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Little Ice Age: It Was Not the Sun

vikingpower writes "The Little Ice Age, lasting from the end of the Middle Age into the 17th century, may very likely have been caused by the combined effects of four major volcanic eruptions and increased sunlight reflection by increasing sea ice, the so-called Albedo effect. ... The University of Boulder has a press release with maps and photographs. Bette Otto-Bliesner, one of the scientists behind the 'volcano + sea ice' thesis, fields an earnest warning against drawing conclusions too quickly from this research: 'I think people might look at the Little Ice Age and think that all we need to save us from rising temperatures are some volcanic eruptions or the geo-engineering equivalent [...] But when you see what happened when global temperatures dropped by just one degree and you look at current predictions of six or seven degree increases for the future, you realize how precarious things are for life as we know it.'"

5 of 375 comments (clear)

  1. Re:We didn't really know how things worked before by tom229 · · Score: 1, Troll

    All it took for me was learning that all their predictions are based on computer models. That alone made me extremely skeptical.

    There is NO way some group of people have figured out all of the variables and equations that affect global climate. Garbarge in, garbage out.

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    If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
  2. When you are biased, you'll see everything as so by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 0, Troll

    The trouble is, most questioning of the science related to global warming is politically motivated.

    The REAL trouble is, even when the questions are not politically motivated, the "Global Warming" fanbois will label the people with questions as "Anti-changers".

    --
    Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
  3. Re:We didn't really know how things worked before by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 1, Troll

    Someone interested in discussing science would not use words like "denialist" with the obvious intention of provoking an angry response.

    Sorry, there's no other word that fits -- and no, "skeptic" doesn't cut it. Rationalwiki has a nice explanation of the difference. There's no reason to play nice with people who have the capacity to understand scientific evidence but refuse to do so.

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    The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
  4. Re:We didn't really know how things worked before by JazzHarper · · Score: 1, Troll

    Shouldn't all science be questioned? If we unanimously accept a scientific theory to be fact, is it still science?

    If AGW is not a testable theory and it does not produce a falsifiable hypothesis, is it scientific at all?

  5. Re:We didn't really know how things worked before by ediron2 · · Score: 1, Troll

    Every time I see a comment like yours, I have to wonder who's astroturfing this crap.

    You toss out hyberbolic claims in a scattergun fashion ("to test... warming effect, cooling effect or somethign else and the magnitude of it"), then say carefully accurate-sounding bullshit like "to (sic) only current way to test ... is to wait 100 years".

    This violates two crux aspects about the scientific method, and models (or hypothesis):

    1 - if nearly all the models show X (a temp increase), and attempts to find a scientifically rigorous and interesting model leading to Y are unsuccessful, it's sophistry to claim we just don't know.

    2 - if the preponderance of evidence and conclusions (models) say X (big temp increases, bad things worsening throughout the next century), we don't have to wait a century to act. That's absurd. We can take precautionary measures immediately, and watch the models and adjust.

    But then, I suspect you know that, since I'm convinced you're a troll...