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Global Warming


IM Egdall

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After conducting his own analysis, skeptic physicist Richard Muller now convinced "global warming is real and humans are causing it."

 

http://www.scientifi...=SA_WR_20120801

That is an interesting article in Scientific American.

 

Here is a link to an interesting and relevant news article titled:

Climate change threatens California power supply: report

 

The thrust of this article is that California is looking ahead to predicting the impact of climate change on meeting its energy requirements.

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After conducting his own analysis, skeptic physicist Richard Muller now convinced "global warming is real and humans are causing it."

 

Today I heard Dr. Muller interviewed:

http://www.democracy...hard#transcript

 

On Aug. 2, 2012, Muller explained:

As a scientist, on such an important issue, I felt it was my duty to be what I would call properly skeptical. And the only way to answer this was to put together a program. So, we gathered a group of truly eminent scientists — people who were really good at analyzing data.
Gee, what a novel idea. I musta' been mistaken thinkin' that had already been done.

 

So what happened, Dr. Muller?

At that point, the data had led me to a conclusion I would not have expected a few years earlier.

 

I think because I now feel that this is true and we could make the scientific case more solidly than had been made in the past, I think this does say we do need to take action and do something about it.

Thanks for sharing your what you now feel, but the scientific consensus already existed. Please feel free to share what you "now feel" about living in a world where "we do need to take action" and do nothing about it.

....

 

 

...but I'm being snarky; what else does Dr. Muller say?

We found the data selection bias didn't affect things.

 

It came together — we concluded that global warming was indeed real.

 

We could do this much better than people had done before. I've got to admit, I was shocked when I saw the results. There was short-term variability that was due to volcanos; essentially nothing due to the solar variation. Theoretically, that's not too surprising, but I was surprised nonetheless.

....

 

Global warming, so far, has not been very much. In the last 50 years it's been two-thirds of a degree Celsius, while one degree Fahrenheit, and that hasn't been much.

 

The danger isn't that we have done harm, the danger is that we understand that this will continue to go up, that in the future, what is now two-thirds of the degree will become one, two, three degrees. And that will be warmer than Homo sapiens have ever experienced.

...my emphases, and I would add....

 

That is also a warmer climate than modern terrestrial animal, crop, and aquatic species "have ever experienced" --or evolved to compete within-- over the past 5 million years. Or put another way....

 

Today's disappearing diversity evolved from life that has not had to contend with such "warmth" for over 20 million years--before today's temperate zones developed. Loss of these temperate zones will favor a shift to, and a predominance by, tropical (incl. disease-causing) species and ecosystems.

 

The National Academy of Sciences recently published "Understanding Earth's Deep Past," where they point out that... "by the end of this century atmospheric carbon dioxide is projected to increase to levels that Earth has not experienced for more than 30 million years."

http://dels.nas.edu/...Deep-Past/13111

 

Millions of years of adaptation... pushed to be undone within a century or so. More ancient species, such as algae & jellyfish, will benefit; ecosystems will lose balance and revert!

===

 

"...the danger is that ... this will continue...." ~Richard Muller

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m I dreaming? I picked up my Wall Street Journal today and there it was on the Opinion Page: "A New Climate Change Consensus". In my experience, the Journal has had editorial after editorial, article after article claiming global warming is a hoax. Now all of a sudden, Fred Krupp's article -- quoting its owner Rupert Murdock and others -- says it's real and we must all get together to try to solve the problem. Halleluya!

 

Maybe the tide is turning, and we will finally do something about it.

 

Link to article: http://online.wsj.co...eTabs%3Darticle

Edited by IM Egdall
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Unfortunately, I'm not very sharp regarding global warming. So, they're talking about record global temperatures for the first time in millions of years? I question whether this increase has occurred continually (a very gradual rise), or has it significantly began fairly recently (within 500 years)?

 

With that aside, I have understood the claim that it will continue, and also how this persistence is not expected to remain as "harmless" as it appears now for much longer.

Edited by Ben Bowen
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m I dreaming? I picked up my Wall Street Journal today and there it was on the Opinion Page: "A New Climate Change Consensus". In my experience, the Journal has had editorial after editorial, article after article claiming global warming is a hoax. Now all of a sudden, Fred Krupp's article -- quoting its owner Rupert Murdock and others -- says it's real and we must all get together to try to solve the problem. Halleluya!

 

Maybe the tide is turning, and we will finally do something about it.

 

Link to article: http://online.wsj.co...eTabs%3Darticle

"Climate change very slow but real. So far all cures worse than disease." doesn't sound like someone ready to act. It sounds like the next moving of the goalposts, from "no increase", to "increase but not man-made" to "increase and man-made but not serious enough to act on it yet". The last ignores the issue of it being cheaper to implement measures now than waiting until the problem gets worse.

 

Also, the observation that "it's an issue that's long been associated with liberal Democrats" is not really true. It became partisan when the republicans declared war on science, and besides, the "if you're for it I'm against it" is an admission that they were more interested in partisan posturing than in doing their job.

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  • 9 months later...

IMO it is relevant that global warming is real, regardless of cause, that it may be disastrous as ice caps melt and glaciers disappear, and that humanity is releasing greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.


Alan Savory in his TED Talk, “How to green the world's deserts and reverse climate change,” shows land he says was reclaimed by new cattle-land management practices. Additionally, he says that
colleagues have calculated that enough land may be reclaimed to reduce atmospheric CO2 to preindustrial levels. See:


Given his claims are valid, it seems that cattle men would adopt them, because the want to improve their grazing land. Such a CO2 reduction would give the human race more time to reduce fossil fuel use to ecologically sound levels. That is, more time to build green power plants, clean energy cars, sustainable buildings, etc.

 

IMO this news is exciting, but I haven't seen any chatter on the internet about it. Am I missing something?

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