Climate Change: A Guide For The Perplexed
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Ganbare Gincun
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Climate Change: A Guide For The Perplexed
Here's a handy guide put together by New Scientist that explains climate change. It won't help the willfully ignorant or the intellectually dishonest, but for those of you that have genuine questions about global warming, this is a pretty good reference guide.
It isn't bad.
Okay, I'll go on and share what I know from my Earth History classes:
1) The planet's had five ice ages that we know about. They last millions of years. There's pretty strong evidence that the biggest one lasted about 200 million years and froze over the majority of the planet. We're actually about 2 million years into the fifth and current ice age.
2) Ice ages themselves contain periods of glacial advance and retreat, due to all sorts of factors--the wobbling of the earth's tilt, ocean currents and, yes, greenhouse gases. Right now, we're during a glacial retreat, and have been since what we think of as the ice age (Mammoths and all) ended (duh). Glacial retreats last...eh, hard to say, really. Could be 10,000, could be 15,000 years. But really, an ice age is defined as the planet being cold enough to form continental ice (such as the huge sheets on Greenland and Antarctica). That's right: Most of the earth's history has been too hot for any other than some minor icecaps to form. Also, we're due for the glaciers to come back any time now (geologically speaking).
3) Continental drift plays a big role, too. Antarctica is acting sort of like an ice block in front of a fan, being perfectly placed to form continental ice, which in turn chills more air...The planet would be noticeably warmer if Antarctica wasn't sitting on the south pole right now.
4) There's other factors, like the North Atlantic Deep Water and the South Atlantic Bottom Water. Basically, both ice caps give off super-dense water that's so salty it's both denser and too cold to actually freeze, so they sink and flow down the Atlantic, creating a heat exchange I'm too lazy to remember the super-precise details of, aside from doing something to equalize the heat on the planet's oceans--not perfectly, but it does smooth out the highs and lows. If the planet heats up TOO much, those two currents stop, that exchange stops happening, and the heat stops being moved around. So the equator gets hotter than hell, and the ice caps slam down with some ice, which quickly (remember, geologically speaking) restarts that so the heat exchange does get to happening again. If someone would like a diagram, I'll jot one up and scan it.
5) The fossil record indicates that life does like a hot planet. I mean, there's some extinctions always, but life forms flourish and diversify during the hot times. Hell, the planet was some 15 degrees hotter during the time of the dinosaurs. And the climatologists freak out over a quarter of a degree.
6) Fuck the ice cores. Those things only show us yesterday. A far more complete picture can be derived from oceanic microfossils. There's critters what back in the day who incorporated water into their shells, just grabbing random water molecules. Turns out, there's three different isotopes of water based on the oxygen, and the lightest one--Water 16 (I think that's the number. Not sure exactly)--is the first to end up as ice. By getting a ton of samples and comparing the ratio of the heavier, normal water (17 or 18, I forget) to the lighter water, and comparing the ratio in the critter's shells to the water today, a picture of the ice caps and continental ice for the time period can be assembled.
What to take away from this:
-Global warming is cyclical to a large degree, but the cycles are huuuuuuge.
-It's not the OMG END OF THE WORLD that I've seriously seen people make it out to be.
-However, pollution IS bad. Really bad. It should be cut down wherever possible. I am not arguing against pollution control by any means. I'm all for pollution control. I'm arguing against the idea that Global Warming will somehow be a world-ending apocalypse. Seriously, there isn't enough water to go Waterworld.
-Geology classes give you a very indifferent view of time and make you twitch when people talk about how the Ice Age ended 10,000 years ago.
-When I watched an Inconvenient Truth, I started twitching when Al Gore tried to make the Antarctic Ice Cores out as the be-all, end-all record of the planet's climate. Seriously, 650,000 years, Al? That gives you NOTHING to know the effects of large-scale global warming, which you could go correlate if you really wanted to. I ended up leaving the room so I wouldn't have to stop myself from shouting at the screen, something that I've only had to do in Star Wars episode 3, during the Obi-Wan/Grievous fight.
Okay, I'll go on and share what I know from my Earth History classes:
1) The planet's had five ice ages that we know about. They last millions of years. There's pretty strong evidence that the biggest one lasted about 200 million years and froze over the majority of the planet. We're actually about 2 million years into the fifth and current ice age.
2) Ice ages themselves contain periods of glacial advance and retreat, due to all sorts of factors--the wobbling of the earth's tilt, ocean currents and, yes, greenhouse gases. Right now, we're during a glacial retreat, and have been since what we think of as the ice age (Mammoths and all) ended (duh). Glacial retreats last...eh, hard to say, really. Could be 10,000, could be 15,000 years. But really, an ice age is defined as the planet being cold enough to form continental ice (such as the huge sheets on Greenland and Antarctica). That's right: Most of the earth's history has been too hot for any other than some minor icecaps to form. Also, we're due for the glaciers to come back any time now (geologically speaking).
3) Continental drift plays a big role, too. Antarctica is acting sort of like an ice block in front of a fan, being perfectly placed to form continental ice, which in turn chills more air...The planet would be noticeably warmer if Antarctica wasn't sitting on the south pole right now.
