The effects of warming: Kilodeaths

[fromderinside]

Twig snap or bullet report both lead humans to do the same thing. They turn their eyes toward the heard source. Same is true with science. Paper title directs attention of those who who come across them. Headlines are filters used by reporters who come across words in titles most likely to draw attention to worthy text in article headline. A natural phenomenon.

For instance forming a primise leading to conclusion of bulshit lead poster above to find and report claimed missing Gore quote. It's all good.

 

[Fentoine Lum]

The problem is that the overwhelming majority of the current predictions of doom that are blindly accepted, believed, and repeated by much of the general public is not in the scientific literature. Such doom scenarios are offered by politicians, newscasters, and such and accepted by many as scientific. Much of the general public accept it as scientific and repeat it, endlessly.

And other people point to those claims and say "look, scientists keep making silly predictions and getting things wrong".

It's ironic, because people learn to distrust scientists, rather than the media and political operators who are misrepresenating the science.

We wouldn't be having these problems if mass media did science journalism with some integrity.

And just how do you expect them to generate revenue with objective reality in america? Advertiser's heads would explode. How we gonna gin folk up for more bogus wars of aggression, more torture, more war crimes and such?

 

[Jokodo]

Today we agree that Ehrlich is full of shit because his predictions didn't pan out. At the time he was accepted as a guru.

Still nothing to do with climate, and no quote for your Al Gore claim.

I call bullshit.

Like you and everyone else on the planet, I don't keep bookmarks of every asinine statement I hear. You demanding a specific quote by Al Gore for what is common knowledge for anyone who sat through an Al Gore talk is ridiculous.

However a first link from a quick google search was this:
https://www.mrctv.org/blog/flashback-7-years-ago-al-gore-said-north-pole-would-be-ice-free-five-years

ETA:
Aha, found a video of part of one of Al's talks so you can see him saying it.

[video]https://static.pjmedia.com/user-content/24/files/2013/12/al_gore_polar_ice_caps_2008-1.mp4[/video]

I have to assume that you actually know diddly-squat about what Al Gore was preaching. You apparently just assumed that what you believe about climate (whether your belief has anything to do with real science or not) is what he was saying.

You are right, I never really followed Al Gore. I like to get my science from scientists. He actually seems to have said that, though hedged with a "might".

I also find it confusing how he and apparently others talk of ice caps while obviously referring to sea ice. Is that common usage? I thought ice caps where ice on land.

 

[bilby]

Like you and everyone else on the planet, I don't keep bookmarks of every asinine statement I hear. You demanding a specific quote by Al Gore for what is common knowledge for anyone who sat through an Al Gore talk is ridiculous.

However a first link from a quick google search was this:
https://www.mrctv.org/blog/flashback-7-years-ago-al-gore-said-north-pole-would-be-ice-free-five-years

ETA:
Aha, found a video of part of one of Al's talks so you can see him saying it.

[video]https://static.pjmedia.com/user-content/24/files/2013/12/al_gore_polar_ice_caps_2008-1.mp4[/video]

I have to assume that you actually know diddly-squat about what Al Gore was preaching. You apparently just assumed that what you believe about climate (whether your belief has anything to do with real science or not) is what he was saying.

You are right, I never really followed Al Gore. I like to get my science from scientists. He actually seems to have said that, though hedged with a "might".

I also find it confusing how he and apparently others talk of ice caps while obviously referring to sea ice. Is that common usage? I thought ice caps where ice on land.

It appears to be one of those terms with a casual and a technical meaning. Casually, an ice cap is any large contiguous area of ice, and that appears to be the meaning here.

Technically, if you are a geographer, it's an area of ice less than 50,000km² in area, on land, but not topographically constrained (ie it over-tops any mountains that surround it). If such an area of ice is hemmed in by mountains, it's an ice field.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Weeks? Wouldn't there be more inertia than that?

I'm honestly guessing, but look at how quickly the temperature drops at night, especially in arid places. That's how efficiently the Earth sheds heat through radiation even with the current green house effect. Now just imagine the temperature drop to be a couple degrees (C) more every night than it is now, without being (entirely) compensated by more warming during the day. I can see things getting uncomfortable pretty quickly.

Removing all the greenhouse effect (which would not happen just from removing CO2) means temps drop by about 30F once things stabilize and not counting secondary effects. (Such a cooling very well might trigger a snowball--we would be fighting to avoid extinction.) Those near the water will have the change moderated by that water (note how much narrower the range between high and low in such areas), those far inland are used to variations that wide anyway.

