Posted on 08/12/2005 8:20:24 AM PDT by cogitator
Won't the reefs migrate northward over time? If the water temperature off Hilton Head will be about the same in 100 years as it is now in the Florida Keys, why wouldn't coral get a foothold there? It may take a while, but I don't think reefs are going to go extinct.
-ccm
As you pointed out that was not the case, Spencer and Christy showed warming at a much slower rate. But this 'study' is not surprising, this is about the 10th attempt by Global Warmers to 'correct' Spencer and Christy's data. It is not that hard to try to manipulate data to meet your desired results. The fact is, global warming models greatly exagerate man's impact on global warming and produce outrageous results that will never happen.
For coral reefs, that's taking the long view. Remember that habitats like the Bahamas resulted from climate processes that occurred over the past 400,000 years or so. While there could be some migration, they have to have someplace to go. And coral reefs don't just get up and walk. Plus, in addition to warming, increasing CO2 from the atmosphere acidifies the oceans, making it harder for the organisms to make the limestone (CaCO3) that forms the reefs. So there are significant difficulties ahead for reefs this century.
One of the main points about this particular event is that it resulted in a substantial upward correction by Spencer and Christy. Their trend is still much lower than Mears and Wentz, but now both trends fall into the error bounds of the model predictions. Before there is concern about predicting what the next 50-100 years hold, it's vital to get "now" right. This is a big step toward that goal.
I'd still like to get an explanation of why the 1997-1998 El Nino "corrected" the lack of a trend so markedly. Yes, it was a big signal -- like a hitter's hot streak -- but temperatures went back to near-normal after that. I'm not conceiving this very well; I'll keep reading.
Your tone sounds like you believe "life" will be degraded in some why. Perhaps life will be enhanced instead?
If your standard is that mere change in species distribution is a bad thing, then yes, any temperature changes is "bad".
I prefer to look at this positively. Evolution is encouraged by climate changes. Whatever species made extinct by human actions can be balanced out by new species niches created by climate change.
A very notable effect could be a significant reduction in the flow of fresh water derived from mountain glaciers. We need it to drink and irrigate, animals and rivers need it to maintain their natural existence, etc.
Are you claiming that less precipitation will result from global warming? I thought more precipitation was predicted. In any event, the current surplus of water from glaciers is merely past precipitation being released. When the glaciers are gone, "normal" water flow will be resumed.
So global warming, along with other types of climate and environmental change, will significantly alter life on this planet.
The only thing "normal" about life on this planet is change. I'm actually kind of enthused that global warming may improve some things. That some things may be "damaged", well, that's life.
When you ask what can (or should) be done about it, the first thing I say is to get better answers to pertinent questions, such as how much warming is too much for ecosystems to handle.
Your implication is that you expect ecosystems to "handle" temperature change by not changing itself. What's wrong with change? Is there something about man changing the earth that makes it "bad" or "sinful"? This seems to be your gist.
The next step is to identify free market-based ways to make addressing climate change and GHG emissions something that people recognize they need to do. Coercion won't work, but incentives probably will.
I don't think there's a dimes worth of difference between "coercion" and "incentives". Even if you pay people money, that money has to be taken from the general population and so is still coercion.
This planet is strong. It can handle a new dominant species. Let's study the change, but there's no reason to panic over it. Life will continue.
Besides, when the third world catches up to the first, they'll go into population decline like we have. The human population on earth I think has been estimated to peak in 50 years or so.
Don't worry, be happy.
But it is S&C who have corrected the data and no one has ever called them global warmers. That is what is the key point here. This is the dataset that the skeptics use to deny global warming. I will also point out that there are other datasets produced by other scientists that show more warming than S&C. For example RSS (the people who pointed out S&C's error to them) has a rate of about 0.17 (posting from memory) as opposed to S&C's 0.12
Assuming the flaky hockey stick theory is correct, this 'apparent rapid warming trend' is not all that abnormal over the 4 Billion years of the earth's existance. The earth's climate has never been stable, and trying to pin all the instability on man is kookiness. Trying to make the case after 4,000,0000,000 years the earth finally became stable and man screwed it up just doesn't fly. Global Warmers are not making an honest effort at finding alternative explainations, instead it is the great 'consensus' (read ASSUMPTION) that it is man's fault.
It's way too early for incentives. We haven't even decided what the optimum climate is for quality of life. It is likely to be a few degrees warmer than it currently is and we should currently be giving incentives to generate GHG.
Technology will have many answers, if it's even a problem we need to solve. If GHG generation is a true problem, half or more of the solution will be on the GHG consumption side.
