[Tim the Plumber (OP)]

Thanks for reading my links and continuing the discussion in a serious fashion, Tim! There are many others on this site that don't put in the effort, and I appreciate it a lot.

I have some responses interspersed with yours below:

Let's talk about sugar maples for a second...

Tim Perkins,  a Professor of Plant Biology at the University of Vermont’s Proctor Maple Research Center focuses on adaptation—how to help U.S. syrup producers make more with less.

He is quick to point out that technological improvements have offset much of the losses affecting American sugar maples to date. “… [W]ith better vacuum, evaporation, and sanitation, tappers get more from trees than they did 20 years ago—even with those trees stressed from warmer weather.”

Well done, you have satisfied the first criteria and the second but when we look at it for 5 minutes it is no longer scary at all.

Glad I got the first criterion down on this attempt :-). The point I was trying to make was not so much that the maple industry is about to collapse (it isn't). Rather, the important takeaway is that there is a record of substantial changes in both the timing and quality of the maple harvest--and these changes are only relatively recent (past few decades).

Now, let's remember that this problem applies to all deciduous trees that depend on an annual seasonal pattern. The Japanese have kept a 1200-year record of the dates that the cherry trees bloom, and while there are significant differences from one year to the next, the average date of blooming taking a few consecutive years makes for a fairly smooth curve, which shows some minor up and down from 800 AD until the mid 19th century, when it begins a long and sharp dive that continues today.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/04/daily-chart-4

While this drifting of the blooming season by only a few weeks sounds pretty minimal, it may ultimately prove fatal to almost all forests outside of the tropics.

Drivel.

The season for cherry blossom trees in the very big and dense city of Kyoto has changed. Yes, it will of, due to the heat island effect. That is what is warming the micro climate there.

I grant that the effects are exaggerated by the heat island effect, and taken alone shouldn't be viewed as strong evidence of global climate change. However, because the average temperature in Kyoto has increased by about 2°C over the last century, while global temperatures have only increased by about 0.5 °C during the same period (https://www.env.go.jp/en/air/heat/heatisland.pdf), this serves as a way to see more obvious changes in tree behavior due to temperature changes. If a 2°C change has moved the cherry trees in Kyoto by 2 weeks, what will the effect be on forests across North America if the global temperature increases by 4°C?

Does the range of cherry blossom trees extend to places where the average temperature is 4c (although 3.4c is the highest predicted rise by 2100 and that shows no sign of happening) above that of the land outside the cities near Kyoto?

Would the cherry blossom trees getting out competed by tropical trees in the wild around there be so bad? I am sure they could still grow them where they planted them and tended them. I am even very confident that the trees would do better in a slightly warmer world. Maple syrup is the first example of something not growing as well in a warmer situation I have come across. Is the sap a defense against cold?

I do not dispute that the world has warmed a bit. Nor do I dispute that the growing season has lengthened. Nor do I dispute that this appears to have had a slight negative impact on Maple syrup, which has caused us humans to get better at making it, but to say that decidious trees will all die if it gets as warm as it is 200 miles south is drivel.

Well, I'm glad we agree on some points. As to my dire prediction: Trees have adapted to a certain climate, which has been more or less the same for several thousand years, and when it changed in the past, it was a gradual change that was slow enough for forests to migrate (latitude or altitude). If the climate changes in such a way that a shift of 200 miles is required, and the forests only have 50 years to move, that's going to be very bad for the health of the forest (not just the trees).

Trees (and most other organisms) have evolved to depend on all sorts of environmental cues--the most important being light, heat, and moisture. In a location with strong seasons, there is a roughly set alignment between these cues: the daylight changes throughout the year will not be affected at all by climate change, but the seasonal temperature and moisture patterns will shift, leading to mixed signals for the tree (organism). Also, because it's not just the trees themselves, but the whole ecosystem, these mixed signals can cause real havoc. What happens when the bees show up on time, but the blooms were 4 weeks early?? What happens when the bear comes out of hibernation (starting hibernation is tied to daylight, and ending is tied to when the bear gets hungry), and the fish have already done their thing and moved on (temperature driven calendar)?

http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-physiol-021909-135837

You do not have evidence that the rate of temperature change is at all exceptional. The changes we are looking at are in any case less than the normal variability for year on year weather. What happens now in an early spring, do all the bears die?

Still waiting for the elusive bad thing that cannot be overcome very easily. 

