New World: Climate Change

[pixelsmith]

Lecture begins at 3:15. This entire lecture is essential listening for those fuzzy on exactly how science works. At 11:00 some pertinent comments viv-a-vis what has been trolled on various climate threads as 'legitimate' counters to the science.

The way this works, however - if you've been reading - is that the lecturer will become the target of ad hominem attacks, no matter how distinguished or respected a scientist they are. (And in the US we can expect more of this as indicated in a previous post since the ALEC meeting). In sum - the ideas will not be discussed, the person will be. This is what I do not want to take place on this thread.

I present this here simply to bring people 'up-to-speed' on 'how science works'.

Stephen H. Schneider ~ Is the Science of Global Warming Settled Enough for Policy?

TEXT: "Uploaded on Mar 29, 2011: Dr. Schneider is the Inaugural Visitor in the Zurich Financial Services Distinguished Visitors Program on Climate Change. He is the Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies, Professor of Biological Sciences, and a Senior Fellow in the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University. From 1973-1996 he served as a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, where he co-founded the Climate Project. His research focuses on climate-change science, integrated assessment of ecological and economic impacts of human-induced climate change, and identifying viable climate policies and technological solutions. He has consulted for federal agencies and White House staff in six administrations."

Really Tyger?! You have to start another climate change thread since you got beat up on the last one? Your "science" is flawed, it does not follow scientific methodology it is based on a belief system and man made faulty climate models that are now PROVEN to be dead wrong.

Steven Schneider warned us of a looming ice age and hinted at melting the ice caps to halt it. Then he said he made a mistake and it was actually global warming that was our big threat and aviation was a big part of that problem and he and other scientists fly all around the world on government funding telling people that flying airliners was causing global warming.. then he had a heart attack and died while flying back from a science meeting where he probably talked about how bad flying was to the environment.
Sorry Tyger.. this hypocritical con man/bought-and-paid-for "scientist" is bad choice to use to make your point.

 

[Tyger]

This is what we are losing -

I am brought to mind of the film 'Interstellar' - there is a moment when one crew member is suffering under the reality of life in a tin-can in space, and in response the one he is talking to gives him a recording of nature sounds from earth.

It's not a minor matter when we lose nature. Our sense of well-being is keyed to nature.

So here we have climate change - and radiation - a world in flux. What will it look like. Can we say?

 

[pixelsmith]

People reading this bunk need to know where Tyger gets his "science from. SkepticalScience is a oxymoronic named website that is run by a washed up cartoonist claiming to know something about climate.
They control, edit and manipulate their comment section to garner support and cover the crap they spew, similar to tactics the IPCC uses in controlling the scientific peer review process. These con men hide behind the green mask.

 

[pixelsmith]

This is what we are losing -

I am brought to mind of the film 'Interstellar' - there is a moment when one crew member is suffering under the reality of life in a tin-can in space, and in response the one he is talking to gives him a recording of nature sounds from earth.

It's not a minor matter when we lose nature. Our sense of well-being is keyed to nature.

So here we have climate change - and radiation - a world in flux. What will it look like. Can we say?

Run Tyger Run!!
Love the polar bear. A truly impressive animal that while being the poster child for the global warming scam is actually a perfect example of a mammal that has adapted to climate change.

 

[pixelsmith]

 

[Goggs Mackay]

People reading this bunk need to know where Tyger gets his "science from. SkepticalScience is a oxymoronic named website that is run by a washed up cartoonist claiming to know something about climate.
They control, edit and manipulate their comment section to garner support and cover the crap they spew, similar to tactics the IPCC uses in controlling the scientific peer review process. These con men hide behind the green mask.

Even if every word is trash I'm afraid it is still a free forum for any view whatsoever that does not constitute a crime! I'm afraid I'd have to have the lifespan of an Ent to even read all the dubious material posted in this forum.

Pixel, I have noted what you have said and you are of course free to counter-post explaining why you think certain info can not be trusted.

Of course, any such counter-posts should be nice an amiable, the kind of post that doesn't end up in a furious PM about behaviour!

 

[pixelsmith]

Even if every word is trash I'm afraid it is still a free forum for any view whatsoever that does not constitute a crime! I'm afraid I'd have to have the lifespan of an Ent to even read all the dubious material posted in this forum.

Pixel, I have noted what you have said and you are of course free to counter-post explaining why you think certain info can not be trusted.

Of course, any such counter-posts should be nice an amiable, the kind of post that doesn't end up in a furious PM about behaviour!

I agree Goggs, he can post whatever he wants but Tyger posts pure garbage and passes it off as fact. I was plenty amiable in my post.

