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How Warm can the Earth get?

late said:
I went over that earlier.

Not that it matters, you are not a Climatologist, you're a propagandist.
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Since you didn't answer a simple question, I take that as a no.

Cheers.
 
late said:
3768968_orig.jpeg


https://www.fewresources.org/soil-science-and-society-were-running-out-of-dirt.html
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YOU wrote:

"Btw, we've lost about half the arable land in America. Most got washed down the river, some got covered over by cities."
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50% loss is what you wrote.

My link shows far less, never once denied there is some loss. But your hyperbole is exposed because even YOUR link doesn't support the 50% loss either.

Meanwhile your one dimensional approach leaves out increased productivity, increased yields and income.

From the United States Department of Agriculture

Productivity growth is still the major driver of U.S. agricultural growth

Technological developments in agriculture have been influential in driving changes in the farm sector. Innovations in animal and crop genetics, chemicals, equipment, and farm organization have enabled continuing output growth without adding much to inputs. As a result, even as the amount of land and labor used in farming declined, total farm output more than doubled between 1948 and 2015.
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I have seen the overblown arable land is washing away baloney for over 35 years now since I left college, where I studied farming in its many forms. Visited farms where Farmers learned to have NO irrigation water ever leave the farm. Have seen no till farming practices that help keep soil in place and helped install irrigation equipment on farms that uses low impact sprinklers that doesn't wash farm land away.

This was all in the 1980's.
 
Tim the plumber said:
No need to bother with any station which is not mining some existing rock out there. No point in doing it. Just go to an asteroid and start solowing it's spin and steer it
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You will need to do a bunch of things in Space. For example, the station will be needed to catch the raw material, get it to a standard size, wrap it, and send it to a precise location. While you might want a ton of gold, you prob don't want it hitting you at thousands of MPH. I figure we will have robotic repair facilities out there, but they will need supplies and repair, you aren't going to want to do everything from the bottom of a gravity well. Doesn't make sense.
 
Sunsettommy said:
YOU wrote:



50% loss is what you wrote.

My link shows far less, never once denied there is some loss. But your hyperbole is exposed because even YOUR link doesn't support the 50% loss either.

Meanwhile your one dimensional approach leaves out increased productivity, increased yields and income.

From the United States Department of Agriculture

Productivity growth is still the major driver of U.S. agricultural growth



I have seen the overblown arable land is washing away baloney for over 35 years now since I left college, where I studied farming in its many forms. Visited farms where Farmers learned to have NO irrigation water ever leave the farm. Have seen no till farming practices that help keep soil in place and helped install irrigation equipment on farms that uses low impact sprinklers that doesn't wash farm land away.

This was all in the 1980's.
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So we meet in the middle. There is plenty of degradation, and while it has slowed down, it hasn't stopped.

Now, what about water problems, the Wheat Belt moving into Canada, and the expectation that the cost of energy will eventually go up a lot?
 
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Tim the plumber said:
No need to bother with any station which is not mining some existing rock out there. No point in doing it. Just go to an asteroid and start solowing it's spin and steer it.
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And why would anyone in their right mind use L5 for that?
 
late said:
You will need to do a bunch of things in Space. For example, the station will be needed to catch the raw material, get it to a standard size, wrap it, and send it to a precise location. While you might want a ton of gold, you prob don't want it hitting you at thousands of MPH. I figure we will have robotic repair facilities out there, but they will need supplies and repair, you aren't going to want to do everything from the bottom of a gravity well. Doesn't make sense.
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Why are you thinking 60's technology?
 
Visbek said:
Try again.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/10/climate/polar-bears-climate-deniers.html



It took millions of years for temperatures to cool to the point of supporting organic life. Plus, the Earth doesn't have a massive A/C coupled to a thermostat. I.e. it is not at all clear that the planet will recover on its own from the impact of AGW.



Erm... No one makes that claim. Bit of a straw man there.

The claims are:
- The planet is warmer than it's been in thousands of years
- The recent warming (last ~150 years) was a very rapid period of warming
- Projected warming will have a variety of negative effects



Yeah, that's not relevant. The question is what kinds of effects will result from increasing global temperatures.



Actually, almost all of your questions have been answered.



https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...th-pole/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.a9d25b54b563



Methane has a big impact, but it only remains in the atmosphere for 10-20 years. CO2 can remain in the atmosphere for centuries.

Legislation on methane is a bit lacking -- e.g. my understanding is that the EU mostly ignores animal sources of methane. However, the scientific community is aware of this, and is pushing for more regulation. One positive step is that the EPA started regulating methane in 2015.

