'cooling trend illustrates how fast the world is warming'...

[GigaBuist]

I'm pretty convinced that even if everyone agreed on the science - and clearly everyone does not (current thread offered as evidence) - we probably would not have the  political and economic will to do anything substantive to "stop it".

Oh, I think you're just talking to the wrong people, and I don't see any reason why we need to get politics involved here.  A lot of global warming activists want to, but that's never the right way to go about things.

There's a lot of reasons to dump hydrocarbon fuel sources outside of the global warming concerns.   We just need to get some entrepreneurs and science minded folk on finding ways to fuel our energy needs without them and to do it cheaper.

Dump coal, go nuclear for all electrical needs.  Not too hard to convince the Republican type crowd that nuclear is awesome.  They (we) generally seem to be all for it.  I'll take that over windmills and solar panels.  Okay, politics would be involved in that one because he electric companies are granted monopolies in their areas, but it's an easier sell because it's not tinkering directly with citizen's lives.

Get somebody pushing an electric commuter car.  I think we're on the verge of this, which I talked about in another thread.  I don't buy the "global warming will kill us all!" line, neither does my father, businessman and Republican through-and-through, but we're both excited about the possibilities of electric cars.  We think they make good economic sense.  Hell, looked into building my own a bit for personal use.

I think we could do those two things in this country, and while selling nuclear reactors to other countries might be problematic the electric car stuff would export easily enough.

Just look to CFLs to see how you sell this kind of tech to people:  "Hey, it saves you money.  Take it or leave it."  I'm sticking the suckers wherever I can.  Saves me money.

[Tallpine]

the climate system has evolved to actively pump down CO2 (mainly those marine phytoplankton) because the more passive processes that rely on rock weathering can require tens to hundreds of thousands of years to lower CO2 levels.

So what are you saying ... that there is some purpose or active direction that is guiding random events

[Scout26]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-comet-webjan02,0,3624054.story

Scientists find signs of 13,000-year-old extinction event
Comet may have exploded over planet, causing fires, die-offs, researchers say
By Robert Mitchum | Tribune reporter
January 2, 2009
A meteorite colliding with the Earth 65 million years ago is considered to be the most likely reason dinosaurs vanished from the planet. Now a team of scientists says it has found new evidence that an object from space caused a similar extinction event only 13,000 years ago.

In an article to be published Friday in the journal Science, researchers present what one author calls the "smoking bullet"—proof that an exploding comet triggered the sudden, thousand-year freeze that killed off mammoths, saber-toothed tigers and other large mammals that used to live in North America.

Working at multiple sites across the continent, researchers found nanodiamonds—microscopic particles thought to be found on comets—in a 13,000-year-old layer of carbon-rich soil.

The authors, led by University of Oregon anthropologist Douglas Kennett, theorize that the comet exploded above the Earth's surface, raining fragments upon North America and starting fires across the continent. That would have ushered in an abrupt global cooling and caused the "megafauna" extinction.

In the layer with the nanodiamonds, fossils of the large mammals are abundant. After that layer, they disappear, said Allen West, an Arizona geophysicist and one of the paper's authors.

"It's extraordinary that tens of millions of animals disappeared synchronously at exactly the time when the diamonds and carbon layer are laid down across the continent," West said.

West said the event also would have affected human populations of the time. Artifacts from the Clovis culture of humans—an early hunter-gatherer society—also disappear after the 13,000-year layer, suggesting they, too, were killed off by the comet or its aftereffects.

Many archeologists remain skeptical of the comet theory, said Daniel Amick, an associate professor of anthropology at Loyola University Chicago who studies the Clovis culture.

"When most archeologists heard about it they were somewhat dismissive," Amick said. "We would think, 'How in the world could we have missed this? How could this spectacular kind of event have occurred and never even dawned on us?' "

The authors have much to prove before their theory is accepted, Amick said, like pinpointing the date of the event and ruling out other potential causes of extinction and climate change.

In response to one common criticism of the comet theory—that no craters have been found from an impact—West said the comet may not have actually reached Earth, but exploded into fragments somewhere above the surface.

Researchers found the highest concentration of nanodiamonds at a site in eastern Michigan, which suggests the comet may have exploded somewhere over the Great Lakes, West said.