 

[Tyger]

The science is sound. I have read it and the conclusions are unavoidable. But don't take my word - or any one's word for it. Read the science. Links to the science are embedded in the links I give. But you can find the science on one's own, too. The disinformation on this topic is considerable so a great deal of discernment is required.

However, it is so vast a problem that a single person is helpless before it - denial, in a way, 'makes sense'. What else is there to do? The sheer inertial momentum of events is a tidal wave few can see their way to impacting. One thing is certain: the future is going to be radically different. The future will be for those who see the changes afoot and are pro-active creating new paradigms to meet the changing landscape. As always, the future will be for the visionaries. I have my own hunches: new cities built on old, centers of population that are self-sustaining with no more national governments or boundaries (creating new freedoms but also new restraints - nothing is perfect). The new sources of energy will be local, with local control. The economic paradigm is shifting. It will take a century to effect imo. That's the merest outline - a sketch of my hunches. (I should write a SyFy film treatment!)

From the article: "Ecosystems are altered by natural and manmade occurrences. As they recover, it will be in a different climate from that in which they evolved. The climate in which they recover will not be stable; it will be continuing to warm. There will be no new normal, only more change."

Further: "There are many reasons that we need to essentially eliminate our carbon dioxide emissions. The climate is changing rapidly; if that pace is slowed, the affairs of nature and human beings can adapt more readily. The total amount of change, including sea-level rise, can be limited. The further we get away from the climate that we have known, the more unreliable the guidance from our models and the less likely we will be able to prepare. The warmer the planet gets, the more likely reservoirs of carbon dioxide and methane, another greenhouse gas that warms the planet, will be released from storage in the frozen Arctic permafrost – further adding to the problem."

We are in a state of what scientists are calling 'committed warming'. There is no going back even if emissions came to a full-stop in the instant - because of the time-lag. What is coming is more than 'unknown' it is truly unknowable because outside our experience. The time-lag is 20-40 years - an interesting number, because the time-lag for cancer (radiation, Fukishima) is 20 years. In any case, a compelling convergence of events that will propel great changes starting at mid-century. We are at the merest beginning.

What Would Happen To The Climate If We Stopped Emitting Greenhouse Gases Today?
December 19, 2014 | by Richard B. Rood
LINK: What would happen to the climate if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases today?

TEXT: "Earth’s climate is changing rapidly. We know this from billions of observations, documented in thousands of journal papers and texts and summarized every few years by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The primary cause of that change is the release of carbon dioxide from burning coal, oil and natural gas. International climate talks in Lima this week are laying the foundation for next year’s UN climate summit in Paris. While negotiations about reducing emissions grind on, how much warming are we already locked into? If we stop emitting greenhouse gases tomorrow, why would the temperature continue to rise?

"Basics of carbon and climate
"The carbon dioxide that accumulates in the atmosphere insulates the surface of the Earth. It’s like a warming blanket that holds in heat. This energy increases the Earth’s surface average temperature, heats the oceans and melts polar ice. As consequences, sea level rises and weather changes. Since 1880, after carbon dioxide emissions took off with the Industrial Revolution, the average global temperature has increased about 1.5F (0.85C). Each of the last three decades has been warmer than the preceding decade, as well as warmer than the entire previous century.

"The Arctic is warming much faster than the average global temperature; ice in the Arctic Ocean is melting and the permafrost is thawing. Ice sheets in both the Arctic and Antarctic are melting. Ecosystems on both land and in the sea are changing. The observed changes are coherent and consistent with our theoretical understanding of the Earth’s energy balance and simulations from models that are used to understand past variability and to help us think about the future.

"Slam on the climate brakes
"What would happen to the climate if we were to stop emitting carbon dioxide today, right now? Would we return to the climate of our elders? The simple answer is no. Once we release the carbon dioxide stored in the fossil fuels we burn, it accumulates in and moves amongst the atmosphere, the oceans, the land, and the plants and animals of the biosphere. The released carbon dioxide will remain in the atmosphere for thousands of years. Only after many millennia will it return to rocks, for example, through the formation of calcium carbonate – limestone – as marine organisms' shells settle to the bottom of the ocean. But on time spans relevant to humans, once released the carbon dioxide is in our environment essentially forever. It does not go away, unless we, ourselves, remove it.

