Climate continues to change.

[StrangeLife]

You didn't read the article. Go back and try again.

You assume wrong. So the University of British Columbia has made the awesome discovery that an ecosystem changes with fluctuations in the current climate conditions? Well, duh! What did they expect?

 

[phrodeau]

You assume wrong. So the University of British Columbia has made the awesome discovery that an ecosystem changes with fluctuations in the current climate conditions? Well, duh! What did they expect?

You said "it's found all over the world", and the article makes it clear that it is not. It has only recently made its way to Arctic areas, because the ice which would impede it is no longer there.

Pretty stupid thing to say on your part.

 

[StrangeLife]

You said "it's found all over the world", and the article makes it clear that it is not. It has only recently made its way to Arctic areas, because the ice which would impede it is no longer there.

Pretty stupid thing to say on your part.

Ok - it's all over the world except in ice deserts and volcanoes. It's estimated that at least one third of the Earths population are carrying Toxoplasma Gondii in the blood stream.

And it's really not surprising that the fauna gets richer during periods with milder climate, since the number of compatible species increases with rising temperature.

 

[KingOrfeo]

The Guardian: Climate-change denialism is not "skepticism," it is "motivated reasoning.

So given the evidence is so strong against them, then why do these beliefs garner such passionate, vocal support? It's tempting to say the problem is a simple misunderstanding, because increasing average global temperature can have paradoxical and counterintuitive repercussions, such as causing extreme cold snaps. The obvious response to this misunderstanding is to elucidate the scientific details more clearly and more often.

The problem is that the well-meaning and considered approach hinges on the presupposition that the intended audience is always rational, willing to base or change its position on the balance of evidence. However, recent investigations suggests this might be a supposition too far. A study in 2011 found that conservative white males in the US were far more likely than other Americans to deny climate change. Another study found denialism in the UK was more common among politically conservative individuals with traditional values. A series of investigations published last year by Prof Stephan Lewandowsky and his colleagues – including one with the fantastic title, Nasa Faked the Moon Landing – Therefore, (Climate) Science Is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science – found that while subjects subscribing to conspiracist thought tended to reject all scientific propositions they encountered, those with strong traits of conservatism or pronounced free-market world views only tended to reject scientific findings with regulatory implications.

It should be no surprise that the voters and politicians opposed to climate change tend to be of a conservative bent, keen to support free-market ideology. This is part of a phenomenon known as motivated reasoning, where instead of evidence being evaluated critically, it is deliberately interpreted in such a way as to reaffirm a pre-existing belief, demanding impossibly stringent examination of unwelcome evidence while accepting uncritically even the flimsiest information that suits one's needs.

The great psychologist Leon Festinger observed in 1956 that "a man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point." This is the essence of the problem, and sadly, Festinger's words ring true today: the conviction of humans is all too often impervious to the very evidence in front of them.

Motivated reasoning is not solely the preserve of conservatives. While nuclear power has been recognised by the IPCC as important in reducing carbon dioxide emissions, staunch and uninformed opposition to nuclear power arises often from the liberal aisle. In the furore over the Fukushima nuclear disaster (which has claimed no lives and probably never will) many environmentalists lost sight of the fact that it was a natural disaster, very possibly exacerbated by climate change, that cost thousands of lives. Instead, they've rushed to condemn nuclear power plants.

 

[phrodeau]

http://www.theguardian.com/environm...ar/19/global-warming-accurate-prediction-1972

John Stanley (J.S.) Sawyer was a British meteorologist born in 1916. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1962, and was also a Fellow of the Meteorological Society and the organization's president from 1963 to 1965.

A paper authored by Sawyer and published in the journal Nature in 1972 reveals how much climate scientists knew about the fundamental workings of the global climate over 40 years ago. For example, Sawyer predicted how much average global surface temperatures would warm by the year 2000.

"The increase of 25% CO2 expected by the end of the century therefore corresponds to an increase of 0.6°C in the world temperature – an amount somewhat greater than the climatic variation of recent centuries."

Remarkably, between the years 1850 and 2000, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels did increase by very close to 25 percent, and global average surface temperatures also increased by just about 0.6°C during that time.

Sawyer also discussed several other important aspects of the Earth's climate in his paper. For example, he addressed the myth and misunderstanding that as a trace gas in the atmosphere, it may seem natural to assume that rising levels of carbon dioxide don't have much impact on the climate. Sawyer wrote,

"Nevertheless, there are certain minor constituents of the atmosphere which have a particularly significant effect in determining the world climate. They do this by their influence on the transmission of heat through the atmosphere by radiation. Carbon dioxide, water vapour and ozone all play such a role, and the quantities of these substances are not so much greater than the products of human endeavour that the possibilities of man-made influences may be dismissed out of hand."

Sawyer referenced work by Guy Callendar in the late 1930s and early 1940s, in which Callendar estimated that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere had increased by about 10 percent over the prior 100 years (an impressively accurate measurement, as current estimates put the increase during that time at about 9 percent). Sawyer also referenced the Keeling Curve, which included continuous reliable measurements of the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere beginning in 1958.

