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We Had All Better Hope These Scientists Are Wrong About the Planet's Future (washingtonpost.com)
Less than 24 hours since we read this dire climate study, an anonymous reader writes from a Washington Post report about several more concerning things: James Hansen, a former NASA scientist, says his new study suggests the impact of global warming will be quicker and more catastrophic than generally envisioned. The research invokes collapsing ice sheets, violent megastorms and even the hurling of boulders by giant waves in its quest to suggest that even 2 degrees Celsius of global warming above pre-industrial levels would be far too much. Hansen has called it the most important work he has ever done. "I think almost everybody who is really familiar with both paleo and modern is now very concerned that we are approaching, if we have not passed, the points at which we have locked in really big changes for young people and future generations," Hansen said.
So what? After all, we've hit peak oil and the population bomb has already gone off. We are literally lifting people in frontloaders out of the way and Soylent Green is people. This is just a drop in the bucket with all the disasters that have already befallen us that were correctly predicted in the 1970s. It doesn't seem like there will be a humanity left to even care by the time Earth has turned into Venus.
Now, excuse me, I need to go out in my gas mask and radiation gear to go salvage vacuum tubes from the ruins of civilization so I can keep my mainframe working in this post-apocalyptic world.
I tend to be a skeptic myself, so my reaction is far from panic, but this seems like something we should be studying very objectively. It's a shame so few people are capable of doing it.
The planet will kill off all of the humans and then get back to its regularly scheduled program. We're just a glitch.
It's worth noting that this is just one paper, and some reservations about this paper have been expressed by peers:
Michael Mann, a Penn State university climate scientist familiar with the original study, commented, “Near as I can tell, the issues that caused me concern originally still remain in the revised manuscript. Namely, the projected amounts of meltwater seem unphysically large, and the ocean component of their model doesn’t resolve key wind-driven current systems (e.g. the Gulf Stream) which help transport heat poleward. That makes northern hemisphere temperatures in their study too sensitive to changes in the Atlantic meridional overturning ocean circulation,” the scientific name for the ocean circulation in the Atlantic that, the study suggests, could shut down.
However, another Penn State researcher, glaciologist Richard Alley, said by email that “though this is one paper, it usefully reminds us that large and rapid changes are possible, and it raises important research questions as to what those changes might mean if they were to occur. But, the paper does not include enough ice-sheet physics to tell us how much how rapidly is how likely.
LOL, so fucking easy to disprove.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Hansen was born in Denison, Iowa to James Ivan Hansen and Gladys Ray Hansen.[9] He was trained in physics and astronomy in the space science program of James Van Allen at the University of Iowa. He obtained a B.A. in Physics and Mathematics with highest distinction in 1963, an M.S. in Astronomy in 1965 and a Ph.D. in Physics, in 1967, all three degrees from the University of Iowa. He participated in the NASA graduate traineeship from 1962 to 1966 and, at the same time, between 1965 and 1966, he was a visiting student at the Institute of Astrophysics at the University of Kyoto and in the Department of Astronomy at the University of Tokyo. Hansen then began work at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in 1967.[10]
After graduate school, Hansen continued his work with radiative transfer models, attempting to understand the Venusian atmosphere. Later he applied and refined these models to understand the Earth's atmosphere, in particular, the effects that aerosols and trace gases have on Earth's climate. Hansen's development and use of global climate models has contributed to the further understanding of the Earth's climate. In 2009 his first book, Storms of My Grandchildren, was published.[11] In 2012 he presented a 2012 TED Talk: Why I must speak out about climate change.[12]
From 1981 to 2013, he was the head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, a part of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
As of 2014, Hansen directs the Program on Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions at Columbia University's Earth Institute.[13] The program is working to continue to "connect the dots" from advancing basic climate science to promoting public awareness to advocating policy actions.
Seriously. If Slashdot, of all places, can't have a reasonable conversation about the science behind this topic without the deniers dominating the discussion then there really is no hope. We should just defund any climate research and put all that money into coal and oil discovery and extraction research. Game over. Why delay the end point? It's not like there's any political will to do anything serious about it anyway.
Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....
As for Hansen's paper referred to in this article, it tries to make a case for the dangers of climate change by looking for analogues for current climate change in the past. But he clearly starts out with the goal of showing that climate change is very dangerous and then tries to concoct scenarios and fit observations to reach that conclusion. Hansen is not objective anymore, and his papers and conclusions are not credible anymore.
