By charles the moderator
I have no other comment.
From congress.org
Global Warming could make Humans EXTINCT within 50 years
Kill mechanisms list
Global Warming could make the human race EXTINCT. The #1 kill mechanism is famine. See “The Long Summer” by Brian Fagan and “Collapse” by Jared Diamond. Shifting winds and warmer oceans have already created a weird moving checkerboard of drought and flood that has interfered with agriculture here and elsewhere.
The extra heat has caused heat related deaths already.
The book “Six Degrees” by Mark Lynas says: “If the global warming is 6 degrees centigrade, we humans go extinct.” The book lists several kill mechanisms, the most important being famine and methane fuel-air explosions. Other mechanisms include fire storms.
“Under a Green Sky” by Peter D. Ward, Ph.D., 2007 says H2S bubbling out of hot oceans is the final blow at 6 degrees C warming.
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read the rest at congress.org
The ad nauseaum rubbish of scare Sci-fiction coming out of certain individuals in Academia in recent years.
Forget the Prozac, etc. These Dudes who’ve the audacity to call themselves scientists and make up this utter unsubstaniated crap. Need to swap their white coats for a white straight jacket and a nice padded room in an asylum. It’s obvious they’ve lost their way in being rational and all the needed level headed objective reasoning approach a true real scientist needs!
Sheesh, last week Prof Frank Fenner said we had 100 years to go to extinction, this week it is 50 years – next week we will probably only have a couple of months (well, if some numpty gets the finger on the nuclear button then I suppose that may be true). And to think that everyone used to laugh at the sandwich board men who paraded the streets with “The End is Nigh!”. What a load of tosh!
NoAstronomer says:
June 29, 2010 at 7:56 am
“methane fuel-air explosions”
Really!?! Natural methane explosions? ROFLMAO.
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Yes, really. Ignis fatuus, or will-o-the-wisp, is burning swamp methane. When a big bubble of the gas bursts through the surface, as happens from time to time, you get either a (rather damp) explosion, or a floating ball of fire, depending on how well it’s mixed with the air before ignition. Hence the proverbial rationalisation of UFO sightings as “swamp gas”.
There are more weird natural phenomena in the world than are dreamed of in anyone’s philosophy!
Zhinlo says:
What happens is that we commit Hare kari at 520ppm. C02 crushes us at 600ppm. At 620ppm, it really does vapourise us. At 560ppm we all die of famine and heatstroke.
By these reckonings, we’ll all be doing hare kari in 30 years. Should only take a week.
They are wrong. We will not be extinct in 50 years time. Superman would have saved us all by then, helped by Ironman, Darkman, the seven dwarves, Peter Pan and Paul McCartney. This is all based on science, I have a consensus (me, myself and my image in the mirror included) and it is all peer-reviewed, by three of my best friends. And who is going to nominate me for the Noble prize for peace? Al Gone?
In the same style of total bogus crap:
“Magnitude of global warming uncertain: Survey
By Margaret Munro, Canwest News Service June 28, 2010”
http://www.vancouve rsun.com/ technology/ Magnitude+ global+warming+ uncertain+ survey+finds/ 3212837/story. html
” “The possibility of really dramatic climate outcomes is significant,”
says engineer David Keith, of the University of Calgary, whose survey
highlights the large but seldom discussed uncertainty in climate
change scenarios.(…)”
” To gauge the risks Keith and his colleagues canvassed 14 leading
climate scientists, including two in Canada. Most are on the United
Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The scientists were asked for their expert advice on how the climate
system will respond to different emissions scenarios. Their responses
are detailed in a report published Monday in the U.S. Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences. (…)”
Background:
David Keith is riding the wave of guilt that gripped rich oil executive in Calgary. An American, obscure researcher and as this piece of junk alarmism proves, a perfect candidate for a Canadian university to promote his own research on gullible people who feel they need to get on the bandwagon of green, sustainable… funding for self serving average scientists.
The fact this reporter cannot identified the colleagues -mostly IPCC members of course who else and in Canada we know well who’s funding depends on keeping the alarmism going- shows how biased, uninformative this drivel is. This is not information but advertisement.
PNAS published last week an infamous “black list” paper co-authored by a climate science nobody IT worker at U of T who googled some list of climate scientist on which the paper is based, first authored by doctorate candidate and helped by the name of Stephen Schneider, one of the “heroes” of climategate.
This PNAS paper references the word “climate denier”, a pun on Holocaust denier that, with the pathetic social science listing, demonstrates how desperate the global warming lobby has become to use such poor propaganda.
So David Keith, mister CO2 bubble on U of C ads, whose research on wind turbine fields and climate change are among the most questionable pieces of literature out there, is preaching and selling his institute for guilt ridden retired oilmen and this newspaper obliges. Shame on you!
I’m sure morons won’t mind, but comparing these sad individuals to morons is unkind to morons.
I won’t be 100 until 2051, can I still come to the party?
Want to increase the worlds food supply? Increase the CO2 in the air. Plants grow bigger and faster.
guh
How’s about unbridled greed as a handful of people attempt to take over the world, hoarding resources and pushing desperate nations into WWIII? Since thier global economic plans have struck rocky shores, the next thing on thier list is Super Monopolies.
It is not an article. It is just a blog post by some loon. There is a lot of that on the web.
Reply: Noted. ~ ctm
I think you understate the “stupidest” part.
The MODTRAN results suggest that we might need to increase the CO2 concentration levels to perhaps 15,000 or 20,000 ppm achieve this temperature increase. Perhaps our greater danger over that time period is global radioactive contamination (GRC) from the ideological use of military nuclear weapons.
Which is the bigger business, preaching about global warming as a result of human excesses or the current manufacturing conglomerates of the world collectively producing products for human consumption? Then, who has the bigger reason to lie?
