Frankenstorm projectiles

[PB666]

http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/experts-say-climate-change-may-spawn-giant-flying-boulders/60596/

I think some might be interested in this.

 

[Geschosskopf]

Well, considering that Earth's climate has been in a constant state of flux since the get-go, with HUGE swings back and forth happening pretty much all the time, and has been both much hotter and much colder than it is now, and huge flying boulders don't seem to have ever happened, I wouldn't lose any more sleep over this than all the other climate-change panic-mongering so fashionable today.

[insert_name]

Great another climate change thread bet it will be closed after 3 pages, place your bets

[RainDreamer]

I thought they meant larger hail storm projectiles. Rocks being lifted by huge hurricanes are not unheard of.

[Findthepin1]

They called them "bloulders".

[PB666]

31 minutes ago, Findthepin1 said:

They called them "bloulders".

much larger than actual boulders and blouder too.

[fredinno]

How does this even work?

[Dieselpower]

Of course, the title of the link that PB666 posted is pretty sensational (they are storm deposited, not flying), but there actually seems to be quite a fair bit of research behind it.
Here is some excellent background information by a former NYT author:

http://csas.ei.columbia.edu/2015/08/14/boulders-and-superstorms-redux/

16 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

Well, considering that Earth's climate has been in a constant state of flux since the get-go, with HUGE swings back and forth happening pretty much all the time, and has been both much hotter and much colder than it is now, and huge flying boulders don't seem to have ever happened, I wouldn't lose any more sleep over this than all the other climate-change panic-mongering so fashionable today.

Please have a look at the topic that was closed earlier this week. Human induced climate change is real and a renounced scientific paradigm that has been researched for more than 100 years. You should be afraid of the consequences, scientists are, politicians are, people are. That is why we are trying to limit its impacts in Paris right now.

16 hours ago, insert_name said:

Great another climate change thread bet it will be closed after 3 pages, place your bets

Probably. In the previous thread the climate deniers get all the freedom to spew their BS from the admins here. They rather close the thread than to bring the discussion on a grown-up level and bring to order those who can't.

[SomeGuy123]

Ok.  So they are talking about global temperatures being 3 degrees higher, celsius, and this is enough to cause massive destruction.  That doesn't sound like much on the face of it.  In any case, taking it as a given that it's going to be a catastrophe, shouldn't rare conditions on earth occasionally create "flying boulder" storms, if such storms are possible?

I mean, on the face of it, regular flooding and hurricanes increasing in frequency by a factor of 3, and the flooding of major cities at low elevation sound like enough reason to do something about this climate change thing alone...

Edited December 3, 2015 by SomeGuy123

[Geschosskopf]

1 hour ago, Dieselpower said:

Please have a look at the topic that was closed earlier this week. Human induced climate change is real and a renounced scientific paradigm that has been researched for more than 100 years. You should be afraid of the consequences, scientists are, politicians are, people are. That is why we are trying to limit its impacts in Paris right now.

Probably. In the previous thread the climate deniers get all the freedom to spew their BS from the admins here. They rather close the thread than to bring the discussion on a grown-up level and bring to order those who can't.

Um yeah.  So why is it that for like 80-90% of its entire life, Earth has had NO ICE CAPS AT ALL?  Note that most of this time was well before the human species ever existed.  What all the climate panickers fail to appreciate is that we are STILL in one of the rare ice ages, which are defined as those anomalous times when ice caps of any size exist at all.  If the ice caps are melting, if they go away completely, that's a good thing.  That's just Earth returning to normal.  We live in an aberrant, transient era that's NOT SUPPOSED TO BE THIS WAY.  All the forces of nature are trying to melt the ice, to get Earth back to its normal state.  If people are helping that at all, which I doubt they can, then so much the better.

[Dieselpower]

Pardon me, I'm just worried about extinction of 80 to 90% of all biodiversity, rising sea tides, increasing storm damages, drought, floods, crop failure, resource scarcity, mass migration and what ever other effect of this happening in a timespan of a few generations.

Earth returning to 'normal' in a the timespan of a few hundred years instead of hundreds-of-thousands of years is the problem, not the fact that there are fluctuations in the earth's climate on timescale eternity.

I'm fine to understand your viewpoint if you were to be immune to these effects, but you are in all likeliness not.

 

[Aser]

Quote

It became all the clearer that the interpretation that we’re making is right, and that the boulders are wave-deposited

So...this is just another case of media sensationalism.

