Climate Change (fair discussion)

[PZ]

Bravo chaps - this is a most lively and interesting discussion 

[JRD]

Art politely asked me to join the discussion and I haven't been able to do so in the last few days but before I can actually give my two cents worth of thoughts I'd like to give a quick overview on the subject.

Does climate change over time? Well, yes, of course. Are we, humans, causing it? It's very likely that, to some extent, we are. Deforestation, CO2 and other gas emissions, large cities creating "heat islands" etc.... it will have an impact on global climate. But how big that impact is? If humans were to dissapear over night and all human related activities that may or may not impact the weather would ceasse too, what would happen? Does any of you believe the world would start to cool off? Or the warming would slow down? Or maybe it wouldn't make any difference at all?

There are changes taking place. Period. We don't know for sure what's our fault and what's just nature taking its natural course but the simple fact that we are questioning our role in all that is a good sign. Can we revert global warming? And if we could, should we?

And then... BAM... snow over the pyramids.... 

[Art Blade]

nice.

And thanks for joining

[PZ]

 

The discussion of climate aside, I lived in southern California in the late 70s-80s in a time when there was not that much pollution control. Living in Riverside for graduate school, I sometimes could not see the Box Spring hills which were only about a mile away.  Driving from the Mojave desert into the LA basin was often like driving into the sea - you saw gray as far as you can see, and you would have no idea that a city even exists there. I actually became ill for a day or two each time returning to the basin after a trip north.

Now due to pollution controls, a drive into LA from the desert is pleasant, and you can actually see the city

[Art Blade]

London (England) used to have fog that was so thick you could see it crawling into the houses through the gap under the front door. It was virtually impossible to see your own feet, I hear. That has changed, too.

[PZ]

I'd welcome fog over smog any day - the LA smog was nauseating - awful stink that had so many chemicals in it, you could not identify them all.

[Art Blade]

yes, smog.. a term I haven't heard in a while. The "fog of London" was witnessed by my mother when she lived there, I haven't experienced that type of fog myself. I suppose chimneys had a part in it. I did see smog over big cities, though. In the summertime on a sunny day, it looked as if a dome of all shades of brown was above those cities when looked at from afar.

[Dweller_Benthos]

I was just thinking and now PZ has mentioned it, the early to mid 70s was a time when you heard a lot about air pollution. We even learned about it in grade school. So, eventually something was done about it, at least in the U.S., and anti-pollution laws were passed.

Also, that time, at least in my limited experience was when we had the heaviest winter snows, at least in my area of the country. As kids, we would be able to dig tunnels in the snow quite often, creating large areas under the snow for us to use as forts in snow ball fights.

Then came the anti-pollution laws and pollution started to clear up. At least the type you could see. The visible, particulate pollution was the easiest and cheapest to clean up and also was the stuff people could see, so it looked like great progress was being made. Thing is, the invisible pollutants, like the carbon dioxide greenhouse gas, were not so easy or cheap to remove from pollution sources, but they also couldn't be seen and weren't detectable by the average person, so they were ignored.

So, here's the scenario, visible pollution is removed, which also has the property of blocking sunlight, so now the sunlight is reaching the earth in higher quantities, and the greenhouse gasses are not removed so the heat is now trapped, heat that is now arriving in higher quantities because the visible pollutants have been removed and are allowing more heat to reach the Earth's surface.

So, those pollution laws might have done more harm than good, considering they only addressed the visible pollution and not the invisible. And, I wouldn't be surprised if certain industry forces were at w0#k when those laws were being created to skew them in that direction, so that the cost of removing all the pollution wouldn't burden the bottom line of those industries.

Same goes for vehicles, and this might have changed in recent years as I haven't looked into it. But in the U.S., passenger vehicles (cars) must adhere to fairly strict anti-pollution and mileage regulations. Thing is, congress never passed the same rules for trucks. So, most of those large pickup trucks on our roads, as far as I know, don't have to follow those rules. Then comes along the SUV and since it's classified a light truck, also doesn't have to follow those rules. I forget exactly why congress never passed pollution rules for trucks, but again I wouldn't be surprised if certain forces were in play at the time. I mean, congress critters at both national and state level are passing laws that prohibit local communities from creating their own local broadband internet connections because there is no company that wants to wire them up because they "aren't profitable enough" but they also don't want to be shown how noncompetitive and monopolizing they are, so they buy congress people to pass laws that the ISP lawyers write so that their bottom line won't be hurt by a small town somewhere whose residents simply want a decent internet connection. If companies like that buy the laws they want, what are super rich oil and industrial companies getting passed?

Sorry, got a little ranty there.

[PZ]

Good points D_B 

Clean skies to mean more sunlight reaching the earth. Ironically when we have clear skies in our area, the day is much colder in the winter as the lack of cloud cover allows heat loss into the atmosphere.

