North Pole temperature above freezing - December 30, 2015

[Meatservo]

I'm just going to plant tomatoes and bell peppers and see what happens.

[Rockie]

I can live with that. The two points that I would like to see addressed are simple; don't nuke our current economy in a rush to get to a green one and don't ship even more unaccountable cash to third world despots in the name of fighting climate change. Other than that, I'm pretty flexible.

I completely agree, the difference I guess is the horizon. In the western world we are too focused on immediate expenses and not long term ones. It's the long term ones that do the most damage and by now even the most dense among us should be aware of the long term consequences of doing nothing. As for transferring cash to third world despots - I couldn't agree more. We've already made far too many African billionaires with foreign aid and I personally have no appetite for more. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't find a way..

[FICU]

The increased rate of warming has been propagated by the massive increase in our planet's population particularly in Asia and the only way the man made contributions can be stopped is by stopping population growth. This planet will continue to warm no matter what we do because the largest contributors in Asia will not reduce their carbon output which will only grow exponentially.

[HiLo]

To answer your question, I don't model anything. I have no knowledge whatsoever of climatology an only an operational knowledge of weather. I present no scientific arguments in favour or against man-made climate change. I only defer to science.

What are your arguments again?

Fair enough. As I stated earlier, I take no issue with the basic premise that human CO2 emissions are warming up the planet. Where I do take issue is with non-scientists, (by which I mean politicians), stating that it is "settled" that we are on the brink of imminent disaster. The system is just too complex for anyone to make a definitive statement like that. Anyone whose had real scientific training knows that nothing is ever settled; any theory, law or concept is open to revision. There are a number of different models out there that predict vastly different magnitudes and rates for temperature change. Even having said all that, I'd still be willing to proceed IAW the worst case scenario if the people who were advocating for it had a viable plan to fix it. The sad fact of the matter is that they don't. All I've seen so far is plans to tax developed nations into poverty and send part of that money to 'developing' nations, (I guess they are called developing nations because they are developing nuclear weapons and space programs). The whole thing just smells too much like opportunists using scare tactics to herd us over their cliff. I suspect you see it differently, and that's cool. It's a free country, for now.

Actually, it's a vast majority of climate scientists who say that.

[Rockie]

I'd still be willing to proceed IAW the worst case scenario if the people who were advocating for it had a viable plan to fix it. The sad fact of the matter is that they don't.

They don't yet, and they won't until there is political will to develop a viable plan. Naysayers and flat-earthers have been preventing that but the tide is turning. This isn't something that can be laid out in a 300 page document either. Our whole economy and way of life basically has to change from a carbon energy world to something clean and sustainable. If half the money spent on the last war in Iraq for instance was spent completing the development of fusion reaction the world would be a very different place. It's simply a matter of priorities.

[cgzro]

The increased rate of warming has been propagated by the massive increase in our planet's population particularly in Asia and the only way the man made contributions can be stopped is by stopping population growth. This planet will continue to warm no matter what we do because the largest contributors in Asia will not reduce their carbon output which will only grow exponentially.

China's population is projected to peak in about 2030 after which it is projected to slowly decline.

[Rookie50]

FWIW I believe in ( and have invested in) companies promoting solar development in Asia.

The population growth and resulting pollution issues are serious.

They have to get off coal, now. But will only happen as people demand better air quality.

[FICU]

China's population is projected to peak in about 2030 after which it is projected to slowly decline.

China just approved 2 children per family. There will be no population decline. They will continue to be the largest contributor to the issue.

[co-joe]

Just in the past month or so I've noticed these huge billboards in YYC advertising the "Friends of science" and their agenda but mostly in industrial parks and areas where let's face it; the education level is lower, than say; in downtown. It's crazy stuff. I guess you have nut jobs on both sides of the climate change discussion.

http://www.friendsofscience.org/

If you want to argue against climate change they have lots of squiggly lines of graphs to back up their agenda... Carry on please...grabs pop corn.

[HiLo]

China's population is projected to peak in about 2030 after which it is projected to slowly decline.

China just approved 2 children per family. There will be no population decline. They will continue to be the largest contributor to the issue.

Keep in mind that they are nowhere near being big per-capita energy users. In fact we are:

2012 (latest data available):
China per capita energy use: 2,143 kg of oil equivalent
Canada per capita energy use: 7,226 kg of oil equivalent

Source: The World Bank

Edited to add source

[YBW-Kid]

I'm not a scientist and I'm obviously not as educated as most of the posters on this topic, but I have made some observations over the past 35 years which make me wonder. I am very close to both nature and aviation and cannot wonder about how the many many changes I have observed in both these area's over the past 35 years may be affecting the change in our climate.

