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Global Warming: Do You Believe?
This concern about global warming is significant, especially in light of the fact that the government's existing environmental policies (along with growing perceptions of technological and cultural imperialism) are making the U.S. once again the most resented country in the world. Already high on the agenda of Western Europe and a cause on U.S. college campuses, this could be the first in a series of techno-political issues that will rise up in the 21st Century. Issues like genomics will morph from gee-whiz cover stories in Time to very real concerns for individuals.
Most Americans are now aware of global warming, says a comprehensive report cited in American Demographics magazine, even though significantly fewer express concern or understanding about its impact.
In August 2000, the Harris poll asked Americans about their beliefs concerning global warming and, more specifically, about the relationship between temperature changes and forest fires. Many more than in previous surveys said they believed that global warming exists and is a serious environmental issue, although only 35 percent believe it was directly responsible for increasing forest fires in the United States.
In l997, 67 percent of Americans surveyed believed that increased carbon dioxide and other gases released into the atmosphere would, if unchecked, lead to global warming and increasing average temperatures. By last year, the figure had risen to 72 per cent. Even though they weren't aware of any specific or urgent impac on their own lives, and thus weren't particularly alarmed, nearly half thought that global warming should be treated as a "very serious" problem. In fact, only 13 percent of Americans said global warming wasn't a serious problem, a record low.
But science and the environment are becoming among the planet's hottest political issues. President Bush touched off a firestorm when he refused to sign the Kyoto accord. Although the reaction in the U.S. was less pronounced, a March 2001 Time/CNN poll found that two-thirds of Americans think the President should develop a plan to reduce the gas emissions that may contribute to global warming.
The U.S. has largely remained reluctant to address science through politics no matter how serious the issues. Big media political coverage tends to focus attention on scandal and confrontation, away from explanations of issues like global warming, or the equitable distribution of technology. Although they differ on certain scientific and environmental issues, neither of our two increasingly similiar dominant American political parties pay much attention to technological issues, or have anything resembling a scientific ideology or agenda.
When a serious matter like medical research involving stem cells from frozen embryos arises, politicians worry at least as much about religious support as they do about what scientists advise.
One might think members of Congress would be up in arms at the growing control of genetic research by a handful of bio-tech corporations; instead, there's hardly any debate about it at all.
My prediction: global warming will become the first issue of science and politics that captures the imagination of large numbers of American voters and becomes a national political issue (one on which the President definitely seems to have taken the unpopular side.) Why? Because it's a tactile phenomenon; people can feel that the weather is changing. They can see pictures of penguins dying in Antarctica. They read that skin cancer rates are rising.
Unlike more abstract scientific issues like genetics (which may become a highly visible political issue, but which isn't yet), or technologically-related social issues like intellectual property and copyright, even the myopic American political and media system, which focused for nearly two codependent years on Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton, will have to start paying attention to global warming.
"Once again?" What did I miss? Did everyone go and hate Canada for a while or something?
Sure...
losing most of the worlds population or at least their living quarters is no big deal...
We (humains) almost all live close to water near sea level, if it goes up, good luck keeping it back. Of course it won't happen overnight but it does reduce the habitable space and people living in those area will eventually have to move or adapt one day.
Fact is humans have never dealt with problem of this complexity, we can't even get the weather right...
If you guys read the IPCC report, the seas appear to be rising to a total of 10 meters in 100 years, that means a meter per 10 years. Imagine what that does to a seashore area.
Just saying that we will adapt is a bad way to tackle the problem. Face it, humans are not really evolving anymore. Leaders don't reproduce more than misadapted individuals.
The earth will survive it, we won't kill it, we won't kill life either. Chances are we'll kill our civilisation.
Refusal to do nothing about it is childish, even more is to say it doesn't matter, it does matter!
Fact is there is no excuse to not do anything about it. It is not so difficult to at least be carefull about global warming. At least it's easier than to deal will reoganisation of seashores, elimination of living quarters of thousands of people. I am afraid some people don't realize they are risking all that because it is not convenient to care.
We don't really need to use so much energy do we? There are many many ways to save energy and reduce global warming but we are not using then because it is unconvenient.
Yes we will adapt, but the sonner we do, the better it is!
When Mount Pinotubo (sp?) in the Philippines erupted a few years back, it was estimated that in the eruption, it released more "green house gases" than humanity has as a whole. Ever. Combined. Chew on that for a second.
Also, if one actually LOOKS at the global temp trends, one can see that in the 2 year after this eruption, global temps were DOWN, mostly due to the dust and debris kicked into the atmosphere. We tend believe ourselves to be the "masters of the world", but info like this is pretty humbling. And remember, if this kind of thing happens naturally, don't you think natural systems have adapted to this kind of thing before?
*disclaimer* I am an atmospheric scientist researching climate change. Specifically, we study aerosols which can actually have a net cooling effect. So, I realize that policy and funding decisions based on climate change can directly effect my livelihood. That being said, I strongly believe that we are adversely effecting our planet. I'm pretty sure that I would feel the same way if I had chosen a different career, but that is moot. *end disclaimer*
I am constantly amazed by the reaction that "Global Warming" elicits on this site. Even though I have been reading Slashdot for a few years and have learned to filter out the comments written for effect, I still feel that there are a lot of educated folks that read and post here. So I can't understand why people are so quick to dismiss such an important scientific viewpoint. I will admit that global warming is an unfortunate tag that has persisted - climate change (as has been mentioned many times before) or climate forcing might be better descriptions. Whatever you want to call it, much of the research (admittedly on a short time scale climatologically speaking) points toward climate forcing due to anthropogenic sources. True, the uncertainties in some of the term involved are quite large, but that is why the research continues.
I have been fortunate enough to travel to a few places around the world to study this topic. I have seen many examples of human influence on the surroundings. I have seen the pollution that comes off of India, Japan/China/Korea, Western Europe, and the Eastern US and the effect it has on the measured optical properties. I have seen dying or dead coral in relatively remote places due to runoff. I have seen garbage in the middle of the ocean (Pacific, Atlantic, Indian). I have seen the police/taxi drivers/etc wearing masks in downtown Bangkok because the pollution is so bad. Even here in "clean" Seattle,it only takes 2-3 nice days for a nice haze (smog) to develop. I realize these are anecdotal examples of pollution that in no way prove or even suggest climate change, but they do show the effect of humans on their surroundings.
So what's my point? I guess I've always wanted to ask someone who is so *sure* that global warming/climate change is a crock...what if you are wrong? At what point is there enough science to say we are screwing up the planet and we have to change? What do we have to lose by establishing a policy that requires reduced emissions, alternative and renewable energy and conservation? At what point do we consider the consequences 50-100 years out (as opposed to a 4 year election cycle)?
Since, a large portion of our (US) policies are based on uncertainties (missle defense, budget surplus->tax cut, etc), why is this issue so different? Why is it so easy to dismiss climate change? Because it actually takes work on our part to bring about said change? Why is it that the politically easy response is to say the science is too uncertain?
These are not sarcastic questions. I would really like to hear honest answers.
I have heard arguments that it is arrogant and naive to believe that we (humans) can effect the climate. I hope it's true, but if not, how are we worse off by cleaning up a place in which more and more humans every day are trying to live.
D
Rupert Murdoch is a liberal ? HaHa! That's a good one!. The only liberal I know who donated $1M to the Californian republican party.
Warming, cooling, survival is a touchy subject.
Last night on the Discovery channel there was a discussion of a super-eruption about 75K years ago. The global temperature drop was estimated at 5 degrees, 10-15 in US/European latitudes.
This eruption may have been responsible for a massive human die-off. Perhaps only 5-10K humans surviving. Our DNA is not as diverse as it should be, a massive die-off from the super-eruption is a plausible explanation.
By the way, Yellowstone in North America is due for a similar eruption. Be carefule when driving SUV's through there.
This discussion should have happened about two weeks ago. There was a special report by John Stossel regarding this whole issue and how the media has basically decided its a fact that Humans have caused global warming and that the US is the worst offender of them all.
Some of the key Items I've picked up over the past few weeks of doing some indepth research on these issues:
1,600 Scientists signed a letter saying that humans are to blame. But on the other hand, 17,000 scientists signed a report saying that there is NO CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE. the report is here:
http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm.
The next big thing that people keep kicking around is the Kyoto Treaty. It should have died LONG ago. Originally, back in 1997, Vice President Al Gore signed this treaty. He did _NOT_ have teh support of the US behind it, but it looked like good PR in the least. When the KYOTO treaty was discussed in Congress it failed with 95 / 100 voting against it. No one voted for it. There were MANY big problems w/ the Kyoto treaty. It did not include the _BIGGEST_ polluters in the world, India and China - they were not held to any standards and could continue to pollute as they have been. The other BIG problem was that no one knew how to account for a countries 'absorbtion' of pollution. The US does pollute a LOT. BUT, our country is so BIG, and since Tree cover (which is the SAME as it was in 1920) is sooo great, we absorb almost all of that pollution. This doesn't work out for these other poorer countries that want us to buy 'pollution permits' from them...
To "FIX" the "Problem" that humans aren't even causeing would cost TRILLION's of dollars, and MAY only affect temperaturs by 1/2 degree. You think our economy is bad now? wait until the extremist 'environmental plans' get instituted, then we're all in trouble.
Also, other people mentions Smog in LA and other Californian Cities. In the past 25 years air quality has greatly improved. Smog days are much less common than they used to. In fact, of the top 5 pollutants (not included CO2), all have decreased. In fact, our lakes and rivers are cleaner now than ever before. (see the John Stossel report, these are EPA findings).
We have only been _really_ studying our environment for 25 years. We have our hypothesees, but we don't have all our data yet. The Sunspot cycle is an 11 year cycle. Our technology, as we all know it, keeps getting better, faster, and cheaper. If in another 25 years of studying the environment there is even more evidence, only this time actually conclussive, and not easily debunked like most of the data today, then there will be reason's to 'drastically cut back' on emissions. As for now, our current conservative cutbacks and changes have been more than enough to allow for us to provide for a better, cleaner future for 'the children'. And heck, as was said earlier, we're going to run out of gas in 100 years anyways, - we're only re-releasing CO2 that was trapped in the earth -, and so we need an alternative to transition too. The Market is the most effective and efficient means to change. If the consumers demand change it will happen faster with better results than any changes that are instituted by the heavy hand of government.
-- dave
That you credit a petition signed by X thousand self-proclaimed "scientists" (dermatologists, industrial process engineers, opticians, linguists, and the like, all of whom deemed "scientists" by virtue of having a B.S. or M.S.) speaks volumes about your capacity for critical thought.
about that petition...
I'm just a CS geek, but I don't seem to remember skin cancer rates being linked to global warming. Ozone depletion due to CFCs, yes, but there are now treaties banning that.
Back in the 1970's the same global warming scaremongers were telling us that a new global ice age was coming. Now it is global warming. The prescription is the same though: immediate radical new government regulations, a reduction in industry, expensive new pollution control requirements, and forcing people to live lifestyles they haven't voluntarily chosen. And of course the sky is falling and if we don't do something NOW, we'll be in serious trouble.
Well, the global temperature did rise about 1 degree - in the first half of the century. The temperature of the earth and the surface climate have radically changed many times in the past, and without any any artificial greenhouse emmissions from humans. The effect of the sun's radition, volcanos, etc have long had an effect on the earth. There may also be long term cycles we know nothing about.
There is some evidence for the earth's warming, but the evidence is far from clean and many observations (such as (corrected) satellite data and weather balloons) show no warming. Most of the climate change predictions are based on computer models. Given our inability to forecast weather accurately at any interval, I doubt very much the computers can handle the much greater complexities of climate change. Certainly more research is warranted and we may yet find some links to human activity that need to be addressed.
But "Global warming" as such as is a political program not science. WHen the New York Times famously said "Blame global warming for the blizzard" (notwithstanding the huge number of major weather events throughtout human history) it has to make you wonder. I honestly believe that if the temperature and precipitation came in right at normal every day, we'd be told that this was a catastrophe caused by global warming and "robbing the earth of its critical climate diversity needed to support its fragile ecology".
There may be good reasons to cut emmissions of lots of chemicals, quite apart from global warming. But the use of hysteria and scaremongering to sell a political agenda is wrong IMO. Let's be honest about what we really want and debate these issues through the normal political process, not as another moral crusade. We've already got too many of those.
The fruit flies are an incomplete system. You can buy a sealed glass globe containing water, brine shrimp, and everything else needed to keep it going apparently for months or years (if light is provided).
(Subtitle: and not a diatribe on global warming like the rest of the posts.)
The reason no one cares about global warming is that it hasn't touched them directly yet. It's the inverse of the NIMBY factor: If it's not in my backyard it's irrelevant. Global warming has not yet provably hurt individual human beings; anyone they have direct contact with in their daily lives. It took a while for AIDS to catch the public eye, but once friends and celebrities started dying it became noticed, and now everyone uses condoms, or at least know it's a good idea. Wait until people start selling their coastal homes in droves, or until everyone around you has skin cancer, or until NYC becomes uninhabitable (well, more so).
I'm rather neutral on this issue, since unlike conservative pundits I *recognize* that I am ignorant about climate science. I don't know if global warming is happening, because BOTH sides of this debate have political incentives to lie. I can't get a dispassionate opinion from anyone. But I *do* recognize BS when I see it, and you are generating a huge amount of it by convieniently not mentioning that the ice in antarctica isn't currently displacing any water right now so your experiment doesn't apply.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
just b/c we are altering the state of the earth does not mean that we will 'destroy it' 'kill it' 'kill ourselves off' etc.
No, we may just starve a few billion, set back the progress of humanity a hundred years, incite warfare over the diminished world resources, etc. Nothing serious at all. Don't worry, be happy!
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
No one is asking you to prove a negative. The point is that there is now a ton of evidence *for* global warming, and if you want people to reject that evidence, you should perhaps make a case as to why we should reject the evidence. As maynard said, your assertion of knowledge that the computer models are false is dubious at best.
As to Lindzen, the earth may very well be able to "counteract such perturbations", but so what? The problem here is that the Earth's feedback systems generally work on geologic time scales. Maybe the earth will cool back down...10,000 years from now. Too bad there may not be any humans there to see it.
Why do they think it's heating up so fast? Because that's what observations show. They show the earth heating up extremely fast, and the past few years/decades being the hottest in recorded history or in what we can determine about the time before that.
And yes, studying has nice, but considering that there are still people who don't accept the theory of evolution, how much study is necessary? More to the point, is the time it will take to satisfy you with study be less than the time it will take for irreparable harm to be done to the planet?
It has been proposed to dissolve wastes in Pyrex glass, cast the glass into stainless-steel tubs, then case the result in concrete for shipping and bury it into geologically stable desert cave regions. The fatal objection to this plan is that if somehow it were subject to 1000-atmosphere pressures and 500-degree water containing phosphoric acid, it would dissolve the Pyrex and release the wastes.
I'm sorry; I do not find this a credible objection. What I find in this objection is someone who wants to play God. And who doesn't mind lying in the attempt.
FWIW.
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
I guess the real issue is; I'm shocked. Totally shocked, at the wide range of conclusions drawn from the SAME POOL OF EVIDENCE.
My conclusion is that there is no hope for humanity, whether global warming is real or not. It's really a moot point whether we're changing the climate or not. If we can't *all* look at the same pool of scientifically gathered evidence, agree upon a rational conclusion, and take action to ensure our own survival - we, as a species are doomed.
Whether it's global warming that eventually kills us, or a global plague, or some other threat. If people can't get together and agree on empirical evidence - we're just fucked.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
One of the advantage of being the richest nation on the planet is that we have this tendancy to clean up our own messes. Global warming, along with the Kyoto Protocol, has been used as a political scare tactic in this country to try to place blame squarely on the American people. Based on questionable science, it survives primarily due to human nature to believe impending doom anytime it's mentioned. Think of the idiots and the Y2K scare. BTW, I have read many of the reports that the environmental groups use. Most of the use the phrase "may be occuring" quite a bit. Add to this, humans are NOWHERE NEAR the biggest contributor to CO2 emmissions to begin with on this planet. If you want to see where C02 emmissions occured over the past year, take a look at this page: http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/viewrecord?80 86. Also, just a note the dates and then think about when all of those wildfires in the US and elsewhere around the world occured.
Why the hell is this cast in the light of something that someone has to *believe* in?
Could it be that Katz' posting rate was falling off, and he was ordered to bring his rate up or be shown the door, now that the owners are reworking their revenue model?
As far as global warming goes, it's a fsck'ing theory, for crissakes, not a goddam religion.
But you sure couldn't tell that from some of the posts here...
t_t_b
--
I think not; therefore I ain't®
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
Tin foil hats? Friendly global corporations? UN as a socialist/Anti-capitalist organization promoting actors as scientists? Well, glad to see that you've set the record straight. Yup, go home now -- nothing more to see. --M
Ironic that I'm using a skeptics argument here, huh?
--Maynard
Climate fluctuation over geologic time scales is much larger than the change we're seeing over the last 50-100 years; true. What you fail to mention is that change over geologic time scales vs. change over 50-100 years is a meaningless comparison -- as in apples to oranges.
Extinction can be thought of as the effect from environmental change so radical and rapid that organisms previously well adapted in said environment become unable to reproduce and thus, instead of benefiting from selection pressure to evolve into the new environment, simply all die as a result. Vast numbers of species are going extinct the world over, which suggests radical environmental change at a very rapid pace. The change is permanent -- extinct creatures and the environment they create will never return. We are walking off a precipice without any safety ropes. From Rainforest clearcutting, Coral reef bleaching the world over (along with massive overfishing), and global climate change from industrial and energy production. I strongly doubt that we'll be able to survive without these basic habitats to maintain our food supply. JMO.
--Maynard
The business community would like us to put our heads in the sand and forget about all these pesky problems steamrolling our way. But the consequences of inaction could be devastating for life across the planet, and our species survival. To continue to trivialize the debate by turning the issue into one of belief instead of verifiable facts simply accepts the common US big media propaganda and spin. This is not a debate of the number of angels on the head of a pin, it's a scientific debate whereby the vast majority of academic scientists the world over have accepted a common view that global climate change is real and could be devastating to life on earth. Please also see: Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development documents on the issue as well.
--Maynard
As the comments in this thread indicate, a lot of people don't believe. It may seem clear to you and I, not to mention virtually every scientist not employed by oil companies, that there's evidence that human activity affects the environment; it may further seem self-evident to you and I that if the evidence suggests it affects the environment negatively that we have sufficient grounds to modify our behavior without waiting for "proof" of the extent of damage, rate of decline, and computation of short-term economic consequences.
But the greenwashing from companies that have vested interests in the status quo is pretty effective. "Hey," they say, "the earth has gone through climate change before without our contribution, so obviously that means we're not having an effect this time--it's just a natural cycle! So keep burning fossil fuels with impunity and ignore those idiotic regulation-loving liberals who talk about how much we'd conserve if we did horrible, freedom-oppressing things like raise fuel economy standards by 50%."
See, if you believe the "chicken littles," you'll be inconvenienced. If you don't, you won't be. And, hey, who wants to be inconvenienced just on the theory, the unproven possibility, that our great-grandchildren might face mass extinction? We should at least wait for a few more decades to see if things are obviously getting worse. Sure, that means that trying to fix things then will cause orders of magnitude more hardship than they would now, if it isn't too late--but until then, check out my new Chevy Subdivision SUV!
At risk of being pedantic, this is what is known as a "hard choice." Despite all the noise about spotted owls and New Age women who live in old growth trees, by and large we've consistently been choosing to protect that GDP than protect the environment.
I don't disagree that we shouldn't take economic hardships lightly. I don't disagree that choosing to protect the environment won't have significant costs. In fact, I suspect if we put a serious effort into it, over the short term things could really suck.
What I do disagree with is the contention that "let's wait and see" is a viable alternative. One of history's clearest lessons is that as expensive as proactive approaches may be, they are consistently far cheaper than reactive approaches.
This is kind of like the "Year 2000 bug." Everyone in IT ran around frantically for two or three years fixing problems, and when the rollover finally came, the damage was virtually non-existent. And of course, everyone said, "Look, it wasn't any big deal after all." But if we hadn't proactively treated it like a big deal, it would have been. If we'd done nothing, and even a fraction of those systems that hadn't been fixed had failed, then what would the costs have been? Everything that was spent proactively, plus all the costs for cleanup. "Cleanup" would at the least involve billions, with a 'b,' in lawsuits, and might involve minor--or even major--disasters. (Some of the systems that were reported as having critical flaws were in hospitals, for instance, and in waste water treatment facilities.)
There were great strides made toward reducing auto emissions, appliance energy use, and cleaning up power plant and factory pollution made in the '70s--and gosh, things in the '90s weren't nearly as bad as people in the '70s said it was going to be. This doesn't mean the people in the '70s were right--but it hardly proves they were wrong. And if they were even partially right, we've saved a whole damn lot of money in energy costs and air and water cleanup.
it will affect us in purely negative ways
Oh really?
There's a lot of land in Canada, Alaska, and Siberia where farming isn't viable because the growing season is too short. Landowners up there will greatly benefit from global warming -- as would the rest of us, as food becomes cheaper and more plentiful.
Likewise, inasmuch as people migrate into lands that were formerly just too cold to live in, overcrowding will decrease in the lower latitudes.
I'm sure my fellow slashdotters can think of a lot of other examples of how global warming wouldn't be all bad.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
...and a non-scientist is not whether they have theories or whether they understand what theories are. It is whether they test their theories against real-world data to determine the degree to which they predict that data. Everybody (scientists and non-scientists alike) has theories. Everybody tests them or accepts them without challenge. Those who rigorously test them in an open environment where others can review their work are scientists.
Climatologists who believe in global warming have for years put forward theories which, to a greater or lesser degree, made predictions which (for the most part) have been borne out by the subsequent data. When they have proven wrong, they have modified their theories or become skeptics. Those who consider themselves "global-warming skeptics" have likewise put forward theories (global warming is not caused by humans, global warming is good, the homeostatic mechanics of weather will fix the problem). When they have proven wrong, they have changed their theories or become supporters of the global-warming hypothesis.
To whatever extent any of those on either side have refused to accept evidence, they are not scientists. Right now, the tide of data is running against the skeptics. But that doesn't mean it always will. If they come up with theories which better predict the data, they will gain ascendency.
The theory put forth in Fallen Angels is not a "competing" theory because it assumes that the global-warming theorists are right about the effect of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The fact that this theory suggests that greenhouse gases are holding back an ecological catastrophe in no suggests that another ecological catastrophe would not be created by over-shooting the needed amount of warming. In fact, the theory in the book almost requires that the global warming theory be also possible.
Fallen Angels is a fun book, but it has almost nothing to do with global warming. The real question it asks is whether a bunch of geeks at a sci-fi convention could actually put a spacecraft in orbit if they really wanted to. (I heard a rumor that an actual science-fiction convention raised money by holding an auction or raffle whose prize was a place in the book.)
The use of the scientific theory in the book is to give them the motivation: The idea is that eco-extremists have instituted a totalitarian state to restrict greenhouse-gas emissions, triggering the ice age which those emissions were preventing. These enviro-Nazis are clamping down on technology, including the space program. (This explains why the government won't put up the spacecraft.) The last bastion of technology is the space station, which has fans among the clandestine groups who still meet at illegal, underground SF conventions. When two astronauts crash, the geeks have to get them back to space before the government finds them.
All of which is fun, but not very believable. The theory is interesting, but of no particular relevance to the current debate over greenhouse gases. In the book, the banning of fossil fuels triggers an ice age, eliminating the need for the ban. But the government continues to suppress the one thing which could save the earth from the advancing sheets of ice.
While this might be believable, the fact that the population continues to go along is not. (The exception is Milwaukee, where the city's government secretly burns fossil fuels.) People might be fooled into accepting a phoney ban on carbon dioxide when global warming was a real issue. But by the time it's snowing in July that argument is gonna fall real flat.
This post says less about science or theories or greenhouse gases than about the will to believe demonstrated by its author. Robotech_Master obviously wants to believe that global warming is "just" a theory, so he is willing to ignore the fact that the theory he puts forward actually includes global warming. Indeed, one could argue that many of the posts to Katz's piece (on both sides) are more evidence of the will to believe than anything else.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
I've noticed that, when somebody comes along with a counter-theory, the junk-science purveyors (again, on both sides of any issue) glom onto it. Even if the counter-theory was presented with a genuine interest in science (and not deliberate deception as appears to be the case here), those who've come to use it in their arguments do so without regard to whether it checks out or not.
You can see the results here: surface temperatures versus atmospheric temperatures, ice ages held off, any number of items which (whatever their original validity) no longer hold water scientifically trotted forth by those who want to believe in what they want to believe more than they want to know what is really true.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
Every EU country has passed the internal laws (or is passing them) required for Kyoto. Many are way ahead of us on this. The U.S. adopted a wait-and-hope-it-proves-wrong strategy in 1990 while the Europeans adopted a do-as-much-now-as-we-can-so-it'll-hurt-less-later strategy. Both were valid strategies. We now know which one was better.
Why do the anti-Kyoto FUDsters think they can get away with saying the Europeans haven't ratified? Because it's technically true: Members of the EU are not allowed to ratify treaties. That's the EU's responsibility. The EU hasn't ratified because it hasn't yet decided what the procedure for ratification will be under the European Union. They are agreed on ratification of this treaty, but they aren't going to rush to create a bad ratification procedure just to ratify something they all know they're going to approve. They'd be stuck with that bad procedure.
The Senate vote was 0-98 because those who support the treaty want the right to bring it up later, something which only those who voted against can do under the rules of the Senate. So, why do the opponents of Kyoto keep resurrecting this cannard? Because their goal is to deceive, not to inform.
It is clear who is repeating lies, Shivetya, the only question is whether you are one of those deceivers or one of the deceived.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
I was aware that the treaty had not been sent to the Senate for ratification. I was also aware that the reason it was not sent by the Clinton administration was that they knew it would not pass.
That is a far cry from saying, as the FUDsters are, (and I do not put you in that category by any means) that there was no support for Kyoto in the Senate and no support in the EU. There is insufficient support in the Senate and overwhelming support in the EU, both among politicians and among the people (even in the business community).
While I do not agree with you on the exemption of non-industrialized nations from the limits, I appreciate the fact that you acknowledge the arguments on the other side and address yourself to those arguments rather than spreading five-year-old disinformation.
I'm sorry my carelessness caused you to doubt my statements about the EU. I will email you a transcript which may help restore my credibility. My main concern is that this discussion is dominated by oft-repeated FUD, which suggests that those who oppose the treaty don't have the kind of reasoned arguments you put forward. I hope my own mis-statements do not get repeated so often they similarly undermine my own position (which is less than full support for the treaty).
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
...the sheer volume of nonsense and dishonesty being propagated by those who oppose the Kyoto Treaty. There are certainly questions about the scientific truth of global warming predictions. But they are not being accurately portrayed in the three posts above this one. Let's look at three posts (working downward in the current tree):
general_re started with:
Master Bait replied with:
And Golias weighed in with:
Here we see FUD of the highest order: everything from outright lies to glib irrelevancies.
Start with general_re's claim that "there is far from any consensus that this warming is the result of human activity." By any definition of "consensus" this is flatly false. There is a consensus (indeed, very close to unanimity) that global warming exists. There is a consensus (strong and widespread, verging on unanimous) that some portion of that warming is caused by humans. There is a consensus (strong and growing, but not unanimous) that the human-caused share is signficant and dangerous. There is even a consensus (much weaker, but still signficant) that most of the currently observed warming is caused by human activity. This last consensus derives primarily through negative data showing that other proposed causes are not contributing.
While Master Bait's claim that only people who aren't part of this consensus get grants from big oil isn't strictly true, it is true that a disturbing number of the "skeptics" are financed by those with a financial interest in the results. Master's exaggerations are dwarfed by Golias' counter-exaggeration:
"That's fun to say, but the largest and most current study to date on the topic (a joint venture by the feds and the National Academy of Sciences done almost immediately after the final nail in the Kyoto Treaty coffin was hammered in), showed that there was, in fact, no consensus in the scientific community about this at all."
Which is also fun to say, I'm sure, but far more inaccurate than Master Bait's overstatement. Almost as fun as paraphrasing "members of the NAS" without citing references, credentials or names (or giving anyone a chance to see if they have since changed their minds -- as many skeptics have).
Picking on four of Golias' itemized points, I would say: (1) wrong or irrelevant; (4) irrelevant; (6) irrelevant and wrong; and (7) totally irrelevant (as befits all good FUD). And then he ends with a true fact which argues against everything he seems to be saying. (All of this is not to imply endorse any of the other points.)
(1) We're not very good at predicting the weather, but we're pretty good at predicting the climate. It's going to rain in the rain forest. It's going to snow in the mountains during winter. Weather is a chaotic system; climate is a thermodynamic system. Northern Europe might cool off while the rest of the world is heating up, but the average has been pretty accurately predicted (by those models Golias derides in item 2). And we're getting better. And the degree to which we aren't good at predicting climatic change is irrelevant if our best current knowledge says a disaster will come if we don't respond.
(4) Geologic temperatures are in constant flux on a geologic time scale. And that flux has often meant bad things for the creatures of earth. The fact that historically recorded fluxes have shortened people's lifetimes is an argument against a concern for global warming only for those who don't care if their lives are shortened. The fact that geologically recorded fluxes have wiped out a vast majority of all the species which have ever evolved on the planet is an argument against a concern for global warming only for those who don't care if their species is wiped out.
(6) Sun spot cycles have been long suspected as contributors to climatic change (since it was first realized that the earth could be viewed as a thermodynamic system and the numbers didn't add up). They have also been completely eliminated as the cause of the observed global warming of last 10 years (as recently confirmed by Pres. Bush's commission on which he made sure there were respected "skeptics"). To the degree that item 6 is not wrong, it is irrelevant: It would not matter to the dead people whether they were killed by sun spots or the combined neglect of two Bush administrations; they would still be dead.
(7) Upper-atmosphere clouds (and, indeed, the entire chaotic system of weather and climate) have, in fact, been discovered to be extremely efficient thermostats by precisely the same kind of science which has discovered that greenhouse gases turn up that thermostat. The fact that upper-atmospheric clouds also regulate the temperature of Venus does not prevent it from being a hellish wasteland of greenhouse gas.
And, finally, the fact that trees can be used to mitigate the accumulation of CO2 says nothing about whether that accumulation should be mitigated.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
Following this logic, everybody should convert to my religion.
When the scientific community at large is as divided as they currently are about a topic that is as 'hot' (no pun intended) as this one is, we certainly owe it to ourselves to research all sides as best we are able.
Otherwise, we are simply choosing and supporting a side as thought it were a religion.
Passion is powerful, but rarely a direct indicator of truth, and any passion, once raised, becomes it's own motivator.
We should ignore our passions until we have explored both sides. More often, however (and I'm guilty of this too), we choose the side that appeals to us (for whatever reasons reasonable or otherwise) and then seek out high-status opinions to support our chosen point of view.
Always give the Devil his due. By exercising honesty and integrity, your final position will be much stronger and more flexible, imho.
**>>BELCH
I say flexible because, more often than not, when you research (however humbly) both sides of an issue, you usually can't help but see degrees of truth and delusion on both. This makes it less pleasing to hurl brimstone at those with whom you disagree, but makes you a far better human being/animal overall!
**>>BELCH
When not even the Nat'l Academy of Sciences or the head-in-the-sand Bush administration denies the reality of Global Warming, it would take a masterly writer to come up with...
While the Bush administration may have acquiesced to pressure not to outrightly deny the 'reality of global warming', I wonder if you can point me to some sort of document in which they acknowledge that global warming does in fact exist ('global warming' as directly attributed to the pollutive aspects of modern industry, not simply the fact that the world today is warmer than it was a little while ago).
Thanks in advance.
**>>BELCH
http://inconnu.isu.edu/~ink/GLOBAL_WARMING.pdf
Get one. Just like the unjust villification of super-clean, cheap, nuclear power, the Green Party folks are crying that the sky is falling again (and people are buying it again). People really are gullible.
The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.
The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.
I don't care enough to decide whether or not I believe. Global warming does not interest me.
Environmental fearmongers are pessimistic escapists. Pre-90's, our bogeyman was nuclear war. I was sure the world would be Wasteland by the time I could grow a beard.
Now it's post-millennium. No mutants, no feral children, no road warriors, not even a goddamned beard. I feel cheated.
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#19845
Not one country has ratified it cos without the US it's worthless.
The Earth is indeed very adaptable. The only problem is that we're less so.
Sorry but are you expecting people to go out and "research" stuff and get results similar to that which professional scientists obtain?
Agreed - more people should look the facts up BUT they should do so with an open mind, not as a reaction to the perceived status quo in the scientific community.
I'm amazed at all the posts moderated up that say "No, it's nonsense".
Well, that's not quite right. It's true there's no black and white evidence that human activity is raising global temperatures. But there are a few things we do know, that are not contested even by the most conservative scientists.
First, we are making enormous changes to the atmosphere. Human activity has raised CO2 levels by something like 30%. We've never done anything like this before, and we have very little idea how it's going to change climate. But it would be remarkable if it didn't do something.
Second, putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere will heat up the earth. We don't know how *fast* or how *much* -- it may heat up one degree, or eight degrees; it make take a decade, or a millenia. Everyone has their own model, and no one has claim to the correct one. But everyone agrees temperatures will go up, the same as putting a lid over a pan, or plugging the holes in your computer case.
Third, the temperature of the atmosphere is increasing at a rate beyond anything we've ever measured, and beyond anything that's happened for tens or hundreds of thousands of years. The important thing here is rate. The absolute temperature change at this point is quite small, and entirely within the range of "normal" temperature fluctuations -- i.e. temperature changes that aren't caused by large driving forces. But the rate of increase *is* beyond what we've observed of "normal" fluctuations. It's quite likely that there's some large driving force for this change.
So... given these, there are basically two issues. First, is CO2 (or other gases) causing the temperature increase? Well, it wouldn't be surprising. But it's very difficult to get definitive proof. People who insist on absolute proof are largely just confusing the issue, because such proof is never possible in the real world. We have to make educated guesses based on the limited information we have.
Second, given that we are making huge changes to the atmosphere -- unilaterally performing grand experiments with life on earth, of which we have very, very little understanding of the possible outcomes -- do we think this is proper or ethical?
