Slashdot Mirror
Global Warming Irreversible, NOAA Scientist Finds
Tibor the Hun writes "NPR reports that Susan Solomon, one of the world's top climate scientists, finds in her new study that global warming is now irreversible. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concludes that even if we could immediately cease our impact on pollution and greenhouse gasses emissions, global climate change would continue for more than a thousand years. The reason is the saturation of oceans with carbon dioxide. Her study looked at the consequences of long-term effect in terms of sea-level rise and drought."
So they are saying we will have the opposite of the Younger Dryas no matter what we do. That may be true, and it might not be true, but I think it's a bit premature to say that our computer models are so good that they can definitively say what global conditions will be like in 1,000 years. Considering how few variables we model let alone the level of detail we have on those data points I think it's a bit foolish to say we can say much of anything definitive from our models at those type of timescales.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
It's the old "Limits To Growth" bullshit back again. The same people who predicted mass starvation in the 70s are now predicting massive climate change. The whole concept that new technology means you can't just extrapolate seems to be lost on them.
And this kind of hysterics has been around a long time. Hobbes had his "nasty, brutish, and short" predictions for mankind in Leviathan. According to experts 30 years ago, the was simply no way we could produce enough food for 5 billion people. Now we're doing it for 7. These professional pessimists have always underestimated mankind's ability to change, adapt, and solve problems. They've always underestimated our capacity to make things happen.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
The key element about global warming that seems relevant is this : how LONG will it take? If we have 200 years before the ice caps finish melting, then it's not really the crisis that it's made out to be.
Why won't it matter if it takes 200 years? Because realistically at even a fraction of the current rate of technological progress, mankind will have the technology to do something definitive about it in 200 years. The simplest, most elegant solution I can think of to global warming is to build giant orbital sunshades to reduce the total solar irradiance to the earth's surface.
I can even see how this would be done using a juiced version of current technology. Automated factories would produce the thousands of square kilometers of shade material (kind of like the automated factories in Japan right now...). The factories might be on the earth or the moon. We'd blast the shades into orbit using lasers (see Lockheed Martin's new LED pumped laser weapon for technology that could do the job TODAY) and they would automatically position themselves in the right location using tiny ion engines (also already been done).
The solar panels would produce electrical energy, which would be beamed down to earth via microwave. The panels would only be maybe 40-50% efficient, so the waste heat would radiate out to space, reducing the total thermal load on the planet.
Presto! Problem solved, and probably would be a profitable endeavor for some future megacorp.
You cannot extrapolate from the occurence of "new technology" in the past to help us, onto future new technology coming at time to help us. New technology is in general an unknown, and thus you should NEVER plan with them in mind. The new technology could as well NEVER happen and so much screw you up in an irreversible way. Which is why it is insane on planning on new tech coming (ne crude extraction tech, new energy generation tech (including fusion), new food production tech, new recyclage tech , new medicine tech etc...). A sane planning should always be based on current tech. You can always adapt your planning if a new tech comes up. You can't if you are waiting for some new tech to come (when ? In how far the problem would be solved ? What problem would be left ? etc...). waiting for new tech to solve your problem is akin to waiting that the problem solve itself. And that is totally utterly lost on you.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Considering the evidence that climate has been cyclic with a cycle of approximately 100k years for the last million-odd years, leads me to think that there must also be negative feedback loops involved here. You seem to have missed that. Badly.
Yes, I realize this doesn't mean that there couldn't be a magic global temperature or CO2 concentration at which suddenly this behavior breaks down. But somehow, I don't think we know all that much about all the processes involved.
At the risk of sounding out of place. I listened to this on the drive to Bar Review Class today and the point was that the damage we have done is relatively irreversible, but we can stop the magnitude of the result by limiting green house gas emissions in the present. That is not particularly outlandish, but it is also slightly disheartening to see that we have passed a threshold of no immediate return. That is the reaction is moving in a reaction to restore equilibrium.
I think we need to not discount technological possibilities of the future, however, curbing carbon emissions is a laudable goal for the present.
Earth has not been 'far warmer'. See the hockey stick.
Cold in DC and in Europe for that matter is due to slowing of the Golfstream and masses on polar region air coming down, both of those phenomenons are activated by global warming.
