How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth?

[Amazonian]

This is an interesting thread. But it would be much better without the patronizing.

[Slybacon]

Svarg26.

On sea levels, the signatories are plain wrong. Sea levels are rising: and it's occurring as a result of simple physics. Pretending otherwise is nonsense. And as for the "inundation" of low-lying land, it doesn't happen overnight, but it will happen. If you doubt this just ask any coastal council in Australia what they think about the issue, and what data they are using, and what their forecasts are. The numbers are simple - and by the end of the century there will be many coastal areas with significant inundation issues. If you think that sea levels are not rising, link to specific data rather than to claims in lobbyist documents that just say so. Then we can actually get to and test it.

 

Don't have enough time to go through and answer every point in your debate. Sea Levels ARE NOT rising. For anybody interested in doing some of there own research or sifting through others .... its out there.

[WoodDragon]

Bacon.

Sea Levels ARE NOT rising. For anybody interested in doing some of there own research or sifting through others .... its out there.

I'm sorry, but sea level is rising.

If you want to sift through some links to both sides of the case, and showing why the negative side is wrong, read

How much is sea level rising?

Scientists retracted claim that sea levels are rising

How much will sea levels rise in the 21st Century?

Some background research can be done Australian Online Coastal Information or at the CSIRO's sea level page, which has a graph that shows emphatically that sea level is rising.

Why do you believe that sea level is not rising, Bacon?

[Edit:

Yes, there is plenty of stuff "out there" that says that sea level is not increasing, but none of it is based in actual science or on reliable measurement. This makes such material really "out there". But if anyone has a source that they think is the bee's knees, I'll happily look at it and test its reliability.]

Edited February 17, 2011 by WoodDragon

[random]

What about the south pacific islands that are being inundated by sea water and hence becoming unliveable? Isn't that a simple way to understand that sea levels are indeed rising, minus any scientific jargon for those of us less intelligent *points to self* ?

[Slybacon]

The Cove in La Jolla 1871

A more Recent Photo

What about the south pacific islands that are being inundated by sea water and hence becoming unliveable?

 

This whole area sits on a fairly active fault line.

Edited February 17, 2011 by Slybacon

[lickapop]

lakes dont count

[Slybacon]

Why do you believe that sea level is not rising, Bacon?

 

Because I have no reason to believe it IS

Edited February 17, 2011 by Slybacon

[Slybacon]

Yes, there is plenty of stuff "out there" that says that sea level is not increasing, but none of it is based in actual science or on reliable measurement. This makes such material really "out there". But if anyone has a source that they think is the bee's knees, I'll happily look at it and test its reliability.]

 

I appreciate your views, however you have a tenancy to rely on very mainstream sources of data in which the associations have been deemed suspicious.

Reliable Measurement ?

You mean like tide markers on poles in areas already subsiding or satellite data from N.A.S.A?

How about some actual photo evidence of risen sea levels that aren't small islands. How about some evidence from heavily populated area's with photo records dating back to the early last century. Surely there would be some visible evidence of such sea rises?

EDIT> If the earth has risen 7 inches since late 1800 isn't that representative of a 7in radius increase. Shouldn't we be spinning slower as well. So according to AGW we are not only getting warmer with risk of being inundated by the sea we are also spinning at a slower rate further enhancing the warming, but i "sea" no evidence of this?

Edited February 17, 2011 by Slybacon

[Slybacon]

What about the south pacific islands that are being inundated by sea water and hence becoming unliveable? Isn't that a simple way to understand that sea levels are indeed rising, minus any scientific jargon for those of us less intelligent *points to self* ?

 

The Case of Tuvalu

Another famous place is the Tuvalu Islands, which are

supposed to soon disappear because they’ve put out too much

carbon dioxide. There we have a tide gauge record, a

variograph record, from 1978, so it’s 30 years. And again, if

you look there, absolutely no trend, no rise.

So, from where do they get this rise in the Tuvalu Islands?

