Yesterday I had the honor of co-presenting a seminar with Dr. John Christy of the University of Alabama, Huntsville, when he visited Chico State University. He had relatives to visit in town but had asked to be able to make a rebuttal presentation is response to Dr. Ben Santer’s presentation a couple of weeks ago which I had attended and written about here.
Dr. James Pushnik, moderator for the Santer event at CSUC, graciously allowed Dr. Christy and myself to make a rebuttal presentation yesterday and I thank him sincerely for the opportunity. Dr. Christy ended his essay with the title of this post saying “Don’t demonize energy, because without energy, life is brutal and short”. Dr. Christy writes this from his firsthand experiences in Africa, where he watched the native people just trying to survive and where wood carried for miles was the energy source for their society. I thought those were good words to consider, especially since we have activist maniacs like weepy Bill McKibben out to demonize energy on a daily basis. McKibben and his followers, not possessing the intelligence to fully understand what they are doing, think “they won“.
Bottom line: that tar sands oil is going to be burned somewhere, in other countries willing to buy it. Stopping a pipeline has no effect on Canada’s export of the oil, only on American jobs, but McKibben and his 350.org is cluelessly ecstatic over this. I like how he’s brainwashed these poor souls into thinking they have to cut back.
Along the same lines and coincidentally about the same time as all this was happening, I was asked by WUWT reader Paul Homewood if I’d be interested in carrying this essay from his blog “Not a lot of people know that” about how difficult life was during the time of the little ice age.
Today, I’m thankful for two things: 1) Our freedom, secured by veterans we honor today and 2) Our wonderful energy infrastructure, without which, I couldn’t bring you this essay and Bill McKibben would be chopping wood in Vermont just to keep warm.
Here’s Paul’s essay on life in the Little Ice Age in England:
In Part I we started to review the book “The Little Ice Age” by Brian Fagan, a Professor of Archaeology. If you have missed it, you can catch up with Part I here.
Everything that follows is based on the book.
==============================================================
Storms and Floods
Drawing by Hans Moser in 1570 of Scheldt flood
It was not only the cold that was a problem during the Little Ice Age.Throughout Europe, the years 1560-1600 were cooler and stormier, with late wine harvests and considerably stronger winds than those of the 20th Century. Storm activity increased by 85% in the second half of the 16th Century and the incidence of severe storms rose by 400%.
Perhaps the most infamous of these storms was the All Saints Flood in November 1570, which worked its way northeast up the North Sea.The storm brought enormous sea surges ashore in the Low Countries, flooding most of Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Dordrecht and other cities and drowning at least 100,000 people. In the River Ems further north in Germany, sea levels rose an incredible four and a half meters above normal.
In 1607 another storm caused even greater floods in the Bristol Channel with flood waters rising 8 meters above sea level miles inland.
Later in the 17th Century, great storms blew millions of tonnes of formerly stable dunes across the Brecklands of Norfolk and Suffolk, burying valuable farm land under meters of sand. This area has never recovered and is heathland. A similar event occurred in Scotland in 1694. The 1400 hectare Culbin Estate had been a prosperous farm complex next to the Moray Firth until it was hit by another huge storm which blew so much sand over it that the farm buildings themselves disappeared. A rich estate had become a desert overnight and the owner, the local Laird, died pauper three years later.
The Great Storm of 1703 is recognized as the most powerful storm ever recorded in England and caused immense damage there as well as across the North Sea in Holland and Denmark.
Cold, Snow and Ice
Between 1680 and 1730, the coldest cycle of the Little Ice Age, temperatures plummeted and the growing season in England was about five weeks shorter than now. The winter of 1683/4 was so cold that the ground froze to a depth of more than a meter in parts of south west England and belts of ice appeared off the Channel coast of England and northern France. The ice lay up to 30 miles offshore along the Dutch coast and many harbours were so choked with ice that shipping halted throughout the North Sea.
