Mormonism, the Anthropocene and the End of Civilization

[_Zadok]

Here is NOAA saying the 2013/14 winter was one of the coldest on record. http://www.weather.com/news/news/winter-ncdc-state-climate-report-2013-2014-20140313

Possibly the Global Climate change says the highs and lows are expanding at each end. Hotter summers, and colder winters. Is that what we are seeing?

[_ludwigm]

As for me, if the climate really is changing such that the earth will become warmer in the future, I'm all for it. I would love to be able to grow a date palm in my yard.

And to be able to fed hundreds of refugees, whose homeland become under sea level?
Moreover, to be able to rebury (is there such word?) there --- under Your date palm --- those *** skeletons?


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*** See my viewtopic.php?p=824240#p824240

The skeletons of 26 Japanese soldiers who died during World War II have been washed from their graves in the low-lying Marshall Islands, prompting warnings by the nation that its future is under threat from rising sea levels.
...
The nation’s 1,000-plus islands are only about six feet above sea level – and scientists are predicting a three- to six-foot rise in sea levels by the end of the century.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... -seas.html
.

[_moksha]

You guys are talking about the end of human civilization via climate change like its a bad thing or something.

[_DrW]

You guys are talking about the end of human civilization via climate change like its a bad thing or something.

Excellent point.

Text string length limits prevented the use of the intended thread title, which was:

Mormonism, The Anthropocene And The End of Civilization As We Know It.

[Guest]

Here is NOAA saying the 2013/14 winter was one of the coldest on record. http://www.weather.com/news/news/winter-ncdc-state-climate-report-2013-2014-20140313

Possibly the Global Climate change says the highs and lows are expanding at each end. Hotter summers, and colder winters. Is that what we are seeing?

Yes, and one can easily understand how this works for higher temperatures.

Start with increased GHG (CO2, CH4, NO2 and H2O) concentrations in the atmosphere. Then appreciate the ability of these gasses to absorb in the infrared (heat energy - proportional to their associated radiative forcing functions). The resulting increased average temperature of the atmosphere represents heat energy that is available to drive weather.

What about colder than normal temperatures?

One of many possible mechanisms by which additional atmospheric energy can affect global weather patterns is what is called latitudinal shift of the jet streams*.

As depicted below, the Northern Polar Jet wobbles in a chaotic fashion with normal circulation, on average, at about 60 degrees north latitude. The northern polar air mass is normally in circulation (due mainly to the rotation of the Earth), and since the circulation is centered nominally around the North Pole, this is called the Polar Vortex.



When the polar jet dips south, as it did in January of 2014 for example, it allows cold polar air to move south - this case into southern Canada and the continental US.



A causal link between increased instability in the northern polar jet and global warming (increased atmospheric heat energy) was pretty much confirmed in 2010, and folks who live in the northern US received a clear object lesson in 2014.

And it gets more complicated than that. When the polar jet dips south, it sets up a blocking air mass that prevents normal air circulation at slightly lower latitudes. This phenomenon, in turn, can lead to unusual warming and snow melt in places like Alaska and Greenland.

Hope this helps.

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*Planet Earth has 4 jet streams; two in the northern hemisphere and two in the southern hemisphere. Each hemisphere has a polar jet (normally circulating at about 60 degrees N/S/ latitude) and a subtropical jet (normally circulating at about 30 degrees (N/S latitude). The one we are concerned with here is the Northern Polar Jet.

These are nicely illustrated in the graphic below from NOAA.


_____________________________

The vertical scale on the lower graphic shows something else of interest with regard to global weather. If one flies from Seattle to Boston, for example, they will be well above the weather at an altitude of 30,000 feet or so.

Flying from Singapore to Brunei at 30,000 feet on a warm afternoon, one can be looking out the window at cumulonimbus clouds with tops at near 50,000 feet. Even the big jets navigate around these monsters.

[_malkie]

You guys are talking about the end of human civilization via climate change like its a bad thing or something.

Of course we (people) are taking a selfish PoV - although it must be conceded that end of human civilization via climate change (or any other likely means) will probably involve the end of life on earth for many other species that we will drag along (are dragging along) for the ride.

But a couple of millennia from now the earth will still exist, and will still be populated by a variety of forms of life (e.g., tardigrades), even if there is not a single human to be found on its face.

So perhaps not such a bad thing after all.

Except that the penguins may not survive.

[_Chap]

You guys are talking about the end of human civilization via climate change like its a bad thing or something.

Of course we (people) are taking a selfish PoV - although it must be conceded that end of human civilization via climate change (or any other likely means) will probably involve the end of life on earth for many other species that we will drag along (are dragging along) for the ride.

But a couple of millennia from now the earth will still exist, and will still be populated by a variety of forms of life (e.g., tardigrades), even if there is not a single human to be found on its face.

So perhaps not such a bad thing after all.

Except that the penguins may not survive.

And the tardigrade successors to prodigal humanity will probably end up believing that a deity created them in his/her/its image ...

[_EAllusion]

] I'm here to learn with others, or at least I hope I learn, and that we don't quickly resort to name calling.

As I understand it, the "settled" part of the debate is that the global climate is not static and is changing. Further, I believe, that scientists agree that the cause is a combination of natural events, and man-caused conditions.

What seems to be the debate is 1. How much of the observed change can we as humans impact, and more importantly, 2. how do we get humans to do it. Two very formidable tasks in my estimation.

Now... gently, without calling me a stupid crap, which may be true, but I dislike hearing it on the first post, tell me where I am right and wrong?

There's overwhelming confidence on the part of relevant scientists that the earth exists in a persistent warming trend due to human activities. DrW tried hedging on the issue even further by just sticking to the warming trend portion. Figuring out what the harmful impacts of this will be and the risk/benefit scenarios of proposed solutions to it has a broader range of academic dispute.

Mikwut cited a notorious global warming skeptic bit of nonsense to give the impression that there is a lively scientific dispute going on over that proposition, leaving us in a position where reasonable people can reasonably disagree. What he referenced is a petition that was circulated for response where anyone who claimed to have a college degree in a science related field could sign a statement intended to convey skepticism in anthropogenic global warming. The statement itself is so poorly worded that it doesn't really capture what the authors intended. It's similar to the Discovery Institute's "Dissent from Darwinism" list, only with even lower standards. It was initially published during Kyoto protocol talks with an attempt to take on the trappings of academic presentation when that clearly was smoke and mirrors created by oil-industry backed propagandists. It was circulated to people to look like a National Academy of Sciences release. It was a deliberate attempt to mislead rather than a well-intentioned effort that just happens to mislead.

It doesn't capture what Mikwut attempts to prove with it. It doesn't show a legitimate scientific dispute going on, because it tells you absolutely nothing about the state of scientific discourse on the subject. All it tells you is that a tiny % of the population of people who claim to have science-related degrees in the United States will sign a questionably worded statement intended to express skepticism in global warming or were willing to do so starting in 1998 after receiving a misleading document meant to look like it came from the NAS. You can contrast it against more legitimate academic attempts to understand the state of scientific opinion on the subject where the results show a very strong consensus on the subject from relevant scientists.

[Guest]

There's overwhelming confidence on the part of relevant scientists that the earth exists in a persistent warming trend due to human activities.

But isn't this a rather recent 'overwhelming confidence'? I seem to remember a time in my younger years when the 'overwhelming confidence' was in favor of a cooling earth. How did we get it so wrong and in such a short time?

[_moksha]

The Koch Brothers have already made arrangements to have their
memory engrams implanted within these guaranteed survivors.