OT Global warming.

[harryagain]

Came across this:-

[Nightjar]

Most people agree that climate changes. What is in doubt is why.

Colin Bignell

[Jethro_uk]

The climate has been changing the past 10,000 years. Something rarely alluded to in the "debate". We're still coming out of that[1] ice-age. Even within this period there have been variations, and anomalies. There's some fascinating archaeological evidence within the UK of settlements having to move because dry spells changed the environment. However these all happened before you could tax carbon, and are so don't really count.

I visited a fascinating abandoned town in Kenya, on the coast near Watamu. It was built by the Portuguese in the 1600s, but one year the wells dried up, and (IIRC) are still dry to this day. No water - they had to leave.

If instead of faffing about with carbon exchange schemes, we'd just looked around at preparing for climate change, maybe Somerset would be less flooded.

[1]Yes, there have been several

[Tim Streater]

Bugger 10,000. Try five billyun or so, or since whenever the surface cooled enough to have solid patches, so that the word "climate" came to mean something.

[Huge]

cf. Fatehpur Sikri.

[Jethro_uk]

Well, true, but the relevant parts are the *regular* ice ages we have encountered since h. Sapiens evolved.

[dennis]

We all know climate changes, we are currently near the end of an ice age.

What I don't understand is why some group thinks that we can prevent the ice age ending.

They don't even know what caused the ice age or what will end it.

[Johny B Good]

At the risk of offending the Chinese community, "Fluctuations" in a chaotic climate / weather system.

[Tim Streater]

The ice age that we are in fact still in (and inside *that* we in an interglacial, due to come to an end in the not-too-distant future) is essentially caused by two factors:

1) A land mass over one pole, which allows ice to accumulate 2) land masses *around* the other pole, preventing flow of warmer water from lower latitudes to keep it warm at the poles. This also allows ice buildup.

IIRC, the interglacials are caused by such as the Milankovitch Cycles. Winky has an article about that.

[Jethro_uk]

And any undersea eruption resulting in a new land mass could upset the apple cart. As indeed could an undersea earthquake. And that's before you remember that the continents are moving *anyway*.

In the context of that, the effect an energy saving lightbulb has is like trying to empty the pacific using the healing power of crystals alone.

[polygonum]

Will graphene be subject to carbon tax? :-)

[Vir Campestris]

It would take a pretty good earthquake or eruption to make a landmass of appreciable size. I don't expect any in the near future.

Even geologically near.

Andy