The psychology of climate change

[Wysiwyg]

Given that there is no actual cut to CO2 emissions actually proposed or even under consideration, you would logically have to believe that climate change does not exist, or at least is not caused by CO2, to argue that there is no need to adapt to a changing climate.

If CO2 does cause climate change then it's pretty much set that we're going to get climate change since there's no serious proposal to change course.

I pulled this little gem out of cyber-space which addresses the crux of this topic. Have highlighted what I think is important.

Criteria for Dangerous Warming.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change www.unfccc.int) has the objective ‘‘to achieve stabilization of GHG concentrations’’ at a level preventing ‘‘dangerous anthropogenic interference’’ (DAI) with climate, but climate change constituting DAI is defined.

We suggest that global temperature is a useful metric to assess proximity to DAI, because, with knowledge of the Earth’s history, global temperature can be related to principal dangers that the Earth faces.

We propose that two foci in defining DAI should be sea level and extinction of species, because of their potential tragic consequences and practical irreversibility on human time scales. In considering these topics, we find it useful to contrast two distinct scenarios abbreviated as ‘‘business-as-usual’’ (BAU) and the ‘‘alternative scenario’’ (AS).

BAU OR AS. Is that NOx I see on a windless day?

 

[basilio]

The range of extreme weather conditions around the globe are making it clear that human created CC is happening. This is not a "20 years in the fuuture" scenario anymore.

There are consequences - and there wil be many more. At what point in time will the CC denial industry reassess their position ? Why is it important ?

Extreme global weather is 'the face of climate change' says leading scientist

Exclusive: Prof Michael Mann declares the impacts of global warming are now ‘playing out in real-time’

• Heatwave made more than twice as likely by climate change, scientists find

Damian Carrington Environment editor

@dpcarrington
Fri 27 Jul 2018 18.02 BST Last modified on Fri 27 Jul 2018 22.00 BST

Emergency workers among damaged vehicles in a open parking area of northern Athens after a flash flood struck the Greek capital. Photograph: Angelos Tzortzinis/AFP/Getty Images
The extreme heatwaves and wildfires wreaking havoc around the globe are “the face of climate change”, one of the world’s leading climate scientists has declared, with the impacts of global warming now “playing out in real time”.

Climate change has long been predicted to increase extreme weather incidents, and scientists are now confident these predictions are coming true. Scientists say the global warming has contributed to on the scorching temperatures that have baked the UK and northern Europe for weeks.

The hot spell was made more than twice as likely by climate change, a new analysis found, demonstrating an “unambiguous” link.

Extreme weather has struck across Europe, from the Arctic Circle to Greece, and across the world, from North America to Japan. “This is the face of climate change,” said Prof Michael Mann, at Penn State University, and one the world’s most eminent climate scientists. “We literally would not have seen these extremes in the absence of climate change.”

“The impacts of climate change are no longer subtle,” he told the Guardian. “We are seeing them play out in real time and what is happening this summer is a perfect example of that.”

“We are seeing our predictions come true,” he said. “As a scientist that is reassuring, but as a citizen of planet Earth, it is very distressing to see that as it means we have not taken the necessary action.”

Heatwave made more than twice as likely by climate change, scientists find
Read more
The rapid scientific assessment of the northern European heatwave was done by Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute and also colleagues in the World Weather Attribution (WWA) consortium. “We can see the fingerprints of climate change on local extremes,” he said.

The current heatwave has been caused by an extraordinary stalling of the jet stream wind, which usually funnels cool Atlantic weather over the continent. This has left hot, dry air in place for two months – far longer than than usual. The stalling of the northern hemisphere jet stream is being increasingly firmly linked to global warming, in particular to the rapid heating of the Arctic and resulting loss of sea ice.

Prof Mann said that asking if climate change “causes” specific events is the wrong question: “The relevant question is: ‘Is climate change impacting these events and making them more extreme?’, and we can say with great confidence that it is.”

