Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - May 31, 2011 - 11:23am PT
|
A flat or declining population has to have one of 3 sources?
1. Limited resources (ie starvation of various sorts)
2. Cultural change
3. Government imposition
Dingus, I hate to rain on your parade, but I can think of a couple of other sources. I suppose war is covered by #3 above, but disease and other natural events would be a solid #4. Godzilla could be #5, a truly unnatural event!
|
|
k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - May 31, 2011 - 01:02pm PT
|
Never mind the methane and all that other jazz, when the Arctic melts the Blob will thaw.
That's when we'll really know trouble.
|
|
barry ohm
Trad climber
escondido, ca
|
|
|
May 31, 2011 - 04:16pm PT
|
Any bets if there will be a june powder day in mammoth? Monday wasn't bad ski-n
Oops this is the climbing forum!
|
|
Ashcroft
Trad climber
SLC, UT
|
|
|
May 31, 2011 - 07:48pm PT
|
A flat or declining population has to have one of 3 sources?
1. Limited resources (ie starvation of various sorts)
2. Cultural change
3. Government imposition
Among many reasons to be discouraged, there are occasional reasons to be cautiously optimistic. It turns out that one of the factors that leads to smaller families is education and empowerment of girls. So education of girls looks like a win both for immediate humanitarian reasons and for future population reasons.
|
|
Ashcroft
Trad climber
SLC, UT
|
|
|
May 31, 2011 - 08:31pm PT
|
Ashcroft, I was being facetious. It is interesting however that people not yet born in a distant future seem to be of more importance than people living right now. The most important thing to the people I'm talking about is not a storm or flood some years hence but whether or not they can eat and feed their families right now.
Dropline, I see now that you were being facetious. I normally have a pretty good sense of humor, but it gets thin on some topics. Sorry I misinterpreted you.
I'll have to think some more about the way you've framed the issue, (which is not how I typically think of it). If our highest priority were the welfare of people around the world now living at the bottom of the economic ladder - people who may be starving to death right now - what climate and energy policy would that dictate.
|
|
Dropline
Mountain climber
Somewhere Up There
|
|
Non-synthetic fertilizer, meaning organic and from natural and renewable sources is much more expensive, and there simply isn't enough of it to go around.
Synthetic fertilizer is non-sustainable, as are internal combustion engines, coal fired electric plants, jet engines, etc. As the supply of fossil fuels goes down substitutions will become economically more viable. Limiting carbon emissions now with cap and trade will accelerate those substitutions. I get that. But at what cost and to whom?.
Regarding population. Most population increases are coming in countries where the average per capita carbon emissions are very low. I think I mentioned previously that the the estimated leveling off of world population has been revised upward from 9 billion to 10 billion people because an additional billion people are expected in Africa. Most of the countries in Africa that have high growth rates have per capita CO2 emission in a range from 0.1 to 0.4 metric tons per year.
For convenience sake let's say it's 0.3 metric tons on average. If CO2 emission patterns remain the same those billion people, added between 2050 and 2100, will emit per year just 4.5% of the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases we here in the US do right now.
So we are the bigger part of problem and we don't want to change our ways. Significant portions of the US population think the whole planet is going to get blottoed after the rapture. A whole raft of people don't think the planet is warming and if it is they don't think human activity has much to do with it. Such folks are a significant part of the political landscape.
Even the most progressive of nature lovers, like we climbers, have little interest in changing our ways. We want to drive and fly to climb. We want food from all over the country and sometimes the world. Those of us in warmer climes want air conditioning and those of us in colder climbs want to be warm in winter. We love cool outdoor clothing and cool gear that's made all over the world. We think the idea of green energy is great but we don't want to pay for it. When push comes to shove we want our energy at Walmart prices.
And it's fair to say most everyone wants their eight metric tons per capita per year worth of government services, except maybe the tea partiers.
For the most part mitigation of GHG to the levels required (<3.0 metric tons) via politically palatable government regulation looks like a dead horse.
Should we give up on mitigation completely? No. But pragmatically it's time to plan to deal with warmer temperatures and their effects and also to fund research on geo-engineering solutions.
|
|
corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
|
|
Dropline - Like many others I agree with your reasoning.
Some Euro news
Danish Veterinary and Food Administration has banned Marmite. A product
similar to Vegemite. Its made out of dead yeast leftover from brewing beer
and tastes remarkably like dead yeast.
Some bureaucratic double-talk about the vitamin levels in the product. So its banned in Denmark just like that.
But...my theory
The Danes are really banning it because during the Copenhagen climate summit they were embarrassed by their huge failure and are now striking back in a rather childish way.
See.. making beer releases a lot of CO2 (never mind the process is carbon
neutral) and Marmite is made out of evil CO2 releasing yeast.
Get it? Warmists don't like yeast. Which means they hate BEER!
I predict their next step will be a carbon tax on all products containing fermented ingredients like bread, wine, and beer making them cost more.
