I don't understand "global warming"/"climate change"

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Just saw another article that thoroughly annoyed me.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/ipcc-window-to-avert-catastrophic-climate-change-is-quickly-closing-161926811.html

Uh, don't these "unlivable" conditions happen on the way out of every ice age...? The rise in temperatures and melting of the ice are an expected thing after an ice age.
Are these people trying to play God or something? They believe they can end ice ages?
Can anyone explain this hysteria to me?

Obviously, there are fluctuations in temperature over geologic time.

No, I don't believe "climate change" is purely "man-made."

The problem, these days, is that the rise in temperature----especially in the Arctic regions---is occurring at an alarmingly fast rate. This make me believe there has been some impetus/catalyst/acceleration of natural climate change bought about by man-made forces.

We finnished 'coming out of the last Ice Age" eleven thousand years ago.

Climate has changed back and forth -cooled and warmed- slightly over the centuries since then. But then there has been sudden and steep rise in temperature since the industrial revolution two centuries ago. Much steeper and faster than any other rise in the last eleven thousand years. Coinciding with the rise in carbon being put into the air by humans burning fossil fuels.

My understanding the ice age cooling doesn't happen until ice completely melts, so the earth surface covered in water would reflect more of the light... For the temperatures to go down they have go up first.

It's a cyclic event, it follows a strict sequence.

That's true----but what usually takes maybe 200 or more years has taken only 20 years or so.

It's the acceleration of the "change" that's the problem--more than the presence of the "change" itself.

Never heard that theory before. But I dont see how it could possibly work that way.

you're saying that when ALL ice goes away it causes the earth to reflect MORE light, and to absorb less light, causing the whole planet to get colder. Ice reflects more light than does non ice. So it cant work that way.

Ice and snow are like aluminum foil. Ice reflects more light than does dry land without ice cover. And it reflects more light than does open ocean water. If you removed the ice caps at the two poles it would decrease the earth's reflectivity. Not increase it.

Also ice NEVER completely goes away. There are always residual ice caps on the planet.

But the point is that when glaciers retreat there is less aluminum foil covering the planet so the earth reflects less, and absorbs more sunlight (because there is more non ice exposed- more dry land and more water exposed). Not what you're saying- which is the opposite.

So if you had a warming trend that resulted in ALL of the ice (all of the aluminum foil) being removed from the earth the earth would reflect the least amount of sunlight, and absorb the most, making the warming trend even hotter. It would not stop the warming trend, and start an opposite cooling trend. It would just keep on getting hotter.

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Maybe you're confused. As I understand it the most accepted theory about the cause of ice ages today is that it has to do with precession of the earth's axis that cause a decrease in temperature which cause ice to expand.

But there was an old theory that the ice ages were caused, paradoxically, by an INCREASE in the earth's temperature. So maybe ice disappearing did indeed cause a heating trend to get even hotter, which conceivably - might cause an ice age. The way that that would work is the hotter the climate is the more water the atmosphere can hold which means more precipitaton. So you get more of both rain and snow. And in the high latitudes the extreme hot caused MORE snowfall. So much snowfall that it failed to melt in spring, and began accumulate year after year- causing the white stuff to expand across the map. Viola! Ice Age. But even that theory is just a theory. And its not exactly the same thing as what you're saying.

We should have used the term "climate change" from day one.

The term "global warming" just makes a lot of people complacent when there is a polar vortex, or a big winter storm like the one that caused the big Texas power grid failure.

One simple word:

You are assuming the temperature data hasn't been "fudged", which it has over here in Australia.
There is also the tactic of only selecting the part of the graph which suits the narrative.

It is naive to blindly believe what the "establishment" (or governing power) propagates.

In this case it’s quite easy to check the data for yourself and see that, yes, the world is rapidly warming.

Ironically it’s the exact opposite to what you think it is - the only way to argue that the world isn’t warming is to fudge the data or only look at an extremely small part of the graph.

Currently, based on natural systems alone, we would not expect any significant long-term fluctuation in temperatures. The increase we are seeing is entirely determined by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

Yes, we can end ice ages. In fact we’re currently in the process of doing so. That’s the whole point.

From what I gathered talking to atmosphere physics and other researchers (without journalists and politicians in-between):
1. Technically, we're in ice age (there are stable ice caps);
2. Earth have functioned without ice caps - practically all Mesozoic was much warmer that current Earth. It was pretty habitable - mainly high altitudes were warmer, lower altitudes were similar;
3. Releasing to the atmosphere the carbon that have accumulated for tens of millions of years changed the equilibrum and it's likely we've triggered switch to the ice-cap-free version of Earth;
4. A predictable and measurable effect of more energy in the atmosphere is larger scale of atmospheric phenomena (e.g. more rainwater in a single storm). That increases probablility of catastrophic floods but also droughts, also unusual frost and heat waves. Weather in the air becomes "bigger" in general.
5. Alpine glaciers are disappearing in timescale of decades;
6. There are densely populated areas that are dependent on alpine glaciers and monsoon (very sensitive to any changes in climate) for their freshwater, which means farming and herding - local food. North India - Southwest China region are billions of already hard-up people whose land is likely to desertify in the coming decades.
7. Due to melting ice caps, ocean level is rising but all the water in ice caps would increase it by about 80m and it would take 1000 to 10000 years.

So:
Will we become uninhabitable Venus? No.
Will there be serious problems? Yes.

I am a Texas oil baron and global warming is a hoax meant to hurt Texas and give New York money with the cap and trade we will never run out of oil and and coal y’all are using petroleum to get on this site I bet y’all could not go a day without any fossil fuels the oil industry is the hero here we will never run out of gas the fossil fuel energy industry will always be with us

Last edited by Texasmoneyman300 on 05 Apr 2022, 3:17 am, edited 1 time in total.

I think the 6 proposed by Magz looks very reasonable.
But this contradicts the information I have:
China's Sui and Tang Dynasties (581-907) was a warm period, when the regime on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, Tubo, was exceptionally strong. After the end of the warm period, they experienced agricultural difficulties due to insufficient annual accumulated temperature, so they declined rapidly.
Perhaps the information you collected speaks of a very long-term outcome?

Another catastrophe I think is worth considering is sea level rise due to melting ice caps. Given the importance of shipping in trade, most prosperous cities are located along the coast. The shifting of the coastline would inundate these cities.

It's the question wheather alpine glaciers exist at all.
As long as they exist, warm weather is good.
If they disappear, we have a catastrophe.

Coastal cities here in Europe will likely make do - people in Netherlands were turning shallow sea into land since Middle Ages. With modern technologies, it's even more possible.
However, there are countries like Tuvalu and cities like Jakkarta that seem indeed at serious risk.

It is a cyclic event, except this time around the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are in excess of previous events which have been fairly accurately monitored from ice cores in Antarctica for about 800.000 years.

The unusual CO2 levels can't be explained as natural and can only be anthropogenic.