Another exceptional winter was that of 1708/9. Deep snow fell in England and lasted for weeks while further East people walked from Denmark to Sweden on the ice as shipping was again halted in the North Sea. Hard frosts killed thousands of trees in France, where Provence lost most of its orange trees and vineyards were abandoned in northern France, not to be recultivated until the 20th Century. In 1716 the Thames froze so deep that a spring tide raised the ice fair on the river by 4 meters! The summer of 1725 in London was the coldest in the known temperature record and described as “more like winter than summer”.
After a warm interlude after 1730, when eight winters were as mild as the 20th Century, the cold returned. The temperature of the early 1740’s was the lowest in the Central England Temperature record for the entire period from 1659. Even in France thousands died of the cold and when the thaw came “great floods did prodigious mischief”.
Although temperatures started to gradually increase in the mid 19th Century, another cold snap in 1879 brought weather that rivalled the 1690’s. After a below freezing winter, England experienced a cold spring and one of the wettest and coldest summers on record. In some parts of East Anglia, the harvest was still being brought in after Christmas. The late 1870’s were equally cold in China and India , where up to 18 million died from famines caused by cold, drought and monsoon failure.
The cold snap persisted into the 1880’s and 1890’s when large ice floes formed on the Thames.
Fishing and Sea Conditions
During the 17th Century conditions around Iceland became exceptionally severe. Sea ice often blocked the Denmark Strait throughout the summer. In 1695, ice surrounded the entire coast of Iceland for much of the year, halting all ship traffic. The inshore cod fishery failed completely, partly because the fish may have moved offshore into slightly warmer water. On several occasions between 1695 and 1728, inhabitants of the Orkney Islands were startled to see an Inuit in his kayak paddling off their coasts. These solitary hunters must have spent weeks marooned on large ice floes. As late as 1756, sea ice surrounded much of Iceland for as many as thirty weeks a year.
The cod fishery off the Faeroe Islands failed completely as the sea surface temperature became 5C cooler than today, while enormous herring shoals deserted Norwegian waters for warmer seas further south.
Famine
As climatic conditions deteriorated, a lethal mix of misfortunes descended on a growing European population. Crops failed and cattle perished by diseases caused by abnormal weather. Famine followed famine bringing epidemics in their train, bread riots and general disorder. Witchcraft accusations soared, as people accused their neighbours of fabricating bad weather.
Farming was just as difficult in the fledgling European colonies of North America where there were several severe drought cycles between 1560 and 1612 along the Carolina and Virginia coasts.
From 1687 to 1692, cold winters and cool summers led to a series of bad harvests. Alpine villagers lived on bread made from ground nutshells, whilst in France, wine harvests were delayed till as late as November. Widespread blight damaged many crops, bringing one of the worst famines in Europe since 1315. Finland lost perhaps as much as a third of its population to famine and disease in 1696-7.
Things did not improve. 1739 brought more problems, ruining grain and wine harvests over much of western Europe, while winter grain yields were well down because the ground was too hard to plough for weeks.
By 1815, Europe was struggling with yet another cold spell, when the Tambora eruption made matters a whole lot worse. The following year was described as “ The year without a summer”. In France the grain harvest was half its normal level and southern Germany suffered a complete harvest failure. In Switzerland grain and potato prices tripled, and 30000 were breadless, without work and resorted to eating “sorrel,moss and cats”.
Inevitably such suffering brought with it social unrest, pillaging, rioting and criminal violence. The famine encouraged many to emigrate to America, although in Saint John’s, Newfoundland, 900 were sent back to Europe because there was so little food in town.
The crisis of 1816/7 was the last truly extensive food dearth in the Western world and its effects ranged from the Ottoman Empire, to parts of North Africa, large areas of Switzerland and Italy, western Europe and even New England and Canada. Other parts of the world were also badly affected such as China. Death tolls are hard to calculate but 65000 may have perished in Ireland, while in Switzerland the death rate could have doubled. The death toll would have been much worse in England and France but for the availability of and ability to efficiently distribute reserve stocks of food.
For anyone who wishes to explore this period further, Brian Fagan’s book is available here.
Several people here have been whinging about “losing” one’s property by way of eminent domain proceedings in order to construct gas or oil pipelines. In practice, such a loss is largely imaginary, because oil and gas pipelines are buried under several meters of soil, and the only ongoing loss of use that landowners straddling a pipeline right of way normally endure is the ability to construct anything that involves deep ground disturbance, such as a well, or building foundation.
