Global Warming Update: Hell Freezes Over!

[pErvinalia]

Carries on like what ....the incessant denial of reality??? Only you're in that fairy land.

We at Unfair Park will never, ever tire of hearing Rex Tillerson, the CEO of Irving-based ExxonMobil, the largest private oil and gas company in the world, admit that the product he peddles has in fact caused the earth's climate to change.
This is the corporation that has for decades bankrolled a campaign to manufacture climate-change controversy, tobacco- and cancer-style, where none actually existed. This is the corporation whose most famous executive, the irascible Lee Raymond -- who steered the company toward the acquisition of Mobil, creating a juggernaut whose economy of scale remains unmatched -- was the single most vehement climate-change denier in the ranks of Big Oil honchos.

Now, this is ExxonMobil, mind you, in whose environmental policy office reside the gurus of hedging, so one foot in front of the other. Acknowledging the mere existence of anthropogenic climate change was a big step.

Is the head of Exxon wrong about climate change....or you?

Climate changes. Always has, always will. Get over it.

Adapt or die.

Progressivism always wins over conservatism. Adapt or die.

Better yet, let's work to eliminate Progressive emissions. Fewer Progressives that way, and a much, much better society for all.

Adapt or die, Seth.

[pErvinalia]

Climate changes. Always has, always will. Get over it.

Climate changes slowly over long periods due to orbital cycles when left alone.

WE have change the climate due to fossil fuel use in a heartbeat.
It's getting warmer
We're responsible....

get used to it.......the move to carbon neutral is not going away despite your wishful thinking.

I thought you were big on corporations taking responsibility for their products and the knock on effects.

Changed your tune on that too?


Pissing upstream of the drinking water is now okay in libbyland?

Just ignore him, Mac. He's got nothing but this inane "adapt or die" line. He doesn't even understand the very basics of this problem we face.

Actually, I understand it far better than you do. Adapt or die. It's the ultimate answer to this "problem" you claim exists. In reality it's not a problem at all, because through adaptation humans will become better evolutionary survivors, thus improving their position as the apex organisms on earth. Only the weak and defective will die as a result of climate change, and that's a good thing, evolutionarily speaking.

I've already explained this to you a million times. Whole ecosystems can't adapt and whole industries and infrastructure will cost trillions to adapt. What's wrong at your end of the internet?

[Warren Dew]

Whole ecosystems can most certainly adapt. That's what happens at every mass extinction.

[macdoc]

hehe the unreality of the right wingdings...

Sure organisms adapt....but they don't adapt in short times frames like centuries..let alne decades..I've no fear for the entire biome....there will be one or another...industrial civilization tho will/IS getting hammered perhaps beyond it's ability to cope with.

Funny how you're unconcerned about the risk yet the US Military is, the head os Exxon is the world insurance industry is very concerned ....but you ...no...
strange that....

The key is that the shift to carbon neutral is inevitable and doing it sooner than later has been shown to be more cost effective than the consequences of a +4C global temperature increase.

Here's a good and balanced article...

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nati ... s/2784561/

Yes sectors are adapting and in some areas doing better due to a warming climate...but now is not decades from now...

Adaptability goes only so far

The USDA is paying close attention to this. America's farmland is some of the most productive in the world in part because U.S. farmers long have been known for innovation and flexibility, finding new ways to farm prairie lands considered unplantable, trying new crop varieties, embracing mechanization and more recently using genetically engineered seed and computer-aided mapping of fields for precision agriculture.

Growers today are using that willingness to experiment to cope with shifts in their local climate. They're planting cover crops such as clover and rye that reduce erosion, retain water and combat weeds, experimenting with different tillage patterns and turning back to crop rotations some had abandoned for a two-year corn-soybean planting cycle.

Still, many worry that eventually the quickening intensity of global warming forecast over the next few decades may be too much for this once-resilient sector to overcome. The USDA forecasts that much of the nation will warm by between 1.8 and 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit in the next 40 years, more so in the center of the country.

When that happens, the southern half of the United States will have too little water and too much heat, McCarl says. "You can't grow crops in a blast furnace," he says. In the North, farming will eventually extend to the Canadian border.

and this is not taking into account extreme events such as the national drought that cost billions...

Weather and climate disasters racked up $110 billion in damages across the country last year, according to a report released today by the National Climate Data Center (NCDC).

