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A Historian's Perspective on Change and Consensus

Glen Contrarian said:
Are you familiar with the phrase "tipping point"? The time to take action isn't after the ice cap has lost a freaking third of its mass - the time to take action is BEFORE it goes to that tipping point! Greenland's ice cap is melting 30% faster than it was in the early 1970's...and even though that only cost less than one percent of the total mass of the ice cap, the PROBLEM is that the rate of melt increased and is continuing to increase...and once it reaches a certain point, it's simply too late. Nothing more can be done to stop it.

What's more, your reference is concerning the 20th century...whereas the hottest years have been since about 1997 or so...which means that your reference is conveniently choosing to ignore the hottest years, almost all of which have come since the turn of the century.
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20th century figures are those cited by the alarmists. When 21st century data is provided we'll take that up. Meanwhile, I doubt a 0.03% loss approaches a tipping point.
 
RetiredUSN said:
Pretty deep reach there pards. But keep trying.
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The Forest did not grow under the ice. It grew at a time period when the ice did not exist there because (most likely) the plate techtonics were such that the location of the Forest was at a warmer spot of the Planet or the orbital mechanics were such that the Planet was much warmer, in general.
 
Glen Contrarian said:
Your post is like that of a blind man accusing a sighted man of not being able to tell the difference between colors. You include an accusation in your first and second sentences based on nothing more than your opinion, your third and fourth sentences are hilariously (and tragically) erroneous, and your last sentence evinces a complete lack of effort to actually determine if there's been any rise in the sea level.

I'm not going to go to the effort of presenting it to you because you've made up your mind - and I cannot change it for you. You're not searching for what's real and factual - you're only wanting to support your side. Only when you personally decide to look at the other side of the story, to see if maybe there HAS been a historically-significant sea-level rise, to see if maybe there HAS been a scientifically-significant rapid increase in the rate of ice loss from Greenland, to see if maybe, just maybe the world's scientific community isn't part of a grand conspiracy out to defraud Tim the Plumber of his hard-earned tax dollars....
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FFS!!!!

How much of a sea level rise is significant? Is 2 inches all that important?

How much ice has been lost from Greenland do you thin and what does this mean for sea level rise???

These are very basic questions which you are terrified of answering because you can't do the maths and you don't want to be in the position that you understand just how tiny the changes in the world are!!

Why else would you be so evaisive?
 
MrT said:
The rate of acceleration would tend to present evidence of you being wrong.

The fact that melting glaciers can create numerous channels of water which will create additional points of melting would provide one such mechanism. The other being the fact that increased warming impacts the ability of the top layer of ice to absorb and retain melted ice before it gets into the ocean would also provide another mechanism.
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For us to determine if any such mechanism was significant to the rate of sea level rise we would need to know how much ice loss is actually happening.

So can you attempt to actually answer any of those questions???
 
Glen Contrarian said:
Yeah, you living there in Texas, you know better than anyone how NASA's always falsifying statistics, huh? And NOAA, too. And our military, too. They're all in it together, I guess, all falsifying statistics just to fool the world. Mm-hmm.
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You don't even have the ability to actually look at the nuimbers so how the hell would you know what the stats say?
 
Tim the plumber said:
You don't even have the ability to actually look at the nuimbers so how the hell would you know what the stats say?
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Yeah, the overwhelming majority of scientists on the planet - including EVERY national science foundation and organization of EVERY major nation - agrees on AGW and accepts those stats...

...but I forget! Tim the Plumber is better than all them, 'cause he's scientifically literate and knows all 'bout them numbers! We know this 'cause he says so, mm-hmm!
 
Glen Contrarian said:
Yeah, the overwhelming majority of scientists on the planet - including EVERY national science foundation and organization of EVERY major nation - agrees on AGW and accepts those stats...

...but I forget! Tim the Plumber is better than all them, 'cause he's scientifically literate and knows all 'bout them numbers! We know this 'cause he says so, mm-hmm!
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When were 'the overwhelming majority of scientists on this planet' ever asked to tender their opinion one way or the other ?
 
Tim the plumber said:
FFS!!!!

How much of a sea level rise is significant? Is 2 inches all that important?

How much ice has been lost from Greenland do you thin and what does this mean for sea level rise???

These are very basic questions which you are terrified of answering because you can't do the maths and you don't want to be in the position that you understand just how tiny the changes in the world are!!

Why else would you be so evaisive?
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"Is 2 inches all that important".

THAT, sir, is an epic demonstration of your ignorance of science.

Are you familiar with "cognitive dissonance", the tendency to readily reject information that does not fit with one's personal beliefs? Here's an exercise, that you might challenge yourself, that you might be able to overcome it: RESEARCH the subject and find out WHY two inches' increase in sea level is very much a concern. You can start with the following factors: what is causing the rise; why the rate of rise is increasing; the effect on the ocean's salinity; how much heat energy that much more water can store (and how that will affect weather across the planet); and - for the last three factors - how increasing rate of rise will increase the severity of each of these factors (i.e. the "feedback loop effect").

