Global Warming

[MakemineVanilla]

 

[CVByrne]

On 26/07/2023 at 19:54, LondonLax said:

Unless the Gulf Stream stops, then London’s climate will be more like Montreal. 

We're lucky the gulf stream can't stop because of Physics. We'd need the Atlantic Ocean to disappear and the earth to change the direction of its spin. 

[Davkaus]

1 hour ago, CVByrne said:

We're lucky the gulf stream can't stop because of Physics. We'd need the Atlantic Ocean to disappear and the earth to change the direction of its spin. 

You should let scientists know so they stop wasting time researching it. 

[limpid]

4 hours ago, CVByrne said:

We're lucky the gulf stream can't stop because of Physics. We'd need the Atlantic Ocean to disappear and the earth to change the direction of its spin. 

Quotes from professors and links to at least one peer reviewed journal.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/25/gulf-stream-could-collapse-as-early-as-2025-study-suggests

Quote

The Gulf Stream system could collapse as soon as 2025, a new study suggests. The shutting down of the vital ocean currents, called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Amoc) by scientists, would bring catastrophic climate impacts.

Amoc was already known to be at its weakest in 1,600 years owing to global heating and researchers spotted warning signs of a tipping point in 2021.

The new analysis estimates a timescale for the collapse of between 2025 and 2095, with a central estimate of 2050, if global carbon emissions are not reduced. Evidence from past collapses indicates changes of temperature of 10C in a few decades, although these occurred during ice ages.

 

[CVByrne]

8 hours ago, MakemineVanilla said:

 

I might quote this lady for science about the gulf stream. 

Baffling how people don't understand physics 

 

Edited July 29, 2023 by CVByrne

[CVByrne]

 

[MakemineVanilla]

2 minutes ago, CVByrne said:

 

I watched that earlier and was interested to find the difference between the Gulf Stream and AMOC, which the media tend to conflate.

 

[tinker]

 

"Something weird is going on’: search for answers as Antarctic sea ice stays at historic lows"

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/29/something-weird-is-going-on-search-for-answers-as-antarctic-sea-ice-stays-at-historic-lows

Things maybe changing far quicker than many imagined. 

[CVByrne]

39 minutes ago, MakemineVanilla said:

I watched that earlier and was interested to find the difference between the Gulf Stream and AMOC, which the media tend to conflate.

It is just physics. Even if humanity are dead and gone the Earth will rotate and oceans will cool slower than land. So as long as Europe is east of the Atlantic it will be a milder climate than Canada across the ocean from it. 

[LondonLax]

14 hours ago, CVByrne said:

We're lucky the gulf stream can't stop because of Physics. We'd need the Atlantic Ocean to disappear and the earth to change the direction of its spin. 

The AMOC then. 

[CVByrne]

10 hours ago, MakemineVanilla said:

I watched that earlier and was interested to find the difference between the Gulf Stream and AMOC, which the media tend to conflate.

 

AMOC is to do with the salinity of the water. That stopping is based on weak models. Ocean currents are far too complex for us to model. Europe heating up is our big issue for climate change not another ice age. 

I really feel all these headlines do undermine things more than help. We need to be focusing on the actions to take and championing successes and innovations. People just tune out with all the world is ending headlines 

[LondonLax]

48 minutes ago, CVByrne said:

AMOC is to do with the salinity of the water. That stopping is based on weak models. Ocean currents are far too complex for us to model. Europe heating up is our big issue for climate change not another ice age. 

I really feel all these headlines do undermine things more than help. We need to be focusing on the actions to take and championing successes and innovations. People just tune out with all the world is ending headlines 

I feel like you are talking with an authority you don’t possess. That’s the internet I suppose. 

[CVByrne]

20 minutes ago, LondonLax said:

I feel like you are talking with an authority you don’t possess. That’s the internet I suppose. 

There really isn't an authority on predictions of insanely complex events though we'll still translate that into almost statement of fact headlines. Unfortunately the way most people consume information on such things is via the headline they click on a news site.

We've got enough evidence for anyone who wants to review it that man made impact on the global climate is having a clear warming effect. Higher surface temperatures lead to more hot weather and heat waves, it also leads to more drought and heavier rainfall and storms. The different impacts of these are in different across the globe, but we're incredibly confident in the causation here. 

When however we come to predictive models the standard error is very large. Which means trying to predict impacts it's very unreliable. This part I do have expertise in as I've a masters degree in Statistics and my thesis was on Stochastic Modelling. However any time there is work done in an area people have invested time in research and they require a conclusion. You don't get well the model is weak but it predicts the following but the standard error is very large, thus the conclusions are incredibly unreliable. 

You'll just get headlines "Climate Scientists predict..."

We can't predict with any real accuracy the weather, we can't predict the stock market, we can't predict the score in a football match. All significantly less complex things than the earths global climate and localised predictions. So I roll my eyes when I see the headlines predicting things.

I don't need predictions. What's pretty clear is that we are changing the climate quite rapidly and our societies have developed in more stable conditions, so climate change will have significant impacts we cannot predict but could be devastating. For example changes in rainfall could lead to rivers drying up and the displacement of millions of people. Furthermore burning of fossil fuels causes air pollution which kills millions of people a year. There are countless reasons to solve this global problem. 

