It was also record cold the 26,27 and 26th, with night time temperatures breaking all records.
Clearly global warming is happening, and in ways nobody expected.
Combined with the shortest summer in the arctic, the early snow and below freezing temperatures there, the climate system is behaving in ways that need to be dealt with. Now.
I suspect a lot of it is that deep down the warmists don’t seriously believe the nonsense they are spouting. Their main goal is to appear intellectually and morally superior.
That’s another question that you will never get a straight answer to. Anyone can actually answer your questions, right or wrong. It’s that the ardent supporters of an undefined theory don’t that makes it such a joke.
Agree, if any response at all is forthcoming, it will most likely be comprised of one or more of the following: (1) insults; (2) unsupported insistence that the questions have already been answered elsewhere; (3) lame excuses for failure to answer the questions; and (4) evasive non-responses.
Regarding solar: I read about the developments in R&D for solar frequently and it seems to me it is on a path to become competitive with other forms of energy, and hopefully even beat the cost of other forms.
It takes years for the research to get into products but it sure looks promising.
I’ll take a stab at this: first off, I am not sure we will ever decide to reduce the use of fossil fuels. We may decide to subsidize other sources of energy or discourage the use of fossil fuels through a carbon tax, but I doubt that the rate which we use fossil fuels will actually decrease, it will just grow more slowly. My guess is that we will burn every scrap of fossil fuels that it is economically viable to burn, our economy and agricultural industry is too dependent on it to do otherwise.
Regardless of what we do, the BRICs will continue to burn oil and coal in prodigious quantities to fund their growth, and who can blame them? China will also invest heavily in alternative energy sources, they already are the world leader in this area and invest more than the US. Because of this investment, the Chinese economy will eclipse the us and European economies in the coming century, because whether we reduce fossil fuel usage or not, the use of alternative energy sources is going to grow exponentially, the world population and economy will demand it. There are just too many people in the developing world to rely on fossil fuels even if we burn it as quickly as possible. The US economy, especially, will miss out on this gold rush due to ideologically driven policies of the US government.
All that said, if we do institute some type of shortsided policy that penalizes fossil fuel usage without offsetting the costs; of course manufactures will move to China, India, or Mexico if they can produce goods cheaper there and make a profit. This already happens all the time and is the reason that much of the world aluminum smelting occurs in the middle east and Iceland: cheap energy. And I would hope the manufacturing would move there, if we can cut the manufacturing costs of goods by moving production to China, it is like everyone in this country receives a raise. Of course some people would also lose their jobs, but not that many; even though we manufacture ~20% of the worlds goods here in the US, we mostly do it all with robots as we long ago lost the ability to compete using people due to high labor costs. Still, I would hope that any policy we would use to incentivize a switch to alternative energy sources would be relativly cost neutral both for manufacturers and consumers. It would behoove us to try, as I believe that the gold rush of this century will be in alternative energy and we should try to get as large a piece of the pie as possible.
Finally, I disagree with you that we need to switch to nuclear or solar or wind to realize a big drop in CO2 emission. We could get a pretty big drop just focusing on efficiency, especially in our transoprtation fleet. Switching much of our long distance shipping to rail would do a lot. Increasing fuel efficiency standards and incentivizing hybrids would do still more. Investing in algae and switch grass based Bio fuels could do a ton without even relying on hybrid technologies or increasing fuel efficiency standards. All that said, I still think investing in nuclear would be a good idea and I support it.
But we are not talking about policy in this thread. We are talking about how the National Academy of sciences are a bunch of lying liberal douchebags who are wrong about climate change and that FXMastermind is right because it was colder last Tuesday than in 1981. That and all the sea level rises, the migration of both animal and plant species northward and higher in elevation, the longer growing seasons, the earlier flowering of plants, the earlier melting of waterways and lakes in the spring, the disappearing glaciers, and the unprecedented changes in weather patterns that we are increasingly seeing is not real and is a plot by NASA scientists to take away our freedom and money. This, at least as far as I can tell, is what this thread is about. If it was about policy responses, I would bet that you and I could find many points of agreement if we discussed it over a couple of beers and tried not to retreat to ideology. But people don’t really do this anymore, do they?
When I see it’s used , I consider it as a catch all that blames global warming on mostly CO increase, based on the physics of CO2 and atmospheric physics. The theoretical (actually hypothetical) parts are that CO2 is the primary driver of climate, both now and in the past. A feedback effect is assumed, to explain how the very small forcing from CO2 could exert enough influence to control the long term climate changes we know have occurred. It is assumed CO2 is the primary long term influence on global energy balance. It assumes an increase in CO2 is directly connected to rising global temperatures. And that fall in CO2 would lead to a glaciation period. Low levels of CO2 are assumed to be the reason we have been in an ice age for a very long time. Feedbacks from albedo changes in the polar regions is also assumed to lead to more warming.
