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Global warming - NATO freezes
ER — (archived)

I'm putting this on Flame because I don't want to burden the poor folks on Space with any more climate controversy. The linked essay highlights something I've been thinking about for a long time, that global warming will not turn the earth into a runaway hothouse, but will possibly provoke widespread regional changes such as the earth has suffered for it's entire existence. These changes are not necessarily life- or planet-threatening, but may still initiate climatic excursions with profound effects for mankind.

The attached article makes no dire predictions or flat statements, its source is impeccable, and is not meant to predict any particular dire scenario, or cast blame on any specific human activity. The processes mentioned are natural and have happened before without any help from man, and they are speculative. We simply don't know enough about the global heat engine to make flat statements about it. The most important thing to be gained here is that the atmosphere-ocean thermal regulator of the planet is a highly complex interacting system capable simultaneously of moderating external stress but also vulnerable to discrete and sudden changes of state. It is extremely robust in the long term, but potentially unstable in the short term and it's effects may be completely counter-intuitive. Most important, we are only beginning to understand how it works.

Please take the time to read this, humor me, I don't point you to external links very often, but I think this one is important.
And I will refrain from commenting on any remarks you may choose to make in respose. This article is four years old.

http://www.whoi.edu/institutes/occi/viewArticle.do?id=9986

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