Limits to Growth Reconsidered

[IntLibber]

The limit to energy production all depends on whether we are in an intergalcial or a glacial period.

Since the current interglacial is predicted (based on the last million years of Earth history) to end any time now I believe that allowable energy production for the next 100,000 years will be rather higher than the numbers provided.

In fact it may be necessary to just "waste" the energy to keep the ice sheets from covering a significant proportion of the currently ice free land mass.

This is quite believable based on the Milankovich Cycles. However, I have read in places that our agriculture and animal husbandry (creates lots of Methane) is actually keeping us out the next ice age, which would have begun about 3,000 years ago were it not for humans.

In any case, a new ice age would be far worse for humanity than any amount of global warming, which would actually benefit everyone except for the limousine liberals with their beachfront houses. Perhaps this is the real reason why they oppose global warming.

Actually, from what I've seen, our natural Milankovitch pattern this time will be a slow cooling over the next 10,000 years into the depths of the next Ice Age. When exactly along that time frame you can say we are "in an ice age" is subjective.

That said, Milankovitch isn't the be-all/end-all wrt climate. The configuration of the continents and seas/oceans also plays a major role. For instance, when Antarctica separated from South America and Australia 14-22 mya, the circumpolar current set in and created a thermal bottle effect around Antarctica which is the cause of its stable long term ice caps. Prior to this Antarctica was more temperate.

Similarly, when the straits of panama closed 3 mya, it shut off a major ocean current pattern and made our present 100ky ice age pattern pretty solid.

However since the end of the last ice age, we have seen the Mediterranean be flooded by the breach of Gibraltar, the Black Sea be flooded by the breach of the Bosporus, and the water level of the Caspian rise and fall frequently. These increases in sea area changed climate.

Similarly, the draining of Lake Agaziz down the St Lawrence set up the Younger Dryas.

The ENSO/PDO patterns have over time become increasingly amplified by the rising of Tibet in altitude due to the impact of India with Asia.

[MSimon]

Actually, from what I've seen, our natural Milankovitch pattern this time will be a slow cooling over the next 10,000 years into the depths of the next Ice Age. When exactly along that time frame you can say we are "in an ice age" is subjective.

What is the reasoning behind that? For the last million or two years the M cycles had what look to me like trip points and ice cores (IIRC) show transitions from "warm" to cool happening in about 100 years or so.

[IntLibber]

Actually, from what I've seen, our natural Milankovitch pattern this time will be a slow cooling over the next 10,000 years into the depths of the next Ice Age. When exactly along that time frame you can say we are "in an ice age" is subjective.

What is the reasoning behind that? For the last million or two years the M cycles had what look to me like trip points and ice cores (IIRC) show transitions from "warm" to cool happening in about 100 years or so.

Actually thats not true at all. While ice ages tend to end rather rapidly, with very rapid collapses in ice sheets, they take a long period of cooling to get started. It takes a long time to build up new ice sheets on Canada and Siberia, periods where those regions must remain at or below freezing temps for most of the year, for most years, for extended periods of time.

The Milankovitch Cycles are themselves gradual in their influence in both directions, the issue is that the ocean can absorb a lot of thermal energy every year for a long time, it takes a long time for the ocean to release that energy, esp with an atmosphere built to keep energy in. It is when the ice sheets reach a critical point that they collapse because they are not polar ice sheets.

What you saw in "The Day After Tomorrow" was utter fabrication.

The cooling seen in the Younger Dryas was not an ice age triggering event, it was a 'last gasp' event of the last ice age, with a large lake of cold lake water draining rapidly into the north atlantic, shutting down the conveyor system, combined with an asteroid impact event.

The claims put out by the university of washington team claiming ice core data from antarctica supported the rapid cooling argument (along with the frequent collapse argument for the Antarctic) was conclusively demolished by a team to the katabatic canyons my cousin participated in. They showed the antarctic ice caps have been stable for the last 14 million years.

[TallDave]

I think both could be right: it could get cold pretty quickly, but we wouldn't have the ice covering everything for some time.

Hey Int, did you see the recent study on the Atlantic conveyor? They're now saying it probably doesn't exist (apparently 90% of the tracking devices floated off in other directions).

http://deepseanews.com/2009/05/deep-oce ... onsidered/

[TallDave]

to the Maldives - who will lose their nation, completely

Shrug. Holland is still around. Some places like Boston actually have considerably more area above the sea than 400 years ago. In any case, a few more cm of sea level really makes little difference when storm surges are measured in meters. It would take 500 years for the problem to really be significant, and that's way too far to plan for.

to the population of the earth which 50% bigger than now will be coping with much lower food productivity (sure - in time we can find or genertically engineer new crops which are adjusted to higher temperatures)

Why would we need to? If you've spent any time at all farming you know plants generally grow better at slightly higher temps. We will see an increase in food production -- longer growing seasons, higher productivity, and the additional CO2 doesn't hurt either.

