Acapulco now modern ruins 54

[Reverse_Bias]

This is one of the few instances of a city with lots of fancy high rise buildings taking a direct hit from a catagory 5 hurricane. Almost every inhabitable structure in and around Acapulco looks gutted. No doubt this is going to take years to get it back to its pre storm status.

Hurricane Otis was predicted to be a tropical storm at landfall the day before, so it also represents a modern weather forecasting being pushed beyond its limits.

https://youtu.be/pTjMK4qCDyg?si=zX8U2M9BeFjkkORv

https://youtu.be/0Pb9iq4cbS8?si=QzSzZF6-8qhPxefS

 

[SWComposites]

Yes, the climate is likely changing due to human influence.

But, anyone who thinks we can hold the climate to be exactly that of say 1970 for the next 10,000 years is a clueless fool. The earth’s climate has had very large variations even over the past 100k years, much less the past 1m years. Cripe, in the 1970s science was freaking out about the coming ice age. Maybe someday we will conclude “global warming” was a good thing.

And our record of weather events is a pitifully short time period (maybe a could hundred years at best) relative to earth epoch time scales.

 

[3DDave]

We don't expect the climate to remain the same, but forcing a change that would have taken 5000 years into 500 is a problem to adapt to, particularly when it's done by releasing Carbon back into the environment at a rate 1000X or more than it was originally removed.

Imagine eating a year's worth of food in 30 days, except it's replaced with fat and starch.

The more irritating claim is "energy independence." No one is making more fossil fuel so if the easy to recover material is sold at low prices now then it leaves America vulnerable in the future. Seems more patriotic to deplete everyone else's reserves first and use them as raw materials rather than for fuel.

" in the 1970s science was freaking out about the coming ice age" was based on wide reporting of a minority opinion.

But as John Cook points out over at Skeptical Science, global cooling was much more an invention of the media than it was a real scientific concern. A survey of peer-reviewed scientific papers published between 1965 and 1979 shows that the large majority of research at the time predicted that the earth would warm as carbon-dioxide levels rose — as indeed it has. And some of those global-cooling projections were based on the idea that aerosol levels in the atmosphere — which are a product of air pollution from sources like coal burning and which contribute to cooling by deflecting sunlight in the atmosphere — would keep rising. But thanks to environmental legislation like the Clean Air Acts, global air-pollution levels — not including greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide — peaked in the 1970s and began declining.

The reality is that scientists in the 1970s were just beginning to understand how climate change and aerosol pollution might impact global temperatures. Add in the media-hype cycle — which was true then as it is now — and you have some coverage that turned out to be wrong. But thanks to the Internet, those stories stay undead, recycled by notorious climate skeptics like George Will. Pay no attention to the Photoshop. It’s the science we should heed — and the science says man-made climate change is real and very, very worrying.

https://time.com/5670942/time-magazine-ice-age-cover-hoax/

 

[TugboatEng]

500 years, 5000 years, why restrict your window to such a narrow time range. Over the past 14,000 years sea level rise has historically been significantly faster than it is post industrial revolution. Sea levels have risen 300 feet in 14k years. That's a real 1/4 of an inch per year and the rate was likely much higher because there has been no remarkable sea level rise within written human history (the last 2000 years).

Want to make a real change? Let's look in to the effects of LED (daylight temp) lighting on insect populations.

 

[dik]

We've accomplished in decades what previously has happened in millennia...

-----*****-----
So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik

 

[TugboatEng]

Are you lying or are you that misinformed? Since the end of the last ice age sea level rise has averaged 1/4 inch per year. We have been nowhere near that rate since the beginning of the industrial revolution.

 

[3DDave]

The amount of available land based ice has significantly decreased, so of course the rate of water rise has gone down. What has gone up is the temperature, and drastically. Once the permafrost is involved kiss the Greenland and Antarctic ice landmass goodbye.

Together, the Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets hold enough water to raise sea level by roughly 65 meters (more than 210 feet) if they melt entirely. That will not happen in the foreseeable future, but it hardly takes the entire loss of an ice sheet to affect population centers worldwide. According to a 2019 estimate by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 680 million people live in low-lying coastal zones, and that number could exceed 1 billion by 2050. The melt of just a tiny fraction of an ice sheet exacerbates high-tide flooding, and rapid change on an ice sheet could spell disaster.