We know in the Tuvalu Islands that there was a Japanese

pineapple industry which extracted too much fresh water from

the inland, and those islands have very little fresh water

available from precipitation, rain. So, if you take out too much,

you destroy the water magazine, and you bring seawater into

the magazine, which is not nice. So they took out too much

freshwater and in came salt water. And of course the local

people were upset. But then it was much easier to say, “No,

no! It’s the global sea level rising! It has nothing to do with our

extraction of freshwater.” So there you have it. This is a local

industry which doesn’t pay.

You have Vanuatu, and also in the Pacific, north of New

Zealand and Fiji—there is the island Tegua. They said they had

to evacuate it, because the sea level was rising. But again, you

look at the tide-gauge record: There is absolutely no signal that

the sea level is rising. If anything, you could say that maybe the

tide is lowering a little bit, but absolutely no rising.

And again, where do they [the IPCC] get it from? They get it

from their inspiration, their hopes, their computer models, but

not from observation, which is terrible.

[Guest svarg26]

the people in those photos should be running for their lives. are they crazy? can't they see the sea level rising around them. can somebody please think about their children. at the current rate they will be under water in about 3000 years. this is terrifying.

woody please do something.

[random]

ok well thanks where did that info come from. And if global warming is all a lie, what is the purpose of the lie? Thanks.

[Slybacon]

ok well thanks where did that info come from. And if global warming is all a lie, what is the purpose of the lie? Thanks.

 

Its all about Power and Control. Fear.

A common enemy to all!

http://pog.nu/02projects/1_maldives.htm

http://pog.nu/sea/10_special_projects/maldive.htm

EDIT> Here is another example - It is common knowledge and a fav of AGW supporters to say glaciers are melting and causing sea levels to rise. Why are glaciers melting because forests are being cleared and no longer precipitate water to be turned into snow to continue the process. They don't show other glaciers in the world that are growing. Its far easier to blame YOU and your horrible western way causing the global warming crisis then it is to just take responsibility for logging and killing of localised industries.

Edited February 17, 2011 by Slybacon

[Slybacon]

If you want to sift through some links to both sides of the case, and showing why the negative side is wrong, read

How much is sea level rising?

Scientists retracted claim that sea levels are rising

How much will sea levels rise in the 21st Century?

 

I want my 15 mins back. I can't say those articles are compelling mate.

[WoodDragon]

La Jolla (where the Scripps Institution of Oceanography is located) has a tidal range of around 2 and a half metres. How do you know that the second photo wasn't taken at a lower tide level that the first?

And do you understand that even if the photos were taken at exactly the same phase of the tidal cycle, which is highly unlikely, it would be difficult to discern by eye the increase over that time in an area with a steep shore and wave action?

The graphs that you pasted are typical of many sites around the world, and when these sites are analysed carefully they do in fact show a rise. You're assuming that it will stand out like dog's balls, even over very small intervals of time such as a few decades, and that's just a wrong assumption in the case of noisy data of the sort in these plots. Don't forget that the mean annual rise across the globe is only 2 or 3 millimetres per year in recent times, and it was less a century ago. This rate, underlying the noise of metres of tide tidal range, is difficult for human eyeballs to grasp - simply 'eyeballing' a graph that shows daily, weekly, or monthly sea levels will ensure that most lay people completely miss the underlying sea level trend.

It's there to see in the annual data though, because the noisiest parts of the overlying tidal cycles are subtracted. And the thing with the rate of sea level rise is that it's increasing compared with the relative statis that occurred for much of the latter Holocene, so in the future it will become more and more obvious. And with more and more obvious consequences.

I appreciate your views, however you have a tenancy to rely on very mainstream sources of data in which the associations have been deemed suspicious.

By whom have the "mainstream sources of data" been deemed "suspicious"? Certainly not by any credible scientific body - but of course, this could be because all scientists and their organisations are a part of a global conspiracy, no?

No.

