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EdwardT
Trad climber
Retired
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Dec 13, 2016 - 11:55am PT
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Only a couple of years ago, some mainstream skeptics were still saying that the planet hadn’t warmed since the late 1990s, or that carbon dioxide wasn’t the main cause of any warming actually observed.
Which mainstream skeptics were making those claims? I'm especially interested on the ones who admitted their views were wrong.
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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Dec 13, 2016 - 01:27pm PT
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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Dec 13, 2016 - 01:45pm PT
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That's a 1 ton hauling a trailer with two snow machines in 4 wheel Robert.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Dec 13, 2016 - 02:40pm PT
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Let's settle this once and for all. You guys on the skeptical side can put your best debate team together, and I'll suggest one for our side. I'll go first.
Batting first in my lineup is Ed Hartouni. He's proved himself on this thread as someone with a good on-base average, solid.
Second; Isaac Asimov - I always liked his Foundation Trilogy.
Third; Carl Sagan - I'm not a big fan of turtlenecks, but it's hard to come up with a more sincere smart guy.
For clean-up, I'm going to go with Elon Musk. He's kind of mixture of Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla with a little Rockefeller thrown in.
Batting fifth; Neil deGrasse Tyson. See description for Sagan.
Sixth up; Stephen Hawking - Considering that he might have the highest IQ of the bunch, I have him here because this subject only occupies about 0.01 percent of his attention.
Batting seventh; David Suzuki. Smart guy, well-spoken, great hair for an old guy.
Batting eight; Beyoncé - I'm thinking that I would like to watch her walk up to the plate.
Rounding out my lineup, Al Gore - for no particular reason.
Your lineup?
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
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Dec 13, 2016 - 07:30pm PT
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Sumner...Why don't you just admit it...You're a pussy- whipped wanna -be yuppy who's only self-gratification comes from killing wildlife , bragging about climbing and sawing 2x6's in half with a dull blade..,It's all about you , Rush Limbaugh , and whatever the next rich as#@&%e client tells you to believe..I'm sick of your whiny belly aching...Grow a pair...
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 13, 2016 - 07:56pm PT
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Recent history has disproved the dire predictions of at least three of your seers predictions. We have the population bomb with its projections of mass starvation, peak oil with its scheduled rapid decline by 1970...
you forgot another one, actually a big one... in 1947-1949 the raging debate was disarming after the war, in particular, whether or not the Soviets posed an existential threat to the USA.
On the basis of the risk that we would have to wage a WWIII, the USA embarked on a massive arms race that lasted about 30 years, and nearly bankrupted the USA, it did the Soviet Union.
But WWIII never happened.
Using your logic, rick, we can conclude that that arms race was a total waste of taxpayers dollars, that we should never have listened to those "negative" voices screaming that we were in grave danger.
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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Dec 13, 2016 - 08:19pm PT
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Probably not Ed, although I wasn't there and not privy to intelligence on that issue. It did, however as you note, vanquish our greatest enemy of the latter half of the 20th century without exchanging so much as a direct shot-proxy conflicts excluded.
Now as far as your situation and the new incoming political reality. Aren't you ready for retirement anyway. If not I'm sure the energy department could actually use a nuclear physicist who's been involved with the weapons stockpile, researched nuclear energy, has never published a single AGW paper nor been on a taxpayer payed vacation to the cop parties.
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
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Dec 13, 2016 - 08:41pm PT
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Rick has no logic , just paranoia and perceived loss of personal freedom , a by-product of the corporate sponsored brain washing that keeps Rick and other wanna - be tough guys in a constant state of fear while subserviant to the corporate needs of raping the planet for short term profits at the expense of the common good ...Common sense policy's that benefit the masses , affordable health care , clean air , safe food and water are villianized in an attemp to con these tough guys into voting against their best interest... Get tough...
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F
climber
away from the ground
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Dec 13, 2016 - 09:09pm PT
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I went skiing today.
Therefore AGW is a crock.
