Solar Lull Could Cause Colder Winters In Europe 320
Taco Cowboy writes "Since September of last year scientists have been wondering what's happening to the Sun. It's supposed to have reached the peak of its 11-year cycle, but sunspot and flare activity remains much quieter than expected. Experts now think the recent cold snap that hit North America and the wet weather that hit part of Europe might be linked to the eerie quietness of the Sun. According to the BBC, solar activity hasn't been this low in 100 years, and if activity keeps dropping, it may reach levels seen during the 'Maunder Minimum,' an 'era of solar inactivity in the 17th Century [which] coincided with a period of bitterly cold winters in Europe.' It wouldn't have a big effect on global temperatures, just regional ones. Why? The sun's UV output drops during these lulls, and the decreased amount of UV light hitting the stratosphere would cause the jet stream to change course. Prof. Mike Lockwood says, 'These are large meanders in the jet stream, and they're called blocking events because they block off the normal moist, mild winds we get from the Atlantic, and instead we get cold air being dragged down from the Arctic and from Russia. These are what we call a cold snap... a series of three or four cold snaps in a row adds up to a cold winter. And that's quite likely what we'll see as solar activity declines.'"
Not the sun (Score:5, Funny)
The Sun does not effect climate. Only carbon.
Only carbon.
Re: (Score:3)
The Sun is still working on turning Hydrogen into Helium
But it will get round to Carbon eventuallu
Maunder Minimum (Score:5, Informative)
Just a link to add for the " Mauder Minimum " that was mentioned in TFA -
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/SunspotCycle.shtml [nasa.gov]
Hope this helps !
Maunder Minimum (Score:5, Funny)
The Maunder Minimum is the degree of deviation from the white line allowed before the trooper cites you for being drunk. Even without exceeding the Maunder Minimum, poor performance here combined with "blowing an .08", a (very low) standard for fellatio (the theory being that you'd have to be *really* drunk to perform that poorly*), can combine to annoy the trooper into issuing a ticket. Tomorrow, we're going to re-discover "Boyle's Laws of Gasses", which dictates performance of glassware with insufficient bong fluid. Now put away your books; time for a pop quiz: Coke, or Pepsi?
* Scale normalized 0.0~~1.0 as per International Standards Req. 4:20, para 69, lines for two.
Re: (Score:2)
The Maunder Minimum is the degree of deviation from the white line allowed before the trooper cites you for being drunk.
I understand you are trying to make light of the subject at hand, but anyway, please refer to the below graph for the real Maunder Minimum as refer to the extraordinarily quietness of the Sun, as had happened back in the 17th century -
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/ssn_yearly.jpg [nasa.gov]
Re: (Score:3)
Thanks, c/Taco. I know what it is. I was just possessed of an urge to start typing when I shouldn't have.
I'm a big fan of solar weather, and to the extent we can suss it out, solar history. Also, ham radio operator, and the state of the sun is the first thing I check in the morning. [solarham.net]
Re: (Score:2)
It can only get into carbon if it doesn't make too much helium. If it makes too much... it will float away! :::gasp:::
Re: (Score:2)
We are golden.
And we've got to get back to the garden.
Re: (Score:2)
We are stardust, man.
Well, then can I roam beside you?
I have come to lose the smog.
And I feel myself a cog
In something turning.
And maybe it's the time of year,
Yes, said maybe it's the time of man
And I don't know who I am but life is for learning.
We are stardust, we are golden,
We are billion year old carbon,
And we got to get ourselves
Back to the garden.
Re:Not the sun (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, you have captured the essential mindset of the denialists: there can only be one cause for anything. That assumption underlies most of the denialist arguments.
One of the common one is, "Wasn't the Earth warmer in the past? Without industrial carbon emissions?" I've seen that trotted out by politicians against climate researchers, as if (a) that were news to them and (b) it had never occurred to them that something other than CO2 could drive climate change. The other favorite on the denialist hit parade is "carbon lagged warming in past warming periods." Again, they say this as if the climate scientists had never considered this, when the very information they're quoting *comes* from climate science.
