Human ‘behavioural crisis’ at root of climate breakdown, say scientists

[Pete in Panama]

You are talking about the earth itself, whereas everybody else is talking about earth's atmosphere?

Ah. So are we changing the "earth" to just the atmosphere? This is why I asked you...

...Are you willing to consider scientifically w/ me of why I find the idea of a greenhouse heating the earth 1C in a hundred years to be preposterous?

--and you said...

Please .. do tell..

--it's now looking like you agree w/ me that the idea is preposterous, that anyone who says the earth is heating up is spouting unthinking nonsense.

 

[Kathryn]

Let me ask you guys a question and I am being 100 percent serious. Say that you are offered your dream job and it's in Dallas or Austin or Houston. Are you willing to give up air conditioning, knowing that in Texas about 40 percent of electricity is from natural gas?

 

[Pete in Panama]

When you added "in any way", that's not what I'm implying at all. However, the main fact that has pretty much full agreement in that higher rates of CO2 and methane gas are the main cause of the overall increase over the last century. It's been know since the late 1800's that both have heat retention qualities.

BTW, maybe cut out the sarcasm as it's really not helping your cause. Do you do this a lot?

Those are all very interesting ideas but what I was asking was...

...Are you willing to consider scientifically w/ me of why I find the idea of a greenhouse heating the earth 1C in a hundred years to be preposterous?

--and you seem unwilling to say whether or not you agree. Somehow we're not communicating. That's OK, we can drop this if you want.

 

[Pete in Panama]

Let me ask you a question and I am being 100 percent serious. Say that you are offered your dream job and it's in Dallas or Austin or Houston. Are you willing to give up air conditioning, knowing that in Texas about 40 percent of electricity is from natural gas?

excuse me, but I was wondering if you could tell me to whom you were directing this excellent question.

 

[Kathryn]

Everyone it applies to. Like, for instance it doesn't apply to me but it may apply to others.

 

[sayak83]

Ah. So are we changing the "earth" to just the atmosphere? This is why I asked you...


--and you said...

--it's now looking like you agree w/ me that the idea is preposterous, that anyone who says the earth is heating up is spouting unthinking nonsense.

Nobody, and I mean nobody is saying that the entire earth is heating up by 1 C. The mean air temperature on the surface, which is what is relevant to us, has increased on avg by 1 C.

 

[Kathryn]

Crickets. Interesting.

 

[muhammad_isa]

--it's now looking like you agree w/ me that the idea is preposterous, that anyone who says the earth is heating up is spouting unthinking nonsense.

I don't agree with you at all .. you are finding fault in "idiom".

If somebody says that "the earth is heating up", they probably mean that our environment
is getting warmer on average .. as in the weather is being affected by mankind's activities.
e.g. the excess use of fossil fuels

..and BTW, the use of fossil fuels globally, is still increasing year-on-year DESPITE the Paris accord
and what-not.

 

[Pete in Panama]

Nobody, and I mean nobody is saying that the entire earth is heating up...

Let's get together on this. Here's a quick internet search:

We got the U.S. gov't, CNN, National Geographic etc. all talking about the earth, the planet, and the globe heating up. It's OK if you want to say that they don't mean it. Perhaps you and I can agree that a lot of folks are saying nonsense that they don't mean.

 

[Pete in Panama]

I don't agree with you at all .. you are finding fault in "idiom".

If somebody says that "the earth is heating up", they probably mean that our environment
is getting warmer...

Like I was saying above, perhaps you and I can agree that people are saying nonsense that they don't mean.

 

[sayak83]

Let's get together on this. Here's a quick internet search:

View attachment 89272
We got the U.S. gov't, CNN, National Geographic etc. all talking about the earth, the planet, and the globe heating up. It's OK if you want to say that they don't mean it. Perhaps you and I can agree that a lot of folks are saying nonsense that they don't mean.

No they are not. They simply believe that people are not stupid enough to think that when one talks about rise in global temperature in the context of weather and climate, they are talking about the interior temperature of Earth's magma and core.
Apparently they are too optimistic.
This is the mean surface air temperature rise we are taking about. See the title in big fonts at the top?

Climate change - Wikipedia

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Are you saying that somehow lack of action has made the earth hotter?

The combination of anthropogenic greenhouse gas increases in the atmosphere over the decades and a slow response to heeding the warnings of climate scientists has made the oceans and atmosphere warmer. The heating of the earth's surface is also a factor in some situations, as with the melting of the glaciers and icecaps, and the production of so-called urban heat islands in cities like Phoenix:

So now we're talking about CO2 instead of temperature.