If the Warmists think they were getting bad press before just wait.
http://www.warwickdailynews.com.au/story/2011/03/25/passion-and-politics-can-be-real-turn-offs/
http://www.thelocal.se/34126/20110601/
They definitely hate it! Denmark BANS Marmite... because it has too many vitamins (oh sure!)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1390419/Marmite-banned-Denmark-contains-vitamins.html#ixzz1O5NC1GBn
|
|
Mimi
climber
|
|
Ed, if subsidies dropped out of the picture so the market determined what was viable, we'd be better off. Just say no to corn syrup and ethanol.
|
|
Mimi
climber
|
|
Because ammonia is made using lots of natural gas, fertilizer prices always rise (with a lag) when NG prices rise and so does food due to the fertilizer used to grow it. And when NG is high, so too are oil and refined fuels so transportation costs for food increases. The demand (and cost) for fossil fuels hits all sectors. What regulation are you referring to?
I believe when you have an educated populace, the market does work in a positive way. I was merely ribbing the corn lobby; I don't see much difference between Big Corn and Big Oil. Global warming; diabetes. Both behavioral adjustments to solve a big problem.
|
|
Dropline
Mountain climber
Somewhere Up There
|
|
as far as taking farming subsides off will not necessarily fix the situation... the market is not a magic solution that fixes everything, at least not the people the Dropline is concerned about.
Surely markets are not magic, but as has been amply pointed out, if the cost of energy goes up, because of cap and trade or any other reason, the cost of fertilizer and in turn food goes up. For already undernourished people this is a matter of life and death.
|
|
corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
|
|
D.M . excellent point. Seriously cutting back on handouts in a bipartisan
way may just equalize the number of votes lost to both R's and D's by
angry cut-ee's so it'll be a wash. Smart move.
B.K. -where did your sense of humor go?
|
|
k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Jun 2, 2011 - 06:05pm PT
|
B.K. -where did your sense of humor go?
Cornhole.... once again your logic is impeccable. Thank you for being the lonely beacon of tortured and twisted light amidst a sea of foolish reason. Without you this thread would be a one way street going somewhere
I don't know CC, that stuff that Bruce came up with was damn funny.
You, on the other hand, are funny too. But in a completely different way.
|
|
Dropline
Mountain climber
Somewhere Up There
|
|
The inclusion of Katrina demonstrates the sensational intent of the author. The only thing unusual about that hurricane was it hit a city built on a sinking river delta. Had Katrina hit 100 miles west of New Orleans no one would remember its name.
|
|
Oxymoron
Big Wall climber
total Disarray
|
|
Rita. Remember Lake Charles?
|
|
Dropline
Mountain climber
Somewhere Up There
|
|
What about the 1938 New England hurricane? Was that related to AGW?
|
|
corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
|
|
Its a fact that people will pay good money for reliable weather forecasts,
economic forecasts, or any prediction of the future that has a real chance of
coming true when it affects their bottom line.
|
|
shut up and pull
climber
|
|
The Global Warming Hoax: A Summary
October 3, 2010
Global warming alarmism is not science. It is a toxic combination of pseudo-religion and totalitarian politics. To the extent that there is any debate over climate science--the alarmists run from debate like vampires fleeing garlic--the "skeptics" always win. If you want to follow climate science controversies in a rigorous but accessible fashion, check out the Science and Environmental Policy Project's web site. Among other things, it features a weekly update on matters relating to the global warming debate.
This week's SEPP newsletter includes an excellent piece by Dr. Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, a former United States Senator from New Mexico as well as a geologist and former Apollo astronaut who currently is an aerospace consultant. Dr. Schmitt reviews some of the basic evidence that the alarmists try to wish away. You really should read it all; here are some excerpts:
Policy makers at the head of government in the United States and elsewhere apparently want to believe, and to have others believe, that human use of fossil fuels accelerates global warming. They pursue this quest in order to impose ever greater and clearly unconstitutional control on the economy and personal liberty in the name of a hypothetically omnipotent government. There exists no true concern by the President or Congressional Leadership about the true effects of climate change - only a poorly concealed, ideologically driven attempt to use conjured up threats of catastrophic consequences as a lever to gain authoritarian control of society.
There has been an absolute natural increase in global surface temperature of half a degree Centigrade per 100 years (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) over the last three and a half centuries. Observational climate data and objective interpretations of those data strongly indicate that nature, not human activity, exerts the primary influence on this current long term warming and on all global climate variations. Human influence through use of fossil fuels has been and remains minor if even detectable. Claims to the contrary only find support in highly questionable climate models that fail repeatedly against the reality of nature. What, then, stimulates historically and geologically observed, sometimes slow and sometimes radical, changes in climate?
The primary alternative hypothesis to human-caused global warming is natural climate change driven by the Sun. ... As many scientists have documented, the position and orientation of the Earth in its orbit around the sun, and the Sun's variable influence and activity, determine weather and climate. Seasons vary because of changing solar energy input in annual response to the varying orientation of Earth's Northern and Southern Hemispheres. ... Further, variations in solar radiation received by the Earth correlate with short-term variations in Earth's weather, based on the slow movement of loops called "Rossby waves" in atmospheric jet streams.
