A New Ice Age? 449
barakn writes "Scientists have savaged the new movie The Day After Tomorrow, which depicts global warming causing a new ice age and freezing New York solid. The movie follows on the heels of a report to the Department of Defense in February, written by two guys who are not climatologists, about the implications of global warming triggering the growth of ice sheets in the northern hemisphere. There is a plausible theory which suggests that melting ice may release enough fresh water to halt circulation of warm water from the Gulf Stream, thus significantly cooling Europe and the east coast of North America. Note that this theory depends on melting ice, not growing ice, which may be one reason scientists find the ice age scenario so hard to swallow. New satellite evidence suggests a part of this circulation may already be slowing down. Those on the North American west coast will not have to worry about ice sheets, but changes in Arctic ice could mean the western drought will be permanent. For those of you who would rather do something before it's too late, iron seems to work, but the long-term ecological implications are still unknown."
Wait... so you're telling me... (Score:5, Funny)
What is the world coming to!?
Re:Wait... so you're telling me... (Score:5, Interesting)
You don't see scientists getting up in arms about movies like The Core, or Armageddon so why are they all defensive about this one?
Re:Wait... so you're telling me... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Wait... so you're telling me... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wait... so you're telling me... (Score:5, Insightful)
And his silly attempts at savagery shows that he never quite GETS it - check out his "review" of The Core. It completely has eluded him that "The Core" is a funny little 50s type sci-fi movie, not a documentary.
* I'm an engineer myself but I've been trained to actually find the truth, not make surmises about what I *think* scientists would say our do - I'd go ask some of them!
Re:Wait... so you're telling me... (Score:3, Interesting)
The thing I find ironic with people who complain about how movies are unrealistic, is that they never seem to stop to think "This *movie* is unrealistic." It's SurReal to begin with! The Movie isn't real - so why aren't they complaining about that?!
Oh wait, what they *really* mean, is that their suspension of disbeleif wasn't maintained. For Christ's sake already -- Movies were made to be enjoyed -- Do you *really* need to
Re:Wait... so you're telling me... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wait... so you're telling me... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wait... so you're telling me... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wait... so you're telling me... (Score:5, Insightful)
The attitude of a lot of people here on Slashdot with regards to global warming amazes me. This is something that could possibly devastate society as we know it, perhaps not for us, but for our children or our children's children, but there's a great many people who either dismiss it as never going to happen or something that can be easily controlled without any major shifts in lifestyle or attitude.
Someone once said "This is a fragile ball we're living on. It's a miracle and we're destroying it." That's a hell of a lot closer to the truth than any politician, especially any politician who's made a killing from exploiting fossil fuels, will ever admit to.
Maybe it is because we are skeptical... (Score:5, Interesting)
When that little warming period and ice age hit, which was not caused by humanity, would the arguments not be the same? EG would the green people would be saying to stop burning all of those fires to heat homes?
Frankly I think the only real way of stopping global warming is to kill off about 2/3 of our planet. There are just too many of us.
Let me give you an example. Germany, which is trying to be green installed a huge number of wind powered generators in the North Sea. They have just found out that because of all those generators the coast is getting 10% more sunshine and 10% less rain. I then ask the question, are we not dammed if we do and dammed if we do not?
So unless you are ready to volenteer your life in the name of "humanity" nothing much is going to change.
BTW I do not agree with your quote as planet Earth has withstood worse things than humans and continued. What might not survive are the humans!
Re:Maybe it is because we are skeptical... (Score:4, Insightful)
Reminds me of Hoimar von Dittfurth who once said, and I paraphrase, that "mankind shouldn't be so arrogant to believe that it can destroy the earth. The earth will have destroyed us long before that." Like you, I completely agree.
Re:Maybe it is because we are skeptical... (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, we seem to have the attitude that if we're going down, we're taking every other living thing with us.
Re:Maybe it is because we are skeptical... (Score:5, Insightful)
Although I agree with you that we don't know if global warming is suppose to happen right now anyway, the rate of change is what's alarming the scientists. Records going back hundreds of years give us a pretty good image of the weather pattern we're suppose to receive. The amount of extreme weather occurances and unprecedented warming of land inside the arctic circle is why scientists are concerned. The rate of change is simply beyond anything nature alone could do.
So yes I do agree with you that globam warming and ice ages are normal. Maybe we're suppose to have global warming anyway. But the rate that this is happening is alarming. And it leaves us little time to prepare ourselves to find ways to adapt to the new climate.
Re:Maybe it is because we are skeptical... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Maybe it is because we are skeptical... (Score:5, Insightful)
This was something whipped up by the media. Global warming has been under discussion in the scientific community for about 100 years. (Yes, really). On the back of work on nuclear winter scenarios in the early 1970s there was some speculation that particulate matter from coal burning might cause a local cooling in some parts of the globe that would offset it. It is no longer believed that this is the case, and was only an possible theory for a brief period. However the media really grabbed onto the theory and keep bringing up.
Re:Maybe it is because we are skeptical... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Maybe it is because we are skeptical... (Score:4, Insightful)
It depends on whether there is sufficient unpaved acerage on which to grow those plants.
People should take all these topics seriously. Paradoxically, global warming could turn Northern Europe and NE America into an iceball. Conversely, the Atlantic tropics wouldn't get cool water from the gulf stream making them MUCH, MUCH hotter.
Better science is still needed to get very detailed temperature data all across the planet. We need the capability to meaure temperature in deep oceans and within the earth itself. We have to find out where all the heat is to be sure that observed temperature changes represent a net increase instead of redistribution.
