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I don't think many dispute that we are living in an interglacial warm period. We call it the Holocene, and it's the most recent warm spell of the Pleistocene. So it's not inaccurate to say we are still living in the Ice Age, just the most recent interglacial warm spell. There have been several major ice ages over the 4.5 billion years of the Earth's history. But standing apart from all of them are periods sometimes referred to as Snowball Earth.

https://amp.livescience.com/64692-snowball-earth.html

https://www.knowablemagazine.org/article/physical-world/2019/story-snowball-earth
 
Red said:
Just providing @babe with different food for thought, in this case the mechanisms behind glacial/interglacial cycles over the past 3 million years.

http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/4/eaav7337
Click to expand...

Thanks for the link.

It's generally accepted that Ice Ages did not occur until ambient atmospheric CO2 declined to the levels we believe "normal" for the past six million years.

We have more oil/coal in the higher latitudes than anyone is telling us about, because..... well.... it was rainforest territory before the ice.

As the Earth coalesced from material ejected from the sun some 10-15 Billion years ago, the oxygen was depleted forming the oxides of not only CO2 but virtually every other element, near the surface as it solidified, and we had a very thick atmosphere of sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide, water vapor(steam), and a little nitrogen oxides but nitrogen "lost out" in the competition and remained the fairly inert N2 gas. A lot of water in the upper levels of forming earth.... eventually forming actual seas.

It was not until the formation of the deep Precambrian layers of almost pure calcium carbonate/layers of magnesium carbonate in some places gave relief from the incredible atmospheric pressures and allowed some sunlight to reach the surface. There was probably no free O2 until the beginning of photosynthesis....

But yes..... lots of geological ages continued the deposition of carbonate rock, with lots of organic material, above the Precambrian.

I believe that the lack of oxygen and excess of hydrogen meant a lot of hydrocarbon of abiotic origin, sealed under the Precambrian rock generally, and more "oil" that John D. Rockefeller ever feared could possibly exist. The fatal flaw in the Cartel/Monopoly plan....

But yes.... in most "authoritative" visons of earth history.... the past was actually warmer than now because of our atmospheric CO2.

We'll live if don't stop the combustion..... but we'll live better if we go to nuclear, and LENR. What we should not do is seal the living standard to feudal politics.
 
I had not heard of "snowball Earth" as discussed in the above links in the proto-Precambrian epoch. As I compute the atmosphere in that era from gross chemical compositions of everything we have now..... yah.... we were a white ball of gas with hardly any sunlight on the surface. Probably we had plenty of heat coming up from the core though. I'd wonder if the Sun were in some quiet phase as well....whaddya know.... what does anyone know.... about that time, before our deepest chemically deposited rock layers were formed. We have to drill down to find stuff below that in most places. and speculate a lot.

I'd imagine that Pangea, the one Continent near the equator as some think.... trying to fit continental pieces together and do a reconstruction of plate tectonics as we know things now, is highly speculative. I've seen some geologists claim there were few, if any "mountains". A lot of humidity.... maybe most of the water in the gas state.... would mean shallower seas as well. But the tell-tale fact is that carbonate rock of Precambrian origin is common over every geological district....so I think "Pangea" was just a place where the water was not so deep.

but what do I know....

Until the earth cooled enough to allow water to condense.... or freeze....as in the snowball idea....the chemistry of contact of soluble chlorides and carbon dioxide would not occur...… well not in organized thousands of feet thick deposits.

anyway, I was disposed to imagine Precambrian time as much warmer..... even with the no sunlight reaching the surface idea.....

and water in the liquid form is essential in most concepts of erosion.... resulting in exposure of soluble chlorides and reaction with dissolved CO2....

I'll have to do a lot of thinking.....
 
So I posted a classic El Nino jet stream sketch in here I think last Feb or so.....

Here is the current sketch....

https://www.wunderground.com/maps/wind/jet-stream

Typical of El Nino patterns is the reversal of the Pacific coastal dominant air stream with storms affected by the persistant Low Pressure offshore Southern California instead of Seattle. Seattle is having a drier year, most of West is soaked. It snowed this morning in Cedar City.

