My question is what caused the ice to melt 10,000 years ago?
There are many theories of why the last ice age ended, here's new one:
http://news.national...7_iceshelf.html
It had to be a serious magnitude of global warming to melt all that ice. Where
did that warming come from? Did the cave man burn enormous amounts of
chopped wood? Was there a worldwide cloud created by humongous volcanic
eruptions?
All warming doesn't have to have the same cause. The 'warming' can come from accumlated feedback effects as explained below.
But then I am just a mechanical engineer. Not a scientist. What do I know!
Right, that's the problems with any of us trying to have opinions on subjects that even the worlds best scientists/climatologists disagree on, we are just blowing smoke frankly.
But at minimum to have an informed opinion, an understanding of feedback systems is required.
For example in case of last ice age. It needs to be understood that a 'system' remains in whats called a 'steady state', but feedback over time causes 'transients'. At some point those transients can cause a 'tipping point', like wings of butterly in choas, and a huge dramatic change in set in motion. Therefore, it doesn't require an event as such to change anything, its due to a cumulative feedback effect over thousands of years that appears to 'do nothing' until all at once those tiny changes play out all at once.
This is just how systems are - they like to stay 'steady' and make their changes dramatically, but the tipping point can be very small.
Global warming is a different issue entirely to ice age ending, as it has to with a known chemical effect. The issue of course is whether this chemical effect is actually happening on a scale to be responsible for the current warming, or whether its just a natural cycle.
As said, scientists can't agree, though the vast majority believe its human caused. But it cannot be proven, because of the complexity of the science involved. So you are left chose whether to believe in the majority or the few skeptics.
But this reveals a fundamenal ignorance of use of science by non-scientists [ as perpetuated by schools and media] . There is virtually no science that is 'provable'. Really science is just probabilities. So lets rephrase, and ask what are the odds it is man-made global warming. If you survery the worlds scientists, you'd get at least 70:30 odds in favour, whatever, make it 50:50 if we like.
So now its just a question of Risk like taking out household insurance - do you want pay to avoid potential disasters costs of global warming, with a 1 in 2 risk of needing it, and 1 in 2 you don't?
Personally I would take out the insurance[though how you do that is a big issue]. Especially I would do this since over time the 'costs' will pay back in growth in the economy.
Of course, we'd better hope it IS man made, because if its natural we have a bigger problem as we have no clue how to prevent it.
Mark.
Edited by entropy, 21 August 2006 - 02:23 PM.
Question everything, especially what you believe you know. The foundation of science is questioning the data, not trusting the data.
I only trust fully falsified, non vested interest 'data', which is extremely rare in our world of paid framing narratives 'psy ops'.
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