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Major Climate Change 5,200 Years Ago Could Repeat
An anonymous reader writes "The climate was altered suddenly some 5,200 years ago with severe impacts. Famouse glaciologist professor Lonnie Thompson have found clues that show history repeating itself. Thompson has spent his career trekking to the far corners of the world to find remote ice fields and then bring back cores drilled from their centers. Within those cores are the records of ancient climate from across the globe. He outlined his fears today at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. 'The evidence clearly points back to this point in history and to some event that occurred. It also points to similar changes occurring in today's climate as well,' he said."
from the article
"The evidence is clear that a major climate change is underway."
President George W. Bush disagrees with this. Therefore more study is needed.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
We know that in the past the earth has gone through many (often cataclysmic) climate changes. We also know that this will happen again.
Since the 70's every now and again someone predicts that such a climate change is just around the corner. The truth is that these predictions are very inaccurate. I'm talking thousands of years uncertainty. I see nothing in this article that makes this prediction any different.
So relax, the chances of anything like this happening in your lifetime is vanishingly small.
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I'll believe in global warming the minute "scientists" find something to agree on. At the moment we have scientists saying we're in the middle of global warming, that we're in a cold period, that ice ages are the norm and we're in between one, and others saying that ice ages come in between warm periods. We have scientists saying that we're overdue for an ice age, others saying we've just come out of one. There are scientists saying we have no effect on global warming compared to just one volcanic eruption, others say humans have had more influence than any other event on the planet.
So what should we believe today?
Uhh, FYI, humans are part of nature. All human activity is natural.
To date there is no known way mankind can annihilate an entire planet or its life. To be sure, poofing off all our nuclear devices would be the end of this mammal period and mark the start of the renewed rule of insects. Life would live on.
If we don't blast our nukes, but continue to pollute and increase the global temperature, mankind will still survive, although quality of life for the already suffering part of the human race will further decrease.
If we instead direct all available resources on picking up our own garbage, we will instead have the problem of third world nations continue the trend of polluting the planet. Believe me, this is happening right here in China right now.
Damned if we do, damned if we don't.
Taking the nihilist approach, we can coldly contemplate the fact that Mother Earth in itself can be regarded as an organism (coined Gaia), where all life on the planet are to the planet what the cells are to the human body. Gaia may lose some of its "cells", but it will continue living on. And on a larger time scale, humans just represent an infinitesimally small time period of Gaia's existence. Gaia has seen countless of species come and go, and she will see humans come and go as well.
Damned if we do, damned if we don't. It is just a matter of time. Resistance is futile. In the end we and all our descendants will disappear. We will fry. Or freeze. We WILL die.
You might as well try to have fun tonight. I know I will.
I think it's a bit much to claim that we're headed for an ice age or that our own emissions are the cause for it. However I do think we should take better care of our enviroment. Regardless of ice ages and such we're fucking up our enviroment and it is disgusting. Driving towards LA is revolting and it's not much better in other major cities. We need to replace our road systems with effecient electric train systems and more people need to go back to walking and biking. It'd certainly not hurt if people would stop throwing their garbage on the ground wherever they go. People, and especially us Americans, are slobs. We need to change our lifestyle before we live in total filth.
I live in Las Vegas right now and most days you can't see across the valley even. Driving through town is a horrible experience. The Strip is especially bad. That area at least should be blocked to non-commercial and non-emergency traffic (ie firetrucks, FedEx, and taxis should be able to go through). I'd not get rid of roads entirely but I'd cut them down to one or two lanes and I'd encourage non-commercial traffic to come by train or taxi rather than driving.
Most places I've lived it's been all but taboo to walk or bicycle. Tell a job that you're going to walk or bicycle or even take the bus to work and they're a lot less likely to hire you. Often there aren't bike lanes or sidewalks. Bicyclists and even walkers get hid by careless drivers all the time. Small effecient vehicles like the recently popular scooters are often against the law to use on either street or sidewalk. Not exactly encouraging to those that'd like a cheaper and more enviromentally friendly way of getting around.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Pathetic. This is the equivalent of stamping their feet. From misinformation to fear-mongering, the purveyors of the litany of environmental catastrophes have no shame.
Before blandly accepting another sky-is-falling study, ask Mr. Thompson if it will rain next Thursday. Ask yourself how we came to the erroneous conclusion that the earth has a meteorological "balance". Ask yourself how the IPCC was pressured to change its own conclusions. Ask yourself what place consensus has in anyone who values independent thought.
When what you believe becomes the only thing you can believe, then no prediction, no extrapolation, no leap of logic is too far, and science, the slow, rigorous process, becomes the province of the wild-eyed fanatics with exactly the same inclinations as those they disdain.
There has been many ice ages in the earths history and we are somewhere between two. The serious (i.e. non-political - I hate so-called scientists who can predict global warming but not predict the weather tomorrow) researchers believe that the temperature may increase some four degrees before the start of the next ice age.
Some researchers notes that the earth were four degrees warmer around 1000 BC (my memory may be wrong with the year) and that the climate also were significantly warmer 800-1200 AD which let to prosperity up until the colder middle age. So let us look forward to a bit of warming!
