Why Global Warming does not bother me.

[Atheist-Lite]

Those kind of odds are absurd for a system undergoing linear change. Expect exceptional changes to global weather patterns and bigger tornadoes than usually encountered the day after tomorrow.

[macdoc]

The most important thing I've written in many years
byBill McKibbenFollowforDK GreenRoots

PERMALINK 50 COMMENTS
And, well, I write a lot.

But this long piece that just went up at Rolling Stone tries to distill what we now know about climate change into 3 numbers

1) 2 degrees C--that's what the world's nations (even oil states) have agreed is the most we can possibly let temps rise. It's actually too high--but it is the one thing about climate change that the world has agreed on

2) 565 gigatons co2--that's roughly how much more carbon we can pour into the atmosphere between now and 2050 and have a reasonable chance of staying below 2 degrees. It's not much--we burn about 30 gigatons a year, and growing, so at current rates would go by in 16 years

3) 2795 gigatons co2. This is the really scary number. It's how much carbon the fossil fuel industry (and the countries that operate like fossil fuel companies) have already in their reserves. The stuff that props up their share price, lets them borrow money. The stuff they're committed to burning.

What that means is: we now know for certain that the stated business plans of this industry will wreck the planet. It's not even close--they're planning to burn 5 x the carbon that any sane scientist sets as the absolute upper limit.

So stopping them doesn't mean gradual shifts in trajectory. It means taking on this industry with at least as much vigor as we took on companies that did business with apartheid South Africa.

We'll be announcing plans at 350.org to do just that. But for the moment, I'd be most grateful if people could read and share the Rolling Stone piece, and provide feedback. Warning: it's long.

thanks much--bill

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/07/1 ... many-years

Global Warming's Terrifying New Math
Three simple numbers that add up to global catastrophe - and that make clear who the real enemy is

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/ne ... z215frox1G

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/ne ... h-20120719

so enjoy your role as arch-enemy MM - even the oil states eh.....and you still don't get it.

[mistermack]

Why do you keep quoting these rabid bloggers, as if what they say actually means something?

If you keep quoting loonies, you shouldn't be surprised to be treated like one.

So some loony writes a blog in Rolling Stone's website.

For mid aaaaaaaah bluh .

[macdoc]

Cascading consequences....

That Sinking Feeling About Groundwater in Texas
Posted by Sandra Postel of National Geographic's Freshwater Initiative in Water Currents on July 19, 2012

Researchers download data from a center pivot sprinkler, a type of irrigation system commonly used in the U.S. Great Plains, to reconstruct the amount of water and time it took to irrigate an area. Photo by Scott Bauer/USDA

In case we need another example of the disturbing ramifications of extreme drought for our future water security, we can look to recent news out of northwest Texas.

The High Plains Water District, based in Lubbock, recently reported that the 2011-12 drought drove groundwater levels in its sixteen-county service area to drop an average of 2.56 feet (0.78 meters) – the largest annual decline recorded in the last 25 years and more than triple the annual average for the last decade.

The lesson: as droughts intensify, our depletion of groundwater will pick up speed.

The recent Texas drought was indeed severe. Lubbock’s rainfall for 2011 amounted to a meager 5.86 inches compared to its long-term annual average of 18 inches.

Besides setting the stage for a record-breaking fire season, the drought forced farmers to pump more groundwater to make up for the rainfall deficit. Without the extra pumping, the drought would have decimated their crops.

Farmers in the District draw from the Ogallala Aquifer, a vast underground water reserve that supplies portions of eight states and waters 27 percent of the nation’s irrigated cropland. Since much of the aquifer gets little recharge from rainfall today, rising rates of pumping have led to steady depletion. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, a volume of groundwater equivalent to two-thirds of the water held in Lake Erie has been depleted from the Ogallala since 1940.

Because large-scale irrigation began earlier in northwest Texas and replenishment rates there are less than in other areas supplied by the Ogallala, the region has suffered the heaviest declines. Water tables have dropped 100-150 feet in sizeable areas, and even more in smaller pockets.

But this year’s decline was exceptional. It warns the world that as droughts become more frequent, particularly in arid crop-producing regions, groundwater reserves will be depleted even faster than in recent decades, threatening not only water but food supplies.

California farmers similarly hastened the depletion of Central Valley aquifers during the drought years of 2006 through 2010, to compensate for both less rainfall and cutbacks in surface water. And farmers in India have turned more and more to groundwater as surface supplies get less reliable.

Hope on the High Plains

My hat goes off, though, to the High Plains Water District (HPWD) for deciding to measure and monitor what’s happening to the water beneath it. Few places in the world dependent on groundwater bother to do so, which means we’re flying blind into the future of water stress. We can’t manage what we don’t monitor and measure. Keeping our heads in the sand only guarantees ugly surprises down the road.