Oh, one other thing we know for sure -- pretty much all scientists agree that Kyoto would have little, if any, affect on warming, if warming is in fact caused by CO2. The scientists who support it are doing so because they believe it will create economic and social incentives for larger changes which would have an impact. I.e. if it drives development of alternatives to fossil fuel, then it's much easier to (at a later time) dramatically cut our fossil fuel dependence.
What's the worst that can happen if the environmentalists are wrong about Global Warming? People have to make sacrifices unnecessarily? Boo hoo.
:)
The worst thing that can happen is a global depression, including mass starvation. Here is the core of the issue: there is no way, I repeat no way, that we can significantly reduce human-produced greenhouse gas emmissions without a MASSIVE economic catastrophe.
Even stabilizing US CO2 emmissions at 1990 levels by 2010 would require at least a $0.50 per gallon gas tax increase, as well as fuel cost increases of nearly 50% for electrical generation. Studies show that this kind of CO2 emmission reduction would cause US GDP to decrease by 1 to 2 percent annually, with nearly a million lost jobs. And this in a country that shouts "monopoly" when gas prices go up a few cents...
But of course, stabilizing CO2 emmissions at 1990 levels is not enough. It would only slow down warming while simultaneously we destroy the world economy. And of course, most of these numbers are pulled "out of the air", and I think they probably underestimate the true tax levels required to reduce CO2 emmissions. I still can't explain SUVs.
And that doesn't even include the economic damage required to reduce methane emmissions from Asia (more greenhouse potent than CO2). Perhaps China would just round up and shoot all the rice farmers. Actually, they have pretty good experience at politically inspired mass starvation already...
So we're stuck in a situation where we either have disaster due to global warming or due to economic failure. The truth is that politics being what it is, most nations would not accept political solutions to CO2 and methane emmissions, with the possible exception of Western Europe
So this leaves another alternative: innovate out of the problem. Don't destroy the economy now, hold out until we have a solution (such as a pure hydrogen/oxygen economy).
We can look into sequestration to some extent as well. Globally, farms are becoming more productive, and farmland can be returned to dense biomass forest. Algae sequestration can be looked at as well.
last summer was warmer, this winter is warmer, it's getting warmer. come to .nz or .au and see for yourselves (luckily, only invisible ozone comes from filthy capitalist running dog .us all the way down here to .pole, so it looks beautiful)
thanks for the pollution, you can go home now americans. bye!
just b/c we are altering the state of the earth does not mean that we will 'destroy it' 'kill it' 'kill ourselves off' etc. The earth will return. We will survive. Get over it.
this has happened many times before in history and it will happen again. Just b/c we are accelerating it does not mean it is a bad thing.
If we didn't do it now, it would have happened 10,000 years from now. People will still be around, and the same damn problems will present themselves.
That means it must be signed by the U.S. Congress before it has any force of law - and even then a treaty cannot be enforced that the Supreme Court deems to be in violation of the U.S. Constitution. Not that Kyoto would be overturned - I'm simply pointing out that the Senate is not allowed to give away Constitutional rights by treaty.
Whether President Bush signs it or not has no bearing. The Senate had a test vote, and it was voted down 97-0 - there is no chance that Kyoto would ever be ratified by 2/3 of the U.S. Senate.
Sorry if that makes the Euros unhappy, but that is life.
-- Ziggy Sig Sig
Dr. Fun has a most appropriate cartoon for today. Except that it doesn't mention Katz by name...
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Then, even if we believe, it doesn't matter. Most people could care less what happens tomorrow, let alone years from now. We are an instant gratification society with no consequences.
John, you have some interesting thoughts about this subject, but they are so splayed about and expressed very murkily (is that a word?). Shit John, please learn to express yourself clearly, otherwise people are going to think your even more of an oaf than they already do.
Yes global warming is an issue people think about, yes US Environmental policy w/ regards to the Kioto Treaty (spelling?) is inconsistent and very embarrassing. Just in case you didn't know, the US is the #1 user of petroleum products. If for example the people of mainland Chine were to use Petroleum like we as Americans do, it would deplete known world petroleum reserves in 6 years (I'll find a link later and post it). We as Americans drive our SUV's and don't give a shit about the Environment. Not to sound like a quack, but I think a modicum of environmentalism on the part of just half our population would be a great thing. Little things all add up, buy that Geo Metro instead of the Escalade, ride yer bike if you can, recycle your beer cans. Pick up litter in the park. Have respect for mother nature. Live in the city instead of the Suburban sprawl that encroaches on the remaining wildlife. Boycott the Sierra Club, and take an ecology class. Respect Mother Nature, and she respects you! That's All Folks!
Rule of Life Number 2: Remember, it can all go to hell at any minute. --Jimmy Buffet
300 million sheep are not necessarily smarter than one person.
Science lesson: the accurate definition of the greenhouse effect, which I thankfully learned in astronomy class, is as follows:
In other words, any time any planet has an atmosphere, of any composition, that atmosphere will tend to be more transparent to sunlight than to infrared. So, light passes through the atmosphere, hits the planet's surface and warms it. The atmosphere then tends to hold in the heat which is reradiated from the planet's surface. This is a Good Thing: it helps keep the Earth at a habitable temperature.
What's even scarier are the people who were TAUGHT the Al Gore version in their classes!
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
So if it turns out to be a problem, we'll just have to build some machines that take HUGE AMOUNTS of CO2 out of the air. All sorts of interesting experiments are underway as to how one might do this. Such as by seeding the oceans with iron filings.
We don't yet have a _good_ solution to the problem, so we should spend some more time thinking about it until we do. Making grand, ludicrously expensive symbolic gestures that have no significant impact on actually fixing the problem (Kyoto), is not a good idea.
I play Nerd-Folk!
What's more troubling is a potential disruption of the gulf-stream. IANACS (I Am Not A Climate Scientist), but as far as I know, our climate is kept moderate by warm water coming from the mid-atlantic. One of the predicted effects of global warming is a disruption of this water stream, leading to severe climate changes.
The north-sea is on the same height as Alaska. Without the gulf-stream, we'd have Alaskan climate in Western Europe.
Han-Wen Nienhuys -- LilyPond
Where we live, we just "enjoyed" one of the coldest, snowiest winters on record: in the top 10 in recorded history. But of course, the acolytes of global warming will (om-mane-padme-om) have an explanation, right?
One little bit of info that the g.w. religionists like to point to is a receding glacier in Iceland. Problem is, they don't check their history records: the valley where the glacier is now was used for agriculture in the 1700s!
"Global warming" is pure "B" as in "B", "S" as in "S". It is a pack of lies being dumped on us for the purpose of justifying more government regulation.
Don't believe the hype.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
Global climate change is a phenominally complex system that is not possible to describe in simple "cause-effect" arguments
You're kidding, right? Look, either human activity (the cause) is changing the global climate (the effect), or it isn't. Since 20 years worth of satellite-based temperature measurements - which are far more accurate than surface-based measurements - show NO temperature change at all, there may very well be no effect. In which case, why go looking for causes? Or maybe you've finally blown away that whole causality thing by finding effects without causes.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
Except that Antarctica is not a big floating ice cube (Arctica is, though), but a continent in its own right that's covered with ice. So tell me, if you put more water in a glass, does it rise or fall?
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
> unless there is some huge problem with electric cars I am missing.
Like the fact that transmission of electricity isn't terribly efficient? That electricity doesn't come from the magic electric fairies, and that you still have to burn stuff? That no one wants any of the new hundreds of power plants this would require sitting in their backyard?
Well there's always nuclear. Except for that little waste problem (not like the crap they scrape out of coal plants is exactly health food though)
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I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Hey Fool,
Read you sources. The following was taken from the CNN atricle you refered to.
In 2000, Levitus and other scientists concluded that the average ocean temperature had risen a fraction of a degree since 1955. But the team was unable to determine whether the change was just a natural variation or the result of human activities.
Id10ts!!!
SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0
0 rows returned
Not sure whether it's global warming, or global cooling, or just global weather changes in general. I also have no doubt that they're as much natural changes in weather patterns, as man-made changes. Either way, I do know the weather here in Denver has changed drastically since I was a kid. It used to be during the spring, all spring long, we'd have thunderstorms/hailstorms. Past few years it's been dry as hell. This year we're getting what I'd consider normal spring storms here in the middle of the summer. More than anything it seems as if the weather cycle here is just off a couple of months.
:)
I'm inclined to say that it's whacky, but maybe not hotter. I can barely tell though, as once it hits 90F it's already too hot for me, and I stop counting
Roogna
I'm not attacking any scientist. I like scientists, I like science.
Scientists are people. They always have been and always will be biased. That science advances is largely due to the limited lifespan of scientists.
My career is not relevant, Asshole.
Surfing the net and other cliches...
Surfing the net and other cliches...
(Who Meta-Meta-Moderates the Meta-Moderators?)
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Explain bullshit, scumfucker.
Gladly, troll. I'm clearly using it as a noun here, and according to dictionary.com:
bullshit Vulgar Slang
n.
1. Foolish, deceitful, or boastful language.
2. Something worthless, deceptive, or insincere.
3. Insolent talk or behavior.
Either of the first two applies.
In the future, if you don't understand a word, you should try the services of Dictionary.com. They aren't perfect, but they're better than having to ask on public message forums.
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Ironically, Americans aren't worried about the technological issues that are seriously changing their lives, and will increase in impact in the future, but are all in a tizzy about global warming, which is bullshit.
But what do you expect, when most of us are products of the government schools?
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I see you missed the point. Do you think any of those media organizations are perceived as liberal?
Yes - the article clearly said that in 2000, Levitus found an increase in ocean temperature, but couldn't attribute the change to natural vairation of human activity. The original article can be found here. It is important to note - this is NOT THE STUDY discussed in the CNN article. This is what is known as "previous work."
This previous work was one of the motivating factors for the next study they performed, the study discussed in the aformentioned CNN article. In this study, they performed simulations "using an atmosphere-ocean general circulation model that includes estimates of the radiative effects of observed temporal variations in greenhouse gases, sulfate aerosols, solar irradiance, and volcanic aerosols over the past century." These simulations MATCHED their data, and the increase in temperatures in their model could be attributed to greenhouse gases released by human activity. And THAT is the study discussed in this CNN article.
And, just to pour a little salt on the wound, let's look at some of the other quotes in the article which you've chosen to ignore (rather than merely take out of context)
"I believe our results represent the strongest evidence to date that the Earth's climate system is responding to human-induced forcing,"said Sydney Levitus of the National Oceanographic Data Center.
"Warming in the ocean is bad and good news. It really does add strength to the claims that global warming is here," said Tim Barnett of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography .. ." but it also suggests that the immediate impact may not be as great because the oceans may slow things down a little"
Exactly as I originally stated. Global warming is real. There is overwhelming scientific evidence to support this. The evidence that it is caused by human activity is becoming overwhelming. But the consequences of this warming, its magnitude, etc, is still a question of scientific debate.
Personally, I feel we should take steps to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. Not because "I know" horrible things will happen to the earth's climate. But because SOMETHING will PROBABLY happen, and it MIGHT be very bad. But I was never much of a gambler.
Very sloppy thinking on your part, I must say.
A recent letter in Science provides 13 citations for reports of such exciting phenomena as reduction in alpine glaciers, increase in permafrost thawing, later freeze-ups & earlier thaws of lakes, etc. etc. etc. occuring over the past 60 years.
These 13 citations are A VERY SMALL FRACTION of the total evidence supporting a warming trend over the recent past. A quick search through the web of science over just the past 2 years turns up 595 articles. Do they all provide evidence of a warming trend? No. Do many of them? Yes.
Heck, even a quick search on CNN turns up evidence of ocean warming caused by humans.
A more complete review of the evidence is presented here.
There is very little doubt that the earth is getting warmer. The debates over the past few years settle on "is it caused by humans" and "how much will it affect climate". The evidence seems pretty clear that humans are responsible for a good portion of the warming. The overall affect of this warming, however, is still very much in doubt. THAT'S where the main scientific debate is.
And, on a slightly unrelated rant . . .
Comments like this really piss me off. It's clear you haven't done any poking through the scientific literature about global warming, and your "as i understand it" comes from mouthpieces of our good friends in the oil industry, rush limbaugh, and others.
Plus, EVERYTHING in science is a theory. It's an explanation of how the world works, based on experimental data. A good theory explains the current data and makes predictions about the results of future experiments (ie, warming the earth will cause an increase in the rate of polar ice cap melting). Theories are NEVER PROVEN - there's always the chance that some experiment in the future will provide data that can't be explained by the current theory - which leads to its modification or, in very rare and exciting cases, a completely new theoriy. This is why we have a "theory of gravity" or "theory of evolution" - they can't be proven, but they explain very nicely all the data we've picked up to this point.
Sheesh.
Global warming, global cooling, whatever is the invogue global disaster of this week.
Until I get real scientists displaying real data everything is just scare tactics of the invironmental publicity Corperations (earth first, and the other scare for profit groups) to get more money.
Show me an active environmentalist and I'll show you a cult follower. Leave science to the scientists... we'll probably tell you before everyone is dead. (as we get into our rocket and leave)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I don't know where you're getting your info, but jack rabbits, coyotes, and mange are indigenous to North America.
Jack rabbit isn't the real species name though. Black tailed hares and white tailed hares are commonly called jack rabbits.
Coyotes have greatly increased their range, mostly where man has hunted wolves out of existence.
Mange is caused by mites that infest coyotes and domestic dogs.
Second, my previous post was from memory. This time I did a really quick search on encyclopedia.com. I could've found multitudes more info backing me up with a more in-depth search. What source are you using besides pulling stories from your ass?
What are commonly called jackrabbits are really hares. There are 4 species of hares indigenous to North America:
- Black-tailed Hare (Lepus californicus)
- White-tailed Hare (Lepus townsendii)
- Antelope Jackrabbit (Lepus alleni)
- Snowshoe Hare (Lepus americanus), also called the snowshoe rabbit
What you may have been thinking of is quoted from the hare article here:Yes, the coyote (Canis latrans) is indigenous to North America.
Mange is a skin disease caused by mites in mammals. There are 3 types of mange:
- Demodectic Mange, caused by the microscopic mite Demodex canis
- Cheyletiella mange, also known as walking dandruff
- Sarcoptic mange, also known as scabies
Maybe you should verify your info next time before you go posting lies and making a fool of yourself.What I don't understand is why we don't have electric cars yet. No emissions, no high gas prices. Is it because of the influence of oil companies? lack of electricity (ex. rolling blackouts)? I just don't get it. Environmentally it makes so much sense- unless there is some huge problem with electric cars I am missing.
There are many huge problems but the ones causing the most problem are range and slow fill ups.
I can get in my car and drive 400 miles on a fillup, stop in a station and do another 400 miles after a 5 minute operation. Once an electric car can do that they MAY be more feasable.
You mean, most scientists appearing in the popular press think global warming is occuring, and as a result of human activity.
Out in the real world beyond the media glitz, the split is near 50/50.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
The ice people are concerned about melting isn't floating in the ocean, though; it's suspended above the water. If it somehow manages to melt, it will raise sea levels. I really don't think it will melt, though.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
You don't want SPF 30 more today than you did twenty years ago because there's more UV coming in. You want it more today because it's more publicized, and you are therefore more aware, at just how harmful those UV rays can be. A heavy tan and hanging out in the sun with little or no protection used to be thought of as a good thing. It was just as dangerous then as it was today!
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
A competing theory, put forward fictionally in the book Fallen Angels by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Michael Flynn (available free in its entirety through the Baen Free Library), is that the earth is actually entering a cooler period (a Maunder Minimum), and if it weren't for the "greenhouse gas" in the atmosphere, we'd be experiencing another ice age.
The book is fiction, but the scientific theory it cites is real. (And it has RMS in it.)
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Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Rarely have I seen such an article on /. become so absolutely partisan, divided, bitter, twisted and antagonistic (as well as the site itself /.'d)
/. can support a debate on such contentious issues. Right now, I see /. overwhelmed by pretty much two *entirely* contentious and unreconsilable points of view, akin to "Does God Exist", and politics in general (Left or Right; Democrat or Republican).
/. population (i know it's mainly US posters, but it'd perhaps help understand the wider /. population, where they live and how they relate to each other, and why various points are being made)
/. (US -centric), I figured it'd be mainly anti-Global Warming posts, but *SUCH* a dominance is scary, and I kind of hope people happy to have their personal views challenged and questioned agree with me on this matter.
/. faces a system/rating/moderating problem when dealing with such a contentious issue? Can it be improved, or am I just a whinging reader?
I know where my opinions lie, but I'll leave that to my other posts. My point here is VERY different (but not IMNSHO offtopic), so please no flames. My point relates to how
Firstly, and least importantly: Where were the poll(s)? Two polls could be added here which could add to the debate: "Which region do you live in" and "Global Warming, True or False". We could then get a picture of the underlying beliefs of the
Moderation also seems to have entirely broken down. The majority of high posts are Global Warming disclaimers (Fair enough, they have a point to be made). The moderation system seems to have unfairly punished believers in Global Warming by not promoting their posts. Not entirely, but generally. Given the demographic make up of
Yes, I know that mod points are allocated out generally fairly, and people can reply directly to points, but this situation has illustrated an exception (a boundary condition almost), and *these* are precisely the ones to watch out for. It's clearly hard to automatically give more points to one side of an argument over another without appearing biased, but perhaps the administrators could see such a contentious issue in the making, and *assist* in the allocation of mod points to *ALTERNATIVE* points of view (whether they agree with them or not). I know this may sound like "moderators are biased in this case", but itis apparant it's not working as well as it normally does. There are also a *LOT* of posts (and this one just adds to the weight). How can moderators expect to see the low rated AC posts, and rate them up as they possibly deserve if they don't read them? (A case for forcing a viewing preference on people with mod points?)
I'm asking for suggestions. Am I wrong here in believing
Answers in a Stamped, Self addressed comment box please.
ooooooh! What does this button do? - DeeDee, Dexters Lab.
Tell that to someone living in a low level country such as Bangladesh or the Netherlands, as the sea levels rise up and destroy their countries.
ooooooh! What does this button do? - DeeDee, Dexters Lab.
I believe George Carlin said it best: the planet's doing fine, it's the people who are going to kill themselves off.
My Blog. Sela Ward can sell me long distanc
Something will be done about it "soon" (that is geologically soon, say in the next couple millenia). The earth is an ecosystem, after a while, the earth will balance out, and buck off our species. Sure a few million of us will survive, but most will die.
Don't worry about mankind destroying this planet, we can't do it, due to our ego's we think we can, but in real life, we can't. After a while, the problems that we are causing will balance out.
The basic sleazeware produced in a drunken fury by a bunch of UCBerkeley grad students was still the core of BIND. --PV
Following this logic, everybody should convert to my religion
Then you didn't follow his logic.
Given two choices, if one has disastrous effects and the other has negligible effects, and either one is equally likely, choose to avoid the disastrous effects.
Choosing the wrong religion (at least western ones) would have disastrous effects regardless, because it measn an etenity of suffering. Therefore all choices are equally defensible and logical.
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Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Right, I can see that most people here don't believe, given that the only serious posts that are above +2 are anti-global warming.
We have four scenarios, as follows:
1) Global warming is false, and we do nothing
2) Global warming is false, and we take action
3) Global warming is true, and we do nothing
4) Global warming is true, and we take action
1), 2) and 4) are fine - either there's nothing to worry about, or in 4), we at least try to avert disaster.
In 3), we're fscked - the seas rise, climate changes, etc.
Assuming that all 4 are equally likely(*), that effectively gives us a 75% chance of being fine. Of course, that means that we have a 25% chance of dooming ourselves. Personally, I wouldn't play Russian Roulette with a 6 chamber gun, let alone a four chamber one.
What's the worst that can happen if the environmentalists are wrong about Global Warming? People have to make sacrifices unnecessarily? Boo hoo.
What's the worst that can happen if they're right, though? I can't imagine that anyone is going to die through recycling too much of their rubbish, or leaving the car at home and walking too often.
It seems to me that until we have conclusive proof that Global Warming is rubbish, we really ought to play it safe.
(* Yes, I know that's not the way it works, but I'm simplifying things. Given that we have no consensus on the matter, it's not such a terrible simplification to make.)
Cheers,
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
In 1997, 67 percent of Americans surveyed believed that
By last year, the figure had risen to 72 per cent
In fact, only 13 percent of Americans said global warming wasn't a serious problem, a record low.
... a March 2001 Time/CNN poll found that two-thirds of Americans think the President should develop a plan to reduce the gas emissions that may contribute to global warming.
Now this will sound like a digression, so bear with me for a minute. There is an old story about the nose of the emperor of China. This man wanted to know how long the emperor's nose was. The problem was, that no one in China had ever seen the emperor. So he went around to many thousands of people, asking each of them how long they thought the emperor's nose was. He accumulated a large amount of data, and was able to use the latest in statistical techniques to come up with a very good number, with confidence intervals and the whole nine yards.
However, no matter how good the statistical analysis is, no one had ANY hard information at all, so all the statistical analysis means NOTHING. And this is what Jon Katz's numbers are. Asking what people think about global warming doesn't tell us anything about global warming at all.
---
At least mafia-owned pizzarias make excellent pizza. Compare to Bill Gates.
You mean, putting European Health and Welfare ahead of US Money. Well of course they do. And those in the US would naturaly put US Health and Welfare ahead of European money. The problem is, that there are many US residents who would tell you that that is OK.
Blar.
Jeeze Jon... You should have watched the Discovery channel last night. According to 'Supervolcanos' we're due for a major eruption of Yellowstone National Park which will lower the earths temperature by 5 degrees C. We definately should be worried about global warming... If we don't speed it up and counter the effects of this imminent supervolcano, we're screwed.
So far I'm seeing a lot of folks saying "no real evidence" and that's typical of everything I've heard for the last 25 years on this and many other subjects (cell phones, cancer, species extinction, Bavarian Illuminati, cabbages, et al).
It really is a belief issue ESPECIALLY for scientists and technologists. I have a very broad education in pure science, technology and the sociology of religion and the disbelief of the data regarding all these matters is a matter of faith in a system that scientists don't have any proof in. Saying the Earth will reset itself, or that humans WILL survive, or everything will adapt is ludicrous. It's as ignorant as anyone saying that man was literally created whole from the clay of the earth and life breathed into him by a supernatural creator. There's no direct scientific evidence to support either hypothesis.
ps: mod me down, I'm obviously flame-bait
not only is the universe stranger than you imagine,
it's stranger than you are capable of imagining
First of all, I'd like to say that I'm not closed to the idea of global warming. What I _am_ is very skeptical. I really don't understand how rational people can be expected to "believe" in global warming. Why? Because:
- The same people predicted an ice-age a couple of decades ago. Even if they now know significantly more about climate than they did then, how can we believe that they won't find new evidence overturning the global warming theory?
- Noone ever mentions anything about water vapor, which is a much more important greenhouse gas in Earth's atmosphere than CO2.
- Ozone holes appear over the poles, and there is no explanation of how humans could cause them to form in those places instead of over cities.
- Scientists have admitted that they DON'T KNOW if the supposed global warming effect is part of a natural climate cycle.
- Liberal political and social activists are the strongest proponents of the global warming theory. They treat every damn thing like a crisis and run around like chickens with their heads cut off. YOU LIBERALS NEED TO STOP "CRYING WOLF" BECAUSE EVERYONE IS STARTING TO DISBELIEVE YOU ABOUT EVERYTHING YOU SAY. Any real scientist or engineer would tell you that it's moronic to try to change something before you can predict what long-term effects the change might create (not to mention whether or not the condition you're trying to change SHOULD be changed in the first place!)
- The Earth has supposedly gotten along just fine without us for billions of years, surviving large asteroids, separation and collision of continents, large volcanic eruptions (which change the climate much more in the short-term than any CO2 emissions ever could!), ice ages, etc. Why are we so arrogant to believe that we can so easily defeat the ability of the Earth to adapt? Furthermore, why are we so arrogant to believe that we can fix the problem without first understanding it (or at least being able to confirm that it exists and is getting worse)?
As I said at the beginning of my post, I don't know if global warming is occuring or not, (I do know that we haven't had a good Winter in Washington State in the last 10 years though =) and if it does exist, I don't know if humans are the cause. What I do know is that I'm going to keep an open mind towards both sides of the debate as long as there isn't hard evidence. If you buy into either side completely then you're most likely deluded.
And another thing that pisses me off: SCIENCE (the application of the Scientific Method) CAN *********NOT********* "PROVE" ANYTHING TO BE "TRUE". All it can do is gather evidence to support or discredit theories about the way our universe works. Science is meant to be a tool by which we can use our own senses and reasoning to find out about that universe, and not a tool for activists, politicians, and news media to get money.
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
They shot up Skinner with them in order to get him to do stuff for the shadow gov't types.
Lowmag.net
This so called global warming is rubbish. The only people that believe in it are organisations funded to study it, and governments that can use it as an excuse for huge energy tax increases.
Sig is taking a break!
from merriamwebster.com:
Main Entry: theory
Pronunciation: 'thE-&-rE, 'thi(-&)r-E
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -ries
Etymology: Late Latin theoria, from Greek theOria, from theOrein
Date: 1592
1 : the analysis of a set of facts in their relation to one another
2 : abstract thought
3 : the general or abstract principles of a body of fact, a science, or an art
Refers to a body of knowledge. Gravitation is a theory, evolution is a theory, law is a theory. This doesn't mean "we're not sure." There may be some varying degree of surety within that body of knowledge, but that does not invalidate the entire body of knowledge.
Not understanding the mechanism doesn't mean it doesn't do what it does. Gravitation kept everything earth-bound long before the apocryphal apple landed on Newton's head.
The modern study of climate encompasses maybe 50 years. Oldest reliable weather obs date back about 400 years (and at a precious few locations), and older data are deduced from ice cores and such making assumptions which could be wrong and which yield less-than-finely-grained data. With an enormous and enormously complex system involved, and with the physics and chemistry incompletely understood, not to mention extremely challenging to model, and assuming infinite computational power (which is not as bad as you might think, since climate and nuke modelling are #s 1 and 2 on CPU use over most supercomputing facilities), we can't possibly venture more than barely educated guesses.
Scientists are pretty evenly split on whether global warming even exists, though neither the press nor the politicians are clever enough to convey this to the public, who are probably not interested or educated enough to understand even that. Read this by a scientist involved in evalutaing claims used to support Kyoto. There is ample evidence to support claims on both sides, and only the most zealous and those with agendas will claim irrefutable proof.
Do people affect the environment they live in? Sure. Do greenhouse gases warm the atmosphere? Of course, that's why they're called that. Can these effects really overwhelm the huge natural processes and cycles of the planet to modify it enough for us to notice? We don't know.
Maybe we're staving off the now-overdue ice age. Perhaps we're experiencing a regular or otherwise cycle of climatic oscillation. Maybe we're screwing ourselves. Who knows? It is relatively certain that curtailing our emissions would have smaller impact on the environment, but that impact might already be much smaller than we think.
Certainly it couldn't hurt, but Kyoto could, and a decision to support it or not should be based on solid environmental, economic and political considerations. Kyoto not only radically reduced limits on pollution in the US and other 1st world nations, but guaranteed the right of 3rd world nations to continue to pollute indefinitely. There were many other difficulties as well, many of which reflect the USA's decreasing involvement in international affairs (W can't even spell UN, so we shouldn't be surprised), and the diplomatic Napoleon complex being expressed by the EU, trying to throw it's new, generally left-leaning politcal weight around.
The world is likely to be severely impacted by an asteroid large enough to cause catastrophic climate change, and will without doubt suffer even worse damage as our sun ages in a billion years or so. Politicians pay no atention to these issues, which would be easy to mitigate given the time until their effects will be felt. Any time they spend on Global Warming is to garner public accolades for their "green" side. Maybe this cancels out drilling in ANWAR.
That's what I was thinking about too. The nano-bots where injected into Skinner. Krycek controlled them with his Palm Pilot of Death.
-B
And Star Trek NG? Every other ep is full of nanothis, and nanothat. Nex
That is true of the North Pole, but the danger is at the South Pole where the majority of ice is overland. That melts and we're screwed.
The (presumably) best minds and computers in the business can't reliably predict the weather patterns 2 days from now, but they want to talk about 10-50 years from now?
I remember as a kid talking about Global Cooling and how we were heading for the next ice age any time.
Its funny how things change.
Those types of movies have been around for a long time. Remember Soylent Green? They lived in a dome. You only got to see nature movies before you died.
And SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!
"Global Warming" (which is a dumb title for the Greenhouse Effect) will seem a lot more real in 40 or 50 years. the theory of the Greenhouse Effect states that as the amount of vapors (H2O, CO2, etc) in the atmosphere increases, more heat energy from the sun will be absorbed and trapped in the atmosphere. now we've set this ball in motion by doing two things: dumping large amounts of CO2 in the air (and cutting down a lot of trees that would gladly breathe it) and eating away at the ozone layer (in the upper atmosphere, where it absorbs ultraviolet rays). more UV is coming in, heating up more vapor in the air.
the 0.5degC increase in global climate may not seem like much, but when you consider how many extra millions and millions of tons of water are in the air, you can probably easily imagine the climactic changes. more humidity planet-wide == more storms, more violent climate. a rise in sea level (from slowly-melting, enormous icecaps) is probably to come in the next 50 years too, putting major metropolitan ports underwater.
the 0.5degC increase in climate is also a reversal of the natural trend in recent centuries. no one can say with certainty if it's just the Earth's natural cycle, but an intelligent human can tell that mayyyybe mankind had something to do with it.
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
I agree with this (public knows SHIT about science) view more than anything. I'm so sick and tired of the banal news people citing a damned poll that says X% believe that global warming is bad.
First of all, who gives a rat's ass what the public -believes-?? A few hundred years ago, the (european) public believed (because they were told) that the earth was round.
Man, this kind of thing just keeps pissing me off over and over...
Hmph. You're forgetting the definition of white trash, which is someone who drives a car voluntarily. This is the nineties; you don't need to be white to be white trash anymore!
Seriously, pollution is a serious problem. I'd like to say "it's all your fault" to the fuckwits who continue to do it on a daily basis. Someday, I probably will.
but the right claims that cutting pollution will destroy our economy
They do, and they couldn't be further from the truth. Creating cleaner technologies will improve the economy, because it will put people to work designing, building, and maintaining the new clean equipment. I expect most people who have seriously considered the issue came to that conclusion. But when the President of the US is an oil man, don't expect much in the way of honesty, intellectual or otherwise. We're talking about a President of the US who was elected because he managed to look less intelligent than his opponent.
--
You're a suburbanite.
Please don't touch the equipment then.
I don't know how many times I have seen a "degreed scientist" torpedoing his own argument as you do. Look at your citations. What's the common thread? Science?
Hell, no. The common thread is 'wants money'.
Global warming is the biggest pork-barrel since Star Wars (and I know, I worked on Star Wars). You can't tell when you're done, you can't tell whether what you did worked or whether the effect came from something else. You can't even deconvolve normal changes from "global warming" changes. There hasn't been enough -time-. Twenty years ago global -cooling- was the worry bead. And twenty years? You haven't even learned how limited little fixes are in that time, how can you advocate a -global- fix?
You don't have the moral high ground. Stop using Appeal to Authority when you need to present -data- that are clear and unambiguous (good luck getting it).
>> Face it, humans are not really evolving anymore.
Real human "evolution" occurs through the evolution of culture and technology, not through genetic mutation and natural selection. So, assuming that human culture and technology don't stop evolving, it is likely that we will always be able to adapt to gradual environmental changes such as global warming.
I agree with most of it, however, do you really think Exxon/Mobile/Shell is going to let go of their oil regime willingly?
When you've got major multinational corporations, each with budgets bigger than most nations and they feel their bottom lines start to shake, well, I'll leave that as an exercise for you to ponder.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Unfortunately the Gulf Stream is highly sensitive to climate change and has *already* declined by 20% in the last 50 years according to this story.
This is not a comforting thought.
Now, what about all us puny little humans? Do you think we won't be affected? Go look at your geological data again and this time think about how these corrections you believe in will affect people - not to mention all the furry little animals.
Depends on your definition of believe.
I think there's a distinct possibility that they could be right, but as so many "disbelievers" have pointed out, it is just a theory.
Here's what I know. It certainly isn't going to hurt to check into it. As a precautionary measure, putting environmental legislation through doesn't strike me as a particularly bad idea. I hear people yell and cry about how environmental policies make things tougher on businesses, etc, etc.
Personally, I find my right to breathe a little more important than your right to manufacture things.
--
Give a man a match, you keep him warm for an evening.
Give a man a match, you keep him warm for an evening.
Light him on fire, he's warm for the rest of his life
Why would sea levels rise? I keep hearing this, but I don't believe it. Do an experiment. Put some ice in a glass of water and mark the level. Now, wait for the ice to melt and mark the level again. See any difference?
Climate is changing? Yes, let's say it is. But is that necessarily an evil? Some lands may become desertified (is that a real word?), but would other lands be opened to agriculture? Wouldn't a longer growing season in milder climates allow for bumper crops?
I'm sorry to question your religion, but the "its-getting-warmer, its-man's-fault, therefore, its-bad" theory just doesn't stand up.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Huh !! Check your facts dude ! the US alone is responsible for nearly 50% of world CO2 pollution. I think that an american must consume something as 100 times (not exactly sure, but ig gives an order of magnitude) as much energy than an indian ! amazing !? no
Hear hear. You shouldn't be surprised there are so many slashdotters who think global warming isn't real. The "Slashdot Personality" tends to think he knows more than all the "so-called experts" and is very susceptible to odd contrarian viewpoints and philosophies that have become popular in the geek culture. Also, excessive use of Perl has clouded their critical thinking skills, and their attention span is too short to actually read an article in Scientific American.
OK, enough harshing on the dotters. I've seen some of the current climate research. It really seems to point to global warming. It's not a hoax. I've seen enough hoaxes, you can usually spot one if it's been around a year or two. There is often a pattern: (1) wild claim met with skepticism from much of the scientific community (2) a few early independent confirmations (there is a bell curve and given enough scientists, any result can be confirmed a few times) (3) many more negative results that place the initial claim in doubt (4) evidence surfaces that the authors of the initial claim were sloppy or deceitful.
This is not what's happening with global warming. The evidence continues to mount. There are relatively few dissenting scientists, and most of them just complain we don't have enough proof yet, they provide little contrary evidence except potshots at the incompleteness of the data set (kind of like how creationists like to point out "holes" in the fossil record as proof that Darwin is wrong).
