Crushing climate impacts to hit sooner than feared: draft UN report

[Fred Bloggs]

"The choices societies make now will determine whether our species thrives or simply survives as the 21st century unfolds, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says in a draft report seen exclusively by AFP."

The human race is dead. All these calamites are happening right now, not decades hence. Relying on collective judgment of a bunch of idiots is suicide.

https://news.yahoo.com/crushing-climate-impacts-hit-sooner-010253436.html

[bitrex]

The water is rising mutha fuckas:

<https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2021/06/24/building-collapse-miami-structure-had-been-sinking-into-earth/7778631002/>

Beachfront high-rises may not seem so appealing anymore

[John Larkin]

Life keeps getting better for humankind. Much better.

IPCC is in the gloom industry. We've had 10-years-left-to-live
warnings for 50 years at least.

Calamity happening right now? It looks beautiful outside right now.

[John Larkin]

Lots of coastal cities are built on sand or muck. Levees and seawalls
and continuous pumping cause the land to sink. New Orleans is sinking,
among many others.

Sea level rise is trivial compared to the land sinking.

Don't build there, or at least build right.

I suppose bedrock is too deep to drive pilings down to in Miami. We
have a high-rise here in SF that's slowly tilting because the pilings
are in old mushy fill; nobody wanted to pay to drive them down to
rock.

That Miami building looked like it had a soft-story garage, mostly air
and skinny posts to make room for cars. Bad engineering.

The long-term feedback loop is that things get cheaper until something
goes wrong.

But I don't understand why anybody would want to live in a high-rise
condo on Miami Beach.

[Bill Sloman]

On Friday, June 25, 2021 at 9:01:27 AM UTC+10, John Larkin wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Jun 2021 11:25:53 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs
> <bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >"The choices societies make now will determine whether our species thrives or simply survives as the 21st century unfolds, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says in a draft report seen exclusively by AFP."
> >
> >The human race is dead. All these calamites are happening right now, not decades hence. Relying on collective judgment of a bunch of idiots is suicide.
> >
> >https://news.yahoo.com/crushing-climate-impacts-hit-sooner-010253436.html
>
> Life keeps getting better for humankind. Much better.

Or so the feel-good propaganda John Larkin favours tells him.

> IPCC is in the gloom industry. We've had 10-years-left-to-live warnings for 50 years at least.

If you bothered to read them, you'd realise that message has been remarkably consistent since the IPCC was founded in 1988 - which 33 years ago, not fifty.

John Larkin doesn't seem to understand much about the history of climate change. He could read about it here

https://history.aip.org/climate/index.htm

but the American Institute of Physics doesn't write it's documents with the primary intention of making the reader feel good about themselves - they concentrate on providing factual information which John Larkin finds tedious and confusing.

> Calamity happening right now? It looks beautiful outside right now.

Climate change is a slow process, but progressive. John Larkin's attention span isn't up to much.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

[Bill Sloman]

On Friday, June 25, 2021 at 9:15:44 AM UTC+10, John Larkin wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Jun 2021 18:46:18 -0400, bitrex <us...@example.net> wrote:
>
> >On 6/24/2021 2:25 PM, Fred Bloggs wrote:
> >> "The choices societies make now will determine whether our species thrives or simply survives as the 21st century unfolds, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says in a draft report seen exclusively by AFP."
> >>
> >> The human race is dead. All these calamites are happening right now, not decades hence. Relying on collective judgment of a bunch of idiots is suicide.
> >>
> >> https://news.yahoo.com/crushing-climate-impacts-hit-sooner-010253436.html
> >>
> >
> >The water is rising mutha fuckas:
> >
> ><https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2021/06/24/building-collapse-miami-structure-had-been-sinking-into-earth/7778631002/>
> >

> >Beachfront high-rises may not seem so appealing anymore.

>
> Lots of coastal cities are built on sand or muck. Levees and seawalls
> and continuous pumping cause the land to sink. New Orleans is sinking,
> among many others.
>
> Sea level rise is trivial compared to the land sinking.

