"Oh, so the ground is against us now" Topic

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Holy crap! You'd begin to suspect that "they" enjoy causing this mounting panic.

Seriously? The micro-organisms are giving back their carbon.

It leads me to ask the question: Why would the earth be set up this way, to self destruct?

There was a millions of years-long period, millions of years ago, where the earth was so warm that it was virtually jungle and rain forest everywhere. Hugely humid. Then all of that changed and ice ages came along. Why?

We are still at the end of the last/latest ice age. Why are people so worried about it staying warm, and getting warmer, if that means that we are still moving away from that ice age? It makes no sense to me. I don't believe it: that warming is bad.

Turn this into yet another "conspiracy" thread if you want to………….

Sounds like more plants are needed. A lot more plants. And that sounds familiar with ages gone by. So the earth, I am going to guess, will come up with the plants as it warms itself. The carbon will balance along with the increase in plants. The air will turn largely tropical. I could like that, a lot…………………….

Didn't M. Night Shamalamadingdong do this already…?

I could like that, a lot…

You may, but the rest of the ecosystem won't. You can say goodbye to a whole host of food crops. Or do you not like eating…

The Gaia Hypothesis must be wrong!
Everything is supposed to be in equilibrium!

Charlie 12 hits the nail on the head. The notion that 'plants like it warmer' is only true to a point. If it gets too hot (95-100F) photosynthesis slows down dramatically and at 104F stops altogether and plants die (desert plants have adapted and go dormant during the heat of the day and only grow in the morning and afternoon when it's cooler--that's why most desert plants are small). We are already seeing reduced yields in certain food crops in warming areas.

Does GWA know that the hottest places on earth are not the most fertile?

Deserts and Jungles are not fertile, neither are very warm seas or oceans. North Atlantic and North Pacific are the oceans bread baskets(as well as the southern sea but harder to get to)

Just as plants don't want it too hot. Neither does the most important food fishes.

I never trusted the ground. Whenever you turn around, there it is right behind you. Freakin' stalker. Go ahead, look down right now … is there ground there? No? You know why? It's hiding under the carpet and floor. Just lying there in wait. Or under the asphalt and cement. It's even hiding under the ocean! Three-fourths of the Earth's surface is ocean … yeah, sure … right on top of the ground, it is. And you know, every time I trip, there it is tearing up the knees on my jeans and slapping me in the face. Jerk. It doesn't even run away afterward. It just stays there. Mocking. Freakin' ground …

It makes no sense to me. I don't believe it: that warming is bad.

Excellent example of the "argument from personal incredulity" logical fallacy.

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Seriously? The micro-organisms are giving back their carbon.

Seriously, that's not what's happening.

The soil contains huge amounts of fixed carbon in the form of partially decayed plant matter. Much is in untouched northern and southern areas, where the plant material is frozen much of the year. With global warming, this decayed plant material provides food for the aerobic soil bacteria over larger areas and for longer than normal during the year. These bacteria respire, just like us. This means, in the process of digesting and metabolizing the soil plant material, they give off CO2 (like us, they also give off methane). That exacerbates the global warming of us dumping tons of CO2 into the atmosphere as well. That's why it is a positive feedback system.

The bacteria are not "giving back their carbon".

So sorry for the mistaken description. But what you wrote agrees with what I was getting from the article.

The point is that "the ground" is increasing the carbon output, it is feared, faster than plants can take it up.

So the earth will warm, and plants will increase, and much of it will go tropical, water included. Hey, is fishing in tropical waters somehow deficient? I hadn't heard.

A greatly warmed earth will still have poles. The food crops will move north (south hemisphere has little landmass comparatively – but maybe coastal Antarctica will grow wheat). The more cool water will be ice free, lots of fishes there too. I don't see a problem. Over time, humans will number billions less, not more. Earth, Gaia, in balance. My vision is loveliness………………

Do you ever get tired of being wrong?

What will happen is everything close to the equator will become a desert. (that included the northern hemisphere)

The effects of Sahara will spread, drying out southern Europe, massive droughts.

Same goes for most of North America, Southern US already suffers massive droughts . These will last decades. Everything south of Dixie will dry out, no food crops from Texas, most of California etc etc. That Canada gets slightly longer growing seasons don't help.