The rises recorded by scientists are done so by thousands of independent groups, using many different techniques. And these techniques agree with each other extraordinarily well. And they agree with satellite measurements, which use the same technology that can send rovers to Mars, and satellites to the outer reaches of the solar system to intercept the furthest planets.

There might be a lot of non-scientific internet chatter that these techniques are not accurate, but that chatter is bunkum.

This is one area where the mainstream has it right, just as it does when it uses the same technologies to fly jets loaded with hundreds of passengers fromone side of the world to the other, and to land them in the dark safely.

EDIT> If the earth has risen 7 inches since late 1800 isn't that representative of a 7in radius increase. Shouldn't we be spinning slower as well. So according to AGW we are not only getting warmer with risk of being inundated by the sea we are also spinning at a slower rate further enhancing the warming, but i "sea" no evidence of this?

There's a very simple way of addressing this question... melting the ice caps and thus turning all of that ice to water, and increasing the sea level by however many metres it ends up resulting in (that actual figure doesn't matter in the calculation), will cause day length to increase by two thirds of one second.

Yep, that's a whole two thirds of one second per day, by melting all of the planet's ice. Who would notice that?

If you want to check the working, it's here. In fact, if you want to check much of the claims of pseudoscience, Steven Dutch's site is well worth careful perusal.

On the matter of Tuvalu, the island's subsidence is recognised by scientists (who do you think discovered it?), but it is also experiencing demonstrable sea level rise from thermal expansion and from the beginnings of ice melt. Just as would be expected in a universe where the laws of physics and geometry apply.

meeka, on 17 February 2011 - 03:20 PM, said:

ok well thanks where did that info come from. And if global warming is all a lie, what is the purpose of the lie? Thanks.

Its all about Power and Control. Fear.

Sorry Synchro Bacon [Edit 18 Feb 2011], but this is a descent into conspiracy theory, and as a scientist myself I can assure you that such a conspiracy does not exist. If it does, please show me some evidence that describes where I can join the party, because I, and the hundreds of scientists I know and have worked with, all missed getting our invitations.

It is common knowledge and a fav of AGW supporters to say glaciers are melting and causing sea levels to rise. Why are glaciers melting because forests are being cleared and no longer precipitate water to be turned into snow to continue the process. They don't show other glaciers in the world that are growing. Its far easier to blame YOU and your horrible western way causing the global warming crisis then it is to just take responsibility for logging and killing of localised industries.

Sorry again Synchro Bacon [Edit 18 Feb 2011], but once more you're way off the mark.

Kilimanjaro is the only mountain thought to be losing snow cover from logging. Logging certainly hasn't been causing melting of glaciers around the world - for pity's sake, there are not even forests in Greenland in the where glaciers are melting like candles on a birthday cake.

This is what's happening to glaciers,and it's happening because the planet is warming.

As I always ask, if you disagree, please use some verifiable science to back up your claims, rather than skipping to the next denialist canard. It doesn't serve your cause to not support your arguments with testable data, and it's just wasting my time to be continually chasing down talking points that have been shot down countless times in the past.

[Edit:

Fixed reference to Bacon instead of Synchro]

Edited February 18, 2011 by WoodDragon

[WoodDragon]

I can't say those articles are compelling mate.

Why can't you say this, Synchro Bacon [Edit 18 Feb 2011]? What is it about the many primary papers, that are linked to those pieces, that you feel is unsupportable? Do you have data that disproves them? Do you have the expertise to point out where they are wrong? Do you have even primary references that does these jobs for you?

Or is it just wishful thinking?

Edited February 18, 2011 by WoodDragon

[WoodDragon]

And Synchro Bacon [Edit 18 Feb 2011], this thread isn't supposed to be about climate change. Can we keep discussion of that off-thread unless it relates directed to sustainability of population?

