Man Made Climate Change - Evidence Based Discussion

[Paul]

Please use this thread to discuss the fundamental issues of man made climate change. Views on all sides of the debate are welcome within this thread but all views do need to be backed up by evidence.
 
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[knocker]

Watch How Solar Power Is Transforming Rural India

 

BARSANA, UTTAR PRADESH, INDIA — Sun-bleached brick and concrete houses dot the landscape. Cows and buffaloes compete with rickshaws, people and the occasional SUV on the only road into town. And when the sun goes down, life comes to a screeching halt. In other words, this rural village in India’s northern plains is an unlikely place for the beginning of a technological revolution.

 

Yet it is here, as I watch employees of one of the country’s many fast-growing clean energy startups install solar panels on a local villager’s roof — their sixth installation of the day — that I realize I am witnessing something transformational. It is a glimpse into the future of how the world’s rural poor could access electricity: off-grid, distributed, renewable, and most importantly, affordable. It’s happening all over rural India and in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, and is turning the entire narrative around energy and development on its head.

[Pennine Ten Foot Drifts]

Watch How Solar Power Is Transforming Rural India

 

Absolutely Knocker, this is very encouraging. Another decent read:

 

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/mckinsey-solar-pv-is-disruptive-and-world-changing-35412

 

However, watch the established carbon based energy and fuel supply companies fight tooth and nail to continue to discredit renewables as they see their stranglehold on the market (and therefore their profits) dwindle. And also watch governments panicking as their centralised grip on power supply is weakened, handing more and more autonomy to local communities. If you've secured your local power supply, the next step is to secure your local food supply. Once those two are done, the role of central government could very possibly become peripheral. I can't wait, (not sure this is a discussion for this thread though !)

[knocker]

If you read Ugo Bardi's Extracted; How the quest for Mineral Wealth is Plundering the planet you realise the importance of the connection between extractable mineral reserves and economics. In other words, put simplistically, it's not just just a case of recoverable reserves but the cost of extraction. People bleat about green taxes but without mentioning the huge subsidies for the fossil fuel industry and the absolutely staggering cost of extraction, not only now, but increasingly so in the futurel  Which is one of the reasons it makes sense to utilise the one fusion generator we know will be around for a while.

 

http://www.jeremyleggett.net/2014/07/fossil-industry-is-the-subprime-danger-of-this-cycle/.

Edited July 11, 2014 by knocker

[knocker]

Rather ties in with the above.

 

It's simple. If we can't change our economic system, our number's up

It's the great taboo of our age – and the inability to discuss the pursuit of perpetual growth will prove humanity's undoing

 

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/27/if-we-cant-change-economic-system-our-number-is-up?utm_content=buffere49cd&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

[Polar Maritime]

 

 

Climate-driven changes in biotic interactions can profoundly alter ecological communities, particularly when they impact foundation species. In marine systems, changes in herbivory and the consequent loss of dominant habitat forming species can result in dramatic community phase shifts, such as from coral to macroalgal dominance when tropical fish herbivory decreases, and from algal forests to ‘barrens’ when temperate urchin grazing increases. Here, we propose a novel phase-shift away from macroalgal dominance caused by tropical herbivores extending their range into temperate regions. We argue that this phase shift is facilitated by poleward-flowing boundary currents that are creating ocean warming hotspots around the globe, enabling the range expansion of tropical species and increasing their grazing rates in temperate areas. Overgrazing of temperate macroalgae by tropical herbivorous fishes has already occurred in Japan and the Mediterranean. Emerging evidence suggests similar phenomena are occurring in other temperate regions, with increasing occurrence of tropical fishes on temperate reefs.

 

http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/281/1789/20140846.full.html

[knocker]

Urban heat: Not a myth, and worst where it's wet

 

A new quantifies for the first time the primary causes of the 'urban heat island' (UHI) effect, a common phenomenon that makes the world's urban areas significantly warmer than surrounding countryside and may increase health risks for city residents. In an analysis of 65 cities, researchers found that variation in how efficiently urban areas release heat back into the lower atmosphere is the dominant factor in the daytime UHI effect.