Cod and tuna populations will plummet, in fact, all major food fishes will plummet.

India a place with 1.2 billion people will most likely not be able sustain even a fraction of that population.
(and no they can't just move into Siberia, Siberia won't become a fertile because of this.

As the southern and Northen oceans warm stuff like the krill will become much rarer, and so many of the large whales will either die out or become so rare they might as well be dead(not that you care about whales, polar bears or you know those pesky 3rd world humans)

"Over time, humans will number billions less, not more.Earth, Gaia, in balance. My vision is loveliness" the guy is cool with the death of a billion human beings from the looks of it. Do you really need to know more?

I don't see a problem.

That's right, you're blinkered that way.

Do you ever get tired of being wrong?

Practice makes perfect. Lol!

Billions may die, but GWA will have his vision of tropical loveliness.

You guys act like this dire scenario of spreading deserts and loss of food and dying billions will happen in a few decades. It won't, unless we help it along with wars and plagues.

Yes, I am okay with the world's humans numbering a billion more or less. Third world? Who said anything about who dies? "You" said, "most of North America", not me.

You are so certain. So give your everything to the tax crew and slit your wrists. I don't intend to buckle that easily.

Now comes the denial that this has anything to do with increased world gov't control. They who hold the resources hold freedom in their hands. When resources are owned by private people there is no central control. Without central control business will continue, materialism will grow in especially the third world, because that is where the frontier of development always exists, you know, competition, the life spring of material wealth and individual freedom.

Take the "state" out of it, because nobody working for the state has any answers that don't involve controlling everybody into acting like programed slaves. Of course, that would cause wars, as billions rebel and are killed off.

Anyway it happens, if you cut the population by six sevenths the problems of anthropogenic climate change go away. The climate will continue to change regardless, the ice age will continue to fade because that is what happens when things get warm. We'll all be dead and gone, unless you ascribe to some kind of "Celtic" reincarnation, in which case we cannot ever escape what is coming.

I love you guys………….

The problem, GWA, is that the scenario might not take hundreds of years, as you suggest, it might only take decades. If the equatorial regions, plus places like India and Indonesia, become deserts, then about 3 billion people are going to have to relocate--quickly. This is going to lead to mass starvation and undoubtedly war as waves of desperate people move north and south to find food. I don't think a new wall is going to stop 200 million Central Americans from crossing our borders.

Trouble with "might only take decades", is that all the consensus talk I've heard posits centuries for the kind of change that Gun is proposing. Much lesser changes, like dead and dying coral, altered fauna habitat, rising ocean levels, happen throughout this century, slowly enough to adapt. It's not like the mythical apocalypse of an advancing ice wall as the next ice age sets in. Or like cities on the coast are suddenly inundated, or our farms suddenly turn to deserts. The water problem isn't one: desalination is on the table, for one thing. And wars are already with us, so increasing wars can be expected here or there.

This whole doom scenario, because of "the way we live", is BS scaremongering hype, designed to put our lives, our everything, into the few hands of "those who know".

And that makes me more than suspicious…………

GWA, thanks for another one of your "migrating frogs" moments.

This whole doom scenario, because of "the way we live", is BS scaremongering hype, designed to put our lives, our everything, into the few hands of "those who know".

Thanks again, that reminds me to buy stock in aluminum foil for my

GWA, to me the bottom line is very simple. I think that climate change is an immediate threat and we should respond by switching to non-fossil fuel based power sources as quickly as it is practical to do so. (I'm talking decades of carefully planned moves. No one losses his job and no billionaires lose their yachts.) You don't think there is a threat and that nothing needs to be done.

If I'm wrong about climate change we still win. Switching to renewable, non-polluting power is a good thing no matter how you look at it. And we will have to do this sooner or later anyway.

If you are wrong we all lose and we could be facing a disaster of unprecedented proportions.

Seems like an easy choice to me.

How can I be wrong? Seriously, for decades now, "they" have told us that we are approaching, then passing, the "point of no return". Tipping points are proposed as we go along. I can't be wrong, since all I am saying is that the current ice age is almost done because of how warm it is (getting). The worst case scenarios that have any scientific clout all talk about centuries for the dramatic changes Gun throws around. Nobody will notice their lives changing drastically on a massive scale. It will take generations. Folk memory will speak of "the good old days", before things became terrible. Children will be born into their world as-is. The palavering of oldsters about how times were once different/better, will be so much empty air.

