COP26

Discussion in 'Politics' started by arfa brane, Oct 29, 2021.

  1. arfa brane call me arf Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,832
    I started this thread in Politics because the climate 'crisis' is for the most part, a political problem.

    I say that because if there really is a crisis up ahead, the future of politicians, even governments, must be endangered, as well as a lot of people who may well not be too concerned about who they will vote for by the time the crisis hits.

    The hit is already here though, it's just going to get worse. It isn't that things change, it's whether things change quickly, say a sealevel rise of a metre or two in a decade, because glaciers take a while to slide into the oceans.
    That would probably disrupt world trade--a lot of ports would be underwater--and because say just most of Manhattan would be underwater too, probably not much of an economy anywhere.

    So at this conference, are they going to commit to anything realistic? Is it, maybe, already too late to avoid a pretty bad situation unfolding somewhere near the middle of this 21st century of "human progress"?

    Sorry if that's a bit Greta Thurnberg, but hey.
     
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  3. sideshowbob Sorry, wrong number. Valued Senior Member

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    Yes. They love to commit. Are they going to live up to their commitments? No.

    We're going down the highway at ninety miles an hour and the bridge is out. The politicians are saying maybe we should stop accelerating. The radicals are suggesting that maybe we should even slow down a bit. But unless we stop altogether, we're going in the river.
     
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  5. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    COP 26
    O goodie
    Dozens of politicians and business people, flying in from all over the world in their gas guzzling private jets, getting together and figuring out ways to raise taxes to cure a problem that primarily exists in the minds of those who know how to profit from it and the weak minded who are easily led.

    Do you think that even one will have the wisdom of King Canute?

    Yippee
     
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  7. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    Why do people still fret over speed of change? The hypothesis that climate only changed slowly was state of the science/art 30-50-etc...etc.. years ago. That fallacy began to unravel over 30 years ago.
    Broecker
    and then
    A lesson about how science proceeds can be learned from this history. Asked about the discovery of abrupt climate change, many climate experts today would put their finger on one moment: the day they read the 1993 report of the analysis of Greenland ice cores. Before that, nobody confidently believed that the climate could change massively within a decade or two; after the report, nobody felt sure that it could not.

    see:
    https://history.aip.org/climate/rapid.htm#N_43_

    Science progresses when people see minute differences/changes and form a new hypothesis.
     
  8. arfa brane call me arf Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,832
    Well, the conference is done, but the negotiations begin.

    In these, politicians (see above) will be deciding how a collective of major CO2 emitting countries will turn the tap back.
    And how they will be helping other developing nations do the same thing; and it seems the goal of less than two degrees in the expected global rise in temperature is within reach (give or take some uncertainty in the models).

    But will it just be a lot of agreements that won't be kept? Not because the politicians don't care--most of them are well aware of the consequences of more than two degrees rise--but because of where we are right now after three decades of warnings and predictions from those prophets of doom, the climate scientists.

    In those three decades, efforts to reduce the amount of CO2 we dump into the atmosphere have resulted in increases in the amount we dump, increases in the numbers of vehicles, ships, planes and so on, as we let global trade and tourism drive a global economy, and continue to believe, in general, that economic progress is a good thing.

    Well, the planet is going to call bullshit on that, I'd say. I'm not confident that in ten years we can collectively replace fossil fuels with electric power; I'm more on the fence here about whether we will do enough, and soon enough, given the 30 years we've been dicking around.

    So that's the memo.

    p.s. the level of interest on this forum in even the COP thing, is let's say, a statement about the above too. Just sayin'
     
  9. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    12,451
    Because it happens fast enough to put London, New York, New Orleans and half of Bangladesh under water before we can do anything about it. And that's just for openers.
     
  10. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    'tain't likely
     
  11. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    That being said:
    A few years ago, Maureen Raymo did a study wherein, she stated that the ocean highstand for the previous interglacial, eemian, happened at the end of that interglacial.(She opined that it may have been due to the collapse of the west-antarctic ice sheet)
    and
    5000 years ago, within this holocene interglacial, sea levels were 3.3 meters(almost 11 feet) above current sea levels.
    so
    If what Maureen found, and what we know of this interglacial
    One could reasonably expect sea level rise of over 4 meters without our help?
    here's a pix

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  12. sculptor Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    8,466
    from Maureen Raymo:
    "between 127 and 119 kyr ago, eustatic sea
    level remained relatively stable at about 3–4 m above present sea level. However, stratigraphically younger fossil corals with
    U-series ages of 118.1±1.4 kyr are observed at elevations of up to 9.5 m above present mean sea level. Accounting for glacial
    isostatic adjustment and localized tectonics, we conclude that eustatic sea level rose to about 9 m above present at the end of
    the last interglacial. "
     
  13. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

    Messages:
    39,397
    Get a grip, sculptor. You're not thinking straight.
     
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  14. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    8,466
    Or
    I looked up the elevations of NY and London and concluded that it was unlikely that those 2 cities would be under water.
    Alternately:
    I will concede that both of those 2 cities had been under water within the last 25000 years, but then, the water was in the form of ice.
     
  15. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,635
    Manhattan? Try within the past 20 years, and not ice.
     

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  16. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    And, New York City is sinking
    perhaps a much as 4-5 inches over the last century
    so
    rising sea level and a sinking city
    Job openings for gondoliers in NY soon?
     
  17. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    12,451
    Whereas the predicted sea level rise over the next century that we are talking about is of the order of a metre. That's 3 feet - enough to overtop flood defences on a regular basis, rendering large areas of these cities unusable.

    Just today I read an article about real estate prices in Miami. Apparently prices are booming now in the highest elevation areas and falling in the beach-side districts. Insurance premia for low-lying areas are going up fast. Why? Because more hurricanes and more floods are expected. Insurance actuaries are pretty cold-eyed calculators and they can see what is coming.

    And of course sea level rise is just one aspect of what we can expect, if people carry on thinking like you. Happily, most of the younger people, who will be in charge in the coming decades, get it, even if you don't.
     
  18. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    8,466
    see posts 8 and 9 above
    I study paleoclimates
    and i do "get it" even if you don't
    1 meter = peanuts
    try 9. 5 meters or 31 feet
    Plan on that and build accordingly
    and that would be without our atmospheric forcing
    whatever factor you think that should add
    add it into the mix and act accordingly

    Meanwhile calculate how much landed ice would have to melt per meter of sea level rise, and then locate where that ice is, and figure out at what temperature and how long it would take to melt it.

    King Canute could not stop the tides, and you cannot stop climate change!
     
  19. arfa brane call me arf Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    7,832
    Great. So you could give us all your opinion of the stability of certain parts of the Antarctic ice sheets, or say, the Thwaites glacier?
    Or perhaps you can cite some evidence in some proxy data that has clues about how long it takes for glaciers to change from a stable to an unstable state?

    Although as you say, you can't stop climate change, what you mean is natural change; humans can stop increasing the CO2 in the atmosphere--the change due to human activity, not geochemistry. Or did you actually mean to say you can't stop humans burning coal and oil?
     
  20. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    Well,
    I certainly can't
     
  21. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,635
    Yep. We can definitely rebuild entire cities. You gonna help pay to rebuild Bangladesh?
    We, of course, could. We don't want to.
     
  22. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    Let me reiterate
    you cannot stop climate change!

    You don't even know why it changes.

    .......................................
    What you may be able to do in 50 years or so, is reduce the carbon footprint
    but
    That ain't climate!
    At best, it is one small component.
     
  23. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,635
    Correct. However, it is forcing a rapid change to the climate. It is the cause, not the thing itself.
     

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