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New ice age? Don't count on it

newscientist.com

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Re: New ice age? Don't count on it

#71

Post by grannyg00se »

muppetman wrote: post #2

With these sorts of articles now I'm never quite sure what to believe. Now before you jump in to mock me, it's just that I don't have time to keep really up-to-date with climate change anymore. Are we really getting warmer? Are we cooling? What's causing it? For each article I read that tells me one thing, a few days later another comes out and tells me the previous one was wrong and here's why. I hope that this arti…

I don't think any legitimate study disputes the fact that the planet is getting warmer and polar ice is melting en masse.

What is in dispute are the reasons why, and what to do about it, if anything.

Re: New ice age? Don't count on it

#72

Post by ungerik »

Typhon wrote: post #30
guelo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FUD. That's the point of the decades long propaganda campaign by the energy companies. If they can't convince you outright they at least want to create the confusion and doubt.

Doubt is a very good thing. It's propaganda versus propaganda now. I will never forgive whoever has made global warming a political issue, because it means debating rationally about it has become impossible. Climate is a very complicated thing, especially when studied on a planetary scale. It's a bunch of chaotic parameters, and any prediction about it is likely to be wrong, or imprecise. Much of science works that w…

> It's propaganda versus propaganda now.

That's right. Want to see the real stuff with your own eyes? Revisit the glacier you have have been at 10 years ago. If you you are not into mountaineering, use historical pictures.

Re: New ice age? Don't count on it

#73

Post by bjelkeman-again »

ars wrote: post #38
david927 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

climate change and green energy are so complicated and political There isn't much complicated about it climate change: the full consensus is that it's happening because we're burning too much oil. The politics? Less than 10 years ago, the world's largest industry was oil when the price was roughly stable at around $20 a barrel. Today a barrel costs $100. For something the world consumes at a thousand barrels a second…

It's not oil, it's coal that is the main source of CO2. And green energy does not exist, so good luck switching to it. People tend to assume "it will be fought every step of the way" because they refuse to believe the truth: it does not exist.

Green energy does exist.

If by “green energy” you are referring to energy production that is renewable or doesn’t produce significant CO2 emissions, then it does exist.

Here are some examples from Sweden:

District heating systems in Sweden has switched from being nearly entirely fossil fuel based (oil mainly) in the early 70s (15 TWh) and following decade (35 TWh) to be nearly entirely renewable energy in 2009 (59 TWh total of which biofuel, waste, peat, heat pumps and waste heat make up more than 45 TWh). [1]

District cooling has gone from zero in the early 90s to supply 800 GWh in 2009. This includes using sea or lake water in district cooling systems, where the system in Stockholm makes up for nearly half of that production. [2]

Swedish total energy use in 2009 is about 568 TWh. [3] Sweden has increased its renewable energy use from about 34% in 1990 to 44% in 2009. [4]

Electricity production in Sweden is about 49% large hydro, 1.9% wind, 37% nuclear (adds up to about 89%), most of the rest comes from combined heat and electricity production, which uses primarily biofuel, but also some coal, oil, gas and peat.

Sweden has a policy to promote renewables and over the years this has paid off. You can do the same.

---

[1] Department of Energy, Energy in Sweden 2010, Figure 30, page 87. http://webbshop.cm.se/System/TemplateView.aspx?p=Energimyndi...

[2] Department of Energy, Energy in Sweden 2010, Figure 31, page 90.

[3] Department of Energy, Energy in Sweden 2010, Figure 8, page 53.

[4] Department of Energy, Energy in Sweden 2010, Figure 11, page 58.

[5] EkonomiFakta, Electricity production in Sweden, http://www.ekonomifakta.se/sv/Fakta/Energi/Energibalans-i-Sv...

Edit: layout and one missing reference, grammar

Re: New ice age? Don't count on it

#74

Post by hugh3 »

hyko wrote: post #53

The Earth has been in an ice age since the Pleistocene. This is an interglacial period.

Yep, and we still don't understand what causes ice ages.

Let's stop and think about that for a minute. We're still pretty darn ignorant of the climate. Look at a plot of temperature over the last mere million years. Climate scientists will at this point tell you they know all about the variation over the last few decades. But point to the huge swings that occur on ten-thousand-year timescales and periodically freeze the entire Earth over and they'll say "Yeah, well y'know, that could be a number of things..."

Climate science is a dodgy form of science. Too many model parameters, too few observations.

Re: New ice age? Don't count on it

#75

Post by ugh »

DougWebb wrote: post #63
arethuza wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deciding whether or not there is climate change and what is causing it is a scientific question. What do to about it is a political decision.

No, deciding what to do about it is an engineering decision. Deciding to actually do what the engineers say is the best way to deal with the problem, based on the science, is the only political decision.

