Global Warming...Fact or Fiction?

[gunnut]

RealClimate: Sea level in the 5th IPCC report

It shows that even without Greenland or Antarctica land ice melting, it is projecting that sea level rise up to 98 cm, close to one meter. Throw in the land ice of Greenland and Antarctica, the estimates change.

Can you help me understand something here? Why would the sea level rise? And why does the study cite different level of "emissions" affecting the sea rising to different levels?

[Wooglin]

RealClimate: Sea level in the 5th IPCC report

It shows that even without Greenland or Antarctica land ice melting, it is projecting that sea level rise up to 98 cm, close to one meter. Throw in the land ice of Greenland and Antarctica, the estimates change. Try again, Sherlock Holmes.

You know, I don't mind trying to discuss this with the clueless, but your less than honest posts are becoming annoying. Once again, let's review...

Quote Originally Posted by Blademaster View Post
that's not what the scientists are saying. They are saying a 1-2 meter rise in sea levels. See here: Sea Level Rise -- National Geographic

If Greenland melts, London will be completely submerged.


Yes but when the time comes, it will skyrocket.

Who is saying 1-2 meter rise by 2100 exactly? I couldn't tell since the article has no citation. It doesn't make much to convince you does it?

As for what "scientists are saying", the IPCC report worst case scenario doesn't even get us 1 meter by 2100, and even that relies on a lot "ifs", just like you do.

https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/unfccc/cop19...ory13sbsta.pdf

After three tries you finally stumbled upon something actually relevant, so kudos to you for finally catching on. As to the IPCC projection, like I said, the worst case scenario doesn't yield even 1 meter by 2100, so there's nothing to try again. Your "consensus" says you are wrong. Your own link tells you you are wrong. Just accept it and try having an honest discussion.

It shows that even without Greenland or Antarctica land ice melting, it is projecting that sea level rise up to 98 cm, close to one meter. Throw in the land ice of Greenland and Antarctica, the estimates change.

First, the projections take ice loss into account. Try again. Better yet, try reading and comprehending. Second, your own link admits a best estimate of 74cm in the worst case scenario if emissions were much higher. The entire range of projections goes from 28cm to 98cm, best estimates are between, not at the extremes. Last i checked, 28cm to 98cm is not 1-2 meters.

QED

https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/unfccc/cop19...ory13sbsta.pdf

Are we done here now?

[Vargas]

That reminds me of 10-15 years ago, when people like Al Gore were saying that by today half of Florida would be below sea-level.
That guy was such an hypocrite that in the same year he said that he bought a mansion at sea-level.

[gunnut]

'Extinct' No Longer? Brontosaurus May Make a Comeback

LiveScience

Stephanie Pappas

8 hrs ago

The Brontosaurus is back. Or at least it should be, according to a new analysis of the long-necked dinosaur family tree.

The study researchers suggest the dinosaur currently known as Apatosaurus excelsus is different enough from its Apatosaurian kin as to be a different dinosaur altogether. Because A. excelsus was famously first known as Brontosaurus until 1903, the species would revert back to that original name and become Brontosaurus once again.

It's a proposal that excites some paleontologists and leaves others skeptical, but researchers say it's entirely possible that Brontosaurus may eventually regain its place in the scientific nomenclature. [See Images of an Apatosaurus Discovery]

"The big picture is, there are independent groups of researchers looking at these dinos and these relationships, and they are independently arriving at the same conclusion, that the diversity of this family of dinosaurs is greater than previously recognized," said Matthew Mossbrucker, the director and curator of the Morrison Natural History Museum in Colorado. Mossbrucker was not involved in the new study, but is "wholly in favor of bringing the genus Brontosaurus back," he said.

Brontosaurus background

The saga of Brontosaurus is as long as this sauropod's snakelike neck. In 1877, the geologist Arthur Lakes sent paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh some fossilized bones, which Marsh described as a new late-Jurassic sauropod, Apatosaurus ajax. In 1879, Marsh's team found another long-necked dino in the same era rock, which Marsh concluded was a different genus and species altogether — Brontosaurus excelsus.

The Brontosaurus name was not long-lasting, however. In 1903, the paleontologist Elmer Riggs determined that A. ajax and B. excelsus were more closely related than Marsh had believed. Apatosaurus, being the first named, took precedence, and Brontosaurus was no more. Instead, the dinosaur species once known as B. excelsus became A. excelsus. The Brontosaurus moniker persisted in popular culture, but not among scientists.