Edited February 18, 2011 by WoodDragon

[synchromesh]

Sorry Synchro, but this is a descent into conspiracy theory, and as a scientist myself I can assure you that such a conspiracy does not exist. If it does, please show me some evidence that describes where I can join the party, because I, and the hundreds of scientists I know and have worked with, all missed getting our invitations.

Sorry again Synchro, but once more you're way off the mark.

Why can't you say this, Synchro? What is it about the many primary papers, that are linked to those pieces, that you feel is unsupportable? Do you have data that disproves them? Do you have the expertise to point out where they are wrong? Do you have even primary references that does these jobs for you?

Or is it just wishful thinking?

Are you sure that you're talking to the right person?

Pfft, some scientist you turned out to be...

And Synchro, this thread isn't supposed to be about climate change. Can we keep discussion of that off-thread unless it relates directed to sustainability of population?

 

You're the one who's been discussing it numbnuts... I barely mentioned it.

[WoodDragon]

So Synchro [Edit 18 Feb 2011], are you saying that the world's scientists are conspirators, that their data are disproven, and that your faith that these two preceding statements are correct is sufficient validation of your stance?

By your own admission, a few weeks back, you base your opinions on your religious faith. What is it about your faith in your beliefs, whether they are religious beliefs, or simply your belief that scientists are involved in a secretive global conspiracy to perpetrate the most astounding fraud in all history, that makes you more correct than an epistmological process founded upon logic, reason, and rationality? A process that has delivered humans the technology and the knowledge to understand and to manipulate the world in an unprecedented way, no less.

I keep presenting demonstrably-supported facts, and refuting ideas that you present (such as the notion that rising sea levels would have any real-world impact on the length of a day), and you blithely move on to your next batch of memes without acknowledging that your last lot was wrong. How, in this process, is it that you feel that you have the truth of the matter and that tens of thousands of professional scientists are wrong - or worse, that they are committing a monstrous conspiracy of fraud?

I really like much of the stuff that you post on other threads, and I have tried as hard as I can since the HIV thread to politely engage you in a way that I might actually be able to show you that some of the things that you've heard pertaining to the fields of biology and physics are wrong, but it all just seems to bounce off. If the practice and the product of science itself is not sufficient to convince you, then how could anything possibly pursuade you that some of the things that you accept on faith are incorrect?

Edited February 18, 2011 by WoodDragon

[synchromesh]

What in the fuck are you talking about?! You're still getting me mixed up with Bacon, psycho!!

By your own admission, a few weeks back, you base your opinions on your religious faith. What is it about your faith in your beliefs, whether they are religious beliefs, or simply you belief that scientists are involved in a secretive global conspiracy to perpetrate the most astounding fraud in all history, that makes you more correct that an epistmological process founded upon logic, reason, and rationality? A process that has delivered humans the technology and the knowledge to understand and to manipulate the world in an unprecedented way, no less.

Fuck you guys can't half talk some shit! Seriously!

[Guest svarg26]

i am still waiting for woody to explain how a "a 20 per cent decrease in rainfall" will cause more flooding. you've got to love scientists.

when all else fails scream, conspiracy theory!

good work, pip squeak.

[WoodDragon]

Synchro.

Yes, I did mix you up with Bacon. Mea culpa. The reason I did so is because I have been trying to be more polite both with you and with Bacon, than I have been with Svarg26, because I have respect for you, as I have with Bacon.

Unfortunately for me, when I typed my responses to Bacon I had others tab open referring to something you said. I didn't pick up that I was using the wrong name, even when you pointed it out at #217. My very very bad. I let my frustrations with pseudoscientific arguments get in the way of checking who I was talking to.

Edited February 18, 2011 by WoodDragon

[WoodDragon]

Svarg26:

i am still waiting for woody to explain how a "a 20 per cent decrease in rainfall" will cause more flooding. you've got to love scientists.

It's very easy to have both - over a period of decades there can be less total rainfall (= long drought), ocassionally interspersed with relatively short periods of heavy rain.

