tecoyah

I read this article a couple years ago, and was fascinated by the implications.....now with the release of the new film "Day after tomarrow" it is getting more attention.

http://www.discover.com/web-exclusiv...fter-tomorrow/

The evidence is compelling, and I don't know about your neck of the woods, but this was one of several recent, "really bad" winters here in New York. Perhaps there is something to pay attention to here.

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Rodney

Well, the movie is 'way overblown. But the point that the article makes (and which the movie makes in overly lurid fashion) is that changes in nature don't always occur slowly. If a mechanism like the Deep Ocean Current shuts down and stops shuttling heat northward, you could definitely have a very serious climate change in 5-10 years. And geologically, that's not slow.

So to me, the question is not, would all this happen if the deep current shuts down, but -- WILL the current shut down? Hey,I'm on the west coast of the U.S., I'd miss the worst of it. But it'd be a real catastrophe.

What I wonder is, would a mini-ice age caused by global warming cancel out sea-level rises caused by global warming? Or would we get the worst of both worlds? There's the making of a really interesting disaster novel here. Especially since we're now a much more mobile population, and there are areas in the southern hemisphere -- Australia, parts of southern Africa, Argentina and certain other parts of South America -- that could definitely accomodate some tens of millions of people should push come to shove. And there might definitely be some shoving.

DelayedReaction

I just hope people don't use this as an excuse to demand environmental reform. The last Ice Age occured without any sort of interference from man; do people really think we could stop the next?

Interesting article.

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tecoyah

Just curious....If indeed something along these lines takes place, and some form of reform could have prevented it. Would it then be an acceptable idea to institute this reform?

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ratbastid

Aw hell, we'll have a monster tsunami caused by collapsing volcanic islands in the Canaries long before that happens. The entire Atlantic coast will be buried under 195-foot waves.

http://www.cdnn.info/article/tsunami/tsunami.html

Enjoy the beach while you can!

zxello

we'll survive! we just gotta go make some yak skin coats, yak > all i dunno, after seeing 'The Day After Tomorrow' and listening to the president in the movies' speech about how we aren't paying enough attention to global warming, it made me feel like greenpeace sponsored the movie.

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Old signature just wasn't doing it for me anymore, so now I have this new one. It's equally as stupid but at least it looks really long. I'm probably just going to keep typing until I run out of things to babble about and see how many people actually read this. I once ran down a hill, fell down and hurt my elbow; my mom said I would be ok, she kissed it and made it all better. I've run out of things to say now, so if you have read this whole thing, congratulations you get a gold star!

:::OshnSoul:::

We just watched a documentary about the magnetic fields and how they are changing- gradually switching places with each other. The outward magnatism and the inward magnatism (one of them is in the north, the other in south- I can't remember which) but that how scientists who have been studied this have seen significant changes and the breakup of the fields and how someday it will again switch on us- causing another 'Ice Age' to part of the world. It was really interesting.

emmdubbs

if and when there is a new ice age, it's gonna be the worlds way of being a giant toilet, it's just gonna flush out all the turds, and before you know it, new turds will be right back, if it happend before it can happen again.

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Delvid

So are we going into an ice age or global warming. I can't keep up.

WarWagon

From what I gather, we're microwaving an ice cube.

DelayedReaction

At that point it really wouldn't matter. And how would you know that instituting reform would've prevented it?

Dude 1: "Hey! Cool! It turns out that, had we never started the Industrial Revolution, we would've had another hundred years or so!"

Dude 2: "Great." (Freezes to Death)

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ARTelevision

I'm not in favor of paying attention to this sort of thing...

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Pacifier

We cannot stop a "natural" ice age, but the curret climate chances are not natural.
Ice ages appear in some sort of cycle. Ice Ages happen in a cycle of ~40000 years (Milankovitch-Cycle). The last one ended 10000 ago. The biggest natural heat up that happes is the period after an ice age, it take 5000 years for the earth to heat up again to a "normal" state. in this period the temperature rises 0.1°C per century. In the last hundert years the temperature has risen about 0.6°C
That is clearly not natural.

Goolges tranlation is crappy but here is an interesting interview
link

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"It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death
— Albert Einstein

mr sticky

I thought the movie was pretty decent, even if it had to drive the enviromental stuff down your throat. But as for global warming, I have to side with the eighty percent of climitologists that don't believe in it. The increase in temps are attributed to natural cycles.

