Tim the plumber

The article is from June 2014. I accept that there are some deaths of people who are very vulnerable when it gets unusually hot but not many at all. In the UK we don't have domestic air-con. It's generally not something that is a significant risk. Are you suggesting that a further doubling is at all possible within any foreseeable time frame? If you are going to start talking about many hundreds of years or even thousands please have a think about how successful any forcast about human civilization would have been 200 years ago. 1814. How much do you think they would have predicted as the impact of air travel? Or we could not talk about all the ice in the world melting as it is not going to and use the predicted numbers that have come out of the IPCC or other bodies. The predictions are of a maximum of a 1m sea level rise by 2100. I find that number unaccountable high because I want to understand how it is arrived at and the mechanism which is expected to cause it. The IPCC uses the method of looking at the graph of the last centuries sea level rise (18cm) and saying that since this was due to the warming of the planet then since the next century will warm by more it will rise by more. Even when they do this they then add some more multiples which they need to get to the 1m level. I would like to see the degree of thermal expansion used as a start point ( it's about 7cm per degree rise by 2100) then look at exactly what ice is vulnerable to melting if there is a rise of "x" degrees. That's relatively easy to do if you only need a number with an accuracy of a factor of 2. By my limited reckoning, which is very basic and back of an envelope stuff, granted, the result will be a lot less than 2cm per degree. As I have said I would like to see an more detailed explanation of the mechanisms involved. Thank you. When the child said "The king has no clothes on." It needed the some of the other people to start to laugh. If the kid was a lone voice then the consensus would have prevailed. The Atlantic is 4km deep. The Pacific is 6km deep. The expected rise by 2100 is at most 1m. I think we can ignore the mass change in calculations which are never going to need to be more accurate than 1mm. Is thinking about sea level to the mm at all sensible???? When ever I've been to the sea side the water has been bouncing up and down much more than that and trying to define the sea level to a mm of the sea right in front of me would be nonsensical.

I've no idea if this is at all possible or useful for the application but... Is there a way of automating the process of looking for the nearest land mark after the position is found and would you want a fuller address or "Middle of the Pacific Ocean" type answers?

Google earth works. Or you could use an atlas like your supposed to.

Perhaps because you don't live in Britain. We don't have aircon. We don't dye of the heat unless we go out in the best 3 days of summer (which can often be the only days of summer) and drink 20 pints of larger in the pub's beer garden wearing no t-shirt. That happens often. Old people do dye of cold here. Fuel prices have risen a lot because of this AGW thing. Old people are dying due to that. Lots of them. I care!!!! I am shocked that you find summers a problem. Do you find winters a similar trouble? If you do have this problem with hot summer nights I would indeed advise you to get an air conditioner fitted to your bedroom. The cost of doing so will probably be less than the increase in your annual fuel bill due to the various green levies, hidden or open, which you are currently paying. You might also want to check out your loft insulation. If your bedroom is under a poorly insulated loft the heat from the sun can be trapped in the roof and be trouble. I am aware that the hype talks of increased extremes but the models which predict this are so poor at predicting the climate that I have no confidence in them. Was there such an increase in heat waves and droughts in the bronze age warm period? Were there less droughts in the little ice age? I thought it was the opposite.

4 to 5 degrees, ummmmm.... Why does your pretty cartoon have a 9 degree temperature increase point on it? Is there any basis for that as a prediction in any peer reviewed science at all? Are you denying the established science that this is utterly impossible in today's world? I was under the impression that the IPCC's highest estimates had a figure of 4.5 degrees. I was also under the impression that the lower end of their predictions was 1.5 degrees. And beyond that I was under the impression that we are currently below the predicted line to hit the lower number. Can you give the source paper for the additional forcing due to feedback loops or whatever which is responsible for the additional warming beyond what is known to be the direct result of CO2 increase? I will be amazed if you can as I have never seen anyone else manage it. OK, so it's an indirect effect. I will continue to ignore a paper which, on the basis of no alteration of life style, predicts that the change of climate from what we have now in the UK to what the climate is 100 to 200 miles south of us is will cause additional deaths. I will do this because people will open the window and will take off the jumper. The climate a bit to the South is a nice climate where people generally live longer. As you go North in the UK the life expectancy generally drops. There is no point posting data about this because it would be quite rightly attacked as being disingenuous. The lower life expectancy is mostly life style caused. Scots have a habit of drinking themselves to death and eating deep fried mars bars. Or deep fried pizza. I will continue to assume that the IPCC's figures are the best available forecasts and use them to gauge my response level to the threat of global warming due to human activity.