Or how about this one: "Mars is warming too, and there's no carbon emissions on Mars."
These arguments are mind-boggling simple-minded, and they're all rooted in a simple, implicit proposition: CO2 either explains all warming episodes everywhere over all time, or it explains *none* of them.
Re:Not the sun (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, you have captured the essential mindset of the denialists: there can only be one cause for anything. That assumption underlies most of the denialist arguments.
Maybe it makes you feel good to think that, but the AGW skeptical material I've read certainly doesn't match that characterization. Maybe the fluff posted in the comments section on YouTube or Fox News or MSNBC etc.
Am I wrong? Why don't you link to a post in one of the major climate skeptic websites that shows this "can be only one cause for anything" attitude you describe. Or maybe you're just making stuff up in an attempt to portray your opponents in debate as fools.
Re: (Score:2)
Why don't you link to a post in one of the major climate skeptic websites
Pick one.
Re: (Score:2)
Or maybe you're just making stuff up in an attempt to portray your opponents in debate as fools.
I won't comment on the "fools" part, but I'm definitely not making things up. If you want an example, how about a 12 term US congressman [youtube.com]?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Again, I don't think denialists are necessarily fools. I think there's a flaw in their reasoning, which is exemplified by the nature of the congressman's questioning. His line of questioning is irrelevant, because he's laboring under the clearly unspoken assumption that if something else caused warming in the past, CO2 cannot be causing it today.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
His line of questioning is irrelevant
I guess you don't need to refute your opponent if you ignore what they say. Brilliant!
because he's laboring under the clearly unspoken assumption
Once again, brilliant! You have convicted him of the crime of saying something which he didn't actually say ("clearly unspoken").
that if something else caused warming in the past, CO2 cannot be causing it today.
My hat's off to you, sir, the winner of the day. That congressman's whole point was obviously this hobby horse of yours, even though he somehow neglected to ever mention it or even remotely allude to it.
Somehow I listened to the same thing, and thought the congressman was merely raising doubt
Re:Not the sun (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Fool and congressman are almost synonymous in my mind. The more terms they've served the more foolish they are. It matters not which side of the aisle they sit.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe it makes you feel good to think that, but the AGW skeptical material I've read certainly doesn't match that characterization. Maybe the fluff posted in the comments section on YouTube or Fox News or MSNBC etc.
And of course, on Slashdot, where this argument and it's derivatives (e.g. referencing the medieval warm period or little ice age as evidence against CO2 induced warming) , is made multiple times in any discussion about climate here. Funny thing is, these remarks are never corrected by the more enlightened denialists. Why is it that you, recognising this fallacy for what it is (and more power to you for seeing that), don't step in and correct these erroneous arguments when they occur? Don't you see the dama
Re:Not the sun (Score:5, Insightful)
For anyone keeping score, several of the alarmists have made fools of themselves as well. James Hansen comes to mind as an example of a cargo cult scientist.
Re:Not the sun (Score:5, Funny)
No no no. Only denialists are fools. Global warming proponents are superior intelligent beings who are never wrong and always have the answers if only all the illiterate peons would listen to them everything would be okay.
Re:Not the sun (Score:4, Informative)
Its not the "denialists" saying that CO2 is the only cause of climate change, idiot
Re: (Score:3)
Too many people on both sides pay way too much attention to weather events such as you outline. No individual weather event can ever be absolutely attributed to climate change. Climate is the carrier wave that the signal/noise of weather rides on. When climate changes it changes the odds on particular weather events happening. But only by looking at the events over long periods of time can you observe the change in odds. Each individual weather event is only another datum for the climate scientists.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
On the other hand the "alarmist" logic is: "we already know the cause of the warming, it is humans saturating the atmosphere with too much CO2, we just need to gather and/or create the evidence to support this theory". That's called inductive logic, and is just as unscientific as what you describe coming from the "denialists".