Mann points out that the link between smoking tobacco and lung cancer is a statistical one, which does not prove every cancer was caused by smoking, but epidemiologists know that smoking greatly increases the risk. “That is enough to say that, for all practical purposes, there is a causal connection between smoking cigarettes and lung cancer and it is the same with climate change,” Mann said.

Other senior scientists agree the link is clear
https://www.theguardian.com/environ...me-global-weather-climate-change-michael-mann

 

[basilio]

When will CC denialists turn? The road to Damascus.

My previous post opened the discussion regarding the multitude of extreme weather events around the world. Record breaking heat waves, consequent wild fires, intense storms, consequent floods..

The difference between these events and historical heatwaves/ floods is the role that human generated CC is playing by intensifying the effects. CC scientists can identify the role of CC in creating a warmer base climate and an atmosphere that can holder considerably more moisture.

Once-upon-a-time the threat of global warming was academic. It was going to happen "sometime in the future". For a long time global warming was happening but the effects seemed, to the average person, not that big a deal. "Isn't it great we are getting some decent warm weather" stuff.

Today it's clear we are way past the academic, and the idea of a pleasantly warmer summer has been overtaken by widespread heat related deaths and uncontrollable wildfires.

So I ask the question :
When will the main players currently refusing to recognise the reality and/or significance of human caused CC reassess their argument ?

What will it take to have an almost wholly united public voice which recognises we have a catastrophic situation and demands our leaders take action?

 

[basilio]

Sometime very, very soon the insurance bill for the latest round of climate based catastrophes will arrive in the mail.

That is when the financial world will start calculating the solvency of Insurance companies and asking difficult questions.

Like who is going to pay this bill today and the certain multiples in the near future ?

Meanwhile other journalists are asking the question I raised.

How Did the End of the World Become Old News?

There has been a lot of burning lately. Last week, wildfires broke out in the Arctic Circle, where temperatures reached almost 90 degrees; they are still roiling northern Sweden, 21 of them. And this week, wildfires swept through the Greek seaside, outside Athens, killing at least 80 and hospitalizing almost 200. At one resort, dozens of guests tried to escape the flames by descending a narrow stone staircase into the Aegean, only to be engulfed along the way, dying literally in each other’s arms.


Last July, I wrote a much-talked-over magazine cover story considering the worst-case scenarios for climate change — much talked over, in part, because it was so terrifying, which made some of the scenarios a bit hard to believe. Those worst-case scenarios are still quite unlikely, since they require both that we do nothing to alter our emissions path, which is still arcing upward, and that those unabated emissions bring us to climate outcomes on the far end of what’s possible by 2100.


But, this July, we already seem much farther along on those paths than even the most alarmist climate observers — e.g., me — would have predicted a year ago. In a single week earlier this month, dozens of places around the world were hit with record temperatures in what was, effectively, an unprecedented, planet-encompassing heat wave: from Denver to Burlington to Ottawa; from Glasgow to Shannon to Belfast; from Tbilisi, in Georgia, and Yerevan, in Armenia, to whole swaths of southern Russia. The temperature of one city in Oman, where the daytime highs had reached 122 degrees Fahrenheit, did not drop below 108 all night; in Montreal, Canada, 50 died from the heat. That same week, 30 major wildfires burned in the American West, including one, in California, that grew at the rate of 10,000 football fields each hour, and another, in Colorado, that produced a volcano-like 300-foot eruption of flames, swallowing an entire subdivision and inventing a new term — “fire tsunami” — along the way. On the other side of the planet, biblical rains flooded Japan, where 1.2 million were evacuated from their homes. The following week, the heat struck there, killing dozens. The following week.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligence...heatwave-media-old-news-end-of-the-world.html

 

[Tisme]

Biblical rains?

 

[basilio]

I wonder when the insurance bill for the latest disasters will hit the press ?

 

[Tisme]

Is this thread about psychology or psychometry?

 

[basilio]

Like every other thread on ASF this thread morphs into the highways and byways of our minds..
Just go with the flow Tisme.
But the discussion I wanted to open up is reposted below

When will CC denialists turn? The road to Damascus.

My previous post opened the discussion regarding the multitude of extreme weather events around the world. Record breaking heat waves, consequent wild fires, intense storms, consequent floods..