In school I was taught that worlds forests and tree's both produce the oxygen we breath and clean the air from pollutants and carbon. It is something which I seldom hear mentioned in the climate change discussions. Machinery is now so extremely efficient at logging vast area's of our worlds forests. What took weeks 35 years ago can today be accomplished in only hours. Sure these trees are a renewable resource, but I can tell you these forests will never recover to a natural level ever again in our lifetimes. As the demand increases, the population will start harvesting smaller trees before they grow into the massive oxygen generators and carbon filters nature intended them to be. There's too much money in those trees to just let them sit there. In many parts of the world, clear cut logging is unbridled and wiping out vast area's of forests. We gotta know this mechanized wide spread logging of our forests is contributing significantly to the changes in our atmosphere.

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Most folks here will not like what I am about to say, but I believe one of the huge contributors to placing millions of tons of carbon daily into the atmosphere is the massive growth in the number of aircraft now in our skies 24 hours per day. The shear number of aircraft operating all across the globe has dramatically increased over the past 35 years I have been watching. Just consider the number of aircraft in the air right now, burning thousands of pounds per hour each. They will land and in two hours will be back in the air at it again. Airlines, military aircraft, cargo flights, not to mention the thousands of small corporate jets with 2-6 people on board. Constantly burning fuel into the atmosphere 24 hours per day with no end in sight.

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Combine the logging, aircraft, automobiles, coal burning electric generation facilities, factories etc. As a sum, these man made factors cannot be a good thing for our atmosphere.

So instead of charging another $1.00 per litre for fuel, perhaps we should start looking at real things that may make a tangible difference. Things like developing alternate building materials cheaper than wood so we cut down less trees. Plant billions of trees now and continue to do so into the future. Plant 10 trees in your backyard and another 10 in your front yard. Restrict logging. Recycle existing wood products and consider smaller more energy efficient homes.

Combine two airline flights which are not full into one flight more often. Or start restricting routes so current flights become full because of demand. Take a real hard look at corporate aircraft with only the boss onboard. Trains are wonderful and in many places much more efficient and definitely more comfortable than squeezing into a Dash-8.

Solar and wind generation everywhere is a good start. How about creating lane reversal patterns in all the busy cities with congested traffic lanes going one way during rush hour when the other direction is wide open. Make the road systems with less stop lights and more traffic circles. Electric & hybrid vehicles with solar panels wind turbines on their roofs. Hydrogen technology for transport trucks and for farm and construction equipment. Redesign cities with business districts closer to where people live so they can use a bicycle or bus if they desire. Start looking after our oceans like they were our lakes.

Doing some of the things I mention would certainly make our Planet Earth a better place even if it is only the Sun's cycles causing these changes.

[cgzro]

China just approved 2 children per family. There will be no population decline. They will continue to be the largest contributor to the issue.

Two children per couple is not enough to grow a population. You need 2.1 or something like that due to early deaths. So at two children per couple China and any other population will still be in decline.

Also as a population become wealthier they have fewer children.

These are not very controversial facts.

[cgzro]

Just to add to the previous post about population growth.

2.1 is the approximate replacement rate, i.e. steady population for a developed country. For undeveloped countries the replacement rate is much much larger. There are some good numbers from the WHO on replacement rates v.s. GDP and its a rather nice inverse exponential curve asymptotic to 2.1 or so.

So if/as our world gets wealthier we will naturally reach a peak population and then start to decline. In fact the replacement rates world wide are dropping steadily as the curves suggest.

As a result the best most humane way to deal with any impacts of large populations is to get people out of poverty world wide as quickly as possible and to try to even out the spread of wealth.

Inhumane approaches are also possible and no doubt some people would advocate them as long as they personally are not impacted.

Access to energy is one of the fundamental catalysts of wealth because energy allows us to multiply our ability to do work at lower cost. Therefore providing low cost energy to Asia, India and Africa will have profound long term positive impacts for population stability.

[Rockie]

Most folks here will not like what I am about to say, but I believe one of the huge contributors to placing millions of tons of carbon daily into the atmosphere is the massive growth in the number of aircraft now in our skies 24 hours per day. The shear number of aircraft operating all across the globe has dramatically increased over the past 35 years I have been watching. Just consider the number of aircraft in the air right now, burning thousands of pounds per hour each. They will land and in two hours will be back in the air at it again. Airlines, military aircraft, cargo flights, not to mention the thousands of small corporate jets with 2-6 people on board. Constantly burning fuel into the atmosphere 24 hours per day with no end in sight.