"Real" science comes from gathering evidence and basing your theories on the evidence gathered. You then determine what it might take to falsify your theory and try as hard as poss
Re:Not the sun (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Not the sun (Score:4, Informative)
Or there could be something else causing global warming
Thanks captain obvious, here's the IPCC attribution graph [wikipedia.org]. Aside from the predicted warming, numerous other phenomena have been predicted by climate models and then observed in nature, eg: "stratospheric cooling" and "polar amplification".
The last nail in the "something else" coffin was during the 50's when spectrometers became sensitive enough to see that the CO2 absorption spectra was interleaved with the H2O spectra rather that blocked by it. Back then AGW was detectable [youtube.com] but the only reason they were looking at all was due to their inability to explain the magnitude of the ice age climate changes from orbital wobbles alone. The original warming prediction was made ~1900, both the 1900 and 1950's predictions did not take into account the growth rate of the FF burning industry, the original predicted a doubling of pre-industrial CO2 concentrations in about 3kyrs not 300yrs.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Not the sun (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand the "alarmist" logic is: "we already know the cause of the warming, it is humans saturating the atmosphere with too much CO2, we just need to gather and/or create the evidence to support this theory". That's called inductive logic, and is just as unscientific as what you describe coming from the "denialists".
You seem to be creating a strawman for the express purpose of knocking it down.
These "alarmist" scientists are the same type who told us that CFCs were creating a hole in the ozone layer.
We went to great lengths to eliminate CFCs, then lo and behold, the ozone layer fixed itself.
"Real" science comes from gathering evidence and basing your theories on the evidence gathered. You then determine what it might take to falsify your theory and try as hard as possible to falsify it.
Holy shit! Just like what happened with the ozone layer!
The Ozone Hole Alarmists were right!
All I see from the "alarmist" camp is people trying to support their theories at all costs, calling things causation where there is barely correlation, and making very little if any effort to falsify their theories. This behavior is more akin to religion than any sort of science.
Then you haven't looked very hard. [nasa.gov]
The weight of "Real" science is behind the "alarmists" and not at all behind the "denialists".
Re:Not the sun (Score:5, Informative)
Just to make it clear to folks who haven't followed this, the "ozone hole" is not a fixed feature of the Antarctic; it's like weather, it grows and shrinks in different years based on local atmospheric conditions, causing many to have declared premature victory. However the ozone levels in the Antarctic have stabilized and are expected to recover to pre-industrial levels over the coming decades.
This is not a case of the problem "fixing itself", it's a case of people deciding to take effective action [wikipedia.org] by banning ozone depleting chemicals (thank you President Reagan [ucsb.edu]).
Re:Not the sun (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not the sun (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand the "alarmist" logic is: "we already know the cause of the warming, it is humans saturating the atmosphere with too much CO2, we just need to gather and/or create the evidence to support this theory". That's called inductive logic, and is just as unscientific as what you describe coming from the "denialists".
"Real" science comes from gathering evidence and basing your theories on the evidence gathered. You then determine what it might take to falsify your theory and try as hard as possible to falsify it.
All I see from the "alarmist" camp is people trying to support their theories at all costs, calling things causation where there is barely correlation, and making very little if any effort to falsify their theories. This behavior is more akin to religion than any sort of science.
False equivalency is false.
Guess what? A lot of the "alarmist" are the same scientists doing the research. Sure, people get attached to theories, but do you realize that the best possible thing to happen to a scientist is for him/her to make a discovery that tosses the widely accepted hypotheses on their head? In other words, if a scientist did a rigorously peer reviewed study which indicated that, say, it's a reduction in neutrinos from the sun somehow, oh, say tweaking aerosol concentrations, leading to a strong causal relationship between this phenomenon and observed global warming - while also showing that the greenhouse effect of CO2 was much less of a factor than previously thought - that person would be fricking king of the scientific world.
