Predictions of Doom and Gloom!

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What did you mean by that? It sounds a little condescending from my perspective.

I don't think that you answered my points. Why was China and India allowed to grow their CO2 footprints. China's footprint is now almost twice that of the U.S. It was only a few short years ago that the U.S. produced the most carbon dioxide.

Hydroelectric and nuclear energy are major sources of electricity and are very viable except in the eyes of the environmentalist. Most of the electricity produced in France is nuclear.
[Nuclear power is the largest source of electricity in France, with a generation of 379.1 TWh, or 71.6% of the country's total electricity production of 519.4 TWh, the highest percentage in the world. (Source: Wikipedia)]

And your last point about the elites consuming exorbitant amounts of carbon based fuels with their large mansions, private jets, mega yachts, expensive cars etc, ---many, many times that of the common man just because they have a kind heart - reminds me of virtue signaling and political correctness. They should be leading by example.

The agreement of hypocrites does not disprove science.

I think that I have answered your questions quite well, and that you have made no attempt at all to answer mine. If you are not being paid for this, you are certainly missing at least one boat.

Do you always lead with statements like this? Are you calling the world's elites hypocrites? I could go along with that when it concerns global warming theory.

Let's just say that you are 71 years of age and set in your ways and that I am 71 years old and set in my ways. Anything I say and any scientific evidence I bring forth will not likely change your views on life and vice versa.

But if glacials are really your thing. Let me know and I will give you my perspective.

I obviously do not always lead with statements like that. You were calling the celebrities who jet to climate protests hypocrites, and trying to infer that they also wrong about the facts.

I could argue on many points, but I think the melting ice will be hardest for you to sound rational about using true evidence. Third request.

P.S. - I don't think my views are fixed. At 16, I took my girlfriend to the McMaster experimental nuke and enthused over it rather than necking, as she expected. Later, I learned more about nukes and their true costs. I reversed a long, strong preference for rear-engine car designs after the LeMans blowovers. My vocation was aimed at conserving oil, but as recently as 2007, I was in favour of developing the Canadian tar sands, using available natural gas to lighten them for use. Then I got to thinking deeply about what I'd seen in Banff the year before. The news from all over has become increasingly alarming since then.

^^the mark of a fine mind, one that is flexible in response to conditions. need more such.

Anyone with an ounce of rationality *must* question the seeming hypocrisy. <sigh>

Most people bow to authority and naively trust what is fed to them.

There is so much political manoeuvring in the climate change debate it is astounding so many people can't see it.
Or if they do, they are willingly complicit.

Remember, fellow aliens,
We are dealing with neurotypicals with their propensity towards deception.
We auties need to harness our better than average reasoning abilities,
Develop our critical thinking skills, and challenge questionable statements.

It is not wrong to ask questions,
And it is questionable when you are confronted with statements such as: "The science is settled",
So: "Don't worry your pretty little heads about it".

Skepticism is not a dirty word.
Don't you believe what you've seen and you've heard.

And the bottom quote is coming from "The Guardian" <snicker>

Yes,
This technology needs more work,
But progress is, err, progressing.

So you don't support the "Extinction Rebellion" crowd who believe billions will die within 12 years time if carbon emissions aren't severely curtailed,
China excluded, of course.

How on earth do you come up with my supposed predictions from a sentence of well known history?

There is a chaos of mutual finger-pointing going on because the clean-up bill is enormous, and the energy companies always shield themselves from liability with legal barriers. I'm reminded of questioning a group of pre-schoolers in a room where some cookies have gone missing. They may well agree that a big dog took them.

There are over a hundred companies trying to jump on the gravy train with designs for small, modular nuclear reactors. These would be mass-produced versions of the first, semi-experimental utility-scale generators, but none have put their own money into a prototype. Those early nukes were all economic failures; the only new hope is that mass production would bring costs down. However, windmills are already under half the price, go up many times faster, and don't leave permanent genetic hazards that can't be fully contained. The "clean up companies" are doing their best to run off with billions of tax dollars, leaving a leaking mess behind for another scam artist. I had some hopes for fusion reactors, until I learned that we can only fuse deuterium, and the neutrons get up to their usual mischief, turning the apparatus into hazardous junk.

