The Climate Change Discussion Thread

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by Eau Claire

Melting ice is an issue with respect to the possible melting of the polar ice caps, which would lead to sea rise, but that is decades way.

There are many sources of data out there which illustrate that polar ice is depleting very quickly, with significant losses recorded each year. Looking at it solely from the perspective of sea rise is only considering one small aspect of polar ice melt. There is also the affect on the species that depend on those conditions (famously: polar bears, but many more), and there are many things that we don't understand yet. How will the change in reflectivity affect the global mean temperature? When we get to the point that all the energy required for a state change of the ice from a solid to a liquid has been absorbed, what effect will that unabsorbed heat load have on global temperatures? What effect will the warmer northern and southern waters have on the species who live in colder waters? What effect will warming waters have on our weather (i.e. hurricanes, ocean currents, etc.)? Etc etc.

It appears that you are considering one negative aspect related to ice melt and saying it's not a problem because the seas haven't risen significantly yet. I'm sure your thoughts are much more complex than that, but it's not reflected in your statement.

The causes of the forest fire issue, in north American at least, are known and climate change is not a major factor. See the previous discussion and links in this thread.

All of those things you stated are indeed factors. I was buying into your argument. But how can you say climate change is not a major factor? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it is, but I'm also not saying it's not. Much of the "proof" appears to be looking at a selected set of parameters, and creating an argument based on those parameters - but our environment is way more complicated than that.

More study required, IMHO.

Climate change is also not a major factor in the extinction issue, at least not today. Overfishing, deforestation, human encroachment on wild areas, invasive species brought to new places by man, and plastics and other chemicals being released into the environment are some of the major causes.

All of these are factors - nobody is disputing that - but the fact that these issues are factors does not prove that the environment is not.

See my above point on rising ocean temperatures. Small changes to environment can affect the habits of some species, causing some to move to a suitable environment or in the worst case to die off. Some of these species might be a food supply for larger species, so this can go right through the food chain. Or, it may cause a species to move to an area of greater human activity (i.e. shipping lanes, etc.), which affects their ability to survive in other ways. Again, very complex and not easily discredited with simple arguments.

Are ocean temperatures rising? Well, long-standing ice caps are melting, and science (i.e. through core samples, etc.) has proven that some of this ice has been around for literally thousands of years, and in the space of 50 years much of it has been melting. Is it a simple weather cycle? The amount of successive years of ice accumulation far outweighs the number of years to severely reduce it, so I don't think we can make that conclusion.

As an aside, ironically, the current US government, who appears to take the stand that climate change doesn't exist, is highly interested in the new shipping lanes that are opening up because of the polar ice melt, and who will control them. Yet apparently no thought as to why they are opening up.

I think you’re being selective with your interpretation here. You will have noticed that everything is being blamed on climate change these days – to the point where it has become a farce, in fact – and one of the issues there is that there generally ISN’T any kind of explanation for why a given incident is related to climate change. Or if there is it’s some kind of generic statement like “hotter and dryer, therefore more fires” which often isn’t even true. Especially on this issue it’s very important to demand facts and logic. And with respect to the attacks, it’s the fear industry that’s doing the most egregious forms of that. I know that David Keith has been attacked mercilessly by “environmental groups” that don’t favour the solutions he’s working on. I read another one of these articles on a fairly prominent website just a few weeks ago.

Not being selective at all. The gist of my post is that there are a lot of blanket statements being constantly thrown around, by governments, by the media, by those using social media, etc. that a particular incident or phenomenon is caused, or not caused, by climate change... with no proof whatsoever. My thoughts are that most of it appears to be to push some sort of political agenda without actually trying to understand and solve the problem. And, as has become the norm in political - and now societal - circles, the simple refute is often to try to discredit the 'other side' without any basis other than believing what we want to believe.

From your posts, I don't get the impression that you fall within this category, but it's not clear that your arguments are taking a comprehensive enough viewpoint. Or, maybe that it's just hard to communicate that on a message board.

