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Water On The North Pole
Auckerman writes: "I wonder how much of this can be attributed to man or to normal weather cycles. Per usual, free login is required at the nytimes." This is a sobering dispatch, no matter how skeptical you are of the ability of homo sapiens to model or understand his role in weather patterns. Seems that what used to be a comfortable icefield at 90 degrees north latitude is now swimming in seawater. [Note: Not "0 degrees" as I'd carelessly typed originally; thanks to YU Nicks NE Way for pointing out the boo-boo.] This sentence from the article especially grabbed me: "Scientists at the Goddard Space Science Institute, a NASA research center in Manhattan, compared data from submarines in the 1950's and 60's with 90's observations, demonstrating that the ice cover over the entire Arctic basin has thinned by 45 percent. Satellite images have revealed that the extent of ice coverage has significantly shrunk in recent years."
You mean like Ted Kaczynski? What was his quote? Too many airplanes not enough bombs?
No one is going to blame global warming on liberal extremists, but don't let that stop you from blaming any and all conservatives you can for it. Never mind that most Americans (liberal and otherwise) are too lazy to recycle, too busy fueling up their gas guzzling SUVs to worry about CO2 and water vapor emissions from said SUVs. People forget its a somewhat democratic process and the public just doesn't give a damn by and large. It doesn't help that the science on global warming isn't firmly in the camp that humans are the causitive agent.
What gets me with "liberals environmentalists" (who are usually green on the outside, red on the inside) is their penchant for thinking that the world was some Garden of Eden before humans staggered up off of all fours, and thats the way the Earth should stay in perpetuity, when reality is that the world has been constantly evolving and changing, and its been downright unpleasant (compared to now and the near future, as long as the super volcano under Yellowstone doesn't light up). As a famous economist once said, the only thing that matters is the short run, because in the long run we are all dead.
There is no reason to think that humanity has had any affect on the weather.
/. all week. We are pumping millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. THIS WARMS THE ATMOSPHERE UP by trapping heat from the sun. It's practically unchallenged in serious scientific circles.
This is one of the most imbecellic statements I have heard on
Now you can argue about how much effect this actually has, and you can even make a case for it being a relatively minor effect compared to the Earth's natural cycles. But you can't say that we can significantly change the composition of the planet's atmosphere without affecting the weather and expect to be taken seriously.
Perhaps I am one helping to propagate our own species' extinction, but get in an airplane or look at space photos. Look at the volume of air in the atmosphere. Humans are an inconsequential deposit on the surface of this rock. What humans should worry about is our own air and water quality in the areas we live in. Fix those, and you have environmental harmony.
Fixing those requires money and work. Most humans- used to buying products which were sold for the value in raw materials and process, not their impact on the environment- will have a hard time dealing with it. But I agree with you, largely on this. To improve our air and water quality we have to make conscious changes, ones that will not unly benefit us immediately, but the system which supports our civilization.
For us to think that something as insignificant in size as ourselves can affect something as large as this planet on a macro level, is the product of a superiority complex. Only scientists with a superiority complex (probably characterizes many scientists in the global warming debate -- they seem to like attention) can claim that data collected in the last 50 to 200 years can be interpolated to an entire ecological history of this planet.
I disagree. The problem is not that we're not going to destroy all life on this planet, but ourselves. Earth, and life on it, has gone through a lot more extremes than we can probably imagine, but most of life today is not adapted and ready for it. Bringing on an extreme for which we're not equipped is suicide.
Scientists only have the imformation they have. They have to extrapolate and use indirect means of collecting data (ice cores, &c). Denying the fact they we've had any negative effect on the environment because we cannot compare it to data recorded by humans, even though we may see this effects within the course of one lifetime is silly. This doesn't give scientists a superiority complex, but simply a concern for themselves and their children. Those which believe that all of our problems are solvable through some technological breakthrough in the future have a superiority complex, not to mention being extremely deluded.
Finally, I don't see any of them coming up with new energy storage and conversion technologies that can even clean up our local environments. Instead, they seem to be hung on the idea of sounding alarm bells for something people can't readily see. All changes must start at the small level and become large. Their whining is doing us no good, except accelerating the decay of logical thinking among peoples otherwise inclined to improve life by improving their local environment. They (as in, scientists, somewhere) do come up with new energy solutions. They are largely ignored by a world that loves to drive gas guzzling SUVs and air conditioning. The mere fact that you've not heard of them is all the proof I need to conceed that statement. Many scientists do take steps in improving their local environment, but the fact is they know what they know- science. They may talk in lofty terms, but they're not just stitting around sounding alarms for some secret agenda. They're worried, and they're trying. Maybe they need to attack it at another angle.
In conclusion, I say these scientists who predict global geological failure, are in fact accelerating our demise. They make it appear that humanity has two choices: 1) Become bush people, 2) destroy ourselves. Naturally, being human, we will pick (2) because its more luxurious and comfortable and (1) is too much trouble.
Again, wrong. I would say that the majority of scientists wouldn't say we have to move back to being bushmen to survive, just revise the way we do things. Quit tearing down forests to stick out cattle on, so we can assert our wealth by eaying streak. Drive electric/hybrid/more effecient automobiles, and not drive any automobiles when possible. Self-regulate the number of children we have. Everyday at work, I see countless examples of people wasting resources, taking the for granted. If people started with little things, a lot could be accomplished. People, like yourself (from what I gather, excuse me if it's a hastily made judgement), are the ones who only see those two options, and would rather stick with (2), the status quo, in fear of moving back to (1).
In short... There are things that each and everyone one of us can do to help our situation, but for some reason (laziness?) do not. I try pretty hard to, and I still live a very luxurious life compared to many throughout the modern and historical world. No use in just dismissing the inbetween like you have in your above analysis.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Unless the Mississippi expands again and all of Kansas is underwater :-)
this doesn't work at all.
The data you collected is specific to THAT tree. Even if you collected samples across an area, there's no way to extrapolate that data to an ENTIRE CLIMATE with any reliable precision.
For instance, I have tomatoes in my yard that seeded themselves from last year's crop. Oddly enough, they only grew in one small portion of the yard... where there were no tomatoes last year. Was it the wind that carried the seeds? Deer? Who knows... all I know is that using geologist methods, it would be determined that my yard produced Tomatoes during that period +/- a few hundred years.
So (a million years from now) the question is: "did they grow tomatoes in North America in the twentieth century?" I can say "Yes" using your methods with SOME reliablility.
But if your question is "were the tomato crops being destroyed by pollution during the year 2000" then there's no way to tell. If you grab one spot of my yard, the answer is yes. In another, my data shows increased growth. IT'S NOT HOMGENEOUS! Add to the mix erosion deleting some of the tomato record, contamination from other sources (tornados, floods)... and you have a DAMN good method for getting BROAD determination of the tomato (or squash... we're not sure) record that might have grown (or reproduced sexually... we can't tell), during the information epoch (approximately 1950-2080), somewhere within a few hundred miles of what used to be the Mississippi or Ohio river valleys....
1)We're still in an ice age..that's a scientific fact. Most people just don't realize it cause they don't have a a glacier up their ass
2)It's not really that incredible to think that people can just shut out the truth. After all, %99 of the world still believes in god - i just hope they're right, after they fuck up this planet.
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
Actually, there are three questions that haven't been settled, at least the last time I was reading the journals a couple of years ago.
(1) Are the computer models accurate? Remember, we're modeling a chaotic system here, and even the best computer models of a chaotic system can be so far off that they're worthless. (Remember the butterfly in Brazil causing thunderstorms in the United States notion from chaos theory? Well, it's impossible for a computer program modeling the weather to also model all the butterflies in Brazil. That's why weather reports are only good for at best 5 to 7 days.)
(2) Is there an actual net increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? Granted, mankind has been burning crap for a hell of a long time (think campfires and man-made forest fires and stuff), but we also know that one good volcanic eruption can pump out more carbon dioxide in an afternoon than our modern civilization pumps out in a year. Further, carbon dioxide is not inert; it's the stuff plants breath--and it's unclear if there is more plant biomass now than there is a hundred years ago. (Ironically, due largely to tree planting initiatives and conservation plans in the United States, there are more trees and tree biomass now than there was 50 years ago.)
(3) Are there other gasses we are pumping out which counteracts carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses? That is, are we doing other things which affect absorption of energy into the atmosphere? We presume that the answer to this is true--after all, ancidotal evidence seems to suggest things are getting warmer now than they were 20 or 40 years ago. And even if things aren't warmer, we can at least point to how the weather seems more "energetic"--so that way, even if things are actually cooler this month, it's due to greenhouse warming.
But...is this part of greenhouse warming, and is this part of man's influence on the environment? And is this part of man's influence that is new this century that wasn't true a few hundred years ago when people would burn several logs to have light to cook and read by?
Keep in mind that scientists in the 70's believed that all the polution created by mankind due to our industrial modern age was causing global "cooling", not global warming. And also keep in mind that these same scientists believed that the overall CO2 polution output of a Europe who was practically deforesting entire landmasses just to have wood to build cooking fires and the like was doing less damage than a modern oil-burning electrical power plant.
I'm not saying we're not doing damage. And I'm certainly NOT advocating we continue our current practice of peeing in our drinking water and shitting on our food. I'm just saying that global warming is not as cut and dry as some people say it is.
And before anyone says "we need to do something now before it's too late!", just keep in mind that this is EXACTLY what conservatives have been saying about censoring the pornography on the Internet: that while all the scientific data may still be "out" regarding the effects of pornography on the development of children, we need to do something now before it's too late.
"Global Warming" refers to the world-wide AVERAGE temperature. THAT is what is going up. Is this such a hard concept to understand? Global warming doesn't in any way mean that every spot on the globe gets warmer... it means that those spots that get cooler are more than offset by places that get warmer, and that lows are offset by more extreme highs.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is skyrocketing. Detailed measurements taken over the past 50 years plus data points extracted from ice-cores over the last thousand years show that, effective with the industrial revolution, carbon-dioxide (a greenhouse gas) has gone up dramatically. Looking at a graph of the measurements is quite striking and very difficult to argue with. There was a great (and fairly balanced) show on PBS that covered all of this.
- Spryguy
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
And remember, those cows exist in nature. It's not like they're bred on giant "farms" by "farmers" such that the population of cows is artificially large.
You were right, as is indicated by Climate Page at the NYC NWS Office Stand corrected, but it is interesting to note the they have had the 4th coolest July on record.
Bryan R.
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
"One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds ... An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise." -- Aldo Leopold, 1953.
I'd like to note that ecology != environmentalism. Ecology is the study of natural systems, the way the land and the things inhabiting interact. However, the reason that most ecologists also happen to be environmentalists has to do with the fact that through what they know, they can see the problems we're causing for ourselves. Same goes for the majority of climatologists, zoologists and botanists. It's very unfortunate many people, Slashdotters or not, seem to assume that if you're a scientist and have environmental concern, you're automatically a tool of the "Environmental Agenda," whatever that means. While I don't sound just as bad, it's usually the opposite- those "scientists" (usually authors with no related scientific credentials) who deny that there are environmental problems are usually backed financially by those who have an agenda, those for which the status quo of resource usage and waste is profitable, who insist on living off the Earth's capital, instead of the sustainable interest.
Having that said, I have a knowledge of ecology and our environmental condition that is above that of an average American. Unfortunately, that doesn't say much. Having attended a surprisingly unbiased environmental highschool (School of Environmental Studies, Minnesota), I was edumacated on a lot of these issues.
I agree with Aldo Leopold. I am torn between the ignorance of the greater community and watching this community slowly kill itself by power of their denial.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
hmm, not really. thats a story about how the sea level in tuvalu, a small island in the pacific, has fallen just enough over the last years so that it seems to be taking longer to vanish ... quoting from the article:
>Hilia Vavae, the Metereological Service's director, said: "This is certainly a bit of a shock for us because we have been experiencing the effect of rising oceans for a long time."
(...)
However, scientists both on and off the island believe such concerns will be short term because the sea level falls are coming to an end and the oceans will soon resume their inexorable rise.
these are the facts we face:
- global sea levels have been rising in the last century. quoting from this article: After the last ice age, the rapid melting of glaciers rapidly raised sea level. That melting tapered off about 6,000 years ago, and sea level -- compared to land -- became fairly stable. However, over the past century, sea level over much of the United States has risen by 25 to 30 centimeters relative to land.
- while the sea level has risen and fallen at many times in the past, the areas endangered by rising sea levels have certainly never been populated by i-dont-know-how-many-hundreds of millions of people.
however, people like clinging to their habits and are generally unwilling to accept any facts that might challenge them to think..and now for something completely different
Then there are the computer simulations that attempt to model and reproduce the various observations.
Please note, these types of research are relatively independent of each other. After decades of work, the diverse set of results are starting to reach one strong conclusion. There will be an United Nations sponsored report due out at the end of the year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Currently in draft form, this report will state, "there has been a discernible human influence on global climate." Remember scientists are conservative in stating their conclusions. This is in reality, a very strong statement.
A short review of this report was presented in Science. Please check out the figure showing temperature fluctuations over the past 1000 years. If this doesn't scare you, nothing will.
Personally I think we are still along ways from generating a self sufficient base here on earth. We don't live in harmony with our environment. We don't replace the resources we use up. Untill we fully replace the resources we use up we are only living on stored up resources. We have a very long ways to go. I really support the idea of going to the Moon or Mars. I feel it will help up learn how to better take care of earth. For colonies to really work on either we will need to learn how to efficiently use and recycle the recources we use.
eureka,
that's what a greek guy said when he figured something out. He was sitting in the bath, and according to the legend went outside without his toga yelling EUREKA!
In short, the volume of ice is not relevant to the discussion since the mass is constant. The whole reason Ice floats is because it has a lower density than fluid water.
Jilles
oh, that's so insightful of you.
Of course we should change our attitudes, IF you want to preserve the Earth the way SHE is. However, there are millions of people that want it to be one large city. Nothing but concrete and greenhouses. Oxygen is to be generated if needed, and all wastes recycled for consumption.
My point is that we have no idea how the earth is changing. You just ASSUME that ALL these changes are detrimental, and we should do something about it NOW!
I was simply saying that we don't know what is really happening, and any changes we make in order to fend off something that we don't know anything about may indeed make things worse. How can we be scientific if we don't make any effort to determine the problem first?
- Natural environmental changes happen
- Species extingish massively because of them. Eventually biological diversification happens and all is good and fine again.
- It happened in the past and it'll happen in the future. Nothing to worry in the grand scheme of things.
- Now, Homo Sapiens is an animal species like any other one.
- It can get extinguished like any other species
- It won't matter in the grand scheme of things, too.