Around 10000 years ago we had a climate shift in the Great Basin area, from wet to dry. Used to be lakes in most of the Basin valleys.... Lake Bonneville.... Lake Lahontan. The lakes seem to correlate in recent epochs with the ice ages. I reason that since snowfall in the great ice sheet zones must be water evaporated from warmer oceans somewhere, that Ice Ages are actually caused by warm oceans.... well.... maybe with some other factors, for sure.

The El Nino pattern is known to be associated with above normal SSTs (Sea Surface Temperatures) in the Pacific zone west of Mexico and southern California. This year that is the case, but there is a large area of warmer than expected surface between Japan and Alaska as well..... and globally warmer ocean temps as some think.

The Humboldt River in Norther Nevada is running over its banks, and Rye Patch.... the little dam that irrigates Lovelock.... might be seriously challenged this summer. The Lahontan sinks ….. used to be salt flats.... might become a lake again ,at least for a while.

The Great Salt Lake has been really low for several years.... a few more wet years and Utah will have to turn on the West Desert pumps again to keep eastshore farms from flooding again.

flooding is news across the northern hemishere this year.
 
So, Babe, just scanned what you posted. Is your point that the earth has been as warm at other times in geological history, so there's nothing to worry about? That's kind of the jist I get, maybe I'm wrong. But there weren't people then. That doesn't mean humans will become extinct, just that life as we know it won't be the same, maybe never. Surely, it will be a dark period in human history and who knows how many or few will survive. Maybe new worlds will be sent out into the universe to persist until finding a new suitable planet. That could take thousands of years, more ... So, what is your point?
 
Eenie-Meenie said:
So, Babe, just scanned what you posted. Is your point that the earth has been as warm at other times in geological history, so there's nothing to worry about? That's kind of the jist I get, maybe I'm wrong. But there weren't people then. That doesn't mean humans will become extinct, just that life as we know it won't be the same, maybe never. Surely, it will be a dark period in human history and who knows how many or few will survive. Maybe new worlds will be sent out into the universe to persist until finding a new suitable planet. That could take thousands of years, more ... So, what is your point?
Click to expand...
Or maybe we'll adapt and be just fine. You can turn a key point around in your statement there to show how the other side thinks about it...

Who knows how many or how few will die.

No one does. But it is interesting that climate alarmists are so set on a final catastrophe. I have yet to see much beyond speculation that it will be the end of the world as we know it and decidedly dark days. Tough to prove scientifically.

In the 70's there was a huge panic that we would run out of oil, some said before the end of the decade, others guaranteed it would happen before the turn of the century. Now some estimates have us with enough to last until the next turn of the century.

But one thing that panic did was drive oil prices up and get heavier government protections for the oil companies. Huge subsidies that still exist and have even been raised since, even while they enjoy now record profits.

See sometimes the fear-mongering serves another purpose. Profit, or power, or control, or all 3.

Which is it this time?
 
LogGrad98 said:
Or maybe we'll adapt and be just fine.
Click to expand...

LogGrad98 said:
But it is interesting that climate alarmists are so set on a final catastrophe. I have yet to see much beyond speculation that it will be the end of the world as we know it and decidedly dark days. Tough to prove scientifically.
Click to expand...

I'm not familiar with the "final catastrophe" scenarios. Unless what is meant by that is that if CO2 emissions are not reduced to a certain level by a certain date, it becomes too late to avoid arriving at a point in global warming that results in the predicted conditions that are said will result from unchecked global warming. I'm not familiar with any thoughts that suggest actual extinction of Homo sapiens. I just came across this page, which seems like a handy breakdown of the expected results from the degree of global warming going unchecked:

https://www.ucsusa.org/our-work/global-warming/science-and-impacts/global-warming-impacts

I see sea level rise where I live. One result is the disappearance of our salt marshes, as they can't really exist if they're drowned. We see southern fish species moving into our waters, and lobsters, which prefer cold water, declining here. I'm in Rhode Island. But I can't say if these changes are actually linked to global warming, only that these are changes that are visibly happening here.

