Warming and Slowing the World

chrisleonard writes "We all know that global warming is supposed to heat the planet up, but did you know that it might also slow it down? According to a report from Belgium's Royal Observatory (as reported here by astronomy.com), if the days seem a little longer to you than they used to, it might not be just old age catching up with you. Would it be wrong to call the interaction of the world's warming temperatures and its slowing rotation ... a snowball effect?"

Comments

HISTORY OF THE WORLD

[Commienst]

2.5 million B.C.: OOG the Open Source Caveman develops the axe and releases it under the GPL. The axe quickly gains popularity as a means of crushing moderators' heads.

100,000 B.C.: Man domesticates the AIBO.

10,000 B.C.: Civilization begins when early farmers first learn to cultivate hot grits.

3000 B.C.: Sumerians develop a primitive cuneiform perl script.

2920 B.C.: A legendary flood sweeps Slashdot, filling up a Borland / Inprise story with hundreds of offtopic posts.

1750 B.C.: Hammurabi, a Mesopotamian king, codifies the first EULA.

490 B.C.: Greek city-states unite to defeat the Persians. ESR triumphantly proclaims that the Greeks "get it".

399 B.C.: Socrates is convicted of impiety. Despite the efforts of freesocrates.com, he is forced to kill himself by drinking hemlock.

336 B.C.: Fat-Time Charlie becomes King of Macedonia and conquers Persia.

4 B.C.: Following the Star (as in hot young actress) of Bethelem, wise men travel from far away to troll for baby Jesus.

A.D. 476: The Roman Empire BSODs.

A.D. 610: The Glorious MEEPT!! founds Islam after receiving a revelation from God. Following his disappearance from Slashdot in 632, a succession dispute results in the emergence of two troll factions: the Pythonni and the Perliites.

A.D. 800: Charlemagne conquers nearly all of Germany, only to be acquired by andover.net.

A.D. 874: Linus the Red discovers Iceland.

A.D. 1000: The epic of the Beowulf Cluster is written down. It is the first English epic poem.

A.D. 1095: Pope Bruce II calls for a crusade against the Turks when it is revealed they are violating the GPL. Later investigation reveals that Pope Bruce II had not yet contacted the Turks before calling for the crusade.

A.D. 1215: Bowing to pressure to open-source the British government, King John signs the Magna Carta, limiting the British monarchy's power. ESR triumphantly proclaims that the British monarchy "gets it".

A.D. 1348: The ILOVEYOU virus kills over half the population of Europe. (The other half was not using Outlook.)

A.D. 1420: Johann Gutenberg invents the printing press. He is immediately sued by monks claiming that the technology will promote the copying of hand-transcribed books, thus violating the church's intellectual property.

A.D. 1429: Natalie Portman of Arc gathers an army of Slashdot trolls to do battle with the moderators. She is eventually tried as a heretic and stoned (as in petrified).

A.D. 1478: The Catholic Church partners with doubleclick.net to launch the Spanish Inquisition.

A.D. 1492: Christopher Columbus arrives in what he believes to be "India", but which RMS informs him is actually "GNU/India".

A.D. 1508-12: Michaelengelo attempts to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling with ASCII art, only to have his plan thwarted by the "Lameness Filter."

A.D. 1517: Martin Luther nails his 95 Theses to the church door and is promptly moderated down to (-1, Flamebait).

A.D. 1553: "Bloody" Mary ascends the throne of England and begins an infamous crusade against Protestants. ESR eats his words.

A.D. 1588: The "IF I EVER MEET YOU, I WILL KICK YOUR ASS" guy meets the Spanish Armada.

A.D. 1603: Tokugawa Ieyasu unites the feuding pancake-eating ninjas of Japan.

A.D. 1611: Mattel adds Galileo Galilei to its CyberPatrol block list for proposing that the Earth revolves around the sun.

A.D. 1688: In the so-called "Glorious Revolution", King James II is bloodlessly forced out of power and flees to France. ESR again triumphantly proclaims that the British monarchy "gets it".

A.D. 1692: Anti-GIF hysteria in the New World comes to a head in the infamous "Salem GIF Trials", in which 20 alleged GIFs are burned at the stake. Later investigation reveals that many of the supposed GIFs were actually PNGs.

A.D. 1769: James Watt patents the one-click steam engine.

A.D. 1776: Trolls, angered by CmdrTaco's passage of the Moderation Act, rebel. After a several-year flame war, the trolls succeed in seceding from Slashdot and forming the United Coalition of Trolls.

A.D. 1789: The French Revolution begins with a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the Bastille.

A.D. 1799: Attempts at discovering Egyptian hieroglyphs receive a major boost when Napoleon's troops discover the Rosetta stone. Sadly, the stone is quickly outlawed under the DMCA as an illegal means of circumventing encryption.

A.D. 1844: Samuel Morse invents Morse code. Cryptography export restrictions prevent the telegraph's use outside the U.S. and Canada.

A.D. 1853: United States Commodore Matthew C. Perry arrives in Japan and forces the xenophobic nation to open its doors to foreign trade. ESR triumphantly proclaims that Japan finally "gets it".

A.D. 1865: President Lincoln is 'bitchslapped.' The nation mourns.

A.D. 1901: Italian inventor Guglielmo Marcoli first demonstrates the radio. Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich immediately delivers to Marcoli a list of 335,435 suspected radio users.

A.D. 1911: Facing a break-up by the United States Supreme Court, Standard Oil Co. defends its "freedom to innovate" and proposes numerous rejected settlements. Slashbots mock the company as "Standa~1" and depict John D. Rockefeller as a member of the Borg.

A.D. 1929: V.A. Linux's stock drops over 200 dollars on "Black Tuesday", October 29th.

A.D. 1945: In the secret Manhattan Project, scientists working in Los Alamos, New Mexico, construct a nuclear bomb from Star Wars Legos.

A.D. 1948: Slashdot runs the infamous headline "DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN." Shamefaced, the site quickly retracts the story when numerous readers point out that it is not news for nerds, stuff that matters.

A.D. 1965: Jon Katz delivers his famous "I Have A Post-Hellmouth Dream" speech, which stated: "I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the geeks of former slaves and the geeks of former slave geeks will be able to sit down together at the table of geeks... I have a dream that my geek little geeks will one geek live in a nation where they will not be geeked by the geek of their geek but by the geek of their geek."

A.D. 1969: Neil Armstrong becomes the first man to set foot on the moon. His immortal words: "FIRST MOONWALK!!!"

A.D. 1970: Ohio National Guardsmen shoot four students at Kent State University for "Internet theft".

A.D. 1989: The United States invades Panama to capture renowned "hacker" Manual Noriega, who is suspected of writing the DeCSS utility.

A.D. 1990: West Germany and East Germany reunite after 45 years of separation. ESR triumphantly proclaims that Germany "gets it".

A.D. 1994: As years of apartheid rule finally end, Nelson Mandela is elected president of South Africa. ESR is sick, and sadly misses his chance to triumphantly proclaim that South Africa "gets it".

A.D. 1997: Slashdot reports that Scottish scientists have succeeded in cloning a female sheep named Dolly. Numerous readers complain that if they had wanted information on the latest sheep releases, they would have just gone to freshsheep.net

A.D. 1999: Miramax announces Don Knotts to play hacker Emmanuel Goldstein in upcoming movie "Takedown"

I thought slowing of earth's rotation...

[efuseekay]

is more profoundly affected by tidal locking with the moon than fluvial effects.

Anybody who knew better please comment on this?

Of course...

[1010011010]

when the poles shift in 15,000 -20,000 years, killing most life, shifting the Earth's plates, and plunging the planet into an ice age, it won't matter much to us.

*gasp*

[CaptainMunchies]

Does this mean my work day just got longer?!?!

:)

Someone must do something!

[Greyjack]

De Viron's team found that earthlings can expect the length of an average day to increase by 11 millionths of a second per decade, corresponding to an overall increase of about one ten-thousandth of a second by the close of the century.

Oh... my... GOD! The ramifications of this are... uh, on second thought, never mind.

Pshaw, I bet we could accelerate the Earth more effectively than that if we'd all get together on the first of every month, point all our cars West, and punch the accelerator simultaneously.

Re:Someone must do something!

[nettdata]

Pshaw, I bet we could accelerate the Earth more effectively than that if we'd all get together on the first of every month, point all our cars West, and punch the accelerator simultaneously.

