Climate Change: Science and Issues

[Alan Klein]

Kent:  Nice story and pictures.  Glad your family is doing well.  After living all our lives in NYC, my wife and I retired to New Jersey where they're are a lot of small farms. Nothing like in the Dakotas, but still it's nice to see cows, horses, sheep, corn fields, etc.  Here's a shot of a nearby farm.  I love it here.
Of course it's been cold, hit around 5 degrees F last night (about -15C).  Thank God for global warming.

Open sky country.  In NJ!
New Jersey Farm by Alan Klein, on Flickr

[Two23]

Of course it's been cold, hit around 5 degrees F last night (about -15C).  Thank God for global warming.

We hit -31 last night.  I wanted to go out pheasant hunting first thing this morning as they congregate in large flocks when it's a bit cool like that, but my wife threw a fit about me going out in the middle of nowhere alone.  I don't tell her how cold it gets at night when I'm out alone taking photos of trains.  Sometimes it gets too cold for the trains to run.   The only thing is you better have a "Plan B" if your car doesn't start!  I wear goose down filled clothing that's about four inches thick, designed for high altitude mountain climbing.  There is an old saying on the Northern Plains--"Forty below keeps out the riff-raff."


Kent in SD

[Two23]

No doubt, many stats are misleading or manipulated. Also, similar to USA, many of the new jobs are low paid jobs without any benefits. However, the number of jobs in Germany has increased any way you measure it. Below are a few interesting articles explaining some of the facts and reasons behind the job growth in Germany.

1. Employment Rate in Germany increased to 74.80 percent in the second quarter of 2017 from 74.60 percent in the first quarter of 2017.

2. The economy is doing well despite Germany’s accommodation of more than 1 million refugees since 2015. For three years now the German government has been running a budget surplus.

3. It's not only Germany. Even a small country as Ireland is growing their jobs at impressive rate (although mainly around Dublin and Belfast).

As an avid investor and daily reader of WSJ, Forbes, and other financial oriented media, I'll add a few observations:

1.  Keep in mind Germany tracks number of people working, not how many hours they work.  In U.S. they tend to lay off workers when production hours decrease.  In Germany (and some other European countries,) they tend to keep the employees and allocate the fewer hours between them.    It's hard to make a direct comparision here.

2.  From what I've read, most of those immigrants do not yet have jobs.  Germany has a system of apprenticeship, so there is typically a six to fifteen year lag in getting a job.  I.e., the recent immigrants are not counted as unemployed OR unemployed.  They aren't yet in the system.  Story:  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-18/german-jobless-mystery-explained-as-refugees-hide-in-statistics

3.  Ireland is a special case.  When a  decades long low level civil war ended, they found their economy in a shambles.  Their solution was to dramatically cut corporate taxes.  It's currently 12.5%, compared to the U.S. rate of 35%  (recently cut by Trump to 20-22%.)   https://www.idaireland.com/invest-in-ireland/ireland-corporate-tax

Anyway, my point is things aren't always what they seem.  You have to do your own research or you can be misled by media reports.



Kent in SD

[Peter McLennan]

A show of hands please.

Hands up if you read the NYT article posted here earlier.
Hands up if you’ve seen the Netflix doc “Chasing Ice”.

Two hands up here.

[Two23]

A show of hands please.

Hands up if you read the NYT article posted here earlier.
Hands up if you’ve seen the Netflix doc “Chasing Ice”.

Two hands up here.

I never read the NYT, the National Enquirer, or Pravda.  I'm too cheap to pay for Netflix.


Kent in SD

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

We are entering a new Ice Age, people!

[pegelli]

We are entering a new Ice Age, people!

Only in NA, it's the punishment for the US pulling out of the Paris accords 

[Alan Klein]

That's funny Pieter.

[RSL]

I'm beginning to wonder whether or not that "scientific consensus" among geologists in the early fifties wasn't right after all. Maybe we ARE on the verge of a new ice age. I'm sure glad I don't own an orange grove here in Florida. The smudge pots are coming out. There are gonna be a lot of people up all night the next few nights fighting "climate change."

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Hi Folks,

In the town where I like, the Mayor and municipal council expressed some bold Sustainability goals for the year 2030, and with upcoming elections in March, they seek cooperation from its citizens. One of the many specific targets aims at improving the quality of the air that we breathe.

I'm participating in a Citizen Science project that, with support from the city, therefore wants to have a better view on what the actual air quality is, in order to pinpoint problem areas and see if progress can be detected. Part of that project involves the construction of a large number of relatively affordable measuring stations and establishing a LoRaWAN network structure for the automatic transmission of the data. By using relatively 'low-cost' stations, we will be able to create a more finely meshed sampling grid with measuring stations than the current official national measuring grid can offer. We are also collaborating with the authorities (RIVM, KNMI) that manage those official measuring stations, a.o. by calibrating our simple sensors against their elaborate systems, by periodically running them in parallel at the same location (to set a baseline and monitor for drift over time). Those authorities benefit from our finer mesh actual sampling instead of calculating and modeling between the official stations.

