People who worry about global cooling or global warming (or whatever catastrophe they imagine is in store for humanity) are merely playing out their unconscious eschatological yearnings; it’s a kind of secular apocalypse. They hate humanity and are often extremely authoritarian in their viewpoints.
Same with the Population Bomb wackos. I remember we used to watch propaganda (oops, I mean “educational”) films in elementary school about how we were only going to have 1 square yard each by 2000 if the population continued to grow at the then current rate. We were terrified of course.
In the 1970s the rage was the coming Ice age. Same worry about the polar bears, etc. Check out this Newsweek piece from 1975:
[quote]lucasa wrote:
lou21 wrote:
The truth is no one really knows what is going to happen. There’s plenty of evidence what we are doing to the planet will mess it up beyond repair. Then again there’s plenty of evidence it won’t. On the plus side climate scientists are currently able to study one of the best and most contriversal experiments ever, without even needing to obtain funding! The effects of doubling CO2 levels in 100 years are completly unknown. The results will be facsenating. It’s a shame we can’t observe from another planet though! Then we would be around to draw some conclusions.
On the other hand maybe some experiments are better not done?
A system observed is a system perturbed.
Describing it as an experiment makes us sound much more omnipotent than we are. We had ‘pushed’ the climate long before we knew we were even capable of changing it. But, it was going to change anyway, so we might as well get fed.[/quote]
In quantum physics maybe. Observing the climate does not significantly perturb in.
However taking CO2 level to crazy heights is very exciting. The geological record shows this was combined (NB correlation does not imply causation) with a whacking great temperature spike the last time it occurred at 55Ma. This Paleo Eocene Thermal Maximum is associated with the same scale extinction event as the more famous 65Ma event).
There is also a fairly strong correlation between CO2 levels and temperature throughout the more recent glacial and interglacial periods. At the moment we should have ‘high’ (about half PETM) CO2 levels. During the glacials CO2 is lower. We have artificially pumped CO2 up to almost PETM values and it will be far higher before it is lower.
Human civilisation may or may not survive such conditions. I won’t try and predict the future. All I’ll say is we only have one Earth why risk it just because you wanna get fed?
I love the way they say 1,000 years is not enough data, when most of todays’ boneheads are happy with 100 years or hey what about only 20 years of crap data?
We should be coming OUT of a little Ice Age now, it was much warmer 1,000 years ago. Man, I hope we are not headed to another ice age in my lifetime, even a little one.
By the way, nothing man can do can affect it either way, unless we nuke a volcano or something equally drastic. Natural living organisms are far more powerful. Natural earth forces are even more powerful. And solar forces blow the crap out of everything. We are lucky to be on such an incredibly stable planet. A self-stabilising planet.
Wait a minute, this can’t be true, because Al Gore said in his movie, that has to be true, that the world is melting. We have Global Warming, not Global Freezing.
Or, could Al the inventor of the internet be wrong?
In quantum physics maybe. Observing the climate does not significantly perturb in.[/quote]
Right, so we spontaneously realized this concept of climate without using any prior resources or a larger societal structure. Given the same amount of time Euclid would’ve conceived of Lorenz attractors and black-body radiation without burning all of the CO2. Given the debate between Angstrom and Fourier (when it arguably was an experiment) I doubt this in the highest degree.
[quote]However taking CO2 level to crazy heights is very exciting. The geological record shows this was combined (NB correlation does not imply causation) with a whacking great temperature spike the last time it occurred at 55Ma. This Paleo Eocene Thermal Maximum is associated with the same scale extinction event as the more famous 65Ma event).
There is also a fairly strong correlation between CO2 levels and temperature throughout the more recent glacial and interglacial periods. At the moment we should have ‘high’ (about half PETM) CO2 levels. During the glacials CO2 is lower. We have artificially pumped CO2 up to almost PETM values and it will be far higher before it is lower.
Human civilisation may or may not survive such conditions. I won’t try and predict the future. All I’ll say is we only have one Earth why risk it just because you wanna get fed?
[/quote]
Human civilization certainly has the overwhelming potential to survive such conditions, especially in contrast of the gamut of equally plausible conditions we couldn’t possibly survive. And once again, calling it an experiment is a gross oversimplification, as if we could just set the temperature lower and that won’t cause more problems (note the less illusory falls in temp. and CO2).
The goal isn’t just to get fed:
‘The goal is not to say: ‘OK, everybody uses less energy, don’t heat your homes, don’t light your homes, don’t use AC.’ That is not the goal. The goal is to have a standard of living that is carbon neutral and works well with the world. And I think it’s possible.’ -Steven Chu
So heat your home, light your home, use your AC, just be more efficient about it.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
And this was well before global warming hysteria had reached the levels it has now. But Niven predicted correctly that it would happen.[/quote]
Niven also predicted the end of apartheid in South Africa, at about the right time. But his version came about because elephant-like aliens invaded Africa after dropping a giant asteroid on India.
Actually given the cyclical trend over the last century or so of Ice Age scares being followed shortly after by global warming scares, ad nauseum (I think the total has been 7 rounds of “man will die from freezing” scares and either 6 or 8 of “life on Earth will become extinct from the planet cooking itself to death”), it was readily predictable that another global warming scare would occur.
The more unusual thing to be correct about, IMO anyway, was his prediction of carbon caps. I hadn’t thought any previous GW scare called for such, so this was less predictable.
But yes, it could of course be luck too. I claim nothing for it but being mildly interesting, and an interesting image of Ice Age-suffering people in the future being PO’d about earlier carbon caps.
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
pittbulll wrote:
I think it is funny that science thinks it can even predict
what is going to happen
It can in certain instances. Thermodynamic processes are much more difficult to predict, especially the further into the future one looks.[/quote]
Actually, the laws of thermodynamics are pretty clear long term, you’ll never get out more than you put in. IMO, it’s the human condition. To look into the future and see the laws of nature clearly saying ‘You’re going to die.’ and replying, ‘Like hell I am.’.
I think whatever the cause, The receeding Ice Caps have more to do with global warming or cooling than anything. If they shrink and are replaced by Dark seas, the energy absorption differential is very very large. Also there is a shit ton of Methane trapped in the permafrost, Methane is a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2, so the Permafrost Melting is going to raise the earths temperature much faster than our CO2 emissions ever will.
I for one, welcome it. I hope the planet gets about 3 degrees warmer. I live in upstate NY and right now it’s 10 below zero. Also the rising ocean levels would wipe out all the pricks who live in the major cities on the coasts. I would love to see these city dwellers get displaced and have thier whole existance changed in a year. No more walking around acting like a prick to everyone. You actually have to work for food and water and shelter and you now get to have less than everyone else since you have no skills.