4) There's other factors, like the North Atlantic Deep Water and the South Atlantic Bottom Water. Basically, both ice caps give off super-dense water that's so salty it's both denser and too cold to actually freeze, so they sink and flow down the Atlantic, creating a heat exchange I'm too lazy to remember the super-precise details of, aside from doing something to equalize the heat on the planet's oceans--not perfectly, but it does smooth out the highs and lows. If the planet heats up TOO much, those two currents stop, that exchange stops happening, and the heat stops being moved around. So the equator gets hotter than hell, and the ice caps slam down with some ice, which quickly (remember, geologically speaking) restarts that so the heat exchange does get to happening again. If someone would like a diagram, I'll jot one up and scan it.
5) The fossil record indicates that life does like a hot planet. I mean, there's some extinctions always, but life forms flourish and diversify during the hot times. Hell, the planet was some 15 degrees hotter during the time of the dinosaurs. And the climatologists freak out over a quarter of a degree.
6) Fuck the ice cores. Those things only show us yesterday. A far more complete picture can be derived from oceanic microfossils. There's critters what back in the day who incorporated water into their shells, just grabbing random water molecules. Turns out, there's three different isotopes of water based on the oxygen, and the lightest one--Water 16 (I think that's the number. Not sure exactly)--is the first to end up as ice. By getting a ton of samples and comparing the ratio of the heavier, normal water (17 or 18, I forget) to the lighter water, and comparing the ratio in the critter's shells to the water today, a picture of the ice caps and continental ice for the time period can be assembled.
What to take away from this:
-Global warming is cyclical to a large degree, but the cycles are huuuuuuge.
-It's not the OMG END OF THE WORLD that I've seriously seen people make it out to be.
-However, pollution IS bad. Really bad. It should be cut down wherever possible. I am not arguing against pollution control by any means. I'm all for pollution control. I'm arguing against the idea that Global Warming will somehow be a world-ending apocalypse. Seriously, there isn't enough water to go Waterworld.
-Geology classes give you a very indifferent view of time and make you twitch when people talk about how the Ice Age ended 10,000 years ago.
-When I watched an Inconvenient Truth, I started twitching when Al Gore tried to make the Antarctic Ice Cores out as the be-all, end-all record of the planet's climate. Seriously, 650,000 years, Al? That gives you NOTHING to know the effects of large-scale global warming, which you could go correlate if you really wanted to. I ended up leaving the room so I wouldn't have to stop myself from shouting at the screen, something that I've only had to do in Star Wars episode 3, during the Obi-Wan/Grievous fight.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
The world will survive global warming. It's just the human population that takes a nosedive.Maxus wrote:
-It's not the OMG END OF THE WORLD that I've seriously seen people make it out to be.
.
Lots of places have such a fragile ecology that even a change in average temperature of a few degrees means famine. Take a look at famine conditions in Africa and Asia and you'll know how it works.
Global warming caused by greenhouse gases takes a process that should take 10,000 years and speeds it up to a few hundred. This will cause changes to weather patterns that will cause widespread famine, and with famine we get the other horsemen of war, death, and disease as people fight over the remaining supplies.
So yeh. Geology may teach you that the earth with survive, but biology and psychology will teach you that human civilization won't. Personally, I think the Mad Max future should be avoided.
Agreed.K wrote:
So yeh. Geology may teach you that the earth with survive, but biology and psychology will teach you that human civilization won't. Personally, I think the Mad Max future should be avoided.
But, still, it'll happen in the next few thousand years, if the past glacial minima for this ice age are any judge. Not during our lifetime...but the glaciers will hit a point of maximum retreat, and then the cycle will reset itself.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
The slower the better. What scares me is not the world getting a litter hotter as such - if humans can live in the Sahara and in Siberia we should be able to deal with a couple degrees more. But with humanity depending on a couple of giant monocultures I can easily imagine every large source of grain in the world failing simultaneously (read: within a couple of years). If that happens too fast to adapt we are fucked. If it happens slow enough we can figure out what else to grow in those regions, or in other regions to make up for it and we will do fine. And that is why it matters whether the change happens in 100 years, in 1000 or in 10000.
Murtak
Excuse me, but global catastrophic climate changed called, and said that it' going to arrive in ten years, not a thousand.
Geology and ice cores and biologic zones say that biologic deforestation has never happened at this rate (nevermind human deforestation), desert forming has never happened at this fast a rate, monsoons are being skipped now, not in a thousand years, and we have written history that human civilization collapses in the face of climate change.
And we've just changed the atmosphere to contain 200% more carbon dioxide than in any point that modern man (the species) has been on the planet.
How does this not proclaim, HOLY FUCKING SHIT?
-Crissa
Geology and ice cores and biologic zones say that biologic deforestation has never happened at this rate (nevermind human deforestation), desert forming has never happened at this fast a rate, monsoons are being skipped now, not in a thousand years, and we have written history that human civilization collapses in the face of climate change.
And we've just changed the atmosphere to contain 200% more carbon dioxide than in any point that modern man (the species) has been on the planet.
How does this not proclaim, HOLY FUCKING SHIT?
-Crissa