Engineers can't do that. You have to give them a goal and then you have to decide whether you like their plan for achieving the goal. The political process becomes important before engineers spring into action.

Re: New ice age? Don't count on it

#76

Post by david927 »

yters wrote: post #61
dodo53 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the greenhouse effect is totally uncontroversial. To what extent the climate will change due to that is slighlty more scientifically controversial, but as uninformed lay person I'd say is fairly broad consensus. Which green energy choices are economically feasible is much more controversial - there's counterintuitive things like - is it better to subsidize solar/wind while not really feasible to subsidize tec…

For some reason the global warming crowd doesn't talk about the fact that the primary greenhouse gas is water vapor. CO2 only makes up something like 10%, and the human caused part only about 4% of that, which is 0.4% overall.

global warming crowd

I don't know if that's the bes term, since I think you'll find it's the same as the evolution crowd and heliocentric crowd.

Your argument is specious -- we're also only talking about it getting a few degrees warmer. If you investigate, you'll find why that's a problem.

Re: New ice age? Don't count on it

#77

Post by j_baker »

Luc wrote: post #20
pedalpete wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As guelo points out, this is part of the propaganda campaigns,but who's propaganda. I say go with your gut and do what's right. We know that burning gasoline and coal releases carbon and are dirty. We know we should be clean. Strip mining, not clean. Recycling, clean. Wind looks cleaner than a smokestack, go wind. Solar, well, if the panels are made from plastics are they really cleaner than gas? I think so, go solar…

> for the most part you know in your gut what's right. For complex issues, that is the worst advice possible. Humanity is barely rational as it is. The last thing we need is politicians (and those who elect them) 'going with their gut'. This really is an anti-intellectual stance.

No it's not. Something like "Stupid academics and their ivory tower global warming theories" is anti-intellectual. The grandparent just values intuition above hard data. I don't necessarily agree, but don't go calling the grandparent anti-intellectual and rant about humanity's lack of "rationality" just because you disagree with them.

Re: New ice age? Don't count on it

#78

Post by oelewapperke »

grannyg00se wrote: post #71
muppetman wrote: post #2

With these sorts of articles now I'm never quite sure what to believe. Now before you jump in to mock me, it's just that I don't have time to keep really up-to-date with climate change anymore. Are we really getting warmer? Are we cooling? What's causing it? For each article I read that tells me one thing, a few days later another comes out and tells me the previous one was wrong and here's why. I hope that this arti…

I don't think any legitimate study disputes the fact that the planet is getting warmer and polar ice is melting en masse. What is in dispute are the reasons why, and what to do about it, if anything.

Imho, what's mainly in dispute is what the effect of different actions will be.

An example would be, what would the effect be of stopping CO2 production alltogether ? Because the answer is so very different from what the politicians would want it to be :

stopping co2 production will have a tiny effect on global warming, or maybe none at all.

Global warming went into a feedback loop over 100 years ago, and while stopping co2 production might slow it down, it will not stop it, nor will it reverse any of it's effects.

Those glaciers are gone until the next ice age. Deal with it. It might be a good idea to pray you don't get to see them again in your lifetime, because you won't like what they bring with them.

Re: New ice age? Don't count on it

#79

Post by istarex »

bjelkeman-again wrote: post #73
ars wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not oil, it's coal that is the main source of CO2. And green energy does not exist, so good luck switching to it. People tend to assume "it will be fought every step of the way" because they refuse to believe the truth: it does not exist.

Green energy does exist. If by “green energy” you are referring to energy production that is renewable or doesn’t produce significant CO2 emissions, then it does exist. Here are some examples from Sweden: District heating systems in Sweden has switched from being nearly entirely fossil fuel based (oil mainly) in the early 70s (15 TWh) and following decade (35 TWh) to be nearly entirely renewable energy in 2009 (59 TW…

A nit: aren't biofuels, waste and peat only "green" in the sense that they are renewable. In terms of climate change (which is the point of this discussion), these sources still release CO2, no?

Re: New ice age? Don't count on it

#80

Post by praxeologist »

jessedhillon wrote: post #8
[deleted] wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

Guessing? How so, by whom, and about what? The scientific consensus is that humans have had a significant, adverse impact on the global climate -- this conclusion is presented with scientific certainty. There is a complete lack of significant dissent: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_c...

"It has been often said that the science is settled on the issue of CO2 and climate. Let me put this claim to rest with a simple one-letter proof that it is false.

The letter is s, the one that changes model into models. If the science were settled, there would be precisely one model, and it would be in agreement with measurements.

Alternatively, one may ask which one of the twenty-some models settled the science so that all the rest could be discarded along with the research funds that have kept those models alive.

We can take this further. Not a single climate model predicted the current cooling phase. If the science were settled, the model (singular) would have predicted it."

http://www.stephankinsella.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Ha...

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