The tired repeated bleatings of non-scientists who have not spent their careers repeatedly getting their work shredded by reviewers [this being the norm, not the exception] on the path to eventual publication do absolutely zilch to move things forward regarding understand what's really going on. The simple-minded idea that climate science is some sort of "alarmists versus skeptics" battle is laughable; this false equivalency between two imagined camps, each claiming to know the truth, is entirely imagined by ignorant people. Unless you've actually done science and gotten your work published in decent journals, these opinions mean absolute diddlyshit; nothing more than mental masturbation splooging text on the screen, masquerading as informed debate.
Re: (Score:2)
do you realize that the best possible thing to happen to a scientist is for him/her to make a discovery that tosses the widely accepted hypotheses on their head?
You clearly haven't done much research. As one guy used to say science progresses when the last generation dies. That's how fossilized fields become when all the people doing peer review have the same mindset.
Maybe I should have said "successfully publish a discovery" blah blah. If you don't believe that, well, talk to Einstein, Bohr, Watson, Crick, Darwin, etc. etc. etc.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Another piece of junk science IMO is dark energy and negative energy. Its like we've gone back to the ether theory again.
Re: (Score:2)
AGW believers can't be proven wrong either. A lot of us have realized this a long time ago. To me it just doesn't pass the smell test. I know too much history and college grade physics. Sorry.
Re: (Score:2)
On the other hand the "alarmist" logic is: "we already know the cause of the warming, it is humans saturating the atmosphere with too much CO2, we just need to gather and/or create the evidence to support this theory".
"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one." - Voltaire
Re: (Score:2)
No the 'denialist' argument is that it isn't a cause to change policy. The temperature change, if it has any impact, is irrelevant compared to existing natural causes. That is the whole point. So before you start proposing for people to freeze in the winter or overheat in the summer from closing down coal power plants, or other dumbass ideas i've heard proposed, consider the consequences.
Re: (Score:2)
No the 'denialist' argument is that it isn't a cause to change policy. The temperature change, if it has any impact, is irrelevant compared to existing natural causes. That is the whole point. So before you start proposing for people to freeze in the winter or overheat in the summer from closing down coal power plants, or other dumbass ideas i've heard proposed, consider the consequences.
First of all, I didn't propose that anyone freeze in the winter or overheat in the summer; that is typical denialist histrionics.
As for the natural causes, which causes in your opinion account for the warming we've experienced since the 1950s?
Re: (Score:2)
I haven't been around that long. But from what I remember the weather is, once again, as cold and wet as it was when I was a kid. People who read a bit are aware that the weather fluctuates and blaming it all on human activity when you know the magnitudes of energy involved in the process is naive. We don't even exploit a significant portion of energy in this planet yet.
As for warming, the Romans had men wearing togas and women wearing silk clothes in the street around 250 BC, so I would say the 1990s weren
Re:Not the sun (Score:5, Interesting)
I haven't been around that long. But from what I remember the weather is, once again, as cold and wet as it was when I was a kid.
This brings up a very important point. "Global warming" is a phenomenon where the atmosphere -- particularly the troposphere -- has more energy. That doesn't mean that that the climate in your neck of the woods is necessarily going to be warmer and drier.
We're talking about a 0.6 degree C average temperature increase or thereabouts in the last 50 years. If the climate in your home town was 0.6 C warmer, *you wouldn't even notice*. From the point of view of whether you need to point on a sweater when you go outside it is meaningless.
But if you consider there's something like 10^21 cubic meters of troposphere that's a lot of energy
Consider the Coriolis force; you can't *feel* it. It makes no difference whether you walk east or north, the effect is too small to measure. But it has an enormous effect on the atmosphere, because the atmosphere is huge. The same can be said for a 1 C increase in temperature; it's not much hotter, but it's a vast amount of energy that affects the movement of huge air masses. Those changes could well make your neck of the woods colder, because air (e.g. the polar vortex) is moving more often in ways it only did rarely years ago. On the other hand other places (e.g. Greenland and Alaska) may be experiencing unusual warm patterns. Average those anomalies out over the entire globe, and you get very slight global temperature increases out of a patchwork of extremes.
So the kind of mental test you are proposing ("is it warmer outside my house than it would have been thirty years ago?") has very little bearing on "global warming". A), it's not *global*. B) globally averaged, temperatures aren't very much warmer under "global warming".
