Originally Posted by The Wonkette

I've got a question for Justin, Robert Reed, and other skeptics: Do you feel that we should be taking steps to reduce pollution and dependence on non-renewable resources?

The two have nothing to do with each other. And really, you're doing a great disservice to the goal of having a nice place to live and not wasting things by tying them to such a potentially-discreditable herring as 'anthropogenic global warming'. Surely all of us with kids put a high priority on them growing up healthy; but how many jump onto every (superficially plausible) passing fad just on the off chance that it may be the right thing to do? I mean, what's the harm if you are wrong? And it is your kids' health you are talking about....

Doesn't it bother you to think that, when either science or experience debunks the notion, at the margins people are going to feel it as a strike against conservationism?

Hey! I just came up with an example where "doing nothing" [in terms of running around screaming your head about human-caused climate change] has benefits that outweigh the costs! It allows you to pursue your serious goals without picking up the baggage of the lunatic fringe. Not only do you get more time to spend on the things that matter to you, but when the lunatics finally fall, you're not pulled down with them. Would David take that as a fair example of a hypothetical C-B equation?

Originally Posted by Arkham '80

Who are you and what have you done with zilch?

That's Marс right there. He's been that way all along; it just gets hard to see sometimes. Why do you thing I keep agitating to keep him around?

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

H-m-m-m. The prevailing winds point toward environmental action and energy constraint ... all good things, regardless of whether Global Warming(TM) has validity of not. Conoco-Philips is one of the more recent converts.

I wonder why Establishment Industry would be getting on board?

Hmmm... cui bono?...

Let's ask CounterPunch

Originally Posted by Alexander Cockburn

Now take the latest brouhaha over emissions from coal-fired plants. The industry wants what is coyly called "flexibility" in emission standards. EPA chief Christy Whitman is talking about "voluntary incentives", and market-based pollution credits as the proper way to go. Aware of the political pitfalls, the Bush administration has recently been saying that it is not yet quite ready to issue new rules.

Now, there's no uncertainty about the effects of the stuff that comes out of a power plant chimney. There are heavy metals and fine particles that kill people or make them sick. There are also cleaning devices, some of them expensive, that can remove these toxic substances. Ever since the 1970s the energy industry has fought mandatory imposition of such cleaners. If Bush and Whitman enforce this flexibility they will be condemning people to death, as have previous footdragging administrations, both Democratic as well as Republican.

Both political parties have danced to the industry's tunes. It was with the propagandizing of Stephen Breyer (now on the US Supreme Court, then a top aide to Senator Teddy Kennedy), that the trend to pollution credits began. And after the glorious regulatory laxity of the Reagan/Bush years the industry was not seriously discommoded in Clinton Time. Ask the inhabitants of West Virginia and Tennessee whether they think that the coal industry lost clout in those years.

The sad truth of the matter is that many "big picture" environmental theses such as human-caused global warming afford marvelously inviting ways of avoiding specific and mostly difficult political decisions. You can bellow for "global responsibility" without seriously offending powerful corporate interests, some of which (like the nuclear power industry) now have a big stake in promoting global warming. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill loves the "caused by humans" warming thesis and so does the aluminum industry in which he has been a prime player. On the other side we can soon expect to hear that powerful Democrat, Senator Bobby Byrd arguing that the coal industry is in the vanguard of the war on global warming, because the more the more you shade the earth perhaps the more rain you cause. So burn dirty coal and protect the earth by cooling it.

The logic of the caused-by-humans models installs the coal industry as the savior of "global warming"? You want to live by a model that does that?

Engineers are known for their ability to simplify things (treat your 'horse' as a 'sphere', and all that), but that seems a bit going overboard to me...

