Scientific Report: rock solid evidence for human-caused G.W.

[Rye]

Hello Mr.Rosenberg. It's self-indicting. I just hope not all of the people in the West share the same mentality (I remember some of such people were just hanged recently... 1945 IIRC)...

I didn't say I agreed with it. I just said to sustain modern western life, a cataclysm would have to prevent the developing nations from interfering with it. The most effective way of doing that would be thinning human herds so resources go further. A pandemic would have plausible deniability and would be effective.

If the West starts this, the flames of global revolution will consume your oh-so-precious "luxury" for which you want to murder millions of people, and your demise will be much more fast and violent.

I doubt this would ever happen, it's much more likely that universal crapper quality of life would be enforced on everyone and the developing world gets shat on economically for a load more drawn out suffering. A pandemic would not be easily tracked to a government if they deployed it, though. They'd just be the average conspiracy theories, like those around HIV and bird flu.

[Admiral Valdemar]

No it wouldn't. Kyoto exempted all the major major polluters like China, India, etc from controls; and seriously, do you think that a few years of minor Kyoto reductions would have reversed the freight train that this report says is inevitable?

No, hence my saying it'd be pretty redundant anyway even if implemented.

I'm combining the next two replies into one, since they sort of interlock:
*SNIP*

Worst case scenario for global warming from the IPCC report is all major life forms on Earth exterminated and humanity extinct. Show me the report that even begins to highlight nukes reaching that and we'll call it even.

End of human race > Piddling nuclear exchange with some inconvenience for civilisation.

[MKSheppard]

Worst case scenario for global warming from the IPCC report is all major life forms on Earth exterminated and humanity extinct.

Alright, who at the IPCC was freebasing Speed/Hash/PCP/Meth/Cocaine all at the same time?

[Stark]

Listen guys, Rye is hardcore and edgy. If *you* didn't notice his attitudes on things like this ages ago, well...

[Admiral Valdemar]

Alright, who at the IPCC was freebasing Speed/Hash/PCP/Meth/Cocaine all at the same time?

No. They're merely looking at how the Permian period ended which, funnily enough, was this same scenario. Incidentally, there are some scientists now disputing the 6 degree increase in Berlin, saying the IPCC has toned it down somewhat to not be so drastically out-of-step with the 2001 report. It is looking like the range may be 10°C or higher. That, it can safely be said, is over 95% of all life on Earth dead and most of the land turned to dust with barely any modern aquatic species since up to the North Sea, the water will be over 40 degrees all year round.

Nuclear war can end with a nice Mad Max pseudo-society afterwards. It's a wee bit harder to survive when there's no agriculture or livestock at all and all but the tip of the poles are Saharan summers. Did I mention the constant hypercanes and terrestrial fireballs as methane hydrate stores are unleashed en masse?

[MKSheppard]

No. They're merely looking at how the Permian period ended which, funnily enough, was this same scenario

Actually you left out the part about "there being no damn oxygen at all" that led to the mass exinction in the Permian period, which many people attribute to massive volcanic eruptions in Siberia.

I'm sure we'll get it in the shorts if the Yellowstone Caldera blows. Or if another asteroid whacks the earth (we're overdue for another K-T event).

[Frank Hipper]

Since when has there been consensus on the cause of the Permian mass extinction?

[Admiral Valdemar]

Since when has there been consensus on the cause of the Permian mass extinction?

Does it matter what caused it? The effects are what matters. It may have been the supervolcanoes or a giant space rock or raptor Jesus for all I care. The end result is the same: we all die horribly. The human factor here is what is making this turn into the equivalent event, even without supervolcanic activity, mass tectonic disruption and celestial bodies impacting.

If we're looking at 10 degrees increase as a max limit instead and the IPCC understated, then we're just as dead.

[Praxis]

Man that is so stupid. Any scientist, particularly geoscientist, corrupt enough to be bribed for a mere $10000 would already be working for big oil for much more.

It might be a little dishonest, but...why not just take the money and then not change the testimony? Unless you're signing a contract or something, the $10,000 is just a 'gift'... >_>

What would they do? Sue you for not taking a bribe?

Then again...in today's age where people call the cops because someone stole their cocaine, it could happen.

[MKSheppard]

That, it can safely be said, is over 95% of all life on Earth dead and most of the land turned to dust with barely any modern aquatic species since up to the North Sea, the water will be over 40 degrees all year round.

