My belief in Global Warming is getting shaky

[litespeed]

freeztar - You quoted me: "Quote:Originally Posted by litespeed Again, all of human history, short as it may be, has demonstrated cold is bad, warm is good." Then you wrote: "Repeating a claim does not make it true. "

MY RESPONSE: List one cold era that was good for humans.

 

You Also Wrote: " How will the Inuits fare once the seals are gone?"

MY RESPONSE: Mistakenly stipulates seals are not already numerous in many climates. Try the warf in San Francisco. Hell, EYE could live of the ones is SOUTH California with nothing more then a billy club. In addition, Polar Bears and Inuits have greatly benefited by restrictions on Harp Seal Pup harvesting. These pups grow to big seals, which are both Polar bear and Inuit food.

 

Two things on Polar Bears. First, they are thriving (not just more bears, but a Hell of a lot more bears) Polar bears 'thriving as the Arctic warms up' - Telegraph

 

Second, the only reason we have white colored brown bears is the weather got COLD. If the weather gets warm enough, they will just transform back to brown, or become extinct, to the Brown colored version they came from. BFD.

[REASON]

GW - Good thing or bad thing.

 

Regardless of whether GW is human or solar in origin; Warm is good. Cold is bad.

 

 

Not according to the U.S. Natural Hazard Statistics generated by NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) for Weather Fatalities.

 

[img=

http://www.weather.gov/os/hazstats/images/hazstat-chart07.gif]http://www.weather.gov/os/hazstats/images/hazstat-chart07.gif[/img]

The U.S. Natural Hazard Statistics provide statistical information on fatalities, injuries and damages caused by weather related hazards. These statistics are compiled by the Office of Services and the National Climatic Data Center from information contained in Storm Data, a report comprising data from NWS forecast offices in the 50 states, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Virgin Islands.

 

 

According to these stats, heat causes more fatalities than any other weather phenomenon, and you are nearly ten times more likely to die from hot weather than cold.

 

The statistics don't support your claim of "warm good, cold bad" in regard to weather related human mortality rates. In fact, they suggest the complete opposite.

[litespeed]

Reason,

 

I like your stats and you sources. However, you confuse the trees for the forest. I am talking about food production. Famine is something historical to most people alive today. That is because we have had all sorts of "Green" revolutions, as well a warm weather to plant crops in the North.

 

A few degrees colder, and all that corn used for subsidized ethanol production will be a matter for food riots in third world nations. Oh. I forgot. THAT ALREADY HAPPENED LAST YEAR. Food reserves are at one of the lowest levels in modern history. So. What do you propose as the climatic optimum for food production? The answer is simple. Optimum is now. Optimium is plus or minus [a given number degrees F].

 

You have never thought about this, have you, and you don't have a number at all.

[litespeed]

Reason

 

PS: Do I read your stat-sheet correctly. The average number of excess deaths throughout the world due to heat is 170, and cold 18. For a total of 188 excess deaths world wide due to temperature extremes?

[Eclipse Now]

OK, I'm glad that's over.

 

Now, Essay and iNow and others, have any of you seen some discussion of the limits of our modelling over the tropics? There was some outcome that did not seem precisely predicted by the models, and the climate guys seemed to be scratching their heads at it for a while. I can't remember what it was called, something about the troposphere over the tropics.... sceptics were having a go at it for a bit, but the climate guys at realclimate.org seemed to be saying it might be instrumentation accuracy issues (in other words it was really small degrees of variability out) or something like that....

 

.... anyway, if you hear anything about it in your travels, or remember a specific link on it, please let me know.

 

Another debate that seemed interesting was the role of black carbon on ice. So yes, Co2 is a major forcing yet of course the climate system is probably one of the most complex things we've ever undertaken to study, so I'm expecting a few surprises, and it may be that other forcings are also serious contenders we have to do something about. The theory that dirt from coal mines is also melting ice ran with the sceptics for a while and of course was one of the ideas on how to change the albedo on Mars and start to terraform Mars.

 

But here, doesn't it just give us yet another reason to get off the coal?

 

(And I'm always hopeful that the legitimate climate sources will finally discover some new "climate safety valve" we were never aware of before, but until then we've got to act!)

[Eclipse Now]

Hi Litespeed,

WHO says the climate-deaths are at about 200k per annum now.

