A thought on global climate change

[sobo]

By my read, we're still on topic, so laissez le bon temps rouler!

But be aware, I'll have this here meme ready if we start to drift into politics and/or religion any further, though...

 

[308]

Scientific understanding improves with improved technology, thats why you were told those things as a kid. Scientists can do and study thing now, that could barely be imagined just 30-40 years ago. You are right in that the climate is always changing. Heck you are right in that we are in-between ice ages too, geologically speaking, since our continents are seperated and breaking up bodies of water into our many oceans, (as opposed to Pangea), its easier for local glaciers/ice sheets to form due to reduced thermal circulation abilities of the ocean, disipating thermal imbalences from our Sun at the equator.

BUT the Roman climate time period that you mentioned was due to a volcanic eruption that reduced solar radiation from reaching earth, and isn't a great example to compare to modern cobditions. Thats called "cherry picked data." And Carbon dating isnt the primary way scientists are figuring out old climatatic conditions, or looking at 200 year old data, its ice core samples, and gaseous concentrations of the bubbles within those samples. The Earth logs info for us, at the benefit of no human error and bias, you kust have to know how to read it. The climate is changing, and it has been here before, but it hasn't been at modern levels for at least 800,000 years. Most likely millions of years. Critters and plants RIGHT NOW are not evolved to the climatic conditions that we have found ourselves in. Its bigger than just C02, we are talking quite a few extinctions of wild species simply from average warmer temperatures alone. Plants cannot as easily migrate with changing temperatures, some critters can. What depends on plants? Everything else thats alive. Extinction rates are easy to find using principals of stratigraphy, and right now they are occuring faster than anything ever seen in geologly (with the eception of a few mass dino extinctions, most likely from metiorite impacts). Geologically speaking the earth could care less about climate change, and its going to be fine, but biologically speaking we need to pay attention.

And fossil fuels do come from fossils, but primarily that of plants, critters would make only a tiny fraction of it. The chemical energy in our fuel is nothing more than stored energy in the form of Carbon-Carbon bonds, due to stored energy from photosynthesis, from plants, mainly trees, that grew millions of years ago. The key aspect is that fungus evolved the ability to break down lignin AFTER trees and most plants grew, not at the same time, but slightly lagged. This allowed a massive amount of stored chemical energy to build up over time, and essentially get compacted until fungus evolved the ability to decompose what was on the surface and put tgat same Carbon vack into the atmosphere. So no, fossil fuels are not being replenished back into the earth like they once were. Fungus have the ability now to break down woody debri before it can accumulate on a massive scale.

And if you really want to get a little spooked, start looking into ocean current circulation. Climate affects how oceans circulate, along with salt content levels. Start dumping tons of fresh water the globally melting ice into the ocean, and you are desaliniating our oceans. Oceans keep many regions of our earth cool, or warm, with their high thermconductivity. Billions of people might not care too much about a few degrees Celcius change of our atmosphere, but if ocean currents change that keep many parts of our earth warm by bringing warm equitorial waters (like Europe, and specifically Britian), we could have entire regious drastically shift local climate simply from ocean currents alone. Its a huge intrrconnected system that we are speeding up way faster than nature would on its own.

The arrogant assumption being that human beings actually can control the planet. If one were to take a few moments to honestly consider, one just might come to the conclusion there is very little in their own personal life to which they have complete control, and yet we have an army of internet experts wanting to control others in order to 'save' the planet through controlling the behavior of 'others' which usually means reaching into the wallet of 'others'.

 

[Mikej]

So, who else is sick of hearing/reading/thinking about all the fires burning everything up, and being stuck in the house because you can't breath the air outside?

 

[308]

So, who else is sick of hearing/reading/thinking about all the fires burning everything up, and being stuck in the house because you can't breath the air outside?

View attachment 748125

It's my understanding you can wear a Covid mask and you will be completely safe...after all

 

[03A3Sporter]

The arrogant assumption being that human beings actually can control the planet. If one were to take a few moments to honestly consider, one just might come to the conclusion there is very little in their own personal life to which they have complete control, and yet we have an army of internet experts wanting to control others in order to 'save' the planet through controlling the behavior of 'others' which usually means reaching into the wallet of 'others'.