There were 11 events in 2012 that each incurred at least $1 billion in damages, including spring tornado outbreaks in the Midwest and Texas, a derecho that plowed from the Plains to the Northeast, and the yearlong drought and its associated heatwaves and wildfires that burned more than 9.2 million acres, mostly in the West.

All told, more than 300 people were killed in these 11 extreme weather events — 159 of those lives were claimed by Sandy.

Sandy by far was the most costly event of the year, with $65 billion in damages. The gigantic storm, which at one point had tropical storm-force winds extending almost 500 miles (800 kilometers) from its center, made landfall on the Jersey Shore on Oct. 29. It caused a record storm surge, historic flooding and widespread power outages along a huge stretch of the East Coast.

Last year's severe, yearlong drought, meanwhile, was estimated to have cost about $30 billion in damages, much of it due to widespread harvest failure. For most of 2012, more than half the country was affected by the drought, which covered the largest area of any drought since the 1930s, according to the NCDC's report.

The costliest year on record for natural disasters was 2005 — the year Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf — with $160 billion in damages. According to the NCDC, 2012 also ranks second for number of billion-dollar disasters, just behind 2011, which saw 14 such events.

no amount of carbon management will stop the warming that is in progress nor reverse what has occurred to date.

Limiting the rise to 2 degrees globally is just barely manageable tho I'm doubtful.

Smart nations like the Netherlands understand what is coming and prepare for rising seas with billions of dollars set saide.

Smart nations like Sweden are well on their way to carbon neutral by 2050

Smart people seek to keep the damage to a minimum for the same reason you don't piss upriver of the water supply instead of continuing to subsidize fossil fuel companies to use the atmosphere as a free sewer....the corporate version of pissing in the water supply.

There ARE consequences....some are here now...

[piscator]

Whole ecosystems can most certainly adapt. That's what happens at every mass extinction.

Our ecosystem runs on high density liquid fuel.

[pErvinalia]

Whole ecosystems can most certainly adapt. That's what happens at every mass extinction.

Well, they'll certainly change. If there is a mass extinction, "adapt" is certainly not the right word. When I say they can't adapt, I mean they can't change quick enough to keep pace with the change in environment. That means ecosystems will die off. The whole earth ecology will continue on, no problem. But the key issue in AGW is whether WE can continue to survive. As ecosystems fail, that becomes less and less likely. It also means that many of us will die (mostly the poor and sick). Libbo's obviously think that is a good idea, as the poor and sick are obviously that way because they deserve it.

[macdoc]

Including critical food crops despite GMO best effort....that's the problem....if we had a planned migration we can leave a good chunk of the worst fossil fuels in the ground and move as some regions have to carbon neutral.

No one in their right mind thinks cold turkey....

Norway has had a carbon tax of $50 a barrel since 1990s - they have 750 million dollars in their heritage fund and they are managing their way to carbon neutral.

It can be done - Sweden is even further along .

But requires

acknowledgeing there is an issue as Exxon and others are now doing.

Many companies can benefit financially from a low carbon strategy but it takes fund for the infrastructure.

That's best role for gov in funding that transition .

Some don't need it...

Improved energy efficiency for eight consecutive years

Using energy more efficiently enables us to reduce our carbon footprint, conserve natural resources and contain costs. The total amount of energy consumed by manufacturing sites across our system has grown as our business has grown—from 54.4 billion megajoules in 2004 to 62.4 billion megajoules in 2012. But our energy efficiency ratio—the amount of megajoules used per liter of product—has continuously improved. In 2012, our ratio was 0.43 megajoules per liter –a 2 percent improvement over 2011 and an 18 percent improvement overall since 2004. By improving our energy efficiency ratio, we avoided approximately $200 million in energy costs in 2012 and over $1 billion cumulatively since 2004.



Complementing efficiency efforts in manufacturing, we have also improved the energy efficiency of our cold-drink equipment worldwide by more than 40 percent compared to year 2000 levels. We have deployed nearly 5.5 million energy management devices (EMDs) for cold-drink equipment, reducing average energy consumption by an estimated 5 billion kilowatt-hours per year and delivering corresponding annual emissions reductions of approximately 3.1 million metric tons—equivalent to the electricity used by over 464,000 homes. Energy-efficient cold-drink equipment saves our customers money, too—an estimated $440 million per year.

