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To: cogitator
Whatever factor has caused abrupt d18O changes is going to produce abrupt cooling again, presumably due to a rapid adjustment to some gradually-changing astronomical factor. The climate system tips rapidly from interglacial to glacial states. It happens fast - and it's going to happen again, and it's on schedule to happen any time. There is not a 'modicum of possibility' for abrupt cooling - there is a virtual certainty! (sans intervention)

You seem overly focused on the most harsh imagined negatives of a speculated severe warming. In terms of abruptness,severity, and consequences for man and life, reglaciation is a far more likely (i.e. virtually certain), deleterious (warm, as you say is better than cold), and long-lasting (100kyr and beyond) climatic change.

Some of the hypothesized astronomical forcings have already dipped into dangerously low territory, harkening a new glaciation (see, for instance Berger et al 2005, Palaeoceanography). We had better get pumping fast if we are going to hold this off - and sawgrass thankfully is not going to play any significant role. You and the libs do all you want to make sure our descendants are back in the deep-freeze - the rest of us will continue to burn carbon and pursue life.

75 posted on 11/21/2006 3:40:03 PM PST by Monti Cello
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To: Monti Cello
You seem overly focused on the most harsh imagined negatives of a speculated severe warming. In terms of abruptness,severity, and consequences for man and life, reglaciation is a far more likely (i.e. virtually certain), deleterious (warm, as you say is better than cold), and long-lasting (100kyr and beyond) climatic change.

I say admiringly that you have a fairly bulletproof position. If you and I were alive at the turn of the next century, and if the global temperature is 3 deg. C higher, with ecosystems collapsing planet-wide and the Greenland ice sheet half melted away, you could still say "I'm still pretty worried about the next continental glaciation! We'd better keep pumping CO2 into the atmosphere to ward that off!"

IF there is a potential abrupt transition into the next glaciation that would happen, caused by undefinable trigger points, being concerned about when it will happen is about as useful as being concerned about when the Yellowstone caldera will erupt again. Sure it's useful to examine what might cause it -- but someone is going to have to pony up some pretty impressive evidence that 10 generations removed have to worry about it happening before 500 years have passed.

83 posted on 11/22/2006 7:49:49 AM PST by cogitator
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