Gaia has a fever and we're the virus.

Heat deaths in the US so far are the homeless, the old, and various foolhardy types.

the old: Teach them oldsters to drink water even when not thirsty, just like bike racers. Teach their caretakers to make sure they don't get overheated and get enough water

The homeless: Those not mentally ill to the extent of being out of touch with reality, learn the same thing, dring plenty before you get thirsty, learn the value of cool places, learn to dig into the dirt/mud and get cool if nothing else.

foolhardy types: Well, what can we say? Darwin was right.

It isn't just a matter of drinking enough. You also need to take enough minerals, or the water won't stay long in your body.

I_Like_Plants, no we are the brain cells and we had better start using them quick.

Graeme as long as by "we" you mean the more englightened "civilized" people. There and there only have I seen a real concern for the environment - although also in the remaining hunter-gatherer group, but only until they taste that first Cheeto, then it's pave away, guys! And get me another bag of these chips!

Warming trend linked to fiercer hurricanes



http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8776578/#storyContinued

Climate Is Regulated By Water



http://www.physorg.com/news5558.html

What's this news about? 70% of the planet is covered by water, and we have known for years the role of the thermohaline currents in regulating the temperature across the globe. Focusing on just the atmosphere or just the oceans is plain stupid, but due to the lack of oceanographic and climate research funding (for people, data and computing machines) we are still limited in our understanding. CO2 IS warming this globe and we have to put the increase in CO2 in the context of combined ocean, atmosphere, weather modeling.

Let me guess - you'll be among the 1 billion right?

What i want to know is this:- How come we've had periods of global warming and cooling in the past with almost zero fossil fuel burning?

global warming is due to increased sun activity - our sun is getting hotter at the moment. itll cool down in its next cycle and people will wonder what all the fuss was about.

Linlithgowoil -

I find myself wondering if you're a market fundamentalist, or maybe a christian version of the same, or maybe just young and impressionable ?

Your really wild wishful thinking is at odds with the findings of the formal scientific academies of China, India, Russia, Europe, and America. And you know better off the back of an envelope ?

Understand that with the reputation (and the sales) of the Oil & Vehicle industries at stake, there has never been a more stringently debated scientific issue than this one.

What matters about promoting your denial of reality to others, is that it is pathological in effect. The longer appropriate action is delayed by such nonsense, the more catastrophic the destabilization of the climate we are committed to.

The scale of casualties we are looking at is genocidal.

Maybe you need to think it over ?


regards,

Backstop

Backstop I believe the point made by Linlithgoil is a valid one and it has been expressed numerous times by a number of respected paleoclimatologists. If you dig around elsewhere on the forum I point to a number of references in this regard. CO2 makes up only 3% of total so-called greenhouse gases, and anthropogenic CO2 makes up only 3% of all CO2 in the atmosphere. Water vapor is the greatest contributor and the models used do not effectively take it into account. Remember the whole argument is based on models....it is not a proven fact as you seem to suggest.
If you want to talk nonsense your comment on destabilization of the climate and genocide are right up there.
I suspect you are the one who needs to think this over....and perhaps broaden your reading to include other than the politicized views that are coming out of IPCC.

Cause the geobiophysical mechanisms controlling climate at a global level are inherently unstable (or lets call them periodic). People who lack a basic understanding of nonlinear science (due to innumeracy, religious beliefs, free marketeers with an agenda) fail to see the actual GW argument. That burning of fossil fuels initiated OR accelerated a trend towards global warming. After the last mini ice age (impressive but mini human die-off in Europe, complete with attrocities) in the 12th century the climate did warm up. On top of that trend (it is debated though, that this trend was real) humans started burning fossil fuels adding a second warming mechanism. If you look at mathematical models of climate stability (with all their incompleteness) they suggest the presence of one (GS shut down) and possible a second (methane hydrates) bifurcation points where random events could tip the climate towards a new Ice age (complete with 1/2 mi ice covering NA and Euiope and massive die-off) or towards a hyper-accelerated warming phase. The end result will be a massive (Ice age) or total (hyper-accelerated) die off of all terrestrial and the majority of complex marine life . Climate then stabilizes over millions of years as the photosynthetic bacteria in the sea correct the instabilities in the atmosphere or as the GS restarts slowly over thousands of years. End result is the same as far as the civilization is concerned. The argument about solar activity is a myth:there will be a generous trend in increase in solar radiation as the nuclear fuel in the sun gets exhausted but that will only happen in a few billion years from now. Cyclical variation is solar activity is a ridiculous explanation for GW as it was a ridiculous explanation for the "Business Cycles" in the 19th century. I'm not suggesting that they do not play a role, but what I'm saying is that if you overlay solar activity and CO2 emissions together then "Houston we've got a problem". Failure to understand the nonlinear aspect of the science is central to the GW "debate" (what debate it is over )
At the very least they might determine the outcome when climate destablization reaches one of the bifurcation points ....

