Slashdot Mirror
Carbon Emissions 'Will Defer Ice Age'
Sven-Erik writes "Due to subtle variations in the Earth's orbit, researchers have calculated that the next Ice Age is due within 1,500 years. However, a new study suggests greenhouse gas emissions mean it will not happen that soon (abstract). 'Dr Skinner's group ... calculates that the atmospheric concentration of CO2 would have to fall below about 240 parts per million (ppm) before the glaciation could begin. The current level is around 390ppm. Other research groups have shown that even if emissions were shut off instantly, concentrations would remain elevated for at least 1,000 years, with enough heat stored in the oceans potentially to cause significant melting of polar ice and sea level rise.'"
Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Michael Flynn.
Fallen Angels
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Its good, as it turns to be? Or do we want an ice age?
Neither melting ice caps nor a new ice age sound particularly appealing.
It makes sense to me that by melting all ice, carbon emissions would prevent the occurrence of an ice 'age'.
This is good news, since many of us live in areas which would be covered with glaciers.
Wonder how many hypocrites who previously excoriate all climatologists who caution about global warming as corrupt and biased instantly trumpeting that these brilliant, honest, decent climatologists have to be right because the end result is one that they want.
And people said global warming deniers didn't care about future generations. They were trying to help them all along!
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
It's hard to get funding for an experiment that takes two identical planets and changes the global CO2 concentration on one.
Climatology is an observational science like geology or astronomy. Models can be checked. It's not just curve fitting to the temperature record: climatologists figure they're on the right track when their models predict phenomena like El Nino.
The experiment is currently running. Check back in 2k years or so for the results.
Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
Good book, IMHO.
For those interested, "Fallen Angels" is available at Jim Baen's Free Library to read online, or download. (linked below)
"Fallen Angels"
*Discaimer*
I'm just an enthusiastic fanboy, not affiliated with Baen Books in any way other than being a happy customer.*
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
That's a tad different. During the last ice age we didn't have the ability to ship food thousands of miles and make user of the land that was now useful for agriculture. Also, we didn't have insulation and heating technology like we do today.
An ice age isn't the greatest thing ever, but life has a much better chance of coping with it effectively than the rather extreme changes in climate that we're setting off.
Anything we do, "could potentially" do something, or nothing, or upset part of Mother Nature that proves unexpectedly fragile. Unless Mankind goes away, we will continue to influence the environment forever. I suggest doing Nothing as the only possible prudent course of action.
Let's roll the dice so we don't have to be inconvenienced by sorting our garbage and driving cars with smaller engines.
My UID is prime. Hah!
I buy that CO2 could prevent or delay the onset of an ice age. What I don't by is the suggestion that an ice age is due to start 1500 years from now. Looking more carefully, I see that the value of CO2 level required to prevent an ice age 1500 years from now is below the pre-industrial level. In other words they've predicted an ice age that would, under no conceivable circumstance, occur and then said, look, it won't occur because of CO2. Yes, but then again our lakes aren't frozen in the summer now because of CO2. Maybe we should send out a press release.
Support SETI@home
Remember the Greening Earth Society?
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Greening_Earth_Society
In the late 1990s I remember they were out there with an interesting take that not only was the greenhouse effect real, but that we should promote it because it would "make Greenland green again" and otherwise unlock many areas of tundra and for conventional agriculture and human expansion.
Apparently it is imperative that we keep CO2 levels above 240ppm unless we want to destroy life as we know it. We have an obligation to save the planet and it's inhabitants from dying a slow, cold death!
One thing's for certain: whether coastal cities are under 20 feet of water or up to their asses in ice 2000 years from now, there will still be politicians pointing at each other over whose fault it is.
- For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
According to this http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1667889/
"House fires keep you warm in the wintertime!"
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
The earth is just a computer. You need two. See Slartibartfast.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
Why? Do you think a bit of ice could kill off all humans?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The planet is soo poluted, in 1500 years I doubt anything will still be alive!
