CAN THERE BE ANY DOUBT--WE ARE LIVING IN THE ERA OF GLOBAL WARMING

You mean migrate--when sea level rise hits two meters, Miami becomes a salt water swamp. A whole heap of other cities are screwed, too. Holland, prepared for such events, will get screwed as water comes in from Germany and Belgium. Bangladesh has recently provided space for Rohingya refugees from Burma. Two meters of sea level rise, and the Bengalis and the Rohingya can start looking for someone else to house them (and feed them).

As recently as a few years ago, people were saying that the Antarctic ice shelves would start breaking up in 50 to 100 years. That was way too optimistic. A little over a year ago, an iceberg nearly as large as the state of Delaware broke off one of the ice shelves. There are huge melt lakes on the Greenland glaciers every summer, and its only a matter of time before those start running off. Continental glaciers in Europe and the Americas are shrinking every year.

It's not only the science denying nut bags who doubt this--the energy industries who rely on fossil fuels have spent millions to deny this is happaning. After all, their CEOs, CFOs and board members live in gated communities. When the oceans begin inundating prime farm land all over the globe, they'll have private, armed security forces to drive back the starving masses.

May you live in interesting times.

Discussions now surround the "feedback mechanisms" that if broken down, could fail us in a fashion much quicker than some climate models have predicted.

Chesapeake and intercoastal waterway islands are even now disappering at rates more speedy than originally predicted. You can se shallow rooted trees down the intercoastal that have died by root contact with brackish waters, all within the last 10 years.

The environmental patterns are now fairly visible

I'm not too concerned about this, since we have pretty close ties now, given our combined membership of the EU. Given that the climate problem is mondial, and global cooperation is required, I can't imagine this will fly under the radar...



I have often wondered if it would indeed go that way. I'm pretty sure they (the execs that is) would hunker down in safety, but would the armed forces indeed be committed to actually gunning down their fellow countrymen, possibly even their familymembers? Especially since I doubt any sort of currency would survive such a global disaster... How will they pay their security force, if money might be worthless?

Perhaps you may recall when the whole cabal of Tobacco Company CEO's lined up in front of a Congressional Hearing and swearing under oath that"to the best science available to them , cigarettes were not responsible in any way as a causative element for the incidence of lung cancer in humans.

I wouldnt believe any of the climate science published by th major oil companies of the world, its the real xample of "fake news"

I think you underestimate the denialists.

If it’s any consolation, there’s nothing we can do to stop the warming anyway. Maybe 50 years ago, but not now. And remember, warming spikes always trigger ice ages. It’s all in the ice core data.

Yeah? When should we be expecting that?

theres much research on consequential events. Richard Alley stated that we can expect an indefinite period of intense effects from the overheating followed by a critical weakening of the North Atlantic Overturning Circulation system ((they call it NAMoC) as well as the entire global "return" oceanic currents. I know that this research pace and gizmo dvelopment has kicked into a high gear in the last 10 years or so.(Some wag recently developed a micro reflection seismic tool that is able to distinguish the density differences between warm v cold thermohaline water lines), and these tools show that the NAMoC has declined about 20% since the mid last century.

This means that , as the poles melt, that resulting cold meltwater, more fresh than the warmer currents will dive beneath and mix with the currents like the gulf stream and lessen their abilities to modify and warm mid latitude climates. I can remember walking around Dublin in Januaries and seeing daffodils bloom and see palm trees in the public parks while across the Atlantic, in the same latitude at the same time of year sits Labrador where the ground is deeply covered with snow and its a Northern boreal forest(no wild palms in Labrador ). So, WIthout the Gulf stream Much of France and the British Isles would be like Northern Canada in winter.
Yeh, Global warming can trigger the next ice age. What we cannot answer is "How long will the intense warmup last? 200 years? 1000 years? ". In all cases the scenario that probably will play out is an intense global warmup with really significant insolation increases that can raise the planets temp to dangerous levels. Then , if the carbon bank is significant it could stimulate the ice age theory because the global circulation shuts down (OR), if the available carbon is really high and a warmup is more intense, the planet could shoot past a new ice age altogether, like what occured in several geologic ages during which the polar regions were tropical seas.

A few supervolcanoes precisely timed by the intelligent overlord could, of course , mollify the heat binge and bring about a "nuclear winter' where we could possibly lose Canada to 2 mile thick snowdrifts.(, on second thought, naaah,At least Canayja is prepared to handle it way better than the UK and (heeh Heeh) FRANCE). An ice age in France would be like a heavy frost in Miami. People would die in the millions trying to shovel the damn stuff. But, thats another topic entirely, "can the French even shovel snow?"