Until we all hit the brake, anyway. :)

Re:Someone must do something!

[dimator]

I bet we could accelerate the Earth more effectively than that if we'd all get together on the first of every month, point all our cars West, and punch the accelerator simultaneously.

Or just have everyone in China face west, and kick a wall.

Re:Someone must do something!

[slashdot.org]

... can expect the length of an average day to increase by 11 millionths of a second per decade

And then this:

if the days seem a little longer to you than they used to, it might not be just old age catching up with you.

Yeah! they DO seem 11 / 10 / 365 millionth of a second longer. Thanks for finding an explantion for that one, I had been wondering.

Re:Someone must do something!

[shessel]

The initial velocity would speed up the core (short-term), but the sheer amount of exhaust would contribute to the greenhouse effect, thereby slowing down the core (long-term).

One caveaut: My diesel-powered Yugo would only help slow down the initial velocity, and it alone could contribute to the greenhouse effect in a major way....

Re:Someone must do something!

[wildsurf]

De Viron's team found that earthlings can expect the length of an average day to increase by 11 millionths of a second per decade, corresponding to an overall increase of about one ten-thousandth of a second by the close of the century.

See, here's the thing.

Long ago, in the age of dinosaurs, the earth was spinning much faster, so everything on the surface (especially near the equator) had less apparent weight. That's how come the dinosaurs got so big. But as the earth spun slower, they all got too heavy to support themselves, so they all died and went extinct. Now, with the earth's rotation slowing further, we are all getting heavier and heavier, as evidenced by the alarming rise in obesity around the world, until eventually we die out too. See, global warming really causes obesity! It's all so obvious.

Re:Someone must do something!

[DemiKnute]

Good god. It doesn't work that way.
The equatorial circumference of the earth is 40,000 kilometers.
Given that the earth rotates with a period of 24*3600 seconds, give or take a few, the velocity of a person on the equator is 40,000,000=v86,400 or 462 m/s.
Centripetal force is F=(mv^2)/r. The equatorial radius of the earth is 6,400km or so. Thus, a 100 kg person at the equator experiences F=(150*462^2)/6,400,000=5 newtons of centripetal force. One kg is 9.8 newtons. Thus, centripetal force has next to no effect on your perceived weight today.

Now. Assume that a subtraction of 2m/s of acceleration from the downward gravity induced Fw is significant. Centripetal acceleration is v^2/r. 2=v^2/6,400,000 v=3600. V would have to be 3600m/s for a significant counter to gravitational force. Note that this is 9 times the current value, so the earth's day would have to be less than 3 hours long. I don't think that's very bloody likely.

Yes, I know that centripetal force is actually an inward force and isn't applicable in this situation. But the magnitude of centripetal force is equivalent to the magnitude of centrifugal force, which I didn't use because it doesn't actually exist. At any rate, it all works out. Trust me.

-David

Re:Someone must do something!

[Chagrin]

What happens when we all turn around and go home?

11 microseconds per decade?

[glitch!]

Wow, this hypothesis suggests that global warming may result in the Earth slowing down its rotation by 11 microseconds per decade. I had better make sure my earthquake insurance is paid up.

What they don't mention is how much NORMAL slowdown we can expect from other causes, such as the transfer of angular momentum from the Earth to the moon. I don't recall the numbers, but I am sure the moon will be a much larger factor than the variation in air currents.

Re:11 microseconds per decade?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's right. The length of the day increasing by 11us per decade is insignificant compared to the 2 milliseconds per century = 200us per decade increase due to the interaction with the Moon.

Also, cnn had the story 4 days ago.

Re:11 microseconds per decade?

[canadian_right]

Mod up please, good info, good link.

Re:11 microseconds per decade?

[Lumpy]

EXACTLY! It blows my mind how quack science get's publicized today. Everything that they have been gloom-and-dooming about are just hazy theories with no solid proof (do we have 1000 years of data? noooo? well then you cant figure out what changes are happening with a 98 Gagillion year old planet All of these events have a greater chance being either a cycle of normal planetary operation or another reason.

This slowing is so slow it cannot be measured (your refrence points in space are probably changing at a different and possibly faster rate) and even those have to be assumed. It amazes me how scientists forget relativity so easily and quickly. this supposed slowing of the planetary rotation is in relation to what? when was the last time we actually measured the earth's roatation to within a microsecond? How about the last time we measured the earth's diameter or circumfrence to within a centemeter? I'd say that both are impossible without calibrated refrence points.

Someone please tell these quack scientists to shut up until they have plausable evidence or even when they move from the hypothesis stage to theory..

Ok, some quick math.

[Restil]

1/10000 of a second every century we shall slow down.

This means, that to gain ONE SECOND of our preciously short day, we will have to wait 1 MILLION years. This means, that by the time the
sun explodes, our day will be approximately 83 minutes longer. I'm sorry if I choose not to get excited about this.

In retrospect, the earth's rotation is slowing due to other factors, primarily tidal forces from the moon at a rate of 22 seconds every million years. It will eventually slow to the point where it takes one month to make a complete revolution, in perfect tidal lock with the moon. Or at least it would, although its still unlikely to make it before the sun goes.

Either way, I don't plan to lose any sleep over it. Of all the scares from global warming, this is one of the least disconcerting.

-Restil

Re:Ok, some quick math.

[Alsee]

By that point, the moon's orbit would have decayed

The moon's orbit is not decaying. It is slowly moving farther away.

-

Re:Ok, some quick math.

[BlueUnderwear]

Either way, I don't plan to lose any sleep over it.

Careful there! If you lose too much sleep, you might still be alive when this happens!

Re:Heh

[WildBeast]

let's see, around here in Montreal the temperature used to be like -20 degrees celsius at this time of year. Well this winter, it's like -6 degrees celsius. I don't feel like we're in winter.

Curious

[MindStalker]

Ok this is a complete joke, the time loss being so slow. But I have to wonder where did they get their figures of global-warming increase. As sence the 80's the amount of toxins in the atmosphere has decreased. So it ultimatly makes absolutly no sence to me, I guess they went on we are pumping out X amounts of toxins a day figure, not accounting for the natural ability of the earth to fix itself.

Days longer in old age?

[glwtta]

I thought that time was supposed to go (or seem to, rather) a lot quicker as you get older? Something about the heart-rate slowing down...

(yeah, yeah - "off topic" - blow me!)

Re:Days longer in old age?

[BluBrick]

I think it's largely perception of time that gets distorted with age.

You see - at 10 years old, 1 year is a tenth of the total time you have experienced. Pretty significant, no?

At 30 years old, 1 year is still 1 year, but it is now a much less significant fraction of the total time you have experienced.

The study

[macdaddy]

I heard about a study that was talked about on Discovery about two common myths, global warming and deforestation. I haven't seen it on Discovery though. What it boiled down to was some time back a bunch of scientists and other *ologists (thousands) signed a paper saying that both were real and major problems. Supposedly it got press coverage out the ass. This Discovery special was about about another paper that came out right after the first (because of the first) from many many more thousands of scientists and other *ologists that said that both were a crock of shit, media and political propoganda. Oddly enough the media didn't give the 2nd paper much billing (I wonder why...). The 2nd paper and the people that signed it proved that deforestation was not a problem and that their research showed that our planet's tree population was far greater than it was in the 1920's and increasing rapidly. They of course did say that chopping down unexplored rain forests could very likely wipe out plant and animal life that had never been recorded. Of course that's no deforestation. They also proved that the Earth is not getting warmer. They proved that in fact the Earth is really getting colder. In the short term were are reaching the peak of some loop that I can't recall the name of. It's supposed to be some variation in the distance from the Sun we typically follow. It's not a round path we follow. It's more oval. Elyptical (sp?). And it varies over time and repeats itself. We're reaching the hotter part of that peak. We are however in the long run starting another Ice Age. Yes, it's true. All these record highs recorded this winter do not mean that the Earth is really warming. They don't support global warming in the least. We are actually cooling in the long run. We will have another ice age before the Sun starts growing to the point that it will cause Earth to heat up. The short time period has us getting warmer. The medium time period has us starting and ice age. The long term time period has the Sun frying our asses.

All these scientists that signed the 2nd paper discounted what the 1st guys said and they did it with an overwhelming number of people. Of course the media didn't cover that. The media never wants to cover something like that. Blood and guts sells. Death and destruction sells. Conspiracy sells. Telling the public that violence in schools is actually decreasing and is lower now than it was in the troubled 70s doesn't sell. Plastering a blood-splattered babbling kid on the evening news that "saw it all" sells.

