A sincere hope

[Trick]

https://realclimatescience.com/2018/04/ ... hole-scam/ Just for fun....and perhaps a little seriousness too

[roger hao]

Steve - you did it again.
You used the probable assumption that an ice age can happen again
to support fear mongering over WHEN it will happen and why.
This is my point entirely about the climate change scams. Measuring, hindsighting
and reporting temperature change is then used to support speculation of the results.
When there is disagreement with the politics the demeaning response is -
"look , you must be an idiot to say the temperature hasn't changed"

[Steve James]

You used the probable assumption that an ice age can happen again to support fear mongering over WHEN it will happen and why.

I don't think I said anything about an upcoming ice age. The recession of glaciers is the reverse of an ice age, isn't it.
Secondly, I only said that the recession of the glaciers can be seen, and the effects of their melting can be predicted.

When there is disagreement with the politics the demeaning response is -
"look , you must be an idiot to say the temperature hasn't changed"

I didn't disagree with any politics, and I didn't demean you. Those are all straw man criticisms of claims I never made.

[Ian C. Kuzushi]

I don't think there are any experts who doubt that there will be another ice age. The question is simply how long can we prolong the current interglacial period. Why is that fear-mongering? The time scales here are geological, not historical.

[Steve James]

Oh, we're talking about the predictions of an ice age in 10,000, or longer than humans have been on the planet? Damn. I'm not going to Google it, but I'd guess that predictions of a coming ice age (reglaciation or the "snowball" Earth) have nothing to do with human influenced climate change. I agree (wait for it) with roger that it would be silly to make a prediction based on that claim. However, I think it would be equally silly to argue that human action over the course of another 10,000 years would have no effect.

The claim is that we can't predict what will happen in the next second, on a very small scale, and we can't predict what will happen 1000 or 10,000 years from now, on a very large scale. Therefore, we can't predict what will happen in between. However, science began with simple observation. Human lifespans are simply too short. None of us here now will see the effects of 200 more years of human activity. So, the point is that we're dealing primarily with what we can do in our short lifetimes.

That's why/when/how it becomes political. That's why some of the fiercest climate activists are very young. It's their future earth, and many of them don't look at it as a political issue. Not because they don't hold political positions on other issues, but because political differences don't matter in hurricanes. I take that back; anything can be politicized. It becomes a matter of gain or loss, winners or losers. And, some see any restriction or change in policy based on "climate change" is simply a loss for them and a win for the other side. Sure, removal of regulations on waste disposal, water usage, carbon emissions, etc, is considered a win.

Ok, not wanting to pay more at the gas pump is understandable, as is not wanting the lefties to win, but c'mon, we're back in the business of sending people to the moon and exploring Mars, have been sending back pictures of Pluto, and measuring gravity waves. Science is doing pretty good. How about apolitically asking "What if they're right?" and "What would we say we should do now?"

I would say that scientific predictions are always more reliable that political and economic predictions. Everybody'd be rich if they could predict economic developments, and nobody could predict today's politics.

[roger hao]

Hi Ian -

It is fear mongering because impending ice age rhetoric is used
to get people to conform to a political agenda.

[roger hao]

Steve -
Regards young people -
it has been shown that some have no actual concept how burgers come from cows.
It could be that you are missing my point - which is simple.
Instead of carbon tax and global concerns of economic balance.
Instead of finally saying - for justification -
that it would be nice if air was cleaner and water was cleaner so why resist
political change headed in that direction.
My point is that ALL of the angst should be turned towards that simple list to clean up the water and air.

Some examples -

outlaw Roundup

mandate a rail system that comes all the way down to each person's relative location - talking about
something like the Seattle Light Rail tying into a train that goes to SF to LA to PHX to wherever.
This is a project on the scale of building the great pyramid - also on the scale of the Iraq war.

no hazardous waste dumped in waterways - including sewer

Am I the only person that sees that municipal projects need to have a budget study
while wars are planned and executed without budget study? It seems that climate change
is always a mis-direction. Focus on air travel while ignoring the waste to move the military around.
Tulsi Gabbard should be listened to much sooner than Greta Thunberg.
I am astounded that the same political base that supports climate change politics also supports
regime change politics.

[Steve James]

My point is that ALL of the angst should be turned towards that simple list to clean up the water and air.

