evidence is there that this is a continual process, it’s been happening since well before we got here.

How we survive, and how far we can help other species survive depends not on how frugal we are how or guilty we might feel about our role here, but on technology and the will to deploy it to best effect. The techies are quite capable of doing their bit, are the diplomats and politicians? I fucking hope so, we’ll be needing those skills to tweak climates other than ours…

[crshbndct]

i just had a thought:
water expands when it freezes right? so if the north pole melts, doesnts that mean that the seal level will actually go down a bit?

i dunno i will probably be fossil fuel before this stuff affects me anyway

[idleidolidyll]

i just had a thought:
water expands when it freezes right? so if the north pole melts, doesnts that mean that the seal level will actually go down a bit?

i dunno i will probably be fossil fuel before this stuff affects me anyway

No, it's the mass of the water that displaces the oceans and that remains static regardless of temperature.

It's not the Arctic that's scary, it will have exactly zero change on the heights of the oceans as it floats already.
It's the Greenland and Antarctic ice that scares many scientists as this ice lies largely on land. Just the Greenland ice cap could raise sea levels by up to 5 metres or so. In the Earths warm periods, the oceans were up to 150 metres higher than they are now.

[Wolf]

We watched Waterworld a week or so back and, while it had some cool action, the post-melt world was ludicrous.

They only had legends of dry land and had never seen it. There would still be dry land but less of it and it would be a different shape - there would be chains and clumps of islands in place of some of the continents etc, but the dry land would be there.

When they found dry land it was an idyllic forested land with no visible occupants, just the remnants of one small family. In reality any land would be being used to its maximum potential by the survivors of the flooding - cities, farms etc. And they'd probably be hostile to any of the water dwellers who wanted a piece of their resources.

In reality, the waterborne cities/industries etc would be close to the shore-line of the "new" landmasses and tied to their economies. Think along the lines of all those boats around Hong Kong.

Coastal areas and some low-lying inland areas would be flooded (bye-bye to Holland and the Waikato ) but even with a 150m rise there would still be a fair amount of land in the higher areas. Everything would have to become more concentrated - cities, farming and ecological areas, industry etc.

Floating platforms would be built to reclaim useable area. Possibly houseboats would become popular, more bridges would have to be built to link some of the islands.

There would be a tremendous cost in resources, of course (salvaging stuff from the flooded areas would be possible but costly in resources).

As mentioned, there's potential for famine, war and overcrowding due to the dispossessed seeking higher ground.

I'm not going to be drawn into the likelihood of this happening and whether mankind making a few token changes can stave it off - as argued, we could all revert to living in unheated, unlit caves and eat our veges and animals raw while walking to work (making nets, growing crops for the local market, fishing and raising animals the way it was done pre-industrial revolution) and still not make enough of a difference to the climate to stave off a global warming and polar melt (Antarctica and ice-covered landmasses in the Artic Circle, ignore the floating Arctic ice itself.)

[Winston001]

You planning on out-surviving me in this thread too dude? Shouldn't be hard, I'm fooked. Last shot eh?

The Gaia hypothesis is a wonderfuly romanticised biological version of the concept of negative feedback systems control. I like it, but it ain’t practically useful as a theory, no numbers.........

Yeah I'm no fan of Lovelock and Gaia but it is a useful image for considering the Earth as an entire biosphere.

Someone (you?) earlier decried the misdirected efforts of politicians and business.

Here is how I see it. Politicians are good at politics, not so good at science. Civil servants/policy wonks are good at bureacracy, but also not too good at science. Both are filters through which science tries to get messages across and unfortunately the information is dumbed down at each step. The media - with exceptions - are no brighter and don't research.

Politics is the art of the possible. If George Bush announced a 50% carbon tax on fuel the Republicans would be political history - it just ain't going to happen. All politicians know they have to lead voters to a point where they accept change and are simply too scared to make the hard decisions.

The NZ govt has vast resources and could establish tidal power stations, thermocline (ocean) stations, mandate solar panels on all new homes, push through wind farms, build 21st century clean coal plants etc etc. Frankly a couple of nuclear plants is the simple answer. We'd have to face tax rises but it can all be done.

I also believe technology will save us longterm but it might be our grandchildren who see it. Fusion generation is the future but is still in the lab at present.

[Winston001]

The oceans have risen about 300mm (1 foot) over the past 300 years which we know from old tidal gauges.

Sea level rises occur for two reasons:

1 Landbased ice melting and adding to the sea.

2 Thermal expansion. Water expands when it gets warmer.

This isn't all quite as simple as it looks. Pacific islands going underwater may be caused by the shelf of land sinking rather than water rising so we can't assume this alone indicates sea level rise. Soetimes land slumps because water has been pumped out from under it for centuries.

Nevertheless satellite data supports a continued sea level rise over the whole globe.

[Winston001]

According to these ice core samples, CO2 as measured in parts per million , was higher 140,000 years ago than it is today.

Please note that in comparrison to the figures from 20,00 years ago and about 140,000 years ago the rise is very similar.

Now please answer me this


140,000 years ago.

Who was depleting the rain forest, driving around in hydrocarbon burning vehicles and poluting the atmosphere with great amounts of CO2.

Merde

Ok. This graph is often pointed to by anti-warming skeptics. Fair enough.

The warming (melt) recorded by the icecores slightly precedes (by as little as 200 years) increases in CO2 levels. The gas bubbles trapped in the ice are always younger than the ice because ice is made up of snow which gradually compresses and pushes the bubbles down.

The warming itself is believed to occur when the Earth wobbles closer to the sun. Just like Mars, but less dramatically the Earth moves closer to and further away from the sun over thousands of years. This is one cause of ice ages.

When the planet warms, CO2 is released by oceans, and then amplifies the warming which increases even more until stability is reached. The point is that the release of CO2 as a result of an initial waming has been known for years. It is still a greenhouse gas and contributes to further warming.

[Finn]

The rising level of our seas is caused by all the fat people swimming. Keep them off the beach and we'll be fine.

[Mr Merde]

The rising level of our seas is caused by all the fat people swimming. Keep them off the beach and we'll be fine.

Maybe they are trying to revert back to the aquatic. Why deny them the boyancy they so badly crave.

All this from a fat, middle aged, bald, hetrosexual, married, Caucasian, middle income, male. A member of the most opressed and least represented minority in NZ.

Merde

[Hitcher]

Why deny them the boyancy they so badly crave.

What if it is girlancy that they crave?

[Finn]

All this from a fat, middle aged, bald, hetrosexual, married, Caucasian, middle income, male.

You should be ashamed.

[Mr Merde]

What if it is girlancy that they crave?

Sow mi speiling is shirt 2day.

I thank you for the correction.

At least you arent one of the nuns that used to cane me for not getting my grammer correct.

Or are you?


Merde

[Mr Merde]

You should be ashamed.

I am so ashamed I could................


Merde

[avgas]

Biofuels are more renewable than oil. Fact.
The sky is still falling, we will still drown and the earth will still die. But Biofuels have atleast given us and alternative to paying for George Bush to pick fights.