It could be that the natural negative feedback loop for the global warming is the formation of an Ice age cowering Europe and most of the USA under miles of ice. That might balance things out. In a couple thousand years.
So ... 10 billion people, frozen Europe, Canada, USA, Russia, scorched deserts in most of Afrika ... where will we all go to live? Will everyone migrate peacefully? How many billion people will be killed in wars to control few strips of land that are still fertile? And how many billions will die of starvation because they did not have the military power to get those lands?
Not so fun.
I don't really see why that's a failure of logic. Her point seems to be that, look we've pushed it to the point it's going to happen, let's not make it even worse.
The event isn't going to be a simple binary yes it does happen/no it doesn't happen it's going to occur on a sliding scale, it could be major, it could be minor, it could be anything in between, how we react is going to define that.
The logic only fails if you're viewing the result in a simple two state it does/doesn't happen manner. It's your application of discrete logic to a comment about a non-discrete system with a non-discrete range of outcomes that's at fault.
If what she says is true and that it is irreversible, then yes we need to do something about it- it means we've fucked up majorly and we need to do something about it now to ensure the impact it has is as small as possible. Certainly going with the attitude of "Oh well" and continuing as is is likely only going to make it a whole lot worse, or even speed it up so that it happens not in 1000 years, but in 100 years. Even if we can keep it to 1000 years and it is serious then at least there's the hope we'll have a better solution by then, but a solution in 100 years could be a much tougher call.
"If you can invent an easy process to turn CO2 in low concentrations back into carbon and oxygen, you have a winner."
Trees?
-- Terry
Mars and Jupiter have been experiencing "global warming", too.
Oh yes, you're totally right! I bet you're the sort who argues over accuracy of Earth's temperature records, but you're willing to believe that we have enough data to show global warming on Mars and Jupiter FFS.
Anyway. From Realclimate:
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Well, I probably just biased you into thinking I'm a climate change denier with the title, but guess what... I buy into science.
However, there is such a ridiculous, self-reinforcing feedback loop of grandiose speech and groupthink within the climate research community that its no wonder quacks out there are encouraged towards disbelief. If you attend lectures by some of these researchers (personally, its been mostly atmospheric chemists for me), you'll see that nearly every one of them thinks they're some sort of Messiah trying to spread the holy message. This article (the original, not the fluff news summary) is no exception.
In order to secure a newspaper headline title (once again, in order to get THE MESSAGE out), Solomon completely ignores a range of facts and potential solutions.
First fact, she admits in the article that people have previously predicted the consequences to last centuries. Apparently, when you increase the timescale from 200 years to 1000 years, you pass her arbitrary distinction between 'reversible' and 'irreversible'. How about we agree to refer to this as possibly reversible on a really long time scale, huh? And instead of Solomon saying that she was the one to discover global warming was 'irreversible', instead say that it will take longer than expected to return to normal?
Second, Solomon DELIBERATELY turns a blind eye to research already in the literature that contradicts her model. This surpasses vanity and enters into the realm of negligence on the level of an ethical violation. I'm talking about the emerging field of carbon sequestration here. Anyone in the field of climate research WILL know about the branch of research focused on removing and confining CO2 from the atmosphere. While any implementation is still a long way from large scale deployment or commercial viability, if you're going to make predictions on a 1000 year time scale, you might want to take into account technology advances in this field! However, that would destroy Solomon's pretty newspaper headline and reduce it to the following:
Global warming might last five times as long as previously expected assuming we don't find a way to fix the problem first
.
Does that sound front-page newsworthy to you? Ok, I support the theory of man-made global warming. However, if we want to persuade the skeptics and nuts out there, climate researchers should start approaching the issue honestly and responsibly. Half truths will only undermine further discussion!
Don't buy car insurance, either.
After all, you've never had an accident! Who are those doomsayers who say you HAVE to?
I think the point is that the site (antithetically americanthinker) is politically/economically motivated bs.
There is a myth that they predicted all apocalyptic shit in the 20th century. I remember when Limits came out .... its predictions were aimed squarely at the early to mid 21st century.
That was not what they were teaching in schools 20 years ago. Oil was supposed to have run out about 1997 or 1998 and tin 1990ish.
Oopsy!