That about covers it.
Just ignore what's happening in Shismaref and Kivalina. Those aren't even real towns, right Rick?
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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Dec 13, 2016 - 09:31pm PT
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That's right F. It was just our government imposing western civilization on nomadic natives under the banner of liberal good works. The natives themselves knew better than to put permanent habitation on the shifting sands of storm ravaged shorelines and barrier islands. Don't blame them for accepting a handout, blame the fools insisting on it.
It shouldn't stop Robert, but the studies must shift to fully documenting natural physical agents of change with a focus towards resilient engineering and long term adaptation. No more free rides for incompetents pushing criminal extremist schemes.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 14, 2016 - 12:00am PT
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...the studies must shift to fully documenting natural physical agents of change...
they do "fully document" all aspects of the change, the largest contemporary agent being human activity...
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Dec 14, 2016 - 04:12am PT
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Milton Keynes and David Rand would show that everyone in your line-up is irrelevant. They know that the 'scientific evidence', and the IQ-glamour-cred of the experts, aren't even the issues anymore.
Sheesh, tough crowd. I guess I could have picked some of the team from the actual climate scientist pool, which we all know constitutes 97 to 99% of them, but I didn't think anybody would know their names.
By the way, of course the scientific evidence matters. Much of what the climate scientists do with that evidence is use it in predictive models.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Dec 14, 2016 - 07:24am PT
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So, I guess I could change out Al Gore for scientist #91 in Malemute's list - Oppenheimer - cause I like the name.
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Dec 14, 2016 - 09:40am PT
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Hey! I know #94!!
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Dec 15, 2016 - 08:36pm PT
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TTradster posted a link to a very interesting paper that I have just gotten around to reading:
NATURE GEOSCIENCE, VOL 9, APRIL 2016, page 325
DOI: 10.1038/NGEO2681
Anthropogenic carbon release rate unprecedented during the past 66 million years
Richard E. Zeebe, Andy Ridgwell and James C. Zachos
Abstract
Carbon release rates from anthropogenic sources reached a record high of 10 Pg C/yr in 2014. Geologic analogues from past transient climate changes could provide invaluable constraints on the response of the climate system to such perturbations, but only if the associated carbon release rates can be reliably reconstructed. The Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) is known at present to have the highest carbon release rates of the past 66 million years, but robust estimates of the initial rate and onset duration are hindered by uncertainties in age models. Here we introduce a new method to extract rates of change from a sedimentary record based on the relative timing of climate and carbon cycle changes, without the need for an age model. We apply this method to stable carbon and oxygen isotope records from the New Jersey shelf using timeseries analysis and carbon cycle–climate modelling.We calculate that the initial carbon release during the onset of the PETM occurred over at least 4,000 years. This constrains the maximum sustained PETM carbon release rate to less than 1.1 Pg C/yr. We conclude that, given currently available records, the present anthropogenic carbon release rate is unprecedented during the past 66 million years. We suggest that such a ‘no-analogue’ state represents a fundamental challenge in constraining future climate projections. Also, future ecosystem disruptions are likely to exceed the relatively limited extinctions observed at the PETM.
As rapid reductions in anthropogenic carbon emissions (1) seem increasingly unlikely in the near future, forecasting the Earth system's response to ever-increasing emission rates has become a high-priority focus of climate research. Because climate model simulations and projections have large uncertainties--often due to the uncertain strength of feedbacks (2)--geologic analogues from past climate events are invaluable in understanding the impacts ofmassive carbon release on the Earth system (3,4). The fastest known, massive carbon release throughout the Cenozoic (past 66Myr) occurred at the onset of the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (~56Myr ago; refs 5-9). The PETM was associated with a ~5K surface temperature warming and an estimated total carbon release somewhere between current assessments of fossil fuel reserves (1,000-2,000 Pg C) and resources (~3,000-13,500 Pg C; refs 10,11). Although the PETM is widely considered the best analogue for present/future carbon release, the timescale of its onset, and hence the initial carbon release rate, have hitherto remained largely unconstrained. Determining the release rate is critical, however, if we are to draw future inferences from observed climate, ecosystem and ocean chemistry changes during the PETM (refs 3,7,8,12,13). If anthropogenic emissions rates have no analogue in Earth's recent history, then unforeseeable future responses of the climate system are possible.
