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

theregister.co.uk

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

#111

Post by wunderfool »

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…

do people really believe that rapid climate change will reveal some new mass of desirable farm land? maybe in 5000 years as the soils adapt to new climates, but not fast enough to feed a hungry planet.

there are some lands on the periphery of existing arable zones that might become desirable in the short term, but certainly there will be a net loss worldwide...local economies have grown around existing arable zones, you have to transplant all that too

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

#112

Post by wunderfool »

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?

no one. we do not have the technology to rapidly alter the climate. our current climate change is the result of thousands of years of population growth and industrialization. concepts for extracting CO2 from the atmosphere in short course are just that, concepts

mother nature is still in charge, and needs only shrug slightly with a temperature change of 10 degrees on average in either direction to eliminate humans and our society

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

#114

Post by lupatus »

cryptoz wrote: post #61
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.

> The difference being that there is nobody living on a planet like say, Mars. Stop right there. You don't know that there isn't anyone living there. We've sent a couple rovers, dug down a few inches, and looked at it from telescopes. There are millions of dollars poured into the search for life on Mars every year, as there should be. But we don't know very much yet! I am totally in favour of terraforming and coloniz…

I am in favor of doing with Mars as we wish. When Western Civilization had "first contact" with various "alien"[1] native societies around the world, most of the impact flowed from civilization to the "aliens". Civilization continued on and most of the alien societies became footnotes in history. Might makes right, and unless the Martian bacteria are crafting starships in their caves, I think we should take samples for scientific study and then open Mars to homesteaders. The Martian lifeforms have had just as long to do something productive with Mars as we have had with Earth. It is not our fault if they are still just bacteria.

[1] Meaning literally foreign.

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

#115

Post by Jach »

cryptoz wrote: post #61
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.

> The difference being that there is nobody living on a planet like say, Mars. Stop right there. You don't know that there isn't anyone living there. We've sent a couple rovers, dug down a few inches, and looked at it from telescopes. There are millions of dollars poured into the search for life on Mars every year, as there should be. But we don't know very much yet! I am totally in favour of terraforming and coloniz…

I don't think it's that big of a deal. Considering the issue of wiping out a species, we do that all the time here on Earth (no that doesn't make it okay, but we do it all the time nevertheless, I don't think it's humanity's greatest crime). Considering the issue of wiping out an ET species, that makes me more worried for Great Filter concerns than about how we'll look back at ourselves in history. If there's life on Mars, or if there was life on Mars, either case is bad news for us.

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

#116

Post by wunderfool »

scarmig wrote: post #71
hyperbovine wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that's a godsend. You're saying that if the problem disappeared tomorrow, people would suddenly become more serious about combating global warming? Pardon the pun, but what on Earth makes you believe that? I don't think an ice age is really imminent, but its occurrence would be a outright calamity. We'd continue merrily down the present course, and be seventy years more fucked when the pendulum came swinging back.

Let's say we could kick it down the road 50 years--I don't believe a mini-Ice Age is coming either, and even if it is NASA for one expects it to counteract only around seven years of carbon emissions. So this is all a bunch of pointless hypotheticals. But bear with me. 50 years from now, assuming around 2% annual global growth (a conservative guess), the world will be over two and a half times richer than it is now.…

"notwithstanding the couple hundred extra ppm of CO2"

if you're saying that ppm will be in the 600-700 range then humanity will be on an irreversible express train to extinction, so not much else in your post matters

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

#117

Post by run4yourlives »

ellyagg wrote: post #68
run4yourlives wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point being that making a mess on another planet is more preferable than making a mess of the only one we have - and I have much more faith in our ability to make a mess of things than I do in our ability to "improve" the Earth's climate.

That's odd since the evidence we have so far points to humanity adapting our environment and improving our living conditions with breathtaking success.

Um, we wouldn't be discussing climate change if that were the case.

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

#118

Post by danparsonson »

jerf wrote: post #101
danparsonson wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What makes it simplistic for me is really the idea that we can make the climate better by tinkering with a single variable (temperature in this case) - I'm not convinced we even know what 'better' is, let alone have enough understanding to predict what the side effects would be. What if we cause some imbalance that doesn't immediately manifest any problems but has a detrimental longer term effect?

I do take your point about space mirrors and the ability to experiment, though - certainly more appealing than man-made plankton blooms shudder - and I think you hit the nail on the head with respect to the political issues!

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

#119

Post by redthrowaway »

wunderfool wrote: post #111
redthrowaway wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

do people really believe that rapid climate change will reveal some new mass of desirable farm land? maybe in 5000 years as the soils adapt to new climates, but not fast enough to feed a hungry planet. there are some lands on the periphery of existing arable zones that might become desirable in the short term, but certainly there will be a net loss worldwide...local economies have grown around existing arable zones,…

That's what I was getting at. Too big a swing could, for example, hasten the expansion of the Gobi Desert, destroying millions of acres of arable land and endangering the food supply for a billion people.

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

#120

Post by dhughes »

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.)

You'd think but as a Canadian who hates the cold but lives on a flat (400ft is the highest spot) island I won't be living here if the sea rises even a bit more.
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