Even in the unproven case that we experience significant warming between now and 2100, the net consequences from global warming are likely to be positive, as they have been throughout human history. Far more people are hurt by excess cold than by excess heat.

The global warming movement is more of a quasi-religious environmentalists' crusade (backed by selective use of data) to decrease what they see as man's deleterious influence on the earth than a real crisis backed by scientific evidence.

[IntLibber]

I think both could be right: it could get cold pretty quickly, but we wouldn't have the ice covering everything for some time.

Hey Int, did you see the recent study on the Atlantic conveyor? They're now saying it probably doesn't exist (apparently 90% of the tracking devices floated off in other directions).

http://deepseanews.com/2009/05/deep-oce ... onsidered/

Well, personally I've never viewed them as hydrological superhighways, despite the Goreacle's penchant for them. Surface currents like the gulf stream often have a lot of eddys and such drifting off the side, so I'd not be surprised to see the same thing in the depths with the cold return, nor would I be surprised to see the cold return being spread across a rather wide area of the ocean bottom, with a lot of turbulence caused by interactions with seamounts and the mid ocean ridge.

The existence of the gulf stream automatically mandates there be some sort of cold return mechanism. Satellite photos clearly show the effects of the gulf stream, warming up the scandinavian and karellian north regions far above what their climates should be, meanwhile the beaufort gyre regularly pushes ice around the arctic and helps maintain a feed of ice that flows over the top of Greenland and down the east coast, sinking along the way.

[IntLibber]

to the Maldives - who will lose their nation, completely

Shrug. Holland is still around. Some places like Boston actually have considerably more area above the sea than 400 years ago. In any case, a few more cm of sea level really makes little difference when storm surges are measured in meters. It would take 500 years for the problem to really be significant, and that's way too far to plan for.

Lets address this specifically. The Maldives are NOT sinking or being flooded. Claims that is is are a massive fraud being perpetrated by folks on the island to get more international aid:

http://www.climatechangefraud.com/conte ... /3623/236/

"When running the International Commission on Sea Level Change, he launched a special project on the Maldives, whose leaders have for 20 years been calling for vast sums of international aid to stave off disaster. Six times he and his expert team visited the islands, to confirm that the sea has not risen for half a century. Before announcing his findings, he offered to show the inhabitants a film explaining why they had nothing to worry about. The government refused to let it be shown.

Similarly in Tuvalu, where local leaders have been calling for the inhabitants to be evacuated for 20 years, the sea has if anything dropped in recent decades. The only evidence the scaremongers can cite is based on the fact that extracting groundwater for pineapple growing has allowed seawater to seep in to replace it. Meanwhile, Venice has been sinking rather than the Adriatic rising, says Dr Mörner.

One of his most shocking discoveries was why the IPCC has been able to show sea levels rising by 2.3mm a year. Until 2003, even its own satellite-based evidence showed no upward trend. But suddenly the graph tilted upwards because the IPCC's favoured experts had drawn on the finding of a single tide-gauge in Hong Kong harbour showing a 2.3mm rise. The entire global sea-level projection was then adjusted upwards by a "corrective factor" of 2.3mm, because, as the IPCC scientists admitted, they "needed to show a trend".

When I spoke to Dr Mörner last week, he expressed his continuing dismay at how the IPCC has fed the scare on this crucial issue. When asked to act as an "expert reviewer" on the IPCC's last two reports, he was "astonished to find that not one of their 22 contributing authors on sea levels was a sea level specialist: not one". Yet the results of all this "deliberate ignorance" and reliance on rigged computer models have become the most powerful single driver of the entire warmist hysteria. "

[MSimon]

Fraud at the IPCC?

I am so disappointed.

This calls my whole belief in AGW into question. What a fool I have been. How could such an honest organization like the UN do this? I'm shocked.

[tomclarke]

strong claims - from a blog, and one scientist whose papers raise controversy amongst most of his peers (who are not all climate scientists).

So: what is the source evidence for this claim of fraud - and what is the other side of the story? It is easy to accuse people of deliberate fraud when in fact all that has happenned is a few mistakes which have now been corrected.