Here in Alberta, we have many, many pipelines crossing private land, and the landowners can and do farm the R.O.W. with implements, and graze cattle on them. It becomes easy, in fact, to forget that the pipeline is even there, and for that reason pipeline operators hire aircraft to patrol their rights of way, looking for leaks, or any unreported encroachments.
I would far sooner have a 60″ pipeline pass through my land than a railway spur, a highway, or a 40 kV electrical distribution line.
Build a refinery in Canada?? Not likely unless we import a ton of foreign trained workers or train operators during construction. 100,000 more jobs is a problem as we are already short tens of thousands of workers. We have 800 oil rigs left in the province (The other 1000 or so are busy drilling gas in north eastern British Columbian and in the Bakken field in southern Saskatchewan. We only have enough trained rig workers to run 500 rigs so 800 will be sitting idle due to lack of workers. Same in the pipeline industry. Tons of big inch (40 to 42 inch) pipelines are being built in BC and Alberta to get the gas out to petrochemical plants – but they too are short of welders, x-ray technicians and environmental monitoring staff. So building a refinery in Canada may be an option but we would have to find workers that just don’t exist right now. Heck, even Tim Hortons, MacDonalds and WalMart have worker shortages.
Anyone with petrochemical industry experience might want to check the Alberta employment advertisements.
I happen to have been reading Brian Fagan’s book the past few weeks and it makes most interesting reading on the general topic of the Little Ice Age. Certainly, energy is good, and so is warmth…both in the right amounts and at the right intensities.
But a few general thoughts about the Little Ice Age, solar influences, ocean cycles, and our current period of potential anthropogenic warming:
1) Certainly solar influences played a huge role in driving past climate cycles, and even scientists such as Mann, Jones, et. al. readily admit as much, and even have done research on the topic of the connection between solar variations and the Little Ice Age.
See: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/294/5549/2149.short
And of course there are many studies linking both atmospheric and ocean changes to solar forcing, such as this interesting one
http://geology.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/33/1/73
What of course has changed, and changed greatly since the last Maunder or Dalton type solar downturn is the composition of the atmosphere. In essence, Earth 2011 does not equal Earth 1650, or even Earth 1800. If we accept the fact that the sun influences the climate through multiple means (magnetic and all frequencies and ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum), and if you also accept the general physics behind greenhouse gas electromagnetic absorption and emission, then the next few years will prove most interesting, for we seem to have forcings on the climate that are potentially moving in opposite directions for a period of time. To wit:
Forcings causing cooling over the next few years (some may be related):
1) Quiet sun
2) Extended Periods of La Nina
3) Human and volcanic aerosols
4) Other cool phases of various ocean cycles.
Forcings causing warming over the next few years:
5) Highest level of greenhouse gases in at least 800,000 years.
So back in the so-called “Little Ice Age”, it appears we had various periods when 1 through 4 were all in play at the same time, and of course, number 5 was in fact quite the opposite, as we had some of the lowest CO2 levels of the entire Holocene. In fact, after the Holocene optimum, CO2 levels were slowly trending downward, until, not coincidentally, the beginning of the industrial revolution when CO2 levels began the fastest spike upward seen in at least the past 800,000 years.
So essentially, during the past decade, for the most part, we’ve seen the 4 primary forcings leading to climate cooling all in play at various times (and sometimes, all at the same time, i.e. 2008 and 2009), while CO2 has steadily kept growing in the atmosphere (along with of course the more minor greenhouse gases). Certainly global temperatures have been flat over this period, with the exception being 2010 in which we saw the ENSO cycle switch to a short but modest El Nino, releasing heat to the atmosphere and testing global temperatures records once more.