I'll try again.
Do you support the beliefs of Extinction Rebellion?

Also,
Wind turbines are helpful in culling endangered bird species.

^^ I have never heard of Extinction Rebellion until now.
Migratory birds are highly dependent on predictable weather. The chicks hatch the week that the plants are young and tender, and are in a race to be ready to migrate. Around here, I've seen dead geese on ice that was late melting some years, and many other disturbances.

It is called: "A faux pas".
An autistic one.
Assuming my, err, assumption that it was unintentional is correct.

However,
If it was an intentional attack on your abilities/character, it was an attempt at diminishing your status/credibility in the social hierarchy.

Jordan Peterson would call it a: "Serotonin event",
Where the winner in the competition gains,
And the loser misses out on the serotonin hit.

Yes, I know.
It's obvious.
I put into words what other people are thinking.
It's a gift.

I have broken this response into a few pieces since I suspect it will not otherwise fit.

Great Ice Ages are rare events over the past 500 million years. Currently the Earth is in the Quaternary Great Ice Age. This Epoch began around 2.6 million years ago. Within the current Ice Age there are cold periods called Glacial periods that last around 100,000 years and warm periods called Interglacial periods that last around 10,000 years. The Earth is currently in an Interglacial period called the Flandrian interglacial which is commonly referred to as the Holocene. [source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene] During the Glacial periods, much of Canada, the northern U.S. and northern Europe were covered by glacial ice sheets over a mile in thickness.

As the Earth transitioned from the Last Glacial Period to the Holocene interglacial, the temperature rose quite dramatically and in a short span of geological time. In Greenland from the Younger Dryas Stadial (around 12,800 years before present to the beginning of the Holocene, the temperature rise was approximately 15 degrees C (27 degrees F).

As a result, vast ice sheets melted and the ocean levels rose approximately 120 meters (around 400 feet).


Climate has been fairly stable over most of the Holocene. But there have been variations.

Little Ice Age [from the 13th or 14th century to the mid-19th century.]
Medieval Warm Period [ca. 900 A.D. to 1300 A.D.]
Dark Ages Cold Period [ca. 400 A.D. to 800 A.D.]
Roman Warm Period [ca. 250 B.C. to AD 400 A.D.]
Much of the temperature rise in the 20th Century has been due to a rebound from the extremely cold temperatures that occurred during the Little Ice Age.

The highest temperatures in the Holocene actually occurred in the Holocene Climate Optimum (roughly the interval 9,000 to 5,000 years before present). Out of 140 sites across the western Arctic, there is clear evidence for conditions warmer than now at 120 sites. At 16 sites, where quantitative estimates have been obtained, local HTM temperatures were on average 1.6±0.8 °C higher than now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_climatic_optimum

During the warm periods glaciers retreats and during these cold period glaciers advance. The 1990 IPCC report reads “Cooler episodes have been associated with glacial advances in alpine regions of the world, such neo-glacial” episodes have been increasingly common in the last few thousand years. Of particular interest is the most recent cold event, the Little Ice Age, which resulted in extensive glacial advances in almost all alpine regions of the world between 150-450 years ago so that glaciers were more extensive 100-200 years ago than now nearly everywhere. Although not a period of continuously cold climate, the Little Ice Age was probably the coolest and most globally extensive cool period since the Younger Dryas.

As the glaciers retreat, evidence of past warming spells appear:
Ancient tree stumps found under Breiðamerkurjökull glacier in Southeast Iceland are confirmed to be roughly 3,000 years old. A specialist believes the remarkably well-preserved stumps were part of a massive forest that disappeared after a long period of a warm climate. One of the tree stumps was found in Breiðamerkursandur a couple of months ago, and once it was being salvaged a second, larger one was found. The smaller one was sent for examination while the larger will be examined at a later time. Examinations revealed that the tree stump died very quickly at 89-years-old in the month of June. Nearby sediments and data suggest that the glacier itself was the culprit.
Discovering ancient forests under receding glaciers is not confined to Iceland. Remains of trees dating back to the Middle Ages have been found under the Juneau and Exit Glaciers in Alaska, as well under glaciers in Patagonia.
Tree stumps have also turned up under Swiss glaciers, carbon dated to about 4000 years ago.
The simple reality is that glaciers worldwide expanded enormously during the Little Ice Age, arguably to their greatest extent since the Ice Age. Despite decades of retreat since the 19thC, they are still abnormally large by historical standards.
Source: https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpre ... c-glacier/

Another point to be considered is that much of the glacier retreat occurred in the early 20th century, long before rising CO2 levels was a significant factor.
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpre ... rly-20thc/

Last edited by jimmy m on 16 Jan 2020, 10:24 pm, edited 2 times in total.