Rising CO2 levels correlate with mean atmospheric temperature.

Ah. So are we changing the "earth" to just the atmosphere?

No. The main problem is the warming of the oceans leading to stronger hurricanes, for example, and the warming of the atmosphere leading to problems with drought and fire, for example.

But as was discussed above, surface warming is also a problem. Melting the earth's surface at the poles leads to increases in sea level and changes in ocean currents as well as increased methane (a greenhouse gas) release into the atmosphere.

Some say that man-made CO2 is aggravating a greenhouse effect that raised the temperature of the earth 1C over the past century. Do you believe that?

Yes, and you should as well. I don't know why you don't. You normally seem pretty informed. Source:

And if you recall the CO2 levels from @TagliatelliMonster 's post, you can see why it is said that atmospheric CO2 levels correlate with global warming.

I understand that every single one of the sources you've checked all agree completely and you've never come across a single scientific source with any point of view that diverges in any way. For me that's very impressive and it seems rather significant.

That sounds like sarcasm. No, every single source does not agree, but only the opinions of bona fide climate scientists matter. There are only a few outliers in that crowd. The overwhelming majority are in agreement. And yes, scientific consensus is significant.

We have already documented melting ice caps, changing migration patterns, changing sea levels, the bleaching of coral reefs, the frequency and severity of extreme weather events (droughts, floods, blizzards, tornadoes, hurricanes), changing ocean currents (surface and deep water temperatures, current directions and speeds, and both dissolved oxygen and salinity levels), something called phenology (the date of the first winter freeze and the spring thaw, when trees bud and lose their leaves, the behavior of various insects [apparently the rate at which crickets chirp is a reliable indicator of current temperature]. These are all meaningful like the atmospheric CO2 levels. They're all effects of planetary warming.

It probably doesn't matter if you ever agree that there is a problem here unless you own a home in an area that's facing imminent climatological catastrophe. As others have noted, the time will come when certain homes will no longer be insurable, and many of them will be burned down. blown away, fall off eroding cliffs, or carried away in powerful flash floods. Those people will be the biggest losers. Many have already waited too long. Their homes are still standing, but people can see that they don't want to buy them or live in that area, and so property values have already permanently fallen.

What do you suppose these neighboring homes are worth now compared to five or ten years ago? This is erosion from landslides caused by extreme rainfall. You don't want to be among the last of the climate deniers:

I think that the most that any of us can do short of activism is to reduce our own carbon footprints, and we don't have to believe the scientists to want to put up solar panels and solar water heaters. We did in 2012 (8 panels and a water heater), which paid for itself in six years, and upgraded that around 2018 with four more panels to accommodate the mini-split AC/heat units we've installed (we didn't used to need either, but our climate has been evolving a bit in the last several years). Those paid for themselves even faster, since we purchased half as many and the cost of new panels fell by 2018.

We benefit from that solar system even if the world doesn't. Perhaps you can as well, especially if you live in Panama, which, being closer to the equator, gets more hours of high sunshine than we do. Global warming doesn't need to be a thing to want to make that conversion.

 

[Pete in Panama]

No they are not. They simply believe that people are not stupid enough to think that when one talks about rise in global temperature in the context of weather and climate, they are talking about the interior temperature of Earth's magma and core.
Apparently they are too optimistic.
This is the mean surface air temperature rise we are taking about. See the title in big fonts at the top?

View attachment 89274Climate change - Wikipedia

You touched upon a number of subjects, maybe I can separate them out & we can deal w/ them one at a time.

First, what I was talking about was all the folks who are saying the earth is warming. Specifically, I did a quick internet search and got hits from the U.S. gov't, CNN, National Geographic, and others. You said--

No they are not. They simply believe that people are not stupid enough to think that when one talks about rise in global temperature in the context of weather and climate, they are talking about the interior temperature of Earth's magma and core.
Apparently they are too optimistic.

--and seem to be discussing the beliefs of the gov't, CNN, Nat. Geog. etc. and while that's all possible, what those folks SAY is public record. They say the earth is warming. If it's warming it can't be because of the greenhouse effect.

Second, you seem to be saying that only the surface is warming, not the volume underneath. While it's possible to measure the temperature of a surface, a surface is not a mass that can receive calories of heat from a greenhouse and warm up. What I'm talking about is our middle school science class where we learned that one calorie can heat one gram of water on degree C. A gram of water is a mass. The earth's surface --all 197 million square miles-- has no mass unless you say what the thickness is.

This is serious stuff, my hope is that you and I could get together on this.