But rockdoc123 the real argument is whether CO2 destabilizes an inherently unstable climate. No one debates that the average temperatures are increasing or the climate is changing. The real debate is whether we are doing something to facilitate the change. If we do accelerate a trend that would have occured anyway over thousands of years (and there is no reason not to believe so, the mathematical models are extremely non-linear) then the assigning a % of blame is irrelevant.

Quote

Backstop I believe the point made by Linlithgoil is a valid one and it has been expressed numerous times by a number of respected paleoclimatologists. If you dig around elsewhere on the forum I point to a number of references in this regard. CO2 makes up only 3% of total so-called greenhouse gases, and anthropogenic CO2 makes up only 3% of all CO2 in the atmosphere. Water vapor is the greatest contributor and the models used do not effectively take it into account. Remember the whole argument is based on models....it is not a proven fact as you seem to suggest.
If you want to talk nonsense your comment on destabilization of the climate and genocide are right up there.
I suspect you are the one who needs to think this over....and perhaps broaden your reading to include other than the politicized views that are coming out of IPCC.
___________________________________________


Rocdoc –

I’m sorry you feel so touchy about this issue. Its plainly one about which you lack basic information.

For instance, you claim that
[i]“CO2 makes up only 3% of total so-called greenhouse gases, and anthropogenic CO2 makes up only 3% of all CO2 in the atmosphere.”[/i]
when in fact CO2 makes up only a fraction of that, while anthropogenic emissions (primarily from fossil fuels and deforestation) have raised the atmospheric concentration of CO2 from a pre-industrial level of around 280ppmv (parts-per-million-by-volume) up to the present 380ppmv, thus increasing the concentration by over 35%, not 3%.

From these glaring errors I surmise that you’ve no training in this field whatsoever.

Furthermore, for you to suggest that models cannot form the basis on which scientific hypotheses develop into accepted scientific facts is to deny a fundamental basis of scientific enquiry. It is commonly the position of those happy souls awaiting the “rapture,” whatever they expect that to be. Are you perhaps one of them ?

The issue of how ignoring Global Warming is genocidal in effect is sadly very far from nonsense. The primary mechanism (and there are many in potential) is of climate destabilization removing the viability of growing crops from the land of potentially millions of subsistence farmers and their families who have no other means of sustenance. They starve, largely as a result of our pollution.

Moreover, for you to suggest that all the world’s great scientific academies have been failing to include water-vapour in their models is sheer hubris. With the world’s scientists having contributed to the IPCC findings since the ‘80s, you proceed to dismiss them as “politicised”, as if merely using the term proves that they’re scientifically dishonest, or actually corrupt, or both.

That you feel the need to resort to such a slur merely demonstrates the weakness of your case.

I say this because any such conspiracy that engages over 2,000 leading scientists serving the IPCC must of course involve many other people, myself included. Among them are the US Secretaries of State for Energy and for Commerce who (as was reported in the Financial Times) shortly before the last US election gave evidence to Congress that it was the government’s view that :
“At least 50% of global warming over the last 50 years has been due to man-made pollution.”

But then, maybe the Financial Times is also part of such a conspiracy since, just before the G8, it carried a long article by Lord Oxbridge, head of Shell, not merely affirming anthropogenic Global Warming but calling for urgent action on the issue. He too of course would have to be part of the conspiracy . . . .

