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Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade

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Re: Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade

#101

Post by jerf »

danparsonson wrote: post #25
hugh3 wrote: post #10

This is exactly why I think the debate should be less about "how can we as humans stop affecting Earth's natual climate" and "how can we as humans gain control over Earth's natural climate". Climate change happens with us or without us. If we're going to protect our huge investments in climate-dependent infrastructure (i.e. cities) then we're gonna want (say) giant space mirrors to compensate for any zany things that…

Attempting to exercise control over such a chaotic system with simplistic solutions like giant space mirrors strikes me as a very bad idea indeed. Until we have a complete understanding of how the climate is regulated naturally I really don't see how we can do any good at all. Not to mention that, as you say, the politics are beyond us at the moment anyway (global consensus? yeah, right...)

The nice thing about space mirrors is that of all the climate mitigation methods I've heard, they are by far the most controllable. Solutions like "let's stuff the oceans full of iron to grow plankton to absorb CO2", even assuming they work as intended, have the problem that they are irreversible. Space mirrors can put heat where we want it, and remove it from where we want it, and can do so on hours of notice. It's actually the least simplistic solution. It also actually allows some reasonable engineering experimentation with commensurate levels of commitment.

Unfortunately, it is also the easiest to turn into one hell of a weapon.

Then, following that logic, climate control in general is one hell of a weapon. If anybody actually can control the climate, can we allow them that power? Things like "turn it over to the UN" aren't a magical answer to that problem because "the UN" is ultimately just another group of people, not particularly imbued with magical resistance to the temptations of power. (Arguably, quite the opposite.)

But assuming the massive political problems can be solved, problems which all climate control schemes have equally, space mirrors are actually the one I favor most. Too many of the other ones have a failure case of "triggering an ice age", and for all the words spent on explaining how bad global warming is, ice ages are several orders of magnitude worse than the worst global warming story I've heard. A true ice age is the end of civilization.

Re: Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade

#102

Post by Jach »

gwright wrote: post #87
RuadhanMc wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is probably because people are comfortable with the familiar. Sure, a warmer earth might be a positive-sum change, but there's an equally good chance that it won't be. So why take the risk of losing what you have if you can avoid it?

> equally good chance that it won't be. probability = ?????? is not at all the same thing as probability = 0.50

In this case, it is! The GP is using a uniform prior assigning "equally good chance" to either outcome (good or bad). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_probability

Of course stopping there seems to be silly since I'm sure more informed people have evidence that can shift that probability one way or the other.

Re: Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade

#103

Post by jerf »

lftl wrote: post #39
run4yourlives wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably easier to just colonize other planets than it is to go farting around with something as delicate as Earth's climate.

It's obviously easier to "fart around with" the Earth's climate considering we're doing it now to some extent. Assuming you meant the much higher bar of improving the Earth's climate (sidestepping the obvious question of what we mean by improve), I'm still not convinced colonizing another planet is easier. There's a number of theoretical plans for reducing CO2, or decreasing surface temperature by reflecting some of…

"sidestepping the obvious question of what we mean by improve"

This, by the way, is rather a massive problem with current discourse. Anyone who wants to talk about "damage" to Earth's environment ought to be required to specify their definition of "optimal". It turns out to be rather tricky, but without it a lot of this debate is politics, not science or engineering.

Re: Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade

#104

Post by curious_man »

goatforce5 wrote: post #85
curious_man wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I think this would be the simplest: the temperature at any given latitude will be the average of the last n years. Period. But maybe I'm too naive.

Who gets to define n?

I don't know actual statistics, but I think that in every place there is something like a "normal temperature" each season.

Re: Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade

#105

Post by rglullis »

jhamburger wrote: post #38
AndyKelley wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The political problem of who gets to control the Earth's thermostat is, of course, a tricky one." Understatement of the year. Can you imagine?

Might test the BRIC alliances. Russia and Brazil probably won't agree on this one.

What BRIC alliances?

BRIC countries are just clumped together for being developing economies that are going through similar experiences, but it is far from being a political-economic group.

Quite the opposite, actually.

