Could "we" be wrong about global warming?

Bill Glasheen · Post by **Bill Glasheen** » Thu Jul 16, 2009 2:07 am

Could the best climate models -- the ones used to predict global warming -- all be wrong? Maybe so, says a new study published online today in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Say it ain't so, Al! After all, didn't you get the Nobel Prize for this stuff?

Gotta love it!

Full article below.

Could we be wrong about global warming?

- Bill

JimHawkins · Post by **JimHawkins** » Thu Jul 16, 2009 11:56 am

What made it rise then may or may not have anything to do with why it is rising now.

Responsibility wrt the environment should be the constant. . There are other ill effects of releasing too much carbon.. The cleaner we can keep the environment the better..

Climates will change until we learn how to better control such things, if possible...

Jason Rees · Post by **Jason Rees** » Thu Jul 16, 2009 3:34 pm

Maybe. Maybe not. But killing our economy while India and China continue the status quo isn't the way to go. And won't make a lick of difference.

mhosea · Post by **mhosea** » Thu Jul 16, 2009 4:28 pm

It's an interesting study, as always. I confess that my mind has not yet gotten to the point of worrying about global warming per se, as the ecological impacts of wanton disregard for the environment as a result of over-consumerism are proximate enough. One is advised, for example, not to eat the fish from local lakes because of mercury.

Anyway, the article is depressingly devoid of good news. It takes an extraordinary degree of optimism to convert "the models don't predict nearly as much warming as there actually was" to "we don't have to worry so much about CO2 because the models are wrong". This is particularly true if the culprit is some kind of as yet un-modeled feedback loop.

Bill Glasheen · Post by **Bill Glasheen** » Thu Jul 16, 2009 8:44 pm

These kinds of publications will become more numerous since global temperature is actually beginning to cool. The data aren't fitting the models, so there will be a race to show why.

The agreement at the Global Economic Summit was very telling. They didn't agree to carbon caps. Instead they agreed not to let global temperatures change more than 2 degrees Celsius. It sounds to me like folks are hedging their bets.

The thing is... if something else drives global temperature more strongly - and there's evidence that sun surface activity is the culprit - then efforts to control this might be futile. Worse yet... the cap-and-trade legislation making its way through the legislature would prove to be more than just partisan. It would be grossly fiscally irresponsible at a time when our economy can least afford it.

Energy independence and diversification? Great idea!!! Carbon redistribution fixation? The evidence isn't supporting that particular cause.

- Bill

JimHawkins · Post by **JimHawkins** » Thu Jul 16, 2009 9:33 pm

We'll see..

But Bill you know what will happen if things generally keep getting warmer, even a couple of degrees, especially at the caps.... right?

By then it may be too late, for such delicate things as 'economies'...

We must eventually learn how to control temps, otherwise it's just a matter of time...

Bill Glasheen · Post by **Bill Glasheen** » Thu Jul 16, 2009 10:35 pm

JimHawkins wrote:
But Bill you know what will happen if things generally keep getting warmer, even a couple of degrees, especially at the caps.... right?

Yes...

JimHawkins wrote:
We must eventually learn how to control temps, otherwise it's just a matter of time...

Evidence is beginning to mount that the forces which control this are far beyond our control. If solar surface activity is one of the major drivers, then it's likely better just to go with the flow.

- Bill

IJ · Post by IJ » Thu Jul 16, 2009 10:44 pm

"They didn't agree to carbon caps. Instead they agreed not to let global temperatures change more than 2 degrees Celsius."

Fo reals? While they're at it, let's agree not to have tides. Even if one fully believes the CO2 theory, the historical fluctuation makes it clear that this is not up to us.

"We must eventually learn how to control temps, otherwise it's just a matter of time..."

Then it's a matter of time. IF we learn from history we might make preparations to escape the next big extinction, by derailing a meteor strike, or preparing to deal with a supervolcano, or a sudden increase in radiation when some local star blows up. But it might not be pretty no matter what we do. We are tiny, almost irrelevant to much of things that go on here and elsewhere. For example, there's not much we can do about the sun's limited fuel supply, and when it goes red giant and vaporizes the oceans, well, that will probably K.O. the spotted owls. When we do get wiped out it won't be by a few degrees of centigrade or a flooding of coastal cities...