I just did some maths; and if my SWAG is correct, in order to raise just the top 10% of the water in the world's oceans from an average of 17C to your 40C, it would require:

31,647 times the energy consumed by the world in one year (2001)
518.52 times the energy in world's estimated coal reserves (2003)
345.68 times the energy in world's estimated total fossil fuel reserves (2003)
898.77 times the total energy from the Sun that hits the Earth in 24 hours
2.46 times the total energy from the Sun that hits the Earth in 1 year

However, this is just the top 10% or so of the world's water. Below 500m, the average temperature of water is 1.5C, and it acts as a heat sink for the upper surface of the oceans. To heat that part up from 1.5C to 24.5C (the same 23C difference between 17C and 40C), you'd need:

284,820 times the energy consumed by the world in one year (2001)
4666.67 times the energy in world's estimated coal reserves (2003)
3111.11 times the energy in world's estimated total fossil fuel reserves (2003)
8088.9 times the total energy from the Sun that hits the Earth in 24 hours
22.16 times the total energy from the Sun that hits the Earth in 1 year

The Maths is based off of:

1.40E+021 kg of water in the world's oceans split into:

1.40E+020 kg of surface water (upper 10%)
1.26E+021 kg of deep water (remaining 90%)

96,296 joules needed to raise 1 kg of water 23 degrees C in temperature. (gotten from the handy calculator at Linka)

3.90E+022 energy in world's estimated total fossil fuel reserves (2003)
2.60E+022 energy in world's estimated coal reserves (2003)
4.26E+020 energy consumed by the world in one year (2001)
1.50E+022 total energy from the Sun that hits the Earth in 24 hours
5.48E+024 total energy from the Sun that hits the Earth in 1 year

You can see that to get to that nice hot 40C it would require quite a lot of energy, of which the only realistic source of energy would be the sun.

In fact, to raise the surface temperature of the top 10% of that water only 1C would require only 11% of the Sun's yearly output on earth, as compared to 1,376
times our annual energy consumption which does tie in well with the explanation that a more active solar cycle is responsible for our temperature increases...not our puny efforts.

[Darth Raptor]

One needs only look at Venus to appreciate how a runaway greenhouse is a very real and non-imaginary phenomenon. Yeah, it's closer to the sun than Earth and is a Volcanic Hell, but IIRC those two factors don't contribute as much as the fact that the planet simply cannot dump heat.

That said, I think the total annihilation estimates are overblown. Even if we don't survive the climate change, something will. The Permian didn't see the eradication of all life everywhere, just most life in most places. For a biologist, Valdemar is seriously underestimating the tenacity of our most unspecialized contemporaries. +10 degree global mean temperature? That won't wipe out everything, and what does survive will evolve to exploit the huge, gaping power vacuums during the ages of recovery. This planet has weathered apocalyptic crises more times than we know.

[Frank Hipper]

Since when has there been consensus on the cause of the Permian mass extinction?

Does it matter what caused it?

It matters immensely, especially when that event is being cited as an equivalent.
If you're unable to say without ambiguity what caused event A (much less show that the causes for event A were even somewhat similar to each other), solidly stating event B as an equivalent to it does not follow.

[Illuminatus Primus]

In fact, to raise the surface temperature of the top 10% of that water only 1C would require only 11% of the Sun's yearly output on earth, as compared to 1,376
times our annual energy consumption which does tie in well with the explanation that a more active solar cycle is responsible for our temperature increases...not our puny efforts.

You think climate change is about fucking heat from smoke? Its about increasing the opacity of the atmosphere to infrared wavelengths. In other words, light comes in, heat doesn't go out. The Earth is bombarded with about 10 times the amount of energy needed to effect the temperature change. All we have to do is make the atmosphere hold in 10% of the energy already here to fuck us.

[Guardsman Bass]

Worst case scenario for global warming from the IPCC report is all major life forms on Earth exterminated and humanity extinct. Show me the report that even begins to highlight nukes reaching that and we'll call it even.

Where? The first release of Group I from the coming 2007 Assessment makes no mention of the above, and neither does the 2001 Assessment, at least as far as I can see in their section on the more extreme impacts on climate (although the ones mentioned were far from pleasant; nastiness like the North Atlantic Current shutting down).

I certainly haven't seen them mention anything like 40C sea temperatures coupled with desertification on a continental scale. I think you are taking the claims of some scientists that the IPCC toned down the report, and blowing what they've said far out of proportion.

[His Divine Shadow]

Nuclear war can end with a nice Mad Max pseudo-society afterwards. It's a wee bit harder to survive when there's no agriculture or livestock at all and all but the tip of the poles are Saharan summers. Did I mention the constant hypercanes and terrestrial fireballs as methane hydrate stores are unleashed en masse?

When are you expecting the arrival of these fireballs and saharan poles? In our lifetimes? Maybe we should start a betting pool.

[Admiral Valdemar]

It matters immensely, especially when that event is being cited as an equivalent.
If you're unable to say without ambiguity what caused event A (much less show that the causes for event A were even somewhat similar to each other), solidly stating event B as an equivalent to it does not follow.

Not when we're simply talking about a mechanism that increases the heat retention of the atmosphere and remains so for any amount of time. The GHGs currently pumped out in bulk are more than enough to cause such a scenario, even if the previous mass extinctions were caused by another factor. They all have the same mechanism in common, that being the rapid and long lived heating or cooling of the planet via ejecta from volcanic activity, large impacts or in this instance artificially releasing stores that have been tucked away for millions of years.