Oh wait! We *did* already run out of oil out of the ground and all of today's oil production comes from extraction from teenager's faces![1] How could I be so dumb?
[1] Who would have thunk that Mel Brooks could save the world?
I get the joke but I'm not sure how we ended up on limits of growth and horse shit, that is not what TFPaper is about.
What it says is that IFF we stopped pumping out GHG tomorrow it would take thousands of years for the ocean to regain it's pre-industrial PH level. The ocean (and the shelled critters in it) is the largest C02 sink, too much CO2 makes the ocean slightly more acidic and this is already having a negative affect on said shelled critters ability to make shells, loss of coral reefs is the most publicised of these effects. Personally I hardly think it's surprising that it would take a long time for makind's CO2 spike to be aborsbed into the system if we all dropped dead tomorrow but science is about measurement and evidence, the question of "how long would it take" is as valid as any other.
limits of growth and horse shit
I like the horse story but the Dodo bird meat industry didn't fare quite as well. Tecnology may one day overcome that "temporary" glitch but until it does the Dodo meat industry went past it's own limit to growth in the 1700's(?). While we are LIMITED by our lack of terra-forming technology I think the most obvious limit to growth comes from from human shit, not horse shit.
As far as I am concerned we have no choice but to turn to technology to fix technology. However it's nice to have a "bug report" that clearly lays out what the problem is. Science is that bug report, without these kind of studies we wouldn't even recoginse the problem, and in fact many people still don't (just look at this thread for examples).
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The reality is this article is an escape clause for scientists. Now, we're going to spend trillions of dollars and impoverish millions of people fighting the global warming man, and then, after that, when we go to check to see if this is shit worked, we'll hear from the environmentalists that, "it will work in a thousand years". WTF!
That's not science. That's religion. And just like every 1000 labelled year, we'll find a new reason that Jesus didn't come back, in the form of some new thing that says we should worship mother earth more, so that she will come back to us.
People that believe this stuff are idiots. Maybe we should have US troops in Iraq for a thousand years, because they will be a democracy by then. Maybe we should let the free market handle this current economic crisis, because it will be ok in a thousand years. A thousand years! If the plan that we are to embark on -might- show progress in a thousand years, then our plan is stupid, how about that!
Stupid climate scientist. I wonder if they will come up with something intelligent, before Jesus comes back!
This is my sig.
And this kind of hysterics has been around a long time. Hobbes had his "nasty, brutish, and short" predictions for mankind in Leviathan. According to experts 30 years ago, the was simply no way we could produce enough food for 5 billion people. Now we're doing it for 7. These professional pessimists have always underestimated mankind's ability to change, adapt, and solve problems. They've always underestimated our capacity to make things happen.
These people have their value though.
Without their strong caveats who knows whether enough of us would feel compelled to actually solve those problems before they blindsided us like a stealth missile.
All optimists, progressives, and risk-takers express this kind of dismissiveness about such dire predictions, but without them, and those who act on them, our decisions would become reckless very quickly.
For instance, if nobody started raising severe alarms about energy use, we probably would have all died in a third world war caused by people fighting over oil for their 10 gallon per mile cars.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
"The New York administration of the late 19th century" did not invent or popularise the automobile, or the train. They did nothing to solve the problem. They threw up their hands and gave up because the problem was entirely beyond them
If by "threw up their hands" you mean "publicly funded and built a massive underground public transit system" and "pushed the adoption of automobiles by adopting increasingly auto-centric laws", then yes, they "threw up their hands".
the world today would be a better place if more governments would follow their lead in that.
If by "better" you mean stuck in the middle ages without electricity (rural electrificaiton initiative), railroads (transcontinental railroad project, and similar projects by european counterparts), sewers, municipal water, rampant disease, and the list goes on and on.
The problem was solved by new technologies invented, developed, an popularised by private individuals looking to either make a buck or solve a problem that they faced personally in conjunction with guidance and aid of committees of busybodies trying to save the world.
There, fixed that piece of libertarian propaganda to reflect reality. Do you really think there were not think-tanks, policy analysts, and government activists since the first city-state arose?