That's not what I said. Gravity acting on the falling object is the simple model used to capture the essential features of a barrel going over the falls, which is a complex dynamical problem. My point was one does not always have to understand all the details of a phenomenon in order to draw useful conclusions about it.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Mike would have you believe that the interaction of solar hydrodynamics, atmospheriс, lithospheric, and hydrospheric (and biospheric) chemical interplays, and the movement of the system through the galactic topography (for example, the timing of some larger climate cycles has been found to coincide quite nicely with the passage of the Sol system through the spiral arms of the Milky Way) -- which itself is not mapped in the adequate micro to make less than thousand-year approximations...

The bolded statement is an example of an irrelevancy injected to confuse the issue. In a complex system like climate we are interested in the effects of variables. On a time scale of decades (which is what we are concerned with here) variables associated with galactic orbital mechanics are for practical purposes constant. The same goes for the effect of precession or orbital eccentricity, all of which change on a time scale that dwarfs the one of interest. The effect of constants are constant and so cannot produce change.

Solar hydrodynamics are irrelevant, their product, solar activity, is what is relevant. The same is true for chemical interplays between the atmosphere, hydrospere and lithosphere. What matters is their effect on greenhouse gas content. Since the products can be measured, we don't have to understand the mechanisms that produce them. We do need predictions of what future values of these inputs are likely to be. This could be obtained from a detailed understanding of the mechanism that produces them, but it can also be obtained from correlation or assumption (projecting multiple scenarios).

Correlation can be used to make predictions without having any understanding of the cause of the correlation. A good example is the calender. For thousands of years users of the calender had no understanding of the cause of the seasons, their theories (e.g. Persephone) were uniformly wrong, but their calenders worked to predict the timing of the seasons, length of the day and so forth.

So we can use correlations between sunspot number (another observable that correlates with solar activity) and temperature to explain past temperature movements. We can project future CO2 levels since the dominant factor on them over the span of time of interest is human release of CO2.

None of what you wrote affects my point. You imply we cannot predict exactly what all the inputs will be in the future. You are right. Sunspot number could go down or up or stay about the same over the next 30 years. On the other hand, CO2 is only going to go up. Celestial mechanics are going to stay the same. Thus, there is a bias towards warming. Even if another factor is important, its effect in the future could be to warm as much as to cool. Or it could stay the same and so not exert its effect.

Since there are two ways that factors can not counter rising CO2 (promote warming or not change) and only one way to counter rising CO2 (promote cooling) it is unlikely that even the presence of unknown factors is going to alleviate the need to do something about rising CO2 in the short term--unless we get lucky.

And this is bascially what the deniers are saying. Let's roll the dice and hope we get lucky!

The Cockburn quote is a bucket of nothing. How does concern for global warming reduce concern for heavy metals? Similarly how does concern for global warming reduce the danger of nuclear waste? Particulates are bad, just because they might produce cooling doesn't mean they are a good thing. Coal plants can reduce warming and conventional pollutants without particulates by embracing gasification. The carbon tax pushes in this direction w/o sacrificing other environmental goals.

There IS a political dimension to the global warming issue. Just because there is doesn't mean the phenomenon doesn't exist or isn't a problem.

Dirty coal plants is the deniers preferred approach. They would do nothing until it is obvious that there is a problem in which case alleviation by reducing CO2 will be impossble without destroying the economy. So the free market solution will be to dirty coal plants evertywhere with serious consequences on the heath of nonrich people. In the article Cockburn argues for dirty coal. He doesn't think so because he chooses to believe that temperature will not ever rise to levels where dirty coal is forced on us. And if he is wrong, Marx always favored policies that increased the suffering of the proletariat as that would hasten the revolution, perhaps Cockburn does too.

But if the deniers do not win the political battle the solutions adopted will have a certain shape. Injection of soot into the atmosphere will be frowned upon. Coal will not be the savior of anything.

Sexy treehuggers and politically-isolated penguins -

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070411/...warzenegger_dc

"Bodybuilding used to have a very sketchy image," the former bodybuilding champion told an environmental forum at Georgetown University. "... It had fanatics and it had weird people. ...But we changed that. ... It became sexy, attractive."

