Global warming up

Wouldn't 500 million plus years of bushfires have caused more temp rises by now according to your model?

Just wondering; how does 500million+ years of bushfires compare with 7 billion humans - who have been on the Earth for 5 mins comparatively - as a % of contribution to carbon emissions into the atmosphere?

Would it register higher than .01%? I'd give it 1% to be fair.

 

Actually - "nitrogen fertiliser" is not a fertiliser (as in soil improver) at all. It is a plant stimulant which unlocks nutrients in the soil and forces plants to continue growing when they wouldn't naturally do so and deplete the soil of nutrients even faster ... this is one of the causes of most of our degradation problems in Australia as the soil is rapidly exhausted.

The only real sustainable solution is to increase soil health via adding carbon based manures and plant matter to the soils - and actually increase fertility.

I know you plant "no till", which is fantastic ... but read "Back from the brink" by Peter Andrews

 

Urea is not a plant stimulant. It's a fertilizer. Look up the definition of the word. It's naturally occurring in urine. I use synthetically manufactured stuff. There is hundreds of millions of tonnes of it used globally, annually, and has been used for decades, so if it was causing degradation of the soil we would all have found out decades ago and now all be starving to death.

That sure works great. It does. Remember you contacting me via PM on somersoft? Asking if I could sell you cereal straw? So you import straw from other farms to put on your organic soil? Great. And the carbon based manure you use? Have a think about where that comes from? There is two billion tonnes of grain grown, using artificial nitrogen fertilizer. One billion tonnes of this is fed to animals. This is turned into hundreds of millions of tonnes of beautiful rich animal manure. So organic growers can use manure as a fertilizer. Good for you! Just remember where it comes from and how it originated?

You have a few hectares to fertilize, like most organic vege growers. I have a thousand hectares to fertilize. Like most broadacre farmers. It would take tens of thousands of tonnes for me to use manure.

Peter Andrews has gone bust several times on his own farm and other farms. He now runs an organic horse stud for a billionaire. He imports thousands of tonnes of straw and manure for the pastures on that farm, and exports a few tonnes of prime horse flesh. See what I did there?.

See ya's.

 

I don't personally have a model; I'm not a climate scientist. The carbon dioxide molecules emitted 500 million years ago are unlikely to still be sitting floating around the atmosphere; I would think they'd been recycled through the biosphere many times over, so it's kind of irrelevant, except if you're looking at atmospheric carbon dioxide levels 500 million years ago. The amount of carbon we have on the whole planet is fixed; the thing that changes is how much of it is atmospheric carbon dioxide at any particular point, as opposed to captured carbon in trees and the soil and fossil fuels etc.

There have been devastating atmospheric events in the past; the planet's climate is quite sensitive to changes. If your point is that there would eventually be global warming even if there weren't humans burning fossil fuels, you might be right, I haven't really investigated that. The point is that we're dramatically accelerating it. If you think "well, the planet's ****** anyway, may as well live it up", then I guess that's a valid position, but own it, rather than pretend there's some great conspiracy of brilliant minds to try and ruin your fun for absolutely no reason.

My position, which I assume is quite widespread, is that if we can slow down global warning such that the planet's habitable for another 1,000 years (if left to a natural cycle) rather than 100 years (or whatever the figures are, if we continue with AGW at the same rate), then that might buy enough time that we can develop the technology to control the atmosphere, build huge biodomes, and/or inhabit other planets.

 

The temps haven't gone up in the last 18 years, so it is not dramatically accelerated.

I don't think the earth is f*cked up at all. It is the same as it ever was in my view (weather wise)...I will say that if the earth does become changed from a weather and temp aspect - it's not of our doing.

But I do think we are making it filthy dirty, polluting the crap out of lots of areas, and using up our resources of fish, and available land for farming etc through accelerated reproduction.

We don't need to go looking for other planets - we need to stop folks from reproducing.

 

I'm going to avoid getting bogged down in the detail around AGW, but I'll make one comment - don't confuse people like Tim Flannery (a science educator and activist) with the actual scientists who are collecting and analysing all the climate data.