Conclusion: Human race should care about his own future(ok, this last line was a nice non-sequitur, but i'm in a hurry and i think my point is clear enough)Most geologists are Uniformitarians, few are Catastrophists. (Many who are may support 'Creation Science,' but that is not my debate here.) Reality may be a mixture of those two major views... while the world is largely stable, there do appear from time to time questions about things like rapidly frozen mammoths in the former Soviet Union, or large-scale flooding on the earth.
Among those views, some have said that a greenhouse earth, with the proper atmospheric barriers so as not to overheat us, could be a flourishing garden spot from pole to pole. It would have a cooler equatorial zone as well as warmer poles.
In known reality, the coldness of the poles at present act like "energy drained mass capacitors," which create freezing weather patterns like the Alberta Clipper. But it is popular opinion than many areas had a rather tame Year 2000, with milder Winter and Summer Extremes.
Could we be seeing an upside to reducing the cyclical stresses of the hemispheres?
Now, scrape off layer after of layer of that piece of paper, until the paper is only several atoms thick. The number of molecules there is orders of magnitude more than the number of humans on this rock. My point stands, we are inconsequential to planetary atmosphere. If you want global climate changing emissions, a single volcanic eruption can equal our current "greenhouse" output for the last few hundred years, globally, and there is not a single thing we can do about it. We'd have to build some extremely big and extremely ineffecient machines and run them for a few eons before we started impacting our environment on a macro level. We should be much more concerned about the quality of air that lingers immediately above us in our cities, and the water that flows out of our taps.
David
If anything, this is part of the earth's natural climate change. Everyone knows that the earth's climate changes over the centuries...this is just a normal phenomenon that will continue. One day you will all be complaining that we're making the earth too cold.
Gee, Timothy...I don't think that there's a lot of ice on the ocean a 0 deg north latitude. In fact, I'd wager that there hasn't ever been much ice there.
Now, 90 degrees North is a different matter.
It's just El Niño acting up again. Go turn that sucker around 180 degrees and Santa won't have to buy himself a new submarine.
Except in a democracy. When people get really upset and they could just nationalize the corporation.
You're also neglecting that if the North Pole is melting, then the glaciers probably are, too, given that they're a lot closer to the equator. In addition, if the warming is symmetrical, there will be similar melting at the South Pole, which is almost entirely on land.
A third factor to consider is the weather system, which relies on sea-based and air-based currents. Losing the North Pole would screw up sea currents directly, and (because it's a source of reflection and emission of heat, rather than absorbtion) the air currents indirectly.
In short, countries such as England (which rely on the Gulf Stream to be habitable at all!) will become uninhabitable waste-lands within a relatively short space of time.
But is this even man-made? Well, the Earth is a gigantic dynamic system, which will ALWAYS move towards stable points. It's irrelevent, for the purposes of this, as to whether the stable points are termed "strange attractors" (Chaos) or "points of preferred condition" (Gaia). What matters is why the shift is even taking place.
It's indisputable that humans have had an impact on the atmosphere. A =SUSTAINED= impact. Natural phenomina may have an immediate impact that is far greater, but few natural phenomina of that magnitude last for more than a few days, maybe a few weeks. Humans have been sustaining the level of activity which could -potentially- be destabilising for over a century.
What to do? I'm not sure there is anything anyone =can= do, now. If you think in terms of Newton's Laws, F=m(dv/dt), and integrate from the start of the Industrial Revolution to now, and then work out what kind of opposing force you'd need to counter that, you'd probably get something far greater than humans could achieve before the brunt of the effects had already been and gone.
Throw in the fact that we're not dealing with the nice linear system above, but a horribly complex non-linear system with constantly varying inputs from other non-linear systems, and the best guess you could possibly make will be way way out from whatever the reality will be.
IMHO, humanity has seriously blown it, and the best anyone can really do now is create gene banks of all existing species, with sufficient variation to create viable populations. Humanity's greed and obsession with dominion over everything (including other humans) =may= have brought about the end of humanity itself. From the perspective of those who can't realistically make any difference, no matter what the reality turns out to be, the best bet is to act as if. Preserve the preservable, in case the worst happens. If the worst doesn't happen, then you've still prevented the extinction of any species you've got in the gene bank, which may save other species from the worst that can happen to them.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Maybe I'm totally missing something here...
BUT, if the caps have shrunk 45%, shouldn't the sea level risen as well?
Chris
But I didn't see it off the root.
Global warming as a natural phenomenon is a normal event on a long-term cycle. We are not qualified to say whether or not we have a real impact on the cycle, or in fact if we are merely a part of the cycle. As volcanoes and sea rift expansion, as well as natural forest fire activity and other major sources of CO2 are normal causes of an increase in greenhouse gases, perhaps we also are just another factor speeding that cycle along.
Nature "wants" to go through cycles of warmth and coolth. For an excellent science-fiction take on this subject, see Orson Scott Card's Xenocide, which I just read - This is a deliberate self-regulating system, which Earth may or may not be. A coworker points out to me that one way we can determine if life probably exists on other planets is to see if it does go through cycles of hot and cold; Volcanic activity is normal (and life-producing) on our planet. If the planet undergoes volcanic activity, changing its atmosphere, and does not change back, then it seems likely that the system has swung out of control and the planet does not sustain (familiar) life. Earth is known to have gone through such cycles in the past, and still has an abundance of lifeforms on it. It is possible (however arrogant) to think that our effects on the atmosphere are merely an extension or acceleration of natural phenomena.
I am not of course advocating pollution. The kind of pollution we are producing is not the kind of thing we as humans will want to deal with. We dump lots of nasty things into waterways and onto the ground (which leaches into the water table, oh what fun that is - For another book reference, check out Neal Stephenson's Zodiac : The Eco-Thriller.) These types of pollution are difficult to see as anything other than bad; They tend to cause malady, not mutation. Whether or not beneficial mutation will rise from that malady is a seperate discussion.
I try not to get too alarmed about what is probably (to my way of thinking) a fairly natural swing in the global climate, which we may or may not be making a serious change in. The things I worry about as a result of our interference are little issues like dramatic die-off of seaweed, plankton, and algae.
I still want to kill off all the mosquitos, ticks, chiggers, and brown recluse spiders, though. It's not my fault I have a phobia of biting and stinging insects. Blame my upbringing and formative-year-events.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
People have been crowing about global warming for decades now, also that CFCs are depleating the ozone layer and will wreak havoc on god's green earth. Maybe they're right? Maybe it's time to put away your Aquanet.
This one looks kinda cool, they fly you in. But is $11000 usd.
Seems that what used to be a comfortable icefield at 0 degrees north lattitude is now swimming in seawater.
About the only ice you'd find at 0 degrees north (or south) latitude is in a long, cold drink - unless the weather is really fscked up...
Not sure what the company was, but i saw a news magazine (cant remember if it was 60 minutes, 20/20, etc.)piece about a russian company that has regular trips there. They use a nuclear-powered icebreaker to get there and once they are there they do all sorts of things. Walk through all 24 time zones in 24 steps, cut a hole in the ice and jump in, and a few other things. I think the trip cost about 10,000USD but i cant remember the company.
Mark Duell
Actually, it is, if a little sarcastic.
You ask how can we be scientific if we don't make any effort to determine the problem first. Not sure where you got this up, but we've been making an effort for decades. The "problem" is that earth science is not the replicable science that laboratory science is--the whole idea of laboratory science is to be able to hold constant all but a few variables. The timescales, spatial scales, and complexity of the natural system preclude this approach from Earth science. If the laboratory criterion is your measure of scientific validity, then what we'd have to do is make a dozen (thousands, billions would be better) planet Earths, with identical solar systems (at least the moon and Sun, you can probably get away with not including the other planets), and change a different variable on each Earth, with the requisite duplication for repeatability, of course.
The fact is that this must be a judgment call. We do not have the security of "scientific proof" in the laboratory science sense. What is a fact is that the Earth is getting warmer faster. Whether this is all natural (not likely), all man made (not likely), or both (most likely) is irrelevant. So is the "we're hurting Nature" argument--Nature doesn't care if the dominant life forms are people or jellyfish and cockroaches. But a warmer planet is relevant to people--depending on the actual warming, it can have considerable economic, agricultural, and epidemiological costs. It seems to me reasonable that it would behoove us to change our behavior somewhat not to keep adding to the problem, not until we can actually say (with justification more rigorous than wistful thinking) that our actions are not making things worse.
The statement we have no idea how the earth is changing is not correct. We have some idea--the hard part is not the "how" (actually, that's hard too) but the "why".
that's just it. All of your "known mechanism of action" and "is proven" isn't based on anything tangible. You believe these things exist. And they may exist... I'm not arguing that.
What I was saying is that it's all theory. And by "theory" I mean completely hypothetical, emotional based, media enforced, scientifically unproven, perspective limited HYPE.
We DON'T HAVE any mechanisms established that can actually measure... with any certainty, precision or accuracy... any of the "global warming claims." They are based on the findings of one generation's nature-centered mindset.
In other words: if global warming destroys the earth, the "chicken littles" will be right out of sheer luck, and not out of any scientific foresight.
I always thought we could do better than that.
For those who haven't seen it, check out globalwarming.org. It's not a pro-environment site -- it's an industry-sponsored coalition spreading the "don't worry be happy" message. They say that mild warming will be "beneficial for the planet", making for nice mild winters in Northern Siberia. Mmmm, get your beach towels.
I'm not saying there are easy solutions, or practical alternatives to fossil fuels -- no matter what you do, you'll be destroying ecosystems, risking radioactive disaster, or blasting CO2 everywhere -- but industry isn't making it easier by spreading such heavily-biased information.
Not that Greens are doing any better -- some of the rabid activism turns people off (like myself) that realize that change is slow and compromise is neccessary. Terrorism just isn't the best way to facilitate a dialogue.
Anyway, we only have 100 years or so of liquid petroleum, after that we're back to coal-burning stoves... by then hopefully we'll be able to export our consciousness to XML and transmit ourselves to another poor innocent Class M world.
However, what frustrates me over the whole debate is that people seems to assume that normal means static. If the climate changes, it is abnormal, right? Wrong! Climate has changed over and over again on earth, it has driven people from their homes (e.g. the perishing of the population on Greenland in the 1350-ties), that's nothing new. If you want to have a good feel for the change of climate over the last few hundred years, go to a glacier.
Now, our civilization has been allowed to flourish because we happen to be between ice ages. OK, so we're vulnerable. Faced with the forces of nature, man will forever remain small. You know, a hundred years from now, it might just be politically correct to suggest pouring CO_2 out in the atmosphere to heat it up.
Now, I'm not saying that we should continue as we do, with our high-flying lifestyle of the west, but I'm saying that we should look more carefully at making changes that will have an effect. I think geophysicists have been overly reluctant to accept that long term variations in solar activity might have an effect, they always respond that the short term variations are very small. What we really don't need, is for political correctness to come and rule the debate.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
You said it, brother!
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There's actually a lot of evidence that the entire oceans were frozen (to a fairly deep depth!) in Earth's geological record. It was the cover story of _Scientific American_ a few months ago.
It hardly seems coincidental that the Cambrian explosion (where you suddenly saw a *lot* of *very* strange critters in the fossil record) occured just after the ice pack melted.
As an aside, anyone who thinks that "40 years is too short to show geological change" should MEMORIZE this article. As I recall, they believe that the global icepack which survived for millions of years melted in 100 years! I've seen other articles suggesting that ice ages have also ended (and begun?) in surprisingly short times - decades, not centuries.
This is very scary because it implies that large climatic changes are closer to transitions between meta-stable phases than a nice smooth transition. (Which makes sense, mathematically, since nonlinear dynamics show "attractors" and abrupt transitions between them (or chaotic periods) instead of the mush you get with linearized dynamics.) This suggests there may be hystersis(sp?), and *that* means that our current global warming may force the climate into a new stable state which can't be easily undone.
(For the record, I'm in the camp that thinks that human factors are significant, but the relative lack of volcanic activity for the last century is probably more important.)
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Don't you somtimes wish moderation included "Fool", "Damn Fool", & "Dangerous Damn Fool"?
God, I wish I could moderate your comments up. Alas, I took part in this conversation and do not have the means.
This reply is THE ONLY one that understood my point so far. Albeit, we disagree, at least the reply was on target.
Thank you for responding.
-----------------------------
That being said, I see your points... but where you added your paranthetical "not likely" and "most likely", on what do you base this weighting system? The climate could change cyclically every 2000 years like this. How would you know? Why did you assume most likely for the "combination of causes" over just "nature"?
My belief obviously is that nature couldn't give a crap if we were here or not. She will establish an equlibrium and fight for it tooth and nail. If we add more CO2, she'll give us more plants to consume it. If we burn forests, she'll starve us until we're reduced to numbers that aren't as offensive. But in the long term, we can't make a dent in the earth's ecosystems.
You have no clue, because I have two.
If there is hope, it lies in the trolls.
A hundred years ago they began to irrigate, moving towards a "modern" society. Now Egypt, and much of northern Africa has humidity...
... whoops, a desert climate with smog.
Hi,
It has been shown in many studies that violent people like to watch violent movies. There is correlation.
Now, does that mean violent people are drawn to violent movies, or violent movies make people violent?
In other words, just because Egyptians started irrigating, and now there is "humidity," does not necessarily mean the Egyptians changed their weather.
A better example would have been Los Angeles, which went from a desert climate to a
-thomas
"And like that
Yes, I am a skeptic of scientific reporting. All I know for sure is that the Mount Pinatubo eruption last decade released more CO2 into the atmosphere in one week then the entire history of human industry. Maybe, just maybe, if there really is some global warming, it is due to that volcano rather than the fact that I don't carpool.
That's the part that fascinates me a lot--if the earth was so fragile that all the CO2 we released since the Industrial age (and notice that no-one blames pre-industrial man's use of fireplaces for any damage at all) was causing substantial damage, then life as we know it should have ended when Mount Pinatubo blew it's top.
Obviously we shouldn't pee in our drinking water. And it's not like anyone here who wanders about the validity of the global warming reports are supporting polluted air or fecal contamination along our beaches or in eliminating recycling programs which are used to reduce landfill. And it's not like I'm against programs to reduce CO2 emissions because they're generally tied to emissions of other atmospheric pollution.
There is a danger, however, in tying all of these programs to global warming: if global warming is proven to be invalid for whatever reason, and we have all of our ecosphere saving measures in that basket, then will people feel free to pollute more?
"Think Global: Act Local"--what a line of bullshit! I'd rather "Think Local: Act Global", such as getting Mexico to enact better pollution controls so that their air pollution doesn't drift across the US/Mexico Border and pollute Texas...
aaaaaaaaaagggggghhhh!
If the ice cap melts for a duration of 100 years every 45,000 years, WE WOULD NOT SEE IT ACCORDING TO YOUR THEORY
sheesh.
I liked geology class, thanks. I just didn't agree with most of it being applied to SPECIFIC and possibly LIMITED situations. Read Asimov's Foundations series. Apply his socialogical rules to geology... and you have something workable.
