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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
| When I was in school there was constant hysteria over the ozone layer. By the year 2000 we were all supposed to be blind and dying of skin cancer because the ozone layer would be mostly gone.
It was an actual, serious problem, and still is, but is not getting worse because the planet took concerted action to fix it.
Acid rain didn't just "go away" either spontaneously, it slowed significantly because humans, back then, actually listened to scientists and were less aggressively selfish and stupid than regarding global warming.
Ignore peak oil, you've hit the real problem: large intelligent, underemployed, and underfunded populations.
Thanks to basic math, it's happening already with the royal family in Saudi Arabia. Up to a point, populations grow exponentially (S-curves rather than real exponential curves). When the Sauds took over, they were essentially a small tribe with a leader and a few princes. Fast forward a number of generations, and guess what, now you still have one leader but tens of thousands of princes (ever wonder why so many people have met Saudi princes? there happen to be many of them).
I had the privilege of working with a prince during a stint in the Kingdom. This was his biggest concern for their future: the royal family was too large and budget could not keep up with the cost of the entitlements. And, unlike welfare recipients in America, these really were entitled people. They all saw the previous generations living like, well, kings. They still do OK, but must live more modestly and are encouraged to work to supplement their income.
My friend was very concerned that most of the other princes would have difficulty transitioning and that the next generations (which, thanks again math, will be even larger) will have no social or economic system to fall back on.
Regardless of when peak oil happens, peak prince has already occurred.
-Chris
Slashdot has more scientifically literate people than alot of other sites, but its been dominated by American right-wing grievance politics for a awhile now, and its only getting more extreme.
These global warming threads have been a bell weather for the site's decline. If you read one for each year going back, you see would see more intelligent comments and less denial the further back you go.
This place used to be for college-age computer geeks and STEM majors, now its for middle-aged Trump voters.
The map is not the territory.