One key indicator that helps support the veracity of a theory (and its general acceptance) is its usefulness. Germ theory really caught on when it started saving lives. Evolution and genetics are supremely useful to the study of biology. Relativity and quantum mechanics are useful for explaining many natural phenomena.
Similarly, theory and data regarding CO2 buildup and global warming are at the point where they are useful. You have to include them if you want to model climatic observations such as seasonal changes in CO2 concentration. Otherwise the data don't make any sense.
damn, forgot to spellcheck my rant.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Sure, I BELIEVED, then I researched paleoclimatology untill I got the facts, now I KNOW most of what they tell me is wrong, half assed, and for political reasons. Don't listen to me, go out there and look up the OPPOSIE of what youve been told, and see if there is more information and if their side makes more sense. Ever heard of the little ice age 200 years ago? Most people havent. Puts a new slant on the warming trend of the last 100 years when you realise we are coming out of a minor FSCKING ICE AGE. Mideveal england was 1-3 degrees warmer than it is now, which is why there were colonies on greenland which died off when the climate GOT COLDER!! Don't believe me, do your own research. Look at the ice core data, listen to that crackpot opposed to the Microsoft, I mean popular view.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
I am a scientist, and people mistake the issues here constantly. The problem is not that the earth is warming. The problem is that we have too many people; we are dangerously close to the carrying capacity of the Earth, and any change in the temperature, warmer or colder, could be disasterous.
Wrongo. We have really shortsighted and ridiculous distribution problems. If mankinds primary objective was the highest possible quality of life for everyone, we could all live comfortable lives. As long as people continue to be as selfish as they are, you end up with situations like we have now. In one country, people are unable to secure sufficient food to survive, (Sub-saharan Africa) while in another country, the second leading cause of preventable death is too many calories (the USA). Enlightened self interest? No, just greed.
It is true that the earth goes through natural cycles. But just because they are natural, doesn't mean you shouldn't worry about them. This is something to be terribly, terribly worried about; it's far more scary than the prospect of, say, giant meteorite impacts. There is evidence that at points in the past, the entire planet was covered in ice. Think our civilization could survive that?
In the long view, we should be terribly worried. Unfortunately, most people are not very concerned with the long view. People who continually dump on NASA for wasting money that could be better spent on providing their children with better Pokemon breakfast cereal come to mind.
The earth's climate is a delicate system, and we don't know what controls it. If you don't know how your life-support system works, it's probably a bad idea to start messing with it. Right now, we are dumping huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. We don't know what it will do in the long term. This is a dumb thing to do.
Well, I recently spent some time on the Darwin Award's website. Your comment immediately brought to my mind that the USA has a Darwin candidate running the country. Does that extend the award to the entire population that allowed this to happen, or only to those who die due to his short sighted and selfish actions?
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.
How is an administration that has been in office for six months responsible for a treaty that has been signed, but gone un-ratified, for three and a half years? Get your facts straight. Long before Bush came to office, the Senate voted, 96-0, that it would not ratify any global warming treaty that let China, India, and developing countries in general off the hook.
Clinton could have tried to get it ratified, but he didn't. He could have tried to get it amended to include China, India, et al., but he didn't. As far as he was concerned, the treaty had already performed its primary function, which was to make him look good and the Repubs look bad; ratification was irrelevant.
By the time GWB came to office, Kyoto was already a dead letter; all he did was publicly acknowledge this fact.
It doesn't mean that we're screwed. It just means that some people will have to move. Even if the icecaps melt, they won't melt fast. If the oceans were to rise, people on the coast would have decades to move.
I saw it on the news just last week. Rick Mercer was asking a bunch of Americans if they'd help out when our polar ice cap splits in two due to the global warming. If it's on CBC, it's got to be true. And if Americans will loan us tug boats to push it back together, who cares if it's true or not.
DataSquid.net, a little about me.
Education != (intelligence + wisdom)
Education != (problem solving ability)
Education + problem solving ability + common sense
=> intelligence * wisdom
The oxymoron in this Theorem being: "common" sense is not so common...
GM claims to have poured 1 billion USD into making the EV1. The Wall Street Journal says it's probably closer to $1.5 billion USD. So far they have "sold" 1000 EV1s. I say sold, because the car is actually leased -- at $900 down and $550 a month (plus $50/month for the charger if you want (need, and yes, you do) that). At 1000 copies, that breaks down to either a million dollars a copy or 1.5 million, depending on whose estimate you believe. This is for a car that doesn't handle particularly well, accelerate any better than average, is hauling around a ton (literally) of batteries, is built more like a light plane than a car (read spartan interior, no sound deadening, no luxuries), has a greatly reduced range, and only carries two people and about as much luggage as a Miata. You could also lease a Chevrolet Corvette for the same amount -- and the EV1 is obviously heavily subsidised. Any surprise that the auto companies are balking at building these?
-------------------------------------------------
.. that global warming predictions might be correct?
.. call me an extremist, but I tend to think that the IC engine is (gasp!) not the pinnacle of Personkind's engineering prowess! We can (and will) do far better.
Let's look at this from a practical standpoint. You say there is nothing to global warming. I say there is. Let's say that we sit back and do absolutely nothing about it. If you are right and I am wrong, then we will have lost nothing. On the other hand, if I am right and you are wrong, we will have lost everything and will endure an eternity of torture and suffering, followed by probable extinction.
It seems to me that even if it is ultimately shown that global warming is a ridiculous liberal myth, it still is in our best interests to take steps to advance our skillset and develop new technologies that allow us to build cleaner factories, renewable energy sources, etc. We need to do away with the internal combustion engine
I realize that many of the opponents of global warming are conservative and old and not long for this world, and therefore not particularly concerned about it since they will not have to suffer the effects. But why do we need the threat of global warming (whether it is real or not) to "frighten" us into straightening up our act and investing in newer, more efficient, more eco-friendly technology? It seems to me that we should be doing this anyway. If everybody had the same attitude that some people display here, we'd still have coal trains belching black clouds of smoke into the air.
Try thinking outside the box for a change!
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
CO2 _is_ a greenhouse gas. That's physics.
The climate _will_ change as a result. We are causing _significant_ changes in CO2 levels.
However it's not necessarily going to get warmer. There are theories that the warmth may radically alter the flow of the "salt converyor" in the Atlantic and could actually cause an ice age.
The weather _is_ going to change.
The only argument is weather or not it will have a significant impact on our lives. But you know what, I don't give a f*ck. I don't have kids. It's your kids that are going to have to live in this sh*thole.
Plus, the threat of global warming pales in comparison to the amount of other crap we're dumping into the biosphere, the rate at which species are going exinct due to habitat loss, and the distribution of non-native species in the world.
Absolute statements are never true
Okay, so you're so gullible to believe a politican, and so sheltered to be actually shocked by it? Come on, pols lie for a living.
Do you really believe this? I can't help but be skeptical. Politicians attempt to pass (or oppose) legislation for a living. Lying politicians get voted out of office all the time. In fact, a strong argument can be made that part of the reason that Gore isn't in the White House is because of the apparent deceptions of former Pres. Clinton. In other words, the voters punished Gore for the lies of Clinton. Voters don't like their elected officials to lie to them, nor should they. I *do* expect my elected officials to tell the truth. This isn't being gullible, it is having standards.
So when Bush goes against an explicit campaign promise, it is noteworthy, at the very least. We should expect our elected officials to keep their promises. Otherwise, why elect them in the first place? If they all lie constantly, then we should just pick who we vote at random. After all, we can't base our vote on what they say. Perhaps you feel that we should always distrust politicians. I agree with that. But if you go further and say that we should expect and accept the lies of politicians, then my good man I must disagree with you. I do not and will not accept lies, especially if a promise is broken.
- Rev.I had really thought that for a technical bunch Slashdot users would at least have half a clue about the facts and information behind global warming.
But after reading the comments for this story I can see that most of you don't have the slightest idea what on earth you are talking about.
Some people must really just like to see their comments on the screen because they really don't have anything intelligent to contribute.
Has anyone here actually ever seen a graph of the global average temperature?
Can anyone actually think that the Earth is so large that we couldn't alter the climate?
Does anyone realise that global warming will bring far more extreme weather? Not only extreme heat, but cold as well. Plus bigger storms.
Don't you realise that one of the greatest dangers of global warming is rising sea levels? Remember that most of the worlds largest cities are built on the coast. Imagine what an increase of 1 metre would do.
And of course it is true that the world has been much warmer/colder in the past than it is now, but we didn't have such a big stake in the current climate setup before. Imagine how much it will cost to keep those cities clear of rising sea waters. Imagine how much it will cost to move all those people. Imagine how much it will cost in lives and money when global food production is completely screwed. Imagine what happens to the mid-west USA when the Dust Bowl comes back with a vengence.
I saw a pretty interesting program on TV a while ago, and have since been reading up on it a bit.. According to a growing group of scientists,
l .0 3/
the real reason for the ups and downs of the earth temperature that we are observing are in fact caused by solar activity!
It is very sound theory, though pretty new. What scientist like about this theory is, that is simple but gives strong predictions.
The group of scientist which did the research, wasn't specifically interested in explaining global warming, but rather finding an explanation for reoccuring trends in historical weather patterns.
So they applied a lot of historical data to this theory, and so far the results has been very good.
It does look like, that this new theory, combined with traditional weather models, does explain historical weather data, very, very well.
When the scientist published their study, their data seems to exclude, that man-made activities played any great role in the weather system. (Their theory could within some margins, 'predict' historical weather)
But here is the point: When the scientist published their study, they had only applied historical weather data, up until 1972.
When they started to apply more recent weather data, somethings changed; their theory could no longer, within the margins, explain the more recent historical weather data anymore. (their theory, as I understand it, would still give better 'predictions' than traditionel weather models, without their theory).
So the "solar activity" theory as it stands now, actually seems to give a very strong indication, that global warming does exists. It also hints, that the global warming is man made, since it is very good at explaining weather, up until the last 30 years.
People often states, that the recent high temperture measurements, could be a natural cycle like earth so often has been going through before. In itself a reasonably statement. But cycles are cycles, because something cyclical, and therefore predictably occur. So far science has become better and better at finding theses cycles (solar activity being last). But no good scientific explanation exist, for which, and what kind of weather cycle, earth is experiencing right now.
Something on solar activity and global warming:
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/intro/shindel
I had this exact conversation with my mother a few weeks back. She told me about a show (on Discovery I believe) that had a number of well known scientists, biologists, and geologists featured on the show. They were asked about global warming and they laughed, citing the information I gave above and even more of their own info. They were asked about the deforestation of the planet (cutting down trees) and again they laughed saying that it was a total crock. They said that for every tree cut down, most lumber companies plant two. They said that the tree coverage of the planet is back to where it was in the early 1900's and that it is spreading rapidly. They said sattelitte photos of the Earth's surface shows this quite vividly. Now they do admit that the cutting of certain forests may destroy medical remedies of animal and plant species yet to be discovered. That is very apparent but the planet isn't loosing its trees. If anything the trees are taking over much of the land. I live iin Kansas (yes it can be boring). I went back home this past weekend (south-east of Wichita on the edge of the Flinthills) and I noticed how much of the pasture land had been taken over by trees since I was last home. Trees are spreading and in many places are going unchecked. We keep saying that we're loosing our trees but has anyone ever asked the question, "What will too many trees do to us?". They were asked about some document or petition that supposedly some large number of scientists, biologists, and geologists type people signed saying that global warming (or was it the trees) was a major major problem and that it would be Man's fate or something like that. I guess it got big press. What the media didn't want to tell you is that something like 6 times as many of those scientist's, biologist's, and geologist's peers and colleagues signed another document stating that it was a crock. Reporting that won't get the media anything. Blood and guts sells. Truth doesn't. I wish I could find a copy of that special. I'd love to see it. If anyone knows what it is, email me.
--
I was a bit confused by Katz'z bit about forest fires.
'only 35 percent believe it was directly responsible for increasing forest fires in the United States'.
Now, I'm no expert, but I had been under the impression that most of our forest fires are the result of failed forest management practices over the past 100 years. Our attempts to put out any and all forest fires has broken the natural cycle of burn-and-recovery in many areas leading to an excess of fuel. The excess of fuel is in turn leading to fires that get way out of control and burn much more land area than they naturally would. Certainly I have heard this explanation for the western wildfires of the past couple of years, as well as the great Yellowstone Park fire of a decade ago. The only two places that I would think there might be a relationship between climate and fire would be California and Florida, but the California fires were clearly the result of El Nino, which may or may not be directly linked to climate change.
Does anybody have more info on that? Specifically any URLs on links between fire hazard and climate.
if ($it != $onething) {$it = $another;}
The motion you are thinking of is the motion to reconsider. Although one has to have voted on the winning side to make a motion to reconsider, one need not have voted on the winning side to vote for a motion to reconsider. Thus, it is wholly unnecessary (and highly irregular) for the entire support base for a measure to vote against it just to leave open the possibility of a motion to reconsider. Traditionally the party leadership takes on this duty. Furthermore, even if for some odd reason all the hypothetical Kyoto supporters in the Senate did vote against the treaty for the purpose of reconsidering, why didn't they do so?
Your misunderstanding goes even deeper, however, because you don't seem to realize that the Kyoto treaty was never sent to the Senate for ratification. The 96-0 vote people keep referring to was for Senate Resolution 98, which was passed before the Kyoto treaty was signed. The resolution laid out the conditions any treaty would have to fulfill in order for the Senate to ratify it. Many analysts feel that the Kyoto treaty fails to meet these criteria, and thus would be disapproved by the Senate, were it to be submitted. Since SR-98 is nonbinding, it's entirely possible that the current Senate would ratify it, but the chances of mustering the required 2/3 vote are basically nil (and that, by the way, is why if Gore had been elected the Kyoto treaty would still not be law in the United States).
All of that brings us to the final point, which is that whether or not you believe that climatic change is human caused (a whole debate unto itself), the Kyoto treaty is a bad treaty. There are plenty of analyses of the technical flaws of the treaty out there, but the most damning thing in my opinion is that it places responsibility for controlling CO2 emissions squarely on the shoulders of the industrialized nations. While that seems like a reasonable thing if you consider only that the (currently) industrialized nations have historically dominated world CO2 output. However, many developing nations have a tremendous rate of growth in their CO2 emissions, and when you take that into account, exempting them from emission limits will completely hamstring efforts to reduce global emissions. Advocates of Kyoto say that it isn't fair that industrialized nations have been emitting for years, and it isn't fair to ask developing nations to stop now that they are starting to ramp up their economies. They may have a point; it probably isn't fair, but the question you have to ask yourself is do you want to put a dent in global CO2 emissions or don't you? If the answer is yes, you do, then Kyoto isn't going to get you there. Controlling global emissions requires a global effort, not just effort from the nations the world loves to hate.
-rpl
In case you come back to read replies: would an article in the Economist work for you? Try this link. Hope that works for you...
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
Man, you have a lot to learn. An article by Jon Katz should fill you with foreboding - what sort of trollfest is about to erupt? And sure enough, check out the highest moderated comments - what beautiful trolls!
When not even the Nat'l Academy of Sciences or the head-in-the-sand Bush administration denies the reality of Global Warming, it would take a masterly writer to come up with "Do You Believe?" (The f*** it matters whether or not you believe anyway.) And sure enough the trolls respond. I don't even know why I bother to read the comments mostly, except that a few like this one keep me coming back for more.
My advice, if you're a newbie, is stop, look, and listen, and please don't shoot your mouth off except where you are an expert. You'll feel clean that way.
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
The earth moves in cycles. From the high end, in a "global warming" trend, to an ice age, there is no problem with either end. True, we may well be helping it along with the stuff we put in the air, but it'll balance back out.
If the temperature raises, Ice melts.
Ice melts, water level rises.
Water level rises, more surface area, more evaporation (remember! hotter weather!)
More evaporation, more crap in the air between us and the sun.
More crap between us and the sun, less sun gets through.
Less sun gets through, lower temperature, less vapor can be held by the air. Ice forms again, rinse. repeat.
So what if we're helping it along? If we all die, the earth won't know the difference. It'll just go on as it always has. So what if the coasts are all flooded (I live on the Cali coast, I can say this). The worst we can do is kill every living organism on the earth. The worst that will probably happen is that there will be a number of years of hot, humid weather, followed by a general cooling trend
And don't get me started on endangered species...
--Just another Hard working Conservative in Santa Cruz
Exantrius
It has become pretty apparent to me that the oil on the planet is getting tapped out - hell, we've already fought an oil war...
After reading some R. Buckminster Fuller I got to wondering if there is enough oil/coal for us to screw things up completely. Obviously we are not very energy concious in the US as of yet... Anyone that has been outside of the US knows that we have a lot of nast habits about energy, not to mention that our appliances consume a sizeable chunk of power while just sitting there "off".
I just wonder:
What do other people think?
+++ ATH0 +++
widely recognized as one of the finest public education institutions in the United States
Huh?
You got a bachelors degree from a community college, and now you pass yourself off as a scientist? I figured it was standard to at least finish a masters before declaring that.
Quoting some Minnesotan friends of mine:
Now I would have ignored you if you said you were from Fergus Falls, and chuckled at a poor decision if you were from Moorhead. If you were from the Twin Cities campus I would have actually respected you, but you are from Morris.
Note to others: UM Morris is a small, small school. Its not recognized for a great Chemistry program. Most serious chemistry students head to UM Twin Cities, UIowa, or possibly NDSU. In fact, I don't know anything that is widely recognized about UM Morris.
There's actually a few problems:
1. Batteries: Batteries are severely limited in their range. Often they can only go 80km before having to be re-fueled, and this range decreases drastically as speed increases. Don't expect to go highway driving on a pure electric car. At least, not for a long drive.
2. Batteries: Batteries are heavy. When trying to lug around the weight of the batteries as well as the car, the less car, the longer the batteries last. The more car, the more batteries you need just to move it. Since the longer the batteries last, the better it is for your range, well, you get smaller cars. Smaller cars mean less passenger room and cargo space, and most people don't like that.
3. Batteries: Batteries often don't have enough torque to be able to get a car out of a "stuck" situation. So in climates with snow, or if you have to go off-road, an electric car can be a real problem.
4. Batteries: Batteries don't like the cold. Not a problem in a lot of places in the world, but in those where it is a problem, it's a major one. In a cold climate, you can cut the range of an electric car in half or worse.
5. Batteries: They're expensive, and when they're dead, they can't just be turfed as they generally have a lot of nasty chemicals in them we don't want leeching into the ground - after all, cutting pollution was the reason we're looking at electric in the first place, right?
You'll notice a theme here. Hopefully once they can start producing fuel cells economically we'll see a lot of these problems go away.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
Are you telling me that weather patterns changed substantially due to a small shift in temperature? One that's been going on for years (according to environmentalists, of course... those damn 20th century industrialists have been killing the earth for 100's of years!).
- -----------------------
And it just happened this year?
Read up on El Nino and La Nina. Relate to Atlantic Ocean. Think. Lather, rinse, repeat.
----------------------------------------
Everybody's got something to hide except for me and my monkey...
-------------------------------------------------
Everybody's got something to hi
The worlds largest polluter, either by nation, or per captia is waking up to polluting the planet.
But will they mind paying twice as much for gas to save the planet, or is it just another crock of shit.
Sorry to get passionate about this but the US is acting like the spoilt child of the planet, complaining that the 3rd World doesn't have to do as much, and thus the US is at a disadvantage, of course it is, the worlds strongest economy must be shitting itself that Namibia pollutes less per capita than the US, and isn't required to reduce that lower pollution rate by as much.
Its time to sue the US for damaging the health of the planet, others have a case to answer but at least the rest of the industrialised world is reducing emmisions, unlike the US which is still increasing them.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
If you actually read what he was writing you would have seen that _in_fact_ he was not saying anything about global warming itself or that it was a problem to be solved etc. etc. but that _people__were__concerned_ about it and that it would become more of a focus now.
Pay Attention instead of having knee-jerk reactions.
--Remove chicken to e-mail
i support your opinion. i read an entire book once on global warming, because I was curious, and I learned that mother nature has very strong counterbalances that prevent anything beyond +/- 4 degrees from ever happening.
-- Betting on the survival of the media industry is a serious risk. I advise investing elsewhere.
I remember when I started into science, and the publications all talked about climate cycles and how we were starting into a new ice age. A few decades later and "oops", were actually warming the earth.
I've been reading the literature on this subject for years, pro and con, and am convinced that the "pro" camp uses peer pressure more than good science.
Specifically:
1. The role of feedback mechanisms such as oceanic phytoplankton and cloud albedo is not understood sufficiently to create an accurate model of the climate feedback mechanisms that would counter any signifigant effect. In the case of cloud albedo, NASA has only started measuring solar flux reflectivitity across the entire atmosphere during the last few years! The potential impact of this mechanism alone (on reflecting solar IR back into space) is _orders_ of magnitude greater than _all_ other declared effects combined, and guess what - it counters warming.
2. The claims regarding rising temperature trends from monitoring stations in urban areas covered with increasing percentages of materials that hold heat such as concrete and asphalt introducing a rising error bias into measurements remains more statistically signifigant than the reported rise in temperature.
You can't claim X is happening based on measured trends in A, B, and C, when the margin of error in A, B, and C are greater than your measured trends! You can't claim Y is happening because of A and B when M can negate A-L combined!
And as for human impact, the Greenland ice core samples show orders of magnitude greater temperature swings without any industrial contribution whatsoever during the geologic past.
Until the science community can address these valid arguments with real data instead of ad-hoc attacks and "look at all these reports we smart people published" (and got our budgets preserved or even increased based upon the threats therein with a little help from media alarmism and an uneducated, unquestioning public), there will remain plenty of skeptics.
So your attitude would be: "wait until the drought hits before you dig the well"?
I think it's important to realise that what we are doing (and NOT doing) right now is going to affect us in coming years. And our children. And their children...
Does the thought of your children and their children living in a world where the only 'clean' air available is from a filtering system in your home.
A home with no windows, because the solar radiation is too dangerous (since the ozone layer went "in grandpa's days")?
A world where you cannot have simple pleasures like going for a walk on the beach, or in a park, unless you wear your air-filter and cover every inch of skin from the sun?
Is that really the legacy you want to leave?
Important info:
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net
http://dieoff.org/synopsis.htm
http://www.peakoil.net
Put me down as believing that the climate is warming, most probably because we are still emerging from the "little ice age" of the 1700's, and that we have not reached the temperatures common in the 1200's (it was warm enough then that the vikings could settle in Greenland!).
Given those long-term trends, I find the evidence that human greenhouse gas generation is driving the warming effect to be unconvincing.
It's pretty simple here...
The goverenment gets a bunch of "scientists" to claim that we are all going to die because the oceans are going to rise, and the average temperatures will increase 10 degrees over the next 5 years, and (umm) that little airosol can is the reason (not the big volcano that just spewed 100X more crap into the sky than the atomic bomb).... But anyways, everyone gets scared and so the goverenments start passing laws to take more and more control of energy. And of-course everyone loves it because we all know the goverenment can make better decisions for us, then we can (think illegal drugs, speeding laws, etc). So we get the idea that the governement is doing a great job because they have protected us from all those evil UV rays. Hip-Hip-Haray for the governement... There will be parades and dancing in the streets because we are all not going to die. Then of-course the goverenement gets some other "scientists" to release new findings that all the hard work has paid off... The ozone hole is closing up, the world is getting colder!!! Then of-course a few years down the road we would begin seeing headlines like "The Next Ice-Age is Apon Us". And since the goverenment did such a good job with the global warming issue, we let them take more control from us.
It's all about control!!! Some call it Socialism
Will you fight for your freedom?
people can feel that the weather is changing. They can see pictures of penguins dying in Antarctica. They read that skin cancer rates are rising.
They can? Where I live (South-Central Texas) it's been one of the mildest summers I can remember. Also, I think you are confused -- penguins in Antarctica and skin cancer are purported consequence of the ozone hole letting in UV. This has nothing to do with global warming.
The release of CO2 is associated with the burning of fossil fuels. Fossil fuel are a finite resource and eventually they will all be burned and humans with be forced to develop alternative energy sources like nuclear and solar power. It really doesn't matter if we cut energy consumption if we don't develop alternative energy sources -- eventually all fossil fuels will be burned, no matter what.
The only question is how much power (political power) the government will try to usurp by exploiting the issue along the way. I believe the free market must solve this problem. Government cannot create energy nor reduce demand.
California illustrates this. The same stupid democrats who caused the problem there by partial deregulation now want to put price caps in place. (Why do you get more control after you prove that you are incompetent?).
The only moral solution is to let the market set prices. High energy prices will drive market based energy solutions like small scale energy production and alternative power sources. If Californians suffer along the way then good -- that is what they voted for. Personally, the higher prices the better from my point of view. CA has the lowest per capita energy consumption because of the mild costal climate in LA, SF, and yet they still can't meet their own needs. They dumped all their energy production on other states to "protect the environment" (screw the other states). Now they complain when the other states charge them, but I'm glad. Fools and their money are soon parted, to the good of the economy.
Was the cited survey conducted in the summer? Would the responses be different if you asked a hundred random people on the streets of Chicago in January?
The earth is large and our immediate impact is hardly perceptible, however we ARE affecting the planet. Argue all you want about climatic cycles, but I'm not going out in the sun without an SPF of at least 30.
<hypocrite>Of course, I'm also not turning off my AC.</hypocrite>
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James
they've heard of nanotech, but nanites are hard to catch on camera.
Is it weird in here, or is it just me?
Having personally launched and tracked balloons (with scientists from the University of Wyoming) to sample the ozone layer over Antarctica and worked with NASA scientists on the retrieval and processing of the data from TOMS-EP (a satellite that uses reflected sunlight to indirectly measure column ozone over any lit spot on the earth), I think can respond to this.
Ozone is created and destroyed constantly all over the earth. It's how we are protected from UV radiation from the Sun. What occurs over Antarctica, the "Ozone Hole", is a case where under certain conditions, more ozone is destroyed than created, disrupting the equilbrium. You need three things in proximity to shift the balance - temperatures around -80C at about 100km altitude (30,000 ft.), a depletion agent (chlorine, bromine, etc.) and sunlight (energy). If you don't have the right temperatures, ice particles of the proper size can't form, eliminating the site where depletion happens. If you have no agent, there's nothing to catalyze the reaction. If you have no energy, there is no way to sever the O3 bonds.
All winter long, ozone forms over the South Pole as the air gets colder and colder due to radiation cooling in the absence of sunlight. The cold air can't mix with warmer air from temperate latitudes because of the circumpolar winds which corral-in the air over the polar plateau (which is two miles tall, exascerbating the heat loss). By the time the first rays of sunlight hit in late August, the ozone concentration at 100km is at its annual peak. Over the next few days, the concentration of ozone plummets dramatically. By the first week of October, the air has warmed up enough that there are no ice crystals of the appropriate size for further loss to occur. There's still chlorine and energy, but no site for depletion to take place. A few weeks later, the upper atmosphere, now heated 24/7, is energetic enough to disrupt the circumpolar current and ozone poor air from above Antarctica mixes with ordinary air from the South Pacific and South Atlantic, diluting the concentration of ozone over the entire Southern Hemisphere.
Perhaps you have missed the warnings issued to southern Chile over the past couple of years about particularly dilute patches passing overhead and the risk of skin and eye damage from as little as 15 minutes exposure if unprotected? New Zealand (occupying from approximately 43 degrees S to 48 degrees S) is at similar risk.
Yes, depleting ozone just makes the atmosphere make more ozone, but it's not a uniform process. It's a seasonal process. This detail does not often make it into the popular press because it's a) not sensational enough and b) too complicated to fit into a sound bite. What scientists currently study is not the percentage of ozone in the stratosphere (at the right altitudes to form the right kind of ice crystals, it's 0% by the start of Summer), it's not the physical size of the hole (which is determined by the shape of Antarctica and the circumpolar current), it's how fast the hole appears as compared to the winter-time minimum and the spring-time maximum extent.
As to the impact of human activity, the documented trends are that chlorine at 100km parallels (with a 18-month lag) the amount of release at ground level, and the more chlorine that's up there, the higher the rate of formation of the hole. It's not a straight uphill line; it has its minor variations up and down like a stock market graph. The overall trend, from decade to decade is up and up and up.
-ethan
http://penguincentral.com/ozone.html
I wish more people were this level-headed (as lythander). I am continually amazed at how people leap to conclusions without supporting facts.
Glancing around at other posts, my amazement continues. People are quick to blur the difference between fact and supposition, and this sort of muddy thinking only hurts the situation, it doesn't help.
And while I'm posting...
"When a serious matter like medical research involving stem cells from frozen embryos arises, politicians worry at least as much about religious support as they do about what scientists advise."
Couldn't politicians be concerned that life begins at conception rather than birth? That's the real crux of the abortion debate, too. Every human is granted rights in our country, but at what point do we consider them "human."
I don't see this as a religious debate at all. I find it unforunuate that so often "religious" people are assailed in such ways. And while I won't agree that some politicians make their decisions based on popular opinion, I hold out hope that others follow their conscience, and I find it perfectly reasonable that some might believe that life begins at conception.
Guess I'm getting off-topic. I'm just sick of this sort of poor journalism. Does Katz get paid for this rubbish?
What if I gave you three dollars? How much? Thr-- four dollars? Keep talking, I'm listening.
I couldn't believe the overwhelmingly disbelieving posts that were being put up. Sure, global warming has been exaggerated in the media over the past decade, and the massively complex effects of CO2 emissions are not completely understood, but global warming is a very, very clear reality. I'm doing some computer modeling of this stuff for NASA this summer, and the "theory of global warming from antropogenic CO2" is about as solid as the "theory of evolution". This is reality... the effects of CO2 production are perhaps not so dramatic right now, but very significant changes are afoot.
As an almost ready student of meteorology at the University of Helsinki I can assure you that your point is old and wrong.
The signalratio of the increasing mean temperature of our planets aircover caused by increased emmissions of greenhousegases has in the nineties exceeded the noiseratio (the natural changing of the temperature) in such an amount that the signal is statistically meaningful. So there is an undeniable signal of the unnatural warming of our climate. It doesn't call for an opinnion, its a scientific fact!
The change in water level will not come from melting at the north pole. Nearly all of the ice at the south pole and on Greenland is on land.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
However, there is a town that would be consumed by a mud flow if Mt. Rainier were to pop again (see Osceola Mudflow).
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Yeah, they were pretty accomodating when we took California, Arizona, and New Mexico. They put up a struggle for Texas (can't see why, really).
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
The Earth has gone through several interglacial warming cycles throughout the last few millions of years. Indeed, there is ample evidence that at various times during the span of this planet's existence that global temperatures have been above that measured during the short timeframe that humans have occupied. What caused these global temperature variations is the subject of numerous research efforts. The conclusions of these research projects vary from changes in the amount of CO2 that can be stored in the world's oceans to the density of terristrial plant life.
My greatest concern isn't necessarily that the Earth may be warming; that may have occurred regardless of the activity of humans. What concerns me is the adaptation that we may lack when sudden and possibly catastrophic changes in ocean thermohaline currents occur. Can we, as a species, adapt quickly enough to make significant changes to our livestyles to adjust to a shorter growing season in the north; can we migrate millions of people from what will become uninhabitable areas during extended winters in the northern hemisphere; will we survive our retreat back to the equator without hostile action with our southern neighbors?
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Funny the way you set the subject to "global warming" and the topic to "United states"... There is a great deal of world outside of the US to, you know.
You do realize that the earth's climate fluctuates wildly over long periods of time. Every few thousand years there is an ice age, during which time thousands of species can become extinct. With this in mind, please tell me why the human race is doomed to become extinct due to global warming? If we're affraid for the very existence of our race over adversely affecting the climate, then we need to be equally, if not more, concerned about the natural changes to our climate.
Also, who is to say that global warming isn't going to save the human race from the next ice age?
Please note, I am not proposing that *I* know the answers to any of this, but the truth is that no one does. No one even has a clue what global warming will do, or that it is even really happening. The climate changes observed during the last 100 years are in no way out of sorts with the normal climate changes that natually occur.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Of course air pollution is bad. In lots of cities you can smell it all the time, and even see it. It covers trees with soot, and probably causes lung disease. However, we have already seen the affects of air pollution, and we have even been able to control it somewhat. Cities like L.A. actually have cleaner air than in the past. It's not good, but it's simply not endangering our species, while the argument with global warming is completely different in that no one has a fucking clue what it amounts to, or that it really exists.
With all that said, I am extremely in favor of cutting back on polution, and especially finding alternative fuel solutions. Not only is fossil fuel dirty, but it's also going to run out someday, that is an undisputable fact.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Learn to read. The climatic changes over the last 50 - 100 years are perfectly consistent with climatic changes that happen over such timespans. What we have is approximately a 1 1/2 degree temperature difference from ~100 years ago, which is perfectly consistent. What's got people worried is the fact that it coincides with the tremendous burning of fossil fuels. Creating CO2 SHOULD increase the temperature, that's a fact, but no one knows how much. We have NOT seen any changes that are undeniably the result of increased CO2.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Most people agree that a global warming is in progress.
...aaahhhh"
Most people agree that Microsoft Windows is a good operating system. You're full of shit. Should I believe whatever the masses believe? What if everyone believed jumping off a cliff was beneficial? "Well, it looks like everyone believes it, so it has to have some merit... let's try ourselves!
Most Americans have no clue about the constant FUD being spread about global warming.
"We can't look at 100 years in the life of a billion year old planet and decide how it's going, it just can't happen."
Untrue, indeed the fact we know that "our climate goes through cycles and phases" is because we can in fact tell a lot about climate from our
limited knowledge of it.
Plus of course we have made some progress in understanding and predicting nature via physics. After all, the science that allows for a
prediction of global warming is exactly the same science that allows for the technology being used to hold this conversation, amoung other things.
Mike
... a long hole, surrounded by metal or plastic, centered around the hole. -- science describes a
Wrong URL, coward: it's http://www.viridiandesign.org
Jon Lebkowsky jonl@polycot.com http://www.polycot.com
"The National Academy of Sciences report makes it look like there is a great deal of unanimity among scientists - this is just manufactured consent."
Not exactly. The problem is good scientists are shy about certainty, but many are stepping forward to clarify that the global warming trend is certain, and that it is certainly the result of human activity. (See my article in the Viridian issue of Whole Earth Magazine for more info on this.) The actual results are unpredictable as to what exactly will happen or when, but knowledgeable scientists agree that our best course of action is to curb greenhouse gas emissions and work on mitigation strategies.
