Climate Alarmism

[_Gunnar]

This Green Technology Documentary describes a lot of green technology solutions that can be and are already being used on an increasing scale to mitigate climate change and pollution that not only reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but provide usable, clean energy and save potentially billions of dollars, while reducing pollution and restoring viable ecosystems.

[_Gunnar]

This TED talk shows how desertification can be reversed and prevented by making seemingly counterintuitive use of large numbers of grazing livestock--resulting in natural sequestration of enormous quantities of CO2 in the resulting grasslands.

"Desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to desert," begins Allan Savory in this quietly powerful talk. And terrifyingly, it's happening to about two-thirds of the world's grasslands, accelerating climate change and causing traditional grazing societies to descend into social chaos. Savory has devoted his life to stopping it. He now believes -- and his work so far shows -- that a surprising factor can protect grasslands and even reclaim degraded land that was once desert.

Not all solutions to climate and environmental problems involve massive government intervention. Check this out: 50 Years Ago, This Was a Wasteland. He Changed Everything

Almost 50 years ago, fried chicken tycoon David Bamberger used his fortune to purchase 5,500 acres of overgrazed land in the Texas Hill Country. Planting grasses to soak in rains and fill hillside aquifers, Bamberger devoted the rest of his life to restoring the degraded landscape. Today, the land has been restored to its original habitat and boasts enormous biodiversity. Bamberger's model of land stewardship is now being replicated across the region and he is considered to be a visionary in land management and water conservation.

China is successfully transforming desert land with the help of solar power into valuable cropland.. This can be emulated in many areas of the world.

New technology in China turns desert into land rich with crops.
Anti-desertification efforts in China's Inner Mongolia.
China Startup- Turning sand into business.
China's Kubuqi model offers solution to desertification.
How China turns deserts into green.
Turning drought-ravaged land into fertile soil.

All these techniques and many others, including barely tapped tidal and wave power, geothermal power and OTEC, all of which have such enormous but yet barely tapped, green energy potential, that it would be practically insane to not tap into it. So please don't try to perpetuate the idiocy that a green energy future would necessarily be economically ruinous!

Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) uses the temperature difference between cooler deep and warmer shallow or surface seawaters to run a heat engine and produce useful work, usually in the form of electricity. OTEC can operate with a very high capacity factor and so can operate in base load mode.

Among ocean energy sources, OTEC is one of the continuously available renewable energy resources that could contribute to base-load power supply.[1] The resource potential for OTEC is considered to be much larger than for other ocean energy forms [World Energy Council, 2000]. Up to 88,000 TWh/year of power could be generated from OTEC without affecting the ocean’s thermal structure [Pelc and Fujita, 2002].

Systems may be either closed-cycle or open-cycle. Closed-cycle OTEC uses working fluids that are typically thought of as refrigerants such as ammonia or R-134a. These fluids have low boiling points, and are therefore suitable for powering the system’s generator to generate electricity. The most commonly used heat cycle for OTEC to date is the Rankine cycle, using a low-pressure turbine. Open-cycle engines use vapour from the seawater itself as the working fluid.

OTEC can also supply quantities of cold water as a by-product. This can be used for air conditioning and refrigeration and the nutrient-rich deep ocean water can feed biological technologies. Another by-product is fresh water distilled from the sea.[2]

OTEC theory was first developed in the 1880s and the first bench size demonstration model was constructed in 1926. Currently the world's only operating OTEC plant is in Japan, overseen by Saga University.

[_Res Ipsa]

Gunnar, you might not want to rush out and buy a herd just yet...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ng-miracle

[_Gunnar]

Gunnar, you might not want to rush out and buy a herd just yet...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ng-miracle

Wow! Thanks for that additional insight. It does indeed call into question the validity of his claims, but were they entirely without merit in all situations? I acknowledge now that they seem less credible than they did at first glance. Certainly less credible than the other two examples of reclaiming deserts that I linked to. Thanks again for making me think more critically about his claims.