There isn't going to be one big bad thing that kills everybody. There will be many changes, many of which might well be easily managed on their own, but they will combine to make a very bad thing.

Imagine: frequent coastal flooding in places like New Orleans, Miami and NYC, mega wildfires in California, another dust bowl in the midwest, Zika-bearing mosquitos as far north as Massachusetts, summers where the temp in Minneapolis never drop below 90 °F...

Any one of these is manageable, but altogether it's gonna be expensive, and overall quality of life will go down.
But this very US-centric view become scarier in places that don't have the money to adapt. "Your town flooded? Oh well, just move somewhere else." "What's that? Your drinking water all comes from melt-off from the mountains, and it didn't snow last year? Oh well, just buy bottled water."

And this human-centric view is also much more sheltered than for the animals who will probably go extinct because their niche no longer exists. "wah wah, polar bears. wah wah fruit bats. wah wah frogs..."

So, no, you can't actually point to anything that will require more money than any local council spends on traffic lights to avoid it's problems.

And especially you cannoy be at all specific about any trouble which you can link any science to at all.

Your input has confirmed my thinking again. Nice try with the Maple syrup though.

[chiralSPO]

Does the range of cherry blossom trees extend to places where the average temperature is 4c (although 3.4c is the highest predicted rise by 2100 and that shows no sign of happening) above that of the land outside the cities near Kyoto?

Would the cherry blossom trees getting out competed by tropical trees in the wild around there be so bad? I am sure they could still grow them where they planted them and tended them. I am even very confident that the trees would do better in a slightly warmer world. Maple syrup is the first example of something not growing as well in a warmer situation I have come across. Is the sap a defense against cold?

I'm not sure if there are any cities with such extreme temperature shifts yet. But there is plenty of evidence of climate-related forest collapse. This link tells of sudden die-off of tens of millions of evergreen trees in California over the past few years: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/29062016/coral-millions-trees-joining-list-climate-change-casualties-california (check the links to the us forest service, who did the actual study). The researchers ascribed the problems primarily to draught and beetles (both of which have been tied to climate change).

I believe that the sap of maples trees may well be part of a defense against cold, but I'm not sure.

You do not have evidence that the rate of temperature change is at all exceptional. The changes we are looking at are in any case less than the normal variability for year on year weather. What happens now in an early spring, do all the bears die?

We have nearly 750,000 years worth of data that indicate that this rate of temperature change IS EXCEPTIONAL. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-are-past-temperatures/

That ecosystems can survive the year-to-year variability of the weather, does not mean that a change in the climate wouldn't be disastrous. I was at a bachelor's party last week and probably had nearly half a liter of vodka over the course of the evening. Did I damage my liver? Probably nothing irreversible. Would my liver survive 5 years of doing that every night? Probably not.

Still waiting for the elusive bad thing that cannot be overcome very easily. 

There isn't going to be one big bad thing that kills everybody. There will be many changes, many of which might well be easily managed on their own, but they will combine to make a very bad thing.

Imagine: frequent coastal flooding in places like New Orleans, Miami and NYC, mega wildfires in California, another dust bowl in the midwest, Zika-bearing mosquitos as far north as Massachusetts, summers where the temp in Minneapolis never drop below 90 °F...

Any one of these is manageable, but altogether it's gonna be expensive, and overall quality of life will go down.
But this very US-centric view become scarier in places that don't have the money to adapt. "Your town flooded? Oh well, just move somewhere else." "What's that? Your drinking water all comes from melt-off from the mountains, and it didn't snow last year? Oh well, just buy bottled water."

And this human-centric view is also much more sheltered than for the animals who will probably go extinct because their niche no longer exists. "wah wah, polar bears. wah wah fruit bats. wah wah frogs..."

So, no, you can't actually point to anything that will require more money than any local council spends on traffic lights to avoid it's problems.

And especially you cannoy be at all specific about any trouble which you can link any science to at all.

Your input has confirmed my thinking again. Nice try with the Maple syrup though.

Umm, the cost of traffic lights globally wouldn't cover half a percent of the resources required to build a 1 meter levee along the entire coastline of Europe, and that would be cheaper still than relocating everyone from Amsterdam, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Genoa, Helsinki, Venice, Naples, Marseille, Nice, and all other coastal cities.