Jon Lebkowsky jonl@polycot.com http://www.polycot.com
Actually, ya know, some of us prefer to use our brains a little rather than just point to some old madmen and say "they were wrong, everyone else must be."
The actual science behind global warming is simple enough I'm sure even you can understand. Global warming is occuring (measurably) due to the high volume of carbon dioxide that is in the atmosphere now as opposed to before the industrial revolution. What was literally the fuel for the industrial revolution? You guessed it: coal, oil, and gas. Fossil Fuels.
These fossil fuels come from a society of organisms that have been long since dead, but were not able to decompose because they somehow got buried quickly. Decompsing organisms (bacteria, etc) might certainly have been present, but unable to do their job without oxygen.
Hence, you have all these billions and billions of pounds of organic material laying around underneat the earch, whereupon humans step in, pump it all out and burn it. Sounds good, in theory, except that when you burn all this organic material you get huge quantities of waste, mainly carbon dioxide gas, in addition to the energy released by burning the fuel.
The point is that we are taking all that carbon dioxide from below the earth and releasing it into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is good for plants, but it also has the effect of trapping heat within the atmosphere itself, like a big blanket.
To put it simply, the fact remains that you simply cannot put huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere and NOT get global warming. If you're in doubt as to how much CO2 we've been adding, I invite you stop and think about how long we've been using fossil fuels and on what scale. The answer will come to you.
People who don't believe in global warming are just burying their head in the sand.
We already know that the icecaps ARE melting, and as the icecaps melt, more and more fresh water will enter the Atlantic, shutting down the Atlantic Conveyor's (AKA Gulf Stream's) Thermo-Haline Circulation, essentially killing the Gulf Stream.
Since Europe (N. Europe & England especially) is primarily warmed by this current, average temperatures there will plummet by ~10-20C. There will soon (50 years) be a LOT more Europeans who are true believers than there currently are.
"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur
I just fire up that Trans Am every mornin'and light em up out of the driveway.Burnin oil and the noxious fumes from the mess in the passenger floorboard festering for years is more than adequate to send all you fuckers the way of the dinosaur.Hey adapt or die pink boy!
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
If the weatherman can't predict tomorrow, how can he predict that Christmas will be colder than the fourth of July, for that matter?
mt
Thats such a good quote, its a pitty tho, while we kill ourselves we kill everyone else, FIRST.
Feel sorry for those Africans, who now only have to put up with famine, disease, war. Soon thanks to our friend the greenhouse effect, they will all get so much worse.
[ugly sarcasm]
Oh but thats fine, it wont effect us for at least another xxx years after *they* die...
[/sarcasm]
Oh if only it were that simple..
:(
Last year when i travelled over europe it was great to be out in the sun all day long, no sun-block lotion, no problems..
Here at home in Sydney Australia, 20 minutes in the sun unprotected leaves you in BURNING PAIN.
I have a sneaky suspicion thats caused by that gaping big hold just beneith us!
I really cant beleive some of the comments that a mod'ed up, but feh, this is slashdot..
I'll only comment on your Ozone comment, dont want to get redundant.
Maybe the reason you dont hear about the Ozone is because you live in America / etc. Unfortunatly us lucky fools living here in Australi (/ NZ) have to deal with the effects every day, in summer, you cant be more than 15-20 minutes in the sun without getting BADLY burnt.
If you want facts, look up the statistics on the rate of skin cancer in Australia, and you will see its the highest in the world.
I guess Bush has watched Armageddon one too many times. Trying to reverse the effects of long-term damage to our planet when disaster actually strikes would be like trying to get an oil tanker at full speed to do a hand-brake turn. But I guess old coyboy Bush will just send up Bruce Willis to nuke a passing frozen comet over our atmosphere.
Check out Future Energies - the practical way to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
It's funny, but generally browsing the responses to this article, you'd come to the conclusion that most people disagree with global warming, therefore, it's not real. Of course, in science we don't vote on the facts. Clearly there is an issue with global warming (every country outside the US is convinced), but large energy companies are against doing anything about it, and generally so is the public.
As long as we have a president cozying up to his buddies in the oil industry, a public that loves to drive their gas-wasting SUVs, and an industry that depends on both to make record profits, you'll always have a group of people that claims that global warming isn't happening.
Science isn't enough to combat this, because the US has been steadily becoming anti-science since probably the 1970s. The US became very concerned about Russia becoming a threat in the 1950s due to Sputnik, so there was an agressive campaign to increase the science-literacy of students in schools. These days, things are much different. Today, we have a number of states that tried (or are trying) to remove biological evolution from public schools and teach myths instead. Every newspaper in the country carries astrological horoscopes to "tell you your future". Some guy has his own cable show where he "talks" to audience members' dead relatives. Is this the society that you think will be convinced they should give up their 8 MPG SUVs to prevent the Earth's climate from changing?
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
But the link you provide only states that it is not known if global warming is occurring. That has little to do with the question if it is ok to pump large amounts of co2 in the atmospere and deplete the oilreserves. It is common sense that using renewable energy sources is better in the long run, especially as we still don't understand our own influence on the global climate. And maybe the general public needs a fiction like global warming, to put up with the inconvienience of getting there.
Joost
1) his promises are worth
Well so far Bush has keep everyone of his campaign promises that matter. Since I am filthy rich (according democRATs that's anyone who makes more than minimum wage), I got my tax cut. He is also pushing through other items he promised such as a patient bill of rights (not the lawyer bill of rights the democRATs are pushing) and finally an education bill that holds the teacher's union feet to the flames so our kids might actually learn the three Rs instead of sex, sensitivity training & environmental Captain Planet crap.
If you are really worried about CO2 emissions, please do us all a favor and stop breathing. The world already has a surplus of whiney, bitchey little men.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Says the moron who feels the need to capitalise the last three letters in the word democrat in an oh-so-amusing way.
Does somebody need their Kotex changed? How about grow some testies and quit hiding behind AC. Just because your fellow comrades cannot figure out what an arrow on a voting ballot means, is no reason to inflict your PMS on us...
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
The fact that UN says there is Global Warming does not mean there is. The UN is a very socialist/anti-capitalist organization. The UN is so far off in la-la land that it voted the USA off the human rights commission and replaced it with Sudan! Do you think that Sudan pays more attention to the civil rights of its citizens more than the US? I think you better open your eyes to the organization that thinks slavery in Sudan is a much better state of human rights than freedom in the US of A. Their credibility is suspect at best.
And who are these vast majority of scientists? Sting and Leonardo DiCaprio? The only folks I ever hear talking about Global Warming are rock stars and actors -- they might play a scientist on TV but they ain't one in real life. Also what kind of scientist are they? Just because people calls themselves "scientists" doesn't mean they know anything about Future Weather Prediction. The most telling point about these "scientists" is that they are relating to me that earth is going to boil away in 50 years, but, for some reason, can't get next week's weather prediction right.
As for business, it would absolutely stupid for a business to desire the destruction of the world's ecosystems. If the ecosystem is destroyed, people will die and there will not be anyone to buy products or services. That ain't too good for profit margin if you ask me. If you want to talk about environmental disasters, look at the former Eastern Block where communism raped the environment. It wasn't big business that did that.
By the way, what you believe to be Global Warming will end naturally in 20 years.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
The problem with the whole Global Warming debate is most people can only tell you there is Global Warming because some actor or rock star told them there was. The general public couldn't name one scientist that has proven that Global Warming exists but because Ted Danson and his toupee said there is Global Warming, there must be. Its a sad statement of our culture. As long as you are popular, rich, beautiful and have the right press agents, you can push any sort of BS on the American public -- shades of the 1930s in Germany.
I am actually more worried about Global Cooling. NYC has been so cold this summer! We have only broken 90 once -- it was 62 F last night! We are due for a nice little ice age any day now (geologically speaking) and all this effort to prevent greenhouse gases might just help mother nature take us there sooner.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Rarely, if ever, do you watch the 6 o'clock news and hear "Scientists report that the status quo is a-okay." Telling us that everything is fine tends to lose ratings to more shocking, if less credible, news. Researchers looking to make names for themselves can release controversial findings to catapult themselves into the spotlight. In the case of global warming, researchers will get funding because they're siding with the enormously powerful environmental lobbies. Corporations like the PR they get from giving grants to research the environmental groups that release many of these findings.
Just a few weekends ago John Stossel on ABC did a "gimmee a break" report on how the environmental lobbies have basically succeeded in convincing many American public school children that Man is destroying the planet. Children were interviewed, saying things about how cities were going to flood and pollution would be so bad that no one will be able to breathe. Did anyone else see this report? Environmental lobbies know that if they can create this sort of mentality, they will receive funding and power for their pet causes in the future.
People have been constantly told that everything man creates is horrible, while everything natural is inherently good. Yet it's only because Man has tamed nature somewhat that people don't fear being attacked by wild animals on their way to work. While everyone _could_ forgo modern convenience for a more primitive lifestyle, mortality rates would shoot through the roof. While many environmentalists wish we could be as in tune with nature as Native Americans once were, Stossel's aforementioned report pointed out that the life expectancy for these environmentally friendly people was only 30 years.
Like every other issue, you should never blindly trust what you hear. The extreme right-wing would say exactly the opposite as environmentalists--using fossil fuels is good for the air, carbon dioxide emissions are making life better for people--for the same reasons: greed and lust for power. Jon Katz probably knows all of this, but is more concerned with creating debate than presenting the facts. After all, it's better for his career.
This is one reason why George W. Bush refused to sign the Kyoto Treaty, a treaty that no other nation has ratified mind you (except Kosovo, I think). Of course, the world assigns the blame to the United States because of its expanded infrastructure and energy needs.
Furthermore, NASA satellite images of carbon monoxide emissions the world over prove that the United States is *not* to blame. The image shows that northern South America and western Africa have the highest carbon monoxide emissions in the world.
So, stuff that in your craw.
It makes no difference - George W doesn't (or rather, those that pull his strings don't).
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Moderator's essentials
Last month's U.S. government report on Global warming did show that there is definite warming going on. I'll keep my laughter about G.W. ordering the report to myself.
Except that report confirmed exactly what Bush has been saying: there is a consensus on the warming, but there is no consensus at all on what role, if any, human beings are playing in it.
I find it difficult to accept that an ecosystem as complex and massive as earth's atmosphere could be irreversibly damaged by the puny acts of man. Global increases and decreases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases have been going on since the formation of the atmosphere, just look at the geological data. The earth has to have natural cycles of CO2 abundance because it is able regulate the levels through a negative feedback loop. For example, higher CO2 abundance means a slight warming of the earth, which leads to melting of the ice caps, which leads to increased ocean surface area, and the warmer temperatures leads to increased amounts of green vegetation. These lead to a decrease in CO2, because it is scrubbed from the atmosphere by the plants, and absorped by the oceans. IMHO, the earth can take care of itself, and what little we do really isn't going to make a difference.
----
Striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap, will be the leap ho
I always thought the water level would stay exactly the same. The ice displaces an amount of water exactly equal to its mass, so when it becomes water, it should "fill in" precisely the volume displaced by the ice.
----
Striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap, will be the leap ho
Ironically, nuclear power represents a short-term solution to the greenhouse effect, by giving an immediately practical alternative to coal- and gas-fired generators.
Yes, although we still haven't figured out quite what to do with the waste of nuclear power generation. This makes it as unattractive than burning fossil fuels for energy. There is no one fix-all technology for these problems, but there are plenty of practical things we could decide to do as a society that make sense at many levels, including lessening the potential threats of global climate change (i.e. global-warming/cooling). I think by pursuing the Kyoto agreement (or some similar thing) would be a Good Thing (tm) to provide an incentive toward taking steps away from fossil fuels to a cleaner, healthier environment.
There is plenty of data by "real" scientists that global warming (better termed climate change, IMO) is occurring and it is tied to massive burning of fossil fuels by humans. And even if it won't lead to near-future (i.e. a few hundred years) catastrophe, we still have plenty of other incentives to wean ourselves from fossil fuels. Smog and air-quality are problems in many cities (ask a city-dweller with asthma). Energy efficiency is often better for the bottom line -- when a long term view (oh-so-rare in America) is taken (check out Natural Capitalism by ).
Personally, I think we should focus on natural gas in the short term (rather than more oil drilling and coal burning), start to develop fuel cells, and begin investing (seriously) in alternative energy source research and infrastructure. More wind power, decentralized power generation (via fuel cells), and non-fossil-based burnable fuels would be a great place to start.
None of this is pie-in-the-sky. Wind-farms are not uncommon in the US, and when planned properly are efficient and environmentally friendly. The oft-mocked call of "Liberals" for energy conservation deserves to be taken seriously -- it's good for us all and for the bottom line. Decentralized, cleaner sources of power could help to eliminate dependencies on large, monopolistic corporations for basics like power, and put decision making power closer to the grassroots.
Of course, with the current quarter-by-quarter mentality of shareholders that leads corporations to seek as much profit as soon as possible, leads corporate decisions makers to leave out the big picture and future consquences. This gets us super-marketed, inefficient, expensive Sport Utility Vehicles and advertising designed to reinforce the modern American impulse to consume-consume-consume at all costs. Combined with the incredible power and influence of Old Energy in DC and internationally (hell, we fight wars for them), old habits like burning fossil fuels will die hard. Very hard. The habits will die, or we will...
I have no desire to "play" at being an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent deity. I do have some opinions on how the world should be and I'm not afraid to articulate them.
I also reject your accusation that I am lying in order to give my opinions more weight. Simply because there are proposals for how to store nuclear waste, doesn't mean the entire problem is "figured out" (my words) -- even if the only "real" problems left are political ones. A proposed solution (even a good one) is not an implemented solution. A proposal doesn't change the fact that the most waste is still stored at the plants and is still waiting to be sent off for "permanent" disposal -- so arguing for the building of more nuclear plants before the waste problem is "figured out" is unwise. Beyond that, there are still plenty of concerns about he safety and efficiency of nuclear power (too cheap to meter?!) -- 3 mile island, cherynobl -- things may be safe enough for the rational person in the present, but who knows what the future holds? Operating nuclear power plants in an unstable political and economic environment could prove dangerous (and who can say with certainty that in 10 or 20 years the US won't be dramatically unstable?).
And even if nuclear power is safe, clean, efficient and the waste can be handled in a safe, clean, and efficient manner in perpetuity, it still does not follow that pursuing other energy sources is a Bad Thing.
As stated by scientists in this article
i d=95000606
http://opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?
They don't know what the effects of global warming are and they don't know what causes it. In the 1300's politicians were going around preaching doom because the Earth was getting cooler. They predicted how eventually everything on Earth would freeze to death. We can all see what a right bunch of fruitcakes they were now can't we.
Your statement is evidence of precisely the problem that besets us constantly, viz.
Special interests from the fringes of the spectrum have been all too willing to impose their political views on their interpretations of science.
In this country we could use more of people willing to apply sound scientific principles to influence their political views.
Usually, it suffices for many to sample filtered "facts" to support hypotheses that make them most comfortable, ignoring the rest and refusing to consider more facts to support alternative hypotheses.
Global warming is still somewhat contentious from a scientific vantage point, with much suggestive evidence indicating that it is a real man-made phenomena, but without the kind of ironclad proof that we would all like to have.
In that sense, I think the issue is akin to where we were in the 1960's, evaluating health risks from cigarette smoking. Statistical evidence was piling up to a considerable weight, while the Tobacco Institute kept holding out for a demonstrated biochemical pathway that remained elusive for a while longer.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
The UN is so far off in la-la land that it voted the USA off the human rights commission and replaced it with Sudan!
Sudan wasn't competing with US for membership on the commission - US was competing with other European countries for "Western" spots.
After breaking or stating they intend to break international treaties (Kyoto, ban on nuclear tests, ABM) and in general not caring anything about the rest of the world, US won't get a lot of favors from Europe. Bush is making a great job of creating enemies of former allies with his right-wing views (some would say "extremist" views, and outside the US they would be correct).
Of course, the fact that the US didn't have an ambassador to the UN doesn't exactly make it more likely to gain allies in the fight for a place in the comittee - and for human rights, the fact that US is the worst in the west should make it pretty clear they didn't belong on the comitte (death penalty being a major issue - US' friends on this subject are China, Iran and Saudi Arabia)
I never understood why people think electricity is "free." "You just plug it into the wall!" Where do you think that electricity comes from? heaven? Chances are it's an electric plant. Probably oil, coal, or some other 'bad to do' thing.
Simply because no fuel is burned in an electric car, doesn't mean less fuel is burned 'over all.' To me, the hybrid cars make the most sense.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Perhaps because science and technology have always been dominated by educated, sometimes arrogant elites
Must be a new record, usually I read at least half of Jon's articles. Don't you have to be educated to be in a science or technology field? Is this opposed to science and technology that is dominated by people that are uneducated? Also if I'm educated does that make me sometimes arrogant and always elite? or is that sometimes arrogant and sometimes elite? Whatever. At any rate the statement makes no sense, and does nothing for Katz's rant on global warming or his typical buy into the popular media attitude.
Now if someone could just tell me why I don't go and turn of the Jon Katz box .... I guess I'm just masicistic
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
The Anti-Blog
your time frame is way too long. start reading yourself. i guess there are more indicators than just the temperature that indicate that global warming is happening, and already having an impact.
granted, these are concerned scientists. however, has it ocurred to you that they might be concerned for a reason?
Stop the brainwash
No we're... sorry i forgot what i was saying... Ameribashing the sport of anon. cowards...
don't believe it
Our planet has seen everything...ice ages, heat waves...I've lost track of how much the temperature of this planet has fluxuated, and I'm not worried about it now. Imagine the worry the people here in North America must have went through back about 8000 years ago when the pollar ice caps were receeding: "This just in: half of North America's land is covered by icy glaciers, but they are receeding at an alarming rate. According to estimates, at this rate, by the year 2000 BC, glaciers will cover only 1/50th of North America! PANIC!!!"
If anyone has ever been to Lake Louise in Canada, there's a nearby glacier (I forget the name) where the path you walk on to go see it has signs saying where the location of the glacier was in 1880, 1900, 1950, 1955, etc. In 1880, the glacier reached all the way to the parking lot of the visitors center, while today it's nearly 2/3rds of a mile away. So how come they didn't start to worry about this problem in 1880 or 1900? Because our planet has been on a constant warming trend for the past 1000 years.
Really, ask any scientist. The problem with analizing the weather is that everyone thinks that you can "accurately" measure the average temperature of the Earth by doing just that. The problem is that the weather has such incredible fluxuations that your findings in a span of 10 years are going to differ from the last span of 10 years, and yet when you put those two periods together, you could conclude even more.
I mean, for my state during the 1990's, during the winter we saw record amounts of snow and temperatures that were way below average, during the time where global warming was "warming up" as a hot topic. Before then, we had a series of very mild winters. Back in the 1880's and 1890's, we saw some very heavy winters. Our weather has varried so much that it just continues on and on. Heck, in 1997 when we were having one of the worst winters ever, Anchorage, Alaska was having a very mild one. You could say that the world has always been warming up ever since the ice age a million years ago or however long ago it was.
What I wish is that people would stop worrying about all the smoke that's dubiously contributing to global warming and instead worry about all the smoke that's contributing to air polution.
I don't care that the karma police are gone and that my post is probably going to go unheard by most of you, but I need to get this off my back.
I KNOW that the Earth is warming up. Every single stupid report I have seen circulating around in newspapers, magazines, scientific journals, and online articles have said it is warming up. But I don't care. Why?
Because you are all ROOKIES when it comes to weather. That's right. I'm NOT a weatherman. I have not studied bullshit when it comes to weather outside the little quips that our local weatherman gives at 6:13pm every night when the news is on. But I do know this: The Earth has been around for thousands/millions/billions of years, and weatherman have been able to accurately measure the last 100 years.
THAT'S why I don't listen to people complain about global warming. This planet has been here for far too long for you to step in in the last 100 years and say to the world that because the weather in the last 10 years has grown proposterously (aka 1.7 F or whatever the number is), that this is cause for the apocolypse.
You have NO idea what "normal weather" is supposed to be. You only know what has happened in the past 100 years. Well guess what? The industrial age began over 200 years ago. We've been pouring industrial smoke in the air for a long time. We've been screwing up this world long before that. But we managed to live through 6000+ years of weather.
So don't cram down my throat that what's been going on in the past 10 years is cause for worry. You have no idea what's gone on in the past 6000, and until you do, don't use your life to stand as the prime example of the human race.
Global warming is not a subject of polls or democratic decicions. By the way, i've got the impression that this discussion shows a weak spot in human brains: We don't look at the facts and choose an opinion (wihich includes to change it when new facts arise), but we choose an opinion and see only the facts we want to see.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
I'm sure there would be a lot less global warming if it wasn't for all the hot air that blows from Jon Katz.
Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I'll never know.
Whoops you're correct. Serves me right for trying to make a quick joke without checking verifying my memory. . I guess it's been to long since I've looked at that stuff.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
It's late in the game but here is my 2 cents. Katz didn't really weigh in one way or the other on global warming. It seems like his main point was that global warming will be a big techno-political issue, which seems like a no brainer since it has been for years now.
I am of the mind that we know jack-shite about how much impact we have on our environment and its a waste of time to endlessly debate these issues until more conclusive evidence is found. There are so many real CURRENT problems the world faces that should be addressed that it seems almost criminal for politicians and world leaders to even bother with it.
I'm not saying we shouldn't continue researching climate change, hell, spend more money on it. We need people and ships in orbit, colonies on the moon, people going to Mars to study its climate - real research yielding real scientific knowledge, not a bunch of rhetoric that accomplishes exactly NOTHING. The real problem with the global warming debate is that it shouldn't be a debate, there isn't enough knowledge to justify debate. It is just another hot button issue like abortion and confederate flags that serves no purpose other than to make our elected officials/world leaders look like they care and are really working hard to solve the problem when in fact all they are doing is avoiding the real work of solving the real problems that people face.
There is civil injustice all over this planet, third-world wars, poverty, government corruption, hunger, AIDS, ebola, breast cancer, colon cancer, snakes, poisonous spiders, you name it! But it is almost as if these fronts have been abandoned; deemed unsolvable by the powers that be. And now they are just trying to look busy.
Anyway, here are the links I mentioned. Both concern John Christy and atmospheric scientist and member of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
http://www.discover.com/feb_01/featgospel.html
. html
http://www.atmos.uah.edu/atmos/christy/march11_01
--
I'm terrified beyond all capacity for rational thought.
-- skantman
only their president doesnt seem to. think Kyoto treaty. think "would hurt my back pocket". say "no thanks".
Global climate change is something people can understand. Everyone has been through a warm winter, a dry summer, a flood, a severe storm. They have seen it affect their comfort, their recreation, perhaps even their income (for people in agriculture).
I'm not saying that carbon dioxide emissions are the cause of every extraordinary weather event lately. When people hear that global warming can cause these events, people take notice. It is something they can understand.
I say we find some fluorocarbon that can make some global cooling. Seriously now, it's fucking hot where I live. I don't care if we livein ice and snow all year around, there's always florida to vacation to, just make it cooler here damnit
I live in MN. It's been cold as hell up here this summer. It's finally beginning to warm up, in the middle of July. No warming here!
1) Is the warming real?
Yes - there is enough data to show the Earth is warmer now than 100 years before (ignoring the other 4.5+Gyr for the moment).
2) Is it due to man-made causes?
No - the scientific data (not GCM models based on CO or CO2 as being the primary greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, except that would be water, which ISN'T contained in any GCM because that is a much harder thing to model --- oops) show that anthropogenic global warming as the primary cause either violates basic cause-and-effect (the temperature build-up occurs before 1945 and then essentially levels out), or there's a global cooling effect that is being ignored by the GCMs that for the most part counteracts the predictions over the last 50 years!
There's another "claim" that's bandied around which is to say that "most" scientists support the belief of anthropogenic global warming. This started with some list that was referred to by the White House in a press conference, except that no one that I know of has ever been able to get a copy of that list. On the other hand, nearly 20,000 physicists, climate scientists, etc. signed a petition NOT supporting the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming, which was slammed by the eco-fundies (who also attempted to taint the data by registering fake people - which goes to show how honest some of them are --- and yes, I'm one of the signers, have read the research papers, and drew my own educated opinion on the subject).
What's sad is that most of the people who have strong opinions on this topic have never looked at the data, or have looked at horrible distortions of the data (the plot in Earth in the Balance makes one feel that there's a huge explosion in CO in the last 100 years, until you discover that all the other data points have been binned differently --- I refer the reader to Tufte's excellent books and what he says about "the lie factor").
Go back to Friis-Christensen and Lasser (1991, in Science or Nature) look at that plot, compare to the actual warming trends. Then look at the warming trends over the last few millenia, and once you've removed the solar component that's obviously there, examine what's left. Perhaps there IS a man-made component lurking in there somewhere, but so far it's a small fraction of a degree.
The dire consequences for low-elevations doesn't care if the cause is man-made or not. However, the best plan of attack DOES change depending on our choice of allocating resources. Throwing $$$ at the "man-made" solution when there's no demonstrable effect could do MORE harm than good if $$$ isn't available when nature continues unabated. In that regard the anti-Kyoto people might be more on-target then the people who are trying to save the Earth.
Well you don't have to belive the ice ages on this planet have happened recently and climate changes can be dramtic enough without undue influence from man . Besides that althou the planet is a couple of billion years old the exsistance of man on this planet is not. Man made pollutants have rendered areas unihabatible . These factors contribute to atmosphic pollutants which help the global warming isssue. The planet may exsist another couple of billion years. How ever it may not be able to support life. Humans should try to contribute to a continued exsistance and not a quick destruction.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
...by the time those couple of centuries elapse, it may be too late to fix the damage.
You're using her as bait, Master!
...for the "booming economy" of greater LA to consume more energy, much of it in the form of fossil fuels (with it's attendant greenhouse gas emissions) than the entire Indian subcontinent?
You're using her as bait, Master!
because according to the "models" of doomsaying ecological apocalypsters (my favorite phrase), we've already kicked up enough CO2 in the atmosphere that will cook us all (remember, CO2 stays in the atmosphere for 50 years+). Also, I'd doubt any models that have researchers with vested interests. That is, they need money, and the best way to ensure funds is to create a threat worth researching.
Global Warming proponents may have the IPCC (1000 some scientists, and hardly unanimous), but those more sane have the letter of 10,000 scientists against the Kyoto treaty.
Best course of action - don't panic. If global warming is going to kill us all, it's already to late. But, hey, I'm sure all those really cold countries (that have been getting the majority of warming) would be against it. And since most warming happens at night, farmers are going to hate how warming prevents frosts that kill crops. Oh yeah, let's not return to the greener period of the last millenium, when Greenland was really green (oh yeah, temperaturers were higher then too).
Okay, forget about opion polls, lets get make policy options based on facts.
F-bacher
James Tiberius Kirk: "Spock, the women on your planet are logical. No other planet in the galaxy can make that claim."
I used to suffer from the typical knee-jerk "America is screwing the world" attitude on this issue. Then I started reading conservative columnists like Thomas Sowell ( http://www.tsowell.com ), a couple of other conservative news sites and started listening to different takes on this issue - And, I have come away with the clear understanding that there is too much politics and the whole issue has been hijacked by washed up leftists who converted to the church of environmentalism, after the collapse of Communism. Consider a few facts : 1. We now have climate records going back 1000's of years and have been unable to establish clearly a coincidence between temperature changes and levels of carbon didoxide in the past. 2. Al Gore's book "Earth in Balance" is based heavily on the work of a four-star scientist ( forgot his name ) who has since revised many of his views - he is not even sure if it's Co2 is the main culprit. 3. The National Academy of Sciences report makes it look like there is a great deal of unanimity among scientists - this is just manufactured consent. Many scientists who were dissented had their names on their report without even being asked. 4. At a technical level the Kyoto treaty has generated lot of hysteria among the more-moral-than-thou and Komodo-dragons-are-my-son-in-law brigade. Do you know that those predictions are made on the basis of mathematical models that are trying to model a complex system with infinite feedbacks, these are numerical calculations of the solutions of partial diff equations and small wonder that , few of these models ever agree with each other. Lot of folks - scientists, self-annointed intellectuals, the media need global warming. Please, Please try to learn about global warming at a scientific level; Let not the media be your guide. Gordon Moore ( not sure about the name ) one of the former heads of Green Peace regretted recently that the whole env. movement has been hijacked by anti-corporate and other political interests.
All I can say is: bullshit.
America is the only industrially advanced country NOT to have ratified Kyoto agreement, whose whole point was to prevent global warming.
Bush is in the pocket of the people who got him to power (=some greenhouse effect advancing corporations), so therefore I am not very surprised by that.
-- pending
And Hollywood hasn't yet even heard of nano-technologies.
ahem. virtuousity?
-=tonyt=-
Yes, we have a severe effect on the amount of carbon dioxide, and currently there is more carbon dioxide in our atmosphere than ever in the history of the earth. The ppm of CO2 is skyrocketing off the charts.
This may not be totally bad. The show mentioned that CO2 makes great plant fertilizer. Plants grow much better under high-CO2 atmospheres. Really, the coal industry funded a major study showing that CO2 in the atmosphere isn't such a bad thing! The bad news is, well, I wouldn't want to live in Florida.
Ceci n'est pas une pipe.
I am a scientist, and people mistake the issues here constantly. The problem is not that the earth is warming. The problem is that we have too many people; we are dangerously close to the carrying capacity of the Earth, and any change in the temperature, warmer or colder, could be disasterous.
It is true that the earth goes through natural cycles. But just because they are natural, doesn't mean you shouldn't worry about them. This is something to be terribly, terribly worried about; it's far more scary than the prospect of, say, giant meteorite impacts. There is evidence that at points in the past, the entire planet was covered in ice. Think our civilization could survive that?
The earth's climate is a delicate system, and we don't know what controls it. If you don't know how your life-support system works, it's probably a bad idea to start messing with it. Right now, we are dumping huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. We don't know what it will do in the long term. This is a dumb thing to do.
That "incorrect assumption" is knowan as the Archimedean law.
Well, as you noticed yourself, the ice floats in water, therefore the displacement is only partial. The point is that the wieght of ice is the same as the weight of water obtained by melting the ice. The amount of water displaced by a floating object (say a ship) is proportional to its weight. That's why the level of water does not change.
The earth is like 4 billion years old and has had life on it for nearly 1billion of those years (I might not have my timelines straight in my head sorry). The populations have been larger in the past (I think dinosaurs really outnumbered humans). The earth will continue to have life in the future as well and whether we live or die we humans have very little control over. At best we can conserve and manage to keep ourselves here a bit longer.
Peter's analysis of the current climate of global warming in world politics I think is correct. Its an economic agreement and quite likely has other motives than just keeping the planet cool. My advice is DON'T FREAK OUT OVER GLOBAL WARMING. That said I'm all for conservation and using envorinmentially friendly things but NOT at the cost of our economy. If you like all of the wonderful things that grace your life like the computers you use to read and post here on slashdot, then you have to support our economy. If you give all that up and go to living with none of those benifits then by all means you can condemn those of us that still use them.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
The basic theory from physics is that as CO2 levels rise, the atmosphere stays transparent to the visual radiation from the sun, while it becomes more opaque to the appx 300K black body radiation from the earth itself. You can understand this basic principle very simply from very well known physical facts. We know what the absorbtion spectra is of the major components of the atmosphere (N2, O2, CO2) and theoretically since CO2 is a more complex molecule than N2 or O2 it has many more vibrational and oscillatory modes in the infrared where it aborbs more radiation. More CO2 in the atmosphere means more opacity of the atmosphere to infrared radiation, which means a hotter Earth.
I will grant that this is theoretical, but its really the only good information that we have to go on. You can argue about little ice ages and natural climate cycles and plants consuming more CO2, but there is one simple fact that we are very sure of, which is that if we release enough CO2 into the atmosphere we'll wind up looking like venus (800K in the shade). In the absence of any really convincing proof that we're not doing any harm to the environment, I'm personally going to assume that we have to take the cautious approach and try to reduce greenhouse gases. The costs if we're wrong and global warming really isn't a problem are that we might slow down the economy a bit. The costs if we continue on our present course and global warming turns out to be a real problem could be devastating. I think its very obvious on which side we should bet our future.
But when Ice on land, melts it runs into the ocean and raises sea levels. They is an enormous ammount of ice covering the Antiartic and if it all melts the sea levels would raise by something huge (50 meters maybe, I forget).
Don't know about Germany, but England has been inside the Kyoto C02 limits for years, thanks to converting much of there old coal fire power stations to natural gas. We're also investing heavily in Hydroelectric, Wind and Tidal power research projects. In additional nuclear power seem to be slowly get back in vogue.
France has always been one of the most nuclear powered nations on earth, and creates much less C02 than most other nations of there economic size. France has always taken the stragratic view that they don't want to be over dependent on Fossil fuels becuase they have none of there own.
For those who don't know, the Maunder Minimum was a period of unusually low solar output which occurred several hundred years ago and correlated with low global temperatures. Whole carnivals were held in the middle of the Thames river because it froze over hard, Louis XIV had warmer floors installed in Versailles, and the canals froze in Amsterdam.
My understanding from my astrophycist friends is that we're not actually presently in another Maunder Minimum period, but that present sunspot activity seems awfully similar to the activity the sun exhibited immediately before the Maunder Minimum. It also seems similar to activity exhibited by other stars shortly before what are believed to be their reduced activity periods. (One of my close friends is big in hunting down other stars similar to our sun, but there isn't enough information to draw conclusions yet.)
In other words, folks, we might possibly be in for a minor ice-age soon. Also, since solar activity continues to correlate with global temperature, either global warming we are presently observing is caused by the sun, or our use of aerosol cans here is somehow turning up the temperature on the surface of the sun.
Now, please excuse me while I climb into an asbestos suit, and while you're aiming your flamethrowers at me please remember that I'm actually a radical liberal and believe strongly in living in an unpolluted environment, I just want some factual reality involved.
You know, 30 years ago we were undoubtedly headed into an ice age that would kill most of humanity and make the world unlivable. Of course, -WE- are the right generation, and -THEY- were wrong. Because there isn't any possible way -OUR- generation could be wrong.
Want some indy electronic (and other) music?
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(C) Kaki Sain, 2011. By reading this, you have illegally copied my property to your brain.
Frankly, I'd have to agree with you. I know everyone loves to bash Jon Katz on here, so it's quite the cliche. I've never read any of his articles, and I know why now. Not clear writing is definately the way to put it.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Nevermind science, I'm a product of pop culture! And boy, I sure do like hot weather!
