Well, ID folks are free to post comments here.
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Let me explain the science so you won’t have to dwell on what you think is speculative. You can still reject it if you want, but at least you will know better what you are rejecting:
About 20 million years ago, the channel of water between North and South America was eternally shut off, when Panama rose up.
This created yet another unique configuration of the land masses of the Earth, a giant rubicks cube of a sort.
QUOTABLE: "Scientists believe the formation of the Isthmus of Panama is one of the most important geologic events to happen on Earth in the last 60 million years. Even though it is only a tiny sliver of land, relative to the sizes of continents, the Isthmus of Panama had an enormous impact on Earth’s climate and its environment. "
Almost a million years ago, regular cycles of glaciation began on the earth, apparently arising out of the new Gulf Stream flow and other changes in global weather patterns. The world has never seen this arrangement of the continents.
A new weather cycle began to emerge, but this cycle is not driven by CO2, but by the Milankovitch Cycle, which is the tiny bit of wobble of the Earth’s (like a top’s wobble) as it circles the Sun.
Sometimes the wobble makes things warmer, sometimes cooler. This creates a feedback loop with the CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere, which either makes things warmer or cooler… which AGAIN changes the CO2 levels. And so on … until the Milankovitch Cycle begins to reverse itself, and CO2 follows in kind.
Since 800,000 years ago, the Earth has had, roughly speaking 4 major glaciations and 4 minor ones (there had been other periods of glaciers, but millions of years earlier). And like the swinging of a pendulum, CO2 levels would swing back and forth from about 180 PPM to 280 PPM. When CO2 got down to 180 PPM, we would find thick sheets of glaciers … sometimes a mile deep right over Manhattan Island!
And when up to 280 PPM, water levels would rise to the highest levels as glaciers receded and water once locked up on dry land would flow into the sea. The warming of the ocean waters ALSO aggravated water levels, as well as land-mass rebound (in some areas) as the weight of the glaciers was lifted from the land.
NOW the world’s CO2 is at 400 PPM, a level which hasn’t been attained since 3 million years ago. What does this mean?
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It means the subtle but inevitable influence of the Milankovitch Cycle is now swamped out. There cannot be a pendulum swing from 180 to 280 back to 180 PPM - - because the atmosphere is still filling up on CO2. The glaciation cycle has been stopped.
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It means that except in a few regionally exceptional areas, glaciers will completely disappear. More ice melt will arrive in the oceans than has been seen in more than a million years. Many European and South American communities living on water supplied by glacial melt will have to buy their water from luckier regions. The Pentagon is already adjusting strategies and tactics to cope with an increasingly ice-free polar region around the North Pole.
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It means we can conclude that the difference between current 400 ppm and the usual high point 280 ppm, is the part of the carbon cycle that human activity has contributed to the Earth’s carbon budget: 120 ppm !
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It means that even if CO2 levels didn’t go up any further, the Earth is still set on “broil”. Nothing can stop the glaciers from continuing to melt.
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It means that until the configuration of the Earth’s continents has re-set the Earth’s climate system, we won’t get close to seeing glacial ice levels until the Earth (assisted with human research no doubt) can fixate millions of tons of free carbon (in the oceans and the atmosphere) into a harmless state … to get the 400 PPM level down to somewhere around 300 or 320 PPM perhaps.
There, @Eddie, now you can reject the science if you like.
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? Maybe that is a a good thing? Do we really need another Ice Age?
Do we need a 2 meter rise in sea level? IIRC, a 1 - 3.5 M rise is in our future unless we take immediate steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
My comment was a bit tongue in cheek, although you have to admit, an ice age would be just about as bad, or worse. Climate change worries me more in that changing weather patterns may well disrupt the food supply, and cause widespread famine, perhaps more of a problem that beachfront condos getting flooded. Cities have moved in and out in response to changing water levels over the eons, probably will have to continue doing so.
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It’s the rate of change that probably produces the biggest problem. For example, the USA is just now coming to terms with the problems inherent with insuring and thus subsidizing properties in flood zones. Moving whole cities or creating much higher water barriers is going to carry a high cost. Those expenses would be easier to absorb if they extended over centuries instead of decades.
Similarly, farming and environmental changes will be happening more rapidly. That will impact the long-term value of land for farmers and increase the rates of species extinction and habitat destruction.
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The irony is that CO2 can be a plentiful feedstock for manufacturing numerous materials that can enhance people’s well being (plastics and liquids) - the cost for developing such industries (along with green and efficient power generation, including fossil fuels) would be far, far, less than the costs that climate change and its consequences. Yet human stupidity is displayed on a grand scale, with billions spent on sustaining inefficiencies and primitive methods such as storing CO2 and dumping it in holes, and no-one taking an interest in using CO2 instead of dumping it to the environment. Nature can cope with changes, but not with human stupidity.