"We think that Chicago might well have been very near ground zero," West said. "If you'd been in Chicago back in that time, it would've been one very bad day."

The possibility of a comet causing catastrophic climate change and extinction relatively recently in Earth's long history suggests scientists shouldn't dismiss the possibility of it happening again, West said.

"Unlike mammoths, who might happen to look up and see the thing coming at them from the sky but can't do anything about it, we're in a position of civilization where we can possibly deflect these things," West said.

[Nematocyst]

"We think that Chicago might well have been very near ground zero," West said.

Maybe that explains Blagojevich's actions, also.  :D
_______________

Tallpine, interesting question. I'll work on a response.

[Nematocyst]

I'm not forgetting Tallpine's question.
It's just been a busy few days.

But this just in, from Wall Street Journal.

The Warming Earth Blows Hot, Cold and Chaotic:
Subtle Rises in Temperature Make for Wild Weather;
'Exceptionally Unusual' Becomes the New Normal

They got it right: it's NOT about uniform warming.

It's about extreme and chaotic.

Violent is yet to come.

[Tallpine]

Warming Earth Blows Hot, Cold and Chaotic

So how would we even notice the difference in Montana?  That's pretty much the normal here 

We only have two temperatures:  too hot and too cold.

And the wind doesn't always blow this way - sometimes it blows the other way.

[Nematocyst]

So how would we even notice the difference in Montana? 
That's pretty much the normal here.

I can guarantee that if the changes occur that we think will occur,
you WILL notice the difference in a huge, almost unimaginable way.
(Unimaginable because our species has never experienced
a climate change event as big as the one that appears to be now unfolding.)

The differences won't be simply a few degrees here or there.
It will be an entirely different climate, with extremes that
even Montana has not experienced during human times.

[Nematocyst]

...the climate system has evolved to actively pump down CO2 (mainly those marine phytoplankton)
because the more passive processes that rely on rock weathering can require
tens to hundreds of thousands of years to lower CO2 levels.

So what are you saying ... that there is some purpose or active direction that is guiding random events?

Been away from this for a while.
(Real life earning a living sometimes gets in the way of having fun.  :rolleyes: )

For an evolutionary biologist, TallPine's question is so intellectually rich that it's hard to know where to start.

This may take a few posts, but I'm up for the challenge.
(Hey, I survived my doctoral exams; this should be fun by comparison.  )

Let me begin my response to your question with a question.

A lowly bacterium - the "lowest" form of life on Earth -
purposefully moves towards its food source in a manner that is clearly NOT random.

Evidence is easy. Watch a million hungry E. coli under a microscope
when you drop a grain of sugar into their medium near them. Their movement is purposeful.
That they "know" where the sugar is evidenced by how rapidly they move towards it.
They can find it the same way you find fried chicken: by following a chemical gradient.
That behavior has evolved in them because they must regulate their internal sugar content.
No food, no life.

Easier still: watch a sunflower track the sun on a July day.
No sun, no life. That behavior, too, is purposeful.

Given those, why is it surprising that a planetary climate system that has evolved both with and because of (*) bacteria and sunflowers  would evolve to regulate carbon dioxide levels, given that carbon dioxide is as important to climate as sugar is to an E. coli and sun is to a sunflower?

(* Sunflowers are plants. Without plants and other photosynthesizing organisms (some are bacteria),
there would be no free O2 in our atmosphere. Without bacteria, there would be no free methane.)

[Tallpine]

Given those, why is it surprising that a planetary climate system that has evolved both with and because of (*) bacteria and sunflowers  would evolve to regulate carbon dioxide levels, given that carbon dioxide is as important to climate as sugar is to an E. coli and sun is to a sunflower?

So the planetary climate system has some sort of volition like living beings

Sounds like the Gaia hypothesis to me ... 

[roo_ster]

So the planetary climate system has some sort of volition like living beings

Sounds like the Gaia hypothesis to me ... 

Well, the whole enviro/GW deal has been liked to a religion.

[Nematocyst]

So the planetary climate system has some sort of volition like living beings?

OK, before we get back to the climate system, we need to establish some clarity about biological systems in general.

Here's a definition of volition: the capability of conscious choice and decision and intention.