"If we stop emitting today, it’s not the end of the story for global warming. There’s a delay intemperature increase as the climate catches up with all the carbon that’s in the atmosphere. After maybe 40 more years, the climate will stabilize at a temperature higher than what was normal for previous generations. This decades-long lag between cause and effect is due to the long time it takes to heat the the ocean’s huge mass. The energy that is held at the Earth by the increased carbon dioxide does more than heat the air. It melts ice; it heats the ocean. Compared to air, it’s harder to raise the temperature of water – it takes time, decades. However, once the ocean temperature is elevated, it adds to the warming of the Earth’s surface.

"So even if carbon emissions stopped completely right now, as the oceans catch up with the atmosphere, the Earth’s temperature would rise about another 1.1F (0.6C). Scientists refer to this as committed warming. Ice, also responding to increasing heat in the ocean, will continue to melt. There’s already convincing evidence that significant glaciers in the West Antarctic ice sheets are lost. Ice, water, and air – the extra heat held on the Earth by carbon dioxide affects them all. That which has melted will stay melted – and more will melt.

"Ecosystems are altered by natural and manmade occurrences. As they recover, it will be in a different climate from that in which they evolved. The climate in which they recover will not be stable; it will be continuing to warm. There will be no new normal, only more change.

"Best of the worst case scenarios
"In any event, it’s not possible to stop emitting carbon dioxide today, right now. Despite significant advances in renewable energy sources, total demand for energy accelerates and carbon dioxide emissions increase. I teach my students that they need to plan for a world 7F (4C) warmer. A 2011 report from the International Energy Agency states that if we don’t get off our current path, then we’re looking at an Earth 11F (6C) warmer. Our current Earth is just over 1F warmer, and the observed changes are already disturbing.

"There are many reasons that we need to essentially eliminate our carbon dioxide emissions. The climate is changing rapidly; if that pace is slowed, the affairs of nature and human beings can adapt more readily. The total amount of change, including sea-level rise, can be limited. The further we get away from the climate that we have known, the more unreliable the guidance from our models and the less likely we will be able to prepare. The warmer the planet gets, the more likely reservoirs of carbon dioxide and methane, another greenhouse gas that warms the planet, will be released from storage in the frozen Arctic permafrost – further adding to the problem.

"If we stop our emissions today, we won’t go back to the past. This is not reason, however, to continue with unbridled emissions. We are adaptable creatures, with credible knowledge of our climate’s future and how we can frame that future. We’re already stuck with some amount of guaranteed climate change at this point. Rather than trying to recover the past, we need to be thinking about best possible futures."

 

[Tyger]

Because there appears to be a serious failure to understand the science in this area, I will post some (imo) excellent renderings of the situation in easy-to-grasp language. The actual science can be daunting to read and follow. The following should be accessible - written by both a scientist and a teacher at university level. His blog is particularly informative for someone new to the topic. He renders the science - the logic - plainly. [It should be clear that it does not mean that one accepts it wholesale - only that the reasoning is presented plainly. If one objects, one should be able to refute with reasoning - not ad hominem attacks.The former is science, the latter is politics.]

From Richard B. Rood regarding the above article quoted in post# 28: "Global average, surface temperatures evolved as a widely communicated measure of "climate" for a bunch of reasons. One, our primary worry of climate is how it affects us. Therefore, this brings attention to the Earth's land surface, and the measures we feel, temperature and precipitation. We also define climate as "average" weather. Then, as climate change took on societal importance, people sought a single measure that represented climate change. Hence, global average temperature, and differences from some average (an anomaly), emerged as the go to variable. There are many problems with this. For example, nighttime lows rise faster than daytime highs. Winter might increase faster than summer. There are local changes dominated by land-use change or irrigation. Then, of course, the failures of global average temperature as a robust single indicator of climate and climate change, help support the arguments of those who want to deny climate change is real or consequential. But all of the variables are actually reported, and you don't have to look deeply to find discussions in the public arena on many variables and measures of change. From a scientist's point of view, it makes sense to think of climate as ocean-dominated - that's where the energy is. I wrote a long and conversational blog trying to make some of ideas in this piece more intuitive ..."

The following is the 'intuitive' piece mentioned.....

Turn Off the Carbon Dioxide Emissions – It Still Gets Warmer
By: Dr. Ricky Rood December 12, 2014
LINK: Dr. Ricky Rood's Climate Change Blog : Turn Off the Carbon Dioxide Emissions – It Still Gets Warmer | Weather Underground

TEXT: "If you compare the climate and weather of, say, Kansas and coastal California, there are some distinct differences. Kansas has higher swings of temperature from summer to winter. In the summer, Kansas is often very hot and in winter it can be brutally cold. Along the California coast, such extremes are not as common. In fact, one doesn’t have to go all the way from the Pacific Coast to Kansas to find such extremes of variability. You only have to go, east, over the relatively small Coast Range of mountains in California to find larger swings of temperature. This is especially true in summer, when driving, east, from San Francisco, through Oakland, to Livermore you can go from quite chilly in San Francisco to over 100 degrees F in Livermore. That’s about 50 miles. (Does any one know what ever happened to Roderick’s BBQ? Prefer, local on-ground verification.)