As much as I enjoy reading Flannery's books, and as qualified a scientist as he is, he's not the one doing the research. Instead, he takes far more clinical and 'boring' findings made by tens of thousands of climate scientists, and explains it in an entertaining way.

Now, there's nothing like a bit of polemic and hyperbole in a book to gain a reader's attention, but Flannery (and similar authors from all political persuasions) is not making proper scientific predictions. He's taking the 'worst case' scenarios and using them to emphasise his point (i.e. we should be doing something to mitigate AGW, because it will probably be very bad for us).

Meanwhile, climate scientists as a whole are much more circumspect in their analysis. They know that, given how exceptionally complicated our climate system is, exact predictions are very hard to make correctly. They also know that one set of findings doesn't necessarily prove anything, which is why you get this incredible amount of data from across the world compiled together, analysed, re-analysed, put through one set of modelling software, re-analysed, put through different modelling software, and on and on and on.

The point is, you don't get interesting and specific predictions from this massive compilation of information (i.e. no more polar bears in a decade, bushfires destroying Canberaa by 2045). You get an approximate trend for future climate. And some of the most boring commentary you'll ever read in your life. If you don't believe me, go and read the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report (not a journalist's Cliffs Notes version, the actual report with the scientific findings) - you will be begging to be shot out of sheer boredom before you get a dozen pages in. It is that exceptionally uninteresting to anyone who isn't an expert or an absolute nut for climate science.

This doesn't mean the findings made by climate scientists are wrong - in all likelihood the planet's temperature is increasing, with historical climate events pointing to negative consequences. It just means that scientists can't (and really shouldn't) tell you whether a particular beach will disappear, or when/where bushfires will occur in 60 years time.

 

Okay, I lied in my last post. I will respond to this comment, since temperatures have gone up in the last 18 years according to:

• The US Government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the UK's Met Office
• The UK's Royal Society and the US National Academy of Sciences
• The UN's World Meteorological Organisation

I'd suggest we give these guys the benefit of the doubt, at least until many more scientific studies show otherwise.

Hear hear, I'm glad most people agree on this if nothing else!

 

I don't know which data you're looking at, but according to NASA, in 1997 the mean global temperature was 0.46 degrees, and now it's 0.68 degrees. That looks like an increase to me. Source: http://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/

You're denying that the ice ages and events such as the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum actually happened?

On what basis? How on earth can you possibly conclude with any credibility, against the consensus of scientists worldwide, that humans are unable to influence the climate?

 

No; they happened - natural occurrences.

"The same as it ever was" refers to the Earths normal patterns - including any previous events.

An increase of...0.23 of a degree.

Is that what this fuss is all about??

I'll go back to a previous discussion; when asked how much of an influence the imposition of a Carbon Tax would affect the temp by the end of this century - the BEST estimate was possibly - possibly an increase of 1/4000th of a degree.

Yep; we can influence temp and weather.

 

I didn't think I'd agree with you on anything in this thread, but I was wrong!
Yes, population growth should be stopped. If you only had one billion people on earth, the consumption of resources would be a much smaller problem and dramatic climate change could most probably be averted.

 

Yet I thought even the IPCC had admitted that there has been no warming for 17 years. Now 18?

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/new...n-climate-debate/story-e6frg6n6-1226583112134

Seems that no one can make their minds up? But I always thought the pause was accepted?


See ya's.

 

Yep; it's a "palm face slap, I shake my head" thing for me.

It it so inobvious what is required here??

Despite all the wars, the famines, the natural disasters and so forth - we are still marching on.

 

If that 0.23 of a degree means that the average temperature at the poles shifts from - 0.1 to +0.13 of a degree, then the entire polar ice caps melt.

I don't understand why you have a problem with small amounts making a big difference; there are examples of it everywhere.

Imagine stress testing an aircraft wing. They put on thousands of kilos of pressure... and eventually there's one last gram that makes it break.

Changing one DNA base pair amongst millions can mean the difference between a normal healthy life, and a devastating metabolic or other illness.

