Ben D wrote:brainpanhandler wrote:Ben D wrote:Penguin wrote:"There's no excuse for saying 'we've got to keep pumping carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere," he told Reuters by telephone, adding that the cooling was projected to start in 10,000 to 100,000 years.
Well there is breathing for a start!
Nice comeback, but Penguin didn't write that. Thomas Crowley, from one of the articles you cite, wrote that.
Understood bph, but he emphasized the statement in 'bold' to presumably make a point.
I could have also pointed out that there is no identification as to who is saying "We've got to keep pumping blah blah etc.",....maybe some strawman somewhere?
In the context of the interview it seems that the "he" referred to in the quote is Crowley. No? Who else could the author be referring to?
I think as happens way too frequently people are running scripted arguments. We've all had various arguments many, many, many times and I think we fall into the trap of not listening to each other very carefully at all because we're predicting the thoughts and opinions of others based on past experience. We're all so quick to pigeonhole and label each other and generally do so to extremes. So in the climate change debate anyone who suggests moderation in assessing the data and predicting trends is a hack paid off by the petroleum industry or a complete idiot with their head in the sand and folks that suggest there needs to be an urgency to our species' response to climate change are sloppy scientists or chicken littles prematurely "pushing the panic button".
You bolded the following phrases from the interview you posted:
'don't push the panic button'"But we have a lot of time to argue about the appropriate level of greenhouse gases."This was also presumably to make a point and perhaps indicates that you believe their are some chicken littles on the board that need to be told to "calm down"?
I assess risk based on two criteria. What's the probability that something will or won't happen and what are the consequences/results if it does or does not happen.
So for instance, if the probability in a given circumstance is high that I will get a hangnail I don't get terribly concerned. But even if the probability is extremely low in a given circumstance that I will die a horrible death I nonetheless take that pretty seriously.
The more horrible the consequences the less I will leave to chance.
If it is true that there is credible evidence that anthropogenic climate change is real and that it is reasonable to conjecture that we might radically alter the planet's natural climatic cycles and bring about mass extinctions, possibly even our own, then I am willing to tolerate zero risk.
What would constitute "pushing the panic button" anyway? What am I being cautioned against?
I can't help but think that a lot of anthropogenic climate change skeptics are incapable of having concern for future generations of human beings.
Seems to me, based on the following, that Crowley is basically saying, "We don't know yet", but he also does not seem to be quibbling with the idea that we have pretty radically altered the earth's atmospheric chemistry.
New Ice Age Predicted -- But Averted by Global Warming?
Mason Inman
for National Geographic News
November 12, 2008
Deep ice sheets would cover much of the Northern Hemisphere thousands of years from now—if it weren't for us pesky humans, a new study says.
Emissions of greenhouse gases—such as the carbon dioxide, or CO2, that comes from power plants and cars—are heating the atmosphere to such an extent that the next ice age, predicted to be the deepest in millions of years, may be postponed indefinitely (quick guide to the greenhouse effect).
"Climate skeptics could look at this and say, CO2 is good for us," said study leader Thomas Crowley of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
But the idea that global warming may be staving off an ice age is "not cause for relaxing, because we're actually moving into a highly unusual climate state," Crowley added.
In about 10,000 to 100,000 years, the study suggests, Antarctic-like "permanent" ice sheets would shroud much of Canada, Europe, and Asia.
"I think the present [carbon dioxide] levels are probably sufficient to prevent that from ever happening," said Crowley, whose study will appear tomorrow in the journal Nature.
Permanent Ice Sheets?
For the past three million years, Earth's climate has wobbled through dozens of ice ages, with thick ice sheets growing from the poles and then shrinking back again.
These ice ages used to last roughly 41,000 years. But in the past half a million years, these big freezes each stretched to about a hundred thousand years long.
Meanwhile, the temperature swings during and between these ice ages became more extreme, soaring to new highs and lows.
These extreme climate swings don't appear to be easing anytime soon, according to evidence recorded in Earth's rocks, Crowley said. "The latest two glaciations were two of the biggest we've seen."
The increasing variability is a sign that Earth's climate will soon move into a new state, according to a computer model used by Crowley and a colleague, William Hyde of the University of Toronto in Canada. They had previously used the model to simulate past ice ages.
In some ways the ice age would be like those in the past few hundred thousand years, with a thick ice sheet covering North America, the study predicted.
But in the model, Europe and Asia also succumbed to ice sheets up to 2 miles (3.5 kilometers) thick, stretching from England to Siberia—something never before seen in models of past ice ages.
"We were surprised," Crowley said. "There's no evidence for this in Asia" during ice ages in the past few million years.
Hard to Know
Though this extreme ice age would be unusual, so is the climate that people are creating by emitting huge amounts of greenhouse gases, Crowley said (global warming fast facts).
"It's hard to say what's going to happen," Crowley said. "The very fact that you have this nonglacial [warming] atmosphere with polar ice caps [still present], presents a bizarre scenario.
"I don't know that we have a comparable analogy for it in the geologic record."
Prehistoric-climate expert Lorraine Lisiecki said, "This is the only study of which I am aware that suggests the next ice age could be much more extreme than those of the previous one million years."
Many more tests are needed to see if the study's prediction seems correct, said Lisiecki, of the University of California, Santa Barbara.
But she agreed that we might never find out what would have happened naturally, due to human-caused global warming.
"Current greenhouse gas concentrations are probably similar to those that occurred three million years ago and are high enough to prevent an ice age for hundreds of thousands of years," she said.
Link"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." - Martin Luther King Jr.