"Like bodybuilders, environmentalists were thought of as kind of weird and fanatics also, you know, the serious tree huggers," Schwarzenegger said.

He said those pushing for limits on greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution were not on the fringe but in the center of the debate on global warming, adding that the environmental movement needs to get to the point where it "is no longer seen as a nag or as a scold."

"We have to make it mainstream, we have to make it sexy, we have to make it attractive so that everyone wants to participate," Schwarzenegger said

In Washington to meet with the head of the Environmental Protection Agency and Democratic Sen. Diane Feinstein of California, the Republican governor said politicians who oppose acting to curb greenhouse gas emissions will endanger themselves.

"Your political base will melt away as surely as the polar ice caps," he said. "... You will become a political penguin on a smaller and smaller ice floe that is drifting out to sea. Goodbye, my little friend! That's what's going to happen."

"We're going to change the dynamic of greenhouse gas and carbon emissions ourselves," Schwarzenegger said. "We are not waiting for anyone, we are not waiting for the federal government or Washington."

Warning to Wonkette and other 4T Forum ladies - prepare yourselves!
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Schwarzenegger says ... make environment sexy, like me / AP

Originally Posted by Justin '77

... Hey! I just came up with an example where "doing nothing" [in terms of running around screaming your head about human-caused climate change] has benefits that outweigh the costs! It allows you to pursue your serious goals without picking up the baggage of the lunatic fringe. Not only do you get more time to spend on the things that matter to you, but when the lunatics finally fall, you're not pulled down with them. Would David take that as a fair example of a hypothetical C-B equation?

Creative ... but no.

Originally Posted by zilch

Uh, you simply do not understand the equation here. Your self-defense reaction is understandable, but this guy's gonna kill you in the name of the greater good. What great calling is there than that?

Thus your act of self-defense is merely underscoring the reason why he needs to kill you in the first place.

H-m-m-m. Apparently you missed the part about her eating the last of the food, taking privilege to the point where my collateral death is of no consequence as long as it doesn't disturb her pleasure. I'm sure you feel the same.

Of course, in the real world, your rules don't apply when they start to affect the ability of others to exist. They will tend to take it personally. The French did once, and the result wasn't pretty. The Russians, too.

So, are you voluteering for the role of arrogant aristocrat?

[quote=Justin '77;195263]

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

... H-m-m-m. The prevailing winds point toward environmental action and energy constraint ... all good things, regardless of whether Global Warming(TM) has validity of not. Conoco-Philips is one of the more recent converts. [/quote]I wonder why Establishment Industry would be getting on board?

Hmmm... cui bono?... Let's ask CounterPunch

Of course they want to influence the debate. They would really like to write the rules. But in the end, they want to make money.

There are a number of reason for us to move to alternative energy, with the environment being only one. We also need to escape the M.E. sandtrap. The last thing the exrtractive industries want to happen is to be shut out of the energy future.

For now, they will play nice out of self interest, but they will continue to do it as a matter of basic survival.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Mike would have you believe that the interaction of solar hydrodynamics, atmospheri?, lithospheric, and hydrospheric (and biospheric) chemical interplays, and the movement of the system through the galactic topography (for example, the timing of some larger climate cycles has been found to coincide quite nicely with the passage of the Sol system through the spiral arms of the Milky Way) -- which itself is not mapped in the adequate micro to make less than thousand-year approximations -- is perfectly analogous to the action of gravity on a falling object.

Engineers are known for their ability to simplify things (treat your 'horse' as a 'sphere', and all that), but that seems a bit going overboard to me...

Hmm... I wouldn't be that surprised if being near more stars caused more light, thus more heat, thus a warmer planet. That the magnitude is large enough to show up in the ice cores is a mild surprise. Thing is, you are just throwing in another distraction. Entering a spiral arm will just make global warming worse, but it isn't due to happen in the foreseeable future. As has been observed before, the skeptics love to throw in the irrelevant to create confusion and stir up emotion. In fact, it ought not to be that difficult to calculate how much more energy hits the planet while in a spiral arm, and add another factor to the models. It just won't be any more relevant to the problem at hand than the rest of your distractions and emotions.