"One reason that the temperature variability on the coast is smaller is because of water. In our California example, the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay are quite cold, and they are large enough to influence the temperature over the land for a few miles. By the time you get to Livermore, this moderating effect of the cool water is diminishing. Many of us have the intuitive feeling that large bodies of water moderate the temperature variability that we feel. That’s one of the reasons we like to go to the seashore or lake shore during the summer. Weather and climate scientists call this a marine, maritime or oceanic climate – from the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Meteorology Glossary “A regional climate under the predominant influence of the sea, characterized by relatively small seasonal variations and high atmospheric moisture content; the antithesis of a continental climate.” Another type of climate largely defined by oceanic moderation / modification is the Mediterranean climate, “Characterized by mild, wet winters and warm to hot, dry summers; typically occurs on the west side of continents between about 30° and 45° latitude.”

"This moderating effect of water is reasonably well known. It doesn’t require a whole ocean. The same effect is seen in Great Lakes of the United States, which is, really, a coupled lake-land-atmosphere climate. And, of course, on even a smaller scale, people of Michigan have a huge summer lake culture, where to escape the oppressive 85 degree F days of August, they go to the less-than-great lakes that are throughout the state. (Keeping with a recent dubious theme Kid Rock. This pretty much explains at least one of my students.)

"Getting to science, we understand that air and land heat up and cool down faster than bodies of water. There are a number of reasons for this. Both water and air are fluids, so when they get heated, there is the possibility of motion, which, ultimately, mixes hot and cold parts of the fluid. It takes, however, more heat to change the temperature of a mass of water than it takes to change the temperature of an equal mass of air. Or, for the same amount of heat, the air warms up faster than the water. Scientists talk about specific heat and heat capacity, and there are definitions, again, in the AMS Glossary, but I preferDictionary.com: specific heat is “the number of calories required to raise the temperature of 1 gram of a substance 1°C, or the number of BTU's per pound per degree F.” Generically, the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of a certain amount of mass of a substance a certain number of degrees. The specific heat of water is about 4 times that of air.

"From a different perspective, if you take away the heat, the water takes longer to cool down.

"Let’s stick with the more intuitive and experiential approach. I spent a lot of youthful time at the mouth of the Neuse River in North Carolina. Here we scooped soft shells, gigged flounder, developed our relationships with eastern diamond backs and stood in the water and felt the shock of distant lightning. (These are Southern things.) Later in life I spent 30 years on the shore of the Chesapeake Bay. One of the things you notice in these places is the slight shift of the seasons. The daffodils were a full two weeks later on the Bay than up in Greenbelt, MD, just 20-30 miles away. In the autumn, frost was reliably two or more weeks later on the Bay. Though we often think of the moderating effect of bodies of water in weather and climate, I want to use this experience as a bit of a re-framing. Specifically, the role of the Chesapeake Bay in autumn and winter is to warm the air. The effect is large enough that it matters to the people within a small number of miles of the shore. This is a case where the water had been accumulating heat all summer. Then in fall, when the air temperature fell below the water temperature it became a source of heat to the air. A really neat thing was to walk into a rough bay or river in late October and early November and feel how warm it is. (Rough needed to mix the warmer, deeper water, with the cooler water at the surface.)

"The point here, there were situations when the heat in the water, in concert with the contrast between air temperature and water temperature, the heat from the water starts to warm the atmosphere. Look around and you can find examples on this at many different spatial sizes on many different spans of time. In a paper with my student Evan Oswald, we found that on hot days in Detroit, the presence of Lakes Huron, St. Clair and Erie kept downtown Detroit cooler than the inland suburbs in the hot part of the day, but warmer at night. Again, here is a moderating perception to people, caused, in part, by the water heating the air at night when the air temperature was low.

