Pessimistic about climate

[foenix]

Here's Rudd's graph which is based on the other 3 graphs......how is it record breaking when all three graph of the 3 different areas are only around the 1985 coral coverage?

It is record breaking because Peter Ridd's chart (which is the sum of the three charts) at 2020 is greater than 1986.

How can the sum be greater when the other 3 charts don't indicate "record breaking" levels? That's called sleight of hand voodoo statistics (made up).

[fluffy]

Interesting little listen from CBC Radio this past weekend, a tenured professor with a PhD in Climate Science talks about teaching students about the seriousness of our current situation and then turning them loose into a world where it's business as usual. About a nine minute listen.

https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1- ... -professor

[rustled]

Interesting little listen from CBC Radio this past weekend, a tenured professor with a PhD in Climate Science talks about teaching students about the seriousness of our current situation and then turning them loose into a world where it's business as usual. About a nine minute listen.

https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1- ... -professor

Up until a few weeks ago, Heather Short was a tenured professor at a Montreal college where she spent more than a decade educating students about climate change. But this year, Short found herself feeling as though her work — which left her students with a great deal of anxiety and few solutions about their futures — might be doing them more harm than good. She resigned and wrote about the need for a more climate-literate education system for CBC First Person.

Listening, I heard hubris and cognitive dissonance.

It's about time teachers started seriously considering the anxiety and mental health impacts of what they are engaged in. It was interesting to me that she still seemed to be shielding herself against truly acknowledging her own part in having done more harm than good.

Institutions should be hard to change. She doesn't "get" why that is. She also doesn't seem to understand why (outside of some of the more extreme religious doctrines) traumatizing children - in this case, traumatizing them to the extent that she thinks they need mental health supports to deal with what they're being exposed to in school - is not generally considered a useful tactic in building community.

[Jlabute]

Interesting little listen from CBC Radio this past weekend, a tenured professor with a PhD in Climate Science talks about teaching students about the seriousness of our current situation and then turning them loose into a world where it's business as usual. About a nine minute listen.

https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1- ... -professor

Up until a few weeks ago, Heather Short was a tenured professor at a Montreal college where she spent more than a decade educating students about climate change. But this year, Short found herself feeling as though her work — which left her students with a great deal of anxiety and few solutions about their futures — might be doing them more harm than good. She resigned and wrote about the need for a more climate-literate education system for CBC First Person.

Listening, I heard hubris and cognitive dissonance.

It's about time teachers started seriously considering the anxiety and mental health impacts of what they are engaged in. It was interesting to me that she still seemed to be shielding herself against truly acknowledging her own part in having done more harm than good.

Institutions should be hard to change. She doesn't "get" why that is. She also doesn't seem to understand why (outside of some of the more extreme religious doctrines) traumatizing children - in this case, traumatizing them to the extent that she thinks they need mental health supports to deal with what they're being exposed to in school - is not generally considered a useful tactic in building community.

Same way I saw her.

[Jlabute]

Interesting little listen from CBC Radio this past weekend, a tenured professor with a PhD in Climate Science talks about teaching students about the seriousness of our current situation and then turning them loose into a world where it's business as usual. About a nine minute listen.

https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1- ... -professor

It is a little listen. The thing about CBC is they are biased. They will only ever show one side of an story. So this college professor was tired of giving her students the same old scary narrative. She quits, then gives the scary narrative on CBC radio. No science supports the climate crisis, nor does the IPCC agree. You can count on some to teach it and the CBC to broadcast it even if it causes young people to needlessly stress out and kill themselves. This 9 minute listen is not about climate, it is about how one person has the hope of indoctrinating, scaring, and profoundly changing the lives of more kids according to their own belief. No science information is in this show.

[fluffy]

It is a little listen. The thing about CBC is they are biased. They will only ever show one side of an story. So this college professor was tired of giving her students the same old scary narrative. She quits, then gives the scary narrative on CBC radio. No science supports the climate crisis, nor does the IPCC agree. You can count on some to teach it and the CBC to broadcast it even if it causes young people to needlessly stress out and kill themselves. This 9 minute listen is not about climate, it is about how one person has the hope of indoctrinating, scaring, and profoundly changing the lives of more kids according to their own belief. No science information is in this show.

A PhD in climate science carries some weight. As do her statements that denial is a common reaction among those not wanting to face the evidence that grows in plain sight daily, let alone the evidence that exists beyond plain sight like ocean acidification and shrinking polar ice.