In 2012, to help our manufacturing facilities continue to improve energy efficiency, we developed 20 step-by-step guidelines to implementing energy-saving actions and shared them with our bottlers. We also upgraded our internal website dedicated to strategies for saving energy, and our system held more than 20 workshops on increasing energy efficiency.

This can be done across the entire first world economy and is being done by many like Bank of America who built their headquarters to platinum standards - cost 7% more...ROI 5 years....then it's just a bonus from there on out.

But until idiot deniers get out of the fucking way with their claptrap and stalling tactics to protect the likes of Koch then the US will just flounder.
Do you have ANY IDEA of how stupid the US looks in the eyes of the world.?

I don't think so.

[Seth]

Climate changes. Always has, always will. Get over it.

Climate changes slowly over long periods due to orbital cycles when left alone.

WE have change the climate due to fossil fuel use in a heartbeat.
It's getting warmer
We're responsible....

get used to it.......the move to carbon neutral is not going away despite your wishful thinking.

I thought you were big on corporations taking responsibility for their products and the knock on effects.

Changed your tune on that too?


Pissing upstream of the drinking water is now okay in libbyland?

Just ignore him, Mac. He's got nothing but this inane "adapt or die" line. He doesn't even understand the very basics of this problem we face.

Actually, I understand it far better than you do. Adapt or die. It's the ultimate answer to this "problem" you claim exists. In reality it's not a problem at all, because through adaptation humans will become better evolutionary survivors, thus improving their position as the apex organisms on earth. Only the weak and defective will die as a result of climate change, and that's a good thing, evolutionarily speaking.

I've already explained this to you a million times. Whole ecosystems can't adapt and whole industries and infrastructure will cost trillions to adapt. What's wrong at your end of the internet?

Er, yes they can, and do, and inevitably will, and civilized infrastructure are going to have to adapt anyway, one way or another, and trying to stop the inevitable will WASTE those trillions, so let's just get on with it and use the next century or so to adapt to how it's going to be rather than trying to fix what's already happened.

[Seth]

hehe the unreality of the right wingdings...

Sure organisms adapt....but they don't adapt in short times frames like centuries..let alne decades..

Then they die, and rightfully so.

I've no fear for the entire biome....there will be one or another...industrial civilization tho will/IS getting hammered perhaps beyond it's ability to cope with.

Sucks to be poor at adaptation.

Funny how you're unconcerned about the risk yet the US Military is, the head os Exxon is the world insurance industry is very concerned ....but you ...no...
strange that....

The US Military and Exxon both want to maintain the status quo and their positions of power. Fuck 'em if they can't deal with climate change.

The key is that the shift to carbon neutral is inevitable and doing it sooner than later has been shown to be more cost effective than the consequences of a +4C global temperature increase.

How the fuck do you think technology "adapts" to climate change to begin with? Derp. The point is that there is absolutely no need to rush about in a panic building windmills that cost more than they will ever produce, kill birds, fuck up the scenery and waste taxpayer money when there's several centuries worth of low-sulphur coal that can provide for all our energy needs until those "carbon neutral" sources (like nukes or fusion) come on line...or we figure out how to capture and sequester carbon from coal-fired electrical plants, which is already in the testing stages.

Shutting down hundreds of power plants and destroying the domestic coal industry by administrative fiat to pander to some fuckwitted Marxist Progressive control scheme is stupid beyond belief. We need MORE energy to create the technology to deal with "climate change" not less.

Yes sectors are adapting and in some areas doing better due to a warming climate...but now is not decades from now...

Exactly. No hurry at all.

Adaptability goes only so far

The USDA is paying close attention to this. America's farmland is some of the most productive in the world in part because U.S. farmers long have been known for innovation and flexibility, finding new ways to farm prairie lands considered unplantable, trying new crop varieties, embracing mechanization and more recently using genetically engineered seed and computer-aided mapping of fields for precision agriculture.

Growers today are using that willingness to experiment to cope with shifts in their local climate. They're planting cover crops such as clover and rye that reduce erosion, retain water and combat weeds, experimenting with different tillage patterns and turning back to crop rotations some had abandoned for a two-year corn-soybean planting cycle.

Still, many worry that eventually the quickening intensity of global warming forecast over the next few decades may be too much for this once-resilient sector to overcome. The USDA forecasts that much of the nation will warm by between 1.8 and 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit in the next 40 years, more so in the center of the country.