[KAL 9000]

39 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

Um yeah.  So why is it that for like 80-90% of its entire life, Earth has had NO ICE CAPS AT ALL?  Note that most of this time was well before the human species ever existed.  What all the climate panickers fail to appreciate is that we are STILL in one of the rare ice ages, which are defined as those anomalous times when ice caps of any size exist at all.  If the ice caps are melting, if they go away completely, that's a good thing.  That's just Earth returning to normal.  We live in an aberrant, transient era that's NOT SUPPOSED TO BE THIS WAY.  All the forces of nature are trying to melt the ice, to get Earth back to its normal state.  If people are helping that at all, which I doubt they can, then so much the better.

Climate change deniers are executed in the KAL 9000 space program, so watch out, Geschosskopf!!!

[PB666]

1 hour ago, SomeGuy123 said:

Ok.  So they are talking about global temperatures being 3 degrees higher, celsius, and this is enough to cause massive destruction.  That doesn't sound like much on the face of it.  In any case, taking it as a given that it's going to be a catastrophe, shouldn't rare conditions on earth occasionally create "flying boulder" storms, if such storms are possible?

I mean, on the face of it, regular flooding and hurricanes increasing in frequency by a factor of 3, and the flooding of major cities at low elevation sound like enough reason to do something about this climate change thing alone...

The current proposal only caps emissions to limit temperature to 2.7 and most countries are not in agreement, India says it will ignore the agreement and do as it pleases. 3 degrees is plausible.

Its immaterial, pockets of late summer water are hot enough now to produce Super category 5 storms. Its all about timing, Cat 5 plus within 50 miles of a coastline. Most frequently what we are seeing are cat 5 storms that develop 2ndary walls before coming ashore, these make massive storm surges because there is nowhere for trapped water to escape, but peak water velocities are attenuated close to shore because the central pressure weakens with broadening.  You get a storm moving about 2 miles per hour 150 miles from a shore, water temperature 30 to 33 degrees celcius, right upper level winds, super catagory five landfall is possibility, all you need is a shoreline with boulders at a depth of 10 feet or so, and the 10-30 meter/sec water will toss those little suckers right out of the ocean and onto land.

[Geschosskopf]

6 hours ago, KAL 9000 said:

Climate change deniers are executed in the KAL 9000 space program, so watch out, Geschosskopf!!!

Denying that climate changes is ludicrous.  Denying that it is changing now is ludicrous.  But claiming that the only reason it's chaning now is people, despite overwhelming evidence that the climate has always changed, radically and frequently, is even more ludicrous.  We're just along for the ride.  The climate would be changing now anyway with or without people.

[steve_v]

1 hour ago, Geschosskopf said:

...claiming that the only reason it's chaning now is people, despite overwhelming evidence that the climate has always changed, radically and frequently, is even more ludicrous. We're just along for the ride.

(Emphasis mine)

Attempts to resist delicious troll-bait: fail.

While it is ludicrous to claim that human activity is the only reason for climate change, claiming that our releasing mind-bogglingly vast quantities of previously stored greenhouse gas into the atmosphere is going to have no effect whatsoever is well beyond ridiculous and heading straight into blatant denial territory.

Current scientific understanding (or at least 90%+ of the world's experts on the matter) says that we are having a measurable effect. Exactly how much of an effect is still an open question, but it's certainly not "none at all".

I was under the impression that contentions 'never going to end in anything but an argument' topics like this were against forum rules anyway, ehh?

Edited December 4, 2015 by steve_v

[Geschosskopf]

19 minutes ago, steve_v said:

While it is ludicrous to claim that human activity is the only reason for climate change, claiming that our releasing mind-bogglingly vast quantities of previously stored greenhouse gas into the atmosphere is going to have no effect whatsoever is well beyond ridiculous and heading straight into blatant denial territory.

Current scientific understanding (or at least 90%+ of the world's experts on the matter) says that we are having a measurable effect. Exactly how much of an effect is still an open question, but it's certainly not "none at all".

I never said people weren't having an effect.  And I certainly don't deny that the climate is changing.  But I must not have explained myself well enough.

So let's look at the issue from a different angle.  To me, the question folks should be asking isn't "why is the world warming up?" but instead "why is it so cold right now?"  Ice ages, like the one we are still currently experiencing, are rare, short-term aberations in Earth's climate.  The absence of ice is normal when viewing Earth's history as a whole.  But every modern human who has ever lived, in the short time our species has existed, has lived in an ice age, so most mistakenly believe ice age conditions are normal, and view the potential (but not yet certain) end of the current ice age as horrible.