I’m curious who you’ve been reading these days who says that climate change isn’t happening.

Look around you... it's all over the place. Many many many (ad infinitum) people are flatly denying that there is anything going on outside of the norms of weather cycles that the earth has always experienced.

The point of the media barrage by the fear industry is exactly to overwhelm and to manipulate you through emotion, without facts. But the facts are out there, so when you’re feeling overwhelmed do some digging, and you’re feel a lot better. We’re not at a point where I’d say it’s problem solved, but we’re making great progress, and we have been for 10 years at least in various ways. But you won’t have read about that in the mainstream media, and that’s a problem.

This is nothing new. The media has always done that, maybe with more desperation and less staff (and therefore less actual research) than before, but sensationalizing is something the media has always had in their cache. However, where there is smoke there is fire (not trying to be cute here) so you have to look through the noise and see where it is originating from.

When look deeper I do not see any proof that 'nothing' is happening, nor do I see any indisputable fact-based material that says we have XX years to solve it. Lots of theories but nothing clearly conclusive as yet. I know it can be comforting to tell ourselves that we have it all figured out, and therefore we have nothing to worry about, but I don't think that matches the reality that we are facing. That's the point I was trying to make, I'm not sure that you got it.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by TorontoDrew

Ya ok buddy. All I had to do was type in "hotter dryer summers and BC" into google nothing about fires and almost all the links were about the connections of climate change and increase in fires.

And the go on and on and on. How one can not connect the dots that climate change isn't a big cause in the increase of forest fires is dumbfounding.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" - Upton Sinclair

[CanSpice]

Originally Posted by Eau Claire

Yes, and this is why it’s so important that we’re working on carbon removal technologies. Every tonne we remove from the atmosphere means removing that tonne x 100 years ish of impact. That’s a big multiplier and it makes this technology VERY important.

What's even better is not putting that carbon into the atmosphere in the first place, because, as you say, every tonne we don't put into the atmosphere now has 100 years of impact, AND we don't have to develop expensive technologies to remove it in the future.

Developing technologies to remove carbon from the atmosphere is great and all, but there is an awful lot we can do today to stop adding the carbon to the atmosphere in the first place.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by CanSpice

What's even better is not putting that carbon into the atmosphere in the first place, because, as you say, every tonne we don't put into the atmosphere now has 100 years of impact, AND we don't have to develop expensive technologies to remove it in the future.

Developing technologies to remove carbon from the atmosphere is great and all, but there is an awful lot we can do today to stop adding the carbon to the atmosphere in the first place.

That's true, it's correct that not producing CO2 is better than producing it only to take it out the atmosphere again. And there is a ton we can do to that end.

But the reality is we are never going to reduce emissions even close to zero worldwide, pretending we can is idealistic fantasy. If we don't face that reality we cannot possibly achieve what needs to be done, and eliminate options that might help. The best we can do is create an economic environment where the cost to produce CO2 is higher than the cost to remove it.

[WarrenC12]

Worth noting that we already have a perfect, cheap technology to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. They are called trees. We should be re-foresting by the millions.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

Worth noting that we already have a perfect, cheap technology to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. They are called trees. We should be re-foresting by the millions.

So implement a payment mechanism. Figure out how much carbon is sequestered from planting a tree, then use your carbon tax revenue to fund people for each tree they plant and maintain into maturity (there will have to be some oversight).

So in this environment, if it's profitable to plant trees they will. Or maybe it's more profitable to build a CCS plant and they will do that. But until we figure out that we need to pay people to do this, none of this is profitable and no one will do it at the scale necessary.

[CanSpice]

Originally Posted by milomilo

That's true, it's correct that not producing CO2 is better than producing it only to take it out the atmosphere again. And there is a ton we can do to that end.

But the reality is we are never going to reduce emissions even close to zero worldwide, pretending we can is idealistic fantasy. If we don't face that reality we cannot possibly achieve what needs to be done, and eliminate options that might help. The best we can do is create an economic environment where the cost to produce CO2 is higher than the cost to remove it.