But if you use them the way you do, (applying broad bursh strokes to periods less than 50 FRIGGING YEARS) you run around changing things that MAY MAKE THINGS WORSE!
Do you get it now? Man, how thick can you be?
Theory of Global Warming for Dummies:
Man bad, he put much CO2 into air.
This CO2 causing energy from sun to enter Earth but leave at less of a rate.
Caught energy causes system to heat up.
My point was that when you have a theory like Global Warming, and no bones about it, my simple example above is what Global Warming is defined as, it applies to the entire system. The Earth is a closed system, surprise surprise, so when you put energy into a closed system, all aspects of that closed system are affected. Simple physics. So, ergo, we should be seeing an increase across the board. You can average anything you want, play with the numbers, do what you like. Now, if we were to re-define things, to say that we are going through a climate change, then I would be more inclined to listen.
Plus, while we are on the subject, last time I checked, Climates was defined as weather over a period of hundreds of years. Since when have the last ten years dictated we were experiencing a climate change?
Bryan R.
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
Ok, i've been seeing your sig around and i'm curious... what's the fun on it? I mean, i don't get it, i must be dumb or something, explain please.
Actually, it's quite a bit easier to predict long term trends than short-term fluctuations. Just like the stock market: up or down almost randomly on any given day, but a safe 10% growth over long stretches.
The thing I wonder about is why anyone would want to ignore this type of data. All we're being asked to do is to not take everything for granted. The effort required on the individual's part is minimal. Now, if the theories of appocalypse are correct, then we've saved ourselves. If not, than we've still saved small pockets of the natural world, which may not be important to human survival but sure are important to our sense of beauty and responsibility.
don't you think it is a bit arrogant of us as one of the many species that inhabit the planet Earth to believe that we alone can overtly destroy so much in mere decades that has survived for milleniums.
Actually, if we tried to destroy the current ecosystem it wouldn't be at all undoable. As to the impact we are having and especially the consequences there is debate. As to our cability to influence this planet we easily could (if we were insane and tried).
Do the math, if the Artic ice sheet has melted by 45%, that would have already risen the worldwide sea-level by at least a dozen feet! That means places like Florida, New York and L.A, as well as Hong Kong, Tokoyo, the Bay Area would all be substantially underwater!
www.enthea.org
It seems like these are the initial steps of global warming. Soon the ice caps in the north and south poles will melt and humans as a species will have to learn to adapt to an aquatic lifestyle because of what their actions have done.
alkali wrote: "And remember, those cows exist in nature. It's not like they're bred on giant "farms" by "farmers" such that the population of cows is artificially large."
Aren't people part of nature? (Well, OK, maybe you don't think so. So I am asserting that "Yes, people are part of nature.")
Modifying ones environment, cultivating certain resources, etc. is *part* of nature! Beavers are part of nature, right? They make lodges / dams; would you say the concentration of fish that the dams create is natural, or artificial?
Ants cultivate aphids for their sweet secretions, same thing. Natural?
The creation of materials which do *not* exist otherwise in nature I'm willing to call artificial (as in "demonstrating artifice") but all I'm saying is that the line is hazy and arbitrary between the "natural" and the "artificial." Some nature lovers like to live semi-primitively (roadside tent camping, or long-term survivalism) but they surely wouldn't want to remove their capacity to change their environment by choice, I would bet.
Re: cows -- a) tofu burgers are really good, and I actually prefer Gardenburgers to most beef hamburgers. Make non-beef alternatives attractive, and beef will be less valuable to grow. b) Giant Fullerine domes with methane catchers at the top! Sell it! Heat your home! Light your yard! Powerful, all-natural methane!
anyhow, idle thoughts.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
The things I observed which give me pause include the admission by one climatologist who admitted in a lecture I attended that as the climate is a chaotic system, they were still having problems getting their computer models to predict anything with any real accuracy beyond a week. Further, they are assuming (at least as I hear it) that mankind has caused damage to the climate by contributing a very small percentage change, which has had a cascading effect on overall weather patterns.
However, the anthropology employed was complete bullshit: the study I listened to basically assumed that mankind's CO2 and methane contributions were 0 until the beginning of the Industrial Age. Yet it's pretty clear from anthropological reports that (a) man used a lot of wood to burn in various fireplaces, campfires, and the like, (b) ancient man had no problems setting fire to an entire forest if it suited him during a war, or for clearcutting, or for farming purposes. (The contribution is set to 0 because it's assumed that the CO2 released from these renewable sources are absorbed by renewed biomass elsewhere in the world--which begs the question why climatologists presume that biomass absorbption of excess CO2 stopped working after 1820.)
The other thing that gave me pause was while I was at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the whole ozone layer stuff was coming to the limelight. It was at a budget discussion to figure out how our group was going to go to congress to get additional funding. At the meeting we briefly toyed with the idea of hitching our fortunes to the recently discovered evidence for a growing ozone hole (note that we never observed from space a time when there was no ozone hole--the alarmists are concerned the existing hole is growing). After all, a growing ozone layer may indicate an environmental crisis--and as was acknowledged at the meeting, it's easier to convince congress critters of coughing up funding when there is an immediate concern. (Why do you think we send probes to Venus? Because it's an excellent model of the greenhouse effect here on Earth!)
Bah.
Don't get me wrong: these things need to be researched. And we do need to institute pollution curbs on a global scale so we don't destroy the air we breathe--but we need to do these things sensably, rather than giving into the passions of the extremist left who suggest we should simply dismantle our modern industrial society in favor of some sort of "primitivist nature revival" that never existed in the first place.
Heh, funny. Now sonny, why not get off your dad's computer so he can look at some gay porn or something.
Bryan R.
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
That's no less imbecellic than the statement you quoted. Now, the original poster did not make a clear distinction between "climate" and "weather", that's his fault. You really need to read up on this, there is a huge debate on whether the compositition of the atmosphere is really significantly altered. That a significant alteration will produce measurable effect is obvious, but a different matter alltogether. It is timely to point out that the World Watch Institute has lost all it's credibility by making as bombastic statements and predictions is you just did, their predictions have always failed miserably.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
For the record:
My first job was designing/installing CEMs under the 29 and 40 CFRs. In english: Continuous Emissions Monitors under the Code of Federal Regulations dealing with Hazardous Wastes Disposal (and Transportation).
Which means, that I was responsible for monitoring the levels of industrial STACK EMISSIONS. CO2, NOx, SO2, Hydro-Carbons, etc...
This gives me some insight into at least some of the global warming claims. You can believe what you want, I'm basing my decisions on what I'VE SEEN!
There is no scientific evidence that the primary contributor to global warming is (or even could be) man-made. Sorry.
If you want to argue that cutting down the rain-forests is a cheif contributor... your call, I know nothing about the lumber industry. But I can guarantee it is highly unlikely due to industrial emissions.
Thank you for your kinds words I live in England.
It's called an elephant's trunk whereas it is in fact, an elephant's nose, a nose by any other name would smell as sweet
Where are you getting this absurd "desert wasteland" idea? You do understand that Earth has a very solid self-regulating atmospheric system, don't you?
Why do you think global warming would turn the planet into a desert? If anything it'll make many areas wetter-- warmer air leads to more ocean evaporation, and more clouds + rain. Plus, the increased cloud cover would reflect more sunlight back into space, thus cooling the atmosphere. Remarkable machine, this earth is. Hell it seemed to be unfazed by global catastrophies in the past (compare 1 degree of global warming with, say, a meteor impact that wipes out 98% of all life, which has happened on a few occasions).
This is nothing. It's not worth reverting back to the stone age to prevent any pollution, whether or not it's our fault.
Look at it this way-- it's just as likely that mankind caused the bizarre weather over the past few years, as it is likely that the Mt Pinatubo eruption caused it. A hiccup in the balance of nature. Familiar with chaos theory? The eruption could've upset the cycles a bit, causing the propogation of the disturbance to increase down the road (like a feedback loop) long after the eruption.
But we will probably never know. Whatever happens, we'll be OK. And Earth certainly will be, because it's already been through much worse.
All I know is these activist groups keep wanting money.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
no.
Peary's claims were disputed. Unlike the South Pole expeditions, he had no evidence that he had actually been there. American history points to him, because he's an American. But there was another (who's name escapes me.... help anyone?) that came down first with claims of being the first. Add to the mix the African-American contingency that it was the black assistant that actually got there....we have no idea who actually got to the North Pole first.
The only confirmed arrival to the north pole was bu Nuclear submarine in the 1950's. I bleieve it was the Nautilus?
Solid water (or rather, ice) is actually MORE voluminous than luquid water. I don't recall why, but you can test it for yourself. Get one cc of water, and freeze that puppy. It will be larger in its frozen state.
Observe, reason, and experiment.
Observe, reason, and experiment.
(if you're too dumb, just pray)
From http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Hazards/What/VolGas/volg as.html:
Emission rates of SO2 from an active volcano range from 10 million tonnes/day according to the style of volcanic activity and type and volume of magma involved. For example, the large explosive eruption of Mount Pinatubo on 15 June 1991 expelled 3-5 km 3 of dacite magma and injected about 17 million tonnes of SO2 into the stratosphere. The sulfur aerosols resulted in a 0.5-0.6C cooling of the Earth's surface in the Northern Hemisphere. The sulfate aerosols also accelerated chemical reactions that, together with the increased stratospheric chlorine levels from human-made chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) pollution, destroyed ozone and led to some of the lowest ozone levels ever observed in the atmosphere.
From http://www.epa.gov/globalwarming/glossary.html:
Mount Pinatubo. A volcano in the Philippine Islands that erupted in 1991. The eruption of Mount Pinatubo ejected enough particulate and sulfate aerosol matter into the atmosphere to block some of the incoming solar radiation from reaching Earth's atmosphere. This effectively cooled the planet from 1992 to 1994, masking the warming that had been occurring for most of the 1980s and 1990s.
CO2 and H2O are both powerful greenhouse gases. Without greenhouse warming the global average temperature would be about 0 degrees Fahrenheit. One of the big concerns of increasing CO2 concentrations is that if the atmosphere warms up, the amount of water vapor present in the atmosphere will also increase. In layman's terms, a warm atmosphere can "hold" more water vapor than a colder atmosphere; see the Clausius Clapyeron equation which shows that saturation vapor pressure (the total "capacity" of the air to "hold" water vapor) increases exponentially with increasing temperature.
As an atmospheric scientist I belive we are carrying on a great experiment, one which has no control experiment to run in parallel. Separating natural climate variability from anthropogenc (man-made) change is one of the biggest challenges we face today. However I encourage anyone who thinks humans aren't having an effect on the environment to take a look at CO2 traces from Mauna Loa which have been kept for over fifty years. There is a steady trend upward that occurs in concert with human emissions. There is little doubt where this CO2 came from.
Concerning the ice ages: variations in the earth's orbit (tilt, eccentricity, precession) are strongly linked with the big ice ages. These occur on scales of tens of thousands of years. However, ice core samples and sea floor samples suggest that the transitions between "normal" climates and "anomalous" climates have happened over only a handful of years, not gradually as was once thought. If we perturb the system hard enough, we could get into another "anomalous" regime (turn off deep convection near Greenland which would shut off the Gulf stream, chilling England etc.).
The truth is, if our climate changes significantly, the earth will keep on turning, millions if not billions of humans may die (think of rising sea levels, mosquito-borne disease etc.), but life will continue. In the end it will not matter who caused what or who was right or who was wrong.
Leigh Orf
A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
Climatologists correct for such measurement errors.
I meat this here for the experiment:/ density_exp.html
w ater.html
http://cwis.nyu.edu/pages/mathmol/modules/water
and those for the molecular structure:
http://www.nyu.edu/pages/mathmol/textbook/info_
http://www.nyu.edu/pages/mathmol/library/water/
wiZd0m
OK, off the top of my head, one problem I have with global warming evidence such as this is that most of the northern hemisphere is still much cooler than it has been in historical times, such as when the Romans were growing grapes in Scotland, and when the Norse settled in Greenland (before being wiped out or assimilated with the Eskimos, depending on which theory you believe).
Aren't we also at the maximum of the 400 year solar cycle, BTW?
(currently testing something about signatures here)
I've been wondering to myself lately if maybe all the pollution, etc that humans have been doing to the earth will actually help natural selection? My point is this: Since the advent of antibiotics (pennicillain, etc) humans no longer evolve for their ability to withstand diseases. Instead, we have poeple evolving for horniness alone; There is no longer survival of the fittest. It has become survival of whoever has the most children t go on welfare. So what impact does pollution have? It's mixing up the gene pool. It makes more mutants. This is a Good Thing, because it allows for the possibility of further human evolution. It's kinda offtopic, but this can be taken one step further, to reach this conclusion: The collapse of the human race in a nuclear catastrophe would be, in the long run, good for the earth. Presumably there would be some poor miserable wretches who survive such trauma. They would: () be immune to all our pollutants, as would all the species they live with. This allows them to have a non-damaging industrial revolution, and therefore pursue scientific goals which we would consider too harmfull to the environment. () have a large pool of data from which to work. At our present state of civilization, I would be highly surprised if our industrial and technological processes didn't survive -at all- a catastrophe. Hopefully books would survive, explaining how to do many things to jumpstart a civilization. Though these creatures would (probably) be no longer human, it would be a step up in the evolutionary ladder. Of course, there would be problems, as in all societies, but by being more physically (and hopefully mentally) advanced than humans, this race could get farther with less. Just something to think about...
to accept the praise of personal wisdom is an affront to the very ideal i hold dear.
Even better in this context, the theory held by Thomas McGovern and others, they moved due to climate change.... :-) There is no doubt that the climate changed significantly about 1350, making the place really cool, failing crops, etc. In addition, as pointed out by Helge Ingstad, it is likely that communication with Norway was cut down because of "black death" (it may have gotten there as well, but it is not that likely). Of course, it may have been lots of other things as well of course. It is probably not slave-hunts in the 16th century as some others have argued poorly...
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
[Repost, I forgot to preview]
I've been wondering to myself lately if maybe all the pollution, etc that
humans have been doing to the earth will actually help natural selection?
My point is this: Since the advent of antibiotics (pennicillain, etc) humans
no longer evolve for their ability to withstand diseases. Instead, we have
poeple evolving for horniness alone; There is no longer survival of the
fittest. It has become survival of whoever has the most children t go on
welfare.
So what impact does pollution have? It's mixing up the gene pool. It makes
more mutants. This is a Good Thing, because it allows for the possibility of
further human evolution.
It's kinda offtopic, but this can be taken one step further, to reach this
conclusion: The collapse of the human race in a nuclear catastrophe would
be, in the long run, good for the earth. Presumably there would be some poor
miserable wretches who survive such trauma. They would:
() be immune to all our pollutants, as would all the species they live
with. This allows them to have a non-damaging industrial revolution, and
therefore pursue scientific goals which we would consider too harmfull to
the environment.