Compared to measurements of human carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels, Sawyer noted that only about half of those human emissions were remaining in the atmosphere. The other half, climate scientists had concluded, were being absorbed by the oceans and the biosphere. Sawyer wrote,

"Industrial development has recently been proceeding at an increasing rate so that the output of man-made carbon dioxide has been increasing more or less exponentially. So long as the carbon dioxide output continues to increase exponentially, it is reasonable to assume that about the same proportion as at present (about half) will remain in the atmosphere and about the same amount will go into the other reservoirs."

Indeed, over the past four decades, human carbon dioxide emissions have continued to increase more or less exponentially, and about half has continued to remain in the atmosphere with the other half accumulating in natural reservoirs. The carbon dioxide being absorbed by the oceans has contributed to the problem of ocean acidification, sometimes referred to as "global warming's evil twin."

 

[FGB]

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ


It's radical and unstable climate change that is fucking things up...

It's time and NOTHING is going stop it or slow it down by any real measurable difference.

 

[phrodeau]

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ


It's radical and unstable climate change that is fucking things up...

It's time and NOTHING is going stop it or slow it down by any real measurable difference.

Human extinction would do it. Maybe we're heading that way.

 

[StrangeLife]

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ


It's radical and unstable climate change that is fucking things up...

It's time and NOTHING is going stop it or slow it down by any real measurable difference.

Why stop it? What wrong with change? It's the only constant we know. Sahara used to be jungle, reptiles once lived in Antarctica, America used to be connected to the European continent.... it's a living and dynamic world. It changes all the time.

 

[thør]

Human extinction would do it. Maybe we're heading that way.

Of course we are.

 

[Sean Renaud]

Why stop it? What wrong with change? It's the only constant we know. Sahara used to be jungle, reptiles once lived in Antarctica, America used to be connected to the European continent.... it's a living and dynamic world. It changes all the time.

Change kills, and the Saharan jungle was a lot longer ago than some people occasionally like to pretend. It's also to the best of our knowledge never been this massively changed by the critters on it.

But mostly change kills.

 

[StrangeLife]

Of course we are.

We are on the verge to begin populating the galaxy. Humanity is here to stay.

 

[Sean Renaud]

We are on the verge to begin populating the galaxy. Humanity is here to stay.

By verge you mean you desperately hope that something really big changes "soon"?

 

[thør]

We are on the verge to begin populating the galaxy. Humanity is here to stay.

There seems to be quite a lack of humanity among the humans. Humans may be here to stay, let's hope humanity joins them.

 

[snugglestruggle]

To be honest I don't know if humans or nature cause more greenhouse gasses . By nature I mean cows farting , volcano's etc.

I do know one thing, humans like their "stuff". By stuff I mean manufactured goods which need electricity, which in turn needs fuel...which in someway(s) can be directly and indirectly linked to the creation of excessive amounts.

Humans are not going to give up owning stuff. You can take that to the bank which is where the problem both begins and ends.

 

[Sean Renaud]

To be honest I don't know if humans or nature cause more greenhouse gasses . By nature I mean cows farting , volcano's etc.

I do know one thing, humans like their "stuff". By stuff I mean manufactured goods which need electricity, which in turn needs fuel...which in someway(s) can be directly and indirectly linked to the creation of excessive amounts.

Humans are not going to give up owning stuff. You can take that to the bank which is where the problem both begins and ends.

Cows farting should count under humans, and we outpace volcanos by such radical amounts it's not even funny.

Humans may very well need to start giving up owning stuff. But in the meanwhile lets start by trying to get more green energy and more efficient everything.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Humans are not going to give up owning stuff. You can take that to the bank which is where the problem both begins and ends.

No, it doesn't end at the bank.

 

[thør]

Despite Warming, Ground Refreezes at Alaska's Shrinking Lakes

Interesting stuff.

 

[StrangeLife]

There seems to be quite a lack of humanity among the humans. Humans may be here to stay, let's hope humanity joins them.

Humanity is what humans do.

 

[phrodeau]

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/31/climate-change-threat-food-security-humankind

A United Nations report raised the threat of climate change to a whole new level on Monday, warning of sweeping consequences to life and livelihood.

The report from the UN's intergovernmental panel on climate change concluded that climate change was already having effects in real time – melting sea ice and thawing permafrost in the Arctic, killing off coral reefs in the oceans, and leading to heat waves, heavy rains and mega-disasters.

And the worst was yet to come. Climate change posed a threat to global food stocks, and to human security, the blockbuster report said.

“Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change,” said Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the IPCC.

Monday's report was the most sobering so far from the UN climate panel and, scientists said, the most definitive. The report – a three year joint effort by more than 300 scientists – grew to 2,600 pages and 32 volumes.

The volume of scientific literature on the effects of climate change has doubled since the last report, and the findings make an increasingly detailed picture of how climate change – in tandem with existing fault lines such as poverty and inequality – poses a much more direct threat to life and livelihood.

