Yes, the ice ages do not conflict at all with the scenarios of rapid,
positive-feedback-driven warming. I think of it like when you bump into
something initially vertical. Like a drinking glass. It wobbles. There
are two basic outcomes. If the bump was not too hard, so that the
critical point is not reached, it oscillates and settles down.
Alternatively, if you bump it just a teeny bit more, it exceeds that
critical point, tips over, and crashes. Once you perceive that the
point has been passed, it is too late to go back and refrain from
bumping so hard. It matters not in the slightest whether you bumped on
purpose, accidentally, because you miscalculated, or even if you wish
you had not bumped.
The process is decidedly non-linear. That's what seems to completely
stall coherent public thought and discussion of the issue.
Non-linearity contradicts the (incorrect) assumption which people seems
inclined to make about gradual and reversible change.
I would find it all a lot more amusing if I thought there were some way
to insulate myself from the consequences, letting the consequences fall
only upon those who insist that nothing is the matter until we observe
it.
The basic argument seems to be of this form:
Knowns:
We have opened a water valve.
We are filling a 5 gallon bucket with water at a known rate.
Th bucket is filling up.
The bucket is not yet full, so its capacity is not yet exceeded.
There is currently no measurable water on the floor.
We do not know how to close the valve without substantial inconvenience.
Our institutions are dreadfully flawed and we do not trust them.
To turn off the water would take us 50 years of focused effort and
research.
The consequences of overflow are catastrophically bad for half the
world's population.
If things go terribly wrong, they are unlikely to remain stationary and
politely expire for the convenience of the rest.
Conclusions:
Therefore we cannot be certain that the bucket will ever get full.
We conclude that we should wait for the overflow, and pretend that we
cannot be certain of anything until we are really getting wet. We
suspect that we will be safely dead of something else by then anyway, so
that we will personally escape both the inconvenience and the
consequences.
---------------------------------------------------------
Fact:
CO2 going into atmosphere in excess of CO2 removed
CO2 is known to be a radiative gas, and the magnitude of the effect
correlates positively to its concentration.
Many suspected positive feedback relations, some confirmed (unlike the
water and bucket scenario)
......
ugh...
Nothing like watching a train wreck in slow motion to really put a
damper on the day. Too bad we didn't start the 50 years 30 years ago,
when it was already known that the bucket was going to overflow.
think I'll go turn on my TV......
> Lets remember
> that Quartinary Geologists maintain most of the last half million years has
> been ice age with only brief interglacials for about as long as the one we
> now enjoy. They conclude that while the earth's weather is too complicated
> and delicate to project what rising CO2 levels will do, the record of
> climate changes in the last two interglacials point to dramatic decade long
> shifts rather than gradual trends and that the current gloom and doom
> warnings of global warming might actually be quite optomistic.
Like taking a shotgun and blasting the Mona Lisa. You cannot know
exactly where the damage will occur or what it will look like, but you
can be darned sure you are not going to improve upon the work.
--
Loren Muldowney
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