Enough of my rambling. You've heard it all before. My question is, has anyone seen this Discovery episode? Does anyone know where more information can be had? I'd love to see the episode. It sounds like a good one. I still like the one that proved that something like 600 million years ago we had a Snow Ball Earth and the one that proved all human life as we know it today originated from deep within Africa. Both of those were good shows.

Re:The study

[jareds]

You DO realize that there is a SIGNIFICANT different between a SAPLING and a 100 YEAR OLD tree right?

Yes, saplings absorb more carbon dioxide than 100-year-old trees. I found this reference with Google to support that fact. See the third paragraph.

World view my ass, no trees in MY area means that _I_ can't breath.

I suppose that's why people regularly suffocate in the Sahara and Antarctica.

And quite frankly I don't GIVE A FUCK about some corporate 'sponsered' (read: EPA made them do it and/or they are making a profit out of it in the long run) program to replant trees. [Emphasis mine.]

Eh? So replanting trees is only good if the entity doing the replanting does not benefit? How does that work?

Re:The study

[Waffle Iron]

Back in the early 1900's, New Englands forest cover was at about 25% and its probably close to 70% or more now...

That's because prior to the early 1900's the folks in New England cut down nearly every tree in the region. They then realized that that was a mistake and have been working to rectify the situation.

The only problem is, New England is something like 1/1000th of the earth's total area. Not a very good base to extrapolate from.

As for wider counts of the number of trees, Christmas tree farms don't count as valid forests, either.

Re:The study

[Malcontent]

The cutting of forests has moved to the west. The east got replanted somewhat but it's still not back up to the way it was 200 years ago (and it will never be how can it?).

Compare the forestation of 1600 to today and both the eas and the west coast are below those levels. Worldwide it's the same.

Re:The study

[Malcontent]

Were you refering to the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine petition? Dude you got hoaxed!. That was proven to be a hoax that's why it did not appear on discovery channel or any other respectible publication. It did however get a lot of press with the conservative press who could not tell science from fiction if it smacked them on the head.

I saw the one about the snowbal earth. Only bacteria were alive for a long time. When the ice burst it unleased ungodly storms for a a very long time (I don't remember the exact time but it was way long like centuries). No place for humans.

Re:The study

[Znork]

On the other hand, if you take a longer view on history, the last 100 years is one of the coldest episodes in the last 10000.

In my opinion the greenhouse effect doesnt even begin to explain temperature over a longer period, and as long as nobody in the CO2 camp appears to be able to explain why the temperature was a lot higher when we didnt release any CO2, and has fluctuated far more widely than the current observations through history, I will be inclined to be extremely sceptical of the current claims.

http://www.co2science.org/subject/other/clim_hist_ tenthousand.htm

And here (http://www.co2andclimate.org/Articles/2001/vca44. htm you can see some compelling data linking temperature history to solar activity levels.

Re:The study

[guygee]

All these scientists that signed the 2nd paper discounted what the
1st guys said and they did it with an overwhelming number of people

Last time I looked, the scientific method did not include petition drives
and petition signing contests. What you may not know about the "2nd
petition" that you mention is that it was circulated, like a piece of junk
mail, to many thousands of people having no expertise in climatology. I
know this because *I* got a copy, requesting my signature, even though my
work is in computer science and engineering. *Anyone* can sign that
"2nd petition" online, right here
. This petition drive is being lead by Frederick Seitz, President Emeritus,
Rockefeller University. Anyone recall
how the Rockefellers made their fortune?

The "2nd petition" is debunked in a
letter written by top scientists from the American Meteorological Society
(AMS) and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR).

It is a fact that
CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing, it is a matter of simple physics
that increased atmospheric CO2 will lead to higher temperatures. What,
to me, still seems debatable, is what the effects of those higher temperatures
will be on the Earth's ecosystems, and human civilization in particular.
Change is certain, but the nature of the change, and the relative benefits
and drawbacks, are unknown.

Re:The study

[macdaddy]

We actually have fairly accurate weather data that dates back hundreds of thousands of years thanks to geologists. That was part of how they proved the Snow Ball Earth theory. They found the layer of rock formed during the Snow Ball and on top that found a very thick layer of calcium carbonate that was formed during the rapid thawing. Our recorded weather data doesn't go back terribly far. Rocks go back a long long ways though. :)

Re:The study

[macdaddy]

Yeah. I know. I spent the better part of last night searching Discovery.com for a reference to the show I was told about. No luck yet. If anyone has any better luck, please share the links and the search string!

BTW, a 100 year high doesn't consitute a warming of the Earth. Climate study isn't a short term thing. It has to be looked at in the medium to long term. Hell El Nino can disrupt the short term view enough to make you think that the Earth is going to cook before the Kennedy files are opened.

Also, I'm not referring to the last Ice Age per say. The last Ice Age wasn't a true "snow ball" either. The tropics were still accessible. The Snow Ball Earth that I'm referring to (I need to find the article for you) was a complete covering of the Earth's surface with hundreds of meters of ice and snow. Even the equator had roughly 90 meters of ice on top of it. The physical evidence proves it. Yes, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking the same thing that the biologist community thought and said. They said that found the theory reasonible except that if the entire Earth's surface was covered in ice, there could be no life. Light (solar energy), the basis of life couldn't get through the ice. The geologists were stumped on that one until an artic diver happened to notice something under the ice in one of his dives. He found a plethora of life below the ice in the form of green algae and a few other things that I can't think of the words for. He said there was at least 30 meters of ice above him. He said there was a great deal of bright light coming down through the ice. He knew why also. If you quickly freeze ice, air will get trapped inside and form the white spots you see in ice cubes. If you cool it slowly though, the ice will freeze from the bottom up and will not contain air pockets (many anyways) making it extremely transparent. He proved the theory. Whew, enough typing. I've got to get to work. :)

Re:The study

[mesocyclone]

There is an enormous amount of informatino available on this. I recommend a recent book - "The Skeptical Environmentalist" which gives a lot of the history.

As per the specifics of your post... There were both petitions. In both cases, most of the signers were not experts in the appropriate field (climatology).

There is no dispute that global warming has occurred in the last century. There is significant dispute as to whether mankind is to blame for that dispute, although the "anti" side is frequently suppressed in the popular media. It is also true that the earth is coming out of a temporary cooling period, and that it is (by historical standards) in a short warming period between ice ages. It is also true that there was a big scare in the late 1970's where "scientists" were saying that the next ice age was about to strike.

I suggest you read up on this subject. The information isn't hard to find, although you want to be sure to read both sides of the debate.

Re:The study

[Com2Kid]

*COUGH* *COUGH*

::notes all of the OTHER graphs on that site show a decrease::

Maine doesn't seem to bad though. . . . .

A few years ago I was witness to a bunch of f*cking MANSIONS being put up in the MIDDLE of forest land.

Pissed me off to no end. Miles away from anyplace else, some dick head 'land developer' had to go around and chop down a bunch of trees to clear some land, and then chop down some MORE trees for lumber, just so some rich dipfuck (mix your swear words folks!) could go and have a retreat in 'the middle of nature' for a few weeks each year.

Damn near made me sick to my stomach.

Re:the big question

[macdaddy]

The warming we think we're seeing is actually very short term (term as in hundreds of years). The Earth doesn't travel around the Sun in a perfect circle. It's an oval of sorts. Elyptical (sp?). That isn't constant either. Over time the cycle changes. At one point it gets warm (now). At the other end of the cycle it gets colder than shit (read: ice age). Supposedly we're reaching the peak. We're actually starting an ice age. Not that you I, or your kids' grandkids' will ever see it but it is beginning. Sure we're putting crap in the air that wasn't as prevalent without us. Then again, CO2 is required to keep Earth warm. Without it, we'd be cold as hell, even this close to the Sun.

Re:Heh

[arsaspe]

In the southern parts of Australia, we often get Ozone hole warnings along with the normal weather.

Re:You do need to do something

[Com2Kid]

How many years in a row does it have to be 'odd' for?

It used to be perfectly natural for my area to get a little something called SNOW now and then.

The last 5 years have gotten snow that almost immediately melted from the ground (within a day) and even then the snow fall was pitiful.

10 years ago we would get a regular snowfall of some sort.

20 years ago a regular snowfall of some decency.