And as an aside, I don't think man has the capability of wiping out life on this planet. From global climate changes, to industrialization, to the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs...life has always prevailed. I mean damn, we can't even stop grass from growing up through six inches of concrete.

I think that enviromental policy should not be one of paranoia, but should tuned in to our need to advance our society. By all means we should keep an eye on the enviroment, but we cant let the reactionary ideals rule the roost.

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erion

How can the climate change not be natural?

Mankind evolved naturally. Nature provided the fossil fuels for us to burn. Nature even provided the means by which solar energy was stored in the fossil fuels in the first place. Everything that happens is natural.

I'm of the George Carlin school of environmentalism. The world wanted plastic, we evolved to provide it. Now that we've filled our evolutionary niche, we're slowly on the way out

onetime2

I am still very much convinced that the "experts" have fewer answers than questions. For all the "science" which "proves" global or even regional climactic changes, there are huge assumptions which are glossed over.

There are simply too few datapoints to even remotely believe they can accurately predict what the global climate was or will be. There are something less than 200 years of temperature recordings. Everything else is "predicted" through assumptions about trapped gas, fossilized plants, and based on theories of past climatologic "facts".

Even if all the data they claim to have (let's say 5 million years worth of data) is accurate (which it likely isn't) it is far from being a random sample which is necessary to create any sort of predictive or explanatory model. The earth is ~4 billion years old. We may have data from the last 5 million years. At best they can say that "if trends over the last 5 million years continue this is what we'll see..." They can not say that there haven't been abrupt (regular or irregular) changes in climate prior to the data set they have, what the causes were, or the likelihood that they will happen again. They can't say that "temperatures are warmer than they've ever been" and they certainly can't say that we aren't in some longer cycle of climate change that they haven't recognized.

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Pacifier

much older data isn't that importand since the world itself look quite different the (continental drift). For example the gulf stream didn't existed back then so data from that time will provide no information about the behaviour of the stream.
And as I pointed out current data indicates that the heat is going up, an effect that seems to be new.
Should we take the risk and act like it is all going away if we don't look? Or should we, for example, try to reduce CO2, a gas of which we know it raises the temperature.

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"It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death
— Albert Einstein

onetime2

You are still assuming you know what was going on prior to 5 million years ago with no data to back up the assertions. And you are still assuming that the assumptions that give you data beyond 200 years are correct.

What makes you (or anyone else) think that decreasing CO2 20 years sooner will have any impact whatsoever in the "fight" against global warming? It's all pure speculation. How do you propose to institute CO2 caps on rapidly developing countries like China who can't possibly adopt "cleaner" technologies and still industrialize?

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tecoyah

I am going to follow the guidance of your sig line.

Suffice to say...there are layers of science, career professionals, and decades of work that have gone into the hypothesis. This accumulation of data, by people with far more knowledge than I have, is enough to convince me to pay attention.

(edited to avoid looking childish)

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ARTelevision

Yes, professionals that make their living by getting grants from government, university, and foundation funding - they are not unsullied.

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Rodney

So we should ignore everything that they say, because there is a possibility that they may be "sullied" by contributions? Hell, if that were the case, we could never believe any of our politicians.

Hey, wait a second....

ARTelevision

A dose of skepticism in matters pertaining to doomsday scenarios is always in order.

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tecoyah

*walks away, head in hands*

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Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

DelayedReaction

Look at somebody's research before you decide to judge them; not the money that's used to determine that research. As an individual who expects to survive off of grants once I complete my degree, I vehemently disagree with your statement.

Exactly how would you prefer these professionals earn their money? Commercial interests that demand a focus on profit? I can't think of any other sources of income beyond what you've declared to be dirty. How would you fund pure research?

That said, I disagree with people who take the theory of global warming to be absolute truth. Does the evidence suggest we should reexamine our way of life and make compromises? Sure. But radical changes based solely on an insufficiently proven theory are unacceptable and should be avoided.

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ARTelevision

This is only a surprise to idealists.

During my baccalaureate years I worked as a research assistant to a department of Physics Professors. I also have a career of teaching at the university-level behind me. I am fully aware of the situation with funded research and I have many friends who speak candidly about how exactly they tailor their findings to meet the expectations of their funding sources. I'm speaking from experience. It has some validity and needs to be considered.