Observations by astronomers over the centuries, as well as studies of tree rings, stalagmite layers, and other pre-historic and geological records, have defined an 11-year sunspot cycle superimposed on a number of longer climate cycles. Much modern research documents that the sunspot cycle also correlates with variations in stratospheric winds and ozone production, cosmic ray flux, ionosphere-troposphere interactions, and the global electrical circuit that exists between the ionosphere and the Earth's surface.
Correlations of records of seasonal changes, solar activity cycles, and local and regional rainfall oscillations all confirm that in some way radiation emanating from the Sun drives changes in weather and climate. Solar interplanetary magnetic fields, whose polarity varies every 22 years or twice the sunspot cycle, may play an additional role as their strength varies directly with increases and decreases in numbers of sunspots. ...
More broadly, geological and planetological observations show that major perturbations in climate relate to the position and orientation of the Earth in its orbit around the Sun. For example, as Serbian mathematician Milutin Milankovic pointed out in 1941, as have many others since, initiation of the major ice ages on Earth correlate with a 23,000-year precession cycle, a 41,000-year obliquity cycle, and a 100,000-year eccentricity cycle in the position of the Earth relative to the Sun. ...
Climate cycles related to internal solar activity are superposed on long-term orbital cycles. For example, the Medieval Warm Period (800-1300) and the Little Ice Age (1400-1900) correlate, respectively, with very active and very passive periods of recorded sunspot activity. As a fairly recent example of solar influence on climate, the Little Ice Age occurred during a 500-year long sequence of three deep reductions in sunspot frequency. The coldest temperatures came during the last of these minima, a 70- year period of exceptionally few sunspots (the Maunder Minimum). The Medieval Warm Period, (when the Vikings colonized Greenland, glaciers retreated, and farmers could at least survive) also correlates to repeated multi-century long, high sunspot frequency.
Since the end of the early 1900s, peak values in sunspot activity rose steadily until 1960, leveling off at higher than normal values until apparently starting to fall about 2000.
The 11-year sunspot cycle repetitions are superimposed on a number of long-term cycles of past highs and lows in solar activity. For example, the Gleissberg cycle has imprecisely defined periods of 90 ± 30 years in length. More energetic sunspot activity in the Gleissberg cycle may correlate with temporary decades of warming, such as in the 1930s and 1990s with the reverse being true in the 1810s and 1910s. Analyses of tree rings, lake levels, cave deposits, tree ring variations in cosmic ray-produced isotopes (14C and 10Be), and oxygen isotope ratios record what appear to be other long period solar cycles, specifically, 2400, 1500 years, 200, as well as the Gleissberg cycle.
Many advocates of human-caused global warming agree that solar cycles show correlations with regional climate variations; but, absent a proven amplification mechanism to enhance small solar energy (irradiance) variations, they reject nature in favor of fossil fuel burning.
It is worth noting that the alarmists are inconsistent, in that their own theory, that carbon dioxide is a sort of thermostat that controls Earth's temperature, is plausible only if all objective effects of CO2 in the atmosphere are multiplied by "positive feedbacks" of various kinds. The difference is that empirically, Earth's temperatures correlate closely with solar activity, while they correlate hardly at all with the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, which has varied widely over geologic history.
Specifically with respect to the last 120 years, the correlation of measured solar energy input variations with global surface temperature and sea surface temperature is very strong. The statistical correlation of solar irradiance with air temperature has been about 79%. In contrast, during the last 50 years, the correlation of measured carbon dioxide increases with global surface temperature has been only about 22%. This directly contradicts the assumption that carbon dioxide has had a large influence on climate in the last 50 years. ...
Additional support that an amplification mechanism exists comes from recent observational data on variations in stratospheric water vapor concentrations over three decades. These data suggest that decreases in water vapor have contributed to amplified sea surface cooling since 2000 while increases between 1980 and 2000 accented surface warming. This relationship may correspond with stratospheric cooling and lower water retention due to lower than average solar energy input since 2000.
Climate change driven by the Sun constitutes a strongly competitive, purely scientific hypothesis to the climate modeling-political hypothesis of human-caused global warming advocated by climate modelers and their acolytes in the science, media, and political establishments. ... The current decade or longer period of cold winters in the northern United States and Europe coincide with a relatively prolonged reduction in sunspot activity below even the norm for a minimum in the 11-year cycle.
Actual observations show that climate varies in response to natural forces and that human burning of fossil fuels has had negligible effect over the last 100 years.
by Powerline
|
|
Mimi
climber
|
|
Oxy, I thnk you're the only person on here that ever heard of Rita or Lake Chuck. LOL!
|
|
corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
|
|
Ed - It means the only path for humanity to follow is adapting to any climate variation that happens.
...and make sure everyone understands CO2 is not pollution.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!