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
I think that was just a speculative suggestion. The core of grandparent's message was that we have here on Slashdot a paper which purports to predict what will happen 1000 years in future, and then happily claiming inevitability. 1000 years is a mighty long time. A natural disaster could happen, giving the climate a jolt in either direction. Or maybe we invent a way of filtering CO2 out of the atmosphere and storing it somehow. Or maybe some new plant emerges (or is engineered) that somehow has an exceptional CO2 demand, who knows?
Yes, the news is worrisome, and we'd do well not to make the situation still worse than what we already have coming for us, but to pretend that you can predict what will happen in 3009 is silly. Hundred years ago folks didn't even have personal computers yet, don't forget that.
Yeah, 32000 "scientists" from just about any field that allows one to get a PhD should easily trump many thousands of scientists from the fields closely related to climate science. Did I mention that that list originally included "Drs. 'Frank Burns' 'Honeycutt' [sic] and 'Pierce' from the hit-show M*A*S*H and Spice Girls, a.k.a. Geraldine Halliwell, who was on the petition as 'Dr. Geri Halliwel' and again as simply 'Dr. Halliwell.'
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
We can produce food for many times what is on this planet. The only difference is that diets will adjust to which food products can be readily produced. Do you understand how much land that is suitable for farming isn't even used?
Susan Solomon is a CO2 freak. Her contention has been that we produce too much CO2 but every time I have read her interviews she spouts the changes in how much we produce without going into how much is naturally occurring. In other words, it looks bad if you just see how much more we produce but mankind has nothing on the mother nature's numbers.
Hyperbole for the win by the way, we have lots of fish, the key is who is farming it and where. Certain vocal industries are decrying loss of fishing but what good does putting a restriction on where our people can fish if our neighbors don't.
The whole problem with the GW is caused by man is that it really is "GW is profitable to certain men". Cap and Trade is the outcome these people want because it will make them money. In the mean time poor chinese and africans will lose their lands to damns and energy projects that benefit the rich world and a few rich people.
Lovely.
Man isn't the cause of global warming but men will certainly find a way to profit off of it
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Are any of us truly surprised.
How many of us just want to believe otherwise, as the idea of it is so difficult to accept. I imagine that one could almost put a name to the mental behavior that so many of us have as we consider this.
It really _has_ always been about adapting, rather than avoiding. The bomb has already gone off, the walk of the meek is at hand.
There is plenty of food.
Where we struggle, as human beings, is getting it to the people who need it. Politics, not capability, determine who gets fed and who doesn't.
We have PLENTY of resources to feed 7bil, 8bil, or even 10bil people. That has never been the problem. It's our own selves that is the problem.
In actual fact we currently produce enough food for over 7 billion people. (Some is turned into ethanol, some grain is used to fatten up meat animals, some food goes to overweight people like me ... all because food prices are historically low.) The reason millions of people are starving today has nothing to do with global production shortages -- it's because of political failures.
That includes not preventing pregnancy, not doing abortions and not taking care of their children properly.
The fact that you can use the phrase "not doing abortions" beside the phrase "not taking care of their children" makes me sick. So, KILLING a child that hasn't been born yet and has had NO INPUT into it's circumstances is a way to TAKE CARE of the children? That is the kind of "care" that ends with a baby in a dumpster, or a mother drowning her kids in a bathtub. Your mentality is so wrong it's almost painful.
Last night I played a blank tape at full volume. The mime next door went nuts.
Well its funny because every manner of fossil fuel is in a state where we are getting "not as good" raw material out of the ground. I'm hardly a big environmentalist but I can't see how anyone can deny any peak fossil fuel or even nearly planetary resource.
The oil we are getting is not as good and harder to extract. In old oil fields you drilled a few hundred feet and you could just pipe it onto a rail car and you were good to go. Now you have to go thousands of feet, blow compressed air into the ground to smash up rocks, heat the oil so you can pump it, and then you have to refine the crap out of it to use it. Even good old coal is certainly not as good - Germany is practically onto burning lignite and that's pretty crappy coal and even in America the good hard stuff is getting used up and we're onto lower grades of coal.
Even for metals you have to wonder where all the good stuff is. In the 19th century, people were getting gold out of the ground and you could SEE chunks of it. Now, when they talk about gold mining, they don't even bother screening the miners because the gold content of the earth is so low that a miner would have to take out an F-150 sized truck of the stuff to get a few bucks.
