It is easy to show that the global temperature is increasing on very finite timeline. This is because we have a very small amount of data to base our conclusions on, being that known human existance spans only a handful of tens of thousands of years. Earth is said to be billions of years old. Our scope is very small. There is evidence to sugest that we are at the point where earth is still coming out of an iceage, and warming should be expected, where the earth when dinosaurs walked was much warmer on average than it is today.
Taking this into account, it is further harder to draw fact from these conclusions because we really don't know what would happen if our icecaps were to melt, we can formulate hypothises based on models but a majority of the pertinent data is an unknown. In most cases the resulting data is based on a worst case or even an average case in results gathered from the model.
The issue here is not that it will happen, but that it might happen. There is a chance, even if we don't know what the numbers are, that this could happen.
Whenever a finite time line is given for events I must pause to really check the facts. When someone says that in two or three years everything will change, I am skeptical. We can not acuratly predict if this coming years rainfall will cause a flood, which is something that people spend more time predicting, than those who spend time predicting the flooding results from melting ice caps. Also the time scale in this case is so small that it is hard to believe it. The use of the word "enough" also causes lots of problems. What is the "enough" factor. Say the entire ice cap melted, then I am sure that we would have some problems. If they were to melt I would think that the temperature of the earth would be more of a concern than that of melting ice caps. We would be much hotter already and be hoping for an ice age.
The issue then isn't one of science but one of politics and philosophy. Is it worth the effert to guard against these threats? Most of these catastrophies will not happen even in the worst case in my life time, or my children's lifetime. There are also issues to be explored in that counter messures that are currently around might end up causing other problems.
It is very hard to come to any sort of answer on these large scale long time line issues. I feel that it is much better to deal with the immediate issues which are tangebale.
Should we polute? I say no, my reason being that I don't think that a brown sky is a happy sky, I don't like the smell of the air. I don't like the look of garbage in the streets, or even that of a landfill. I don't want to swim in water that has had refuse, human waste, and worse dumped into it. To a lesser extent I can imagine what the world might look like when I am 80 years old, and I wouldn't want that to come to pass, which adds further reason not to polute.
I feel this way about many issues that rely on models to prove themselves. If you are trying to prove something by a model you are proving things the wrong way. Prove the smaller pieces don't jump into the big pieces. I would be ready to believe that we estimate a certain percent of melt this coming year, but then taking that data to mean that we will have all the ice caps melted in x years is simply silly.
To start with, the data we are using to plot next years melt has a large margin of error. The margin of error just gets huge when you start to multiply out by hundreds of years.
Say we have a figure of 1% for this coming year, this number also comes with a margin of error +- anywhere from 0 to 100%, and I would guess it to be more around 1 or 2% margin of error. Which means not that in 100 years all the ice will be melted, but that in 100 years we might have more ice or we might have less ice. It is faulty to take uncertain numbers and plot them.
I like the studies that a limited and give a margin of error, also giving the time line that the statistics are compiled over. The "Farmer's Alminac" is a good book to use to guage possibilities for next years rain, but would you use this information to determine when the next great flood is coming? I would hope not. It just isn't enough information.
-Dan-
posted 03-17-2004 17:45
