The climate change debate continues.

[nomadpete]

Interesting pie chart. I note that even though his primary field of expertise is water usage and ecology (not climate or weather sciences), he still indicates that 'climate change' has crossed the boundary, and:

 

"Crossing these boundaries increases the risk of generating large-scale abrupt or irreversible environmental changes"

 

So he does see climate change as an increasing danger. True, he sees biodiversity as a far greater risk, but that is what he has been studying, so he would probably have a more intimate knowledge of that important branch of science.

 

He also totally neglects any mention of the massive risk posed by overpopulation which greatly increases all risks to pleasant life on earth.

 

 

[octave]

No I don't Octave. I was commenting on the only options I could see possible if what the previous poster said about the capitalist/socialist thing was true. I don't personally believe it's true.

 

As you say " Equating emission controls with some sort of socialist plot seems pretty whacky to me. ". It seems pretty wacky to me as well. Is it possible you might have misinterpreted the context of my post?

 

Sorry quoted the wrong the post !

 

 

[willedoo]

Sorry quoted the wrong the post !

 

No worries, Octave. I thought that might have been the case.

 

 

[spacesailor]

" If the weight of the evidence contradicts the theory then I will happily  abandon it. "

 

Careful:

 

The "wooly Mammoth" died out due to global warming, SO SAY the scientist.

 

A bit before the industrial revolution of Humans, I believe.

 

Snowball Earth has been thawing for many millions of years,

 

When Humans hadn't reached the Iron age !.

 

spacesailor

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

I read in a this morning's paper that couples are voluntarily removing themselves from the gene pool because of fears about global warming. And I read last week that primary school children don’t expect to see adulthood. Doesn’t anyone else see how whacky this is? Even if you believe the alarmist consensus totally, climate change is a risk much less than overpopulation, species extinction and urban spread. These are things we can do something about to greatly improve the future.

 

 That's a worry, PM. Kids need hope. I agree it sounds alarmist, but there were similar levels of fear during the Mutually Assured Destruction era of the Cold War.

 

The best news is that today's kids are doing something about it.

 

Which issue is the greater threat? They're all interrelated. The rate at which we are destroying species and whole ecosystems is unprecedented in human history. Our kind won't be far behind.

 

We didn't learn from the wisdom of  Chief Seattle:

 

Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. 

 

Man did not weave the web of life: he is merely a strand in it. 

 

Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself...

 

The whites too shall pass; perhaps sooner than all other tribes. Contaminate your bed, and you will one night suffocate in your own waste.

 

But in your perishing you will shine brightly...

 

[octave]

The things that were being asked for were these

 

1. No new coal, oil and gas projects,

 

2. 100% renewable energy generation and exports by 2030.

 

3. Fund a just transition and job creation for all fossil-fuel workers and communities.

 

Seems pretty reasonable to me, I did not hear anything about to complete dismantling of the modern world  as the "alarmists" claim.

 

 

[pmccarthy]

SHANGHAI (REUTERS) - China's total planned coal-fired power projects now stand at 226.2 gigawatts (GW), the highest in the world and more than twice the amount of new capacity on the books in India, according to data published by environmental groups on Thursday (Sept 19).

 

The projects approved by China amount to nearly 40 per cent of the world's total planned coal-fired power plants, according to the Global Coal Exit List database run by German environmental organisation Urgewald and 30 other partner organisations.

 

 

[octave]

SHANGHAI (REUTERS) - China's total planned coal-fired power projects now stand at 226.2 gigawatts (GW), the highest in the world and more than twice the amount of new capacity on the books in India, according to data published by environmental groups on Thursday (Sept 19).

 

The projects approved by China amount to nearly 40 per cent of the world's total planned coal-fired power plants, according to the Global Coal Exit List database run by German environmental organisation Urgewald and 30 other partner organisations.

 

 

 

China has not stepped away from low carbon energy and continues to develop renewables.  It will be interesting to see if all of the power stations go ahead.   There are many reasons that the Chinese people may not accept more pollution than they already endure.    These future power stations will have to stack up against increasingly efficient and clean technologies.  In a purely economic sense, any investment power stations  (of any kind) must be able to ensure a return for investors over its payback period. 

 

“Beijing said on Tuesday, in a position paper ahead of the UN meeting, that it would remain on ‘the clean energy and low-carbon development path’, but stopped short of setting new targets,” Reuters says. “China has cut the share of coal in its total energy mix from more than 68% in 2012 to 59% by the end of last year, but overall consumption has continued to increase,” with 1,020 GW of installed capacity as of late July.

 

https://theenergymix.com/2019/09/22/china-plans-226-gw-of-new-coal-plants/

 

Compared to our 16% renewable power China has done quite well.