There have been a number of scares concerning glaciers over the past few decades

Himalaya Glacier Scare
In the 2007, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claimed:

• receding and thinning of Himalayan glaciers can be attributed primarily to the global warming; in addition, high population density near these glaciers and consequent deforestation and land-use changes have adversely affected these glaciers

• the total glacial area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 km2(or disappear entirely) by the year 2035

• the 15,000 Himalayan glaciers form a unique reservoir of water which in turn, is the lifeline of millions of people in South Asian countries

• it is likely that glacial melt will turn the big Asian river systems into seasonal rivers and affect economies in the region

This scare caused a massive rebuttal. The scare was not based on peer review or even data. It was based solely on gray literature.

Its has recently emerged that the IPCC statement on Himalayan glaciers, which was based on information from a 2005 report by the World Wildlife Fund, was in turn gleaned from an article that appeared in the popular UK science journal, The New Scientist in June 1999.

In the article, "Flooded Out," Indian glaciologist Syed Hasnain speculates that the Himalayan glaciers could vanish within 40 years as a result of global warming.

A glacier expert interviewed by CNN explained that the data published was flawed.

Michael Zemp from the World Glacier Monitoring Service said: "There are simply no observations available to make these sorts of statements."

Zemp says that the figures quoted in the report are not possible because 500,000 square kilometers is estimated to be the total surface area of all mountain glaciers worldwide.

"The other thing is that the report says the glaciers are receding faster than anywhere else in the world. We simply do not have the glacier change measurements. The Himalayas are among those regions with the fewest available data," Zemp said.

In the end the U.N.'s leading panel on climate change has apologized for misleading data published in a 2007 report that warned Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035.

Recent studies have shown that 87 percent of Himalayan Glaciers have been stable since 2001. Of the remainder, 18 glaciers were advancing while 248 were retreating. https://www.thegwpf.com/himalayan-glaci ... -discover/


Montana Glacier National Park
The park service were so convinced that the glaciers in the Glacier National Park were in imminent danger that they installed warning signs over a decade ago. The signs said its signature glaciers would be gone by 2020 due to the effects of man-made global warming. Currently the park service is replacing these signs.


North Polar Ice Death Spiral
Almost every year, there has been much excitement in the media about ‘catastrophic’ melting of Arctic sea-ice, run-away melting, tipping points, death spirals and “ice-free” summers.

In the Arctic Ocean, the area covered by sea ice grows and shrinks over the course of the year. Each fall, as less sunlight reaches the Arctic and air temperatures begin to drop, additional sea ice forms. The total area covered by ice increases through the winter, usually reaching its maximum extent in early March. Once spring arrives with more sunlight and higher temperatures, the ice begins to melt back, shrinking to its minimum extent each September.

One of the common theories is that the Arctic will become so ice free that ships will navigate the Northwest Passage soon. But actually ships have been navigating the Northwest Passage for over 100 years. Here is a list: https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpre ... t-passage/

Examining this trend over a longer time window, it should be noted that the Arctic had less ice in the past:
Recent mapping of a number of raised beach ridges on the north coast of Greenland suggests that the ice cover in the Arctic Ocean was greatly reduced some 6000-7000 years ago. The Arctic Ocean may have been periodically ice free. ”The climate in the northern regions has never been milder since the last Ice Age than it was about 6000-7000 years ago. We still don’t know whether the Arctic Ocean was completely ice free, but there was more open water in the area north of Greenland than there is today,” says Astrid Lyså, a geologist and researcher at the Geological Survey of Norway (NGU).
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpre ... years-ago/
This would match up with the warming that occurred during the Holocene Climate Optimum

no offense intended towards those who disbelieve in climate change. but, i am more inclined to discount their disbelief due to the toxic right-wing baggage the disbelievers carry that has nothing to do with climate change.