() have a large pool of data from which to work. At our present state of
civilization, I would be highly surprised if our industrial and
technological processes didn't survive -at all- a catastrophe. Hopefully
books would survive, explaining how to do many things to jumpstart a
civilization.
Though these creatures would (probably) be no longer human, it would be a
step up in the evolutionary ladder. Of course, there would be problems, as
in all societies, but by being more physically (and hopefully mentally)
advanced than humans, this race could get farther with less.
Just something to think about...
to accept the praise of personal wisdom is an affront to the very ideal i hold dear.
Corporations don't eat added costs (or added taxes, or ...) - they pass them on.
No, it depends on the shape of the supply and demand curve. Usually both the consumers and companies bear some of the cost. In any case, I'll be happy to pay if it means less pollution.
Worries me too, if the weight distribution at the poles changed, the gravitational gryoscopic effect of the suns gavitational pull on the earths axial tilt, could suddenly put the north pole over Seattle.
It's called an elephant's trunk whereas it is in fact, an elephant's nose, a nose by any other name would smell as sweet
and if the ocean's floors were eroded for a period of 45,000 years (which compared to 60 millions years is a drop in the bucket)... and in that 45,000 year period the earth's emissions had risen to TWICE the CO2 levels they are today?...
Your argument is solely based on that one fact. That one fact isn't scientifically sound down at this level. We are measuring in the range of a few years here people. NOT 20 MILLION. No apparatus created has a range or precision that can work in the MILLIONS of YEARS, yet can be so precise as to show last April. Please.
Fact is, you have no idea what happened over the last 20 million years. Due to sea floor evidence, you'd like to believe that CO2 emissions are the highest ever... but you can't prove it.
so before I sign off on BILLIONS of dollars of spending on YOUR theories... I'd like a little more substantial proof first, if that's ok by you.
Meteorological stations (the weather guages) in the 19th century were boxes stuck out on poles in the middle of a field. Meteorological stations in the 21st century are boxes stuck out on poles in the middle of an airport tarmac.
This is standard canard. The main component (70%) is measurements over the sea surface. Further, most warming has occurred since 1980-- long after the effect you cite should have appeared. Be careful; the petrochemical industry spends a lot of money spreading such "commonsense" nonsense.
Or what about the ozone hole? [...] And we have no theory today to explain why it subsequently shrunk.
Our lack of understanding is my point, but... this from the 1998 WMO/UNEP Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion: "The large ozone losses in the Southern Hemisphere polar region during spring continued unabated with approximately the same magnitude and areal extent as in the early 1990s. [...] These ozone changes are consistent overall with our understanding of chemistry and dynamics."
All I know for sure is that the Mount Pinatubo eruption last decade released more CO2 into the atmosphere in one week then the entire history of human industry.
Pure invention. Here are global CO2 levels as measured at the Muana Loa observatory. No discontinuity due to Pinatubo's 1992 eruption. (You're probably thinking of SO2, but you're still overstating.)
Human-caused CO2 increases are certain. Global warming is certain. The first should cause the second. But conceivably we're missing something, the CO2 increases are not causing global warming, and coincidentally some unknown, natural force is the real cause. It's possible. But odds of even, say, 1 in 10 that we're hosing the planet should perhaps give one pause.
Guys like Al Gore.
I've often wondered whether the apparent absence of technological civilizations in the universe might be attributable to politicization of what should be technical decisions rather than nuclear holocaust or other forms of war. All you need is political animals with their paws on the technology decision buttons, (e.g. "I invented the Internet.", said Al Gore) to end a technological civilization. This seems to be an obvious failure mode of any technological civilization -- the animals want the authority of the technology and know how to acquire it: politics. The problem is, a sufficiently developed technological civilization can support a lot of evolution of political animalism before its robust infrastructure finally caves in -- and then you have really sophisticated political animals pretending to be inventors and technical thinkers, riding the top of the thing all the way back into the dust, and then they all scurry back into the weeds whence they came. Once brought down, the nonrenewables such as hydrothermally produced high grade ores, that were so critical for technological civilizatoin's rise, may not exist for a rebound.
It's an interesting intellectual exercise to ask at what point a technological civilization has achieved sufficient robustness in its infrastructure combined with sufficient evolution of its political animals, to pretty much guarantee it will consume all the economically accessible nonrenewables while driving itself into the dirt, to guarantee that planet will never become a spacefaring technological civilization.
Seastead this.
Antimony also expands upon freezing. Which i think is why it was originally used for making typeset.
Wouldn't it be wisest to not take the chance of turning Earth into a barren wasteland though? How could pumping chemicals into the atmosphere do any good? Until we fully understand the Earth's climate, if we ever do, we really shouldn't be doing things that future generations will regret.
There's no reason to be skeptical of such models (or claims) because they don't exist.
I challenge you to supply a reference to a single peer-reviewed scientific paper claiming that melting of the polar icecap will cause a rise of 10-100 meters in the depth of the sea.
It is thought that the rise in temperature of the planet over the next few decades will cause rise in sea level on the order of meters, not tens of meters. And this won't be due to the melting of the polar icecap alone not by any means. After all, the sea ice of the icecap displaces about 90% of its volume when it is floating.
As someone earlier in another thread pointed out, it is water trapped as ice on land (such as Greenland and Antartica) that will provide most of the contribution to any rise in sea level that occurs.
Proving a false premise to be false, as you've done, doesn't prove global warming to be a myth.
ok, i agree that these activist groups are stupid... but there are scientist who probably know a little more about the greenhouse affect and chemistry than you or me, and they support the theory. and not all of the people who support the theory are selfish. listen to the scientist who support the theory talk, they're do care about humanity.
yes the earth is a self-regulating atmospheric system, but only in the sense that the anything that happens to the atmosphere will ballance out in the long term. but that doesn't help life on earth much. just knowing that in ten thousand years the atmosphere can support life again doesn't replace all those species that went extinct. that includes humans.
the data over the past 30-40 years show that while industial activity has increased and CO2 levels rise, there is a direct correlation with the how fast the polar icecaps are melting. now maybe the global warming theory is incorrect (if it is then we're really in troble cause we have to spend more time finding out what's really causing it) but it doesn't change the fact that we are seeing highly irregular increase in the mean heat levels that are trapped in the atmosphere.
What relevance does volcanic activity under Antartic ice have on the fact that warmer water in the ARTIC (roughtly 12,000 miles to the north) is causing the melting of the polar icecap?
July 4, 1776 is the traditional date the Declaration of Independence was signed, stating that the American Colonies were no longer ruled by King George III. Of course, there being no satellite communications or transatlantic phone lines then, he would have had no way of knowing that until weeks later, but it's still ironic.
--
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
By the way, most of North Africa was farmland two thousand years ago, when it was the bread-basket of the Roman empire. I've heard several stories about what happened. One holds that plowing ruined the soil and allowed desertification, another holds that the rainfall patterns changed. I suspect that there is something to both those ideas. I'm not sure how much of this recent change is due to Aswan and other irrigation projects, and how much is due to shifting rainfall patterns. I've never looked into it.
Back to what I set out to say, there are many temperature series out there. Some of them go back over one hundred years. Reliable global temperature series don't seem possible in the pre-satelite era. Yes, many European cities have temperature series going back way further than that, and we have cores from the Greenland icecap which give us hints about the local-to-Greenland weather for hundreds of thousands of years. There is still some controversy about the conclusions to be drawn from them.
Here are a couple of links:
National Ice Coring Lab This has some ice core data sets, and some perspective on them.
Global Climate Perspectives System These guys have some models and some data up on the web.
Global Temperature Anomolies" This is a NASA site...
This is a fellow who seems to take it as given that the temperatures have increased (I'm still not convinced), but isn't sure about why.
Here is a site put up by some folks who aren't convinced by the popular press coverage of global warming.
I know I've found some much more usefull links in the past, but I can't stumble over them right now. One thing that you want to keep in mind is that ( according to researchers I've talked to) being trendy is vital to getting grant money. If the politicians and the bureaucrats they fund are convinced that global warming is politically significant, you base your grant proposals on the idea that global warming is real, even if the really interesting questions start from another premise. Or, you don't get funded. So while I won't say that anyone is whoring for grants, I will say that the scientific debate might be on rather different terms if it weren't for politics.
See what I've been reading.
Let's posit that the Earth is getting warmer and warmer faster and faster (and the brunt of the evidence says that it is.) Let's also say that if it gets warm enough, it will have major economic, agricultural, and epidemiological impacts (just a hypothesis, mind--though not totally unreasonable.) And let's also say that anthropogenic emissions may contribute to the warming (looking at temporal and latitudinal trends of such emissions, and correlating them to temperature, this isn't totally unreasonable either, although it isn't "proof" in the laboratory science sense.) Finally, let's say that there are uncertainties in everything, that we have no infallible crystal ball. What do you propose is the most reasonable long term course of action, given that sometimes in life you have to make big decisions with incomplete information?
We can argue with details concerning the validity of each of those hypotheses: going through Science, Nature, or interviewing the earth science departments of local universities/gov't labs will tell you where most of the scientific community stands. It may also give you enough background to challenge or agree with the assumptions above (to within a healthy uncertainty, of course.)
You are perfectly correct: there is no control group to compare to. As I said in another post, to do a proper job, we'd need a large number of Earths identical in all respects except for a few chosen variables to examine. We will never get "scientific proof", in the laboratory science sense--the complexity of the natural system precludes that (The complexity and messiness of the natural system are actually some of the fun things about the field.) With such a complex system, all we have to go by is the weight of the evidence.
Me, I've done my homework, come to my own conclusions. Let's just say that neither a hand-wringing "but we don't absolutely know!" nor wistful thinking appeal to me.
Apparently you haven't traveled much. It's funny how environmentalists in the US tend to always blame the US for the world's problems (you only mentioned US cities). Try going to Asia or Africa or India, where garbage and raw shit is routinely pumped into rivers and oceans, and people who can afford them wear bandannas over their mouths and noses whenever they go outside because the air is so bad. The air burns your eyes and your lungs. It makes the air in LA seem as clear as a pristine national park in comparison.
Ohh yeah, the US still attributes to all this, because we are such huge consumers of international goods, right? Please. Place the blame where it belongs for a change.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do. --Benjamin Franklin
Considering that we are coming out of an ice age still, I'm not surprised that ice is melting.
--
People have proposed "seeding" the ocean with algae to reduce carbon dioxide levels and lower the temperature. If they do that, northern North American will be under ice in fifty years.
Global warming is just a theory, people, and a poorly based one at that. I direct you to this article: Contrary thermometers (NASA) before you flame me.
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According to this article from CNN about a month ago, the Greenland icecap has become thinner.
USA alone produces 35% of all the greenhouse gases. That's why they have been hammered at the Kyoto convention, but will never meet their target.
Next time there's a wildfire near to you, don't blame "mother nature".
Sigged!
> will actually help natural selection?
Help who? The good of the individual is not the good of the species. For instance, weeding out the weaker ones with a good plauge or something strengthens the species, but is kinda hard on the physically weedy ones. You know, geeks who post to slashdot and people like that.
"good of the species" is the the theory anyway. It didn't work for the aboriginal inhabitants of North & South Amrica.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
Yeaaargh, it terrifies me that people are commenting on this thread with the complete lack of knowlege they are. First the repeating of oil company propaganda, now this. Pinatubo erupted Jun 1991.
I'm not sure which one you are referring to, since you seem to be pulling things out of the air instead of doing research on the web that is at your fingertips, but the largest historical explosion was Tambora in 1815. It's been blamed for an exceptionally cool year in the Northern Hemisphere in 1816, but those who argue that that year was more of a matter of perception -- the people keeping the most records were having a cool year and other regions were normal.
Before people start posting in panic, even if all the ice at the north pole melted it wouldn't cause sea level to rise... now if the glaciers of Greenland and the south pole all melted, then you can worry.
The reason, of course, is that north pole ice is floating on water so that it's weight is already seen in sea level.
'Intellectual Properties' are uncontrollable in the wild. To base an economy on them is just stupid.
You dont live in LA do you? The only thing in LA that's gonna be underwater if the sea level goes up a few feet is orange county, and maybe some of venice (disappointing, no more movies like White Men Can't Jump... they're gonna have to be like White Men Can't Swim i guess)...LA, unfortunately, would be fine...you're gonna have to wait for an earthquake to take out the metropolitan areas of LA.
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
Ok, well look... I'm a huge fan of Slashdot humor and so I often go grep-ing for "funny" comments. And searching thru 330 comments, I find no humor. Sadness. So this is my attempt at a joke and a paradox!
"Global Warming - Nothing Funny About It"
Haha? No, that's not funny. QUITIT! You're hurting my brain!
"a powerful and unexpected ally..."
No one, ever, has said that global warming wont happen if we spew greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, except for Jerry Fallwell.
But then, I suppose if You don't belive in evolution, globabl warming isn't much troubble to disbelive
Logic != reality, if you only belived what logicaly probable, you wouldn't belive very much at all
Someone ought to take a class in sciance.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Why can't the environmentalists tell me what caused the ice ages?
Well, they told me what caused the ice ages in my elementary school astronomy class, irregularitys in the earths orbit. moron.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
You failed to consult the oracle.
Mt. Pinatubo erupted in 1991. Krakatau erupted in 1883 and had the effects that you described.
If you can't work out why melting of the Arctic ice cap would not cause an increase in sea level then I suggest a few remedial experiments with an ice cube and a glass of water.
Nick
-- "It's a sad day for American capitalism when a man can't fly a midget on a kite over Central Park" - Jim Moran
IANAC... :-) Anyway, I have become a skeptic after witnessing debates between climatologists and solar physicists, computer scientists, mathematicians and lectures by climatologists alone. Basically, in the solar physicists vs. climatologists debate, climatologists attacks a strawman when they say that solar variations is 1% or 0.1% or whatever. It's far greater on a longer time scale. Climatologists are knowingly neglecting effects of short time solar variations, but they are increasingly starting to take them into account these days. This translates to that what climatologists thinks is a fourth order effect is a first order effect. If you neglect a first order effect, well, GIGO.
In one of the lectures I attended, a couple of CS professors sat in front of me. During the lecture, one of them whispered to her collegue that "if this guy had attended my numerical computing course, there is no way he would have passed." The questions she asked afterwards where rather devastating, the lecturer pretty much admitted that the conclusion "there has been a discernible human influence on global climate." is premature. The simulations that was intended to be done before the conference that was supposed to take into account assumed important effects (I don't remember the details, it was about some sulfur stuff) was really never finished, they simply didn't have the CPU required to do it. I was disturbed to hear his admissions. This is about research funding I'm afraid (I'm of the opinion that the current ways of providing research funding is corrupting science in many ways, and I'm not saying that climatology is worse than other fields of science, it is probably not).
