Permaculture Heresy

Yes there is such a thing because permaculture seems to have some belief systems that should not be questioned. These belief systems are based on what is considered by the believers as "facts", and in many ways these parts of permaculture are just like a religion.

One heresy in permaculture is to voice an opinion regarding climate change that runs contrary to the beliefs of our most prominent leaders. Permies all over the world are designing systems intended to last 1000 years, so what if a fundamental basis for these designs is wrong? There will be very real repercussions within these systems that's what.

So I present to you a video that looks at 6 major problems with climate change from a position that is neutral on the topic. I think that every permie should watch this video, because we should all be making decisions based on the best information available to us, and engaging our brains.

Remember what Aristotle said: "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."

I would dispute that the video is coming from "a position that is neutral on the topic." It took about three minutes of viewing for me to determine that it was (in my opinion) a compilation of the standard climate change denialist tropes. (Of course that doesn't make them wrong, it just makes them standard.) The video's narrator uses what strike me as cheap rhetorical tricks delivered in a calm even tone. For instance, in one fast sentence he says the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is "melting underneath due to a massive volcano system directly under the melt." That's simply not true -- the leading researcher documenting the melting of that ice field says that the heat from vulcanism contributes to "a few millimeters" of the hundreds of meters of annual melt being observed.

I wholeheartedly agree that we should all be making decisions based on the best information available to us. Sadly, this video is not (in my opinion of course) a source for that, and my assessment is that the deceptiveness I found in it was probably deliberate, given how fast and easy it was for me to Google up the truth behind what struck me as an unlikely claim.

Thank you Nick. I do think you have a point that people need to be questioning more, and frankly, I would blame some modern education systems out there for quashing some people's natural drive to question things. Anyhow, I am glad you brought this up. I think that a lack of curiosity, drive, and ability to play devil's advocate has dire consequences for just about everything.

Some of the things addressed in the video, I learned about when I took AP Environmental Science last year. I will agree that climate is changing, as it always is, lol. The infinite summation of weather events creates climates. Also, part of the problem is that not everyone is well informed. Now, which way the climate is changing could be argued various ways. But, undoubtedly, it is changing.

The changes in climate, well, of course are not changing unexpectedly. The milankovitch cycles are good proof of that.


I already knew about points 1-3 that he discusses, but now, point 4 was kinda surprise to me because that information does not get into the newspaper as often as it should be. I'll have to read more on this myself to find out more, but point 5 was kinda of a no-brainer to me. Big fiery ball in the sky, of course it will dictate out future. Now, the details about exactly how it dictates our future, I need to read more on that, too.

Point 6, eeh, I try to steer clear of the talk about geoengineering and weather modification because I have tried listening to both sides of the argument, and I'm still stuck in the middle.

My overall stance on the discussion being made here is that citizen-science needs to be promoted more in the public so that people can start figuring things out themselves without the bureaucracy involved in regular scientific and government institutions. This way claims and opinions can be verified, disputed, or disproven by anyone that has followed the basic scientific method.

I forgot to add what was to have been my main point in the last post. I am designing (to the limited extent that my haphazard ways could be called "design") my plant systems to include as many plants as possible that thrive in hotter, colder, wetter, and dryer conditions than currently obtain here. I consider this a way of hedging my bets against all that is not known about climate change. Whatever happens, I want plant systems in place and already established that can feed me under the new conditions. Obviously the established native food trees already here (on my property, that's primarily persimmons, pecans, plums, and oaks) along with many others I'm planting because they are suitable to my current biome will continue to do fine if "global weirding" doesn't happen at all. (I consider that a low-probability outcome given the atmospheric carbon numbers ... but I could, of course, be wrong.)

Dan Boone wrote:I would dispute that the video is coming from "a position that is neutral on the topic." It took about three minutes of viewing for me to determine that it was (in my opinion) a compilation of the standard climate change denialist tropes. (Of course that doesn't make them wrong, it just makes them standard.) The video's narrator uses what strike me as cheap rhetorical tricks delivered in a calm even tone. For instance, in one fast sentence he says the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is "melting underneath due to a massive volcano system directly under the melt." That's simply not true -- the leading researcher documenting the melting of that ice field says that the heat from vulcanism contributes to "a few millimeters" of the hundreds of meters of annual melt being observed.