[_Res Ipsa]

Gunnar, you might not want to rush out and buy a herd just yet...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ng-miracle

Wow! Thanks for that additional insight. It does indeed call into question the validity of his claims, but were they entirely without merit in all situations? I acknowledge now that they seem less credible than they did at first glance. Certainly less credible than the other two examples of reclaiming deserts that I linked to. Thanks again for making me think more critically about his claims.

I did the same thing: watched the Ted Talk and was very impressed. Later, I just happened to stumble across studies that indicated the claims were overhyped.

[_Water Dog]

RI, none of the graphs, yours or subs, are objective. Every single one of them presents a relative, subjective look at some data. Above vs. below normal. What is normal? Define normal. There isn't a defined normal at all. The graphs you show do not establish warming trends. The decade averaged record highs and lows being a good example of this. That's not a warming trend. It's high, it's low, it's high again. Fewer record cold events. But wait, you mean there still are record cold events? It's a variability frequency metric at best, and it's region specific. By itself means nothing.

Nothing about this suggests a warming trend at all, much less a CO2 driven one, much less a man-made CO2 driven one, much less a catastrophic trajectory and ultimate outcome. And now you're suggesting 12 degrees of warming by 2100. Based on what? ROFL. There is no evidence to support this at all. You can't prove any warming. ANY. You cannot prove that human activity is responsible for even half a degree. You have a graph of some data. Awesome. So what?

[_Res Ipsa]

On to Sub's next "best evidence:"



This is from the same extreme climate science denial website as the prior graph. Here's the argument. Let's say you have a weather station that reports temperatures once a day at 9:00 a.m. After doing this for years, it changes to report at 3:00 p.m. Do you just report the raw data, which will show a jump in temperatures due solely to changing the time of the measurement? Or do you adjust the data to eliminate the known bias. Or say a station is located in a large urban area subject to known Urban Heat Island effects. At some point in the record, the station is moved to a location not affected by UHI. Do you use the raw data or do you adjust the data to remove the known bias created by relocating the station? t Or what if testing shows that newer weather stations use instruments that measure temperatures half a degree higher than older instruments. As instruments are updated, do you use raw data which shows a false warming caused simply by changing instruments, or do you adjust the raw data to eliminate the effect of changing instruments?

All of the adjustments shown in Sub's graph are made to be able to compare apples to apples. The two largest source of adjustments are the elimination of known biases caused by changes in the time that stations report the temperature and changes in instruments that introduce known bias. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com ... 15GL067640

A group of climate change skeptics, headed by Robert Muller and including Judith Curry set out to test whether there were shenanigans in the data used to generate the various temperature indices used by climate scientists. Climate deniers celebrated the project at the outset. At one point, Anthony Watts declared that he would absolutely accept the results of the project. Those who accepted mainstream climate science worried that the fix was in: Muller had shown himself to be hostile to climate scientists, Muller got a grant from one of the Koch brothers for the project, and Muller appointed his own daughter to manage the project.

When the results were released, the temperature record produced by the group looked just like all the other indices. Muller announced himself as a reformed "skeptic." and accepted what the data showed: the climate was warming exactly how climate scientists said it was. Curry criticized the way Muller announced the results, but stood by them. Watts lost his crap and ran away as fast as he could from the results, with his denier groupies making Muller out as some kind of traitor.

Here's a graph from the Berkely Earth website that compares the Muller Group's results with those from other temperature indices:



Here's another graph from the Berkely Earth website that shows its entire temperature index:



And here's what Berkely Earth has to say about adjustments to raw data:

Having worked with many of the scientists in question, I can say with certainty that there is no grand conspiracy to artificially warm the earth; rather, scientists are doing their best to interpret large datasets with numerous biases such as station moves, instrument changes, time of observation changes, urban heat island biases, and other so-called inhomogenities that have occurred over the last 150 years. Their methods may not be perfect, and are certainly not immune from critical analysis, but that critical analysis should start out from a position of assuming good faith and with an understanding of what exactly has been done.

http://berkeleyearth.org/understanding- ... ture-data/

So does Sub's graph show, as he claims:

The worst case based upon the best data is that most climate science is alarmist and exaggerated with regards to impact, influence, and cause....most modern climate science is Policy Based Evidence Making:

Oh hell no. It shows just the opposite: climate scientists are geared toward gathering and analyzing the data in a way that produces the most accurate picture possible of how the climate is changing.

