The well known period Hansen called the “Altithermal”, or the HCO, is usually a pretty solid bit of science, with sea levels and ice records and pollen and sediment data and all kinds of solid evidence for the changes. See here. When our planet was 2 to 4 degrees warmer than now, there was no runaway global warming or methane disaster, even when sea levels were much higher, and the arctic much warmer.
Does this mean we are not fucked? I can’t say, because that warming isn’t understood, even with our best guess theory of solar insolation as driver of climate change, the truth is nobody actually knows. Hell, there are serious fights over every last thing these days, so that some say there was no warm period recently, or that the little ice age wasn’t really that cold, even recent changes are denied.
It’s sickening really. Like the Wikipedia article I linked to. It actually says
Which is horseshit, pure original research you will only find on Wikipedia.
Nothing is out of bounds for the fuckheads who are trying to alarm you. They will say or do anything to promote their cause.
Strictly speaking you are correct, but there is actually a good basis for optimism. From the fact that the climate has been around for a long time, one can be pretty confident that it’s reasonably stable. If a rock has been in roughly the same place for a long time, is it more likely that the rock is at the bottom of a valley or at the top of a hill? The smart money is on the first choice.
I would agree, and I was quite surprised to find that my reasoning about the Altithermal and current changes was not only thought about, but actually stated in a paper, back in 1982.
Certainly the past periods, where it was much warmer than current levels, did not lead to either a methane disaster, or run away feedbacks, or drastic worldwide drought. In fact, it was much warmer in the past, something the alarmists might grudgingly admit, but they quickly add “but the rate of change”, or “our current civilization and sea level”, or something, anything, to try and keep the fear going.
Certainly if we see conditions return to the HCO levels, we can expect at least 3 meters of sea level rise. But this took thousands of years, so there is no chance any of us will even know if it happens.
Of course it’s also possible warming will result in glaciers at high altitudes growing, which might result in sea levels dropping. (the models predict both Greenland and Antarctica will see increases in high altitude ice mass)
With the recent findings of high non polar ice increasing at high altitudes, most likely due to an increase is snow, it’s actual an unknown what will happen. That the sun seems to be entering a grand minimum just makes it that much more uncertain.
ROFLMAO … Do you know what it takes to become a California high school economics teacher ??? No, I don’t know either, I think just a Bachelor degree and a two month teacher’s course … what else can you do with a 16[sup]th[/sup] Century French Literature degree?
However, he is correct about the existence of these Atmospheric River events, except they are highly localized, say 25 to 50 miles wide. So that within this narrow band we can see truly amazing amounts of rainfall in a short period of time, at least compared to normal rainfall amounts for the West Coast (we don’t see tropical cyclones or steady-state thunderstorms). I’m looking at the Wikipedia article on Floods in California and it lists the event our favorite high school economics teacher is referring to, but this looks like a localized event in the Sacramento area.
The thing about predicting flooding rains in California every year is that eventually, I’ll be right !!!
There is no doubt such a disaster will eventually occur, which is interesting. There isn’t any way to prepare for it. Aside from at the individual level, which means moving before it happens. Considering the effect on the entire country from such a disaster, it would actually be a national disaster of sorts. Except for the price spike would benefit other farmers, not effected.
But knowing full well such events have happened, and they are actually how droughts end 40% of the time, it’s prudent to be honest about the possibility, and what will happen from such a rain event.
Like with Texas. Droughts there almost always end with extreme tropical moisture, and flooding. Yet when it happened this year, some people were surprised. It certainly didn’t help that official prophets were predicting an eternal drought (from global warming of course). And just like in Texas and Arkansas and surrounding regions, when Cali does get relief (and the flooding that almost always occurs when it happens), some idiot will then blame the drought busting rains on global warming.
It reminds me of the tsunami situation in Japan. Even knowing full well it has happened multiple times before, people act now, as if it will not happen again. And they build and profit and then act surprised when it happens.
It happens so frequently and with such surety, it is human nature.
You might say the difference now is there is a boogieman to blame for the weather. But that is also something that has always happened. In the past other things were blamed. It’s very hard to grasp that mother nature just doesn’t give a flying fuck about human beings.
Hell, the entire city of Seattle is at risk from Mt. Rainier.
There just isn’t anything that can realistically be done about some risks.
(But I do wish that states along the Mississippi River would empty out more water catchments, to absorb overflow in big floods. Big Miss. floods are absolutely known to recur, on a regular basis. The condemnation of some low-lying areas as water-meadows would be less costly than the damage we know will happen in the next big flood. And this has been known for well over a century.)
Not at all … it’s all about risk/benefit … Sacramento can earn far more money during the 150 years to rebuild herself many times over … a little flood every once in a while is no great loss. Besides, it’s only the poor and middle class that suffer … the rich live up in the Auburn Hills … so very little risk, big big rewards …
Dumping radionucleotides into the world’s oceans would keep humans from eating everything in them oceans … that would be GOOD for the oceans … because right now y’all are completely stripping all the life out of the oceans … a healthy dose of plutonium could only bring about recovery of said life.
Yep! I wouldn’t build a power reactor on a steep slope of any mountain, but a recently-active volcano is that much worse. I also wouldn’t build one in the flood-plain of the Mississippi River, or below sea level in New Orleans.
(Hades! I wouldn’t build a bloomin’ hen-house below sea level in New Orleans!)
Does that sound idiotic? Blaming weather on global warming? Yes, yes it does. Especially cold and snow. Blaming weather on global warming is bad enough, but blaming record cold, or snow, or ice, or record cold and sea ice, on global warming sounds even worse.
Like blaming a record cold high temperature (Tmax) on global warming, which is exactly how this topic started off.
The thing is, I see actual climate experts do this. Blame record cold and snow on global warming. After it happens of course, no consensus climate scientist ever predicted record cold and increased snow fall on global warming, before it happened.
But, and this is very unknown, there were some scientist who predicted this, and they did it in 1956. And in 1976. They were of course dismissed as wrong. Because their theory was considered wrong.
And then there is Cohen (and a few others now) who predicted such things (based on theory) in 2004, or 2005, it’s hard to actually say.
Even more surprising, some wrote about it in the 1930’s, and 40’s. Not Australia getting record cold and snow, but the idea that a warming ice free arctic ocean could influence the weather. Cause more snow and make winters colder.
Which is, of course, how scientific inquiry works. You develop your entire theory, write it down on a piece of parchment, and lock it away in a vault. There it sits, immutable for all eternity. Nothing is ever updated, nobody changes their position, everything is set in stone. This sacrosanct tradition is what has given us all of our technological and medical advances.
We see it on full-color display in this thread. FX has developed (to put it charitably) his “theory” (feeling especially generous today), and despite the embarrassment of evidence to the contrary, he’s chained to it. Sad, really, but that’s science.