Doug Casy on the Climate Change Hoax Part 2

[Gilberto de Piento]

<Sigh> The rapid devolution of this thread from discussing the optimum CO2 concentration for plants and humans to arguing for the enforcement of a worldwide one child policy is a pretty good reinforcement of my belief that dictatorial political intervention is a far greater long-term risk to human society than climate change. Too much CO2 will make submariners a little loopy, but what's the maximum concentration of smug that they can tolerate without killing each other off?

This thread was always a castle built on sand. Just look at the title and the first post. Maybe a recession will come along so we'll have something to talk about around here.

[jennypenny]

+1 to what GdP said. I don't think projections are as straightforward as sometimes advertised. West Africa is the fastest growing region population-wise, but it is also an area particularly vulnerable to climate change and is burdened with a sub-standard health care system that struggles to keep up with current demand. Those two threats alone will probably have a significant effect on actual population growth in the area. And that's just one example.


Also, +1 to GdP's comment about the title of the thread. I think jacob has banned certain discussions about climate change so "climate change hoax" probably shouldn't appear in any thread title.

[Mister Imperceptible]

https://www.mymoneyblog.com/images/0911/talebturkey.gif

[Nomad]

I've read a lot of stuff on climate change and I've followed certain websites.
It is astounding how many non-scientists believe that is a hoax but those people generally seem to live in the US and I suspect it is a US media thing.

The CO2 level today is 411ppm, at the start of the industrial revolution it was 280ppm. The rate it goes up by is accelerating...
https://www.co2.earth/

[jacob]

I was on vacation, but I suppose I can waste 5^H30 minutes on clearing up a few things. I apologize for the condescending tone, but none of this is a matter of opinion. It is intro-level text book stuff that has remained unchanged for the better part of the past 40 years. In particular, we've gone though most of this in 4 other and very long threads already so there's no reason to continue/repeat the debate at this level.

Source check: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/zero-hedge/

CONSPIRACY-PSEUDOSCIENCE

Sources in the Conspiracy-Pseudoscience category may publish unverifiable information that is not always supported by evidence. These sources may be untrustworthy for credible/verifiable information, therefore fact checking and further investigation is recommended on a per article basis when obtaining information from these sources. See all Conspiracy-Pseudoscience sources.

Overall, we rate Zero Hedge an extreme right biased conspiracy website.

In short, to the OP, it's better to get your scientific reporting from elsewhere! Unfortunately, zerohedge is not what it used to be

I'm just going to do this from memory but you guys can just assume that I'm correct and that I can find sources for all of this. It would save us all a lot of time. Book suggestions for acquiring a rudimentary understanding of the physics can be found in the other threads. Yes, I'm gonna be an ass about this and lock the thread ... but we've gone through this exercise too many times already!

In no particular order:

• Solar intensity drives the climate. The intensity various by the solar cycle and various perturbations in the Earth's orbital cycle (thanks to the pull from Jupiter and Saturn) as well as precession. These are called Milankovitch cycles. They have been known in detail since WWII (or was it WWI ... Milankovitch worked them out as a prisoner of war).
• If it weren't for human CO2 emissions, temperatures would have been decreasing over the past 75 years. The rise of T is thus 100% attributed to human influence. Also, these emissions have/will prevent the next ice age which the Milankovitch cycle would have guaranteed within the next 1500 years or so. If humans manage to emit all known fossil fuel reserves (which I think humans will do) the next ice age will be postponed for about half a million years.
• Given the solar input, CO2 is the main greenhouse gas to determine the surface temperature. This has been understood for 120 some years. (Since Arrhenius in 1897.) The greenhouse effect itself has been understood since about 1820.
• Fast increases in CO2 has been responsible for 5 out of the last 6 mass extinctions on this planet. (Except the one that wiped out the dinosaurs with a big meteorite.)
• Such CO2 emissions were previously driven by volcanic activity burning through buried carbon over thousands of years in e.g. large igneous provinces such as the Siberian traps. There's also one in India (Deccan) and one in Australia (I forget). Humans are currently digging up carbon and burning it about 100x faster than any volcanic activity has ever done! About 10GtC/year. As much as a big volcano is able to burn through in terms of subterranean carbon as the magma comes up in a limited geographical area, it's nothing compared to what the sum total of human drilling teams situated all over the world are capable of excavating. Basically, humans figured out how to create the effect of 100 LIPs going off simultaneously. It required a level of intelligence never seen before ... and likely never seen again in planetary history.
• The last ice age was 4-7C cooler than today and was generally considered to be pretty bad for humans. We barely survived that (look up Toba and genetic bottlenecks). A wise civilization would probably try to manage for avoiding further ice ages. We, however, are not being very smart about this... management. Instead we're heading for a hot house scenario which is just as bad.
• Temperatures were 8C higher during the PETM. This was a time when palm trees and alligators could be found in Greenland and the planet was completely ice free. This eliminated practically all large land mammals. (Humans did not exist yet then.) It's worth keeping in mind that humans do better than almost all other mammals in terms of dealing with high temperatures. This is because we have more sweat glands. This allows endurance-hunting where prey is simply run down to exhaustion after which we can walk over and stab it with pointy sticks. (This is pretty much what humans evolved to do before accidentally discovering agriculture a short 10k years ago.) This also means that other mammals will croak before humans as temperatures keep rising. Keep in mind that humans are an immensely successful adaptive and invasive species. Elephants and badgers not so much. There will be some humans left after all is said and done. Not so much in terms of wild land mammals. Horses will be some of the first to go. Try to discourage an interest in horses (and wild animals in general) in young children. It will reduce sadness.
• It is absolutely possible for temperatures to reach 8C again within the next 200 years. All it takes is continuing business as usual and if so this point will be reached some time in the 22nd century. We'll be halfway there within the next 60-80 years.
• Since the last ice age and until about 200 years ago (the Holocene), the global temperature has been incredibly stable. Agricultural civilization has been designed around this temperature range including the limited number of crops (less than 10, think potato, rice, corn, wheat, barley... ) that now feed 7.7 billion humans with calories. We have ZERO historical experience in how to deal with climate change of the current order of magnitude as a civilization. Even small fluctuations in temperature have historically resulted in major problems in terms of crop failures, wars, and civilizational collapse. The Little Ice Age created serious suffering with ongoing famines and conflict. Erring on the high side will not be different.
• Human civilization has NEVER existed at temperatures that are as high as they are now. We're in uncharted territory. The biggest problem is of course the rate of change. Some research has been done. Expect crop productivity to decline by about 10-15% per degree of temperature increase.
• Humans really do lose cognition and motivation at higher CO2 concentrations. You do indeed find higher concentrations [than we'll ever see in the atmosphere] indoor and especially in submarines That's prob. why "fresh air" is recommended to "clear the head" or whatever. A bigger problem in terms of economic productivity is that it's just physically harder to work (and think) when temperature and humidity increases. So it's not so much that humans become dumber ... overall exhaustion from heat will be a bigger problem. The economic losses from the latter will become material in the latter part of the 21st century. Another heat induced factor is increased crime of the violent kind.
• The sole reason why it's possible to sustain a global population of almost 8B humans is that we broke the nitrogen cycle and no longer rely on nature to fix the nitrogen we require for our protein (see other thread about eating chicken). Today, this is done via the Haber Bosch process. Previously nitrogen was mined out of the ground but those reserves were exhausted in the 19th century. About 70% of humans remain alive now thanks to this process. It's driven by fossil fuel inputs but could technically also be run on alternative energy. This would result in considerable demand hardening for those who go for the technological solution. Nitrogen is also a crucial input in explosives and the HB process can easily be switched from making fertilizer to making gun powder depending on which way the political winds blow. Which is more likely when it comes to the other humans? Feed them or shoot them? Currently, immigration policies all over the world are trying to solve just that problem. It doesn't look too encouraging.
• If you have a Russian, Canadian, or Scandinavian passport, I highly recommend you hang onto them so as to be on the right (food) side of any potential walls. "Go north, my young friend". If you have children or plan to have children, the best gift you can give/get them is a passport to one of these regions, if possible. NZ is also acceptable.
• It is not known with any great level of accuracy how many humans the planet can hold sustainably. Ignoring climate change, if we have to do it w/o fossil fuels, then pre-industrialization, the number was about 1.5B. If we have to do it strictly based on traditional farming practices and diseases control, i.e. medieval technology, then the number is 0.3B or so. This is 5-25x less people than we're dealing with today. With climate change compounding the damage and resources being more diluted than there were then, the number might be lower still. We do have some scientific knowledge that earlier times lacked, but it's hard to foresee to which degree humans will make use of it, e.g. we know how infectious diseases work, but we also have anti-vaxxers.
• A one-child policy starting today is insufficient to reach 1.5B by the time that global temperatures reach 4C (and crop productivity has declined by 30-50% compared to present levels) at the end of this century. The demographic inertia is simply too large already because there are too many children now growing up and eventually having 0.5 child each in 10-20 years time from now. This leaves a reduction in average lifespan. A one-child policy and an average reduction of lifespan to 55 years (this would require four horsemen type impacts) would result in 1.5B humans by the year 2100. I will note that the collapse of the Soviet Union actually "enjoyed" a population decline of 5%/yr in the 1990s thanks to a combination of resurging infectious diseases and drinking oneself to death, that is, reducing life-span on a practically voluntary or at least an economic/behaviroal basis. I think this is more realistic than a universally agreed upon one-child policy.
• We're in deep deep shit. Most of us just don't realize it yet.