When that happens, the southern half of the United States will have too little water and too much heat, McCarl says. "You can't grow crops in a blast furnace," he says. In the North, farming will eventually extend to the Canadian border.

Well, it already extends well north of the Canadian border already, Canada being one of the major wheat producers on the planet. So the Great Plains become unfarmable...so what? I have no problem with growing tomatoes in Yellowknife in January.

and this is not taking into account extreme events such as the national drought that cost billions...

Adapt or die. Got a dust bowl problem? Move the fuck out of the dust bowl.

Weather and climate disasters racked up $110 billion in damages across the country last year, according to a report released today by the National Climate Data Center (NCDC).

There were 11 events in 2012 that each incurred at least $1 billion in damages, including spring tornado outbreaks in the Midwest and Texas, a derecho that plowed from the Plains to the Northeast, and the yearlong drought and its associated heatwaves and wildfires that burned more than 9.2 million acres, mostly in the West.

All told, more than 300 people were killed in these 11 extreme weather events — 159 of those lives were claimed by Sandy.

Sandy by far was the most costly event of the year, with $65 billion in damages. The gigantic storm, which at one point had tropical storm-force winds extending almost 500 miles (800 kilometers) from its center, made landfall on the Jersey Shore on Oct. 29. It caused a record storm surge, historic flooding and widespread power outages along a huge stretch of the East Coast.

Last year's severe, yearlong drought, meanwhile, was estimated to have cost about $30 billion in damages, much of it due to widespread harvest failure. For most of 2012, more than half the country was affected by the drought, which covered the largest area of any drought since the 1930s, according to the NCDC's report.

The costliest year on record for natural disasters was 2005 — the year Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf — with $160 billion in damages. According to the NCDC, 2012 also ranks second for number of billion-dollar disasters, just behind 2011, which saw 14 such events.

Meh. Don't like coastal storms, don't fucking live on the coast. Lose your cheap-ass house to the winds, build a better house next time. Adapt or die.

no amount of carbon management will stop the warming that is in progress nor reverse what has occurred to date.

Limiting the rise to 2 degrees globally is just barely manageable tho I'm doubtful.

Exactly. So let's use the time and resources to adapt to what's coming and quit fucking about with all this political power and control bullshit that the IPCC is pandering.

Smart nations like the Netherlands understand what is coming and prepare for rising seas with billions of dollars set saide.

Gee, what a concept. How about they just move their fucking population above sea-level? Fucking asshats. I care less for them than I do for the occupants of New Orleans. They will all get exactly what they have coming to them if they remain so stupid as to voluntarily choosing to live below sea level.

Smart nations like Sweden are well on their way to carbon neutral by 2050

Which will do absolutely nothing to help them adapt to that inevitable climate change you just mentioned.

Smart people seek to keep the damage to a minimum for the same reason you don't piss upriver of the water supply instead of continuing to subsidize fossil fuel companies to use the atmosphere as a free sewer....the corporate version of pissing in the water supply.

That's why we have water treatment plants. Everyfuckingbody downstream is drinking everybody upstream's piss (and hormones) and have been for hundreds of years. Get over it. That's the price of progress and population I'm afraid.

There ARE consequences....some are here now...

So adapt already.

[macdoc]

we are and you'r meme is not a survivor - your views are in the extinction pool...

no sense, no power....wailing in dark and not at the table making policy....enjoy the exile....well earned and deserved

[Seth]

we are and you'r meme is not a survivor - your views are in the extinction pool...

no sense, no power....wailing in dark and not at the table making policy....enjoy the exile....well earned and deserved

Only time will tell which of us is in the extinction pool.

[pErvinalia]

Climate changes slowly over long periods due to orbital cycles when left alone.

WE have change the climate due to fossil fuel use in a heartbeat.
It's getting warmer
We're responsible....

get used to it.......the move to carbon neutral is not going away despite your wishful thinking.

I thought you were big on corporations taking responsibility for their products and the knock on effects.

Changed your tune on that too?


Pissing upstream of the drinking water is now okay in libbyland?

Just ignore him, Mac. He's got nothing but this inane "adapt or die" line. He doesn't even understand the very basics of this problem we face.