[Captain_Townsend]

Yeah who needs experts right.

[sidcow]

27 minutes ago, Captain_Townsend said:

Yeah who needs experts right.

I dont think it's that simple. 

The press can be very selective about which "experts" they quote. 

Like the Dr in the early 2000s who was all over the press saying the MMR vaccine was dangerous. It caused a huge negative reaction to MMR leaving thousands of children unprotected. He's now a leading figure in the US anti vax movement and fully paid up nutter. 

Similarly The Daily Mail and the like always quote a guy called Mike Foster who is CEO of the Energy and Utilities Alliance (a not for profit Association) on energy stories. Sounds kinda credible? Well they're just Oil and Gas shills. They will take every opportunity to slag off anything to do with renewable energy, heat pumps, EV's etc yet are rolled out at "Experts" whose opinion we should listen to and take on board.   It's like trying to run a report on The War in Ukraine and rolling out Expert commentator Vladimir Putin to advise us what's going on. 

[blandy]

1 hour ago, CVByrne said:

We can't predict with any real accuracy the weather

Slightly tangential, but yes, yes we can predict the weather with real accuracy. In the old days people would go with “well tomorrow will be much the same as today” and they’d mostly be right, but as knowledge progressed and the spread of pressure sensors, temperature sensors, windspeed and direction sensors, weather balloons and so on increased, predictions got better. And now satellites and powerful computational models have improved that further. Weather forecasting is now extremely accurate. Not perfect, but very good.

And so it is with climate models, too. Much more data, much more focus and predictions are also increasingly accurate. You’re right that because of the greater complexity there are still wider error margins and occasional “failures” or gaps in predictions, but really to reinforce your point, it’s quite beyond rational argument to dispute the facts.

[MakemineVanilla]

2 hours ago, LondonLax said:

I feel like you are talking with an authority you don’t possess. That’s the internet I suppose. 

The ultimate expression of insisting that science should be based on authority, was Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union, where thousands of scientists were gaoled for believing in gene theory.

Authority is not really appropriate when discussing climate change because the theory is based on the influence of the 'precautionary principle', which means that the doubts are set aside, because the consequences could be catastrophic.

Chicago university explains here:

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1093/reep/ret023

Quote

Uncertainty is intrinsic to climate change: we know that the climate is changing but not precisely how fast or in what ways. Nor do we understand fully the social and economic consequences of these changes or the options that will be available for reducing climate change. Furthermore, the uncertainty about these issues is not readily quantified in probabilistic terms: we are facing deep uncertainty rather than known risks. We argue that this may render the classical expected utility framework for decision making under uncertainty of limited value for informing climate policy. We review the sources of uncertainty about all aspects of climate change, separate these into scientific and socioeconomic components, and examine their relative importance. Then we review decision-making frameworks that may be more appropriate in the absence of unique probabilities including nonprobabilistic approaches and those based on multiple priors, and we discuss their application in the context of climate change economics.

 

 

 

[Xann]

A very Telegraph headline.

Obviously the Chinese will just be bugging cars.

Everything else they make is fine. Phones, computers and nuclear power stations are all good.

[blandy]

On 30/07/2023 at 11:22, MakemineVanilla said:

Authority is not really appropriate when discussing climate change because the theory is based on the influence of the 'precautionary principle', which means that the doubts are set aside, because the consequences could be catastrophic.

Chicago university explains here:

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1093/reep/ret023

That’s poor from them. There are several counters to that line. Firstly there’s the top level argument that goes along the lines of “ if we reduce fossil fuels and go renewables and it turns out that climate change isn’t as bad as we predicted, we’ll have gone and created cleaner air, healthier people, less pollution and all for what?”

The second one is that while there is a degree of  uncertainty on the precise severity of the consequences and how adversely they will affect people, there is certainty around the nature of the consequences already seen and around the impact this has had. It makes the implied point from the Uni rather moot -“ until we can absolutely precisely identify the exact outcomes we should not do anything”. It’s arguing something from a stance that deliberately ignores what we already, accurately know to be true and by excluding that knowledge from the “argument” paints a skewed  thesis.

[MakemineVanilla]

18 minutes ago, blandy said:

That’s poor from them. There are several counters to that line. Firstly there’s the top level argument that goes along the lines of “ if we reduce fossil fuels and go renewables and it turns out that climate change isn’t as bad as we predicted, we’ll have gone and created cleaner air, healthier people, less pollution and all for what?”

The second one is that while there is a degree of  uncertainty on the precise severity of the consequences and how adversely they will affect people, there is certainty around the nature of the consequences already seen and around the impact this has had. It makes the implied point from the Uni rather moot -“ until we can absolutely precisely identify the exact outcomes we should not do anything”. It’s arguing something from a stance that deliberately ignores what we already, accurately know to be true and by excluding that knowledge from the “argument” paints a skewed  thesis.

I think the operative portion is:

Quote

We argue that this may render the classical expected utility framework for decision making under uncertainty of limited value for informing climate policy.

I think what they are suggesting is that as resources are finite and the actual consequences uncertain, it is difficult to prepare for.

If sea-levels are to rise and parliament is only 10ft above sea-level, do we move the capital, or if the country is to be plunged into scandinavian winters, are our projected power-generation requirements adequate?

Edited August 6, 2023 by MakemineVanilla