So here's the thing.....  If a person is all about respecting Nature, protecting the Planet, or whatever the mantra is this week, then surely that person wants the planet to get back into its normal, healthy, happy state.  Problem is, most of these people don't realize that this normal, healthy, happy state means the complete absence of ice caps, and the complete absence of plants and animals specialized for ice age conditions.  Thus, they're fighting the wrong battles for the wrong reasons, when they should be out there burning celebratory bonfires at the melting of the ice.

Now take this a step farther.  If a person believes that humans are enough of a factor to change climate at will, either by continuing as we are or doing something different, which course is morally better?  Would not willfully and artificially prolonging the current abnormal ice age be a huge crime against Nature?  OTOH, would not letting nature take its course and thaw this abnormally frozen planet out, even helping the process along, be more in keeping with the idea  of respecting Nature?

So let's agree that neither side in the climate war has the moral high ground, and thus take all the quasi-religious zealotry out of the equation.  Having done that, we can look at the matter objectively.  Therefore I ask again, "why is it so cold now?"  Nobody knows what causes ice ages nor keeps them going when Earth really doesn't want to be so cold.  Which means that climatology cannot even explain current conditions which are, after all, an ice age.  Nor can it explain why normality is NOT an ice age.  And if it can't do either of those, then it certainly can't make valid predictions about the future, nor assign valid weight to any factor in the equation.

No matter what side you're on, you should find this situation intolerable.  There's no denying the climate's changing but there's also no denying that we have no valid explanation as to why.  We don't even have anything that fits the august definition of a true theory because we cannot answer the question, "why is it so cold now?"  We need to be able to answer that question.  When we can do that, we'll know whether the world is warming up by itself or due to our activities.  Then we'll know whether we have to prepare for the inevitable or try to do something about it.  But at present, we can't do either because we simply do not know the thruth, and shouting "The debate is OVER!" from the rooftops is simply counterproductive.

[steve_v]

1 hour ago, Geschosskopf said:

I never said people weren't having an effect...

Excellent, we're probably (mostly) in agreement then.

It's the "just along for the ride" bit that turned my crank, I've heard that far too many times as a justification for all manner of misguided zealotry and conspiracy theories.

Why is it so cold? Dunno, and AFAIK nobody else does either, but if we assume that maintaining something close to the current climate is a requirement for the continued existence of civilisation as we know it, and we can affect this to any degree by reducing our contribution to the apparent warming trend, should we not at least try?

The same goes for 'preparing for the inevitable' - whether we're a major or a minor influence on climate change is largely irrelevant, what we want is to survive it.

'Crimes against nature' be damned, IMO morality is a bit pointless if nobody can actually live on the 'moral highground'.

If large scale climate engineering was a thing, I'd probably be for that too, but until our understanding of the situation improves, all we have is preparing for what may come and trying not to make things worse. ...while we figure out what's actually going on.

We are influencing the climate to some degree, and in a way that is not particularly good for us, so let's stop doing that, it might at least buy us some time.
Here's where "along for the ride" is often used as a justification for doing nothing at all, usually accompanied by "it's all a conspiracy to ruin the economy" and a bunch of other anti-science/anti-establishment bunk, and that I do object to.

I only shout "The debate is OVER!" when I get the impression someone is saying "we have nothing to do with it, therefore we should ignore the situation".

Here's hoping that this lot makes some kind of sense, or at least explains my take on the current 'war' - but I leave you to be the judge of that, it's getting late here and I have a rocket to launch.

Edited December 4, 2015 by steve_v

[magnemoe]

2 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

I never said people weren't having an effect.  And I certainly don't deny that the climate is changing.  But I must not have explained myself well enough.

So let's look at the issue from a different angle.  To me, the question folks should be asking isn't "why is the world warming up?" but instead "why is it so cold right now?"  Ice ages, like the one we are still currently experiencing, are rare, short-term aberations in Earth's climate.  The absence of ice is normal when viewing Earth's history as a whole.  But every modern human who has ever lived, in the short time our species has existed, has lived in an ice age, so most mistakenly believe ice age conditions are normal, and view the potential (but not yet certain) end of the current ice age as horrible.

So here's the thing.....  If a person is all about respecting Nature, protecting the Planet, or whatever the mantra is this week, then surely that person wants the planet to get back into its normal, healthy, happy state.  Problem is, most of these people don't realize that this normal, healthy, happy state means the complete absence of ice caps, and the complete absence of plants and animals specialized for ice age conditions.  Thus, they're fighting the wrong battles for the wrong reasons, when they should be out there burning celebratory bonfires at the melting of the ice.

Now take this a step farther.  If a person believes that humans are enough of a factor to change climate at will, either by continuing as we are or doing something different, which course is morally better?  Would not willfully and artificially prolonging the current abnormal ice age be a huge crime against Nature?  OTOH, would not letting nature take its course and thaw this abnormally frozen planet out, even helping the process along, be more in keeping with the idea  of respecting Nature?