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140709140119.htm

 

The study

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v511/n7508/full/nature13462.html 

[knocker]

Australia drying caused by greenhouse gases, study shows

 

A new high-resolution climate model has been developed that shows southwestern Australia's long-term decline in fall and winter rainfall is caused by increases in human-made greenhouse gas emissions and ozone depletion, according to research. Several natural causes were tested with the model, including volcano eruptions and changes in the sun's radiation. But none of these natural climate drivers reproduced the long-term observed drying, indicating this trend is due to human activity

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140713155504.htm

[4wd]

Do model runs count as 'evidence' then?

[4wd]

There was a recent paper attributed "50-80%" of the change in rainfall patterns there to land use changes in particular coastal forest has been much reduced.https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/andrich_and_imberger_2012a.pdfMysteriously these changes don't seem to have been considered in the new paper.

Edited July 14, 2014 by 4wd

[knocker]

I think you aught to give the original source and the discussion therein just to emphasis your point. And the comments section, as always, throws much light on the scientific merits.

 

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/13/claim-australia-drying-caused-by-greenhouse-gases/

Edited July 14, 2014 by knocker

[4wd]

Yes there's some interesting stuff, for example the 2013 claim that Australian drought was caused by the (then trendy) *Polar Vortex*
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s948858.htm

And Bill Illis supplies the actual rainfall for Perth recently - above average.



Or Kalgoorlie further inland



 

Edited July 14, 2014 by Paul
Removed un-needed sarcasm.

[knocker]

Interesting even though this was 2003 and the science has moved on since then. Still a quote.

 

 

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia may be facing a permanent drought because of an accelerating vortex of winds whipping around the Antarctic that threatens to disrupt rainfall, scientists said on Tuesday.

 

Spinning faster and tighter, the 100 mile an hour jetstream is pulling climate bands south and dragging rain from Australia into the Southern Ocean, they say.

 

They attribute the phenomenon to global warming and loss of the ozone layer over Antarctica.

 

"This is a very serious situation that we're probably not confronting as full-on as we should," Dr James Risbey of the Center for Dynamical Meteorology and Oceanography at Melbourne's Monash University told Reuters on Tuesday.

 

"There has been real added impetus here in Australia to try to study (the wind vortex) because we've been faced with an almost precipitous rainfall decline, particularly in the southwest of Western Australia," Risbey said.

 

Australia, one of the world's top agricultural supply nations, has just been through its worst drought in 100 years.

Risbey and other Australians are part of an international band of scientists and meteorologists focusing on the vortex as an explanation for declining rainfall.

 

Rainfall has declined by nearly 20 percent in the past seven years over parts of southwestern Western Australia, through to Victoria and into southern New South Wales state, Risbey said.

 

At the same time, temperatures have been rising in Australia by about one degree Celsius over the past 50 years, requiring more rain to fall just to keep the status quo.

 

http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/index.cfm?id=4444&method=full

[knocker]

A developing country is showing it is economically feasible to produce electricity from 100% renewables while lifting the standard of living of its people.

 

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/958m-geothermal-project-approved-costa-rican-legislature-26594

[knocker]

Eight ways climate change is making the world more dangerous

Disasters including storms, floods and heatwaves have increased fivefold since the 1970s, UN finds

 

 

Forget the future. The world already is nearly five times as dangerous and disaster prone as it was in the 1970s, because of the increasing risks brought by climate change, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organisation.

The first decade of the 21^st century saw 3,496 natural disasters from floods, storms, droughts and heat waves. That was nearly five times as many disasters as the 743 catastrophes reported during the 1970s – and all of those weather events are influenced by climate change.

 

The bottom line: natural disasters are occurring nearly five times as often as they were in the 1970s. But some disasters – such as floods and storms – pose a bigger threat than others. Flooding and storms are also taking a bigger bite out of the economy. But heat waves are an emerging killer.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2014/jul/14/8-charts-climate-change-world-more-dangerous?CMP=twt_gu

[loafer]

The comments below the Guardian article are interesting and worth reading.

