Climate change. . .

[spacesailor]

Sorry

 

The flesh of fish is Not salty, and Australia has the "stromberlites" (spelling) to prove the ocean was fresh water.

 

If you were to put lots of shade sails around your home it would make the surrounding area cooler, Just like the shade of a tree.

 

spacesailor

 

 

[Bruce]

Well the early history of the oceans is a big subject space, and I agree those things which I thought were called stromatolites sure do go back a long way. I think before the iron-oxide deposition which made the Hammersley.

 

But regarding temperatures, the ones quoted are "shade" temperatures, from a stevenson screen over watered mown grass.

 

I would like them to give the wet-bulb temperature too, as this indicates the comfort level. Apparently you can't survive in a wet bulb of over 35 temperature.

 

 

[dutchroll]

HEREIs the fact that most have ignored for centuries. ( you/we all can test it ourselves)

 

The SEA was fresh water, now its salt, the larger the salt content the less evaporation occurs, which means less rain!.

 

Are we "warming" to the fact, that the rain is Not cooling the planet as it did eons ago.

 

spacesailor

Rain might cool you, your car roof, or your driveway on a hot day (through evaporative cooling), but the water cycle does not cool the whole planet. The only thing which will cool the planet is if more energy is radiated into space from the Earth than it receives from the Sun.

 

Ironically a warmer atmosphere will result in more or higher density rainfall due to basic physics (Clausius-Clapeyron).

 

Also there's no evidence it's raining less today than it was eons ago.

 

 

[spacesailor]

Except the deserts are getting larger

 

spacesailor

 

 

[Marty_d]

Maybe this is being simplistic, but....

 

diffusing some of the energy from the sun before it even hits the earth would result in some cooling. Obviously you can't make a shade-cloth big enough to cover half the planet from even as far out as lunar orbit, but what about much, MUCH further out?

 

Ok, as I was thinking about this I went to see if anyone else thought it was doable, and found this.

 

Space sunshade - Wikipedia

 

20 million pounds is a fair old payload... but the Russian Angara A5 can apparently lift 7.5 tonnes to "Geostationary Transfer Orbit"... that's what, 16,500 pounds, so about 1,200 trips should do it. Once it's all up there, shouldn't be impossible to accelerate it out 1.5 million km to the Lagrange point.

 

....or we could just stop using coal...

 

 

[dutchroll]

This is true. However desertification is complicated and is an interaction between land degradation through socioeconomic factors, and changing climate and rainfall patterns (note I didn't say reduced rainfall globally - just changing patterns). A study of desertification over nearly 30 years in China found livestock population, farmland area, and increasing temperatures all significantly responsible.

 

Oddly enough in Mongolia, they found that afforestation was by far the biggest factor. As opposed to "reforestation", "afforestation" is the planting of trees where normally there would only be grasses or ground vegetation. The reason it increased desertification is because putting trees in where there were previously none due to the semi-arid nature of the land caused huge additional demands and stresses on the already limited groundwater supply. It also killed grasses that previously held the soil together causing rapid soil erosion.

 

So it's not such an easy thing to explain!

 

....or we could just stop using coal...

Yeah basically we're knitting ourselves an ever thickening wool blanket (of greenhouse gas) when it's actually kinda warm enough already. If we could just control our knitting needles, that would be a good start!

 

 

[Bruce]

Space-shades and space mirrors could in theory be used to control the climate on earth. Imagine creating and then nudging a rain system to stop a drought.

 

But don't tell Turbs, he will point out that the operators would be held legally responsible for any weather-related loss from then on.

 

 

[Gnarly Gnu]

Except the deserts are getting larger

Only on ABC.

 

In the real world the earth is significantly greening and most of the deserts shrinking.

 

 

[Bruce]

Is that true of the Sahara Gnarly? I thought that was growing, in part because well-meaning aid agencies were sinking bores so the nomads could stay and really overgraze the place instead of being forced to move.

 

 

[Marty_d]

Only on ABC.

In the real world the earth is significantly greening and most of the deserts shrinking.

Ah, here he is, the voice of reason...

 

Actually Gnu, talking of something you said on another post, I'm very glad you think I get a lot of things "ass about". If you ever agreed with me on subjects of politics, theology or social values, I'd have to seriously look at my stance and see what I was doing wrong.

 

 

[dutchroll]

Is that true of the Sahara Gnarly?

Well.......it's a fairly gross over-simplification. It's a sort of "not completely true, but not completely false" statement. Also, Gnarly links to an article stating that Europe is greener now than it was 100 years ago. I might take the opportunity to point out that "Europe" is not "the whole planet Earth".

 

Some areas are greening, some are becoming desertified. Some areas are more vulnerable to it than others - Europe is not vulnerable. The issue is whether it is happening in areas that matter, and in a number of cases (especially where its root cause is human activity like deforestation or agriculture) it is.

 

The US Department of Agriculture publishes an excellent map on desertification vulnerability which is based on soil climate data:

 

Global Desertification Vulnerability Map

 

 

[Gnarly Gnu]

If you ever agreed with me on subjects of politics, theology or social values, I'd have to seriously look at my stance and see what I was doing wrong.