So, yes, you provided another example of a physical mechanism which can be understood reasonably well by laymen, which can be observed in nature, simulated in the laboratory, and added to the models. Why you think that is valid science while CO2 is not, I don't know. I just figure there are a lot more important and immediate concerns than measuring the exact location of the very fuzzy galactic arm borders, and plotting out where solar system is going to be over the next few billion years.

CO2 and other unexplained sources have added at least 0.6 degrees to the averages. 2 to 3 degrees can be enough to produce extinction events, vast disruptions in the biosphere which can themselves produce more temperature increasing effects. (Polar ice and glaciers are already melting, making the planet darker, allowing absorption of more heat. Permafrost thaw is already releasing methane.) This 0.6 degrees plus exists, is real, is now, is measurable, is explained, whether one looks at absolute temperatures or tries to compensate out all other known factors.

It is true there is a yet unmodeled cooling effect visible in the 1950s through 1970s that masked warming over that period. That unknown cooling factor however, -- my guess is global dimming -- is currently being overwhelmed by CO2 and other factors. Why the skeptics have such irrational faith that this unknown cooling factor will suddenly leap into play in a much larger and much more long term way than it did in the mid 20th Century, overwhelming well known and observable effects of the CO2, polar melt and permafrost methane releases, I can only explain as the conservative trend to not address problems. It is politics, not science. It is the typical conservative refusal to change values in the face of crisis.

Will the scientists have any better luck convincing the capitalists than the abolitionists had convincing the slave owners? I doubt it. Values are stubborn things. People are quite capable of believing what seems convenient. Thing is, reality has a way of changing cultures. The slave owners, in refusing to change, had to be made irrelevant. Obsolete values will go extinct, one way or another.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

The bolded statement is an example of an irrelevancy injected to confuse the issue. In a complex system like climate we are interested in the effects of variables. On a time scale of decades (which is what we are concerned with here) variables associated with galactic orbital mechanics are for practical purposes constant.

See, there's your oversimplification. They are for all practical purposes constant, except at boundary transitions. Then they can end up being very important. So where are we? Boundary transitions happen -- no denying that. Are we near one? You don't know, do you? Frankly, no one does. All we know is that there are known drivers for climate changes of far greater magnitude than what we appear to be seeing now for which we have almost no data.
But that's okay; according to the IPCC report, it is perfectly sound science to assume that the impact of the variables we don't measure is insignificant. Good stuff, there.

The same goes for the effect of precession or orbital eccentricity, all of which change on a time scale that dwarfs the one of interest.

Actually, the same does not go for regular cyclical events as does for galactic topography. You see, those cyclical events are known quantities. You simply cannot say with any degree of accuracy what kind of environment the system is passing through now or what it will be passing through in five years, when it has advanced -- at 217km/s -- almost three times its entire diameter (11.8 billion km; the mean orbital diameter of Pluto). We've never even been able to topo-map what's as far out as one Pluto-radius. So you could hardly call it a known, repeating constant. And although we know that there are big rolling hills to go through (the spiral arms), we also know that there are plenty of bumps and dips.

Solar hydrodynamics are irrelevant, their product, solar activity, is what is relevant. The same is true for chemical interplays between the atmosphere, hydrospere and lithosphere. What matters is their effect on greenhouse gas content. Since the products can be measured, we don't have to understand the mechanisms that produce them. We do need predictions of what future values of these inputs are likely to be. This could be obtained from a detailed understanding of the mechanism that produces them, but it can also be obtained from correlation or assumption (projecting multiple scenarios).

Such correlations would need to be based in an underlying algorithm that at least displays an understanding of the force-balancing in the driving hydrodynamics. Otherwise, they're all just assumptions. Not that there's anything wrong with assumptions per se; just that your knowns should really outnumber them by a fair margin if you want to do serious work.

