Trio and Friends

A friend of Barney's wrote: In terms of sea level rise—it depends (as he says in the video) on the start date you pick. So, yes, the sea level has been rising since the mid 1800’s—but that is when we would have expected it to anyways—due to the burning of carbon fuels during the industrial revolution. I’m pretty sure that he is wrong about it being at a constant rate. The Smithsonian would contest that: https://ocean.si.edu/through-time/ancie ... level-rise, as would the National Oceanography Centre: https://www.noc.ac.uk/news/when-did-mod ... rise-start

Although, all of these are basically missing the point: in a geological time scale, we know that oceans have been both way higher (400ft) and much lower than at present (like during the last ice age). Actually, we are at rather a low point right now, compared to what could be and has been: see, for example, the Vail and Hallam curves of sea level fluctuation (the graph works backwards, by the way, with the present day at the left on the time scale). During the Silurian and Ordovician, sea levels were 200-400 meters above present. Sea levels have dropped massively since the Cretaceous when the dinosaurs were wiped out. As far as we know, the seas have only been as low as they are now during the early days of the dinosaurs. All this is to say that when we are looking at the last few hundred years, we are trying to keep the ocean levels on a rather unlikely knife edge because even a little increase will have devastating effects on hundreds of millions of people. During the history of the world, we happen to be at a rather low level of sea because of the last ice age—which he points out in the video. What he ignores is the millions of years of history before that where the sea levels are much, much higher. Essentially, he picked one of the lowest points in the last 400 millions years to start his graph—the very fraud he is accusing the climate scientists of! The natural tendency will be for them to rise. That means we have two choices: adapt to the newly changing conditions, or try to keep the climate stable in an area where it has been for a few thousand years, but will likely not stay for much longer.

The other misleading thing about the video’s data is that while the US is a big place, it is still a relatively small place compared to the global scene. Climate change is global, not local. So looking at one country’s data in isolation is just as misleading as looking at just the 1960’s on. 1934 was VERY hot in the US, but not over the rest of the world. 2016 was just about as in the US, but was WAY warmer everywhere else.
https://www.skepticalscience.com/1934-h ... record.htm

To use one place, like Waverly OH, is misleading. We need to look at the global trends, not the local ones.

So yes, the page of graphs he shows about climate change in the US alone is cherry-picked, but he is actually doing the same thing. The burn acreage data is the same: he doesn’t say that it is also reflecting decades of fire suppression, which are only now being rectified with controlled burns. There is correlation between heat waves and acreage burn, but that does not account for all the variables by a long shot. The sea ice argument is similar—climate is an average over 30 years, so worrying about whether the graph begins or ends between 1979 and 1973 doesn’t make a huge difference. Look at longer spans—or if you want these sorts of visuals, look at the Mountain Legacy Project—it uses photographs of hundreds of Canadian mountains with pictures from 1870-1930ish, and then retaken in the last decade. The vast, vast majority of glaciers have shrunk or disappeared. In one specific study in the Yukon, for example, where they looked at change in glacial area from 1958 to 2008, is that of the 1,400 glaciers surveyed in 1958, only 4 have gotten bigger after 50 years. Over 300 have disappeared completely, and almost all the rest have gotten smaller. That is from essentially the 1960’s, yes, but for glaciers to have been there at all, they would have been there for thousands of years. Now 300 have disappeared entirely in a few decades. That is not the normal way of things…

Part of the problem with all of this is that we have organised human society without much flexibility: monocrops, lots of building on ocean fronts, a reduction of food sources to a few staples—all of these make us extremely vulnerable to any change in climate. The other problem is increased reliance on electronics. Major sun flares, which do happen relatively regularly, and the switching of the magnetism of the poles (geomagnetic reversal which is long overdue to happen) will have massive effects on all our navigation tools and electronic systems.

I think the point is not entirely whether or not the change is natural or man-made, but that dramatic change is coming and are we ready for it?

In reply, Ondrej wrote:That last take might be a more productive direction. Let’s agree that we prize human flourishing and that humans should not be viewed as a cancer on the planet. The degree to which we are changing the environment is debated, and even the degree to which the environment is changing is debated. To say that we are “extremely vulnerable” is non-specific. If the oceans rise a few feet over the course of 100 years I would not be concerned at all. We have 100 years to move, rebuild things, redesign things. This is not an emergency. Likewise, the idea of stronger storms and such is not particularly concerning. First, we already have storms so there’s no getting away from that. But using cheap energy we can become wealthier and build stronger buildings and build backups and failsafes. We do not want to hamstring our own progress by removing the very things we relied on to get here. New buildings in the US routinely weather hurricanes due to improved building codes and innovation. Most of the pictures of devastation come from old construction. Pictures of new construction don’t look like anything because the buildings can handle it. Increased CO2 in the atmosphere and a warmer climate will be beneficial for farming and plants in general. This doesn’t sound alarming. Warming tends to occur mostly at the poles so this should make the coldest regions more habitable for humans. None of these things look like a catastrophe around the corner. We should also track improvements to human well being brought on by the use of fossil fuels and appreciate how much they have helped us. Coal is better than wood, natural gas is better than coal, gasoline and diesel free us to become superhuman. See the book “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels”. If we are free to use these resources as we like, how do we know we will not be way more capable of handling any environmental changes that come our way? All the evidence suggests that use of fossil fuels makes human life better and humans more resilient (i.e. availability of cheap reliable energy).
We should also keep close watch on those espousing the view that humans are a cancer on the planet. If they are the ones claiming we must eradicate all use of fossil fuels, are we sure they want to see human flourishing? Are they really on our side? And to what degree are they driving the conversation?
There’s another book on my radar I want to read as well “Apocalypse Never”