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Just about 99.95 percent of us. You don't expect Russia, China and the US to go quietly into the cold do you? If it became clear an ice age is dawning, we get uncivilized again.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Better explanation of why CO2 levels don't have an impact on glaciation cycles, http://motls.blogspot.co.nz/2012/01/will-co2-save-us-from-next-ice-age.html
Just up the road a ways (ok 100 KM) is a mountain that is capable of sustaining a sizable population for 10 years, with stores as well. Many nations have similar areas. No, a comet would NOT wipe out humanity 100% unless it took out most of our atmosphere or the planet itself.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I seriously doubt it. It MIGHT take out 50% or more, but 99.95? Not bloody likely esp. when you consider the the majority of the population live around the equator already.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You'll have to give us a reference for that, since my sources say otherwise:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_sea_level_rise
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/slideshow?id=9281281
Sit, Ubuntu, sit. Good dog.
The reverse argument is equally ridiculous:
Nothing we do can combined cause global scale changes on the planet, which is nice, because then I can keep doing whatever I want.
The worst part is that very little is required to make very large impacts on carbon emissions. If everyone in the US bought a car that had half the horsepower that the car they currently own has, they could make a huge impact on their emissions.
My UID is prime. Hah!
Wouldn't glaciation pretty much end life as we know it on the planet? You can't grow anything on an ice sheet.
Given the choice of planet wide starvation and freezing VS moving to high ground and breeding heat tolerant crops,
Given the choice between the extinction of some less mobile less heat tolerant species VS the extinction of all species,
I pretty much know what I'd be in favor of and it dosen't involve freezing to death
Is the big bang science? Or politics because we can't reproduce it?
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
This simply gives more excuses for maintaining the pollution driven economy we have now. The same reason that so many people argue that there is no human induced global warming will now say "Not only are we not doing anything wrong, but we are helping."
Unfortunately, our society is based on greed. The people in power have a lot of money invested, and make a whole lot of money from polluting and destroying the environment. They pay lots of money to keep people ignorant, and make anything that makes them profit legal. Sad really, but the truth.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
The mandatory response is, of course, ability to occasionally predict something is not an indication that the level of certainty of all stated conclusions is as great as claimed. Whether or not level of certainty has been overstated is not something that yields itself to peer review. Basically, peer review can only answer the question "is this definitely true or is there a flaw in the observations or conclusions." Whereas, level of certainty can only be estimated by answering the question "is this plausible." It's the difference between "accurate" and "plausible" that makes peer review adequate or inadequate method of fact finding.
Climatology is not at all like geology, by the way. Geology has reproducible data because it studies artifacts of events rather than events in progress.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I'm so tired of hearing this ridiculous nonsense from people who obviously have no clue about the scientific method.
There are many predictions in climate science which are replicable. Every year we can predict the thickness of tree rings and ice-layers, the amount of CO2 and pollen trapped in glacial ice, the amount of microorganisms trapped in ocean sediment, and many, many other pieces of data, based on the climate. Models predict the average temperature and the average CO2 concentration (and many other things).
These predictions can all be checked against real-world data, and therefore, it is science .
This is vastly opposed to denier "science", which makes no predictions, or incorrect predictions.
Everyone else is fairly well aware of the scientific method and peer review.
However, we have known for a few years that the Earth's orbit has been rounding out, which is when it gets colder. This was among many points covered on slashdot along with solar output and geological methane release that demonstrated that the Earth's climatic shift has been primarily due to CO2 levels. If CO2 levels had not gone significantly beyond their 1700 levels, we would be experiencing the starting signs of cooling over the next 200 years.
"Yeah...it was the numbers that were irrational, not the murderous cult of vegetarians...." -- Hippasus of Metapontum
It will kill a lot more of us than a bit of warming would.
Indeed. As is hominid evolution. Just because we are basing theories off of observed and currently happening phenomena does not mean that the science need be any weaker than working with phenomena for which active processes have largely ceased. Besides, geology is a ludicrously bad example. Just how many times do you get to observe Archean rocks form? That climatology is researching active processes is a benefit, not a negative. Helluva lot more difficult to test specifics of ancient geology or Big Bang cosmology when said events happened billions of years ago, and not, say, right fucking now.
There's this bizarre belief being stated by some of the skeptics on this particular article that somehow knowing the end of a process, but not the beginning, is in some way superior to knowing the beginning, but not the end.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"Step 0: Be born a retard like jellomizer."