Elsewhere, the melting of mountain glaciers should have an impact on fresh water resources. And mountain glaciers are melting. That, in turn, would likely lead to the movement of people. Sea level rise itself would lead to movement of people, but it would not be overnight. It would take place over decades, so it would not appear as catastrophic, in the way devastating storms can be catastrophic, and represent "sudden" rather then slow change.

I always felt, and could easily be wrong, that millions of automobiles spewing emmisions into the atmosphere for over 100 years now would be expected to have an impact on the atmosphere. If someone can tell me how that would not be the case, well, I need that education, because otherwise it seems like once Henry Ford applied assembly line technology to the production of automobiles, he made possible something not present beforehand: a technology that added emmisions to the Earth's atmosphere from millions of engines on the road. I don't know how humans do that without consequences. It was not there prior to mass production.

As far as actual warming, it seems like the greatest amount so far is happening in the polar regions. Which does make it "out of sight" for most of us. But it is leading to things like thawing permafrost, and release of methane as a result.

In general, I don't know how these changes happen without consequences. But, I also find it hard to imagine we get to a point where, suddenly, we say "oh my, the global warming warnings were right, what now?" It's like someone will always say "oh, this is just the natural cycle", or "sometimes storms are just really big, that's always been the case". Everything predicted happening over decades of time amounts to a very slow moving catastrophe, which, it seems to me, just makes it hard to recognize it.

Add to that the tendency we have to postpone needed changes, I imagine if the predicted results from global warming are accurate, we won't deal with it until we develop mitigating technology to address it and reverse or mitigate it. Like extracting CO2 from the atmosphere. Which would be a form of adoptation. We will likely need a global response, and since we live in competing self interest nation states, it just seems like that's a lot to expect. We usually wait to act until it's pretty late in the game, and that seems to be the case here.

But the refrain I have often seen here, "the alarmists are saying the world will end in 12 years" is silly. That is not what is being said at all.

We are the X factor in all this. We will have to find ways to mitigate it if we are intent on not finding ways to prevent it. And a global economy dependent on fossil fuels probably means mitigation, not prevention, will be the eventual global response.
 
Red said:
I'm not familiar with the "final catastrophe" scenarios. Unless what is meant by that is that if CO2 emissions are not reduced to a certain level by a certain date, it becomes too late to avoid arriving at a point in global warming that results in the predicted conditions that are said will result from unchecked global warming. I'm not familiar with any thoughts that suggest actual extinction of Homo sapiens. I just came across this page, which seems like a handy breakdown of the expected results from the degree of global warming going unchecked:

https://www.ucsusa.org/our-work/global-warming/science-and-impacts/global-warming-impacts

I see sea level rise where I live. One result is the disappearance of our salt marshes, as they can't really exist if they're drowned. We see southern fish species moving into our waters, and lobsters, which prefer cold water, declining here. I'm in Rhode Island. But I can't say if these changes are actually linked to global warming, only that these are changes that are visibly happening here.

Elsewhere, the melting of mountain glaciers should have an impact on fresh water resources. And mountain glaciers are melting. That, in turn, would likely lead to the movement of people. Sea level rise itself would lead to movement of people, but it would not be overnight. It would take place over decades, so it would not appear as catastrophic, in the way devastating storms can be catastrophic, and represent "sudden" rather then slow change.

I always felt, and could easily be wrong, that millions of automobiles spewing emmisions into the atmosphere for over 100 years now would be expected to have an impact on the atmosphere. If someone can tell me how that would not be the case, well, I need that education, because otherwise it seems like once Henry Ford applied assembly line technology to the production of automobiles, he made possible something not present beforehand: a technology that added emmisions to the Earth's atmosphere from millions of engines on the road. I don't know how humans do that without consequences. It was not there prior to mass production.