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
proven already, since 1960 amount of warm water floating to waters around norway has decreased with 40%
FOR THE LAST TIME: 40 YEARS OF DATA DOESN'T PROVE ANYTHING. The planet has been around for hundreds of millions of years. Taking a 40 year sample and basing conclusions on it is analyzing less than one thousandth of one percent of the overall history. Its Absurd.
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
I have read a lot about polar expeditions. A lot. One of the major complaints, what makes the north pole hike so difficult is that you do bump into huge openings in the ice now and then. That they are a mile across is not unusual. Now, this happens to be almost at the pole right now. Strange?
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Have you heard of the concept of insurance? Risk management? Probabilistic thinking?
Nice try, but the majority (60%) of the energy from el Sol is IR (Infrared Radiation), which is not blocked out by clouds. You know IR has the type of radiation used by your remote controls. You can't see it, but it is a significant part of the spectrum. The problem is that IR is kept in by clouds when it is re-radiated. The main indicator of this re-radiation of IR is night time temperatures. This is the greenhouse effect.
You should be worried. Actually, when our generation (currently 20 - 30) is about 60, the weather and environment could be really dicey. My hope is that hydrogen will become the major energy source in the next 10 years so that greenhouse gas production drops significantly (especially for automobiles - a major cause of carbon release). If this doesn't happen, you better start praying.
--
"You're gonna need a bigger boat." - Chief Brody
Here are some things we do know:
the earth used to be a lot warmer, a thousand years ago. That's when the Norse were farming in Greenland, where there is permafrost and desolation today.
The earth has been a lot colder than it is now. Think about the Ice Ages.
The earth was a lot colder than it is now just 500 years ago. Today they call that the mini ice age, and it's what killed off the Norse colonies in Greenland and North America. As recently as 200 years ago, the canals in Holland were freezing over every winter. That hasn't happened for a long time, now. We seem to be coming out of that mini ice age, but slowly and with steps backwards.
Sorry, but we have at least SOME long-range data, that are very preoccupying.
Two British scientists say the level of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earth's atmosphere is higher than for 20 million years.
Sigged!
That's a lot of heat used for melting ice instead of being measured as a temperature increase. Which makes the measure temperature increases even more alarming.
Benny
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
As a participant in the 1998 and 1999 SCICEX's (Science Ice Expeditions) of the USS Hawkbill (SSN 666), I've had a chance to look at these questions pretty closely:
We do know that the arctic has warmed in the last 40 years. However, this does not necessarily mean that global warming is a fact. The arctic climate is very complex and involves the interaction of the atlantic and pacific waters (which are of different temperatures and salinity) and many atmospheric condiditions.
So, we don't have any good evidence confirming that the loss of arctic ice is representitive of global warming. It could be a cyclical condition of which we became aware only recently (when we gained the ability to collect data in the arctic).
This is why the US Navy and the scientific community has invested large amounts of time, personnel and equipment to arctic expeditions.
For more information on the SCICEX expeditions, take a look at the official SCICEX web site:
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/SCICEX/
For some great pictures of the USS Hawkbill at the pole (and if you don't mind a relatively slow connection), take a look at the USS Hawkbill Commemorative CDROM:
http://www.walkeonline.com/hawkbill/index.html (look under the photo album for SCICEX '99 or SCICEX '98)
Vann Walke LT, USN
Salmon, Broads & Beer
Northwest journal fo
However, to say that the current warming trend is influenced by man would require us to explain some hard facts:
- Volcanic eruptions alone pour out pollutants every year than anything humans can come close to
- Solar cycles seem to be tightly linked with annual variance
- Man could not have had any serious impact on the global warming trends that have been observed in the geological record.
- All historical indicators (that is to say, going back 200+ years), seem to indicate that our current tempratures might be a bit on the cool side, as compared to the average.
Global warming trends will likely continue as long as the Sun keeps powering them. Don't confuse this for an anti-ecological rant. I'm as much a tree-hugger as the next person who grew up in Vermont, and I'd love to see our conservation efforts get a little more reasonable. You cannot, however, base any reasonable discussion of the environment on misinformation (much as many will doubtless try).Now consider the fact that over these last 40 years, mankind has been at war with nature, consuming and polluting and otherwise raping this planet.
Actually, we've been at war with the planet for a lot longer than 40 years. Think of the evolution of black spotted moths in England due to rampant polution (such as soot) in the last century. It was routine for some Native American tribes to completely burn down the forests they lived in, such as was done by California Indians when an area of forest stopped producing adequate amounts of acorns to support the tribe. (The tribe itself would move out of the forest and bug the neighbors for a year or two while the forest healed itself.) It's also believed that it was ancient man who at least contributed to the creation of the Sahara Desert through overgrazing.
There is a commonly accepted "truth" by many that modern man is more destructive than ancient man because we have so much more. But the reality is that ancient man was extremely wasteful--not understanding as we do the value of not destroying an entire forest or no driving an entire heard of buffalo off a cliff for one or two pelts. And no matter how "in tune" or "spiritually connected" (or some other bullshit) ancient man was supposed to be with nature, ancient man did not know the value of land preservation or conservation.
My point is that mankind has been fucking with the environment in ways which make Los Angeles look like a picnic, for much longer than records have been kept. The only difference between conditions today and conditions a thousand years ago is that there is a larger population--but we are more efficient in supporting that larger population through better farming practices and land management than we ever have been before.
*shrug*
If this means we are affecting the environment or not, I dunno. But mankind has been fucking with things for more than just 40, or even a hundred years. We wiped out the mastadons and overgrazed the Sahara looooonnnng before the Industrial Age...
This is the best news I have heard in a long time! Some of us are snatching up property that is about 20 feet above sea level currently. Remember, its at bargain prices right now!
Anyone remember Jules Verne's "The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras," where he predicted the exact geographical north pole region would be covered with water instead of ice? One more feather in the man's cap?
Some of us have *tiny* clues. Like the meteorologist that explained why the 20st century was warmer than the 19th, particulularly after 1950. Think about how you got a temperature reading in 1880 and one in 2000. Meteorological stations (the weather guages) in the 19th century were boxes stuck out on poles in the middle of a field. Meteorological stations in the 21st century are boxes stuck out on poles in the middle of an airport tarmac.
Cities are always warmer than the rural country side. Airport tarmacs are warmer than cow pastures. Comparing todays temperature data with that of the 19th century is scientifically invalid. Climatologists have to use that error-prone data because they have no other. And one of them who are honest will admit that their results are inaccurate.
And then you have that little statistic about "Each year of this decade has been one of the top 15 warmest of the century." The pessimist will see this as a sure sign that SUV's and hairspray are destroying the world. The realist will understand that this is predicted by the oldest and widest-held climatalogical model: the climate has cycles. Only 500 to 1000 years ago there was a mini iceage. 10,000 years ago there was a major iceage, and scandinavia is still rising a couple of centimeters each years because it is no longer weighed down by greenland-like ice sheet.
Or what about the ozone hole? Only in the past few decades have we been able to even detect an ozone hole over the antarctic. We had no theory to explain it in 1985. And we have no theory today to explain why it subsequently shrunk. Perhaps the polar ozone holes also follow a climatic cycle? Perhaps there's was an ozone hole every fifty years and we just don't know it?
Excuse me for not taking this news of doom and gloom with religious certainty. Yes, I am a skeptic of scientific reporting. All I know for sure is that the Mount Pinatubo eruption last decade released more CO2 into the atmosphere in one week then the entire history of human industry. Maybe, just maybe, if there really is some global warming, it is due to that volcano rather than the fact that I don't carpool.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
will the politicians take any notice. And then, of course, they will find a way to blame it on liberal extremists.
I suppose that he's been forced to relocate to Davie Jones' locker...
OK, I did state "artic cap", and my 10-100m was wildly incorrect for just the artic ice "cap". Having so many nasty responses, I took a quick peek to dig up at least one reference for that number.
If I stated "artic ice" instead of "cap", then the figure from "U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1386-A" is 73.44 meters, given the conditions:
"Sea level rise potential (in meters) [defined as the maximum sea level rise
expected if all glacier ice were to melt in a specified geographic region
based on a density of 0.9 for glacier ice (Robin, 1967), an ocean area of
362X106km2 (National Geographic Society, 1996) and 400 km3 of glacier ice
melted to raise sea level 1mm]."
and
"The total volume of glacier ice in Antarctica is 30,109,800 km3. For
the calculation of sea level rise potential, only the grounded-ice volume
of 29,377,800 km3 was used. The total grounded ice volume includes 25,921,700 km3
for East Antarctica, 3,222,700 km3 for West Antarctic, and 183,700 km3
for the Antarctic Peninsula. The volume of ice rises on the Ross Ice Shelf and
the Ronne-Filchner ice shelves are 5,100 km3 and 44,600 km3, respectively."
So while the "artic ice cap" melting has little impact, that constitutes only ~0.5% of the ice at the poles. And before blasting back anything about how stable Antartic ice is, do some homework on the collapse mechanisms for the West Anatartic ice sheet, cross reference that with weather reports from the Ross Ice shelf, as well as the Wordie, Larsen, Wilkins, and George VI.
Would you like more references?
Wow that is a pretty complicated explanation to come up with. Why would I believe that is what is happening instead of the fact that our warming the atmosphere is doing it? I mean, it is a given that we are warming the atmosphere, this fact is nearly uncontested in science, so why dont you just say "Um. yeah.. warm air melts things." Instead of coming up with some bullshit theories about tectonic plate movements block bathtub style drains.
?
Sigs are awesome huh?
so we're missing the climate patterns for 45,000 years. We don't know what they were... but now with the latest technology we can at least determine that they're missing.
This would prove or disprove what I was saying?
Plus carbon dating can't get you to the year. If it's accurate to a few hundred years then it's completely useless in this context. The example you gave would be like doing brainsurgery with a back hoe.
until the masses start flooding into the midwest because, as you described it, it provides shelter... yep, i'm sure you'll enjoy them spending your tax dollars on crack and hookers once the midwest goes to hell...lucky you, you're unaffected.
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
(Entropy, anyone?)
Welp, I think we just proved that you are an idiot, thank you
(Hint, the earths surface is heated by the sun, not the core)
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Moron. Antarctic ice fields are shrinking and calving at an unprecedented rate. Just like the Arctic sea ice, the ice cap of Greenland, and nearly every single high-latitude glacier that is monitored.
In other news, astrophysicists have announced that they now know what all that dark matter is: it's stupidity.
The Global mean temperature for 1999 was the 5th warmest on record since 1880. The warmest and second warmest years were 1998 and 1997. The top 6 warmest years have been in the 1990's. Each year of this decade has been one of the top 15 warmest of the century.
Since when does a 10 year trend indicate anything? Percentage wise, this is absurd at best. 10 years on a geologic timescale isn't even worth noting.
If you choose to say this isn't a 10 year trend, but a max value in a 200 year study, I submit to you that 200 years on a geological timescale is also nothing more than a mere dot, almost meaningless to anyone who takes the time to look at the BIG picture rather than shoot off meaningless facts to drum up political support for environmental issues (yeah, its election time again, didn't take that into account, did you?)
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
if 45% of the ice is gone --
Gee.. Where did 45% of the coastline go?
Seems that Florida would now be a coral reef starter.
gurgle..glub..glub..
Quick call Ralph Nader or Al Gore to save us...
Pure fat is bad for you, it probably wouldnt' be a good idea to eat a kilogram of butter, but it wouldn't kill you.
Lest say we added 100 milligrams (the same scale your talking about) of nerve-toxin to that fat, and you ate it. Would you die? hell yeh! almost instantaniously, as soon as you touched the stuff.
In other words, there are other issued besides magnitude here. Just beacuse billions of tons of CO2 get pumped into the air each ear naturaly, dosn't mean you can dump 40 pounds of plutonium dust into the atmosphere.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
In the article they talked about submarines doing tests. My father was the navigator on one of the subs that did the testing, the Puffer. I think it in 94 or 95. Some people on the surface of the ice carved a huge target on the surface of the ice.The sub could see the target through a camera of some sort, I dont think it was the periscope. The sub would then break through the ice, trying to hit the center of the target. I have some tapes of it, its very interesting.
"Cornflakes are not the innocent critters they seem"- Sterling Morrison
I agree with the fringe element here.
In sixth grade we were taught that to be "scientific" meant to have an hypothesis, and then remain completely unbiased while you collect data. Thus proving or disproving your theory. Then other scientists were supposed to pour over your findings for a few years, in order to ensure whether there were any flaws in your data.
Now, there are TONS of instances where this didn't work (so don't waste our time replying with examples please), and it's TIME CONSUMING. But, for the most part it works well.
The problem I have with the global warming theory, is that it's data is restricted to the last hundred years or so. Meteorology is a NEW SCIENCE. Hell, they can't even predict TOMORROW'S weather, how accurate can they be about stuff that happened 100 years ago?
So, granted that there's alot of evidence that could conceivably point to human's destruction of our global weather patterns.... however, THERE IS NO CONTROL GROUP TO COMPARE THIS TO! How do we know what the earth's normal weather cycles are in THE LONG TERM?!
We only just got to the North Pole in the 1950s. How do we know it was even there in the 1850s?
Hummm... I guess many /.-ers will dismiss the dangers of global warming, but here's a different view.
Look, there are two possibilities: either this is not caused by humans, or it is. Most scientist believe it is. Now, we can either do nothing and see what happens, or we can try to stop the pollution and greenhouse gas emission. The former would be simpler, just go on living as you did, but risking -EVERYTHING-
The latter could mean sustainable survival.
Sigged!
I hope your not to stupid to realize that wether or not you feel its arrogent or not has any relevance on wether its true or not. what matters are sciantific fact, not your armchar psychoanalisis of the people presenting them.
Your argument is like saying evolution didn't happen beacuse "animals are just soo diffrent, I can't see it happening"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
So be it. There are few causes more noble.
Corporations don't eat added costs (or added taxes, or
Two words: Price Controls
Oh yeah
--
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The New World Order is upon us, and it's about damned time.
Global warming has nothing to do with the greenhouse effect, they are two seperate things, and cfcs are not even greenhouse gasses!
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
If the ice cap melts for a duration of 100 years every 45,000 years, WE WOULD NOT SEE IT ACCORDING TO YOUR THEORY
him:
They can determine the age through the radioactive decomposition of Carbon-14 and Chlorine-36
Now you see it?
Well, for the past ten thousand years the ice caps have been melting. It's part of a cycle of ice ages that occurs ever hundred or so thousand years. The caps melt down to nothing, freeze down to Ohio, then melt again.
2) Absolutely. The increase is increasing, and it's more marked in the Northern Hemisphere than in the Southern. What you say about volcanic injection is not true, however. You can see volcanic signatures in the CO2 record, but they do not dominate the signal.