The science of rising sea levels is very simple, there are 2 effects:

One is the melting of land ice into the sea (there is enough ice on land to increase the depth of the ocean by nearly 100 meters if it were all to melt! This is why there are so many marine fossils on what is now land) http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2013/09/rising-seas-ice-melt-new-shoreline-maps/

The other is simply the thermal expansion of water--each degree celsius that the ocean warms up by can increase the volume of the ocean by about 0.02%, which doesn't sound like much, but with about 1.3x10⁹ cubic kilometers of water, that means a 2°C increase could expand the ocean by 25000 cubic kilometers! (http://www.kayelaby.npl.co.uk/general_physics/2_7/2_7_9.html https://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/411.htm

[Bored chemist]

So, no, you can't actually point to anything that will require more money than any local council spends on traffic lights to avoid it's problems.

Thanks for clarifying that you are only interested in problems that will directly affect the rich.
Those whose community can't afford traffic lights need not apply.

[Tim the Plumber (OP)]

Does the range of cherry blossom trees extend to places where the average temperature is 4c (although 3.4c is the highest predicted rise by 2100 and that shows no sign of happening) above that of the land outside the cities near Kyoto?

Would the cherry blossom trees getting out competed by tropical trees in the wild around there be so bad? I am sure they could still grow them where they planted them and tended them. I am even very confident that the trees would do better in a slightly warmer world. Maple syrup is the first example of something not growing as well in a warmer situation I have come across. Is the sap a defense against cold?

I'm not sure if there are any cities with such extreme temperature shifts yet. But there is plenty of evidence of climate-related forest collapse. This link tells of sudden die-off of tens of millions of evergreen trees in California over the past few years: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/29062016/coral-millions-trees-joining-list-climate-change-casualties-california (check the links to the us forest service, who did the actual study). The researchers ascribed the problems primarily to draught and beetles (both of which have been tied to climate change).

I believe that the sap of maples trees may well be part of a defense against cold, but I'm not sure.

Do you have any actual science that says that this Californian drought is unusual for California in a way that has a clear mechanism described in some sort of physics based paper published in a journal after peer review or is it another case of everything being blamed on climate change with out that old fashioned thing of skeptical challenge of the evidence and all the rest?

You do not have evidence that the rate of temperature change is at all exceptional. The changes we are looking at are in any case less than the normal variability for year on year weather. What happens now in an early spring, do all the bears die?

We have nearly 750,000 years worth of data that indicate that this rate of temperature change IS EXCEPTIONAL. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-are-past-temperatures/

That ecosystems can survive the year-to-year variability of the weather, does not mean that a change in the climate wouldn't be disastrous. I was at a bachelor's party last week and probably had nearly half a liter of vodka over the course of the evening. Did I damage my liver? Probably nothing irreversible. Would my liver survive 5 years of doing that every night? Probably not.

OK, let's look at this temperature record and see if we are having more rapid than usual temperature changes.

First, what period is the fast bit so far?

Second, why would this short period be obvious if it had happened in any of the proxies?

Still waiting for the elusive bad thing that cannot be overcome very easily. 

There isn't going to be one big bad thing that kills everybody. There will be many changes, many of which might well be easily managed on their own, but they will combine to make a very bad thing.

Imagine: frequent coastal flooding in places like New Orleans, Miami and NYC, mega wildfires in California, another dust bowl in the midwest, Zika-bearing mosquitos as far north as Massachusetts, summers where the temp in Minneapolis never drop below 90 °F...

Any one of these is manageable, but altogether it's gonna be expensive, and overall quality of life will go down.
But this very US-centric view become scarier in places that don't have the money to adapt. "Your town flooded? Oh well, just move somewhere else." "What's that? Your drinking water all comes from melt-off from the mountains, and it didn't snow last year? Oh well, just buy bottled water."

And this human-centric view is also much more sheltered than for the animals who will probably go extinct because their niche no longer exists. "wah wah, polar bears. wah wah fruit bats. wah wah frogs..."

So, no, you can't actually point to anything that will require more money than any local council spends on traffic lights to avoid it's problems.

And especially you cannoy be at all specific about any trouble which you can link any science to at all.

Your input has confirmed my thinking again. Nice try with the Maple syrup though.

Umm, the cost of traffic lights globally wouldn't cover half a percent of the resources required to build a 1 meter levee along the entire coastline of Europe, and that would be cheaper still than relocating everyone from Amsterdam, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Genoa, Helsinki, Venice, Naples, Marseille, Nice, and all other coastal cities.