Personally I find the whole notion laughable. I think perhaps the governor of California, Arnold Swartzeneggar put it best when he declared loudly and on camera :

“The debate is over. Global Warming is a reality. Now we have to find ways to deal with it.”


Regards,

Backstop

And the day after tomorrow scenario
Presentation by R.B. Gagosian head of the Woods Hole Oceanographic institute, with (cool, but chilling) videos on abrupt environmental change involving the thermohaline currents.
Click me

For those of you who have time in their hands and can afford a little bit of depression (or maybe want to experience die-off extravaganza )
The influence of shutting down the thermohaline current (an effect projected to happen due to GW) was investigated in a scientific publication by the Royal society which can be read here

Take home points from the paper (has nice figures BTW, you can take a peak if you do not read the whole story)
The strength of the
North Atlantic overturning reduces to near zero very quickly, and then recovers to its original strength over a period of ca. 120 years (the recovery process is discussed . The atmosphere responds quickly to the change in ocean circulation. A cooling of the Northern Hemisphere is rapidly established (figure 1a), which is strongest over and adjacent to the North Atlantic.
....Over the first three decades the response develops to include a warming in the Southern Hemisphere.....
Over the UK the mean cooling is 3–5 ◦C in the first decade, and
2–3 ◦C in the third decade. The cooling is fairly uniform through the seasons. To put such a cooling in context, a typical decadal mean cooling during the ‘Little Ice Age’ period of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as seen in the Central England temperature record (Parker et al . 1992), is of the order of 0.5 ◦C, and the coldest individual year in the record (which goes back to 1659) was 1740, with an anomaly of −2.5 ◦C (anomalies are taken relative to the 1961–1990 mean).
...As a response to the general cooling of the Northern Hemisphere, there is
a widespread reduction in both surface evaporation and precipitation there....
The combined temperature and hydrological changes would be expected to have a significant impact on vegetation and agriculture. While these effects are not fully modelled here, the model does estimate the change in net primary productivity by land vegetation, on the assumption that the current mix of vegetation types is maintained. This is suggestive of the magnitude of changes that could be expected. There is reduction of 12% in the primary productivity of the Northern Hemisphere as a whole, with larger regional changes: −16% in Europe, −36% in the Indian subcontinent and −109% in Central America (the latter implying that the current
mix of vegetation types is unsustainable).

Bye bye Mexico, Venezuala, Cuba, Panama .... moderate degrees of die-off in Europe and India
The influence of the CO2 level when the shutdown occurs:
In the 2 × CO2 run, the overturning weakens, but starts to recover ca. 70 years after stabilization, and returns to its original value by 400 years after stabilization.
In the 4 × CO2 case, the overturning becomes very weak, and remains weak for over 1000 years after stabilization. Then, there is a fairly rapid recovery to pre-industrial values over 100–200 years.

(2x CO2 = twice the preindustrial CO2 level, 4xCO2 = four times the pre-industrial level, currently we are at 1.3 x CO2 preindustrial levels)
Of course they add the following:
Based on the evidence above there are reasonable grounds to speculate that a rapid or irreversible shutdown of the THC over the next century is a rather low probability event. Nonetheless, given the evidence from models that there are probably thresholds in the system, and the fact that we are clearly not yet at a stage where the that a spontaneous ‘flip’ is unlikely in models are good enough to make confident, quantitative statements about THC changes, the possibility needs to be taken seriously....
Following several decades of global warming, such a shutdown
would return northwestern Europe in particular to a climate that was substantially colder than pre-industrial
Cold and dry = terrestrial primary productivity is reduced by 20%; add the fact that that large areas will be covered with ice, and that fresh waters and fertilizers will be gone due to PO and hmm

BTW predictions for the East part of NA are similar; the weather will be much colder and severe drought will occur throughout the continent, however temperature will go down by -6 degrees and drought will be more severe in certain parts of the continent (midwest might see an actual increase 3 decades post the event).
Any comments?