50 years ago you actually had to own a pair of snow boots to wear more then once a year.

Now days the 1 day of snow we get is so thin that you can walk in it with sneakers.

So... let me get this straight...

[stinky wizzleteats]

We're on a planet that has a 3 billion year history in which the climate has changed dramatically enough to put dinosaur fossils on Antarctica, evidence of undersea life on top of Mt. Everest, strange enough to feature a 20 megaton blast in Siberia 50 years before atom bombs were invented, and random enough to prevent our ability to accuratly forecast tomorrow's weather, AND we conclude based on less than 100 years of weather data that global warming is happening?

Forgive me, but I'm feeling a little like a mayfly seeing its first (and only) sunrise and worrying about global sunlighting.

Re:So... let me get this straight...

[dragons_flight]

No, no, there is quite a strong body of evidence that global temperatures fluctuate and that they have been slightly higher as of late.

Most scientists at current seem to agree that there is some degree of global warming. The real questions are what are the causes and what are the effects. It's also quite clear that man has been increasing the CO2 levels on earth since the industrial revolution. Whether this or any other man-made process is responsible for the observed warming is a much harder thing to establish.

Even if we are to blame (at least in part), then the question becomes, do we care? Dire predications get a lot of press, but there are still groups of scientists that believe the warming will have a neglible or even net positive effect on the Earth (from the point of view of an environment for sustaining man).

Raising ocean levels has far greater impact

[Thagg]

If, due to global warming, ocean levels rise five feet, then (assuming a constant density, spherical earth) the rotation rate would slow down by about 1 part in 2 million, about 18 seconds a year.

Given that water is less dense than most of the rest of the earth, it would probably be only two or three seconds a year, but still a substantial amount.

I had seen some speculation that the magnetic field of the earth is due to a different rotation rate between the core and the rest of the earth. Changing these relative rates may be significant.

thad

One of Asimov's essays...

[devphil]

...talked about this. The name of the essay was IIRC "The Inconstant Moon" and I first read it in The Sun Shines Bright, a collection of his science essays.

All I vaguely remember from the essay is that, once everything slows down enough, the moon should start spiralling inward. Friction with the atmosphere will destroy it, giving us a nice little ring system like Saturn's. However, that's supposed to take 7 billion years, while Sol will go red-giant in 5 billion years, so it's one of those "this would be really cool, but we'll all be dead by other means before we get to see it" events.

I hope I'm remembering the essay correctly. If you disagree, okay -- go read the essay and tell me what I forgot.

Re:One of Asimov's essays...

[Bill Currie]

The only problem I have with this is the moon is currently getting further from the earth as it slows down the earth's rotation (due to tidal forces) and gets sped up in the process.

That said, I suspect that we're both right in that eventually the earth will have a day of 1 month, slow down some more due to the sun, then start pulling the moon back in.

No matter what, that's going to take a bloocy long time.

Re:Yeah right the days are getting longer

[freeweed]

Although there is so much supposed controversy around global warming I for one can attest to witnessing it first hand growing up in Austin, Texas. Every year consistently since I was a boy the summer temperatures have hit new record highs and for longer and longer periods of time. Last summer there was three weeks where the daily high temp did not drop below 100.

Considering we haven't been seriously monitoring the weather for much more than 100 years, and early recording instruments were semi-accurate at best, I don't think you can claim that recent record highs have anything to do with global warming. Keep in mind that the average annual temperature in Texas about 20,000 years ago was barely this side of freezing. Human-caused global warming certainly didn't do that!

Although I do have to agree with you, I'd take a bunch of nuclear plants over coal/oil/gas any day.

+1 On Topic on the MQR standard

[MarkusQ]

1010011010 wrote: when the poles shift in 15,000 -20,000 years, killing most life, shifting the Earth's plates, and plunging the planet into an ice age, it won't matter much to us.

...and somebody (I suppose you know who you are) modded it "Offtopic". Given that the topic was the interaction between the earth's temp. and rotation, and that the effect 1010011010 pointed out is

much more pronounced than the one mentioned in the article (though of course not as dramatic as 1010011010 makes it sound)

much more likely than the one mentioned in the article

much more interesting than the one mentioned in the article

much more established than the one mentioned in the article

...it is hard to see how you could consider it "Offtopic". For that matter, the strength of the data for pole reversals causing major climate shifts is about as strong (or I should say, as weak) as the data for global warming (whether caused by humans or an unrelated trend in the global climate).

-- MarkusQ

P.S. There was a very interesting comparison floating around a few years back (it was cited against me in an argument about my shorting idiodic dot com stocks) between the global warming data and the exponential growth of the internet economy. I replied that I agreed, and that I thought both "trends" were drawing conclussions far in excess of the data.

Boy, did I get flamed.

If anybody has the article I'd love to have a link/copy.

Re:+1 On Topic on the MQR standard

[geekoid]

the story is about global warming effect on the length of days. Not about the destruction of the human race, or the poles. Thus, off-topic.
There is far more evidence to prove that global warming is caused by mans by products then there is that the poles shift.
Not that the pole don't shift.

If the effects of the depleting Ozone later where natural, this must be the first time because life infernieth the opening is dying.
also, the effects of mans byproduct can be proven in the lab.

Re:Global warming finally making itself present..

[hype7]

I'm sorry, but I'm going to pipe up here.

If you're basing "global warming" off anecdotal evidence, Canberra in Australia (where I live) has just had one of the coolest summers ever. The opposite of your experience. And please, don't try that b-s line on me that "global warming makes the extremes greater", because that's not global warming.

But allow me to present the case against the global warming phenomenon.
1. The temperature that is used by most scientists to prove the world is "warming up" is taken at posts that have been established for circa 100 years. Any further back than that there's no guarantee that the information is accurate. As a result of scientists normally living in larger cities as opposed to country towns, most of those weather posts were set up beyond the outskirts of large towns/cities approximately one hundred years ago.

However, as is the nature of these cities, they have grown/sprawled to encompass these weather posts. Now, as any scientist can tell you, cities are warmer than their surrounding regions. It's known as the "urban heat island effect". Tarmac, cement and all those other human building materials absorb and retain a much greater proportion of the heat that hits them during the day than does undeveloped land. Try walking over bitumen during a hot day and then walk over dirt. You'll see what I mean.

As these hotter cities expand to encompass the temperature stations, the temperature recorded by them is artificially increased. However, it's an extremely localised effect - the city is warmer, yes, but there's no way that the city is warm enough to have any effect on the surrounding countryside. It doesn't warm the globe up.

So, to begin with, almost all the statistics the global warming proponents are chucking round are incorrect.

2. Furthermore, land covers only 1/3 of the earth's surface. The other 2/3 is the ocean. Funnily enough, scientists haven't measured the temperature of the ocean over the past 100 years - there are generally only temperature stations located on the land. So the statistics that I've outlined above, that I believe already are flawed, are no greater than 30% of the surface area of the planet.

3. NASA satellites (which have been measuring the temperature of one of the atmospheres of the planet - I forget it's name, but it's about 1km above the surface of the planet) shows that the planet has actually been cooling down since the records have recorded. How is it that the planet has been warming up yet the atmosphere cooling down? And remember, these statistics are taken for the entire planet, not just the area over which is land.

4. From core samples that have been taken in various places over the planet, scientists have been able to determine both carbon dioxide and temperature levels. They've graphed both these over hundreds of thousands to millions of years, and guess what it showed - carbon dioxide moves as a result of temperature, as opposed to vice versa.

5. Another scientific experiment that's very interesting - in an isolated greenhouse, increase the proportion of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Guess what you'll find? That the trees/plants grow faster. And as such, increase their intake of carbon dioxide, and produce more oxygen!

As such, my opinion is that the effort that is spent worried about global warming should instead be re-directed towards the preservation of native habitats, especially old growth forests which are our greatest ally as carbon dioxide recyclers. They are, quite literally, the lungs of our planet.

-- james
ps For some of those statistics I've used above (NASA satellite links, core samples, etc) please head to http://www.vision.net.au/~daly/

This is an independently (ie no finance from oil company, etc) run web site run by a man named John Daly, who like myself, believes that the Greenhouse Effect is nothing more than hot air.

