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MIT study says Arctic ice thinning 4x faster than predicted

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Re: MIT study says Arctic ice thinning 4x faster than predicted

#21

Post by ChuckMcM »

ryandvm wrote: post #2

The question isn't whether the earth is warming or not - it clearly is. The real question is what should humans do about it? I think it's pretty reasonable to ask if trying to turn down the heat is the best use of our resources? That is, perhaps the incalculable trillions of dollars that it would cost to adjust the earth's climate would be better spent on helping humans adjust instead. Hell, there is significant evid…

I think the original article's headline would have been less provacative if it had read "MIT measures actual ice melt and proves our models of the Earth's climate are still wrong."

And our lack of knowledge here is quite large. So large that the notion of "The real question is what should humans do about it?" is still preposterous. We can't "do something" about something when we don't understand how that something works. It won't stop us of course, barber's tried to 'balance your humors' to correct illness in Medival times, not because it was effective but it met the goal of 'doing something.' Few people have the tolerance to wait until actually understand how Earth's climate is created/changed/affected before they start acting. And like Medival barbers their actions may make things worse just as easily as they may make things better.

I suspect, that you are a 'Climate Fatalist' like I am. I accept that the climate will change and that no matter how much I wish it different, if Yellowstone erupts we're talking ice age baby right then and there. I also accept that it can change quickly without my help so I pursue ways to survive large variations in climates. I've recently been looking at Aquaponics [1] which is a mostly closed loop system for sustainably growing vegetables and protein using a simple eco-system that can be protected from gross changes in the environment. Since it will be impossible (remember I'm a fatalist :-) to get mainstream investment in climate change preparation until rapid climate shifts are upon us, I'm trying to find ways to seed survivability niches.

[1] http://www.aquaponics.com/

Re: MIT study says Arctic ice thinning 4x faster than predicted

#22

Post by zeteo »

ajb wrote: post #13
krschultz wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we need to? Just because it is unnatural and you are philosophically opposed to it? Or are you saying something about the fact that the temperature change is driven by humans rather than nature makes it a problem?

The distinction is one of knowledge. We have evidence that that the environment as it exists now, is a relatively stable regime. The climate has changed throughout history, but not, obviously, to the extent of rendering us extinct. If, however, we act to bring the climate out of the regime for which we have this evidence (for example, by raising the CO2 level to its highest value for 800,000 years), then with our pre…

>We have evidence that that the environment as it exists now, is a relatively stable regime.

Umm.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth ?!

Re: MIT study says Arctic ice thinning 4x faster than predicted

#23

Post by gmac »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #21
ryandvm wrote: post #2

The question isn't whether the earth is warming or not - it clearly is. The real question is what should humans do about it? I think it's pretty reasonable to ask if trying to turn down the heat is the best use of our resources? That is, perhaps the incalculable trillions of dollars that it would cost to adjust the earth's climate would be better spent on helping humans adjust instead. Hell, there is significant evid…

I think the original article's headline would have been less provacative if it had read "MIT measures actual ice melt and proves our models of the Earth's climate are still wrong." And our lack of knowledge here is quite large. So large that the notion of "The real question is what should humans do about it?" is still preposterous. We can't "do something" about something when we don't understand how that something wo…

We can't "do something" about something when we don't understand how that something works.

Yes, we can.

We don't know what the outputs of the system will be for all inputs, but we know that the key input is greenhouse gases. We can reduce that input if we choose, and our fundamental lack of knowledge about what the outputs might be means that is almost certainly a good idea.

There is a developing literature on such fundamental uncertainty ('ambiguity') in policy problems of this sort. E.g. See here: http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/5454

Re: MIT study says Arctic ice thinning 4x faster than predicted

#24

Post by DougWebb »

ajb wrote: post #13
krschultz wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we need to? Just because it is unnatural and you are philosophically opposed to it? Or are you saying something about the fact that the temperature change is driven by humans rather than nature makes it a problem?