Oh, and agriculture isn't the only source of methane emissions. It's about 1/3 of methane emissions in the US:

methane_sources.png




Warmer temperatures doesn't mean Death To All Organisms, nor does anyone make such a claim. The point is that as temperatures increase, so will sea levels, which will wreak havoc on coastal areas (where about 40% of humans live); crops will be harder to grow; weather will get more extreme; we'll have more heat waves, more droughts, more intense storms, and so on.

Oh, and scientists do routinely look at warmer past periods to see likely impacts of warming. Just FYI.



1) We are still pumping tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
2) As noted, gases like CO2 will remain in the atmosphere for centuries, meaning that no the planet will not magically heal itself in 5 minutes
3) As the planet warms, it causes feedback effects (e.g. unlocking other sources of carbon, which causes temperatures to increase)
4) Yes, we are likely doing some irreversible damage. As noted, the planet doesn't have a thermostat, and won't magically reverse the effects of climate change.



1 metric ton of CO2 is a very small amount. For perspective, the world is emitting about 9.7 metric gigatons of CO2 per year, and even that only probably causes around 0.017C of temperature increase per year. Since it can take years for the full effects to be felt, that's only a part of it.

So, I'd say that 1 metric ton of CO2 increases temperatures by approximately.... 0.000000000017525C? Give or take an order of magnitude. Of course, the real world effects will not be anywhere near that precise, that's not how the climate works.

Nor is climate science "exact" to the same tolerances as, say, nanotechnology. It's well understood, and discussed, that there are lots of uncertainties in various measurements and predictions. However, despite the uncertainties: The global warming trend is very clear, and predictions are fairly correct so far.

continued....
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Very comprehensive response. Well-researched!
 
Visbek said:
Almost all of it. IPCC AR5 estimates of climate forcing below. Some natural processes (like aerosolization) slightly cool the atmosphere. Solar forcing is probably the largest natural source of warming, and it's very small compared to anthropogenic sources.

ipcc_rad_forc_ar5.jpg




IPCC AR5, Section B gives you a summary of likely future impacts.
https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg2/ar5_wgII_spm_en.pdf



Try again.

2016 was the hottest year on record; 2017 the 2nd hottest. Five of the 10 hottest years on record were between 2010 and 2017. The upward trend started in 1920.

TimeSeries2017.png




Mmmmmm not so much.

IPCC relies on multiple scenarios, of varying amounts of GHG emissions and other impacts. 2 to 2.5 meters is the highest predictions I've seen (RCP 8.5); 1 meter (which is still huge) is more likely. 1m of GMSL is pretty serious.

The best-case scenario used by the IPCC is RCP 2.6... and that is zero GHG emissions, without any sort of carbon removal/sequestration. In that scenario, temperatures flatten out at 2050, and remain there for the rest of the prediction period. They won't drop.



Try again.

• Most of the US doesn't border on the Great Lakes
• Parts of the US already has suffered serious droughts, and no we can't just pump water from the Great Lakes to the rest of the US
• Huge swaths of the US population live in areas vulnerable to increases in sea level rise



Well, as long as you're not being self-centered about it....

The impacts of climate change on the Great Lakes is not clear. There may be some benefits (e.g. longer growing seasons), but new problems as well (regional climate will be hotter and drier; rain cycles may change, more pests etc).

I'd do a little more research if I were you. A good place to start:
https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/defaul...documents/global_warming/greatlakes_final.pdf

As to refugees, they show up no matter what we want. It is entirely plausible we'd see waves of climate refugees from around the world.



Riiiiiiiight

Nuclear has its pros and cons. Fukushima should make it clear that nuclear is, at a minimum, not a slam dunk in terms of safety. Even safe plants have lots of issues, including waste (fuel and heated water) and enormous construction costs (e.g. the canceled plants in South Carolina could have cost as much as $23 billion by time of completion).

Solar isn't perfect either, but it is getting cheaper all the time, and has a significantly lower ecological cost. Also, some iterations of solar and wind are in fact cheaper than nuclear, and obviously have fewer concerns about waste.

Lazard-wind-energy.png


Another element, not often discussed, is conservation. That's a critical component that is just as important as the generation side.

There certainly are many unanswered questions in climate science. However, climate science has answered most of the critical issues here. It is more than solid enough for us to say that:

• Global temperatures are rising
• Global temps are rising faster than in previous eras
• There will be lots of negative impacts on almost all life and ecosystems on the planet
• Human activity is the primary cause of climate change
• We can still mitigate the worst harms, if we get our act in gear.

Aren't you glad you posted?
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Ditto for this one! I believe passive solar, and thermal mass (coupled with a very tight home) are way underused for heating in the US. Simple - but very effective.
 
Sunsettommy said:
What insult?