[Jlabute]

It is a little listen. The thing about CBC is they are biased. They will only ever show one side of an story. So this college professor was tired of giving her students the same old scary narrative. She quits, then gives the scary narrative on CBC radio. No science supports the climate crisis, nor does the IPCC agree. You can count on some to teach it and the CBC to broadcast it even if it causes young people to needlessly stress out and kill themselves. This 9 minute listen is not about climate, it is about how one person has the hope of indoctrinating, scaring, and profoundly changing the lives of more kids according to their own belief. No science information is in this show.

A PhD in climate science carries some weight. As do her statements that denial is a common reaction among those not wanting to face the evidence that grows in plain sight daily, let alone the evidence that exists beyond plain sight like ocean acidification and shrinking polar ice.

The oceans are strongly alkaline, not acidic. Arctic ice has grown over the last 15 years and Antarctic ice is also growing. Denial is a common reaction to overwhelmingly stupid ideas that only fit a political narrative. Her PhD doesn't carry any weight in climate science. I've never seen her name on any research papers. I can only assume she is small potatoes in the combined scientific understanding of climate. Still, we know little in regards to climate since climate deals with numerous long cycles and we've only captured some accurate data over a few decades. The physics of how climate works is barely scratched. That is one reason models are completely wrong.

[rustled]

Interesting little listen from CBC Radio this past weekend, a tenured professor with a PhD in Climate Science talks about teaching students about the seriousness of our current situation and then turning them loose into a world where it's business as usual. About a nine minute listen.

https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1- ... -professor

It is a little listen. The thing about CBC is they are biased. They will only ever show one side of an story. So this college professor was tired of giving her students the same old scary narrative. She quits, then gives the scary narrative on CBC radio. No science supports the climate crisis, nor does the IPCC agree. You can count on some to teach it and the CBC to broadcast it even if it causes young people to needlessly stress out and kill themselves. This 9 minute listen is not about climate, it is about how one person has the hope of indoctrinating, scaring, and profoundly changing the lives of more kids according to their own belief. No science information is in this show.

I found it disappointing but unsurprising the CBC commentator - a parent - didn't question the narrative.

She didn't seem even remotely interested in how the objectives of this PhD, and countless other teachers, have negatively impacted the mental health of children like her own.

[rustled]

It is a little listen. The thing about CBC is they are biased. They will only ever show one side of an story. So this college professor was tired of giving her students the same old scary narrative. She quits, then gives the scary narrative on CBC radio. No science supports the climate crisis, nor does the IPCC agree. You can count on some to teach it and the CBC to broadcast it even if it causes young people to needlessly stress out and kill themselves. This 9 minute listen is not about climate, it is about how one person has the hope of indoctrinating, scaring, and profoundly changing the lives of more kids according to their own belief. No science information is in this show.

A PhD in climate science carries some weight. As do her statements that denial is a common reaction among those not wanting to face the evidence that grows in plain sight daily, let alone the evidence that exists beyond plain sight like ocean acidification and shrinking polar ice.

Regardless of her credentials, she seems to be in denial about the part she has played in traumatizing children to the point they need greater mental health supports. One would think someone with a PhD would be better at applying her critical thinking skills and looking at the bigger picture.

[foenix]

A PhD in climate science carries some weight. As do her statements that denial is a common reaction among those not wanting to face the evidence that grows in plain sight daily, let alone the evidence that exists beyond plain sight like ocean acidification and shrinking polar ice.

The ocean is strongly alkaline, not acidic. Arctic ice has grown over the last 15 years and Antarctic ice is also growing. Denial is a common reaction and includes overwhelmingly stupid ideas that only fit a political narrative. Her PhD doesn't carry any weight in climate science. I've never seen her name on any research papers. I can only assume she is small potatoes in the combined scientific understanding of climate. Still, we know little in regards to climate since climate deals with numerous long cycles and we've only captured some accurate data over a few decades. The physics of how climate works is barely scratched. That is one reason models are completely wrong.

Sure the Ocean ph is somewhere around 8 on the ph scale of 0 to 14 but as it absorbes more CO2 from the atmosphere, it becomes less alkaline.....

In the 200-plus years since the industrial revolution began, the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has increased due to human actions. During this time, the pH of surface ocean waters has fallen by 0.1 pH units. This might not sound like much, but the pH scale is logarithmic, so this change represents approximately a 30 percent increase in acidity.

https://www.noaa.gov/education/resource ... dification

Arctic ice isn't growing relative to what it used to be pre 1980 and before that, there isn't really any reliable data to say one way or the other besides the eyeball observation from whalers and such. Since then, the ice coverage in the Arctic has steadily declined.....sure there are short term variation in that as the graph will show but the overall trend is a negative ice coverage.

