That’s an overly simplistic evaluation of the process; one might equally point out that the more free water (as vapor) in the air, the more clouds and therefore the more reflection back into space, thus reducing temperature. But the truth is that the climate system is a highly complex and chaotic system; even the best meteorological models today can’t accurately predict behavior beyond a few days and even then are subject to highly perturbative events which can radically alter results.
As for anthropological climate change, it is premature to state a known degree, though it seems clear that human intervention has precipitated or amplified the current warming trend, but estimates of how much, how extensive, and what can be done to remediate the problem (if possible) are subject to order of magnitude errors. Gore, in particular, presents the worst case results as “an inconvenient truth” rather than the qualified speculation that it is, presumably (and perhaps astutely) because the public won’t take note if it’s not otherwise a crisis. Long term, we’ll adapt and adjust, but it’s also true that coastal nations, espeically those with low-lying, berm-protected areas, are going to suffer massive and perhaps catastrophic readjustment, while agricultural areas are going to shift.
Clean air is becoming less and less of a problem as regulatory standards and better filtration methods are being utilized. Sadly, the same can’t be said for water quality and availability. One of the currently underrated and potentially catastrophic crises is the increasing lack of potable water and the draining of underground aquifers, which cannot be readily replunished. Somehow, this problem–which is real, quantifiable, and wide-ranging–seems to fly almost completely under the notice of the environmental movement. (I don’t think I’ve ever heard Gore speak on the topic.) In fifty years the American Southwest may become drier than the Sahara, the residents of the Los Angeles Basin may not be able to fill up their sinks, much less their backyard pools, and Mexico City might well be collapsing in on itself (it’s already sunk about 4 meters over the past century because of structural compression due to aquifer depletion).
I checked out that site and it seemed interesting and logical. Then I googled on Frederick Seitz and read about how he has opposed a number of these types of issues (global warming, ozone, etc.). Then I read he worked for the tobacco companies researching 2nd hand smoke and wasn’t able to find any harm, whereas independent research has shown it does cause harm.
Well, as was mentioned earlier, back in the 1970s there was a lot of serious scientific talk about how we were overdue for another ice age and that governments should get off their collective arses and do something to stave it off before we all froze to death. And so, when I first started hearing all the fuss and bother about global warming and how it was caused by man, all I could think was, “Thank heavens – somebody finally did something about that impending ice age!”
Of course, then I watched “The Day After” and discovered that global warming could actually cause an ice age. Who knew?
First, that’s rather sociopathic. Second, the climate can change massively and suddenly; don’t forget those frozen mammoths with flowers in their stomach - if they were intelligent, they would probably have said “What do I care if my great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandchildren freeze ?” If some tipping point is reached, we could be dealing with massive climate change next year, not next century.
I’m quite aware of that but the current trend is to focus on global warming, which in my opinion is pretty abstract, but I think they’d be better off focusing their attention on clean air and water which is much more concrete and not as controversial.
That I could not agree with more. I am a member of several Environmental groups, but the one I am active in is Clearwater / Monmouth County Friends of Clearwater. A group whose primary focus is cleaning up estuaries, rivers and drinking supplies. However, Global warming is an issue to try an rally the general public around. In this way, the focus people like Al gore have put on this particular issue, should help towards the Goals of Clean Water & Air.
I like your blind faith, and wish I could share it. I too sit within sight of defences which are supposedly several feet above 1953 levels. Trouble is, even the '53 flood was hardly the extreme of what could occur, added to which is the potential for more frequent and severe hurricanes producing more significant pockets of low pressure entering the funnel of the North Sea, combined with higher sea levels.
I would like for a nuclear fusion power engineer (I’d even accept a physicist ) to tell me I am wrong but I think you are going to have to wait a loooong time.
About 20 years ago I surveyed the power out of tolkamak reactors as a function of the time that the reactor was built. The power-out to power-in ratio was steadily approaching unity from below. Without any theoretical basis but merely on appearance it looked to me like the curve was heading for one as an asymptote.
Has anything startling happened in the last 20 years?
Not a “nuclear fusion power engineer” or a physicist, but a mechanical engineer with a physics minor, a little bit of experience in computational fluids, and a fluctuating interest in nuclear fusion; there have been some substantial advances in the ability to model coupled plasma fluid/electromagnetic field dynamics, and incremental advances in superconductive magnets and fine control of magnetic fields. This hasn’t, however, lead to any revolutionary breakthroughs in thermofusion reactors that promise over-unity power generating capability in the foreseeable future.
Even if we can create and sustain an over-unity fusion source, there remain the practical issues of extracting the energy from it in a useable fashion (steam turbine-type electricity generation is out, as the temperatures in the fusion core are way in excess of what any steam loop piping could endure). Power generation will likely require advances in magnetohydrodynamics to directly convert the resultant EM field directly to induced electricity, which is (at this point) very much a nontrivial technical exercise. Then there’s the problem of coping with activating and highly damaging neutron radiation from the high energy, low threshold D-T reaction. (There are other reactions that produce less or no neutrons but which have a much higher Coulomb barrier, making them unlikely even if the elemental fuel were available.) Compounding that is the fact that the method that has achieve the highest efficacy, inertial confinement, isn’t really all that practical for a sustained reaction, while magnetic confinement, offering greater possibility of energy extraction, has been less promising.
