A New Climate Change Study

[Elemmire]

http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1887.html

Climate change is expected to have significant influences on terrestrial biodiversity at all system levels, including species-level reductions in range size and abundance, especially amongst endemic species. However, little is known about how mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions could reduce biodiversity impacts, particularly amongst common and widespread species. Our global analysis of future climatic range change of common and widespread species shows that without mitigation, 57±6% of plants and 34±7% of animals are likely to lose ≥50% of their present climatic range by the 2080s. With mitigation, however, losses are reduced by 60% if emissions peak in 2016 or 40% if emissions peak in 2030. Thus, our analyses indicate that without mitigation, large range contractions can be expected even amongst common and widespread species, amounting to a substantial global reduction in biodiversity and ecosystem services by the end of this century. Prompt and stringent mitigation, on the other hand, could substantially reduce range losses and buy up to four decades for climate change adaptation.

This is.. wow.

 

[Deathdealer]

Educate yourself.

[video]http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/videos/ice-age-cycles/[/video]

 

[Lanien]

While I don't doubt the natural occurring cycles of Earth warming and cooling, it is possible that humans have an effect that could accelerate the warming process. No one really knows what the Earth's average temperature should be.

 

[Raesvelg]

The truth is that there is no "average temperature". The climate is constantly in flux, though we do see transient periods of relative stability. Milankovitch cycles are all well and good, but even there it just defines a tiny piece of the overall pattern. The past million years or so, from what I recall; prior to that, we still appear to have had cyclical patterns in the climate, but those patterns occurred at a tighter interval.

So.

Do I believe in climate change? Absolutely. Which is the same as saying I believe that the sun will rise in the morning; it always has so far, after all. The climate is always changing.

Do I believe in anthropogenic climate change? Now there's a stickier question. Yes.

But.

We don't understand the climate well enough to make the claim that "X action will have Y effect". It might. It might not. Hell, the forcing mechanisms behind the Milankovitch cycles are poorly understood at best, much like the rest of the forcing mechanisms, when you get right down to it. It makes me exceptionally cranky when scientists conduct research with the objective of proving their bias, and it pains me to say that an awful lot of climate research falls into that category.

Their opponents are busy doing the same thing, of course. The entire debate, such as it is, has taken on a near-religious fervor on both sides.

As for the topic of this post...

Biodiversity is an interesting subject. In part because while it's certainly important, it is not the harbinger of doom it's often played up to be.

What biodiversity offers is resilience in the face of adversity. The irony, of course, is that now that adversity is occurring, and natural selection kicking in, humans (in all our arrogance) are crying foul just because this is the latest round of mass extinctions we've been handing out.

Technically it's the same wave, mind you. The one that started when the first proto-human tied a stick to a rock and suddenly found himself a vastly more effective predator. It could be a coincidence, but it is a rather striking thing to consider that a wave of mass extinctions among the megafauna of the Americas followed the arrival of humans with clockwork precision.

So yes, we're going to lose a fair number of overly-optimized species. So long as they're not keystone species, the world will likely spin on, though yes, extinctions will occur. There's not a whole lot we can do about that short of killing off 95% of the human race and reverting back to a vastly more primitive technological base.

Yes, we can attempt to arrest the pace of climate change. I have some significant doubts about the efficacy of such actions, but its conceivably possible we could manage to keep emissions low enough to matter. More than conceivable if the nutjobs would get out of the way of nuclear plant research and construction.

But that won't matter much, really. Evolution is driven by selection, after all. Minor differences among members of a species pile up when the members with those differences survive to breed in greater numbers than the ones who lack such advantages. Hell, there's some evidence that some populations of cliff swallows have evolved shorter wing feathers over the last 30 years.

Why?

So they can avoid being hit by cars. Seriously, no shit, look it up. It's not conclusive research, but it is moderately compelling.

I'm honestly more concerned about the effects of human over-exploitation of fishing waters than I am the prospect that a few more degrees of temperature rise before we can get our CO2 emissions under control will wipe out the less temperature resistant species. I fear that it's going to take something like the US Navy going around and sinking every fishing fleet that can't abide by rules set by scientists, not politicians.

 

[Lanien]

Of course the Earth has an average temperature... And that fancy science we have has shown it's going up, even on a short 150 year time scale. But like you said, the Milankovitch cycles aren't exactly provable due to the length of the climate record being insufficient to establish a statistically significant relationship between climate variations.