There are many so-called experts whose findings differ drastically. On this issue in particular, the weight of expert opinion is unconvincing, to say the least.

Best of luck with your career.

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animosity

interesting read....

YzermanS19

Thermocline say whaaaaaaaat?

We're just in the space between ice ages folks, and you know what? The average global temperature between now and the last Ice Age was 4 degrees. 4.

It's ok, I'll just go back to hunting mammoths.

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The upside to this, of course, being that my house in Omaha is now ocean front property. Kaching!

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It is indisputable that true beauty lies within...but a nice rack sure doesn't hurt.

Esco

Ya, but it's still "Omaha".

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Pacifier

true, but so what?
the rise in temperature we are now observing hasn't happend in a natural way before. Like I said, there is some data from the last couple of ice ages, and there was never a heat-up like there is now.

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"It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death
— Albert Einstein

onetime2

Tecoyah, veiled insults are as bad as real ones. You've proven once again that you have no ability to discuss the issues.

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shakran

that movie was, if this is even possible, more unrealistic than Twister. The only realistic thing in the whole movie was the rude New York cab driver.

Hanxter

is the squirrel back???



if the sun burns out at noon would it then be night?

DelayedReaction

I guess things are somewhat different in the engineering sector, at least at UMD. Good job backing up your point BTW.

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ARTelevision

Thanks. I do hope for the best for your future.

I believe you'll find that some skewing of research occurs as a natural result of the need to get grant money to survive. It begins with tailoring your proposal to what is currently cannonical, acceptable, fashionable, safe, and most politically correct. I know I considered this whan I applied for and received a state grant. Beyond that, there is pressure exerted when findings are reviewed, edited, and ultimately published.
It's an unfortunate fact of life and it revolves around the power relationships linking grantors and grantees.

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Charlatan

Technically we are still in the Ice Age... the warmth we have experienced for the past 8,000 years is a blip.

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DelayedReaction

So if research is inherently sullied by the fact that it uses grants, how is one supposed to accept the findings? Is the amount of scrutiny research is given now before being published enough, or do we require more?

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ARTelevision

Good question.
It's sort of a corrollary to the notion that one can not simply trust a set of statistics - because stats are manipulable and can be tailored in many ways toward very divergent results. Research findings require a similar sort of skepticism, I think.

Issues such as global warming and an Ice Age hypothesis, are prime examples of the variabilities and vagaries of "scientific" research. We have before us a situation in which so-called "experts" differ greatly in their conclusions.

That should be sufficient to create a healthy skepticism in our minds regarding anything like a black-or-white interpretation of the data.

In general, one attempts to survey the field and draw some tentative conclusions on the basis of proposed hypotheses rather than supposed facts. When the results of research span a broad spectrum of possible hypotheses and interpreted results, we simply don't have sufficiently reliable information. The correct conclusion is further study is necessary.

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tecoyah

You are correct....my apologies.

There is at this time, much debate as to the validity of research pointing towards climate change on our planet. The science, by its very nature is difficult to prove, and therefore is but mere hypothesis. There is however, enough evidence (IMO) to merit consideration of the data. As the implications of this data could have a detrimental effect to the population at large, it falls into a category of seriousness that few other issues can.
To ignore the possibility of climate change would be, irresponsible at best. The entire world and all who dwell here have a stake in understanding this, and preventing as much damage as possible should the data pan out.
If the data are indeed flawed, for whatever reasons, we can at least breath a sigh of relief. We would then have a more defined comprehension of the way our planet regulates itself. Scientific research will never be perfect, and is in a constant state of revision, that is how it works. That should never be a reason to turn away from the possibilities, and is in fact what makes advancement possible.

In my opinion, Climate change is one of the most important issues facing the human species, as it may very well be damaging to us all......or perhaps not. But, we really should find out , one way or another.

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Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

warrrreagl

To paraphrase George Carlin, "Humans should never be so smug as to actually believe that our puny actions could destroy the earth. Before that would happen, the earth would shake us off like a bad case of fleas."

But seriously, I had noticed the opposite. I remember winters down here in the Deep South as being a lot colder when I was younger.

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