I was thinking that the mass decline of rainforests around the world in the last 100yrs or so up to now, has been one of the main triggers for global warming, since they are our main filters for cleaning our atmosphere. I thought it would be hopeless to worry about carbon emissions when we don't have enough trees anymore to filter out that stuff, plant more trees I would think

There has been an "interior" cycle of 1700 to 2300 years in the larger cooling/heating cycles, which was first noticed by historians. In particular, what is now called the 4.2 kiloyear event was first noticed by historians because of the profound effects of extreme aridity--the collapse of the Middle Kingdom in Egypt, the collapse of Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia, the collapse of the Indus River Valley civilization, and similar events in China. Scholars consulted with people in other disciplines, mainly wanting to know why the aridity occurred. That was when the cooling period was noted, and since then, earlier events of this type have been noted. The cooling basement, so to speak, for which there are recent historical accounts was at the beginning of the 18th century. If it can be demonstrated that that was an event like the 4.2 kiloyear event, then we are on the rising side of climate change, which will not return to the cooling basement again until 3400 or even 4000. It could be 2500 or later before this spike begins to taper off. Leaving aide volcanism's wild card, we don't really know what to expect, because the bitter winter of 1709-10 took place at a time when human impact on climate was negligible. Of course, the volcanism can have a dramatic effect. Five major volcanic eruptions between 1812 and 1815 lead to a drastic and rapid cooling event--a matter of months--resulting in what was called "the year without a summer," 1816. As I said, interesting times.

I'm not doubting they would back up false data and swear before the courts they knew of no wrongdoings. I am by now pretty much convinced that the CEO's of all major global companies have no moral code at all. Morals get in the way of being successful in business, after all.

I'm doubting whether they would indeed be able to escape the consequences of a global disaster in the way Setanta described. I know there are a number of people out there willing to do everything for money, but even they may balk to use live rounds on the victims of a disaster the people they are defending are responsible for.

I know, but this remains an important issue. After all, now we get to play the blame game, and I'm pretty sure that once denialists are indeed confronted with the disastrous results of climate change, they'll refuse to accept blame. I'm positive for instance that a certain individual, together with the posse behind him who take everything he says as gospel, will place the blame on either:

a. The EU. Or China. Or any other country apart from the US.
b. the progressives/liberals in general.
c. Obama/Hillary.

where the problems have been reported/recorded for at least 50 years

can't recommend this book enough to people interested in the globe/climate

https://www.cbc.ca/books/canadareads/the-right-to-be-cold-1.3969500

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/book-reviews/the-right-to-be-cold-a-courageous-and-revelatory-memoir/article23449642/




a really interesting mix of science, politics, biography

please ask your library to order it

sounds neat. I will get a copy and then turn it over to our library cause we arent well funded out here and our local library is a sub-s corp. So we look out after ourselves(Besides it keeps books and mags from piling up at home)
I urge folks to do that. Just one mag subscription or book ayear can make big dents in the knowledge vacuum that our kids are exposed to.

Thanks for supporting your library. They are important to our communities.

I also recommend keeping an ear/eye out for Ms. Watt-Cloutier as a speaker locally.

I don't know. I wish I did. My crystal ball tells me that it will start sooner than most scientists expect, but you know how reliable crystal balls are

What I know for certain is that the ice core data shows a clear cyclic pattern to warming spikes. And they are spikes for a reason, because all warming events over the last several hundred thousand years result in rapid glaciations (which are actually the norm for Earth. We are currently in one of the shorter warm periods.)

What don't know for certain, but can infer from the data, is that there is some type of natural balance point in the climate where something occurs which shifts the warming pattern to a freezing pattern, and I'm pretty sure it's the Thermohaline cycle (levels of salt) in the oceans which drive major ocean currents (but that's just my amateur opinion).

Farmerman is correct that if the degree of warming this time around is sufficiently energetic, it may exceed the counter-cycle and supersede any changes in the ocean, but I doubt that will happen. It generally takes an order of magnitude change in the atmosphere to match the influence of the oceans (they are more dense and trap far more energy).

Yeh, the blame game is fun, but it won't change anything.

The climate is warming. It's been warming for thousands of years. And now humans are helping it warm. So even if we stop all our activities tomorrow, it's just going to continue to warm. Eventually it'll hit the next trigger point, then it will probably cool.

The best thing humanity can do is rush to make renewable energy sources economically viable so that there is a natural shift away from fossil fuels. The minute sun and wind become cheaper fuel sources everyone will shift to them, no legislation necessary. It'll also help to clean up hazardous pollution which may be more damaging than global warming. But once that's all said and done (maybe in a hundred years or so), the climate is still going to be warming until it hits that tipping point.

Ultimately humanity is going to have to weather the storm (climate storms; warming or glaciating), because we live on a planet that changes over time. Whether it's us or volcano's or asteroids or solar cycles, it's easier for us to move cities than it is to alter the climate.

I think we should clean up our messes just because it's the right thing to do, not because we're trying to manage the climate.

ultimately we're temporary residents/stinky guests (imnsho)

and we clean up

Not to worry, in a hundred years CRISPR is going to allow us to survive in carcinogenic environments and zero gravity. So as long as we don't screw up before then, we should be able to artificially adapt to any mess we make.