Expert prognosis for the planet

[Irace86.2.0]

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/17/us/la...ate/index.html

The shocking numbers behind the Lake Mead drought crisis

If the lake loses another 175 feet, water will no longer flow through the Hoover Dam.

Lake Mead has lost 5.5 trillion gallons of water since then
That is more than 1,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools lost every day for nearly 22 years.

25,000,000 people rely on Lake Mead water

[Captain Snooze]

Originally Posted by Irace86.2.0

It’s the fault of our selfish genes,

Are you suggesting our problems would be over if we started wearing chinos?

[Captain Snooze]

Originally Posted by Irace86.2.0

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/17/us/la...ate/index.html

I'm suggesting this has been a problem for a while world wide.

In Aus the Murry-Darling river system is the source of water for many farms and there has been a constant battle between farmers needing (and stealing) water to make their farms viable and the needs of the river ecosystem.

Ethiopia and Egypt
The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is considered crucial to securing Addis Ababa’s energy needs while Cairo and Khartoum believe it will reduce water flows downstream.


Aral Sea
"Formerly the fourth largest lake in the world with an area of 68,000 km2 (26,300 sq mi), the Aral Sea began shrinking in the 1960s after the rivers that fed it were diverted by Soviet irrigation projects.
By 1997, it had declined to 10% of its original size, splitting into four lakes: the North Aral Sea, the eastern and western basins of the once far larger South Aral Sea, and the smaller intermediate Barsakelmes Lake."
(My bold)
Wiki

[Spuds]

Originally Posted by Captain Snooze

I'm suggesting this has been a problem for a while world wide.

In Aus the Murry-Darling river system is the source of water for many farms and there has been a constant battle between farmers needing (and stealing) water to make their farms viable and the needs of the river ecosystem.

Ethiopia and Egypt
The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is considered crucial to securing Addis Ababa’s energy needs while Cairo and Khartoum believe it will reduce water flows downstream.


Aral Sea
"Formerly the fourth largest lake in the world with an area of 68,000 km2 (26,300 sq mi), the Aral Sea began shrinking in the 1960s after the rivers that fed it were diverted by Soviet irrigation projects.
By 1997, it had declined to 10% of its original size, splitting into four lakes: the North Aral Sea, the eastern and western basins of the once far larger South Aral Sea, and the smaller intermediate Barsakelmes Lake."
(My bold)
Wiki

Attachment 202071

If there are no Americans around to shout and point, did it really happen?

[Captain Snooze]

"The Earth is warming faster than expected: NASA
Washington: The amount of heat Earth traps has roughly doubled since 2005, contributing to more rapidly warming oceans, air and land, according to new research from NASA and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The Earth takes in about 240 watts per square metre of energy from the sun. At the beginning of the study period, in 2005, it was radiating back out about 239.5 of those watts – creating a positive imbalance of about half a watt. By the end, in 2019, that gap had nearly doubled to about 1 full watt per square metre.“The magnitude of the increase is unprecedented,” said Norman Loeb, a NASA scientist and lead author of the study, which was published this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. “The Earth is warming faster than expected.” "
Source

Geophysical Research Letters


I thought this to be very interesting:
"But it is difficult to discern human-induced changes from cyclical variations in the climate, the researches said......But, Johnson says, that doesn’t let humans off the hook. “We’re responsible for some of it,” he said. It’s just unclear how much."

[Irace86.2.0]

1) Either the warming is significant such that it presents a danger to humans, whether directly or indirectly, or it is not. I don't think there is any doubt that the relatively small amount of warming trends we have seen is already alarming and has cost lives and money. We can only expect more problems if things get worse.

2) It is either a product of something natural, or it is a product of human interactions, or it is product of a combination of the two. The fact is that we can't continuously dump toxins into the air, pollute the environment, consume every resource unsustainably and reproduce uncontrollably and expect to not have an impact on the environment. Specifically, the trends in CO2 and methane release into the air is unparalleled and is a dangerous experiment on our existence and the health of the planet. In all likelihood, the trends are linked to human activity, but even if it wasn't the case, we are reached the precipice where we need to start making some hard decisions if we want to sustain our existence.

3) It is either something that we can control, or we can't. We most definitely can influence our own effects on this planet, but it may not be possible to save ourselves from every natural disaster or terraform the planet against the natural processes at play. We can do nothing and allow our species to die or hope things don't get that bad, or we can be proactive. We can defend ourselves from ourselves, and maybe in that effort, we learn to defend ourselves from a natural armageddon.

[Dadhawk]

Originally Posted by Irace86.2.0

2) It is either a product of something natural, or it is a product of human interactions, or it is product of a combination of the two. The fact is that we can't continuously dump toxins into the air, pollute the environment, consume every resource unsustainably and reproduce uncontrollably and expect to not have an impact on the environment.

The ratios, though, do matter.

If warming and/or cooling is a natural part of the cycle of the planet (which to some extent it seems to be) and humans (and other creatures for that matter) contribute to it in some small percentage, it's just a contribution to the inevitable one way or the other. We may be speeding it up in some inconsequential way (in "Earth Age" terms) but it may just be a blip on the clock.

Not saying making change isn't worth the effort, similar to how we have slowly cleared up the air from the early part of the Industrial Age, but it may not amount to much in the long run.