I suspect the oil companies and the other companies like that are delighted now that Scott Pruitt is the head of the EPA, And the former CEO of Exxon is the head of the State department.  Oh well, at least my retirement investments are doing better than they have in decades.

[Art Blade]

 

That was an interesting read, D_B 

I too remember the 70s and the snow we saw as kids. I remember looking out the window (very likely in 1969/70) watching people digging around in the snow and after a while you could see the car that they were digging out of the snow 

Do you guys remember "spikes?" Like, car tyres with metal pins sticking out so you could get some grip on ice and snow? They're forbidden now.

[PZ]

Yes, I remember them clearly because people still are allowed to use them here - completely ruins the roads 

[BinnZ]

I missed out on one of the most interesting discussions, until now that is

I think we humans are slowly destroying our world. Maybe I think so because that is what they taught me at primary school, maybe it is because my love for wildlife and nature opened my eyes for simple things that were showing change in a destructive way.
Anyway, I'm not a deep digger on the subject, but from what I got aware of during my life, I've seen a lot of destructive power in human activity.
To me, climate change is part of a bigger happening, which is destruction of life on this planet.

I agree with those who say that climate change isn't only caused by human activity. Indeed there are many more factors influencing our climate; not only today, but also millions and millions of years ago. Fragger, you are right about the huge impact of the galaxy and anything unknown even in the universe, far beyond the reach of our knowledge and perception.

But let's look at what we do know and see. For me, the proof is to be found in changes in ecosystems. Life on earth evolved. That's something I believe in. I know it did. There's proof for it. We can see how, during millions of years, life forms evolved into what they are now. Ecosystems are fragile and super complex balances, slowly moving and changing but basically holding itself together in its slow and careful evolution.
What I see happening all across the globe is ecosystems changing drastically. Extinction is happening while we look at it. Animals that have been evolving themselves into their present form are suddenly disappearing.

Climate change is one of the things that is a player in that movement. Pollution and contamination is another player on the field. And what to think of global movement of product causing large groups of animals to become endangered or extinct because rabbits, cats, mosquitoes or martens were suddenly introduced.

Look at the illnesses that we humans are suffering from. Yes, we western people grow older and older. Better healthcare and all that, sure. But we all suffer from cancer. Even small children get horrible forms of cancer more and more often. Many refuse to say that Tjernobil has a part in that matter. I think it does. I also think that the way we treat our food production, being simplified and shaped to mass production, is causing that. And look at what happens with antibiotics. They lose their effect because of extensive use to the benefit of food production.

I know of a terrain the size of a small football field on the riverside that is so contaminated by a long gone asphalt factory that our government is intensively cleaning that terrain for already over 7 years and still hasn't done the job. I remember, 22 years ago, when I was a student on the local environmental science academy, we made an excursion to that terrain and we were told that cleaning that area, which was known as one of the worst contaminations in our country, would cost over 10 or 20 million florins (we didn't have the euro back then). I think the cost of the cleaning has already become the double, who knows even more.
On a daily basis people disclose large dumping of waste from extacy labs. Just another example of how little people really care about long term cause of their deeds.

That is what I think is one of the biggest challenges of mankind. We should become aware of the fact that our actions have more than a short term effect and thereby stop going for the quick wins. We can't know it all, but we are ignorant as hell when it doesn't fit our direct needs.

I myself am not much better. My energy bill is high because I use a high end computer to please my quick joy playing games and look at excellent graphics. I don't shut it off when I take a break or do something else in between. I waste sources for the sake of my own pleasure and laziness. I'm bad. We all are. Let's face it and change, starting by ourselves. Our actions do make a difference.

[PZ]

Nice post, BinnZ 

One thing I have come to realize over decades of life is that rarely is a process due to one extreme factor or the opposite end - just about everything is a middle of the road result of sometimes a great variety of variables. I'd not thought of D_B's interesting idea of pollution reduction contributing to change in climate.  There is no doubt that on average humans pollute (meaning changing the chemical environment for whatever reason) more than any other single factor, so that alone is likely to be contributing to some kind of change, whatever that may be.

[Art Blade]

nice post indeed, BinnZ

Looks as if we all started to agree that pollution is really bad for a lot of the planet's life forms, including ourselves and pollution at a grand scale might play a role in a changing climate.

Grand scale, reminds me of "the 7th continent" aka "the Pacific trash vortex." Simplified, it is a pile of plastic ranging from stuff like plastic bags and bottles down to the size of microscopic plastic particles. The whole thing is so big that some compare it to the size of India. By the way, there are more garbage patches like that (not as big) in other oceans as well. If you want to learn more about it, take a look:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch

[LowPolyOWG]

Current PCs are pretty energy efficient (they use less energy when idle). One thing we always did in our family before going to w0#k/school was turning the lights off.