Re:Heh

[freeweed]

let's see, around here in Montreal the temperature used to be like -20 degrees celsius at this time of year. Well this winter, it's like -6 degrees celsius

Yeah, and in places like Georgia and Florida, they've gotten snow this year. While here in Winnipeg, it's currently 15 degress Celcius above normal and no signs of cooling down before spring. Doesn't mean much beyond this: weather CHANGES from year to year, and from location to location. Anecdotes aside, there really is no reason to think anything bizarre is happening, except for the fact that newssellers need to do just that: sell news.

Yeah But...

[istartedi]

...did their model account for the reduced angular moment when ice caps in Greenland and Antartica melt off and slide into the ocean? Some of that ice is 2 miles thick, so it should make a difference. If this really becomes a problem, we can vaporize the Himalayas with hydrogen bombs. Problem solved.

Re:Yeah But...

[istartedi]

Good grief you're right. I guess then we'll just have to use smaller bombs, and haul the rubble to large barges that will dump it into the Marianas trench. This should provide plenty of work for Indians and Chinese if there is an economic slowdown.

p.s., In case some of you out there on /. don't realize it, I'm joking!!! I would hate to see the Himalayas, or any mountain chain dismantled. Mountain-top mining in nearby West Virginia is bad enough. Let's not do that anyplace else.

If global warming ever does get to be a real problem, I think we could probably erect giant translucent screens in space. Frankly, I don't think it will ever come to that.

The Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy

[Bob_Robertson]

You might have missed where last week, the leader of a violent terrorist organization, which has taken credit for many bombings and destructive acts in the United States, was questioned before congress under oath.

The leader "plead the fifth" on everything.

The violent terrorist group? Earth Liberation Front (or something like that), a bunch of ecological extremists that the media happens to approve of.

It isn't that the media is deliberately biased, just that they tend to report what they support, and ignore as "not news" those things they disagree with.

Another example is defensive uses of firearms. 300 different stories published about the latest "school shooting", 2 of them accurately reported that the shooter was stopped by two other students (it was a college) who had their own firearms. The rest just said the perp was "tackled".

Bob-

+1 Rational on the MQR standard

[MarkusQ]

While I don't rate "Discovery" very high as a source for information about science, this raises my estimation of their credibility.

I also applaud you for posting this. The pettition you refer to has not received enough attention (see also). But even more important is to look at the data.

-- MarkusQ

Re:+1 Rational on the MQR standard

[Lemmy Caution]

And here is the expose.

Re:+1 Rational on the MQR standard

[Malcontent]

Dude you got hoaxed. That petition was a total hoax. Geri Halliwell of the spice girls is one of the signators as a (biologist). LOL.

Also the two links from junkscience.com are bogus too. One is from the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine which is republican front and the other from a gas company "scientist".

Please do some research before posting bogus links as science.

Re:+1 Rational on the MQR standard

[MarkusQ]

Dude you got hoaxed. That petition was a total hoax. Geri Halliwell of the spice girls is one of the signators as a (biologist).

I'm not disputing that I may have been hoaxed (see my reply to the post above yours) but I don't see her name or any breakdown by field (no one is labled "biologist" etc. that I can see.). How did you determine that she was listed as a signator?

Please do some research before posting bogus links as science.

I never claimed it was science; I claimed that it was the pettition that the poster I was replying to had mentioned.

-- MarkusQ

P.S. And here's an interesting thing to try: go to the list of names, choose one at random (pref. an odd one, e.g. "Ismail B Haggag") and do a web search on them. Most of them seem to be real people at least. When the ones I tested should up in lists (e.g. faculty rosters) I tried picking a random name off the roster and searching for it on the pettition (to see if they had "harvested" the names off of university web sites. None of them were there.

Re:+1 Rational on the MQR standard

[MarkusQ]

HA HA HA!!! You total and absolute idiot, a hoax which confirms your idiotic belief that the world is flat "raises your estimation of their credibility"? HA HA HA!!!!!

Yes, though your post does nothing to raise my estimation of either the sagacity or tact of Anonymous Cowards.

To recap:

I do not know that the petition was a hoax. That claim has been made, based on the fact that it contained various questionable names. As several people have pointed out, it is absurd to assume the questionable names were added by the petition's authors; they were obviously added by critics wishing to discredit the petition, and have subseequently been removed.

This no more makes it certain that it is a hoax than the objections raised by some of the IPCC authors to that report's contents (which, they asserted at the time, were forced on them by the lead authors for political reasons) make that report a hoax. Such accusations can (and have been) made by both sides. That's part of what makes it a controversy.

In any case, questions of science can not be resolved by pettition. In this case, we may even be past the point where data will help, since the sides seem to be polarized beyond even agreement on terms.

For example, over what time period are we talking? It is quite posible to have a warming trend on one scale and a cooling trend on another (think about a fall morning; between, say, dawn and noon, the temperature is likely rising, but that doesn't mean winter has been cancled). Are we talking about the upper atmosphere, the lower, or maybe the sea surface? If we are talking about the earth as a whole it is clearly cooling, since the bulk of the heat is in the molten iron core. But I doubt most people mean (or even consider) that.

All of this, without even touching on questions like "are people causing this?" or "is one side or the other using the issue as a cloak for some political agenda?" or "what should/can we do about it?". It is a complex issue, or at least seems so to an "absolute idiot" such as myself.

It was the hope that Discovery was doing more than presenting just the standard knee-jerk "the sky is falling" line that raised my estimation of their credibility. (As a side note, the best way for someone to max out their credibility on the MQR standard is to publish a well thought out, tightly reasoned refutation of a position I--perhaps tacitly--hold. Simply agreeing with me doesn't help me much, since there's little to be learned from people who agree with everything you say. People who can offer cogent objections to your positions are priceless.)

-- MarkusQ

P.S. Laughing in all-caps isn't generally considered a "cogent objection".

Even if...

[The Man]

you buy into the assertion that Earth is warming, the historical record indicates that at times in the distant past (100s MY ago) the Earth was MUCH warmer. Yet, amazingly, the "fossil fuels" we're so bad to be burning weren't yet fossils, humans didn't exist, and Earth didn't become Venus. Shocker. As for slowing rotation, there are plenty of other factors controlling air currents, so even if we were to accurately measure an otherwise (moon, etc) unexplained slowdown in rotation, it doesn't prove that Earth is warming. All it proves is that Earth spins more slowly.

Care for our planet, yes. Act as responsible stewards of our land and oceans, certainly. But spew bogus alarmist rhetoric to confuse and manipulate the mediagoing public, shame on you. This is junk science at its worst.

Re:Even if...

[nomadic]

Illogical anti-environmentalist rhetoric. Name one person who has claimed that the ONLY way to heat the atmosphere was through CO2 released in industrial processes. Do you think declaring that during its 6 billion year history the earth has been warmer than it is now actually disproves a damn thing?

11 millionths of a second?

[autopr0n]

De Viron's team found that earthlings can expect the length of an average day to increase by 11 millionths of a second per decade, corresponding to an overall increase of about one ten-thousandth of a second by the close of the century.

OH MY GOD!!!! A HUNDRED MILLIONTHS OF A SECOND!! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!

This seems more like 'hey, look at this' then 'hey we have to do something!' I don't really think a few hundred thousanths of a second could screw anything up.

And those that say the earth would get hotter... we would also have longer nights as well.

"More profoundly"?

[The Monster]

efuseekay writes:

is more profoundly affected by tidal locking with the moon than fluvial effects

While the story itself says [emphasis mine]:

expect the length of an average day to increase by 11 millionths of a second per decade, corresponding to an overall increase of about one ten-thousandth of a second by the close of the century

Since the people who tend the atomic clocks have been adding at least one "leap second" each year for as long as I can remember (inserted as 23:59:60 GMT on 31 Dec, with the occasional extra at the same time on 30 Jun), it would seem that it would take tens of millenia before this factor is even a blip, much less 'profound'. The article closes with this Burning Question:

How will the diurnal rhythms of animals and plants be affected in coming millennia? Only time will tell.

Is there any animal or plant with a rhythm that can be measured in nanoseconds? If so, why are we not using them instead of those atomic clocks?

Re:"More profoundly"?

[monkeydo]

According to the USNO:
"Through the use of ancient observations of eclipses, it is possible to determine the average deceleration of the Earth to be roughly 1.4 milliseconds per day per century."

So the slowing caused by the tides is approx. 1,000 times stronger than this "global warming" effect.

Also, leap seconds are not inserted every year, but "as needed".

Re:"More profoundly"?