JimHawkins · Post by **JimHawkins** » Thu Jul 16, 2009 10:48 pm

Well I beleive (as do some scientists) that given enough time we can learn how to control temps.. To me it's simply a race, as with other things; our technological advancement vs time and what is inevitable--change.

We're still just babies, give us another thousand years and what we could do might blow your mind--if we get there....

f.Channell · Post by **f.Channell** » Fri Jul 17, 2009 2:43 am

Supervolcanoes
If we learned to harness the magma chamber at Yellowstone think of the energy potential......

We're in a time period of huge human growth.
1970's 1 billion
Now 3 billion
2030 12.9 or so

Energy needs in 2050? scary

Bill Glasheen · Post by **Bill Glasheen** » Fri Jul 17, 2009 2:45 am

Jim

There are many, many things we could learn to do with technology.

What we can do isn't the question. The real question is what is the best use of our limited resources?

Good thing we don't have any problems in this country. Oh wait...

So, we trash our economy so that in effect we slow down (not stop, mind you) the release of carbon BACK into the atmosphere. After all, that's where fossil fuels got it in the first place before TEAMING PLANT LIFE collected it and put it underground. God forbid we ever go back to a point in time where conditions were so wonderful on this planet that plants were going ape-schit. But of course we're going to do it "for the planet."

Then we find out it doesn't make any difference. We find out that we trashed our economy on bad science while other countries spent their resources more wisely.

Oops!

Once again, it's never a question of what we CAN do. It's a question of what the responsible thing is to do. What are our priorities?

Stopping the next warm age or the next ice age isn't on my agenda. Do the math; it isn't cost effective.

Not dissimilar to the problems in health care today. But I digress...

Bill Glasheen wrote:
Energy independence and diversification? Great idea!!! Carbon redistribution fixation? The evidence isn't supporting that particular cause.

Sounds like some smart thinking to me!

- Bill

f.Channell · Post by **f.Channell** » Fri Jul 17, 2009 2:55 am

I don't think temperature control is ever possible.
It would require control of plate tectonics.
One super volcano eruption, which in geologic time will happen again,
can cause massive temperature changes.
Eruptions have caused drastic temp changes in just the last 150 years.

JimHawkins · Post by **JimHawkins** » Fri Jul 17, 2009 3:00 am

I'm not up on exactly who is venting what.. The more advanced nation states generally are doing more to control things and I'd wager we're not in the top 2...

To me it's all just a flash in the pan... I'm a futurist.. In the grand scheme of things the existence of human kind is a brand new pimple on the surface of this little grain of sand amid an infinite number of beaches in the known universe.

If things are destined to change for the worse then so be it.. We must do what we can to survive, trail and error, good intentions and greed all playing their parts..

IMO the best choice is the way of the American Indian, to leave the earth as we found it. Do no harm to the best of our ability, given the plethora of human weakness and needs that sustain our feeble grip even as we live our last moments...

It will all come out in the wash...

JimHawkins · Post by **JimHawkins** » Fri Jul 17, 2009 3:15 am

f.Channell wrote:I don't think temperature control is ever possible.
It would require control of plate tectonics.
One super volcano eruption, which in geologic time will happen again,
can cause massive temperature changes.
Eruptions have caused drastic temp changes in just the last 150 years.

I'm a can-do kind of guy..

IMO there is precious little that can't be *done* given enough time and talent....

I submit the last century, where we started on horseback and ended up beginning the exploration of space... How many "cants" got squashed along the way...? And that's just scratching the surface of what is to come, IF we have the time.............

RA Miller · Post by **RA Miller** » Fri Jul 17, 2009 9:28 am

JimHawkins wrote:

IMO the best choice is the way of the American Indian, to leave the earth as we found it.

Just a quick call on this since romanticizing the past is one of my buttons- These would be the Native Americans who burned hundreds of square miles of the Willamette Valley every decade to keep trees from growing on it? Who drove the original native horses and camels (not to mention more exotics, like giant ground sloths) to extinction? Who would use wild fire to drive entire herds of buffalo over cliffs, gorging on what they could and leaving the rest to rot? Who would catch so much more salmon in the Columbia than they could use that they would try to burn it for warmth in the winter? Who lived so close to nature but regularly had 'winter kills' of starvation in places as green and literally awash in potential food as the Oregon Coast?

Or are you just referring to the wise mystics of modern television?

Sorry for the thread drift, Bill.

Rory