Meanwhile, up in space, we have an asteroid that is quite literally made out of 20 trillion dollars worth of practically pure iron and precious metals, a planet made out of methane, and we're sitting here with our thumbs up our rears, barring ourselves from using nuclear power to make spaceships with, when unimaginable wealth is in the skies above us.
You don't need to be a scientist or a genius to see where the future is. All you need is to read an assay of a asteroid, and compare that to an assay of what's considered to be a good project today. Right now, if we took a tenth of the capital we spend on developing technologies to get every last scrap of goodness out of our used up planet, we could have enough materials of any kind to essentially end all of poverty on this planet.
There is no long term environmentalism without the conquest of space.
This is my sig.
Yes, weather is not the same thing as climate, but that doesn't mean that these people have a better grasp on climate than they do with weather. If anything understanding climate is more difficult than the weather. We have a pretty good grasp of weather patterns. Good enough, anyway, that I can make a pretty good daily forecast with nothing more than a barometer and a thermometer (and maybe a quick peek out the window).
We know far less about the climate other than it has always been in constant flux.
What's your point? You give one example of something that illustrates your point. There are plenty of examples of the government has done positive things. Capitalism wouldn't abolish slavery. Too much government is bad. Not enough government is bad. Why don't people get this?
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
"Before humans, was there ever an atomic explosion on the surface of this planet?"
Volcano's and Asteroids have put *way* more heat out than the atomic explosions we humans have set off.
"Before humans, was there a way for animals on the opposite end of the planet to communicate with each other?"
thats like saying Before flying animals could creatures go higher in the atmosphere to breath out their CO2?
"So why is it so hard to believe that humans could be raising the average temperature of the planet by a few degrees every year?"
A few degrees every year? we would all be dead. The fact is the 'rapid' temperature curve we were on is petering off and reversing
" During 2006, the doomsters were predicting that 2007 would be the hottest year on record, so why have we seen no reports about this?
The answer is simple - 2007 turned out to be the coolest year for 30 years. It is also the case that there has been no global warming since 1998. In fact, since 1998, there has been steady cooling.
Even more dramatic is the fact that the most recent computer model predictions indicate that there will be no more global warming for the next ten years. But the doomsters say that, after this ten-year period, global warming will come back with a vengeance. Why?
Certainly, mankind's production of carbon dioxide (CO2) has continued to increase since 1998 and will continue to increase, particularly since countries such as China and India say that their economic growth comes first, so they do not intend worrying too much about CO2 production."
http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/there-is-no-evidence-man-made-co2-causes-climate-change-2008-07-04
"Ahh! Arrogance and stupidity in the same package, how efficient of you!" --Londo Molari
You're making an invalid assumption. Many systems are easier to predict and understand on a large scale.
For example, if I boil a pot of water, I can easily predict how its overall temperature will increase. It's much harder -- impossible in fact -- to predict exactly where bubbles will nucleate.
Overall temperature = climate. Location of the bubbles = weather.
A huge part of the problem is that the folks going on about "global warming" have ridiculously simple models that they are using to try and predict a very complex system. We are just scratching the surface when it comes to understanding the systems that regulate global temperatures.
Dr. Solomon has a computer model that she believes tells the future. Well, I have a neighbor that is convinced that the position of the stars in the skies predicts the future as well.
I am not saying that Dr. Solomon isn't right, but I will say that I am skeptical until there is some evidence that her computer model is actually useful. The earth is definitely not a pot of water.
Umm, well, good luck with that. The only problem with your argument it the complete fantasy that your altruistic busybody is both going to show up and his/her replacement is going to continue in their do goodery. As flawed as free market and capitalism is, it feeds of the basic human instincts of greed and desire to harness them and use them to further the economy. What you suggest is a one track path to fascism.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Interesting to hear about your neighbour. I have a neighbour who also is convinced about the stars and the future, too, with one subtle difference: she believes that she can tell where the stars will be in the future. And guess what? Thanks to the wonders of modern astronomical models, she's mostly right. The whole value of models of the physical world is that they can provide some level of predictive accuracy. Pompous announcements that Dr Solomons hasn't convinced you of the validity of her model until you've seen "some evidence that [it] is actually useful" just make you come across as an ass. Have you reviewed the various articles she's published on the details of her model and do you have the necessary learning (note, not qualification, but hours of intensive study) that enable you to make an informed judgement? I heartily doubt it but stand willing to be corrected. If you have, perhaps you'd care to list the detail of where her papers are wrong, plus links to the letters you've written to the various learned journals she's been published in, where you explained how she was wrong. That, after all, is how science is done.