We don't need to reduce emissions to zero, and saying that we do is fatalistic and encourages people to do nothing. We can reduce emissions through a huge number of moves that each reduce emissions a little bit. Planting trees is one way, eating less meat is another, shifting electricity generation to wind and solar is another, promoting mass transit is another, reducing food waste is another, and so on. There doesn't have to be one giant cure-all because there isn't one giant cure-all, but there are a bunch of little ones that we can easily do now and over the next 20-30 years using today's technology that can add up and make a big difference.

[milomilo]

I agree, but there are many people who indeed are pushing for zero emissions. It's nonsense, essentially impossible in fact.

[CanSpice]

Originally Posted by milomilo

I agree, but there are many people who indeed are pushing for zero emissions. It's nonsense, essentially impossible in fact.

Then why did you bring it up?

[milomilo]

Because it needs to be said. Lots of people truly believe zero emissions is a realistic goal, and it's counter productive.

[jlousa]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

Worth noting that we already have a perfect, cheap technology to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. They are called trees. We should be re-foresting by the millions.

And hence why a Surrey Councillor just quit his party as over the last 6 months Surrey has cut down 50K trees to make room for more sprawl.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by jlousa

And hence why a Surrey Councillor just quit his party as over the last 6 months Surrey has cut down 50K trees to make room for more sprawl.

Wow, I hadn't seen that figure before. Shameful.

[CanSpice]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

Wow, I hadn't seen that figure before. Shameful.

Especially since the article detailing his party resignation includes a picture from the campaign where that party was petitioning for saving trees in a Surrey neighbourhood.

[Eau Claire]

Originally Posted by TorontoDrew

Ya ok buddy. All I had to do was type in "hotter dryer summers and BC" into google nothing about fires and almost all the links were about the connections of climate change and increase in fires.


An extended interview with Tim Takaro, a professor with Simon Fraser University, and how B.C. is being affected by climate change.
https://globalnews.ca/news/4636389/h...ity-professor/

How climate change is making B.C.’s wildfire season hotter, longer, drier
http://thenarwhal.ca/how-climate-cha...-longer-dryer/

Hotter, drier summers the ‘new normal
In British Columbia, 2018 has been the second-worst year ever recorded for wildfires, behind only 2017.
https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/ou...492869351.html

Vancouver Island’s hotter and dryer weather is killing trees, arborists say
https://www.cheknews.ca/vancouver-is...-trees-394457/

Ten times as many wildfires burn in B.C. compared to this time last year. Can government act fast enough?
With climate change, including hotter, dryer summers, wildfires are expected to increase in intensity and frequency across Canada.
https://www.nationalobserver.com/201...nment-act-fast

Hot summer days bring fun and risk of forest fires
http://www.nationalpost.com/m/editor...569/story.html


And the go on and on and on. How one can not connect the dots that climate change isn't a big cause in the increase of forest fires is dumbfounding.

So, we're talking about Alberta, and more specifically northern Alberta, and even more specifically three recent high profile fires, and you come back with a bunch of links on .... BC. I think this side conversation is not working out, so I'm going to leave it here, but I'll leave you with this. I haven't looked at any of your links or done any deeper digging on the BC fire situation, but a quick search found these. If you decide to look into this issue I suggest that you start here. This is the hard data:
http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/soe/indicat...ange/temp.html
http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/soe/indicat...ge/precip.html
These are government of BC pages that show the changes in temperature and precipitation since 1900. Here's a quote from the precipitation page to show the kind of information they have:

"-Province-wide annual average precipitation has increased by 12 percent per century. Annual average precipitation increases ranged from 10 to 21 percent per century across 8 ecoprovinces.There is no significant trend in annual average precipitation for the Northern Boreal Mountains ecoprovince.
-Changes in seasonal precipitation are varied through B.C. For example, precipitation has increased by 23 percent per century in the spring in the Georgia Depression ecoprovince, however no other seasonal precipitation trends were detected for that region. In the Taiga Plains and the Northern Boreal Mountains ecoprovinces, the trends indicate an increase in precipitation in the winter, summer and fall, but not in the spring.
-There are few trends in winter precipitation across B.C. In addition, there are no seasonal trends in precipitation in the Coast and Mountains ecoprovince.
-Precipitation is highly variable across B.C. Long-term changes in the amount, form, and timing of precipitation will almost certainly have significant impacts on freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems. They will have both positive and negative impacts on human activities."

[Eau Claire]

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

There are many sources of data out there which illustrate that polar ice is depleting very quickly, with significant losses recorded each year...

So the overarching point I was making is that you have to do research for yourself, and by that I mean Internet research, not primary research. I suggest that you pick a couple of issues that interest you and do a deeper dive on the Internet. I suspect that what you will find will not match the what you thought you learned from the mainstream media. For example, Polar bears are not a threatened species, and arctic sea ice isn't shrinking every year, either by area of volume. The hard data on these is pretty easy to find, so I'll let you practice your research on these two.

[Eau Claire]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" - Upton Sinclair

Well, I think you've just given something away here! Your posts often don't make sense environmentally, and facts are certainly not your friend. And when you have no response to the facts presented you try this tactic. But I think you are trying to project onto me what you are doing yourself! Your posts make a lot more sense now. It'll be interesting to follow your aversion to facts and science from now on, just to watch you squirm.

[Eau Claire]

Originally Posted by CanSpice

What's even better is not putting that carbon into the atmosphere in the first place, because, as you say, every tonne we don't put into the atmosphere now has 100 years of impact, AND we don't have to develop expensive technologies to remove it in the future.

Developing technologies to remove carbon from the atmosphere is great and all, but there is an awful lot we can do today to stop adding the carbon to the atmosphere in the first place.

The point is that there is already a whole lot of CO2 in the atmosphere, which will be there for a long time, so we HAVE to develop CDR technologies, and the IPCC has said as much. But what once seemed like a difficult and expensive technical challenge is getting easier and cheaper practically by the month. Of course we still need to look at technologies that reduce emissions as well. We need to look at ALL options at this point, not just CO2 and not just emissions. The objective is to reduce the concentration of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. Let's forget that. One more time, this is the kind of thinking we need to be doing:
https://www.drawdown.org/solutions-summary-by-rank
(I think this particular list is truly dated now, but this is the idea.)

But, CDR's ability to take CO2 directly out of the atmosphere is very powerful, and as it gets easier and cheaper to do a lot more possibilities start to open up. There is a big hill to climb yet, of course. Let's not forget that either. We still need to find things to do with at least a large chunk of that CO2, but the progress we're making now is truly remarkable. This is nothing but good news for real environmentalists, of course, but I'm betting those with ulterior motives and hidden agendas aren't going to like it, and that they'll manufacture ways to attack it and try to shut it down. Warren is a prime candidate to be in this group.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by Eau Claire

So the overarching point I was making is that you have to do research for yourself, and by that I mean Internet research, not primary research. I suggest that you pick a couple of issues that interest you and do a deeper dive on the Internet. I suspect that what you will find will not match the what you thought you learned from the mainstream media. For example, Polar bears are not a threatened species, and arctic sea ice isn't shrinking every year, either by area of volume. The hard data on these is pretty easy to find, so I'll let you practice your research on these two.

Gee, thanks for your advice.

Again, you missed my point.

But, since you choose to make statements without sources to back them up, here are a few that I found with a simple Google search regarding Polar Bears/Arctic Ice. Note that neither of your above assertions are true, which makes me question whether you actually do any research yourself, or just pull 'alternative facts' out of your ass...

https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/polar-bear

Because of ongoing and potential loss of their sea ice habitat resulting from climate change, polar bears were listed as a threatened species in the US under the Endangered Species Act in May 2008.