Finally, this isn't the first time this theory has been presented in movies. AI depicted a future inhabited solely by robots who excavated the ice incrusted ruins of manhatten where they found David, their only reliable link to their human creators.
Re:Maybe it is because we are skeptical... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Maybe it is because we are skeptical... (Score:3, Insightful)
The original author implied that humans couldn't adapt quickly to global warming. I was merely pointing out that this wasn't a problem in itself.
It's pretty clear that there's a vast wave of extinctions that seems primarily due to the presence and actions of humanity which could build up to the worst of the disasters of geological time. Even this
Re:Maybe it is because we are skeptical... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, this was my point. Here's the quote from the original poster:
I read that as meaning humans were too delicate to handle a slight increase in temperature or to move out of the way of rising oceans.
Adaptation of civilization on the other hand is NOT easy, if you think you could move billion people from india to US mideast easily with no gigantic adverse effects y
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Maybe it is because we are skeptical... (Score:4, Funny)
Wouldn't it be easier to just kill the last male Bundy?
Re:Nuclear (Score:4, Informative)
Completely moving to solar electric would be very expensive with current technology, and use a lot of land, but it probably could be done.
Re:Wait... so you're telling me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Your personal beliefs are meaningless. The overwhelming amount of data measured and interpreted by scientists is meaningful.
False premise. No one argues that "every little thing man does" will "derail" the earth's climate cycle. The consensus opinion among climatologists today is that a handful of global-scale actitivites are contributing to measured global warming.
Re:Wait... so you're telling me... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a bogus argument. Of course the number of reported cancer cases has increased over the last century. There are two strikingly obvious reasons.
First, people have a much longer life expectancy today than people did a century ago. We've eliminated a lot of the things that used to kill people (simple infections, food poisoning, etc). Many of the people that would have gotten cancer, died from something simple that is non-fatal today.
Second, we know so much more about cancer today. We know how to diagnose it. If you go back 100 years, I would guess that there were thousands of farmers who died of a "cold" but really had skin cancer. And skin cancer is easy to see compared to pancreatic cancer, bone cancer, and other internal cancers.
A century ago people might have died of cancer (if they lived long enough to get cancer), but it's unlikely that it would be reported as a death from cancer. The rise in cancer rates may be related to industrial waste, but that claim cannot be reliably made because there is no way to find valid cancer statistics from 100 years ago.
Re:Wait... so you're telling me... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Wait... so you're telling me... (Score:3, Informative)
Ever heard of deforestation? Or of CO2 released by burning fossil fuels? Don't you think these things have any effect on CO2 levels in the atmosphere?
Do you know how much CO2 has been released since the dawn of the industrial revolution? Or that in nature it sometimes only takes a change of a few percent here or there to have catastrophic effects on an ecosystem?
Do you know that the US produces and consumes 25 percent of the world's power and yet
Re:Wait... so you're telling me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wait... so you're telling me... (Score:3, Troll)
Oh, an armchair climatologist. Can't wait for the reposte that claims that climatologists are doing it for their own personal agenda.
> It would take a massive development to make this anything other than junk science
Yeah, that is why those things are published in such back-world papers like Science and Nature.
> The U.S. already consumes more CO2 than it produces.
Care to back this up? Is the US secretly growing vast forests? The US has the most CO2 emissions, how do you achie
Re:Wait... so you're telling me... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, no, a thousand times no.
Nothing personal; you're just repeating what you've been told, but you have been told wrong.
The fact that short-range weather forecasts for individual locales lose skill at roughly 10 days does not mean that accurate 50+ year climate simulations are not possible. Why? The short answer is weather != climate.
The climate model is not concerned with predicting the temperature and skycover at London at 3PM on April 1, 2078. It cannot do so. It is interested in the broad -- global, regional -- statistics: means, variances, seasonal/annual/decadal precip totals and averages, etc.. It is possible to get those right even though forecasts at fixed points in space in time are wrong. We're looking at the forest here, not the trees.
If you take a short-term weather forecast model and perturb its starting conditions, even by a wee little bit, you will wind up with a very different result in short order -- in under a week. One simulation might be predicting sunny for a fixed point, the other cloudy. One cooler than normal, one warmer; one wet, one dry. Chaos theory, and all that.
But it's still the same climate. Please understand this. Yes, the skill in assessing "weather" fluctuations about the climate mean has disappeared, but the climate remained the same.
What climate models are trying to do is ascertain whether the climate itself is changing. Are climate models perfect, complete, 100% skillful? NO, of course not. Do they have a long way to go towards improvement? YES. Are they useless? Well, you be the judge.
I have a very nice figure showing how well a climate model was able to reproduce climate (NOT weather) variations -- specifically, global average temperature -- over the last millennium. Model predictions are superposed on climate data reconstructed from proxies. The model was run numerous times, with perturbed starting conditions, to yield an "ensemble", helping to assess the range of uncertainty.
I can't find this image on the web, and don't want to put it somewhere where it might be slashdotted, but if you really care enough, email me at rfovell at yahoo dot com and I will send it to you, along with an explanation of what you are looking at. It's an excellent reconstruction. So good you simply have to pay attention to what these models are saying about the future.
Thanks for reading this far.
Re:Wait... so you're telling me... (Score:3)
If you're going to try and ridicule someone then at least back it up with knowledge. Not for my sake (I could care less if you want to stick your head in
It occurs to me... (Score:2, Interesting)
According to them, we should be all dead by now.
Personally, I'm not sweating anything. There is plenty of evidence that our toxic output is not the largets or the deadliest on this planet, and thankfully things pretty much clean themselves.
I refuse to forget how many times popular science has been wrong.
