notyou2 wrote:Is it only the climate change deniers that call climate change global warming?
Nope.
Global warming was the original and still the more meaningful term. Climate change was a more wishy-washy term that was brought in because global warming deniers would point to one bad snowstorm and say stupid things like "so much for global warming!" If it was up to me, I would have met them head on and said, "look, retard, just because the climate is warming overall doesn't mean that every single day is going to be warm in every single place." But it's not up to me. The cowards in charge decided to not fight that battle and retreat to the term "climate change".
I have a vague memory that in one of the threads in this forum, mets gave more detail about when and how the term changed.
“Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.”
― Voltaire
jonesthecurl wrote:Well, there's also the fact that some places will probably get colder, like the UK.
Exactly
Yeah, but that means nothing. Global warming refers to the average temperature over the entire earth, and that is unquestionably going up.
Sure, there will be places that will buck the trend. A river flows down hill, but there are always a few drops that splash upwards. Doesn't mean shit to the overall trend.
“Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.”
― Voltaire
I figure NASA will launch some solar sun blocker that will block 1 or 2 percent of the Suns rays for few years. Balance it all out and then move it out of the way. Science meeting fiction.
you're just a global warming nut because you're freezing up there and you want a little warmth to come your way. you think you'll be like california then but you're too old to enjoy it.
well, places close to here have lost millions in houses lost to the sea, houses that were originally hundreds of feet away from the original shore line some 8 years ago. every year, a few houses destroyed.
it won't be stopped because we stop doing what we're doing, it will stop because at some point some technology will be developed to help equalise things. i'm confident in it. if not, who cares, i only have a few more years in this place.
HitRed wrote:I figure NASA will launch some solar sun blocker that will block 1 or 2 percent of the Suns rays for few years. Balance it all out and then move it out of the way. Science meeting fiction.
HitRed wrote:I figure NASA will launch some solar sun blocker that will block 1 or 2 percent of the Suns rays for few years. Balance it all out and then move it out of the way. Science meeting fiction.
jonesthecurl wrote:Well, there's also the fact that some places will probably get colder, like the UK.
Exactly
Yeah, but that means nothing. Global warming refers to the average temperature over the entire earth, and that is unquestionably going up.
Sure, there will be places that will buck the trend. A river flows down hill, but there are always a few drops that splash upwards. Doesn't mean shit to the overall trend.
Sure, but my point was that this is one of the reasons for the renaming of global warming to climate change.
2dimes wrote:That dinosaurs caused an ice age hundreds of years ago and now burning their carcasses might cause the tropical oceans to return to Alberta?
nietzsche wrote:Couldn't it be that the global warming crosses a tipping point and we get into an ice age?
I'm seriously asking.. for a friend.
No. That would be global cooling.
We were quite likely headed in that direction, but we've turned 180 degrees.
There’s speculation that Global Warming / Climate Change will indeed cause a mini-ice-age in the North Atlantic.
Climate Change is the more appropriate term... because even thought the global trend may be towards warming... we may have vast areas that cool. These vast areas are not like small drops in a river bouncing back or a local snowstorm... they are giant regions like the whole north atlantic.
tzor wrote:4. Polar Bears and Other Species Are Not Dying But Flourishing!
Really? This is just one more bit of denialist hogwash that just won't go away. Clifford Kraus started this myth by saying "there are more than 20,000 polar bears roaming the Arctic, compared to as few as 5,000 40 years ago." The trouble with that is, while the 20,000 is reasonably accurate (best current estimate 23,000), the 5,000 is nonsense. It's pure smoke and mirrors. One Russian author in 1956 said there might be 5,000 to 8,000 polar bears in the world. He didn't do any kind of counting, he just took anecdotal accounts from bear hunters and wildly extrapolated from there. Climate change deniers have latched on to the "5000" figure as if it was gospel truth (I wonder why they didn't latch on to the 8000 number instead?) and keep repeating it, despite the fact that its just a wild guess by one man who didn't do any real counting. Even rudimentary attempts at actually counting polar bears didn't begin until the late 1980s.
In the next 40 years or so we'll have much more accurate surveys. But going 50 years into the past, any number was pure guesswork.
“Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.”
― Voltaire
Are polar bear populations increasing: in fact, booming?
To make it simple, the answer is NO.
Answered by Dr. Steven C. Amstrup, chief scientist with Polar Bears International and USGS polar bear project leader for 30 years.
Q: Why all the fuss about polar bears? Aren't their populations increasing: in fact, booming?
A: One of the most frequent myths we hear about polar bears is that their numbers are increasing and have, in fact, more than doubled over the past thirty years. Tales about how many polar bears there used to be (with claims as low as 5,000 in the 1960s) are undocumented, but cited over and over again. Yet no one I know can come up with a legitimate source for these numbers.
One Russian extrapolation presented in 1956 suggested a number of 5,000 to 8,000, but that figure was never accepted by scientists. The fact is that in the 1960s we had no idea how many polar bears there were. Even now, about half of our population estimates are only educated guesses. Back then, the best we had over most of the polar bear's range were uneducated guesses. Polar bear science has come a long way since then.
We do know (and I have published papers on this) that some polar bear populations grew after quotas were imposed in Canada, aerial hunting ceased in Alaska, and trapping and hunting were banned in Svalbard. All of these events occurred in the late 60s or early 70s, and we know some populations responded—as you would expect. Some populations were not being hunted back then (or were hunted very little) and those were probably unaffected by these three actions.
Back then, the sea ice was solid and not noticeably in retreat. With stable habitat, polar bears were a renewable resource that could be harvested on a sustainable basis.
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.