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes and no.
Yes, because it slows the warming a bit.
No, because the effect is less than 1% (in heat).
However the issues with UV (and gamma) radiation hitting the higher atmosphere and what effect that has on cloud forming is a pretty new topic.
Re: (Score:2)
The Sun does not effect climate. Only carbon.
Only carbon.
The Science is settled!
Everyone knows the sun has .... (Score:2)
absolutely nothing to do with the political hot air and chilling political failures this planet is suffering from.
Re: (Score:2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:2)
The smartest person on (uh err... in) the planet...!!!
OB: Global warming (Score:5, Funny)
Obviously Global Warming is a fiction created by neo-Luddite Green party members.
And communists. Yeah. Communists.
Re:OB: Global warming (Score:5, Insightful)
Weather in some places that's colder or warmer than others!
Truly unprecedented in history.
Regardless of the predictive value of our models, let's raise some taxes.
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
Regardless of the predictive value of our models, let's raise some taxes.
You mean the ones that are at historical lows?
Or the other ones which account for businesses externalities and are mostly zero?
Re: (Score:2)
Taxes are high man. Especially here in Europe. What is low is interest rates.
Re: (Score:2)
Then we would emit less carbon and reduce the public debt at the same time, all for the price of a carbon tax. Who doesn't like two-for-one deals?
Re: (Score:3)
Carter and Clinton both reduced the public debt.
If, for some reason, you think that those you've personally chosen to lead the country won't do as you've requested by using your tax money to reduce the public debt, then you might favor a revenue-neutral carbon tax. If the tax is $1 per gallon of gas, and if the average person uses 500 gallons per year, then the everyone would receive a $500 check from the government every year, no matter how much gas they've used. Again, it would encourage people to emit le
real but (Score:2)
For the investment minded (Score:3)
Good chance to make some money on rising energy costs. ...cause nobody wants to build nuclear plants, but nobody likes being cold, either.
Re: (Score:2)
Like the guy used to say, just use another sweater. Good luck doing that at -20 C though.
Re: (Score:2)
Just burn more carbon based fuels. That will warm you right up.
It just occurred to me that if the scientists wait (Score:2)
till after the fact, they might just be right.....
We could ... (Score:3)
I, for one, am willing to do my part.
Told you so. (Score:3)
Winter *is* coming.
Re: (Score:2)
Summer *is* already happening: on the sothern hemisphere.
Northern Hemisphere bias (Score:2)
It's been bloody hot this week downunder. perhaps the sun just flew south.
Re: (Score:2)
Europe hasn't seen any real winter yet either, just lots and lots of storms ... birds think it's spring already.
Re: (Score:3)
Europe hasn't seen any real winter yet either, just lots and lots of storms ... birds think it's spring already.
European swallows think it's Spring? What is the opinion of African swallows?
Re: (Score:2)
You don't have a clue man. There are places in Europe where frost is showing up when it usually doesn't all year. This week has been horrible.
Re: (Score:2)
Britain is half-way through a mild winter, the fourth-mildest on record. We had a series of wet and windy storms blow in from the Atlantic in December, lots of rain and flooding but temperatures have remained above freezing even in central Scotland which is at about the same latitude as Baffin Bay for comparison. No frosts here which is very unusual, we normally get periods of below-freezing temperatures starting in early November. Where are these places in Europe getting unseasonal frosts?
Re: (Score:2)
It's been bloody hot this week downunder. perhaps the sun just flew south.
Quit standing under the ozone hole.
And here I thought... (Score:2)
... that the Solarian civil war had finally ended and the sun was at peace once more.
Before this turns into a derpfest... (Score:5, Informative)
So could a lengthy drop in solar output be enough to counteract human-caused climate change? Recent studies at NCAR and elsewhere have estimated that the total global cooling effect to be expected from reduced TSI during a grand minimum such as Maunder might be in the range of 0.1 to 0.3 Celsius (0.18 to 0.54 Fahrenheit). A 2013 study confirms the findings. This compares to an expected warming effect of 3.0C (5.4F) or more by 2100 due to greenhouse gas emissions. In other words, even a grand solar minimum might only be enough to offset one decade of global warming. Moreover, since greenhouse gases linger in the atmosphere, the impacts of those added gases would continue after the end of any grand minimum.
