History for Global Warmers (and reality check)

Um, ok. So?

 

I think the point is, like some Climatologists and meteorologists have said, these things probably go in cycles. I think those who jump on the "global warming" issue, like Pat Robertson, do so just because it is hot. They fail to realize that there are several reasons why it is hot (High Pressure systems, Climate cycles, its summer, etc).

I believe that global warming is a very real thing. However I seriously doubt that man-kind has played that big of role in global warming. It seems that the earth goes through cycles of hot and cold, and we are entering into a warmer period. What changes will it bring? I don't know. I do know that at one point the North Pole was tropical, and at another point the ice reached all the way down into North America. Only God knows where this is heading.

 

The shocker is the rather tight correlation between CO2 in the atmosphere and global temperatures. And that is tightly correlated with burning fuels. The difficulty is that correlation does not necessarily mean causation. There might be something else that causes all three things.

But it's getting harder and harder to conclude that there is. While there are natural cycles (and they have a fractal structure, with cycles in cycles) there are points at which the system can be tipped one way or another with relatively little input.

My take on it is that we have only one world to mess with. We need to make sure.

 

How do we know that the "system" can be tiped one way or another by "little input"?

 

Little input affecting the Earth or systems massively??? Ha!



I wonder how many billions of dollars all these scientists/companies/organizations are receiving for this research?

I wonder if any of them are the same scientist which were telling my generation throughtout 70's and 80's; that we would experience another "ice age". The signs were everywhere for them then and we did not have the type clean air legislations etc, etc as today.

God made us caretakers so we should be such. But much of this is absolute bunk! One extreme to the next:laugh:


P.S. Seems some still advocate the Ice Age theory. http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/Ice_Age.html

 

How do we know that a very small input can make a huge effect in things like climate?

It has to do with chaotic systems. A system can be said to be chaotic if:

A. The are deterministic through description by mathematical rules.
B. They have mathematical descriptions which are nonlinear in some way.

Systems such as weather, the stock market, and climate are chaotic. They are fractal in the sense that no matter how you scale the graph, the curve looks the same.

The first understanding of the problem came about when a scientist was modeling a very simple system, using a very large number of individual elements. At one point, he stopped the simulation, and restarted it later, using the same numbers present when he stopped it. To his surprise, it behaved in an entirely different way. The system was chaotic, and infintessimal rounding errors in the hardware caused a huge difference in output.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect

There are forces working against this as well. The Earth has a number of stabilizing systems that tend to maintiain constancy, but these are also chaotic, so we can have all sorts of fluctuations at all levels of the curve.

And a very tiny difference is enough to make it happen.

I've been in science since the 60s, and I don't remenber any climatologists predicting an ice age. I'm sure there must have been, but the idea that a significant number of them thought so, is a kind of urban legend. Scientists first predicted global warming about 1908, and by the 1970s, the consensus was that it was happening.

As to your link? From Wikipedia:

Stephen Schneider said of him that "Jaworowski is perhaps even more contrarian than most, claiming that he can prove the climate is going to get colder through his work excavating glaciers on six different continents, which he says indicates what we should really be worrying about is 'The approaching new Ice Age...'."[1] However, Jaworowski denies making any prediction, stating "I do not make my own detailed projections. In my paper I referred the reader to B&M paper, and that is all."[2] Jaworowski’s theories were not published in a scientific journal, but in 21st Century, a magazine published by Lyndon LaRouche

Lyndon LaRouche? Oh my goodness...:laugh:

The specific claims are examined here (warning, technical)...
http://www.someareboojums.org/blog/?p=7

This is on a par with bigfoot hunters and alien abductions. An endorsement from LaRouche might be impressive for some, but most will probably take it as a warning label.

BTW, this works for all such systems in which the output of one iteration is the input of the next. Fiegenbaum showed that the doubling characteristics of all such equations are such that a single constant (the Fiegenbaum number) predicts how fast bifurcations will occur as a variable changes. It applies to all such systems, regardless of the equation used.

 

So if it true that the atmospheric system is "chaotic" and that it only take small amounts of influence to effect a change would it not also be true that in that chaotic system any influence might be short lived due to the fluid nature of the system?