Jorgen
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
the only good point about this movie was the last 30 seconds when the astronaut points out he has never seen the atmosphere so clear before. anyways this sort of story is old news for anyone who has seen the movie Pi, and has tried to apply spirals to life. Life will constantly repeat itself, spiraling to a point that is finally rock bottom, at which point our survival instincts will take over, and we will shift to a new spiral, hit the pinnacle of society in that form, and spiral back down to self destruction. Its not humanity, but the nature of life itself. You grow, mature, peak, then spiral down to death.
There is substantial evidence of the impact human actions have on natural resources, like pollution, extreme CO2 amounts, ozon destruction etc. If nature goes wild, then it's nature's fault, but we humans should not accelerate that fault.
-You presume human-caused climate effects are "bad" and should be "fixed"
-You claim humans have caused Earth to deviate from the "natural order" of things
-You imply there actually exists a "natural order" or "master plan" for Earth.
You may think you're discussing science, but your argument's roots are pure religion.
Explain to me, in scientific terms, how human activity is less natural than cat activity, or wasp activity, or amoeba activity. It's wonderfully comforting to think we are special and different and favored and there exists a higher order to guide us, but where's your evidence? (Beyond scripture, that is)
Some references to further information. Google can supply nonsensical 'sceptic' links if you really want to see what the oil lobby and AM radio types want you to think. Personally I'll take the likes of Science and Nature journals, thirty years of research by peer-reviewed scientists over Rush Limbaugh any day.
- RealClimate.org/a>
- http://www.aip.org/history/climate/
- Global Warming FAQ
- http://ebulletin.le.ac.uk/features/2000-2009/2004
/ 12/nparticle-vkt-hgf-t4c
What really frightens me is that since I started following the science of this stuff in the mid 80s, evidence has consistently emerged that shows the IPCC-type predictions are actually rather conservative. Real climatologists are now very, very worried.Oh and by the way: the world's fastest moving glacier, in Greenland, doubled it's speed according to NASA research. If the Greenland ice-shelf slides into the sea you'd better be living in the Rockies with a large stash of tinned goods.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
It "was altered"? By who? The cavemen? Or was it the vast civilization of the woolly mammoth whose massive industrialized society spewed greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere?
I know the idea that our environment is a static entity that will only be changed should someone like the evil corporations or the Bush administration do something to it is a commonly accepted idea, but that is just scientifically inaccurate.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
How convenient for the environmental alarmists. Now any weather event, hot or cold, can be used as "evidence" for further scaremongering.
Guess what folks, there were floods and hurricanes and blizzards before humans ever existed. Before the first caveman learned to tame fire, Earth's temperature and climate varied in ways that dwarf today's minor fluctuations.
Junk science-- mere blips of statistical noise tortured out of dubious computer simulations-- is being harnessed to the service of a coercive, collectivist political agenda.
Too much Law; not enough Order.
Or so a space colonization advocate once said. The metaphor has its rough spots, but it's interesting nonetheless.
Resistance is futile. In the end we and all our descendants will disappear. We will fry. Or freeze. We WILL die.
If we get some viable off-world settlements, I'm sure we can make it to at least the heat-death of the universe.
Isn't this when the biblical flood occured.
The "biblical" flood is actually just a retelling of a story from the epic of Gilgamesh; as such, it likely refers to the flooding of the Persian gulf.
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Snow would explain it.
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The consensus on human CO2 emissions
Consensus...the data substitute.
Why don't scientists use the word 'concensus' when talking about things we actually understand? (The consensus is the Earth is round. The consensus is matter exhibits properties of both waves and particles. The consensus is...)
When you have hard data, you don't need consensus. The only scientists defending their theories with "the concensus is..." are those lacking real evidence.
Consensus is useful for getting grant money. It is in no way an acceptable substitute for actual results.
"I'll believe in global warming the minute 'scientists' find something to agree on."
/.
You hit on the operative word--"believe."
Environmentalism (as opposed to conservation) has deteriorated into a religion, which by definition mandates belief from followers. If you doubt this, witness two of the topics that generate the most comments and flaming "Flamebait" moderations on
Post something questioning religion (mainstream), global warming, or man's impact on the environment, then sit back and watch the zealot fireworks show.
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
it was clear that the oceans would die by the turn of the century, the ozone hole would be so large it would cover parts of Africa, people would be dieing of radiation poisoning from the sun... etc etc etc.
Weren't the ice caps supposed to be all gone soon?
Why should even the public take notice anymore? The boy who cried wolf syndrome has worn done the public's acceptance.
Proof has been constantly cited since the 70s and yet all the dire predictions have come to naught. I am not saying they are all wrong, I am saying that their proof leaves a lot to be desired and the only cause they are hurting is their own. I still laugh at all the predictions of doom from Kuwati and Iraqi oil fields being set ablaze if America acted (back in GulfWar1 and now 2)
Face it, a cosmic mishap (solar/meteor), will do more to us than we can do short of a nuclear war. A few good volcanoes provide visible effect that the public can see and in some cases experience. The same effects are blamed on Global Warming by one group and El Nino by the next.