I'm not at all confident that you'll even attempt to do so - you're too interested in defending what you think you know.
 
RetiredUSN said:
Did you know that there are ice sheets around the world that are growing?
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Did you know that from the very beginning, the climatologist community stated that YES, there would be SOME areas that would be colder? That's why the preferred phrase is not "global warming", but "climate change". BUT the SOME areas that would be colder does not make up for the MANY MORE places that would be warmer...and generally speaking, the world is getting warmer.

You were an engineman, so you should understand the following explanation instinctively: when a gallon of gasoline is burned, it produces about 20 lbs. of CO2. Yes, ONE gallon of gasoline, when burned, produces over twice its weight in CO2. How many cars are there in the world? Over half a billion. And it's probably a conservative estimate to say that each one of those half billion cars uses a tank of gas per week. Give it another conservative estimate - 15 gallons per tank. That's 15 gallons times 500,000,000 cars...and then that times 20 lbs...and that's how much CO2 we put in the atmosphere every single week of every year. And that's JUST CARS - not counting ships, trains, semis, farm equipment, factories....

Add to that the fact that we've a LOT less forestation worldwide than we once did.

In other words, every single year we're putting literally gigatonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere from a source that the world NEVER had to deal with before...and we've got LESS plant mass to try to absorb it.

Do you really think this wouldn't have an effect on the worldwide climate? How long can we crap in our own crib before the stink starts getting our attention?
 
Glen Contrarian said:
Do you really think this wouldn't have an effect on the worldwide climate? How long can we crap in our own crib before the stink starts getting our attention?
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How many of us would you have stop breathing before you are satisfied because by demonizing CO2 you are demonizing your own respiratory cycle and a beneficial gas essential for the crops we grow.

Look what happens when we treble it ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2qVNK6zFgE

Why is this a bad thing ?
 
Glen Contrarian said:
Yeah, the overwhelming majority of scientists on the planet - including EVERY national science foundation and organization of EVERY major nation - agrees on AGW and accepts those stats...

...but I forget! Tim the Plumber is better than all them, 'cause he's scientifically literate and knows all 'bout them numbers! We know this 'cause he says so, mm-hmm!
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I am not asking you to parrot out the dogma but to actually say what it is you think the science is on the subject!

How much sea level rise do you think the melting ice of Greenland is causing???? It should be easy! Amount of ice in Km3, or gigatonnes, divided by the area of the world's oceans times a million to get to mm.

How much do you think is dangerous? How much is insignificant?

Answering questions is called thinking scientifically. Avoiding questions is called religion.
 
Glen Contrarian said:
"Is 2 inches all that important".

THAT, sir, is an epic demonstration of your ignorance of science.

Are you familiar with "cognitive dissonance", the tendency to readily reject information that does not fit with one's personal beliefs? Here's an exercise, that you might challenge yourself, that you might be able to overcome it: RESEARCH the subject and find out WHY two inches' increase in sea level is very much a concern. You can start with the following factors: what is causing the rise; why the rate of rise is increasing; the effect on the ocean's salinity; how much heat energy that much more water can store (and how that will affect weather across the planet); and - for the last three factors - how increasing rate of rise will increase the severity of each of these factors (i.e. the "feedback loop effect").

I'm not at all confident that you'll even attempt to do so - you're too interested in defending what you think you know.
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So you think that 2 inches is important.

OK. When Greenland's ice melt reaches the stage of having contributed 2 inches to sea level in about 100 years, well.... er.... nothing at all.

The Atlantic is 4km deep. The pacific is 6km deep. 2 inches has no effect of the thermal capacity or the salinity of these oceans at all.

The rate of ice melt in Greenland has decreased. The edges have had a little melt due to the warmer climate over the last couple of decades and then as they are reaching the balance point they are slowing this melting. The center of the Ice sheet has thickened due to the increased snowfall as the Arctic ocean being more ice free allows more clouds to form.

Antarctica has added more ice than Greenland has lost and is continueing to do so. Is that your next reason to panic? Dropping sea levels?

Given your inability to show any sign that any maths is in your skill set I will not begin to baffle you with the basic school boy maths of what happens when you add energy to the top of the oceans. Thermal expansion is also beyond your willingness to take in.
 
IPCC / Modeling
[h=1]Initialization practices disqualify UN IPCC global circulation models from use for most climate change forecast purposes[/h] Guest essay by Michael G. Wallace Hydroclimatologist, Albuquerque, NM The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change UN IPCC features and endorses decadal global climate forecasting products. Those in turn feed into numerous downscaled regional climate forecasts. In published representations of forecast skills to date, all within this collective appear to include the poorly disclosed…
 
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