The Ethics of Climate Change; and NOVA Does Dover: Scientific American Podcast

[litespeed]

Eclipse - You provided: "Climate deaths are 200k per annum now." That could be perfectly accurate but is certainly perfectly useless.

 

1) Cold Climate or hot climate deaths?

2) Is this an increase or decrease over ten years?

3) What is the criteria to determine death due to climate. For instance, 250,000 people seem to have perished due to tsunami not long ago. Nothing GW about that.

 

You can see how this is going. Get your act together before you take it on the road. Unless you address the above three issues, I see no reason to even bother reading you posts. By example, Reason informs me excess deaths due to climate extreme are a total of 188. He seems to believe he is on to something. For the life of me I do not see what.....

[litespeed]

ECLIPSE

 

I don't know how new it is, but the heat vent over the Pacific Ocean in the tropics (I believe) is something relatively new. Further, you are correct to raise the issue of black residue on ice reducing reflectivity. However, the power of CO2 forcing is in contention. For instance, the PPM CO2 over the millenia has varried hugely:

 

"Similarly, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Early Carboniferous Period were approximately 1500 ppm (parts per million), but by the Middle Carboniferous had declined to about 350 ppm -- comparable to average CO2 concentrations today...In the last 600 million years of Earth's history only the Carboniferous Period and our present age, the Quaternary Period, have witnessed CO2 levels less than 400 ppm."

 

Climate during the Carboniferous Period

[REASON]

Reason,

 

I like your stats and you sources. However, you confuse the trees for the forest. I am talking about food production. Famine is something historical to most people alive today. That is because we have had all sorts of "Green" revolutions, as well a warm weather to plant crops in the North.

 

A few degrees colder, and all that corn used for subsidized ethanol production will be a matter for food riots in third world nations. Oh. I forgot. THAT ALREADY HAPPENED LAST YEAR. Food reserves are at one of the lowest levels in modern history. So. What do you propose as the climatic optimum for food production? The answer is simple. Optimum is now. Optimium is plus or minus [a given number degrees F].

 

You have never thought about this, have you, and you don't have a number at all.

 

Sorry. I wasn't aware you were being specific about food production. I thought you just made a general statement about warm vs. cold. The information I referenced having to do with average annual weather related deaths was for a 10 year period in the United States and U.S. territories alone. The averages are not world wide. But they make an obvious point.

 

As for food production, the food riots you mentioned were caused by numerous factors that are primarily market related. According to the International Food Policy Research Institute:

The current food crisis has several causes—rising demand for food and feed, biofuels, high oil prices, climate change, stagnant agricultural productivity growth—but there is increasing evidence that the crisis is being made worse by the malfunctioning of world grain markets. Given the thinness of major markets for cereals, the restrictions on grain exports imposed by dozens of countries have resulted in additional price increases. A number of countries have adopted retail price controls, creating perverse incentives for producers. Speculative bubbles have built up, and the gap between cash and futures prices has risen, stimulating overregulation in some countries and causing some commodity exchanges in Africa and Asia to halt grain futures trading. Some food aid donors have defaulted on food aid contracts. The World Food Programme (WFP) has had difficulty getting quick access to grain for its humanitarian operations. Developing countries are urgently rebuilding their national stocks and re-examining the "merits" of self-sufficiency policies for food security despite high costs.....

So maybe we shouldn't confuse the issue.

 

It seems to me if the optimum climate conditions for food production is NOW, then why would we continue to be in denial about the warming trend that we may be influencing? Do you discount the idea that a significantly hotter climate can be disruptive to food production in various regions around the world? It seems to be in our best interest to determine the potential climate impact of continually transforming stored carbon to an atmospheric gas and whether it is affecting heat retention on this planet. If so, wouldn't it be a good idea to alter our energy production patterns to hopefully slow down any accelerated warming we are causing to protect our optimum climate conditions for food production?

[REASON]

By example, Reason informs me excess deaths due to climate extreme are a total of 188. He seems to believe he is on to something. For the life of me I do not see what.....

 

Don't play dumb with me, litespeed. I was clearly providing a statistic that was contrary to your unscientific "warm is good, cold is bad" generalization.

[litespeed]

Reason - You wrote: "It seems to me if the optimum climate conditions for food production is NOW..." Recall, I did not specify we are in a food production climate optimum. I don't know, so I asked YOU if it is now, or plus or minus specific number of degrees. You have not provided an answer.