"Let’s take this to the global scale. Energy comes from the Sun and heats the Earth. Our “extra” carbon dioxide holds a little more of that energy near the Earth’s surface than compared to, say, a 100 years ago. Some energy goes to heat the land surface and the air. Energy goes into melting ice – sea ice, glaciers and ice sheets. Most of the energy goes into the ocean, increasing the heat content of the ocean. Though most of the energy goes into the ocean, because of the large mass of the ocean, the mixing of ocean, and relative to air, the large specific heat, the temperature of the ocean takes a long time to increase. In this way the ocean actually moderates the air temperature – or, without the ocean, the Earth would be heating up a lot faster. Alternatively, the ocean is taking heat from the atmosphere. (Without the ocean, we also would be less likely to have things like The whole silly warming pause, warming hiatus thing.)

"We are already seeing now, in 2014, how a relatively small change in the ocean surface temperature related to a weak, almost El Niño is leading to record surface air temperatures. This is a case of the ocean heating, relatively to last year, the atmosphere. In fact, reaching back to Ocean Hot and Hotter Still, I cite “Oceanic influences on recent continental warming,” that appeared in Climate Dynamics. This paper concludes that much of the “recent warming” observed on land can be traced to heating from the ocean. "Recent" in this paper is, more or less, the last half of a century, fifty years. The authors trace the heating of the land to increases of heat in the ocean.

"I have tried to establish an intuitive and experience-based demonstration of the role of large bodies of water in the determination of air temperature. I have described an example, my experience at the coast during autumn, where as the heating by the Sun decreases, the heat from the water serves to warm the air. On a global scale, we are at this very moment living the fact that warming water in eastern Pacific Ocean is pushing the global-average surface (air) temperature to record highs. Therefore, it should logically follow that if we were to stop our emissions of carbon dioxide, thereby stopping the increase of energy being held at the Earth’s surface, that the energy being stored in the ocean will serve to heat the air and continue to warm the Earth’s average surface temperature, until a balance is reached.

"I want to end by introducing the role that Point of View plays. Because we are most interested in how climate affects us, we are most interested in the surface air temperature, especially over land. You can imagine, that if you were in space studying the Earth, rather than surface air temperature being your primary focus, you might focus first and foremost on what is happening in the ocean. We would, then, not think so much of the ocean’s ability to heat the air, to increase the average surface temperature. Rather you would think of all of the heat stored in the ocean maintaining the planet in a more or less stable climate, with fluctuations in air temperature. Then the air temperature could be viewed as a low heat capacity envelope around the ocean that amplifies ocean temperature variability. Then, in our thought experiment of the carbon dioxide emissions halting, we would be seeing the atmosphere catching up with the more stable, perhaps more important ocean. It is our presence, our point of view, that makes the surface air temperature the important parameter, that frames our thinking of the ocean catching up and “heating” the planet."

 

[Tyger]

For those interested - if you are reading this (and I assume no one is until someone pops on to comment) - I strongly recommend reading the comment sections to the blogs linked to, as a great deal of the (underlying facts of the) science is there debated amongst scientists. In many ways this whole area is a 'spectator sport'. However, a passing understanding of weather science is very helpful.

 

[Tyger]

The following offers a massive amount of information, in accessible language, regarding the issues of climate change/warming.

Dr. Ricky Rood's Climate Change Blog
LINK: Wunder Blog Categories | Weather Underground

It also has extensive discussions/explanations on modeling. (A bugaboo for some).

 

[Tyger]

Keeping in mind that everyone who advocates global warming and climate change is a target for accusations and smears by deniers. Still the science is out there for anyone to read. There are particularly good summations of the science.

Climate change: How do we know?
LINK: Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet: Evidence

TEXT: "The Earth's climate has changed throughout history. Just in the last 650,000 years there have been seven cycles of glacial advance and retreat, with the abrupt end of the last ice age about 7,000 years ago marking the beginning of the modern climate era — and of human civilization. Most of these climate changes are attributed to very small variations in Earth’s orbit that change the amount of solar energy our planet receives.

"The current warming trend is of particular significance because most of it is very likely human-induced and proceeding at a rate that is unprecedented in the past 1,300 years.

"Earth-orbiting satellites and other technological advances have enabled scientists to see the big picture, collecting many different types of information about our planet and its climate on a global scale. Studying these climate data collected over many years reveal the signals of a changing climate.

"The heat-trapping nature of carbon dioxide and other gases was demonstrated in the mid-19th century. Their ability to affect the transfer of infrared energy through the atmosphere is the scientific basis of many instruments flown by NASA. There is no question that increased levels of greenhouse gases must cause the Earth to warm in response.

"Ice cores drawn from Greenland, Antarctica, and tropical mountain glaciers show that the Earth’s climate responds to changes in greenhouse gas levels. They also show that in the past, large changes in climate have happened very quickly, geologically-speaking: in tens of years, not in millions or even thousands."