So perhaps a serious lull in solar activity could put some feeble brakes on global warming, slowing it down... temporarily, only to charge back when the sun gets over its issues.
I'm a meteorologist, not a climate guy, but I find the hypothesis that the current solar lull is responsible for the recent cold snaps in the northern hemisphere to be extremely dubious. Much more tenuous than the hypothesis that the meandering jet stream is happening due to the reduction in the north/south temperature gradient due from a reduction of Arctic ice cover, which itself is physically feasible but still not shown very conclusively.
The best way to get a grip on these issues would be to run many, many ensembles of weather models and coaxing out statistical links. And this is where weather/climate modeling is going, for good reasons... but as all the armchair slashdot climatologists will (perhaps rightly) point out, models have issues... but they are getting much better and ensembles help a lot to provide a handle on the probability that forcing A is causing response B.
Re: (Score:2)
Thank you for the sane, intelligible reply, and I hope you get modded up.
Re: (Score:2)
His comment sounds like utter bullshit though. You can put all the CO2 in an atmosphere you want. If you don't have solar flux the heat on the surface will be minimal. One good example is Mars. There have been plenty of examples along history of temperatures decreasing by more than .1 or .3 Celsius even when there were no humans on the planet.
Re: (Score:2)
His comment sounds like utter bullshit though. You can put all the CO2 in an atmosphere you want. If you don't have solar flux the heat on the surface will be minimal. One good example is Mars. There have been plenty of examples along history of temperatures decreasing by more than .1 or .3 Celsius even when there were no humans on the planet.
Ok Dr. Bagel. You win. I'll go burn my diploma, tell my colleagues at NCAR to eat a bag of dicks, and await your clearly superior intellect to publish that which is something other than 'utter bullshit'.
Since you are clearly an expert on the subject of the sound of bullshit, please, o wise one: Exactly what does utter bullshit sound like? As opposed to just plain bullshit? Do the flies buzz louder?
Re: (Score:2)
Jesus I have better things to do than publish in that rats nest that is climatology. I have enough issues publishing in my current field. I see enough group think as it is. If you try to go one inch outside the group think you will constantly get challenged that your results are crap or invalid even if you provide a way to reproduce the experimental results. Meanwhile I see glaring errors in their own publications all the time like superlinear speedups and the ilk. Not physics related as you probably realiz
The solar minimum versus carbon emissions (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Don't forget Global Dimming which everybody would know about from the "skeptics" and the fossil industry except that Global Dimming was found to fit in with Global Warming and undermine their propaganda strategy. You might hear more about it from the Atmosphere Engineering people who will cite it as proof we can change the climate... but instead of unhealthy pollution we are dimming the earth with today we'd use more healthy pollution. There is no doubt we'd be much hotter today if it were not for Global D
Re: (Score:2)
Re:global cooling (Score:4, Interesting)
So would a second "Maunder Minimum" now be a good thing because it buys us a little more time to get our act together? Or a bad thing because it lets us keep our heads in the sand even longer so that we get hit all the harder and faster when the sun returns to its normal behavior?
Not that we have solar observations going back long enough to detect long-term cycles, but another 50+ year minimum starting up now when it could make it much easier to avoid the worst permanent climate changes would be almost enough to get me believing in intelligent intervention.
Re: (Score:3)
Your argument presupposes that we can manipulate our behavior and environment cohesively and quickly enough to effect a useful change that would - well, what would it do? Allow increased population growth? Allow for better standards of living for humans? The rest of the biosphere?
Given the inertia of 7 billion humans and our imperfect knowledge of some very, very complex systems, I'm not at all sure that anything we can do will actually help.