[_DoubtingThomas]

It depends on what you mean by the “best” solution. Science can give us options and help predict the responses of the natural environment to any actions we take..

Yes, but Science doesn't tell us what solution makes economic sense.

[_Res Ipsa]

RI, none of the graphs, yours or subs, are objective. Every single one of them presents a relative, subjective look at some data.

Strawman. I've never claimed they are objective. They are a representation of data in visual form. And as I've shown over and over with the graphs you've posted from denier websites, graphs can be manipulated to give a false impression of the totality of the data.

Above vs. below normal. What is normal? Define normal. There isn't a defined normal at all.

Red herring. The graphs don't say anything about normal. The ones showing extreme temperatures are based on the individual temperature record for each station. So, if a high is recorded that is in the top 10% of the historical record for that station, it counts as an extreme high maximum temperature. They aren't comparing the stations to some standard of "normal" -- just to the each stations historical temperature record.

The graphs you show do not establish warming trends. The decade averaged record highs and lows being a good example of this. That's not a warming trend. It's high, it's low, it's high again.

They are good evidence of warming trends. Decadal averages aren't trends. Climate trends are measured over a period of at least 30 years. The trend on the decadal averages appears positive. Care to predict whether an actual computed trend over that time period is positive or negative?

Fewer record cold events.

No, fewer record cold temperatures recorded than record warm temperatures. If average temperature in the U.S. were not increasing, we'd expect to see the numbers close to even.

But wait, you mean there still are record cold events?

Well of course there are, silly Dog. The shorter the time period of measurement and the fewer the number of locations measured, the higher the variability. When you get down to single stations measured from day to day, the variability swamps the trend. So, an average warming of 3F doesn't mean that all time low temperature records will never be set at individual weather stations. Rather, over longer periods of time, we expect the number of those records to get smaller.

It's a variability frequency metric at best, and it's region specific.

So? Sub's graph was for the US. My graph was for the US. Regardless of label you slap on it, are you claiming that they were an inappropriate response to Sub's graph?

By itself means nothing.

By itself, they provide us lots more data than Sub's graph. Sub uses an arbitrary temperature to represent extremes in order to give the impression that extreme temperatures aren't increasing. However, a comparison of each station to its own historical temperature ranges shows is evidence that we are seeing more and more extreme high maximum temperatures, fewer and fewer extreme low maximum temperatures, more and more extreme high minimum temperatures and fewer and fewer extreme low temperatures. That's not "nothing" and is in fact the opposite of what Sub's graph attempts to convey.

Nothing about this suggests a warming trend at all,

Misrepresentation. The trends over the last 30 years shown on the graphs certainly "suggest" a warming trend. They are exactly what we would expect in a warming world, and not in a cooling world.

much less a CO2 driven one, much less a man-made CO2 driven one, much less a catastrophic trajectory and ultimate outcome.

Strawman. I never claimed that the graphs show any of those things. I offered them solely as a response to Sub's graph. That's all.

And now you're suggesting 12 degrees of warming by 2100. Based on what? ROFL.

Personal incredulity. I'm not suggesting it. I'm accurately reporting the predictions of the worst case scenario that appears in AR 5. The basis for that scenario is explained in detail in the AR 5 WG report -- the summary of the science that you refuse to consider.

There is no evidence to support this at all. You can't prove any warming. ANY. You cannot prove that human activity is responsible for even half a degree. You have a graph of some data. Awesome. So what?

Strawman; unreasonable standards. There is evidence. You just deny its existence. Demanding "proof' outside of math or formal logic is just silly. The evidence of warming and of human activity as its cause is, again, layed out in the science that you refuse to consider. My response to Sub was not intended to and did not purport to be "proof" of warming. It was offered to show that the "best" evidence supported a conclusion opposite to that suggested by Sub's graph.

[_DoubtingThomas]

You cannot prove that human activity is responsible for even half a degree. You have a graph of some data. Awesome. So what?