Humans always adapt. We are the species that walks all over the planet. We will farm further north and south. We will populate as allowed. If that means a billion or a third of a billion (like it was forever before modern times), so be it. Numbers are immaterial.

I argue this point with my TBM wife and others who bring it up: "The earth is full and there is enough and to spare". Written back in the mid 1800s. That is supposed to be God talking. Well, it needs updating. Unless our current population crisis is temporary and needs no revision of revelations.

Take the human element out and climate change "returns" to the inevitable crap game of the cosmos. We are not even big enough to be analogous pawns……………

I came across this piece this morning in a blog that I follow, and I think it applies to GWA and the other peddlers of excrement of male Bos Tauros as opinion.

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Plato distinguished between opinion or common belief (doxa) and certain knowledge, and that's still a workable distinction today: unlike "1+1=2" or "there are no square circles," an opinion has a degree of subjectivity and uncertainty to it. But "opinion" ranges from tastes or preferences, through views about questions that concern most people such as prudence or politics, to views grounded in technical expertise, such as legal or scientific opinions.

You can't really argue about the first kind of opinion. I'd be silly to insist that you're wrong to think strawberry ice cream is better than chocolate. The problem is that sometimes we implicitly seem to take opinions of the second and even the third sort to be unarguable in the way questions of taste are. Perhaps that's one reason (no doubt there are others) why enthusiastic amateurs think they're entitled to disagree with climate scientists and immunologists and have their views "respected." […]

So what does it mean to be "entitled" to an opinion?

If "Everyone's entitled to their opinion" just means no-one has the right to stop people thinking and saying whatever they want, then the statement is true, but fairly trivial. No one can stop you saying that vaccines cause autism, no matter how many times that claim has been disproven.

But if ‘entitled to an opinion' means ‘entitled to have your views treated as serious candidates for the truth' then it's pretty clearly false. And this too is a distinction that tends to get blurred.

How can I be wrong? Seriously, for decades now, "they" have told us that we are approaching, then passing, the "point of no return".

That's because if you actually read the litterature, you'd know that there's a large lead time (approx. 30 years) between CO2 going to the atmosphere (Transient Climate Response) , and all of the immediate effect being seen, and about 200 years for all of the feedback to cycle though the system (Equilibrium Climate Response). In other words, it's like saying that rudders on supertankers don't work since they don't handle like German sports cars…

Nobody will notice their lives changing drastically on a massive scale.

BULL…excrement! How about more flooding coastal areas during King Tides? In a situation that's directly comparable to the current pants on head thinking by some websites that specialize in the bulk distribution of conspiracy info, large temporary spikes – King tides and El Nino – are being goosed by an underlying rising trends. In this case, the mean ocean level and mean surface temperature respectively.

You can look at the empirical evidence of more flooding days, as well as the millions of dollars in remediation being spent in Miami, Boston, and other low lying areas (I'll restrict my comments here for the only land mass that truly matters /s).

"Numbers are immaterial."

Wow, that's a… breathtaking statement. :)

So you actually believe that as climate change makes the planet less and less able to support our billions of people that we will just voluntarily have fewer or no children so that the population will fall to a number that can be sustained? And all in pace with the climate change so we never reach a crisis point where billions are starving and violently try to do whatever they have to do keep themselves and their families alive?

I'm afraid I have to call that wishful thinking on a colossal scale.

I would much prefer that we actually try and do something about it rather than just keep our fingers crossed that we'll die of old age before disaster strikes. You are arguing that this is a problem our great-grand children might have to deal with, not us. Well, I care about them, too.

How can I be wrong?

"Numbers are immaterial."

Only to those that slept through high school math and science classes. And to those that think that toads and frogs migrate.

You are not entitled to your opinion. You are only entitled to what you can argue for.

Nice link, Martin.

So you actually believe that as climate change makes the planet less and less able to support our billions of people that we will just voluntarily have fewer or no children so that the population will fall to a number that can be sustained? And all in pace with the climate change so we never reach a crisis point where billions are starving and violently try to do whatever they have to do keep themselves and their families alive?