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Evidence? Bah! Who cares! I have faith that counters the evidence! If I ignore it really hard it'll go away!
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
The danish solar physicist Henrik Svensmark claims that there is a close link between solar activity and cloudforming, which again affects average earth temperature. He finds a nice correlations between temperature and the number of solar spots. Some of his theories are being tested at CERN. If I remember correctly the UN climate council has admitted that solar activity was responsible for the rise in temperature in the first half of this century.
The gulf stream is being driven by cold water that sinks in the basin between Greenland and Norway. The german physicist Stefan Rahmstorf claims that when the icecap melts ic creates a layer of freshwather on top of the ocean. This fresh water is so light that eddies do not form, and therefore it does not sink. His simulations showthat this effect can (within 50 years) force the gulf stream turn west outside spain, leaving northern europe very cold. Computer simulatuons may be largely insecure, but I think that he does show a mechanism by which a 2 degree temperature change end up having a dramatic effect on the climate where I live.
BTW: The american oil industry is sponsoring a lot of scientist to work on reports showing that there is no global warming going on, so we have FUD against FUD.
Trouble is, they don't have anywhere to move TO. If you live in Bangladesh on your little farm, there's nowhere to go to. You move, you lose the resources to grow your food, you die. It's that simple. Well, the UN (assuming the US ever gives them the money they owe!) will set up refugee camps and try to do something with them, but you can bet that if it's farmable, someone's farming it already.
Grab.
I know much land isn't farmed, but that doesn't mean it's farmable. You're not going to grow much on the slopes of Everest or in the Sahara Desert, for instance. Agricultural land is a pretty scarce commodity and is all already spoken for, which is why flooding agricultural land is such a serious problem for the ppl living there.
Grab.
Have you ever heard of levels? Lead is a toxin, in a large doses! Small amounts don't hurt. Think of it spreading out across the entire sky. Directly indisgenting some is a lot different from breathing in a fractional amount!
Open Source, Open Standards, Open Minds
and then it'll be too late.
Really it takes 20 to 50 years for pollution to affect the global climate. What we are now seeing is the effects of 1970-1980.
The problem obviously is we don't have the facts now, cause
a) The absoulte pollution has risen since 1970.
b) The climate is too complex to accurately predict it.
c) All the time new parameters are found, new data gets added.
So what should we do?
Option 1) Ignore those pesky green left wing scientist?
or
Option 2) Do what ever we can against pollution?
(Obvously I've taken the extremes.)
Let's evaluate:
Option 1 means maybe we will find out in 20 years, Global Warming exist. (If it exists the efffects will be BAD, (If you don't understand that, sorry jump to the end, and come back later)
Or maybe it doesn't exist and we had a wonderfull prosperous time.
Option 2 means shutting down serious parts of the industry, like getting rid of most coal power stations, getting rid of gasoline powered cars...
This would surely prevent global warming, but it has severe effects on the industry, not something you will want.
Or should we choose Option 3, the option europe takes: Reducing the total pollution without relevant reduction of comfort. (You don't believe that's possible? Why does the typical American use a multiply of the energy an European uses? Why needs a typical American car more gasoline than comparable European cars?
Easily America would be able to reduce it's pollution significantly without any comfort reduction! The Kyoto treaty uses relative numbers for the reduction, so the if the USA would be maintaining Kyoto they would be nowhere the level of "CO2 production per person" Europe is.
Is Global Warming bad?
Without any doubt YES.
Present me a proof that Global Warming isn't bad, or that it isn't happening and I would be happy to not care, else I AM CARING.
daniel teske
Politicians aren't scientists (at least most of them). Why should I want politicians engaged as part of a scientific debate? Answer: When there are public policy issues that need to be addressed!
So, why should I want politicians to get engaged on the topic of A.I. In spite of what Bill Joy, Ray Kurzweil, and Steven Speilberg may have to say, there are no public policy issues associated with A.I., at least at this time. Anything that our politicians did about this issues at this time would be, at best, meaningless.
On the other hand, look at global warming. This one's really ugly. The global warming advocates, especially the more radical of them, are arguing for massive changes in public behavior in the United States. Many of the anti-global warming advocates are sticking their heads in the sand by attempting to ignore the available evidence. This is because they don't want to have to deal with the consequences if humans really are causing massive global climate changes.
And pity our poor politicians, they can't get a simple story from the scientists, because science doesn't have one. And now they have to decide, as a matter of public policy, what is going to be done about a problem that might not even exist.
That's why global warming is getting all the attention.
Chris
P.S. I wish I could claim this for my idea, but I borrowed it from an article I read several years ago. (No reference, sorry.)
I definitely agree, Jon Katz isn't presenting the full story and his logic is fuzzy.
Katz says the U.S. is becoming one of the most resented countries in the world. Hello Katz! The U.S. has ALWAYS been one of the most resented countries because of its prosperity. The rest of the world loves to belittle the U.S. for any reason it can come up with because of its prosperity.
Next Katz talks about surveys:
67% of Americans surveyed believed that increased carbon dioxide and other gases released into the atmosphere would, if unchecked, lead to global warming and increasing average temperatures.
Since when does the general public have the scientific knowhow to analyze factors and trends in the Earth's chemical content? They think that because its what they are TOLD by the liberal media not because they have made a scientific analysis of the situation.
Katz goes on to say that this issue is going to capture large amounts of attention and that our nation's president is definitely on the unpopular side. Katz, the environmentalist left has been preaching this for decades. The truth is that global warming is NOT based on fact it is based on scare tactics. If the rest of the world jumped off a bridge would the U.S jump too? I'm proud that our president has stood up for his belief that environmentalism, when carried to the extreme, is very unhealthy for everybody. If you believe that global warming is truly a threat, do your homework and research the topic instead of blindly trusting liberal rhetoric. You'll find that global warming is actually at odds with science and is just another political tool.
The Tick : Spooooooooooooooooooooon!.
The Tick : Spooooooooooooooooooooon!.
Neo : There is no spoon.
We have all done or seen the experiment with fruit flys in biology class. Eventually the fruit flys over populate the container and die in their own pollution.
All you have to do is read some of the descriptions of what goes on in places like The Three Sisters and especiallyYellowstone to get a real scare--the place has heaved up 86 cm this century.
A major caldera explosion at yellowstone could cover the American breadbasket with ash and plunge the world into volcanic winter.
So, why don't they build huge hydrothermal plants at places like that to siphon off some of the heat. That is, assuming that we could actually make a difference. When you are dealing with something capable of ejecting 240 cubic *miles* of ash into the atmosphere, I'm inclined to think we will be powerless.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Okay, the Ozone hole is real, no prove it was the result of humans. Seriously. Give me one shred of good evidence, and I will be highly impressed that you were able to do what no scientist to dat has been able to do. The planet has warmed in the past, and will warm again, deal with it!
I believe that global warming as a theory is a 'fairly' sound basis. I believe that the effects are what they say they will be. Although, it is still just theory hand has yet to be fine tuned.
But, I do not believe that the effect of global warming will happen to the extent that the environmentalist wackos have lead people to believe.
If you sift through the evidence. Figure out the good science from the bad science. Ignore the politics involved in the issue and you will see that at the core, fundamentally, global warming exists. But the numbers really don't show shit. Not to mention all of the new discoveries that are being made about how our planet regulates itself.
Environmental issues in general have been vastly bastardized by politics to the extent that it is hard to find unbiased scientific evidence any just about anything.
For real.
I always get a kick out of the people who build their houses along the bancks of a river or in a flood plain and have their house wiped out by a flood. They rebuild. Then next year the same thing happens to them. People like that will blame everyone except themselves. I've heard everything from bridge, sewer systems, political conspiracies, and yes, 'global warming' for being the cause of the floods.
Of course if you build your house there for the view and are aware of the risks. All the more to you.
Most of the people on Slashdot are relatively well educated the sciences. Science is largely about looking at evidence and applying logic and rational thought to see what it means. When that is done to religion it quickly become clear that there is no evidence to support religion and many of the ideas associated with religion.
They do have open minds. They opened thier minds to religion, examined it and rejected it.
You, sir are a fraud!
*Removes gloves*
SMACK!
*Puts gloves back on*
Thank you.
;^)
...go here for a good understanding of what the term greenhouse means, and the science involved.
I posted this just to help with understanding of the terms, which some people are misusing. This is not a post pro/con global warming.
be sure to read the faq.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The proof is right in front of our eyes. The DMCA is another case of corporations getting more rights at the expense of the people. Bush not signing the Kyoto treaty is yet another example of corporations flexing their influence over the government for their benefit at the expense of everyone else.
The land of the free is becoming less so every day.
Although I have no doubt that you are serious about the scientific evidence surrounding the global warming phenomenon, other scientists armed with research info have stated the Earth is about to start another ice age.
The information I have read, indicates to me personally that we really don't know what is going to happen, simply because we haven't been observing long enough. Ice cores from the antartic regions indicate the Earth inexplicably and suddenly changes it climatic patterns, a classic example of chaotic system behavior.
Also read history. Gibbon mentions the Danube at the time of the Roman empire never froze, whereas during his time, during the height of the smoggy Industrial Revolution when it snowed ash in London, it commonly froze over.Basically to sum it up: We do need to clean the environment, but I don't think we should be so bold to presume at this point (esp. with global warming and ozone) what is going to happen.
>Well actually yeah we do, it's really, really
>big and called the universe . But your
>point is still well taken.
From what I have been taught, that is wrong.
THERMODYNAMICS LESSON OF THE DAY
by Dr. Mike®
The universe under best understanding is an isolated system. Lets review our thermodynamic definitions:
- Open System - Mass and energy can cross the system's boundary.
- Closed System - Energy can cross the system's boundary, but mass can't.
- Isolated System - Both mass and energy cannot cross the system's boundary.
The earth® is an open system, since both mass (hydrogen gas can float away into space) and energy (sunlight!) can cross earth's boundary. The boundary to our planet is sort of tough to define, but its best put at a couple 100 km up. (Space station is at 400km).And someone screwed up before, the trophosphere only goes up about 10 km (the altitude that commerical airlines fly their planes). Then the stratosphere starts, followed by other layers on top of that.
Disclaimer: Dr. Mike® is a chemical engineer as degree bestowed by the University of Connecticut (BSE), but is currently enrolled in a Ph.D. program at Caltech. The term "Dr." is used for entertainment purposes only, and should not be confused for a real doctorate degree (yet) or as a medical doctor.
I'm glad Hollywood has finally gotten around to recognizing global warming. It's about time.
Hopefully they can make a movie about a time in the near future, when we've destroyed almost all plant and animal life on the planet, even exausting the supply of plankton in the ocean, and the only thing humans have left to eat are other humans. But most people wouldn't know that their food is people -- it would be kept a secret from the population. And then, in the last scene, the truth should be revealed! That would be a cool movie. Why hasn't hollywood made something like that yet? What a bunch of lame asses.
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
Oh, please. I have a certain amount of patience when it comes to intransigence, ignorance, short-sightedness and so forth. But as I get older (where DID I leave my teeth?) I find myself less and less able to face abject defeatism with a sense of calm.
2010 is 9 years away. And just because you won't necessarily make a target doesn't mean it's a bad thing to aim(tm) at.
First up, why must the convenience of the population of California take priority over the fate of 6 billion people?
Secondly, you don't have "no choice but to increase them" even if you do increase massively the amount of power available to California, or anyone else. Unless you choose to stick with 50-year old generating technologies. You probably can't get rid of all the existing fossil or nuclear sources, but that's no reason not to start supplementing them with other, less climate-harming sources. Solar rooftops, for example. wind farms catching the Pacific sea breezes, geothermal plants
And that's just the supply side. There's also an embedded assumption here that to get the light output of a 100 watt incandescent bulb requires 100 watts. It simply doesn't have to. But for decades, we've been designing, manufacturing and using massively profligate technologies rather than coming up with alternatives which, while they may be more costly in the short term to produce or buy, end up using far less energy and thus requiring far less funding, over their useful lifetime. And for that matter, making things by energy-hungry processes, packaging and transporting them similarly, only to throw them away 3 years later for the latest, greatest model.
Note - I am NOT criticising any particular 'western developed' nation here. I live in the UK, and we're every bit as disgraceful as anyone else in this respect. And I'm no enviro-saint living in a bender and farming my own food. I'm a city-dwelling car-driving TV-watching enviro-nightmare myself. But I AM aware that it's a terribly, terribly wrong way to exist, and that we all need to make our little contributions to the big picture wherever we can.
Guilty as charged.
TomV
Try re-reading that comment after smoking a big bat ;)
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
We can only burn oil for 100 or so more years, after that I'll all be gone. 100 years of pollution is relatively nothing.
It doesn't help when imbeciles like Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R., Calif.) dismiss scientific evidence as "Liberal Claptrap"
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
There ceratinly may be no consensus, but shouldn't we just err on the side of caution?
We can
a) We carry on as we are, saying there is no problem
Result 1) There wasn't a problem, it was all scare mongering. We are all a little richer than we were before.
Result 2) Droughts, millions dead, rising sea levels.
b) We start to tighten our belts, we don't have the same amount of consumption.
Result 1) There wasn't a problem. We can all change to act as we were before we tightened out belts.
Result 2) There was a problem, but due to our foresigthtedness we have saved the planet for future generations, we will forever be known as the "thinking generations".
try to make ends meet, you're a slave to money, then you die
It's unfortunate that although many scientests do not believe that humans are causing the earth to warm, they are ignored for the "better story" which is picked up by the media. So in essence, our friend jon katz is not saying that global warming will be a big issue, but that the media has begun to play more and more of a role...control of information..fun stuff (kind of like the "microsoft is evil" stuff that comes from slashdot :)
"Most Americans" can barely read, get most of their information from the television, and have a vague idea that "global warming is bad." They have no clue how the effect is measured. They don't know that there are any climate models, much less how they work. They don't understand what "greenhouse gases" are, and if they discovered that the Kyoto accord would have directly decreased their standard of living, they'd never have supported it. Actually, they didn't support it. They just said that it would be a good idea if those penguins didn't die. They had no idea that their profligate use of energy might have to be reduced.
I noticed two articles in my morning paper (and by the way, note that even the newspapers, as insipid and simplistic as they are, are dying for lack of interest) on global warming. One was on Peruvian glaciers; the other was on penguins. Neither article gave any details on how global warming was supposed to work, or the kind of regulations and controls that would be required to implement what some people think are the appropriate solutions. And neither article will register at all on "most Americans."
It's not a reasoned scientific debate. It's not a question with a deterministic answer. If regulatory action is taken, it will be in the absence of any useful scientific discussion. If regulatory action is not taken, it will be similarly ill-supported. It's a freaking sideshow, and it'll have the half-life they all have. Remember Farm Aid? Remember famine in Ethiopia? Remember land mines? You can be damn sure that "most Americans" don't.
Personal opinion? The first greenhouse gas we ought to get rid of is the hot air generated on the whole stupid subject.
Last I heard, these scientists (especially the danish guy being behind the first 'discovery' of these indications) have found more similiar effects that indeed seem as if, in sum, they could produce the kind of weather variations we've had over the last 30 years. And the figures they recently have presented do indeed include data up to the late 90's (99 being the last year if i remember correctly), still having a very strong tie to the weather conditions..
.. well.. guess.
The biggest problem they have is actually that they are being accused of being sponsored/bribed by the oil industry... An industry they have nothing to do with, but that happens to like their ideas... And on this basis, they are rejected by 'established' theorists as
Love over Gold.
I saw a pretty interesting program on TV a while ago, and have since been reading up on it a bit.. According to a growing group of scientists, the real reason for the ups and downs of the earth temperature that we are observing are in fact caused by solar activity!
In short, the theory is that when the suns solar activity increases, the intensity of the magnetic field around the solar system increases. This field is part of what shields us from the so-called cosmic rays, rays from distant objects and energies in the universe.
Now suppose it's true as they claim to have found, that the level of cosmic rays influences our atmospheres ability to block or 'keep' sun radiation, and a whole new dimension is suddenly added to the discussion.
Using similiar methods as for tracking the environment back in time, they tracked the level of cosmic rays backwards in time aswell, and found a 100% match between the levels of cosmic rays and the average temperature on earth. And as if that wasn't enough, it even was able to explain the 'exceptions' from the until-now believed CO2 rule, like during the second world war when the CO2 levels in the air were immensely increased compared to the years before and after, but the temperature was falling..
Problem: Political unwillingness to consider new views and theories. And ofcourse the fact that politicians and environmental organizations already have spent billions in time and money on the CO2 'problem'... It's not hard to imagine how embarrassing it would be for them to admit that they might have been wrong..
Love over Gold.
Check the archeological record. You'll see that the earth is warming, has been warming for 8000+ years at least, and that it has absolutely nothing to do with people. The ocean has been rising an average of 1 inch per hundred years for at least a few thousand years now. A good example from the archeological record is just off the coast of Israel where I live. About 4000 years ago about some 50-100 people built themselves a little village about 20 or 30 feet from the beach. Their little village is now 30 feet underwater. Same story for numerous other archeaological sites up and down the coast.
Woopty Doo Basil, what does it all mean?!
What the...?
I have no reply to this.
well...maybe...'Guns at dawn! We'll battle for the maiden's hand then!'
Like sex? Read and write about it! Indecent Blogging
Spielberg raises some profound moral issues involving A.I. in his new movie, drawing a number of critical raves but proving a disappointment at the box office
AI was a box office disappointment? It's made almost $60 million in less than 2 weeks. What do you call a success?
Like sex? Read and write about it! Indecent Blogging
Mosquitoes and other disease vectors will have new ranges open to them, and diseases will spread quickly among vulnerable populations of animals, plants, and people.
Dont underestimate the power of humans to change climate. It is well within our power the eliminate all vegetation on the surface of the earth in a geological instant. We have a massive effect on the earths albedo and chemical composition. A very small change in the energy in the earth's system can have a very macroscopic effect.
When weather changes, it tends to do so quickly, though it can change back just as fast. And the effect of civilization on the earth is unprecedented- so looking at the geological record is of limited utility.
The Earth has nothing to fear from humans. Itll recover even if we wipe ourselves out by ruining our habitat.
Now, as we bare more of our skin when we go out, the skin cancer rates rise from when we kept more of ourselves covered. Seems like there's a corellation there.
Yes, I know corellation does not necessarily indicate causality, but still... look at it and think about it.
Well the coin may have dropped for most Americans, but it seems like there is still one who doesn't comprehend the impact caused. Unfortunately he happends to be their president......
-.sig sauer-
Basically, a long time ago glaicers covered most of europe, asia, and north america. We know this by the geological evidence they left behind, as in fjords, lakes, and rubble that the glaciers carved out of the landscape. The glaicers are made from snow that falls in the winter and never totally melts in the summer. Leaving layers of snow that get packed on top of each other like layers in sedimentary rock. The logical conclusion is that the average temperature was a lot cooler, allowing the snow to build up over time to form the massive glaciers.
OK, so we know that it is warmer now, on average, than it was then. Why? Well, here is an interesting theory I heard a while ago.
The main part of the theory is a "vapor canopy". The "vapor canopy" is a high water vapor content in the atmosphere. The amout of water vapor in the atmosphere reached an equilibrium where there was enough to make clouds to reflect sunlight and prevent the temperatures from going higher and creating more water vapor. The earth was very hazy, hot, and humid. But then something happed. Something upset the equilibrium.
A comet or metorite impacts the earth throwing millions of tons of dust in the atmosphere. The dust blocks the the sunlight, which rapidly drops the average temperature globally. This causes the vapor canopy to collapse. The air is not warm enough to hold the massive amouts of water vapor. So the vapor condences, clouds form, and it rains. Just like a cold front, but on a massive scale. The earth cools even more. It gets cold enough that it starts snowing in the far north. The snow, clouds, and dust reflect enough of the sunlight to keep things cold so the snow does not all melt in the summer. Eventually, the dust settles, but only after huge amounts of snow and rain have fallen. Up north, snowfall after snowfall have packed the snow layers into ice layers to form glaciers.
OK, so it got cold. Why is it getting warmer? Things are getting warmer to once again obtain the point of equlibrium. The cool equlibrium temperature was achieved because of the dust. The dust blocked out the sunlight, which set the equilibrium temperature very cold. After the dust settles, the temperature is free to rise again. It rises slowly at first, because the snow and glaciers reflect a lot of sunlight and energy back into space. But things gradually begin to defrost. As more land appears out from under the snow, the more it can asorb the sunlight and the warmer it can get. The increase in temperatures cause more snow to melt, which uncovers more land. This process has kept going from then until now.
OK, so it is getting warmer. How warm will it get? Who knows. If the theory is accurate, the temperature will keep rising until it reaches a point of balance between the cooling effects of clouds and rain and the heating power of the sun.
Wrong. Utterly Wrong. Katz spins EVERYTHING and always neglects the truth. This is yet another case of that.
The Kyoto treaty seeks to reduce ALL Carbon Dioxide emissions 5% BELOW 1990 levels by 2010 (More Info Here). This is of course impossible. Consider the current power situation in California for instance. Solving that will likely INCREASE the amount of CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere. How can you expect to reduce these emissions when you have no choice but to increase them? (You liberals have nobody to blame but yourselves on this one)
Bush came up with his own plan. His plan states that by 2015 CO2 emission levels will cease to increase. By 2050 his plan is to abolish ALL CO2 emissions. Hmmmm... I dont think the Kyoto treaty planned to get of them all......
Learn to read people. Dont make yourselves look like morons by buying into Katz's shit. Bush's plan is not only better in the long run - but it takes a realistic outlook on the problems he have TODAY. He realizes that A LOT of this country's power comes from COAL. Which as you know produces A LOT of CO2. You slashbotters are so blindly aligned sometimes its just sick. You people deserve Katz - you truly do.
Gam
"Flame at Will"
I love idealists not because I am one, but because they make life bearable for pragmatists such as myself.
Some of you may be familiar with Art Bell, he and Whitley Streiber wrote a book called "The Coming Global Superstorm." I just finished this book and was fascinated by it. They discuss hard evidence that shows that early human civilization could have been wiped out by climate change. Earth has a natural cycle to help it deal with global warming. There are currents in the ocean that exchange warm salt water with cold fresh water. This exchange is vital to the stability of the climate and when the ice caps melt the oceans are flooded with cold fresh water and the exchange comes to a grinding halt. It's predicted that when this happens the mother of all storms will develop and bring with it a new ice age in order to restore the polar caps. There is already evidence of this weather change. Most people have noticed the rapid increase in the instability of weather patterns in the world. Floods, heavy hurricanes and droughts. Global warming is not the part that we should really fear. It's Gia's revenge! Our CO2 based culture is accelerating the inevitable storm that has the capability of killing millions and displacing millions more.
WURD!!
-Dave
As for the environement. It's all just a bunch of scare tactics, right? Well, if you listen to ultra right-wing groups such as capitalismmagaize.com and aynrand.org, perhaps, since it's in their own best interest to promote their ideology which says you shouldn't inconvenience yourself for the benefit of anyone else. Similarly, a story about the severity of global warming from a group like Earth First! wouldn't carry much weight, either, even though they can quote plenty of studies themselves.
So is it just a bunch of scare tactics? We have hard data showing that people definitely have a significant impact on the local climate -- think urban heat islands. Is it possible that in doing so, the local climate can have such a huge effect without impacting the larger world? Not really. There aren't ecosystems that large that exist in complete isolation.
Many people have claimed that carbon sinks, largely in the form of forests, would be more than enough to counter the effect of increase carbon dioxide emissions. The Kyoto Protocol placed significant emphasis on forests for that purpose. Unfortunately for that view, researchers at Duke released the results of a study showing that while the growth rate of plants showed significant initial increases, it slowed dramatically within a couple years (see the last couple paragraphs). What's the implication? That we'd need to constantly be planting forests. And of course since they'd absorbed the carbon we couldn't cut them down since that'd end up releasing the carbon back to the atmosphere. Actually, it isn't known how much of the carbon the trees actuall keep as opposed to storing in short-lived organs like leaves which fall off, decay, and release the carbon back into the environment (see the infor about this ongoing Harvard study). And if you want to know more about the group that did the research for Duke and is conducting related studies, their homepage is here.
Finally, as for the idea that "our president has stood up for his belief that environmentalism, when carried to the extreme, is very unhealthy for everybody"... Well, if you cut through the political commentary in this column you find out that Bush's own ranch has gone to great lengths to be environmentally sensitive. So much for his politics reflecting his actual beliefs.
Tell that to the Borg.
:)
Say you had a house, built 100 years ago. It's an old house of course, so there are things wrong with it, but it's upkeep by the owner has been fairly good, and major catastrophe's to the house are few and far between, so it's still livable and in good shape.
Now, say on the 100th birthday of the house, you introduce a colony of termites into the woodwork. These termites are voracious, and immediately begin breeding and chewing up the house. At first, the owner can keep up with the damage by replacing a few board here and there, but the termites keep breeding, and it soon grows beyond the owners control. When you go to inspect the house a year later, and find it's falling apart from the inside out, would you say that it's impossible to determine if the termites were the cause, that this might just be a "natural phase or cycle of the house"?
OK, the analogy isn't perfect, but you get the idea. It's irresponsible to take the opinion that just because we humans haven't been doing what we do for a very long time (comparitively), that we shouldn't worry about what we are doing.
Well, what about people living in, say, North Dakota? You tell them they are making the world hotter and making oceans rise, and what do they care? Their land will just be more valuable, more of it will be arable. Or tell people in Palmdale, California that the oceans are rising. Just means they'll eventually own beachfront property. I don't think they care about bangladesh. They are all going to just run outside and start spraying aerosol in siberia if it means its gonna get hotter. The global warming problem isn't just a problem of the world getting hotter, or a problem of people not agreeing on facts, but a problem on what the facts mean and who they affect. The world does not work together happily, and probably never will. Kyoto is totally biased towards already developed countrys. Europe says they love it but only Romania has signed it. China can just sit there pumping out people and burning dirty coal and we're supposed to put more MBTE in our gas or something? Please. If it's actually a problem, I'm all for fixing it, but we're not anywhere near that now. Stunting the economic growth of the US, Europe and Japan isn't going to save the world from global warming, especially when China passes all three economically and still kills its people by the truckload and steals their organs. It's everyone or no one, and my guess it will be no one.
I totally agree with this. Western countries including the United States and Canada should be taking leadership roles in the move towards sustainable emissions.
In today's Globe and Mail there is an article showing that 93% of Canadians think the federal government should do more to fight global warming and not follow the Bush's direction on this issue.
The Globe and Mail Article
So, then WHERE is the electricity GENERATED? Does your wall plug just magically create the juice to go into your car?
Come on - all you are doing is moving the problem somewhere else. Some coal/natural gas burning facility somewhere has to burn more coal and create more emissions there to keep your car running.
<troll>But, since people with this attitude seem to forget about these things, you just keep hugging those trees and talking bad about the auto companies, OK?</troll>
Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals... except the weasel. -
So THAT'S why the ice cream in the top of my bowl melts first... It's closer to the sun!
Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals... except the weasel. -
You guys seem to only argue about human responsibility on global warming. The planet is warming, everyone knows about it. Human are polluting, everyone knows about it too. But are we polluting enough to affect the weather?
If you look at the rate humans are consuming the resources of our planet ( Food, water, forests, fossil fuels, Materials,etc...) and the World population growth without mentioning pollution, I think that we can affect the weather and we can do something about it.
It's always better to prevent than repair.
recommended reading:
Beyond the Limits
Ok, I think that the fact that the average temperature on earth has been increasing over the past 100 years or so. The question is : why? This is a classic correlation vs causation issue. We know that temperatures have been increasing for some time (how long, we don't know, because we've only recently learned how to measure temperature). Also, we know that co2 emmissions have been building up over the same time period for which we have temperature data. These two things are clearly positively correlated. That does not necessarily mean that co2 emmission build up is the sole or even most important reason for increases in temperature. It is just as possible that the earth's temperature follows very long-term cyclic behaviour and just happens to be on the upward phase in it's cycle. Meaning that the correlation between temperatures and pollution is spurious (or, at least positively biased). How can analysts get around this? Either find really sound temperature and co2 data that extends back through at least 2 global climate cycles (how, I dunno), or wait a few thousand years until we've collected such data through a couple of cycles. Allan
Global Warming and the hole in the ozone layer. Amazing how the media interprets these things. There have been plenty of studies that have shown that the hole in the ozone layer is somthing that is very cyclical. It grows, it shrinks, it grows, it shrinks. But, the media wouldn't want to report anything like that - saying that it is all a natural thing because then they wouldn't be able to try to push through their agenda.
1.) Yes, the US is a very large country and so there are plenty of people driving long distances - but also remember that some of these people are just driving back and forth to work as well. Our public transportation isn't near where it should be. Most of Western Europe's Public Transportation is many times over better than ours. As for our gas prices - they aren't all that much cheaper than yours. Compare it on a cost of living basis and it comes out to be just about the same. The average american income is about 1/5 that of the average western european's. So, according to that, if you take $1.3 a gallon (the avg us cost is much higher) and roughly cut it in half to get pounds and then multiply by 5 to get roughly the same average cost of living and then divide by 3.785 (to convert from gallons to litre), you get .8585. So, if you are paying that much or right around there, your cost of gas is prolly a little cheaper than the average american's gas is. Also, your government does impose a few more taxes that go to pay for things like your nationalized health care. We don't have this. All in all - the gas costs about the same.
2.) The government has been offering more incentives to save energy in some areas such as california where they have done some solar power programs. Also, we have car regulations which all manufacturers have to meet. The problem with this is that to meet these, they skimp on other things - you get plastic transmissions etc that don't last nearly as long and can't really be rebuilt, so they get destroyed and then you have the plastic burning which doesn't help the atmosphere and all (according to enviornmentalists) - and then you still have to pay to have another produced and shipped to a location to be put back into the car) - no real savings.
3.) I'll grant you that plenty of people are lazy in the states. But, I'm not going to get into all of that except to say that purchasing your car (or large SUV) has plenty of taxes associated with it. Each time you buy gas you are paying to pollute. That's part of the real cost of gas and the "luxury" of the vehicle.
4.) It's funny because you don't really see many of these people who complain about the atmosphere and all that driving much less - a few do, but most of them don't - as a matter of fact, you'll see them hop into their big old ford expedition (or whichever the largest is that ford makes) and drive cross country. The media in the US is so biased and agenda based that you can't really believe a thing that they say and you have to find out for yourself.
As children we hear plenty of the BS regarding Global Warming. Consider it small minded if you will. We are NOT the main cause. Some people have their priorities screwed up. Now, I'm not all for trashing the planet and all, but these people who want to save all these little animals at our expense are wacked.
The planet has been through many worse disasters and humans have still survived just fine. A single volcano erupting has many times over worse effects than we have done in the last decade multiplied by 10.
Why does the US get the blame? *No country* but ROMANIA has signed the Kyoto treaty yet all we hear about is the US's lack of concern.
********************
********************
I object to Intellect without Discipline.
Even if America's awareness on this situation increases... how much of a difference will this make? Right now, America has the #1 waste and carbon emission position on earth, but most experts predict that in 10 years that'll all change. Developing countries are developing at an alarming rate and China will soon have a more detrimental standpoint then America.
And even though the majority of Americans are ignorant, it'll still be a much easier job to raise awareness here then in a country like China. There are a whole lot more people there and there are some parts of the country that totally lack education.
My worry right now is soil errosion. Our rate of soil errosion far exceeds the rate that nature can provide soil. This is mostly due to lack of education in the agriculture society on this matter which makes me laugh that a 16 year old knows about it, but farmers are ignorant to the problem. Crop rotation and new ways of plowing fields are both suggest solutions that allow nutrients to be evenly distributed in the land and also allows land to rejuvenicate itself.
The problem isn't the environment itself, it's educating people about it. In fact, education people period is a problem.
Yes, but in the long run, research into and implementation of cleaner production of energy could save money. There may be a short term redirection of capital, but that would be temporary. It's the vested interests of established capital that are worried about Kyoto or some variation. The increase in R & D and capital investment might actually be an economic boon.
I must say I disagree with the theme of your post. You seem to be saying that, in the face of incomplete information and noise, we should do nothing; and that, given even worse things could happen, what are we worried about?
One. Given the ambiguity of the data, we should err on the side of caution, rather than pandering to established capital.
Two. The fact that I may die of food poisoning tomorrow is no justification for driving while intoxicated today. The only link between global warming and asteroid impact are that they both affect climate! The fact that we can do nothing about asteroids should not in the slightest way influence how we approach (possible) global warming.
What rubbish. Do only right-leaning political structures get to throw their weight around?
Despite the overwhelming opinion so far that there is no global warming I can't help but scratch my head and wonder why people seem to be in denial about it. Calls for "more research" seems to be a typical response to the non-believer but there is a crapload of research already out there supporting this theory. Check out http://www.ciesin.org/TG/OZ/oz-home.html and look at the picture at the top of the page. Is the satellite that took the picture lying? Did the scientists that control the satellite alter the data? Come on, there's a huge freakin' hole in the atmosphere and anybody can take a picture of it given they have the right technology to do so.
Doesn't it seem odd that we're about the only nation in the world that hasn't accepted the global warming theory and that we're the one nation that will suffer the most economically if we enact the necessary cutbacks and reforms? Do you think that the oil and automotive industries aren't trying to protect their interests and are at this moment lobbying hard in Washington to stall or kill any global warming related reforms?
It's beyond me how a statement like "show me an environmentalist and I'll show you a cult follower" earns a score 5:Insightful rating. All scientists and environmentalists that support pro global warming theories are cult followers and have no real basis to support their beliefs. Right. I think hell would freeze over before a "Show me a Linux user and I'll show you an anti-Microsoft anti-innovation zealot." statement got modded to score 5:Insightful.
Or how about Chicago, New York, Vancouver, Toronto, etc?
-Medgur
I think that stem cell research would have been a far better example of the current administration's disconnect with modern science. Already, stauch Bush supporters and anti-abortion crusaders like Orrin Hatch have recognized the potential that stem-cell research offers. Nevertheless, Bush is stalling on the issue and is likely to render a decision that is detrimental to the scientific community--putting him in conflict with over 75% of Americans.
The fact that Europeans acknowledge the importance of global warming does not, in any way, indicate that they are more attuned to how science should affect policy. In fact, their irrational crusade against genetically modified crops, in spite of the fact that there is no evidence supporting thewir health and environmental concerns, is no less a product of ignorance than Bush's reluctance to acknowledge global warming.