Re:It occurs to me... (Score:5, Insightful)
there is your answer... "popular science"
it diesnt say accurate science, or proper science or even real science... but popular science...
they only print that which is "popular" at that time. Many times their articles are complete bunk and sensationalized to the point of being redicilous... and they have ALWAYS been that way.
Popular science is for the Lay person that likes to be entertained... go grab one of the real science journals for accurate information.
And don't call "global warming" accurate science (Score:3, Interesting)
Could the warnings of global warming armageddon be true? Yeah, but so could the warnings of global cooling armageddon from the 1970s.
And even if either guess is true, there's no way to be sure that the problem was caused by man.
Now, all that doesn't mean we shouldn't be reasonable about reducing pollution and gre
Re:And don't call "global warming" accurate scienc (Score:4, Insightful)
Wrong. While it is not possible to run experiments as such, it certainly is possible to make certain predictions based on the underlying physics and look how the predictions turn out based on empirical data. Then the theory is either validated or not - in which case you modify the theory trying to account for the difference. Or, in briefer terms, you apply the basic scientific process.
And of course it is still absolutely possible to run many experiments on a smaller-than-global scale - the outcome of which help the understanding of the global climate and help predict it's future development.
And even if either guess is true, there's no way to be sure that the problem was caused by man.
That's true. There's no way to be sure of anything per se. There are ways to be reasonably sure of it based on a given set of information, though.
Well, except if the older "global cooling" predictions were really true, then we should be cranking out the greenhouse gases, right?
No. I haven't been around to read about the older predictions, so I might be wrong. However, I imagine a global warming can well induce a severe global cooling, and the other way round. And furthermore, it might well be that the previous claims were just wrong - and the underlying assumptions corrected since then in the process I described above. Of course, now you're saying "Well, what if they're wrong again?!" - that's just the problem with any scientific claim, it can always be wrong. Unless you've got some indications that the current theories are failing, though, it'd be probably be wise to assume they are correct. If on the other hand you do have such indications, you probably should do some research into the matter and find out if either you're wrong, or they are.
And as for the original poster saying: "I refuse to forget how many times popular science has been wrong."
I'm not sure what exactly "popular science" is supposed to refer to, but science is one of the few fields were being wrong is not that bad. Newton's laws on gravity have also been proven wrong, but they were still an incredibly important discovery. And while you refuse to forget how often science was wrong, you do seem to forget how often it has learned from those errors and corrected them, and how often science is right. Also: Try reading a book some day. [amazon.com]
Re:It occurs to me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, it's popular science that the laymen take as truth. The public has SO MUCH blind faith in science its disturbing. Everyone figures "well these guys are scientists, so they must know what they're talking about" - It's not that that the public is stupid (debatable...) but rather they are just so uninformed about how everything works that they really can't critique the claims.
And all too often the laymen are the policy makers and social/political reactionaries. That's when the problems start.
=Smidge=
Re:It occurs to me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Your gross (though common) oversimplification of the claims doesn't counter the fact that the amount of oil is limited ... unless you are hypothesizing either an infinite amount of oil or some currently unknown process that is replacing it as fast as we can use it? When the reserves will run out, whether in 5 years or 50, is a relatively unimportant detail compared to the fact that they will. Yes, there is uncertainty about the timing -- should we gamble that it will be later rather than earlier?
The attitude that "it hasn't happened yet therefore it won't happen" is even sloppier thinking than what you are criticizing.
The only way to avoid be caught unprepared for changes in the availabilty in resources is to prepare for those changes. Why is this so hard to understand?
Re:It occurs to me... (Score:5, Insightful)
My whole point, which you seemed to have completely glanced over during your little crusade, is that scientists make statements that the public in general doesn't completely understand. This half-knowledge scientific rhetoric then becomes so widespread throughout society it "becomes fact", when in reality it's only half the story.
Did I ever say we'd never run out of oil? No. Did I say Global Warming is a myth? No. I never used the words "it hasn't happened yet therefore it won't happen." I think we both agree that's the worst attitude you can have in any situation. My point is that, in the 1970's, we knew we would "run out of oil in about 20 years", and today we know that global warming will destroy the planet as we know it in 10 years (or whatever they're saying nowadays). When in fact what we as a society know is really only half the story. However, it's "popular" that global warming is going to destroy the planet in our lifetimes, and that somehow makes it fact when it's really just one of many, many possibilities we don't fully understand.
=Smidge=
And it occurs to me... (Score:5, Insightful)
Generally, in any case by no means every theory/prediction made about climate has been wrong. Case in point James Lovelock (who happens to be one of the two founders of what's generally known as the Gaia hypothesis) and co-researchers *accurately* predicted the medium-long term results of CFC release on the ozone layer.
Science is inherently wrong, because it's the art of better explaining what we don't know. Another related case in point. Up until a dozen years ago physical oceanography uniformly concluded (based on theoretical models and very limited data sets) an understanding that the deep ocean flow was uniform and slow.
A friend of mine at WHOI put some cameras on the floor of the northern Atlantic, one day they were thinking their hardware had flaked 'cause they couldn't see anything. What was happening was silt was being stirred up by a high velocity current. What they discovered was that oceans have 'weather patterns' which operate much as atmospheric weather, fronts, low&high pressure areas etc.
This completely blew away established theories of physical oceanogrpahy (and happens to be directly related research to the abrupt climate change and ocean conveyor research article referenced in this post).
I'm glad you feel safe, however concluding that you're safe because prior research has been wrong is not a great recipe for the long term. The CFC / ozone problem is one of the first instances of scientific results materially impacting environmental policy at the global/international level. If rapid-onset ice-age is a possiblity (this has been pretty well established). And if a 'lens' of low-density fresh water over the northern oceans can trigger this abrupt change we would be foolish to conclude there's no risk worth further understanding.
