Paris climate Agreement and the 1.5 degree thing.

I have been trying to discuss and learn about AGW for quite a while now. Like many, my understanding has evolved a little. I suppose I am stubborn and still not willing to let go of some common sense thinking that seems to get in the way. So in hearing about the Paris Climate Agreement this morning in the news, a few things were said that gave me pause. First, the goal is to keep global temperatures from reaching 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. "Scientists" think that is the point of no return. (From what I heard, or thought I heard, so that may be incorrect) And I don't know if that's the same 99% of scientists, or some other group.

So here is my dilemma. I fully understand that the climate is changing, and currently getting warmer as an overall average. So to say I am a denier would be wrong. I also was able to look back at the many times in our Earth's history that the global overall climate did the same thing when recovering from an ice age. (And I still remember the talks given by Phage and others about how this time it's much quicker due to man's influence) The part that makes me question the ability to keep temperatures from rising is the part that we don't have any control over. We can't stop an avalanche, we can't stop a tsunami, we can't stop a hurricane, we barely understand tornadoes, let alone possess the power to stop them. Yet, we seem to think we have mastered the ability to control temperatures by limiting GHG?

I wonder how much we fully understand the role nature has in it's part of the global temperature. I have heard all about what "WE" do to make it rise, but very little about what "SHE" does. (She being mother nature)

And I am left with a feeling that we as a planet have been here before, and somehow survived. I realize that beachfront condo complexes may suffer, and sea side villages may suffer, and places where it's already hot will suffer. But then, we have also came up with the ability to move, to adapt to harsh environments, to evolve and overcome rough situations.

climate-energy.blogs.panda.org...

My thought is we can't even get the weather report right, and we've got this all figured out?? And why right away is it a money thing with carbon taxes?? The whole thing stinks of globalization BS!! Humans love control and even more so being controlled by their pathetic leaders, you guys really are a pathetic species!

It's impossible to control global average temperatures, no matter what agreements we make, it's too complex of a system to believe that if we just do X then Y will happen.

Average temperatures have been 10+ degrees hotter in the past for global averages. Life flourishes in warmer temperatures than the what we have now, it's also been 10+ degrees cooler on average with less life on the planet. To think we must prevent something like a global warming trend is short-sighted and down-right ignorant.

Our entire energy system has naturally been shifting towards cleaner energy, we don't need to force something that is coming naturally. Think about this, wood was the primary energy source for thousands of years, burning wood is the worst in terms of carbon pollution. We shifted to coal during the industrial revolution, coal is dirty yes, but it is not as dirty as wood. It didn't take thousands of years to switch to fossil fuels, and fossil fuels have less carbon than coal. We have gradually been shifting towards natural gas, which is even cleaner; and in the future our primary source will be hydrogen which will be 100% clean energy.

www.eia.gov...

The link shows a table for co2 output, it doesn't have hydrogen in the list, but hydrogen is 0 co2 output.

The system is far too complex, and the warming models have not even taken into account the response by plants in taking in more co2. It's actually turning out to be more beneficial than it is harmful, but that doesn't make the big bucks scaring people about global cataclysm.

It's sickening to impose a tax on existing and at the same time promote and instill a guilt trip that supports the reason for the tax.

It's as if we we shouldn't even be on this planet, yet here we are but we are such an imposition to the balance of the universe. Pwwwsshh.

I'm sick of this bs climate/carbon/warming/cooling/breathing/existing/taxing/guilt ridden hog wash that only serves to enrich the proponents of said bs.

Not to disregard a solar induced climate cycle at all, but in the grand scheme of things...our inherent greed and arrogance leads us to believe that we are somehow unique and special in the ENTIRE universe.

The only thing that's unique but not really is the public is dipped by those who simply wish to empty all our pockets.

I don't buy it....won't buy it...and save your breath to cool your pies because I'm not trying to hear it either.

"Head in the sand..."

"Scientific substantiation..."

What the f# ever...

Save it.

Well actually we can effect the outcome here.

It's very hard science that greenhouse gasses are driving climate change. Likewise we know for sure that cutting those greenhouse gas emissions will slow down the rate at which it is happening.

Do we have a huge amount of control over the outcome? No, probably not. But can we do a little to maybe make this planet survivable a little longer? Yes, absolutely.

a reply to: Painterz

would we not be wiser to spend our money adapting to climate change rather than throwing into the dark hole of trying to control climate change?

Besides CO2 has greened the planet by 14 % and increased crop yields?

a reply to: network dude

The one thing I don't understand is this fascination with wanting to control the climate and keep it at a set constant.

The climate has always changed, to assume we can control it AND worse think it's acceptable to control it just seems incredibly wrong and I have this feeling that by controlling the climate it will make matters far worse than anything we may have already done to the climate.

It's like they want to keep the global average temperature at a single figure, whereas throughout the entire history of the planet it has always changed.

It all seems ironic that they want to escape man made climate change, by using man made climate change

Everyone knows in their heart burning fossil fuel is sooting the air. Since the industrial revolution the amount of carbon in the atmosphere has gone up substantially. Regardless, fossil fuel is the reasons for huge amounts of misery on the planet with wars in the ME and resulting poverty from the cost of the commodity.