I wholeheartedly agree that we should all be making decisions based on the best information available to us. Sadly, this video is not (in my opinion of course) a source for that, and my assessment is that the deceptiveness I found in it was probably deliberate, given how fast and easy it was for me to Google up the truth behind what struck me as an unlikely claim.

The article you linked to simply states that there is an increased geothermal heating beneath the ice sheet, but that is not grounds to throw out the global warming hypothesis. I totally agree with that, in fact the article published a few days earlier show that the amount of heating is twice the normal:
http://www.livescience.com/46194-volcanoes-melt-antarctic-glaciers.html

If the entire climate change theory was based on this one observation about the western ice sheet then it would indeed imply what you argue but it doesn't. Think about this for a minute... If the air temperature above the ice sheet remains below zero then melting must be happening by some other process underneath. We know ice will melt simply by applying pressure (which is a known mechanism by which glaciers move), so if the ice is thickening then a possible result in an increase in water at the ice / earth boundary. Then there is geothermal heating through volcanism or radioactive decay of mineral deposits.

They have discovered that the geothermal heating is twice what they originally thought, which should translate to roughly twice the melting rate...

Anyway, the thrust of the video basically shows that you can't trust either side of this topic, and both sides are ignoring some potentially significant factors. That's the key message it's supposed to deliver IMHO.

Dan Boone wrote:I forgot to add what was to have been my main point in the last post. I am designing (to the limited extent that my haphazard ways could be called "design") my plant systems to include as many plants as possible that thrive in hotter, colder, wetter, and dryer conditions than currently obtain here. I consider this a way of hedging my bets against all that is not known about climate change. Whatever happens, I want plant systems in place and already established that can feed me under the new conditions. Obviously the established native food trees already here (on my property, that's primarily persimmons, pecans, plums, and oaks) along with many others I'm planting because they are suitable to my current biome will continue to do fine if "global weirding" doesn't happen at all. (I consider that a low-probability outcome given the atmospheric carbon numbers ... but I could, of course, be wrong.)

Totally agree, and I think it would be dangerous to implement a system based on the idea that it will be 2 climate zones warmer in 50 years. Better to plan for climate craziness

Nick Kitchener wrote:They have discovered that the geothermal heating is twice what they originally thought, which should translate to roughly twice the melting rate...

And per my link, the amount of melting attributable to geothermal heating has been calculated as just a few millimeters out of the hundred-plus meters of melting that's happening annually there. Is that few millimeters twice the amount of geothermal melting that was formerly supposed? Perhaps it is, but that doesn't make the video better where it blames the actual melting (100+ meters per year) on volcanoes, using phrasing that I have concluded was most likely intended to be deceptive.

Nick Kitchener wrote:Anyway, the thrust of the video basically shows that you can't trust either side of this topic, and both sides are ignoring some potentially significant factors. That's the key message it's supposed to deliver IMHO.

The message it delivered to me was that the narrator of the video was not worth my trust or (any more of) my time. Once I concluded that he was deliberately attempting to mislead me, it sort of became philosophically impossible for me to learn anything else from the video, so I stopped watching it.

So I think the first 5 minutes of this video are a great starting place for a discussion. I also think the time for discussion on some of these thing is past and overdue.

So that's where I'm at. I don't appreciate nitpicking and character assassination when there is so much direct observation going on. I mean telescopes are great. The sun is very very important. We don't even understand our own biosphere.

Those are my thoughts.

I read in some permaculture book (not sure where) that we should be planting perennials that can barely survive the winter in warm microclimates, and also planting things that barely get enough cooling hours on a shaded north slope. And things that need both more and less water then we currently have. Of course, just small amounts of them; the bulk have to be things that do well, that are in their optimum range.

But that way, we will be ready for whatever happens. Global warming can lead to local cooling. And one volcano could give us another "year without a summer" (1816)

Also, if we have hot and cold microclimates, and the same plants in each, we will more likely get a yield every year from at least some of the plants.

I think everyone should read "The Resilient Homestead" by Ben Falk. He really covers what it takes to thrive, no matter what.

I have a different heresy - I dont think nitrogen fixing plants share much of their nitrogen . What would be the point for the plant in question ?

I alsothink Permiculture is a design science there fore we should be able to test everything. Believe nothing test test test .

David

Totally with you on the test philosophy there.