Good thing is: none of this really matters. Politically, it is impossible for Western leaders to have much influence over fossil fuel use, and deployment of renewable energy progresses at its own pace and as it makes economic sense, no matter what nutcases like Hansen say or want.
Well, lead the way. Nothing like leading by example.
This is why AGW pseudo-skeptics are like Creationists. No matter how many times you demonstrate some meme they brainlessly repeat was never true, they just turn around and make the same claim again. You simply cannot debate someone who is so divorced from reality that they think some slogan they picked up off a Heartland-funded website somehow falsifies an entire scientific discipline.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You're a god damn fool. If all of this is poppycock but we still act, there isn't much of a problem. If it isn't poppycock and we don't act then the results could be catastrophic. I'd rather we err in the side of caution only a fool would choose to do otherwise.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
Science means discussing things with people who disagree who actually have the vaguest fucking idea what it is that is being discussed. Science isn't about scientists debating with morons on the Internet, and pretending that their pseudo-skepticism is even in the tiniest way a real critique of the theory.
Or perhaps you imagine that advocates of the Electric Universe or Young Earth Creationism somehow just automatically deserve a pedestal because they have enough neural wiring to make any old claim against established science.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I think his is lead and he's been chewing on it for far too long.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
Wait, GGP said not a scientist. GP said he has several science degrees, including stuying the atmosphere, and you said 'so what'?
No wonder you believe what you believe.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
You're right. When an uneducated radio preacher starts sermonizing about the end of the world and for evidence holds up a book written by a bunch of ignorant stone age goat herders, we Atheists go off our rocker because it's an amoral shitshow. Especially when the key question gets asked which is "Okay, so what should we do?" and the answer is to mumble to ourselves... I see that person as an idiot charlatan and treat them accordingly.
However, when a scientist says "We're fucked and here's why..." and then plops down 50 years worth of climate data showing there's a direct correlation between our use of fossil fuels, the rise in CO2 levels and the rise in ocean level, ambient ocean temperature and acidification of the oceans. Moreover when other scientists look at different data sets and corroborate those findings. I generally take these person seriously, giant boulder hurling hyperbole aside.
I presume your reference to the preacher is to Harold Camping... Note is apology is laughable at best.
Scientists speak without certainty because they work in a world where new evidence can change their world view. The religious nuts speak with certainty because no evidence, however good can change their beliefs.
As for magical government regulations, you lost me on that. I'm yet to see scientists come out and say "Phew, good thing we passed that carbon tax or we'd all be screwed by now!"
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
He is an activist, he's been arrested when participating in protests.
Depending on your definition of charlatan he qualifies for that too, he also earns A LOT of money as a doomspeaker at various climate events(and did so during his NASA career even though he wasn't allowed to under the public employment contract but I digress).
During his time at GISS he also set the wonderful standard of retroactively editing their own climate record through sweeping changes in adjustment methodology which have pretty much all their press release announcements of past years completely invalid. If they say "Nth warmest year on record " this year they'll have it readjusted 5 years down the line to be "Nth-10 warmest year on record", because they goal is to perpetually keep the current year as hot as possible and the past be damned. If he was a historician then Donald Trump would have started the Iraq war during his last presidency. It's all ideologically oriented fiction and no fact nowadays.
Feel free to check their press release archives yourself, the at-release graphs are included in them. But I'm sure you have some mental gymnastics ready to explain why the data is reliable despite changing appearance through statistical retconning every third year on average.
You disproved nothing.
He's been arrested FOR PROTESTING A HUGE OIL PIPELINE ACROSS THE US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
That's not an activist. That's someone who puts their money where their mouth is.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
We need nuclear power. We, as Americans need to be building a new nuclear power plant (with about 1GW capacity) every week. We, as humans, need to be building a nuclear power plant every day. We need to do this from now until we replace all coal and natural gas power plants, and then keep going to replace the nuclear power plants that we'd retire in 40 years. At some point we'd likely have to build them at an even faster pace to account for an increasing population and/or an improved standard of living.