The evidence for rapid climate change is compelling:
Sea level rise: Global sea level rose about 17 centimeters (6.7 inches) in the last century. The rate in the last decade, however, is nearly double that of the last century.

Global temperature rise
All three major global surface temperature reconstructions show that Earth has warmed since 1880.5Most of this warming has occurred since the 1970s, with the 20 warmest years having occurred since 1981 and with all 10 of the warmest years occurring in the past 12 years.6 Even though the 2000s witnessed a solar output decline resulting in an unusually deep solar minimum in 2007-2009, surface temperatures continue to increase.

Warming oceans
The oceans have absorbed much of this increased heat, with the top 700 meters (about 2,300 feet) of ocean showing warming of 0.302 degrees Fahrenheit since 1969.

Shrinking ice sheets
The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have decreased in mass. Data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment show Greenland lost 150 to 250 cubic kilometers (36 to 60 cubic miles) of ice per year between 2002 and 2006, while Antarctica lost about 152 cubic kilometers (36 cubic miles) of ice between 2002 and 2005.

Declining Arctic sea ice
Both the extent and thickness of Arctic sea ice has declined rapidly over the last several decades.

Glacial retreat
Glaciers are retreating almost everywhere around the world — including in the Alps, Himalayas, Andes, Rockies, Alaska and Africa.

Extreme events
The number of record high temperature events in the United States has been increasing, while the number of record low temperature events has been decreasing, since 1950. The U.S. has also witnessed increasing numbers of intense rainfall events.

Ocean acidification
Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the acidity of surface ocean waters has increased by about 30 percent. This increase is the result of humans emitting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and hence more being absorbed into the oceans. The amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by the upper layer of the oceans is increasing by about 2 billion tons per year.

Decreased snow cover
Satellite observations reveal that the amount of spring snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere has decreased over the past five decades and that the snow is melting earlier.

 

[manxman]

Indoctrinating your countries children in your new religion, is shameful.

And the video from your own clergy is sick, Hitler did exactly the same, when he de-sensitised a nation to thier jewish neighbours.




The infamous 1010 Green Activist video which promotes the killing of all climate deniers and their children.
This is the FINAL SOLUTION to the climate denial problem, as suggested and promoted by the UK based activist group, 1010.

 

[Tyger]

Urban planning is factoring in the climate changes now. For individuals, planning into the future, the message is clear - seek higher ground. Invest in family property (that will be inherited in 30 years) on high ground. Not on deltas. Not on flood plains. Not on the banks of rivers. [To be clear - this is not advocacy: this thread is exploring what the world will be like, not arguing Climate Change, but as a reality. As a reality - one would not want to invest in sea-front property, delta property, etc.]

The following reports on a study analyzing nuisance-level floods occurring for 30 days or more per year in various locations. This is about science impacting policy. This is a summation of a study.

D.C. has passed sea level rise 'tipping point,' more cities to follow: study
LINK: D.C. has passed sea level rise 'tipping point,' more cities to follow: study

TEXT: "SAN FRANCISCO — Major U.S. coastal cities, including Washington, D.C. and Wilmington, North Carolina, have already slipped past a sea level rise-related “tipping point,” and into a new era of increasingly common and damaging coastal flooding events, a new study found. Other cities along the East and Gulf Coasts are following close behind, with the majority of coastal areas in the U.S. expected to see 30 or more days of “nuisance-level flooding” each year by 2050, regardless of how significantly countries cut emissions of the greenhouse gases that are causing global warming, according to the study.

"The study defines this flood frequency as the "tipping point" in the local flood regime, with major implications for the management of coastal roads and critical infrastructure located close to sea level, since there will be far less time for repairs between floods. Nuisance-type flooding is defined as flooding to a height of between 1 to 2 feet above local high-tide levels. Such floods, the study said, are now five to 10 times more likely today than they were just 50 years ago.

"Although the term “nuisance floods” may connote minor flooding with little reason for concern, the impacts of repetitive floods should not be underestimated, the study’s lead author, William Sweet of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), told reporters at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union on Thursday. “It’s an emerging flooding crisis,” Sweet, an oceanographer with NOAA’s National Ocean Service, said. The new research, published in the open-access journal Earth’s Future, is among the first to look at the rapidly changing frequency of minor coastal flooding in response to sea level rise.

