Earth Sciences Today is hot

[Kildonan]

Now I'm not advocating that we use anecdotal evidence to support our beliefs, but...

Apparently it is the hottest day on record (according to my wife's reading of the the BOM site) here in Queensland. I suppose this probably means that the average temperature of the state is highest on record. Although it just may be that this is the hottest average temperature recorded on this date???

She also tells me that this comes after the hottest year on record (2016) and the hottest decade on record where 9 of the hottest 10 years recorded were recorded in the last decade.

All I know is that it is hot. Hotter than I have ever experienced before and looking at the trend - it will only get hotter.

Is this the world we want to bequeath to our kids?

 

[cannot]

too late

 

[GreyCrow]

The irony is to escape the heat we turn on our air-conditioners

 

[Frank Bunn]

Now I'm not advocating that we use anecdotal evidence to support our beliefs, but...

Yes you are. This is a science forum. Your post is unscientific.

 

[Chief]

The irony is to escape the heat we turn on our air-conditioners

That's what I have solar panels for.

 

[Kildonan]

too late

It probably is too late for the next two generations - warming will continue for some time even if we stop emitting carbon waste into the atmosphere immediately and totally. These generations have the benefit of our technology, our art and our infrastructure. They benefit from that, but we extract payment from them by forcing them to deal with our waste.

 

[SBYM]

The science of climate science...

I'm sitting here watching the UK GE debate (sans Theresa), and they just asked the seven participants what they would do in response to the Donald pulling out of the Paris Accord.

Watching politicians talk about pretty much anything almost always does my head in...when it's something like science then I simply can't believe they have any idea what the feck they are talking about...

That being the case, I've come here to ask;

How much s**t are we in?

Are things like this (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/11/28/science/what-is-climate-change.html) useful??...science written for the vast majority of the earth's population (like me) who don't know up from down when it comes to the overwhelming flood of data that is out there...

Serious answers only need apply, you wanna argue take it elsewhere. Ta.

 

[cats2rise]

Yes you are. This is a science forum. Your post is unscientific.

Err, his hypothesis is that it's only getting hotter, and he is discussing recorded observations through the BOM.

 

[Baby Duck]

Claims of the hottest days on record are meaningless. Its like people assume when they hear the word EVER it means for all time. We have only been recording temperatures for an miniscule little blip of time compared to how long we have not. We already know that the climate shifts even without our tiny interferences.

On [device_name] using BigFooty.com mobile app

 

[Thegibbsgamble]

How much s**t are we in?

.

We're not in any s**t at all.

This has all happened before and will happen again.

Yes the planet is heating up and storms and weather becoming more extreme. Yes sea levels are rising and eco systems changing

Yes there will wars famine disease and anarchy.

But it's all natural. With death there is life

Embrace our earth. She knows better. She's doing what she has to survive. Her self awareness extrodinary. It really is that divine intelligence people seek from god

When you marvel at her georgous kaos. You become so much more human and live so much more inside her boundaries. You appreciate all living things and thier purpose

We are all connected

 

[Ron The Bear]

What do proponents of warming make of the past two years' increase in Greenland's ice mass, given it lies mostly inside the Arctic Circle where some have warned that ice-free northern summers are imminent?

 

[GreyCrow]

You are going to narrow your argument on 2 years data?

 

[Ron The Bear]

You are going to narrow your argument on 2 years data?

Not arguing anything, just curious about what it means. 2017 was apparently due to a hurricane that wended its way north and brought above-average snowfall, but I haven't seen an explanation for 2018 (nor any mainstream media coverage).

 

[GreyCrow]

Not arguing anything, just curious about what it means. 2017 was apparently due to a hurricane that wended its way north and brought above-average snowfall, but I haven't seen an explanation for 2018 (nor any mainstream media coverage).

It seems to me you do want an argument by the use of your term 'proponents of warming' line.

I think 2 years is too narrow to define anything. Its why I appreciate the graph you supplied. It shows quite clearly the cyclical nature of it all. Random years are just random years. ie 1964-1998 all the negative runoff and then the 1999-2018 positive runoff. I would like to see a change back to the negative and sustained for a period before I had any major concerns

 

[Ron The Bear]

It seems to me you do want an argument by the use of your term 'proponents of warming' line.