To those of you that think we could never build such complex machines at such a pace I say look at the numbers of commercial jet aircraft or oil tankers built in a year, they are comparable to a nuclear power plant in size, cost, and complexity and we mass produce them. To those that think we'd create some sort of radiation hazard, well we can address the comparatively small problem of disposing of radioactive waste or we can deal with the problem of oceans rising, super storms, and so on. I'd also maintain that the problem of nuclear waste has been solved already, we'd just need to build reactors that can both produce power and consume the waste we have now.
To those that believe we can solve this problem with wind and solar I say these technologies produce less than 5% of grid power now after decades of government subsidized research and development. Nuclear power now produces 20% of our grid power and we've not built a new nuclear power plant in 40 years. Even if we built those same 50 year old designs today then we'd still be a century ahead of what wind and solar can do. If we build truly modern nuclear power plants, and mass assemble them, then we'd be able to bring costs down below that of any other power source based on economies of scale alone.
To those that think nuclear power is the path to nuclear annihilation I say there is no better way to make nuclear weapons worthless than to make them more valuable as fuel than as a weapon of war. A large problem of dismantling these nuclear warheads is that we'd have to find a way to make the nuclear fuel inert. We can make it inert by neutron bombardment in a reactor, and we'd get effectively free energy from it. The cost of mining and refining this uranium and plutonium is a sunk cost, we can power the world for a very long time on these warheads alone and in the mean time go out and dig up some more fuel in the form of uranium and thorium. With breeder reactors we'd have an effectively limitless supply of fuel.
Don't build the reactors on fault lines, or places known to have tsunamis, but put them on solid bedrock in the middle of a desert and use high temperature air cooled reactors so the lack of water is not only not a problem but makes containment in the case of a spill or leak much easier. In a dry place the radioactive material is much less likely to wash away, contaminate drinking water, or irradiate crops.
If this doomsday scenario is true, and I DO NOT believe that it is, then we need to do something about it now and quickly. We can hope these scientists are wrong and keep burning coal and oil, we can continue to maintain our standard of living free of global warming with nuclear power, or we can revert to a life of subsistence farming and beasts of burden where life is poor, brutal, and short.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Pedantics aside, it'd be helpful if these folks would stop running around claiming the sky is falling unless/until it actually IS falling.
The problem is once we reach the point where the sky is actually falling it's far too late to do much about it. There are no instant fixes to the anthropogenic global warming problem.
Relax. Although the submitter's write-up uses the binding "will", the actual paper is about as firm as the (in)famous Geico commercial. The one about 15 minutes, that could save you 15%. Or more...
It is safer that way — when the time comes and the mongered fear does not materialize, the "researchers" can shrug and offer you some new and improved fears to worry about without having to explain their past mistakes. "We never said it will happen, only that it could."
Pedantically speaking, such statements are not falsifiable and thus non-scientific. Consequently, any "scientists" using them in a supposedly "scientific" article is a con-artist...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Citation needed. Could you please point me to the "failed prediction after failed prediction" you're talking about?
Last I saw, global temperatures were doing an excellent job tracking predictions made over the last 40 years. Ditto for sea level rise, which is actually happening a bit faster than most scientists had predicted.
Let me hazard a guess: you don't really pay much attention to scientists to find out what they're saying. If you did, you'd find that most of their predictions are cautious and very carefully qualified. Instead, you listen pundits who like to rant about the "Doomsday Predictions!!!! of the Scientists!!! who say we're all about to die!!! Who do they think we are???? We know better than to believe that."
Am I right?
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
Clearly this study is complete biased nonsense. Look at the institutions at which these supposed scientists work.
Columbia University, University of North Carolina at Wilmington, NASA Goddard, Institut Pierre Simon Laplace, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of California Irvine, Western Carolina University, University of Toulon.
Each one is some garbage degree factory with no scientific rigor whatsoever.
hehe
I suspect that most others on the right also cringe at these remarks.
Unless I'm misunderstanding you, are you kidding? Everyone on the right believes what that guy said. It's not just some small portion of the American population that believes in climate change denialism, it's probably about half, maybe more.
One of the big problems I see with liberals (and I say this as someone who generally agrees with most liberal ideas) is that they frequently refuse to see and believe just how prevalent certain beliefs are among certain populations. They have an almost religious belief that most people are good, peaceful people who are interested in the welfare of all, and they tend to ignore humanity's darker sides, and not see how many people really aren't good or peaceful and who are entirely selfish, sociopathic, or intent on doing harm.