And if the atmospheric system is so chaotic then how are co2 levels even measured with any consistency?

Based on what you said I get the picture of a gallon of cool aid being poured into the ocean. How soon will the ocean color change?

And I do not understand your comment that there are stabilizing systems that maintain constancy but then you say these are also chaotic. How do you suppose a system is both stabalizing and chaotic at the same time?

 

hummm, stable and chaotic are opposites of each other, they are mutually exclusive, and you can not have both.

 

Ralph,

We are in an Ice Age, in a interglaciation period, so yes, "they" probably are the same scientists. Although climate in inherently variable and, ultimately beyond our control, it is to our benefit to keep it as stable as we can.

 

Are they absolutes or opposite ends of a sliding scale?

I think "scale".

eta: I should read the all the previous posts before commenting

 

Having stated it is beyond our control, why do you think it can be stabilized?

 

This is not directed at anyone in particular. But I believe it is arrogant to think we can have effect and control on the climate one way or another, for good or worse.

Science is as chaotic as the atmosphere, it is ever changing and unreliable.

 

I said "ultimately" by which I mean, a major volcano discharge like Mount Tambora's or the expansion or contraction of the sun. In the meantime, what we can do, we should do (and yes, I drive a car and run the air conditioning in the summer at night).

I'm amazed that anyone would dispute it.

In NYC, the temperature in Central Park is noticeably cooler than the surrounding streets; in the summer it is actually chilly in the park while it is sweltering on the streets. Even in a single block, a tree-lined one is cooler than a solid concrete one. These may be microclimates, but they add up. It has been shown that cutting down the rainforests brings desertification to the area.

It is cummulative. Knowledge is built upon previous knowledge - each generation need not reinvent the wheel.

Established science is more reliable than not. It is not perfect but medicine alone is far better than a hundred years ago.

 

OK -- since we won't give up our cars and air conditioning (which I use during the day, too) what can we do?

 

No, that's wrong. Chaos has it's own stability. For example, markets are inherently chaotic, but can find stable points in spite of this.

These are called "attractors."

The science of chaos is mostly mathematical, but if you'd like to experiment a little, I can show you how to get started.

I never really wanted to learn this, but I was doing work on the Lotke-Volterra equation with regard to predators and prey, and kept getting different answers. Turns out it's a chaotic system, and once I figured that out, it worked fine.

Bottom line, yes the world is getting warmer. And yes, just a few degrees can produce catastrophic changes. But no, we don't know exactly what to do, other than try to reduce the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. How to do that, is a bit more complicated, because there are economic and political consequences to any decision we make, including a decision to do nothing.

Problem was, I was doing it on a hand-held programmable calculator about 1976, and just didn't have the power to get where I wanted to go with it. In 1978, Fiegenbaum figured out why all such systems behave the same way. Could have used that information a bit earlier.

 

How do you come about stability when everything is chaotic?

Curves, graphs, computers, eye's, fingers, weathervains, radar, computer simulations and the WEATHER MAN still can't accurately predict the weather beyond two days or so. Some would argue even less than that. By the way Einstein said this many decades ago! In stating that science has it's limitations.
I live on the Gulf so the weather can change quickly and often completely in contradiction to forecast. My prediction for the rest of the summer, hot with 50% chance of scattered afternoon thunderstorms, ha.:thumbs:

answer to above: "God".

A very tiny difference is enough to make it happen? Come on Galation!

I recall, they said within a number of years the oceans would suffer significant and irreversible effects which would kill the largest percentage of sea life. Wow! This as pushed by Gore and his scientific sources over ten years ago, he, he, ha, ha! I believe Ann Coulter actually makes note of this in her recent book "Godless".

Also the "ice age" and predicted re-occurrence was taught right out of the text books. I don't know if such was widespread notion but was indeed taught. Mr. Jaworowski actually notes the change in trend beginning in late 60's and early 70's. My memory is not what it used to be but my recollection is accurate, "pun". I can remember us kids having fun drawing future homes under ground. So we could cope with a possible ice age. Man those were the days!