Global Scientist are sure of one thing, that the weather is constantly changing. What they haven't proven beyond reasonable doubt is that mankind is the primary mover behind it, nor that America is the primary mover either.
You want to see real pollution, travel to former Soviet states. You will see stuff that will make you cry. You want to see new and greater abuses of the environment just jog over to China - but don't expect anyone to care.
In 20 years some then current environmentalist when confronted by dire predictions 20 years ago will dismiss those people as not having had the full picture whereas they do now. The same this is being said when opponents to the current pc point of view point out the fallacies of 20 years ago.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Their date is 200 years after the Biblical flood. Take a look at this post for some information on how it corroborates the Bible.
"That a system is too chaotic to predict on a microlevel does not mean we can't understand or predict it on a macrolevel."
in quatum physics, you also cannot predict the exact path or position of one single electron. we don't need to either. it is sufficient that the majority of the electrons in your CRT end up on the phosphorus layer of your screen.
Inidividual elecrons can theoretically end up anywhere anytime (unpredicatable) this does not mean that you can't use them.
Bullshit.
Volcanoes: 145-255 million tons of CO2 per year, total.
(http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Hazards/What/VolGas/voHumans: 24 billion tons. About 150 times the amount of all volcanoes combined.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
Real science:
"Repeatable experiments have generated data that..."
"This model is fully consistent with..."
"Anomalous observations require a new hypothesis regarding..."
Fake science:
"The general consensus is..."
"74% of scientists polled believe that..."
"Articles published in a popular journal state..."
It doesn't take a scientist to recognize when the bullshit is flying.
Nice job of avoiding the really important points of his post, in which he quotes the article:
"The climate system is remarkably sensitive to natural variability," he said. "It's likely that it is equally sensitive to effects brought on by human activity, changes like increased greenhouse gases, altered land-use policies and fossil-fuel dependence.
"Any prudent person would agree that we don't yet understand the complexities with the climate system and, since we don't, we should be extremely cautious in how much we 'tweak' the system," he said.
I know the idea that our environment is a static entity that will only be changed should someone like the evil corporations or the Bush administration do something to it is a commonly accepted idea, but that is just scientifically inaccurate.
That's also a straw man argument, since no one is making that claiming. Everyone knows that the environment can be affected by things beyond man's control. But that doesn't mean that we should just ignore those things we can control. "Well, a meteor strike could wipe out life on Earth, so let's not worry about dioxyn, PCBs, air pollution, or greenhouse gas emissions. And what's with those whiners in Bhopal, India? So what if Union Carbide killed thousands. Earthquakes kill thousands of people, so why should Union Carbide have to be concerned with safety?" That's Republican logic (to use an oxymoron) for you.
They don't allow murderers into heaven. Haven't you read the bible? particularly the part when God gives Charlton Heston the tablets of the law?
In case people want to read about the Greenland Glacier: Article
I found it interesting that it had actually slowed and built up between 1991 and 1997.
Sig it.
I hear heaven is a nice comfortable temp. Now Michael Moore, he better bring a person AC unit.
Dick Cheney - corporate crook, chickenhawk who sends our troops to kill and die in an unnessecary war while at the same time rewriting our energy policy soley for the benefit of industrial polluters (and to the detriment of the planet).
Michael Moore - two bit populist documentary filmaker who unnsuccesfully tried to swing an election with a movie that uses emotional appeals to turn viewers against the incumbent.
I wonder which one of these guys is going to hell. To even compare the scale of McMoore's actions to Cheney's is insane.
That's known as a truism. It's the warm periods that delineate the ice ages (and vice versa). If you had two ice ages in a row, we'd just call it one long ice age. Similarly for warm periods.
Saying things like "we have less effect than one major Eruption", may be true while the eruption is going on, but few major eruptions continue for more than a few days. Our society is having an effect in the range of a major eruption, but 24/7, 365 days a year.It's like the difference to your electric bill between baking a cake, and leaving the oven on -- door open -- for an entire month.
Especially in the early days of global warming research, there was a lot of controversy over whether it was happening, and whether human activity was a (or the) prime contributor. In the last few years, however, it's become more a question of how fast and how far.
The north pole, which has survived for millenia has thinned by 30% in the last couple of decades -- at that rate it could be gone in my lifetime -- and in the meantime, it's eating a lot of the excess energy that we've been pumping into the ecosystem and capturing with the greenhouse effect.
A similar effect is occurring in antarctica. Ice shelves that have survived 3 or 4 ice-age cycles are breaking off wholesale. Right now, there's a massive 80 mile long iceberg that is threatening to starve one of the major penguin colonies (as well as possibly preventing this year's supplies from being delivered to three antarctic research station)
Consider now, an entirely different analogy:
Let's say you're driving down the road one night, and 5 people try to warn you (over the CB radio) that the bridge ahead seems to be washed out. You're in a rush (late for a hot date), and none of these people has actally seen the washed out bridge. Furthermore, one person is telling you that the road ahead is fine (your rival for the date you're going to meet). Do you keep going pedal-to-the-metal, or do you slow down enough so that you can stop if the bridge is really out?
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