jerome t. scuggs' weekly politix thread

[DankNuggets]

Within our lifetimes, the important matter is that we'd be fundamentally altering this planet for the worse for most people who live on the planet (yes the Saskatchewan farmers that stand to gain from longer growing seasons are in the minority of the planet's population) from ruining of many agricultural lands, creating vastly more deserts, submerging large areas of cities and from increasing tropical disease as the climate is better for disease vectors such as mosquitos to spread.

We make it better in one place, and worse in another. It's the way of change. A lot of our agricultural land wasn't always agricultural land. Slashing and burning in the name of crops may hurt the earth, but it's necessary for people to live. We can adapt, we are the chosen species.

The folly of it all is that we can easily stop it if we just tried. The truly ironic thing is, we don't even want to try because of an idea that trying to stop climate change would 'ruin the economy' (aka quality of life) when in reality, changing the environment as significantly as global warming will do, will dramatically alter our quality of life for the worse much more than any % loss of GDP growth that we can fathom from combating man-made climate change.

Easily? if it would ruin the quality of life, then it's not easy. Like i said, i'm not going back to pre-columbian ways, and i wouldn't expect anyone else too. Otherwise, creating new technologies and such isn't easy. We're overpopulating the planet. That's a bigger issue than global warming, and one that might be "easier" to halt. We'll run out of crop land from increased demand before we run out of it form global warming. people already starving everywhere, but we should strive to protect there right to starve for eternity.






phew! that felt good. feel free to pick it apart and call me an idiot, just please give me something to argue with besides that. I might seem angry or w/e but i'm not. It's just that that post was the best thing i've read/responded to in weeks. It gets boring when you just name call and "LOL".

[Epinephrine]

I'm not contradicting myself, i'm playing devil's advocate to something that is beyond the complete comprehension of any one person, and probably the collective intellegence of all mankind. It's foolish to believe we can purposely change the entire climate or predict what will happen down to a T, especially something as nitpicky and speculative as where deserts (based more on weather patterns than shear temperatures) will appear, and how much a body of water that's also beyond measurement will change based on predicted values. We're more than extrapolating, we're doing some good ol' fashion bullshitting. None of this science has been observed enough to predict what will happen. Go ahead and predict the end of the world, that's the more interesting view. I'm gonna stick with boring checks and balances.

Yes it's an extrapolation, but even if you don't believe me, I did get a lot of my information from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ( http://www.ipcc.ch/ ) which I assume at least thousands of experts who spend their lives doing this stuff would probably be more right than you or me.

Even if you don't believe me, there's the more easy to see evidence of glaciers around the world shrinking, the ice sheets on Greenland actually getting smaller as measured by NASA satellites, and reports of more and more water channels opening up in the arctic ocean every year.

Global warming is a fact, the only things left to debate are the effects and how far it will go.

well i find it hard to believe that it will increase at a rate faster than it is now (with arctic ice), that's observable. I find it had to believe because the sketchy info i could find on measured sea level rise and temperature rising shows no actual correlation, just coincidence. A) because we measure mainly ocean surface temperatures, you can't say that it'll warm water 200m below the surface. B) there are too many other factors that aren't held in control to show it's the temperature thats making the ocean expand, not the addition of other water or a myriad of other conditions that effect sea level. So i say that it's a moot point to say that the oceans will all expand because of melting polar ice. 1- can't prove it will expand simply because water in a test tube (controlled environment) expands. Yes water expands when heated, but becuase it's only heated from the top, it will either stratify, with only the top layer expanding, or it will mix and the water really won't get much hotter.

i'm no astronomer, but i'm sure that it's not exactly the same amount of energy day in day out, but it's probably close enough to not argue that. And since the earth's axis is on a tilt, it doesnt. i guess you mean year in and year out, but that's not what i'm talking about. i thought we were talking about seasonal consequences.