Tom

[MSimon]

strong claims - from a blog, and one scientist whose papers raise controversy amongst most of his peers (who are not all climate scientists).

So: what is the source evidence for this claim of fraud - and what is the other side of the story? It is easy to accuse people of deliberate fraud when in fact all that has happenned is a few mistakes which have now been corrected.

Tom

Yeah - like the adjustment for CO2 + amplification warming factors that was made when the scientist found that they were aliasing the PDO/ENSO for CO2.

I'm still waiting. It has only been 12 years. I'm sure they will get around to it soon. Really soon. Absolutely no sign of fraud in that oversight.

Or the fact that the crockey stick was prominently featured in the last IPCC report a number of times despite the fact that its was know to be in error. Absolutely no sign of fraud there.

It is why con men do so well. Even when evidence of fraud shows up people being scammed don't want to give up their beliefs. Faith is a wonderful thing. People will go to their deaths and kill others for it. Generally doubt is safer for all concerned. However, it is not near as satisfying as faith.

Old Aleister (you are a Brit, you have heard of him, no?) had it right:

I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.

[tomclarke]

Not Aleister Crowley?

You have strange taste in poetry - but I see from wiki that his father was an engineer, so perhaps that is a connection.

He was a v weird person. Ok, u may think most brits are weird, but not that weird!

Tom

PS I am a brit. Isambard Kingdom Brunel was a brit.

[MSimon]

Not Aleister Crowley?

You have strange taste in poetry - but I see from wiki that his father was an engineer, so perhaps that is a connection.

He was a v weird person. Ok, u may think most brits are weird, but not that weird!

Tom

PS I am a brit. Isambard Kingdom Brunel was a brit.

It is rather worse than that for me. I have studied Magick In Theory and Practice extensively.

Magick in Theory and Practice

Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will.

(Illustration: It is my Will to inform the World of certain facts within my knowledge. I therefore take "magickal weapons", pen, ink, and paper; I write "incantations"---these sentences---in the "magickal language" ie, that which is understood by the people I wish to instruct; I call forth "spirits", such as printers, publishers, booksellers and so forth and constrain them to convey my message to those people. The composition and distribution of this book is thus an act of Magick by which I cause Changes to take place in conformity with my Will.)

In one sense Magick may be defined as the name given to Science by the vulgar.

II) POSTULATE.

ANY required change may be effected by the application of the proper kind and degree of Force in the proper manner, through the proper medium to the proper object.

(Illustration: I wish to prepare an ounce of Chloride of Gold. I must take the right kind of acid, nitro-hydrochloric and no other, in a vessel which will not break, leak or corrode, in such a manner as will not produce undesirable results, with the necessary quantity of Gold: and so forth. Every change has its own conditions.

In the present state of our knowledge and power some changes are not possible in practice; we cannot cause eclipses, for instance, or transform lead into tin, or create men from mushrooms. But it is theoretically possible to cause in any object any change of which that object is capable by nature; and the conditions are covered by the above postulate.)

There is more.

If you will note: the above is rather like what I have been up to with Polywell. Especially re: information. Fortunately "printer's devils" do not enter much into the current equation.

Although I did have to help invent the internet first. (I designed the I/O board that went into the world's first BBS). And when I was up to that I had absolutely no thought of Polywell. I first got informed of it at Classical Values. Hmmmm. Is Magick a Classical Value? Well obviously the threads are all rather convoluted. It all started for me when I was born. And then.... And I owe to Hitler and Hirohito the accident of my birth. Without them my mom and dad wouldn't have met.

I'm reminded of Arthur C. Clarke's dictum:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

I wonder if he was a student of Crowley?

[IntLibber]

I'm reminded of Arthur C. Clarke's dictum:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

I wonder if he was a student of Crowley?

I think it had more to do with the fact that most people tend to be more likely to succumb to magical thinking as a lazy substitution for reason. Anything not understood easily has fairydust/curse/boogeymen running it. The more ignorant a person is, the more magical the universe and other beings are.

[MSimon]

I'm reminded of Arthur C. Clarke's dictum:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

I wonder if he was a student of Crowley?

I think it had more to do with the fact that most people tend to be more likely to succumb to magical thinking as a lazy substitution for reason. Anything not understood easily has fairydust/curse/boogeymen running it. The more ignorant a person is, the more magical the universe and other beings are.

I would agree. However, deep thinking on difficult subjects requiring long trains of logic and prone to error at every point is not a common human trait. So for most it is not just laziness. For most it is an impossibility.