 

[Pete in Panama]

...Some say that man-made CO2 is agravating a greenhoue effect that raised the temperature of the earth 1C over the past century. Do you believe that?

Yes, and you should as well. I don't know why you don't....

OK, you're saying that you believe the earth has been warming 1C over the past 1-1/2 centuries because of a green house effect. This is what I was talking about above when I posted...

...Let's think back to our middle school science class when we were 12 years old. Back then we were able to understand that one calorie could heat p one gram of water one degree C. The sun radiates 200 teraWatts of energy at the earth. This means that every minute the earth recieves 2.86806883502e+15 calories. That's a lot of calories for every minute but the earth is big, it's = 5.9722×10²⁴ kg. OK so the earth isn't water, it's like rock and stuff. We can assume it's got a specific heat of 0.8 --granite. We can plug the mass and the calories into our middle school formula and we find out that even if we had a 100% retention of ALL solar heat, it would still take 10,000 years for the sun to heat up the earth 1C.

The idea that that CO2 could cause a 1C in just 100 years does not make sense. There's something else happening here and the earth heating up that fast isn't it....

Like I said, the earth may very well be warming at a disastrous rate but it can't be warming because of a greenhouse.

 

[muhammad_isa]

..what I was talking about was all the folks who are saying the earth is warming..

Why .. what is your motive for taking idioms literally?

In other words, do you take climate-change due to the activities of man, seriously or not?

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Let's think back to our middle school science class when we were 12 years old. Back then we were able to understand that one calorie could heat p one gram of water one degree C. The sun radiates 200 teraWatts of energy at the earth. This means that every minute the earth recieves 2.86806883502e+15 calories. That's a lot of calories for every minute but the earth is big, it's = 5.9722×10²⁴ kg. OK so the earth isn't water, it's like rock and stuff. We can assume it's got a specific heat of 0.8 --granite. We can plug the mass and the calories into our middle school formula and we find out that even if we had a 100% retention of ALL solar heat, it would still take 10,000 years for the sun to heat up the earth 1C.

The idea that that CO2 could cause a 1C in just 100 years does not make sense. There's something else happening here and the earth heating up that fast isn't it.

Global warming isn't about warming the entire earth through to the core, so the 6x10^24 kg number (the mass of the earth) isn't relevant to the calculation. It's about warming the atmosphere, the oceans (I don't know if they warm all of the way down to the ocean floor or just in the parts where light penetrates), and the surface of the planet - the parts where life is found. The crust below a short depth is unaffected, as is the mantle and core, and perhaps some or all of the deep ocean.

What other source of heat were you imagining has warmed the earth's atmosphere and oceans over the last many decades if not the sun, whatever the mechanism for retaining it (greenhouse gases are the only candidate for holding the heat, but maybe you have another in mind)? Radioactive elements generate heat, which keeps the outer core liquid to generate a magnetic field, and powers plate tectonics to create earthquakes, volcanoes, and ocean-bottom fumaroles. Are you suggesting that that is powering the observed warming of the earth? The only other candidate is the sun.

 

[sayak83]

You touched upon a number of subjects, maybe I can separate them out & we can deal w/ them one at a time.

First, what I was talking about was all the folks who are saying the earth is warming. Specifically, I did a quick internet search and got hits from the U.S. gov't, CNN, National Geographic, and others. You said--

--and seem to be discussing the beliefs of the gov't, CNN, Nat. Geog. etc. and while that's all possible, what those folks SAY is public record. They say the earth is warming. If it's warming it can't be because of the greenhouse effect.

Second, you seem to be saying that only the surface is warming, not the volume underneath. While it's possible to measure the temperature of a surface, a surface is not a mass that can receive calories of heat from a greenhouse and warm up. What I'm talking about is our middle school science class where we learned that one calorie can heat one gram of water on degree C. A gram of water is a mass. The earth's surface --all 197 million square miles-- has no mass unless you say what the thickness is.

This is serious stuff, my hope is that you and I could get together on this.

Note this excerpt from NOAA website
Global warming is the long-term heating of Earth’s surface observed since the pre-industrial period (between 1850 and 1900) due to human activities, primarily fossil fuel burning, which increases heat-trapping greenhouse gas levels in Earth’s atmosphere. This term is not interchangeable with the term "climate change."

Since the pre-industrial period, human activities are estimated to have increased Earth’s global average temperature by about 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit), a number that is currently increasing by more than 0.2 degrees Celsius (0.36 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade. The current warming trend is unequivocally the result of human activity since the 1950s and is proceeding at an unprecedented rate over millennia.

