Climate Change EXPLAINED!! Hoax claims EXPOSED!!

[PeterMP]

Not sure how the two are different. There's no guarantee they'll happen because there are systems in place to prevent it.

What systems?

How do you know how they are going to react to a set of conditions that are unique in the history of the world?

Remember this started when talking about weather and weather patterns.

So I'm saying there is absolutely no current evidence or guarantee that during this current warming cycle humans will see drastic changes in weather (i.e., increased natural disasters) or abrupt climate change (i.e., during Younger Dryas)

And these are changes humans can easily adapt to.

(and if I'm not mistaken about 40% of the world's population live along the coasts. Hardly a "vast majority.")

Your mistaken (note the below link is from 1995. The trend they refer to has continued, and I don't think those numbers include ALL major bodies of water (e.g. in-land lakes)), and it isn't easy to adapt to flooding.

http://www.aaas.org/international/ehn/fisheries/hinrichs.htm

How much money do you think the US spends as a yearly average on flood prevention and "recovery"?

Since this apparently is one if not the warmest time in human history wouldn't it be that we "evolved" under cooler conditions.

We're not doing too bad now that it's warmer, no?

As a species, yes as a civilation no. The VAST majorit of the "building" of the current human society has been in the last few hundred years.

As a species, at various times, there have been HUGE "costs" associated with climate change. Read what happened to the cultures in American during the Younger Dryas.

It isn't that evolutionary system can't survive, but the "costs" are usually VERY large.

Which is probably why it doesn't happen often.

The fact that it doesn't happen much has NOTHING to do with the "penalty" to evolutionary systems (again, unless you believe God set it up that way).

In the end, you are left with a choice based on what we currently know about climate. Either you are looking at on average 1+ feet of sea level rises (and I will point out this doesn't mean that in the whole world sea level rises will be 1 foot (and really more) as sea level changes are "local" in nature as some land masses are actually rising, and since flooding is also local and based on "extreme" conditions assuming a "constant" sea level increase of 1 foot spread over the whole world signficantly under-estimates flooding), or you are predicting some unkown feedbacks operating in "novel" conditions will kick in, but you don't understand what those feedbacks or the consequences of them kicking in so you are getting to the point of having to assume that changes are going to be neutral for something that has essentially been an evolutionary process (i.e. the building of modern society), which is highly unlikely.

Either way, it is VERY likely that long term the "costs" will be much less by addressing the root of the problem in a preventative manner.

**EDIT**

I wanted to come back to this and give some meat to the point. It isn't a feedback, but a believe lessening of the effect of CO2 was believed to come from the fact that much of it would be dissolved in the oceans. Essentially, much of what we have been producing hasn't been making it into the atmosphere because the oceans will dissolve it, and it was believed this would continue for a long time into the future.

Unfortunately, what was believed isn't exactly right. A large chunk of the ocean is now saturated in CO2, in a manner that was unpredictable due to ozone depletion. A historically new variable has affected climate change in an unexpected manner.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090624093458.htm

Models based on historic ocean absorption of CO2 are now wrong.

This of course will result in other changes (ocean currents will be different) creating even more "novel" conditions that will interact to create other unpredictable situations.

What we have known about climate is pretty meaningless because we've created a completely new "system" under which climate is now occurring.

Now, one could take this as good news, but that ignores what we know about the evolution of systems (including modern day culture/society) and their stability with respect to changes in their enviroment.

Earlier in the thread, you proposed some "outrageous" conditions that you said couldn't happen.

I now challenge you. How do KNOW that can't happen? We've never seen the current conditions to know if a large number of possible climate "states" can or can not happen. The fact that it hasn't happened in the past is NOT good evidence that it can't happen now.

A VERY large number of things are now possible (Essentially an infinite things), but of those large number of possible states, only a VERY few will be positive or even neutral in the short term for our society, meaning it VERY VERY likely there will be some short term costs, and most likely a substantial short term costs.

Long term, realistically, I think it is a coin flip (well realistically a roll of a "fair" three sided die) if a new climate "state" would be good or not for human society, but short term, nobody that knows anything about changes in the enviroment to evolutionary systems is going to argue that it is likely the change will be postive or neutral.

And an argument that we should risk paying that likely very substantial cost to obtain an unpredictable out come rings pretty hollow in my ears.