I think what we need to do has a planet is invest billions into fusion and LFTR research and get off fossil fuels altogether. And that's exactly what the Chinese are doing. Here in the USA our hands are tied by Big oil. But not China. China is supposed to have a working commercial grade LFTR reactor by 2020.

LFTR reactors use thorium. Unlike plutonium, thorium is as plentiful as lead just as easy to mine as lead. Thorium is everywhere on the planet. Thorium deposits are even on the moon. Plutonium is as expensive to mine as platinum. At some point the world will get rid of the fossil fuel madness.

a reply to: network dude

First of all, you need to understand the difference between warming that happens as a function of geological processes, solar fluctuations, and other natural processes over which we have no control, and the warming that happens as a result of what we, the human race, do.

And it is more than a matter of simply thinking about greenhouse gasses as well, as I will explain.

When a volcano erupts, huge quantities of material are thrown into the air, small particles of pulverised rock, sulfurous gas, and a huge amount of heat are expelled into the atmosphere, about which we can do nothing. This is taken as read, and has been happening for more years than there has been life on Earth. It is a natural thing, over which we have no control. When undersea vents start outgassing, releasing acidic gasses into the sea, and heating the hell out of it, we can do nothing to stop it. When the sun goes into its period of maximum activity, and throws greater numbers of photons per square inch, not to mention those moments when it hurls flares at all and sundry, there is not a damned thing we can do about its effects on the climate.

But...

There ARE things that we do, that we do not NEED to do, which make the problem worse than it has to be. We mine fossil fuels, and whether at sea or on land, this causes damage to the environment. Whether its by destroying natural habitats as a result of spills, or the release of by product chemicals into water supplies, which kills fish, birds, and other wildlife, which in turn alters the ecology of an area beyond recongition, or whether its just the erection of the infrastructure necessary to collect, the raw product, these things all damage the ecology of an area. When an areas ecology is damaged, it has knock on effects on all other life in surrounding areas. Whether that comes of a species becoming extinct because of habitat loss, or being driven to expand into surrounding ecologies and causing things local to that ecology to lessen in number, the effects are still avoidable, and still devastating. Now, its obvious that I have not yet gotten to the climate issue. But here is the thing. Animals move through bushes and trees, sidle past plants all the time. There are some animals, many in fact, which eat plants. By doing both these things, they help in spreading those plants around. They help in pollination, they help spread the seeds... they have a part to play in maintaining certain plants and vegetation. Plants and trees are the things which consume CO2, strip it out of the atmosphere, so anything which affects the animals which aid their spread, is bad for the climate.

Then you have the actual burning of fossil products, which again, is just increasingly unnecessary. There should be no coal or fuel burning power production. The whole thing needs banning. Solar farms, wind farms, hydro... all these things should be made the only legal method of collecting electrical energy for the purpose of grid distribution. You can argue that cars and trucks may still need fuel to run, and I would be prepared to entertain that argument, but there is no need for fossil fuel to burned in power stations. Whenever it is burned, it gives off the very chemicals that can and do damage the climate, and at a rate which cannot be overcome by the amount of trees in a given area...

Which brings us to other stupid things we do, that we do not NEED to do. We are constantly cutting down far too many trees, for utterly unacceptable reasons. To make room for roads, to make room for houses, to make room for the very oil exploration which is the root of most of our worlds climate trouble, to make room for more agriculture, despite the fact that we do not NEED more space for that, but to better manage the space we use already. If we must make more houses, which many nations desperately need, we ought to be making them AROUND existing forests, and in amongst existing forests where there is no further room outside them. We should be living under the canopy, not destroying it. Houses should be built around the trees, not through them, and preferably out of materials which can do them no harm.

Without leaving the forests as they are entirely, unless we stop knocking down trees to put up parking structures, lay roads and build towns, we will be causing the downfall of this species and every other species on the face of Earth. So, if we must take up more room, we need to share that space with what is already there, instead of removing it and crushing it. We need to change the way we think about civic planning, ENTIRELY if we are to make a go of protecting our own existence, leave alone the natural world. Reducing the number of trees in a given location for the purpose of replacing those trees with more concrete and asphalt, needs to simply be seen as outrageous, because every time we do it, we reduce the amount of carbon being taken out of the atmosphere. That would be stupid of us even if we were not putting so much of it there in the first place. We need to build in a manner which prevents the destruction of natural habitats, and pays heed to the importance of those habitats for the maintenance of a survivable climate on this planet.

And your point about beach front property and "places where it is already hot" is absurd. It is not a matter of posing a threat to places near the sea, or places where it is warm. It is a matter of making things damned near impossible for EVERYONE on this planet. There will come a time, unless we manage ourselves correctly, where we have more carbon than the trees can consume without damaging their ability to take up other necessary minerals and nutrients. When that happens, the trees and every other kind of plant is going to simply die. All the crops will fail, all the animals we keep for meat and dairy will die, everything we can eat, and finally we, will die, and if it is LUCKY, the planet will rebalance itself when we are gone. If not, not only will we have been the architects of our own downfall, but we will have killed an entire worldwide ecology. We will make Mars on Earth. That is the worst case scenario.