Agreed , which is why I lend little credence to most of the scientists who claim to know that humans are negatively changing the climate. We are not even ants on this rock in the grand scheme of things any number of natural events can and do happen which remove humans in a wholesale fashion ..

 

[turbo_vanner]

Just one example of something humans have directly affected, that has been observable and measurable, is the ozone layer.

Not sure how someone can come to the conclusion that humans don't affect the planet.

Also, some horrible misinformation regarding oil and ice cores in here, but I'm not looking to argue.

 

[Diamondback]

It's my understanding you can wear a Covid mask and you will be completely safe...after all

Don't be so sure...

The CDC Accidentally Admits Cloth Masks Are Not Effective

www.redstate.com

 

[03A3Sporter]

Fossil fuels are the exact opposite, non decomposed fossils, primarily plants, that still contain stored energy in the form of Carbon-Carbon bonds that were formed from stored energy through photosynthesis. A tiny, tiny fraction of what is in your gas tank was ince a shellfish or dino, or bird, the insane vast majority is processed anchient plant matter.

I still disagree ... Science has made assumptions that because they found fossils in coal , coal is a fossil fuel. The problem with most scientists are they think they know things they don't , I am not saying it is bad to have a theory to work off off . A lot of what we do is based on empirical observation , however to be so obtuse that you start believing the theory is fact when it is not proven is the very height of arrogance.

When you have irrefutable proof that the coal , oil and natural gas come from these sources get back to me. I find much more plausible that the earth is constantly making these fuels , versus a bunch plants died all at the same, and ta da millions of years later we have coal.

My challenge is this show me concrete proof humans have changed the planet...

I am numbers guy by trade and I deal with statistics all the time . It literally is my job to make sense of big data sets and create meaningful reports from them. Show me the data in a conclusive enough fashion that it CAN'T be refuted.

We have such a limited understanding and we can't positively explain the relatively few data points that exist for any reasonable person to come to such a conclusion.

 

[Mark W.]

Ok here's something to think about how much carbon is released into the atmosphere when you burn up 1/3 of a state? Compounded by the loss of all that green that normally absorbs CO2. Or does the blotting of the sun counteract the effects of all that heat?

 

[308]

Don't be so sure...

The CDC Accidentally Admits Cloth Masks Are Not Effective

www.redstate.com

I was being sarcastic.
The masks my wife and the rest of the surgical staff wear on a daily basis states on the box "does not protect against viruses"...virus particles being smaller that smoke particles

"Cloth masks that are used to slow the spread of COVID-19 offer little protection against wildfire smoke. They do not catch small particles found in wildfire smoke that can harm your health. Limit your time outside when it's smoky. Learn how you can protect yourself from wildfire smoke: https://bit.ly/3kSMjl9"

 

[Dinglenutz]

I think it's possible humans have changed the climate a bit. I also think technology will fix this before it's an issue as long as we don't let government stifle innovation too much.

Look up the London Manure Crisis for a historical example.

 

[03A3Sporter]

Ok here's something to think about how much carbon is released into the atmosphere when you burn up 1/3 of a state? Compounded by the loss of all that green that normally absorbs CO2. Or does the blotting of the sun counteract the effects of all that heat?

Well here is the thing forest fires naturally occur all the time we really have no control over such events, trees aren't just absorbing CO2 they are making oxygen.

The CO2 is part of the photosynthesis process . Humans and everything else on earth have carbon in them.

How long will it take for the particulate to fall back to earth from the atmosphere ? How long will it take for the CO2 to be processed as part of the earth's dynamic process ?

 

[03A3Sporter]

I think it's possible humans have changed the climate a bit. I also think technology will fix this before it's an issue as long as we don't let government stifle innovation too much.

Look up the London Manure Crisis for a historical example.

Yes and no , technology is good at shifting the problem somewhere else . A great example is sewer systems , before we had them people dumped their chamber pots into the streets .

Yes sewer systems helped make the city cleaner at the expense of another location . Factually the city of Salem and others still dump raw sewage into the Willamette river. Now did you fix the problem or did you just take the problem and put somewhere you do not see it ?

Think of it like this in Risk Compliance there are strategies for dealing with risk.

1. you can eliminate the risk

2. you can avoid the risk

3. you can mitigate the risk

4. you can use a compensatory approach or transfer the risk.




You can never totally eliminate the risk however. which strategy is being used to deal with the sewage in this instance ?