I think the biggest problem is there are so many different external forces that finding a "scale" to base the Earth's temperature on is difficult. If you go off the 100,000 year scale based on orbital eccentricity, then how do you account for Ice Ages that happen in the middle of the 100,000 year scale? You have to factor in axial tilt and precession, aspidal precession, and orbital inclination that each have their own transitional scales. Finding where human influences fit into this is quite a task.

Either way, there is no reason we shouldn't make the technological advances to get off energy sources that create the large amounts of green house gases. It reminds me of that old political cartoon where it lists the benefits of "green" energy sources, and a dude in the audience says something along the lines of "what if it's a hoax and we make the world better for nothing?"

 

[Deathdealer]

Either way, there is no reason we shouldn't make the technological advances to get off energy sources that create the large amounts of green house gases.

Could not agree more. My whole poitn in posting, is that we as humans have the tendency to make ourselves out to be a lot more important than we really are in the big picture. While I believe we shouldn't be making our house any worse, to think that we are so self-important that people take shit to the extreme (as they do with EVERYTHING they are told to believe in), is idiotic and fucking stupid. In the words of the late great George Carlin "The world has survived a LOT worse than the human race. It was here before us, and it will be here long after we're gone." We'll all kill each-other long before artificial global warming does...

 

[Raesvelg]

My point regarding an "average temperature" is that it only applies to relatively brief periods in the sense of geological time. Sure, we've had an average temperature for the past couple million years.

Prior to that, we had a different "average temperature" for the preceding three million years. We've gone ten million years a time without polar ice caps.

Ten. Million. Years.

Hell, if we extrapolate a bit further from the geological record, it would appear that for Earth, having polar ice caps is the exception rather than the norm.

And yes, I'm a fan of eliminating our dependence on fossil fuels. I'm also a fan of next-generation nuclear power though, which it appears is a taboo subject for the vast majority of so-called environmentalists. While the third-gen reactor designs do have a host of problems, the fourth-gen designs, like the LFTR, are vastly superior in many ways. Solar and wind power are great, but they aren't suitable for every location, and most importantly are not consistent, with the power they produce varying wildly depending on local weather conditions.

 

[Morcheeba]

http://www.cracked.com/article_20411_6-harmless-fads-that-caused-widespread-destruction.html

Right now we're no better than the tards in the past centuries. We may be making headway with technological advances, but we're stupid as fuck. Cell phones, microwaves, multivitamins, can't wait until the long term affects studies start piling up.. you know after we've been exposed long enough to ascertain truly long term affect studies.

Our grandchildrens grand babies will look back at us and laugh at how ridiculously ignorant and arrogant we were. Knowing much of the risks and still brushing them off as minor irritations. Assuming of course the apocalypse doesn't wipe us out.

Also

This totally happened today.. we're all going to die.

 

[Grandphoenix]

http://www.cracked.com/article_20411_6-harmless-fads-that-caused-widespread-destruction.html

Right now we're no better than the tards in the past centuries. We may be making headway with technological advances, but we're stupid as fuck. Cell phones, microwaves, multivitamins, can't wait until the long term affects studies start piling up.. you know after we've been exposed long enough to ascertain truly long term affect studies.

Our grandchildrens grand babies will look back at us and laugh at how ridiculously ignorant and arrogant we were. Knowing much of the risks and still brushing them off as minor irritations. Assuming of course the apocalypse doesn't wipe us out.

Also

This totally happened today.. we're all going to die.

YOU'VE BEGAN 3RD IMPACT

 

[Elemmire]

Educate yourself.

[video]http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/videos/ice-age-cycles/[/video]

Same to you

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change

and

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/20...oints-with-links-to-the-full-climate-science/

I'll just leave those there.

90% sure it's human caused in the Science community. NINETY PERCENT!! Pretty fucking conclusive as far as our science community is concerned. And that's WITH all the big oil money and other industries trying to claim it's not with their false studies.

And Raes, I do so wish we'd move towards Thorium power. I remember SciShow doing a good video on it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYxlpeJEKmw

It really would be the more ideal solution to helping our power problem and getting us off of fossil fuels that cause problems with our environment. It won't end our need for fossil fuels any time soon because of cars and other such things, but it'll help ween us off. And we could engage in some projects to help counter our warming of the planet. One feasible (though still needs more research and work) idea is the sending of ships into the Atlantic to suck up some of the water (since it's had a great deal more influx of fresh water with the melting polar regions) and create artificial clouds that are as white as possible into the air. It will help reflect some of the sun's rays and cool our planet. Now, shouldn't jump the gun and do it, should study all possible outcomes that could have, but we should definitely not do "nothing" and claim that "oh it's just the natural earth cycle" especially since the majority of scientists are pretty sure we are a great deal of the cause (just to clarify, I'm not saying that's your point, I just see that point made often by many).