For example, Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier drains a giant expanse of the ice sheet in West Antarctica. The glacier covers an area larger than the state of Florida. At its current rate of retreat, it is expected to contribute several centimeters (a few inches) to sea level rise by the end of this century. A worst-case scenario involves sudden retreat of the glacier beginning later this century, loosening enough ice to raise sea level by more than 3 meters (10 feet) over the next few hundred years

https://nsidc.org/learn/ask-scientist/where-will-sea-level-rise-most-ice-sheet-melt

 

[TugboatEng]

If that's your source I guess we'll settle for grossly misinformed. Talk about an organization with a conflict of interest.

Let's look at how outrageous that claim is. 125k years ago the North polar ice cap completely melted. Sea level was 8m higher then than it is today. This is within the history of humans as well. The oldest human fossils are estimated to be 233k years old.

There has also been a time when Earth has no ice at the end of the Cretaceous period. Certainly geological surveys and fossil records could estimate what the peak sea level was? Nah, it pays more to scare the public with ludicrous numbers.

 

[jhardy1]

@TugBoatEng:

Yes, you are 100% correct that past climate changes (over timescales of tens of thousands to millions of years) have exceeded what is projected as the most likely outcome of recent anthropogenic climate change in the coming decades.

The big differences are the rates of change (decades, rather than millennia), and of course the fact that human civilization is not only causing the current very rapid changes, but will also have to deal with it.

On the timescale of climate change over the past 100,000 years or so, we have seen drastic changes in regional vegetation across the globe, together with the loss of entire ecosystems (to be replaced by new ecosystems), and the wholesale extinction of megafauna across the globe. Does the fact that we might be responsible for something comparable in the next 50 to 100 years not bother you?

As for the impacts of climate change on human civilization: there is ample historical evidence of what happens when the regional climate changes by a couple of degrees over a few centuries; as a key example, consider the part of the Middle East that is known as the birthplace of western civilization; today, it is a couple of degrees warmer, and much, much drier than it was 5,000 years ago. Now consider those sorts on impacts across the globe, but happening over the next century. And you are still not concerned?

http://julianh72.blogspot.com

 

[jhardy1]

And as a postscript: I assume you are aware that the melting of the Arctic polar icecap contributes precisely 0 mm to global sea-levels, because it is already floating.

It is the melting of the remaining land-based ice that will have the biggest impact; in particular, Antarctica and Greenland.

http://julianh72.blogspot.com

 

[TugboatEng]

Jhardy1, do you think the northern ice cap melted completely without any significant reduction in land based ice?

Why does everyone keeps saying 10's of thousands of years. The last ice age ended within a singular ten thousand years and sea level rose 300 feet within that single 10k years. That's where my 1/4 inch per year average comes from. However, there has not been remarkable sea level rise in the last 2000 years so the rate of rise was likely MUCH higher at times. The patterns of history all seem to be much more extreme than anything of late.

 

[Reverse_Bias]

What populated place has become unlivable? Nothing is clear. Everything you have said is a total fabrication.

India, Africa, The Middle East, and everywhere near the equator that doesn't have elevation, even Miami was pretty brutal for 4 months this year.

 

[TugboatEng]

All of those regions, even Florida, are having population booms...

My wife is a funny example, she works in an air conditioned office. I work in engine rooms. She has never been heat tolerant. I'm fine with it as long as I'm not in the direct sun. She got to remote work from home for two years because of COVID fear. We don't have air conditioning. She's much more heat tolerant now to the point she enjoyed our last stroll through downtown Tuscon at 95°.

Humans are very adaptable...

It crazy listening to people complain about the discomfort of a day a degree or two hotter than normal and think that throwing away their comfortable automobiles is going to make their lives more comfortable.

 

[jhardy1]

@TugBoatEng:

The last glacial maximum was 20,000 years ago, not 10,000 years ago. Sea levels have been rising over the past 20,000 years, albeit far from uniformly. Most of the post-ice-age sea level rise occurred between about 19,000 to 8,000 years ago - which pre-dates "civilization" as we know it. Sea levels have been fairly stable over the past 6,500 years (i.e. most of human civilization), ending with a 0.50 m sea level rise over the past 1,500 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_sea_level

Your personal tales about your own and your wife's heat tolerance are fascinating, but ignore the real question: what happens to global food supply, potable water supply, and indeed habitable land area, when we take into account anthropogenic climate change over a period of a century or so, rather than millennia? Most of us could cope at a personal level with an average temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius or so in our current towns and cities, but we'll be struggling to maintain a reasonable standard of living if potable water becomes scarce, food crops fail, and ocean-front land starts to slide into the sea. There are already examples of such trends in many places around the globe.

http://julianh72.blogspot.com

 

[3DDave]

As long as humans revert to a nomadic existence, numbering in the few millions, hunting and gathering, it will all work out. Stones are still available, so they will be fine. But, for a brief moment, we maximized shareholder value.