I would agree it all is basically in line with Bigfoot. Some scientists say there is no global warming, others says there is a global warming. The later however are split on it being natural vs. man influenced. This later, can usually be traced to enviro's who want their agenda's and legislation passed.

Again, Einstein pointed out the limitations of science or application thereof. Stating many decades ago that we could not even accurately predict the weather. Still holds true!

Here are a few other advocates of another Ice Age. I am not advocating such just pointing out, like Einstein, science is not exact and often flawed. Many times today due to money and politics.


http://www.iceagenow.com/

http://www.whoi.edu/institutes/occi/viewArticle.do?id=10046

It's all bigfoot and flying saucers, I agree.

Do not litter folks, and if a scientist come's knocking on your door, don't open. :laugh: . Just kidding Galatian!

Take care, Ralph

 

Real or imagined global warming or climate change we'll be getting a global tax bill in the mail sooner or later.

 

original quote by The Galatian:....."The Earth has a number of stabilizing systems that tend to maintain constancy, but these are also chaotic, so we can have all sorts of fluctuations at all levels of the curve".

There is an entire science of chaos, showing that there are stable, even predictable structures within chaotic systems. You might want to read this:
However, it should be noted that despite its "random" appearance, chaos is a deterministic evolution. In addition, there are chaotic systems that to not have periodic orbits (periodic orbits only survive in the boundaries of KAM tori, and for sufficiently strong perturbations from the integrable case, islands do not necessarily survive). Furthermore, in so-called quantum chaos, trajectories do not diverge exponentially because they are constrained by the fact that the entire evolution must be unitary.

The boundary between regular and chaotic behavior is often characterized by period doubling, followed by quadrupling, etc., although other routes to chaos are also possible (Abarbanel et al. 1993; Hilborn 1994; Strogatz 1994, pp. 363-365).
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Chaos.html

It's a very strange thing, and quite counter-intuitive. It's well worth your time, checking it out.

Curves, graphs, computers, eye's, fingers, weathervains, radar, computer simulations and the WEATHER MAN still can't accurately predict the weather beyond two days or so.

Mine can get 4 or 5 days. Most can. However, notice that while the daily cycle is hard to get, yearly predictions are more often than not, accurate.


original quote by the Galation: "And a very tiny difference is enough to make it happen.

I've been in science since the 60s, and I don't remember any climatologists predicting an ice age. I'm sure there must have been, but the idea that a significant number of them thought so, is a kind of urban legend. Scientists first predicted global warming about 1908, and by the 1970s, the consensus was that it was happening".

Yep. If you don't understand why, you don't understand climate.

I don't know who "they" are, but "they" aren't the consensus of climatolotists.

Gore said that? I wonder why no one reported it. Do you have a checkable source?

Coulter says a lot of weird things that aren't true. She gets paid to say angry and offensive things so suckers will buy her books.

Hmm... never saw one like that. You have a checkable example?

Hmm... I was in colleges from the mid 60s, to late 70s. Never saw a change, except that more and more evidence for warming was accumulating. Don't remember anyone teaching a new ice age was immenent.

:
Barbarian on a "scientific" endorsement from Lyndon LaRouche:
"...............This is on a par with bigfoot hunters and alien abductions. An endorsement from LaRouche might be impressive for some, but most will probably take it as a warning label.

Barbarian on chaotic systems:
BTW, this works for all such systems in which the output of one iteration is the input of the next. Fiegenbaum showed that the doubling characteristics of all such equations are such that a single constant (the Fiegenbaum number) predicts how fast bifurcations will occur as a variable changes. It applies to all such systems, regardless of the equation used.

We can, however, accurately predict climate. Almost all models anticipated the current warming trend.

I'm not impressed that a few scientists go against the evidence. There are a few people who claim the Earth is flat, too.

I'm impressed by theories that actually work. Since the consensus of climatologists were able to accurately predict the climate well in advance, I'm inclined to go with them.

 

And that, kind sirs, is a valid bottom line. As such, there is no need to "convince" anyone that a single activity must occur to "fix" it. Thanks!!