Queensland has just come out of some of the worse drought is has ever experienced. It is quite likely to experience more such droughts in the future, at greater frequency as the planet warms, and to have these broken with more short, intense bursts of rain, and still have an overall decrease of precipitation.

And note that climate models are currently relatively coarse. They don't resolve at small geographical scales unless there are confluences of certain features. There is bound to be some divergence from the current models at fine resolution, and if you studied the modelling you'd know that they explicitly include confidence intervals for exactly this statisitcal uncertainty.

At regional, at national, and especially at global levels though, the modelling is already fairly tight. If you can show why it's not, using physics, please share it with us.

[Slybacon]

And Synchro Bacon [Edit 18 Feb 2011], this thread isn't supposed to be about climate change. Can we keep discussion of that off-thread unless it relates directed to sustainability of population?

 

Yeah it was kinda high jacked..... You could always come back to our other thread.... We wont bite.

[Slybacon]

So Synchro [Edit 18 Feb 2011], are you saying that the world's scientists are conspirators, that their data are disproven, and that your faith that these two preceding statements are correct is sufficient validation of your stance?

By your own admission, a few weeks back, you base your opinions on your religious faith. What is it about your faith in your beliefs, whether they are religious beliefs, or simply your belief that scientists are involved in a secretive global conspiracy to perpetrate the most astounding fraud in all history, that makes you more correct than an epistmological process founded upon logic, reason, and rationality? A process that has delivered humans the technology and the knowledge to understand and to manipulate the world in an unprecedented way, no less.

I keep presenting demonstrably-supported facts, and refuting ideas that you present (such as the notion that rising sea levels would have any real-world impact on the length of a day), and you blithely move on to your next batch of memes without acknowledging that your last lot was wrong. How, in this process, is it that you feel that you have the truth of the matter and that tens of thousands of professional scientists are wrong - or worse, that they are committing a monstrous conspiracy of fraud?

I really like much of the stuff that you post on other threads, and I have tried as hard as I can since the HIV thread to politely engage you in a way that I might actually be able to show you that some of the things that you've heard pertaining to the fields of biology and physics are wrong, but it all just seems to bounce off. If the practice and the product of science itself is not sufficient to convince you, then how could anything possibly pursuade you that some of the things that you accept on faith are incorrect?

 

WD- We will discuss this further in a more suitable thread. Oh how much better this would be in person ....... Maybe one day

I do hear exactly what you are saying, and I dont think it is some HUGE global conspiracy that all scientists are in on. But I do believe that there is a pecking order amongst todays science and all the "accepted" and used figures and observable data is only credible if its from selected sources that fit the situation. If you will, please have a read through this article http://www.climatechangefacts.info/ClimateChangeDocuments/NilsAxelMornerinterview.pdf and give me your opinion. If you could also peruse through the links to his current project in the Maldives I would like to know what is unscientific about this evidence.

Thankyou for the calc of 1/4 of a second, it did have me thinking.

My religious beliefs do not factor into this discussion, and I have taken on board what you have said about HIV. Don't worry I am listening. I can't say you have totally changed my mind but you definitely make me question myself so your not flogging a dead horse.

EDIT>

On another note, you mentioned about the legitimacy of when the data is collected in the south pacific, but what makes your figures anymore reliable. Is it because they are "peer Reviewed" by "trustworthy" scientific organizations????

Edited February 18, 2011 by Slybacon

[Slybacon]

Why can't you say this, Synchro Bacon [Edit 18 Feb 2011]? What is it about the many primary papers, that are linked to those pieces, that you feel is unsupportable? Do you have data that disproves them? Do you have the expertise to point out where they are wrong? Do you have even primary references that does these jobs for you?

Or is it just wishful thinking?

 

MAte you can't either..... Lets be honest here..... We are both basing our ideas on work by someone else, so I don't know what makes your facts any more special.

The graphs I posted above are just as reliable as any of the tidal graphs or computer models by the CSIRO

Edited February 18, 2011 by Slybacon