So disagreeing is now trolling? I see the only reasonable folks are the ones who agree with you..
"since 1998, there has been steady cooling." is a troll? The fact is we are getting cooler over the past half decade (or more)..
"Ahh! Arrogance and stupidity in the same package, how efficient of you!" --Londo Molari
"That sure as hell proves that man can not be responsible for Global Warming"
I never said that proved any such thing but posts that follow the logic that because we set off a few bombs maybe that has something to do with it. *if* global warming is caused by man its not because of the nuclear weapons that have been set off.
"but you also claim there is no Global Warming, even that"
I don't claim anything over the past ten years temperature have been *dropping* to the point now where we are now at 1980 temps. Also the readjustment of 'top world temps' that took place last year moved the hottest years on record back to the 30's. This could be a blip, we could be warming, and I can be convinced of that.
I'm just not a climatological chicken little and I am skeptical of folks who are especially when 'climate change' is used by everyone and their mother to push pet causes like birth control, vegan diets,
"Ahh! Arrogance and stupidity in the same package, how efficient of you!" --Londo Molari
I've seen this argument before and I also have been asked if I believe the earth is flat since I question the validity of climatology findings. Climate is more like economics and we know how easy it is to predict economic fluctuations :) If you read some books on complexity and chaos theory you will find that chaotic systems have a high degree of unpredictability. One of the best books on the subject is The Essence of Chaos by Edward Lorenz (a meteorologist) Comparing climatology science to Newton's discovery of orbital mechanics is a bit of a stretch. The planets orbits can be observed and checked in a few days. Climate predictions would need how long to prove? 10 years, 100? Climate is probably more like weather. We have lots of weather models and a big incentive to predict the weather but we can not reliably predict the weather more than 10 days into the future. How can we then say that we can predict the future climate? I also think that politics has muddied the water my insisting that man made CO2 is the main factor driving climate change. Of course I would like us to get off of foreign oil so I would be content with "Global Warming" being a "Convenient Myth" instead of an "Inconvenient Truth"
- Things are the way they are because they're coded that way -
"I am not a climate scientist, but I believe that if I don't understand no one else possibly could," would have been a sufficient answer.
Moderation is not one of them. Y'know how troll, flamebait, and offtopic explicitly do not mean "I disagree with you and wish to censor your comments"? In the same way, insightful does not mean "I agree with the inane drivel that you have spewed forth onto the intertubes" nor does it mean "I up-mod mindless flamebait for the lulz".
Now, while you're certainly free to have the opinion that his opinion of the moderator's opinion is not a worthy contribution, I feel compelled to point out that you're a worthless hypocrite, because you posted your equally worthless opinion on his opinion of the moderator's opinion. And before someone falsely claims that I'm also being hypocritical - I never claimed that any of the posts in this thread should not have been posted. Indeed, the entire point of the moderation system means that dross such as this can be posted, and will inevitably settle at the bottom of the metaphorical dung heap that is the interweb, where those that have far too much time on their hands will revel in the discussion.
Actually, the Earth really is at least in part a pot of water, with a constant heat source. There's a gaseous lens which permits some heat to enter and some to escape, and various chemicals can enter the pot of water, both from the bowl, and the gaseous lens. If you can measure the overall content of the lens, what chemicals will seep into the lens and the water, and the heat source, it seems pretty reasonable to make the sort of claims she's making. Obviously there are bubbles in both the water and the lens, but I'm prepared to accept that they're transient and not particularly significant. Even if 50% had consistently different behavior, I would expect that it would be sufficiently random that over the course of a decade only the predictable elements would be particularly significant.
But then I'm not a climatologist.
There were two papers written about it, one was in Scientific American. Everything else was media hoopla. Carl Sagan was going on about nuclear winter, but mostly the "global cooling" stuff is being resurrected by people who are politically motivated.