So let's agree that neither side in the climate war has the moral high ground, and thus take all the quasi-religious zealotry out of the equation.  Having done that, we can look at the matter objectively.  Therefore I ask again, "why is it so cold now?"  Nobody knows what causes ice ages nor keeps them going when Earth really doesn't want to be so cold.  Which means that climatology cannot even explain current conditions which are, after all, an ice age.  Nor can it explain why normality is NOT an ice age.  And if it can't do either of those, then it certainly can't make valid predictions about the future, nor assign valid weight to any factor in the equation.

No matter what side you're on, you should find this situation intolerable.  There's no denying the climate's changing but there's also no denying that we have no valid explanation as to why.  We don't even have anything that fits the august definition of a true theory because we cannot answer the question, "why is it so cold now?"  We need to be able to answer that question.  When we can do that, we'll know whether the world is warming up by itself or due to our activities.  Then we'll know whether we have to prepare for the inevitable or try to do something about it.  But at present, we can't do either because we simply do not know the thruth, and shouting "The debate is OVER!" from the rooftops is simply counterproductive.

Lots of the reason for different climate in earlier geological times was different orientation of the continents. 
Had the antarctic continent not been at the south pole its an good chance we would not had any permanent ice cover at the south pole at all. Yes its probably other reasons also.

Still its natural for us to resist changes, had our climate been at the end of the last ice age would would tried to stop that too. 
Pretty natural as it would flood all our cities, effect was 70 meter rise, far worse than the 0.5 meter or something change in 2100 IPCC warn about. 

[magnemoe]

16 hours ago, fredinno said:

How does this even work?

Good question, most huge boulders roll down from higher ground. Transported by ice is also common but not here.
If washed up by waves they must come from or just below the sea level, that is sea level 100.000 years ago. 

Tsunami sounds like an more likely explanation to me as they have way more force than an hurricane and the tsunami wave is deep unlike storm waves who have no force a few meter below the waterline.
So the boulders was eroded loose from the old shoreline 100.000 years ago. An Tsunami hits and the two boulders was in an positioned so the wave was able to move them far inland because of the shape of the beach. 
Sea level rises and hide the old beach they came from and probably cover it with sediments. 

 

[micr0wave]

Quote

6 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

Now take this a step farther.  If a person believes that humans are enough of a factor to change climate at will, either by continuing as we are or doing something different, which course is morally better?  Would not willfully and artificially prolonging the current abnormal ice age be a huge crime against Nature?  OTOH, would not letting nature take its course and thaw this abnormally frozen planet out, even helping the process along, be more in keeping with the idea  of respecting Nature?

How would changing humans behaviour artificially extending a current ice age ?

We probably acclerated the process of warming, not slowed it down... so basically, if you want to have mother nature take over the rudder totally, shouldn't mankind do all it can to stop it's influence ?

 

[Findthepin1]

6 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Pretty natural as it would flood all our cities, effect was 70 meter rise

I assume you mean back during the end of the last glacial period. Now that you've mentioned it, it probably did flood all our cities. Or the equivalent settlements we had as cities back then. Bunches of stone huts or whatever, maybe there's some remains of buildings sitting around in the North Sea or the Persian Gulf. People have always built on the coasts because it's access to easy and plentiful food, water, and transportation. They should do submarine surveys to look for these things.

Edited December 4, 2015 by Findthepin1

[Mister Dilsby]

In before the lock! Whooo!

if the 'natural' state of the planet is one that doesn't support human life, then I guess I'm anti-nature  And if we are on a slide toward such a state, I don't really care what % of the problem is due to nature and what % is due to human involvement. I'm more interested in minimizing or eliminating the human contribution to the problem for the sake of my descendants.

[PB666]

6 hours ago, Kuzzter said:

In before the lock! Whooo!

if the 'natural' state of the planet is one that doesn't support human life, then I guess I'm anti-nature  And if we are on a slide toward such a state, I don't really care what % of the problem is due to nature and what % is due to human involvement. I'm more interested in minimizing or eliminating the human contribution to the problem for the sake of my descendants.

But wouldn,t you like to see a 100 to boulder being tossed from the sea. Hmmm, but wait, i guess the storm would not be very hospitable to human observation either. oh well. Climate chane is here and coming, its not about the descendants its about how best to live long and prosper, lol. 