Re:global cooling (Score:4, Informative)
Greenhouse gas heat capture is reasonably well understood, even if many of the secondary effects are still being discovered. While completely unrealistic, eliminating carbon emissions tomorrow would do quite a bit to stabilize the climate, if we were very, very lucky the global climate wouldn't change much by the end of the century and after that the crisis situation would largely be over and global climates would likely remain reasonably stable thereafter. We're probably past the point of getting the climate back to the state it was in a century ago without massive geoengineering, but we can still work towards mitigating the changes.
As for the benefits - a big one would be a biosphere not confronted by a second major extinction event to exacerbate the one were already in the midst of (human hunting, fishing, farming, and (more recently), toxic pollution has devastated the biosphere over the last few millenia). We're going to be hard-pressed to sustain the ~10 billion people the global population is expected to stabilize at by mid-century without any climate troubles. If our farmland is being rendered non-viable by climate shifts that problem will be much, much worse. For example it's looking likely that without serious changes in climate policy in the near term, within a century or two corn mostly won't be a viable US crop except in the northernmost states. Canada will have become much more suitable, but that will mean devastating ecologically important wilderness areas, and while farms are fairly easy to move, you can't just up and move all the processing plants and other infrastructure, and refitting a century worth of infrastructure to process whatever crops, if any, are suited to the new climate is liable to be very expensive if even possible. Now imagine that happening to every crop, everywhere on the planet, simultaneously. Extremely expensive. Not to mention that during the transition period you're going to have vast regions of agricultural land that has become non-viable for one crop but not yet viable for another. And we'll also have all those more extreme weather patterns to contend with as the forcing factors from polar temperature differences weaken and stop forcing the weather to follow predictable patterns from year to year. We're already seeing the polar wind belts becoming weaker and more meandering, which allows weather patterns that would once have swept across the country to get trapped in the eddy currents to cause severe protracted storms in some places and droughts in others.
Global famine is looking like a very real possibility, and that would likely destabilize world peace more thoroughly than anything we've seen in centuries. Peace is one of those luxuries you strive for once not starving to death has been taken care of.
So basically yes to all of your possibilities. But we're not talking about an increase from today, we're talking about avoiding, as much as possible, a massive decrease in all of them. It's looking like some decrease is inevitable - estimates are that we're already harvesting the global ecosystem (farming, fishing, logging, etc) at a rate ~40% higher than is sustainable (we're "spending the capital" and doing long-term damage to environmental productivity). Getting efficient we could possibly support 10 billion people in comfort sustainably, but that's a tall order, and probably not even remotely possible if climate change are powerfully undermine our productivity. And what exactly do you suppose will happen in the intervening time if the global population is forced to be reduced by 1/2 or 3/4 within a few generations?
Re: (Score:2)
Greenhouse gas heat capture is reasonably well understood, even if many of the secondary effects are still being discovered
Apparently it's not very well understood by the companies selling natural gas (methane, a greenhouse gas) in the U.S., which were recently reported to be leaking dangerous amounts of the stuff all over NYC and Washington DC, and that's not including the town that blew up in California.
Re: (Score:2)
Who says they don't understand it perfectly well? It's just not in their own best interests to fix the problem, and it *is* in their best interests to deny it exists. Do you really expect them to be any better than the Tobacco industry?
Re: (Score:2)
Who says they don't understand it perfectly well? It's just not in their own best interests to fix the problem, and it *is* in their best interests to deny it exists. Do you really expect them to be any better than the Tobacco industry?
At least t-butyl mercaptan (the smell they add) isn't bieng added to make it more addictive...
Re: (Score:2)
That's what they want you to think, but when's the last time you actually avoided any exposure to gas for a few weeks to test it? All part of the long term plan my man, all part of the plan.
[chuckle]
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
If we enter another little ice age, that's bad for most everybody. Europe's agriculture would be decimated, many towns in the Alps will be overrun by glaciers, etc. We have good records of what happened during the last one ~200 to 600 years ago. It wasn't pretty.
The oil exporting desert kingdoms might benefit since energy demands will skyrocket and they might get some respite from their usually brutal summer heat.