I think the math tells us that it is really too late to avoid the fate of rising oceans.
The question is now how long it takes to pro-actively move people and do some Dutch-style mitigations… and how long it takes to learn how to CAPTURE carbon to contain carbon levels where they are now.
But really… once the oceans have risen… I’m not sure it’s going to matter about the water levels going back down.
The LASTING HARM is in food production. As agriculture zones move because of changes in heat and moisture levels, prime growing regions are becoming too hot, and new growing regions are known for having poor soils.
There are ebbs and flows in temperatures … mini-cycles… mini-ice ages and such. But 1000 years ago, CO2 levels were not at 400 ppm!
400 ppm is 42% HIGHER than the Earth regularly experienced during the multiple glacial melts that we experienced over 800,000 years.
It virtually certainly means that the 120 ppm higher than the usual high point (280 PPM) WAS produced by human activities. That’s almost 1/3rd of the total 400 ppm.
Isn’t it amazing what you can do with math, once you know what is normal and what isn’t?
Reducing the production of greenhouse gases could certainly mitigate the problem, though. Manhattan could far more easily withstand a 1M rise in sea level, for example, than a 3M rise. Charleston, SC (where I work) would basically disappear under a 3M rise in sea leel.
@Chris_Falter, the problem is that even if the CO2 level never goes past 400… the Earth’s thermostat is already set on BROIL.
Water levels will continue to rise as heat energy goes deeper into the oceans …
CO2 ppm doesn’t have to go any higher for the wreckage to continue …
I agree that we could probably do without mile high glaciers … but we solved that problem way back at 300 ppm!
@Eddie @gbrooks9 @Chris_Falter @jpm @Argon @GJDS
I think that this should probably be moved to a new thread, and I think that this is a very important topic, but not for the reasons that @gbrooks9 thinks. CO2 levels have been proven by ice core data to lag global temperature.
http://joannenova.com.au/global-warming-2/ice-core-graph/
Climate alarmists can argue that feedback from increased CO2 will increase global temperatures, but that is simply not supported by the evidence. CO2 has very little to do with global temperature.
On the other hand, concerns about food availability and starvation are valid, but they are completely opposite to what climate alarmists fear. People in Africa starve every day, yesterday, today and tomorrow and it is because of politics, corruption and lack of industrial infrastructure, not because of AGW.
http://blog.heartland.org/2015/01/how-many-of-worlds-poor-will-climate-alarmists-let-die/
What we have in america is a war between special interest groups. Fossil fuel producers have historically backed republicans. Democrats would like to erode that base. Environmental groups (with big money) want a boogie man to galvanize their base. Big fossil fuel producers (Exxon etc.) look at cap-and-trade and realize that an across the board price hike would put more money in their pockets and create a barrier to entry for smaller players. Tax payers and consumers are caught in the middle. Emerging market countries are left out in the cold, literally.
Young people, and those not so young, look at sustainability and Alarmism and get a sense of shared purpose in something greater than themselves. Because this is not based on fact, it is very dangerous. This kind of thinking is a secular substitute for religion. It substitutes faith in Science for faith in God. Scientists (when towing the line for the party in power) become a new priesthood, not to be questioned. Peer review is mistaken for a magic wand of infallibility and truth. Nazism was based on “science” in the form of eugenics. Of course, eugenics is pseudo-science, but then again, so is AGW.
The true cost of AGW is prosperity. Give up your future prosperity and you will be accepted by the group. Disagree and lose your funding, or be sued.
https://www.freespeechinscience.org/
You cannot accurately mathematically model a process that you do not understand.
America has a generation that has watched Al Gore’s movie on Netfix and Youtube, but has not seen the 77 pages of corrective guidance mandated in 2007 by a London judge to counter the scientific errors in the movie.
Science and reason have benefited everyone, and everyone agrees that science and reason can be used to solve problems and arrive at truths. The problem is knowing when you have arrived. For instance, for years the consensus was that high cholesterol caused heart disease. Or, not.
