Re: Greta Thunberg - Time Person of the Year

Not strange in the least. None of it. Antarctica is colder than the Arctic because the ice and snow reflect sunlight back into space and it was that cold that dragged Freon and other fluorocarbon gasses that formed the hole.

As for the sun, it's the greenhouse gasses that are causing the the energy from the sun to be trapped. The clue is in the word greenhouse.

BUT -- it's not only burning fossil fuels that is screwing things up. In addition to exotic gasses we are still producing there's also other captured carbon being released especially methane which had been stable as methane hydrate that is being gasified as a result of climbing sea temperature and methane is a bugger when it comes to greenhouse gasses.

Another confusing (for some) factor is the elevating sea temperature. Because of new convection currents resulting in zones of sea water temperature change that cause very cold deep water to rise and so affect surface temperature changes this is slowing but not changing the elevating global temperature.

Then factor in the melting ice that is taking place. When a liquid or gas or solid material changes from solid - liquid - gas phase which most things do what is called the latent heat of change of state comes into play.

In the case of water ice that means that a change from ice to water absorbs 80 calories of heat for every gramme of material. That means that while the global ice burden is melting there will be a hiccup in the curve showing climate change.

The bottom line is that anthropogenic global warming is an absolute certainty and it's gonna get worse but there are things that can be done, the first being to get people to realise that it is real, it is man made, and it's en route to being catastrophic.

Re: Greta Thunberg - Time Person of the Year

I didn't notice Climatologist amongst your list of Expertise/Experience/Knowledge Todger.....

A good climatologist who does not have the hand of the BBC up their backs would tear you theories to pieces.

But then again, we all get our information from the media and internet....If we didn't, there would be no such thing as 'Man made Climate Change' so I guess we are all experts really depending on who you listen to/read....

Re: Greta Thunberg - Time Person of the Year

Let's see what a proper climatologist has to say about man made climate change......


statistics:

Over the past century, there has been a 99% decline in the death toll from natural disasters, during the same period that the global population quadrupled.
While global economic losses from weather and climate disasters have been increasing, this is caused by increasing population and property in vulnerable locations. Global weather losses as a percent of global GDP have declined about 30% since 1990.
While the IPCC has estimated that sea level could rise by 0.6 meters by 2100, recall that the Netherlands adapted to living below sea level 400 years ago.
Crop yields continue to increase globally, surpassing what is needed to feed the world. Agricultural technology matters more than climate.
The proportion of world population living in extreme poverty declined from 36% in 1990 to 10% in 2015.
While many people may be unaware of this good news, they do react to each weather or climate disaster in the news. Activist scientists and the media quickly seize upon each extreme weather event as having the fingerprints of manmade climate change — ignoring the analyses of more sober scientists showing periods of even more extreme weather in the first half of the 20th century, when fossil fuel emissions were much smaller.

So . . . why are we so worried about climate change? The concern over climate change is not so much about the warming that has occurred over the past century. Rather, the concern is about what might happen in the 21st century as a result of increasing fossil fuel emissions. Emphasis on ‘might.’

Alarming press releases are issued about each new climate model projection that predicts future catastrophes from famine, mass migrations, catastrophic fires, etc. However these alarming scenarios of the 21st century climate change require that, like the White Queen in Alice and Wonderland, we believe ‘six impossible things before breakfast’.

The most alarming scenarios of 21st century climate change are associated with the RCP8.5 greenhouse gas concentration scenario. Often erroneously described as a ‘business as usual’ scenario, RCP8.5 assumes unrealistic long-term trends for population and a slowing of technological innovation. Even more unlikely is the assumption that the world will largely be powered by coal.

In spite of the implausibility of this scenario, RCP8.5 is the favored scenario for publications based on climate model simulations. In short, RCP8.5 is a very useful recipe for cooking up scenarios of alarming impacts from manmade climate change. Which are of course highlighted and then exaggerated by press releases and media reports.

Apart from the issue of how much greenhouse gases might increase, there is a great deal of uncertainty about much the planet will warm in response to a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide – referred to as ‘equilibrium climate sensitivity’ (ECS). The IPCC 5th Assessment Report (2013) provided a range between 1 and 6oC, with a ‘likely’ range between 1.5 and 4.5oC.