 

My GENERAL theory that warm is good and cold is bad for living conditions (food production) etc. is two fold. First, during normal ice ages much of the Northern hemisphere is actually uninhabitable. I don't see much room for quibble here. Second, in less extreme swings, we have Britain exporting wine in Roman era, but famine and plaque in the cooler early middle ages.

 

So I am asking GW people what they would recommend as the optimum for which to aspire. 1) current climate, 2) cooler climate by ? degrees F. 3) warmer by ? degrees F. So far I have had seen little evidence the GW crowd has even evolved their thinking to even addressing this issue. "The Sky is Falling. The Sky is Falling.

 

Well put up or shut up. Climate Optimum: 1) now 2) cooler then now 3) warmer then now.

[litespeed]

Reason - You wrote: "Don't play dumb with me, litespeed. I was clearly providing a statistic that was contrary to your unscientific "warm is good, cold is bad" generalization."

 

Yeah. And you tallied about 150 excess deaths due to high temperatures. Inform me; how many people are killed by honey bees, bycycle accidents, or lightning strikes. The cold post Roman era, as well as the most recent 'Little Ice Age' killed people by the tens of millions.

 

More pertinent, a normal Ice Age would make much of North America and Europe uninhabitable. It is no accident that our post ice age climate is generally described as a climate optimum. But YOU worry about getting to warm. So you want to reduce global warming? Tell, exactly, by how much cooler you wish to make it?

[JMJones0424]

While I think the combative nature of litespeed's recent comments are not productive, I do think he has a point. As one living in Texas, I am not particularly fond of the notion of an increasingly warming climate. However, warming surely will not eliminate prime agricultural zones, rather it would just move those zones closer to the poles. Since global warming is a fact, as I see it, regardless of how rapidly we can reduce CO2 emissions in the future, the damage, for the time being, is already done. Has any research been done into how the expected warming will effect more northern and southern areas to produce food? How does the expected change in rainfall patterns either help or hurt those newly warmed regions? Is it significant that those areas closer to the poles also receive significantly more variable sunlight throughout the seasons?

[Eclipse Now]

ECLIPSE

 

I don't know how new it is, but the heat vent over the Pacific Ocean in the tropics (I believe) is something relatively new. Further, you are correct to raise the issue of black residue on ice reducing reflectivity. However, the power of CO2 forcing is in contention. For instance, the PPM CO2 over the millenia has varried hugely:

 

"Similarly, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Early Carboniferous Period were approximately 1500 ppm (parts per million), but by the Middle Carboniferous had declined to about 350 ppm -- comparable to average CO2 concentrations today...In the last 600 million years of Earth's history only the Carboniferous Period and our present age, the Quaternary Period, have witnessed CO2 levels less than 400 ppm."

 

Climate during the Carboniferous Period

 

And according to the excellent (and free!) online movie "Crude" by the ABC Science unit, it was damn hot back then too!

Crude - the incredible journey of oil - Broadband edition - ABC Science

 

Watch the whole movie, it's absolutely fantastic.:):hyper::hyper:

 

(OK, I'm a bit of a fanboy of the ABC as they are the only station in Australia to seriously cover peak oil).

[Eclipse Now]

While I think the combative nature of litespeed's recent comments are not productive, I do think he has a point. As one living in Texas, I am not particularly fond of the notion of an increasingly warming climate. However, warming surely will not eliminate prime agricultural zones, rather it would just move those zones closer to the poles. Since global warming is a fact, as I see it, regardless of how rapidly we can reduce CO2 emissions in the future, the damage, for the time being, is already done. Has any research been done into how the expected warming will effect more northern and southern areas to produce food? How does the expected change in rainfall patterns either help or hurt those newly warmed regions? Is it significant that those areas closer to the poles also receive significantly more variable sunlight throughout the seasons?

 

very interesting discussion.

This biologist has some thoughts on the viability of doing so, but I can't comment.

 

Climate change and famine: II Soil Greenfyre’s

 

What about the geopolitics? Imagine America's breadbasket drying up and moving to Canada? How is this going to affect international economies and relationships? Sounds like a real concern to me. However, before America let that happen they might try a bunch of different agriculture technologies like food towers, etc, although I remain sceptical about the overall ERoEI of such schemes. (Energy Returned on Energy Invested). It depends how much energy we have left after peak fossil fuels.