Where? The first release of Group I from the coming 2007 Assessment makes no mention of the above, and neither does the 2001 Assessment, at least as far as I can see in their section on the more extreme impacts on climate (although the ones mentioned were far from pleasant; nastiness like the North Atlantic Current shutting down).

I certainly haven't seen them mention anything like 40C sea temperatures coupled with desertification on a continental scale. I think you are taking the claims of some scientists that the IPCC toned down the report, and blowing what they've said far out of proportion.

The IPCC report won't do, since the effects won't be released for some months yet. Mark Lynas, however, wrote a detailed article in The Independent that was part of the research he's doing in a book on the subject detailing what that 6.4 degree increase would mean. The IPCC report states what the temperature rise from human caused GW will be. Lynas merely did a piece on what this means in real terms now.

As for scientists concerned over the tone, I'll have to find that Reuters (or was it AP?) article that I read the other week on it. A lot of the delay we got was over wording of hurricane information in the report, because some countries, Australia for one I believe, were not happy with the original wording. SLAM has a thread discussing the problems of being blasé over the potential outcome of a worldwide crisis.

Another factor is alarmism. People are often inundated with horrible horror stories of the world about to end virtually every week. Remember SARS? In fact the same is happening where I am because of H5N1 being found in a farm here, people are otherwise apathetic to it, when a year ago, they'd likely start stocking up on masks and tinned food. The media has already exhausted the flu pandemic scenario and it's died a death. If the pandemic didn't arrive within six months of the stories on all this, it was never going to come. Right? Wrong. People are stupid in that respect, and ironically, some of the bigger breaking stories of late concerning that disease are going unnoticed, such as the first human case in Africa which most certainly could ignite a global human pandemic flu outbreak.

Anthropogenic global warming; same thing, just add an extra few decades of loony green hippies ranting on about this over and over. Now you see why the IPCC and others are trying not to go too far in dire predictions, since the people expect this crap to happen now, or it won't ever happen.

Frog in the boiling water mentality.

When are you expecting the arrival of these fireballs and saharan poles? In our lifetimes? Maybe we should start a betting pool.

That depends. Could be 2100, could be 2090, could be earlier by decades or never. The we're seeing things accelerate beyond all expectations (remember when this idea of an uninhabitable Earth was something our children's children's children's children would have to maybe worry about?) and this is one possible occurrence. The world will have gone to shit long before then with rampant deforestation, massive soil erosion, displacing of whole communities and water and food shortages to add to the flooding.

[His Divine Shadow]

Oh well then the US should have time to implement their "weather control system":
http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/002868.html

[Gil Hamilton]

In fact, to raise the surface temperature of the top 10% of that water only 1C would require only 11% of the Sun's yearly output on earth, as compared to 1,376
times our annual energy consumption which does tie in well with the explanation that a more active solar cycle is responsible for our temperature increases...not our puny efforts.

With respect Shep, human caused global warming scenarios get virtually all their energy from the sun as it is. We aren't physically dumping that heat into the atmosphere ourselves, to claim that would be a dishonest strawman of what human caused global warming is. As IP pointed out, all the energy needed to significantly heat the Earth is already being thrown at us from the sun, it's just that currently most of it bounces off and goes on it's merry way due to the atmosphere only retaining a small portion of it. The trouble is that while we can't produce the energy to heat the planet to death, we are more than able to effect the composition of the atmosphere to something that will make the sun do all the work for us.

Right now, there is without a doubt that there is a strong correllation between global average temperature and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. That's something we can measure. There is also no doubt that we are producing greenhouse emissions, from industry, that dwarfs anything seen in at least 400,000 years. This is again something that can be infered from gathered physical data. Add two and two together there.

[Stofsk]

Woah, slow down there Gil, no need to get into complicated mathematics.

Two plus two equals negative fun.

[Gil Hamilton]

Woah, slow down there Gil, no need to get into complicated mathematics.

Two plus two equals negative fun.

Yeah, I know. I should lay off the complex math.

[Admiral Valdemar]

The number of conservative blogs going on about this socialist conspiracy both amuses and saddens me.

[Darth Raptor]

That doesn't even make sense. Socialism likes industry just as much as capitalism, it just distributes the profits differently.

[Admiral Valdemar]

That doesn't even make sense. Socialism likes industry just as much as capitalism, it just distributes the profits differently.

You think logic enters into this? Poor fool! These people excel at being able to burn brains out that dare try and work out how they deduce such "facts".

It's a call for the curtailing of capitalism, ergo, the IPCC AGW conspiracy is about getting socialist liberal power mad people into power and taking our precious bodily fluids.

Have you ever seen a commie drink water, Darth Raptor...?

[Julhelm]

So with reducing emissions now being completely pointless, why people still bitching about Kyoto instead of working on measures to, you know, cool the earth instead?

[Admiral Valdemar]

The only people still bitching about Kyoto are likely the gullible fools who also think this problem will be solved with a few energy efficient light bulbs and less SUVs on the roads.