Correct, you appear to be a lover of darkness.

 

Yes Bruce the Sahara desert is also shrinking although there are areas where deserts are expanding due to destructive local human activities. The greening is globally, not just Europe of course. Plenty of satellite gathered evidence of this, just google.

 

 

[dutchroll]

The Daily Beast article about the "positives" of global warming in greening up land in cold climates is all well and good.

 

It's a bit like saying "the great thing about smoking is that it lowers the risk of Parkinson's Disease, lowers the risk of obesity, and helps certain blood clot-inhibiting drugs work better in patients with coronary artery disease."

 

This is all true. It also causes heart disease, respiratory diseases, cancer, high blood pressure, reduced resistance to infections, premature wrinkling of the skin, higher risk of blindness, gum disease, gut inflammation, ulcers, poor blood circulation, slower wound healing, loss of bone density, and impotence.

 

But hey........it has some benefits!

 

 

[Marty_d]

Correct, you appear to be a lover of darkness.

I'm a lover of the light of logic, Gnu. Darkness is the blind belief in ancient dogma and the willful rejection of all evidence that doesn't fit that belief system.

 

 

[Gnarly Gnu]

Terrific Marty, that's a principle we both agree on then - don't just blindly accept popular dogma and instead seek the evidence. That's how science used to be, very applicable to this thread.

 

 

[dutchroll]

That's how science still is.

 

If you had ever done any, you would realise it.

 

 

[Gnarly Gnu]

It's how true science is, some branches such as 'climate change' have become pseudo-science and operate by majority consensus and politics. That is no longer science but a belief system held by faith irrespective of actual evidence.

 

 

[Marty_d]

So... any science that doesn't fit your belief system is no longer science? Interesting.

 

 

[Yenn]

True science is supposed to be able to replicate findings. If some experiment is done to prove something, then somebody else can also do that experiment and prove the theory.

 

I don't see that happening with the science of climate change. It is far more statistical and unproven theory. That is not to say that I believe the theory climate change is wrong, it just is not proven science.

 

No matter what it would not harm the ecology to reduce the use of fossil fuel by either using renewable energy or just using less energy.

 

 

[spacesailor]

yes but

 

The government will NOT allow "off the grid" solar power in the city!.

 

Just to put a little dent in the power bill wouldn't take a big panel array & battery to power the fridge-freezer.

 

It's only a little bit for the environment and a small step for mankind.

 

spacesailor

 

 

[octave]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VeMXoCXOXE

[Bruce]

yes that's awful Space. You would think that you should be able to go off the grid anywhere.

 

What if you just stopped paying your bill? would they not just come around and cut you off?

 

Then you could operate off your solar ( plus batteries) .

 

There are houses around here that have burned down because they were using candles. They were using candles because they had been cut off the grid on account of spending the electricity money on grog.

 

Then they went to sleep in a drunken state and the candles set fire to the curtains.

 

 

[Bruce]

Gnarly, I would really like to have global warming disproved, please feel free to pass on the links.

 

 

[Bruce]

Yenn, there are several different groups on the climate-change thing. They actually come up with slightly different figures. Alas for the deniers, there is no respectable group saying what the deniers want to hear. By respectable I mean that they work from measurement through physics and chemistry to work out the future.

 

 

[dutchroll]

It's how true science is, some branches such as 'climate change' have become pseudo-science .....

Right.....

 

So the physics of ultraviolet radiation being absorbed by the Earth's surface then emitted as infra-red radiation which then, due to the vibrational and rotational modes of CO2 molecules is absorbed and re-radiated back down through the atmosphere thus causing a net energy gain is.......

 

......pseudoscience?

 

True science is supposed to be able to replicate findings.

That's correct.

 

If some experiment is done to prove something, then somebody else can also do that experiment and prove the theory.......

That's not correct.

 

The experiment doesn't "prove" the theory. The experiment just provides results that happen to concur with the theory. That might be a total coincidence. However as more experiments are done and more data is gathered, and all that concurs with the theory too, then scientists gain more and more confidence that the theory is accurate or at least mostly accurate. If something doesn't gel, then they may need to revise the theory to better explain it. That's just garden-variety science and applies to everything from the theories which gave us computing, to the theories which gave us electricity.

 

Even the most widely accepted theories still have problems though. Newtonian gravity (which is only a theory) suggests that if I leap off a cliff, I will fall at an ever increasing velocity (accelerating by 9.8 metres/sec/sec neglecting air resistance) until my fall is interrupted by a relatively immovable object. We know this theory works most of the time, but if you plug numbers into this theory at a sub-atomic scale, it just produces garbage. So is gravity true or not? Does it really happen? Yes it happens and we have to deal with it, which is why we don't usually leap off tall cliffs with rocks at the bottom just for the thrill. However it is far from a perfect theory.

 

So global warming isn't a perfect theory either and there are aspects scientists don't understand or can't explain and which they are working pretty hard to research and come up with better answers. Just like gravity. Does that mean it is false though? Do you have the confidence that it's so wrong that you can leap off that cliff without causing any grief?