If there is a "spike" in coastal flooding due to increasing storm activity, an increase in casualties will occur. Big deal, to the casualties. The rest of the planet doesn't care. Bangladesh. The tsunamis from the Indian ocean quake, what was that, a quarter million dead? Horrible. I guess the earthquake was caused by global warming.

Over DECADES (much more so centuries) humans will meet each crisis and adapt.

If we insist on increasing/maintaining our unsustainable billions, climate change is the least of our worries. Pandemics and wars will take us out far quicker than floods and droughts and starvation. Hell, starvation is what caused Europe's epidemic of the Black Death. Food and population were no longer in balance, and millions of people were malnourished, their bodies just waiting to succumb to the bubonic plague.

I believe it was Asimov, back in the 80s, who posited/predicted that by the end of the first quarter of the 21st century, at the then-present rate of population increase and available food, another outbreak, a pandemic this time, would occur and wipe out billions of people.

This entire climate change thing is a distraction from the real danger: over-population and unsustainability. And there isn't a thing any gov't can do about it that isn't a drastic overreach. If people won't curb their procreation, nature will do it for us.

@Bowman: context, my friend: numbers of humans on the planet are immaterial to "the good life".

Millions can enjoy "the good life". Billions become increasingly problematic……………

@Bowman: context, my friend: numbers of humans on the planet are immaterial to "the good life".

Tell that to one of those culled.

starvation is what caused Europe's epidemic of the Black Death.

That's news to forensic epidemiologists. The Yersinia pestis plague known as the Black Death came from China and traveled down the Silk Road and from seaborne traders. It decimated everyone from China, Mongolia, India, Arabia, Byzantium and finally to Europe.

Not everyone was starving. However, malnutrition will increase the morbidity and mortality rates of any serious disease.

Bowman- There you go again interjecting facts into the discussion.

Tell that to one of those culled.

See how you are? Over the top reactionary. Why is dying the same as being "culled"?

"Starving", as I used the word, wasn't meant to invoke masses of skin and bones lying on the ground crawling with flies. I did put it into context: malnutrition is a form of starvation. Slow starvation. And your last sentence agrees with me. Which is what Asimov was addressing.

I think most people would prefer a bullet in the neck over "slow starvation" and if the starvation doesn't kill you than the plague will?

Very humanist of you! I'm sure the Nobel peace price is within your reach. Just remember to point out starvation ain't culling.

Deliberate starvation would be culling. Unpreventable starvation is not, it is merely a catastrophe. But nobody is going to go around putting slowly starving people out of their misery.

It is preventable

I would much prefer that we actually try and do something about it

Seems like an easy choice to me.

It is preventable

OK, how? Please outline a course of action that countries will actually implement.

What? You say they couldn't even come up with a plan in the Paris accord that would accomplish what the scientists say is needed? A worthless unenforceable non-binding non-treaty where they could lie to their hearts content and they STILL couldn't agree to aCOA to achieve what is needed?

Then how, pray tell, is it preventable in the real world where you have to actually DO things and not just make pie in the sky pronouncements when they couldn't even do it in LaLa Land?

… we should respond by switching to non-fossil fuel based power sources as quickly as it is practical to do so. (I'm talking decades of carefully planned moves.

Unfortunately according to the scientists in question, we don't have decades and some say we are already past another tipping point. I agree we should go clean as soon as it is feasible and practical but it doesn't meet the demands of the climate science magic numbers.

When IS it feasible and practical?

Just to be clear, I wasn't suggesting a binary choice of do nothing until F&P and then throw the big switch to completely change over. My intent was to say that as it is feasible and practical at any given site to do so. For example, the main Cremmins production plant on Sybliss Island is not in need of any changes with their current power situation. One of their subsidiaries, OTOH, as a part of a major enlargement would need to re-do their power generation in any event and as such, it makes sense for the good folks at Cremmins to take a look and see whether the investment to switch over to natural gas makes better sense than larger, newer, more-efficient but still coal burning power plants.

There are a number of variables, any one of which might be sufficiently impactful to trigger the decision, or it could be that a number of variables small in magnitude but in combination sufficient to trigger the decision.

No single "If X > Y then go to 210" logic model to answer this the same way for everyone, everywhere.