That Nitrogen thing. It certainly does seem that these plants use pretty much all of it themselves unless a human intervenes at the right time to change that situation. In all the stuff Geoff Lawton has put out regarding Nitrogen fixation, I don't recall him ever saying "plant the tree and it will provide fertiliser for your food forest".

It's always "plant the tree and chop it regularly so that the accumulated Nitrogen is released to the ecosystem".

I sort of made the connection a year or two back with annual beans. Since the beans pump everything they have into their fruit before dying, it seems to me that either you can plant beans to add nitrogen to your garden, or produce a harvest, but you can't have both at the same time.

Nick Kitchener wrote:=Since the beans pump everything they have into their fruit before dying, it seems to me that either you can plant beans to add nitrogen to your garden, or produce a harvest, but you can't have both at the same time.

True, but if you eat the beans and return your pee to the garden, then the nitrogen ends up there eventually.

Back to the climate change for a minute. A question I'm not hearing asked, let alone answered, is...Why are we including animal emissions in the calculations when animals can't create CO2? They can only recycle what they have already taken in...which was removed from the atmosphere previously.

And, the Nitrogen? It is drawn from the atmosphere by plants and added to the soil when the plant either dies or is dropped. Animals speed up the cycle by eating and peeing. Which still means that Nitrogen fixers add nitrogen to soils...it's just not instant. At least that was the state of knowledge when I went through Ag Uni several decades ago...more may have been discovered since. Certainly, many thousands more N fixing organisms have been discovered.

I've finally reached stage 5 of the 5 stages of climate change: Acceptance.

The climate is going to do what it's going to do (whether by human activities or natural cycles, it doesn't matter). Neither governments nor businesses are going to be the ones to take a single step "backwards" in order to avert disaster, and ruin their profits.

My job, therefore, is simply to design a system for myself that will be resilient to whatever the climate does in future, and in no way exacerbates the problem. And that's really all any of us can do.

Im a big fan of Greenman3610 that debunks the debunkers. I always recommend anthropomorphic climate change deniers go through his entire series and get back to me.



the whole series [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/user/greenman3610[/youtube]

A personal Fave- [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WvasALL-hw[/youtube]

I live in one of the cooling areas of the planet. Its because the oscillating jet stream has stalled due to excess heat on the other side of the continent. A warming planet is not palm trees in Alaska. Its climate chaos. Hotter hot. Colder cold. wetter wet. Drier dry. As for the missing carbon of the last few years....The timeline magically matches the world wide recession. Go figure.

Here is another one dealing with last winters cold and probably this winter as well. Beware the Blob [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=on0QmcDFgrg[/youtube]

Well Ross, have you ever watched this?



This is the guy who makes most sense to me so far.

I like watching this one too.





And three questions,

Is warming that bad? Shit, i should remember that now it's not global warming anymore, but climate change now .

Can you cultivate much in Greenland anymore? So why is it still called greenland?

Who does the crime profits to?

You'll say oil companies? I'd say yes. Governements, yep, carbon taxes and all that. But petrol is a great benefit to all of us. Even you, who have a computer! The first two might be involved into denial. Tho governements oscilate between taking taxes from the oil and saying there's no weather change, and therefor keeping social peace, and taxing the carbon, and saying there's change, and that we need to do stuff for the planet; and taxing lots of other activities. But it's all the hypocrits's dance. Scientists, love climate change, that gets them funds, so no one is realy telling the truth.


To me the simplest way would be to say, the works gonna be handed to our childrens, so don't polute it too much. That would be cleverer and honest.

But that would cause problems to governements and multoinationals. Who are able to poison people or start wars to fulfill their greed and thirst for power.

"How To Talk To A Climate Skeptic": http://grist.org/series/skeptics/

"Is warming that bad? Shit, i should remember that now it's not global warming anymore, but climate change now."

"Objection: The earth has had much warmer climates in the past. What’s so special about the current climate? Anyway, it seems like a generally warmer world will be better.

Answer: I don’t know if there is a meaningful way to define an “optimum” average temperature for planet earth. Surely it is better now for all of us than it was 20,000 years ago when so much land was trapped beneath ice sheets. Perhaps any point between the recent climate and the extreme one we may be heading for, with tropical forests inside the arctic circle, is as good as any other. Maybe it’s even better with no ice caps anywhere.

It doesn’t matter. The critical issue is not what the temperature is, or may be, or will be. The critical issue is how fast it is moving.

