NWR Climate change

Remington Norman said:
Your statements:

1. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. Agreed. So is water vapour, the main constituent of clouds. No models an handke this important climate forcing agent.
2. Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are currently higher than they've been for hundreds of thousands or millions of years (I think the figure is actually about 3.6 million). From the fact that atmospheric CO2 is higher than pre-industrial levels no conclusion can be drawn about global climate trends. There is good evidence from ice cores etc that CO2 levels follow rather than precede T changes, so the direction of causality is in doubt.

The data shows that i) climate is cyclical, not linear and ii) that climate trends mimic solar activity rather than CO2.
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It's true that water vapour is proving tricky to model because it can act as both a negative and positive feedback mechanism, but that's a side issue.

With regard to your other statements, obviously it's difficult to model what was going on with the climate millions of years ago - the climate is incredibly complex and its behaviour is driven by multiple factors: atmospheric (questions of composition), geological (CO2 uptake and release by rocks), biological (CO2/methane uptake and release by organisms), oceanographic (CO2 uptake by the oceans) and tectonic (CO2 and SO2 release by volcanoes, changes in ocean circulation due to continental drift). And yes, there is obviously a cyclical element as well due to changes in solar activity. But there is broad agreement that periods of high temperature in the past have coincided with and been driven by high levels of atmospheric CO2.

See for example: Modelling the long-term carbon cycle, atmospheric CO2, and Earth surface temperature from late Neoproterozoic to present day

The idea that all of the changes in global cliamte that have occured in the past are down to solar activity is just ridiculously simplistic. There are have been cold periods in the recent past that were due to massive SO2 releases by volcanic eruptions and the break-up of supercontinents have also had enormous impacts on climate.

So if you accept that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that levels of CO2 are high, why can you not accept that rising CO2 levels are behind the higher temperatures?
 
Like so many areas in science (e.g., being able to conclude absolutely that one food type will result in specific health effects), I expect that it will never be possible conclusively to “prove” that climate change is now being significantly driven by human activities. There are so many variables that many people will probably never accept what scientists are saying on climate change. But surely the risks being identified are so severe that we cannot ignore the strong probability of this?

We don’t seem to be very good on risk prevention, as any successful risk prevention approach of course results in no discernible change or impact, and so the approach goes unnoticed. Then, as soon as cost-cutting approaches are pursued, these risk prevention activities seem to be the first to go (the recent pandemic monitoring system in Canada seems to be a good example of this).

So, irrespective of the climatic factors, as illustrated by the quote in the other thread, “what if climate change is a hoax and we just made the world a better place for no reason”, all of the efforts to find alternative sources of energy should, hopefully, result in reduced pollution. And if we don’t start trying to develop alternatives to existing carbon-based energy sources now, we may be in for huge, non-climate-based problems in the future (war over dwindling resources, etc.).

Also from a non-climate-based viewpoint, the ability to capture and store energy easily through, e.g., solar and wind, if we can get there, would remove a huge number of geopolitical problems and conflict scenarios which exist simply due to where the large oil resources reside. (BTW, the U.K. has some great technological industries with respect to capturing and storing such energy, e.g., ITM Power, and many others.)

One thing that is irrationally annoying me now is that, if we do manage to implement alternative energy approaches successfully, and bring down carbon-emissions, and if there is then no resultant catastrophe, many people will take this as evidence that there was indeed nothing to worry about and that we shouldn’t have bothered (but back to the quote above). But I will be long gone by then.
 
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I guess when the planet survives and progressively humans die out the answer will become obvious to all the naysayers albeit a tad late.

James Lovelock and the Gaia hypothesis remains a worthwhile read never mind more up to date scientific evidence.
 
Ian Russell said:
I guess when the planet survives and progressively humans die out the answer will become obvious to all the naysayers albeit a tad late.

James Lovelock and the Gaia hypothesis remains a worthwhile read never mind more up to date scientific evidence.
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Is anyone serious predicting human extinction from global warming?
 
George Marshall said:
View attachment 19868

Extreme climate in Canada at the moment

Source:
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1410157638109872134
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Listening to the news here every morning resembles something from an apocalyptical science fiction film. It is simply absolutely terrifying. I can't imagine trying to function in a physical temperature of 49C. It is extremely dangerous and sadly a spike in deaths is being reported.

It is also reported to be having a devastating effect on crops.
 
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G. W o l f f said:
Listening to the news here every morning resembles something from an apocalyptical science fiction film. It is simply absolutely frightening. I can't imagine trying to function in a physical temperature of 49C. It is extremely dangerous and sadly a spike in deaths is being reported.
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Is not something I’d like to see in the UK at any point. Hope you are in a cooler spot.
 
Yes, where we are in eastern Ontario, we sometimes have physical highs of 36C in the summer, with awful humidity, and that is difficult enough.

I lived in Edmonton (Alberta) up until 2002 and loved the summers there then - cool and low humidity. I understand that that is no longer the case. I think that today Alberta and Saskatchewan are facing some extremely high temperatures as the B.C. system moves east.
 
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David Mansfield said:
it really is the most tiresome subject. It’s like the coming and going of the ice age.........it happened
lets get on with our lives for goodness sake.
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What an utterly bizarre comment. How exactly are the people dying in the current heatwave meant to 'get on with their lives'? And what about those living areas where rising sea levels are making 'getting on with their lives' impossible? The farmers unable to grow crops because of changes in rainfall patterns or, yes, heatwaves? I could go on and on and on, but I guess that would just be being tiresome.
 
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