One could make a reasonable argument that without the balancing effect of the additional CO2 that we presently have over the period of the Dalton Minimum (1790 to 1830) we might indeed be seeing even more cooling than we currently are with the quiet sun that we have. In this regard, Europe might well be glad for the additional CO2, at least over the short-term. Once however, the pendulum swings back and we see a few of the previously cooling forcings, head into a more warming phase, we might once more be seeing global temperature records being set. I would suspect, for example, that we will see another modest El Nino approximately coincidental to the Solar Cycle 24 max in 2013 or so, and these two additional forcings, combined with the continued high greenhouse gas levels could well break the flattened trend in global temps, pushing things warmer.
Your title is profoundly ironic, although I’m sure you won’t agree. I would rephrase the title as follows: “With continued use of fossil fuel energy, life will continue to be nasty, brutal and for many, short”.
Humankind is now facing its biggest challenge, namely, finding a way to live comfortably and safely without burning massive amounts of fossil fuels; findinig ways to produce enough food to feed our rapidly growing population; and find ways to accomplish this with increasingly scarce amounts of fresh water and depleting soils. Our children have their work cut out for them, and their task will become increasingly difficult (and expensive) the longer we fail to act.
Hugh Pepper says:
November 12, 2011 at 11:55 am
Jay Davis asserts that no one has come up with an alternative to fossil fuel based production of energy. You are wrong Jay, and I would suggest you read Jeremy Rifkin’s latest book (try Amazon) and notice what is happening in Europe and cities like Rome and San Antonio. We are hitting the wall with regards to the availability of cheap oil and the necessity of switching to newer forms of energy production are apparent, even obvious. Rifkin describes this transformation as the Third Industrial Revolution. The decision to change will either result from freely made choices, or, if we delay too long, we will find our choices diminishing and becoming prohibitively expensive. (read the Stern report for an elaboration of this economic circumstance)
________________________________________________________________________
Sorry to burst your bubble mate, but with all the natural gas, we have a long time before we run out of fossil fuels. Why has the price dropped from $8 to less than $4? Oversupply.
http://www.energy.gov.ab.ca/NaturalGas/1316.asp
Hugh Pepper says:
November 11, 2011 at 3:36 pm
“Anthony, I think you need to temper your language with regards people who have different views than you. There is no point in demonizing Bill McKibbon or anyone else for that matter. McKibbon is not against “energy” as you contend. He is against the extraordinarily dirty (in terms of carbon content”) oil which derives from the Alberta tar sands. From his point of view, burning this fuel would produce far too much CO2 and would jeopardize our collective need to survive. YOu can disagree with him without be so nasty. ”
Hugh, it is you who owes an apology to Anthony for your lack of knowledge as to how the Alberta Oil sands are processed and how carbon based fuels has changed our lives. Also carbon is not dirty except in some minds, and if you read the article it would be clear as to how energy, largly carbon based, has advanced civilization in an incredible way. Do you have a clue as to how “man” survived” in the winter in cold climates prior to the use of natural gas, oil or coal to heat their homes?
The oils sands are under attack mostly because they are a threat to your statement below:
“We are hitting the wall with regards to the availability of cheap oil and the necessity of switching to newer forms of energy production are apparent, even obvious.”
It is tough to be exposed by the potential of oil sands and admit that your comment is a total fabrication . It appears that you will believe everything that Nancy Policy and Al Gore utters.
Then there is the comment on alternative energy:
” I would suggest you read Jeremy Rifkin’s latest book (try Amazon) and notice what is happening in Europe ”
Are you aware of the economic crisis in Europe which is on part due to a belief that their economy can be run on alternative fuels. You should especially check out Spain and their experience with clean energy that has put them on the verge of bankruptcy. Or have you read how the average bloke in UK is struggling to keep warm in the winter?
Also check out the latest National Academies report on biofuels which paints an “ugly” picture as to the viability of Biofuels without massive subsidies.
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=13105
Finally as one who worked on the second major oil sands project over 30 years ago, I am amused at the misinformation (or intentional lies?) spread by the anti oil sands folks.
To expensive?; that project, 30 years ago, was built when oil was $12/bbl; and if private capital is invested today it will probably pay out unless a foolish government (like our current Administration) changes the rules.