Well. He seems to have gotten at least a little better. He's posting to slashdot. I acknowledge that's not much of an achievemet, but still, given where you say he started at...
But if you weren't retarded to start with, then what happened to you along the way?
People tend not to be so worried about what happens in 1500 years or so.
But, they'll get into bitter dustups over what will happen in 50.
No kidding. The way we're burning through oil reserves, even if we stop giving a shit about potable water, we've got, what? Maybe a couple of centuries. Not to mention that fossil fuels are just as important to countless industrial and material processes as they are to putting gas in your car, and that it isn't just the price of a gallon of gas that shoots up, but a whole host of other things as well.
And once you've burned through all the easily-obtainable long chain hydrocarbons, then not only do your freighters and jet plains don't work any more, and you end up at the very moment of greatest crisis having to try to catch up on all those energy sources that have been poo-pooed by the oil and gas industry and their shills.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Since we know about CO2 being a greenhouse gas since the 19th century, industrialization was just planned to prevent the ice age.
Je me souviens.
unless it took out most of our atmosphere or the planet itself.
... which it could
There's this bizarre belief being stated by some of the skeptics on this particular article that somehow knowing the end of a process, but not the beginning, is in some way superior to knowing the beginning, but not the end.
The belief is far from bizarre. It is rooted in this poorly-understood phenomenon called entropy. Being able to posit an orderly beginning that is consistent with the observable and relatively chaotic present is far more meaningful than extrapolating into an unobservable future using equations with iffy and actually unknown stability properties.
Your wikipedia reference states that in the last 18,000 years, sea levels rose 120 metres. Thats over 6mm per year. Over a 100 year period you're talking 67cm. Sea levels has risen 20cm in the last 100 years
Do you see how data can be manipulated to suit either standpoint?
No, the other 49.95 percent is the nuclear winter the fight for habitable territory would cause.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
>>Models can be checked. It's not just curve fitting to the temperature record: climatologists figure they're on the right track when their models predict phenomena like El Nino.
The problem is there's no shortcut for it as you move forward. While you can kinda-sorta validate your models by looking at different time periods, ultimately, having 100% predictive accuracy on the past is just an illusion of accuracy.
I worked in modelling for years, and the golden standard my professors always hammered into me was forward prediction. Not the ability to predict the past.
I'm pretty much with you on what you say but I'm not aware of any climate models that attempt to predict phenomena like El Nino (or any number of other phenomena that work on decadal or shorter scales). Most climate modeling is done on a 30 year moving average which means the El Nino/La Nina cycles basically cancel each other out and they can use the average of the cycle.
Not all arctic ice is floating in the sea. There is the Greenland ice sheet and many of the other islands around the arctic have lesser ice sheets. The estimates are that if all of the ice sheet on Greenland were to melt sea level would rise approximately 20 feet.
We all knew climate change would be bad for polar bears. If I was a polar bear I'd be pissed to hear about this.. If you're a polar bear, that ice age; it's the _best_.
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-B.Franklin
Astronomy and geology are certainly not "observational sciences" in the sense you use that phrase. Experiments are not only possible in astronomy and geology, they are performed routinely. I don't know much about geology, but there are a lot of notable experiments in astronomy, from ancient times to yesterday. For example, the determination of the circumference of Earth by Eratosthenes, the discovery of the planets beyond Uranus, the observation of neutron stars, the background cosmic radiation, the discovery of extrasolar planets, and many, many others.
Actually, there is no such a thing as "observational" science -- ability to define your theory so that it can be tested against an experiment is what distinguishes a science.
I finally read "All the Trouble in the World" which was bublished in 1995.
The author traveled to various UN supported countries investigating the efforts to end overpopulation, famine, poverty, etc.
He describes convoys travelling under armed guard through the most furtile areas on the earth to deliver: food.
There are real problems with the UN, not least of which are the ammounts of $$ that magically dissappear and the lavish soires.
No brain, no pain.