As the required components are coming in from all over the globe, and we have time to do some soldering, programming, 3D-design, QA validation of parts and results, and calibration of the different sub-units, I've done the first test with a pilot unit that amongst others will test for Particulate Matter that's suspended in the air. What better time to test than with the traditional new year's fireworks ...

Attached a graph of what one of my (not yet calibrated) sensors picked up, and the air was cleaner than the years before, due to fewer fireworks (some official ones got cancelled due to windy conditions), strong winds/gusts, frequent rain showers, and relatively high temperatures (which prevented fog/smog from forming). The normal situation on a Sunday would show PM10 values of 3-5 µg/m³ when there is little traffic, with a somewhat higher level during the week's working days and temporary peaks (to some 25 µg/m³ on dry days which is above the legal limits) during the rush-hours. The fireworks obviously scored much worse air quality with a peak PM10 reading of 105.1 µg/m³, and that was a relatively modest outcome compared to previous years that also started disappearing sooner than usual, it took something like 1 or 2 days in the previous years to get back to normal levels.

I wish all the LuLa readers a happy and clean 2018.

Cheers,
Bart

[pegelli]

I'm beginning to wonder whether or not that  "scientific consensus" among geologists in the early fifties wasn't right after all. Maybe we ARE on the verge of a new ice age.

Was the consensus that it would only hit North America

[RSL]

The consensus, Pieter, was that there'd be a new ice age. Not instantly, but by the time the global warming panic (renamed "climate change" after original forecasts didn't pan out) died down. The world's population should find really warm clothes and shelter. I remember a discussion turning toward the idea of igloos for the homeless.

Now, if you think igloos for the homeless is a crackpot idea, you should realize that in comparison with the rest of this thread it's absolutely sane. Lewis Carroll could have picked up some wonderful story ideas if he'd been able to read this stuff.

Happy new year.

[pegelli]

Well, there was something about an mini ice age in the papers here as well recently. But I don't think it has any relation to the current cold spell in a small part of the world (i.e North America).
We'll see how it pans out (or how it cancels out), while contrary to you I believe human activity is contributing to the warming I tend to take the alarmist messages about the effects from all sides (warming, deniers and possible ice age) with a big grain of salt.

[Alan Goldhammer]

While we are in the midst of a bad cold spell here in the Eastern US, it looks like continental Europe is pretty warm by comparison.  I looked at the foreign temperatures in today's Washington Post and most every major European city was at or above freezing including Kiev and Moscow which usually are much colder this time of the year.  This is just a reminder that weather is local and transitory while climate change is global and lengthy.

[Alan Klein]

We're still in an interglacial period of the Ice Age.  So it's still warming up. 

[pegelli]

While we are in the midst of a bad cold spell here in the Eastern US, it looks like continental Europe is pretty warm by comparison.  I looked at the foreign temperatures in today's Washington Post and most every major European city was at or above freezing including Kiev and Moscow which usually are much colder this time of the year.  This is just a reminder that weather is local and transitory while climate change is global and lengthy.

+1, They showed a map of the world on television here New Year's eve where shades of blue was temperatures below normal, white at normal and shades of red for temperatures above normal (darker/more saturated colour was a larger deviation from normal). It only showed parts of the US and Canada blue, the whole rest of the world was mainly red with modest areas white. But I agree with Alan G, this doesn't prove or disprove anything about climate change, it's just what happened with the weather this week.

[pegelli]

We're still in an interglacial period of the Ice Age.  So it's still warming up.

Not if you believe Russ or Slobodan, they're reporting (or speculating) an Ice Age is coming.

[Alan Klein]

+1, They showed a map of the world on television here New Year's eve where shades of blue was temperatures below normal, white at normal and shades of red for temperatures above normal (darker/more saturated colour was a larger deviation from normal). It only showed parts of the US and Canada blue, the whole rest of the world was mainly red with modest areas white. But I agree with Alan G, this doesn't prove or disprove anything about climate change, it's just what happened with the weather this week.

Fair enough. So when does weather become indicative of climate change? Wouldn't we have to discount the warmer Summers that we've had the last couple of years as just weather?

[pegelli]

Fair enough. So when does weather become indicative of climate change? Wouldn't we have to discount the warmer Summers that we've had the last couple of years as just weather?

I think nothing has to be discounted, you only need to look at very long time (moving) averages to demonstrate warming or cooling and filter out day-to-day (and week-to-week, month-to-month) weather variations.

[RSL]

Not if you believe Russ or Slobodan, they're reporting (or speculating) an Ice Age is coming.

Not at all, Pieter. I'm not speculating about anything at all. Unlike some others (who shall remain nameless) I know better than to speculate about crap like this. Believe it or not guys, you don't need to go hide in a closet. I'll be all right.