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The initial carbon release during the PETM onset thus occurred over at least 4,000 yr. Using estimates of 2,500-4,500 Pg C for the initial carbon release, the maximum sustained PETM carbon release rate was therefore 0.6-1.1 Pg C/yr. Given currently available palaeorecords, we conclude that the present anthropogenic carbon release rate (~10 Pg C/yr) is unprecedented during the Cenozoic (past 66Myr). Possible known consequences of the rapid man-made carbon emissions have been extensively discussed elsewhere (2,30,34,35). Regarding impacts on ecosystems, the present/future rate of climate change and ocean acidification (12,36,37) is too fast for many species to adapt (38), which is likely to result in widespread future extinctions in marine and terrestrial environments that will substantially exceed those at the PETM (ref. 13). Given that the current rate of carbon release is unprecedented throughout the Cenozoic, we have effectively entered an era of a no-analogue state, which represents a fundamental challenge to constraining future climate projections.
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tuolumne_tradster
Trad climber
Leading Edge of North American Plate
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Dec 15, 2016 - 10:27pm PT
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We're headed back to the Eocene....
World Without Ice
http://www.es.ucsc.edu/~jzachos/pubs/Hothouse%20Earth.pdf
Summary Points (McInerney and Wing, 2011)
http://pages.geo.wvu.edu/~kammer/g231/PETM.pdf
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The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, which took place 56 Mya and lasted for 200 ka, stands as the most dramatic geological confirmation of greenhouse theory—increased CO2 in the atmosphere warmed Earth's surface.
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The large release of organic, 13C-depleted carbon caused a global carbon isotopic excursion, widespread deep-ocean acidification, and carbonate dissolution.
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Carbon was later removed from the abiotic pool on a timescale of 100 ky, primarily through silicate weathering and eventual precipitation of carbonate in the ocean and/or uptake by the biosphere and subsequent burial as organic carbon. CO2+ H20 = H2CO3 weathers silicates, releases Ca+2+ HCO3-= CaCO3+ H+ forms carbonate
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Warming associated with the carbon release implies approximately two doublings of atmospheric pCO2unless climate sensitivity was significantly different during the Paleogene.
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Although there was a major extinction of benthic foraminifera, most groups of organisms did not suffer mass extinction.
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Geographic distributions of most kinds of organisms were radically rearranged by 5–8°C of warming, with tropical forms moving poleward in both marine and terrestrial realms.
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Rapid morphological change occurred in both marine and terrestrial lineages, suggesting that organisms adjusted to climate change through evolution as well as dispersal and local extirpation. Where best understood, these evolutionary changes appear to be responses to nutrient and/or food limitation.
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Research on the PETM and other intervals of rapid global change has been driven by the idea that they provide geological parallels to future anthropogenic warming, but much remains to be done to gain information that can be acted on.
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tuolumne_tradster
Trad climber
Leading Edge of North American Plate
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Dec 18, 2016 - 05:17pm PT
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I have a great deal of respect for Chris Hedges...one of the few remaining honest journalists.
Regardless what you think of Jerry Brown, he gave an inspirational speech this week at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting in SF where he set the stage for a showdown between the Trump administration and California RE Climate Science.
http://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2016/12/this-is-what-the-resistance-sounds-like/510899/
At ~ 10min:30sec If Trump turns off the satellites [that monitor global atmospheric temerature], California will launch their own damn satellites.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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Ken M
Mountain climber
Los Angeles, Ca
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Dec 18, 2016 - 06:03pm PT
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What a great speech. Not a polished, wordsmith-type----but a clear, heartfelt type. Brown has been great for Calif.
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