[The Monster]

monkeydo wrote:

leap seconds are not inserted every year, but "as needed"

Well, I don't recall saying that it was exactly every year, but that it seemed like it. Consulting with The Definitive Source On Such Things, I see that since 1972 there have been 23 Leap Seconds. That comes to an average of .766... ls/y - not exactly 1, but way closer than this effect is supposed to account for.

The polls have shifted before.

[autopr0n]

All life did not die.

CO2 is not a toxin

[autopr0n]

You have no idea what you're talking about. The amount of CO2 going into the air is known... the affect on the weather is what's in question.

Global Warming is very real ...

[whjwhj]

... but you can bet the Slashdot crowd will ignore the facts on this one.

Please, just for a moment, put aside all of your preconceptions and assumptions and go out there and learn the facts . What you will discover in this process is that Global Warming is, in fact, quite real. Frighteningly real. And human beings are the cause.

You're always going to find scientists who will claim that Global Warming is a crock of shit. (A lot of those same scientists work for oil companies and other concerns.) But the truth of the matter is, the vast, VAST majority of the world's scientists overwhelmingly agree that Global Warming is very real and poses a significant threat to our ecosystem and our way of life.

This bullshit about the "myth" of Global Warming is largely a U.S. phenomenon. Most 1st world countries trust their scientists and completely understand that Global Warming is a very real threat. So much so that even China jumped on the bandwagon. The sole detractor at Kyoto is the good ol' U. S. of A. As usual, we've got our head in the sand.

A few of you have mentioned how the media has blown this out of proportion and is being alarmist, etc. The exact opposite is true. The media in the U.S. has ignored and sidelined the entire issue. People hate scary stuff. Doesn't sell. So they barely mention it. All the more reason that our government should continue to fund (and increase funding for) unbaised news sources like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

But my point is, go learn the facts before you show up here pretending you know them.

P.S. And keep an eye on the weather. It'll just get more and more obvious. Been quite a warm winter this year, wouldn't you say?

Re:Global Warming is very real ...

[Usquebaugh]

There a very few scientists who have the requiste knowledge and data to comment on global warming. Most scientists can only comment on certain areas.

In the 70s we had a lot of scientists saying we were on the brink of an ice age, in fact a number of these changed their tune. Now we have a lot of scientists saying we are on the brink of a heat wave. Who is accurate?

Goverment funding for an unbiased news source, what hell are you smoking, please re read and understand that there is no unbiased reporting, none. The best you can do is understand what the bias is of your news source.

No the winter here in San Francisco has been fucking freezing, lowest temps etc etc In short it's been bloody miserable. However the summers seem to have been warmer as well.

My belief is that as with most things humans do not have enough accurate historical evidence to say what the temperature is doing and they have even less understanding of how our actions influence that temperature.

Science is not a new religion and the sooner people understand that because a scientist says something does not make it accurate.

In short, the climate is changing as it always has and we do not have a fucking clue why. But a boat load of scientists can pretty much tell where their next round of funding is coming from.

Re:Global Warming is very real ...

[Chanc_Gorkon]

Um. No. I vehemently disagree with you. Global Warming is bunk. We only have about 100 years worth of weather data. HOW IN THE WORLD CAN YOU SAY HUMANS CAUSE THIS WITH THIS DATA! It isn't enough! The world is around 3 billion years old ( I think that's it....) and we are trying to say that us humans who have only been here part of that time caused this? No, US folks are skeptical of scientists who talk out there butt. Weather patterns are CYCLICAL! Just because I ain't freezing my butt of now and walking thru 10-12 inches of snow does not mean that the globe, as a whole is any warmer. Do you realize that Texas has had more snow then Columbus, OH?? That's almost unheard of. Also, I believe Texas has also been colder then we are too. Some people will say that global warming caused this chaotic pattern. BS. We don't have anywhere near enough data to prove global warming. Any scientist saying we do should tear up his PhD.....now and go start selling burgers at McDonald's.

Also there's no such thing as an unbiased news source. We're humans. We have opinions and try as we might, we can't always suppress them.

Also, an another note, for the freaks who say we don't have enough oil, well, if we'd drill in ANWR we'd stabilize the market. If we get off of our butts and tap the oil in the Gulf of Mexico, we could be self sustaining and not need oil from saudi. This is a fact (wish I could atrribute a source but it's late and I am going to bed after this). Here's an interesting link about ANWR. The reasons these ecological wackos have come up make no sense and have no scientific backing except some crap some scientists who liked the idea has drawn up.

I am not saying we should not explore alternatives that are cleaner then gasoline. Hydrogen and fuel cells hold great promise not just from an environmental sense, but from a business sense as well. Imagine if we all had a fuel cell on our house. We'd no longer be dependent on wires going underground and into our house and no longer would we have to worry about lightening striking the above ground wiring because there would be none. When ever Hydrogen is cheap (it's cheap now...), you'd just fill it up and be good to go. The waste water created by the reaction could be ran through a filter, and used to flush toilets or take showers or heck even drink. Who WOULDN'T want this? Even the big oil would want a piece of this. The good thing is if we actually tap the Gulf adequately, we could be assured we would have enough oil until this stuff is perfected. Right now, if we decided to bomb someone in the middle east, we may as well grab ahold of a bank loan to buy gas cuz it's going to go up. My biggest point here, is that it doesn't have to be this way. it's only this way becase a small MINORITY thinks the sky is falling when it's not.

Re:Global Warming is very real ...

[canadian_right]

One of the odd things about changing global weather paterns is some of the unexpected side affects. Global warming may decrease the temperature in Northern Europe by a few degrees by changing some rather major artic ocean currents. Warming would bring a major cold stream that is currently quite deep (and makes it farther south) to raise up and cool Europe.

Weather is very complicated. Global warming will not simply give us the same weather, but warmer. It will cause strange, and unexpected new weather patterns. Storms will tend to be more intense (high temp = more energy), some places will get wetter, some drier, some warmer, some cooler.

But all this is nothing compared to the Ocean's rising if it actually get warm enough to break up the antartic ice shelf.

And all xfiles people know that global warming is being orchestrated by a global conspiracy of GOOD guys to stave off an imminent ice-age!

Re:Global Warming is very real ...

[LarsWestergren]

Global Warming is very real ... but you can bet the Slashdot crowd will ignore the facts on this one.

Hear hear. Whenever this issue is raised on Slashdot, someone posts something about the greenhouse effect being alarmist and poor science and it gets modded up to five pretty much instantly. They also (like one of the posts above) usually post Rush comments like the ones about sensors in warmer cities skewing the statistics even though this effect has been known and included in calculations for a long time.

Re:Global Warming is very real ...

[Pentagram]

We only have about 100 years worth of weather data. HOW IN THE WORLD CAN YOU SAY HUMANS CAUSE THIS WITH THIS DATA!

We have thousands of years' worth of weather data. Dendochronology, ice cores, sediment patterns, historical records, etc.

The opinions on global warming on Slashdot is about as scientific as creation scientists. 99% of the world's climatologists agree that global warming is occuring. Even president Bush.

Please tell me you were trolling.

Re:Global Warming is very real ...

[Chanc_Gorkon]

Well, no there probably is not enough data to PROVE it's bunk. But I seriously doubt that it can be anything but. Archeology samples like ice cores and everything are only theorizing what it was like back then. Some assume that the layers are unchanged by years and that they are as they were when they were formed. I am not saying that everyone says that. It's just with the data we have, you can say either way...that the earth is cooling or that the earth is heating up. I also do agree, somewhat with having clean burning fuels. It makes sense not just for the environment but from a energy standpoint as well. A clean burning engine is more efficient then a dirty engine.

Now, the earth has been here for 3 about billion years. Humans have been on the planet a FRACTION of that time. The planet is a BIG place wih lots of sutff happening. No we have some people arrogant/dumb enough to say that we can affect the planet's weather??? I just don't believe that something such as this is possible. Even if it is, according to some the air was supposed to be unbreathable 2-3 years ago. What happened hmm? Us humans like to think we have power. We crave it. The fact is the world is a whole lot bigger then any of us and it is capable from bouncing back from amazing stuff.

Should the average human worry about global warming...well, I don't think so. First off, we already have enough things to worry about like how we are going to pay our bills and crap. Should we just pollute for the heck of it? No. Should we look into alternative fuels? Yes, if they can be done econimically. Soon they will be....even with in our lifetimes. My point is we have time and the earth is a lot more stronger then we are. God gave us oil and the ability to use it. Why aren't we using more or making it available so it can be more affordable? Granted, even at today's prices, gasoline is cheaper then bottled water. Amazing huh?