But we very well could do many things to help offset the climate change. Other than the ship bit, we could start outfitting many houses (at least around the equator region of our planet, or the sun bet) with solar panels. That would help alleviate things. And we could put as much research into green energy solutions instead of the vast sums put into weapon research. I mean, most agree green energy is a big upcoming industry, yet we're letting China lead the research? I thought we wanted to be the leaders of innovation and such? Just seems like we could be doing far more.

 

[Raesvelg]

Geoengineering solutions are incredibly ill-conceived. They're attempts to meddle in a fantastically complicated system with ham-handed and simplistic techniques and expecting positive results without negative consequences.

It's like Keynesian Economics for the environment.

 

[Elemmire]

Geoengineering solutions are incredibly ill-conceived. They're attempts to meddle in a fantastically complicated system with ham-handed and simplistic techniques and expecting positive results without negative consequences.

It's like Keynesian Economics for the environment.

We already meddle with complicated systems easily with just our basic fossil fuel usage.

There are 5 options I see from this though

1) We do nothing, climate change is real and the world is getting dangerously warm for us, we ruin the planet and all die (or kill the majority of our species and other species with our hubris)
2) We do nothing, climate change isn't as big a problem, nothing happens
3) We do something, climate change isn't real, we waste some money (but in the process jobs are created and things are learned)
4) We do something, climate change is real, we successfully help counteract our previous interfering with nature.
5) We do something, climate change is real, we make things worse.

If we're smart about how we do something instead of letting politicians who are bought by corporations who would rather not lose profit due to green energy decide things we should be able to avoid option 5, if we do nothing and climate change is real, we're horribly screwed, and ya... the "do nothing and hope it isn't a thing" is a problem I'm sick of seeing being considered the best course of action -_- it's the least likely possibility given our data. The others aren't that bad or downright good. I dunno, it's just not smart to do nothing about this issue like so many anti-climate change people are for.

This video is interesting

 

[Raesvelg]

There are 5 options I see from this though

There's doing "nothing", and then there's simply restricting our carbon output. I'm a fan of the latter.

But when you start talking about seeding the oceans with iron to cause algal blooms to soak up CO2, then we start getting into the territory of potentially dangerous geoengineering.

This video is interesting

It was... a little simplistic. Obviously. It was also simplistic in favor of atmospheric composition models for temperature variance, which is irritating.

 

[Elemmire]

There's doing "nothing", and then there's simply restricting our carbon output. I'm a fan of the latter.

But when you start talking about seeding the oceans with iron to cause algal blooms to soak up CO2, then we start getting into the territory of potentially dangerous geoengineering.


It was... a little simplistic. Obviously. It was also simplistic in favor of atmospheric composition models for temperature variance, which is irritating.

I'd like to restrict carbon output, but is that merely going to be enough? And how many people are going to really do that? I don't know if people are really going to want to alter their way of living after they've done it for so long or necessarily buy new products to replace less efficient ones. Especially when studies like this come around:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/apr/30/conservative-us-shoppers-turned-off-eco-lightbulb

Granted, not the best study and would help to have more, but it's not very encouraging. And let's be honest, many climate change deniers do want to opt for the "do nothing" approach :\ Especially many who just weigh the money value of things and ignore the possible end of mass amounts of species (possibly our own) from such actions. It's.. sad.

And the video is simplistic because they try and keep things short, but it is entirely factual and cites all their sources in the information and ya... I don't see it being as so sparse that it doesn't make a valid point.

 

[Raesvelg]

I'd like to restrict carbon output, but is that merely going to be enough?

Probably.

Part of the problem here is that the doomsday advocates have written themselves into a corner with their narrative. If there are positive feedback loops in place, it's too late no matter what we do, short of becoming not just CO2-neutral, but actively absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere, we're totally fucked. On the other hand, if there are mechanisms in place to support a natural equilibrium, then all we have to do is stop pumping excessive CO2 into the atmosphere and things will rapidly revert to "normal".

In reality, of course, there is no normal, but I've covered that already.

Most of the evidence, as evident by the fact that we're all still here, is that there are natural mechanisms in place to maintain equilibrium. For that matter, at least 40% of the CO2 produced by humanity is absorbed into the system already. Cut emissions roughly in half and we're instantly at equilibrium again. Cutting emissions is vastly preferable to meddling further in an attempt to "fix" the "problem".

And the video is simplistic because they try and keep things short, but it is entirely factual and cites all their sources in the information and ya... I don't see it being as so sparse that it doesn't make a valid point.