The simple fact is that both conservatives and liberals will deliberately remain ignorant of scientific facts for the purpose of pandering to their constituencies.
Lenny
ByteMyCode.com: A Web 2.0 code sharing community.
that's such a ridiculous convetion. I'd like to mod down this article for even mentioning it.
Did anyone ever think that we didn't sign it - not because restricting pollution is a bad idea - but because the protocols themselves aren't very good at what they do?
would you rather be the industrialized nation that approved the wholesale sale of pollution rights in third world countries?
that's right. the kyoto protocol exempts developing nations from pollution restrictions. If you were worried about the way we exploit the third world now, think about the ramifications of allowing a developing government to -sell- the rights to pollute in the very areas that thus far have been protected from pollution through their lack of industrialization.
And who exactly -has- ratified or acceeded to the kyoto protocol?
http://www.unfccc.de/resource/kpstats.pdf
A sizeable list of developing and third world countries has acceeded to be sure, but -missing- more prominantly alongside the US is: Denmark, Germany, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and many others.
So do think maybe it's a matter of propaganda and presentation that there was a 'bonfire' set by our declination of Kyoto?
Sure, the rest of the world tends to hate america - but lets at least look at facts before we accept the sensationalism presented on TV.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Just go to a country with extreme poverty and ask them if you can put in a big factory that will pump soot into the air and poision all the water around, but everyone will have enough food to eat and be able to afford a house to sleep in.
When your family is starving, even the short term solutions start looking pretty good.
I demand a million helicopters and a DOLLAR!
And why exactly should we expect everything to stay the same? I know humans tend to like things that are familiar and predictable (sitcoms and Hollywood garbage are proof of this), but that doesn't mean we can force natural events to be convenient. One key concept that is often lacking in all of these discussions is that we have been trying to (and succeeding at) keep terrestrial events nice and constant. We keep the forests from burning down, we keep the rivers from overflowing their banks, we keep the coastline from eroding. What we don't realize is that this artificial constancy interrupts natural cycles, resulting in catastrophic forest fires, massive flooding (the Mississippi is overdue for a significant course redirection because we want it to stay where it is), etc. Change happens.
Global warming alarmists often take the same position - everything isn't staying the same, so we're in trouble. The problem is, how do we know what is normal? As individuals, we have a very short memory. As a society, our memory isn't much longer, and detailed records only go back 100 years or so. Beyond that, we have to rely on our interpretation of various written information and geological evidence to piece together what we believe to be long-term patterns. These can help us to understand long-term changes, but applying this information to short-term changes can be a bit tricky. We don't know what the future will bring, and we know much less than we think we know about the past, so calling any short-term change "abnormal" is a position that is difficult to support.
So where does this leave us with environmental protection? We should start with the small things and work our way up. Instead of trying to combat global warming, we should be trying to reduce emissions because of the problems we are more sure of (smog, acid rain, groundwater contamination, health concerns, etc.). By dealing with what we are fairly sure we are contributing to first, we can move on to better understand the more complicated issues like the heating/cooling cycles of the planet. When we can properly define what a "normal" temperature change is (and over what period of time to measure it), then we can try to determine if we are the cause of the abnormality (again, change happens, and humans aren't responsible for all of it). As it stands now though, we cannot say with any certainty whether the short-term change in temperature over the past century is "normal" or whether it is a result of human activity.
Perhaps it's not modded up because it mischaracterized the findings of the NAS. The NAS most emphatically did not agree on the global warming issue.
If you simply look at the actual report (rather than the press kit summary), you will see that they said there is no consensus and no certainty concerning the conventional wisdom of CO2 causing catastrophic global warming.
Here is what the NAS actually said:
That's from page 1 of the report. If you click here you can order a copy the 28-page report yourself. As shot as it is, the word "uncertain" or "uncertainty" appears 43 times.
Or you can go here and read how two actual participants in the study reacted to the massive distortion of their findings by the global-warming crowd and their cheerleaders in the media. It's loaded with actual facts about the NAS findings, something the global warming debate could use a lot more of.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
The earth was here long before we came along, and will probably be here long after we are gone. It has suffered far more intensly devestating events than global warming. I may be somewhat worried about us, but the earth is going to be just fine.
Colomb
http://www.sit.wisc.edu/~amcolomb
I mean, isn't the biggest risk of a nuclear war the 'nuclear winter' from all the dust kicked up? Global warming getting to you? Set off a couple dozen nukes, kick up enough dust to cool the planet off. Yeah, I'm being a little sarcastic.
The point that people are trying to make is that we don't have enough data. We know that the earth has been hotter (time of the dinosaurs), and colder (ice ages). Meanwhile, we only have a couple hundred years AT MOST of accurate data for much of the world. These temperature cycles last for thousands of years.
As for even vast changes, if it's less than a couple degrees a decade, humanity as a whole will adjust. The equator might be largely abandoned. Siberia might become the next breadbasket. Ancient civilizations rose and fell on climatic changes.
As for the New Zealand problem. Sure, regulate CFC's. I seem to remember that there was a thorough study for that. But there the causation is understood better. The ozone layer absorbs UV, which is a known cause of skin cancer. There's a measurable hole/weakening of the ozone layer in the area. Decompositions of CFC's are detected in the area of the ozone loss. Volcanoes were also looked at as a possible cause, if I remember correctly.
Firethorn
I don't read AC A human right
There are perhaps two climatologists with tenure at top universities who like to get quoted in the business press about the limitations of scientific knowledge and the supercomputer models used to track and predict climate. They may be sincere; they may be whores. Some of the rest of the field may be whores too. But not the whole field, about 98% of which, by conventional measures of who gets called a 'scientist,' agree we have a tremendously serious threat.
Just curious, where do you "science is whatever it's convenient for me to believe, I burn a lot of gas, I want to believe I'm innocent" folks get your misinformation? And are you all regular /.ers - who seem generally aligned to rational, even deep discussions of science and technology premised on the truth of natural law and the reality of evidence - or is there some IRC channel where the 'global warming: myth' crowd gets their latest action alert to go to /. or wherever and moderate each other's nonsense up?
Sorry about the trolling, but jeeze y'all are doing way too much of it too.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
And at the same time the U.S. government chides the E.U. all the time for subsidizing European farmers because that's "unfair for American farmers"
What a lot of people don't realize is that the earth will, over the long run, correct itself.
If humans heat it up too much, diseases, storms, droughts, etc, will eventually kill off a lot of people, reducing the heat they produce, and cooling it off.
10,000 years ago, people were probably concerned about global warming too, when the land bridges between alaska and asia started being covered with water again, among other massive changes in climate.
It's all a great big cycle.
It's just a theory, and as such has yet to be conclusively proven
Yes, just like the theory if evolution?
put forward fictionally in the book
I added the bold, no other comment is necessary here.
As another poster pointed out, we will not destroy the earth, no matter what we do. However, we may not. Environmentalists need to realize that most people dont really give a damn about the earth itself (just look out your window while driving some day, youll see more trash in a couple miles than there is in most town dumps).
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The ivory tower has never had to reach so h
Some coal/natural gas burning facility somewhere has to burn more coal and create more emissions there to keep your car running
Granted, but it is easier to control the emissions at a few large plants, rather than in millions of individual cars...
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The ivory tower has never had to reach so h
> Ask a dinosaur what it was like to have his
.033%v/v to about 0.043%v/v. (30% increase, which is an arbitrary increase I've made up)
> atmosphere altered.
An asteroid strike or severe volcanism doesn't rank up there with increasing CO2 content of the air from
Remember than methane is about 100x more potent a greenhouse gas as CO2. Since methane composes 2 ppm v/v (0.0002%), a 30% decrease in methane (to 1.6 ppm v/v) will result the same effect as a the increase in CO2.
How do we decrease methane? We all become vegetarians and get those pollution spewing cows and goats off the farms! Digestion processes of herbivors and of decay of organic matter (usually in swamps) are the two bigggest sources of methane.
Ban the cow. Open hunting season on wild goats and sheep. And fill in all the swamps. There is a recommendation for all you bleeding hearts who insist that Mother Earth's temperature should be kept from changing.
-AD
Hmmm, I'd rather deal with the combustion products of tetraethyl lead than the huge amounts of benzine vapours given off from petrol stations.
I'd also take my chances with them instead of the highly toxic hydrogen sulphide that catalyst-equipped cars produce.
There's only a tiny amount of lead in leaded petrol. Even the leaded petrol that piston-engined aircraft use (which is actually called 100LL, the LL standing for "low lead"). Lead's pretty common stuff, it's in damn near everything since the Industrial Revolution...
We are currently coming out of an Ice Age, caused by the interposition of dust between us and the sun. The Earth's orbit shifts over time, being rather complex, and part of this is that the plane of the ecliptic wobbles up and down.
The current wobble is taking us away from the clouds of dust, so in a few thousand years, the Earth will be warmer, and we will have far fewer meteor showers.
Using unleaded petrol or demanding cycle lanes all over isn't going to help.
In a way that seems kind of bogus. Like saying "your country doesn't have many cars, so your cars can belch as much pollution as you want them to." These kinds of rules ( assuming that's really what it says ) will only serve to cause countries that are not heavy polluters now to become heavy polluters. Who wrote that accord anyway? Who paid them. Who is paying for their vacations now? Could it be that some world wide politics came into play in drafting the accord? ( I can almost hear the World Bankers, "We have invested 20 Billion dollars in Bangladesh. If we can push these pollution laws through Bangladesh will be the only country in the world where air conditioners can be made...")
I tend to only believe about a small amount of what I read in the popular news media. I'm quite skeptical that the long term world wide climate is being significantly changed by our pollution. And I laugh at anyone who will suggest that some forest fires someplace were cause by global warming. Did this years climate cause a fire or prevent one? Who is to say? How can anybody know?
Kevin
"They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"-B.Franklin
You misunderstand me. I do not use the word belief to mean blind faith. I simply mean the state of being convinced of something.
Where we agree is that on this issue people's beliefs should be based on scientific evidence rather than a gut feeling or other factors.
There's a whole area of philosophy which deals with how we know what we know and how certain we can be of it. You yourself say that science is "our vision of truth, as close as we can get it". Sometimes science brings along a change so radical that it completely alters what we thought we knew ("the world is round not flat", "the earth goes around the sun"). So I think that using the word 'believe' is often more appropriate than 'know' - even where we are discussing scientific conclusions based on evidence.
To quote Obi-Wan Kenobi "Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view"
I'm not really disagreeing with your underlying point but you need to understand that faith can be based on evidence as much as it can be based on nothing or wishful thinking.
I agree with nearly all of what you've said.
However I think Jon Katz actually raising the issue of belief is a key one. Until people believe the problem is real they won't be motivated to make the changes, or influence their governments to make the changes.
I think global climate change is such an important thing that cannot be leave out of consideration by every individual on Earth. Of course especially who lives in developed countries (the US 4% percent of total population responsible for 25% of total CO emission).
Unfortunately I dont see the knowledge of individual responsibility especially in so called consumer societies. A good example: in the US an average car has a 2+ litre engine and uses lots of unsufficient gas while emitting additional unsufficient CO. Engineers know since a long time to move a car efficiently no more needed than 55 horsepower...
Another thing is the issue of alternative sources only Germany not the whole EU (which comparable to the US) produces more wind power than the US.
So these things makes me really angry and the worst of all is, that all I can do is to writning into this topic.
Is it right? Not?
I have not seen any good evidence to convince me that melting icecaps will lead to major increases in sea level. It is a common science experiment for kiddies to put ice in a glass of water, mark the water level, and wait for it to melt. Even though part of the ice was above the water level, the sum level remains unchanged after the melt, because frozen water traps air. The volume of air in the ice was equal to the volume of ice above the water level, and the volume of water in the ice was equal to the volume of ice below the water level. Thus, no net change.
As far as I know, the Arctic ice caps are free-floating, and are therefore subject to the same effect as the ice cube in the glass -- when (if) they melt, there will be virtually no change in aggregate sea level. The Antarctic ice caps are a different story, resting as they are on a big chunk of land. In the case of the Antarctic ice melting, the sea level will rise with a volume of however much ice is being displaced by the land.
Here's the unfortunate part -- no one knows or agrees on an estimate of how much ice is displaced by the Antarctic land shelf, and consequently how much water volume and height would be added to Earth's oceans if they melt. I've heard estimates ranging from 6 inches to 220 feet of sea level change. (I've only heard of Waterworld type sea elevation changes in, you guessed it, Waterworld) Does anyone have real figures or calculations of this sort?
Another factor is that it is unlikely that the entire ice cap will melt. And nigh impossible that it will happen all at once, as doomsayers picture, with massive sudden flooding of coastal cities. If the melting reaches critical point, people will notice that they're splashing in salt water in the street in plenty of time to move.
Well, I'm glad I was able to start a tiny discussion, unfortunately most of you who responded chose to call me names instead of making valid points. Luckily, there are a few intelligent people that actually came up with valid arguments.
1. What to do with dead batteries.
2. Emissions are just switched from the car to the power plants.
3. Limited range of batteries
4. Batteries don't work well in cold
I have been reading about GM's electric car. According to them, their batteries are 98% recyclable. And here is a quote from their environment page:
The EV1 helps contribute to a cleaner environment. In California, for instance, there are 97% fewer emissions with the EV1 than a conventional gasoline engine -- this includes the electricity-generating emissions from the power plant. Also, when you use electricity at night to charge the EV1, it actually helps power plants operate more efficiently because of power plant load leveling.
That leaves limited range, and battery performance- both of which are strong arguments. But for those people who only need a car to get to work every day, an electric car seems like a step in the right direction- certainly better than gas cars.
What I don't understand is why we don't have electric cars yet. No emissions, no high gas prices. Is it because of the influence of oil companies? lack of electricity (ex. rolling blackouts)? I just don't get it. Environmentally it makes so much sense- unless there is some huge problem with electric cars I am missing.
I guess you missed the part where Bush said he was for doing something about "global warming". He killed Kyoto because that treaty sucked. It was not global. It didn't include the future powers like China and India. It was a bad treaty.
An ever better film was Silent Running. Starred Bruce Dern as a caretaker of the last remaining plants of earth (apparently no longer required on earth). Cute robots, nice 70's message.
We were paralyzed because we have no equipment or experience dealing with snow. For our northern friends, if I point out that the city was literally "on hold" with Police warnings not to leave your home because of dangerous road conditions for three days, and then add that we got 1/4 inch of snow, they'll laugh their butts off. The problem is that everything is slanted here for water runoff, and all those overpasses and bridges all froze and we had no way to remove the ice, short of waiting for the sun to do it on its own. We tried to borrow de-icing equipment, but cities north of us who had it, were USING it, understandably.
If things start to get too warm we can cheaply fix it then. Edward Teller, father of the H bomb, had some suggestions along this line a few years ago. Essentially send up fine particles into the upper atmosphere just like a volcano. Or maybe by then then we'll have an even simpler more reliable solution using nanotech.
I don't know about anyone else, but personally I don't care if 100% of the "people on the street" believe whatever about a complex scientific issue. Without a lot of study and some minimal level of comprehension of the relevant science involved, all they are doing is parroting TV or People magazine or whatever.
If the stats were based on surveys of atmospheric physicists and climatologists, then maybe the stats would be relevant.
"That's not even wrong..." -- Wolfgang Pauli
There's much gratification in driving a car.
US citizens are most dependent on driving cheap
used cars, that produce gobs of toxins and CO2.
Nobody has given up cars in LA, tough the pollution
and smog problems are more prevelant, than global
warming, yet people are unable to deal with
the smog problem in such small area.
Who says that the rest of US will be able to
afford a new car with 80MPG or electrical one?
There too many poor uneducated, highly arrogant
citizens in US that would die giving their car
before their neighbour and/or friend.
Only luck or real deaths that are DIRECT consequence of
car usage will be able to evolve this problem into
something more appealing to public. Even then,
public is highly resistive to any studies and
results of them, because Sciencentific process
has been abused so much in US in name of mighty
buck. Truth is lowered quality of air is already
contributing to ever increasing cases of athma and
heart problems.
as usual, jon katz doesn't have a clue what he's talking about, as evidenced by the first paragraph, but what i want to talk about is global warming. there is a theory that global warming is our friend. according to the geological model of the earth's evolution (as opposed to the astronomical model), we should be in the middle of an ice age. the beginning of that ice age corresponds nicely with the advent of human civilization, and global warming. it appears that global warming is in fact staving off that ice age. of course, the real problem is what happens when we reach the downside of our ice age, but since that's a couple thousand years away, who cares. of course the real problem with runaway global warming is not the melting ice caps (that's just an inconvenience), but ocean temperature. marine botanists can tell you that if the ocean temp raises by 10 degrees the plankton dies, which means no more oxygen, which means no more life. but not to worry, the earth will be fine, it doesn't need life to survive, so you can ignore all that save the earth bull.
1)Since america is a large country, people drive long distances. Petrol is very cheap in the US compared to the UK. SUVs also seem to be very popular
2)The government seems to offer few incentives to save energy.
3)Laziness
4) Scepticism
Though there is concencus among scientists that global warming is happening, and a look at the facts will probably lead you to realise we are the main cause, many people deny it is happening at all. I consider this an incredibly small minded and dangerous attitude.In the UK, children are taught about global warming and the scince behind it in Geography lessons at school, does this happen in the US?
coincidentily, Radio 4 had a programme last night about attitudes to energy conservation in the US. They offer a 'listen again' service over the web, so you can listen to the programme in Realaudio format hereSorry about the programme link, It's not been uploaded yet. An article about the programme is here and on that page (left side) there are links to realaudio versions of some of the interviews from the show.
The emerging exception appears to be global warming, which Americans are suddenly very worried about.
Possibly, but I bet most of those worries go something like this:
Gosh it's hot. Maybe I should wear shorts today. But then what if it cools down later on? Hmm...
Kill, Tux, kill!
The other view of the argument is held by those who are not only offended by the environmentalists' dire, premature predictions but appalled that our children are encouraged to accept them as gospel. Therefore, you have doomsayers relying almost completely on emotions arguing against otherwise logical people whose emotions are inflamed. Hence, the discourse is passionate, and not because there is some new melding of science and politics.
From my point of view, if you can't tell me what the temperature will be two weeks from Tuesday, don't tell me what it will be in 50 years. And remember, in the 70's we were warned about the global cooling that was soon to destroy the planet.
I agree with you in that knee-jerk "oh wow things are screwed lets fix everything NOW" reactions are bad. (Not to mention how Hollywood beats you over the head with it)
In this case however, one would be hard pressed to dissprove the fact that our planet is getting 'worse'... quickly. Take a look at weather pattern maps, forest belts moving northwards, arid/desert zones expanding. Or right outside your window; when I was a kid, Southwestern Ontario could count on at least 2-3 ft of snow for Christmas. I can't remember when the last time we've had more than 6-10 inches on the ground at any one time - not for 5 years at least.
Yes, you're right; The Earth is a crazy everchanging planet. And yes, 100 years is but a blip in the history of this rock. But what a 100 hundred years it has been. There's usually thousands to millions of years between ice-ages; more than enough time for the planet's ecosphere, flora and fauna to adjust.
Not in this case. Like the meteor that could have wiped out the dinosaurs, humans learning to use their opposable digits (or whatever other marker of sentient presence you prefer) was the impact of the Human blight. The reprocussions have just taken a few thousand years to manifest themselves. But thats still pretty small on the Earth's timeframe.
Nope, we've started something that I don't think we can stop. Whether Manhatten will be submerged under 1000 ft of water, well thats up for speculation. But if we're going to start fixing things, we have to act now.
"Twenty-five signatures turns the most frightful stupidity into an opinion" -Kirkegaard
I live the the midwestern region of the United States and can give you INDISPUTABLE EVIDENCE of global warming within hours of my home. Look at the plains. Look at the rivers. Look at the moraines across Illinois and Wisconsin. This whole area was covered by a large sheet of ice only a short time ago (in geological terms).
The Earth has been getting warmer over the last million years or so. What about global erosion? I can show you Devil's Tower in WY where they have lost 1,200 feet of elevation over this same period.
Of course, no one wants to hear about this kind of cycle because it can't be blamed on Republicans or big business.
The liberals should just lobby congress or the UN to pass a law telling the Earth to stop changing. We like it the way it is. Stop climate change! Stop the axis wobble! Stop evolution and extinctions. We must protect the planet! Forget the fact that it was here long before us and will be here long after the last human is dust.
Viv
-----------
Viv
Gmail invites for ip
Think about the time scales involved here. The Earth has existed for at least 5 billion years. There has been animal life for at least 100 million years. Ice Ages come and go in cycles of around 20,000 years. For around 5000 or so years, we humans have been able to record history. For around one hundred years, we have been able to take accurate (by modern standards) temperature readings.
So, we are basing global climate change forecasts on a sample that represents 2% of recorded history, and less than 2/3 of 1% of the periodicity of Ice Ages. Am I the only one here who thinks this sample is just a bit too small to make accurate predictions?
Goto Google, type in "UHIE" or "Urban Heat Island Effect". Tada! *Still* unrefuted (haven't seen a good write-up against it) proof that "Global Warming" is the "Troll of the 20th Century".
I don't know what specific question they asked, but in general polls like this are totally useless. Why? Because they ask questions in the format "Would you like X to happen?" without ever exploring any of the costs involved. Of course two-thirds of Americans believe, when asked in the abstract, that we should reduce emission of greenhouse gases. But get down to specifics and I guarantee you would see the numbers change.
The poll question I want to see would be something like this: What steps are you willing to take to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 20%? (Check all that apply.)
A. Pay $5/gallon for gas
B. Take mass transit to work (or carpool) twice a week, every week.
C. Raise taxes by $1,000 per person per year.
D. Cut home energy consumption by 20%.
I'm making up the specifics, obviously, but my point is this: Questions that ask people to indicate whether they'd like a particular benefit without making reference to the tradeoffs involved are pointless. And I bet that when you start making people realize that nothing comes for free, their opinions will change -- fast.
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
It's not really a matter of what one "believes", is it? I mean, either we change the climate and the ice caps melt or we don't. "Believing" one way or another is just ignoring the evidence before your eyes.
Lets face it, most people follow the "see no evil - hear no evil -- well I guess there's no evil" philosophy. Aids didn't even get recognized as a problem until started effecting the general population. When the problem is clearly visible and starts costing us money then people will believe. Too bad we have to wait for it to become a problem before doing something about it.
Willy
Expensive equipment that may not affect a problem that may or may not result in the extinction of the human race.
My joke got modded as Insightful and my insight got modded as Funny.
beleive that these "scientists" can predict climate changes over 100's of years when they can't even accuratly predict what the weather is going to be next week. Also if you go back about 30 years, these same "scientists" were predicting an ice age in the next 100 years. So what is it, is the earth heating up or cooling down, or neither and the govt jerks just need a new hobgoblin to scare the sheep.
Its nothing new that we as a civilization will die off eventually. We are only hastening our own demise with our culture (whether you believe in global warming or not). Things are constantly being destroyed and created. In the words of the prophets "They Might Be Giants": "Time marches on"
-dr. layyze f. tooth PhD
I was reading something a few weeks ago about how Neanderthal man died out in Europe. The popularised belief that homosapiens went around slaughtering them by the thousand for no reason has been accompanied by a theory. This theory states that the Neanderthal's couldn't adapt to drastic climate change. We (homosapiens) being more advanced in tools and mind adapted to the enviroment change. The problem with global warming is that it is 'global'. 'Heading north' cannot ensure a better climate.
:-)
Take for example the UK. The UK gets some heat from the Atlantic Conveyor. If this stops it gets colder. Some research shows that it is slowing. If it stops it will be colder, yet global warming may increase the temperature. With such variables it is impossible to tell how everything will pan out.
The BBC Scitech news bar was running a story about how in 50 years there may be a ring of smog surrounding the Earth. (A search should find the story)
Talking specifically about Bush. I don't know why people were surprised about the decision to pull out of Kyoto. The US would not have ratified the treaty. Bush did the world a favour be not pissing about. We also shouldn't forget about the money that Oil Companies paid his campaign.
A better question for a survey would be:
"Do you approve of the direction in which current enviromental policy is heading?"
The problem with these types of surveys are that they rely on people who in general either no nothing or learn everything from the media.
BTW if Neanderthals suffered during climate change maybe it will be the politicians turn next
Would you mind elaborating for me, or will this vague response have to suffice?
Finder of the any key.
Maybe Global Climate Change is a better term. Even as the earth does get warmer, a degree or so either way isn't something we're really going to notice - daily variations tend to be much greater anyway. What we do notice is the weather systems getting screwed up as a result of the small rises knocking the established systems out of whack.
Over the last year or so, we've had the atlantic weather systems reverse themselves; a weather front set itself up over Europe, all summer long, so the north didn't get a summer and the south stayed in the 100s (40s in C); the Mississippi has taken to flooding regularly; Southern California, as opposed to its usual 5 days of rain hardly stopped raining from January through March; and then there's South America that seems to go from one weather related disaster to another.
I'm sure a load of people who know the subject far better than I [or at the very least are convinced they do] can offer other explanations. All I'm attempting to show is that Global Warming [assuming it exists] wouldn't be something that's visible by "Oh cool, extra beach days," but by that extra degree or two screwing up the weather in general.
One observation is El Niño, which commonly drenches the west coast with torrential rains, is a shifting weather pattern caused by "global warming", however, the rainfalls of 1998 were less than during a 4 year period in the late 1800's.
What I believe is there is a connection, like applying more heat to a mug of coffee increases the brownian motion. The downside isn't flooding low areas (Washington DC is one of them) by melting ice caps, but how unpredictable climates will play havoc with agriculture. Perhaps some good ol' genetic engineering will provide us with grain which can survive in anything and taste almost as good as fricaseed cockroaches.
-- .sig are belong to us!
All your
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Fill your bathtub near the top and place a large chunk of ice on the edge so that it's above the water level (like the antarctic ice cap). Now mark the water level and let the tub sit overnight.
Did the ice melt? Did you notice that you had to mop all that water off your bathroom floor.
I try to be skeptical whenever I read or hear anything anymore, so my fundamental answer is: We don't know enough yet to make a decision.
However I do tend to lean towards the "Don't believe it" side for several reasons.
First and foremost, what data we have doesn't go back far enough to really make a case for global warming. We have recorded variations in the O-zone layer for what, thirty years tops? Its not even a blink of an eye in the life of the earth. We have recorded temperatures for 3-5 hundred years? Not even a noticable fraction of the life of the earth. So how then can we say that we know what changes are happening to the earth.
Secondly, (is that a word?) even if there is a marked change in the global climate, we can't be sure that a) its not "natural", or b) we caused it. aside(I put natural in quotes because I don't think we really understand this term yet. By definition we humans come from nature, so shouldn't anything we do be considered natural? Even buildings could be natural if you relate this to termites or wasps that build nests, but we could argue that for hours.)end aside As someone previously mentioned, the earth goes through changes and cycles that we don't yet understand, so why do we automatically assume that anything that happens is our fault?
Thirdly, (um, I think) we have not proven that we even have the capability to change the climate in this way. Volcanoes erupt all the time, spewing massive volumes of noxious chemicals into the air, many of which are greenhouse gasses. I have heard (though I don't know for certain) that Volcanoes emit more greenhouse gasses that the human race has ever produced in its entire existance. Still, we see no effect on the atmosphere or on the ozone layer.
Fourthly (I'm still not sure those are words) The earth is not an isolated system. The earth is involved in a larger (solar) system. Do we really understand the role and cycles of the sun and how it affects the earth? Not just with light and energy, but sun spots, solar flares, and a strong magnetic field among other things. We are NOT alone, and the truth may or may not be out there.
Lastly, The people that always speak the loudest about whatever crisis is going on are the Hollywood folks. C'mon, they're actors, of course they're going to make it sound like a big deal. It their jobs! But seriously, I wouldn't go to Meryl Streep for brain surgery or to get my teeth cleaned, and I'm sure as hell not going to let her tell me what food is safe to eat, or if the world is going to end.
I think we should watch our consumption of fossil fuels. This is only common sense, as it is a limited and valuable resource. We should curb our polluting. (I don't wanna breath smog, how about you?) But this is for OUR benefit, not to "Save the Planet!"
As usual, everything stated here is my opinion, and not subject to be taken seriously.
Zeus_tfc
"...At the end of the day"..."when everyone goes home, you're stuck with yourself." RIP Layne Staley
Everyone knows global warming is a conspiracy hatched by the Canadian Tourism Board to boost tourism by turning Manitoba into "Mazatlan North". Damn Canadian winters.
It's possible, but this topic thread may have generated the lowest SNR ratio of any Slashdot topic I've ever read. Thanks, Katz! Starting the discussion off with a public-opinion survey of a scientific topic is like filling the kiddie pool with kerosene and handing Junior a Zippo. Massive flamage occurs, and it's not so good for Junior, either. Is it possible to moderate Katz' post as Flamebait?
But what does my opinion matter, I just vote here. It's not like I have any money or anything.
Oh yeah, and the heads of all those Euro-countries that are nagging President Bush about not signing the Kyoto agreement? The sum total of those countries who have signed is the square root of fsck all.
This is the same agreement that practically lets India and China off the hook, and they have a metric arseload of the world's population and a goodly chunk of pollution as well.
Okay, compared to some parts of the States, they're pikers, but really, the Kyoto Agreement was flawed to begin with. No, it doesn't make Bush much less of the corporate stooge he appears to be (or the puppet of Cheney, some would say), but Christ, at least get some facts straight.
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Okay, so you're so gullible to believe a politican, and so sheltered to be actually shocked by it? Come on, pols lie for a living. If they told the truth they wouldn't get elected. On the other hand, they have to keep their lies to a "believeable" level or they won't get elected either. Would you vote for someone who promised to get so much pork barrel money sent to his district that your dog would have a government job?
So, no it's not surprising that GWB is a lying sack of dung. But he doesn't deserve some of the stuff that he's being hit with. If Clinton had truly supported the whole drinking water thing, he would have signed it during his first term, when it came up the first time in his stay in office. And if the European leaders were so concerned about the Kyoto agreement, then they would have signed it and really made GWB look bad. But, golly gee... they didn't sign it either.
Why? Hrm... could it be because it lets China and India majorly off the hook for policing their own environmental problems? It may not be in the same league, exactly, as the USA, but it's getting there, and Kyoto would have done next to nothing to stop them. It is a flawed agreement.
Kierthos
(No, I didn't vote for Bush.)
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
This was a concern a few years ago (About 8-10) during the end of the Bush administration, and the beginning of the Clinton administration. People made a big deal about Earth Day, there was the bio-dome, and people worried about aeorsol, cfc's, and students had big enviromental programs in schools.
But the world stopped caring as much.
Now people are driving SUV's which use tons of gas, aerosol can's are very prevelent, all though some are now enviro-friendly, and people are less likely to recycle unless their city requires them to.
People are just waking up again to the possibility that there may be some enviromental implications of what they are doing. There will be a period of concern, hopefully changes will be made and things will be improved, but unfortunately, people will probably begin to forget again.
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
Why has not one country ratified the Kyoto treaty, if it is so good? Not one industrialized country has ratified this tready, because it treats them unfair, because the developing countries don't have to live up to the treaty, but they pollute many times more than the USA. We shouldn't have to ruin our economy so that the developing nations can just catch up to us (in an economic sense).
You are misinformed and naive.
First, there is NO land mass under the North Pole.
Second, even if relocation of those flooded out was not a problem (it would be), we do not know what would happen to global weather patterns. Not to mention if the volcanoes of Antartica were to be more active due to the lack of weight sitting upon the land mass.
--
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Jon, you aren't clear enough in your thinking to be writing stories for a major publication like Slashdot.
Bush's education improvements were
My guess is that, in number of person-hours spent reading, Slashdot is far, far more popular than Atlantic Monthly.
I agree A.M. is a respectable, likeable publication, but Slashdot gets READ.
I agree that Mr. Katz is in need of an editor. Every writer, no matter how skilled, needs an editor. Particularly people like Mr. Katz, who write before their thinking is clear.
But also, Mr. Katz is just not wise enough to write for Slashdot. Many of the people who post here write very well and have informed, carefully considered opinions.
Bush's education improvements were
Awww... does this mean that we won't see an X-Files show detailing how global warming is really a government conspiracy to hide alien crafts within pockets of darkness hidden by light refracted by carbon dioxide, sulphate and ozone clouds? Dang.
All this states is that the temperature is increasing FASTER than previously measured. I'm neither a scientist, nor a degraded scientist, but doesn't the glaciation cycle happen on approximately 100,000 year cycles?
If I understand the data I've seen (again, I'm no scientist), the climatological data appears to suggest that average global temps vary by as much as 12-15 deg F from min to max over these spans.
I think the current period is called the Holocene, and it started at the end of the last ice age - about 8700 BC. Since then it appears to have varied far more widely up & down than the current 'catastrophists' say would be terrible for the human race. Didn't we invent AGRICULTURE in that time period? I don't think that was so bad for us.
Are we polluting our atmosphere? Yes, of course. Is it changing short-term climate data? Probably, the same way if you exercise you raise the temperature of the room you're in. But it doesn't mean the house is going to fall down, either.
I just get the sense that the people screaming "GLOBAL WARMING" were the same ones who told us Petroleum would be exhausted by 1988, and we'd have 20 billion people living in starvation by 2000. As much as I care about the environment, it's hard not to get a severe case of the "cry wolf"ies when I hear these doomsayers.
Most of the things I mention are summarized at http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA194.html
-Styopa
That when the temperatures reached a certain point (global, not local) that the ice caps would begin to melt, and this would cool the oceans, causing the global temperature to drop, causing something akin to an Ice Age.
They stuck me in an institution, said it was the only solution, to...protect me from the enemy, myself
Bullshit, all of it!
Global warming is a rediculuous liberal myth propagated by elitest democrats in order to rob red-blooded Americans from obtaining their god-given right to pollute the shit outta the environment. The corrupt Democrats won't stop until we have a totally sterile facist police state where spitting or swearing is punishible by prision time. If I want to dump used oil down a storm drain, god damnit, I should be able to do it! My taxes helped pay for those storm drains, so what's the harm.
Have you flamed SpanishInquisition t
I believe global warming will balance out the temperatures of earth come the next Ice Age, at the end of which a nuclear winter will ensure a stable balance when the world starts heating up again. Or perhaps I'm just cynicle.
After I have received the wisdom of good teaching, I will untiringly teach all people. - The Teachings of Buddha
You moderators call this insightful and bump it up to +3? Since when does name calling give any insight into anything other than the author's immaturity? This pitiful example makes clear that the current slashdot system gives power to unscrupulous moderators bent on advancing their own agenda.