As far as actual warming, it seems like the greatest amount so far is happening in the polar regions. Which does make it "out of sight" for most of us. But it is leading to things like thawing permafrost, and release of methane as a result.

In general, I don't know how these changes happen without consequences. But, I also find it hard to imagine we get to a point where, suddenly, we say "oh my, the global warming warnings were right, what now?" It's like someone will always say "oh, this is just the natural cycle", or "sometimes storms are just really big, that's always been the case". Everything predicted happening over decades of time amounts to a very slow moving catastrophe, which, it seems to me, just makes it hard to recognize it.

Add to that the tendency we have to postpone needed changes, I imagine if the predicted results from global warming are accurate, we won't deal with it until we develop mitigating technology to address it and reverse or mitigate it. Like extracting CO2 from the atmosphere. Which would be a form of adoptation. We will likely need a global response, and since we live in competing self interest nation states, it just seems like that's a lot to expect. We usually wait to act until it's pretty late in the game, and that seems to be the case here.

But the refrain I have often seen here, "the alarmists are saying the world will end in 12 years" is silly. That is not what is being said at all.

We are the X factor in all this. We will have to find ways to mitigate it if we are intent on not finding ways to prevent it. And a global economy dependent on fossil fuels probably means mitigation, not prevention, will be the eventual global response.
Click to expand...
I know this is the most commonly referenced quote about the 12 year thing.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/2642481002

And while I do not believe that is what most people believe in the climate change community, I think this is a good example of the leverage that they are attempting to gain and how to get it. By building sound bites into the collective consciousness. We better take drastic economy-destroying action right this very second or we are all dead in 12 years. But that is just her heavy-handed attempt at manipulation, not what all climate alarmists believe. But the alarm is still there.

I think this is a good post, @red. What you describe is how I expect we would adapt. But I think there is more work being done in alternate energy and more progress will be made. Yes, people may have to move, but as you said it won't be overnight. I do not believe there will be some tipping point of imminent societal collapse. But there are plenty of articles touting that exact outcome, and plenty of people spreading the fear. I think that is counterproductive to the final result. And an attempt at control and manipulation as opposed to gaining support for a cause.
 
LogGrad98 said:
I know this is the most commonly referenced quote about the 12 year thing.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/2642481002

And while I do not believe that is what most people believe in the climate change community, I think this is a good example of the leverage that they are attempting to gain and how to get it. By building sound bites into the collective consciousness. We better take drastic economy-destroying action right this very second or we are all dead in 12 years. But that is just her heavy-handed attempt at manipulation, not what all climate alarmists believe. But the alarm is still there.

I think this is a good post, @red. What you describe is how I expect we would adapt. But I think there is more work being done in alternate energy and more progress will be made. Yes, people may have to move, but as you said it won't be overnight. I do not believe there will be some tipping point of imminent societal collapse. But there are plenty of articles touting that exact outcome, and plenty of people spreading the fear. I think that is counterproductive to the final result. And an attempt at control and manipulation as opposed to gaining support for a cause.
Click to expand...

Regarding AOC's remark. Oh, to be young and foolish again, lol. Seriously, I did not realize she actually said that. It's counterproductive, IMO, handing a talking point to people who dispute human caused climate change.

Yes, there will be continued progress in green energy development. We built the first offshore wind farm in the United States. 5 turbines providing energy to Block Island, which had been dependent on diesel fueled generators. The turbines are generating enough excess electricity to permit some transmission to mainland RI. Another 80 turbines planned for Rhode Island Sound.

Of course, Trump displays his hand in support of fossil fuels by his criticism that wind energy kills birds. It's kind of a funny argument on his part, since it really is not the huge problem he states it is, and really, it's hard to see how everyone can't easily understand his motive with that argument.

Another thing we see here very recently is a great proliferation of solar farms. This is unregulated, and since the majority of RI is still very rural, local municipalities are struggling with things like clear cutting hundreds of acres of forest and altering their towns. It's not dissimilar to the Kennedy families opposition, years ago, to "unsightly" wind farms spoiling their views from Hyannis. And I can appreciate the concerns of our rural communities in RI. I love the rural beauty of my state, and the solar farms near my own home are real eyesores.