[Geschosskopf]

On ‎12‎/‎4‎/‎2015‎ ‎5‎:‎34‎:‎50‎, magnemoe said:

Lots of the reason for different climate in earlier geological times was different orientation of the continents. 
Had the antarctic continent not been at the south pole its an good chance we would not had any permanent ice cover at the south pole at all. Yes its probably other reasons also.

Still its natural for us to resist changes, had our climate been at the end of the last ice age would would tried to stop that too. 
Pretty natural as it would flood all our cities, effect was 70 meter rise, far worse than the 0.5 meter or something change in 2100 IPCC warn about. 

Well, just go back to the Cretaceous.  A mere 65Mya, the continents were all in essentially the same places they are today.  And yet there was no ice, tropical conditions existed nigh unto the arctic, etc.  And so it remained for another 62.4 million years after the dinosaurs were gone, until the end of the Pliocene when the current, and still on-going, ice age began.  Note that the genus Homo did not exist in all this time, nor even Australopithecus, yet the world was considerably hotter then than now.  That's because the absence of ice is Earth's natural state and it's just been abnormally cold the last couple million years.

The "last ice age", as in the last one that actually came to an end, happened way back before there were dinosaurs.  We're still in the same ice age that involved woolly mammoths--it hasn't ended yet.  We're just in one of the many interglacial periods it's had during it's 2.6 million year run.  In fact, several of the previous interglacial periods have been hotter than it is today, and yet it's gotten colder again and the glaciers have plunged far south repeatedly.  The colloquial use of "the last ice age" to describe the previous glacial period with woolly mammoths and all is an artifact of terminology from the very early days of geology, before we knew about repeated glaciations during the same ice age.  IOW, the line between the Pleistocene and the Holocene is totally arbitrary and in fact should not exist.  Really and truly, we're still in the Pleistocene.

I'm not concerned about a 70m sea level rise.  So far, I have seen no evidence to suggest that the current ice age is about to end.  After all, it's been hotter in previous interglacial periods than it is even now, and yet the glaciers have returned, so there's no reason to panic about that happening.  It's total propaganda by the panic-mongers to rant about 70m sea level rises.  Besides, nearly all of us will be dead by 2100 so even that little rise won't be our problem ;).

 

On ‎12‎/‎4‎/‎2015‎ ‎10‎:‎54‎:‎55‎, llanthas said:

The problem with climate change is not that it's happening, but that it's happening WAY too fast.  Yes, the earth has historically been warmer, but the natural world (which is what we eat) cannot adapt to rapid changes like this. 

Actually, the idea that things are changing unnaturally fast today is also pure panic-mongering propaganda as well.  The folks who say that only show you graphs of the last few centuries, taking stuff totally out of context by ignoring what's been going on over the longer scale.  Take a look at the charts going back 400,000 years, which is only the most recent 20% or so of the current ice age:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok_Petit_data.svg#/media/File:Vostok_Petit_data.svg

First, note the big trends in the upper, blue part (temperature).  We're all the way at the right edge and, as you can see, things have been relatively constant compared to the rest of the chart.  If anything, there's been a gradual downward trend from a peak temperature about 10,000 years ago.  But in the rest of the chart, that same amount of time usually has some serious peaks and valleys, indicating very significant changes in much shorter periods of time.  Then note that the recent past appears almost as a wide, solid bar instead of a thin line.  This is because in the last 10,000 years or so, the temperature has fluctuated rapidly up and down in very short time intervals around an average.

Thus, what's happening right now appears to be exactly the same as has been going on the last 10,000 years.  We live in an era where temperatures are swinging rapidly +/- 4^C every few decades, and this has been happening non-stop for 10,000 years.  For the 1st 5000 years of that time, everybody on Earth was a hunter-gatherer and the population was much lower.  For most of the 2nd 5000 years, most people on Earth were farmers and the population wasn't all that much bigger.  It's only been in the last couple centuries that the population has mushroomed and industrialization has become global.  But the same sort of short-term, small-scale temperature fluctuation was happening all along.  Thus, it's wrong to say that climate is changing faster today than it has at any time in the past 10,000 years.  And it's also wrong to say that modern human conditions are having a noticeably different effect on climate than back when everybody was a hunter-gatherer.

Also note on the chart that at about 325Kya and 125Kya, it was hotter than it has been at any time in the last 10,000 years.  And yet the glaciers came back.  VERY rapidly.  Observe the extreme temperature fluctuations between the peaks and their adjacent valley, not just the big ones but also all the little ones.  These abrupte changes show that the climate of the last 10,000 years, despite the many frequent dips of +/- 4^C, is actually rather more stable than at any time in the previous 400,000 years.  .It also shows that nature alone is capable of producting WAY more radical climate swings, one right after the other, than anything humans have been able to accomplish.