 

Valcents growing reactors seem interesting. Turn sewerage waste water into a fluid nutrient (kind of like hydroponics) in greenhouses with 1/20th the water and 1/20th the land requirements for certain vegetables. Grow food in deserts, as long as there is a suitable city nearby. Valcent Products Inc,. - High Density Vertical Growth System - Thu Feb 26, 2009

 

I like the "Cradle to Cradle" philosophy of trying to engineer ecocities where ALL waste = food. Waste from industrial systems goes to feed the next product, biowaste goes back to local farms to grow the next round of food. Surely if we started to design our cities with more energy efficiency we'd end up with trendier cities, cleaner cities, healthier cities, more fun cities, and solve peak oil and global warming as an afterthought?

 

This is what I'm talking about, Masdar in UAE. Coming soon.

YouTube - Masdar Initiative - Worlds First 100% Carbon Free Community http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovly1dQGKH4

[REASON]

So. What do you propose as the climatic optimum for food production? The answer is simple. Optimum is now. Optimium is plus or minus [a given number degrees F].

 

You have never thought about this, have you, and you don't have a number at all.

 

Reason - You wrote: "It seems to me if the optimum climate conditions for food production is NOW..." Recall, I did not specify we are in a food production climate optimum. I don't know, so I asked YOU if it is now, or plus or minus specific number of degrees. You have not provided an answer.

 

My GENERAL theory that warm is good and cold is bad for living conditions (food production) etc. is two fold. First, during normal ice ages much of the Northern hemisphere is actually uninhabitable. I don't see much room for quibble here. Second, in less extreme swings, we have Britain exporting wine in Roman era, but famine and plaque in the cooler early middle ages.

 

So I am asking GW people what they would recommend as the optimum for which to aspire. 1) current climate, 2) cooler climate by ? degrees F. 3) warmer by ? degrees F. So far I have had seen little evidence the GW crowd has even evolved their thinking to even addressing this issue. "The Sky is Falling. The Sky is Falling.

 

Well put up or shut up. Climate Optimum: 1) now 2) cooler then now 3) warmer then now.

 

I don't know the answer to your question. Should I? You seem to speculate that 3 is the answer, but you don't really know either, do you?

 

What I find curious about what you are saying is that you imply that we can "aspire" to the type of climate we want. How can we do that if AGW is a false prospect? If, on the other hand, we are capable of affecting the Earth's climate, should we really be interested in taking the chance of damaging the environment of certain peoples for the sake of hoping we can fire up the wine production facilities in England again? I don't think so. Our efforts should be in having a reduced impact on the environment, not a greater one. Something like that is already hard enough to achieve with accelerated population growth besides the efforts of "do nothing" climate change denialists to affect public opinion on the issue.

 

I'm not trying to be any Chicken Little, I'm simply trying to apply common sense to this issue, and I feel that we are living in a time when the prevailing values and attitudes are for short term gains at the expense of long term effects. I want us to be knowledgeable and intelligent as we make decisions that have the potential to have a dramatic effect on future generations.

 

Is that not a worthwhile consideration?

[REASON]

Reason - You wrote: "Don't play dumb with me, litespeed. I was clearly providing a statistic that was contrary to your unscientific "warm is good, cold is bad" generalization."

 

Yeah. And you tallied about 150 excess deaths due to high temperatures. Inform me; how many people are killed by honey bees, bycycle accidents, or lightning strikes. The cold post Roman era, as well as the most recent 'Little Ice Age' killed people by the tens of millions.

 

Obviously, it's very difficult to inform you considering you can't even read the simple chart I provided. Once again, according to statistics provided by NOAA, over the last decade, 10 times more people died annually from heat than from cold across the United States. That's it. The quantity is not pertinent to the point I was making.

 

 

More pertinent, a normal Ice Age would make much of North America and Europe uninhabitable. It is no accident that our post ice age climate is generally described as a climate optimum. But YOU worry about getting to warm. So you want to reduce global warming? Tell, exactly, by how much cooler you wish to make it?

 

I'm sorry, but I'm not advocating another ice age. I'm concerned about our impact on the climate. That's all. I expect it to change naturally, but if we are causing it to warm at an unnatural rate, then I think that is something we should be wary of, and be willing to make adjustments to try and minimize our affect.

 

What is so unreasonable about that?