Re: Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade

#106

Post by wunderfool »

dstorrs wrote: post #72
wunderfool wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nowhere to go? really? last time i checked most of the earth's surface was uninhabited. why do people want to go to mars when the land can be had in the mojave desert for practically no cost? its just as dry but has an oxygen atmosphere, and there is virtually no demand for the land or forget about the mojave. northern canada has a population per square km that is effectively zero. pretty mars-like, but you can hunt…

A) Because every dollar invested in the US space program since inception has created about $7 of economic benefit to the consumer economy. B) (Related to A but worth mentioning separately:) Because the space program has led to major advances in medicine that have improved length and quality of life on Earth. [1] C) To gain access to essentially limitless energy resources via space-based solar. D) To gain access to ma…

you raise a bunch of economic issues, but the poster to which i replied simply stated that there was "no where else to go", which is absurd

the rest of your points are dubious. your point B) has been proven false since the launch of the space station...this was one of its apparently initial goals, zero-g bioresearch...except that ended up being replaced with simulating everything in computers with bioinformatics on earth much more easily

C) also has no meaning as we could provide 100% of our solar needs by simply covering a part of any of our major deserts with solar thermal.

http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2009/surface-area-requ...

D) maybe, but, for a contrived example, if gold is $5000 an ounce, you have to bring it back from mars for less than $5000 an ounce or its a wash

E) completely bogus, no humans could survive long term with constant support from earth, this has been beaten to death

Re: Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade

#107

Post by curious_man »

redthrowaway wrote: post #100
curious_man wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I think this would be the simplest: the temperature at any given latitude will be the average of the last n years. Period. But maybe I'm too naive.

Simplest, but not optimal. Ideally you'd want to settle on a mean that: a) Maximizes arable land, b) Minimizes climate-based natural disasters such as hurricanes, and c) Is as near to self-sustaining as possible. That is, the global mean should not lead to significant growing or shrinking of ice caps and glaciers, nor significantly alter carbon uptake by the oceans. While some degree of human control could make up fo…

> While some degree of human control could make up for heterostatic forces, a swing too far in either direction would quickly exceed our ability to compensate.

Exactly. That's why I'm suggesting that the "not worse" solution could be to artificially heat up the earth to the actual temperature for every latitude. Politics aside, a different temperature would probably disturb the current equilibrium and potentially cause some side-effects worse than the suspected mini ice-age.

Re: Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade

#108

Post by c2 »

Hawramani wrote: post #57

Reading the comments on here and many other places about global warming, it makes me sad that nobody is open-minded enough to entertain the possibility that an increase in the Earth's temperature could be a positive-sum change. We know very little about the Earth's natural cycles and the effects we have on them, so we are very far from knowing whether things are going in a good* or bad direction. * Good for everyone…

First off, the global warming debate is not just about temperatures. It is also about resource use, pollution, waste, contamination of environments, etc.

Secondly, the effect of this 'mini ice age' will last a scant 10 or so years. Call me crazy but it doesn't make sense to burn more fossil fuels and continue to cause potentially unrepairable harm to our environment to optimize for a period of 10 years of relatively cool temperatures.

If the scientific community agrees that warmer temperatures are in the planet's best interest, I'm sure there is a safer and more effective way to bring that about then the massive amount of pollution and CO2 we are currently pumping into the atmosphere.

Re: Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade

#109

Post by lupatus »

wunderfool wrote: post #60
run4yourlives wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference being that there is nobody living on a planet like say, Mars. Last I checked, there are a whole bunch of people with nowhere else to go on Earth as it stands.

nowhere to go? really? last time i checked most of the earth's surface was uninhabited. why do people want to go to mars when the land can be had in the mojave desert for practically no cost? its just as dry but has an oxygen atmosphere, and there is virtually no demand for the land or forget about the mojave. northern canada has a population per square km that is effectively zero. pretty mars-like, but you can hunt…

I second wunderfool's comment. Having driven from Richmond, Virginia, to Anchorage, Alaska, a couple of times, I can attest first-hand that most of North America is unoccupied, empty wildlands. And, don't tell me that I was confused by giant farms in Saskatchewan or something like that. I'm not counting them. Most of the land is simply empty and devoid of humans. (This fact got a little worrisome when it was night, I was low on gasoline, it was snowing, and I was still a good distance from the next "town" on the map.)

Re: Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade

#110

Post by wunderfool »

natmaster wrote: post #21
hugh3 wrote: post #10

This is exactly why I think the debate should be less about "how can we as humans stop affecting Earth's natual climate" and "how can we as humans gain control over Earth's natural climate". Climate change happens with us or without us. If we're going to protect our huge investments in climate-dependent infrastructure (i.e. cities) then we're gonna want (say) giant space mirrors to compensate for any zany things that…

For instance Canada may want the earth warmer, whereas Indian would want it cooler. (Since it benefits their respective latitudes.)

why do people throw these arguments around? i don't know of any nation whose scientists find any rapid climate change desirable. who are they? the notion of a polar thaw is tossed around as being desirable for canada as a shipping route....BUT this would decimate the living biosphere of 90% of canadians who live within 100 miles of the US border. i've never heard a serious canadian climate science talk about rapid climate change as desirable...nor any other
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