There’s more information available here than the average True Believer will countenance. Here’s just a taste:
Abrupt climate change is a potential menace that hasn’t received much attention. That’s about to change. The U.S. Department of Energy recently launched IMPACTS – Investigation of the Magnitudes and Probabilities of Abrupt Climate Transitions – a program led by William Collins of Berkeley Lab’s Earth Sciences Division that brings together six national laboratories to attack the problem of abrupt climate change…
Sparked by the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize that was shared by Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the reality of global warming finally got through to the majority of the world’s population. Most people think of climate change as something that occurs only gradually, however, with average temperature changing two or three degrees Celsius over a century or more; this is the rate at which ‘forcing’ mechanisms operate, such as the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels or widespread changes in land use.
But climate change has occurred with frightening rapidity in the past and will almost certainly do so again. Perhaps the most famous example is the reverse hiccup in a warming trend that began 15,000 years ago and eventually ended the last ice age. Roughly 2,000 years after it started, the warming trend suddenly reversed, and temperatures fell back to near-glacial conditions; Earth stayed cold for over a thousand years, a period called the Younger Dryas (named for an alpine wildflower). Then warming resumed so abruptly that global temperatures shot up 10 °C in just 10 years.
Because civilizations hadn’t yet emerged, complex human societies escaped this particular roller-coaster ride. Nevertheless, some form of abrupt climate change is highly likely in the future, with wide-ranging economic and social effects.
RTFA – and the linked materials, as well. Truly interesting.
There are some who disagree, and believe that this precipitous climate change ~15,000 to 12,000 years ago destroyed a sophisticated (no plasitc or comuters, but civics, taxes, public works, precision manufacturing, etc) civilization that existed on this earth. The mechanism is attributed to a theoretical phenomenon called “crust dsiplacement” linked to the pole shift.
There are some well-written books on the subject, most notably “Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings”, by Hapgood.
Old news. It was determined that the warming 15,000 years ago was caused by man. LOL
Good issue and starting link. Problem reamins that we really can’t tell if any 4-5-6 year tick in the graph will continue thus being the start of RCC or if that tick will reverse in an overall trend in the opposite direction.
This might be the more relevant sentence in the article: “the first thing we had to do was define what we meant: a large-scale change that happens more quickly than that brought on by forcing mechanisms – on a scale of years to decades, not centuries – and that persists for a very long time.”
On that definition and the described four horsemen, we could well be in this change RIGHT NOW, or not. Our models simply are not reliable enough to tell==only good enough to model what has already happened.
I will bet money that humans cannot band together to act towards one goal when it comes to environmental issues. Too many short term benefits to fouling the nest. Just like the USA financial system. Too many people benefit from the system failing.
“Earth Watch Satellites” – we really should have satellites with video cameras pointed down at the Earth and giving a real-time feed so that we can see what the astronauts can see when they orbit the earth. The was proposed by Al Gore among others, and recalls the Whole Earth Catalog of many years ago. Seeing is believing !!!
Adapting to any future climate change is the cheaper solution than crippling an economy in hopes of avoiding it.
#5 “Adapting to any future climate change is the cheaper …”
Especially since every time there is a warm period more plants and animals flourish as the climate gets wetter. More places to grow food…
bobbo, I think you’re right that humans will not be able to address this problem in a cooperative way. Less obvious market and social forces may have impact. However, the issue of avoiding a disaster is moot – it’s already begun, and the debate now is really only about the size and scope of the disaster.
Creationism is on the retreat, the fallback line of defense is “intelligent design” which is impossible to disprove. Similarly, as the reality of climate change becomes obvious, people fall back to the position that it isn’t human-created. It’s impossible, today, to prove beyond doubt that our emissions are the main cause, although in the future that may be blindingly obvious as climate science advances. Assuming, that is, that we have a future.
#6 – you’re beginning to sound more and more like a middle-school student every day. 🙂
Even aside from climate questions, meteorology is more complex than you apparently understand.
Google, read, read some more.
#1 – Good point. A question I find interesting is how well is human history documented. For all intents and purposes, we only have a recording of the past 2000 years, and its mostly accurate over only the last 500 (and that’s being generous). I think we should be open to the idea of multiple “advanced” societies existing over the past 20,000 years.
#5 – I think the concept of “adapting” to climate change is an easier sell than “preventing” it. To buy in to prevention you have to accept there is something you can do about it, which is a big “if” in my book. However, to agree with adaptation, you just have to accept the range of potential outcomes, and being prepared for each.
#7 “Google, read, read some more.”
Already done. You should read up on air temp and change in ability to hold water. Then study up on the rainfall amounts during the Holocene period.
As the earth warms there will be more precipitation.
Climate change is gonna happen whether man is responsible or not is irrelevant. The real question is what are we gonna do about it? Human society depends on a delicate set of conditions, Abrupt Climate Change could easily bring about a collapse, talking about anarchy on a global scale. The smart thing would be to study the phenomenon and develope the technologies necessary, the same sort of thing that should be done about the meteorite impact threat. But man’s a party animal, so enjoy life while you can and when things start to fall apart, save what you can.
#11 “Abrupt Climate Change could easily bring about a collapse, talking about anarchy on a global scale.”
I’m not too worried about the developed world. The primitive societies could be in trouble though.
>Similarly, as the reality of climate change becomes obvious, people fall back to the position that it isn’t human-created.
Well, we’re looking at a thirty-forty year period of no warming, so we’ll see how that reality affects people.
#13 – huh? Did you mean to say “a 34 year period of unprecedented warming, culminating in the highest average global temperatures yet recorded?”