3) Possibly SO2. This gets converted to sulfuric acid, which can act as cloud condensation nuclei. There is some evidence that the Northern Hemisphere is getting cloudier than the SH. This was why climatologists back then thought that anthropogenic emissions might cool the planet. Perhaps it is mitigating the effects of the greenhouse gases--it's impossible to "prove". But putting more SO2 in the air is not the answer--it comes down as acid rain.
Somebody better get their ass up there and teach Santa to swim fast! I don't know how long all those reindeer can stay afloat, either...
first off, i'm amazed it took them this long to notice anything. i've been commenting on weird weather for years. i live in New England, where weather isn't exactly consistent, but the weirdness is still noticable. for example, two straight weeks in the middle of august without more sunshine than a couple afternoons of "chance of sunshine" is definitely something noticable.
you can blame the factories and cars for the pollution, but who says this isn't the way it's supposed to be? maybe the dinosaurs died because the carnivores ate so many herbivores that the plantlife grew out of control, which produced so much O2 that the dinosaurs themselves couldn't cope with it (oxygen is a corrosive element after all). [note: this is a crazy hypothesis just to make a point. take it with a shaker full of grains of salt].
maybe we're supposed to "pollute" the atmosphere. maybe increased UV light will somehow cause us or some other creature on the planet to evolve into something better. who knows?
[note #2: i can also argue the otherside of this, but i feel technology IS evolution. since most people blame technology for the "pollution", even though technology is also helping to fix it, i'm not going too argue that right now]
--Justin
The United States appears to have a large propaganda campaign going in an attempt to make believe that global warming is not happening, I can only guess that this may be because of the potential cost to the US economy to do something about it. This is an incredibly short sighted and dangerous view.
The global warming debate should shift its focus from political/economic arguments to scientific arguments. Focus relentlessly on the science - determine to what extent we are modifying the earth's climate, determine what we should do about it, etc. In other words, stop bickering about *if* and focus on *what to do about it* .. before it is too late to do anything about it.
"If anything, this is part of the earth's natural climate change. Everyone knows that the earth's climate changes over the centuries"
Maybe it is just natural climate change. Or maybe it isn't. I don't want to be the one to explain to my children or grandchildren why they are doomed to perish on a desert wasteland, because we made the mistake of complacently assuming that the radical, sharp increase in global temperature and temperature increase rates was "probably just normal climatic changes". The fact is, temperatures are rising, and we don't know why. As much as you would like to believe that it is natural, you have absolutely no way of knowing that (burden of proof etc etc .. please point us to the proof of your argument .. if anything, the evidence we have suggests your argument is wrong.)
ice core
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
When measurements of polar ice thickness are plotted since 1950, we usually assume that there are no local events which could cause such a thing. However, during that period of time there have been increasing numbers of intentional cases of breaking-up of the polar ice, in order to navigate the surface of the polar region.
Recently there were photos of a commercial expedition, using a Russian nuclear-power ice breaker, for those scientists, journalists, and tourists who travelled to the pole by ship. While this may be a comfortable way to get there, it has the direct effect of causing major damage to the ice pack, and increasing the surface area in contact with the ocean. Add to this the vast quantities of excess heat generated by the ship's nuclear reactors, and there is some reason to beileve that there will be localized dammge to the ice pack. Just as with permafrost regions, damage from human presence can be very long-lasting.
It is also worth noting that undersea measurements of polar ice thickness are taken from submarines. Now the overwhelming majority of those subs which cross those cold waters are nuclear-powered. This is a matter of necessity, since the diesel/electric boats are not suited to long runs under the ice. Those nuclear reactors generate vast quantities of heat, which is dissipated in-place, under the ice. Now no one transit by a single ship may cause any measurable change, but the thousands of transits, each emitting many megajoules of energy as heat, can in concert cause measurable melting.
Whether or not there are external effects caused by long-term climactic changes, there are most certainly local causes which must not be ignored.
Free the mallocs!
Many of the posters here have pointed out that we cannot definitively separate human causation of global warming from natural cycles of temperature. And ultimately this statement is true; definitive proof is impossible. However it is pretty clear that regardless of the cause of global warming, the effect will be quite catastrophic for many of the people on the planet ( at what altitude do 50% of the population of humans live ? ).
Global warming is like a grand experiment. Here's an analogous scenario to think about. You are about to rapell down a cliff using a rope. On the way down the rope may break sending you to a messy splattering death on the rocks below. There are two techniques you can use for your decent both of which will abrade the rope, and make things more risky, but one technique is SUSPECTED to cause less rope damage. WHICH TECHNIQUE DO YOU CHOOSE AND WHY? The point of that scenario is that it is generally a good idea to choose the least risky pathway, even if the risk factors are not known precisely and you are operating on educated guesses.
Scientists world wide will readily agree that their statements are not definitive proof. But what they will tell you if you read the fine print of their reports ( and I have ) is that there is such and such a probability that the warming IS caused by human activities. They've used a multitude of techniques to arrive at their conclusions, each of which help corroborate the others.
One clear example is the RATE of warming ( ie degrees per century ). By examining warming rates through multiple ice-age cycles extending back hundreds of thousands of years, it has been possible to establish "typical" slew rates for temperature within the dynamic system we live. By using simple uni-dimensional statistical techniques on these collections warming data, it's possible to arrive at a nice "bell curve" of warming rates, including probabilities that the warming is "natural." What they've found is that the last century and a half has had a warming RATE which is WAY beyond "typical." That the probability that it is a natural cycle is VERY VERY low.
These high slew rates also have consequences for the adaption of the ecosphere. For example it is known that certain species of trees have a maximum migration rate. No, individual trees don't move, but the distribution of a particular species of tree can change over time in response to environmental pressures. The "migration" rate of the trees, is determined by the reproduction period, and how the seeds are spread, among other factors. In many cases it has been determined that global warming will cause the temperature bands within which particular trees can grow to move at rates faster than the trees can "migrate." This means extinction for those particular species of tree. The point is that while the earth clearly adapted to previous temperature cycles without too much trouble, the current slew rate may push the ability to adapt beyond what many species are capable of.
I suppose we'll be running the experiment as to what exactly will happen, what the consequences will be.
When you were a little kid experimenting with the consequences of a diving board, you usually started with the low board first, and then with that understanding sometimes allowed yourself the additional danger of the high dive.
As earth citizens it seems prudent to start with a small test first.
You fucking Frenchies piss me off!
Kudos to NASA for finally finding water on the north pole of some planet! Now we know where the Mars Polar Explorer landed...
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
I think his point was that when clouds pass over, it gets cooler
If clouds reflect IR back to earth, they would also reflect back to space. You would know that if you spent any time whatsoever thinking about it.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Sounds like you're a watermelon... Green on the outside, red on the inside.
What if the earths mean temperature rises one degree or two, the polar caps melt, and all that cold water floods into the oceans. The cooler ocean temperatures then result in a global cooling effect 10 years down the line, everything freezes, and bam! a new ice age that lasts a hundred thousand years.
This is stuff we just don't know enough about... Since it's already started, perhaps we should keep on pumping greenhouse gasses into the air so the global cooling after the melting of the polar caps won't bring on the next ice age?
In my opinion, the ice ages are a sign that the earth is slowly dying and cooling off, and will continue to do so. (Entropy, anyone?) I'm all for re-warming the earth, so the weather is more like it was 100 million years ago, with jungles all the way up to the poles. I sure as heck wouldn't mind a tropical vacation on Greenland! Why aren't there any environmentalists pushing to restore the earth to its "natural" temperature of that age?
Just the other face of the coin.
That's not good.
actualy, it was 45% more ice then last year that melted, witch was about .000001% in total
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Ok, here is the deal. The oceans are much like the atmosphere in that there are currents, and eddies, and large scale patterns. The north pole has an interesting phenom that there is this huge rotation from south to north at the ocean floor and then from north to south at the surface. So, you have all this water pouring into the North Pole between Canada and Greenland, and pouring out again. BUT, what is happening due to plate movement and such is that more water is going in then coming out, so all this water is now building at the north pole, all being accomplished NATURALLY, unless humans are the cause of Greenland slowing moving towards North America. Sorry, but there is no greenhouse phenom here, or increased methane emissions from cattle, or what ever. Nature. It does its own thing once in a while.
Bryan R.
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
I am not sure whether this is correct, I think it's not, but that is not my point now. I wonder whether you took into consideration the deforestation and the thinning of the Ozone layer.
Yes, there is a significant deforestation, which is also a cause of increase of CO2.
Sigged!
People should remember that Europe is as far north as Hudson's Bay in Canada in North America, and would be much colder without the benefit of the Gulf Stream. So anything that messes with this flow could mess with European weather. This is known as "Not a Good Thing" (tm).
My own take on this is that Global warming is basically increasing the amount of energy in a basically chaotic system. Given that, this would probably increase the range of variability in that system. This means that things would not just get warmer smoothly, but that there would be periods of more extremely weather, warmer and colder, wetter and dryer, etc. all around the planet.
While I do not think that this would lead to a new iceage, there are some, especially in the crackpot community that do.
There are also some legitimate scientists who are alarmed by the possibilities. It is certainly worth investigating.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Actually, it's not incorrect, it's called "thermodynamics". When you get to University you will study this in first year physics.
PS, you will also learn at University about the notion of backing up your arguments with some evidence, rather than just stating them as facts and leaving the burden of proof to somebody else. This is part of what is called "science", and these little things seperate "science" from "religion" and "zealotry".
Luckily, I won't be the one drowning from flood if the earth starts heating up. The Midwest has provided me shelter :). Anyways, have you considered how much has really melted? Wouldn't you think that the water would dilute the sea water?
Umm before you go on about no clue some more. Go read some scientific papers on the subject. (I have not read any, I have had an atmospheric physicist summarize them for me with his biases).
t ic
The Antarctic has a big hole over it because it is really really cold there (colder then north). And I am not a chemist so I don't know why this causes a hole, but as far as I know its quite an accepted theory. There is also a lesser hole over greenland/Canada I believe.
So as for the model being wrong it sounds like they just didn't take the really cold dark winter into there model calculations and its affect on ozone.
Anyway in conclusion: Ozone depletion is understood and basically solved. Global warming has not. Not the same thing. The two faqs below explain ozone depletion and the antarctic hole. Read them before you spread any more FUD.
Here is the ozone faq: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/ozone-depletion/intro/
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/ozone-depletion/antarc
"So what are you going to do if it turns out you're wrong and catastrophe ensues?"
I am not stopping you from eating organic breakfast cereals or riding a bicycle to work or donating to Nature Conservancy to buy up land or wearing cotton shirts instead of sythetic. I am imposing nothing on you. Yet you reciprocate by advocating increased taxation, lobbying to ban my vehicles, deride me for not voting for your candiate despite the fact that every single one of his non-environmental policies are tyrannical, and even spit at my feet when I inadvertantly toss an empty coke can into a waste basket. And to top things off you accuse me of killing fish and poisoning streams.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
While we may all be worried about causing catastrophic changes to the Earth, I personally think that it will be a much better place for all concerned ie plants and animals when the Humans finally manage to kill themselves off.
Slashdot Beta should die a painful death.
Yes, species have always gone extinct, but never before has one speicies been the exterminator of so many others.
...says the man that apparently has been around since the beginning of time. How do you know? How do you know that 16 different varieties of dinosaur didn't single-handedly wipe out billions of species? You don't. Again, your sweeping generalizations are dramatically unprovable and do a great deal to discredit you.
The atmosphere is a very myterious thing and we really don't understand most of it. Under these circumstances I think it behooves mankind to act in a very conservative matter when dealing with the climate.
A little known fact is that more important then overall cooling or warming is the degree with which the tempratures fluctate within the year. Over the past few years we have seen the extremes of both cold and hot, wet and dry swing wildly. Someone has to calculate the costs of floods, forest fires, droughts and mudslides into their calculations. It seems like some people only want to consider the costs to the businesses but not to the society at large.
A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.
War is necrophilia.
I agree. If we can cause the extinction of a significant proportion of our planet's species and remove a hefty chunk of it's forests, who's to say we can't change the environment? Whether or not we're causing global warming, it seems certain that we're causing the thinning of the ozone layer which has a very real effect on our health.
oh bull shit
you haven't given any concrete examples of anything in this post. You refer to the greenhouse effect which is "known and measurable." Yet you don't produce any equations or data. Why? Because you don't know anything about what you're saying. You heard the buzz phrase on TV first. Then it was repeated in your pathetic undergraduate classes as an attempt to keep "in touch" with the younger generations.
I on the other hand have dealt with these equations. The ones in particular are the emission dissapation acceptable to the federal goevernment in proportion to the height of the stack, flow rate through it... and typical wind forces. We have to determine how much gas is dissapated to any individual downstream of our stacks. We also spend MILLIONS of dollars just to calibrate our monitors... so this isn't something on which you can make mistakes without getting fired.
This is REALLY STARTING TO PISS ME OFF! If you don't know what you're talking about, shut up already.
You are chicken littles. You are not in the field... with the possible exception of spondylus, who's comments are actually constructive... most of you are mindless collegiate dweebs whose self-images apparently are defined by how well you regurgitate psuedo-scientific morality IN SPITE of people in the field telling you that you MAY BE wrong.
This was my point to begin with. You are not listening to people in the field. You've made up your minds... which is NOT SCIENTIFIC!
Read the frigging original post again! Stop wasting our time.
PS. Nobody debates the greenhouse effect... what is in debate here is how scientific the effect's effects are being determined. The fact is, no one knows. But God forbid that the baby boomers can live with themselves if we don't stir up enough emotions so that the 6:00 newscast is interesting...
Yes, species have always gone extinct, but never before has one speicies been the exterminator of so many others.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
The pesticides, herbicides and various hormones currently sloshing around in our rivers and lakes are having a very visible and measurable effect on wildlife. I think I'm right in saying that they weren't put there when a volcano erupted.
(excuse one handed typing -- eating a bagel)
ya. not to belittle man and his co2, but doesn't your average mt helens eruption put about as much co2 into the atmosphere in one go as we have to date?
I'd be more worried about deforestation, as trees is where a lot of the environment's co2 is stored.
but then I'm a computer scientist, not an environmentalist.
That was my frigging point! I do reject geology, but not as a whole.
This is because I know... with absolute certainty, that carbon dating CAN NOT be so precise as to measure to a specific year. You even said that. So... and I hesitate saying this ONCE AGAIN.... how do you know that we haven't had melt offs like this if they only last a few years when your precision is limited to several hundred?
What's so hard to understand?
You CAN'T USE GEOLOGY THE WAY YOU'RE USING IT!
