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Friday, February 07, 2014

The Real Story Behind Global Cooling

Right wing commenters on the inter webs love to do their little adolescent dance about how global cooling was all the rage back in the days when they didn't have man tits and could still see their penises. But Doug Struck's recent piece in Scientific American (you know, that magazine for scientists that has been published for nearly 170 years with past contributions from people like Albert Einstein) details exactly how the Church of the Climate Denier has lied about this theory.

For example, the author of the global cooling piece...

"When I wrote this story I did not see it as a blockbuster," Gwynne recalled. "It was just an intriguing piece about what a certain group in a certain niche of climatology was thinking." And, revisionist lore aside, it was hardly a cover story. It was a one-page article on page 64. It was, Gwynne concedes, written with a bit of over-ventilated style that sometimes marked the magazine's prose: "There are ominous signs the earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically..." the piece begins, and warns of a possible "dramatic decline in food production." 

"Newsweek being Newsweek, we might have pushed the envelope a little bit more than I would have wanted," Gwynne offered.

Oh really? I'm most shocked that they would leave out these details...

8 comments:

GuardDuck said...

Was is warmer before the last ice age? Did it get cooler? Then did it warm up again?

Was this before or after human induced carbon exhausting?


Then what could possibly explain that?

Nikto said...

*sigh*

Humans are producing CO2 at an unprecedented rate, freeing up billions upon billions of tons of greenhouse gases that were locked up in coal, crude oil and natural gas beneath the earth over billions of years.

This is changing the temperature of the atmosphere and the ocean at a rate far faster than has been seen in the past in the absence of catastrophic events like massive volcanic eruptions or asteroid impacts.

In effect, mankind burning all these fossil fuels is a catastrophic event on the order of a thousand Krakatoas, albeit erupting over 200 years instead of a few days.

This will drastically alter the climate in a relatively short span of years, which means many plants, insects and animals will not be able to adapt. More importantly, and selfishly, local weather will be drastically altered, causing some areas to get much hotter and drier, while others will be deluged by torrential rains.

This will disrupt agriculture, causing food supplies to be interrupted. Sea levels will rise. Tropical diseases will spread north. Among humans this will cause mass migration, starvation, and war.

If humanity consisted of a bunch of hunter-gatherers like we were during the Ice Age, we'd just pick up and move to greener pastures. But the planet is already full. There's nowhere to go anymore. People will fight over food and land.

Our technological society depends on the climatological status quo, and is extremely complex and interwoven worldwide. If the climate changes drastically, our entire way of life will be seriously compromised, and possibly destroyed.

We know that there are cycles of heating and cooling over geological epochs. We're messing with the planet's thermostat, turning it way up in an extremely short timespan compared to those geological epochs, and we know that can cause serious problems for humans in particular. If Greenland's ice sheet melts, it will cause sea level to rise as much as 20 feet.

That would destroy entire countries and many major cities in the world, displacing hundreds of millions of people and wreaking hundreds of trillions of dollars of damage to property alone, not to mention the human carnage.

Insurance companies acknowledge the seriousness of the problem. They are going to be on the hook for problems that climate change is already causing. We can't say with absolute certainty that we're going to melt the Greenland ice sheet. But if we do, we're seriously hosed.

Therefore, the conservative thing to do is stop making the problem worse. We should stop pumping all these greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as soon as we can switch over to something cleaner, and stop wasting time arguing about who will pay for it -- because the costs will likely be monstrous if we keep going the way we are.

Unknown said...

Nikto, how do you explain the changes in the surface temperature of mars? Mankind?

GuardDuck said...

This is changing the temperature of the atmosphere and the ocean at a rate far faster

Really?

Mark Ward said...

I think you guys should continue to adolescently avoid responsibility on this issue and ignore the science. That way, when this affects you personally, change will be all the more quicker.

Larry said...

What, you mean the media hypes shit? They may have gone overboard on that story? But they never do that now, I'll bet, do they? It's a perfect example of group-think and hype -- which is precisely why it brought up as an example of why everything "JournoListas" print needs to be viewed with a skeptical eye. Even when they're playing it straight because it's not politically relevant, the typical journalist doesn't know enough to have any idea whether or not what dribbles out of their mouths on camera or gets typed up on screen really makes any sense or not. Nor do most seem to care.

Juris Imprudent said...

avoid responsibility on this issue

Oh, so it isn't really about science but about moral claims. Is that right?

Larry said...

[The Others] love to do their little adolescent dance about how global cooling was all the rage back in the days when they didn't have man tits and could still see their penises.

That's the way to show how much more mature you are. You're such a hypocritical asshole, you know?