The irony is not lost on me. I want to see these alternative energy sources. But, wind farms filling our offshore sounds, and solar farms springing up in abundance, made me realize "oh, there is a cost I did not expect to all this, the rural charm and the scenic beauty is affected". I think there will be some regulation by towns, like locating solar farms on brown fields, for instance.

The sea level is rising faster here then other parts of the globe. We have a string of salt ponds and barrier beaches lining our south facing Atlantic coast. These are expected to be among the first geophysical features to disappear with that rise. And they are beautiful beyond compare, and some of the best beaches in New England. Seeing them disappear, though it won't quite happen in my lifetime, really saddens me.
 
Beginning with Eeenie-Meenie's question above.... what is my point....

I'm the kid on the beach throwing pebbles out on the waves. I know nothing, dream everything, live a life filled with wonder. I'm not the college prof trying to save the world one kid at a time by telling them what they should think.

Or the ideological crusader out to make sure the world is run right.

So, maybe, I have no point.

I do love donning the contrarian hat and trying my best to rock whatever boat I'm on.....

But I am not afraid.

Let me rephrase that:

"I am babe Verne, and I am not afraid."

I'm taking liberties there with Louis L'Amour and "The Lonesome Gods", but I think that is the one book I have gone over more than anything else ever written. My kids put it on my little minipad as the Audible rendition, and I've listened to it maybe a hundred times, driving the deserts.
 
Those pesky climate computer models...

NATIONAL PARK QUIETLY REMOVED WARNING THAT GLACIERS ‘WILL ALL BE GONE’ BY 2020 AFTER YEARS OF HEAVY SNOWFALL
  • Glacier National Park quietly removed a visitor center sign saying its iconic glaciers will disappear by 2020 due to climate change.
  • Several winters of heavy snowfall threw off climate model projections the glaciers would all disappear by 2020, according to federal officials.
  • A blogger first noticed the signage change and noted other signs warning of “impending glacier disappearance have been replaced.”
https://dailycaller.com/2019/06/07/national-park-glacier-warnings/
 
Heathme said:
Those pesky climate computer models...


  • A blogger first noticed the signage change and noted other signs warning of “impending glacier disappearance have been replaced.”
https://dailycaller.com/2019/06/07/national-park-glacier-warnings/
Click to expand...

Read that line a couple times and wonder to yourself if the person that wrote it passed 8th grade English class?

The blogger noticed other signs that said "impending glacier disappearance have been replaced."

That's a pretty weird sign to put up.

32xy7p.jpg


This is something I've noticed a lot on the far right "news" sites. Those ****ers speak one language and aren't even fully literate in the only ****ing human language they understand.
 
Heathme said:
Those pesky climate computer models...

NATIONAL PARK QUIETLY REMOVED WARNING THAT GLACIERS ‘WILL ALL BE GONE’ BY 2020 AFTER YEARS OF HEAVY SNOWFALL
  • Glacier National Park quietly removed a visitor center sign saying its iconic glaciers will disappear by 2020 due to climate change.
  • Several winters of heavy snowfall threw off climate model projections the glaciers would all disappear by 2020, according to federal officials.
  • A blogger first noticed the signage change and noted other signs warning of “impending glacier disappearance have been replaced.”
https://dailycaller.com/2019/06/07/national-park-glacier-warnings/
Click to expand...

Isn't government censorship grand? Let's hear it for the ostrich gang.....

https://www.inquirer.com/science/cl...ritten-testimony-climate-change-20190608.html

Brought to you by world renown stable genius, and climate scientist extraordinaire, Donald Trump, ladies and gentlemen!
 
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It's easy to find less literate comments on any issue to use in dissing the other side. Some people @Bulletproof believe this gives strength to their own side.....

We are experiencing some "climate change" year by year..... I don't believe this has ever stopped or ever will stop, millions of years historically or progressively.