The distinction is one of knowledge. We have evidence that that the environment as it exists now, is a relatively stable regime. The climate has changed throughout history, but not, obviously, to the extent of rendering us extinct. If, however, we act to bring the climate out of the regime for which we have this evidence (for example, by raising the CO2 level to its highest value for 800,000 years), then with our pre…

The climate has changed throughout history, but not, obviously, to the extent of rendering us extinct.

It's come pretty close, and that's typical. Most species that have ever existed on this planet went extinct ages ago, often during periods of drastic climate change (as far as we can tell from the archeological record.)

Our own fairly recent past is the same. The latest research on the 'flood' that gave rise to flood myths in every civilization in Southern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, suggests that the Mediterranean Sea was a fertile populated valley during the last ice age. But when the ice age ended due to natural climate change, the rising Atlantic broke through the natural dam at Gibraltar and flooded the valley, and into the Black and Red seas, up the Nile, etc. That's a massive natural disaster that must have wiped out a pretty big chunk of humanity. It was probably repeated on a smaller scale around the world too, as seaside villages were flooded out by the rising oceans and likely increase in the number of storms as the world warmed up.

Re: MIT study says Arctic ice thinning 4x faster than predicted

#25

Post by manux »

cpeterso wrote: post #14
manux wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to because we are aware of the detrimental effects our environmental behavior has not only on nature, but on ourselves too. (And we like preserving ourselves right?)

> detrimental effects our environmental behavior has not only on nature, but on ourselves too. Is the goal environmentalism to preserve the earth or to preserve humanity ? The earth will survive perfectly well without humans, so I believe the (generally unacknowledged) goal of mainstream environmentalism to help humanity. That said, there are environmental fundamentalists who believe (with almost religious fervor) hu…

Haha, I am not one of those.

I think humanity needs to be selfish in this case, and you know, it needs to be some kind of long term selfishness.

IMO there is no rationale behind the "humans are evil" thing. Just a very poor self-esteem.

Re: MIT study says Arctic ice thinning 4x faster than predicted

#26

Post by jamii »

DougWebb wrote: post #24
ajb wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The distinction is one of knowledge. We have evidence that that the environment as it exists now, is a relatively stable regime. The climate has changed throughout history, but not, obviously, to the extent of rendering us extinct. If, however, we act to bring the climate out of the regime for which we have this evidence (for example, by raising the CO2 level to its highest value for 800,000 years), then with our pre…

The climate has changed throughout history, but not, obviously, to the extent of rendering us extinct. It's come pretty close, and that's typical. Most species that have ever existed on this planet went extinct ages ago, often during periods of drastic climate change (as far as we can tell from the archeological record.) Our own fairly recent past is the same. The latest research on the 'flood' that gave rise to floo…

Even more dramatic, a number of genetic studies suggest that hominids faced near extinction more than once eg http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=early-human... estimates a total population of around 50k.

Re: MIT study says Arctic ice thinning 4x faster than predicted

#27

Post by gmac »

jameskilton wrote: post #7
ryandvm wrote: post #2

The question isn't whether the earth is warming or not - it clearly is. The real question is what should humans do about it? I think it's pretty reasonable to ask if trying to turn down the heat is the best use of our resources? That is, perhaps the incalculable trillions of dollars that it would cost to adjust the earth's climate would be better spent on helping humans adjust instead. Hell, there is significant evid…

My look on the whole matter is about sustainability. This is the only Earth we have, and we are many, many years away from even thinking about trying to colonize another planet or moon. From that, you'd think that common sense says that we should live in a way that keeps our planet habitable and doesn't increase the chance of a run-away chain reaction, ruining the place. Then again we also know that common sense isn'…

The Earth can certainly heal itself; the question is whether the healing involves getting rid of us lot.