When will you actually address what I said?
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You don't have the standing to ask that question until you can present your original research that falsifies the decades' worth of climate science work. So let's see that research already.
 
longview said:
You think we are that far away?
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Prob, but remember that the asteroid belt is an extremely hostile environment. We are going to have problems we don't even know exist yet. And that's on top of the high radiation, the huge distance from Earth, etc.

Even after we get Von Neumann vacuum cleaners, there is still a lot to be done to have them be able to work for decades in Space.

Again, I'd like to see the NASA budget get 10 times the money it gets now, and working toward this goal is something I'd like to see have a very high priority.

A caveat, I'm just a guy, I have my suspicions as to the best way to go about this, but if the actual guys at NASA have a better idea, I'd defer to them.
 
late said:
Prob, but remember that the asteroid belt is an extremely hostile environment. We are going to have problems we don't even know exist yet. And that's on top of the high radiation, the huge distance from Earth, etc.

Even after we get Von Neumann vacuum cleaners, there is still a lot to be done to have them be able to work for decades in Space.

Again, I'd like to see the NASA budget get 10 times the money it gets now, and working toward this goal is something I'd like to see have a very high priority.

A caveat, I'm just a guy, I have my suspicions as to the best way to go about this, but if the actual guys at NASA have a better idea, I'd defer to them.
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I was thinking of the simpler idea of a self replicating factory, I could see something like a solar panel factory fairly quick.
 
Rust Belt Red said:
When Al Gore was born there were 7,000 polar bears. Today, only 26,000 remain.

Timeline of evolution:
https://imgur.com/a/jfFXj

How warm can the Earth get?

3,600°F. This is the mean global temp. from the earth’s earliest days. Even after the Hadean period, and the planet had tens of millions of years to cool, surface temperatures were more than 400°F.

-"Humans can't survive these temperatures? Why mention it?"

It debunks the climatological "Point of no Return”. The earth was able to cool itself from a far higher temperature than humans could ever produce.

-"Have humans warmed the earth more than it has ever been warmed before?"

No. From 600 myo to 800 myo, during the Neoproterozoic era, the earth had sea ice down to the equator. Geologists reason that volcanoes brought the earth out of this ice age to mean global temperatures of 90°F. (The average today is 60°F.) Nature was 100% responsible for this massive mean temperature rise with no human activity. This means that natural global warming is far more devastating than human activity.

-"So the earth is a dick to itself and the point of no return is nonsense. But what is the warmest the earth has been since after the dinosaurs?"

73°F. (Remember the average today is 60°F.) That was the average temperature during the PETM which occurred 56 myo. During the PETM, the poles were free of ice and palm trees and crocodiles lived above the Arctic Circle. The Mesozoic era —age of dinosaurs- saw even higher mean temperatures.

Unanswered questions of Climate Science:

If the polar ice caps are melting then why is Antarctic sea ice growing?

(https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/antarctic_seaice_sept19_1.jpg) Why is only the northern polar ice cap melting?

If the #1 cause of climate change is livestock bowel movements then why do regulations target fossil fuels?

How did life thrive in a warmer world and what can we learn from these periods?

If the globe is able to recover from climate change then why should we worry about this in the long term? We aren't doing permanent damage to the planet.

If climatology is an exact science then what is the effect of 1 ton of CO2 or CH4 on mean global temperature?

What % of climate change is caused by humans?

What % of humans will die from climate change? What % of Americans will die?

Climate science cannot answer any of these questions, yet. The public gives climatologists the Last Say on public policy but they are not gods. The mean temperature has not been warming for 15 years. Pacific cooling, which was predicted by 0 computer models, has balanced out the rising north sea temp.

The IPCC's latest report shows that in the next 100 years sea levels will only rise by 2 meters and temperature will rise by 4-7 C and then go into a period of cooling. Humans are perfectly capable of moving a little further away from the ocean and wearing fewer sweaters.

The USA will be relatively unaffected by climate change. I live on the Great Lakes which is projected to lose 2.5 meters of sea level by 2100. As the temperature increases so does evaporation. The Great Lakes will also insulate the USA from droughts.

-"But Global Famine!"

I am a farmer. When Global Famine hits then food prices will soar and I will become wealthy. The USA won't take climate refugees so we should be fine.

My personal preference (or bias for the cynics) is nuclear. The IPCC recommends that all nations double nuclear output by 2050. France supplies 39% of its country on nuclear power.

Nuclear is safer than Solar.

Solar energy kills .44 people/TWh
Nuclear kills .04 people/TWh.

This is because a lot of people die from falling off of roofs while maintaining their solar panels.

Nuclear energy is also cheaper than Solar.

Nuclear energy costs .02 $ per Kwh
Solar costs .12 $ per Kwh or six times as much!

Do you want to pay six times as much for an energy source that kills more people?

If we stop discovering new fossil fuels and new technology then we will run out of fossil fuels in 110 years.