If you're peddling religious dogma, though, then no need to worry.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Creative ... but no.

So. You're not actually looking for a cost/benefit argument that falls to the side of prudence at all, then. Just demagoguing.

Okey-doke.

What effect would the increase in sea level have on plate tectonics, if any?

Originally Posted by mattzs

What effect would the increase in sea level have on plate tectonics, if any?

Probably none. On the other hand, faster plate movement will result in more creation of sea floor, which will take millions of years to cool off and will therefore be elevated, raising sea level.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

They are for all practical purposes constant, except at boundary transitions. Then they can end up being very important. So where are we? Boundary transitions happen -- no denying that.

Boundary transitions in what? Galactic topography. Sounds like hand waving. Are you refering to Alexey N. Dmitriev?

Such correlations would need to be based in an underlying algorithm that at least displays an understanding of the force-balancing in the driving hydrodynamics.

No they don't. One can use mechanistic understanding to select a useful form for a correlation (e.g. double reciprocal plots for Michaelis-Menten kinetics) but for many things simple correlations work quite well:

For example a linear correlation words well to represent the relation between sunspots and cosmic raysl:

Originally Posted by Ben Espen

I think sunspots are a pretty good indication of cosmic rays. I grabbed the data on both from the following places:

ftp://ftp.ngdc.noaa.gov/STP/SOLAR_DATA/SUNSPOT_NUMBERS/
ftp://ftp.ngdc.noaa.gov/STP/SOLAR_DA...AYS/climax.tab
It is pretty hard to miss a cosmic ray, you just point your scintillation counter up and wait. Sunspots are similarly easy to see, as generations of blind astronomers testify.

As you can see, there is a pretty good negative correlation here.
]

No mechanism was required to construct this correlations.

Otherwise, they're all just assumptions.

No they aren't.

Originally Posted by The Rani

One of them pointed out that people like me, who eat veggie but don't make a big deal out it, do more for "the cause" than the militant animal rights people who harrass people at every meal. He said that when I was around, he was always concsious of having veggie options and not overdoing the meat, out of politeness.

Fletch: "God I admire you . . . .Well, consider this case closed."

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Creative ... but no.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

So. You're not actually looking for a cost/benefit argument that falls to the side of prudence at all, then. Just demagoguing.

Okey-doke.

No, just something with numbers. It's hard to analyze fantasy.

Originally Posted by The Rani

... Since we're now discussing killing each other off, I would say that this discussion has reached a similar point.

OK. Truce.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

No, just something with numbers. It's hard to analyze fantasy.

Just thought I'd throw out a few numbers, for the benefit of those living in the reality based universe. This following chart is from a less automated version of the models. (Meehl, G.A., W.M. Washington, C.A. Ammann, J.M. Arblaster, T.M.L. Wigleym and C. Tebaldi (2004). "Combinations of Natural and Anthropogenic Forcings in Twentieth-Century Climate". Journal of Climate 17: 3721-3727. ) No automatic curve fitting. They just measured five separate factors, calculated forcing for each separately in five colors, then added them together in black. As this was a study of the 20th Century, the year 1900 was arbitrarily declared 'normal.' All curves measure differences from 1900.



Interestingly, when you break out the curves, you can start to attribute the cooling trend in the 1950s through 1970s. The major man made factors, Greenhouse (blue) and Global Dimming (labeled "Sulfate" in purple) are fairly flat. They are both traveling in fairly straight lines, one trending upwards, one downwards, doing much what they did for the entire century. Two natural factors, solar energy and volcanic activity, both trend downwards in that period. Note that the major two human factors are larger than the natural effects.

The grey areas around the 'modeled' curve show the 68% and 95% probability lines. In any chaotic system, one expects noise. If the curve is good, it ought to stay in the 68% area 68% of the time, and the 95% curve 95% of the time. It needs a little more work. One might look to improve the model by another tenth of a degree. One should not ignore trends significantly larger.