Re:It occurs to me... (Score:5, Interesting)
We should force all these ignorant people to submit to our will. From this point forward no one is allowed to drive cars or use electricity. We will go back to a "natural" state.
As you die of starvation, disease and animal attacks, remember that your life and the hundreds of millions of other lives are serving a great purpose of making the climate "right".
Don't be bothered by the fact we don't have a model that has ever accurately predicted climate change.
Don't worry that there were periods of warming and cooling in the past that had nothing to do with humans. The people who think that this might be related to our observations of climate change today are completely ignorant. Your suffering is worth the price.
I'm not convinced (Score:2, Informative)
Regardless though, what is gonna happen will happen, and there is nothing we can do to change it. Worrying about such things seems pointless to me. The whole planet is going to be destroyed by the sun dying in about 5 billion years, why don't we worry about
Re:I'm not convinced (Score:3, Interesting)
No it's not. (Score:5, Informative)
Because, for example, the eruption of Mount St Helens put 1 Million tonnes [usgs.gov] of sulfur aerosols into the stratosphere - these are the things that have the most effect on the worldwide climate, the ash from volcanos is local effect only.
Now, a million tonnes sounds absolutely huge. But it is still only just over five times what, say, the State of Louisiana [state.la.us] emits as sulfur dioxide every year.
So in other words - the US easily produces as much sulfur dioxide, and more, every year than the explosion of Mount St Helens.
Or put it this way - you get sulfur dioxide from burning fossil fuels. We mine, worldwide, billions of tonnes of coal [bbc.co.uk] every year (the US alone produces just under a billion). How much sulfur dioxide do you think all that lot produces? The answer is that a typical small coal-fired power station (100 MW) may produce from 20 000 up to 30 000 [www.ntnu.no] tons of sulphur dioxide a year. In other words, Mt St Helens is worth a measly 40 small coal-fired power stations. How many of them are there in the US alone?
Re:No it's not. (Score:5, Informative)
I believe the poster you were responding to was citing the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo [usgs.gov]. This particular eruption in 1991 was at least 10 times as violent as Mt St. Helens.
It created an "aerosol cloud" that spanned the continents and even affected global weather.
Scientists estimated a 4 to 6 percent loss in ozone at the time. It was also said that the toxic output of this blast contained nearly a thousand times the ozone depleting chemicals that humans have created since the Industrial Revolution.
And here's the kicker: This was only the 2nd largest eruption of the 20th century!
Sometimes I think it is human pride that makes us want to be the most influential, and thus devestating, force on this planet.
Re:No it's not. (Score:3, Insightful)
Consider that China produces almost a billion-and-a-half tons, and that India is third in world production after China and the US. In China, nearly 60% of that coal is used as a cooking fuel and to heat buildings -- applications that are not particularly amenable to clean burning techniques. Because of the expense, little of China's coal is
ice age (Score:4, Interesting)
a comment (Score:3, Interesting)
Informative? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Informative? (Score:4, Funny)
look at the bright side (Score:3, Funny)
Please don't tell me this... (Score:4, Funny)
Aren't we still in an Ice Age? (Score:5, Informative)
Today, it's like 59 degreees F.
If that recollection is true, then we're still in an "Ice Age" and should expect the world to be getting warmer if the "Ice Age" is in fact coming to an end.
Sorry if this doesn't fit into the "human == BAD, all_natural == GOOD" paradigm, but getting struck by lightning or eaten by a lion does fall into the "all_natural" category too...
Re:Aren't we still in an Ice Age? (Score:2)
Also, does a lightning strike still count as all_natural if you're out playing golf in a thunderstorm?
Totally agree with you on the global warming [globalwarming.org] though...
Re:Aren't we still in an Ice Age? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is what I call "Dubya" science or speak, as this is something like what he would say.
The fact is that we are conducting a worldwide uncontrolled experiment on mother earth, as we pump evermore quantities of CO2 in the enviroment.
There has never been a greater amount of CO2 in the enviroment than right at this point of time.
This outpouring of uncontrolled CO2 started with the industrial revolution and hasn't slowed since.
Likewise, the temperature of the Earth has been rising steadily and at a faster rate.
People may scoff at and dismiss a 1 degree raise in the earth temperature as nothing important, but there is one fact of physics that is incontrovertible;
Ice is frozen at 32 degrees, ice is *water* at 33 degrees
Which means that we start losing the polar ice caps with a one degree change in the earth's climate.
Startling evidence has occured that this shows this very thing may be happening - The north pole turns to water on a regular basis, and a huge part of the Antartic ice sheet has broken off.
I'll let somebody else post the links or google it. One of them was an old slashdot story.
So scientists or whoever can diss the movie all they want, but it is just a matter of time before some weather related event occurs that will come back to bite us in the collective but in a big way due to global warming.
Re:Aren't we still in an Ice Age? (Score:4, Informative)
This is complete bullshit! The current CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are on the order of 12%. Global climate predictive models (calibrated with painfully short term datasets) deal with CO2 or "double CO2" concentrations. An examination of geologic evidence indicates that CO2 concentrations have been historically as high as 60% during the Cambrian (ended 540 mya) and CO2 concentrations were this high until the carboniferous (Mississippian and Pennsylvanian) when land plants began to cover the globe.
"This outpouring of uncontrolled CO2 started with the industrial revolution and hasn't slowed since."