"Extremes are rising far faster than the mean
"Sweet and co-author Joseph Park, also of NOAA, used tide-gauge data and mainstream sea-level-rise projections, to show that, in many places, the frequency of coastal flooding events is rising far faster than the mean sea level is. To date, the mean sea level rise is what has captured the most attention. “It’s not so much the mean that we are concerned about than it is the frequency of these lesser extremes,” Sweet said. In some cases, less than a foot of mean sea level rise may be all that is required to reach the threshold level of 30 days per year of nuisance-type flood events, he said. Such floods affect infrastructure that lies just 1 to 2 feet above sea level, which in many cases, includes critical shoreline roads, military bases, airports and water-treatment facilities.

"The study is a warning to decision-makers in many coastal areas that they need to think more proactively about protecting their critical infrastructure from coastal flooding, rather than assuming that most of the impacts of sea level rise will be delayed until the end of the century. [see graph in link indicating areas of concern - such as San Francisco by 2030

"The study, as well as a recent report from environmental advocacy group Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), shows that floods reaching such heights are becoming the norm — rather than an outlier — in many places. The UCS report, for example, warns that flooding at high tides may become so common along the East Coast that "sections of coastal cities may flood so often they would become unusable in the near future." As the relative sea level rises, the probability of floods that were previously quite rare is also rising, but at a far more rapid, non-linear rate, according to the new study. By 2100, most coastal locations analyzed in the study are predicted to have almost daily flooding, Sweet said.

"The ocean is not "a bathtub" with uniform levels of sea level rise
"Some cities, such as New York, are already hardening their shorelines in response to major coastal-flooding events, such as Hurricane Sandy. Others, like Miami, Florida, are taking action because of increasingly common “sunny-day flooding” when astronomical high tides are reached. But the U.S. is a country with more than half of the population living within 50 miles of the coast, and many areas are just at the beginning stages of preparing to deal with the changing flood regime.

"In Washington, increasingly frequent flooding along the Potomac River has affected neighborhoods like Georgetown, as well as nearby Alexandria, Virginia. In addition to D.C. and Annapolis, Maryland, other cities that will soon exceed their tipping points include Baltimore, Maryland; Charleston, South Carolina; and Atlantic City, New Jersey. These locations should pass the 30-day flood-frequency benchmark within the next five years, the study found.

"Areas that have more frequent storms will see more frequent nuisance-level floods, as will places where local sea levels are rising more than the global average projection of between 1-and-a-half to 4 feet, according to the study. The Mid-Atlantic is considered to be a regional “hot spot” of sea level rise, with the ocean increasing faster than the global average there, due to land subsidence and regional ocean currents.

"This illustrates that the ocean is not “a bathtub,” with water rising to the same height everywhere around the rim, Sweet said. Instead, there are regional variations that scientists have recently been identifying, and which policymakers need to be aware of. Ben Strauss, who directs the sea-level-rise research program at Climate Central, a nonprofit research and journalism organization, said the study offers new insights that until now, have largely gone unrecognized. “I think this study highlights one of the most important, and least appreciated, threats from sea level rise — that flood risks will grow much more rapidly than you would expect from even modest rise,” he told Mashable in an email. Strauss was not involved in the new report.

“This study shows that just like lowering the rim of a basketball net a few inches would increase the number of dunks a lot, sea level rise of a few inches can increase nuisance flooding dramatically,” he said. “This research is consistent with our own work showing that in some places, a person could buy a home today that has rarely or never flooded, and find it flooding regularly by the end of a thirty-year mortgage.”

"One prominent omission in the new study is Miami, Florida, which is widely considered to be ground zero for sea level rise-related impacts in the U.S. The study’s authors did not include Miami in their analysis because of discrepancies in its long-term tidal data. Hurricane Andrew, which struck in 1992, destroyed the tidal gauge that had been recording sea level and high tides there. A new one was installed in a different location, introducing a gap in the long-term record.

"Miami is already experiencing a phenomenon locals refer to as “sunny-day flooding,” said Jayantha Obeysekera, chief modeler for the South Florida Water Management District. “It’s already happening almost every year, miles and miles of streets are flooded,” he said at a press conference in San Francisco on Thursday. On a global scale, research by Strauss and his colleagues has found that nearly 200 million people or more - possibly as many as half a billion — live in places at risk of submersion or chronic flooding by century’s end, assuming business-as-usual emissions continue. The majority of these people live in coastal cities in Asia, particularly in China."

 

[Tyger]

Some news from last June '14 - this is old news. Please note: the 'outrage' is not with the deniers' pov but with the tactics being used by the deniers. There is a kind of anti-science going on. I have been startled by the lack of science in the deniers' camp. There really is no substance to the (so-called) objections. On close scrutiny, there is no real rebuttal. What is revealed on analysis is a serious lack of understanding of how science works, or else it's some willful disinformation, pure and simple.