And manage is what the HPWD is attempting to do. A few months ago I wrote about the District’s new rule that places a limit or cap on the volume of groundwater farmers can pump from beneath their land, a limit that gets gradually stricter. The rule sets the 2016 pumping volume at 29 percent below 2012 levels.

Not surprisingly, farmers are not pleased with – and have threatened lawsuits over — the restrictions. They say the rule interferes with their right to pump as much water from beneath their land as they want to. Both Texas law and a February 2012 opinion by the Texas Supreme Court affirm that farmers do indeed own the groundwater beneath their property, but also that conservation districts like the HPCD can regulate pumping rates.

In response to the outcry and threat of legal action, the HPCD decided in late February to delay enforcement of the new rule until 2014.

But what the HPWD is attempting, and what is needed in other groundwater-dependent areas threatened by long-term depletion, is sound planning and management. By law, groundwater may be privately owned, but in reality it is a shared resource. Just as many straws in a water glass will empty the glass faster if there’s no limit on the amount allowed per straw, so will an aquifer dry out faster if there’s no limit on the volume pumped per well.

The District’s goal is to ensure that at least half as much water remains in the Ogallala in 2060 as it contained in 2010. While such “planned depletion” is still an unsustainable use of water, it slows the depletion down by promoting wiser choices about what crops to grow and how to grow them. And it motivates investments in irrigation efficiency, enabling farmers to get more crop per drop.

Without question, weighing concern for future generations against that of our own, and balancing private rights with the public good is difficult – especially during hard times. But pulling our heads out of the sand and coming up with realistic solutions to achieve the best balance we can is crucial.

It seems to me the Texas High Plains Water District is attempting to do just that.

Sandra Postel is director of the Global Water Policy Project and lead water expert for National Geographic’s Freshwater Initiative. She is the author of several acclaimed books, including the award-winning Last Oasis, a Pew Scholar in Conservation and the Environment, and one of the “Scientific American 50.”

*Note: Upon a re-read the day after publication, I edited the phrase describing farmer’s sentiments about the ruling to better reflect my understanding.

[Jason]

Yes.. restrict the farmers from irrigating their crops thus deepening the crop loss crisis while ensuring people in Dallas can still fill their swimming pools. Brilliant!

[macdoc]

law of unexpected consequences....

[Gawdzilla Sama]

It's not surprising that it was an exceptional year. Most years only have 12 months.

Anyway, very few people dispute that the climate has warmed, so it's hardly surprising that records have gone.

It doesn't say year, it says period, June to June inclusive.

[mistermack]

It doesn't say year, it says period, June to June inclusive.

It doesn't say inclusive. Anyway, what's the point of quoting Rolling Stone?

Should the IPCC be quoting Mick Jagger?

If temperatures have risen, then of course records will go. Especially as methodical records began to be kept at a particularly cold period, which we have come out of.
Why keep trying to prove that temperatures have risen, when nobody is saying they didn't.

I watched a tv documentary the other day, not about warming, but about wine.
They had a professor who is publishing work about how growing grapes has mapped the climate over the last 2,000 years.
He said that we have just come out of a very cold period, and are almost back to the temperatures of Roman times. Going by historical growing of grapes, which he has made a study of.

So surprise, surprise, temperatures have risen. Just as they have, over and over again in the past.

[Blind groper]

There was a New Scientist article on the cooling trend. The conclusion is still controversial. It is based on a re-interpretation of tree ring data. Apparently the width of tree rings reflects summer warmth. However, some trees do not widen their tree rings during a warm summer, but grow denser rings instead. Using this secondary measure, a scientist concluded that the last 2,000 years at least, reflect a long term cooling trend.

This puts global warming into stark perspective. It is warmer today than it was 2,000 years ago, despite a long term cooling trend (assuming the dendrochronologist was right) which shows the impact of human caused greenhouse gases on world climate. This cooling trend shows that global warming is actually worse than we thought, since 100 years warming has more than overcome 2,000 years of cooling.

[macdoc]

That not anything new in terms of understanding.
The holocene optimum was a while back. This graph reads left to right.



Due to orbital changes the climate was moving very slowly to a cooler world and eventually maybe 15,000 year out another ice age.

Then we started altering the climate in a number of ways of which C02 is most persistent and the trend reversed.

[mistermack]

There was a New Scientist article on the cooling trend. The conclusion is still controversial. It is based on a re-interpretation of tree ring data. Apparently the width of tree rings reflects summer warmth. However, some trees do not widen their tree rings during a warm summer, but grow denser rings instead. Using this secondary measure, a scientist concluded that the last 2,000 years at least, reflect a long term cooling trend.