Also, i don't think a large amout does reflect back. Why? because a large amount isn't ice, so by definition, it's not large. Needless to say, more will bounce back with ice than without, but it's not reflecting nearly as much as say the atmosphere. Also, that energy has already been trapped in the atmosphere, so unless we burn another hole in the ozone layer (some scientists actually want to do this) it's not going back into space.

well i don't think the ocean's gonna absorb it all. the ocean actually does reflect some back, but since it's water, it takes a lot of energy to heat up. conversely it takes a lot to cool off. land heats and cools a lot faster, so i don't think it'll heat up the earth (as in the land). All it's gonna do is get trapped in the atmosphere and make it hotter in the air. Yes, that's bad and will have consequences, but i don't think it's the same consequences that you're coming up with. Shorter/longer sea ice seasons are a byproduct of global warming, not a cause of it.

Look, we both can agree that ice reflects more than water, after all ice is white and white reflects. What I don't agree with you is that somehow all that reflected heat stays in the atmosphere anyway. Actually the entire point of 'greenhouse gases' is that oxygen is actually a poor trapper of heat. Meanwhile other gases are able to hold solar energy much better. CO2 is not THAT great a greenhouse gas either, the most powerful would be methane, but CO2 IS much better at trapping heat than oxygen, at least enough so that on the planetary scale it makes enough of a difference that we can notice the effects.

The ozone layer meanwhile has absolutely nothing to do with trapping heat (although I guess it traps a small bit), but rather it helps filter out solar radiation from actually ENTERING the atmosphere in the first place, so it's a moot point.

My point is that, when ice reflects the energy from the sun, a lot of it really DOES radiate back into space and does not get trapped. Meanwhile because water does not reflect as well, it ends up HOLDING more heat. Yes you are correct that it's only the upper levels of water that are heated, but then again when you continuously heat something, even if it's very slowly, eventually that something will be much hotter than if you didn't continuously heat it. I think that's just common sense.

Without using too much math, I will try and explain. So the way it works is the following. As an example, currently let's say the temperature of ice is -10 degrees Celsius in the winter. The summer heat will heat up the ice to just below 0, and then in winter it goes back to -10. Now, thanks to global warming and the trapping of solar heat everywhere on the earth, now the temperature of ice in the winter at this point is -5. The summer heat gets it up to +3 (we lose a bit of heat thanks to the latent heat of melting, and water's specific heat capacity is actually around double that of ice). BUT that's under the old model. Because water actually absorbs more heat than ice, once the H2O reaches liquid form, it suddenly starts absorbing far more energy than the ice. This means that for the water might actually go up to +3.5 celsius for instance. Then as winter onsets, the ice will only go back to -4 degrees instead of -5 thanks to the extra energy that the water gained while in liquid form. This means the next year the summer energy is enough to make the water go up to +4 celsius, and the ice is at -3 and so on and so on, until we reach the limit of what the water will get given the amount of actual solar energy that reaches the earth every year.

While I don't have all the calculations, people who know the calculations, have done it, and using computer models have predicted that the arctic will be relatively ice free in about 30 years. Now as anyone who lives near a body of water will tell you, it gets warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer because water's specific heat capacity heats up (in the winter) or cools down (in the summer) the area around it.

Let's consider Greenland, which is covered almost entirely by ice sheets 1-2km thick. For our purposes, we only need to worry about the heating up as the water is already surrounding greenland and keeps it extra cool in the summer. Because Greenland will now be surrounded by water instead of ice, it will get much warmer in the summer. This will make it much easier for the ice to start melting in greenland.

Now I admit it will take vast amounts of energy to melt ice 2km thick, but the problem is, recent findings have shown us that in fact you don't need to melt everything. Scientists have found that the melted water has been boring through the ice to reach the ground under the ice, and then acting as a cushion, it is letting the ice slide into the ocean. This vastly speeds up the rate at which the ice melts, and taking into account the amount of water in the world, there is more than enough heat stored in that water to make this a reality.

