BF2S Forums A Warming Planet Struggles to Feed Itself

Wall of quote.

Jay wrote:

Burden of proof lies with those asking for massive changes. Most of the world has a negative growth rate.  Africa and South America do not. They either need to industrialize their food production or cut their growth rate. Either way food aid needs to end. People like you caused the mess.

You can use that argument for anything, still waiting to hear how I caused it.

Prove to me that unless the US spends 1/3 of its budget maintaining a huge nuclear arsenal, spending trillions on carrier groups and F22 Raptors to dogfight over the South China Sea we'll all be burnt to a cinder/speaking chinese and voting communist next week.
You can't, because the question is dumb.

Climate change and loss of food production are risks, increased energy and food costs are risks, it makes sense to mitigate potential risks rather than ignore them in the hope they don't happen.

Spark wrote:

Cheeky_Ninja06 wrote:

my 1st post wrote:

Lol oil isn't going to run out for ages.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4681935.stm

Kuwait: 92bn (64bn)
UAE: 92bn (34bn)
Iran: 93bn (64bn)
Iraq: 100bn (48bn)
Saudi Arabia: 258bn (170bn)
Claimed oil reserves, bn barrels 1990s/1970s

The link is an old one but my main reason for raising this is the constant revision of each oil producers reserves. From a colleague who has moved into the oil industry, the reserve figures are mainly to control price. How long have we been forecast to have 20 years of oil remaining? No I do not have a huge amount to back it up but it doesn't surprise me at all.

Oil is not running out any time soon. Cheap oil in easily accessible geological strata, that's probably running out. I don't know how long it will last, 10 years, 20 years, 100 years, whatever.

So we are agreed on this and can move on?

We cannot destroy the earth, this is common sense. At worst we can make it less habitable for us but we would struggle to make it uninhabitable. Technically we haven't left the last ice age as we still have ice on the poles, not the forests / jungles that the dinosaurs inhabited. Remember that next time you read "the planet has never been this warm ever!"

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjec … rs/plants/

PANGAEA AND WEATHER DURING THE MESOZOIC ERA
The dinosaurs evolved early in the Mesozoic Era, during the Triassic period (about 228 million years ago). At the start of the Mesozoic Era, the continents of the Earth were jammed together into the supercontinent of Pangaea; this land mass had a hot, dry interior with many deserts. The polar regions were moist and temperate. During the Mesozoic, Pangaea began breaking apart and the weather changed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous

Warm-adapted plant fossils are known from localities as far north as Alaska and Greenland, while dinosaur fossils have been found within 15 degrees of the Cretaceous south pole.[11]

A very gentle temperature gradient from the equator to the poles meant weaker global winds, contributing to less upwelling and more stagnant oceans than today. This is evidenced by widespread black shale deposition and frequent anoxic events.[12] Sediment cores show that tropical sea surface temperatures may have briefly been as warm as 42 °C (107 °F), 17 °C (31 °F) warmer than at present, and that they averaged around 37 °C (99 °F). Meanwhile deep ocean temperatures were as much as 15 to 20 °C (27 to 36 °F) higher than today's.

I could find further reference but I was not aware this was in debate especially.

The point is this is not particularly relevant as you may as well be talking about a different planet. The climate of a supercontinent-dominated planet and one with continents scattered all over are very very different, which is why no one bothers to qualify "since the start of the ice age cycle".

The climate continued as the continents broke up (in that the poles stayed "moist and temperate.") However I am sticking to the point that claiming a year is the hottest ever is hyperbole and really means the hottest since accurate records began in 1880. 130 years =/= 4bn years.

For the last 10-15 years climate science has been predicting doomsday, unfortunately current data is a very long way from fitting any of the suggested trends. Shock horror. Climate refugees anyone?

http://itsfaircomment-climategate.blogs … t-dud.html

The United Nations Environment Programme has tried to erase one of its glaring failed predictions about climate refugees by removing a map from its website purporting to show where 50 million climate refugees will come from by 2010.