This puts global warming into stark perspective. It is warmer today than it was 2,000 years ago, despite a long term cooling trend (assuming the dendrochronologist was right) which shows the impact of human caused greenhouse gases on world climate. This cooling trend shows that global warming is actually worse than we thought, since 100 years warming has more than overcome 2,000 years of cooling.

The tree-ring evidence never did it for me. There are more factors than just temperature.
The wine-growing evidence is more convincing to me. There is historical evidence of wine-growing in Britain at more northerly latitudes than today. Both in Roman times, and in the medieval warm period.

It's been warm AND cold. I've seen NO evidence of a steady cooling trend from Roman times.
That completely ignores the strong evidence for the medieval warm period.
The evidence is actually for constant rapid changes in climate.
You have the medieval warm period, with wine being grown as far north as Sheffield, and then the little ice-age, with fairs being held on the ice of the frozen river Thames.
Both of these things would be remarkable today. It's proof that there are CONSTANT big swings in climate.

[macdoc]

More wishful thinking.
Climate is not this random set of forces - you are just trying to wiggle out of the reality that it's getting warmer and we're responsible.

Local climates can shift with some of the decadal oscillations like the NAO and PDO which can provide relatively brief periods measured in decades of warmer or cooler seasons locally.

The holocene was marked by rather moderate small changes which brought a consistency allowing agriculture to flourish and human civilization to grow.

We are moving out of that thanks to our own doing into a much more variable climate marked by extremes in weather as a new equilibrium is sought - unfortunately we keep feeding more energy into the system by way of CO2.

Your thesis is full of horsepucky.

[Blind groper]

mistermack

The 2,000 year cooling trend from the new tree ring data is, as I said, controversial still. However, you should not interpret that to mean a straight line cooling. The graph will have lots of swings and variations in it, with room for both the medieval warm period and the little ice age. This long term cooling is fully consistent with wine in Sheffield (probably crap wine, since it would still have been too cool for quality wine - but I bet the Roman soldiers did not complain.).

It is also consistent with the discoveries of cities (like that off Alexandria, and the one off North East India) that have been inundated by rising sea levels.

[mistermack]

mistermack

The 2,000 year cooling trend from the new tree ring data is, as I said, controversial still. However, you should not interpret that to mean a straight line cooling. The graph will have lots of swings and variations in it, with room for both the medieval warm period and the little ice age. This long term cooling is fully consistent with wine in Sheffield (probably crap wine, since it would still have been too cool for quality wine - but I bet the Roman soldiers did not complain.).

It is also consistent with the discoveries of cities (like that off Alexandria, and the one off North East India) that have been inundated by rising sea levels.

I wouldn't accept that the Romans were not fussy about wine. The evidence is the opposite, they knew their wine, and knew what they liked. They did after all import huge quantities of it over the years.

That doesn't mean that wine in those days would compare to todays. But maybe the Romans wouldn't rate modern wine.
But the evidence is that they were very fussy. You can make alcoholic wines from a great many native fruits in Britain. I have done myself, and they can be really nice. If rough alcohol was all they wanted, they didn't need to grow grapes. But they went to big trouble to get what they wanted.

There are more hardy varieties available today than 2,000 years ago, so if they were growing grapes in Sheffield, it was definitely warmer than today.

There are also many placenames in the UK that relate to grapes being grown in antiquity.
You get places like viney hill, or vine street etc.

The Romans introduced wine making to the United Kingdom, and even tried to grow grapes as far north as Lincolnshire. It was successfully done till the cooling in the 800s although the remnants of this can still be seen to this day in the city of Lincoln in the gardens of the medieval Bishop's Palace. Winemaking continued at least down to the time of the Normans with over 40 vineyards in England mentioned in the Domesday Book, although much of what was being produced was for making communion wine for the Eucharist.

Today there is a lot more expertise in the selection of varieties that will survive a cooler climate.

Mostly, people ignore history, and think that today's climate is what it's supposed to be. Any ten year warming or cooling always brings dire warnings.
When I was a kid, winters were REALLY cold. (Nineteen fifties and early sixties ).
Everybody was warning that there was going to be a major glaciation.
If you got ten cold years now, I guarantee that they would be saying the same thing again.

The truth is that these models DON'T predict climate. They follow it.

As far as the sunken cities go, it HAS to be local sinking of the Earth's crust. The evidence of historical ocean levels is overwhelming. It's too well documented for there to have been ocean rises that aren't known about.

It depends how ancient these "cities" were, though.
Don't forget sea levels were much lower during the last glaciation.
That lasted 100,000 years and only ended 10,000 years ago. I haven't heard of any cities that old though.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

It doesn't say year, it says period, June to June inclusive.

It doesn't say inclusive.

June to June, 13 months. That's inclusive.