In the years since the 5th Assessment Report, the uncertainty has grown. The latest climate model results – prepared for the forthcoming IPCC 6th Assessment Report – shows that a majority of the climate models are producing values of ECS exceeding 5oC. The addition of poorly understood additional processes into the models has increased confusion and uncertainty. At the same time, refined efforts to determine values of the equilibrium climate sensitivity from the historical data record obtain values of ECS about 1.6oC, with a range from 1.05 to 2.7oC.

With this massive range of uncertainty in the values of equilibrium climate sensitivity, the lowest value among the climate models is 2.3oC, with few models having values below 3oC. Hence the lower end of the range of ECS is not covered by the climate models, resulting in temperature projections for the 21st century that are biased high, with a smaller range relative to the range of uncertainty in ECS.

With regards to sea level rise, recent U.S. national assessment reports have included a worst-case sea level rise scenario for the 21st century of 2.5 m. Extreme estimates of sea level rise rely on RCP8.5 and climate model simulations that are on average running too hot relative to the uncertainty range of ECS. The most extreme scenarios of 21st century sea level rise are based on speculative and poorly understood physical processes that are hypothesized to accelerate the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. However, recent research indicates that these processes are very unlikely to influence sea level rise in the 21st century. To date, in most of the locations that are most vulnerable to sea level rise, local sinking from geological processes and land use has dominated over sea level rise from global warming.

To further complicate climate model projections for the 21st century, the climate models focus only on manmade climate change – they make no attempt to predict natural climate variations from the sun’s output, volcanic eruptions and long-term variations in ocean circulation patterns. We have no idea how natural climate variability will play out in the 21st century, and whether or not natural variability will dominate over manmade warming.

We still don’t have a realistic assessment of how a warmer climate will impact us and whether it is ‘dangerous.’ We don’t have a good understanding of how warming will influence future extreme weather events. Land use and exploitation by humans is a far bigger issue than climate change for species extinction and ecosystem health.

We have been told that the science of climate change is ‘settled’. However, in climate science there has been a tension between the drive towards a scientific ‘consensus’ to support policy making, versus exploratory research that pushes forward the knowledge frontier. Climate science is characterized by a rapidly evolving knowledge base and disagreement among experts. Predictions of 21st century climate change are characterized by deep uncertainty.

Re: Greta Thunberg - Time Person of the Year

Food for thought there, Foxy!

Re: Greta Thunberg - Time Person of the Year

I wish young Greta would smile occasionally.
She has the most unnatural severe face every time I see her.

You don't have to be totally humourless and hard-faced to get your point across in a sensible way.
Maybe people would warm to her more and listen to her if only she stopped scowling at them.

*

On another point, did anyone see on tonight's news about the rapid erosion of the cliff edges at Skipsea in Yorkshire?
They said parts have fallen away into the sea at twice the rate that was anticipated.

Same in parts of Norfolk.
Is this climate change too?


https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/heri...ast-1-10214711

Re: Greta Thunberg - Time Person of the Year

Those cliffs have been taken back by the sea for hundreds of years Mups, and will continue until the sea reaches some hard stuff....Granite, Sandstone or Limestone.
Heavy rain in November and December is the likely suspect for speeding up the erosion.
What the Yorkshire Post fails to mention, is that for every metre of coastal erosion there, deposits are found further up and down the coast actually adding to the land mass...
Not everything that happens in nature is attributed to climate change Mups, but the media would have you believe that......It sells newspapers....

Re: Greta Thunberg - Time Person of the Year

Hi Foxy, according to tonight's news though, the cliffs are eroding twice as quick as anticipated now though. Is that untrue then?

Re: Greta Thunberg - Time Person of the Year

I guess they didn't anticipate all that rain in November and December Mups. It just goes to show that with all man's knowledge they get it wrong sometimes. Predicting things (especially the forces of nature) is only guess work at best...

Re: Greta Thunberg - Time Person of the Year

Yes, I expect you're right, Foxy.

Re: Greta Thunberg - Time Person of the Year

Look on the bright side in a 100 years that earth will wash over to Holland build the land up there as its being doing for centuries