Not among most scientists, anyway. There have been occasional calls to re-examine the species. Paleontologist Bob Bakker, the curator of paleontology at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, has argued for a revision of the A. excelsus name since the 1990s.

"These guys should never have been lumped [together] back in 1903 or '04," Bakker told Live Science. He cites differences in the A. excelsus shoulder blade, head and neck that separate it from other Apatosaurs. But the only systematic analysis of Apatosaurus traits, published in the National Science Museum Monographs in 2004, upheld the current naming conventions.

Revising the family tree

The new research examines not only Apatosaurs, but all long-necks in the Diplodocidae family, the group that includes Apatosaurs and Diplodocuses. The researchers examined 477 different morphological traits from individual specimens found in museums in Europe and the United States. The study started simply, said lead researcher Emanuel Tschopp, a paleontologist at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa in Portugal. [6 Strange Species Discovered in Museums]

"The idea was to identify some new skeletons that there are in a museum in Switzerland down to the species," Tschopp told Live Science. "At some point, we figured out that in order to do this, we also had to revise the species taxonomy of the group because it was not known in enough detail to really see where our new specimens would belong."

Tschopp and his colleagues cataloged the differences in various bony features of Diplodocidae dinosaurs and used a statistical method to quantify how different each dino was from the others. From there, they separated the specimens into individual species and genera, or closely related groups of species.

The most provocative result was how much A. excelsus stood out.

"We found that the differences between the genus Brontosaurus and the genus Apatosaurus are so numerous that they should be kept apart as two different genera," Tschopp said.

Most notably, he said, Apatosaurus would have had a wider, more robust neck than Brontosaurus. The findings appear today (April 7) in the open-access journal PeerJ.

Dino debate

Tschopp's work did not take into account Apatosaurus excelsus' skull, because paleontologists disagree about whether a true skull of this animal has ever been found. Bakker and Mossbrucker argue there is good evidence that true skulls have been found; other paleontologists are skeptical of the field drawings and diagrams of Arthur Lakes, who found the original Apatosaurus specimens in the late 1800s.

If Bakker and Mossbrucker are right, the skulls of A. excelsus and other Apatosaurians bolster the Brontosaurus claim. The nasal chambers in A. excelsus' probable skull fossils are larger than in other species, Bakker said, which would have made its bellows higher-pitched. Its muzzle, shoulders and neck joints are different, which would have altered its maneuverability and posture, Bakker added. All of these changes mattered ecologically.

"It's important to recognize the distinctions, because this group of critters, the long-neck Apatosaurs, evolved faster than we've been giving them credit for, and they evolved in sectors of anatomy that are really interesting," Bakker said. "Why would they change their head-neck posture? Why? I suspect part of it might be social behavior, the way they signaled to each other with head flips and chin bobs."

But discerning behavior and evolution from bone shapes and features is a tricky business.

"The question for me is when we look at these changes, and we say the shape of this bone is different, the shape of that bone is different, it's hard for me to say that they are equivalent changes," said John Whitlock, a paleontologist at Mount Aloysius College, who was not involved in the study but who reviewed it for publication. For example, one change could require the alteration of 400 nucleotides of DNA, Whitlock told Live Science, and another just a couple of nucleotides.

"Evolutionarily speaking, those are not necessarily equivalent," he said.

If anything is certain, it's that bringing back Brontosaurus will require a lot more debate (and, ultimately, a ruling by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature).

"For sure, there will be other researchers that are maybe not convinced or have their own evidence against the separation of the two," Tschopp said. "In the end, this is how science works."

Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

'Extinct' No Longer? Brontosaurus May Make a Comeback

Interesting....after 112 years of "consensus," the new "consensus" is to rethink the old "consensus" to reach another "consensus?"

As far as I know, these fossil fragments haven't changed or "evolved" over the last 112 years. Yet these "scientists" can examine the same thing but reach new conclusions. Amazing! I wonder what would happen if a bunch of "scientists" examining complex and dynamic things can get things right on the first try?

[Firestorm]

Can you help me understand something here? Why would the sea level rise? And why does the study cite different level of "emissions" affecting the sea rising to different levels?

Thermal Expansion (warmer seas take up more space) and Glacial melting, in addition to ice-loss from Greenland and Antarctica. Different levels of emissions over the next several decades will mean a difference in the average temperature (due to increasing CO2...greenhouse effect...you know the drill).

FWIW the article also says this:

On the low end, the range for the RCP2.6 scenario is 28-61 cm rise by 2100, with a best estimate of 44 cm. Now that is very remarkable, given that this is a scenario with drastic emissions reductions starting in a few years from now, with the world reaching zero emissions by 2070 and after that succeeding in active carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere. Even so, the expected sea-level rise will be almost three times as large as that experienced over the 20th Century (17 cm). This reflects the large inertia in the sea-level response – it is very difficult to make sea-level rise slow down again once it has been initiated. This inertia is also the reason for the relatively small difference in sea-level rise by 2100 between the highest and lowest emissions scenario (the ranges even overlap) – the major difference will only be seen in the 22nd century.

I couldn't find any reason for the "inertia" that they talk about.

[gunnut]

Thermal Expansion (warmer seas take up more space) and Glacial melting, in addition to ice-loss from Greenland and Antarctica. Different levels of emissions over the next several decades will mean a difference in the average temperature (due to increasing CO2...greenhouse effect...you know the drill).

An increase in temperature is the cause of sea level to rise, presumably water gets bigger as temperature rise and ice on land, locked in glaciers, melt and add to the ocean water.

This increase in temperature is caused directly by an increase in CO2? Increase atmospheric CO2 content means temperature goes up, regardless of any other factor. Decrease atmospheric CO2 content means temperature goes down, regardless of other factor. Is that correct?

I couldn't find any reason for the "inertia" that they talk about.

That's to increase the paranoia level so that the UN/Illuminati/Al Gore/Green Peace/Big Brother can keep a tighter control of our everyday lives.

[gunnut]

When science and politicians collide, a scientist finds herself out of a job

April 08, 2015 · 8:45 AM EDT

By T.J. Raphael

Plenty of politicians say they're not scientists. But when politics bumps up against science, there are consequences for all of us.

Anne Glover, a former chief scientific adviser to the president of the European Commission, and currently vice principal for external affairs at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, learned that first hand. Glover served in the role of chief scientific adviser until last November, when her position was abolished.

“The new president of the commission, President [Jean-Claude] Juncker, has decided that he probably doesn’t want a single identified figure offering scientific evidence,” says Glover. “He has said that, for the meantime anyway, he wants to dissolve the post.”

When Glover was initially appointed to the position of chief scientific adviser, many in Europe breathed a sigh of relief, feeling that objective scientific advice would finally reach the ears of some of the EU’s most powerful leaders.

“When you’re constructing or developing policy, you need to base it on something, and if you want it to be robust and long-lived, the best possible platform you can use is scientific evidence,” she says. “The evidence is never 100 percent certain, but it’s our best bet for having something robust and long-lasting. Without evidence, we go into the realms of opinion, philosophy or ideology.”

Though many were pleased with Glover’s appointment, that optimism didn’t last long. Glover, who took office in 2012, was out of the job just two years later — after she cited scientific evidence on genetically modified foods that ran contrary to popular consensus.

“Generally, I would say that European citizens are not in favor of growing and consuming genetically modified crops,” she says. “And I have had a number of conversations with politicians where, behind a closed door they’ll say, ‘Yes, we do understand that the evidence tells us that the technology itself is not harmful.’”

Glover says that while European politicians have acknowledged the validated scientific research around GM technology, their positions haven’t shifted.

“What those politicians would say is, ‘I know that my voters would not be keen if I turned around and said I vote in favor of using GM technology,’” she says. “Politicians are elected and they represent citizens. I, as a chief scientific adviser, wasn’t elected, so all I can do is offer advice and the evidence.”

Glover hopes that politicians will adopt “honest and truthful” stances by using the most accurate scientific research.

“They should use the evidence and talk about the evidence available, and where it disagrees with public opinion or ideology or philosophy, just be straightforward about that,” she says. “But in my mind, you must not say that the evidence is lacking when it isn’t.”

While the EU might be ahead of the United States in terms of scientific acceptance, Glover says that scientists on both sides of the Atlantic still need to stand together.

“We need to stand up and say let’s make a clear distinction between what the evidence is, which is something that is peer reviewed, argued about, and refined until it’s a very precious and powerful thing, that there’s a big difference between that and philosophy, ideology, or faith,” she says. “Those things are equally valid things, but they should not be confused with the evidence.”

This story first aired as an interview on The Takeaway, a public radio show that invites you to be part of the American conversation.

When science and politicians collide, a scientist finds herself out of a job | Public Radio International

What have we learned from this article?

Consensus is always right and scientific evidences are always 100% certain.

Politician control scientists by holding the purse strings.

Government paid scientists cannot be wrong and big-oil paid scientists cannot be right.

[zraver]

The evidence is pretty much undeniable at this point that we are undergoing rapid climate change on a global level. Past that and as to what is causing it there is room to disagree but its time to start taking prudent steps to be good stewards of the only place we have. Worst case- we get locally cleaner environments and develop technologies to deal with climate change. best case- we avert a global disaster.

[gunnut]

The evidence is pretty much undeniable at this point that we are undergoing rapid climate change on a global level. Past that and as to what is causing it there is room to disagree but its time to start taking prudent steps to be good stewards of the only place we have. Worst case- we get locally cleaner environments and develop technologies to deal with climate change. best case- we avert a global disaster.

1. Define "rapid."

2. Since when does the climate NOT change?

3. What makes you think we can "stop or slow" climate change? By what mechanism can we affect the global climate in the way we wish to?

[zraver]

1. Define "rapid."

faster than many life forms can adapt to.

2. Since when does the climate NOT change?

its the rate of change, not change itself

3. What makes you think we can "stop or slow" climate change? By what mechanism can we affect the global climate in the way we wish to?

I didn't say we could, I said we should clean up our mess because there is no real downside to it other than short term pain for long term gain.

[Wooglin]

faster than many life forms can adapt to.



its the rate of change, not change itself



I didn't say we could, I said we should clean up our mess because there is no real downside to it other than short term pain for long term gain.

Wait a second... you're saying we're experiencing a rate of change so fast that many life forms cannot adapt, and that's "undeniable"? That's one hell of a claim considering 1) the rate of change for the last 15+ years and counting has been at or near 0 and, 2) even the IPCC admits there's a lack of evidence for species extinction due to climate change.

Sorry dude, you're way off here.

[Blademaster]

Wait a second... you're saying we're experiencing a rate of change so fast that many life forms cannot adapt, and that's "undeniable"? That's one hell of a claim considering 1) the rate of change for the last 15+ years and counting has been at or near 0 and, 2) even the IPCC admits there's a lack of evidence for species extinction due to climate change.

Sorry dude, you're way off here.

Biodiversity has been reduced by half and it is not being replaced with new species on a one to one basis.

[zraver]

Wait a second... you're saying we're experiencing a rate of change so fast that many life forms cannot adapt, and that's "undeniable"? That's one hell of a claim considering 1) the rate of change for the last 15+ years and counting has been at or near 0 and,

Uhm no, the models all over estimated the amount of warming, yet global temps are rising, just not as fast as predicted but still outside of known historical norms. Slower than predicted change is not zero

2) even the IPCC admits there's a lack of evidence for species extinction due to climate change.

Sorry dude, you're way off here.

Extinction is an end state, not a starting point. An example might well prove to be the California Sea Lions. If the warm waters don't recede we could see a serious population collapse. hell California could see a major biological disaster if the historically never seen before drought doesn't break. In Maine puffins are suffering because the prey they rely on are moving out and as poor flyers they can't follow. Strange winters in Mexico along with a loss of habitat in the US have the Monarch butterfly on the verge of extinction. Each might be a small part, but the evidence is mounting that climate change is doing horrendous harm to the lives we share this planet with. Add in the direct damage we do- over harvesting, over fishing, poaching, loss of habitat.... and we have become blight. Its time to get serious about being good stewards of Planet Earth.

[Wooglin]

Biodiversity has been reduced by half and it is not being replaced with new species on a one to one basis.

*sigh*

Ok, I'll play along. What peer reviewed published study claims half of the planets biodiversity has been lost due to climate change?

[Sanjac]

Gotta do the math. If I recall correctly, the last time I did it, if all the landborne ice above sea level on Earth were to melt, the total increase in Earth's sea level would be about six feet, just shy of two meters.

Key factors:

Floating ice does not count. Its weight is already affecting sea level so if it melts, sea level does not change. None of the north polar ice would contribute to a rise in sea level and little of the south polar ice. The Greenland ice sheet is the major factor, with a few tiny bits from permanent glaciers on tall mountains.

When ice melts into liquid water, its density increases. The same amount of water occupies 90% of the volume as solid ice; and much, much less if you're melting gas-entrained loose snow.

The most amusing thing about this global warming fantasy is that although, if it were anything more than this year's corrupt schemes overlaid on last year's frauds, at the cost of losing some prime real estate in Florida and maybe up on those dikes around New Orleans, Earth gains a 50% increase in arable land, mostly across Canada and Siberia.