Actually, I understand it far better than you do. Adapt or die. It's the ultimate answer to this "problem" you claim exists. In reality it's not a problem at all, because through adaptation humans will become better evolutionary survivors, thus improving their position as the apex organisms on earth. Only the weak and defective will die as a result of climate change, and that's a good thing, evolutionarily speaking.

I've already explained this to you a million times. Whole ecosystems can't adapt and whole industries and infrastructure will cost trillions to adapt. What's wrong at your end of the internet?

Er, yes they can, and do, and inevitably will,

Er, what the fuck would you know about ecology, Seth??

and civilized infrastructure are going to have to adapt anyway, one way or another, and trying to stop the inevitable will WASTE those trillions, so let's just get on with it and use the next century or so to adapt to how it's going to be rather than trying to fix what's already happened.

It's not inevitable, Seth, that's the point. It's also the degree to which it happens. Smaller changes are going to be more manageable and cost less. The more we transition our energy economies now, the less it will cost us in the long run. In fact, we stand to make economic growth from green and sustainable technologies. It's win-win.

[pErvinalia]

hehe the unreality of the right wingdings...

Sure organisms adapt....but they don't adapt in short times frames like centuries..let alne decades..

Then they die, and rightfully so.

Who said? God?? Lol, you and your religious thinking, Seth.

Anyway, if ecosystems die, then so do we. We aren't above nature, Seth. We are part of it. We require ecosystem services to survive. Of course I've told you this about a million times before, and you still don't understand it. Quelle surprise.

I've no fear for the entire biome....there will be one or another...industrial civilization tho will/IS getting hammered perhaps beyond it's ability to cope with.

Sucks to be poor at adaptation.

It does suck. So why not transition our economies and societies NOW, instead of later when it is too late? That's the sensible approach to risk management. But no one has ever accused a libbo of being sensible.

The key is that the shift to carbon neutral is inevitable and doing it sooner than later has been shown to be more cost effective than the consequences of a +4C global temperature increase.

How the fuck do you think technology "adapts" to climate change to begin with? Derp. The point is that there is absolutely no need to rush about in a panic building windmills that cost more than they will ever produce, kill birds, fuck up the scenery and waste taxpayer money when there's several centuries worth of low-sulphur coal that can provide for all our energy needs until those "carbon neutral" sources (like nukes or fusion) come on line...or we figure out how to capture and sequester carbon from coal-fired electrical plants, which is already in the testing stages.

Shutting down hundreds of power plants and destroying the domestic coal industry by administrative fiat to pander to some fuckwitted Marxist Progressive control scheme is stupid beyond belief. We need MORE energy to create the technology to deal with "climate change" not less.

No one wants to shut any industry down, Seth. It's about TRANSITIONING our industries. But that idea doesn't fit your simplistic false dichotomous conservative world.

Yes sectors are adapting and in some areas doing better due to a warming climate...but now is not decades from now...

Exactly. No hurry at all.

Except for the overwhelming amount of evidence that suggests that there is a hurry.

and this is not taking into account extreme events such as the national drought that cost billions...

Adapt or die. Got a dust bowl problem? Move the fuck out of the dust bowl.

....

Meh. Don't like coastal storms, don't fucking live on the coast. Lose your cheap-ass house to the winds, build a better house next time. Adapt or die.

Lol. Can't live in the centre of the US as it will be a dust bowl, can't live on the coast as it will be too dangerous and destructive. Where you going to put all those 350 million people, dumbass? On tops of mountains?!?

Seth, Obama is coming for your guns. Adapt or die. Adapt or die. Adapt or die.....

[pErvinalia]

we are and you'r meme is not a survivor - your views are in the extinction pool...

no sense, no power....wailing in dark and not at the table making policy....enjoy the exile....well earned and deserved

Only time will tell which of us is in the extinction pool.

Adapt or die, Seth. Adapt to the new social order and new green sustainable technologies or die. It's simple. Those who can't adapt to this new social order will "die, and rightfully so".

[Warren Dew]

Whole ecosystems can most certainly adapt. That's what happens at every mass extinction.

Our ecosystem runs on high density liquid fuel.

If you mean oil, the supply of that fuel is finite. Adaptation will have to happen sooner or later.

But the key issue in AGW is whether WE can continue to survive.

What an anthropocentric viewpoint! What makes humans more valuable than any other species - or for that matter, than any species that will come into being as a result of a major ecological shift?