Rapid change is the real danger. Human habits and infrastructure are suited to particular weather patterns and sea levels, as are ecosystems and animal behaviors. The rate at which global temperature is rising today is likely unique in the history of our species..."


"Can you cultivate much in Greenland anymore? So why is it still called greenland?"

"Objection: When the Vikings settled it, Greenland was a lovely, hospitable island, not the frozen wasteland it is today. It was not until the Little Ice Age that it got so cold they abandoned it.

Answer: First, Greenland is part of a single region. It can not be necessarily taken to represent a global climate shift. See the post on the Medieval Warm Period for a global perspective on this time period. Briefly, the available proxy evidence indicates that global warmth during this period was not particularly pronounced, though some regions may have experienced greater warming than others.

Second, a quick reality check shows that Greenland’s ice cap is hundreds of thousands of years old and covers over 80% of the island. The vast majority of land not under the ice sheet is rock and permafrost in the far north. How different could it have been just 1,000 years ago?

Below is a brief account of the Viking settlement, based on Jared Diamond’s “Collapse“.

Greenland was called Greenland by Erik the Red (was he red?), who was in exile and wanted to attract people to a new colony. He thought you should give a land a good name so people would want to go there! It likely was a bit warmer when he landed for the first time than it was when the last settlers starved due to a number of factors — climate change, or at least some bad weather, a major one...."

"Who does the crime profits to?"

"Objection: Global warming is a hoax perpetrated by environmental extremists and liberals who want an excuse for more big government (and/or world government via the U.N.).

Answer: Here is a list of organizations that accept anthropogenic global warming as real and scientifically well-supported: (see list at this link) http://grist.org/climate-energy/global-warming-is-a-hoax/"

Since we are just playing tit for tat....Here is the critique of the big swindle movie


since you have also fallen for the happy Vikings of Greenland myth I will toss this one in as well.


Now lets think this through. Your saying that there is a secret cabal of mad scientists going after government money. Last tie I checked Palio climatologists were having to leave the states because there was no funding. In Fact Climate scientists were showing signs of PTSD from their research. I suppose you should read about that http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a36228/ballad-of-the-sad-climatologists-0815/

So where is the actual Big Money? last time I checked "Secret donors" gave climate denial groups 125 million dollars over 3 years. Some of the scientists for hire were receiving well over a million dollars a year. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jun/09/secretive-donors-gave-us-climate-denial-groups-125m-over-three-years

Guys, i respect your point of view.

Not talking about the swindle movie.

But has any of you watched the Bob carter film till it's end?

I'm a real follower on any discovery about human evolution.

And, seemingly, what made us the most adaptable species on this planet is fast climate change.

Frankly, to me, global warming preachers are just doomsayers.

You say that scientists believe in climate change. Well, which scientists.

Human nature is conservative, and scientists are alike.


As i said before, try not to see the forest for the trees. The climate change "theory" is very convenient to lots of people. But the culprit to me is polution, not global warming or change.


Realy, given the science feedback, it's all down to beliefs, not real hard science.

If you oppose to this computer models. Yeah sure, Computer models are just that. Numbers fed to human built machines. Do you want your lives rulled by inanimate machines into which numbers are fed by mere failure prone humans? Realy. Hard science usualy says, in the actual state of maters, we do know that much. But, whenever there's a paradigm change, whole fields of science colapse.

Do you realy think we know it all with 150 years of temperature measurements and ice cores?

"If you oppose to this computer models. Yeah sure, Computer models are just that. Numbers fed to human built machines. "

"Objection: Why should we trust a bunch of contrived computer models that have never had a prediction confirmed? Talk to me in 100 years.

Answer: Given the absence of a few duplicate planets and some large time machines, we can’t test a 100-year temperature projection. Does that mean the models can’t be validated without waiting 100 years? No.

The climate is an extremely complex system. Our observations of it are by no means complete — even with regard to what’s going on today.

This is a shortcoming we need to work hard to correct, but it is also an opportunity for validating model predictions: Find a measurement we’ve never taken, see how the models say it should turn out, and then go take it and compare.

Still, there are global temperature predictions that have been validated. We can start with one of the pioneers in climate science. Over 100 years ago, in 1896, Svante Arrhenius predicted that human emissions of CO2 would warm the climate. Obviously he used a much simpler model than current Ocean Atmosphere Coupled Global Climate models, which run on super computers.