Actually, the process with climatology was subtly different, something like
1. Someone got a PhD in science
2. They began collecting data and observe what's happening
3. They published some papers and gathered about 10 more people, who had gone thru 1 and 2
4. They published more papers
5. They collected more data, and convinced their government that even more data is necessary
6. They got more equipment, more data, came up with some ways to put these data together
7. Then they refined their hypothesis, got more funding and more students
8. Then they got publicity by semi-literate journalists, and it all went political. Unfortunately, unlike the people who play politics, the people who did the research were not prepared for the tricks on the political side.
9. Even unfortunatelier, nobody else was prepared to understand or argue sensibly the "tricks" on the research side
10. Ever since, it has been one giant downhill race in lies, accusations and misunderstandings, to the detriment of science
11. When it should have been a harmonious transition to getting more understanding of the topic, and gradually and smoothly planning and executing whatever action would be necessary.
And so it goes.
A bit of warming. Yes. A lot of warming combined with massive drought all around and you might be wrong.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Keep displaying your ignorance. Ice cores over the last 800,000 years have not shown CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere above about 300 ppmv. This year the concentration is about 390 ppmv. The key phrase was up to 50 million climate refuges. As to the rest of your stuff you're going to have to document it. I suspect the Canadians would laugh you out of the room with your statement that "arctic ice has not melted to what it was in 1940-1945".
Erm... how is "the observation of neutron stars" evidence that astronomy is not an "observational science"?
Erm ... They were predicted before they were observed, so it wasn't a chance discovery, but rather, an experiment to find an object with the specific properties suggested by the theory. You know, kind of like an experiment.
We also didn't have modern glacier farming technologies. Experimental crops grown on glaciers are up 1000% from initial studies!
Help stamp out iliturcy.
1500 years is a human timescale. We've been living in parmanent settlements for 11,000 years. Plus it's an estimate. We don't know when it would actually be, and if the report is correct we probably never will. That would not be a bad thing.
I check computer models and computer-generated engineering drawings every day (it's fun, actually), but we don't build things from computer models. We build things from detail drawings, which need checking.
The smallest computer glitch can have a huge impact on a project if not caught, especially if one considers that many will unquestioningly accept whatever the software spits out.
I like to think that Slashdotters already realize this.
No, I'm here. What did you want to know? Getting off the Earth? That's easy:
* Orbital velocity is root (R(e) * g), where R(e) is the radius of the Earth (6378000 meters), and g is the surface gravity (9.80665 m/s^2). That works out to 7908 m/s
* Kinetic Energy is 0.5 * m * v^2. Thus kinetic energy to reach orbit is 31.27 MJ/kg.
* One kiloWatt-hour (kWh) is the common unit of electric energy. 1000 W * 3600 seconds = 3.6 MJ.
* Therefore it takes 31.27 / 3.6 = 8.7 kWh/kg to get something into orbit.
* Multiply by your local electric rate. Where I an now, that works out to $1/kg, about what potatoes cost at the local market.
So getting off the Earth is cheap, if you use energy efficiently. You haven't been, though. You have been using about the least efficient method available: chemical rockets. The best rocket fuels only have a bit under half the energy needed to get to orbit (15 MJ/kg), and the engines are around 2/3 efficient, which leaves you at around 10 MJ/kg. So the fuel can't even get itself to orbit, much less anything else, like cargo. You end up using a lot of fuel to lift a smaller amount of fuel part way, then use that to push an even smaller amount a bit further, and finally that last bit pushes a very small cargo to orbit. For those who understand math, that is an exponential ratio of fuel to cargo, where the exponent is the ratio of mission velocity / rocket exhaust velocity. For chemical rockets, that works out to 2-3, depending on which fuel. So you use e (2.718...) raised to 2-3 power as much fuel as cargo that gets to orbit.
The answer is quite obvious: use something else. Something that has better efficiency, so you are not slaughtered by the exponential. There are a number of choices. Which one you use depends on a number of "mission requirements": What are you launching, how often, how much up front development money you can spend, how much risk do you want to take, etc.
OK, that takes care of getting out of *this* gravity well. What next?
(1) Don't go right down another one. The Moon and Mars can wait till you build up some infrastructure. Use near Earth asteroids first, followed by other asteroids, including the ones orbiting Mars, as a source of building materials. You can use efficient electric thrusters as long as you are not diving down a gravity well.