YOU DON'T KNOW THE RECORD IS MISSING. EVEN IF THE CARBON DATA APPEARS TO BE CONSECUTIVE PER STRATUM... IT ISN'T PRECISE TO THIS LEVEL OF RESOLUTION!
aaaagggghhhh!
in any case, I'm sick of this... go blow it out your ear. this is like arguing religion. You have your priests... go pay homage to the geology gods... I'm telling you carbon dating is totally inadequate for this level of precision, you're telling me that carbon dating knows all. There are no gaps +/- a few thousand years.
Who the fuck is the ignorant one here?
Global warming is a certainty. Here is an excerpt from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's 1999 climate review:
The Global mean temperature for 1999 was the 5th warmest on record since 1880. The warmest and second warmest years were 1998 and 1997. The top 6 warmest years have been in the 1990's. Each year of this decade has been one of the top 15 warmest of the century.
Certainly, some climate changes happen naturally. However, it would be quite a coincidence if this rapid change had a natural cause at just the time that an obvious man-made cause appears: elevated atmospheric CO2 levels.
If there is one fact to know about the global environment, it is this: we have no clue. Water at the pole is not the first surprise. For decades, we poured out chemicals that appeared safe; they were non-flammable, non-corrosive, non-toxic, non-reactive-- what could be better? Well, in 1974 Molina and Rowland pointed out that these chemicals, CFCs, destroy stratospheric ozone, potentially allowing UV to devastate crops worldwide (not to mention causing skin cancer). Imagine the surprise: sometime totally inocuous like spray deoderant could devastate all life on earth. What a thought. It was like discovering that salsa causes tectonic instability. We had no clue. Since CFCs are stable enough to survive in the atmosphere for decades, estimates are that ozone levels will not return to normal until about 2050. That is, I will probably never live one day on this earth with a normal ozone layer.
But then everyone spent 10 years collecting data and running sophisticated computer models, and we got on top of the problem. Cool, right? Except that in 1985 the massive ozone hole over Antarctica was discovered. Totally unexpected. Didn't show in any computer model. No one had any idea why a hole should appear there instead of, say, over the continental US. After all that study, still we had no clue.
There is no reason to expect the global warming phenomena to be any more predictable than ozone depletion has been. In all likelihood, our CO2 emissions amount to a rampaging charge to fundamentally alter our entire planet. The eventual outcome? We have no clue.
Shucks, no wonder my room was flooded in today. Guess it's time to put on me speedos.
You're also neglecting that if the North Pole is melting, then the glaciers probably are, too, given that they're a lot closer to the equator. In addition, if the warming is symmetrical, there will be similar melting at the South Pole, which is almost entirely on land.
You're making some fast and loose assumptions. First of all, the mechanism by which glaciers recede and the polar cap melts are two different mechanisms. The polar cap is diminishing because of increased water temperature, while the glaciers would melt from increased ambient air temperature (which of course can affect the polar cap as well, but not as much as ocean currents do).
But is this even man-made? Well, the Earth is a gigantic dynamic system, which will ALWAYS move towards stable points. It's irrelevent, for the purposes of this, as to whether the stable points are termed "strange attractors" (Chaos) or "points of preferred condition" (Gaia). What matters is why the shift is even taking place.
Here's where jd throws in some technobabble to make his argument sound informed. "Gaia" and "strange attractors". Hate to break it to you, but the Earth is anything but a stable system. The fact that we've had a relatively stable few million years doesn't make a stable system.
It's indisputable that humans have had an impact on the atmosphere. A =SUSTAINED= impact. Natural phenomina may have an immediate impact that is far greater, but few natural phenomina of that magnitude last for more than a few days, maybe a few weeks. Humans have been sustaining the level of activity which could -potentially- be destabilising for over a century.
I see your knowledge is as weak as your logic. There are lots of natural phenomina that have large impacts over years, decades, centuries and longer. Take the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Phillipines. Lowered the global temperature an average of 1 C for a whole year. That was just one minor volcano. El Nino and La Nina have tremendous effects on climate.
Throw in the fact that we're not dealing with the nice linear system above, but a horribly complex non-linear system with constantly varying inputs from other non-linear systems, and the best guess you could possibly make will be way way out from whatever the reality will be.
I notice how this doesn't stop you from portending doom. Translation: jd's best guess is way way out from whatever the reality will be.
Blame Canada!
Steve Magruder
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
Global Warming is in fact a secret Canadian undertaking - designed to make our vast expenses of frozen wasteland habitable again.
I can't wait to buy my cottage up on the cozy northern shore of Ellesmere Island.
=)
--
Remember the Lorenz butterfly, one of the most populate demonstrations of a strange attractor?
In weather, like other phenomena governed largely by chaotic forces (read your Mandelbrot), transitional periods from one stable state to another involve highly erratic behaviour.
What I believe we're seeing now is the erratic behaviour in global weather patterns that will result in more long-term stability. Whether that will be warmer, colder, or whatever remains to be seen.
If you want evidence of erratic behaviour, just look at the number of records (record storms, droughts, cold, hot, rain, forest fires, locusts, etc.) that are set every year - we've had more extremes recently than in the past, even for this century when weather records are fairly complete.
This has NOTHING to do with global warming. It is
the result of the "Yosemite Syndrome". After
countless expeditions of tourists to the north
pole, all using heavy equipment to REND and
CRUSH the precious frozen-ecosystem, it is no
wonder that we're starting to see open water
at the pole.
We must introduce legislation to carefully limit
the number of icebreakers that can carelessly
break the eons-old northern ice as preservation
for our future generations. Some of this ice
was frozen centuries before the giant sequioas
only to be reduced to ice cubes at the bow of
these fossil (fuel) burning monstrosites.
Maybe we extend clinton's protectionist
legislation so that we exclude all motorized
vehicles from international ice floes - allowing
only eco-safe hikers to make their way to the
north pole. No mountain bikes either.
Save the ice.
If they were at a peak back then, how come the ice caps didn't melt?
If they melt at the current rate, London and various other parts of the British coastline will flood. Now that hasn't happened for many many thousands of years.
A cliched term, but why not better safe than sorry? Especially when it comes to our existence.
- Justin
Posted by PartA:
I can't help but be amused by the other postings.
The level of denial is remarkable.
Anyway... we can fairly accurately determine the atmospheric composition over the last centuries, and possibly longer from ice core
samples, fossil records, and so on. From these we are sure, not think, that we have at least doubled the CO2 concentration since the start
of the industrial revolution and we are sure that we are the cause of that.
The planet can handle a certain level of abuse, same way we can. That does mean that we can abuse it a bit, and it will recover, a bit more
and it will take longer, and too much, and it will become sick, and possibly die. Sure the planet will still be here, lots of people will still be
around, but I don't fancy a life in glass dome.
I don't know much, but I know enough to be saddened, partly by how much some people think they know.
(2) Is there an actual net increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?
The answer is a BIG F*CKING YES!
Sigged!
Just live in your happy world and watch football.
Wah!
There have been several studies of Coral reefs and are linked to a rising ocean temperature... This is an interesting interview on the subject. Now I am not saying that "global warming" as it is presented by some is true, but you can't ignore some things. One should get educated and read information from both sides of the argument. One thing is certain, changes are occuring be they from a 1000+ year cycle, mankind, or both. Who knows, it could even be multiple cycles coinciding... *shrug*
the earth used to be a lot warmer, a thousand years ago. That's when the Norse were farming in Greenland, where there is permafrost and desolation today.
The earth has been a lot colder than it is now. Think about the Ice Ages.
The earth was a lot colder than it is now just 500 years ago. Today they call that the mini ice age, and it's what killed off the Norse colonies in Greenland and North America.
Actually, the Norse colonies in Greenland wer very short-lived, decades rather than centuries. I.e. they weren't killed off around 500 years ago, but more like 1000 years ago. There was a very short warm period. This is why Greenland has that completely preposterous name. Iceland (where I live) was named by rather disappointed settelers after a bad winter not many decades earlier. These climate swings were rather short.
And there was no Norse (Icelandic, actually) colony in North-America. Leifur "Heppni" Eiriksson (son of Eirikur who settled in Greenland after being driven from both Norway and then Iceland for killing just a bit too many people) and his people went there for a couple of years and found a land which was "flowing with wine", etc. They seemed to like it, but being used to Icelandic climate, they would! They did, however, have some trouble with the natives :)
Logi - I can do anything, but not everything.
Here are some things we do know:
the earth used to be a lot warmer, a thousand years ago. That's when the Norse were farming in Greenland, where there is permafrost and desolation today.
The earth has been a lot colder than it is now. Think about the Ice Ages.
The earth was a lot colder than it is now just 500 years ago. Today they call that the mini ice age, and it's what killed off the Norse colonies in Greenland and North America. As recently as 200 years ago, the canals in Holland were freezing over every winter. That hasn't happened for a long time, now. We seem to be coming out of that mini ice age, but slowly and with steps backwards.
There is no reason to think that humanity has had any affect on the weather. If there is a warming trend today, it is most likely a return to the between-ice age conditions of 1000 years ago.
See what I've been reading.
A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.
War is necrophilia.
[Note: These are all from memory, I forget the original sources, and I'm most likely wrong with one or two of them] Actually, we are coming out of a mini-ice age... I remember reading a record somewhere that 150-250 years ago... the Thames froze over! We also need to take into account that the sun, our ultimate source of all heat... has been gradually increasing in activity over the period that we've been able to record it. There is also the gradual shift in the Earth's axial plane (the closer to 90, winter and summer get more mild and we get an ice age, and further from 90, the warmer the summer and colder the winter). There are just too many factors in global weather patterns, espeically ones that span mellenia, for us to pin one sole reason. It's even more ignorant to soley blame humans. Now, I'm all for efficient and clean technology... it's just good practice (economic and otherwise...). However, threatening the world with dire (and false) blame is helping no one. for example, if those scientists want CFCs out of use, they should work on a replacement that's better. Right now, a group of other scientists are developing sound engines that have great refrigeration capacity and only use Helium.... yet the environmentalists just continue to collect money from the scared masses and spout more doom prophesies. Let's be sensible about this. BTW, warmer weather won't cause more severe storms... in fact it will decrease them. It's having a larger contrast between warm and cold air that creates stronger storms.
A dynamic equilibrium has no fixed value, but does have a reasonably well-defined RMS state, within a fairly well-defined variance. (NOTE: That IS the correct term. The "mean" generally won't mean anything, but the root mean square value, over a long enough period of time, usually will.)
You also seem to not understand what Chaos/Gaia are. They are non-linear dynamic systems which orbit one out of a set of fixed points. If the system gets a sufficiently-large push, it will leap from one point to another, and then orbit that. This is all very basic stuff, and I feel sad that anyone with the wits to read Slashdot hasn't got an understanding of these fascinating mathematical systems.
But then, maybe the difference is that most geeks, when confronted with something new, are curious enough to investigate. Anyone who flames, because they can't be bothered to reach for a scientific dictionary, is unworthy of any status as a geek. Being curious does not make one a genius, but it does make one a little more understanding, every day.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I'm having a hard time seeing your analogy. The person you were responding to was making the point that the earth itself puts out far more pollution than humans do. Your analogy makes no sense what so ever in reference to the post you responded to. Nerve toxin in no way even relates to eating butter. I think what you are trying to say is the stuff that humans put out is worse than the stuff that the earth itself belches out. I would seriously have to disagree with that. Some of the toxins that the earth puts out will kill a person quite as effectively as a drop of nerve toxin. With the radioactive dust you have to consider how much of it is going to settle out. It would probably be more of a local problem. Anything after that would fall into the background radiation that we receive ever day of our lives. In other words, one speck of plutonium isn't going to kill you. Getting bathed in it is a different matter. That is a real magnitude. Taddeusz
-- Ignorance is the pinnacle of religion - Me
a bunch of lacky press who can't even tell the difference between Linux programmers and antisocial highschool geeks
You mean there is a difference?
Wow, this whole time I could've had a social life and program Linux.
The Original Celebrated Curiously Strong GHOST (mentha lemures)
They said that in most computerized climate models, the north pole was always the first to go.
Ok, like that didn't sound like a line out of a cheesey fifties b-movie.
The Original Celebrated Curiously Strong GHOST (mentha lemures)
I live in Minnesota and can tell you from personal experience that the winters here are no where near as bad as they used to be fiften or twenty years ago. This is not just last winter I'm talking about but every winter since the mid-eighties! There are far fewer -20 degree days now than there were in the '70's and early '80's. We also seem to warm up faster in the spring, not earlier really, just faster. This leads to floods like we have seen recently in Fargo and in DesMoines and other places. The run-off is faster and the ground soaked so it goes into the rivers faster than they can handle.
Maybe this happens sort of randomly every two or three thousand years. That could explain things like out of place cave drawings and discoveries of canoes where there is no water. But don't you really think it is more likely that hydrocarbon emissions, industrial pollution, deforestation, and the ubiquitious paved road are getting to a point where the earth is feeling it?
I guess that I see our planet as a living, breathing being. If she gets sick and we don't do something about it we will suffer, afterall, we are in essence parasites on her body. Even worse, we have no place else to go!
This is gonna sound odd, but have you ever wondered why the birds in your town/city don't fly away anymore when you approach them ? When I work late, I can usually hear birds singing.. at 2 am in the morning..
I don't think these things are normal. I have a pretty educated guess as to why these things are happening, but I 'll never be able to proove them. I can only observe and finally write down what happens, including a certainty factor that relates the 2 observations.
The stress human civilisation puts on the rest of the species must be inmense, and we can only connect e.g. the death of a wildlife species with unproven causes that are discovered during or after the process is completed. It is indeed virtually impossible to proove that the stress factors that are constantly injected into our environments are harmfull, because there are too much variables. We probably will never be able to put it black on white with equations and unbiased or complete statistics. We can only place educated guesses.
You don't have to be convinced. You don't have to believe anything scientists say. Just in your own mind, reason what happens when you see the fumes of petrol of your neighbours car colouring up the evening skylines.. Lit another cigarette, and dismiss the thoughts of finally be released from that damn bad cough you have in the morning. These things are as unprooven as everything else, because here science has to penetrate what I call the infinitely dense model that life is.
In the end, the melting ice will have some effect, and at the moment we see a few other things happening that are odd. Fisheries close, coastal flora diminishes, some animal species grow thin or much denser than usual. At the same time, human greed destroys natural resources that untill up to that point was serving other tasks in life. Do we have to suppose they are interrelated ? No. But we, as a species, can at least try to make sure we do everything we can to prevent nature to go to waste.
Call me a sentimental ecologist, or anything else, but I just like that tiny blue planet, and I would like to tell my kids I fought for it, rather than be the cynical sob and tell them: well kids, here's the pile of dirt, enjoy yoursleves..
With great power comes great electricity bills.
There was a doco I saw recently on global warming, where, after iterating the various data on CO2 and average temperature increases (exponential CO2 increase since the 50s - _that's_ scary), they went on to talk to a bod from the British Coal Board, and examined what the fossil fuel vested interests were doing.