I believe there was a thread on this earlier in the year.

Last I heard climate change was not about the number of refugees around.

http://crecherche.ulb.ac.be/facs/scienc … tt2003.pdf
http://eprints.ifm-geomar.de/7878/1/965 … d13120.pdf
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/ is always useful.

The combined global land and ocean surface temperature for the January–April period was the 14th warmest such period on record. This value is 0.48°C (0.86°F) above the 20th century average.

I'm not exactly sure how that fits into the models having not seen them in a while (I have other papers to read) but my gut feeling is that it's pretty well in the range.

This is two minutes of searching, with more time I could find more.

From your last reference:

For 2010, the combined global land and ocean surface temperature tied with 2005 as the warmest such period on record, at 0.62°C (1.12°F) above the 20th century average of 13.9°C (57.0°F). 1998 is the third warmest year-to-date on record, at 0.60°C (1.08°F) above the 20th century average.

However

Global precipitation in 2010 was well above the 1961–1990 average, ranking as the wettest on record since 1900. Precipitation throughout the year was variable in many areas. Regionally, drier than average conditions were widespread across much of French Polynesia, the Solomon Islands, Hawaiian Islands, northwestern Canada, extreme northwest and northeast Brazil, and southern Peru. The wettest regions induded most of Central America, much of India, southwestern China, east Asia, Borneo, and parts of Australia.

So as the planet warms it gets wetter. Now forgive me if I am wrong but plants rely on CO2, H20 and heat to grow well. All of which are increasing. Notably one of the areas highlighted by the referenced report in the OP was India as being a potential victim of crop failure due to drought from a warming planet.

As for prediction asessments, the IPCC first report (1990) gave this prediction

Based on current models, we predict: under [BAU] increase of global mean temperature during the [21st] century of about 0.3 oC per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0.2 to 0.5 oC per decade); this is greater than that seen over the past 10,000 years; under other ... scenarios which assume progressively increasing levels of controls, rates of increase in global mean temperature of about 0.2 oC [to] about 0.1 oC per decade.

From your referenced site again..



So, from the chart:

1990 is 0.30 oC above the 20th century average
2000 is 0.45 oC above C20
2010 is 0.55 oC above C20

IPCC first estimate gives values of 0.3, 0.6, 0.9 which is over 160% of the observations.

IPCC progressive estimate would give 0.3, 0.45, 0.60 which is much closer to the observation but normally I would expect the observation to fall within the central range of estimates, not to be hanging out of the bottom.

Notably the progressive estimate was supposed to represent when governments were making large concessions to prevent climate change which just hasn't happened.

As we both know many other organisations have been brandying around much larger increases than the IPCC for example..

http://www.worldwildlife.org/climate/Pu … em4926.pdf

Future warming ranging from 0.2 oC per decade (low estimate) to 0.5 oC per decade (high estimate)

0.5 oC per decade, we've seen half of that over double the time frame.

Sure polluting is not beneficial and we should always strive to improve efficiency but we don't need a load of BS scare mongering to make it happen.

Common sense.

CFCs didn't ban themselves, did they?

That is sort of my point. Demonstrable pollutants are acted upon. If the underlying science is correct it holds much more integrity than overinflated figures and wild predictions.

Hell its not even called global warming anymore because the whole world isn't going to heat up.

It is referred to as "climate change" and the whole world isn't going to heat up, does this need referencing?

It's called "climate change" because it's a far more accurate description. Duh. Are you seriously suggesting scientists are now backtracking from "the earth will warm in the 21st century"?

Climate change is a far more accurate description although it is still misleading. There is no point in history where the climate has not changed, the common inference is that the climate would never change if we weren't on the planet. Anybody who has a grasp on science knows this to be false however this is how it is often portrayed.