Ocean water has the wonderful property of turning reflective white when vaporized. We can control the amount of sunlight absorpbtion we want be developing cloud management technology.
No, this is one of many datasets that skeptics use to deny global warming. And skeptics are denying that there is a warming trend, what is at issue is the effect man has on it and the enormous number of assumptions put into the models which produce whacky predictions. Global warmers have a religious view of their models.
And skeptics are denying that there is a warming trend...are 'not'....
There are cycles of freeze, thaw, warming and other things that we know go by 10s of thousands of years... in fact sun spots and the earths wobble on its access has more to do with global climate changes than anything we do.
Well, when the science career dries up, there's always politics.
Know thine enemies...
I like your attitude, but I also examine the issues as flatly as possible -- meaning that I don't want to over-value nature or under-value humans. Both are important.
Climate change is evolutionarily advantageous -- in a wholly natural world. In a modified world where the modifications are predominantly human-made, nature doesn't have as many options for evolutionary change. Extinction and reduction in biodiversity is made more likely.
I brought up honeybees because they illustrate the interdependence of humans and nature. Despite numerous technological advances, we can't effectively mass-pollinate a lot of agriculturally-important crops. Honeybees are stressed; losing them would change our lives in many ways. In the wholly natural realm, there are specific pollinators that actually pollinate a number of different flowering plants. If the pollinator goes extinct, most of the dependent plants will, too. Such a cascade effect may have dependencies that we can't even see, and some of those may be important to us.
Are you claiming that less precipitation will result from global warming? I thought more precipitation was predicted. In any event, the current surplus of water from glaciers is merely past precipitation being released. When the glaciers are gone, "normal" water flow will be resumed.
No, most mountain glaciers are melting at an accelerated rate. A glacier is a great example of quasi-equilibrium; it responds to both input factors and output factors. As you note, it's a reservoir. If the reservoir gets drained, the flow from the reservoir will then become merely the flow of the annual input, not annual input + reservoir flow. Out West, though the past couple years have been a little better, they worry about declining reservoir levels. What do you rely on for water if the reservoir's gone? "Normal" flow? I don't think Phoenix, Albuquerque, and Las Vegas can do that.
Your implication is that you expect ecosystems to "handle" temperature change by not changing itself. What's wrong with change? Is there something about man changing the earth that makes it "bad" or "sinful"? This seems to be your gist.
Ecosystems can and do adapt to certain levels of change. That's OK. I do hold a view that allowing preventable extinctions to happen is not good stewardship of Earth's natural resources, particularly if the cause of the extinction is primarily human activity. For one thing, we may not recognize the importance to us of something that is lost. There was a movie called "Medicine Man" (Sean Connery) that illustrated this in a somewhat overblown fashion; deforestation in the Amazon deprived us of a potent anti-tumor drug.
I don't think there's a dimes worth of difference between "coercion" and "incentives". Even if you pay people money, that money has to be taken from the general population and so is still coercion.
There's a FReeper called Carry_Okie who I greatly admire, though we have differing opinions. He's pointed out how private landowners can be provided market incentives to do things that help, rather than harm, nature. That's the type of thing I'm thinking of. We have often discussed ways that the current "tragedy of the commons" affecting declining ocean fisheries could be fixed.
Don't worry, be happy.
I don't like to be unhappy, but I also don't like being unknowledgeable. Unfortunately, being knowledgeable sometimes makes me a bit disconsolate.
It's unusual for the Holocene. Remember that climate is different when the Earth is different, so the further you go back in time for comparison, the less relevant the comparison becomes. The reason that the "hockey stick" evaluation is pertinent is so that the context in which the observed change is happening can be compared -- to the extent possible -- with other comparable periods.
The other thing we know (without a doubt) is that GHGs, particularly CO2, are increasing in the atmosphere. The reasons the studies under discussion in this thread are important is that they have helped to verify the models that indicate increasing CO2 in the Holocene atmosphere -- meaning now -- should cause an increase in the global temperature. While the tropospheric warming trend was uncertain, the models didn't predict uncertainty, they predicted a warming trend in the troposphere DUE TO increasing GHGs. Now the data appears to agree with the models.
Thus, since humans are causing the increasing atmospheric GHGs, humans are part of the cause of the current warming trend. I don't call that abnormal, I call it fact. Once the fact is accepted, the evaluation of what could or should be done about it can be undertaken in a reasonable fashion.
Yep, the "process of science at work." The data doesn't comport with your politically motivated predetermined results? Just change the data.
The scientific method at work.
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