Now consider that the Antarctic also has massive ice sheets experiencing the exact same thing, taken together along with thermal expansion of water, this will raise the water level globally. No it won't go up 50 metres, but probably closer to 2-4 metres. Yet just that is enough to bury all the beaches around the world, and also bury a lot of areas of coastal cities and low lying countries as well (most of the Netherlands, and large areas of Florida and so on).

[Epinephrine]

you've accurately described the heating and cooling of the earth. i think scientists are aware of this, it's the same principle as ice ages in reverse. I don't think that's what we were debating, i'm fully aware the earth is getting hotter. i just don't think that the all the ice melting, which i'm starting to doubt will happen now, anyway, is gonna be a cause rather than an effect of global warming.

The icecaps/glaciers/ice sheets melting will be an effect of global warming. But once that ice is fully melted and the land and water underneath is exposed, it will be a contributor of global warming as well. Energy doesn't just disappear, and when you end up absorbing more energy, it will be there.

i was referring to the water that, previously shaded by ice, will be available for growth. The amount of light hitting earth doesn't change, but the amount of light hitting the ocean would. i think that's also a part of your arguement. Also, it's light that's needed, not heat. I don't know enough about it to know if they always go hand in hand, ie if the angle would effect heat and light absorption at the same rate.

Well even in the craziest of scenarios, the arctic will continue to freeze in the dead of winter, and when it's melted, it will probably still be below 10 degrees celcius. At these temperatures, there won't be significant life growing there. The bigger areas that WILL matter are say northern Canada and Russia where suddenly a lot of tundra will open up with life. The big thing about this is, this land would probably be used for agriculture and making new cities for those displaced from near the equator where it will be much too hot for most people to want to live, rather than allowing these massive areas to change into forests which absorb carbon FAR FAR better than say a farm.

i'm gonna go ahead and say i'm not qualified to conjecture anymore than you are on the future placement of deserts. Many things besides lattitude and temperature play into it. For ex, in the new world, more land is available in NA closer to the poles than the equator. in africa, it's the opposite. so higher temps would make NA more fertile and Africa less fertile under the assumption that only temps would play into it. I don't know how increased temps/sea level would affect wether patterns either. As it is now, a lot of deserts are deserts b/c the weather moves into a mountain range or something and it only rains on one side. Also, deserts exist at all lattitudes, as do forests (exception polar regions--all desert currently)

if it was even possible to predict where deserts would form and where new land would be viable, then we'd have an argument/debate on it. as it is now, we're both doing more than guessing at it.

Part of the global warming problem right now actually is that deserts are expanding at huge rates. The Sahara is expanding at insane rates, as is the Gobi. China is spending billions trying to reverse this with little success. One only has to visit cities like Xi'an to see how it is covered in a fine layer of sand from frequent sandstorms to see it first hand.

here's the magnanimous argument that i'll have to concede. Yes, it won't matter a million years from now. We're not adding carbon, we're extracting it. The problem isn't one of existance or utter destruction of life/human race, it's a problem of humanity. We'll either survive or die, that' probably out of our hands. What is in our hands is how we will live in the meantime. We can enjoy ourselves now and make life a lot harder in the future, or we can keep on going it hard as fuck for all eternity (i'm not gonna go back to plowing my own fields and walking everywhere). Face it, i think the quality of life is better WITH global warming than it was pre-Industrail revolution. Now the answer lies with being able to have it both ways: to have the environmental innocence of yesteryear, and to have the technology that's allowed mankind to flourish.

This is a commonly held fallacy that in order to stop global warming we have to go back to becoming cavemen. I personally don't think we will ever have the WILL to STOP global warming, but we can significantly slow it down enough that the change will be so gradual (over many centuries rather than over decades) that either technologies we can't even imagine will solve the problem, or at least we can easily adapt.