Scientist Offers $10,000 To Anyone Who Can Disprove Climate Change 6/24/14
LINK: Scientist Offers $10,000 To Anyone Who Can Disprove Climate Change

TEXT: "Outraged by the unsavory tactics of climate change deniers, physicist Christopher Keating says he'll give $10,000 to anyone who can use the scientific method to prove that human-instigated climate change isn't real.

"Keating has been involved in one way or another with climate change for the past three decades. He's been a professor of physics for over 20 years and has taught at the U.S. Naval Academy and the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. He recently issued a bit of a tirade via PRWeb, claiming that climate change deniers are using the same methods as the tobacco industry, and pointing to their claims as evidence.

" "Compare the claims of deniers of today to the people that denied a link between tobacco and lung disease and see how similar they are," he writes. "The tobacco people funded certain scientists to undermine valid research. At the same time, they called into question the ability of scientist receiving government funding to remain unbiased. They claimed lung disease was just a natural event. Climate change deniers today are making the same arguments about global warming."

"He says the science of climate change science is so overwhelming that the only way we can deny global warming is to deny science itself. "Greenhouse gases are on the rise and the effects are evident: The earth is getting warmer, weather everywhere is changing, the oceans are warming at an alarming rate and ice caps are melting," he says. "Everywhere you look you see evidence of global warming. This isn't something that is only going to occur in the future, it is happening right now." "

"To that end, Keating is offering two prizes: One that will pay $10,000 to anyone who can prove — via the scientific method — that anthropogenic climate change is not real, and one that will pay $1,000 to anyone who can provide any scientific evidence at all that it isn't real. "I'm a scientist and I have to go where the science leads me. I have been studying climate change for a long time and I am certain my money is safe," he adds. "They are in the business of denial and deception, not science. But, if someone could give me a scientific proof global warming isn't real, it would be worth the money."

 

[Tyger]

Indoctrinating your countries children in your new religion, is shameful. And the video from your own clergy is sick, Hitler did exactly the same, when he de-sensitized a nation to their jewish neighbors.

Strange. It's hard to know what to say, even if one were so inclined.

The infamous 1010 Green Activist video which promotes the killing of all climate deniers and their children.
This is the FINAL SOLUTION to the climate denial problem, as suggested and promoted by the UK based activist group, 1010.

No one is advocating such. This is pure nonsense. This is British humor. It is satirical. It lasted one day. You are a Brit yet you use this to advance a smear? Never the science - you never argue the science. Dead-give-away that you are on shifting sands. You don't have a case - so you divert attention away from the science - and waste people's time.

Even Wikipedia gets it right.
LINK: No Pressure (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[pixelsmith]

Funny crap you spew. I don't know any scientist denying climate change. Although there are extremely ignorant and childish people claiming it.


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[Tyger]

Funny crap you spew.

How is it 'crap'?

I don't know any scientist denying climate change.

You don't? That's news. That's a change. So I assume you've done your due-diligence and discovered that there is a consensus? But even I would never make such a categoric statement. There has to be outliers - and well there should be. Science is tentative.

Although there are extremely ignorant and childish people claiming [climate change].

Are you talking about yourself?

 

[pixelsmith]

I have posted a couple videos that explains your crap spewing but I didn't realize it was material you are unable to comprehend and are apparently too intimidated to even try.
Climate change is accepted by scientists I am familiar with. The claim that humans are causing it is in dispute.


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[manxman]

Yes he goes to great length's some would say any lengths, to explain the obvious, what he doesnt explain is the co2 causal links to climate change, the sun's influence on climate is known, and explains both the warming and the hiatus, but oh no its co2, its polution man, its bad shit..

But lets not get carried away, ooops too late.

However, it is so vast a problem that a single person is helpless before it - denial, in a way, 'makes sense'. What else is there to do? The sheer inertial momentum of events is a tidal wave few can see their way to impacting. One thing is certain: the future is going to be radically different. The future will be for those who see the changes afoot and are pro-active creating new paradigms to meet the changing landscape.

As always, the future will be for the visionaries.

I have my own hunches: new cities built on old, centers of population that are self-sustaining with no more national governments or boundaries (creating new freedoms but also new restraints - nothing is perfect). The new sources of energy will be local, with local control. The economic paradigm is shifting. It will take a century to effect imo. That's the merest outline - a sketch of my hunches. (I should write a SyFy film treatment!)


The lads a visionary Pixel.

Well why didnt he just say, we kneel before thee prophet.

I believe brother, hallaluja i believe.