The link below is to a 2005 ICAO report on the aviation contribution to GHG's and other pollutants. In that year they estimated aviation contributed about 2.5% of all CO2 emissions worldwide, but that figure was predicted to increase up to 4.5 times by 2050. I haven't had time to read the entire report but it looks interesting.

http://www.icao.int/environmental-prote ... Ch1_en.pdf

September 11th, 2001 was a very clear day in Ontario and New York (which no doubt helped those maniacs tremendously), and the grounding of all North American air traffic over the next few days made it exceptionally so. The difference in the clarity of the air was striking.

[complexintentions]

I don't give a shit if climate change is happening or isn't, is man-made or isn't. Really, I don't. Who knows, maybe this is the Big Correction that restores humanity to a sustainable level. If that level happens to be zero, so be it. We've always been stupid as a species, anyway. Simple Darwinism. If we deserve to survive, we will. When I consider most people I meet, I have my doubts. ("Um, what's that? Was just taking a selfie.")

I have to laugh when I see "save the planet" stickers. Save the planet? The planet will be fine. It'll still be around in 1,000 years. Humans? Perhaps not. *shrug* Any one of us is but a blink of an eye, time-wise.

All I know is I'm not paying some bullshit carbon tax to the Gerald Butts, excuse me JT2, communist gubmint.

If y'all care to, fill yer boots. But as long as places like China are building a coal-fired generator every week, the Liberals can kiss my sweet white expat ass. Ideological nonsense.

[Lloyd YWG FIC]

. Plant billions of trees now and continue to do so into the future. Plant 10 trees in your backyard and another 10 in your front yard.

Can't go wrong planting trees. That number in a yard might not be realistic but even one is good.

“Society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.”

― Anonymous Greek Proverb

As I am now "old", I can do this.

[Rockie]

I don't give a shit if climate change is happening or isn't, is man-made or isn't. Really, I don't.

We've always been stupid as a species, anyway. Simple Darwinism. If we deserve to survive, we will. When I consider most people I meet, I have my doubts.

You don't see the irony between these two statements?

[HiLo]

I don't give a shit if climate change is happening or isn't, is man-made or isn't. Really, I don't. Who knows, maybe this is the Big Correction that restores humanity to a sustainable level. If that level happens to be zero, so be it. We've always been stupid as a species, anyway. Simple Darwinism. If we deserve to survive, we will. When I consider most people I meet, I have my doubts. ("Um, what's that? Was just taking a selfie.")

I have to laugh when I see "save the planet" stickers. Save the planet? The planet will be fine. It'll still be around in 1,000 years. Humans? Perhaps not. *shrug* Any one of us is but a blink of an eye, time-wise.

All I know is I'm not paying some bullshit carbon tax to the Gerald Butts, excuse me JT2, communist gubmint.

If y'all care to, fill yer boots. But as long as places like China are building a coal-fired generator every week, the Liberals can kiss my sweet white expat ass. Ideological nonsense.

So what you're saying is that you are totally fine with causing extreme suffering mainly to citizens of underdeveloped nations?

http://www.theguardian.com/global-devel ... tries-ipcc

[NunavutPA-12]

I don't give a shit if climate change is happening or isn't, is man-made or isn't. Really, I don't. Who knows, maybe this is the Big Correction that restores humanity to a sustainable level. If that level happens to be zero, so be it. We've always been stupid as a species, anyway. Simple Darwinism. If we deserve to survive, we will. When I consider most people I meet, I have my doubts. ("Um, what's that? Was just taking a selfie.")

I have to laugh when I see "save the planet" stickers. Save the planet? The planet will be fine. It'll still be around in 1,000 years. Humans? Perhaps not. *shrug* Any one of us is but a blink of an eye, time-wise.

All I know is I'm not paying some bullshit carbon tax to the Gerald Butts, excuse me JT2, communist gubmint.

If y'all care to, fill yer boots. But as long as places like China are building a coal-fired generator every week, the Liberals can kiss my sweet white expat ass. Ideological nonsense.

+1

I think a lot of us feel that way. We're tired of politicians making grand commitments that they won't keep, setting targets that they will never reach and throwing away money that would be better spent elsewhere.

[Rockie]

But as long as places like China are building a coal-fired generator every week, the Liberals can kiss my sweet white expat ass.

China has a long way to go, but they made the Harper government look like the chumps they were.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b1f3ec6c-65cd ... z3w8ctg5X1

Ideological nonsense.

You're confused. This is science, and it's ideology that is denying it.