About the only good thing from a new little ice age would be putting Al Gore, Michael Mann, etc
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, but that's very unlikely to happen because of an extended solar minimum alone - The Maunder Minimum actually occurred towards the tail end of the medieval little ice age. In this case we're in a situation where human forcing factors are pushing towards extreme warming, a few decades of solar decrease would only slow the rate of increase, buying us some more time without resorting to geoengineering projects with potentially devastating unintended consequences.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
The next ice age is going to come eventually. We aren't that far away from the point when its supposed to happen again. In fact some people claim we would already be experiencing its effect it it wasn't for the elevated CO2 and higher than usual solar activity in the last decade. Now that the Sun is abnormally inactive, which is something which may be indicative of an ice age, since the causes phenomenon are not completely well defined, we shall see.
When Al Gore bought real estate in NY which was close to s
Re:global cooling (Score:4, Informative)
Another denialist myth, misquoted.
Al Gore bought some waterfront property. In CA. On a hill. It's very unlikely the sea level will rise some 80' during his lifetime considering the expected rate is less than 1" per year.
Re:global cooling (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
you're afraid of your political opponents gaining power
Well, sure. Who wants a bunch of statist central command types running their lives? Tax-ravenous Nanny Staters are bad news. Why should we want them to get any more power than they've already got? They've latched onto climate alarmism as their latest propaganda tool, and it's perfectly delightful when they are deprived of easy, distracting sound bite fodder. Half their fun already ended when they had to switch from "global warming" to "climate change," and this just makes it a little harder for them to spe
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If you have a better way to reduce our usage of fossil fuels without statist central command types running our lives, let's have it!
It's called nuclear energy. We have all sorts of options along those lines, but idiot lefty green-types can't stand the idea because it has the word "nuclear" in it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There's a natural carbon cycle [wikipedia.org] that gets plants their food. No one is suggesting interfering with that cycle. I'm discussing burning fewer fossil fuels so we don't add more carbon into that cycle. Believe me, no plants will die if we stop burning shit. If you think so, how do you think they survived the many millions of years before humans existed?
How can we reduce the amount of fossil fuels we burn without socialists running the planet? I don't think this is a hard question.
Re: (Score:3)
Coal is made up of dead plant matter. So the carbon was available and in the environment at one point. I don't like coal power plants either but not because of CO2. I am more concerned about fly ash, coal mining deaths, carbon monoxide poisoning and things like that. CO2 doesn't even compute. There are alternatives like nuclear. Yes even wind with pumped storage hydro is a partial alternative. However I could care less about the amount of 'fossil fuels' we burn. The end state of the universe if we continue
Re: (Score:3)
So talk about 'renewables' is a misnomer. Its a matter of timescales of availability. No resource is infinite since the universe is finite.
The mental hoops you're prepared to jump through to convince yourself that there's nothing wrong are quire remarkable.
Anyway: renewable isn't a misnomer. With coal, once it's dug up it's all gone. The time until it's all gone depeneds only on how much you take. With solar, the same is available whatever you do. that's what is meant by renewable: not that it's infinite.
Yo
Re: (Score:2)
> How can we reduce the amount of fossil fuels we burn without socialists running the planet? I don't think this is a hard question.
That's easy. Make non-fossil energy sources that are cheaper than fossil energy sources. This is already happening, but it will take time for the new sources to displace the old ones (you don't replace a grid's worth of power in a day or a decade).
When I say "it's already happening", I mean the newest utility-scale solar PV plants are coming in considerably cheaper than nu
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Absolutely! Virtually every independent climatologist on the planet agrees that we're causing extremely serious long-term climate problems because they're part of a leftist conspiracy to control the economy. Good thing we have big oil and other entrenched corporate interests looking out for us, they have no reason to lie! And when they use their wealth and power to secure massive subsidies from the government that's not "control", that's just the free market at work!
Re: (Score:2)
See? God himself wills it so. Makes as much sense as some of the crackpot theories i've heard.