OPINION: Climate change–is it a crisis? (Part 1)

9 Comments

1. Pingback: Climate change–is it a crisis? (Part 1) | Rio Blanco Herald Times - Climate Change News

2. 

   Bill Butler

   February 16, 2020 at 9:27 pm

   Once again an ignorant Global Warming Denier fabricates what “Consensus science tells us”. One of these days (hopefully) GWDs might actually read an IPCC assessment report to learn what is really happening – and why.

3. 

   Su High

   February 17, 2020 at 11:16 pm

   But the most important point is that whatever happened in the past is really irrelevant. Polar bear habitat is disappearing due to global warming. Even the most careful on-the-ground management doesn’t matter if polar bears don’t have the required habitat.

   Polar bears depend on the sea ice surface to efficiently catch their seal prey. A shorter duration of ice cover over their productive hunting areas means less opportunity to hunt. A reduction in sea ice has been statistically linked to reduced stature and weight in polar bears and to lower survival rates of cubs. So, it doesn’t really matter that hunting is now largely under control or that we know a lot about other impacts people might have on bears. Without habitat, polar bears will disappear no matter what else we do. If a farmer has 100 cows out in a pasture, and every year he goes out and paves over some of his pasture, pretty soon he won’t have enough habitat to support 100 cows. And, each time he paves over a little more land, his remaining land will hold fewer cattle. There may be some short-term enhancements of the remaining habitat that will forestall the inevitable. But, when his whole pasture is paved there will be no cows! Declining habitat now and the assurance it will decline in the future is why polar bears were listed as a threatened species. Discussions about how many bears may have lived in the past before and after hunting quotas have no bearing on this new situation.

4. 

   Chris Ball

   February 18, 2020 at 5:14 pm

   The great climate change agenda is the perfect hoax. Unlike pollution issues which can identify problems with real world possible quantifiable actions and results the “climate change” narrative is driven by those who want to abolish fossil fuels but are aware that is unrealistic so they create a false narrative to support their agenda. Think about it. We are being told that if we just throw obscene amounts of money at organizations they will somehow be able to “prove” the dangers of climate change with no expectation of realistic action to change the weather or weather patterns which is pretty much what climate change is all about. The supporters of this agenda want increased “taxes” on “carbon emissions” but where is that money supposed to go and what difference is the special interest groups anticipating the windfall really going to make except the enrichment of themselves and their programs. No plans, no measurable results but plenty of emotional hand wringing and screaming at the sky. It is the perfect con because no one expects accountability for a nebulous situation of constantly changing global weather patterns as long as they can churn out the feel good rhetoric about making a difference while happily skipping through the rain all the way to the bank.

5. 

   David Appell

   February 21, 2020 at 6:29 pm

   I have a very good rebuttal to Ms Hemmerich, which the newspaper says they can’t publish since I’m not local and which the commenting system rejects as spam. (It’s anything but spam.)

   Alas.

6. 

   Bruce Many

   February 21, 2020 at 9:55 pm

   My new career

   I’ve grown gardens. But I just found out I could have been a farmer all this time! Democrat Presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg said all you have to do is put a seed in dirt and give it water. And he’s a billionaire, so he must know.

   I thought that being a successful farmer meant you had to know a lot about irrigating, planting and harvesting at the right time, keeping the soil healthy, developing a sixth-sense about weather, learning to keep machinery running (often with baling wire), risking your time and money on something weather could destroy, learning how to control insects and diseases, working long, back-breaking hours and more. I never knew you could just put a seed in dirt, give it some water, and watch the corn come up!

   But that’s okay. I’ m coming out of retirement to be a machinist. Bloomberg said that all you have to do is get a piece of metal and start the lathe turning. I can do that! Want a new crankshaft? Just give me a call!

   Bruce Many, Eckert, CO

7. 

   David Appell

   February 21, 2020 at 9:57 pm

   Dear Herald Times,

   Unfortunately, Leona Hemmerich conveys a great many climate myths in her Feb. 16th essay “Climate change–is it a crisis? (Part 1).” Notably, she references very few scientific studies, almost as if they don’t exist.

   First, there was certainly no agreement on global cooling in the 1970s[1]. It was a time before satellites, so scientists had little global data to work with. But President Lyndon Johnson received an environmental report in 1965 whose last chapter was about global warming from atmospheric carbon dioxide[2]. That was the same year Frank Ikard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, said at the 1965 American Petroleum Institute’s annual meeting, “Carbon dioxide is being added to atmosphere by the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas at such a rate that by 2000 the heat balance will be so modified as possibly to cause marked changes in climate beyond local or national efforts.”[3] Los Alamos physicist Edward Teller warned about CO2-warming in 1959. Svante Arrhenius, a Nobel Laureate, did so in 1896. Etc.

   Next, no scientist has ever said “we will all die,” which is why Hemmerich didn’t quote a scientist who said that.

   Mann et al’s hockey stick did not ignore the Medieval Warm Period or the Little Ice Age – it found there was no evidence to support their existence. They were regional phenomenon, not global. Studies since have confirmed this finding, as well as the correctness of the hockey stick[4,5].

   Of course there were more forest fires before 1960. It was a time before fire fighters made all-out efforts to suppress fires. Comparing 1920s and 1930s fire seasons to the present is simply impossible, and very misleading.

   About the 1930s: it was an extraordinary few years in the continental Unites States (but not the globe; remember, the continental US is less than 2 percent of the globe’s area), with extraordinary warming of, mostly, a natural origin. Such natural fluctuations happen, and this was a large, albeit geographically limited one. But even then the effect of atmospheric carbon dioxide was 1/4th of today’s value.

   It’s certainly true, as Hemmerich writes, that water vapor is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. BUT, the amount of water vapor in the air cannot increase until the air’s temperature first increases. But carbon dioxide keeps building up regardless of the temperature. Carbon dioxide is what initially heats up the planet, and then water vapor increases – by about 7 percent per degree Celsius of warming. That additional water vapor[6] then causes even more warming, and so on, a positive feedback.

   Scientists say that water vapor is a “condensable” gas – any increase quickly rains out of a stable atmosphere – while carbon dioxide is a noncondensible gas, as are methane, nitrous oxide, ozone and the other manmade, greenhouse, heat trapping gases.

   I could go on, but I think the point is made: scientists have spent a century providing evidence for manmade warming. At this point it’s silly to deny that – we should instead spend out time talking about what we should do about it.

   Sincerely,

   David Appell
   Keizer, Oregon

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