It is going to be the plain fact that some glaciers are growing.... maybe others receding.... and whatever present pattern we have reversing....because..... well, because "Science" is not a prophetic discipline practiced by humans who have no ax to grind.

Good if some try to be objective..... a high and holy aspiration few of us really achieve....

But imo, the climate alarmists have been having a decades-long wet dream with hopes of global socialism/property redistribution/carbon credit fortunes for former coal mine owners....

It's entirely too political to be believed as "Science".

Locally, at my Great Basin locale, on the shores of the ancient Lakes, I don't care if we have an ice age again and if the valleys become fantastic awesome lakes. I studied geology/earth history/climatology. I counted the tree rings all around. I made my bet.

I won't be watching my salt marshes submerged under the seas. I won't be rebuilding ocean-side cities, or building two-hundred-foot dikes like Holland.

But it looks like it's been a helluva winter. Nevada's Humboldt river is flooding, endangering some bridges and railroad alignments. The Missouri, South Platte, Red Rivers and Mississippi are flooding.

Iran has had serious flooding..... some rivers in China as well.... The mean ocean surface temp world wide is above historical norms....

and probably this is even more true or pronounced at depth. This probably means more intense hurricanes/cyclones, and more of them.

and meanwhile..…. the sun is at a long-term solar minimum that is predicted to be decades working through..... meaning.....

We do have an ice age impending, even if.... especially if..... we are "warming up" on the surface..... 70% of our "surface" is sea.... folks....

The equation for an ice age requires more evaporation..... more moisture carried to high lattitudes….. and a little less solar energy to melt it.

That's all there is to it.

So, Red, buy some seafront property.... buy more as the ocean recedes.... it's a great investment. Your marshes will move further out along with the seawater....
 
babe said:
So, Red, buy some seafront property.... buy more as the ocean recedes.... it's a great investment. Your marshes will move further out along with the seawater....
Click to expand...

Lol, yeah, right. The waters of the Atlantic are rising higher in southern New England, then elsewhere. We have a string of salt ponds, fronted by barrier beaches, on RI's south facing Atlantic coast. These barrier beaches and salt ponds, constituting some of the best Atlantic coast beaches between NYC and Cape Cod, are predicted to be among the first geophysical features that will disappear due to rising sea level.

I don't own any property, let alone seafront. But I have seen several family members lose their cottages to the sea along those coastal salt ponds, because their cottages could not be moved back any further, and I've seen an ex-governor and ex-senator's seaside home moved back as far as it could be moved back, to no avail. It can't be moved back any further, and its fate is irreversible. Maybe he, and the many others, should have known better.

This is ongoing, the barrier beaches will not be breached and fully erased in my lifetime, but the handwriting is on the wall for my state's south facing shoreline. In the summer, these beaches are the beaches of destination for residents of neighboring Ct. and western Ma. Residents of Springfield, Ma., have long made our barrier beaches, about a 2 hour ride for them, their beaches of choice, and they are vital to our summer tourism industry.

During the last glacial maximum(LGM), our south shore extended a full 50 miles south of Block Island, which is 12 miles south of those barrier beaches. No doubt you believe that will one day be the case again. No doubt you believe we will return to those LGM days, with a wall of ice 2 miles high advancing over our entire state. No doubt you are sadly mistaken. And I cannot afford seafront property at all, let alone crippling flood insurance. Nor am I stupid enough to buy into your predictions.
 
babe said:
So, Red, buy some seafront property.... buy more as the ocean recedes.... it's a great investment. Your marshes will move further out along with the seawater....
Click to expand...

Really, smarten up, for God's sake. Stick to Utah, you won't have any problem with rising seas.

http://rhodybeat.com/stories/here-comes-the-flood,24215

http://www.riclimatechange.org/changes_sea_level.php

http://www.beachsamp.org/stormtools/stormtools-coastal-environmental-risk-index-ceri/

The projected impact on our salt ponds and barrier beaches:

https://www.ecori.org/climate-change/2017/2/12/see-level-rise-estimate-now-above-9-feet
 
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