Re: MIT study says Arctic ice thinning 4x faster than predicted

#28

Post by ChuckMcM »

gmac wrote: post #23
ChuckMcM wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the original article's headline would have been less provacative if it had read "MIT measures actual ice melt and proves our models of the Earth's climate are still wrong." And our lack of knowledge here is quite large. So large that the notion of "The real question is what should humans do about it?" is still preposterous. We can't "do something" about something when we don't understand how that something wo…

We can't "do something" about something when we don't understand how that something works. Yes, we can. We don't know what the outputs of the system will be for all inputs, but we know that the key input is greenhouse gases. We can reduce that input if we choose, and our fundamental lack of knowledge about what the outputs might be means that is almost certainly a good idea. There is a developing literature on such f…

Nice link. I think you missed my point. The climate is going to change, humans cannot at this stage of our evolution and sophistication, prevent it from changing.

We're dumping CO2 and our farm animals are dumping methane into the atmosphere. Check. And we can do lots of things which will change how much CO2 and how much methane we dump into the atmosphere. Check.

Here's the sticky bit: If we could leave the planet, en-masse right now with all our farm animals and remove ourselves from the equation completely, the climate is still going to change from what its like today to something different.

We know that to be true because there is lots of evidence that it was different before we arrived on the scene, both hotter and colder. We are beginning to see several different studies that some of those previous periods changed quite rapidly. We know those changes had zero anthropogenic contribution. Based on that argument I make my claim that whether or not we are on the planet the climate will change.

We don't know all of the factors that cause the balance in the system to become unbalanced. As this MIT observation has shown, yet again, that our current best guesses about what the balance is in that system are incorrect (but that is good science, we'll keep putting together the pieces to develop that understanding) Based on that evidence I make the claim that we don't know enough of the factors which affect how climate changes to accurately predict any outcome of any action we might make.

I am unaware of any chain of reasoning based on actual science that supports either the conclusion that humans can "control" the Earth's climate, or a conclusion that any action we might take now will stop climate change from happening.

The flawed reasoning that some people put forward is "Humans are the proximate cause of climate change if we stop doing things that affect the climate, the change will stop." However, as we are not the only cause of climate change (which is shown by the fact that the climate has changed without our help) and the fact that we do not have a model which accurately accounts for all the factors (we keep finding new things where reality and the model differ, this MIT observation is yet another example), impeaches this line of reasoning.

Re: MIT study says Arctic ice thinning 4x faster than predicted

#29

Post by killerswan »

gmac wrote: post #27
jameskilton wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My look on the whole matter is about sustainability. This is the only Earth we have, and we are many, many years away from even thinking about trying to colonize another planet or moon. From that, you'd think that common sense says that we should live in a way that keeps our planet habitable and doesn't increase the chance of a run-away chain reaction, ruining the place. Then again we also know that common sense isn'…

The Earth can certainly heal itself; the question is whether the healing involves getting rid of us lot.

Many of the extinctions we see today are erasing genetic sequences that will take far more than another 4 billion years to develop again the natural way.

I suspect that the cost incurred by changes in the weather itself is irrelevant compared to these losses.

Re: MIT study says Arctic ice thinning 4x faster than predicted

#30

Post by cpeterso »

manux wrote: post #25
cpeterso wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> detrimental effects our environmental behavior has not only on nature, but on ourselves too. Is the goal environmentalism to preserve the earth or to preserve humanity ? The earth will survive perfectly well without humans, so I believe the (generally unacknowledged) goal of mainstream environmentalism to help humanity. That said, there are environmental fundamentalists who believe (with almost religious fervor) hu…

Haha, I am not one of those. I think humanity needs to be selfish in this case, and you know, it needs to be some kind of long term selfishness. IMO there is no rationale behind the "humans are evil" thing. Just a very poor self-esteem.

I agree. I think the mainstream environmental movement would get more traction if they reframed their position to focus on the benefits to humanity (of protecting the environment) rather than talking so much about the sacrifices humanity must endured to "save the environment."

Compare with VHEMT, the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement: http://www.vhemt.org/

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