[Triffin]

Found this extensive photo collection from
a Danish dentists' visit to Greenland ..

Capital is Nuuk, has about 13,000 residents
Might be an interesting summer destination for
you post PO yachties out there

http://mytrip.dk/esider/ebsider/image001.html

Triff ..

[Liamj]

Exactly!
International Law and complying with it, doesn't mean the actions are good.
That is my whole point from the very beginning.

Okay, I thought you were defending Bush actions because they were within international law, i see now that you're rather pointing out the fact that Bush junta actions are permissible under IL and therefore its an error to claim 'illegal'. I know you know more than me about IL, and i'm quite prepared to take your word for it, so.. Good Point!
Sorry if i missed you making this clear earlier.

If the US's case depends on precedents of 'S.Vietnam invited us, etc' then thats a case i'd love to see dragged thru the courts, just to air all the 'conspiracy theories' (unpleasant facts) about covert killings/bribings/votefixings in the countries listed. But i wouldn't ask anyone to waste their years on what'd have to be an ultimately futile effort.

[nth]

If the US's case depends on precedents of 'S.Vietnam invited us, etc' then thats a case i'd love to see dragged thru the courts, just to air all the 'conspiracy theories' (unpleasant facts) about covert killings/bribings/votefixings in the countries listed. But i wouldn't ask anyone to waste their years on what'd have to be an ultimately futile effort.

Don't worry about it as long as you are clear about it now.

Too bad your scenario will never happen because US doesn't recognize ICJ.

[PenultimateManStanding]

Reading the book oowolf mentioned, Climate Crash by John D. Cox. Fascinating discoveries in recent years (early '90s mainly) about the past record of rapid climate change. The current period of warm, stable climate, The Holocene, of the past 11,640 years came on practically overnight. The last warm period is known as the Eemian was from 135,000 years ago to 110,000 years ago and was a bit warmer than this one. But there were many more rapid, temporary shifts of dramatic proportions then. The last 8000 years has been "strangely stable" by geological standards. It does appear that paleoclimatology can only say what has happened but the systems are too dynamical, non-linear and random to say what will happen in the future. One thing is clear: we are in one of two stable states of global climate - the warm one. The other is the cold one and most of the Earth's history going back for hundreds of thousands of years has been cold. Would it not be a grand irony if modern humanity has lived for thousands of years in blissful ignorance of how cold the world can get practically instantaneously only to develop the scientific ability to discover the truth about this kind of change right at precisely the same moment in time when it's about to happen again! The world is a strange place.

[holmes]

One word.. WOW! interesting to say the least.

[Eli]

So the best science of today, shows that we could be heading into the next Ice age within a decade or have more extreme warming and that these changes in climate have happened many times in the past even before man had any influence on the climate.


I think what we have seen in the past few months is that mankind is helpless when it comes to the environment we live in. Earth quakes, Hurricanes, tsunamis, floods, diseases, with all our science we are all still at the mercy of our environment.

[Raxozanne]

Yeah except that this time around there is a hell of a lot more of of us to be helpess in the face of it.

[PenultimateManStanding]

So the best science of today, shows that we could be heading into the next Ice age within a decade or have more extreme warming

The implication of the record from the past is that we are headed for a rapid temperature drop. My understanding of the impact of fossil fuel burning is that though it contributes to the current rise of C02, it plays only a minor role in the over-all trend up. Mainly though, the record is a toggling between states and we are already in the warm state. So the next switch would be to the cold state, whatever the current trend is.

[Eli]

Thanks for clearing that up for me Penn. I was going to ask the question you answered for me.


That would be the Ironies of Ironies if just when everyone said it was going to keep getting hotter and hotter that we froze to death.

I for one am not impressed by the extent of science's knowledge of how the climate works because what mankind does not know for certain far out ways what he does know.

And it is not what you don't know that usually kills you,
it is what you don't that you don't know that gets you.

[PenultimateManStanding]

Very true Eli. Take these rapid changes for instance. There are things involved such as the dumping of fresh water in the North Atlantic changing the salinity and stopping the sinking in the North Atlantic that returns the water to the equator where it picks up heat again and returns it north to heat Europe. Nobody seems to really know if it is a cause or an effect. Though I'm not quite done with this book about it, it does seem that what has happened in paleoclimatology is that the events have been mapped out but the underlying physical processes remain unknown. Just the details of what has been going on are fascinating though. Seems there are times when huge armadas of icebergs leave the NA and dump particles of rocks onto the ocean floor. They have been cored up and reveal that the changes are global. So what happens in the changes of the Atlantic currents are merely a small part of the overall picture. There are parts of Antarctica that follow along with the Northen Hemisphere climate shifts and parts that work in an opposite pattern. Why? Nobody knows.

[PenultimateManStanding]

Yeah except that this time around there is a hell of a lot more of of us to be helpess in the face of it.

Absolutely. A dramatic change in the global temperatures would mean that the whole world would have to make vast, fundamental shifts. It doesn't seem plausible that humanity could adjust with so many people in it. The last time a huge cold shift of climate occured is when agriculture was invented, apparently as a direct result of the climate shift. (that would be the relatively short ice age right before the Holocene - just a spike on the timeline which ended 11,640 years ago) The next time will have a similar level of radical importance.

[elroy]

Yet another thing to add to the list. Giant volcanoes, asteroid crash, peak oil, economic crash, super flu bug, I'm almost starting to wonder how it's possible we're still around.

[PenultimateManStanding]

Yet another thing to add to the list. Giant volcanoes, asteroid crash, peak oil, economic crash, super flu bug, I'm almost starting to wonder how it's possible we're still around.