So, just focus on that. Advocate for that. Are you looking agreement with those goals? Have I or anyone suggested they disagree with those goals?

Btw, I never mentioned a carbon tax, but I did say that some people would oppose it simply because it would cost them. They deny climate change for economic reasons, and they influence politicians.

[Steve James]

Btw, NASA observations conclude that the Antarctic has actually gained ice because of snowfall. The studies do not conclude that there is danger of an ice age. Rather, the observation shows that the loss of ice through deglaciation is happening, but that it is offset in the short term (decades). https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/na ... han-losses

Note that it's not a prediction of an ice age at all.

“We’re essentially in agreement with other studies that show an increase in ice discharge in the Antarctic Peninsula and the Thwaites and Pine Island region of West Antarctica,” said Jay Zwally, a glaciologist with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the study, which was published on Oct. 30 in the Journal of Glaciology. “Our main disagreement is for East Antarctica and the interior of West Antarctica – there, we see an ice gain that exceeds the losses in the other areas.” Zwally added that his team “measured small height changes over large areas, as well as the large changes observed over smaller areas.”

Scientists calculate how much the ice sheet is growing or shrinking from the changes in surface height that are measured by the satellite altimeters. In locations where the amount of new snowfall accumulating on an ice sheet is not equal to the ice flow downward and outward to the ocean, the surface height changes and the ice-sheet mass grows or shrinks.

But it might only take a few decades for Antarctica’s growth to reverse, according to Zwally. “If the losses of the Antarctic Peninsula and parts of West Antarctica continue to increase at the same rate they’ve been increasing for the last two decades, the losses will catch up with the long-term gain in East Antarctica in 20 or 30 years -- I don’t think there will be enough snowfall increase to offset these losses.”

[roger hao]

Steve -

So, just focus on that. Advocate for that. Are you looking agreement with those goals? Have I or anyone suggested they disagree with those goals?

I have been trying for 50 years to talk sense into everyone.
Don't eat meat
Don't pollute

I told some people at coffee the other nite - now in my life I am like the Indian with a tear in my eye
at how messed up it all is. I believe in the improvements you name and that's great but........
when I was young rivers were great to swim and fish - lakes the same - even the ocean is
much more polluted now than it was.

Your statement above - my point is make those things THE goals - because they are not the goals now
the goals now are economic and political. Those goals are ancillary reasons tacked on so people
like me will go along with all the BS. The economic goals got us in trouble in the first place so I have
no idea how that fixes anything.

[Steve James]

I don't care which political system gets us clean air and water as long as it achieves them. All I want to see is advocacy for them. What I won't say is that the science is wrong because someone says it's part of an economic conspiracy. That's a waste of time for me.

[Ian C. Kuzushi]

Hi Ian -

It is fear mongering because impending ice age rhetoric is used
to get people to conform to a political agenda.

Well, my point was that I think it's perfectly reasonable to predict another ice age for people who study geology and the like. My point (which Steve may have missed due to my lack of clarity?) was that it has nothing to do with our current conundrum. That's why I mentioned geological rather than historical (human) time.

Although, there has been some speculation that some of the proposed tech fixes for global warming could overshoot and lead to an accelerated ice age (spraying silver nitrate into the atmosphere to cool the earth a la a massive volcanic eruption).

Who is using an ice age to fear monger? I thought the fear mongering (not my preferred term) was that things were getting hotter.

[Steve James]

it has nothing to do with our current conundrum.

I don't disagree with the idea of predicting an ice age. I just don't believe in arguing with anyone about it --for the reason you give above.

[Trick]

What’s wrong with an ice age? No problem, Folks up in the north will just migrate southward for a better life....?

[Steve James]

The predictions --that exist-- of an ice age don't necessarily predict that humans will be around to see it .

Secondly, if we were, it is unlikely that humans would cooperate and allow mass migrations. It's why there were so many doomsday preppers. Fear an ice-age? Shucks. Fear the walking dead or alive. It would be interesting to see Americans backpacking down to Mexico, but not for a vacation.

Btw, I doubt any scientist "fears" an ice age as much as a gamma ray blast, an errant --but probably inevitable-- comet or meteor strike, or a vacuum metastability event, or even an eruption of that supervolcano (caldera) in Yellowstone. There are other possibilities that keep scientists awake at night because they're all possible, and there's not a damn thing humans can do about it.