Arrhenius overestimated the climate’s sensitivity to CO2 by a factor of 2. At the same time, he hugely underestimated the degree of warming, assuming CO2 would rise very slowly (who could have predicted the emissions the future held?). Still, it was a pretty impressive early success for models.

Running the clock forward: in 1988, James Hansen of NASA GISS fame predicted [PDF] that temperature would climb over the next 12 years, with a possible brief episode of cooling in the event of a large volcanic eruption. He made this prediction in a landmark paper and before a Senate hearing, which marked the official “coming out” to the general public of anthropogenic global warming. Twelve years later, he was proven remarkably correct, requiring adjustment only for the timing difference between the simulated future volcanic eruption and the actual eruption of Mount Pinatubo.

And let’s face it, every year of increasing global mean temperature is one more year of success for the climate models. The acceleration of the rise is also playing out as predicted, though to be fair, decades will need to pass before such confirmation is inarguable.

Putting global surface temperatures aside, there are some other significant model predictions made and confirmed:

models predict that surface warming should be accompanied by cooling of the stratosphere, and this has indeed been observed;
models have long predicted warming of the lower, mid, and upper troposphere, even while satellite readings seemed to disagree — but it turns out the satellite analysis was full of errors and on correction, this warming has been observed;
models predict warming of ocean surface waters, as is now observed;
models predict an energy imbalance between incoming sunlight and outgoing infrared radiation, which has been detected;
models predict sharp and short-lived cooling of a few tenths of a degree in the event of large volcanic eruptions, and Mount Pinatubo confirmed this;
models predict an amplification of warming trends in the Arctic region, and this is indeed happening;
and finally, to get back to where we started, models predict continuing and accelerating warming of the surface, and so far they are correct.
It is only long-term predictions that need the passage of time to prove or disprove them, but we don’t have that time at our disposal. Action is required in the very near term. We must take the many successes of climate models as strong validation that their long-term predictions, which forecast dire consequences, are accurate.

If we seek even more confidence, there is another way to test a model’s predictive power over long time periods: hindcasting. By starting the model at some point in the past — say, the turn of the 20th century — and running it forward, feeding it confirmed observational data on GHG, aerosol, solar, volcanic, and albedo forcing, we can directly compare modeled behavior with the actual, observed course of events.

Of course, this has been done many times. Have a look at this page and judge for yourself how the models held up.

Would a prediction made in 1900 of temperature for year 2000 have been validated? Would politicians in 1900 have been wise to heed the warnings of science, had science had today’s climate models then?

Clearly, yes."

http://grist.org/climate-energy/climate-models-are-unproven/

Satamax Antone wrote: But the culprit to me is polution, not global warming or change.

Personally I don't think we need to choose one or the other to be concerned about, or to address. I think they are both important and can be addressed with permaculture.

All arguments asside.


Would you think a warmer Earth would be bad?




What i'm trying to say about polution, i mean nasty one, like plastics into the seas, fertilizers, heavy metals, pesticides, oestrogens, progesterone, all the chemicals etc. That's the real fight. We're getting lured by the people focussing on carbon. Carbon is not a poison.


I'd say, take care of realy nasty polutants first, and then, we'll see what carbon does. We are apes, and a warmer climate is good for us!

Satamax Antone wrote:
Would you think a warmer Earth would be bad?

It probably would be for my region, which is predicted to experience even more dramatic swings between drought and flood than we already have. Like the article I reference above discusses, it's not how warm it might get that is the main problem, but how quickly things are changing which will make it difficult for our human civilization to adapt and for wild plants and animals to adapt. http://grist.org/climate-energy/whats-wrong-with-warmer-weather/

Incidentally, climate science does not consider CO2 a "poison."

This article goes into historical cycles primarily driven by the cyclic output from the sun. The model is predicting that we are transitioning into a cooling period similar, but more intense than the last one 300 years ago. If it's correct, as I suspect it is, then we need to plan for it.

http://www.armstrongeconomics.com/archives/37141

Here I am newly bestowed with 4 apples and the desire to drop a braindump on this thread....