I did like someone else's idea about using up all of everyone else's oil then go tell the mid east to shove it after we used their stuff up and have ours to ourselves. But I don't think that way. I think in the terms we better use OUR stuff. We buy too much crap from the Japanese and Chinese already!

Re:Global Warming is very real ...

[nomadic]

One of the telltale signs of junk science is a TENDENCY for its PROPONENTS to occasionally CAPITALIZE words for no APPARENT reason.

Re:Global Warming is very real ...

[Simon Brooke]

It actually doesn't matter whether global warming is real or not; and it doesn't matter whether we're causing it or not.

If it is real, then the potential costs are so high (most major cities, for example, grew up around ports and are only a few metres above sea level), and the time it takes to turn the juggernaut around is so long, that we need to be taking urgent avoiding action now while we continue to urgently assess the reality of the risk.

If it turns out that global warming is happening but that the major causes are natural, then we're still better off if we've done everything we can to stop making things worse.

If it turns out that global warming isn't happening and it was all a panic about nithing, then we'll still have more efficient transportation, better insulated houses, and a cleaner planet with greater fossil fuel reserves to pass on to our children.

But if the United States carries on the way it's going and it turns out that that global warming is real, then the voters of Florida, Mississippi, and Texas aren't going to cheer too loudly for the President and the generation which lost 20% of the land area of the continental United States, and turned another 20% into desert.

Re:Global Warming is very real ...

[whjwhj]

Now just what the hell do you think you know about this stuff? You jump right in with your reasoning about this and that ... but are you a climatologist? Are you ANY kind of scientist? I didn't think so. So don't give me your two-bit crap opinion and try to pass it off as scientific truth. Because the only truth you expose is your own ignorance.

Re:Global Warming is very real ...

[whjwhj]

No the winter here in San Francisco has been fucking freezing, lowest temps etc etc

Global warming is screwing with our weather patterns. Here (in Minnesota) it's been very warm almost all winter (but probably still pretty cold by your standards) whereas in San Fran it's been strangely cold. Abnormal weather patterns. The scientific community struggles still to prove the exact cause of the strange weather the world has been experiencing of late, but circumstantial evidence suggests it's due to global warming. Which is what I mean by "keep an eye on the weather". Let's see how bizzare our winters and summers are say ... 10 years from now. Even 5. By then we'll probably all have forgotten what a "normal" winter or summer was even like.

Re:Global Warming is very real ...

[-Harlequin-]

Global Warming is bunk. We only have about 100 years worth of weather data. HOW IN THE WORLD CAN YOU SAY HUMANS CAUSE THIS WITH THIS DATA! It isn't enough!

It's easy - you've just got the scientific method all backwards.
Global warming ISN'T about looking at the weather data and saying "Uh-oh - this looks like a bad trend...". It's about looking at the easily measureable artificial increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases and saying "if the physics inside the lab also applies outside the lab, we can expect that climate change will result from the known increase of these gases in the atmosphere". IE, the weather data has nothing to do with the climate predictions - people are looking to it as a way to check the validity of the predictions, NOT as the basis of the prediction. (Unless they're dippy media sensationalists)

We don't have anywhere near enough data to prove global warming.

We also apparently don't have enough data to prove the Creationists and Flat Earth Society wrong (or so they tell us). Science isn't about proof, it's about evidence. And the evidence suggests it is very foolish to continue indulging some of our current excesses in the she'll-be-right-mate belief that nothing can happen.

In terms of risk management, I'd say the evidence points towards changing some of our bad habits. And that we will technologically benefit from this in the long run anyway suggests we should do it anyway. What the climate change risk adds is an imperative to do it NOW, and an incentive to tackle the change harder (ie more painfully) than we might otherwise choose. But we didn't seem to interested in changing for the better at all before environmental issues appeared.

Re:Global Warming is very real ...

[_xen]

Most of the scientists who believe that man is strongly responsible for global climate change have nothing to do with any meteorology.

Most atmospheric scientists are quite concerned about global warming (in fact you have to pay a lot tet one to say it isn't happening). A large majority of atmospheric scientists believe that anthropogenic carbon is a factor in global warming

The US is not the only detractor, Canada and Australia both have major issues with it and fact that it will do little more than punish larger, countries with fewer general pollution problems.

While there are apparently a lot of scientists for sale in the US, in Australia, there is only a single University employed atmospheric scientist who argues against the view that human activity is a major factor in global warming. Even he is not of course stupid enough to argue that global warming is occuring (that simply a matter of getting the measurements and doing the stats). The people who have major issues with reducing greenhouse gas emissions are not scientist silly, they are economists and politicians. That is to say they, like you, lack the education to understand the problem.

Re:Yeah right the days are getting longer

[ahde]

Just because in Austin, Texas the summers have been getting warmer for the past decade, (as both you and Bruce Sterling have so scientifically observed) doesn't mean its happening globally. Actually, just up the road in Dallas, the winters are getting colder!

Where is my mind

[Graymalkin]

Stop the world I want to get of...oh. Well thanks then mate.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:Keep an open mind.

[ahde]

Newton's gravity model has been un-dis-provable except for a few astronomic observations. In point of fact, for *all* practical purposes, Newton's gravity model still holds.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:Heh

[ahde]

on those days, do the uwary sometimes catch on fire?

Re:Global warming?

[Tablizer]

(* Global warming? It seems to be the latest fad by the environmentalists to get us to bend to their wills. *)

Although the effects are debatable, it is almost an accepted fact that the ratio of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere *is* changing rapidly due to our activities.

Thus, what actual changes we are making to the earth as a whole are disputable, it is almost a certain fact that we *are* making significant changes to the atmosphere itself that are not "normal" (within the timeframe of millions of years).

another thing to watch out for...

[supernova87a]

The Reversal is coming!!! Well, in about 300,000 years, that is.

For those who aren't familiar with this physical phenomenon, the Earth's magnetic field reverses itself (changes polarity) every 300,000 years or so. Rather quick on a planetary time scale, huh?

There are lots of geophysicists interested in this field (paleomagnetism) because it requires some sophisticated modeling of how geodynamos work. Take a look: here for supercomputer modeling of the reversal

I'm not sure which to place my bets on first -- a) the Moon flying away from the Earth, b) the magnetic field reversing, or c) the Earth stopping its spin... Well, ok. It's b). But between a) and c)? I'm not so sure.

Bring it on..

[joonasl]

Slowing this world down a notch might not be a terribly bad idea..

And from a nordic perspective global warming might not be that bad either :)

Re:Global warming finally making itself present..

[cp99]

If you're basing "global warming" off anecdotal evidence, Canberra in Australia (where I live) has just had one of the coolest summers ever. The opposite of your experience. And please, don't try that b-s line on me that "global warming makes the extremes greater", because that's not global warming.

Err... you are aware that putting more water vapour into the atmosphere "makes the extremes greater". If anecdotal evidence is what we're looking for for, then Canberra's recent heavy rainfall should provide evidence of this.

But allow me to present the case against the global warming phenomenon.

1)

Do you have any evidence (peer-reviewed, of course) for this? Forgive my skeptism, but I would put more weight on the views of the Australian Academy of Sciences, Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts, Brazilian Academy of Sciences, Royal Society of Canada, Caribbean Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, French Academy of Sciences, German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina, Indian National Science Academy, Indonesian Academy of Sciences, Royal Irish Academy, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (Italy), Academy of Sciences Malaysia, Academy Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Turkish Academy of Sciences, and Royal Society (taken from a joint statement made in the journal Science), than the word of a slashdot poster.

2)

This point is just wrong. If you had have paid more attention to the link which you posted, you would find a section on measurements of temperture change in the deep sea Southern Ocean.

3)

This point ignores that loss of ozone will cause a temperture decrease in the upper atmosphere, and that the satellite data has been reexamined, and found to show a increase in the temperture.

4)

Could you please supply a citation for this. I'm interested to see how they seperated out cause and effect. I looked through your supplied link, and didn't see it.

5)

Negative feed back mechanisms have been known about for years, plant growth especially. This have been taken into account in the climatical models.

Global Warming is very real ... on Mars

[Caractacus Potts]

If you want to see an example of weather chaos in action, look at pictures of Mars from last October. A small dust storm grew into a planet-wide dust storm, causing real global warming due to the dust in the atmosphere.

