All Solar, Et Al, In 12 Years?

[Pittsburgh Pete]

See for yourself:

http://ocean.nationalgeographic.com/ocean/critical-issues-sea-level-rise/

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WorldOfChange/decadaltemp.php

BTW, don't you think it's intellectually immature to post satire (or anything else written by others for that matter) without proper attribution? I know it's your modus operandi but it is intellectually somewhat sleazy!

 

[Randolph Kinney]

See for yourself:

http://ocean.nationalgeographic.com/ocean/critical-issues-sea-level-rise/

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WorldOfChange/decadaltemp.php

BTW, don't you think it's intellectually immature to post satire (or anything else written by others for that matter) without proper attribution? I know it's your modus operandi but it is intellectually somewhat sleazy!

Science "boy" with a small "b" you did not know when the sea level began rising or temperature.

Doggerland was an area of land, now lying beneath the southern North Sea, that connected Great Britain to mainland Europe during and after the last Ice Age. It was then gradually flooded by rising sea levels around 6,500–6,200 BCE.

As the thick ice sheet gradually melted away, at the end of the last glacial period of the current ice age, sea levels rose and the land began to raise and sink as an isostatic adjustment to the gradual removal of the huge weight of ice. Doggerland eventually became submerged beneath the North Sea, cutting off what was previously the British peninsula from the European mainland by around 6500 BC.

The remains of plants brought to the surface from Dogger Bank had been studied as early as 1913 by paleobiologist Clement Reid and the remains of animals and worked flints from the Neolithic period had been found around the fringes of the area.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland

Little Ice Age (LIA)

Little Ice Age (LIA), climate interval that occurred from the early 14th century through the mid-19th century, when mountain glaciers expanded at several locations, including the European Alps, New Zealand, Alaska, and the southern Andes, and mean annual temperatures across the Northern Hemisphere declined by 0.6 °C (1.1 °F) relative to the average temperature between 1000 and 2000 CE. The term Little Ice Age was introduced to the scientific literature by Dutch-born American geologist Medieval Warming Period (roughly 900–1300 CE) and preceded the present period of warming that began in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

http://www.britannica.com/science/Little-Ice-Age

 

[Pittsburgh Pete]

The rise in sea levels seen over the past century is unmatched by any period in the past 6,000 years, according to a lengthy analysis of historical sea level trends.

The reconstruction of 35,000 years of sea level fluctuations finds that there is no evidence that levels changed by more than 20cm in a relatively steady period that lasted between 6,000 years ago and about 150 years ago.

This makes the past century extremely unusual in the historical record, with about a 20cm rise in global sea levels since the start of the 20th century. Scientists have identified rising temperatures, which have caused polar ice to melt and thermal expansion of the sea, as a primary cause of the sea level increase.

A two-decade-long collection of about 1,000 ancient sediment samples off Britain, north America, Greenland and the Seychelles formed the basis of the research, led by the Australian National University and published in PNAS.

The 35,000-year span of the study was chosen as this comprises an interglacial period. Researchers could pick submerged sediments that may include tree roots, suggesting a previously lower sea level, or mollusks, which can be measured against the fossil record to determine the previous sea level.

Ice started melting about 16,000 years ago, with this melting ending about 8,000 years ago. A slowdown in sea level changes didn’t occur until 6,000 years ago, however.

“It’s like if you leave a big block of ice on the table, it doesn’t melt instantaneously, there’s always a delay in the system,” said Kurt Lambeck, who led the research at ANU.

“We know from the last interglacial period that when temperatures were several degrees warmer than today there was a lot more water in the oceans, with levels around 4 to 5m higher than today. The question is how fast that change occurs when you increase temperatures.”

Lambeck said the sea level increase of the past 100 years is “beyond dispute”, backed up by separate data from salt flats and also changes to the sea floor caused by the extra weight of water.

“What we’ve seen is unusual, certainly unprecedented for these interglacial periods,” he said.

“All the studies show that you can’t just switch off this process. Sea levels will continue to rise for some centuries to come even if we keep carbon emissions at present day levels.

“What level that will get to, we are less sure about. But it’s clear we can’t just reverse the process overnight.”

http://www.theguardian.com/environm...evel-rise-unmatched-6000-years-global-warming

 

[Pittsburgh Pete]

The Earth's climate has changed throughout history. Just in the last 650,000 years there have been seven cycles of glacial advance and retreat, with the abrupt end of the last ice age about 7,000 years ago marking the beginning of the modern climate era — and of human civilization. Most of these climate changes are attributed to very small variations in Earth’s orbit that change the amount of solar energy our planet receives.