CO2 comes naturally from the respiration of all living organisms and from decaying vegitation. It is also injected into the atmosphere by volcanoes and forest and grass fires. Carbon dioxide from man made sources comes primarily from burning fossil fuels for home and building heat, for transportation, and for industrial processes. Hydrocarbons come from growing plants, especially coniferous trees, such as fir and pine, and from various industries. In the transportation area, hydrocarbons result from incomplete oxidation of gasoline. Both hydrocarbons and methane also enter the atmosphere through the metabolism of cows and other ruminants. It is estimated that American cows produce 50 million tons of these gases per year. Methane seeps into the air from swamps, coal mines, and rice paddies; it is often "flared" from oil wells. The largest source of greenhouse gas may well be termites, whose digestive activities are responible for about 50 billion tons of CO2 and methane annually. This is 10 times more than the present world production of CO2 from burning fossil fuel. Methane may be oxidized in the atmosphere, leading to an estimated one billion tons of carbon monoxide per year. But now this balance appears to be disturbed as CO2 and the other major greenhouse gases are on the rise, increasing their concentration in the air at a rate of about one ercent per year. CO2 is responsible for about one half of the increase. Analysis of air bubbles trapped in glacial ice and of carbon isotopes in tree rings and ocean sediment cores indicate that CO2 levels hovered around 260 to 280 parts per million from the end of the last ice age (1O,OOO years ago) till the mid-ninteenth century, except for anomolous rise 300 years ago. And these measurements also show that CO@ concentrations have varied widely (by 20%) as the earth has passed through glacial and interglacial periods. While today's 25% increase in CO2 can be accounted for by the burning of fossil fuels, what caused the much greater increases in the prehestoric past? The present increase has brought the CO2 level to 340 parts per million, up about 70 parts per million. If we add the greater amounts of methane hydrocarbons, and so forth, there is now a total of about 407 parts per million of greenhouse gases. This is large enough so that from the green- house effect alone we should have experienced z global warming of about 2 to 4 degrees F. But this has not happened. The observed and recorded temperature pattern since 1880 does not fit with the CO2 greenhouse woarming calculations. During the 1880s there was a period of cooling, followed by a warming trend. The temperatre rose by one degree from 1900 to 1940, then fell from 1940 to 1965, and then began to rise again, increasing by about .3 degrees F since 1975. And if the temperature
measurements taken in the northern hemisphere are corrected for the urban
effect - the so-called "heat island" that exists over cities due mainly
to the altered albedo from removing vegitation - then it is probable that
not only has there been no warming; there may have been a slight cooling. It
all depends on whose compouter model you choose to believe.
Clearly, there is still something that is not understood about global
conditions and about the weather links between the oceans and the atmosphere.
Have the experts fully taken into accountthe role of the sea as a sink or
reservior for CO2, including the well known fact that much more CO2
dissolves in cold water than in warm? The ocean hold more CO2 than does the
atmosphere, 60 times more.
The ocean covers 73% of the earth's surface. When people, including scientists
talk "global" it is hard to believe that they can ignore 73% of the globe,
but obviously they sometimes do.
Once agian, since the greenhouse gases are increasing, what's keeping
the earth from warming up? There are a number of possible explanations.
Perhaps there is some countervailing phenomenon that hasn't been taken
into account; perhaps the oceans exert greater lag than expected and the
warming is just postponed; perhaps the sea and its carbonate-depositing
inhabitants are a much better sink than some scientists believe; perhaps
the increase in CO2 stimulates more plant growth and removal of more CO2 than
calculated....The fact is, there is simply not enoough good data on most of
these processes to know for sure what is happening in the enormous, turbulent,
interlinked, dynamic systems like atmosphere and oceanic circulation. The only
thing that can be stated with certianty is that they do affect the weather.
A forest of young, growing trees will remove five to seven tons more CO2
per acre per year than old growth.
Mt St. Helens erupted with the force of more than 500 atomic bombs. Gases
and particulate matter were propelled approximately 15 miles into the
statosphere and above the ozone layer. More than 4 billion tons of earth
were displaced in about 12 hours after the volcanic eruption.
Because Mt St. Helens is relatively accessible, there were many studies
conducted and good data availible on the emissions. For the next seven
months of 1980 from the eruption on May 18, Mt St. Helens released 91O,OOO
metric tons of CO2, 22O,OOO metric tons of sulfer dioxide, and an unknown
amounts of aerosols into the atmosphere. Gigantic as it was, Mt St. Helens
was not a large volcanic eruption. Some estimates from large volcanic
eruptions in the past suggest that all of the air polluting materials
produced by man since the beginning of the industrial revolution do not
begin to equal the quantities of toxic materials, aerosols, and particulates
spewed into the air from the just three volcanoes:Krakatoa in Indonesia in
1883, Mount Katmai in Alaska in 1912, and Hekla in Iceland in 1947.
We can conclude from these volcanic events that the atmosphere is enormous
and its capacity to absorb and dilute pollutants is also very great. This
is no excuse, of course, to pollute the air deliberately, which would be
an act of folly. But it does give us some perspective on events.
GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE:HUMAN AND NATURAL INFLUENCES, edited by S. Fred Singer,
1989
Hansen, James E., 1988, THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT:IMPACTS ON CURRECT GLOBAL
TEMPERATURES AND REGIONAL HEAT WAVES
"Hansen vs. the World on the Greenhouse Effect", Science, Vol 244, pp1041-43,
June 2 1989
Broecker, Wallace S. and George H. Denton, 1990, "What Drives Glacial Cycles,"
Scientific American, Vol 262, No 1, p 48ff
THE 1980 ERUPTIONS OF MOUNT ST HELENS, Washington Geological Survey Professional
Paper 1250, Peter Lipman and Donald Mullineaux, editors, 1981
Maize, Kennedy, 1989, GLOBAL WARMING SCIENCE FLAWED?, Vol 17, No 109,9 June 1990
Global warming didn't start with the industrial revolution. It didn't start with the internal combustion engine. It wasn't invented by Al Gore. The current period of global warming started 18,000 years ago at the end of the 100,000 year long Pleistocene Ice Age. There isn't even an indication that the climate is getting warm by the standards of the last thousand years. There was a thriving Norse farming community in Greenland during the first half of the last millennium. The earth entered a period of colder temperatures and they died out. Read On
Watching Cowboy Bebop in my jammies, eating a bowl of Shreddies.
I don't drive an SUV, i drive an efficient FORD station wagon. why is it efficient? because it gets me where i need to go. the funny part is that SUVs have better fuel economy than my car. it's kind of funny that people argue over global warming where there's nothing that we can really do about it. what are we gonna do? stop driving cars? people say that we can make more fuel efficient cars, so what? so we use 25% less gas? i don't see that making any big impact on global warming.
Only on country in the world ratified the Kyoto treaty, and that is Romania.
Where is France, Germnany, or England when it comes to putting their money where the mouths are?
NO WHERE.
Besides blaming Bush is a cheap shot and the liberals love nothing more than a cheap shot. Clinton could have pushed for it, but he never did. Remember, the Senate voted 98-0 TO NOT RATIFY. How can you blame Bush Jon? You can't with facts, but facts aren't what you or your type are interested in.
Most Americans might survey that they are concerned about Global Warming, but I bet 90% don't know any real facts about what it is or what causes it.
Apparently the left expects to use their only real strategy, repeat a lie until it becomes the truth, or is at least believed.
As for the A.I. reviews, it got just as many harsh ones as it got raves. It died because it doesn't connect with people, and that is the only review that matters.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
First of all, I am completely stunned by the staggering number of posts claiming to know more about our earth and climate than the bulk of the scientific community. Never before have I seen such a display of arrogant, ignorant bullshit.
Pull your head out of your ass and pay attention: There is comprehensive, undisputable, sound, scientific EVIDENCE that global warming is quite real and human activity caused it. You can choose to believe otherwise but then you'd be wrong.
But let's assume for a moment you DO choose to believe otherwise. That it's all just a big lie and the scientific community doesn't know what they're talking about -- would eliminating CO2 emmissions be a bad thing anyway? Of course not! We would have clean running automobiles, no more smelly coal fired power plants, no more acid rain, no more dependence on foreign crude oil, increased technical innovation, and a generally better and cleaner place to live.
So it seems to me we should respond to the threat of global warming. And even if it turns out to be a big hoax, we'll all be much better off anyway. If it's NOT a big hoax (and it isn't), then we can potentially save ourselves from a horrible and disastrous future.
I am in no way an expert, but the comment about "mean surface temperature" got me thinking. Ever been out in the middle of a parking lot when the sun is out? Ever sat under a tree on a sunny day? I think the ever-expanding human sprawl, which is where most people notice temperature, might have something to do with this whole warming thing. The ammount of pavement and lack of large groups of trees. I also seem to recall seeing a plot of these temperatures over a long time period and it goes up & down all throughout, and that the current worry was that it's climbing faster than normal, i.e. the slope is too high for you math folks. Well, so much for my 2 cents.
As I live in the Netherlands, like some 6 million of my countrymen (and I think I can include a couple million of Londoners as well) I would think this vastly preferable over seeing my home flood. So if the cost means a slight tax hike to me, I'll be happy to pay, even if it later turns out to be a false alarm.
Mart"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
"Facism is corporatism" - Mussolini
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
So far as I can see, the bulk of the evidence suggests the following:
Global warming is occurring, but we don't really know how fast.
Human activity appears to be a contributing factor. Some of the waste we produce will contribute to a warming of the atmosphere, but we don't know how much.
We have a lot to learn.My question is: why are we all standing around picking our butts? Either we are contributing to global warming or we aren't. Why take the chance? We have the technology to at least avoid screwing things up if the science proves correct. It's a nasty game of Russian Roulette, with potentially devastating global consequences. The worst part is, there is absolutely no need whatsoever for us to be playing this game (unless we believe Shell Oil, in which case we are damned fools for doing so).
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
The people that believe in the reality of global warming (or is that just "believe in global warming?") are the same people responsible for the silicone breast implant ban, for gut level reactions against electromagnetic emissions ("radiation") of all kinds, for the regulatory tolerance given to "dietary supplement" manufacturers selling products that from time to time turn out to be poison. And so on.
I'm all in favor of an educated and scientifically literate public, but I don't see how any scientific issue will ever get beyond the black and white banners of a "cause" in this country. Not today, not in the near future.
-joseph
Being the second stone from the sun is not all there is to Venus being so hot: Venus also has no moon. The moon is an extremely important factor in keeping the Earth's climate habitable. The moon doesn't cause tides in just the oceans, but it also causes a tide in the molten layer under the Earth's crust. This keeps the plates loose so that they can move around, and vast amounts of heat can escape from the center of the Earth around the boundaries of the plates in the form of volcanoes. This tidal action has allowed enough heat to escape so that the surface of the Earth has cooled enough in the past couple of billion years to allow the water vapor in its atmosphere to condense into oceans, which further moderates the temperature of the atmosphere via currents circulating around the cooler poles, the currents being assisted by tides caused by the moon. Carbon dioxide can be dissolved in the ocean, and reacts with calcium to form calcium carbonate, to precipitate out to make limestone. The addition of lifeforms which produce calcium carbonate (in the form of exoskeletons) further precipitates this process.
But poor Venus is lonely. She hasn't been able to shed her excess body heat because there is no moon to cause a tide to crack the surface so the heat can be released slowly and continuously through volcanoes. The heat slowly builds up, then every million or so years, the entire planet's surface just heaves up and boils over. This process hasn't let out enough heat so that the surface is cool enough to allow water to form, and even if it did, there is no tide to drag the water around to moderate the climate.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't be concerned about global warming if we want to keep living in the manner to which we have become accustomed. If not, Canada and Siberia will warm up enough to grow crops, the subtropics will become deserts, and we'll all have to pull up our stakes and head north. Global economies will shift, there will be wars (remember: real estate is the motive for ALL wars), then we'll get used to it. Then once we're out of stuff to burn for energy, or otherwise change our ways and reduce emissions, it'll cool off, Canada and Siberia will freeze back over, and we'll all head south once again. But we are by no means doomed. Unless we lose the moon.
Gasoline engines are ~20% efficient at converting fuel into energy. A modernized coal power plant can be 40% efficient, and all the smog can be localized to a point (the chimney), where scrubbers can remove the fly ash and sulfur dioxide and convert them into gypsum to be recycled into concrete. But you lose that efficiency by transmission line losses from the plant, then lose even further to charge batteries. A solution would be electric railways, but here in ass-backwards America, they are few and far in between 'cuz people gots ta have dere wheels.
Once again, it's time to point out that mankind is not destroying the Earth or its ecology, but may be playing a part in the rate of change. And probably a small part at that. Mankind has flourished probably because of the portion of the ecological cycle during which it evolved. We happened to hit it just right. We know that the Earth has been through various ecological cycles during which Man would likely not have survived. We may be noticing that our time in the sun (pun intended) may be fading, and that we may have to adapt to the changes to come. Maybe we will, maybe we won't. Either way, the Earth is going to carry on according to the unchanging rules of the Universe.
I'll state it again. Conservationists and environmental fanatics are not trying to save the Earth. They're trying to save Man. The Earth will still be here, and will still evolve according to the natural laws of the Universe, whether Man is here to witness it or not.
- Sig this!
Please read this article and find out about the real science the "mainstream" media is hiding from you. Among many interesting points: global temperatures may simply be tracking the fluctuations in the energy output of the sun.
I watch Brit Hume on Fox News
There just isn't any conclusive proof of humans having an effect on global warming. I used to attend Iowa State University as a physics major. When Freeman Dyson, whom some of you may have heard of, visited as a guest lecturer, us geek physics students got to have a Q&A session of our own with him. One of the big topics was global warming and his view was that there was a lack of accurate data so vast that nothing conclusive would be possible for a couple of centuries.
If you look at studies that have been done, most of them don't report any findings that conclude humans have had any effect, but environmental groups only tote the few that do.
Global warming may be partially caused by us and then again we may contribute 1% to what is just a cycle that we are a small cog in. I think it merits further study, but not immediate action and should definitely NOT be used as a boogeyman to scare our kids into hating large corporations.
--- Don't be a player hater: I meta-mod ALL negative mods as Unfair.
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Oh bother.
Global warming may come to the forefront of american politics, but not for the reasons specified. Maybe the weather has changed, but it's different year to year, and individuals are not very good at noticing slight changes in weather patterns. Penguins may be dying, but even the near extinction of the Bald Eagle never really caught the attention of Joe America (especially not enough to influence a presidential race). Melanoma is already the leading killer of young adults (23-39) in America, and every day people run to the beach to get a tan.
Presidential elections are influenced much more by the media and by taxes, and a news anchor running around spouting a doomsday theory (especially one that almost everyone has already heard) isn't going to draw much ratings. Even more than that, the average person has already heard so much about the greenhouse effect that many are resigned to a "there's not much I can do about it" position.
By the time American voters realize first hand that this is an issue, it's going to be too late. Subtle changes in the weather can have drastic effects. It certainly isn't going to take a 20 degree F change to melt the polar ice caps, and by the time the changes are significant for the average person to observe, it's going to be too late to reverse the effect in time to save Venice... or Manhattan, but that might be a good thing ;).
Art At Home
Why can't people stop with pollution without a reason. If global warming is 100% fake, then let's still cut car emmisions and etc.
How can we aford to pollute when we have no where else to go? Pollution of any kinda has a direct effect on nature, without global warming thrown into it.
If we were good in the first place, we wouldn't be in this situation now.
Instead we have people worrying about the costs to keep Global Warming at bay.
Get your Unix fortune now!
This is waaaay off-topic, but...
Civilisation is not always advancing. How about the Middle Ages?
The Middle Ages were not a backwards era, despite the common misconception that it was "the Dark Ages". There were countless new technologies and advancements that arose during that time (the 11th and 12th centuries in particular), which advanced civilisation. Do you assume that the much touted civilisation advancements of the Renaissance just magically appeared all at once as soon as the art and philosophical arenas began to flourish? Any advancement in any field is built on the shoulders of previous innovations and inventions, and it is naive to perpetuate the myth that the Middle Ages saw a continual decline of civilisation.
In fact, on a slightly more related note, there was a period of great civilisation advancement in the 12th century due to a favourable climactic change in Europe. The weather warmed considerably, allowing unprecedented crop fertility and a subsequent rise in population. This may have been a major factor in the urban revival, growth of commerce and industry, and cultural growth (new universities and centres of learning) of the High Middle Ages. If it hadn't been for the nasty little issue of the Black Plague that killed off an enormous part of Europe, perhaps the "rebirth" of humanism and culture in the Renaissance wouldn't have been necessary. The same "advancement" of civilisation would have already been underway due to the efforts of the Middle Ages.
I'd provide references for my assertions, but I don't carry my history books around with me everywhere. :-) Carry on with the global warming discussion now.
Well. I thought everyone already knew about global warming since it's been a top story here in Australia since the mid-eighties. Ever seen an aerial photograph of L.A. on a warm day? Just looks like a big brown fart. And you think that pollution from automobiles and factories might have something to do with it? Really? Woah... you guys are good!
Who cares if he is degreed or not. The documents that he is showing are from world class doctorates that have been working in their respective fields for decades, and have scientific proof to back it. There is no need to care about his degree. The truth of the matter is that you my friend are a naysayer, and are living in a world where blind hope is not going to solve these problems.
Global Warming is ridiculous. Or at least accepting it as fact. I can believe that over the past 20 years, data has been collected from a respectable amount of places all over the earth showing a slight change in temperature. However, what I cannot believe is that data has been collected in a large variety of places for 100 years. Maybe it has been collected in cities for 100 years, but so what. Cities are always getting warmer as they grow anyway. But I mean really! It is ridiculous to not think that there are going to be mild fluctuations in temperature on the planet. Anyways, I'm sure no one will listen to me..
Second, when we see (as we do) an anomolous increase in temperature, and when our best theories and computer models support the theory that these temperature increases are consistent with changes caused by greenhouse gasses, then it behooves us to take the very real possibility that the greenhouse effect is real into account as we determine how to address our energy and resource development policies.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
The comment I'm replying to here should not be modded -1. Please mod it up so it has the visibility it deserves
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
I supect the motives of those making Global warming a big issue. What do they propose? Do they ask that a way be found to remove CO2 from the atmosphere? No. Maybe we are already doomed by the CO2 already produced? If a way to remove CO2 could be found, Global warming would no longer be a justification for taking over the economy. Do they propose that a way be found to put out certain Chinese underground fires, that by some account kick out as much CO2 as the entire US economy? No. They propose that the CO2 production of the developed world be cut by xx percent. xx is between 10% and 30%. Does that mean that we will go to hell xx percent slower? Excuse me, less than xx percent slower, because the CO2 production from the undeveloped world will continue to grow. xx percent is enough to make the gatekeeper for the last xx percent into a vary powerful institution. Be the gatekepper national or UN officials. Historicly, there has been much more human suffering in the cold periods than the warm periods. Remember when Carl Sagan predicted disaster when the Kuwait oil well fires were started? Where is the disaster? Science has been politicized. I wonder if global warming is not a stalking horse for governmental control of the world economy.
There is a simple solution to all of this: find a way to make boatloads of cash from environmental protection activities.
I bet you there's a way to do it, too.
Most of the temperature increase was near the poles. I'm sure the people in Siberia are really complaning that the average temp has gone from 18 to 20 degrees over the past 50 years.
I'm not going to debate whether global warming exists or not, or whether actions by mankind can accelerate it or delay it. But I totally disagree that it will become an issue of any significance in US politics. What events could make people vote based on this issue? First, a strong perception that we are 'going to hell in a handbasket' This does not exist now, whatever the polls show, and probably will not ever occur, even if the predicted temperature changes occur. A half-degree per century isn't going to turn a lot of heads. Second, trade pressure from other nations. U.S. citizens have never voted out of fear of reprisals from abroad. I doubt they ever will. My own position is "what's the worst that could happen?" I don't expect everyone else to agree, but I don't see what's so bad about losing a few hundred square miles of coastland per decade, or drinking a bit more lemonade. Americans tend to react negatively to trade sanctions pointed at us, so that will not
I think it's safe to call X-files mainstream. They had an episode where remote-contolled nano-bots were injected into ... Mulder? Pretty sure it was him. So I think Hollywood has heard of them.
Nope, no sig
It's not like we just wave a magic wand and 'tighten our belts'. There are real financial and human costs involved. When the cost of energy goes us, everything goes up. Do you really want to pay more for gas for your car? Airline tickets? Heating your house? Shipping costs? (and what isn't trucked these days ...)When the factories that produce the goods that we all love (motherboards, hard drive, RAM and other less-essential items) are forced to install expensive equipment that may or may not affect a problem that may or may not exist, who is going to pay for it? Do you really think that those costs are not going to be passed on to the consumer?
If we have learned anything from the past ten years, it is this: when profits go down, people get laid off. Like it or not, it's a fact. This is the human cost I am talking about. Is it worth people losing their jobs over a problem we're not even sure exists?
Scientists are wrong, and wrong often. It's a part of there job. I should know, I'm planning on being one. Never base a belief on the number of believers, even if there suppose to be imformed ones. Always base it off of the evidence. As the evidence has been put forward in this discussion, it appears that global warming is not a big issue. Local air and water issues are of a much greater concern, and it appears that those must be protected. Smog is easy to see, and easier to deal with. Water pollution however is not, and thats were real danger lies. Ya, there's a lot of water, but only 2% is fresh, and most of that are in the ice caps.
Ok all the super knowlegable, and fasionably environmentalist can argue about what the causes are BUT what do you do to help? You recycle cans-good. How about paper, plastic, glass? Hell you know in Italy they even seperate dry goods from humids, like food scraps. Were does that go? Into the mulch, fertalizer for the farmers.
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
Global warming is flooding the planet, tropical diseases are spreading, cell phones are causing brain tumors and SUV accidents, high voltage power lines are causing leukemia in children and birth defects in cows, global cooling is bringing another ice age, killer bees are coming, fire ants are coming, kudzu will cover the South completely, Robert Byrd will pave over West Virginia completely, the ozone hole will give us all skin cancer and cataracts, excess UV light gives frogs excess limbs, chemical pollution gives frogs extra limbs, global warming gives frogs extra limbs, parasites give frogs extra limbs, genetic engineering will create a new supervirus that will kill us all and then give frogs extra limbs, all food gives you cancer and heart disease, the Doomsday clock ticks ... eventually. This is all true because I heard the reporters say that some scientists said it was true, and you don't get research grants by saying the weather is fine.
slowly towards midnight, we have only ten years to save the oceans, you are all gonna die, and all your children are gonna die
Global warming has been an issue for quite a few years... the government has known that CFC's were accelerating the greenhouse effect and changing the equilibrium since at least the 70's. The fact that many people know about this issue is not surprising.
Before Global warming was a rallying point, Nuclear weapons were the heady subject of the time [and they continue to be]. Previous to mass destruction, extinction processes and evolution were a much talked about subject[as they still are].
These issues aren't necessarily having people rear their heads and turn their ears and eyes toward science. Most people who know of these issues don't even consider them much more than trivial. The issues have been around for extended periods of time; hence public awareness. This has not been a quick or even recent process of understanding by mass culture. And it will never be so.
People like to live their lives within their shells... within their ecosystems and areas. When the river by your house is polluted, you become involved... when your kids are deformed by Agent Orange you gain interest... when the temperature is said to be increasing over amounts of time that it is indistinguishable from yesterday, people are aware of it but don't really care.
Alcohol doesn't affect your judgement as much if you know exactly where you stand.
'it should "fill in" precisely the volume displaced by the ice.'
...
I'm sorry but this is an incorrect assumption. The density of ice is less than water (hence ice floats in water). Density is defined as mass/volume. So you have two seperate density equations-
where i signifies ice and w signifies water-
m(i)/v(i) = d(i)
m(w)/v(w) = d(w)
since the mass is unchanged in this example-
m(i)=m(w)
therefore-
m/v(i) = d(i)
m/v(w) = d(w)
we know that
d(w)/d(i) > 1
therefore
(m/v(w))/(m/v(i)) > 1
m's drop out and
v(i)/v(w) > 1
or
v(i) > v(w)
this means that the volume displaced by ice is greater than the volume displaced by H20 at a higher temperature. Although it is a good point mentioned below that the ice is only displacing the water partially(floating).
Alcohol doesn't affect your judgement as much if you know exactly where you stand.
no the Archimedean law states that the amount of displacement of the water is equal to the volume of the object occupying it... we are talking about a change in the state of the water and a change in volume changing the water level... think about it. How are you going to argue with the pure common sense and simple derivation just given above?
Alcohol doesn't affect your judgement as much if you know exactly where you stand.
damn it... have you no brains, man?
the displacement is based on density... if ice were more dense than water it would displace more than in water form... nevermind you're never gonna get it
Alcohol doesn't affect your judgement as much if you know exactly where you stand.
My prediction: global warming will become the first issue of science and politics that captures the imagination of large numbers of American voters... They read that skin cancer rates are rising.
Well, the skin cancer rates are due all the CFC's eating the ozone layer, which was a pretty big deal a decade or so ago.
It's a good prelude the global warming battle, but an easier one - the scientific evidence was a lot more definitive, and not nearly as many industries were affected by the required solution ("Ban cfc's, use alternatives.")
--
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
- Nietzsche
"From of old, there are not lacking things that have attained Oneness." - Lao Tzu
First, I found it interesting the 35% of American's apparently believe global warming has a connection to forest fires. The more likely explanation is underbrush. It seems to me that our logging regulations have become so tight, that we can't thin out forests, even when failure to do so contributes to forest fires directly. Lots of close trees = very fast spreading fire. Logging regulations even prohibit logging companies from harvesting the trees that have burnt down due to these fires. The trees are dead and the wood can be used, but the environmentalists say "No way."
What we know for sure is that the earth is one degree warmer now then it was last century. What we don't know is why or if it matters. Man probably had played a role, but I don't think to the degree that it has been alleged.
I believe we should all do something to help the environment. I try to avoid getting a bag for my purchases wherever possible. One of the big problems is the amount of trash. Burning the trash would help, but people don't want to do that either. Burning would reduce the trash volume alot, and the ash could be used. They would rather bury it then smell the smoke. And people are unwilling to throw less away. People are environmentalist when it is a convenience. People protest about environmental action in other places, but never do it themselves.
We should have a minimum standard for gas efficiency for cars. Say 15 miles per gallon. Anything less then that in a non-commercial vehicle is either not allowed or taxed. That would help. Again, people are unwilling to give up their high gas consuming vehicles because it effects them. Environmentalist 'till it gets personal.
The Kyoto treaty is too restrictive, and I am glad we abandoned it, even though everyone is screaming at us. First, the rules would have really hurt the American economy. Rules that have minimal effect on a county like Andorra for example would have a more significant impact on a country a couple thousand miles wide. It would have disproportionately effected our ability to compete. We can be environmentally friendly and compete too. The two are not mutually exclusive. That is why I support America's decision to find our own environmental solutions.
I think the Bush energy plan is sound. We need more power plants. We need more oil. Americans demand power. But they want only clean power. Solar is ok, but can't supply our needs. Gas is great, but the environmentalists won't let us dig up the earth to lay the pipe. Nuclear is clean, but everyone screams because of the waste, even though there are ways to reuse the waster, which seems to also not be ok.
I am for the environment in balance. We can use the natural resources we have AND respect the environment. We can dig for oil and respect wildlife. We can cut down trees and have forests. The environment is not the end-all, be-all cause. It must be respected as part of a balance of goals, not as an absolute ideology.
Lawrence Lessig is my personal hero.
So what?
I'm not denying that ozone blocks UV. I'm not denying that there is a hole in the ozone layer. What I am decrying are the claims that we are the cause of that hole. There was a sizable hole in the ozone layer in the 50's - comparable in size, if not bigger than the hole that was detected in the ozone layer before we started "doing anything about it."
Sorry. I classify global warming in the same category as I classify the global epidemic of mad cow disease. It's a joke. James P. Hogan wrote a really good commentary on this called "Ozone Politics." It's a good read. You might be able to find it on his web site here.
So what if the climate is changing? There was an ice age not so long ago, remember? For some reason, I don't think that humanity's industrialized heat and waste output 100,000+ years ago had anything to do with warming the environment to what it is today. And what about the huge ozone hole detected in the 50's? Why don't we hear about things like this?
The reason is because the only information that makes the news is the information that supports a catastrophe. You can thank the media for that one.
So, while the rest of you whine about global warming and cover up, I'll be eating a nice hamburger made from european beef and afterwards I'll catch some rays on the beach.
(it goes down since unusually water 'H2O' expands when frozen)
I believe that this factor must be taken into account when dealing with seas rising ... (although land bound ice going into the sea is a worrying proposition!)
Being a geologist, there is only one thing I can say:
"As scientists, the only thing we can say is that there needs to be done a lot more research on this subject."
Don't take this as flamebait:
Any premature belief or conclusion is bound to become proven unjust:
- The enormous amount of relevant data has only been studied for a relative short time
- We cannot yet estimate the real changes in temperature like tomorrows weather
- A lot of seemingly small events can have large effects on the climate, and we know there are such events daily on earth
- Global climate has changed over time much more rapid and extreme than we can imagine
- The indicators that human life effects global climate are much less significant than autonomous global changes
to mention a few.
In short: believe in global warming is like trusting the newspapers!
"and forcing people to live lifestyles they haven't voluntarily chosen. "
Let's see, 90% of the wealth. 90% of people on this planet suffer famines, poverty, wars, and genocides and are forced to live livestyles they have not voluntarily chosen.
Kind of makes *your* problems seem rather unimportant when you look at the situation with a bit of perspective.
Let us know when you grow up...
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
They all preclude individual THOUGHT.
What exactly defines "air quality"? Is it a lab report? A set of chemical parts-per-million? A media story? A soundbyte from a science convention?
/you and I know/ who are exposed to higher levels of the stink are dying from cancer and all sorts of nastiness; now why in the hell would you need Time Magazine to tell you there's an air problem? The sciences and the scare tactics and the "global warming" chutzpah are all playing on the same team: They're all designed to distract us from the obvious, simple, straightforward problems at hand.
No, stupid, it's the AIR. Every human being on Earth ought, as a matter of simple survival, to know what good air and bad air is. So look outside, you idiots!! I can't believe all the time people waste with their heads buried in pointlessly-biased, fluff-ridden magazines debating about a substance that's right outside their door!
Is the air in bad shape? I DARE you to come stand in Detroit, where I live, or in any major urban area (many of which are worse) and say otherwise. Take a big burning gulp of that stink and try to tell me it's "scaremongering". An "intelligent" individual is not one with a degree, or one who watches Washington or listens to the Corporate News (or even the non-corporate news). It's somebody who LOOKS AROUND THEM and GETS AN IDEA about what's going on. If people were really paying attention to the state and quality of their environment, none of this would even be an argument. We got factories, things got stinky. We got cars, things got stinkier. People
I'll tell you what Global Warming is: IT'S A BUZZWORD. And like a million zillion other buzzwords, it's only there to make you go tingle-tingle-ooooh; Now I Know. And you don't, because you haven't actually *thought* about it for a bloody second. Sure, from a scientific perspective it does matter if the Earth's temperature is rising at an accelerated level; we all live here and we all have to deal with that. But from a PUBLIC perspective that's nothing but a smokescreen; whether or not the temperature is higher by an average degree is ABSOLUTELY MEANINGLESS to the public responsibility of decision-making. What matters is what you see -- Gawd, wasn't it just a few decades ago that we ridiculed the world's idiots with the taunt, "What, do you believe what you read, too?"
For pete's sake, stop being led by the nose! Go look outside! Watch the freeway traffic spill tons of black smelly cloudage into the sky, and then SLAP YOURSELF for ever wondering if there really was a problem, just because all the scientists and newspapers told you there might not be. Then turn that slap where it's needed: Slap some RESPONSIBILITY, some taxes, and some heavy regulations on the people responsible, from Ford all the way down to the idiot watering his lawn in California. Then, AND ONLY THEN, will this become a problem we can deal with.
Until then, *cough**cough*, I'll be outside, smoking a cigarette for some fresh air. -S.T.
If you believe in global warming, let me ask you this question: do you know global warming is happening? How do you know? Where are you getting your information? From the media? Where are they getting their information? From... scientists? Which scientists? Are politicians involved somewhere? Ok, out of all of those involved people, from the lowly scientist to the news person reporting that news, is every one of them an altruist? Are they all 100% trustworthy with no hidden agendas? Maybe most are. But it's naive to assume that all of them are all of the time. Humans havn't changed in thousands of years. And propaganda is the first tool of opression.
For every scientist who says global warming is happening, I can show you one who says it isn't. So who wins? the one with the most scientists? How smart is that? 1700 scientists signed the Kyoto treaty. How many didn't? Why? You never hear about that because the media has chosen to tell you only certain, carefully selected pieces of information.
What about statistics! You can't argue with statistics! If I polled 1000 college students and asked who they will vote for, what will they say? 1000 retirement home residents? 1000 caucasian people in an affluent shopping mall? 1000 inner city residents? Take your pick. Ready made statistics to fit your agenda.
The point is that no one can ever know the 100% truth. And anyone who says they can are fooling themselves. Even scientists make mistakes. All you can do is look at all the evidence together, from as many sources as possible, and make your best guess.
People, especially the american people, are sheep. Nothing more. And, for the most part, they ask the questions they're told to ask, and believe what they're told to believe, and vote accordingly.
Don't be a sheep.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
As a planet we have not had data for much more than 100 years regarding temperature on a mass scale. Knowing this actual fact how can one say that we know anything for sure about how the planet is heating up? Look at the "circumstantial data":
species migration
CO2 levels (which have never been this high when looking at ice core readings)
tree rings (which are a reliable source or temperature)
You find this: the planet is warmer at the present then it has been.
All it takes is some reading.
The problem is more analog. You see, you are a frog sitting in a pot that is slowly rising in temp. You'll die before you can realize that the water is about to boil.
You know the Microsoft destroys the night, Linux devides the day...
As a belligerent European who thinks that the leader of the world's most polluting country in the world should take his head outta his ass, I actually agree with most of Jon's points (such as they are).
Having not (as yet) seen Speilberg's AI nor fully understanding Jon's "nano-technology" references I was somewhat lost in a few of the points he was trying to make. However, when it comes to science as a driver for political debate, I'm surprised that everyone doesn't vote green. (I mean, come on ye self-serving bastards what about the other 4.99bln of us).
