Environmental Collapse: when and how bad?

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nomadologist

Guest
From Wikipedia on "Ice Age":

In between ice ages, there are multi-million year periods of more temperate, almost tropical, climate, but also within the ice ages (or at least within the last one), temperate and severe periods occur. The colder periods are called 'glacial periods', the warmer periods 'interglacials', such as the Eemian interglacial era.

The Earth is in an interglacial period now, the last retreat ending about 10,000 years ago. There appears to be a conventional wisdom that "the typical interglacial period lasts ~12,000 years" but this is hard to substantiate from the evidence of ice core records. For example, an article in Nature[3] argues that the current interglacial might be most analogous to a previous interglacial that lasted 28,000 years.

Based on predicted changes in orbital forcing, in the absence of human influence, the current interglacial may be expected to last 50,000 years: see Milankovitch cycles. There is no evidence that anthropogenic forcing from increased "greenhouse gases" outweighs orbital forcing, and the prediction for the next few hundred years is for temperature rises: see global warming regardless of man's activities.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
nomadologist said:
unfortunately, science isn't about "safe assumptions", it's about observable facts and reproducible lab results
Click to expand...

You want to reproduce the effects of global warming in a 'lab'? Do you happen to have a spare Earth-sized planet handy?

I don't think you appreciate that climate science is an extremely complicated business in which almost no *absolutely certain* causal relations can be established. This is because everything affects everything else. What *is* undeniable is that the global climate is changing, and changing rapidly. If you look at the graph on the Wiki page I posted, it looks like the fasted period of warming was no more than a few degrees over the course of several thousand years. We're talking about a rise of close to a degree in the past century, with the posibility of a rise of 5 degrees in the next century.

I mentioned the Pentagon because the conservative American politicians and thinkers have tended to downplay global warming in the past, due to their concerns in industry, so if they're finally admitting there's something to worry about, surely that adds a lot of weight to what many other people have been saying for a long time? Lastly, my point about human activity influencing the climate was at least in part an appeal to "erring on the side of caution" - I mean, the stakes could hardly be higher, could they?

Edit: your quote from Wiki is someone's opinion. I linked to it to show how ice ages have happened in the past, which is verified science.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
yes, I do appreciate that climate science is an extremely complicated business. that's why pseudo-science is best left out of it.

if the conservatives are jumping on the global warming lobby, what do you think that means? maybe that they're trying to manipulate people through fear, as usual.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

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If they 'manipulate' industry and consumers into making attempts to reduce carbon emmissions and deforestation, that's fine by me.
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
i think we should all be doing it anyway. it stands to reason, regardless of current climatology hypotheses, that we should move to cleaner energy sources since we HAVE THE (FINANCIAL) RESOURCES TO DO SO
 
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nomadologist

Guest
you know what happens when the right starts using "global warming"? they start mitigating the fear they propogate by implementing severely half-assed crap initiatives that are nowhere near comprehensive enough. then people will sigh in relief thinking "at least they're doing something", which of course won't be enough.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

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Why? If you're right and global warming is nothing to do with human activity, surely the only reason to burn less fuel is that the fuels are going to run out one day? I mean, if the actual emmissions are nothing to worry about, it makes no odds as to what's 'clean' and what's not. You seem to be hedging your bets...
 
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nomadologist

Guest
No. Conservatives, as usual, are being brilliant strategists. Unite the country on global warming so THEY can keep control of the government's "fixes" for it--of course, the conservatives would spend TONS less the the democratic party would on this. It's a desperate bid to align themselves with the center to put a good PR shine on the party just in time for the next election.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

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Politicians in 'cynicism' shocker!

Making the right noises is better than making no noises at all. In any case, I don't think too many voters are going to be suddenly convinced that the Republicans have suddenly seen the light over the plight of Mother Earth, blah blah blah. In any case, this report came from the Pentagon, not the Reps per se..

Although it's interesting to note that the American politician most often in the news for taking a green stance is the Governator.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
Germans are great about clean energy. I want to move there anyway, but if people really think the Pentagon report was "leaked"...god help us all. (i know i know arnie is austrian.)

And I wouldn't underestimate the Republicans and any potential PR bounce-back. As soon as conservatives start talking about global warming, they'll have a very neat and tidy 4 point plan that every middle american will think sounds just great and plausible and the liberals won't have one, and everyone in the center will think "well, at least the conservatives have a plan..."
 
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G

gek-opel

entered apprentice
To be honest the simpler answer is that the Pentagon are scaremongering (or worst case scenario envisaging) in an attempt to maximise military spending, which I guess is part of their function. The solutions the Pentagon will be interested in lie not so much in reducing emissions, or even pretending to do so in an attempt to fool the country into continuing to hold behind the Republican agenda, but rather to militarily secure borders, resources and international interests.
 
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nomadologist

Guest
yup, Gek. and look it how it will probably work! (by which I mean keep them in office)
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I was in Berlin over New Year. Great city, but if the Germans want to be 'clean', they can start by encouraging dog owners to clean up their pets' shit. Fucking place was carpeted with the stuff. Same in Geneva, where I used to live. The habits of (most) British dog owners are one thing we can hold our heads high about compared to the rest of Europe - it's got so bad in Paris they have dog-shit-cleaning teams on the streets armed with these big poo-hoovers...
 
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nomadologist

Guest
i live in bushwick in the middle of a bunch of tortilla and processed meat factories. dog shit is what the rats knaw on. i got bronchial asthma just from all the pollution and infestation problems.
 
G

gek-opel

entered apprentice
I know that they share a lot of interests, but are the Pentagon and the Republicans really to be so IDENTICALLY mapped onto each other? Is that not a touch simplistic, like lobbing all "fundamentalist muslims" into a single category... and presuming that strategically they are all pursuing identical aims?
 
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nomadologist

Guest
It's of course too simple, but I don't know that the Pentagon isn't, for all intents and purposes, a solely conservative force in American politics lately. Think about the history of the C.I.A. --people seem to really conflate U.S. intelligence agencies with "conservative," and I don't think the Pentagon is much different.
 
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