It is also completely contrary to the IPCC report which says there is little or no evidence of any increase in extreme weather events.

[Gray-Wolf]

The IPCC report is always going to be at least 5 years behind of times and heavily censored by signing members ( 1 vote against means that draft fails!!!!). In some ways it is a miracle we are even allowed to see change at all in the report? What you see there are the irrefutable facts that member states feel they cannot question. Any new research that provides a direr outlook are not accepted.

 

The old thread had a link to one of the folk involved in creating the document and his agnst at the expurgation that goes on before anything is set to print. It seems Nations can also be denialist if industry pressures it to be so? 

[Gray-Wolf]

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/24485-arctic-warming-and-increased-weather-extremes-the-national-research-council-speaks

 

This article looks at just how conservative the scientific process is and shows how the IPCC is even more conservative with its output. A point in case is Antarctic Ice loss. The 07' IPCC report said not to expect any mass loss even though science had been measuring it since the 1990's!!!

 

The 2013 IPCC report is the first time Ice loss in Antarctica is mentioned....... over 20 years after it began!

 

The article also points out that current modelling , using the 'old climate' does not work. We now have a 'New Climate' , the climate has changed and to the point that the article suggest removing ourselves from consensus and trusting expert opinion over it?

 

I have always said that the 'cutting edge' research is where to find current changes and not old papers? It might suit certain folk (those who disputed the 07' IPCC report until newer papers made it suddenly 'attractive' to them!) but for policy makers the world over things are now changing so fast that they would be better served consulting directly with scientists currently working in the field than relying on papers written before changes became so great as to alter climate?

[4wd]

The comments below the Guardian article are interesting and worth reading.It is also completely contrary to the IPCC report which says there is little or no evidence of any increase in extreme weather events.

Indeed, many point out problems with the simplistic sensationalised article e.g. 

 

 

James Ibbotson14 July 2014 12:18pm

Recommend43I am sorry to have to say it, but this is a singularly unhelpful way of presenting the data." The data doesn't match the headlines. At All".In fact the two worse natural disasters for loss of life were in 1970 in Bangladesh and Ethiopia in 1983. Well before any serious AGW was noted by James hansen in 1988.The data also seems to give credence to the meme that the cost of storm damage is increasing due to an increase in wealth in the western world. not because the strength or frequency of the storms is increasing.This sort of journalism and headline making is what gives climate science a massive communications problem. Its its own worse enemy.

[knocker]

Surely if one is worried about the quality of the journalism, and I have to smile wryly when I consider the number of time I've seen the Mail quoted on here, just read the report.

 

http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/drr/transfer/2014.06.12-WMO1123_Atlas_120614.pdf

Edited July 17, 2014 by knocker

[knocker]

Another interesting 'report'

 

This is a list of every skeptic argument encountered online as well as how often each argument is used.

 

http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php?f=percentage

[knocker]

NASA Finds ‘Amazing’ Levels Of Arctic Methane And CO2, Asks ‘Is a Sleeping Climate Giant Stirring in the Arctic?’

 

A NASA science team has observed “amazing and potentially troubling†levels of methane and CO2 from the rapidly warming Arctic. Given the staggering amount of carbon trapped in the permafrost — and the fact that methane is a very potent heat-trapping gas — the space agency is now asking: “Is a Sleeping Climate Giant Stirring in the Arctic?â€

[Gray-Wolf]

http://www.swerus-c3.geo.su.se/index.php/swerus-media

 

Ongoing expedition to examine the submerged permafrosts and the dangers they hold for our world ( esp. keeping below the 2c max warming limit)

[knocker]

Northern Canada is On Fire, And It's Making Global Warming Worse

Wildfires have burned six times as many acres as normal this year in the Northwest Territories.

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/07/canada-wildfires-climate-change-feedbacks

[Gray-Wolf]

We're only in July and Siberia is also not doing too well in the wildfire dept. The soot produced is also an issue over ice and snow cover with the lowering of Albedo and the blackened surfaces lead to more rapid thaw once exposed the following year bringing issue to permafrost melt.