Look back at the medieval warm period. This was a time of great wealth and prosperity, when Cathedral building became prolific and when wine was made as far north as Scotland. Compare that to the famines of "the little ice age" and explain to me why a return to medieval warm period temperatures is such a bad thing for mankind.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period


I will make a concession in that these phenomena appear to have been fairly localized around Europe.

However:


ties in nicely with my Cathedral reference.

http://www.lycos.com/info/medieval-warm-period.html


Maybe its not all 100% accurate but I would not go so far as to say my post was "wrong"

Firstly, the anomaly around AD 1000-1200 (as they say, although my suspicion is that it was much shorter and based on very old, vague data with very low resolution) had a maximum of at most 1C above global average. (
http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1579/0044-7447-29.1.51)

We are at 1C above global average. No one sensible is claiming that the serious affects are being felt now, potentially enlarged droughts aside and the like.

Secondly, it's a massive bow to draw that "building cathedrals" equals prosperity and good crops. Indeed

There is
some similarity between this reconstruction and that produced independently by
Graumlich (1993) for the same region, who notes drought periods between A.D.
800-859, 1020-1070, 1197-1217, 1249-1365, 1443-1479, 1566-1602, 1764-
1794, 1806-1861 and 1910-1934. She finds no evidence of century-scale or longer
deviations in her reconstruction.

I would suggest that building cathedrals had little to do with the welfare of the common serf. Cathedrals was build because power was being increasingly centralized in Europe around that time - more powerful people are more likely to build big cathedrals. In particular the onset of feudalism, which has nothing to do with climate.

1 oC above which global average? Also as it has been determined as a local effect maybe oC above the local average would be more relevant, it must be fairly high to bring the entire global average up by more than the entire world have managed over the last 20 years.

From your drought record it becomes difficult to make a link between increased global temperatures and any correlation on the likelihood or severity of droughts which would also have to be applicable to the present day....

Building cathedrals has little to do with the common serf, I agree. However why was such a large percentage of enormously expensive architecture built in the 1100-1400? If it was purely an effect of increasing power you would expect such construction to continue into the 1500-1750 would you not? There was certainly a higher degree of power centralization, yet this does not hold to be true. I am not trying to cite this as 100% proof that there was a higher temperature and that every body was rich. The angle I am going for is that the higher temperature certainly did not hamper development of the time and if any effect was to be inferred it would be one of increased prosperity.

Similarly Wine being produced in northern England, although not irrefutable proof, is certainly evidence of a much higher local temperature as England currently struggles to produce any Wine at all.

Spark wrote:

Okay, that's much more clear now.

Just one note

IPCC progressive estimate would give 0.3, 0.45, 0.60 which is much closer to the observation but normally I would expect the observation to fall within the central range of estimates, not to be hanging out of the bottom.

Estimates in science almost never work like that.

Even so, that was a best case based on a "if we act now" scenario. Which we didn't. If observations struggle to even fall within the range of predictions then why bother with the prediction? The amount of funding that goes into these reports and assessments to come out with an answer that has about as much accuracy as me taking a ruler to a graph.

How many of the climate change graphs floating around 10 years ago showed the change leveling off between 2000 & 2010... not many.

*sigh*

It does make me wonder what everybody would be doing with themselves if we weren't so hung up on climate change. The cynic in me says that there would be an alternative global disaster imminent, the optimist says we could be making some significant technological advances.

Im swaying towards the cynic, there's no money in good news.

Last edited by Cheeky_Ninja06 (2011-06-07 04:34:51)

I noticed someone wrote about Pangea. The forming of the super-continent was one of the reasons for the Permian Extinction. 95% of life became extinct. Then the dinosaurs were born.

Which was more productive:

The Cold War

The Space Race

(You can use a crayon)

Dilbert_X wrote:

Which was more productive:

The Cold War

The Space Race

(You can use a crayon)

Option 3: Manhattan Project. Did more for the technological progress than any other project in history.

And Colar War and the Space Race were in no way unrelated.