It is at the moment. The Greenland ice sheet would cause a six metre sea level rise if it all slid off into the ocean, which it will do when it gets warm enough. When that will happen is hard to predict, since all the crucial change are happening a mile or so under the surface we can see and get at.

There's another three metres of incipient sea level rise in the West Antarctic ice sheet. It happens to be resting on rock which is below sea level, so when it decides to break up, the glaciers can drift away quite rapidly.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-how-close-is-the-west-antarctic-ice-sheet-to-a-tipping-point

> Don't build there, or at least build right.
>
> I suppose bedrock is too deep to drive pilings down to in Miami. We have a high-rise here in SF that's slowly tilting because the pilings are in old mushy fill; nobody wanted to pay to drive them down to
rock.
>
> That Miami building looked like it had a soft-story garage, mostly air and skinny posts to make room for cars. Bad engineering.
>
> The long-term feedback loop is that things get cheaper until something goes wrong.
>
> But I don't understand why anybody would want to live in a high-rise condo on Miami Beach.

There are lots of things that John Larkin doesn't understand.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

[jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com]

On Thu, 24 Jun 2021 11:25:53 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs
<bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:

"And it shows that even as we spew record amounts of greenhouse gases
into the atmosphere, we are undermining the capacity of forests and
oceans to absorb them, turning our greatest natural allies in the
fight against warming into enemies."

Poor plants! We are choking them to death with food.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth

As the guy says, the greening is based on data and the doom is based
on models.




--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

The best designs are necessarily accidental.

[Bill Sloman]

But only about a quarter of the earth was showing the greening effect (while CO2 levels have gone up everywhere), and more recent studies have shown that it is slowing down.

CO2 may be food for plants, but so it water, and the obvious response to raised CO2 levels in plants is smaller stomata in their leaves, so they can absorb the same amount of CO2 while losing less water.

The data is a short term consequence, and the "doom" is the likely long term consequence. John Larkin doesn't know enough to get his head around long term consequences - as he managed to demonstrate over the past year or so in his appreciation of the progress of the Covid-19 pandemic. Global warming is a much slower process.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

[whit3rd]

On Thursday, June 24, 2021 at 9:00:59 PM UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Jun 2021 11:25:53 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs
> <bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:

> >https://news.yahoo.com/crushing-climate-impacts-hit-sooner-010253436.html
> "And it shows that even as we spew record amounts of greenhouse gases
> into the atmosphere, we are undermining the capacity of forests and
> oceans to absorb them, turning our greatest natural allies in the
> fight against warming into enemies."
>
> Poor plants! We are choking them to death with food.

Not food, in the energetic diet content sense; just raw material for
the photosynthesis. Yeah, it can be overdone (they need the OTHER raw materials, light,
and the right temperature range, to actually make the 'food' carbohydrates and such).

Can't result in choking, though; mostly, plants can close their stomata.

[Fred Bloggs]

On Friday, June 25, 2021 at 12:00:59 AM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> On Thu, 24 Jun 2021 11:25:53 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs
> <bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >"The choices societies make now will determine whether our species thrives or simply survives as the 21st century unfolds, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says in a draft report seen exclusively by AFP."
> >
> >The human race is dead. All these calamites are happening right now, not decades hence. Relying on collective judgment of a bunch of idiots is suicide.
> >
> >https://news.yahoo.com/crushing-climate-impacts-hit-sooner-010253436.html
> "And it shows that even as we spew record amounts of greenhouse gases
> into the atmosphere, we are undermining the capacity of forests and
> oceans to absorb them, turning our greatest natural allies in the
> fight against warming into enemies."
>
> Poor plants! We are choking them to death with food.
>
> https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth

NASA does not do too well in the agricultural and horticultural sciences. CO2 is the catalyst, soil nutrients are the enabler. Increased growth only means the plant draws more nutrients from the soil than the ecosystem is adapted for, making the plants soil nutrient depleters. That's a good way to create a wasteland.

[jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com]

On Sat, 26 Jun 2021 14:06:25 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs

<bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Friday, June 25, 2021 at 12:00:59 AM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
>> On Thu, 24 Jun 2021 11:25:53 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs
>> <bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >"The choices societies make now will determine whether our species thrives or simply survives as the 21st century unfolds, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says in a draft report seen exclusively by AFP."
>> >
>> >The human race is dead. All these calamites are happening right now, not decades hence. Relying on collective judgment of a bunch of idiots is suicide.
>> >
>> >https://news.yahoo.com/crushing-climate-impacts-hit-sooner-010253436.html
>> "And it shows that even as we spew record amounts of greenhouse gases
>> into the atmosphere, we are undermining the capacity of forests and
>> oceans to absorb them, turning our greatest natural allies in the
>> fight against warming into enemies."
>>
>> Poor plants! We are choking them to death with food.
>>
>> https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth
>
>NASA does not do too well in the agricultural and horticultural sciences. CO2 is the catalyst, soil nutrients are the enabler. Increased growth only means the plant draws more nutrients from the soil than the ecosystem is adapted for, making the plants soil nutrient depleters. That's a good way to create a wasteland.
>
>

Wasteland:

https://tinyurl.com/cewyrzdf

https://suyts.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/image48.png

http://thebritishgeographer.weebly.com/uploads/1/1/8/1/11812015/1337499770.jpg


CO2 is not a catalyst.

[Bill Sloman]

On Sunday, June 27, 2021 at 7:06:29 AM UTC+10, Fred Bloggs wrote:
> On Friday, June 25, 2021 at 12:00:59 AM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> > On Thu, 24 Jun 2021 11:25:53 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs
> > <bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >"The choices societies make now will determine whether our species thrives or simply survives as the 21st century unfolds, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says in a draft report seen exclusively by AFP."
> > >
> > >The human race is dead. All these calamites are happening right now, not decades hence. Relying on collective judgment of a bunch of idiots is suicide.
> > >
> > >https://news.yahoo.com/crushing-climate-impacts-hit-sooner-010253436.html
> > "And it shows that even as we spew record amounts of greenhouse gases
> > into the atmosphere, we are undermining the capacity of forests and
> > oceans to absorb them, turning our greatest natural allies in the
> > fight against warming into enemies."
> >
> > Poor plants! We are choking them to death with food.
> >
> > https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth
>
> NASA does not do too well in the agricultural and horticultural sciences. CO2 is the catalyst, soil nutrients are the enabler.

I hate to say it, but, John Larkin is right on this point. CO2 is not a catalyst. It certainly facilitates the absorption of other nutrients, but it is consumed in the process - carbohydrates (like cellulose, the basic building block of plants) are just a combination of equal numbers of water and CO2 molecules and CO2 is consumed in the process of creating them

> Increased growth only means the plant draws more nutrients from the soil than the ecosystem is adapted for, making the plants soil nutrient depleters. That's a good way to create a wasteland.

To some extent. Ecosystems are pretty flexible, and it's not easy to get genuinely resource depleting growth. I can't think of any examples.

As I've said before, the plants that do well out of the extra CO2 in the atmosphere aren't necessarily the crop plants that we want. Weeds are much better at exploiting extra resources, and choke back crop plants when they do well.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

[ke...@kjwdesigns.com]

On Saturday, 26 June 2021 at 14:43:59 UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
>
> >
> Wasteland:
>
> https://tinyurl.com/cewyrzdf
>
> https://suyts.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/image48.png
>
> http://thebritishgeographer.weebly.com/uploads/1/1/8/1/11812015/1337499770.jpg
>
>
> CO2 is not a catalyst.

..
The great majority of the improvement over the last 100 years is nothing to do with carbon dioxide, it is a result of intensive effort in creating new crop varieties and changes in farming methods.