 

Power generation from renewable energy sources reached 1,870 TWh in 2018, an increase of 170 TWh and making up 26.7 percent of the country’s total. Hydro contributed 1,200 TWh (up 3.2 percent), wind – 366 TWh (up 20 percent), PV – 177.5 TWh (up 50 percent) and biomass – 90.6 TWh (up 14 percent). 

 

https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/2019/03/06/chinas-renewable-energy-installed-capacity-grew-12-percent-across-all-sources-in-2018/#gref

 

Peter you started out by saying the science is rubbish then you questioned the motives of the scientists suggesting that it was some kind of plot to bring down capitalism (although it is never explained why)  and now you have moved on to  subtly suggest that what we do is irrelevant so lets just keep burning fossil fuels.

 

Because an extremely large country is only making slow progress but yet is still trying does not mean we should abandon the move away from the older methods of generating power.  

 

 

 

[facthunter]

 The Farmers Federation have gone all socialist too.? The sky is falling in chicken little. It's about making money from obsolete concepts that muck up  the environment. Liberals we once environmentalists too. Now it's politicised, but never had to be. Nev

 

 

[pmccarthy]

Octave I fully support moving to renewables as it becomes possible without disadvantaging the developing countries in Asia and Africa etc ( though developing countries is a bit of a misnomer these days). Or destroying western economies. But I disagree with frightening young children and young adults with misinformation to achieve a political outcome. And I guess I believe in capitalism and abhor socialism because of the historical precedents.

 

As I have found elsewhere, the thinking on a chat site gets polarised one way or the other, with the minority view leaving as has happened here. On other forums I find my views in the great majority. It doesn’t mean I am right or you are right, the minority have just voted with their feet. The right answer must be supported with facts.

 

Once a forum has polarised, posting facts just brings denial or counter-argument. I persevere here because the debate remains rational and polite. I will try to post facts rather than opinions from now on, like I just did with the post about China. I have a lot of facts to hand!

 

 

[spacesailor]

COAL.

 

At the time of the industrial revolution COAL, would have been a "godsend", to the forest of the world

 

Steam ships burning tons of wood daily, trains power-stations ETC, All burning wood. The world would be like that island (Easter Island (Rapa Nui: Rapa Nui).

 

Not a tree standing.

 

When it's all gone, And COAL is but a memory MEMORY,. Our debates will seem a little Over the top !.

 

spacesailor

 

 

[pmccarthy]

This is Tony Heller's latest video. Please take the time to watch it. I would appreciate comments on his analysis of the data. Please don’t bother attacking the speaker, that is the first defence of the alarmists.

 

 

 

 

[octave]

This is Tony Heller's latest video. Please take the time to watch it. I would appreciate comments on his analysis of the data. Please don’t bother attacking the speaker, that is the first defence of the alarmists.

 

 

 

More than happy to go through these assertions in detail, the research will of course take time.

 

Just a few general observations.   We had an exchange earlier in which I used the word conspiracy, you took exception to this and said you had never used that word.  The video clearly asserts fraud between different organisations, universities and countries.  My question Peter is this, do you assert that our CSIRO is commiting fraud and is part of a conspiracy to bring down capitalism? 

 

My initial skimming through this video suggest that it is asserting that the world is cooling, do you agree?

 

It seeks to point out cherry picking  data by itself cherry picking data.   At the end it really gets into conspiracy theory.  I have asked you many times the put forward a logical argument as to why these organisations NASA CSIRO etc whish to bring down capitalism and what benefit was would afford them.  

 

Any over the next few weeks I will look at every graph at it's source.

 

 

[pmccarthy]

As I have said before, this problem is one of human behaviour. The same behaviour that led to the Salem witch trials and the Inquisition by the Roman Catholic Church. People were not stupid then, and they are not stupid now, but they can get drawn into a pattern of behaviour. I would include the Nazis as an example. Once enough people have said something, the rest gullibly go along or are too afraid to speak up. It doesn’t need a global mastermind behind it, the behaviour builds of its own accord.

 

i would go further and say that most of the people doing the work are honest and genuine, but so were scientists, engineers, doctors and others under the Nazis or the Soviets. You work within the framework you find yourself in.

 

Some mining and oil companies are now on the band wagon. It makes commercial sense for them to do so if they want to operate in our society at present.

 

i wish I could live another fifty years just to see an analysis of the alarmist hysteria once it is over.

 

 

[octave]

Please don’t bother attacking the speaker, that is the first defence of the alarmists.

 

 

 

Establishing the credentials of the author is absolutely required. If we were discussing cancer treatments we would want to know the expertise behind that advice wouldn't we?   

 

I will not bother with a detailed critique of Tony Heller aka Steven Goddard (what's with the pseudonym?)    Other readers can do their own research on the expertise of Heller/Goddard.

 

The first graph I am looking at is the acres burned graph.    The complaint is that the graph starts from 1980 and that if it went back to 1925 it would show much greater areas burnt than today.   The explanation is that this data has only been seriously and accurately collected since 1980 and between 1960 and 1980 only partial data was collected. 

 

The suggestion is that fires were reported more than once and that intentional scrub clearing has been included.  Whilst reasons could be dismissed  it is an interesting question as to whether in the 1930s there were  a couple of years where over 50 million hectares were burnt.

 

If 50m acres had actually burned in the early 20th century, it would amount to an area of land equal to the entire state of Nebraska going up in flames every year.

 

Eardley suggests that earlier records were inflated by including areas where fires were purposefully set to clear forests for agriculture, or where rangelands were torched to get rid of sagebrush to improve grazing conditions. Other federal reports suggest that most of the area burned between 1930 and 1950 was in southeastern US and were primarily intentionally set fires for clearing land.

 

While the early 20th century data is not reliable and likely double or even triple-counted actual fires, Eardley says that it is possible that fire extents were higher back then for a simple reason: there was no large-scale firefighting organisation in the first half of the 20th century. Therefore, fires would burn through larger areas before being extinguished or burning themselves out, particularly when they were not close to towns or settlements.

 

Today, the US has larger and more organised firefighting operations in place. Therefore, recent increases are not due to any change in firefighting approach. If anything, many more resources have been devoted to fighting fires in the past few decades than in any prior period.

 

https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-how-global-warming-has-increased-us-wildfires 

 

If the graph is accurate back to 1930 then in the 1960s there was a sudden and huge decrease, coincidentally this was also when data collection methods were improved and standardized.

 

An interesting question would be to look at what the situation in Australia.  Has the frequency of fires increased? Has the severity of fires increased? Has the length of the fire season changed. I pose these questions without having looked at the data.  

 

 

[octave]

As to the first graph heatwaves, what we are talking about is the AVERAGE GLOBAL temperature.  Here is is average number of extreme heat days going back to the 20s in Australia.

 

[ATTACH]50344._xfImport[/ATTACH]

 

Hellard/Goddard talks about data that is hidden and whilst the full data might not have been present in that particular presentation it is not hidden and is freely available. it would be monumentally foolish believe that no one would investigate to data more closely.

 

I do intend to revisit this particular graph but my point is that it would be as unscientific to draw conclusions from the Australian graph alone as it is to draw conclusions from the US graph.

 

By the way for a deep dive into the report that Heller? Goddard cherry picks from here is the link.  Long but I am reading it.    https://science2017.globalchange.gov/downloads/CSSR2017_FullReport.pdf

 

[spacesailor]

"As I have said before, this problem is one of human behaviour"

 

BUT this started a few year's after the big rock wiped out the Dinosaurs.

 

The poor cave man is copping a lot of flack for starting the BIG thaw, after Snowball earth.

 

spacesailor

 

 

[Marty_d]

Please don’t bother attacking the speaker, that is the first defence of the alarmists.

 

I can understand why you don't want people looking at Tony Heller / Steven Goddard.

 

I am a little confused as to why a climate skeptic would try to use Ottmar Edenhofer's comments about the IPCC's alleged wealth distribution as any sort of refuting of anthropogenic climate change itself.

 

Heller/Goddard has tried to claim in the past that the Earth is cooling.  However here he is trying to use Edenhofer, who was the lead author on AR5. Below are the lead findings of AR5.

 

General

Warming of the atmosphere and ocean system is unequivocal. Many of the associated impacts such as sea level change (among other metrics) have occurred since 1950 at rates unprecedented in the historical record.

There is a clear human influence on the climate.

It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of observed warming since 1950, with the level of confidence having increased since the fourth report.

IPCC pointed out that the longer we wait to reduce our emissions, the more expensive it will become.

 

Historical climate metrics

It is likely (with medium confidence) that 1983–2013 was the warmest 30-year period for 1,400 years.

It is virtually certain the upper ocean warmed from 1971 to 2010. This ocean warming accounts, with high confidence, for 90% of the energy accumulation between 1971 and 2010.

It can be said with high confidence that the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have been losing mass in the last two decades and that Arctic sea ice and Northern Hemisphere spring snow cover have continued to decrease in extent.

There is high confidence that the sea level rise since the middle of the 19th century has been larger than the mean sea level rise of the prior two millennia.

Concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has increased to levels unprecedented on earth in 800,000 years.

Total radiative forcing of the earth system, relative to 1750, is positive and the most significant driver is the increase in CO2's atmospheric concentration.

 

 

[Old Koreelah]

PM your video is quite interesting and I'm sure many skeptics would see it as proof that we've been conned. 

 

How reliable is the info in the video?

 

If some data is being used selectively by climate scientists, it may be that they've learned a few bad habits from industries with dirty secrets to hide.

 

I am more interested in the broad historic context of the data.

 

Today, the Arctic ice has retreated so far that large cargo ships routinely take a short-cut between Europe and Asia. Over the centuries, hundreds of sailors suffered and died trying to navigate both the NE and the NW Passages. Now they are open.

 

There is so much other evidence of change (accelerating melting at the poles, thawing of permafrost, massive shifts in wildlife distribution, etc.) that I'd love the skeptics to convince me all is well. How bad will it have to get before they accept that we can't keep pumping our pollutants into the air?

 

 

[octave]

Skeptics?

 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.skeptics.com.au/2019/03/15/aust-skeptics-inc-statement-on-climate-change/amp/

 

 

[pmccarthy]

Skeptics?

 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.skeptics.com.au/2019/03/15/aust-skeptics-inc-statement-on-climate-change/amp/

 

It is illuminating to read the letters below the statement. Many seem to be by thoughtful people, who do not accept the statement and give their reasons. 

 

 

[Methusala]

Article on ABC this morning.For anyone in doubt please refer to "the precautionary principle". We are in clear and present danger of a catastrophe. Don

 

https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-25/un-ipcc-climate-report-warns-oceans-at-tipping-point/11547454

 

 

[willedoo]

Today, the Arctic ice has retreated so far that large cargo ships routinely take a short-cut between Europe and Asia. Over the centuries, hundreds of sailors suffered and died trying to navigate both the NE and the NW Passages. Now they are open.

 

Old Koreelah, that's partly true, but quite a bit of urban myth. No doubt warming is making that very small window per year open up, but it's counted in days, not months. NW passage would average maybe 20 vessels per year, mostly ice breakers, research vessels etc., but rarely open for conventional cargo vessels. Warming is causing the ice to become thinner and even open up a passage in the middle of summer, but outside that small window, it's still not navigable, and still frozen over for most of the year. Some predictions say that by 2060, it might be open for a month and three months per year by the end of the century.

 

Here's a bit of government info on it; bit of a shame some of the charts are low resolution.

 

https://www.enr.gov.nt.ca/en/state-environment/73-trends-shipping-northwest-passage-and-beaufort-sea

 

As this article points out, the situation you described (routine shipping) is coming soon, but not quite yet.

 

https://www.maritime-executive.com/editorials/the-arctic-shipping-route-no-one-s-talking-about

 

The NW passage/ Northern Sea Route gets a bit of shipping from Murmansk to Dudinka in the west and from Vladivostok up around the corner to Pevek, but very little in the centre part. Sometimes the ice breakers escort naval vessels right through. But neither route is a viable commercial shipping lane on a regular basis. It will happen for a few weeks per year one day, but not for a lot of years yet.

 

 

[nomadpete]

The biggest problem that I see, is that although climate change, regardless of whether totally caused totally by humans or not, is real, and at the very least, made worse by human greed. Even the 'deniers' mostly seem to agree with that. They mostly just argue about the percentage.  But since it is slow, and might not wipe us out for centuries, humans (the voting public) really don't care what happens to their kids, grandkids, etc. And are afraid that taking preventative action might be somehow uncomfortable (fear of the unknown). In fact, it looks more likely that taking action with regard to coal and oil doesn't have to be a catastrophe. And if we're wrong about climate change, we still have all those resources in the ground and with time they even become more profitable! We can't lose by diversifying our energy sources!

 

Anyway, we should be changing from our archaic fossil fuel addiction. Burning coal and oil causes way too much damage with all its pollution.

 

 

[Bruce]

" If the weight of the evidence contradicts the theory then I will happily  abandon it. "

 

Careful:

 

The "wooly Mammoth" died out due to global warming, SO SAY the scientist.

 

A bit before the industrial revolution of Humans, I believe.

 

Snowball Earth has been thawing for many millions of years,

 

When Humans hadn't reached the Iron age !.

 

spacesailor

 

Space, since I had not heard that a climate change killed the wooly mammoths, I looked it up on google and your assertion about scientists is not accurate.  The mammoths died out for more than one reason. The last group died of thirst, and that could be climate change I guess or the mammoths damaging their drinking water supply by browsing the lake shores.

 

There is a dishonest argument technique called " the straw man " where you attribute incorrect stuff to an imaginary opponent before demolishing it. Have another look at your post.