(2) Don't send humans first. Humans have all kinds of picky needs about temperature, pressure, food, radiation, etc. Robots, remote controlled, and automated equipment (which I will call just "robots" for brevity) are not as sensitive. Send robots first, have them build stuff up. Once you have enough stuff in place and can support the humans, then they can come.
I think the gold standard should be it's utility. Try googling, you will find dozens of forward predictions similar to these...
1. The phenomena known as "Polar amplification" was predicted before it was observed.
2. The phenomena known as "Stratospheric cooling" was predicted before it was observed.
5. Accurately predicted the climatic impact of the Mt Pinatobo eruption.
These sort of tests don't even start to list the basic predictive skill a climate model needs to be considered useful, such as the ocean currents, air pressure patterns, the roaring forties, monsoons, ENSO, the formation of tropical cyclones in the right geographical locations in the right season, the morning clouds in the Amazon burnt of by the sun, sea ice extent, all these things and much more must be accurately hind-cast before you can even start to ask "what if" questions.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The smallest computer glitch can have a huge impact on a project if not caught, especially if one considers that many will unquestioningly accept whatever the software spits out. I like to think that Slashdotters already realize this.
Of course we do, so do climate scientists. Which is why when scientists say "climate models predict" they're talking about the statistics of thousands of runs on hundreds of different models.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The real history:
It started in 1824 when Fourier predicted the IR absorption properties of CO2 while inventing spectroscopy. Tyndall confirmed the prediction in the 1850's and finally in 1896 Arrhenius started looking into the effects of industrial CO2 emissions on the climate (not sure if any of them had a phd). The idea was dismissed for about 50yrs due to the argument that water's broad IR absorption spectrum obscured and therefore cancelled CO2's narrower IR absorption spectrum. It wasn't until spectrometers with better resolution (invented to research missiles) came about in the 50's that it overcame that last serious objection, (turned out that the frequency peaks are interleaved not overlapped). In 1958 the NAS warned the US government that our emission's were changing our climate and the political bun fight started in earnest.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
You forgot about the extra rain and snow and floods and nice wine in the UK.......
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
OK. I'd have thought that the theorising part of that was astrophysics, whilst the looking for them was astronomy. But looking at Wikipedia right now, the implication is that astronomy and astrophysics is more or less the same subject. My nephew is studying astrophysics, so I'll have to ask him to fill me in on that when next I see him.
You can swim in water. You can't swim in ice.
--
When did the future switch from being a promise to a threat? -C. Palahniuk
Perhaps, 'intelligent design' is not so far of after all. A giant experiment is what this is.
Only in far northern latitudes, something which you probably would have mentioned if you were being honest about it.
Yes, where the "stands" for temperature proxy are. Something you would have known if you actually wanted to learn about it instead of rushing to support a priori conclusion.
"His name was James Damore."
I had no idea we were already living in a Rush album.
Try 512 AD.
-DwS
Oops!
Oh, sure, you're an honest broker, which is why you clipped a small part of one sentence of my original post, and used it to attempt to mislead people.
Which misleading is that? I have not proffered that global warming is or is not happening, nor that humans are or are not causing it.
..nice world that must be.
You were trying to mislead us into believing that you knew what you were talking about. Not only were you wrong about the veracity of tree rings with regards to temperature record, you dared state that "every year" that tree rings have been proven to show skill at matching the instrumental record.
I guess in your world its ok to lead off with a complete fabrication in order to prove whatever point you have...
"His name was James Damore."
why this was modded 'funny'?
This is a UDP joke, I don't care if you get it or not...
Just to be clear, I believe it will be at least 200 years before we could force 50 feet of sea level rise. Before that happens we'd likely do something about global warming. So I don't expect that to happen, certainly not in the lifetime of anyone who is alive today (assuming no immortality treatment).
ORLY? I hear the ocean is absorbing more CO2 and is getting slowly more acidic as the temperatures and the atmospheric concentration is rising. You know, kind of like you can dissolve more sugar when you heat the water, not less. You got some prooflink for your interesting statement?