People who look at solar cycles have made some predictions as to the future. Some project another cooling period similar to the "Maunder Minimum" that caused "Little Ice Age" another century out. Further out still might be another warm period, similar to the one that produced the warm time during the Middle Ages. Thing is, the magnitude of the solar variations is less that the greenhouse and sulfate trends. If India and China respond to health concerns as the West did, and start cutting sulfates, if the polar ice melts and the tundra starts spilling methane, the next Little Ice Age would be swamped by much larger forcing factors.

I know of no way to make long term predictions about volcanic activity. They are a mixed blessing. They release particles to produce a short term boost in global dimming, and release CO2 to produce a longer term addition to greenhouse gasses. Praying to Pele for volcanic relief from global warming is thus problematic. Volcanoes are just going to be a random factor. They generally cause less forcing that the man made effects, but events like Mount Tambora generating the Year Without a Summer could happen at any time.

Not modeled in the above is the latest distraction, galactic topography. I did find some interesting articles on that one. It seems that as the sun orbits the Milky Way's galactic center, one enters and leaves galactic arms with a cycle of about 130,000,000 years. The amount of 'forcing,' temperature change attributed to galactic position is significant. One estimate showed a difference of 15 degrees between being dead center of a galactic arm and dead center of a galactic gap.

Which means, typically, one might expect roughly 15 degrees divided by 650,000 centuries worth of change in galactic arm forcing over a century. This would make a difference of .000023 degrees per century. This compares to .7 degrees of measured change. Clearly, unless we are surprised by the sudden appearance of a new arm of the galaxy, this is not going to be a measurable factor. Counting on the appearance of a new galactic arm to save the planet seems less that prudent.

Forcing due to galactic topography does turn up in the long term diagrams, however.



Galactic arms are not spaced evenly and are not mapped accurately. Thus, you see estimates of periods between ice epochs such as 130,000,000 years plus or minus 25,000,000 years. Thus, one would expect to see cooling trends of roughly 65,000,000 years, followed by a warming trend of similar length. You can see one such cooling trend above, with about 50,000,000 years having passed since the Eocene Optimum. The galactic arms are shock waves, not too unlike ripples on the surface of the sea. The star and dust cloud density changes as a sine wave, not as a square wave. There are no 'boundary conditions' where you go suddenly from no stars to billions and billions of stars. The change is gradual. By the time a star orbits around to return to where it was, the galaxy has changed. New ripples would have formed. Old ones might not be there. Thus, yes, scientists could spend some time more accurately locating galactic arms, and projecting what the galaxy might look like as the sun reaches various points in its travels. Sometime in the next million years, we might want to get around to it.

But galactic topography is a very long term very slow forcing factor. Incorporating it into the short term global climate picture is just an unnecessary complication. Just draw a flat line across the top diagram to indicate the effects of galactic topography, and add zero to the combined curve.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

Forcing due to galactic topography does turn up in the long term diagrams, however.



Galactic arms are not spaced evenly and are not mapped accurately. Thus, you see estimates of periods between ice epochs such as 130,000,000 years plus or minus 25,000,000 years. Thus, one would expect to see cooling trends of roughly 65,000,000 years, followed by a warming trend of similar length. You can see one such cooling trend above, with about 50,000,000 years having passed since the Eocene Optimum. The galactic arms are shock waves, not too unlike ripples on the surface of the sea. The star and dust cloud density changes as a sine wave, not as a square wave. There are no 'boundary conditions' where you go suddenly from no stars to billions and billions of stars. The change is gradual. By the time a star orbits around to return to where it was, the galaxy has changed. New ripples would have formed. Old ones might not be there. Thus, yes, scientists could spend some time more accurately locating galactic arms, and projecting what the galaxy might look like as the sun reaches various points in its travels. Sometime in the next million years, we might want to get around to it.

But galactic topography is a very long term very slow forcing factor. Incorporating it into the short term global climate picture is just an unnecessary complication. Just draw a flat line across the top diagram to indicate the effects of galactic topography, and add zero to the combined curve.