You are falling into an incorrect line of reasoning by using the word "volition". I purposefully (because I am a conscious being) chose (made a decision about) the examples I used - bacteria and sunflower - to illustrate my point that living things can act "purposefully" even if they have no volition, that is, no capacity for conscious choice and "intention".

Let me state that very explicitly: neither bacteria nor sunflowers possess consciousness like humans, and therefore are not capable of making rational choices. They are not self-aware like humans are. 

The problem is that you - and most people who are not familiar with cognitive sciences - do not distinguish between cognition and consciousness. Cognition is simply "knowing", able  to detect differences in their environment that are relevant to their  survival, but it does NOT imply rational thought or even self-awareness.

By contrast, consciousness is knowing that you know. Humans are conscious. We know that we know. We are self-aware; we make rational decisions. We have volition. We're discussing that now.

Bacteria and sunflowers are not conscious. Cognate? Yes. Conscious? No. They have no volition. (Neither does the climate system.)

Bacteria "know" where food is and will move towards it. Light-seeking bacteria, some algae & sunflowers know where the sun is and can follow it. Planaria worms, on the other hand, know where the sun is and move away from it (they want shade, not sun). Yet none of these creatures are conscious. They aren't making conscious, rational choices. Their choices are hardwired. There is no volition. Their cognition is simply a faculty that has been naturally selected during their evolution because it allows them to stay alive longer than other variations  of their  species that are not cognate. The bacterium that "knows" (not consciously) where food is stays alive; those that can't find the food die. Simple as that.

Consciousness - knowing that you know, being able to make rational decisions based on evidence gathered, having volition and free will, self-awareness - requires a well-developed brain, probably considerably more developed than a bumble bee.

If you can't grasp that distinction, then this discussion is going nowhere and we'll just leave it where it is. (But then I won't be able to address your interesting question.)

The climate system is not conscious. It has no volition. It has no power to make rational decisions, and no self-awareness. Yet, it responds to outside stimuli much like a bacterium would even though - like a bacterium - the responses of that system are hard wired, much like those of a bacterium or sunflower. Yet, it in a sense, it is acting cognitively (again, NOT consciously) because the climate system involves living components that play a very significant role in climate (see my earlier references to Spencer Weart's essay on the role of biosphere in climate).

That's why I made reference to oxygen and methane above. No one in this forum, no one in science, can explain using physics and chemistry alone why Earth's atmosphere is 20.9% molecular oxygen with measurable quantities of methane present (right now, 1750 ppb). Those molecules are biological products. Without life on this planet, there would be no free O2 in the atmosphere, and no methane. Those biological entities are part of the system, and therefore play a role in its dynamics. Yet again, there is no consciousness involved, no volition. It's just an automatic response.

Systems respond to changes. They don't need to be conscious (like humans) in order to do so. Sometimes, negative feedback processes kick in that automatically (without thought) correct the change. This happens daily in your physiology. If you get too hot, you start sweating automatically, without thinking about it. If you get too cold, you start shivering, automatically. Your blood glucose levels automatically adjust (as long as you follow your cognition and eat food). There is no consciousness involved in temperature regulation by sweating and shivering. It just happens. Likewise with blood glucose (and every other nutrient, hormone and antibody in your blood). It's automatic. But it's also purposeful. There is no denying that.

Sometimes, when negative feedback processes fail, positive feedback kicks in that amplify deviations from "normal" and shove the system into a new state. (That's what's happening now in the climate system.)

Again, to be as clear as possible, with climate regulation there is no thought on the part of the global system. It has no volition. The adjustment of the climate by the system is as automatic as your own physiology adjusting your temperature. The adjustment of CO2 is as automatic as your own physiology's regulation of your blood CO2 (which, if it varies by a tiny fraction of a fraction, will kill you in seconds due to change in blood pH).

Finally, anyone who accuses me of advancing a religious argument around this issue doesn't know me very well. I'm as atheist as they come. Just read my posts in the APS thread on "What religion are you?" or something like that. This is pure science, not new age hogwash or superstition.

[Iain]

Thanks for that response Nem. I knew what you were driving at and was going to post but decided you'd do it better.

[Nematocyst]

Thank you, Iain. I appreciate your perspective.