Journalists have been telling lay people (like me) for years that there is a 97% consensus among climate scientists that people are dangerously warming the planet and that we should immediately subscribe to their (the journalists’) newspaper and read all about it before we burst into flame. There is no consensus. Disbelieving in AGW is not a rejection of science and reason.
http://climatechangedispatch.com/97-articles-refuting-the-97-percent-consensus.html/
Immanent threat sells newspapers. “If it bleeds, it leads” has been a maxim in journalism that holds true today, and nothing bleeds like a tidal wave of glacier melt coming to flood your living room. The argument around AGW seems to end up often times at Pascal’s Wager, with windmills substituted for God. If we believe in AGW, we will gain clean energy and lose nothing. If we believe in God we will gain eternal life and a universe with meaning and morality, and lose nothing. This does not translate to AGW. If we believe in AGW, which unlike God, does not exist, we lose one of the major sources of prosperity on the planet. If you are rich enough that you don’t know what your electric bill was last month, or don’t wince when you fill up your gas tank, then AGW is a small price to pay for the feeling of smugness that you get when dressing down some conservative neanderthal on Facebook for not being compassionate toward your fellow man and showing how much you value science and reason by being really really concerned about AGW and what the big bad industrial sector has done to the planet because coal is MEAN!!! Coal makes dolphins SAD!!! If on the other hand you live on a budget, or heaven forbid, if you live in a developing nation like Nigeria and you literally only have electricity for 5 hours a day, if at all, then coal, or oil or natural gas are not mean, they are light and warmth.
Educate yourself, and don’t believe what I say, or what the imaginary consensus says.
Global warming is a religion. Be a heretic.
Most, if not all, scientist understand the limitations of models of global climate with associated factors such as ocean currents. There are however, facts that are not in dispute, and these include the increase in CO2 concentrations, the Greenhouse effect(s) and the relative increases (albeit non-linear) in average global temperatures over recent decades.
My view is there are a number of factors that are compelling, and action is warranted to decrease CO2 emissions, but this should be done in an economically sound way. The best way that I can think of is (in a way we would mimic nature) to use CO2 as a raw feedstock in the manufacture of materials that all countries would use. Utilisation of CO2 can be done by combining it with hydrogen, and hydrogen can be made by breaking down water into oxygen and hydrogen. Oxygen can be used to burn fossil fuels with greater efficiency, and CO2 is easily captured from this. Higher efficiencies would also be possible with this approach, and solar power can be used (direct current) to break down water.
The result is sustainable, emissions free (all gaseous products are captured), good economically, and propels the industry to adopt increasingly higher efficiencies.
The notion that reducing emissions helps Asian countries to compete unfairly with the USA is incorrect - the USA has resisted emission targets and has been the greatest emitter of CO2 until recently (now it is both USA and China) - during this period US manufacturing has declined and this cannot possibly be due to CO2 policy, as the US has not reduced CO2 to any substantial amount. Increased amounts, and low prices, of natural gas has enabled US to use high efficient gas fuelled power stations which emit much lower amounts of CO2.
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If you read my post carefully, you would learn that the “lag” is because the Milankovitch Cycles DRIVE warming and cooling … and CO2 responds to the cycle.
But this does not permit the conclusion that “CO2 has very little to do with global temperature.” That is simply wrong and easily proved wrong.
Yes, CO2 has increased, but the “Greenhouse effect(s)” of CO2 as modeled by the IPCC et. al., are disputed as to severity. IPCC says that doubling atmospheric CO2 would increase global temperatures by 4 C. Actually, the effect would be to raise temps by one half C.
Also, the global rise in temperature ended 18 years ago.
Yes, I am aware of the Milankovitch Effect, and yes I am sure that it accounts for a large part of natural climate change, but when I say that “CO2 has very little to do with global temperature” I am referring to the climate sensitivity research “of Spencer & Braswell and Lindzen & Choi that a doubling of CO2 levels would only lead to an increase in top of the atmosphere temperature of 0.67°C, or global surface temperature of about 0.18°C, instead of the alleged 3°C claimed by IPCC computer models.” A brief overview of the Milankovitch Effect can be found at 1:22:30 of this presentation:
@gbrooks9 as for your graph, correlation is not causation.
Also, don’t expect to see any of this frank discussion in your newspaper any time soon. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jul/14/sheldon-whitehouse-calls-news-outlets-suppress-ext/
But Nick, you may ask, what, if anything, does any of this have to do with Jesus, science, the Bible and creation? Well, I see somewhat of a parallel between how Young Earthers and Climate Skeptics are viewed by society. Both Young Earthers and Climate Skeptics are heretics as relates to the strange cult of science that seems to want to take hold of popular culture. Both Young Earthers and Climate Skeptics reject important memes of pop sci. One rejects evolution, geology and the constancy of the speed of light in a vacuum. The other rejects the steaming pile of nonsense that is Man-made Global Warming Hysteria (run away. . .). When, exactly did it become bad to be skeptical? When did it become bad to be skeptical of a congressman telling newspapers not to publish stories that he does not like? When did it become bad to be skeptical of state Attorney Generals suing oil companies under the Rico act? I am skeptical, and I am a Christian; both are good things.