I’ve read collapse, I don’t recall anything about human extinction, looks like Edward Greisch is just making things up, and who is Edward Greisch anyway?
Methane fuel-air-explosions? That is just freakin’ awesome that anyone could even think that up. This stuff just reads like Sci-Fi.
What about Bill McKibbins “Eaarth”? And what about the book “The Coming Climate Wars”. The cover looks great – absolute Sci-Fi. The thinking that produces this “Pulp Fiction” is incredibly faddish and superficial. We live in such weird times….How can anyone be taking any of this stuff serious.
Oh I keep forgetting; the science is settled.
“The book lists several kill mechanisms, the most important being famine and methane fuel-air explosions.”
HAR HAR HAR!! Methane fuel-air explosions?? These rarely happen at sewage treatment plants, where biomethanation is commonly employed via anaerobic digestion!!
The LEL (lower explosive limit) of methane in air is 5%, if we get that high in our atmosphere, we will have other things to worry about.
Thanks, Chas, that IS a breathtakingly stupid article! Nice catch!
This bothers me more than it should. I live in a college town and the insane, illogical “professing” is more prevelant than I think most people believe. We have a chemistry prof who is very active in local politics who is writing the same sort of nonsense to local newspapers, using his credentials to smack down we deniers. I can only assume that he is making money teaching the same crap to captive college students. (got to have that degree, you know) How do we get out of mess? How do we unlearn at least two generations of bad information? It’s frustrating.
And then I find that taxpayers are funding stupid:
http://www.wsutoday.wsu.edu/pages/publications.asp?Action=Detail&PublicationID=20450&TypeID=1
Paul Birch says “For cities in warmer climates, white roofs would beneficially mitigate the UHI effect, which can be quite unpleasant.”
Think it through, Paul. Some of that heat getting reflected from the white roof might be sucked straight down the throats of air conditioner inlets, causing them to consume more energy to cool the interiors of the buildings ….
The cars in the streets would be hotter inside, so more gas used to cool them …
People in the streets would feel hotter and would want to go into cool buildings, increasing the load on cooling systems …
Mad dogs and Englishmen would stop going out in the midday sun …
etc etc
It’s almost a zero sum game. The main effect would be aesthetic, but only if you like white would you feel a big benefit.
“GregO says:
June 29, 2010 at 8:14 pm
What about Bill McKibbins “Eaarth”? And what about the book “The Coming Climate Wars”. The cover looks great – absolute Sci-Fi. The thinking that produces this “Pulp Fiction” is incredibly faddish and superficial. We live in such weird times….How can anyone be taking any of this stuff serious. ”
Yeah.
It’s the same as those who think 2012 is going to be Doom year.
There’s supposedly going to be an item on our local NZ TV3’s 60 Minutes Program about 2012. Supposedly some 2012 Doomster believers are supposedly coming to NZ to get away from the Chaos caused by 2012 in the NH. Well NZ ain’t much of a good place to settle. We’re the shaky Isles. Prone to Earthquakes and has plenty of Dormant Volcanoes. So NZ could be the first country wiped off the map when or the ‘prophesized’ doom hits us in 2012. 🙂
Well, duh! Did you actually pay attention what they said? They said: Global Warming could make Humans EXTINCT within 50 years. By ‘could’, they mean to say there is still plenty of uncertainty in the science.
Here are more examples:
1-The weight of too many fat people on the Earth’s crust could trigger volcanic eruptions at unexpected places around the globe.
2- The slingshot maneuvers used to speed up spacecraft could perturb the Earth’s orbit and hurtle it towards the dark abyss of space.
3- Too many tourists may get the Loch Ness Monster so angry that it may start eating our kittens at night.
As you can see, there is still plenty of uncertainty in the science behind each one of those considered statements.
Aymospheric methane fires?explosions — possible/maybe.
A local highschool boy caught the seat of his pants on fire while testing whether various sources of methane were equally flamible. (WARNING!! DO NOT attempt this scientific experiment at home!!)
PS That was supposed to be Atmospheric. These ancient fingers don’t always go where I want.
Also — could you all make that 100th birthday party a little earlier? Mine comes in only 17 years.
Geoff Sherrington says:
June 29, 2010 at 9:53 pm
It’s almost a zero sum game. The main effect would be aesthetic, but only if you like white would you feel a big benefit.
But think of the wealth created by the increased sales of sunglasses.
And this Englishman don’t like midday sun much.
Geoff Sherrington says:
June 29, 2010 at 9:53 pm
Paul Birch says “For cities in warmer climates, white roofs would beneficially mitigate the UHI effect, which can be quite unpleasant.”
Think it through, Paul. Some of that heat getting reflected from the white roof might be sucked straight down the throats of air conditioner inlets, causing them to consume more energy to cool the interiors of the buildings ….
It’s almost a zero sum game.
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I have thought it through. It is not zero sum. From no white to all white, there would be a net increase in albedo of order 10% (to ~90% from ~50% over the ~25% of urban area covered by roofs). Under clear skies, this would mean a reduction of ~30W/m2 absorbed at the surface, or ~7C reduction in black body temperature. Nearly all of the reflected radiation will go straight back out into space (not into air conditioners) . Only under heavy cloud would it make little or no difference. Depending on the climate, we might wish either to retain or to radiate heat at night; we could get either effect by adjusting the IR emissivity of the paint. Assuming we want to radiate as much heat as possible, we might use ordinary radiator paint, which has the right spectral properties.
And people, natural swamp gas (mostly methane + phosphine + H2S) explosions are not science fiction. They are real (though generally pretty feeble). The stupidity of the poster is not in assuming that global warming would make them happen more frequently, but in thinking they could ever be catastrophic enough to threaten the survival of the species.