 

[TugboatEng]

Warming climate is correlated with increase precipitation... Lawrence Livermore Labs (funding not tied to doomsaying about climate change) released a study a few years ago that said precipitation would increase with warming. That got swept under the rug rather quickly.

Anyways, you're supporting my point that climate change has historically occurred faster without human emissions and it has happened many times within human history without causing human extinction.

3DDave? Is that what you're doing? Maximizing your income while it's still legal to inject CO2 into the upper atmosphere?

 

[3DDave]

That's what the fossil fuel industry is built on.

So extinction is the hurdle? Getting humans to 5,000 would get there.

Warming climate is correlated with increase precipitation - in places that won't help humans. Maybe humans will enjoy Ozark raised kelp.

"climate change has historically occurred faster" as measured by what scale? Climate is a measure of large trends, such as planetary temperature or continental precipitation.

"This ancient, or paleoclimate, evidence reveals that current warming is occurring roughly 10 times faster than the average rate of warming after an ice age. Carbon dioxide from human activities is increasing about 250 times faster than it did from natural sources after the last Ice Age."

https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

 

[TugboatEng]

How is it that we measure CO2 from so far in the past?

 

[jhardy1]

TugBoatEng:

It is more accurate to say that climate change will lead to changes in precipitation patterns, rather than an implied global increase. (And what makes you think that a global increase would be "good" for humankind anyway?) Some areas will see an increase in precipitation (and an increase in storm intensity, flooding, dams over-topping, etc), while others will see a decrease in precipitation (and an increase in drought frequency / intensity / duration).

"Current climate models indicate that rising temperatures will intensify the Earth’s water cycle, increasing evaporation. Increased evaporation will result in more frequent and intense storms, but will also contribute to drying over some land areas. As a result, storm-affected areas are likely to experience increases in precipitation and increased risk of flooding, while areas located far away from storm tracks are likely to experience less precipitation and increased risk of drought."

https://gpm.nasa.gov/resources/faq/how-does-climate-change-affect-precipitation

Yes, global climate change has happened and will continue to happen, with or without human involvement. However, the rate of recent change is unprecedented.

There were periods in the prehistoric past which saw rates of sea level rise faster than is predicted for the next 50 to 100 years, but there were no history-recording humans around to tell us how they coped. Chances are, they simply moved inland a couple of kilometres every generation or so, but they probably told stories about how their ancestors once hunted and foraged on the land which had since sunk below the waves. (Ever wonder how the Atlantis myths might have originated?)

I wonder what our great-grandchildren will think of the tales of their ancestors who used to live in high-rise buildings in Miami and on the Queensland Gold Coast, to take advantage of the wide sandy beaches which once existed there, and how there used to be a multitude of inhabited islands in the South Pacific?

http://julianh72.blogspot.com

 

[dik]

@3DD... Excellent NASA link...

-----*****-----
So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik

 

[TugboatEng]

Some areas will see an increase in precipitation (and an increase in storm intensity, flooding, dams over-topping, etc), while others will see a decrease in precipitation (and an increase in drought frequency / intensity / duration).

You say this very confidently as if you have evidence to prove it to be true. Or, you're parroting the same excuse used when the experts predictions of global warming all failed.

Chances are, they simply moved inland a couple of kilometres every generation or so, but they probably told stories about how their ancestors once hunted and foraged on the land which had since sunk below the waves.

Yes, these include the stories of Noah's Arc and the lost city of Atlantis.

Nice dodge on the ice core question. If CO2 causes warming that reduces ice levels then ice samples would never show high levels of CO2.

Historically, Earth's climate seems to be very stable until it isn't. All changes have been quite rapid but the rapid changes aren't captured due to our slow sampling rates. I think the controls engineers call this aliasing.

Wait until someone recognizes that the Grand Canyon may not be the result of millions of years of erosion...