Jay wrote:

If we did that for every crackpot idea we'd go broke now wouldn't we? The greens have lost their credibility on myriad topics. It's always something.

The military-industrial complex has been crying wolf for a long time, and yet they get their trillions.

Sorry. Zero credibility. They've cried wolf about 148097254082708 times now.

When have 'they' 'cried wolf' exactly?

Granted lots of people have latch onto climate change, just as people latched onto the 'red menace' to make money, doesn't mean the basic science is necessarily wrong (whereas the 'communist domino' theory was laughably wrong)

Scaring people into getting what you want only works for a short period of time. People become numb.

Seems to be working fine with the 'muslim menace'.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2011-06-07 06:12:03)

Spark wrote:

Jay wrote:

Dilbert_X wrote:

Not true at all.

We all spent trillions and developed tons of technology during the cold war, and apparently that was fine because although the risk was low the consequences were severe.

Now apparently the risk is middling, the consequences middling to severe but apparently we should do nothing, spend nothing and not worry about it.

If we did that for every crackpot idea we'd go broke now wouldn't we? The greens have lost their credibility on myriad topics. It's always something. Build new wind farms. Oh wait, wind farms disrupt the migration patterns of bats! Ohnoes! Global cooling! Ohnoes! Hockey stick graphs!

Sorry. Zero credibility. They've cried wolf about 148097254082708 times now. I'll be damned if I volunteer a single penny to go into 'research' produced by fake scientists.

Come on man you're smarter than this. I don't like environmental groups either and I agree some of the rubbish they spout is ridiculous but it's not hard to find solid, sensible science behind the theory.

All they do is push worst case scenario And expect people to fork over billions of dollars in order to Ward off Armageddon.

But the outcome is mostly speculation. I'm not denying climate change, I'm simply not buying the severity of the outcomes they predict. These are the idiots that were pushing hydrogen power at one point.

Last edited by Jay (2011-06-07 06:54:22)

After 'Climate gate'

This one was better though...


One would think that since this is such an epic plight mankind faces, those involved would be more than happy to expound and elaborate on their work.....  Nah.  Apparently one has to sue & sue to get to see their any data.

Sorry I'm a beer man myself, kool-ade being too sweet for my taste.

Macbeth wrote:

Kmar wrote:

Macbeth wrote:

In the west? Easy, provide economic incentives for limiting reproduction. Add a bunch tax penalties for having children.Combine that with more sex education and you could begin to drive down the population in U.S.

I don't know why you would want to do that though. There isn't really a population problem in most industrialized countries. Hell the Japanese and Taiwanese are trying to get their people to start reproducing again.

So your easy solution is to tax the people trying to support children? Sex education isn't going to change much. Almost everyone knows the consequences of unprotected sex and they still do it. The US population has gone from 150 mil to over 300 mil in about 50 years. It's true that European nations have stalled. But most of the rest of the world has not.

Examples: http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb- … &dl=en
Tick the world box to see the trend as a whole.

Most of the U.S.'s population growth has been from immigrants, and the children they have when they get here. Otherwise the established U.S. population stalled also. It's been the cause of hand wringing in some circles when the subject of demographic shift comes up. Japan has stalled out too. I also know the Taiwanese are now trying to get their people to pump out more kids by providing economic incentives like tax breaks.

The European, Japanese, and established American birth rate decline has been because of economic conditions. Life improved, people wanted to have more fun and enjoy life and not raise a lot of children. It's pretty much a fact that as conditions improve birth rates go down. I do think if the government provided economic incentives to not reproduce the birth rate would continue to slide among those groups.

American birth rates are in decline? Why don't you try sampling a least a decade? Actually you don't even have to do that http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb- … &dl=en

However, there has been a decline in immigration to the US as a result of the financial crisis. Compare that with the fact that the population is still growing and the logic defies your implication that the US is merely growing it's population as a result of immigration.

Country of origin isn't very relevant to a global population problem.