It's either a total fluke or else that's the way God planned it. Probably a fluke but you never know.

[bobcousins]

Would it not be a grand irony if modern humanity has lived for thousands of years in blissful ignorance of how cold the world can get practically instantaneously only to develop the scientific ability to discover the truth about this kind of change right at precisely the same moment in time when it's about to happen again! The world is a strange place.

That is pretty much the plot of the "Helliconia..." trilogy by Brian Aldiss, which I found absolutely fascinating, and has stuck in my mind ever since. What civilisations might have existed before the last glacial period, and have been wiped out by the glaciers, leaving no trace? Perhaps civilisation happened so quick this time because of skills gained before?

There is a lot of interesting stuff on climate which is far more than I can go into here, but William Ruddiman has done some interesting work in this area,
see Early farmers warmed Earth's climate. He has a great graph in his paper which I can't find right now[1], which shows warming trends over recent glacial periods. The main driver seems to be a combination of 3 orbital oscillations which affect the amount of solar radiation we get. We are basically just after a peak in temperature.

Humans appear to be creating a temporary blip upwards in temperature, but presumably if we stop generating greenhouse gases, the downward trend will resume. One interesting question is the link between CO2 and temperature. Which comes first?

This cycle of ice age and warm interval has been occurring over the last few million years and appears to be stable though oscillating state. Before that there have been other wild swings, with very long warm and cold periods. The Sun has declined in power over billions of years - could we now be on the edge between a habitable planet and an icy snowball, with the climate teetering between the two?

Its a pity the subject invokes such ignorant emotional response (frm both sides) which obscures some fascinating scientific progress.

There are many random events that could cause global extinctions, they are possible but unpredictable (e.g. gamma ray bursts). The next glacial period is a certainty. Barring the unlikely, it pretty much defines how long our current civilisation could last. How much of our culture could we preserve over 120,000 years with most of the Earth covered in glaciers 1 mile thick?

Read Helliconia Spring!

[1] I found it THE ANTHROPOGENIC GREENHOUSE ERA see page 266.

[PenultimateManStanding]

There are many random events that could cause global extinctions, they are possible but unpredictable (e.g. gamma ray bursts)

Evidently, there are no candidates for a supernova close enough to hit us with a killer shot of gamma rays. A supernova nearby the Solar System could take us out completely. At least we can take that one off of the list of doomsday scenarios! Yellowstone is the biggest threat to wipe out most of the current complex organisms. Of course, it's overdue. The genetic evidence, according the book A Short History Of Almost Everything is that only a few thousand humans survived that last eruption and that we are all descended from them. A caldera forty miles across is rather daunting to think about.

[frankthetank]

Pen~very funny...i'm currently on page 100 of that book...!

[PenultimateManStanding]

Pen~very funny...i'm currently on page 100 of that book...!

Which one, Frank, A Short History or Climate Crash? Both great reads. I simply love a good book about science for the non-specialist. I've read so many of them and never get tired of reading about what scientists are discovering. Climate Crash was terrific in telling us about the latest revolution in science. Everything everyone thought was wrong! The famous Latin phrase, Natura non facit saltum has been shown to be wrong again. The one field of science writing that I don't care to read about anymore is the boundaries of physics. It seems so absurd with it's 42 dimensions or whatever that it's all but useless to make any sense of it.

[frankthetank]

"Climate Crash"...by Cox. I've also read "2 mile time machine" by whats his name (about a year ago). I'm very interested in the past and how climate on earth has changed over time. Its crazy how much the temp up in Greenland has changed...I'm guessing @ lower latitudes it probably wasn't as extreme (but what do i know).

I believe it was around page 80 that the guy (i'll have to look) made the point that during the past 1/2 million years only a small percentage of that time was spent in the warmth, meaning a overwhelming part of that time was spent in the freezer.

I know people make references to all kinds of doomish scenarios, but just look @ the past 20 years and you'll find all kinds of "freak" things that have happened. Now think of the next 80 years (a human lifespan for many) and i don't think you or I can even closely predict what will happen--i doubt it'll be boring.

Hey Europe...your living on borrowed time! Keep an eye on the gulf stream

I really wish i had a time machine.

[PenultimateManStanding]

Hey Europe...your living on borrowed time! Keep an eye on the gulf stream

I really wish i had a time machine.

Those ice cores aren't actually a time machine, but what an amazing amount of information the wizards in the white lab coats have extracted from them. A highly detailed record of the weather in the past going back 150,000 years or so. All from nearly pure ice. Awesome. It isn't just Europe that's living on borrowed time. Then again, the Eemian warm period lasted 25,000 years, so maybe there's nothing to worry about (except oil supplies).

[Antimatter]

Heres a nice pic of the data from the Vostok core:



One showing only more recent time:



Link to large thread destroying version

The changes in temperature actually preceed the changes in GHG's (CO2 and CH4) by several hundred years, the GHGs are thought to be a feedback. The Milankovitch cycles (small variations in earths orbit) are thought to be primary responsible for the cycles and the mechanism and magnitude of the GHG feedbacks not very well known.

The data shows that interglacial --> glacial transitions are usually slow affairs so I'm not too worried about any sudden ice ages. Theres a good chance, IMO, that the extra CO2 we have added will hold off the next ice age for some time, the magnitude of the milankovitch forcings responible for the flips is very small. A good case could be made that we should leave lots of coal, oil shale etc in the ground incase we need to burn it later on if things start getting chilly. Or whip up some super powerfull GHGs Some CFC's are thousands of times more effective a GHG than CO2, it is probably possible to create powerful heat trapping gases that don't eat the ozone layer.