"What caused this significant drive in yield improvements? There are a number of factors which are likely to have contributed to sustained yield gains: fertilizer application, irrigation, increased soil tillage, and improved farming practices. However, a key driver in the initial rise in yield is considered to be the adoption of improved corn varieties from plant breeding developments. The initial period of yield gains in the late 1930s-early 1940s coincides with the transition period of farmers from open-pollinated varieties to hybrids. This process of cross-breeding between open-pollinated varieties, combined with improved breed selection practices is thought to define the key turning point in US corn yields."

https://ourworldindata.org/crop-yields

kw

[jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com]

Life on earth flourished when CO2 was 6000 PPM. Critters have
increasingly sequestered CO2, to the point that plants were starving.
It's our job to dig up some of that carbon and make it bioavailable
again. 800 PPM or so would be good.

But in general, the human lot continues to improve. Some people enjoy
doomsday fantasies for fun and profit, but none look likely.

"10 years left to live" gets old after 60 years or so.

[whit3rd]

On Sunday, June 27, 2021 at 10:43:08 AM UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

> Life on earth flourished when CO2 was 6000 PPM.

Not human life, nor our crop plants. And, not most species we know today.

>Critters have
> increasingly sequestered CO2, to the point that plants were starving.

Tell that to a Sequoia Sempervirens! It will laugh at your naiivete.

> It's our job to dig up some of that carbon and make it bioavailable ...

Not generally accepted; on the other hand, you've got a large contingent
that believe we were kicked out of the Garden and told to work for our
livings...

[Bill Sloman]

On Monday, June 28, 2021 at 3:43:08 AM UTC+10, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> On Sun, 27 Jun 2021 10:18:57 -0700 (PDT), "ke...@kjwdesigns.com"
> <ke...@kjwdesigns.com> wrote:
>
> >On Saturday, 26 June 2021 at 14:43:59 UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> >>
> >> >
> >> Wasteland:
> >>
> >> https://tinyurl.com/cewyrzdf
> >>
> >> https://suyts.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/image48.png
> >>
> >> http://thebritishgeographer.weebly.com/uploads/1/1/8/1/11812015/1337499770.jpg
> >>
> >>
> >> CO2 is not a catalyst.
> >..
> >The great majority of the improvement over the last 100 years is nothing to do with carbon dioxide, it is a result of intensive effort in creating new crop varieties and changes in farming methods.
> >
> >"What caused this significant drive in yield improvements? There are a number of factors which are likely to have contributed to sustained yield gains: fertilizer application, irrigation, increased soil tillage, and improved farming practices. However, a key driver in the initial rise in yield is considered to be the adoption of improved corn varieties from plant breeding developments. The initial period of yield gains in the late 1930s-early 1940s coincides with the transition period of farmers from open-pollinated varieties to hybrids. This process of cross-breeding between open-pollinated varieties, combined with improved breed selection practices is thought to define the key turning point in US corn yields."
> >
> >https://ourworldindata.org/crop-yields
> >

> Life on earth flourished when CO2 was 6000 PPM.

And the sun was a bit smaller, and pushing out less infra-red to keep the planet warm.

> Critters have increasingly sequestered CO2, to the point that plants were starving.

"Critters" are animals. It's plants that sequester CO2. Plants have never starved - they have adapted to lower CO2 levels, but if you want to lose plants from an area you deprive them of water.

> It's our job to dig up some of that carbon and make it bioavailable again. 800 PPM or so would be good.

It would be a total disaster - at least for us. Any plants that survived from the Carboniferous might feel more at home, but I don't know of any.

> But in general, the human lot continues to improve. Some people enjoy doomsday fantasies for fun and profit, but none look likely.

When you are a pig-ignorant as John Larkin, nothing looks likely. In reality it's John Larkin's gullibility that's being displayed here - he uncritically believes the kind of climate change denial propaganda pumped out by paid hirelings of the fossil carbon extraction industry - Anthony Watts comes to mind, because it is laced with the personal flattery to which he is addicted.

<snip>

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney