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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

#21

Post by devijvers »

Joakal wrote: post #9
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…

Well, other people think it's bullshit here so far without any sources. Here's some scientific stuff: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Scientific_op... It's unlikely you can understand all the factors of climate change since there's far more variables of Earth than most scientists can comprehend so they could only study and make scientific theory based understandings. I think it's best to leave it to th…

I would be happy to leave it to academics if they hadn't transformed into a political body. Too late.

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

#22

Post by ars »

jessedhillon wrote: post #16
[deleted] wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

> Consensus, although comforting, is irrelevant in hard science. Particularly so when uncertainty is high, as in climate change modelling. When you say "irrelevant," do you mean to say that the attempts of thousands of scientists to use the scientific method to repeat findings which constitute the body of research -- and consequently fail to falsify the theory of anthropogenic global warming -- do you mean to say tha…

He's probably getting downmodded, which isn't right. Don't downmod someone just because you disagree. Upmod what you agree with, and leave what you disagree with alone. Reserve downmods for stupid comments.

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

#23

Post by devijvers »

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...

"Scientific certainty" is not a popularity contest as you describe.

Everybody can agree and still be wrong. Einstein's work is a good example of that.

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

#24

Post by nagrom »

I'd love to see more engineering efforts going towards improving our standard of living regardless of what the climate does. By all means, worry about whether the planet is getting warmer or cooler or a bit of both dependent on the place...but let's find a way to live regardless of CO2-induced warming, sunspot rarity or some other, unforeseen dramatic change.

A lot of the political and societal measures are aimed at making energy more expensive, reducing consumption and promoting a rather righteous view of how people should live. Why not spend the same effort to promote technologies that allow people to live however they want in a way that is sustainable regardless of the environment?

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

#25

Post by jessedhillon »

devijvers wrote: post #23
jessedhillon wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

"Scientific certainty" is not a popularity contest as you describe. Everybody can agree and still be wrong. Einstein's work is a good example of that.

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 world was wrong about the motion of physical bodies, with their notions from Newtonian models, until relativity came along? If so, you may care to read this: http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm

It's about the difference between a wrong theory and an incomplete one.

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

#26

Post by david927 »

dodo53 wrote: post #14
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…

The problem is that climate change and green energy are so complicated and political, it's hard to tell what is propaganda (and there's strong incentives in many different directions for the results to come out in a given direction). Ethanol used to sound like a good idea; now it sounds like it's mostly a corn/sugar-lobby way of getting money and not practical (although I'm sure it's not that straightforward). For 'w…

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, that's huge. At the price a couple weeks ago, it was a better investment to buy the world's biggest commodity than Google when it IPO'd. You might want to read that again.

Climate change is a force of urgency in the switch away from oil to green energy. You can be sure it will be fought every step of the way with every tool available.

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

#27

Post by Tichy »

nagrom wrote: post #24

I'd love to see more engineering efforts going towards improving our standard of living regardless of what the climate does. By all means, worry about whether the planet is getting warmer or cooler or a bit of both dependent on the place...but let's find a way to live regardless of CO2-induced warming, sunspot rarity or some other, unforeseen dramatic change. A lot of the political and societal measures are aimed at…

I don't think the aim of politics is to make people's live more miserable. Energy is being made more expensive to account for the externalities . The markets can then figure out how to make us live well with the proper energy costs.

What kind of tech promotion do you imagine, other than more efficient energy production and consumption?

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

#28

Post by varjag »

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…

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 overall maintenance effort.

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

#29

Post by dodo53 »

david927 wrote: post #26
dodo53 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that climate change and green energy are so complicated and political, it's hard to tell what is propaganda (and there's strong incentives in many different directions for the results to come out in a given direction). Ethanol used to sound like a good idea; now it sounds like it's mostly a corn/sugar-lobby way of getting money and not practical (although I'm sure it's not that straightforward). For 'w…

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…

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 technology development or build natural gas plants (which are proven to be economically feasible and cleaner than oil I believe - but obviously still a fossil fuel).

Edit: tried googling for gas-is-cleaner-than-oil citation, and found - http://www.propublica.org/article/more-reasons-to-question-w... saying earlier studies may be wrong and it's actually dirtier than coal.

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

#30

Post by Typhon »

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.

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 way, but problems arise when you need to make political decisions about such matters. You can't make large-scale decisions that will affect millions based on flimsy predictions that may turn out to be wrong.

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