Global Warming

[LeeToRainesToRoach]

Who's ignorant about it? Climate change is real, and climate variability still exists, always has and will.

They're ignoring Melbourne's cold weather. Haven't seen any newspaper articles on it, but I'd be willing to bet it (every month under the long-term average) hasn't happened in a long time.

What I'm getting at is that "climate change" is still essentially "global warming", a label that had to be abandoned due to the post-1998 hiatus which some of you claim didn't happen.

 

[DavidSSS]

As I said, the HUN figures are extremely dodgy, if they are using info you are showing from the BOM site, doubly so.

Have a look at that and you will notice it is not 1991-2020 because you can't get an average of that period unless you combine 2 sites or use an alternate site for Melbourne such as Melbourne Airport or Moorabbin Airport.

The averages shown there are for the Melbourne Office of the BOM from 1991 to 2015.

If you want to compare apples with apples then you can compare the current year with the observations at Olympic Park which go back to June 2013. The BOM do not provide averages for the Olympic Park site for the very reason that it was opened too recently and there are not enough years of data to make an average useful.

If you want to look at climate change you need to look at trends over a long period in a lot of locations.

If you take an exceptionally hot year as your base year you can make it look like there was a hiatus. Like arguing that Richmond Football Club plateaued in 2019 if you take 2017 as a base year. Of course Richmond look like they have been on the rise if you take 2016 as a base year. Everyone can manipulate very short term trends and everyone can manipulate data by cherry picking the base year.

As we all know from the COVID data we see every day, you need a longer period of time and you need to be looking at an appropriate moving average.

By the way, many people started using climate change as the change is not uniform in different places and is not uniform in the short term impact. Many still use global warming and some now use global heating to reflect that the warming has been going on for a while and has now added a lot of heat into the atmosphere and the oceans.

Althom, yes we are moving through changes in the climate, but we are also driving a change in the climate by altering the chemical composition of the atmosphere. How can adding billions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere possibly have no impact?

DS

 

[Althom]

So what's the explanation for what happened prior to any industrial activity.
When temperatures were a lot higher than current and there was a lot more CO2, due to volcanic activity, and water vapour in the atmosphere.
The current level of CO2 being released into the atmosphere due to industrial activity is negligible comparted to what was being released previously by volcanic and thermal activity.
Mankind might have some miniscule impact but the cycle is natural and the impact of mankind on the cycle is not discernible.
Mankind might reduce the time to the next Ice Age from 10000 years away to 9990 years away and that will be about it.

 

[LeeToRainesToRoach]

As I said, the HUN figures are extremely dodgy

As I said, they're not "HUN figures".

Have a look at that and you will notice it is not 1991-2020 because you can't get an average of that period unless you combine 2 sites or use an alternate site for Melbourne such as Melbourne Airport or Moorabbin Airport.

The averages shown there are for the Melbourne Office of the BOM from 1991 to 2015.

If you want to compare apples with apples then you can compare the current year with the observations at Olympic Park which go back to June 2013. The BOM do not provide averages for the Olympic Park site for the very reason that it was opened too recently and there are not enough years of data to make an average useful.

Good pickup and fair comment. I withdraw my table. To get to that page I clicked on a link for the monthly temps at Olympic Park that reads "If you are after long-term averages relevant to Melbourne (Olympic Park), Victoria, look at the tables for Melbourne Regional Office".

Still *smile*' cold though, innit?

If you want to look at climate change you need to look at trends over a long period in a lot of locations.

Cities absolutely have their own climate.

How can adding billions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere possibly have no impact?

It's the vexed question - what effect does 0.0016 percent of 0.04 percent have?

 

[AngryAnt]

Of course Climate Change is real.
We're moving away from the last major climate event, the last Ice Age, and moving towards the next major climate event, the next Ice Age.
Totally natural that the planet will, on average, warm up as we head towards the next Ice Age.
There'll be deviations away from that trend as the cycle continues but continue it will and there's jack **** to be done about it.

A fine argument, and a common denialist one. The climate does change, and always has, true. Apart from catastrophic events like supervolcanos and massive asteroid strikes, this "natural" change take thousands of years for visible and measurable effects to be apparent.

We've changed the climate significantly in just 200 years or so of industrial activity.

 

[tigersnake]

jesus christ

 

[DavidSSS]

A fine argument, and a common denialist one. The climate does change, and always has, true. Apart from catastrophic events like supervolcanos and massive asteroid strikes, this "natural" change take thousands of years for visible and measurable effects to be apparent.

We've changed the climate significantly in just 200 years or so of industrial activity.

This, the change is quicker and is a result of our actions.