Anyone who cares about the planet and what we are doing to it should be applauded for their intentions, and we should try to agree on objectives before disagreeing on detail
Sticking to facts rather than conjecture can help constructive discussion. ie "satellites show xyz" or "temps are adjusted according to the documentation at suchandsuch link" are better than "the planet is/is not warming"
There are a lot of lies and vested interests on both sides of the debate. Distrust amongst the public for anyone with an opinion is high, and rightly so
Satellites were put into orbit to specifically monitor the part of the atmosphere that according to our understanding of greenhouse effect should show temp rises if increasing CO2 were to ccause higher temps. NASA say vvery little about what these satellites are reporting and are recently downplaying their accuracy.
NASA publishes a historical record of temperature readings as they stood when they were taken and also the adjusted temps, so anyone can see the adjustments that have been made, but the reasons for those adjustments have not been made clear
CO2 concentration is roughly 400 PPM. It was 300 PPM 100 years ago.
Certain graphs have been produced showing a hockey stick effect whereby temp rises have accelerated in recent decades. The datapoints use diverse data, some time periods use thermometer data, some use ice cores, some use tree rings. several hundred trees were looked at before one was settled at that agreed with the conclusion that was preferred.
We are in an interglacial period. Earth has been in interglacial periods before man was producing CO2 to a significant degree. In interglacials, by definition, glaciers retreat. Glacier retreat is not evidence of AGW.
Following the paycheck to find the vested interests can mean money from coal industry or money from govt, both are well funded.
Any big corporation likes legislation as it is a barrier to entry. Oil and energy companies, especially large ones have a lot to gain from pushing AGW theory. Small companies cant afford scrubbers, CO2 sequestration etc.
The horse and buggy ddid not die out because it was legislated out. Similarrly fossil fuels will die when other technologies mature, regardless of govt incentives. Ironically, burning more fossil fuels could lead to a faster rate of industrial output and technological advance. Banning fossil fuels would send us to the dark ages, delaying the point in time when we find a better energy source.
There are lots of reasons to be concerned about burning fossil fuels, from the risk of running out, to the effects of nitrous oxide on people's health, to the geopolitical and military implications of securing supplies to the affordability of access to energy for deprived people and peoples. We must get the CO2 problem, if it is a problem, in perspective rather than it being the be all and end all of policy. EG in Europe people are dying because in some cities over 50% of cars run on diesel, which has been incentivised due to its lower CO2 output per mile, despite it's other adverse effects.

Hello Nick,

I am also a fence sitter about AGW. However, I will have to say that the last link you posted is suspect due to tone. Anyone who labels the opposition as evil and uses a ranting tone may have an ax to grind. Stuff like this sets off my nonsense alarms.

People who believe this nonsense should not read this blog for they must also be a deep-rooted Marxist who believes all the BS of governments. If you buy into that, you might as well buy into everything they say. Only an idiot can possibly think we have the capacity to alter the universe or how it functions.

And at the end comes this gem:

If you have a basement, you can grow your own food without land, which may be the next hot trend.

I sure can't think how that would work; unless one was going to burn lots of coal to run florescent lights and had about an 4000 or so square foot of basement.

Satamax Antone wrote:
Would you think a warmer Earth would be bad?

That's like asking if more fire is bad. More fire is bad if it burns you; it's great if it keeps you warm. How much more? And how will it be distributed? You have to know those answers if you want to address the question meaningfully.

A warmer earth will be good for some people. It will be bad for other people. It could potentially cause megadeaths from drought, wildfire, social instability, starvation, migration, and war. We won't know until we finish the experiment, but I find it hard to see potential benefits that outweigh risks on that scale.

Peter Andrews of Natural Sequence Farming fame, believes climate change is occurring not because of the burning of fossil fuels but because of the destruction of the hydrologic cycle and concurrent desertification and loss of the carbon-capturing function of living ecosystems. I think he has a good point, and the best part of this is these are things we can readily solve through permaculture, and in a relatively short period of time (a decade).

http://www.naturalsequencefarming.com/

hi Ludi, good to see you back

another voice who sees water and hydrology as the important players in climate

http://permaculturenews.org/2015/09/03/new-water-paradigm-case-study-just-add-water/

NEW WATER PARADIGM CASE STUDY: JUST ADD WATER

http://www.ourfoodfuture.com/2122/rehydrating-the-earth-a-new-paradigm-for-water-management/

Rehydrating the Earth: A New Paradigm For Water Management

http://www.waterparadigm.org/indexen.php?web=./home/homeen.html

Water for the Recovery of Climate - A New Water Paradigm

Since someone bought up the idea that its all solar fluctuation...I thought I would counter it with "Solar Schmolar"

I could do this all day. Just play wackamole on each climate crock...and that may have to happen. Wack each and every one.