.....but nice try in looking a 15 year period where there appears to be a very very slight rise ice coverage but look at the slope on that graph......that's call a negative slope in ice coverage for the Arctic....ie, overall trend in negative ice coverage.

As far as climate models goes, yeah it's still in it's infancy but that's not to say that all the models are wrong. It's the best we've got with the data that's been measured. I'm sure the models will get more accurate as we gather more data......that's how science works.

Since the world can’t afford to wait decades to measure the accuracy of climate model predictions, scientists test a model’s accuracy using past events. If the model accurately predicts past events that we know happened, then it should be pretty good at predicting the future, too. And the more we learn about past and present conditions, the more accurate these models become.

Climate models are complex because of the all the elements that are in flux within Earth’s systems. If our atmosphere was like the moon’s, climate modeling would be fairly easy because the moon barely has an atmosphere. On Earth, climate scientists must account for temperature fluctuations, wind patterns, ocean currents, land surface characteristics and much more. Because of this, the models always consider some level of uncertainty – but models measuring smaller areas with higher resolutions produce more accurate models. Despite a small amount of uncertainty, scientists find climate models of the 21st century to be pretty accurate because they are based on well-founded physical principles of earth system processes. This basis solidifies the confidence of the scientific community that human emissions are changing the climate, which will impact the entire planet.

https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2018/ ... -accuracy/

Here's an example of a model, with and without industrial revolution's influence on global temperature.

[Jlabute]

I found it disappointing but unsurprising the CBC commentator - a parent - didn't question the narrative.

She didn't seem even remotely interested in how the objectives of this PhD, and countless other teachers, have negatively impacted the mental health of children like her own.

It IS disappointing but it appears to fit the standard CBC narrative that your mental health is but a casualty in a more important fight. The CBC acknowledges mental health is an issue and suggests individuals put an effort towards fighting climate change in order to feel better.


As for ocean acidification:

- Climate models suggest the ocean’s surface pH has dropped from pH 8.2 to 8.1 since 1750, that change was never actually measured. The pH drop is merely a modeled conjecture that is constantly repeated as fact.

- The concept of pH was first introduced in 1909.

- The pH concept was not modernized in chemistry until the 1920s.

- There are only 3,800 Argo floats that measure ocean temperature and salinity. Only 10 percent of those measure ocean carbon dioxide chemistry, and just 40 floats measure ocean pH, suggesting the researchers don’t think it is a really big problem.

- Measured trends in ocean pH only began in the 1990s, which is far too short a time to allow a robust analysis.

[foenix]

I found it disappointing but unsurprising the CBC commentator - a parent - didn't question the narrative.

She didn't seem even remotely interested in how the objectives of this PhD, and countless other teachers, have negatively impacted the mental health of children like her own.

It IS disappointing but it appears to fit the standard CBC narrative that your mental health is but a casualty in a more important fight. The CBC acknowledges mental health is an issue and suggests individuals put an effort towards fighting climate change in order to feel better.


As for ocean acidification:

- Climate models suggest the ocean’s surface pH has dropped from pH 8.2 to 8.1 since 1750, that change was never actually measured. The pH drop is merely a modeled conjecture that is constantly repeated as fact.

- The concept of pH was first introduced in 1909.

- The pH concept was not modernized in chemistry until the 1920s.

- There are only 3,800 Argo floats that measure ocean temperature and salinity. Only 10 percent of those measure ocean carbon dioxide chemistry, and just 40 floats measure ocean pH, suggesting the researchers don’t think it is a really big problem.

- Measured trends in ocean pH only began in the 1990s, which is far too short a time to allow a robust analysis.

That's why the scientists have to use proxies like coral and ice core sample to measure those things because there weren't any reliable measures for them. That doesn't mean it's not as valid.....it's true that actual measurements are better but we have to use what's available.....

These records can be extended back through time using what are known as chemical proxies to provide an indirect measurement of seawater carbonate chemistry. A proxy is a measurement from a natural archive (ice cores, corals, tree rings, marine sediments, etc.) that is used to infer past environmental conditions. For example, by analyzing the chemical composition of tiny fossil shells found in deep ocean sediments, scientists have developed ocean pH records from ancient times when there were no pH meters. Furthermore, because the ocean surface water is in approximate chemical balance, or equilibrium, with the atmosphere above it, a record of historical ocean pH can be inferred from atmospheric carbon dioxide records derived from Greenland and Antarctic ice cores, which contain air bubbles from the ancient atmosphere. Such evidence indicates that current atmospheric carbon dioxideconcentrations and ocean pH levels are at unprecedented for at least the last 800,000 years.

https://www.whoi.edu/know-your-ocean/oc ... ification/

Here's a better explainaion......