It makes a point, certainly. A valid one... more debatable.

It glosses over large periods of historical climate, glosses over non-atmospheric explanations to specific events, basically lays everything at the feet of the greenhouse effect and calls it good.

That's still bad science. When you start watering down or outright changing the truth in an attempt to influence public opinion, you're fucking yourself in the long term.

 

[Thelona]

We are already cutting back our carbon output, goodluck getting china to do the same.

 

[Elemmire]

China is the leading developer and researcher in green and alternative energy sources and has been working on cutting its carbon emissions.

And the video I think was more just a quick change in environment and it did make the point that, no, our climate has never been set as anything in the history of the world and is always changing, but that there are lifeforms that change it (true) and that right now ours is, as far as we can find from the evidence we have now, the fastest changing climate (and getting hotter when it should be cooling a bit if the trends of the data are to be anything) we've seen in a LONG time.

 

[Raesvelg]

China is the leading developer and researcher in green and alternative energy sources and has been working on cutting its carbon emissions.

Not... exactly true.

China's got a lot of hydro install at this point, that much is true. It's their biggest "green" energy source, though the way they've handled it hasn't exactly been environmentally friendly. They're throwing a lot of money at it, certainly, but they've thrown more capacity into coal than anything else. Which is probably why their CO2 emissions have been climbing at a ridiculous rate over the last 5 years. Like between 10% to 17% per year. And that doesn't even include how incredibly dirty most of their plants (and hell, their fuels) are in terms of pollutants other than CO2.

Their per-capita emissions still aren't that high, of course, but that's because the vast majority of China's citizens are still dirt poor.

China's spending the most on installing renewable energy in terms of single-nation, but the European Union puts them firmly in second place if you take the EU as a whole. There's also a few issues surrounding the factual basis of China's claims regarding renewable energy. Sure, they're spending a lot on wind farms. But by many accounts, close to a third of those farms aren't even hooked up to the grid, because the grid isn't robust enough to handle transmitting power from the farm to the places that need it. On top of that, a lot of the capacity that is hooked up isn't well-sited. Last I checked, while China has more installed capacity than the US does, it actually generates noticeably less wind power in total.

As for research spending, that's trickier to nail down. And by trickier, I mean I just can't seem to find any good data regarding that part of the equation. It's difficult to tell who's leading the charge on research, though it's probably the EU, followed by the US.

And the video I think was more just a quick change in environment and it did make the point that, no, our climate has never been set as anything in the history of the world and is always changing, but that there are lifeforms that change it (true) and that right now ours is, as far as we can find from the evidence we have now, the fastest changing climate (and getting hotter when it should be cooling a bit if the trends of the data are to be anything) we've seen in a LONG time.

Actually, we've been about due for the current cold period to end. The rate of change is the worrisome part.

As for the rest, it's not that the video doesn't present accurate information, though it does present speculation as though it were fact. The problem is that it shows an incomplete version of the truth in order to influence opinions.

Why is that a problem?

It becomes an issue when someone who's not quite sure about the idea is motivated by the piece to do some research of their own. And then discovers that the picture painted is radically incomplete in some areas and cherry picked in others. That kind of discovery can turn people against the author of such a piece. It's a lot simpler to just state the facts as they are, rather than try to edit them to fit your point.

 

[Morcheeba]

Not entirely related to the topic at hand.. but it is in few ways. Never-the-less a spectacular sight.

http://www.upworthy.com/some-strang...g-to-astronauts-returning-to-earth?g=2&c=ufb1

Enjoy.. I did.

 

[Lanien]

My point regarding an "average temperature" is that it only applies to relatively brief periods in the sense of geological time. Sure, we've had an average temperature for the past couple million years.

Prior to that, we had a different "average temperature" for the preceding three million years. We've gone ten million years a time without polar ice caps.

Ten. Million. Years.

Hell, if we extrapolate a bit further from the geological record, it would appear that for Earth, having polar ice caps is the exception rather than the norm.

And yes, I'm a fan of eliminating our dependence on fossil fuels. I'm also a fan of next-generation nuclear power though, which it appears is a taboo subject for the vast majority of so-called environmentalists. While the third-gen reactor designs do have a host of problems, the fourth-gen designs, like the LFTR, are vastly superior in many ways. Solar and wind power are great, but they aren't suitable for every location, and most importantly are not consistent, with the power they produce varying wildly depending on local weather conditions.

I completely forgot about this topic lol

I am all for the next step in nuclear power. It's relatively clean and efficient compared to all our other choices. WTB Anti-Matter energy though lol It only costs like 64 billion dollars to make a gram of anti-matter.... lol