Rising global temperatures, acidification of the oceans, changes in plant growth. The rising temperatures are expected to lead to reduction of sea ice, reduction in permafrost, glaciers, ice fields, and snow cover. Decreased temperature gradients from tropics to poles, as well as milder winters with less snow. Increased hydroogical cycle, increased drought, more energetic storms, and SST will increase. Sea level will rise due to thermal expansion and melting of ice. Tree lines will rise, migration patterns will change. Earlier springs, later first frosts. Warmer night time temperatures, and more heat waves, with less extreme cold events. Rossby waves and jet streams will increase or decrease. Corals and other marine life will die from too fast of a change in Ph
Plants will increase growth rates and resist heat and water deprivation better, but this is also true for pest/weeds. Trees will grow faster, and species will migrate towards the poles and higher up the tree line.
This is a simplistic list.
Evidence to support CO2 increase and CO2driven warming involves decreasing Ph of the oceans. Warming in the polar regions and in winter. Upper atmospheric heating faster than surface. Increased tropospheric water vapor. Higher tropopause. Increase in stream flow for wet areas, decreased rain and moisture for dry areas. Increase in strong storms. Changes in the jet stream, a movement towards the poles, especially in winter. Decreased snow pack and snow coverage, with early melt times in the arctic. Sea ice forming later. Fewer blizzards and the ones that do occur should have a more polar track. Fewer cold events in the sub tropics, with less frost. Increased growth rate of trees and crops, as well as weeds. decreasing O2 levels to match CO2 increase (shows the CO2 is from burning, not released from oceans due to warming)
That is an incomplete list, but it was from memory so sue me.
I combined the evidence increase in CO2 from human activities and the global warming for ease.
In this thread all kinds of shit has actually come up, from politics and economics to ideology, physics and meteorological issues, theory and hypothesis, religious like rants, insults and screed, some threadshitting and a bunch of tap dancing.
And here I thought it was going to be train wreck.
I can’t tell where you are coming from anymore, for few posts you parrot standard denialist drival, then the next post you say something reasonable intelligent. Whatever, I am happy that I can contribute to this incoherent train wreck.
I agree that it would hurt the USA disproporionately to the benefits if the USA unilaterally decides to impose measures to reduce its CO2 output because fossil fuels will simply be burnt elsewhere and the USA isn’t the majority contributor to CO2 anyway (relative to the rest of the world put together will soon be.)
But I disagree with the characterization of a monetary expense to carbon emissions as “not offsetting the costs”. Rather, it would be the rest of the world that would not be offsetting the community costs of carbon emissions. Indeed, by one way of looking at it, failing to enact any expenses for carbon emissions is subsidizing them, since they impose costs on the rest of the world without having to pay any of it themselves.
Why would anyone expect you to be on topic, factual and/or sincere when all your posts so far have been specious, mangled misrepresentations FX?
“Thanks Cecil”?
It’s like having a “Goebbels in training” auditioning for the part of resident propaganda machine. I’m pleased to see you are at least occassionally capable of brevity. Keep working on that… It’s a trait like your confusion that I hope you can take to an extreme.
Actually that’s pretty much the gist of your objection. Nobody could be THAT stupid to ignore all of the evidence, so you must be a paid shill.
You’ve illustrated the problem with everyone only looking out for themselves. If we don’t keep burning coal, the logic goes, then China or India who don’t give a damn about global warming will keep doing it and…something bad will happen to the US.
Whether or not we can get people to agree on carbon limitations is irrelevant to what we should do ourselves. By investing in green energy, just like how we don’t burn tons of lumber anymore or use coal to power trains and ships, we get our foot in the door at the next wave of energy that’s technologically superior to coal and oil. Because those things WILL run out, and anyone who hasn’t tried to move beyond it will be fucked.
People like FX just wants to keep burning coal and oil thinking it’ll last forever, or that it’ll never impact them or their children because they’ll be long gone by then. I’m looking out for what the world will be like 30 or 50 years from now. We can stand to burn a little less coal and try to create efficient and inexpensive solar cells or energy creation from other fuels. I’m uninterested in what limiting our fossil fuel consumption does for the quarterly earnings report for Chevron in the next year and more interested in what it would do for breathing when I’m 65, cause breathing is rad