We hear plenty from those proponents. Even during this calendar year, articles such as these have abounded:

Greenland Is Melting Faster Than at Any Time in the Last 400 Years
Greenland’s ice is melting much faster than we thought. Here’s why that’s scary.
NASA gets up close with Greenland's melting ice
Watch billions of tons of ice collapse at once: How climate change is impacting Greenland's glaciers

Would've thought a return to the status quo was good news, but perhaps not.

 

[Wizard17]

The thing with climate is that is sporadic and it doesn't necessarily all go one way (hot or cold) the thing is what happens when climate change gets out of hand what would occur. The Permian mega extinction is one example (caused by Vulcanisation and Methane bubbling from deposits at the bottom of the sea) and that was the worst catastrophe in the history of life. But we are a fair bit away from that sort of disaster. Other smaller extinctions have happened recently because of the sporadic intervals in the last Ice Age which nearly wiped out our genus at one point.

We still haven't looked back enough into the past of the Earth's climate to work out the exact way in which it will behave in the future. Needs more research, but looking at the base data it is dangerous to life therefore dangerous to humans.

Not arguing anything, just curious about what it means. 2017 was apparently due to a hurricane that wended its way north and brought above-average snowfall, but I haven't seen an explanation for 2018 (nor any mainstream media coverage).

Going to be interesting if trends like this occur more often and thus starts to take moisture away from the equator.

 

[Mningasimisonda]

What do proponents of warming make of the past two years' increase in Greenland's ice mass, given it lies mostly inside the Arctic Circle where some have warned that ice-free northern summers are imminent?

I believe there's a change in wind patterns around the Arctic Circle where the wind runs in a wave like pattern around the Earth, so it could be part of that lottery, just like how each year half of the US (East/West) gets a warm winter and the other half freezes and gets buried in snow.

The other thing to note is that weather systems are chaotic. Draw a graph of the overall amount of ice over a long period rather than a graph of some short term variations and you'll see a very different story.

Science is the study of what is and involves looking at the sum of it all, and what is really happening. Things like choosing a graph of the right scale and irrelevant measure to fit an argument belong more in politics and are really an abstract marketing exercise rather than a search for insight.

All the graph really shows is that weather is chaotic even when there is a long term trend. Also climate change is a better term, because climates shift as the Earth warms. For example, parts of Europe are meant to freeze as the Gulf Stream slows, but having a colder Europe would not mean climate change is not an issue, rather it would demonstrate that significant and detrimental changes are occurring.

 

[Chief]

The Permian mega extinction is one example (caused by Vulcanisation and Methane bubbling from deposits at the bottom of the sea)

i don’t know that this is settled - there are a number of theories as far as I know.

 

[Wizard17]

i don’t know that this is settled - there are a number of theories as far as I know.

Yes there appears to be a lot of different theories as to what happened but the Siberian traps and the unusually high levels of Pyrite in the layer where the event occurred point to oxygen-less seas and high sulphur content that you'd expect from acid rain from the traps. Plants from the same period on land show similar mutations to deal with an atmosphere that was very badly polluted. I've seen a theory that the extinction event was made worse by a meteorite strike but it is clear that other events made the issue worse even then. Perfect storm sort of event in my opinion.

 

[Bollox]

Now I'm not advocating that we use anecdotal evidence to support our beliefs, but...

Apparently it is the hottest day on record (according to my wife's reading of the the BOM site) here in Queensland. I suppose this probably means that the average temperature of the state is highest on record. Although it just may be that this is the hottest average temperature recorded on this date???

She also tells me that this comes after the hottest year on record (2016) and the hottest decade on record where 9 of the hottest 10 years recorded were recorded in the last decade.

All I know is that it is hot. Hotter than I have ever experienced before and looking at the trend - it will only get hotter.

Is this the world we want to bequeath to our kids?

You decided that "all you know" is that is "hotter than i have ever experienced".
Then went on to conclude it will only get hotter, based upon which trend ?