In less than three months, George "I oppose the Kyoto Protocol" Bush, has gained a reputation that would be the envy of the four equestrians of the apocalypse.
It is not only the Americans (some of whom I'm reliably informed did vote for him) that will suffer for this self-serving unilateralism, but also the 5 billion odd inhabitants of the planet who didn't have a vote. Bush, like the most spoilt child in the playground, has taken his ball away. Unfortunately, this is the ball we all live on.
If Bush can quote the type of science that believes the sun orbits the earth, and still be placed in front of ALL the buttons, then I am at least unsurprised by the comments made in most of my fellow posters. (Republican Slashdotters? An oxymoron?)
Is it possible to out-Reagan Reagan.
(And the poor brainwashed youth who turned in his own school to Microsoft and posted such in the wrong discussion should be outed so he can receive the proper assistance)
While Los Alamos is, indeed, in New Mexico, the vast majority of US above- and underground nuclear testing took place in Nevada, at the aptly-named Nevada Test Site. I think (but I'm not certain) that only one test took place in New Mexico, at the Trinity Site.
My father, who is a nuclear physicist, participated in over two dozen of those tests, and had to fly to Nevada from New Mexico (where we lived) for every one.
By the way, there are also no deserts in New Mexico.
I love how in this country of ours, the US for those international readers, we ignore what scientists, say, good or bad. Only in a place like the US do have a president who ignores what scientists say about global warming, and national missile defense.
We are not curbing C02 emmisions because "there is not enough scientific evidence of global warming." At the same time, any scientist will tell you that shooting an intercontinental missile is harder than shooting a moving rifle bullet with another bullet. After reading some of the comments here, it is clear there are a lot of libratarians in this audience, so you should all appriciate how hard that is.
We are always going to ignore scientists in the name of consumer happiness and 'good' economics. If its not going to be global warming, we are going to screw ourselves some other way. For those of you who believe that global warming is a myth, you are hopelessly ignorant, and unfortunately your ignorance effects me and every other person on this planet.
Neil
PS: AI is the worst example that could be used for this commentary. I love how at the end of the movie the alien is talking about the "genius of the human race." HA!!! So smart that we worked ourselves into extinction! Sorry for those of you who have not seen it. Actually, I'm not, its the worst movie I have seen in a long time.
There are many more misleading stuff out there in the media than global warming... although i do wonder why people are always misdirected to minor things rather than to things which are important.
Don't quote me on this.
I disagree that the problem of global warming will be the first scientific or technological issue to attract massive public attention. Instead, the issue of radiation and fallout from above-ground nuclear tests, and the related issues of nuclear power and weapons proliferation, attracted public attention decades ago.
The results were decidedly mixed. Although public pressure stopped above-ground nuclear testing (which is a good thing), public paranoia about radiation in any form has yet to recede. We see this in many forms - remember the panic about radon gas in basements a few years ago? I'm also convinced that the issue of cell-phone "radiation" is covered by the same fear, in spite of the fact that RF energy from cell phones is low frequency and non-ionizing -- but just try explaining that to Joe Sixpack. Ironically, nuclear power represents a short-term solution to the greenhouse effect, by giving an immediately practical alternative to coal- and gas-fired generators.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
With that said, I think some of the problem with the believability of these scientists with some people (especially in the US) is that scientists are human after all. Often they view their reputation as being more important than the work they do. Being right is less important than being famous.
So when one political group or another starts to protest something as "dangerous science," there's always at least a few people in the community willing to back up their claims. They do this mostly because you get more attention by running around waving your arms shouting about how the world is going to end than you do by saying "Oh, stop worrying, it's going to be alright." And the fewer of your colleages that agree with you, the better. No need to share the limelight with anyone else.
To make matters worse, it's often quite easy to manipulate data in a way to make what you're saying seem true or more favorable. Anybody who's heard of last year's presidential debates knows that Democrats were against giving tax breaks to "the wealthiest 1%," not "the wealthiest 2.6 million people."
This leaves us with a scientific community where, instead of having everybody who calls themselves a scientist making rational decisions and rational statements, we've had physicists telling us about how nuclear energy is the root of all evil, medical doctors explaining the need to "detoxify" our bodies, and we've had biologists passionately arguing for creationism.
(While these views may or may not be true, most of the arguments for these sides that I've heard are mostly along the lines of "I'm right, and if you don't agree with me, then you're either blind or a fool." It's tough at times to figure out where "science" ends and "scientology" begins.)
People can only take so much of this before they get tired of these boys crying "Wolf!" So when they next see a meterologist on TV telling us about how we need to change or perish, beating their podium ala Kruschev, a lot of them are just going to roll their eyes and keep on changing the channel.
Combine this with rational (and seemingly valid) arguments on both sides of the fence, as well as differences in opinion about how the problem should be solved ("The US should/shouldn't be the one to drop emissions the most."), and global warming becomes a very confused issue.
Take a valium, will ya? I never said, "YOU must believe that there is a global warming." If you look at the statistics quoted in the article, you'll clearly see that most Americans (perhaps I should have been that specific before) agree that global warming is happening.
Most Americans have no clue about the constant FUD being spread about global warming.
I made no references to any FUD being spread, nor did I try to argue the validity of such. If you read my post carefully, you'll find that I neither supported nor took a stand against the prospect of global warming. My facts were pretty clear: There are reports and data that indicate that carbon dioxide emissions are having a significant impact on global warming. There are also reports and data to the contrary. The truth is that at this point there is enough evidence for people to believe whatever they want to.
GreyPoopon
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GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
Now, you can argue that current energy problems in the US are their own fault. This is true, but doesn't change the fact that the problem exists. You can also argue that placing tighter emissions restrictions on energy development would ultimately yield a greener and more cost effective energy solution. This would be true for the long run, but not the short run. I'm sure it wasn't easy for the President to decide to back out of Kyoto. Unfortunately, he's stuck with the legacy (translate "mess") left to him by Clinton and his own father.
GreyPoopon
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GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
Of course it's not that simple. The real question is: How many people would die if we *didn't* industrialize in the first place? How many people are alive today because of ambulances rushing them to hospitals (powered by gasoline), how many people are saved by plastic helmets, how many people are saved by sterilization, how many people are saved by our industrialized world? Well, a quick answer would be to look at countries that haven't industrialized. What is the average lifespan there? what is the quality of life?
the real problem is no one is even analyzing this. No one cares. No one sees that the world has become a whole hell of a lot better place to be. No longer is everyone starving, wishing to god the forces of nature would be kind and not wipe out their potatoe crop. No longer is the world a malevolent demon... rather it is now a tame beast in the hands of those who want more than ever to live.
If you argue against me, and you say that man has no right to alter the planet to suit his survival and happiness, then consider what you are. You are a man who has used his brain to reason and decide that mankind has no right to live. You have used your only tool of survival, your mind, to extinguish the idea that the mind should exist. There are killers who are acting on the premise of death, who tell you that life digging for survival is immoral.
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
But I could have sworn I read something about the ozone hole closing or starting to close or something. You'll have to forgive me if I'm wrong about this since I live in the Northern Hemisphere (where we know how to take care of our ozone layer).
http://www4.nationalacademies.org/news.nsf/isbn/03 09068916?OpenDocument
A lot of people have been posting a link to this article as proof that global warming is real, PLEASE, take the time to read it.
This article clarly shows thet the global warming crowd has no evidence at all. The only light spot in their report is thet they managed to smudge their computer model suffeciently so that it would still predict global warming.
The only place they found warming was in the surface temperatures. Unfortunately, this collected data is far from reliable since the detection of surface temperatures very often is done in urban areas (like at an airport, or in a cities downtown centers). These detectors will show an increase in temperature because of the heat island effect of larger and larger urban areas (feel the temerature of the concrete or street vs natural grass or dirt).
The only reliable data they used (satallites and weather ballons) showed no change in temperature. However, to receive continued funding, their computer model had to show global warming was real, so they fudged their computer model until it did.
"For example, natural events such as the eruption of
Mt. Pinatubo in 1991 tended to decrease atmospheric
temperature for several years. And burning coal and
oil for energy produces tiny aerosol particles in the
atmosphere that can have a cooling effect. Upper-air
temperatures also can be reduced by depletion of ozone
in the stratosphere caused by chlorofluorocarbons and
other chemicals being emitted into the atmosphere. When
these variables are accounted for in atmospheric models,
satellite and balloon data more closely align with
surface-temperature observations"
Yes, once they include effects that they are claming warm the atmosphere as cooling effects, their model works. Note that they can pick and choose their fudge factors to make their model come out just right.
Its amazing to me that so many people blindly believe hollywood celibs when they say "global warming is real, be afraid". Interestingly enough, its about the same percentage that believe psychic phenomenon.
socialist, mocialist - these words are just cheap dust in the eye. You remind me the anti-Stallman crowd. We can find out if there is a human induced global warming AND do it RISK FREE if we reduce polution . If trends don't reverse in 20 years, O well what did we loose? If done right environment work should help the economy not hurt it. Of course all contries should be subject to the same environment standrds. I can assure you that I know at least one country that bought US power generators for being less poluting... So help the environment and help the economy can be the same thing. But little scared chickens like you play the hand of the fossil burners... at the expense of all others.
I'm sorry, but the earth is a crazy, spinning planet, our climate goes through cycles and phases just like everything else. It changes. We need more time to decide if we've really screwed it up or not, until then, I'm sick to DEATH of lame movies like AI and Waterworld that tell us about how terrible the world is going to be when we screw it up and can't fix it back. We can't look at 100 years in the life of a billion year old planet and decide how it's going, it just can't happen.
Besides, I like hot weather. Tank tops are comfortable.
spacefem.com
katz stats "In August 2000, the Harris poll asked Americans about their beliefs concerning global warming and, more specifically, about the relationship between temperature changes and forest fires. Many more than in previous surveys said they believed that global warming exists and is a serious environmental issue, although only 35 percent believe it was directly responsible for increasing forest fires in the United States" In a similar poll jay leno asked if joe american knew who are president was....... We know the people are stupid those polls are headline grabbers ask the educated america and we will tell whats going on unfortunately the educated america is outweighed by dimwits. - Anyway we all know smokey the bear is the one starting forest fires. The little bastard has us all fooled
***I GOT NUTHIN***
I am not a scientist, I have not analyzed any data or done extensive research on this subject. But i know what I see. I live in New England, and over the past decade I've witnessed pretty substantial changes in the weather. The winters keep getting warmer, and there's much less snowfall (consequently, ski resorts in the east are suffering pretty badly). Right now, we're in the middle of the hottest summer that I, or any of my friends can remember.
Now I don't pretend to have any idea what this means from a scientific view point, maybe it's a natural cycle, but I tend to be pessimistic. There's no doubt in my mind, that given enough time, the human race will use up all of the planet's natural resources and in so doing completely destroy the planet. If it's scare tactics that are required to raise public awareness... well, so far they've worked a lot better than anything else that's been tried... Anyways, sorry about the rant, I have a tendancy to do that sometimes...
When a serious matter like medical research involving stem cells from frozen embryos arises, politicians worry at least as much about religious support as they do about what scientists advise.
/. a while ago (I think it was even a Katz article) about how some news portals risk destroying open thought because they allow you to select only news stories that correspond to your own viewpoint. Don't risk your open mind by acting this way - a closed mind is what got MS in power in the first place, what allows outrageous software patents to be granted, what allows an industry to control how you use your media.
There is one facet of slashdot, and the internet in general that disturbs me. Religion is often treated like a stepchild, and often when a religion-oriented comment is submitted and poster is derided. Why is this? Is there no tolerance for those who display a religious opinion? Katz himself, the impartial journalist, displays a slight disdain for those with religious leanings in the above quote, implying that listening to scientists is more important that listening to those with a religious point of view.
People with a religious inclination often labor under the stigma that they are close-minded. Why is this? They simply have a different viewpoint. True, there are people who will try to impose their religious viewpoint on others, but the same is true for Linux advocates towards Windows users.
I recall an article on
People with a different viewpoint should be judged on what they have to say and their reasons for saying it, now on what they do on Sunday mornings.
Um.... Jon.... I hate to tell you this, but I learned this in First grade back in 1984. 17 years is hardly sudden.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
If the weather man cant predict what tomorrow afternoon is going to be like, then why should I believe what he says about global warming?
Unfortunately, a strong economy is the best thing for the environment and if Kyoto Protocol proponents manage to cripple our economies then we're all doomed.
High powered economies (like the United States) and rich citizens (like the United States) create people that both care about the environment and have the means to do something about it.
Our high powered economy allows us to do expensive things like research Fusion Power. This research can't happen in a country with a crippled economy.
Yes, we're burning the candle at both ends right now, but by doing so we're buying a better future.
How far back to the rabid environmentalists want us to go? 100 years? 200? 1000? The world was never an environmental paradise. Our best bet for creating a new Eden is to keep on like we're going, develop cleaner limitless power sources and then clean up the mess we've made in a few decades. You can't bake a cake without breaking some eggs.
Peter
For further reading, I'd suggest:
Kyoto Policy Analysis
Downsize DC Today!
For those interested in both sides of the global warming debate, the review "Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide" may be of interest. From the abstract, "Predictions of harmful climatic effects due to future increases in minor greenhouse gases like CO2 are in error and do not conform to current experimental knowledge."
Science fiction writer Bruce Sterling's Viridian Movement is a culture movement devoted to combating climate change by making pollution unfashionable. The Sterling-edited Summer 02001 issue of Whole Earth Review makes a good introduction to Viridian ideas. So does the entertaining Viridian Design Web site.
From the manifesto:
Carbon dioxide is not a time-honored philosophical dilemma or some irreducible flaw in the human condition. Serious fossil-fuel consumption, as a practice on the grand scale, is only about 200 years old. The most severe rise in carbon emission occurred during the past fifty years. We're painfully dependent on this practice, but it's not as if we've married it.
[...] Civil society does not respond at all well to moralistic scolding. There are small minority groups here and there who are perfectly aware that it is immoral to harm the lives of coming generations by massive consumption now: deep Greens, Amish, people practicing voluntary simplicity, Gandhian ashrams and so forth. These public-spirited voluntarists are not the problem. But they're not the solution either, because most human beings won't volunteer to live like they do. Nor can people be forced to live that way through legal prescription, because those in command of society's energy resources will immediately game and neutralize any system of legal regulation.
However, contemporary civil society can be led anywhere that looks attractive, glamorous and seductive. [...] The world needs a new, unnatural, seductive, mediated, glamorous Green. A Viridian Green, if you will.
[...] The best chance for progress is to convince the twenty-first century that the twentieth century's industrial base was crass, gauche, and filthy. This approach will work because it is based in the truth. The twentieth century lived in filth. It was much like the eighteenth century before the advent of germ theory, stricken by septic cankers whose origins were shrouded in superstition and miasma.
And from the Sterling speech that formally announced the movement:
A genuinely degraded climate doesn't mean that the sky is falling. It doesn't mean armageddon, or utter annihilation, or anything half so romantic. It means a conclusive end to our Belle Epoque, though. Basically, it means smoke and heat and damp, clinging filth. All our cultural circumstances will become different then. Everything we know and cherish about life will suddenly become antiquated. It will belong to a vanished, beautiful, innocent era. That will be our Belle Epoque's version of the Great War, in other words.
So why is this an aesthetic issue? Well, because it's a severe breach of taste to bake and sweat half to death in your own trash, that's why. To boil and roast the entire physical world, just so you can pursue your cheap addiction to carbon dioxide.... What a cramp of our style. It's all very foul and aesthetically regrettable.
Sterling's Viridian Notes mailing list amusingly documents the sad procession of recent climatic catastrophes, such as the recent melting of the North Pole.
"If you tell 100 Americans 'The Earth will burn up if you don't stop driving your car,' 99 will say 'Let it burn!' and the hundredth will shoot you." -- Allen Varney
Yes I can tell we are all very intelligent people. There is really no sense in arguing one way or the other about global warming. Yes the Earth is a closed system, mostly. All the stuff on this planet has been shlepping around for a very long time and we have done little other than to concentrate, recombine and dissociate things. In the longest of scales, this really doesn't matter.
;) )
Add to this the complex patterns that make up our long term weather changes. Natural phenomena, varying eccentricities in our orbit over 100,00s of years, even a wobbling on our axis and changing our angle to the sun all make an impact on our long term weather patterns.
I am somewhat put out though by the lack of environmental concern expressed by many of the postings here. Really, I too plan on dying long before much of any change occurs on grand scale. But I am not so brash as to think that our development of non-naturally occurring substances are very good for my body, or the other living things on the planet. They impede my immune system and other bodily functions, and I don't even have much choice about them sometimes. I can choose what I eat, but not the air I breathe or the water I drink that the idiot above wants to pour motor oil into.
I can't really think of much reason why we should want to do anything about this though. This civilization has developed into one that really doesn't need natural diversity in our daily lives. Generally, our choices of meat and produce are a fairly limited list compared to what is out there. I mean, who eats penguins? (no not the ones in the tin
So, I invite you to consider the impact that we do make. We backfill wetlands, destroy natural areas for new development while, at least here in Detroit, other brown fields lie vacant or abandoned. We throw all sort of crap in our lakes so we can't swim in them, pull a lot of water out of deep confined aquifers (research subsiding to learn more), and reduce a once chaotic landscape to simple geometry.
I don't want to come of as a rabid environmentalist. Honestly, these decisions lie with us the masses. What we choose as public policy will be the way things go. I am all right with this. But for anyone who claims not to appreciate diversity, try eating the exact same thing for every meal!
I am not saying I believe this but I just read a book called Fingerprints of the Gods. The ideas in this book could be totally bogus but it says that the build up of ice in antartica will cause Earth Crust Displacement thus destroying civilization. Therefore if we have global warming the ice will stop building up. Earth crust displacement does a good job of explaining ice ages. The earth does not get cooler just different parts of the world are at the poles at different times. Einstein believed in it but he was not a geologist. I have been looking for information that refutes this guys theories on earth crust displacement but I have had no luck. Can anybody point me somewhere that can give me the other side of the argument?
The city is being overrun by a herd of Lucy Liu's.
We increase the level of oxygen in the air which in turns increases the growth rate of plants which in turns creates an accelerated decrease in the amount of oxygen. This is explained by the formula(via. the steady state) (C02)1/(plants)1 * (constant/variable)=(CO2)2/(plants)2 * (constant/variable).
If the constants/variables are equal, they cancel out. If some point it changes, they have to be maintained.
Nature will eventually work itslef out and man will slowly become less polutant by nature(government regulations mostly)
----
Just because a bunch of people believe or do something stupid, doesn't make it any less stupid.
Raw Data from data found at VA Data. Their are hundred more like this but it still isn't a big enough sample to be conclusive.
----
Just because a bunch of people believe or do something stupid, doesn't make it any less stupid.
First of all, nice article. I am a newbiew around here (two days :-)) and this is the best I have seen so far.
Second, I am not from USA. I may have a different perspective from the average american, altought it is obvious that I do not have from who wrote this text.
That said, I think the weather challenge cannot be won without the USA.
That's quite obvious analizing the reasons that lead to the Kyoto protocol, which may fall without USA support.
The United States is responsible for much of the pollution that goes to our air, land and water. There's no doubt about this, numbers everywhere to confirm.
Per person, it is the country that produces more pollution.
But at the same time, I believe a lot more is going on. USA has taken in the past years a role of technological leader in the world. Most research breakthroughs (spelling?) come from there. So much ahead of other countries, that the other countries are fighting back with more 'humanitary' global actions.
ONU's chair in human rights was the 'concrete' action of something bigger. Slodoban's and Pinochet's happening on Europe enlarge that continent's role of 'social', 'humanitary' leader. What we have now are two sides of serious future consequences that need to develop and unfold together.
In one corner you have tech development. On the other human society. Body and mind, matter and spirit if you wish. You cannot separate them, cannot only concentrate on one side. They must grow together for a better future.
But, a historial view of the last years, after the Industrial Revolution, will make you think that we as humans have pend much more to the tech side than the spiritual one.
Antique societies, old religions, they all got weaker since the beggining of the century. I am not talking about christianins (again, sorry for the misspelling, english is not my primarly languague), but instead, almost every other religion on the world, that takes the perception of life after dead very different than our ocidental way.
To simplify, west tries to enjoy life at maximum because we all gonna die, so do it quickly and do it now. East, on the contrary, have a vision more like "we all gonna die anyway, why do it?".
But, tech improvement is changing this. We don't die at 30 now, like 150 years ago. Most people that are 20 years old nowadays with go beyond 100, easy, easy.
This perception that life has increased, that we really don't have to do it fast and do it now, the 'eastern' life and death vision, is losing its forces.
With this in mind, you can justify people's concern with the weather. At the same time we are taking care of our lives, improving it, we are taking away the force of who gave us life, 'Mother Nature'.
Prodigal sons, we are now taking the harder route to the 'eco growth', an economy based on the principles that we must take care of the enviroment.
Earth has been around for billions of years with or without us, and will probaly be after we are gone from here to other planets. What we say now, is a 'rearrange' of forces, like a system where it must balance what is inside. There's no weather problem for Earth. Our planet is what it is. There is weather problem for ourselves, for our future as a race.
I hope as soon as is possible we learn how to balance matter and spirit, tech and religion inside us, so we can exist in union with our planet.
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
For the record, most of the ozone depleting agents have come from the northern hemisphere. The reason that there is an ozone hole in the southern hemisphere (or it's more pronounced anyway) is that there are special conditions, which are described above which only occur in the Antarctic which accelerate ozone depletion.
remember at one time scientists thought the world was flat...
_______________________
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
_______________________
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Tonight there is a chance of darkness with a continued chance of dark til daybreak...
_______________________
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
flashms010 claims: "Here are some things science (in general) has given us: windmills,iron, steel, computers, telephones, electricity, lots of great drugs, atomic energy / bomb, rockets, you might be able to think of a few more."
2 0010611-2.html) that he has people on his staff who understand science.
SCIENCE didn't give us those things; ENGINEERING did. And if you want that climate changed, just give us the go ahead and we'll do that too. Dam the Strait of Gibraltar? Put a sea in the Sahara? Start a new Ice Age? All it takes is money.
flashms0101 then asks: "And has he even assigned a science advisor yet!?"
He nominated John H. Marburger III last month. Even without a science advisor, it is clear from the content of the speech he gave last month in the Rose Garden when he discussed the Kyoto accord (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/06/
"A scientist can discover a new star but he cannot make one. He would have to ask an engineer to do it for him." -Gordon L. Glegg
"is this a reference to the Nazi project in Philip K. Dick's Man in the High Castle?"
No, I haven't read that book. It is a reference to a proposal in Willey (or Willy) Ley's book _Engineer's_Dreams_. Considering that Ley was German, I suspect Philip K. Dick took the idea of the Nazi project from him also. Ley's book is out of print, but worth looking at (IMHO) if you can find a copy at a library or used book store.
"I wouldn't go executing all the scientists just yet. "
Oh, I wasn't proposing that we do; I was just pointing out that Scientists tend to go from specific applications (like experiments and observations) to general knowlege (theories and "laws") while it is the Engineers that are the ones who go from general knowlege (usually, but not always the ones the scientists developed previously) to specific applications (products, like you listed). It is, as you point out, semantics; real people rarely fit neatly into either category. In reality almost all engineers are also trained in the scientific method; and I have known plenty of scientists who were also very good engineers. If I had to pick a profession to excecute, it certainly wouldn't be the scientists. I also wanted to subtly suggest that if science can discover and accurately model how man is accidentally altering the climate (and perhaps even if they can't), then those principles can be used to deliberately engineer changes. Not something I think we will be ready to try anytime soon; but it may be something we need to do eventually.
"Portuguese ditch diggers would dam the Strait of Gibraltar." True, it was improper of me to overlook the tradesmen (who, in practice, also overlap with the other 2 categories).
"it doesn't look like Bush did anything more than parrot the Kyoto accord dissenters"
I wasn't suggesting that they had people in the White House running enviromental science experiments that the rest of us haven't seen. I merely meant that whoever Bush is listening to, and has write his speeches, is up to date on the scientific weaknesses in Kyoto. The administration was also well informed enough not to dismiss the whole global warming concern as crap just because they didn't like the specifics in Kyoto. Despite the science window dressing, I think that Kyoto was "killed" for political reasons (although very good ones as far as the U.S. is concerned); but at least the science window dressing was reasonably well informed science window dressing. Better than I can say for some of the crap that I ran across in _Earth_in_the_Balance_; though to be fair to my former senator, I only read about half the book.
To quote Gerrard O'Neil (in The High Frontier, p20):
Wealth is highly correlated to energy consumption, and the third world won't be a third world for much longer. So, even without the greenhouse effect, we'll soon be cooking ourselves anyway!........(unless we move our eggs out of the cradle, which is the point of the rest of this "old" book that I pulled the quote from...)
Power to the Peaceful
If you do get modded down, it'll be because you're not smart enough to realize that Polar Bears don't live in Antarctica, they live in the regions near the North Pole, and that just because you don't perceive a change in the weather climate change can't be happening.
The system has failed you, don't fail yourself. --Billy Bragg
Does it matter if polution is causing global warming? No one is gonna do anything about it, and if they try to they will get stopped by the government because all those polutants bring profits. I REALLY want my own country!
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Sig
I was a high school science teacher in a previous life. One of the curriculum subjects was global warming. I always tried to teach in a way that presented both sides of controversial topics and then we discussed the merits of the arguments, letting the students come to their own conclusions. When Mt. Pinotubo erupted in the Phillipines, it spewed more green house gases in a very short time than man has contributed to the atmosphere since the time man has been making fires in caves.
I have a couple sources for this data sitting in a box somewhere in my basement - sorry they're not handy.
The point is that it stands to reason that this one cataclysmic event would have a significant impact on global warming as compared to the slow contribution of people over a long time. It seems to me that it's a self-regulating system. If things get warmer, more evaporation and cloud formation occurs, contributing to lower temperatures. The points in earlier posts regarding the cyclical nature of climate are spot-on.
01100101 01111001 01100101 01100010 01101001 01110100 01100101 01110010
Using unleaded petrol or demanding cycle lanes all over isn't going to help
Yeah, you did just say that you don't think leaded gasoline is bad. I'm pretty sure lead and global warming having nothing to do with each other. Lead makes kids retarded. That's why it is banned. That's why the joke "Did you eat paint chips as a kid?" exists. Lead kills people. Lead kills everything. It's bad.
I don't want to breathe. Neither do you. This is me looking out for you. Trust me on this one.
Um...I remember hearing about how evil global warming was back in the 1980's. And the Democrats have been pushing for environmental protections (including Global Warming) for as long as I can remember.
Generally, the technology sector has been more supportive of the Democrats, which most likely had to do with education levels (generally, 90% of those with PhD's tend to have a liberal bias). Up until very recently, the only people who worked with higher technology were the PhD's. Now, big business has embraced Technology, so we might see more of a lean towards the Republicans, but its hard to say.
All around, I think this "feature" sucks. Speaking as a student of Political Science, this isn't even a well phrased theory, let alone having any research, or even an informed opinon. If I handed something like this in for a paper for any of my Poli Sci classes, this would be a garunteed failing grade.
Try doing some background research next time?
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Haven't we rescued, defended and poured enough $ into this retched ungrateful continent? When the EU goes belly up, I say screw them and don't offer one to cent to save them. We should have let the Kaiser/Nazis/Soviets take over those ungrateful elitists.
I'm not going to try to argue the USA's environmental record, though I would generically claim that we have a lot of positive things to show for our size, level of industrialization, and overall potential to do a hell of a lot more harm than we are doing now. The problem with the side opposite to the U.S., the one that keeps fanning these flames, is that the anti-US propaganda really doesn't hurt us; not yet anyway.
So, I would are that 'Perception' has far more to do with the Global Warming debate than reality. Reality will kick in when we start having to wear hip-boots.
When science saves lives in the operating room, makes faster processors, bounces Buffy episodes off of satellites into your living room -- you believe in science. When science says something about global warming, scientists are suddenly "full of sh*t."
Here are some things science (in general) has given us: windmills
iron, steel
computers
telephones
electricity
lots of great drugs
atomic energy / bomb
rockets
you might be able to think of a few more.
Here's one more thing 'science' would like you to consider: global warming is an issue.
On NPR there was a story about how the Kyoto accord is based on a broad study. 200 scientists throughout the world cooperated on writing it, gathering evidence. Then the paper was peer-reviewed by 200 other scientists (who live to look smart by obliterating other academics).
If you've ever seen three math professors trying to figure out how to get into a car, you know how alternately indecisive and uncooperative that sort of personality can be. 400 people of this sort agree decisively that global warming is a result of human activity, and is a serious issue. When the story goes to press, reporters call up one of the five scientists in america who don't agree with the study to get an opposing viewpoint.
It's not about FUD, politics, or whatever. GWBush says it's bad science, but he also said, "The role of the executive branch of government is to interpret law," and "I invented the word 'misunderstanding.'" And has he even assigned a science advisor yet!?
All those Republican pundits who point out how the Kyoto accord would harm the US economy are secretly hoping for the worst. They are heavily invested in life-rafts, sunscreen and sombreros.
I know for a fact that GWBush is building a big fresh-air bubble dome so his daughters will have something to breathe in the next decade. Soon I'll be able to buy into the Bush biosphere, too. I'm patenting a melanoma home treatment kit.
Gallows humor.
The Science is not there to prove that Global Warming even exists. In fact, the science suggests that the Earth has gone through several "warming" periods naturally, as a result of valcanos and other natural activity. Much of the pro-Global Warming stuff has ben funded by pro-environmental and other pseudo-science organizations. Bush is correct in not destroying American business and our thriving economy over unproven facts. Now, this deserves better than a 1? How come all of my postings get an automatic 1?
The earth is not in danger, unless you're a green, a politician, or just another ignorant yet vociferous upstart - in which case, you're the problem, not jobs or families.
Knowledge is, indeed, that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another.
granted, the air around some island in the middle of the pacific with no factories will be clean. there's nothing to mess it up. if you put a factory on that island, there's now a source for pollution. but as countries develop more, beyond the first inefficient, 1830s-style factory period, their air begins to clean up. around cities there's no getting around it, the air will have car exhaust in it (at least for a few more years, then the hydrogen fuel cell might be able to fix that). but on the whole, the air in the u.s. is better than the air in azerbaijan. pollution is inefficiency, so even if the industrialised world cleans up pollution only because it's a less efficient use of resources (which i don't think is its only motivation, none of us wants to have to breathe bad air), the air still gets cleaner. and someday we won't need fossil fuels for anything, and the air will be cleaner than it was for the cavemen.
this topic is getting more attention now that spielberg put out a movie where global warming is an important piece of background. it's odd that in the future we'll be able to create robots that can love, but won't be able to do anything as the polar floodgates turn manhattan into atlantis. maybe if the hague went under...no more bogus ipcc reports...
rm
Knowledge is, indeed, that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another.
China is the #2 emitter of CO2 (total, not per capita.) But becasue they have 50 billion people they should just be allow to increase emission? What kind of logic is that? Hell, the US doesn't even have to cut emissions then! We just need to stop using birth control and start cranking out babies. If every couple has at least 10 kids, we could nip this pollution problem in the bud!
This past March President Bush reneged on his campaign PROMISE to have a MANDATORY reduction of CO2 emission. That shows what: 1) his promises are worth, 2) how much he cares about the environment.
Hairspray or lack of meteor dust , I don't know what is heating this planet - but it is getting warmer for most people. But not for me. Norway et.al. have been blessed by the Golf stream bringing hot water from the Carribean to our shores keeping our harbors ice free even at 71 deg north.
But the global warming is killing the Golf stream, so while you and the rest of the world get hot, I will freeze.
I hate to tell you guys this but Global warming is quite a myth. Do you actually think for a second we as humans have the power to change the conditions of our atmosphere? The only reason we notice effects such as smog is because of large amounts of people living within a confined area, a city. If you spread out the human population evenly across all the habitable areas of the world, even with our modern technology, we'd never notice the effect we have on the planet. Remember back in the late 70's early 80's when several cities in California were filled with smog? Has anyone noticed that within less than a decade, the smog is gone due to the California emission standards? Industrial cities like Chattanooga TN and Atlanta GA are other good examples of how cities can clean up their acts in a very short amount of time.
:)
I'm sorry, but Global warming is a myth. The Earth's temperature has increased an average of 1 degree over the past century. This "1 degree" is also a very liberal number since we can't accurately determine what the average climate was during the early part of this century or any other for that matter. The margin of error is greater than the estimated change (kind of like the last election
What I'm getting at is that we're scaring ourselves to death. We're scaring our children with the threat of doom to earth. When Mt. Pinotuba (forgive me if I spelled that wrong) erupted, the global climate was changed to the point that entire corn crops were laid waster and our farming economy suffered in the year after. The only thing that humans have done that we can convulsively link to increasing the global temperature is the equivalent of a man made volcano...a nuclear bomb.
I have noticed something curiously absent from many of the debates concerning global warming. I think it is best expressed by what I call the "Domino Effect." At the heart of this concept is what most climatologists have known for years; that is, the sum of human society's impact on the global climate is only the first domino that once knocked over triggers a larger natural chain reaction that is both irreversible and catastrophic. The other dominos come in the form of vast frozen methane sinks, storing billions of tons of the green house gas, contained in the permafrost and on the ocean floor. Once human beings affect the climate enough to thaw out portions of these frozen methane sinks, nature takes over, thawing still more sinks, releasing more greenhouse gas, and raising global temperatures to again release more methane until the temperature is hot enough that plant-life cannot survive and in turn decays releases masses of carbon into the atmosphere of an exceedingly inhospitable earth. What I hear the latest U.N. reports are saying is that a 6 to 10.5-degree change is forecasted for the next century - which is an amble amount of climatic change to knock over the first domino. This is both an uncomfortable and a hugely complex problem that challenges the way humans live and organize our societies. In the face of this global problem, I am humbled and am deeply sympathetic to everyone adversely affected - however as painful as it is, how we handle the stabilization of the earth's climate over the next few years will be for better or worse the greatest legacy we leave behind. Let's keep the dialogue alive!
For those of you that think that global warming exists only due to a nebulous political agenda, check out the spike on the global temperature chart for a couple thousand years ago. The Romans were very good at building nifty gadgets. A lot of these gadgets were made out of lead. Between the amount of lead manufacturing going on then, and the amount of wood burning stoves, etc. you get a nice little spike in temperature. All of this before us commie liberals were but a spark in Mommy's eye.