With some changes in how we manage things we can make a huge impact. For instance, it's estimated that 25% of global warming is caused by slashing and burning of tropical forests around the world. Rainforest wood is actually not really the best for building or fuel, but forests are increasingly cleared for agricultural production lands. The funny thing is, we already produce enough food on this Earth for everyone to have 3 decent meals a day. The problem is, a lot of land is either not fully utilized using modern technology (GM foods, mechanized farming, efficient farming methods) or we have rich countries where billions and billions of tonnes of food is wasted every year. Wasted either by overproduction (Canada is going to slaughter something like 50 million pigs and NOT SELL IT this year, so that pork prices stay artificially high for farmers), by poor usage of land (i.e. biodiesel using corn which wastes prime farmland and isn't even nearly close to the most efficient way of producing diesel) or by the fact that in the developed world we just eat TOO MUCH, with Americans eating vastly more than everyone else period. Secondly we're losing a lot of prime land for no reason other than to build more suburbs. For instance in the Toronto area, suburbs are built over some of the best agricultural land in all of Canada. Luckily the government has now created a greenbelt around the city to stop development, and I hope more places will adopt this.

So we have all these forests which are excellent holders of carbon being burned to create more land, when we could sacrifice some and use existing land more efficiently, which is just silly. The worst thing is, continuing pollution in countries like China has ruined a lot of prime land, and continuing global warming has screwed up the growing seasons (i.e. too hot = bad, and messed up weather patterns with more frequent storms and more drought periods in between is also bad for agriculture) enough to make a significant difference.


Secondly, we do a lot of things very inefficiently. For the price of an Iraq war (At least $500 billion and counting), we could have retrofitted all of our powerplants in North America to be super efficient and spew a lot less gases. Everyone could drive smaller cars in North America like they do in say Europe where you can still HAVE A CAR but it wastes a lot less. Luckily high oil is helping us with this very nicely.

Furthermore, the greenhouse gases created by energy production is ridiculous. For a few cents more per kilowatt hour (I guess a few hundred dollars more a person a year) we can change our entire energy infrastructure to take advantage of zero carbon technologies (wind, solar, etc) which already exist and whose price will sure fall with mass production.

Instead of flying everywhere for a cheap vacation (as Europeans are increasingly doing), a vastly superior high speed train network could be much more efficient and environmentally friendly. Yes, even European high speed trains could be made faster and more efficient.

Yes there are sacrifices, but in the end I think it's worth it. We already live much better than our parents generation did, and I think they grew up pretty happy. So maybe we don't all have 3 cars for a 4 person household, or don't have 5 TVs... but in exchange we can save a lot more. Even just listing the things that 'rich' people enjoy, we can see that it's important.

For instance, rising waters will completely ruin most of the natural beaches of the world, and many great island vacation spots. Global warming will also completely wipe out most of the ski resorts of the world (already having troubles with snow).

Meanwhile in terms of everyone, global warming will wipe out a lot of current ecosystems and habitats which will wipe out many more species on the planet which can't be good. Global warming will cause millions and millions to leave the tropics and flood the richer north and south. You think you have problems with Mexican immigrants now? Global warming will also help dry out rivers, lakes and freshwater, so that places where water supplies are already at it's limit (i.e. American west), will have increasing troubles. Global warming will also contribute to increasingly erratic weather patterns, more hurricanes, more storms, more droughts inbetween.

All of these changes will cost vast sums of money to fix. Either by relocating millions, damming up more rivers, damming up the ocean to save coastal cities, and so on, just to clean up the mess made by global warming will have serious financial consequences.

Obviously people will adapt, and the new 'warmer' world will be the new norm. But regardless, I don't think it's worth it at all. I think for the small changes that we need to do without being cavemen are more than worth it to preserve a lot of what's important on this Earth, and also will in the long run contribute to lower costs for all. Let's not be penny wise and pound foolish.


P.S. I'll stop now, handing the thread back to Jerome's weekly politix thread.

[milosh]

I'm going to get into the white paint market before some kind of future established global environment network makes painting your roof a necessary agreement. :greedy:

[DoTheFandango]

jesus christ.
tl;dr