The survival and the protection of the polar bear habitat are urgent issues for WWF.

https://polarbearsinternational.org/...d-polar-bears/

The IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group lists the polar bear as a vulnerable species

https://www.ontario.ca/page/polar-be...onse-statement

Currently, the impacts of these threats are being observed in a significant reduction in the bears' body condition although at this time, population numbers in Ontario remain relatively stable. Nevertheless, climate change models predict that without significantly halting climate change, Polar Bears are likely to be extirpated from Ontario within 40 to 100 years.

https://www.gov.mb.ca/sd/fish_and_wi...ars/index.html

Bear condition and productivity has declined steadily over the last decade. Fall weight of all age classes for both sexes declined, and a steady decline was seen in spring weight of adult females leaving the denning area with cubs. The reproductive rate of females also declined, as did the survival rate of cubs. Researchers from the Canadian Wildlife Service continue to investigate this trend and its possible causes.

Manitoba lists the polar bear as threatened under The Endangered Species and Ecosystems Act, and as protected under The Wildlife Act. Provincial staff participate on the Canadian Polar Bear Technical Committee and on the Advisory Committee which meet yearly to discuss polar bear management issues.

https://www.fws.gov/alaska/pages/end...es/polar-bears

Designation: Threatened

Sea ice, the polar bear’s primary habitat, is declining due to human-induced climate change.

http://pbsg.npolar.no/en/status/status-table.html
--> Note that the "Change in summer sea ice area (percent change per decade)" has negatives for all regions.

https://wildlife-species.canada.ca/s..._e.cfm?sid=167

The following is a list of current threats facing the Polar Bear. It is recognized that the relative impact of these threats on Polar Bears may change, and that new threats may be identified in the future. Climate change: Environmental change is the most critical long-term threat to Polar Bears and their habitat. Projected warming over much of their range and the associated reductions in the extent and thickness of multi-year sea ice, and the duration and thickness of annual sea ice, will have both direct and indirect effects on Polar Bears. Direct effects include change of habitat (i.e. extent and composition of sea ice), while indirect effects include ecosystem level changes in availability in prey species (such as seal), separation from terrestrial denning areas and refugia, contaminant transfer, and change in level of human activities. Climate change is likely to influence all of the threats listed below for the Canadian population and it should therefore be treated as the ultimate limiting factor for the species. The observed declines in the Western Hudson Bay and Southern Beaufort Sea management units can largely be attributed to climate change.

https://www.arcus.org/sipn/sea-ice-o...ost-season#two

[Hackslack]

Originally Posted by Eau Claire

The point is that there is already a whole lot of CO2 in the atmosphere, which will be there for a long time, so we HAVE to develop CDR technologies, and the IPCC has said as much. But what once seemed like a difficult and expensive technical challenge is getting easier and cheaper practically by the month. Of course we still need to look at technologies that reduce emissions as well. We need to look at ALL options at this point, not just CO2 and not just emissions. The objective is to reduce the concentration of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. Let's forget that. One more time, this is the kind of thinking we need to be doing:
https://www.drawdown.org/solutions-summary-by-rank
(I think this particular list is truly dated now, but this is the idea.)

But, CDR's ability to take CO2 directly out of the atmosphere is very powerful, and as it gets easier and cheaper to do a lot more possibilities start to open up. There is a big hill to climb yet, of course. Let's not forget that either. We still need to find things to do with at least a large chunk of that CO2, but the progress we're making now is truly remarkable. This is nothing but good news for real environmentalists, of course, but I'm betting those with ulterior motives and hidden agendas aren't going to like it, and that they'll manufacture ways to attack it and try to shut it down. Warren is a prime candidate to be in this group.

Why is "Educating Girls" number 6 on the list of reducing emissions?

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Hackslack

Why is "Educating Girls" number 6 on the list of reducing emissions?

By that you mean "why isn't it nearer the top", right?