My information of the impacts of a degree of warming are mostly from the work of the IPCC. I am unaware of any direct impact of a degree of warming upon any aspect of erosion of any substance other than ice. Perhaps you could elaborate about this and the amount of heat energy involved in a degree of atmospheric warming. I suggest that the initial big number is divided by the surface area of the world so we can consider it per square meter. The enthalpy expressed thusly will, I expect come out as a small number of Joules. It would, however, be a lot more informative to simply visit England for a week or so, ask if the weather you are experiencing is exceptional and then visit the Channel Island. I expect the change will always be pleasant one. They have a nice mild climate as opposed to the chilly one England has. Yep, which do you think is the issue in the UK? How often do you think 37 degrees c is exceeded in the UK? Do you think that a raise of 1 degree will cause an additional 5000 deaths per year as has been said/implied on this thread with a peer reviewed paper to support that position. I have been unable to site any paper which refutes that. I have also been unable to site any paper which refutes the idea that the ocean is dry. My position has caused me to be warned by the moderators. Hey ho, looks like they (he?) will ban me now....

Well the wiki definition is; I was using the one that the weatherman on the TV uses. The one almost everyone uses when they say it's humid. The one which is relevant to discussions about the effect on humans of higher temperatures.

I know it sounds dangerous and I fully accept that strong checks against bias or rigging need to be in place and a system of support and investigation would also need to be there to police any threats to it's integrity. But we live in a free world not because everyone is 100% free and nice but because we have police and laws and such which allow us to be safe from the nasties out there. The scientific world is already state funded to an overwhelming degree. It needs to be recognized that this gives the state the responsibility to make the results available for all of us. Also I am not asking for the journals to be the only method of publishing science. I just wish to have free access to results I have already paid for.

I agree. As far as I see it, which is from a very limited view point, life seems to be everywhere we would expect it and almost everywhere else as well. That is it's wandering about inside glaciers, sitting on top of lava lakes and doing it's thing in rocks miles below ground. The path of evolution which has resulted in us is, however, massively flukey. There are many points where just the right size asteroid hit or the world went snowball at just the right time. Even when apes started wandering around the plains they were hardly a spectacular success. Their populations seem to have been very low. Even those still in the trees are hardly there in plague numbers. Early man was never as common as lion or elephant. Even after that our civilization did not happen at all for most of the time of humanity. We seem to have wandered all over the planet as hunter gatherers for a lot longer than seems decent if we were supposed to make more of the place. Eventually some of us started to build villages. And there it stopped for many thousands of years again. Lots later, like 9 thousand years or so, we started creating larger political units. Having armies. Trading. The big shift came in North Western Europe 500 years ago. We finally got into gear and looked at the world with the view to use the understanding of it to solve problems. In the 1400's the Chinese sailed around lots of the world bringing back giraffe to China as zoo animals. They decided the rest of the world was rubbish and shut up shop. The early explores who made it back from India had a significant difference beyond the fat that they did it in what we today, and the Chinese would consider a medium size yacht suitable for calm weather on a river day trip, is that they showed a profit.

A peer reviewed paper that provides support to skeptics! And it's in Science. I don't have a subscription to science so I am unable to read the whole paper, I may have to visit my local library. -15 Wm-2 seems a lot. I am presuming that this figure would be fairly localized. If anyone can post more of the paper without infringing copy right that would be good. The world must move to nationalize scientific journals. The content has already been paid for by us all in our taxes to fund the research!

Well I was waiting for somebody else to explain that humidity is the amount of water vapor in the air divided by the amount that air of that temperature and pressure could carry, x 100 to get a percentage. So an increase of 1 degree would not mean an increase in humidity directly. In fact the opposite initially. Warmer climates are not necessarily more humid. I only do basic science, but it's good to have somebody that does do those points don't you think?

I think that the Bible says that the number of people who enter the kingdom of God will be 12,000 from each of the 12 tribes of Israel. That's the lot. If you are not in any of those tribes then unlucky your going to where ever the rest of us go or don't.