What I've read says that the cooling during the Cenozoic is due to tectonic factors, not astronomical ones. The cooling was caused by the separation of South America and Antarctica and by the uplift of the Alpine-Himalayan and Andes mountain belts.

Originally Posted by The Rani

I was out to dinner with a bunch of friends a while back, eating a veggie burger while they all had various forms of dead cattle. One of them pointed out that people like me, who eat veggie but don't make a big deal out it, do more for "the cause" than the militant animal rights people who harrass people at every meal. He said that when I was around, he was always concsious of having veggie options and not overdoing the meat, out of politeness.

And yet, the only reason this had the effect it did is because other people have in the past promoted vegetarianism in less subtle ways (if, let's hope, not always obnoxious ones). If that were not the case, your friend would not have even had the option in his mind, nor noticed your good example. You were able to assume the role you did (of exemplar) because others had taken on roles you prefer not to, sparing you the necessity.

Which brings up something relevant to Justin's earlier discourse about alternate explanations for GW. We each have our roles to play, in discourse, and in a Crisis era. That's true both generationally and as individuals. One important role is to say "whoa, slow down," because although decisive collective action will be needed, including government action, it's very possible to take that kind of thing too far and do more than is needed, or take the wrong kind of action. Somebody has to apply the brakes and, for example, suggest that the data are inconclusive to call for a serious response with real sacrifice -- even if they must clutch at truly-improbable straws, and argue in effect that no real knowledge is possible about anything (which it isn't if one is to introduce factors as speculative and far-fetched as galactic stellar concentrations), and so no action is ever justified.

People believe what they want to believe in many cases. If one regards collective action in general and government action in particular as dangerous and undesirable, and further believes that the reality of human-caused global warming, if generally accepted, will provoke collective action and probably government action, one is strongly motivated to believe that human-caused global warming is NOT a reality, and to find support for that belief anywhere one can, even if it is of an intellectual character one would reject in less charged contexts. But that's OK as long as we remember that Justin is fulfilling the requirements of his (and by and large his generation's) role in the dialogue -- a very important and necessary one -- and that ultimately what will determine things is an intersection and interweaving of everyone's contribution. AND as long as Justin, etc. remember to keep advising caution about too-precipitous and possibly stupid collective action EVEN AFTER they come to their senses about the reality of what we face.

I think people on my side of this fence sometimes get overstimulated on the subject because there have been so many deliberate lies promulgated by "scientists" funded by the fossil-fuel industry, and it's natural to be angry when one has been lied to. But that doesn't do much good either -- I've found that out the hard way. And in any case anger needs to be directed at the real culprits, not those fooled by them, who are generally guiltless.

And yes, when it reaches the point of killing each other (even in simulation), things have gone too far. The Civil War should teach us that. We are all necessary.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

But that's OK as long as we remember that Justin is fulfilling the requirements of his (and by and large his generation's) role in the dialogue -- a very important and necessary one -- and that ultimately what will determine things is an intersection and interweaving of everyone's contribution. AND as long as Justin, etc. remember to keep advising caution about too-precipitous and possibly stupid collective action EVEN AFTER they come to their senses about the reality of what we face.

Let's call it a deal.

Originally Posted by Odin

What I've read says that the cooling during the Cenozoic is due to tectonic factors, not astronomical ones. The cooling was caused by the separation of South America and Antarctica and by the uplift of the Alpine-Himalayan and Andes mountain belts.

I don't doubt the tectonic factors were important. The astronomical theory is still fairly new, and somewhat controversial. Lots of folks have other theories which might also be valid and contributing. You can measure greenhouse gas levels, and the amount of dust in the atmosphere. You can get a pretty good guess at where the continents were. It's much harder to get a look at where the galactic arms were several hundred million years back, though they try to estimate it by looking at what sort of cosmic rays were hitting meteors of various ages.