In short, unless someone figures out how to make muon-catalyzied fusion sustainable or develops some kind of electrostatic confinement that is more efficient than the Farnsworth method, practical nuclear fusion for energy generation is decades out; I’d estimate on the close order of fifty years and up.
We live in a world where most people cant get too worked up about doing things being done gradually to your own body that will probably kill you 30 years from now, ie overeating, smoking, lack of exercise etc. Heck many of us have trouble with 10 years with these kinds of things.
Doing something about global warming where its about future generations was always going to be a hard sell, even if people believe it, let alone when its so easy to not believe it.
Like Scylla (though without the 3 heads thingy), I go back and forth on this one. Some days I’m pretty calm, others I worry about what may happen. Usually I worry when I see shows on the various Discovery/TLC/Science Channel/etc…they pretty much all say the same dire things. Then I see shows on all those channels talking about meteor impacts, giant super volcanos in the US, killer super tornados, various and sundry other ends to civilization as we know it…and I think, ‘hm…there is a trend here’.
Myself, I’m convinced that global climate change is real. Whether or not it is a long term trend or just another blip in earths weather I’m not so sure about. I’m also not so sure about the cause…and less sure than that that even if humans are the prime cause that we can do anything substantial about it short of going back to living in caves (seemingly). And my faith in the scientific consensus on this issue is not really great either. From talking to friends who are climate scientists I think the data is a lot more shaky than the rock solid consensus of scientists should warrent…especially when it comes to the predictions of dire consequences and what we could do about it categories.
Finally I think that Kyoto is a major waste of time, money and effort. Not only does it seem difficult to accomplish (if the Euro’s are any indicaition…several of whom are NOT making the grade IIRC), in itself, from what I understand, it won’t really accomplish the goals. Its a first step…which will lead to other, more radical steps. Even if Kyoto doesn’t have the short term effect of making the economy go tits up I don’t have any confidence that the follow on resolutions won’t. And I don’t have any confidence that, having fucked up our economy, we will come out of it with a vastly different global climate system…or that we might not fuck things up in another way causing as bad or worse climate change in an unexpected direction while basically accomplishing the goal of making everyone poor in the process…and thus less able to deal with things.
I see that in the US there are already several companies who are voluntarily reducing emmissions (there was a good article on this on MSN a few days ago…wish I could find the article now). In addition, there are cities and towns in the US that are doing the same thing…without it being mandated by fiat from the government. Technologies are also advancing that may make the whole thing moot (assuming its CO2 emmissions from humans causing the majority of the havoc)…and these technologies are being driving, again, not by the governments whim but by that dreaded source The Market.
When I see the enviro-fascist crowd in the streets demanding nuclear power plants (as opposed to fighting tooth and nail whenever one is proposed), THEN I may start to take this whole thing a bit more seriously…
Careful what evidence you use to prove your case, Der Thris - it might not be as true as you think: Check Here
and more from the Bad Astronomy Forum .
I miss the Bad Astronomer. Sigh.
Oh, and Scylla ?
Spoken like someone who doesn’t live in the Southern Hemisphere. The ozone hole? All too real, thank you very much. Bet you think Y2K was all a plot too, don’tchya?
If people are having trouble understanding how destructive humans are upon the earth, download Google Earth. Go look at the encroachment on the borders of the Amazon, it’ll distrub you - that vast green sea of rainforest slowly being infested by small veins of deforestation. As disturbing as that is, zoom out and now realize how much has already been lost.
Fly over America, look for any expanse of undisturbed land. There isn’t any. The entire country is either divided into farm plots, urban centres, or crisscrossed with roads were the land is uninhabitable anyway. Next check out the rivers, especially in the South West. The fact that most of them end as nothing more than a steam should be indiciative.
The most distrubing part is that most industrialized countries have no “natural” ecosystems left in their borders. (Canada’s North is spared this fate, but it is being ravaged by a few degrees of warming annual temperatures. Look at Quebec or B.C.'s forestry industry, it is ubiquitous). If you want to see nature v.s. industrial nations look in S.E. Asia, compare Thailand to its neighbors. All countries are racing hard towards industrialization which is completely at the expense of natural environments.
You can dismiss the global warming apocalyptic rhetoric, but you cannot actually believe that completely transforming an entire landmass from “natural vegetation” into “productive land” will not have some influence on weather systems. Can you?! A few degrees this way or that and entire ecosystems are destroyed, look at ocean reefs off Belize or Australia.
Mankind will suffer, endure and adapt, just like the last two million years. Or not. Besides, I just can’t get worked up about a ‘crisis’ that’s threatening enough to justify stripping down our industrial capacity, but never quite bad enough to justify redirecting that industry so as to actively combat the crisis directly. Global warming always seems to be just enough of a threat to support giving power to those that have identified the problem and continue to harp on it.
Since fanatics who have luddite utopian plans and actually want the authority to implement them concern me far more than a few extra feet of seawater, I don’t worry much about global warming. And if the worst predictions turn out to be true, I’m okay with that. Shit changes and we adapt, or we die. That’s nothing new under this sun.
Only the people exploiting it or crusading about it are new.
) to tell me I am wrong but I think you are going to have to wait a loooong time.
