Michael Crichton picks a fight with environmentalists

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by shawnmmcc
Check on the Arctic Ice Pack. It's been thinning and is doing quite badly, with open areas lasting for much longer periods into the pre-winter period than ever recorded. Again, same problem. Recorded info on the Arctic Ice Pack is of much too short a duration, it's going to take extensive ice core research to really determine what's going on. If the changes continue it may cause the extinction of the Polar Bear, which indicates the elimination of a species, which is at least 100,000 years old (evolved in the Pleistocene). Maybe it's indicative of a major change?

Note I posted info on the increased solar activity. The various other posters did the work for CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions. Crichton is using one of the few examples that is ambiguous, and leaving out the other "inconvenient" facts like the temperate region glacial melting or the Arctic changes. Even then he leverages his one example to claim it proves what it doesn't. Note that the Antarctic Ice Shelf is undergoing a substantial redistribution (if current trends continue). Now I would consider that something to be concerned about, and indicative of some sort of change.

I don't disagree that climate is changing, what i am disputing is that it is primarily manmade (if at all), and so is Crichton unless i read him wrong.

I don't know if you know it, but at the moment it's quite impossible to do any farming in Greenland. Nonetheless, it was possible some hundred years ago. That must mean that back then the temperature was reasonably higher than it is now. Even through that hot period the polar bear seemed to survive, so why not now ?

Maybe i'm wrong, but i see nature as a very adaptive thing. If i as an ice bear no longer can survive in this area, the i move. If i cannot move quickly enough, then some relatives elswhere may survive and when climate changes in our favour, then we retake lost ground.

I have a little question : what if climate changes isn't manmade ? What are we then supposed to do ? shall we throw all our knowlegde and ressources into efforts that only maybe can hold back what f.ex. the sun are doing to us ? (ups, the was three questions)

[BlackCat]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
If it is the sun, we can actually try and deal with it by putting reflective materials in the air, like increasing cloud cover.

If you don't mind, i'll prefer that we save that kind of fiddeling with the climate until we really knows what is happening.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia
he has data. lets see yours, convince me crichtons wrong.

Data isn't the same thing as information.

[Mr. Harley]

BlackCat, read my earlier posts. We don't know, and too little effort/funding is going into finding out. We don't even know how the sun works, for goodness sakes (the neutrino emissions are all wrong - either what's going on inside differs from the theories, or the base theories are wrong, in which case we REALLY don't know).

You'll note I mentioned an extinction event. They are thoroughly unpleasant, and mankind might not survive it. No, not because we aren't adaptive, but because when people are starving they do funny things. Called wars. In between nukes, recombinant DNA (nobody has seriously used modern genetics to make a killer germ, the potential is catastrophic), and nanotechnology, in combination with an ongoing extinction event and the fact everybody seems too cheap to seriously go into space, we could end up extinct. In the next century if trends continue, i.e. warming and climatological changes, desertification, aquifier depletion, water source pollution, non-diverse food crops, etc.

Of course in another twenty years they could all be laughing at the global warming hysteria at the turn of the century. We don't have the data, and without it no rational plan of action is possible. The people who err on the side of safety are actually being quite rational. The problem as one poster pointed out is that governments typically do nothing.

Look at the asteroids that cross Earth orbit. From an insurance standpoint it - cost versus amortized cost of not during something over the lifetime between events - it makes sense to map them all and create a space presence able to do something about one should it be on a collision course. But the scales are so large that governments won't budge. Politicians run most of the industrialized world governments, not insurance mathematicians, nor scientists, nor engineers (though China may be an interesting hybrid). Until the crisis is looming, but the cost crippling (i.e. social security) nobody is going to do anything. But don't cite Crichton, even the Bush administration says there may be some kind of problem, and they had to be dragged kicking and screaming.

[Ted Striker]

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[Ted Striker]

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[Ted Striker]

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[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia
crichton disputes all of this. antartic ice shelves are melting on one part of the continenet but are growing bigger on the other side (net = zero)

I would be wary of thinking that's a net zero effect. If the ice sheets are getting larger, that means more water is being displaced in the ocean, pushing sea levels up. At the same time, shrinking ice sheets mean that glaciers are moving into the sea faster, which also raises the sea level. What would make it a net zero is if snow is falling on Antarctica at a greater rate then previously.

[Mr. Harley]

Chegitz, not exactly. Continental ice sheets - which most of the Antarctic ones are, sort of, and even those there that aren't are often on the shallow ocean floor creating a de facto continental effect - drop sea levels, as they tie up water. A much bigger potential problem is the effect of warming ocean surfaces and hurricanes. Read "Mother of Storms" by Gregory Benford. What happens if we get enough warming to create a "red spot" (permanent superstorm aka Jupiter) on earth? It's a scary story, and he's got his climatology down pat. Real hard SF, not pseudo-science like Crichton.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Ted Striker
By the way, the economy of Southern California has rapidly expanded over the last 20 years, but due to pollutions controls, the air has become much cleaner. More cars are on the road than ever before. There used to be "smog alerts" over a dozen times a year about 20 years ago, now there are none. Pollution controls WORK. Conservation WORKS. Alternative energy sources WORK.

That example alone flies in the face of your theory.

It can be done.

Is the CA economy growing on heavy industry?

I didn't think so.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by The Mad Viking
NYE

You seem to be implying that China should not be allowed the economic growth necessary to move from subsistence agriculture to a developed society.

If this is not the case, then you must take into account the fact that growth is a given, when assessing emissions.

If you take this into account, China is doing a remarkable job of reducing emissions per unit of production.

If what you want is social justice, just say so. Don't lie about the real motive.

Fact is that several important economies are affected almost zero by Kyoto, Britain, Germany, Russia...

The burden is on the US, Canada, and some others.

Why should we tank our economies? Why not draw the line at 2002 and make it a harsher cut? Is it because there is no way in hell that that would pass through all the G7 nations because the Brits and Germans aren't stupid? Why do you expect the Yanks to be as stupid as Chretein was?

[Ted Striker]

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[notyoueither]

How much steel, Ted? How much dirty industry?

You think aircraft assembly is heavy industry? Bwahahahahaha.

[The Mad Monk]

Hang on -- before this proceeds, perhaps a working definition of heavy industry should be agreed on?

[Ted Striker]

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