A mini ice age + global warming = cool sailing ahead!
Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade
161–170 of 176 posts
Re: Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade
#162It's not exactly news. Reduced solar activity has been observed for some time and satellite measurements of the troposphere show a slow cooling of the average global temperature over the last ten years.
Here is a presentation by Fred Singer if anybody is interested (in the past he has headed the US weather satellite program for many years). http://videolectures.net/kolokviji_singer_nnha/
Re: Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade
#163News like this always makes me wonder if the Maya calendar is an accurate description of cycles in nature. The end of there calendar also ends within a decade. Maybe just a prediction of another cycle.
Re: Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I have a question [???] and the answer is "true" or "false". The probability of it being "true" is 50%; Every question you can come up with, you can come up with a negative version. e.g. "Is your name gwright" vs "Is your name not gwright". So given any question where you know absolutely nothing at all about it, the probability the answer is "Yes" must be 50%!
The correct answer is the correct answer 100% of the time. And the wrong answer is the wrong answer 100% of the time. If I gave you a question where the correct answer is "no" and you knew _absolutely nothing_ about it, your answer "Yes" would be correct 0% of the time.
That is true, the probability of "Yes" is 0, but only according to you. Relative to me, however, the probability is still 50% chance.
It's just like if there was a stock the market know nothing about, but you know it just scored a magnificent deal a couple of hours ago, the market will see it as "meh, 50 50" (no price change), while you see "100% going to go up, must buy."
That's called insider trading, however. ;)
Re: Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade
#165So we will either die of cold or heat. Maybe.
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Re: Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade
#166Earlier 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.
Some other life, not all other life.
Re: Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade
#167Maybe nobody will read my comment since I'm a bit late but anyway: It seems like nobody talked about the implication of the diminution of the solar magnetic field.
If I remember correctly, the solar magnetic field (SMF) is held responsible ’not entirely, earth's GM too and other things’ for deflecting galactic cosmic rays. What are the consequences of the current diminution of the SMF?
Looks like it will be better for space travel..(the article says) and how is that? Solar storm > Cosmis ray?
Excuse me but seems to me like it's the other way around: "The storms actually improved the radiation environment inside the station." via (http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2005/07...)
What are you views on the subject? I don't know what to think anymore.
Re: Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 chang…
Southern Ontario dips down to just north of PA/Ohio and next to Detroit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Canada#Extreme_poi...
I'm nitpicking, but unless I'm misunderstanding you, what you're saying about Southern Ontario having weather like DC in July is a little off. Average high July DC is 88F. Average high July Detroit (close to S Ont) is 83F. It's similar, but 5F is definitely a difference. Sharing the facts because I find this stuff interesting!
Opinion: DC often feels hotter than it actually is due to the high humidity, which gets worse the farther down the east coast you go. I've never been to Southern Ontario in July though.
DC: http://www.weather.com/weather/wxclimatology/monthly/graph/U...
Detroit: http://www.weather.com/weather/wxclimatology/monthly/graph/U...
Re: Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade
#169Earlier 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…
Ah, but with space mirrors we don't get "temperature", we get temperature in locations. You don't just point the mirrors "at Earth", you point them "at Utah" or, well, engineering-wise there's nothing really stopping us from getting it down to a few hundred square meters or even tighter, which is why this can be such a weapon. But it's also why they really are the best solution, they have fine-grained control over many things and can even be used to do things like significantly increase evaporation in oceans or something, not just control temperature directly.
Re: Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
IIRC, plankton blooms were debunked. They tried it and the number of predators just a level removed from the plankton increased to offset the bloom.
They were; I just picked that as a convenient example of a non-reversible idea. Once you dump the iron in, you're committed. It turns out that in a dynamic system (ahem) that just smashing one of the inputs doesn't guarantee a linear response, but regardless, you're committed once you've done it.
(It turns out that in this case the system tends towards stability. There are good reasons to believe that most changes we can make will also be neutralized. But there's no a priori reason that the same experiment couldn't have experienced a wildly disproportionally large response instead.)