Turns out they have been, on one hand, funding lots of researchers who have been discovering (surprise, surprise) that there is no such thing as global warming, and on the other, producing little informative pieces on how much nicer the planet will be once its warmed up a bit.
People like to live in warmer climates. We are doing you a favour here - gonna make the whole world like Florida!
You'll be able to go the beach a LOT more often! (because it will be so nice and warm)
There will be fewer deserts (because of the increased rainfall)
Crop yields will increase (because higher CO2 means more food for the plants)
Personally, I'm waiting for Australia's inland sea to open for business again.
Anyhow, for what it's worth, let me try to clarify the sea level thing. Melting sea ice has no effect on sea level (eureka!) because a floating object displaces exactly its weight of water. Melting glaciers and thermal expansion of water can cause sea level to increase. Both of these effects are basically inevitable in the coming century or two.
There's a countervailing phenomenon, which is that the snowfall onto the glacial landmasses (a.k.a. Greenland and Antarctica) is likely to increase under global warming, since warmer polar air can deliver more precipitation. This phenomenon would cause sea levels to drop. Best bets are that this phenomenon will be much smaller than the others, and sea level will rise gradually, unless there is a massive failure of a huge glacier.
The most likely candidate for that is the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which would be capable of raising sea level a few meters more or less abruptly if it were to slide into the ocean.
Now about the "still recovering from the ice age" thing, that's true about sea level, since the continents are still bouncing back from the weight of the huge land glaciers from a mere 20,000 years ago. This reduces the volume of the polar ice shelves, forcing sea level up in other places. So there is a background sea level rise that was ongoing before the industrial revolution.
However, the "still recovering from the ice age" is total nonsense regarding global mean temperature. Prior to 1900, global mean temperature peaked 6000 years ago and slowly declined since then.
Michael Tobis Ph.D. (Climatology, U Wisc Madison 1996)
mt
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths
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wow.
_
_
You keep going around in circles. You are talking in terms of... never mind... turn on your courier font and let me show you:
____________________________|__________________
That blip is what I want measured. You are looking at grand sweeps of periods of thousands of years:
_________----------__________-----------_______
That's what you're measuring. And with an accuracy that you feel comfortable with. I want the GOD DAMN blip! You're not saying anything to argue with that... you just keep going around in circles.
Now the reason we don't take ice sample from the pole is very simple... it's the same reason that the Nautilus' flag isn't there today... BECAUSE THE DAMN THING MOVES!!! The ice at the pole is forced South... and eventually melts. I'm surprised an expert like yourself wouldn't know that.
Now for Greenland ice to be measured is fine... it's been around awhile. But again... and I hate to keep this conversation going because you simply don't get it... you can't see blips of warming like I described... you're think in terms of thousands of years. Which means the warming has to last for thousands of years to see it. So if the warming was only for a few hundred years... and occurs cyclically every few thousand, you won't see it. Period. Finito. The end. No more. God you're dense.
Actually, the rain forest doesn't really produce all that much in the way of O2.. About 75% of our CO2->O2 conversion comes from phytoplankton and seaweed. This is how the atmosphere was teraformed when the earth was pretty much all ocean with very few land-based life forms. The rain forests may seem vital, but it has been calculated that we could survive without them.
"I regret that I have but one life to give for my country. I'd feel safer if I had two or three."
Those bloody overclockers!
They're just using humans to do the dirty work.
We've been conditioned to think that global warming is a reality. Unfortunately, those scientists trumpeting GW usually start their "centuries-long" studies of GW starting somewhere in the 1400's -- which, according to the geological constructs that allow us to see back into the past, was one of the coldest times since the last Ice Age.
We have to remember that the Earth is not some climatologically stable planet. There are many, many factors involved in the various warming and cooling periods, and while man is no doubt a factor, it's not as much as some would think. Studies at UAH's and NASA's Global Hydrology Climate Center by Dr. John Christy, et al. have shown that the GW predictions are off by a factor of ten -- the earth has warmed up, but not at the rate even the most conservative models predict.
Am I for being environmentally unfriendly? Nope. Am I for not worrying about rising water levels? Nope. Am I for playing Chicken Little? Nope. We must, through science, strive to understand the situations at hand and try to solve them. This is a case of quod erat demonstrandum, and we've got to just let the facts speak for themselves, rather than trying to extrapolate why it's happening from small statistical samples.
Of course, maybe the George Strait song about "Oceanfront Property in Arizona" will come true . . . -veg-
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-- Geof F. Morris
It'd be interesting to see if ideology is impacting this (a la Limbaughesque denunciations of phenomena one doesn't understand) or whether it's actually honest knowledge at work in the production of /.er opinions.
Think Different
There is no way 10 billion people and an industrialized economy can effect the environment.
Buy an SUV.
Eat red meat.
Vote Bush.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
This Article suggests that they are.
Nojan
cool
my apologies
The thread is all tangled now since everyone is "Anonymous Coward." With my settings, most of the replies are beneath my current threshhold, so I'm typically replying to the wrong messages...
Thanks for the support. It's funny how all I was originally trying to say was that I'd love to see science be improved, especially in this field. oh well....
A good story HERE about how sea levels actually appear to be falling.
It's time for the EPA to crack down on Santa Claus and his polluting toy factories. A reasonable first step would be a mandate that Santa put scrubbers on his smoggy toxic smokestacks. This goes to show you what happens when century after century of unregulated toy manufacturing is allowed to occur. I smell Al Gore somewhere in all this.
Is global warming a product of mankind's industrialization, or is it just the natural cycle of things, brought on by such factors as the Earth's orbital precession and the like? To be honest, I don't know. Here's what I do know. We are doing things that impact our environment negatively, and they are affecting the health of real, live people. To say that we should scale back environmental restrictions because Rush Limbaugh thinks we're heading for a new Ice Age is ridiculous. What about cleaning up our factories and vehicles because it's the right thing to do?
Oh, wait
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The New World Order is upon us, and it's about damned time.
I remember reading (no, don't have the link) about the methane produced by cows is a larger 'global warming' cause than man ever has been.
But you're gonna need a bunch of BBBIIIGGG corks to do anything about it.
HerrGlock
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
If the artic cap has thinned 45% (!!!!), then according to global warming models, the sea should have risen ~10-100 meters, depending on the model
No, you fool. These models do not exist, you have invented them. The melting of the Arctic ice will not affect sea levels a lot because most of it is displacing water already.
Looks like my "Melt the Polar Ice Caps" business venture is going to be a failure. Oh well, back to my "Chop down the rainforest so the whole world dies but at least we'll have lots of paper and 2 x 4's" idea
Err...Looks lime someone beat me to that one too...
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"I'm not gonna say anything inspirational, I'm just gonna fucking swear a lot"
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First, how many ./ers does it take to float an ice cube in a glass of water? This has been mentioned by so many, I don't see why it didn't occur to everybody... Go read John Gribbin's book.
Secondly, I suppose the people who claim that man only had a significant effect on atmospheric carbon dioxide levels after 1820 would put that down to increasing use of fossil fuels. When you burn wood, you release the carbon stored in the structure. New trees reabsorb the released carbon dioxide to create new wood. But when you have a few million years' worth of binding up carbon into plant cells that are permanently buried, and suddenly man starts digging that up and releasing the carbon dioxide back into the air at an enormously faster rate, then the carbon dioxide levels rise quickly.
Now, seriously, go and read Gribbin's books (In Search of Schrödinger's Cat is a good read, too).
Oh, and learn to spell "arctic".
Man is arrogant if he thinks his actions do nothing to the environment. It may be less than the pollution Mother Nature causes, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't take responsibility for our actions.
The article implied that it was possible to get a *tour* to the North Pole. Where can you do that? Sign me up!
I've seen dire predictions for ice cap melt off, in the form of every x percent (single digit) of ice cap melt means global sea level rise of y (single digit to low double digit) meters.
If the artic cap has thinned 45% (!!!!), then according to global warming models, the sea should have risen ~10-100 meters, depending on the model!
Instead, its up a few cm. Now why am I skeptical of these models?
Not to mention their abysymal handling of other extremely critical factors, like our STILL not understanding the feedback effect of cloud albedo change, or oceanic phytoplankton(sp), or several other factors that throw the model off 2-3 orders of magnitude in EITHER direction.
I still have meterological textbooks from a few decades ago warning of the impending ice age. Our arrogance in the face of these complex systems continues to amuse me.
http://www.h artwick.edu/geology/work/VFT-so-far/glaciers/glac
The first two sentences seem to imply that, geographically speaking, these seemingly alarming events are not necessarily unusual:
We think of ice caps on our planet as "normal," because in the recent past there has always been polar ice in both the Arctic and Antarctic regions. However, if we look at all of Earth history we find that there are also extended periods in which there were no polar ice caps.
It's clear that the Earth's climate is currently going through a warming period. It has been since the last ice age, ca. 18,000 years ago I think. I've visited glaciers in both Canada and New Zealand that make this point dramatically with markers that show where the foot of the glacier was located in a particular year. The Athabasca Glacier in Jasper National Park, for example, has retreated something like 1.5 miles in the past 100 years. (That's from memory, and I could easily be off by a factor of 2 either way on either of those numbers). Or just consider that Yosemite Valley in California was carved by glaciers. Obviously the climate has changed just a bit since *that* happened.
But what this really comes down to is two things. First, what is humanity's contribution to global warming? Others on this thread have pointed out a number of possible alternate possible sources of change such as solar activity or changes in the Earth's orbit or tilt. Second, is global warming necessarily a bad thing? There are a number of reasons to believe it might be: more intense drought-flood cycles, rising sea levels, increased range of traditionally tropical diseases a la West Nile virus in New York City. Then again, global warming might have some benefits too. The obvious one is making land arable at more arctic latitudes (a reply of the Vikings-in-Greenland scenario). Less obvious but even more importantly, it might make it easier for me to get a tan here in Seattle <g>.
Seriously, we have virtually no clue what the truly long-term cyclical implications of climate change are; the warming part of a global warming-cooling cycle may be important to, say, the development of certain ocean currents that support various aquatic ecosystems. But who really knows?
I'm reminded of the fact that, for decades, U.S. Forest Service policy was to quash wildfires as soon as they occurred, because letting forests burn is obviously a bad thing, right? Except it turned out that the forests need fire in order to remain healthy. The result of decades of fire suppression has been the buildup of unnatural amounts of fuel, which has contributed to the disastrous fire situation that the U.S. has encountered this summer. Or to use a Lorentz butterfly-wing-flapping chaos analogy: If I sneeze right now, I might start eddies that end up developing into a hurricane that destroys Haiti. Then again, if I don't sneeze right now, I might not disrupt the airflow that is going to end up developing into the hurricane that destroys Haiti.
When it comes to long-term climactic changes, we (including me!) are all sitting here pontificating about how we should behave to optimize a tremendously complex, probably chaotic, system whose inputs, outputs, and function we really don't understand. Given our incredible lack of knowledge, I'm inclined not to thrash and scream about humanity's influence at this point. Yes, we should watch and study, and we should enhance and tune our models, and we should take sensible steps to minimize obvious human impact on the environment. But let's not try to undo the Industrial Revolution just yet.
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
You are comparing apples to airplanes. what he's saying is that if you eat a kilogram of butter and it doesn't kill you, then another 100 miligrams of butter won't either. His claim is that we put out the same kinda of pollution that the earth does. Except I don't buy it. We humans generate PCBs, and all kinds of nasty stuff that no amout of thunder storms or volcanos will EVER make. No volcano will produce the kind of toxins as waste products that modern man does with his factories.
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
dammit i knew I shouldve vetoed that vote to melt the polar caps and raise sea levels by 300meters when I was planetary governer.
Oh dear, I've been playin too much Alpha Centuri lately.
This comment was generated by a Squadron of Ultra Ninjas
Ummm, no, actually that would mean that all WE CONSUMERS would have to spend extra money every time we buy those vehicles, and cleaner fuel for those vehicles, and products those factories produce.
...) - they pass them on.
Corporations don't eat added costs (or added taxes, or
There's another ecological problem that isn't being addressed: sound pollution in our oceans.
A lot of marine mammals use echolocation to navigate, and all the marine mammals "chatter" to one another in their family/social groups.
Water is a very good medium for sound transmission. Boat propeller noise carries for hundreds of kilometers.
In many areas, the noise from props is loud enough to be the equivalent of a nearby jackhammer. The marine life *literally* can not echolocate or communicate.
This is a growing concern. We humans have it easy: when we're on a noise construction site, we can always use hand signals. Whales, dolphins, sea lions, seals and other marine life don't have that option.
How does this relate to the article? Well, those "tourist icebreakers" are deafening the Beluga and Narwhal populations in the Arctic oceans. There are only a few tens of thousands of Beluga, and they need to echolocate and communicate.
The poor bastards are dying off more quickly than ever before, and prop noise is now being considered a factor in their decline.
Please don't assist in their destruction by participating on icebreaker cruises.
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Which begs the question: Why is this incorrect logic?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Not to discount the long-term affects that such phenomenon as "global warming" or the "green house effect" **MAY** have some day, but don't you think it is a bit arrogant of us as one of the many species that inhabit the planet Earth to believe that we alone can overtly destroy so much in mere decades that has survived for milleniums.
I am sure that one day my great, great, great, grandchildren will be quite pissed at their ancient relatives for some of the negative and short-sighted activities that we currently engage in that have the potential for long-term repercussions. However, I seriously doubt that anything - good, bad, or indifferent - that has occurred for as short a period as "global warming" will even make good old mother nature twitch.
To me, much of this is brought on by the humans' inherent need to elevate their self-importance in the grand scheme of things. It took years upon years for astronomers to convince the general public that the Earth, and thus humans, were NOT the center of the universe. I foresee the same challenge ahead for enlightened meteorologists who will have to encourage a bit of humility in us all and make us realize that the weather patterns don't revolve around us either.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. -- Benjamin Franklin
Just lastnight I watched the NOVA Episode Warnings from the Ice on PBS. Though they did point out that the speed of the ice melt during the 20th Century is exceptionally high compared to what can be determined from ice core samples, they indicated that it is at least partially due to volcanic activity directly under the Antarctic ice sheet.
I strongly believe that we are in a period of global warming, however, our impact is likely not as significant as geothermal activity, including ash and gases in the atmosphere from other volcanoes. I do feel though, that it is our responsibility to the future generations that we limit any negative impact we do cause to the environment. Critical at the moment is reducing forest destruction since forests are the 'lungs of the planet' removing CO2 and producing O2. (you can help the rainforest by visiting here or here.
The complete transcript of NOVA: Warnings from the Ice is available on the PBS website.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
I think I have an alternate explanation of what may be causing the ice to melt abnormally. Are there a lot of icebreakers in the area? :-)
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* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."