Your body's pH is maintained around 7.4; below 7.35 and above 7.45 can be life-threatening.

No, it was immediately decried widely as a misrepresentation by The Australian. See, for example: http://www.skepticalscience.com/australian-pachauri-global-warming.html and https://theconversation.com/fact-check-has-global-warming-paused-12439

It appears that Pachauri was, if anything, referring to global air temperatures, which fluctuate more rapidly than ocean temperatures (which hold > 90% of all the earth's warmth). Global air temperatures experienced "less warming" due to the countering cooling effect of excessive sulphur dioxide emissions from China. Global ocean temperatures have continued to rise.

 

Now I'm a bit perplexed by your response. I thought you said that there was no problem and now seek to decrease the population to lessen the problem?

 

The IPCC Summary report shows a chart of sea level rising for the last 100 yrs on p10. Looks to me as though it's been rising at a pretty consistent rate since well before we started pumped CO2 into the atmosphere.




And on p4 it says that Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface than any preceding decade since 1850. That might appear like a scary headline, but it just means that it was warmer 150 yrs ago.

Betcha never see those headlines on the front page of your tabloid .

I'm all for reducing pollution, CO2 output, our footprint on the earth, being environmentally sensitive etc, but far to many people are influenced by the sensationalist media portrayal of what may very well be the normal variations in an extremely complex system.

 

I though that too but we were wrong. There is no consensus. This here is a great article about different scientists arguing about 'the pause', whether it is 'real' and what has caused it (if it's real). Very interesting reading.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/has-global-warming-paused/

 

I think this is the crux of the issue. In some ways Global Warming is the worst thing to ever happen to the evironment. By that I mean it is a complete distraction from the real issues, such as pollution. It has polarised debate and since the climate models were wrong, some people have dismissed global warming. Now they think it is ok to pollute, because global warming isn't real. It's like the powers that be put all their bets on a certain outcome and lost. Now it seems it is a free for all and it's ok to pollute again? There is an issue with this though because we need clean air to breathe and polluted air is not clean. I don't want to wind up like mega cities overseas where the government has to issue pollution warnings and people have to stay indoors. I am a lot more concerned about pollution than carbon. I think the whole focus on global warming has distracted from this issue.

 

When do you think we started burning fossil fuels? That graph starts at 1900...well after the start of the industrial revolution.

No it doesn't. It could also mean that they started the records at the end of the little ice age.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

 

From your article

"It's true that Willis and nearly every other climate scientist dismiss the idea that global warming has paused."

True, its not a consensus, just a majority.

 

I'm not going to argue with you - I have my beliefs about the addition of artificial "stimulants" and what I read makes logical sense - such as:

http://healthwyze.org/index.php/com...troying-your-body-the-soil-and-your-food.html
https://books.google.com.au/books?i...icial fertilisers and crop stimulants&f=false
http://soilsmart.com.au/about_soilsmart.php

... but don't have all the answers. I have no answer as to how one would naturally augment such a huge cropping area as you have, other than rotational cropping with spelling periods of green manure crops in between to reintroduce the trace nutrients that such spelling crops draw out of the air ...

I do add bought in manures and mulches onto my property because my own paddocks were so degraded, and am mulching down the grasses in these paddocks on a rotational basis to improve the quality of the soils in those paddocks ... and I don't want to wait a decade or so ... if others want to sell, then I will buy ... but I am very keen to improve my soils to such a level that I don't have to "bring in".

I now have copious worms in paddocks where none existed two years ago (a great indicator of soil health) - the humus levels are now deep, soft and aerated where I've improved ... compared to the hard, dense clay where I haven't ... and I've attached a photo of the grass growing in one of these improved areas (between the garlic rows) in mid-winter where we've had below freezing.

I also understand Peter's plight ... he's been battling against decades of "modern" farming practices and bureaucracy frustration ... but he also have some big believers like Gerry Harvey et al ... but what he says makes so much sense ...

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-...-sequence-farming-methods-to-continue/6459040