An enormous amount of CO2 was sequestered in the Proterozoic and Paleozoic in the form of marine deposited carbonate rocks (limestone CaCO3) and most of the worlds coal was deposited in the Mississippian and Pennsylvanian. The burning of fossil fuels is only circumvention of the carbon cycle, where these carbon sinks would otherwise be subducted and released through volcanic activity this process of recycling has been going on for millions of years. The sum total of ALL INDUSTRIAL ACTIVITY is akin to a few more active volcanoes on the world.
The CO2 emissions according to this site http://www.ucsusa.org/global_environment/global_w
9581925304 M tons in 245 years - volcanoes 4960020000-M tons in 245 years -Industrial Countries
http://www.ees.nmt.edu/Geop/mevo/geochem/co2.html
As it can be seen Baseline volcanic activity exceeds Industrial activity this is without consideration of all of the large volcanic eruptions in the last 245 years.
According to geologic record in reference to glaciation and ice ages, before the most recent 3.5 million years of ICE ages the earths average temperature was estimated to be warmer than it is now (Based on fossil locations that point to climatic conditions for given locations) there were also interglacial periods where the average temperature of the earth was warmer than it is now. There is every bit of geologic indication that the earth should be warming as it is. Even fluctuations in solar intensity (released from the sun) coincide with warming and cooling periods.
The real problem is that in the case of climate research there is far less funding for the people that are pointing out that ITS ALL PART OF THE RIDE, than the people that want to scream that we are all going to die!
Re:Aren't we still in an Ice Age? (Score:5, Insightful)
I will generally agree with this, however the conclusion you draw from it is incorrect.
1. There is a small chance that if we do nothing catastrophic damage will be done. Therefore, we must take action.
2. Doing "X" will probably fix the problem predicted by the model. However, we do not have a good model to evaluate all of the outcomes from taking action "X", so we must evaluate the probablities. Because the model isn't good enough, the probablity that "X" will cause different but equally catastrophic damage, is the same as the original problem. Therefore we cannot take action "X". We must take other action.
3. Repeat step two until you've exhausted all possiblities and realize that, without a good model, taking drastic action is not a good idea.
The lack of a valid climate model is the reason that it's irresponsible to take drastic action that will harm people today. Because the model is bad, taking action doesn't remove the chance of catastrophic damage and it creates certain short and medium term damage.
It is not on the naysayers to prove that nothing needs to be done. The burden is on those pushing for change to make a valid case for change and show that the immediate downside is out-weighed by the potential gain. Current climate models do not do this.
Re:Aren't we still in an Ice Age? (Score:3, Insightful)
I propose the following solution:
1. We need to build 100 identical Earths, all at the current tectonic and biospheric age.
2. We need to seed each Earth with a population of between 100 million and 20 billion
3. We need to allow each Earth a different level of industrialization.
Until we do this, or at least do something similar, I don't see how any of
Re:Aren't we still in an Ice Age? (Score:3, Insightful)
However, the arguements you made for conservation were almost all economic. (Which is why I agree with them.) If there is a economic incentive to take the action that agrees with what the model says we should do, then it's most likely a good idea. However, we do it because of the economic impact, not the environ
Re:Aren't we still in an Ice Age? (Score:3, Insightful)
The Antartic is the largest body of ice on this planet. If the Antartic melts in a significant way (and there seems to be some worrisome cracks forming) this water will be added to the oceans. To say that this will not have any measurable effect is being naive.
You are right that climate behavior seems chaotic. And there aren't computers powerful enough to give an accurate prediction of what m
Re:Aren't we still in an Ice Age? (Score:3, Interesting)
Bullshirt right back at you.
From this link: [geocities.com]
Here you may see the close correlation between CO2 and Temperature variation in planet history. You may find that recent CO2 concentration level of 375 ppm is much higher than any value in the previous 450,000 years, and that the rate of increase of CO2 with time is about 100 times higher than any other rate of increase in the recorded history.
They can drill ice cores from the
Re:Aren't we still in an Ice Age? (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe a more acceptable statement would be CO2 is at record levels [myway.com]
Half a million years is enough for scientists to conclude that CO2 concentrations are at abnormal levels, both by the quantity and rate of increase.
It's true. When the earth was cooling and there was nothing but volcanoes everywhere 5 billion years ago, there could have been more CO2. And when there was an "extinction event" the concentrations could have been higher. But the fact remains, we
Re:Aren't we still in an Ice Age? (Score:3, Insightful)
First, I'm only repeating what the general scientific consensus is. This is nothing new or strange.
Second, If we had limited data points, you would have a valid point. But the fact is we have very precise data points garnered from ice cores [usgs.gov] drilled in the Antartic that shows the content of CO2 in the atmosphere and the related temperature changes for the past 500,000 ye
Re:Aren't we still in an Ice Age? (Score:5, Informative)
We are in one of one of those interglacials now, and in fact it has lasted 18,000 years so far - so it's not at all crazy to start looking for signs of the end of it.
This is not the first ice age; there one approx 600 million years ago; another 450 mya; another 300 mya. They each lasted at least a few tens of millions of years. This ice age is young and will likely exist for many millions more years. During this whole time, we can expect the glacial and interglacial cycle to continue.
There are some important points everyone who discusses climate should be aware of:
For most of the history of the Earth, it has been very much warmer than it is now.
For the last four million years, it has, on average, been very much colder than it is now.
A thousand years ago, there was a "medieval warm period" during which global temperatures were significantly warmer than today; to the extent that wine grapes were grown in Southern Scotland.
Five hundred years ago temperatures were significantly colder than today; "the little ice age". Opinions vary as to when the LIA ended; some say aruond 1900, others say it hasn't totally ended yet.