How do we know what ocean pH was in the past even though the pH scale was not introduced until 1909?


When ice sheets build up into glaciers, air bubbles become trapped in the freezing ice. Scientists have analyzed the CO2 concentration of air in these bubbles and have developed a record of the atmospheric CO2 concentration in the recent past. Because large parts of the surface ocean CO2 concentration remains roughly in equilibrium with the atmospheric CO2 concentration, the ocean CO2 content can be calculated from these air bubbles, and ocean pH can also be calculated. In fact, the ice core record shows that the atmospheric CO2 concentration has never been higher than about 280 ppm during the last 800,000 years, creating conditions leading to an average preindustrial surface ocean pH of ca. 8.2. — Jelle Bijma, Biogeochemist, Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Germany

https://www.whoi.edu/know-your-ocean/oc ... ification/

[fluffy]

The oceans are strongly alkaline, not acidic.

Yes, it's not the level as such, but the changes in that level. The balance between pH and ocean life is delicate. Excess atmospheric CO2 ends up in the oceans, forcing the pH level further toward the acidic end of the spectrum. The numbers are small, a change in recent years from from normal pH of 8.2 to its current level of 8.1 might not sound like much but because the scale is logarithmic that represents a 26% increase in relative acidity. Coral reefs are dying, shellfish shells are getting softer due to increasing carbolic acid in seawater due to absorption of excess CO2 in the atmosphere.

https://www.whoi.edu/know-your-ocean/oc ... ate-ocean/

Arctic ice has grown over the last 15 years and Antarctic ice is also growing.

Wrong, we have been losing arctic sea ice at a rate of 13% per decade.

https://www.worldwildlife.org/pages/six ... s-everyone

[Jlabute]

Wrong, we have been losing arctic sea ice at a rate of 13% per decade.

Except the last decade when it has increased. The record low occurred in 2012. Summer minimum has been greater since then and 2021 exceptional. Time will tell.

Minimum arctic ice extent has grown over the last 12+ years and Antarctic ice has gradually grown for decades. The arctic sea ice has had pronounced loss of ice over a small period of time since 1980 but 1901 to 1940 it was decreasing, then 1941 to 1980 it was increasing. 1980 to 2008 it was decreasing. 1980 was considered anomalously high. There are many ocean cycles and loss of ice isn't necessarily because of CO2. We have had hotter periods with less CO2 with higher oceans and less ice. As complex as it is, only time will tell what happens.

I would expect more warm peaks to follow as they did 120,000 years back in the last interglacial. Don't worry though, if you want cooler temperatures, they will eventually occur.

A world of only 'natural drivers' does not give you a flat unchanging climate. That is biased modelling. A result of too much trust in models when the science is not understood.

The most important thing to remember about climate models which are used to project future global warming is that they were “tuned” with the assumption: that the climate system is in a natural state of energy balance, and that there is no long-term climate change unless humans cause it.

This is an arbitrary and illogical assumption. The climate system is an example of a “nonlinear dynamical system”, which means it can change all by itself. For example, slow changes in the rate of vertical overturning of the world’s oceans can cause global warming (or global cooling) with no “external forcing” of the climate system whatsoever.

Instead, the climate models are “tuned” to not produce natural climate change. If a 100-year run of the model produces change, the model is adjusted to removed the “drift”. The models do not produce global energy balance from “first physical principles”, because none of the processes controlling that balance are known to sufficient accuracy. Instead, the models are “fudged” to produce energy balance, based upon the modelers’ assumption of no natural climate change. Then, the models are used as “proof” that only increasing CO2 has caused recent warming.

[foenix]

Minimum arctic ice extent has grown over the last 12+ years and Antarctic ice has gradually grown for decades. The arctic sea ice has had pronounced loss of ice over a small period of time since 1980 but 1901 to 1940 it was decreasing, then 1941 to 1980 it was increasing. 1980 to 2008 it was decreasing. 1980 was considered anomalously high. There are many ocean cycles and loss of ice isn't necessarily because of CO2. We have had hotter periods with less CO2 with higher oceans and less ice. As complex as it is, only time will tell what happens.

Like you wrote, pre-1980, they didn't know for sure what the ice fields were doing as there were no measurements, just eyeball estimates from whalers and scientists. If you have any data on that pre-1980, feel free to put them out. I wouldn't mind looking at them.