Anyone have Al Gore's email address?
Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade
141–150 of 176 posts
Re: Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade
#142This 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…
I worry that you underestimate the complexity of the problem.
Drastically reducing CO2 in the atmosphere by reducing fossil fuel usage AND increasing sequestration by natural systems is by far the easiest and most predictable approach to strive for.
However, even that is proving beyond the abilities of our struggling political leaders.
Re: Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade
#143Earlier 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?
Exactly. The worst case, I'm afraid, would be another MARS in the solar system.
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Re: Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
As seemingly benign as a "slightly longer winter" seems, I would venture the consequences of this will be larger than we anticipate.
Indeed, considering that the much-feared "global warming" constitutes an increase of one degree per _century_.
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Re: Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 poin…
Temperature as a single variable doesn't deal with /known/ problems.
Besides the well-known effect on temperature, CO2 also causes ocean acidification, which among other things kills coral. In its own way, ocean acidification is far scarier than global warming, because there is absolutely no question that it is taking place. While you need a PhD to analyze climate data, you only need high school chemistry to demonstrate ocean acidification. Moreover, you have to deal with the carbon dioxide directly to solve this problem; you can't just try changing the albedo of the Earth, through mirrors or surface reflectors or particulates in the upper atmosphere. And worse: simply stopping where we are may not an option. The current levels may already be long-term undesirable.
Re: Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 cl…
I've seen studies pointing out more land access for Canadians [0] but hardly anything about affecting the 'living biosphere of 90% of Canadians within 100 miles of US border'. What's the source? [0] https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=farm+climate...
you don't need a study. most of the population of canada is situated far further south than most americans understand. the lowest point of ontario, for example, is south of the most northern point of california.
most of the inhabited areas of canada already have very hot summers. in southern ontario you can expect weather like washington DC in july
if most of the united states is set to be victimized by climate change (which everyone accepts) then it is a trivial deduction that most of the population of canada will also be
Re: Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
wrong. that bottle of organic shampoo from whole food commits about 98% of the sins as a bottle of a nonorganic varity from safeway. both are put in plastic which may or may not be recycled but was certainly made from oil (like all plastics), and was driven to the store in a vehicle that emits CO2, stored in a room kept warm or cool with a device that emits CO2, and then driven back to your house in another vehicle t…
I agree that current efforts at sustainability are pathetically weak, but I disagree that CO2 emissions are fundamentally the problem. Global warming is an environmentalist boogeyman that makes for good PR, but climate disaster or not we have politically intractable problems with the waste of natural resources. We can always grow more plants to reclaim CO2, but we can't continue to just extract everything and then th…
Re: Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which life? Industrial age humans? That's who we care about. Our goal is (or at least I hope it is) to enable humans to thrive, we don't really care about other life (at least if we had to pick between humans and other life) as long as it is not instrumental to our success.
The problem is that without the other life there can be no human life. We are on the top of the food chain and as such we depend on all other animals for our survival. Hopefully it makes sense what I'm saying.
oddly enough some climate scientists (james lovelock, in this case) take it as a given that most animal life is already doomed, and that humans will have to engineer a food source in order to survive. green goo might be in your future
Re: Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade
#149Reading 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…
some interesting food for thought. in james lovelock's last book, he discusses how recent volcanos have indeed had a measurable cooling impact (abeit short term)...he suggests that it may indeed be the case that humanity, in a fit of desperation, may have to (try to) engineer a large scale introduction of such material into the atmosphere to create immediate cooling...even though such material itself poses many dangers
Re: Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade
#150Relevant: http://www.ted.com/talks/david_deutsch_on_our_place_in_the_c... As David makes the point (at the near end of the video), the best available science in the 1970's predicted that the climate was cooling down. The best available science of today (not the least, with the help of best marketing) would predict Global Warming. The same best scientific estimates of the day also predict that our best projections to…
it is important to note that half of the CO2 in our atmosphere is produced by our exhalations and those of our animals [source:gaia's final warning]...so indeed not only would ceasing all industrial activity be required to stop increasing CO2...we would also have to drastically reduce population. even then, there is enough CO2 already in the atmosphere to move the temperature to a new steady state which could take thousands of years to change
we are increasing population when we should be enforcing a global one-child policy