It is quite simple:
The Greenhouse effect is the only reason we can live on this planet, it keeps the temperature at a livable level.
The Greenhouse Effect is the result of heat being captured by gasses in our atmosphere, such as CO2 and Methane.
We are pumping billions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere.
This enhances the Greenhouse Effect.
Enhancing the Greenhouse Effect will make the planet warmer.
A warmer planet is precisely what has been observed.

jesus christ

What did he do?

DS

 

[Tigers of Old]

4 Years of Catastrophic Fires in California: ‘I’m Numb’ (Published 2020)

For the eight million residents of the San Francisco Bay Area, a ring of fire across Northern California feels inescapable.

www.nytimes.com

4 consecutive years of fires in California. Hopefully we don't have a fire season like last year..

 

[LeeToRainesToRoach]

California like Victoria does not perform anywhere near enough back-burning. A recent independent report described forest management by California landowners as an "unprecedented catastrophe".

 

[AngryAnt]

California like Victoria does not perform anywhere near enough back-burning. A recent independent report described forest management by California landowners as an "unprecedented catastrophe".

It's hazard reduction burning, "back burning" is a controlled burn ahead of a fire front to prevent progress.

With the warmer and drier climate in Victoria over the past few decades hazard reduction burns are increasingly dangerous, and have been shown to have been of limited utility in any case.

Fire chief calls out debate around fuel reduction burns as 'an emotional load of rubbish'

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews moves to shut down calls for a massive increase in fuel reduction burns and is backed up by the state's fire chief, who says the debate involves "hysteria".

www.abc.net.au

 

[DavidSSS]

Yeah, I suppose the warming climate has nothing to do with longer bushfire seasons here and elsewhere and more severe fires.

Probably nothing to do with the Earth losing 28 trillion tonnes of ice between 1994 and 2017 as pointed out in a recent article in The Cryosphere Discussions.

As the authors conclude:

The overall rate of ice loss has increased by 49 % over the past 24 years compared to the 1990s, and in situ measurements of changes in glacier mass (Zemp et al., 2019) and satellite records of ice shelf extent (Cook and Vaughan, 2010) which pre-date the complete survey confirm this trend. Although a small fraction of mountain glacier losses are associated with retreat since the little ice age (Marzeion et al., 2014), there can be little doubt that the vast majority of Earth’s ice loss is a direct consequence of climate warming.

Climate change is happening, it is already having a detrimental impact, this is not something which will happen in the future, it began decades ago and the impact is right in our faces.

DS

 

[LeeToRainesToRoach]

It's hazard reduction burning, "back burning" is a controlled burn ahead of a fire front to prevent progress.

With the warmer and drier climate in Victoria over the past few decades hazard reduction burns are increasingly dangerous, and have been shown to have been of limited utility in any case.

Ah yeah I keep making that mistake.

There is a lot more burning being done than before. If land being zoned for development is making it more difficult to perform preventative burns, people will just have to accept the danger as a trade-off.

People were calling out last summer's hazardous conditions 12 months in advance. You either do something to prepare or you react when fires flare. The latter is official Vic government policy.

 

[AngryAnt]

Yeah no worries, we'll never agree on this.

 

[LeeToRainesToRoach]

Yeah no worries, we'll never agree on this.

Conditions are becoming more conducive to bushfires, but what can you do if those responsible for mitigating the danger are reluctant to undertake the preparations that used to be taken?

We've had an unprecedented global industrial slowdown due to the pandemic, yet no slowdown in the increase of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere which hints at the massive change/sacrifice required to have an impact. If the trend continues unabated t may yet force a rethink about human influence.

 

[DavidSSS]

Yep, all the impact of COVID19 and we are still emitting too much CO2.

The earlier we get on to fixing this the easier it will be.

DS

 

[DavidSSS]

Meanwhile, it might be our winter, but summer on the other side of the planet.

So, what do we see? More bushfires and more evidence that climate change increases the likelihood of extreme wildfire conditions in California.

An article in Environmental Research Letters concludes:

Observed and projected trends suggest that anthropogenic climate change has already facilitated conditions that are increasingly conducive to wildfire activity, and that continued global warming will continue to intensify those conditions in the future.

That's right, this is not something we are expecting in the future, it is something already observed.

We got to observe more extreme fire conditions earlier this year and the impact of such conditions.

The evidence just keeps piling up that climate change is happening, human activities are the cause and the impact is severe.

DS

 

[Tigers of Old]

Los Angeles reports its hottest day on record, reaching a maximum of 49.4°C..

 

[LeeToRainesToRoach]

Denver had 37 degrees on Sunday and is set for 3 degrees on Tuesday. Snow forecast for the Rocky Mountains which is apparently very rare.

 

[Baloo]

Yep, the climate change is a very real thing as evidenced in the 2 posts above

 

[AngryAnt]

Denver had 37 degrees on Sunday and is set for 3 degrees on Tuesday. Snow forecast for the Rocky Mountains which is apparently very rare.

It's almost as if the climate is changing