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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

#81

Post by Luc »

j_baker wrote: post #77
Luc wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> No it's not.

Well, yes it is, by definition.

Paraphrased from Wikipedia: Anti-intellectualism is a mistrust of intellect, and the derision of science as impractical. Gut feelings are emotional reactions, generally regarded as not modulated by conscious thought, and as a reflection of intuition rather than rationality.

That seems pretty clear to me, so I will gladly call this advice to follow the gut anti-intellectual.

Furthermore, I think it's to be actively opposed in the public sphere. Politics in general is all about the gut feeling, and favouring non-rational solutions to complex issues is simply dangerous, especially far-reaching ones like this one. If that is 'ranting' to you, then so be it.

Lastly, I am not disagreeing with his opinions (I agree with several of them, though that's not relevant), I am disagreeing with the 'go with gut feeling' stance.

Just in case you were not trolling...

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

#82

Post by jberryman »

ars wrote: post #19
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…

Except your gut is wrong. Recycling is not really clean. For some things maybe but not for everything (it uses far too much water). Solar? Not clean at all. (For photovoltaic which is what most people mean. Solar thermal is good though.) And just because they are made from plastic means nothing. Plastic is cleaner than wood you know (i.e. uses less energy to make and use). There is a fact that no one wants to acknowl…

> There is a fact that no one wants to acknowledge: In timeframes of under 20 or so years there are NO energy technologies that are clean. None. For timeframes longer than 20 there is exactly one: Nuclear. There is nothing else.

I'm skeptical of this figure, but it's not particularly relevant. The issue is whether directing energy towards renewable energy production has a better environmental impact vs directing that same amount of energy towards fossil fuel energy production.

Total evaluations of the costs (in dollars, to the environment, etc.) are extremely important in comparing energy production methods, but your 20 year figure is fairly meaningless on its own.

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

#83

Post by jberryman »

ars wrote: post #37
varjag wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fusion. The ultimate, clean energy generation potential. Also, don't discount wind that fast. The typical "it will have to whole country with these 1-2 MW turbines" line of argument is old. Modern offshore turbine designs are 6MW, getting to 10MW by 2012 and 20MW designs are in the works now. Advances in the field have been massive just in under a decade, with higher output efficiency (gearless designs) and less over…

The trouble with wind is the variability. And even if you assume that there is always good wind somewhere, the energy grid just can't handle shifting power back and forth so quickly. It takes time for the other generators to change output levels, so during high speed wind turbines tend to get disconnect from the grid because of the harmful effects they have on it. The net result is that they don't produce out as much…

So, energy is hard, let's go shopping?

Yes, we need a smarter grid, we need a breakthrough in battery technology, etc., etc. The way forward is going to be hard and take serious investment in technology, but what else is new?

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

#84

Post by jessedhillon »

PakG1 wrote: post #39
jessedhillon wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say anything about popularity mattering. In the absence of any better way of ascertaining objective truth about the world than the scientific method, I choose to accept the fact of consensus -- that a large number of scientists have failed to falsify the theory -- as being a meaningful indication about the truth of global warming. EDIT -- I assume with your reference to Einstein, you mean that the whole worl…

Just curious, how is climate change falsifiable? What we have is a lot of data and a lot of models. We don't have any way to test this data and models, no? Furthermore, we don't know if we know everything about the subject, although we would appear to know a lot. So the only way to falsify it is if new data comes out? But for something so complicated, future data is likely a crapshoot? We can only estimate future dat…

You're right -- it's an established fact that the median temperatures have increased over a period of time. What would need to be falsified is the theory of anthropogenic global warming -- i.e., that the warming is caused by humans.

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

#85

Post by ditojim »

ungerik wrote: post #72
Typhon wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

but the planet goes thru cycles. glaciers melt. then new ones refreeze. our existence is merely a glance at the overall cycle.

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

#86

Post by marknutter »

muppetman wrote: post #6
[deleted] wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

And that's what it seems like to me. But everyone writes and discusses it so authoritatively that you almost feel silly if you question it. In computer science, no one seems to say "This is a fact" unless they know (or can prove) it is. Doesn't seem to hold true for climate change, which is what frustrates me.

"But everyone writes and discusses it so authoritatively that you almost feel silly if you question it."

Funny, that's exactly how I feel about global warming.

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

#87

Post by dhs »

randallsquared wrote: post #59
ars wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except your gut is wrong. Recycling is not really clean. For some things maybe but not for everything (it uses far too much water). Solar? Not clean at all. (For photovoltaic which is what most people mean. Solar thermal is good though.) And just because they are made from plastic means nothing. Plastic is cleaner than wood you know (i.e. uses less energy to make and use). There is a fact that no one wants to acknowl…

Except your gut is wrong. Recycling is not really clean. For some things maybe but not for everything (it uses far too much water). Well, recycling might use too much energy to be clean (depending on how we get the energy), but using too much water doesn't seem a useful complaint, since cleaning and reusing water is just a matter of more energy.

Energy which, the parent argues, comes from un-clean sources - that's the complaint. How is this complaint not "useful", as long as you don't rebut it by listing those possible energy sources which you consider "clean"? Then I might be convinced and say: "He's right, dirty water doesn't matter, since we can just clean it, using this guy's clean energy sources."

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

#88

Post by Produce »

Right, so there was a grand minima between 1645-1715, which has been widely attributed to the last mini-ice age and yet there is no way that this one can do the same because our models do not predict it, even though our models couldn't predict the current grand minima in the first place. From a logical standpoint, this argument makes absolutely no sense and suggests that the model is incorrect.

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

#89

Post by Produce »

nl wrote: post #70
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've found http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php quite useful. It lists all the skeptic questions, and investigates the science that relates to each one in some depth - at either "Basic" or "Intermediate" levels.

I decided to take some time and read the sections on the climate being a chaotic system and, frankly, I'm still thoroughly unconvinced that it isn't one.

The main argument against it being a chaotic system is that the climate is a boundary condition system, determined by it's input and output energy. This does not satisfy me as an explanation because the sun, being the main input, is chaotic in it's energy output, as demonstrated by the unpredictability of the current lull. So if we can't predict the main input, why do we think that we can predict the behavior of something that has a chaotic input? It does not compute.

All of these discussion really miss the point though, which is that pollution of our environment is generally a bad idea. In other words, I agree with the sentiment but not the rationale.

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

#90

Post by InclinedPlane »

guelo wrote: post #7
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…

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.

Sadly, on the subject of climate change the FUD goes both ways, and the end result is that science suffers while everyone else peddles their agendas.
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