U of Wisconsin researchers find potential cause for climate variability

[Beldaran]

This (http://www.wisn.com/weather/18935841/detail.html) is a pretty interesting article. Doesn't "disprove" Al Gore's religion, but it does provide an interesting, plausible, and heretofore unconsidered explanation for why the last 100 years has seen some warming, and why now we cooling.

[Archibaldo]

But why is everything synchronizing only recently or even at all? What causes it?

[rock_nog]

Well, it's a little complicated. See, the primary natural forces that we know affect climate change are solar activity as well as El Nino/La Nina. However, solar activity only accounts for about 25% of what we observe in terms of climate change, and El Nino/La Nina contribute a little more, but they still don't tell the whole story here.

What I gather is that the article is proposing that chaos theory can account for at least some of the changes we see - like why we see a spike in temperature when solar activity goes down, and that sort of thing. Basically, even under steady conditions, the Earth's climate is a chaotic system and so there will always be some apparently inexplicable flux.

But basically, like any climate model, we really just have to wait and see how well it pans out into the future. Which, I don't know why there's such a debate. There's not much we can realistically do cut greenhouse gases at the moment, and even if we could, we can't really undo all the greenhouse gases we've already pumped into the atmosphere. So why not just give it a couple of decades, and see where it goes from there?

[Beldaran]

But basically, like any climate model, we really just have to wait and see how well it pans out into the future. Which, I don't know why there's such a debate. There's not much we can realistically do cut greenhouse gases at the moment, and even if we could, we can't really undo all the greenhouse gases we've already pumped into the atmosphere. So why not just give it a couple of decades, and see where it goes from there?

I totally agree with your approach, which is really the truly scientific approach.

However, the reason there is a "debate" is because democrats intend to destroy modern industry and cripple the economy based on unverifiable truths.

[rock_nog]

See, here's my problem. The debate is currently over whether or not global warming is real. The debate should be over whether or not the proposed solutions are viable. See, what you're saying Beldaran is that even if global warming is totally man-made, the proposed solutions are just not at all realistic. And I would agree with you there. Even if we could 100% prove that global warming was man-made right now, that doesn't make the proposed solutions any less ridiculous. We can't just change our entire energy infrastructure overnight. If global warming is real, we've already fucked ourselves over. Frankly, I think the real issue here is that's a scenario no one wants to talk about. People want to say "We can fix it," or "It'll go away on its own." Nobody wants to say "It's out of our hands now."

[AtmaWeapon]

I don't really get the article; from what I gather they're saying, "We have a mathematical model that explains the climate data we've already measured. We don't know what's going to happen tomorrow." Thanks guys!

I do agree with the ongoing discussion in the thread right now though. Infrastructure change is slow. Climate change is slow. It's stupid to sit around arguing over whether the climate is changing or not. It's more productive to figure out what things could have a negative impact on the climate and find a way to change them. Then we're in a state where if it turns out we're at fault, at least we've stopped doing the bad things and if it turns out we're not, at least we aren't polluting as much.

The problem is oftentimes the greener energy is more expensive. Justifying an infrastructure change is hard when the only reason is "We're not sure but it's possible you're hurting the climate and dooming humanity". Now if the value proposition were something more like, "Year over year wind farms cost 30% less to maintain than an equivalent coal plant*" you'll see changeovers in a hurry.

* This is a completely fabricated point used to indicate a situation that would impress big power companies; it's not a point of argument.