Note the term "heating at the Earth's surface". Note also the corresponding graph showing the rise in Earth's average surface air temperature as clearly noted in the caption.
What Is Climate Change?

There is no confusion in the mind of anyone apart from you i.e. that global warming is about the rising temperature of the earth's surface air temperature. If you have been confused before, that is a problem at your end only. Are you clear now?

 

[sayak83]

You touched upon a number of subjects, maybe I can separate them out & we can deal w/ them one at a time.

First, what I was talking about was all the folks who are saying the earth is warming. Specifically, I did a quick internet search and got hits from the U.S. gov't, CNN, National Geographic, and others. You said--

--and seem to be discussing the beliefs of the gov't, CNN, Nat. Geog. etc. and while that's all possible, what those folks SAY is public record. They say the earth is warming. If it's warming it can't be because of the greenhouse effect.

Second, you seem to be saying that only the surface is warming, not the volume underneath. While it's possible to measure the temperature of a surface, a surface is not a mass that can receive calories of heat from a greenhouse and warm up. What I'm talking about is our middle school science class where we learned that one calorie can heat one gram of water on degree C. A gram of water is a mass. The earth's surface --all 197 million square miles-- has no mass unless you say what the thickness is.

This is serious stuff, my hope is that you and I could get together on this.

I have not said anywhere that the masses of the earth is not heating up. I have said that global warming is tracked in terms of the temperature increase of the mean surface air temperature of the planet.
Different masses of the earth is heating up in different amounts because of the increased heat storage of the greenhouse gases. Here is the latest of where the heat has gone:-
This study is a Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) concerted international effort to update the Earth heat inventory and presents an updated assessment of ocean warming estimates as well as new and updated estimates of heat gain in the atmosphere, cryosphere and land over the period 1960–2018. The study obtains a consistent long-term Earth system heat gain over the period 1971–2018, with a total heat gain of 358±37 ZJ, which is equivalent to a global heating rate of 0.47±0.1 W m−2. Over the period 1971–2018 (2010–2018), the majority of heat gain is reported for the global ocean with 89 % (90 %), with 52 % for both periods in the upper 700 m depth, 28 % (30 %) for the 700–2000 m depth layer and 9 % (8 %) below 2000 m depth. Heat gain over land amounts to 6 % (5 %) over these periods, 4 % (3 %) is available for the melting of grounded and floating ice, and 1 % (2 %) is available for atmospheric warming. Our results also show that EEI is not only continuing, but also increasing: the EEI amounts to 0.87±0.12 W m−2 during 2010–2018.

Reference
Heat stored in the Earth system: where does the energy go?

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

..Let's think back to our middle school science class when we were 12 years old. Back then we were able to understand that one calorie could heat p one gram of water one degree C. The sun radiates 200 teraWatts of energy at the earth. This means that every minute the earth recieves 2.86806883502e+15 calories. That's a lot of calories for every minute but the earth is big, it's = 5.9722×10²⁴ kg. OK so the earth isn't water, it's like rock and stuff. We can assume it's got a specific heat of 0.8 --granite. We can plug the mass and the calories into our middle school formula and we find out that even if we had a 100% retention of ALL solar heat, it would still take 10,000 years for the sun to heat up the earth 1C.

The idea that that CO2 could cause a 1C in just 100 years does not make sense. There's something else happening here and the earth heating up that fast isn't it....

Like I said, the earth may very well be warming at a disastrous rate but it can't be warming because of a greenhouse.

I think it's funny that you look at your "high school formula", see that the earth is heating up MUCH faster then it should, ackowledge that something special is going on and that it requires an explanation.... And then dismiss that very explanation with what seem to be nothing but an argument of incredulity.

YES, there is something special going on.

Humans have been pumping massive amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere for over a century since the industrial evolution at exponential rate.
You know... greenhouse gasses. Gas that trap heat. Heat that would normally escape the earth and which doesn't, being trapped in the atmosphere by the presence of ever more greenhouse gasses.

That's what is going on.

 

[Pete in Panama]

...I was talking about was all the folks who are saying the earth is warming...

Why .. what is your motive for taking idioms literally?

In other words, do you take climate-change due to the activities of man, seriously or not?

What's happening here is you and I are in conflict and that is counter-productive. My interest is in understanding what is happening and I am not getting any information, all we got is that I'm a bad guy for not agreeing. For me agreement is not the issue. What's important is what's happening. All I'm hearing is that the earth is warming and we know that's not true. We need to get back to understanding what IS happening.

So. WHAT is warming and how do we know it's warming?