But none of those cites will need any sort of evacuation to cope with sea level rise of 1m by 2100. Nor will the entire coastline need to be altered.

Your example of Holland is the best one. Today there are places 11m below sea level there. If the sea does start rising then they will add an extra meter to those existing defenses. This will be the most costly place it would have to be done. It is cheap in comparison to traffic lights which cost a surprising amount. Still nothing compared to the overall budget of any local council. Concrete is cheap stuff. Using a digger to build up the leeve is cheaper still.

The science of rising sea levels is very simple, there are 2 effects[you mean sources of increased sea level]:

One is the melting of land ice into the sea (there is enough ice on land to increase the depth of the ocean by nearly 100 meters if it were all to melt! This is why there are so many marine fossils on what is now land) http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2013/09/rising-seas-ice-melt-new-shoreline-maps/

Are you cliaming that this is at all in danger of melting in the next century??? Do you understand any physics? If so we can look at the energy budget requirments for this to happen. It cannot happen.

The other is simply the thermal expansion of water--each degree celsius that the ocean warms up by can increase the volume of the ocean by about 0.02%, which doesn't sound like much, but with about 1.3x10⁹ cubic kilometers of water, that means a 2°C increase could expand the ocean by 25000 cubic kilometers! (http://www.kayelaby.npl.co.uk/general_physics/2_7/2_7_9.html https://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg1/411.htm

Which is not going to happen more than 21cm by 2100 if the temperature rises by the max amount the IPCC predicts.

The amount of energy going into the ocean will not be enough to raise the temperature of the water by that much. The deep ocean's temperature is controled by the density of water and will not change.

[Tim the Plumber (OP)]

So, no, you can't actually point to anything that will require more money than any local council spends on traffic lights to avoid it's problems.

Thanks for clarifying that you are only interested in problems that will directly affect the rich.
Those whose community can't afford traffic lights need not apply.

No, I am horrified that the poor of the world are currently being denied acess to the benefits of modernity due to some sort of twisted guilt complex dressed in bad science and communist politics.

Your emotional attachment to this doom cult being just one of many examples.

[Bored chemist]

Do you have any actual science that says that this Californian drought is unusual for California in a way that has a clear mechanism described in some sort of physics based paper published in a journal after peer review or is it another case of everything being blamed on climate change with out that old fashioned thing of skeptical challenge of the evidence and all the rest?

Well, it's easy enough to get the data for rain. I found some here
http://www.laalmanac.com/weather/we13.php

Can I show that it's unusual?
Well, yes. If you bunch the data into 6 year  lumps to even out the effect of weather rather than climate  then look at those data you find that the recent clump has a z score of about 2.2 which puts it somewhere near the 98th percentile.
That's unusual when you are only looking at a couple of dozen or so bunches of data.
The correlation coefficient indicates that about 8% of the variation in temperature over that interval is due to a trend.

Can I show that it's not due to some other factor? Of course not.
Are there any published papers that do so.
No obviously. Neither I, nor the authors of papers, can prove a negative.
Nice try there.
If you set an impossible task then you might get away with berating someone for not achieving it.
Or you might get called out on it.

[Bored chemist]

So, no, you can't actually point to anything that will require more money than any local council spends on traffic lights to avoid it's problems.

Thanks for clarifying that you are only interested in problems that will directly affect the rich.
Those whose community can't afford traffic lights need not apply.

... communist politics.

That's the Communist policy of practically the whole western world, is it??

[alancalverd]

Early blooming does cause problems as it changes the lifecycles of insects, and it takes a while for migratory insectivirous birds, who I think are driven more by day length than temperature, to catch up with the rest of nature.  However the world has undergone more rapid and more extensive heating in the past, and apart from a few trivial extinctions (dinosaurs etc) seems to have adapted.

It's important to distinguish between disasters principally driven by climate change, and disasters conveniently blamed on climate change but actually due to human disrespect for the forces of nature (dust bowls, flooding of New Orleans...) The northerly spread of mosquitoes is no big deal, climatologically: East Anglia was a malarial swamp within recorded history and really only became habitable in the 12th century when the climate suddenly cooled.

[Tim the Plumber (OP)]

Do you have any actual science that says that this Californian drought is unusual for California in a way that has a clear mechanism described in some sort of physics based paper published in a journal after peer review or is it another case of everything being blamed on climate change with out that old fashioned thing of skeptical challenge of the evidence and all the rest?

Well, it's easy enough to get the data for rain. I found some here
http://www.laalmanac.com/weather/we13.php

Can I show that it's unusual?
Well, yes. If you bunch the data into 6 year  lumps to even out the effect of weather rather than climate  then look at those data you find that the recent clump has a z score of about 2.2 which puts it somewhere near the 98th percentile.
That's unusual when you are only looking at a couple of dozen or so bunches of data.
The correlation coefficient indicates that about 8% of the variation in temperature over that interval is due to a trend.

Can I show that it's not due to some other factor? Of course not.
Are there any published papers that do so.
No obviously. Neither I, nor the authors of papers, can prove a negative.
Nice try there.
If you set an impossible task then you might get away with berating someone for not achieving it.
Or you might get called out on it.

So, if you, as nobody else has done, chops up the data into 6 year units for a specific location then there is a trend of some unspecified sort.... with a very high corrolation!!!

Look out look out the trend is coming!!!!

Not cherry picking data and location at all and not specifying the time you are looking at......

Not actually linking this in any way to any sort of bad thing, not citing any sort of peer reviewed paper or any such, not then explaining why the not specified problem is costly. Not answering the challenge.

[Tim the Plumber (OP)]

So, no, you can't actually point to anything that will require more money than any local council spends on traffic lights to avoid it's problems.

Thanks for clarifying that you are only interested in problems that will directly affect the rich.
Those whose community can't afford traffic lights need not apply.

... communist politics.

That's the Communist policy of practically the whole western world, is it??

Well, why are you so emotionally attached to this doom scenario when you cannot explain why it is a problem?

[chiralSPO]

Do you have any actual science that says that this Californian drought is unusual for California in a way that has a clear mechanism described in some sort of physics based paper published in a journal after peer review or is it another case of everything being blamed on climate change with out that old fashioned thing of skeptical challenge of the evidence and all the rest?

BoredChemist answered this one nicely.

OK, let's look at this temperature record and see if we are having more rapid than usual temperature changes.

First, what period is the fast bit so far?

Second, why would this short period be obvious if it had happened in any of the proxies?

Please see here for Temp and CO_{2[/sup] records:
https://xkcd.com/1732/ (I know it's a comic, but the data it presents is accurate, and I think the scrolling timeline and milestones communicate the context well)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/media/File:All_palaeotemps.svg (note that each box has it's own x-axis scale, differing by orders of magnitude, so apparently steep changes in the leftmost box need to be adjusted by a factor of 10,000. also each box has data from different locations and measured with different sensitivities.)
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/images/air_bubbles_historical.jpg (800,000 years of CO2 concentrations--we are above 400 ppm now)}

But none of those cites will need any sort of evacuation to cope with sea level rise of 1m by 2100. Nor will the entire coastline need to be altered.

Your example of Holland is the best one. Today there are places 11m below sea level there. If the sea does start rising then they will add an extra meter to those existing defenses. This will be the most costly place it would have to be done. It is cheap in comparison to traffic lights which cost a surprising amount. Still nothing compared to the overall budget of any local council. Concrete is cheap stuff. Using a digger to build up the leeve is cheaper still.

There will be many places affected, and nobody said concrete would be the expensive part. I am not a civil or environmental engineer, but my understanding is that coastline protection and levees are no small endeavor, especially in urban environments. Once built, these defenses would also need to be maintained and monitored, so I think perhaps comparing this to highways is better than comparing to traffic lights.

Are you cliaming that this is at all in danger of melting in the next century??? Do you understand any physics? If so we can look at the energy budget requirments for this to happen. It cannot happen.

No, I definitely NOT claiming that all that ice would or could melt in the next 100 years. I was just asserting that land ice is not a limiting factor in the potential sea level rise, at least until very severe (and unlikely) scenarios are considered. There are those who would make the claim that melting ice wouldn't change the sea level much, or that there isn't enough, and I wanted to establish that there is indeed enough land ice to pose problems in this regard.

Which is not going to happen more than 21cm by 2100 if the temperature rises by the max amount the IPCC predicts.

Up to 21 cm for just thermal expansion, plus another 20-50 cm from melting, would increase the average sea level by half a meter, give or take. That sounds like a problem to me. Add storm surges and tides onto that (fuller seas have larger tides, and warmer seas have larger storms), and there will be many places that need to add protection.

[Tim the Plumber (OP)]

Do you have any actual science that says that this Californian drought is unusual for California in a way that has a clear mechanism described in some sort of physics based paper published in a journal after peer review or is it another case of everything being blamed on climate change with out that old fashioned thing of skeptical challenge of the evidence and all the rest?

BoredChemist answered this one nicely.

Er, was that the bit where there is some sort of trend if you chop data from 1870 to today up into 6 year lumps for LA?

What did that show and what was the mechanism? And what did it do? And where was the peer reviewed paper cited?

OK, let's look at this temperature record and see if we are having more rapid than usual temperature changes.

First, what period is the fast bit so far?

Second, why would this short period be obvious if it had happened in any of the proxies?

Please see here for Temp and CO_{2[/sup] records:
https://xkcd.com/1732/ (I know it's a comic, but the data it presents is accurate, and I think the scrolling timeline and milestones communicate the context well)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/media/File:All_palaeotemps.svg (note that each box has it's own x-axis scale, differing by orders of magnitude, so apparently steep changes in the leftmost box need to be adjusted by a factor of 10,000. also each box has data from different locations and measured with different sensitivities.)
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/images/air_bubbles_historical.jpg (800,000 years of CO2 concentrations--we are above 400 ppm now)}

Peer reviewed paper or some such. I am fully aware that there are loads of people out there with the belief that there are all manner of dooms awaiting us from using fossil fuels but I insist on actual science not drivel.

But none of those cites will need any sort of evacuation to cope with sea level rise of 1m by 2100. Nor will the entire coastline need to be altered.

Your example of Holland is the best one. Today there are places 11m below sea level there. If the sea does start rising then they will add an extra meter to those existing defenses. This will be the most costly place it would have to be done. It is cheap in comparison to traffic lights which cost a surprising amount. Still nothing compared to the overall budget of any local council. Concrete is cheap stuff. Using a digger to build up the leeve is cheaper still.

There will be many places affected, and nobody said concrete would be the expensive part. I am not a civil or environmental engineer, but my understanding is that coastline protection and levees are no small endeavor, especially in urban environments. Once built, these defenses would also need to be maintained and monitored, so I think perhaps comparing this to highways is better than comparing to traffic lights.

Given that the mantainance is due to damage from storms and waves it has to be done today. It costs a lot. Sure. But the increase in cost due to this 3 feet sea level rise will not be significant. You are already doing the maintanance.

Are you cliaming that this is at all in danger of melting in the next century??? Do you understand any physics? If so we can look at the energy budget requirments for this to happen. It cannot happen.

No, I definitely NOT claiming that all that ice would or could melt in the next 100 years. I was just asserting that land ice is not a limiting factor in the potential sea level rise, at least until very severe (and unlikely) scenarios are considered. There are those who would make the claim that melting ice wouldn't change the sea level much, or that there isn't enough, and I wanted to establish that there is indeed enough land ice to pose problems in this regard.

So you brought it up because you wanted it to be know that it is not going to melt? And thus not be a factor? Ugh???

Which is not going to happen more than 21cm by 2100 if the temperature rises by the max amount the IPCC predicts.

Up to 21 cm for just thermal expansion, plus another 20-50 cm from melting, would increase the average sea level by half a meter, give or take. That sounds like a problem to me. Add storm surges and tides onto that (fuller seas have larger tides, and warmer seas have larger storms), and there will be many places that need to add protection.

Well, I have been using the more alarmist 1m figure. I don't see it as scary but that might be because I am a builder type and if I had a coastal property I could protect easily from such a tiny change where ever it was.

[chiralSPO]

Early blooming does cause problems as it changes the lifecycles of insects, and it takes a while for migratory insectivirous birds, who I think are driven more by day length than temperature, to catch up with the rest of nature.  However the world has undergone more rapid and more extensive heating in the past, and apart from a few trivial extinctions (dinosaurs etc) seems to have adapted.

When were there more rapid and more extensive changes in the climate that were NOT associated with mass extinction events?
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mass-extinctions-tied-to-past-climate-changes/

Obviously there were enough survivors of the extinction events I don't think for a moment that the climate change we are experiencing, and will continue to see, will end up ending life as we know it, or probably even come anywhere close to the Permian extinction event. But I think it is not unlikely that a change of 3 or 4 °C over 200 years could lead to significant short term (1000–100000 yr) ecosystem instabilities. I would rather that didn't happen, if possible.

It's important to distinguish between disasters principally driven by climate change, and disasters conveniently blamed on climate change but actually due to human disrespect for the forces of nature (dust bowls, flooding of New Orleans...) The northerly spread of mosquitoes is no big deal, climatologically: East Anglia was a malarial swamp within recorded history and really only became habitable in the 12th century when the climate suddenly cooled.

Fair enough, I'll gree with you there. I still think these issues count towards the cost of climate change though. We didn't need to build New Orleans where it is, but that doesn't change the fact that they will need to face some very tough choices in the next few decades. And their biggest issues will have been largely (in theory) preventable.

[chiralSPO]

Peer reviewed paper or some such. I am fully aware that there are loads of people out there with the belief that there are all manner of dooms awaiting us from using fossil fuels but I insist on actual science not drivel.

See attached pdf, published in PNAS. They show temp data from 1880 until now on the second page, 1350 until now and the last 150 thousand years on the fourth page.

Given that the mantainance is due to damage from storms and waves it has to be done today. It costs a lot. Sure. But the increase in cost due to this 3 feet sea level rise will not be significant. You are already doing the maintanance.

Fair enough. But wonder how many additional dykes and levees might need to be built (and then maintained) in places that have not historically needed them. (I have no numbers here, just wondering)

So you brought it up because you wanted it to be know that it is not going to melt? And thus not be a factor? Ugh???

The main point I was trying to make is that there is essentially unlimited potential for harm. Only our choices will select a value between 0 and 50 meters change in sea level over the next 1000 years. Can we not agree that it would be cheaper to keep that number closer to 0 than to let it approach 50?

Well, I have been using the more alarmist 1m figure. I don't see it as scary but that might be because I am a builder type and if I had a coastal property I could protect easily from such a tiny change where ever it was.

I think 1 m is a good ballpark estimate. And I agree, it's not the end of the world. There are some fairly straightforward ways to manage that level of rise. We disagree on how expensive that would be. I am no expert on that aspect, but the experts I have heard from seem to be concerned, and their logic makes sense to me.

The other thing that I will mention again, is that this is one part of a multi-faceted problem. The sea level rise alone will be manageable. But that combined with agricultural changes, ecosystem destabilization, and everything else all together will place significant economic and ecological stresses on the world.

[chiralSPO]

and the other half of the pnas paper. sorry I had to break it up so much.

[Tim the Plumber (OP)]

Peer reviewed paper or some such. I am fully aware that there are loads of people out there with the belief that there are all manner of dooms awaiting us from using fossil fuels but I insist on actual science not drivel.

See attached pdf, published in PNAS. They show temp data from 1880 until now on the second page, 1350 until now and the last 150 thousand years on the fourth page.

I am aware of such. This does not meet the criteria of anything that says that there is any doom out there.

Given that the mantainance is due to damage from storms and waves it has to be done today. It costs a lot. Sure. But the increase in cost due to this 3 feet sea level rise will not be significant. You are already doing the maintanance.

Fair enough. But wonder how many additional dykes and levees might need to be built (and then maintained) in places that have not historically needed them. (I have no numbers here, just wondering)

So you brought it up because you wanted it to be know that it is not going to melt? And thus not be a factor? Ugh???

The main point I was trying to make is that there is essentially unlimited potential for harm. Only our choices will select a value between 0 and 50 meters change in sea level over the next 1000 years. Can we not agree that it would be cheaper to keep that number closer to 0 than to let it approach 50?

Well, I have been using the more alarmist 1m figure. I don't see it as scary but that might be because I am a builder type and if I had a coastal property I could protect easily from such a tiny change where ever it was.

I think 1 m is a good ballpark estimate. And I agree, it's not the end of the world. There are some fairly straightforward ways to manage that level of rise. We disagree on how expensive that would be. I am no expert on that aspect, but the experts I have heard from seem to be concerned, and their logic makes sense to me.

The other thing that I will mention again, is that this is one part of a multi-faceted problem. The sea level rise alone will be manageable. But that combined with agricultural changes, ecosystem destabilization, and everything else all together will place significant economic and ecological stresses on the world.

Many thousands of people per year are dying in the UK alone due to the hype over CO2. Diesel fumes produced from vehicles that would have been petrol are responsible for many thousands of deaths each year here alone.

How many people do you think should die due to some vague worry about some sort of none problem at the moment that could never really be a significant trouble in any sort of forseeable future?

That you cannot stay on a single problem and have to wander all about trying to find one but cannot suppport any with a decently explained mechanism, physics explained, shows how strong each and every cherrished doom is.

I am arguing against religion not science.

[puppypower]

When the global warming scare started, in earnest, it was predicted that the polar caps would be melted by now and the coasts would be flooded. Based on the first wave of doom and gloom prediction, it turned out this was all hype. It designed for motivation, with many people buying the swamp land. This propaganda was effective and led to a boom in terms of science spending connected to global warming. Even NASA diverted resources away from space to appease the hype, mostly due to the influence of con artists in the seat of power.

Those who most believe the hype, like college students, can no longer think freely and practice free speech. They have to censor, protest and even run away from free speech. They have been brainwashed and then conditioned to avoid alternate POVs, all based on promises of doom and gloom, that have not panned out, but always seem to hang over them.

We are now in an era of fake news and partisan propaganda that is no longer even trying to be subtle. It appears the global warming template is being applied to everything. The same people seem impacted by the fake news in the same way. There are those who blindly go along, not because of facts, but because of an emotional connection driven by induced fear.

As an example, picture if a new neighbor moves into you neighborhood. A rumor begins, that they are criminals. The fear generated, due to the unknown, can make some people start to take precautions, just in case. As others see these precautioned taken, this will reinforce their fear, until the group starts to live out their fantasy. They will all predict lost property.  Yet months pass and no property seems to disappear. But that does not matter, when you reach the point of no return. You will justify the lack of stolen property with clever excuses.

[chiralSPO]

I am arguing against religion not science.

And yet you are the one arguing from your armchair while armies of scientists produce actual data and results, and actively test their own theories and each other's theories. That you discount them so easily without results of your own to point to, indicates that it is you who is not following scientific protocol. Perhaps we should turn the tables around, and you should provide evidence that indicates why we are safe and needn't worry.

[chiralSPO]

When the global warming scare started, in earnest, it was predicted that the polar caps would be melted by now and the coasts would be flooded. Based on the first wave of doom and gloom prediction, it turned out this was all hype. It designed for motivation, with many people buying the swamp land. This propaganda was effective and led to a boom in terms of science spending connected to global warming. Even NASA diverted resources away from space to appease the hype, mostly due to the influence of con artists in the seat of power.

Those who most believe the hype, like college students, can no longer think freely and practice free speech. They have to censor, protest and even run away from free speech. They have been brainwashed and then conditioned to avoid alternate POVs, all based on promises of doom and gloom, that have not panned out, but always seem to hang over them.

We are now in an era of fake news and partisan propaganda that is no longer even trying to be subtle. It appears the global warming template is being applied to everything. The same people seem impacted by the fake news in the same way. There are those who blindly go along, not because of facts, but because of an emotional connection driven by induced fear.

As an example, picture if a new neighbor moves into you neighborhood. A rumor begins, that they are criminals. The fear generated, due to the unknown, can make some people start to take precautions, just in case. As others see these precautioned taken, this will reinforce their fear, until the group starts to live out their fantasy. They will all predict lost property.  Yet months pass and no property seems to disappear. But that does not matter, when you reach the point of no return. You will justify the lack of stolen property with clever excuses.

There is a way to defend against fake news. It's called peer review. And the peer-reviewed literature is fairly unambiguous about this, and has been for a few decades now. The real fake news is the multitude of unsubstantiated claims of scientists somehow making this up to get rich. It's laughable, but unfortunately there are enough people willing to bury their heads in the sand and eager to grasp at any story that helps them convince themselves that they aren't worried.

[Tim the Plumber (OP)]

I am arguing against religion not science.

And yet you are the one arguing from your armchair while armies of scientists produce actual data and results, and actively test their own theories and each other's theories. That you discount them so easily without results of your own to point to, indicates that it is you who is not following scientific protocol. Perhaps we should turn the tables around, and you should provide evidence that indicates why we are safe and needn't worry.

Well with all those scientists, who, if they are anything like you lot, are determined to find trouble with a warmer world and supporting evidence of such, have failed to produce a single peer reviewed paper which says that a slightly warmer world would be bad. At least not one you can find.

I am only asking questions.