On Thu, 23 Feb 2006 20:07:39 -0800, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 23 Feb 2006 09:49:28 -0700, Mark Fergerson

We simply cannot wield energies on natural scales.

Mr. Larkin thinks that washing his car will cause an ice age.

I think he's being just the least bit sarcastic.

I think you're responding to a non sequitur anyway. ;-P

No, I think that, if climate is a chaotic system, the tiniest
disturbance will propagate to complete changes of state.

But all chaotic states have "attractors", which conceptually
can be mapped onto equilibrium points, so to speak, AFAIUI.

It's interesting that the "climate change" crowd (formerly known as
the "global warming" crowd) now warn us of a "tipping point" where
added CO2 will trip a positive feedback mechanism and cause either
intense warming, or an ice age, I'm not sure which.

I saw some guy on edjamacayshunal teevee just the other night, who said
practically exactly the same thing, and went on to say that we've already
passed it (the TP), so no matter what we do, the ice caps are going to
melt.

He used recent melting rates of glaciers and core samples that he claimed
went back 250,000 years, and there is supposedly a recent spike in the
CO2, and it's observable that the glaciers are melting faster than they
were last year, and so on; the clincher was that the more ice and snow
that melts, the more dirt is exposed, lowering Earth's albedo, so we
warm up more, and so, the positive feedback has already kicked in.

Now, to me, that's cause for the opposite of panic. Screw it, we can do
anything we want to, so eat, drink, and be merry! Nothing's going to
make any difference anyway! %-}

And, as I've always said, what would be so bad about the whole planet
being a tropical paradise where people don't even need to wear clothes?
Well, the women, anyway. leer, snort

Cheers!
Rich
--
Elect Me President in 2008! I will:
A. Fire the IRS, and abolish the income tax
B. Legalize drugs
C. Stand down all military actions by the US that don't involve actual
military aggression against US territory
D. Declare World Peace I.