The current warming trend is of particular significance because most of it is very likely human-induced and proceeding at a rate that is unprecedented in the past 1,300 years.1

Earth-orbiting satellites and other technological advances have enabled scientists to see the big picture, collecting many different types of information about our planet and its climate on a global scale. This body of data, collected over many years, reveals the signals of a changing climate.

The heat-trapping nature of carbon dioxide and other gases was demonstrated in the mid-19th century.2Their ability to affect the transfer of infrared energy through the atmosphere is the scientific basis of many instruments flown by NASA. There is no question that increased levels of greenhouse gases must cause the Earth to warm in response.

Ice cores drawn from Greenland, Antarctica, and tropical mountain glaciers show that the Earth’s climate responds to changes in greenhouse gas levels. They also show that in the past, large changes in climate have happened very quickly, geologically-speaking: in tens of years, not in millions or even thousands.3

http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

 

[Randolph Kinney]

Sea level rise

Sea level rise has been estimated to be on average between +2.6 millimetres (0.10 in) and 2.9 millimetres (0.11 in) per year ± 0.4 millimetres (0.016 in) since 1993. For the period between 1870 and 2004, global average sea levels are estimated to have risen a total of 195 millimetres (7.7 in), and 1.7 millimetres (0.067 in) ± 0.3 millimetres (0.012 in) per year.

During the Little Ice Age, 1300 to 1850 – when temperatures were the coldest during any time in the past 10,000 years – snow and ice accumulated in Greenland, Antarctica, Europe and glaciers worldwide. As a consequence, sea levels fell so much that important Roman Era and Medieval port cities (like Ephesus, Ostia Antica and Pisa) were left miles from the Mediterranean.

Since the Little Ice Age ended about 160 years ago, tide gages show that sea level has risen at a steady rate – with no correlation to the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.

Robert W. Endlich served as a weather officer in the US Air Force for 21 years and a US Army meteorologist for 17 years. He was elected to Chi Epsilon Pi, the national Meteorology Honor Society, while a basic meteorology student at Texas A&M University. He has degrees in geology and meteorology from Rutgers University and the Pennsylvania State University, respectively, and has studied and visited the ancient sites of Rome, Ostia Antica and Pisa.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

Global mean surface temperature change since 1880. Source: NASA GISS

Source: Boden, T.A., Marland, G., and Andres R.J. (2015). Global, Regional, and National Fossil-Fuel CO2 Emissions. Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, doi 10.3334/CDIAC/00001_V2015.

 

[Cigar]

Pete:

Randolph posted this John Kerry statement above:

Here are Kerry’s exact words:

… The fact is that even if every American citizen biked to work, carpooled to school, used only solar panels to power their homes, if we each planted a dozen trees, if we somehow eliminated all of our domestic greenhouse gas emissions, guess what – that still wouldn’t be enough to offset the carbon pollution coming from the rest of the world.

If all the industrial nations went down to zero emissions –- remember what I just said, all the industrial emissions went down to zero emissions -– it wouldn’t be enough, not when more than 65% of the world’s carbon pollution comes from the developing world.

I haven't seen you challenge this, but global warming or not why spend all the money to counteract it if it won't do any good?

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

but global warming or not why spend all the money to counteract it if it won't do any good?

I would argue a more efficient use of the money would be better water controls (levees, etc.) and more engineering to conserve, research money to develop alternatives, etc.

 

[Pittsburgh Pete]

So the solution is to do nothing? Clearly there is a need for a global effort (or not since the situation doesn't exist at all according to some).

Looks to me like both the sea level increase and temperature increase have accelerated since 1940.

 

[Cigar]

So the solution is to do nothing? Clearly there is a need for a global effort

Since the developing nations are not going to do anything, if Kerry is right it doesn't make any sense to throw our money away doing "something". The problem is overpopulation, the solution is to decrease the population of the earth down to a sustainable number, we are pushing 8 billion now, some environmentalists say the earth can handle anywhere from 700 million to 2 billion, I'd certainly rather spend my tax money on reducing the population through a worldwide eugenics program than waste it on something that is going to do no good. Back when I was in college in the early 50s they taught us that the world's biggest problem is lower intelligence women having more children than higher intelligence women. Somehow eugenics got a bad rap when Hitler adopted it, but Hitler was also the biggest promoter of a non-smoking policy and we have adopted that without attributing it to Hitler.