Note that both the MWP and the LIA occurred before the industrial revolution; they were not caused by man.
There is no "normal" temperature.
The current climate has not existed very long, and will not stay the same for very long (and this would be true even if there were no humans).
Re:Aren't we still in an Ice Age? (Score:3, Interesting)
What matters is the comment "THERE IS NO NORMAL TEMPERATURE" (caps mine). Whether or not the climate gets a bit warmer or a bit colder, all hell is going to break loose because mankind is pushing the envelope of sustainability on the planet. With the population set to pushing ten billion in this century, it's not hard to find populations living very close to survival margins (a small shift in any major variable -food, water, temperature)will cause major stressors on the popula
Re:Aren't we still in an Ice Age? (Score:3, Interesting)
Measuring global temps over time (Score:3, Informative)
Here's [xs4all.nl] another.
Or you could just Google for paleotemperature [google.com] among other things.
Earth simulator (supercompuer) (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Earth simulator (supercompuer) (Score:2, Informative)
They can make a better approximation. If it were used for weather, it could possibly give us a relatively accurate forecast for a couple of weeks (as opposed to a handful of days).
The problem with simulating earth is that there are too many variables, and too much data.
~X~
Re:Earth simulator (supercompuer) (Score:3, Informative)
Lo
Terraforming (Score:3, Insightful)
* a generalisation, yes, but just look at some of the comments so far!
Well, damn! (Score:5, Funny)
I was hoping for global warming! I already had ordered a few 100.000s tonnes of pearly white sand to make some lovely beaches in soon-to-be-sunny Greenland... Damn it!
rising temps cause iceage theory? (Score:3, Interesting)
okay, I couldn't begin to tell you where I heard this (let alone provide a URL) but I recall hearing/reading the "global warming=new ice age" theory kinda like this:
So the earth's temperatures rise a certain level, really only a few degrees, maybe half a dozen. This means the atmosphere can hold more moisture and precipitation increases.
But - with the earth's overall temps slightly higher the temperatures over the poles would still be hella cold (just not as hella cold as before) and the moisture-laden air passing over the cold regions would dump a lot of snow, sleet and ice, which would mean expanding polar ice caps, glaciers, etc., etc., albeit this would be a cumulative effect taking place over many thousands of years.
So, like, I ain't no climatol... clima... uh, scientist or nuthin' - that's just what I read in some fancy magazine somewhere.
Re:rising temps cause iceage theory? (Score:2)
Re:rising temps cause iceage theory? (Score:3, Informative)
Bad Science (Score:4, Interesting)
It would seem that the Earth's climate is normal, and we're not going to suffer a slow broil (so put away the onions, and get that apple out of your mouth).
As for the ice age theory, one of the last ice ages was caused by a lot of fresh water pouring into the North Atlantic. The difference in salinity caused the warm Gulf Stream waters to submerge, reducing the overall temperature in Europe and North America enough to cause an Ice Age. The effect took only 70 years.
It would indeed be ironic, though, if the only way to save civilization as we know is would be to increase greenhouse gasses, not reduce them.
Re:Bad Science (Score:5, Interesting)
I just wanted to remind you and everyone else, that we are living in the last Ice Age, it didn't end yet.
The climat we are experiencing for the last 12000 years or so is a moderate warming during an Ice Age, nothing special. And yet all our civilisation was built in and depends on these rather uncommon (for this planet) conditions.
Re:Bad Science (Score:5, Interesting)
Since the 1600's when telescopes became widely available, scientists have actually plotted the level of sunspot activity. They noted that between the 17th and 18th Centuries there was a long period of NO sunspot activity, and that corresponded in a mini Ice Age period where temperatures in Europe were quite a bit lower than normal and the Thames River going through London regularly froze over during the winter.
Indeed, I think Earth is returning to a period of warmer weather akin to what it was like before the dinosaurs died out about 65,000,000 years ago.
non-linear systems (Score:4, Insightful)
Because our climate is probably not bound by a purely linear occurrence of events. It is full of rebounds, snap-backs, and whatever else you want to call it... like oscillations.
Just because the melting of the caps is the result of global warming doesn't mean that doing so will not trigger a rebound, causing more of the northern hemisphere to freeze. Just like freezing the caps and lowering the sea level will (theoretically) uncover methane deposits in the soil, releasing greenhouse gasses and thus warming the planet again. So stopping the nice current bring warm water up to northern Europe will cool it down, allowing more ice caps to form. Sure, one they're formed the currents might start up again and warm up Europe, but like I said, it works in oscillations.
What really surprises me is why so many people have a hard time swallowing this. Even looking back at the history of Earth's climate shows numerous ice ages and warm periods. CO2 levels have done the same as well.
Some people just need to think a little bit longer down the line. Or maybe they disregard the claims so they don't loose grant money? Not flaming, just a warranted curiosity...
Nature's reset? (Score:2, Funny)
An ice age depending on melting ice? (Score:2)
Re:An ice age depending on melting ice? (Score:5, Informative)
This is a pretty strong argument that the higher lattitudes are temperate because of the regulating effects of the currents. Siberia is a frozen waste because it benefits from no nearby warm current, and the Sahara bakes while the Amazon is merely tropical because of the proximity to a regulating surface current. If the deep ocean current were disrupted, there is reasonable and significant doubt that a different suitable global ocean current system would develop to prevent the low lattitudes from turning into a planet-wide desert while the high lattitudes make Siberia look like a warm vacation spot.