For starters your own perception of how it is "hotter" than you have ever experienced is utter nonsense. You have no ability to feel that within your lifetime. There are too many variables, both physically and psychologically. As we age our perception of temperature changes for starters, We start "to feel the cold AND feel the heat".
15yrs ago i sat wrapped in a blanket watching two of my nephews not even hesitate to run into the Derwent River in Hobart on a chilly day, not even a second thought. Young men now and they'd run a mile claiming they;d freeze to death instantly. Its a lot colder ? Feels colder ? Told it was Cold ? Got smarter ? Got lazier ? Similarly when i did some field work in my 20's near the Gibson Desert during one summer i remember it being hot as hell, but nothing like i would feel if i were to go out there at the same time of year now. I'd feel like i was about to die of exposure instead of being able to walk around and not even concern myself with the heat after awhile.
With recorded 100year temperature changes, how it "feels" to you is an entirely psychological response. Within standard errors you cannot possibly physically detect even the more wild and ridiculous claims of warming or cooling (say perhaps 2deg C) since you were a kid. We might think we could, but we cant seriously claim to be able to correlate relatively minute mean temperature changes within our lifetimes.
In colloquial terms...its utter bullshit and you are better off reminding yourself of exactly that.

 

[Thegibbsgamble]

In my lifetime half of all species have been made exintct due to western civilisation mostly.

Two thirds of all trees gone


All but one major river system halted

All are filters for carbon.

In this time we've pumped massive amounts of carbon out.

It's pretty basic s**t

 

[Clems Knee]

So the predictions of Climate scientists and economists such as Garnaut are coming true.
The amount of Carbon Dioxide released in the fire emergency across the states will only add to our problems.

Is the science settled?
If not, where is the evidence for this?
If so, what do the scientists say we can do about it?

Can we reverse or reduce the effects of climate change?
What technologies are needed to do so?

Is it time to give up on these ideas and just try to adapt to the predicted changes? Give up on having natural areas, abandon farms in marginal areas, move from the coast, accept the loss of many key species.

 

[GreyCrow]

Give up on having natural areas, abandon farms in marginal areas, move from the coast, accept the loss of many key species.

Why would all these be affected?

Natural areas are fine , they will always come back and regrow. Its not about abandoning farms but changing what is farmed. Then you want people to move from the coast - to where? Those abandoned marginal farms?

What key species will be affected and how?

 

[Clems Knee]

Why would all these be affected?

Natural areas are fine , they will always come back and regrow. Its not about abandoning farms but changing what is farmed. Then you want people to move from the coast - to where? Those abandoned marginal farms?

What key species will be affected and how?

Firstly, I don’t want any of this.

It was a thought about the consequences of giving up on reducing carbon emissions - which is in effect what has happened so far.

Large scale bushfires are inevitable and will increase in intensity if the natural forests remain. In that case I think it’s likely that regular smaller scale burning will change the hinterland so that it couldn’t be termed natural. That would lead to a major change in the biota.

Many farmland areas are marginal at the moment. What do you think they change either farms to? There are large areas of desert that have never been farmed, because it is uneconomic to do so. That area will extend in the near future.

The sea level rise has been predicted often as a result of increased temperatures. At the moment the measurable rise is due to thermal expansion - it just means high tide is higher and there is more coastal erosion, affecting homes on the coast. The evidence for a comparatively quick collapse of ice fields above land is pretty compelling. When Greenland’s ice shelf and the Antarctic ice shelves melt, there will be much larger sea level rise, causing damage in coastal cities around the world. NASA.gov states that Greenland has enough ice to raise sea levels by 6 metres. The Antarctic has enough to raise sea levels by a further 80 metres. Greenland and Antarctica lost an estimated 400 gigatons of ice in the last year.

Where do people go? There’s the rub. You can guarantee that insurance companies won’t be paying for the movement of people. Our economy will probably be driven by the disaster effort in the same way that the Christchurch economy benefitted from the rebuilding effort.

As far as key species, a lot of resources have been spent on saving endangered and critically endangered species from extinction. I think that will be seen as an impossibility. Species that are currently listed as vulnerable will move towards endangered and the resources may be spent on those species.

I haven’t even got to the really scary stuff which needs further research. Stuff like the acidification of the oceans and the collapse of calcified organisms and their ecosystems leading to anoxic environments and the collapse of oceanic fishing industries. Stuff that we will only notice how bad it is when it’s way too late to do anything significant about.

I think an effort to reduce the effects of global climate change is worth taking. It’s not enough to accept that this is what will happen and for us to try to adapt to the changes.

 

[Snake_Baker]

Moderators, please redirect this thread to the SRP board.