The difference between these events and historical heatwaves/ floods is the role that human generated CC is playing by intensifying the effects. CC scientists can identify the role of CC in creating a warmer base climate and an atmosphere that can holder considerably more moisture.

Once-upon-a-time the threat of global warming was academic. It was going to happen "sometime in the future". For a long time global warming was happening but the effects seemed, to the average person, not that big a deal. "Isn't it great we are getting some decent warm weather" stuff.

Today it's clear we are way past the academic, and the idea of a pleasantly warmer summer has been overtaken by widespread heat related deaths and uncontrollable wildfires.

So I ask the question :
When will the main players currently refusing to recognise the reality and/or significance of human caused CC reassess their argument ?

What will it take to have an almost wholly united public voice which recognises we have a catastrophic situation and demands our leaders take action?

 

[Smurf1976]

Looking at my own local area it's a familiar theme.

One of the biggest floods in Hobart's recorded history back in May resulted in a damage bill over $100 million, cars floating around the CBD, basements full of water to the ceiling and so on.

It hasn't been cold though and there has been just one "proper" winter day of cold & wet at the same time and hanging around all day. In other years there's quite a few such days not just one, those being the day which make winter, well, winter from a practical perspective. Cold wet and miserable. There has been a relative lack of such days this year and with July now over the chance that we do get that sort of weather is diminishing.

It's just another random data point that could easily be dismissed as just natural weather variation. Trouble is, there's rather a lot of such data points rapidly piling up globally.

It's like, say, smoking. Some people are unlucky and get lung cancer despite never having smoked even once. Others smoke 50 a day and live to 100. Reality is though that those who smoke are far more likely to get cancer in their lungs than those who don't and a point came historically where, despite the tobacco industry's attempts at denial, the evidence was just too strong to ignore even though it couldn't actually be "proven".

The same applies with many things. It's rather hard to prove that being in the front row at a concert three times a week will send you deaf but all we know on the subject of hearing says it will do some significant damage over time. Again it's not able to be readily proven but we do know that exposure to loud noise over a prolonged period is followed by hearing damage and few would argue otherwise since as with smoking the evidence is overwhelming.

And so with the climate it is fast becoming much the same. We have theory which tells us what we expect to happen and we have a rapidly increasing number of observations which tell us that change is occurring. That's not proof of the cause but it would be an amazing set of coincidences that's for sure if the observed changes, which broadly match those expected, weren't linked to the cause we know is occurring and which we expect would produce those changes.

 

[SirRumpole]

When will CC denialists turn? The road to Damascus.

I think the denialsts will turn when the Right realise that it's bad for their business, like several big companies have already done.

 

[basilio]

When will CC denialists turn? The road to Damascus.

I think the denialsts will turn when the Right realise that it's bad for their business, like several big companies have already done.

Not sure about that...
From my perspective the main public denialists are a relatively small group of media people and right wing think tanks that have been overwhelmingly supported by the oil and coal lobbies to create uncertainty about CC. It has been these fossil fuel industries that believe they have the most to lose by a rapid decarbonisation of the worlds energy sources.

These are amongst the most profitable and powerful industries world wide. They have generally had many governments in their pocket in a way that few other industries can achieve.

The irony is that in 2018 it is becoming quite clear that for economic reasons alone renewable energy sources are more competitive than coal or oil (and that ignores the health issues) But these industries are still fighting to preserve their place in the energy mix.

I suppose I'm wondering how/when will Andrew Bolt, Alan Jones, Marc Morano, Fred Singer, Christopher Monckten, Steve Milroy, Patrick Michaels, Bjorn Lomborg, Matt Ridley turn the page.
https://www.beforetheflood.com/explore/the-deniers/top-10-climate-deniers/

 

[SirRumpole]

I suppose I'm wondering how/when will Andrew Bolt, Alan Jones, Marc Morano, Fred Singer, Christopher Monckten, Steve Milroy, Patrick Michaels, Bjorn Lomborg, Matt Ridley turn the page.

