So if the oceans contain too much fresh water, we have a problem.
If the oceans absorb too much heat, we have a problem.
If the oceans absorb too much Co2, we have a problem.
If all three is happing right now …
And that research is available, and ongoing, no models, stats, assumptions, extrapolations, needed, no blame.
Just measured facts affecting the bare basics living organisms need to survive on earth.
Humans seem to have lost the ability to understand, generally speaking, that is, that without nature, we are dead, no culture, no art.
EDIT: Ok, that is a bit melodramatic, the fact is, if there is an imbalance in nature, it will be rectified.
And the oceans, we need them to be healthy, to do their immensely complex natural function.
There is of course another “solution” to all this, something that someone mentioned before. The earth essentially already has a closed control loop to regulate this back. The disasters we are seeing… that’s the reaction. The earth will regulate it back towards the other end of the spectrum, temperatures will go down again, carbon will reduce, there will be another cycle of global cooling… but in order to do that, a lot of human beings are going to die.
Now we can make like that dude in the movie Titanic, and declare that as long as it is not the better half, we’re fine with that…
I smiled at that … thing that bothers me though is this is not the Titanic. There are no lifeboats.
Anycase, my question is being ignored, I hope some of my comments got some to think a wee wider than just one aspect, the part that the governments have latched on i.e. Co2.
Personally, if one looks past the financial gains to be had, it could have been a way to “dumb it down” for the populace of the world. It has blown back badly.
We agree it is an extremely complex system we are trying to get to grips with, and we probably will not properly understand it in another 50/100 years, the scientist that is.
Me, I say focus on what we could grasp, and work from there … focus on what is happening in and around the oceans.
Not really. I just don’t have an answer for you. In fact, not clear on the question. Seems rhetorical almost?
You ask: Do we see things going sideways?
Well, what do you mean by “sideways”?
If you think the “new hotness” we feel now is just a blip, then your answer is already no. If you don’t think it is a blip, and you worry about a long term ongoing thing, then your answer is yes.
It is what you call “begging the question”. The answer is worked into the premises…
The climate denialist may well acknowledge that heatwaves and floods are damn inconvenient, but dismiss their importance in the long term. Hence… I don’t see that acknowledgement as being of much use. We can acknowledge the effect, and still deny the cause-effect argument preceding it.
Let me rephrase: Does anyone experienced, read about, or seen information on how the world around us, ito nature and the effect it has on life on earth, is changing?
I would say yes. But I’ve run into people on social media that say no, these things don’t really constitute a change. The earth was always heating up and cooling down. We’ve always had droughts and floods. Some will then also add that they distrust the political involvement in these campaigns. Which I will concede is not unreasonable. That distrust of the powers that be is baked into the Western psyche.
Edit: Now on that topic. Quite often I find that people who say “no” are people not really affected by it. They are the proverbial “better half”. They will announce, triumphantly, that global warming is nonsense, because this year is the coldest on record (where they live). Conversely, and this has to be said (confirmation bias and all), people who live in the affected areas are more likely to look for something or someone to blame… so are they automatically to be trusted more?
Now if we can ascertain based on our own observations, experiences, family friends’ experiences, and observations, like your Dad in Nam too, more farmers, that what we read and see in articles that are trusted sources, being the fair yet critical crowd we are, could we by any chance agree that something is happening around us?
We could, but I don’t see it helping. Remember, I’m actually on your side of this debate… so I am playing a little bit of devil’s advocate.
We could agree that the cattle is in the wrong camp (something is wrong, or at least inconvenient), and you could simply deny that you had anything to do with it (despite me blaming you for leaving a gate open).
That is why my only strongly held position, in this debate, is that until we’re sure, at least don’t throw any more gates open!
(The analogy perhaps sounds silly, but to a cattle farmer, there are times it may be critical… eg when a Bull comes into contact with his own “daughters” because you left a gate open… ).
It will help a lot when people could make up their own minds, not proportion blame (anywhere), find reasons why to think about it, then decide for themselves.
Then a debate could lead somewhere.
But each and every time this subject matter gets drawn down to an attempt to over-simplify it, what "others are saying, who is to blame. It always goes nowhere.
I have accepted that changes are taking place, in the oceans as I mentioned, the poles melting, and glaciers disappearing fast.
Why is that?
That is a simple question yet an unbelievably complex answer to find IF humankind can even grasp the ongoing complexities to try and explain it.
That does not distract though, that it is happening.
And when we have agreed on that, then we could debate what we each think could contribute to the changes happening.
As I said, the scientists living this decade after decade, the good ones, we are “killing the messengers” with our obstinance by not applying our own minds, and looking at what is happening.
The Co2 debate, park it. It is not the core problem. Consider talking about methane gas, as in the last 2-3 years, more and more reports on that have been surfacing.
Ps. Note, I don’t link to articles, on purpose. Pss. Also note, I will not mention steak nor bacon in the same sentence as methane. Like the Co2 debate, it is just another fringe issue that is used today to “derail” any sensible discussions on methane issue.
Cutting methane and other “short-lived climate pollutants” (SLCPs) such as soot would reduce the global heating effect in the near term, thus giving the world “a fighting chance” of staving off climate catastrophe, the scientists said. Methane warming effect [is as much as 80 times that of C02], although it quickly degrades in the atmosphere.
Cutting CO2 is still essential for the long term, but must be accompanied by strategies to reduce the levels of SLCPs. If not, then temperatures are likely to exceed 2C above pre-industrial levels, the upper limit set in the 2015 Paris climate agreement, even if there are stiff cuts to CO2 emissions.
Sharp cuts to methane and other SLCPs could result in temperatures lower by 0.26C by 2050, which is almost four times greater than the benefit of pursuing CO2 cuts alone, which the scientists estimated would result in temperature cuts of 0.07C by 2050.
Aaah but that is the follow-up question. The one I find more interesting. Of course I fully understand how this works…
Q: What are the three things I need to know for my salvation?
A: (this is paraphrashed) First, how badly things are going, Second, what can be done about it, and third, how to be thankful that something can be done.
It appears to me the Co2 debate, we have been missing (misled maybe?) the actual causes, plural, of the entire issue.
I could never fathom how Co2 had this immense effect this “fast” that the poles and glaciers are melting at the speed they do, just because of just “Co2”.
“non-carbon dioxide pollutants” had been “underappreciated by scientists and policymakers alike and largely neglected in efforts to combat climate change”.
Sarel, as I said before, the ocean traps most of the Co2, not the atmosphere. Hence the furious debates on the matter.
A side effect of the ocean trapping massive amounts of Co2 is their acidification. Now there is a lot of ocean, the problem comes in when the base of the food chain dies … phytoplankton.
Personally, the heat is not “trapped” per se, the Co2 debate, or rather, derailment. It appears a lot of heat is being generated, for various reasons and sources, angles we do not even touch on, or worse, are not even aware of.