As someone who has lived for 19 years less than 11 miles from a nuclear power plant, I am confident nuclear is the future. Unfortunately, investments for nuclear have been sidelined for solar and wind based on public hysteria.

I firmly believe that as fossil fuels run out the debate will become Nuclear vs. hysteria rather than fossil fuels vs. green energy. If that happens then nuclear will win.
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Nothing here to see. Just another form of ad hominem. When the fossil fuels run out, we just might be lucky to even see the sun, let alone escape to

a place of anything like the consistent weather and temps. enjoyed until then. People will be dying younger and younger and our

children will be...spitting on our graves.
 
Tim the plumber said:
When David Atenbourgh was on the TV(UK) talking about thousands of cubic miles of ice in the Himalyan mountains I was on a forum saying that there is less than 10 cubic miles up there.

Still waiting for you to post any claim what so ever to having any sort of origional though yourself in this "who can claim the most research" contest.

If I need to be a published climate scientist to state the bleeding obvious what claim do you have to the right to an opinion?
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OK.

As I I understand this, you were on some kind of TV panel in the UK once with an alternate opinion than David Attenborough.

So far, what you have demonstrated is that you have opinions, you appear to have done no original research, or, since you have failed to cite one authority I suspect you have done no research at all.

Everyone is entitled an opinion, of course. But it's way past acceptable when you demean others' opinions when you no more authority than anyone else with a computer.

And don't get on Phys251, all she has done is ask you for the research you claimed to have done
 
Pedestrian said:
Nothing here to see. Just another form of ad hominem. When the fossil fuels run out, we just might be lucky to even see the sun, let alone escape to

a place of anything like the consistent weather and temps. enjoyed until then. People will be dying younger and younger and our

children will be...spitting on our graves.
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What makes you think fossil fuels will run out?
I think they will simply get more expensive, until they price themselves out of the market.
 
Pedestrian said:
Nothing here to see. Just another form of ad hominem. When the fossil fuels run out, we just might be lucky to even see the sun, let alone escape to

a place of anything like the consistent weather and temps. enjoyed until then. People will be dying younger and younger and our

children will be...spitting on our graves.
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longview said:
What makes you think fossil fuels will run out?
I think they will simply get more expensive, until they price themselves out of the market.
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Like the man said, the stone age didn't end because we ran out of stone.
 
longview said:
I was thinking of the simpler idea of a self replicating factory, I could see something like a solar panel factory fairly quick.
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That's existing tech. Strictly speaking a Von Neumann can build it's replacement when it gets old. A much easier task would be robotic factories that can smelt and form hull sections, build the electronics, IOW, build miners from scratch, make it's own fuel, and find places to mine.

Here's my guess, we'll have to make a large, do everything facility, and shoot it out there. When it gets out there, it will make smaller copies of itself that will do the actual mining.

If you had to make a to do list, it'd run down the street, and get halfway downtown, before you ran out of things that need doing first.
 
Media_Truth said:
Ditto for this one! I believe passive solar, and thermal mass (coupled with a very tight home) are way underused for heating in the US. Simple - but very effective.
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Perhaps. ;) The OP hasn't responded yet, though.

Oddly enough, the initial post here is the only post he's made to Debate Politics. Seems odd.
 
Phys251 said:
You don't have the standing to ask that question until you can present your original research that falsifies the decades' worth of climate science work. So let's see that research already.
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You are unable to answer simple questions, which make you lose credibility.

Cheers!
 
longview said:
What makes you think fossil fuels will run out?
I think they will simply get more expensive, until they price themselves out of the market.
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Warmists and Liberals rarely understand what Capitalism is about, which is why they go into silly resource depletion arguments.
 
Sunsettommy said:
You are unable to answer simple questions, which make you lose credibility.

Cheers!
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Let me know when you are ready to produce scientific research that falsifies the conclusions of climate scientists instead of just regurgitating right-wing talking points. The ball remains in your court.
 
Phys251 said:
Let me know when you are ready to produce scientific research that falsifies the conclusions of climate scientists instead of just regurgitating right-wing talking points. The ball remains in your court.
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What do you think the conclusions of all of those climate scientist are?
No one is trying to falsify that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, it is, and that is what most of the scientist of the world agree with.
As to the portion of the predictions of high gain amplified feedbacks, those have never been validated,
and so you cannot falsify, that may not even exists.
 
longview said:
What do you think the conclusions of all of those climate scientist are?
No one is trying to falsify that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, it is, and that is what most of the scientist of the world agree with.
As to the portion of the predictions of high gain amplified feedbacks, those have never been validated,
and so you cannot falsify, that may not even exists.
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Sounds like you might have some findings that falsify climate science. Have you published them, or are you just offering your personal opinions again?
 
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