Then it demonstrates in a fish tank how cold water currents cannot descend in fresh water as well as in salt water. This is exactly what happens near Iceland, where the warm Atlantic surface current hits Arctic waters and drops to the ocean floor to fuel the deep ocean current. Already they have scientific measurements to suggest that the deep ocean current is being fueled less now than it was 30 years ago, before which nobody understood the importance of salinity in the oceans and the deep ocean currents. This correlates to the alarming increase in icebergs which have broken away from the polar ice caps over the last few decades (something like a 500% increase, by the way.)
And the documentary takes only 60 minutes, including commercials.
The Great Conveyor (Score:3, Informative)
Climate research has shown that climate shifts have occurred over history in as little as a few years.
If enough ice melts and flows into the North Atlantic, it disrupts the cold saline flow, which disrupts the concomittent return warm flow. Which makes the Northern Hemisphere colder. Which brings on the Ice.
That's as simple as it gets and the ice record in Greenland bears this out.
Global warming is NOT the problem (Score:4, Funny)
Previous Ice Ages (Score:5, Insightful)
A brief Synopsis - How Global Warming = Ice Age (Score:5, Informative)
The Gulf of Mexico is a large tropical sea with very warm water. A major ocean current, called the Gulf Stream, carries warm water from the Gulf up the east coast of the United States, starts to curve to the east as it passes Virginia, makes a sharper turn east near Cape Cod, heads straight for Ireland and Britain, turns south and heads down the French coast to Spain. The heat from the Gulf Stream warms northwestern Europe, and is the reason why London is as far north as Quebec and Moscow, but doesn't get 4 meters of snow every winter.
The mechanism that causes the Gulf Stream to flow is that cold water is denser than warm water. The arctic water up near Greenland and Iceland sinks and the warmer, less dense water from the Gulf of Mexico flows up to take its place.
However, salinity also affects water density. If enough fresh water from the ice cap melts and flows into the area around Newfoundland-Greenland-Iceland-Scotland, the water won't be dense enough to sink. Therefore the warm water will stop flowing north from the Gulf of Mexico.
Now London gets 4 meters of snow. Scandanavians laugh at them.
Of course, this will also cause the ice cap to stop melting in this area, but it will take quite a long time to "prime the pump", perhaps several thousand years. In the meantime, the northeastern United States and Northwestern Europe experience an "Ice Age" where their climate more closely resembles the climate of Russia at similar lattitudes.
Good idea... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, there's a good idea. I read that article and while on the surface it seems like a grand idea, it's the second part of your statement that concerns me. We don't know the long-term ecological implications and frankly, I think we'd be more likely to do long-term damage than long-term good. I just don't trust our knowledge of global warming and cooling
I think for now we're much better off sticking with reduction of greenhouse gas creation until we better understand our environment.
Here's the problem. Scientists say, "we've got global warming," and hey, maybe we do, but the Earth also goes through cycles of warming and cooling that are natural, and we don't entirely understand these yet. So now scientists aren't sure if we've got global warming or if we're simply in a natural warming stage. Yes, we do have manmade greenhouse gases. There's no question, but how much this is actually affecting global warming is up for debate.
There are many unknowns. And as we like to quote from the White House, some of those unknowns are known. Some of them are unknown. Until we really understand how global climate operates (maybe in 50 years, maybe longer), I don't think we should do anything to cause any intentional major changes because the damage we could wreak may be well beyond our ability to control, before it's too late.
But that's just my opinion.
But! (Score:5, Funny)
Iron's panacea status is not solid. (Score:5, Insightful)
All iron seeding studies as of 2003 [bbm.me.uk], confirmed the consumption of CO2 but
Fast forward to 2004.
There is an article in nature [nature.com], published on March 17 2004, whose abstract says iron is not a panacea
Audio interview, (8:36 ogg, 3.3Mb) [www.cbc.ca] with one of the authors. Source story [www.cbc.ca].Apparently the study linked to [calstate.edu] in the original post has two studies who's results will be published in April 2004
So what do we know for sure? Adding iron does cause a bloom, and does drawdown CO2 but other nutrients are used up and the CO2's ultimate fate is debatable.
The conflicting results could be regional variation in ocean conditions, but IANAO.
Either way global warming is real, and the film may bring to light the severity of future changes.
The Cassandra effect and Public discourse (long) (Score:5, Interesting)
When I first got into this business in the early 90s I spent a lot of time discussing these topics on sci.environment.
It may be worth pointing out that climate change over the past decade has panned out pretty much as was expected ten years ago. It's interesting that this hasn't affected the cerdibility of the field very much.
I've dabbled a bit in sci.environment again in the last few months, but it's been a lot less satisfying. Ten years ago I had the privilege of getting into flame wars with no less than John McCarthy, as well as many other less famous but comparably intelligent, very well-informed conservatively inclined people.
To be sure, there were also many throughly propagandized folks, mostly aligned in two opposing camps, but it was possible to have a serious debate and even, once in a while, score a point.
The conversation on Slashdot is only marginally better than the decaying thrashings on sci.environment. It's better because most people here are grinding different axes, and so their ill-informed commentary is less shrill and confrontational.
There's a hell of a lot of misinformation going around here, though. It's pretty discouraging to see what gets moderated to 5, insightful or informative.
Even the hacker community, chastened though it should be by the ways in which writing code makes you face your mistakes, is sadly overconfident about its opinions. People make broad and confident statements on matters where, (obviously to those few of us here who are serious students of the matter) they know very little. Moderators sharing the politics of the poster mod these up to "insightful" ore even worse "informative".