Nature however over time can actually correct the problem . People are so obtuse as to think though they can fix environmental problems with technology.

The inherent problem with humans having such a finite existence from a time perspective is that we think that because nature takes 100, 500, or 10,000 years to fix a problem it is unfixable or that we can fix the problem when in reality we are just making the problem someone else's problem like dumping raw sewage into the river ....

 

[turbo_vanner]

Science has made assumptions that because they found fossils in coal , coal is a fossil fuel. The problem with most scientists are they think they know things they don't , I am not saying it is bad to have a theory to work off off . A lot of what we do is based on empirical observation , however to be so obtuse that you start believing the theory is fact when it is not proven is the very height of arrogance.

you do realize that plant fossils are.... fossils too right? Coal in and of itself is fossilized plant matter.....

 

[Dinglenutz]

A great example is sewer systems , before we had them people dumped their chamber pots into the streets .

Depends on how you define the problem. If you define the problem as a sanitation issue involving human health it's pretty well solved in all developed nations, ie, places where the majority of the populace knows better than to sh*t upstream. In the case of the London Manure crisis, no amount of legislation helped, and then Henry Ford invented a method to manufacture affordable cars and the problem literally disappeared.

Nuclear power, battery tech, and related advances have the potential to do a similar thing with greenhouse gases as long as government stays out of the way.

If you define the sewage problem as "people are pooing" then it's not going to be solved as simply.

 

[Diamondback]

I think it's possible humans have changed the climate a bit. I also think technology will fix this before it's an issue as long as we don't let government stifle innovation too much.

Look up the London Manure Crisis for a historical example.

Yeah, but if you aren't careful when you try to stop global warming you trigger global cooling and get "Snowpiercer."

 

[03A3Sporter]

Depends on how you define the problem. If you define the problem as a sanitation issue involving human health it's pretty well solved in all developed nations, ie, places where the majority of the populace knows better than to sh*t upstream. In the case of the London Manure crisis, no amount of legislation helped, and then Henry Ford invented a method to manufacture affordable cars and the problem literally disappeared.

Nuclear power, battery tech, and related advances have the potential to do a similar thing with greenhouse gases as long as government stays out of the way.

If you define the sewage problem as "people are pooing" then it's not going to be solved as simply.

One can also point to the considerable amount of evidence that creating those batteries is more harmful to the environment than the petrol powered car is. It's all about how you try to "solve" the problem in this case we are pretty ok with polluting another country making the batteries so that we can work on keeping our own little corner nice and clean at the cost of jobs for Americans.

Also the electricity has a cost and in the case of nuclear it on the whole is more efficient and one could say safer as a power generation source as long as there are no problems. However when problems occur with nuclear facilities a geographic area can be made unlivable for HUMANS for extended periods of time.

Keep in mind I am libertarian and love the free market as a curative for most social ills, but any set of problems which we think solve really is just passing the problem on to someone else creating a whole new set of problems.

In fact I can go so far as to point out that many of our modern problems such the population explosion is our own homegrown misery . Technology and medical science has allowed unheard of population growth. 100 years ago it was still largely a self correcting problem, childbirth death rates were higher globally, and those in third world countries died off at faster rates for a whole host of reasons which kept the global population in check.

Nature has a perfect mechanism to deal with it . We are ones who do not have a good mechanism for dealing with the problem.

 

[Certaindeaf]

Monte Shelton had a family Rabbit in his stable of rigs and raced it at SCCA events instead of his Porsches.

My first car was a used 68 bug. They were said to be reliable. Well, not for me. Simple yes. Bought the first "idiot's guide".. for vw beetles etc. What a great book. I drove mine like a normal kid but knew guys (they had a mountain of transmissions on the shop floor to prove it) that'd blow a transmission with each drag run in their bugs.

 

[Mikej]

My first car was a used 68 bug.

that'd blow a transmission with each drag run in their bugs.

Wut? Two statements that I'd wager have never been in the same comment on a discussion forum until now.

 

[Dinglenutz]

in this case we are pretty ok with polluting another country making the batteries so that we can work on keeping our own little corner nice and clean at the cost of jobs for Americans.

There are advanced storage technologies on the horizon that use carbon as the primary storage medium. Tech can fix this the same as it's fixed other issues, and in so doing it will likely cause new issues, which tech will then fix again.