On the other hand, if the Earth had a steady state environment prior to, say 1500AD, with no variations, and all changes have happened since then, well, maybe we could make a meaningful difference. Thing is, it didn't.

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

The ratios, though, do matter.

If warming and/or cooling is a natural part of the cycle of the planet (which to some extent it seems to be) and humans (and other creatures for that matter) contribute to it in some small percentage, it's just a contribution to the inevitable one way or the other. We may be speeding it up in some inconsequential way (in "Earth Age" terms) but it may just be a blip on the clock.

Not saying making change isn't worth the effort, similar to how we have slowly cleared up the air from the early part of the Industrial Age, but it may not amount to much in the long run.

On the other hand, if the Earth had a steady state environment prior to, say 1500AD, with no variations, and all changes have happened since then, well, maybe we could make a meaningful difference. Thing is, it didn't.

I think they do matter because the evidence suggests it is humans that are causing the changes, but I like to begin an argument from a point of agreement with anyone with an opposing view and work back to my position, or I like starting with the supposition that the opposing perspective is correct.* In this case, if it is humans then we can do something about it. If it is not humans then maybe we can still do something about it. Just because it could be natural doesn't imply that it doesn't present a risk to humans. That is all I am getting at. The opposing position is either that it is natural, and we are doomed, so why attempt to stop the inevitable (I think it is worth the effort if this is the case), or that it is natural, and we are not doomed, so why attempt to waste money on a problem that doesn't exist (the evidence suggests it exists)?

To review the evidence:

This is a graph of estimated average surface temperatures and the standard deviation of error on those estimates over the last 10,000 years. The chart is normalized against an arbitrary zero based on average temperatures across 1961-1990. As you can see, average surface temperatures have been increasing at an alarming rate.




What could be the cause of this change? Well, there could be many factors, but one could be CO2. When we compare CO2 throughout history over the last 400k years, we see fluctuations, but the recent trends are off the charts.




When we scale the chart from hundreds of thousands of years down to thousands of years, we see an alarming trend. Levels of CO2 and methane have been very stable for thousands of years, but there has been a precipitous rise recently, which coincides with the precipitous rise in temperatures.






While it is possible that the dramatic rise in CO2 and methane is natural, and while it is possible that there is no link between these greenhouse gases and the rise in temperatures (that it is just coincidence), it seems highly unlikely. It think we would be just fooling ourselves. Nevertheless, if we assume all these things are natural, that doesn't change the fact that they are alarming and problematic. What is our solution for surviving a natural rise in CO2, methane and global temperature spikes, even if those spikes are natural? How high will these numbers go? When will they stop or reverse? If the trends continue, how long do we have until these trends become extremely problematic or dangerous?

I think the idea is the same regardless of the cause. It could be a volcano that is about to erupt or a thousand coal factories that are about to emit a certain amount of CO2. Either the events have an effect or not, and if the effect is severe then we either react or we don't. The response will be different, but the place to start is to first recognize that there is a problem.


-----------------------


*In a similar way of arguing, and as an example, I tend to focus on a place of agreement with people who want to argue that BEVs are dirtier than ICEs over the entire lifecycle of the car. Of course this isn't the case, even if it was once the case, but the point of agreement could be that we can all recognize that oil is finite and that using it for transportation forever is a dead end argument because it is not sustainable, so what is the sustainable alternative to gasoline ICEs? If it isn't BEVs then what is it. Likewise, I think anyone could look at the trends above and be alarmed, regardless of whether they believe humans are the cause, so then the question becomes, what should we do about it? The answer might be the same regardless of whether humans are the cause or not the cause. These would be things like carbon capture, reduced carbon emissions, moving to sustainable resources, etc.

[Irace86.2.0]

[Dadhawk]

Originally Posted by Irace86.2.0

New Solar Tech....

Interesting, although the guidance of using the color of the sky to find the sun seems overly complex. The path of the sun through the sky is well known. That said, I'm sure they probably tried that first. Also, it is going to reek havoc on local wildlife.

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by Dadhawk

Interesting, although the guidance of using the color of the sky to find the sun seems overly complex. The path of the sun through the sky is well known. That said, I'm sure they probably tried that first. Also, it is going to reek havoc on local wildlife.

I don't know how hard it would be to calculate the location of the sun during all times of year at all locations around the world at any time in the day. It seems like that calculation would be easy. In fact, our brain does it without doing it; we just look at the sun. Seems like a single camera could create a fixed focus point where all other mirrors feed into that point like shooting a laser pointer at the sun that all the cats turn their attention to. It is odd.

Deserts have wildlife, but not as much as other areas.

[Irace86.2.0]

[weederr33]

I know veganism was a small discussion here and one of my favorite fitness guys, Dr. Mike Israetel. A bit interesting to listen to

[MuseChaser]

Just in general....

If folks approached scientific research and data with no agendas, no focus on personal financial or other gains, nor any preconceived notions or goals other than a greater understanding of events, the conclusions being widely published would undoubtedly be quite different... not to mention much more accurate.

There ARE experts.. many of them.. who do not share the prognoses promoted by the perpetrators of this thread. Perhaps, in the interest of accuracy (of course, who wants THAT, right?), the thread should be renamed "One of Many Possible Prognoses for the Planet, According to Some Self-Professed Experts and Their Followers."