Furthermore, the extreme cold would only be at night. You're normally sleeping in an fixed location--you can pile blankets on, you can use extra clothing as makeshift additional blankets. The real problem would be frozen pipes--we live in a climate that doesn't make provisions for winterizing a house, I could shut off the water but I couldn't hope to drain all the pipes.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The new equilibrium temperature would be about 15 kelvins lower than current temperatures; I could see that level being reached fairly fast (maybe ten days or so), particularly in continental regions. The oceans would buffer temperatures very effectively, leading to huge storms, as the cold continents draw warm moist air in from the warm oceans.

Continental inland residents might not freeze in the first week or two, but the storms required to transfer enough heat to those areas from the oceans might be harder to survive than mere cold weather would be.

Ouch on the storms, I didn't think of what would happen as the new equilibrium was being established! That would be far more of an issue than the cold itself. Being able to pile things on your bed to protect you from the cold won't do much good if the storms break your house.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Unless we abandon the folly of extractive capitalist economic growth to infinity, there will be nothing to adapt to, the antidote will come and the earth will heal itself over time. Turns out "the primitives" were right all along and we were to arrogant to listen.

And who decides which 99.9999% of the population is to die?

Strip a few of those 9s - you're insinuating less than 10k survivers. The earth is very well capable of supporting tens, of not hundreds of millions living primitive lifestyles. Even before the advent of agriculture, most estimates put the human population in the 7- digit range.

Of course it's not very relevant. Killing (directly or indirectly) 7,000,000,000 people isn't any more ethical than killing 7,590,000,000 or 7,599,990,000

Yeah, I got an extra 9. I disagree on hundreds of millions with primitive lifestyles, though--primitive lifestyles basically will not permit extractive industries as pretty much anything that could be reached with that tech level has already been mined. Those hundreds of millions will use up the stuff that has already been extracted and then there will be no more metal tools. We would then fall until we reached the point we could obtain the resources of the technology--which means early stone age.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Should humanity cease to burn fossil fuels, or even find some magical way to eliminate all CO2 in the atmosphere tomorrow. It would not make one iota of difference to Earth's climate!

I'm well aware of what you believe. It's just amusing to observe the internal contradictions in your worldview.

I've asked you before to post one, just one prediction GW/CC/CD of doom made in the past decade that's actually occurred! Just as well I wasn't holding my breath for a response! The cult has taken hold of many and blinded all rational thought on the subject unless it's pro.

I have asked you repeatedly for one failed prediction of doom from a scientist in the field, not a reporter or the like. You still haven't provided anything, all your "answers" were popular press garbage.

 

[bilby]

Strip a few of those 9s - you're insinuating less than 10k survivers. The earth is very well capable of supporting tens, of not hundreds of millions living primitive lifestyles. Even before the advent of agriculture, most estimates put the human population in the 7- digit range.

Of course it's not very relevant. Killing (directly or indirectly) 7,000,000,000 people isn't any more ethical than killing 7,590,000,000 or 7,599,990,000

Yeah, I got an extra 9. I disagree on hundreds of millions with primitive lifestyles, though--primitive lifestyles basically will not permit extractive industries as pretty much anything that could be reached with that tech level has already been mined. Those hundreds of millions will use up the stuff that has already been extracted and then there will be no more metal tools. We would then fall until we reached the point we could obtain the resources of the technology--which means early stone age.

You always forget that the ruins are better ore than anything in prehistory. One modern container ship contains more iron than the Roman Empire used at its peak. A single abandoned modern shipyard can provide iron age tools to tens of millions; An abandoned city can do the same for hundreds of millions more. That material isn't available to us because people get pissed and call the cops if you dismantle their stuff for its scrap metal value. But in a post-apocalyptic world, all those concentrated bulk deposits of refined metals and other materials that we call 'cities' are there for the taking.

It's not harder to rebuild society because the mines are exhausted; It's easier, because the stuff has already been brought to the surface.

 

[skepticalbip]

Weeks? Wouldn't there be more inertia than that?

I'm honestly guessing, but look at how quickly the temperature drops at night, especially in arid places. That's how efficiently the Earth sheds heat through radiation even with the current green house effect. Now just imagine the temperature drop to be a couple degrees (C) more every night than it is now, without being (entirely) compensated by more warming during the day. I can see things getting uncomfortable pretty quickly.

Removing all CO2 would certainly cause a cooling but I think not as rapidly as you say. Water vapor is the dominate greenhouse gas. This is why areas with extremely low humidity such as deserts have such drastic drop in temperature at night while areas with higher humidity have much less drop in temperature even though both have the same (or damned close) CO2 concentrations. Humid tropical jungles remain hot at night though the temperature does drop a bit.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

AOC is becoming today's guru. But, as you say about Ehrlich, that's not science.

Sure you can quote three specific claims about climate change AOC has been making and presenting as scientific fact that contradict the majority of current primary research?

We're taking scientific claims, not policy recommendations.

