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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

#31

Post by oelewapperke »

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...

In real science you don't get to use the word "adverse". That's a value judgement and it has no place in exact sciences, which are (supposed to be) value-free, purely descriptive.

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

#32

Post by AlisdairO »

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…

Thorium molten salt reactors are potentially a good option - nuclear that doesn't produce much in the way of dangerous byproducts, and can't melt down. China's investing quite heavily in them iirc.

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

#33

Post by ugh »

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…

So, how exactly couldn’t it be a political issue?

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

#34

Post by Typhon »

ugh wrote: post #33
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…

So, how exactly couldn’t it be a political issue?

By focusing public attention on something else. It's not as if we had a shortage of problems. Then, the matter of climate change could be settled in a scientific manner, as opposed to a religious debate involving legions of people who don't know what they're talking about.

Obviously, i'm being unrealistic. Once it's become politicized, it's already too late.

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

#35

Post by ecaradec »

ugh wrote: post #33
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…

So, how exactly couldn’t it be a political issue?

The issue is that it has become a political issue before we were sure what the issue was. Now we don't know whether or not we should act, instead of deciding what we should do.

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

#36

Post by ars »

AlisdairO wrote: post #32
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…

Thorium molten salt reactors are potentially a good option - nuclear that doesn't produce much in the way of dangerous byproducts, and can't melt down. China's investing quite heavily in them iirc.

Those aren't quite ready for primetime yet though. It'll be decades before we are getting energy that way, even if there was concerted research.

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

#37

Post by ars »

varjag wrote: post #28
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…

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 energy as expected.

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

#38

Post by ars »

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…

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.

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

#39

Post by PakG1 »

jessedhillon wrote: post #25
devijvers wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 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 data based on current models, which may or may not be able to model reality well, given how complex and nonlinear the entire system is?

It seems really difficult to falsify the idea of global warming.

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

#40

Post by ugh »

Typhon wrote: post #34
ugh wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, how exactly couldn’t it be a political issue?

By focusing public attention on something else. It's not as if we had a shortage of problems. Then, the matter of climate change could be settled in a scientific manner, as opposed to a religious debate involving legions of people who don't know what they're talking about. Obviously, i'm being unrealistic. Once it's become politicized, it's already too late.

Thing is, whether or not climate change is happening has policy implications. Just settling it was never gonna be enough.
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