The biggest danger from climate change is the loss of our ability to grow enough food. A minor shift in weather patterns can turn major food producing areas like the American Midwest into desert in a couple of years. If you think not enough oil can disrupt a modern society, what do you think will happen when we start to go hungry.
The real problem is we don’t have alot of GOOD data on the climate. Our somewhat reliable weather records only go back a couple of hundred years of so. And they only cover a few countries. Beyond that they are only guessing. You can plug all the crappy data in the world into the best computers, and what will it spit back out at you?
This is scary. But what can you do. Over the next couple of centuries, every drop of usable oil and every ounce of coal is going to get dug up and burned. I am in my 40’s and should be dead before the real nasty stuff begins, but I am worried about my grandkids.
Don
Humans can’t address the problem at all. Humans had not a thing to do with the change 15K years ago and we can’t do anything about any change that might come in the future.
What we can do is prepare ourselves and that isn’t going to happen as long as we sit around with our thumbs up Al Gore’s ass thinking we caused it so we can fix it.
There’s a good chance most of the warming being experienced in the Arctic is due to soot on the snow rather than CO2 or natural temperature variations.
The good news is that soot is easier to control than CO2. The bad news is that this theory is not as widely known as the CO2-warming theory.
Global warming is man made, period!
Spoken like a true, unquestioning, lemming follower of the High Priest of Doom and Carbon Credit Selling Scam King, Al Gore.
I love it, various scientists deign themselves to be smarter than the average Polar Bear and can chose to ignore ALL of the natural dynamics of a revolving Earth (with imperfect revolutions aka, wobbliness) in an orbit around the sun (with an imperfect orbit, aka, again, wobbliness). “THAT CAN’T BE THE REASON!”
And IF Global Warming were to be true, Man is a piss ant in the whole scheme of things…if that much.
The sky is falling, the sky is falling!
It’s a good thing people get so worked up about something humans will have to deal with because we can’t stop it or change it.
It’s not like we’ve got politicians robbing us blind while we bow down to the High Priest Gore and his minions in worship of their really big crania.
God, I’m ready to just move to another planet …
I’ve been hearing about the danger of greenhouse gas emissions and global warming for about 20 years, from sources like Scientific American, National Geographic, Science News and Smithsonian magazines, and the PBS Nova show.
There’s a UN-charted group called the IPCC, formed in 1988, which has published 3 reports summarizing the work of thousands of researchers
A few years ago a politician named Al Gore made a documentary about it. I hear it’s good, but haven’t seen it.
#21 “A few years ago a politician named Al Gore made a documentary about it. I hear it’s good, but haven’t seen it.”
Yes, kinda like the global cooling scare of the 70’s…
Probably about as accurate as those scientist’s were also.
Jimh, you should do some research. Read through those IPCC reports, and you’ll see how much they’ve backtracked.
As I said, there has been no warming in the last 10 years, and there could very well be a period of cooling for the next 20 years. The last year has been much colder than normal.
http://tinyurl.com/46uexj
Here’s a look at the breakdown of science when it comes to global warming.
Fine grained records of climate are missing in text from. Even in coarse form it has major gaps.
Sediment on the other hand often contains a better records if you can read it.
They left out the cause of the little ice age. The sun just stopped throwing out as much heat for a time. Very few sun spots for 50 years.
At the present we have an eleven year cycle and the fewer sun spots the cooler the sun is.
MikeN, I can’t do research because I’m not a scientist.
Every credible source of scientific information for the general public is in general agreement that there is a very serious problem – and this has been true for almost 20 years. The UN commissioned 2500 climate researchers from all parts of the world, and they’re telling me essentially the same story.
This, I think, is enough for any reaosonable person to conclude that urgent action should be taken. They may all turn out to be wrong – and if so I’ll accept that outcome.
If 2500 scientists show me photos of smoke coming from my attic, I am not going to argue with them about their methodology or their numbers. I am not going to claim there is now less smoke than there was an hour ago. I am not even going to be concerned with whether I started the fire myself, or it was caused by lightning. I am not going to sit back and say there is probably nothing I can do about it, or that all these people are politically motivated. I am going to act, based on a reasonable interpretation of the available information, and consideration of how much I stand to lose if I ignore the warnings and they turn out to be right.
#26 “They may all turn out to be wrong – and if so I’ll accept that outcome.”
So if economies get trashed over what could be junk science you’ll make it right?
Like I posted earlier. There was consensus on global cooling too…
The reality is that they are making guesses about a system they don’t understand. But, I guess if you say both cooling AND warming are happening you can’t be wrong! LOL
#26 – “If 2500 scientists show me photos of smoke coming from my attic, I am not going to argue with them about their methodology or their numbers.”
What the politicians conveniently fail to mention is that the vast majority of the 2500 or so scientists don’t think there is much, if anything, we can do about “the smoke coming from the attic.”
Former US Senator Timothy Wirth, (D-Colo) said that “We’ve got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing – in terms of economic policy and environmental policy..”
They don’t give a crap about science, they have an agenda to ram down our throats.
I was going to comment here but there are so many dumb and uneducated comments by MikeN, Paddy, geofgibson, kbell55, GigG, and Sinn Fein that my fucking head hurts.
You guys should get an education before you decide to come on a blog and discuss a topic that is clearly above any of your education levels.
That’s just it jim, the UN reports keep changing. The predictions they used to claim no longer hold.
Now the planet is actually cooling, due to the sun.
#29 – “so many dumb and uneducated comments”
Ah, the ad hominem attack. A tried and true technique of those who have no facts to back up their arguments.
So, the politicians have NOT actually said that science doesn’t matter? The IPCC and other scientists have NOT said there is little to nothing that can be done to change the course of climate? The planet has NOT been in a 10 year cooling trend?
Ya, right. Call some people stupid some more, that must make you real smart.