Let me review the settled science. There's a lot that's unsettled, but when I see these points debated I despair for democracy:
Re:The Cassandra effect and Public discourse (long (Score:4, Interesting)
I have a question about the nature of climate. You say:
What about 1/f noise? Are we studying a stationary random process? Is it even legitimate from a mathematical-modeling viewpoint to talk about long-term average behavior? The prediction you make about 2304 is reasonable, but hardly long-term by geological standards.
Re:The Cassandra effect and Public discourse (long (Score:5, Informative)
Is it even legitimate from a mathematical-modeling viewpoint to talk about long-term average behavior?
Indeed, in a formal sense it is not easy to make a distinction between climate and weather. The casual statement "climate is the statistics of weather" becomes formally unsatisfactory when one starts to talk about climate change .
Nevertheless, I hope you will admit that I am saying something both meaningful and true when I say that the climate of Kansas City Missouri is more variable than that of Portland Oregon. How to cast this into a formal mathematical statement is not obvious, but probably not relevant for the current discussion. Whether it ought to be a practical issue for the field is something I've wondered about, but I don't think it's a current topic.
Interestingly, "climate" is conceptually better defined in our complex models than in the real world, because our models have finite sets of forcings and of free variables, and thus a clearer distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic variability than the real world does.
The prediction you make about 2304 is reasonable, but hardly long-term by geological standards.
Actually, the prediction is robust for any location at 40 degrees north latitude, at any date, on physical grounds, as long as the atmosphere is not almost totally opaque to incoming shortwave radiation (a.k.a. "sunshine") as on Venus.
I simply use it to illustrate that the predictability horizon of weather (defined as preturbations about the climatological mean) does not amount to a predictability constraint on the climate itself. I will make the same assertion for 30,000 years in the future, if you assure me that "Chicago" will be meaningful that far into the future (which I very much hope will be the case!)
I understand this doesn't go directly to your question, which is mathematical rather than physical. Climate is definitely not stationary, and quite possibly not even ergodic.
Climate is easy to define formally in our models though, much more so than in the real world. Our models can do multiple realizations of a particular year, based on specific boundary conditions and forcings. We capture enough of the variability in these models that the realizations differ. We treat the variations among these realizations as stochastic weather and the commonalities as deterministic climate.
In the real world, as opposed to in models, there is only one realization, and in fact, no clear distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic processes. So our meta-model, our model of the model, is difficult to justify formally.
In practice we don't dwell on this much. We just treat the real world as a superposition of chaotic dynamic variability (an unpredictable part) and deterministic climate change which sets up the statistical properties of the chaos.
In the simple chaotic dynamics view, weather is the state of the system (the wandering dot), and climate is the shape of the set of permissible trajectories (the whole phase diagram). Things aren't necessarily that simple in fact, but we don't have a better way of addressing the issue. Ultimately, we aren't trying to prove theorems, we're trying to elucidate complex physics, and this view appears to be both necessary and sufficient for most of our purposes.
Side effect may make the 'iron solution' fail (Score:3, Insightful)
Goodbye Science (Score:3, Insightful)
ipcc report and water vapour in the atmosphere (Score:3, Interesting)
The issue is that water vapour is by FAR the most important greenhouse gas. CO2 is about 365 ppm these days - or 0.0356% while water vapour is in the range of 2-4% and this makes water vapour 100 TIMES more important.
Next, we need to consider irrigation. The CIA factbook does have land under irrigation on a country by country basis. It is clear these irrigation projects collectively are very significant and they have the effect of turning vast areas of arid land into moist land. All that water ends up transpired or evaporated into the atmosphere.
If we consider fossil fuels we find another large source of water vapour.
If we add it all together, which the IPCC has not done, what we find is that there has been a change in the amount of water vaopur released into the atmosphere from mankind's activites and then we must note that the UNCERTANTY in the measuremens of the water vapour are much greater than the total amount of trace gases.
Water vapour is 2 orders of magnitude more significant in concentration and it is a stronger absorber of Ultraviolet light in ALL wavelengths.
---------------
That being said, our climatologist look at an extremely short time frame. The earth has been around for about 4.5 billion years. By 570 million years ago, it had warmed and then it stayed warm for close to 90% of the time since then. There really only were 4 cold snaps and we have been in one for the last two million years. And during this last 2 million years it appears we have enjoyed about 20 ice ages, the last of which ended only 18,000 years ago.
To contrast the duration of time, suppose we were to stack up the volumes of the encyclopeadia Brittanica. If we count the number of pages we might find the thickness of each page would correspond to say about 100,000 years of the earths history.
This means that our climate modelers basically collect there data from usually less than 1/1000th of the thickness of the last page and meanwhile they ignore everything else.
IMHO this does not bode very well for their ability to make valid predictions.
CO2 Concentrations (Score:3, Insightful)
Mars Global Warming (Score:3, Insightful)
Or perhaps our probes are polluting the Martian atmosphere? ;-)
Are you implying that these scientists' predictions of doom are wrong? That would mean that they're just "stretching the truth" to get more grant money and don't care about being credible!... oh, wait.
Re:Asteroids, Volcanoes.... Climate Change? (Score:3, Insightful)
Their subsequent calculations indicated that the NAD only contributed about 5% of the additional heat energy that Europe recieves. The majority - 60% - comes from atmospheric circulation effect
Re:New Ice Age is old news, really (Score:4, Interesting)
The global mean temperature did increase over the last 100 years, most prominently over the last 30 years or so. The reasons are not totally clear.
Watching local weather reports regularly for less than two decades or so may not indicate this, since there is indeed a superimposed cyclic temperature change (related to solar activity). Moreover, there are regions where a systematic *decrease* of mean temperatures was observed over the last decades.
CO2 does not cause holes in the ozone layer
Antarctica is not a volcano