This MUST be combated with all possible vigour. There are technologies available now which could vastly reduce our carbon emissions, vastly reduce the necessity for the burning of all fossil fuels for mains power, utterly eradicate our reliance on oil and the companies who produce it, for the energy we need to run our daily lives, and doing so would not just benefit our worlds ecology, but the people living on it, in terms of the cleanliness of their surroundings, the quality of the air they breathe, the richness of the habitats they live in.

Even if you ignore the HUGE political benefits of never having to deal with oil producing nations (many of which have appalling records on human rights, and are run by despotic regimes of one insane kind or another), even if you ignore the political benefits of no longer having a powerful oil and gas lobby, dissolving democracy and promoting corporatism, even if you ignore the benefits of it being impossible for a company to wield power over people by price fixing and gouging, the fact is that there are still great reasons to do far more than we have, to reduce our footprint, from a selfish standpoint, not a hippy dippy one.

a reply to: Painterz

This is probably the PERFECT example post of the ignorance of today.

Have you done ANY of the research necessary to reach all of those conclusions? Do you know how much information from 3rd parties are involved in these claims?

My God, there is NOTHING we need to do.

a reply to: Painterz

they used the terminology "point of no return" when speaking of the 1.5 degree thing. I used these tactics to get my kids to sleep when they were little, but trying to scare them with "the thing under the bed" no longer works. I guess it just irritates me that the global initiative is that condescending to think scaring everyone into being afraid of "the thing under the bed" is still a viable option. If it was that damn important, they wouldn't be driving or flying anywhere, they would be teleconferencing.

"So here is my dilemma. I fully understand that the climate is changing, and currently getting warmer as an overall average."

We can't verify climate is "currently getting warmer" because the data has been manipulated to a point where temperature readings have been added to that dataset without actual temperature readings, making the whole resulting climate model suspect

a reply to: network dude

Earth has a natural carbon cycle that should, if left to it's own devices, leave a steady 350ish ppm in the atmosphere. Earth has natural carbon sinks and natural releases. Earth also sequesters so much CO2 every year, but now not only are burning carbon for fuel, the extra warmth we have created thus far is thawing frozen CO2 as well as other GHG's.

All of this is overwhelming the natural carbon cycle. The more CO2 and other GHG's in the atmosphere the less heat escapes back into space and bounces back to the surface. Hope that helps.

a reply to: TrueBrit

with all the statements of what "WE" need to do, I am having a hard time grasping all that while those who are telling us that aren't doing any of the things ""WE" need to be doing. When does all this start? If we need a starting pistol, Chicago may be a good place to look for one.

a reply to: Kali74

what happens when we reach "the point of no return" or over 1.5 degrees?

a reply to: acackohfcc

I'm not calling you a liar but you are repeating a lie. There's reasons why raw data needs to be adjusted and the truth is had the data not been adjusted the temperature rise would be recorded as much higher than it actually is. The reason for the adjustment is because some of the stations were placed in areas that were in heat sinks or cold spots so actual temperature for the area for the correct recording times had to be substituted.

a reply to: network dude

We start getting into positive feedback loops. More melting, more heat, increasing severe weather, climate zone changes. Some of these things are already happening we don't know if they can be held in check or reversed. We do know that it won't get better or stay the same if the CO2 ppm keeps going up.

a reply to: Kali74

I get that part, and I understand it, but to think that something this important was left to people who would put the temperature sensors in the middle of a blacktop parking lot, kind of gives the impression they are either really, really dumb, or really really dishonest, and I don't really see a third option there.

originally posted by: Discotech
a reply to: network dude

The one thing I don't understand is this fascination with wanting to control the climate and keep it at a set constant.

The climate has always changed, to assume we can control it AND worse think it's acceptable to control it just seems incredibly wrong and I have this feeling that by controlling the climate it will make matters far worse than anything we may have already done to the climate.

It's like they want to keep the global average temperature at a single figure, whereas throughout the entire history of the planet it has always changed.

It all seems ironic that they want to escape man made climate change, by using man made climate change

This is always the question I have that never gets answered. Who has decided what the optimal global temperature must be? Some places would like warmer weather and may actually be beneficial and other places could cool off. Temperature has varied a lot, so how did the scientist come up with the temperature that they think must remain constant?

originally posted by: Kali74
a reply to: network dude

We start getting into positive feedback loops. More melting, more heat, increasing severe weather, climate zone changes. Some of these things are already happening we don't know if they can be held in check or reversed. We do know that it won't get better or stay the same if the CO2 ppm keeps going up.

'

Thank you for admitting that. I've been saying the same for a while now. We have way to many unknown variables to be making definitive statements like "if this happens, we are doomed".

But as long as big oil still drives the bus, all we get to do is ride and STFU. I'd prefer we cut down or out our use of fossil fuels and I don't like the waste associated with Nuclear either. So the "X" factor needs to be found, or released. But we just don't have a choice.