Too heavy/dirty?: The plant I worked on used existing refining technology (cokers) to upgrade the product, Sulphur extraction to clean the product, and lots of hydrogen to produce a lighter synthetic crude for subsequent processing in a conventional refinery. The crude is cleaner than the heavy, sulphur laden crude the refineries now imported from Venezuela that the Canadien oil sands will replace.
I would rather import our oil from our good friends in Canada than from an unfriendly, OPEC nation that has recently threatened to cut us off.
Killing the pipeline is a horrible government energy policy while also killing jobs, and risking energy security.
Erik (sceptic),
Actually, the possibility of an urban heat island effect was recognized decades ago and has been taken into account by the major compilers of temperature data, including NASA and NOAA.
For example, in 2001 NASA eliminated roughly 80% of the temperature recording stations from it data source, because of the possibility of an urban heat island bias at those stations. The stations that they removed even included many located in places that would strike most people as rural; this was because satellite photographs taken at night showed that these places, although rural, were brightly lit at night — hence, possibly affected by urban heat island bias.
The followers of this web site, alert as they are to possible flaws in sampling technique, were not the first to recognize this problem!
G. Karst wrote: Please provide evidence that CO2 induced water vapor has caused run-away warming on this planet.
I didn’t say that it had. I said that it might.
Jesse Fell says:
November 12, 2011 at 11:35 am
The most significant feedback effect would be an increase in the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. Warmer air holds more water vapor, and water vapor is a potent greenhouse gas. More water vapor, then, means rising temperatures. This creates the possibility of a run-away feedback cycle of warming.
The Water Cycle takes away heat from Sun-warmed Earth and releases it as water vapour, lighter than air, rises into colder levels and condenses out into rain. The Earth with our fluid gaseous atmosphere but without the Water Cycle would be around 67°C, think deserts. In other words, rising temperatures will just make the Water Cycle work harder.
The models you appear to believe are based on reality, have for some unaccountable reason forgotten to put in the bog standard physics real and well-known effect of the greenhouse gas water vapour – cooling the Earth. Any explanation as to why?
To Carcracking: Apologies are never need for an expression of anything, unless the language used is derogatory. You claim I have a lack of knowledge regarding the oil sands, and I ask, “How would you know this”? Aren’t you being presumptuous?
There is no doubt that carbon based fuels have enabled huge growth and the development of industrial societies, especially here in the northern hemisphere. But we are moving into another era now, where the use of these fuels is either too expensive, or too damaging to the atmospheric chemistry, which enables all life-supporting ecosystems to survive. Alternatives have to be found and implemented.
R. Gates;
until, not coincidentally, the beginning of the industrial revolution when CO2 levels began the fastest spike upward seen in at least the past 800,000 years.>>>
Despite which there has been no noticeable change in the general warming trend since the LIA, in opposition to everything the warmists have been telling us for decades. Now that the dominant natural cycles have flattened out, suddenly you want to claim that the increased warming from CO2 is being “masked” by the natural cycles. Try “dominated” my friend, the CO2 is just a bit of noise that you have to come up with ridiculous excuses to explain the absence of any measurable effects.
Fastest spike in 800,000 years and…. nothing.
Hugh Pepper says: November 11, 2011 at 3:36 pm
“He is against the extraordinarily dirty (in terms of carbon content”) oil ”
Hugh Pepper, as a carbon based human I am telling you carbon is not dirty or pollution. Please temper your language and do not insult me as well as any other carbon life form on this planet.
“the carbon-based fuels which create the warming conditions that threaten all life.”
Further I need to inform you that we all consume some sort of carbon-based fuels and about 10% of human CO2 exhaust come from breathing. Where do you take the “warming conditions that threaten all life from”? Hugh are you sure you believe what you write? And if so what and how do you believe this Thermaggedon is going to happen? How on Earth is warming ending all life forms?
Henry Galt,
When I wrote that the evidence in support of the AGW theory is “massive and redundant”, I was referring to the fact that virtually no scientific papers published in the major peer-related journals have successfully challenged the thesis that the burning of fossil fuels is raising the Earth’s temperature, and that the rise in temperature is having an effect on climate. The latter is the more problematic, of course. It is more difficult to find out why temperature is rising than it is to predict the effect of a given rise in temperature on the Earth’s climate.