They may never turn the page themselves, but in the end they will become irrelevant as the reality dawns on the vast majority of the world's population.

 

[basilio]

A big part of public perception about the reality and effects of CC is dealing with the changing nature of what we call natural disasters. The current fires in California share similar characteristics to the Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria - a radical step up in intensity which has caused firefighters to reassess how to deal with the new firestorms.

As California burns, many fear the future of extreme fire has arrived
This Land is Your Land
Wildfires

Experts say the state’s increasingly ferocious wildfires are not an aberration – they are the new reality

Supported by

About this content
Alissa Greenberg and Jason Wilson in Redding

Tue 31 Jul 2018 06.00 BST Last modified on Tue 31 Jul 2018 20.52 BST

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Homes destroyed by the Carr fire in Redding, California. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Roger Gray has lived in his suburban subdivision in a quiet California city for 30 years. On Thursday, it was struck by a jaw-dropping geophysical phenomenon.

Gray had defied orders to evacuate Redding, in the far north of the state, which was threatened by the fast-growing Carr fire outside town. He and his neighbors wanted to defend their homes. A navy veteran, Gray worked 10 hours preparing his house and was already exhausted when he saw plumes of smoke in the distance. “Then they started to swirl together, and I’m going, ‘Oh, we’re in trouble,’” he said.

His wife evacuated without him, driving through a maelstrom of smoke and burning tree limbs. Not long after, “it was raining fire”, Gray said. He could hear exploding paint cans and ammunition in the distance; he guessed the flames were 100m tall. “Are we going to die?” his neighbor asked him.

The firenado, a huge rotating whorl of smoke, flame and ash, was upon them.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/30/california-wildfires-climate-change-new-normal

 

[rederob]

This is nearly 10 years old, leading up to "Climategate," but remains as relevant now as it was then.
It shows that denialism has a strong base, and was already in place some 30 years ago.
When you read some of the rubbish posts at ASF about climate, you will b able to find a reference to its nature in Mashey's linked paper.

 

[qldfrog]

The good point for those still believing the co2 is the cause of it all is:
as global warming intensifies and in itself increases co2 level, they will be able to say, i told you so
Cause and consequences are not always obvious to distinguish especially when there is no will to even try

 

[rederob]

The good point for those still believing the co2 is the cause of it all is:
as global warming intensifies and in itself increases co2 level, they will be able to say, i told you so
Cause and consequences are not always obvious to distinguish especially when there is no will to even try

Only more CO2 can add to its presence so that claim of yours was completely bogus.
Meanwhile 5 IPCC Reports confirm you know nothing about climate change cause and effect.

 

[bi-polar]

Cause and consequences are not always obvious to distinguish especially when there is no will to even try

cough cough

 

[Logique]

This thread is hosted on a stock market forum. Unfortunately for the pavement gluers, we recall Tulip Mania, the South Sea Bubble, the Tech bubble, and for that matter Y2K.

The pavement gluers don't. The only thing they read is today's speaking notes from propaganda central. A goldfish knows more about science than them.

Anyway, there is still recourse to the Ignore function.

 

[bi-polar]

https://phys.org/news/2018-04-ocean-circulation-ice-age.html
Findings showed that the release of CO2 by the North Pacific was caused by a change in its circulation .

Evidently there was a landform change possibly due to Pacific earthquakes and cold ocean waters gained more tropical flows. CO2 is less soluble in heated water . The CO2 today comes from industrial outputs and not earthquakes and the results are melted ice. But faster than the ice age melting.

 

[bi-polar]

Chemistry:
CO2 solubility at atmospheric pressure is .0013 mole fraction in water at 0 degrees (compared to the other little molecules of stuff). At 10 degrees it's .0009 , about 2/3 as soluble. At 20 degrees it's .0007 , around half as soluble.

In 200 years there has been 1300 gig tonnes CO2 added , 800 into air and 500 into water. Our rate is now at 2000 gt per 200 years , 1500 to air and 500 to water. Then the solubility is 2/3 normal. A rising part of rising CO2 load is added each year to air , compounding the compounded interest .