As for "would a warming climate be bad, McKay", Lets look at the faulty logic. They say, "The earth is really cooling...unless it isn't...then its natural and cyclical...and warming is a good thing"

Meanwhile in the real world of real people- "Syria, where 7.6 million people are displaced inside the country and another four million are seeking asylum elsewhere, a severe drought plagued the country from 2006-09. A recent study pinned the blame for that drought on climate change," http://qz.com/501807/migrant-crisis-if-we-dont-stop-climate-change-then-what-we-see-right-now-is-just-the-beginning/

And- Two untamed wildfires displace 23,000 people in northern California http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/14/two-untamed-wildfires-northern-california-valley-butte.

Soon we will chat about Feedback loops of methane release from northern permafrost melt. Methane being 72 times the greenhouse gas of CO2. Hint= All life on earth ends.


Back to the issue of "Scientific Consensus"...I always have to ask, what type of scientist is your global cooling "Expert" to speak on Paleo Climatology. My wife has Dr. at the front of her name. Being a professor of Sociology doesn't make her qualified to perform brain surgery on me. Same with the shucksters. A science degree in wood construction, or meteorology, or, like one of the grandest con men, "Lord Moncton" Business and media science? "Really?". Only a Paleo Climatologist is qualified....Its not brain surgery.


Since I brought up Fraud Moncton...Ill leave you to a bit more playing wackamole. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfA1LpiYk2o

Satamax Antone wrote:All arguments asside.
Would you think a warmer Earth would be bad?

While certain areas would suffer, certain areas would benefit. For example, it has been predicted that a slight increase in temperature would increase rainfall in the Sahara desert potentially turning much of it into arable land. Here in the Midwest it is expected to get warmer and wetter, so we'll be able to grow even more corn...

Ross Raven wrote:
I could do this all day. Just play wackamole on each climate crock...and that may have to happen. Wack each and every one.

The frustrating thing is that they are the same objections that have been refuted for a decade or more. Almost as if the climate change skeptics are unaware of the information, or perhaps simply uninterested in it.

Ross Raven wrote:Methane being 72 times the greenhouse gas of CO2. Hint= All life on earth ends.

This is easily disproved by the record of previous interglacials when the ice caps melted and all life was not extinguished

The methane greenhouse effect is saturated, just as the CO2 effect is. That's why with CO2 at 400PPM the world is no hotter than it has been at times when the concentration was 300PPM.

This is pointed but fairly gentle. It's not aimed at anybody in this thread, where we're having a relatively civilized discussion of the science. But still relevant, I think, and surely funny:

Hello Steve,

Are you saying that the earth can't get any hotter then it is right now? Even though I am not totally convinced about AGW, that would seem to be a difficult prediction to make.

But I agree that claims of total extinction of life on earth are just scare tactics. Life has gone through an awful lot, including huge astroid impacts and long ice ages. It would be strange if life couldn't come through a bit of warming. Besides, all we need is a big volcanic eruption and things will cool down a bit.

By the way, for the record I don't see anything inherently impossible about AGW. My concern is that some of the claims about the amount of future damage seem to be exaggerated, some of the proposed solutions seem worse then the disease, and some of the claims of future trends have been debunked with the passing of time. Also, the world tends to be more complicated then scientists think it is. Right now the AGW science looks fairly solid, but so did many debunked theories in their day.

I think we should wean ourselves from fossil fuels and plant lots of trees no matter what. So does everyone else here. So really, why does it matter to our world view if it is happening or not? We are already want to build a sustainable world, and are working towards that goal.

Gilbert Fritz wrote:some of the claims of future trends have been debunked with the passing of time.

That's called "science." http://grist.org/climate-energy/they-predicted-global-cooling-in-the-1970s/

No, I meant warming predictions. Some people predicted an ice free arctic by 2013, or a snow free UK by 2000. That does not disproved AGW of course, it just means that there is still some debate as to just how fast things will happen, and even just what will happen. I think anybody can see that there has been a warming trend. But where it goes from here is less certain. Different scientists and models disagree as to just how much warming, when and where.

Also, I want to point out something; here is a rational, polite discussion of AGW online from both standpoints! Permies really is something special!