It’s worth noting that the discovery of the “greenhouse effect” is not recent, but can be attributed to Jean-Baptiste Fourier in a paper published in 1824). His findings were extended and clarified by John Tyndall, in a paper published in 1861. In 1896, Svante Arrhenius, published a paper “On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air on the Temperature on the Ground”, that is generally considered the foundation of modern climate science.
It is true that these scientists did not have at their disposal most of the scientific instruments that today are considered essential. But their work has been around a long time, and has been found to be accurate in its essentials.
It’s also worth noting that none of these three scientists were hunters of grant money. One advantages of not being able to use scientific instruments and computers is not needing to buy them.
At any rate, to get a good idea of the breadth and depth of the scientific research behind the AGW thesis, take a look at “The Warming Papers: The Scientific Foundation for the Climate Change Forecast” (Archer and Pieerehumbert, eds.) — a fascinating anthology of the classic papers on climate change, beginning with Fourier’s.
Jesse Fell;
I was referring to the fact that virtually no scientific papers published in the major peer-related journals have successfully challenged the thesis that the burning of fossil fuels is raising the Earth’s temperature>>>
You’ve already discredited yourself by claiming a direct forcing from CO2 that is double what is actually claimed in the scientific research. Now you want to add some half truths to your argument?
The fact of the matter is that while the direct effects of increased CO2 are reasonably well understood, the science published in both major and minor journals in regard to the feedbacks is increasingly showing that the large positive feedback estimates are out of whack with reality, but that they may even be negative. Your desperation to confuse the issue with incorrect science and blatant half truths speaks to your agenda which appears to have nothing to do with the actual science.
Jesse Fell says:
November 12, 2011 at 3:58 pm
At any rate, to get a good idea of the breadth and depth of the scientific research behind the AGW thesis, take a look at “The Warming Papers: The Scientific Foundation for the Climate Change Forecast” (Archer and Pieerehumbert, eds.) — a fascinating anthology of the classic papers on climate change, beginning with Fourier’s.
Does it include this paper from Arrhenius?:
tokyoboy,
if by ‘research papers’ you mean studies that have undergone peer-review and published in listed scientific journals – handle the Poptech list with care. Many of them are not research articles but opinion pieces. A good number are not peer-reviewed. Check them against google scholar.
There are 900 papers in that list and a tiny proportion satisfy your query. If you want to save time, search the page there [cntrl + F] for papers by authors Loehle and McIntyre. Some of these papers have passed peer-review and are also discoverable through google scholar – assuming this is the standard of work you are looking for.
Jesse Fell @ur momisugly here.
Actually, 2.1C from CO2 doubling is the transient climate response, which does include feedback processes. Doubling of CO2 without feedbacks is 1C.
TCR is the magnitude of change at the time of CO2 doubling, as opposed to the more commonly seen Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (~3C/doubling), which includes longer-term feedbacks, particularly oceanic thermal lag. ECS is the response about 30 – 40 years after CO2 has doubled, to allow for committed feedback processes. There are putative longer-term feedbacks (like ice/albedo), but they don’t get rolled into ECS at present.
Jesse,
the mainstream view on feedbacks precludes the notion of a runaway greenhouse effect from burning fossil fuels. Hansen iterated a highly theoretical possibility, but generally this idea is considered as good as impossible. The mainstream view theorises about abrupt changes and ‘tipping points’, but not a Venus-like runaway effect.
RE:Jesse Fell: (November 12, 2011 at 11:35 am)
“The most significant feedback effect would be an increase in the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. Warmer air holds more water vapor, and water vapor is a potent greenhouse gas. More water vapor, then, means rising temperatures. This creates the possibility of a run-away feedback cycle of warming.”
If you look at the referenced plot in my article showing Radiative Forcing of the Troposphere, you will see a narrow CO2 hole around 667 kayzers (cycles per centimeter, CM-1) and a minimal ozone hole around 1111 kayzers. There are no H2O holes. It would appear that H2O may be a leaky greenhouse gas.