Can you?

Or is this going to end like your remark about Al Gore and your "we know because" statement that assumes CO2 a the sole determinant - silently being dropped.

AOC's problems are almost all with her proposed solutions. Her statements of the problems are generally competent for a lay person.

 

[bilby]

AOC is becoming today's guru. But, as you say about Ehrlich, that's not science.

Sure you can quote three specific claims about climate change AOC has been making and presenting as scientific fact that contradict the majority of current primary research?

We're taking scientific claims, not policy recommendations.

Can you?

Or is this going to end like your remark about Al Gore and your "we know because" statement that assumes CO2 a the sole determinant - silently being dropped.

AOC's problems are almost all with her proposed solutions. Her statements of the problems are generally competent for a lay person.

Sadly her statements of the solutions owe more to popularity than to practicality.

 

[fromderinside]

AOC solid wood congressional table book

 

[DBT]

So when you said the scale of urbanisation is causing problems, you didn't mean that the scale of urbanisation is (note: present tense) causing problems, but that something that has very little to do with urbanisation will (future tense) cause problems long after you've died?

The issue of the long term sustainability of human activity on the planet has nothing to do with me, how long I live or when I happen to die.

Of course not. That is however not particularly relevant to your use of "urbanisation" as a paraphrases for "increased consumption" when urbanisation in fact leads to less consumption, all else equal, or to your use of the present tense for something you now say you expect in about 60 years. How about you stop randomly firing smoke grenades to see what sticks and limit yourself to arguments you're willing to defend?

You read too much into brief remarks where not everything is said or can be said. I have explained the issue in terms of not only numbers but the rate of consumption by a given percentage of the population.....that the world cannot cannot keep consuming resources at the current rate of citizens of developed nations.

And if it is correct, as some estimates go, that we are now consuming resources at a rate higher than the planet can sustain, overshoot, the way that we are living right now is unsustainable in the long term.


How Earth Overshoot Day is calculated

When the first overshoot calculation was announced in 2006, it found that Earth used a year's worth of resources by Oct. 9. The Global Footprint Network determines the date by drawing data from the United Nations, the International Energy Agency and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, among others. These estimates of productive land and sea area, grazing land, cropland and fishing grounds are expressed in so-called global hectares. This measurement (roughly 2.5 acres) is meant to be a standard unit, projecting average productivity, that can be tallied to represent the Earth’s total "biocapacity."

The researchers then examine the demand side: mankind’s need for crops, livestock and fish, timber and space for urban development, along with a calculation of the forests’ capacity to absorb carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. The difference between this “ecological footprint” and the Earth’s biocapacity represents the overshoot.

The Aug. 1 date declared this year means that, for the final five months of the year, mankind is overdrawing natural resources. Framed another way, it would take 1.7 Earths to supply the resources needed to feed, clothe and sustain Earth's 7.6 billion people for a year.''

 

[DBT]

So when you said the scale of urbanisation is causing problems, you didn't mean that the scale of urbanisation is (note: present tense) causing problems, but that something that has very little to do with urbanisation will (future tense) cause problems long after you've died?

The issue of the long term sustainability of human activity on the planet has nothing to do with me, how long I live or when I happen to die.

There it is, the eurocentric world view, the eurocentric perceptual reality. No spiritual connection to anything including ancestors or descendants.

What I meant was: whatever I say on a public forum has no impact on the world at large, current trends or the course of events that determines our future, whatever it may be. I'm just saying that it seems that the prevailing view of business as usual does not appear to be sustainable, that given our current course there is likely to be a major crisis sometime in the next 60 years or so.

 

[Jokodo]

Of course not. That is however not particularly relevant to your use of "urbanisation" as a paraphrases for "increased consumption" when urbanisation in fact leads to less consumption, all else equal, or to your use of the present tense for something you now say you expect in about 60 years. How about you stop randomly firing smoke grenades to see what sticks and limit yourself to arguments you're willing to defend?

You read too much into brief remarks where not everything is said or can be said. I have explained the issue in terms of not only numbers but the rate of consumption by a given percentage of the population.....that the world cannot cannot keep consuming resources at the current rate of citizens of developed nations.

And if it is correct, as some estimates go, that we are now consuming resources at a rate higher than the planet can sustain, overshoot, the way that we are living right now is unsustainable in the long term.


How Earth Overshoot Day is calculated

When the first overshoot calculation was announced in 2006, it found that Earth used a year's worth of resources by Oct. 9. The Global Footprint Network determines the date by drawing data from the United Nations, the International Energy Agency and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, among others. These estimates of productive land and sea area, grazing land, cropland and fishing grounds are expressed in so-called global hectares. This measurement (roughly 2.5 acres) is meant to be a standard unit, projecting average productivity, that can be tallied to represent the Earth’s total "biocapacity."