This was reflected in the language. The summary mentioned the word “risk” more than 230 times, compared to just over 40 mentions seven years ago, according to a count by the Red Cross.

At the forefront of those risks was the potential for humanitarian crisis. The report catalogued some of the disasters that have been visited around the planet since 2000: killer heat waves in Europe, wildfires in Australia, and deadly floods in Pakistan.

“We are now in an era where climate change isn't some kind of future hypothetical,” said Chris Field, one of the two main authors of the report.

 

[StrangeLife]

This was reflected in the language. The summary mentioned the word “risk” more than 230 times, compared to just over 40 mentions seven years ago, according to a count by the Red Cross.

At the forefront of those risks was the potential for humanitarian crisis. The report catalogued some of the disasters that have been visited around the planet since 2000: killer heat waves in Europe, wildfires in Australia, and deadly floods in Pakistan.

http://www.artizans.com/images/previews/GRA392.pvw.jpg



OMG! Killer heat waves in Europe! Save our souls.

 

[KingOrfeo]

The IPCC's new report is out.

YOKOHAMA, Japan — Climate change is already having sweeping effects on every continent and throughout the world’s oceans, scientists reported on Monday, and they warned that the problem was likely to grow substantially worse unless greenhouse emissions are brought under control.

The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations group that periodically summarizes climate science, concluded that ice caps are melting, sea ice in the Arctic is collapsing, water supplies are coming under stress, heat waves and heavy rains are intensifying, coral reefs are dying, and fish and many other creatures are migrating toward the poles or in some cases going extinct.

The oceans are rising at a pace that threatens coastal communities and are becoming more acidic as they absorb some of the carbon dioxide given off by cars and power plants, which is killing some creatures or stunting their growth, the report found.

Organic matter frozen in Arctic soils since before civilization began is now melting, allowing it to decay into greenhouse gases that will cause further warming, the scientists said. And the worst is yet to come, the scientists said in the second of three reports that are expected to carry considerable weight next year as nations try to agree on a new global climate treaty.

N.B.: This is the report from Working Group II, which focuses on risks, costs, and mitigation. The full AR5 report has not yet been released.

 

[phrodeau]

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politic...-top-10-terrifying-impacts-of-climate-change/

Here are the top 10 frightening highlights of the National Climate Assessment:

1. Bigger, more frequent droughts.
2. Larger wildfires.
3. Glaciers and polar ice will melt at a faster rate.
4. The possible reemergence of currently uncommon diseases, such as dengue fever.
5. A higher risk of heat and respiratory stress from poor air quality.
6. Deteriorating infrastructure. For example, extreme heat is already damaging roads, rail lines and airport runways.
7. Water shortages and diminished water quality are more likely.
8. Food security could be at risk as climate change threatens crops and livestock.
9. Poverty will likely be exacerbated.
10. Species will become increasingly extinct as ecosystems are disrupted.

From hotter heat waves and heavier downpours to more frequent flooding and drought, climate change is already having a broad impact on the nation’s weather and economy, according to a new government report.

“Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present,” according to the third National Climate Assessment.

“Corn producers in Iowa, oyster growers in Washington state, and maple syrup producers in Vermont are all observing climate-related changes.”
“Americans are noticing changes all around them,” according to the report. “Summers are longer and hotter, and extended period of unusual heat last longer than any living American has ever experienced. … Rain comes in heavier downpours.”

President Obama seized on the report’s alarming predictions for the future to try and bolster support for his efforts to curb climate change.

“I think it’s important for everybody to know that this climate assessment that’s been done over the course of four years really establishes that climate change is already affecting Americans all across the country – in every region,” Obama said in an interview on Tuesday with ABC’s Ginger Zee. “If you’re near a coastline, you may be concerned about flooding or more hurricanes. If you’re in the west, you’re concerned about drought.”

According to the White House, the findings “underscore the need for urgent action to combat the threats from climate change, protect American citizens and communities today, and build a sustainable future for our kids and grandkids.”

 

[garbage can]

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politic...-top-10-terrifying-impacts-of-climate-change/

Here are the top 10 frightening highlights of the National Climate Assessment:

1. Bigger, more frequent droughts.
2. Larger wildfires.
3. Glaciers and polar ice will melt at a faster rate.
4. The possible reemergence of currently uncommon diseases, such as dengue fever.
5. A higher risk of heat and respiratory stress from poor air quality.
6. Deteriorating infrastructure. For example, extreme heat is already damaging roads, rail lines and airport runways.
7. Water shortages and diminished water quality are more likely.
8. Food security could be at risk as climate change threatens crops and livestock.
9. Poverty will likely be exacerbated.
10. Species will become increasingly extinct as ecosystems are disrupted.

After last winters nation wide record cold, fears of global warming won't get Obama many votes.

 

[thør]

After last winters nation wide record cold, fears of global warming won't get Obama many votes.

It was fairly warm in arctic Alaska.

 

[garbage can]

It was fairly warm in arctic Alaska.

Yes, I had heard that during the time the midwest was in a deepfreeze.