If CO2 emits a photon, that photon is most likely to be a prime candidate for being absorbed by another CO2 molecule. The same is true for H2O except this is a sticky polar molecule, which wants to be a solid or liquid at normal atmospheric temperatures. It would seem likely that colliding H2O molecules are always trying to lock on to each other and the strong electrical forces involved could promote the generation of unusual photons, which would be unlikely to be absorbed by other H2O molecules.
Note that the water content of the atmosphere drops to near zero at the top of the Troposphere and the H2O absorption bands are wide open to outer space.
tokyoboy,
http://www.pages-igbp.org/
The group at the site are dedicated to paleoclimate. The March edition of their newsletter has a bunch of articles that cover your query.
http://www.pages-igbp.org/download/docs/NL2011-1_lowres.pdf
Famine followed famine bringing epidemics in their train, bread riots and general disorder. Witchcraft accusations soared, as people accused their neighbours of fabricating bad weather.
How long have humans believed that they can control the weather? Is this penchant for belief in weather control and underlying aspect of the AGW notion.
Graeme;
How long have humans believed that they can control the weather?>>>
I think the question is how long have some human beings been successfull in convincing their entire tribe that the weather can be controlled (by them). I think it depends on the specific tribe involved and their proximity to volcanoes.
Hugh Pepper says:
November 12, 2011 at 2:56 pm
Your title is profoundly ironic, although I’m sure you won’t agree. I would rephrase the title as follows: “With continued use of fossil fuel energy, life will continue to be nasty, brutal and for many, short”.
How come? The title as it stands is a statement of history, it’s access to cheap energy on tap which has fuelled better living conditions for all of us who had it available, and without which we wouldn’t have the great many advances in all fields as the pool of our knowledge has grown to be an ocean through education for all and not just for the few able to afford time for it, who used people as energy to better their own conditions and living standards.
Humankind is now facing its biggest challenge, namely, finding a way to live comfortably and safely without burning massive amounts of fossil fuels;
Humankind is now facing its biggest challenge, namely, finding a way to continue to live comfortably and safely when those who are bent on reducing us to energy poverty again have been so successful in making us believe that the source of our comfort and safety is demonic, and all without a shred of scientific proof.
findinig ways to produce enough food to feed our rapidly growing population; and find ways to accomplish this with increasingly scarce amounts of fresh water and depleting soils.
We have found lots and lots of ways, through the talents of the many now globally brought into the think tank which used to be reserved for those who could afford the leisure time to ponder such things. By demonising without cause the still abundant cheap energy available for the masses these ways can’t be developed, or, they will be developed on a small scale to benefit the elite who can afford energy priced out of reach or rationed for the rest. For example, hot houses, heated greenhouses, were available only for the very rich who had readily available fuel energy and people energy to maintain them productively, now look of the spread of them in the developed countries in personal use and on massive farming scales.
Our children have their work cut out for them, and their task will become increasingly difficult (and expensive) the longer we fail to act.
..the longer we fail to act to curb those who want to reduce them to serfdom and slavery to reserve plenty and leisure and creative enjoyment of life for themselves alone.
Barry,
You are right — no one is predicting that anything like what happened on Venus will happen here. But a lot of scientists are concerned about what a water vapor feedback could do to enhance the warming effect of atmospheric CO2, even though it falls far short of a Venus-like runaway.
Myrrh,
Yes, “The Warming Papers” includes the 1906 paper by Arrhenius.
Barry, If the 2.1C/3.78F increase in temperature from a doubling of CO2 takes into account the various feedbacks, still, this is the increase that the human race will have to live with.
And this would be the globally averaged increase. The southern hemisphere would likely experience less of an increase, while the high northern latitudes would experience more. The latter is one of the possibilities that turns us “warmists” into “alarmists”. The loss of arctic ice — which is happening before our eyes — will greatly reduce the Earth’s total albedo, which will in turn enhance the warming effect of the greenhouse gases.
We’ll never be like Venus, where the atmosphere is 95% CO2. But the evidence is accumulating that small increases in temperature lead to changes in climate that are harmful to the human race.
(I wish I didn’t know anything about the real Venus. Reading “Perelandra” will never be the same.)