The researchers then examine the demand side: mankind’s need for crops, livestock and fish, timber and space for urban development, along with a calculation of the forests’ capacity to absorb carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. The difference between this “ecological footprint” and the Earth’s biocapacity represents the overshoot.

The Aug. 1 date declared this year means that, for the final five months of the year, mankind is overdrawing natural resources. Framed another way, it would take 1.7 Earths to supply the resources needed to feed, clothe and sustain Earth's 7.6 billion people for a year.''

How about you don't change the topic for once?

 

[Jokodo]

AOC is becoming today's guru. But, as you say about Ehrlich, that's not science.

Sure you can quote three specific claims about climate change AOC has been making and presenting as scientific fact that contradict the majority of current primary research?

We're taking scientific claims, not policy recommendations.

Can you?

Or is this going to end like your remark about Al Gore and your "we know because" statement that assumes CO2 a the sole determinant - silently being dropped.

AOC's problems are almost all with her proposed solutions. Her statements of the problems are generally competent for a lay person.

That was my impression too, but here we skepticalbip calling her "the new guru", comparing her with Paul Ehrlich, saying that she was spreading made up scientific "facts".

Of course no examples.

 

[Jokodo]

Strip a few of those 9s - you're insinuating less than 10k survivers. The earth is very well capable of supporting tens, of not hundreds of millions living primitive lifestyles. Even before the advent of agriculture, most estimates put the human population in the 7- digit range.

Of course it's not very relevant. Killing (directly or indirectly) 7,000,000,000 people isn't any more ethical than killing 7,590,000,000 or 7,599,990,000

Yeah, I got an extra 9. I disagree on hundreds of millions with primitive lifestyles, though--primitive lifestyles basically will not permit extractive industries as pretty much anything that could be reached with that tech level has already been mined. Those hundreds of millions will use up the stuff that has already been extracted and then there will be no more metal tools. We would then fall until we reached the point we could obtain the resources of the technology--which means early stone age.

One 9 removed is s still only 76,000 survivors. There were more people than that (by some estimates 100 times this number) long before agriculture, let alone metallurgy.

 

[DBT]

Of course not. That is however not particularly relevant to your use of "urbanisation" as a paraphrases for "increased consumption" when urbanisation in fact leads to less consumption, all else equal, or to your use of the present tense for something you now say you expect in about 60 years. How about you stop randomly firing smoke grenades to see what sticks and limit yourself to arguments you're willing to defend?

You read too much into brief remarks where not everything is said or can be said. I have explained the issue in terms of not only numbers but the rate of consumption by a given percentage of the population.....that the world cannot cannot keep consuming resources at the current rate of citizens of developed nations.

And if it is correct, as some estimates go, that we are now consuming resources at a rate higher than the planet can sustain, overshoot, the way that we are living right now is unsustainable in the long term.


How Earth Overshoot Day is calculated

When the first overshoot calculation was announced in 2006, it found that Earth used a year's worth of resources by Oct. 9. The Global Footprint Network determines the date by drawing data from the United Nations, the International Energy Agency and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, among others. These estimates of productive land and sea area, grazing land, cropland and fishing grounds are expressed in so-called global hectares. This measurement (roughly 2.5 acres) is meant to be a standard unit, projecting average productivity, that can be tallied to represent the Earth’s total "biocapacity."

The researchers then examine the demand side: mankind’s need for crops, livestock and fish, timber and space for urban development, along with a calculation of the forests’ capacity to absorb carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. The difference between this “ecological footprint” and the Earth’s biocapacity represents the overshoot.

The Aug. 1 date declared this year means that, for the final five months of the year, mankind is overdrawing natural resources. Framed another way, it would take 1.7 Earths to supply the resources needed to feed, clothe and sustain Earth's 7.6 billion people for a year.''

How about you don't change the topic for once?

It is the topic, while the OP deals with the rising number of deaths in a scenario of 1.5 to 2 degrees temperature rise, we were also discussing the question of sustainability in relation to climate change and urbanization. It's just a broader look at the climate change issue. If we are not living sustainably now, climate change only adds to our problems.

 

[Jokodo]

How about you don't change the topic for once?

It is the topic, while the OP deals with the rising number of deaths in a scenario of 1.5 to 2 degrees temperature rise, we were also discussing the question of sustainability in relation to climate change and urbanization. It's just a broader look at the climate change issue. If we are not living sustainably now, climate change only adds to our problems.

As far as I can tell, you (not bilby, not me) brought up urbanisation. When he and I pointed out that urbanisation is part of the solution more so than part of the problem, you had two options: drop it or defend it. "Yeah, but overshoot day" is cheating.