You think that will be necessary if there is a 1 degree warming?

Yes, but, is that knowledge or just meaningless data? I think the definition of what is knowledge or information will have to be very well defined for this to be resolved at which point it will be answered.

The area of the World Ocean is 361 million square kilometers. A quarter of an inch is about 7mm. So that would mean the mountain would have to be 2,500 cubic kilometers, but 2,400 is good.. I don't know how much volume there is in Everest or how you would actually decide which bits of rock were or were not that particular mountain but I think it's not going to be that big. It's only 8.8km high. If there had been a slow rise in the sea bed of a particular region I don't know if it would have been detected. SOSUS is a listening system for finding submarines. It is, I expect, not particularly tuned for sensing the exact depth of the sensor. If the mid ocean ridge has moved up a few tens of meters then i don't see how we would be aware of it. that would produce enough volume change for centimeters of sea level change.

I quoted the paper. It says that the effect is only if NO ADAPTION OF ANT KIND happens. So any conclusions you draw from it about any actual real world effects where people will take off their jumpers are 100% unjustified.

Are such philosophical problems the sort of thing which has any place in a science forum? In case you are not aware we change the world by all of our actions. So? Since the increase in CO2 means that plants grow better is this not actually a good thing? I think that increasing the abundance of life on the planet is a good thing (since we are making value judgments). These real problems of which you speak, without any detail as to what those are, are they worse than billions of people dying from lack of food due to not using fossil fuel for agriculture?

My bold. Take the jumper off. Job done. For the advanced class; buy a nice garden chair and make sure there is enough ice in the freezer for fruit cocktails in the afternoon.

The CO2 in the air is increasing almost certainly due to human burning of fossil fuels. Yep, so? One of the lines in the video says "Keep calm and carry on". Good advice. Is this any sort of science? If so what is the point? What is the detail of the mechanism which is being discussed? What predictions are being made?

^ If you think that claiming that a slight increase in temperature of 1-2 degrees will result in an additional 5000 people per year dying in the UK you are either barking mad or being deliberately misleading. The paper you sited started with the premise that it was assumed that no adjustment was taken into account before calculating the deaths. If, however, people took the jumper off them the whole argument falls down. The climate of the Channel Islands is not exactly uncomfortable. Old people go there for holidays in the summer. If the climate of Yorkshire becomes warmer to the point of being half way between what it is now and that, lovely! Sometimes the most scientific statements do not involve quoting papers or experts but just pointing out that the King has no clothes on! Color not used as the moderator likes conformity in all things, posting styles to opinions. :-In Edit; It's OK, I've changed the font instead.

I think it's a tendency for things to get bigger in stable situations. If there are fluctuations of environment such as ice ages the degree of specialization required to take a generalist animal to get to such a specialist eating/growing/egg laying machine is not there. I think... Any other ideas out there?

OK, so it's not the methane hydrates under the ocean it's the permafrost.... If all the permafrost melts....... Why would all the permafrost melt? Won't it just be a little bit around the edge of the vast areas of permafrost? Perhaps? Has the IPCC claimed that this apocalypse is credible? No? Why not do you think? They have stretched all their other prophesies of doom as far as they will go. Perhaps you need to maintain a sense of perspective. The Earth has been warmer in the recent past (few thousand years). No disaster. This run away warming to a Venus has never happened before. There have been faster climate shifts than now.

How deep in the ocean are these gas hydrates? How do you expect the environment they are in to change if there is a 2 degree increase in surface temperature by 2100 and a 50cm sea level rise? Do you think that these changes will cause these gas hydrates to boil into the sea water and if so is that the top most of them or all of them? Once the methane has entered the water and dissolved how long do you think it will take for half of it to escape to the surface layers of the ocean and then into the atmosphere? Do you thin that there are existing sources of methane which are mixing into the oceans all the time?

97% of climate experts agree that human activity is having an effect on climate. As do I. Have 97% of climate scientists been asked if they consider AGW a significant danger to humanity? I think you might get a very different answer to that question if it was ever asked.

Are you seriously of the opinion that a 1 degree c temperature rise will cause a pronounced change in the climate of the UK to such an extent that heat waves which kill lots of people are common?