I keep finding plots of average temperature against time that go further back. The following is the latest. You can see a signal there with a period that matches the 130,000,000 plus or minus 25,000,000 years you'd expect if galactic arms contribute. The astronomers have been able to line these swings up with their guesses of where the galactic arms might have been.



But mountains aren't going to rise, continents drift, and galactic arms form in the course of the next few decades. None of the ultra slow motion factors are going to effect the decisions that must be made over the next several turnings. People who bring up these factors up aren't being honest with someone, though often enough they might be fooling themselves.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

But mountains aren't going to rise, continents drift, and galactic arms form in the course of the next few decades. None of the ultra slow motion factors are going to effect the decisions that must be made over the next several turnings. People who bring up these factors up aren't being honest with someone, though often enough they might be fooling themselves.

Why do you keep talking about the galactic arms? They're not the point I was making -- of course they couldn't be; they are fairly well-mapped and a fairly well-understood event. My point is that, since we have evidence showing that galactic topography has a significant (perhaps even one of the most significant) delta-effect on the globe's climate, what about the interstices? Do you really think that the spaces between the arms are empty? Or that no 50-AU-wide -- that'd be about two decades' worth of travel time for us -- patches of roughness exist?

The point is: It does have a significant effect; and we don't know what is happening right now on that regard.

But go ahead and play with your 'high degrees of certainty' if it makes you feel good.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Why do you keep talking about the galactic arms? They're not the point I was making -- of course they couldn't be; they are fairly well-mapped and a fairly well-understood event. My point is that, since we have evidence showing that galactic topography has a significant (perhaps even one of the most significant) delta-effect on the globe's climate, what about the interstices? Do you really think that the spaces between the arms are empty? Or that no 50-AU-wide -- that'd be about two decades' worth of travel time for us -- patches of roughness exist?

The point is: It does have a significant effect; and we don't know what is happening right now on that regard.

But go ahead and play with your 'high degrees of certainty' if it makes you feel good.

I went to click on your links in high hopes that I might learn what you are talking about. Unfortunately, they aren't links, they are just underlines. Nothing to learn. I did try to Google words like stellar, topography, climate, change and various other similar words in assorted combinations. What I got was spiral arms and a few tin foil hat sites.

Could you give me a hint as to the shape of your tin foil hat? If your claims are purely faith based in nature, I can't address them without knowing what religion I am dealing with.

One peer reviewed paper I did read mentioned the mechanisms for the spiral arm effects. Cosmic rays effect cloud formations. More stars mean more cosmic rays.

There are also dust clouds. When a star goes nova or supernova, its remnants cool into dust. There is dust all through the galaxy, but a lot more near old novas, and there are more old novas in spiral arms. Thing is, solar wind blows away dust. One of the Voyagers has been outbound for decades, and only recently hit the border where interstellar dust isn't pushed clear by the sun's rays. If the sun should encounter a dense enough nebula whose dust is driven by the original explosion or other nearby stars, they did calculate that interstellar dust could get within Earth's orbit. It is in theory possible that the solar wind (included in existing climate models) could be overwhelmed by external forces, making it necessary to change to a new model.

Now, neither nebula nor stars are reserved to spiral arms. You are just statistically much more likely to have a close encounter with a nebula or star when you are in a spiral arm.

Thing is, neither a nebula dense enough to fight solar wind nor clusters of stars causing surges of cosmic rays are apt to appear undetected in the next few decades. The nearest star is four light years off. The inverse square law says its influence will be trivially smaller than the sun's. Hubble has been taking all sorts of pretty pictures of nebula and stellar clusters. I haven't heard we are due to hit any of them in the next few decades, or that there are stealth nebula or invisible stars. Sure, a neighbor star could go nova at any time, creating a radiation burst. Like a volcano, it would be a random factor that could effect climate. Thing is, it is an unlikely random factor. You shouldn't count on it happening. The result is more apt to be ugly than pretty.

Thus, I'd just like to see some references on these mystery nebula, invisible to instruments, yet powerful enough to penetrate the solar winds, and how they will effect climate.

Got a link?