Global Warming Myths

[kronstadt]

After seeing loads of pseudo-science (on both sides), I took the time several months ago to look at the scientific literature and try to learn about the validity of claims that many laypeople made about global warming. The parent touched on a few of these, and I couldn't resist digging in...

1) Global temperature is decreasing.

No. Even the most cursory look into the subject should show this to be false. For an example, check out the graph on this page. Almost all of the literature I have read agrees on this. The debate comes in when you start talking about how much/why/is this natural?

2) The atmosphere already contains carbon dioxide and needs it in order to keep the Earth warm. Thus, more carbon dioxide is not bad.

While the atmosphere does contain significant amounts of CO2, the thing to remember is that it needs to maintain a balance. As an analogy, think of your body. If you don't have enough iron, you get sick (e.g. anemia). If you have too much iron, you also get sick.
One of the biggest sources of natural atmospheric CO2 is plant matter. At the end of the 19th century, human CO2 emissions were comparable to global plant matter emissions (~150 MMt). By the end of the 20th century, human emissions were 40 times greater than the plant CO2 emissions. You can check this up at the CDIAC site.

3) Global temperature increases can be explained by volcanic emissions.

Also not the case. In fact, one of the landmark papers (Mass, Portman 1989) actually showed that the net effect of each of the several largest 20th century volcanic eruptions was a decrease in global temperature. The reason for this is that, while volcanos do put significant amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, they also release substantial quantities of particulate matter (e.g. ash). The effect of the latter is to decrease the net amount of sunlight reaching the Earth's surface.

4) Global warming can be explained via sun spots, orbit variations (Earth and/or lunar), etc.

I was unable to find very much evidence of this in the literature. I was, however, able to find a significant amount of "pop sci" articles supporting these theories.

The general consensus is that scientists do not know enough to fully evaluate the problem, but that humans do have a measurable effect on the atmosphere. The scientific side of the debate centers around the size of this effect, and whether or not it is significant. The atmosphere is incredibly complex, and we may never be able to fully describe it. To me, this appears to be as good an argument in favor of reducing emissions as any other.

On a side note, I found the following to be generally true of articles/papers about global warming: The "seriousness" and scientific legitimacy of such an article are inversely proportional to the concreteness of the claims. Papers claiming that "global warming is just a myth", that "global warming can be explained by some never-before-heard theory", or that "global warming is already upon us and will put most of the Earth's land underwater in the next few years" almost never appear in peer-reviewed scientific journals, while papers claiming that "we really don't know enough yet to make firm conclusions" almost never appear in pop sci magazines.

Re:Global Warming Myths

[Dwonis]

Regarding those who say that global warming is bunk, Didn't somebody take a sample of the ice in a glacier somewhere (it was either Greenland or Antarctica) that conclusively showed that global temperatures are much higher than they ever were over the last 5000 years?

Re:Global Warming Myths

[geekoid]

all of which ignores the fact that something is causeing ozone depletion, and if we don't stop it, we can kiss it all good-bye.
alarmist? no. the effects of the ozone depletion are visable. recently, the pole grew big enough to touck a contenant with livestock, cancer rates on livestock went through the roof.
plants die. plankton, dies. the poles are melting faster then we've ever scene, or measured. Polar bears ares tarving to dath because fish are decreaseing.

If the algea in the oceans die, we die.

We need to figure something out, quickly. we neeed to discover how much of it is from mans impact, thats for sure, but we need to do something.

a system may be very chaotic

[Edmund Blackadder]

But it doesnt mean it wont react relatively predictably to a relatively large input.

And all this carbon dioxide we are sending up is a pretty large input.

Re:Global warming finally making itself present..

[LadyLucky]

OK, I'll bite.,

While yes, most claims over global warming and the like are vastly exaggerated, some of what you say is not strictly correct.

1. Not sure. One thing I do know in the time I have spent doing atmospheric physics is that people are smarter than that. Temperature data is FAR FAR FAR more than a few thermometers in cities

2. There is an experiment called ATOC which has been doing just that for several decades. While this mightnt yet be long enough, the trend seen so far is for warming.

3. This is no longer correct. The satellite data to which you refer has more recently been analysed, and shows a warming effect. I believe the effect that was ignored was the spiralling in of the satellites over time, but im not sure.

4. Eh? millions of years? and you can see a cause and effect? What's more, your next point contradicts this one. CO2 and water are known greenhouse gasses. Even mars is warmed by a few degrees by its atmosphere.

5. Yes, there is a known dampening effect on greenhouse gasses. The other one is the warmer it is, the faster C02 dissolves in the ocean, leaching out as rock.

Michael Moorcock story on this theme

[Yarn]

The world has stopped, people live in endless sunshine. But the endless sun causes infertility etc, so one person from the twilight area goes into the dark side to find this mad scientist and get him to turn the world.

In the end the scientist does turn the world, by 180 degrees and stops.

The moral is: when talking with scientists, be precise.

Tapping Asian Oil

[Bios_Hakr]

I, for one, think the policy of dependance on foreign oil is a good thing. One day, oil will run low. Would you rather be asking for foreign oil now, or in 30~50 years? It may seem harsh, but at that time, we can tell OPEC to kiss our asses and leave the Middle East to the religous zealots.

Re:Tapping Asian Oil

[Bios_Hakr]

While it is nice to think that in 50 years we will all have flying, hydrogen-powered cars, you must attempt to preserve the resources you KNOW to be valueable.

...a snowball effect?

[quintessent]

No, that would be cooling the Earth...

Re:Global warming finally making itself present..

[Lumpy]

3. NASA satellites (which have been measuring the temperature of one of the atmospheres of the planet - I forget it's name, but it's about 1km above the surface of the planet) shows that the planet has actually been cooling down since the records have recorded. How is it that the planet has been warming up yet the atmosphere cooling down? And remember, these statistics are taken for the entire planet, not just the area over which is land.

any sattelite orbiting at an altitude of 1Km would be a wild fireball that would either last 3 seconds and then cease to exist or cause thousands of UFO sightings and cause accidents with aircraft.

I have been above 1Km at least 60 times in my life (a private aircraft, single prop without a pressurized cabin can get to 2km easily. and I can positively say that there are NO sattelites at that altitude...

Oh and weather balloons, hang aroud 30-50Km high.

My bad

[MarkusQ]

The Oregon Institute's "petition" is a hoax. The names are largely made-up. I recall Captain Kangeroo being among their number. The OISM is run from a small warehouse in rural Oregon. Their scientific credibility is on a par with the Flat Earth Society.

*laugh*

That will teach me to do a quick link search! (Although to be fair, I haven't really researched your claims either). I don't doubt that there are are people in the "global-warming-is-bunk" camp that have political agendas; for that matter many people in the "humans cause-global warming camp" have a pretty clear political agenda too. In my defense, please note the times on my varrious posts over the past few weeks (and frequent refferences to coffee); we've got a new son, & I've been hopping on while rocking him between diaper changes,, etc. at pretty much random times (read: not enough sleep).

So I will back down to a few statements I know first hand to be correct, and not try to back anything with potentially tainted links:

I don't recall hearing about the pettition until the first poster mentioned it; based on that, I just did a quick google & posted what I found. My bad. I have seen the long term (>1000 year) climate data, and it is noisy. I worked briefly with someone (him in the field, me on the computer) who was trying to correlate data from varrious locations, and the correlations they found (to distinguish global from local) was about as good as it is at present. The noisy climate record isn't a consequence of our ignorance. Against this background, the size of the signal claimed for global warming is absurdly small (cf the day length change posited in the article here, vs, the change due to tidal forces, etc.). I'm not an industry flack, fundumentallist, etc. of any stripe, and I am also not a climate expert. I was a botany major for a while, (w. a 4.0 GPA), but then I was also a math major, a physics major, and several others. The main limiting factor for most plants is CO2 supply. The only reason we have the atmosphere we do (almost no carbon, lots of oxygen) even though we started out with a carbon-heavy atmosphere is that the plants sucked down every scrap they could get their grubby little leaves on. As one on my professors put it, "dumping CO2 into the attmosphere is like throwing money off a building in New York City: you might change the local environment some, but if you expect it to accumulate and block up the street, you're dreaming." In the 1960s, the more vocal global warming advocates were asserting that, by 2000, the earth would be uninhabitalbly hot. They keep shifting the claims, but it always amounts to "dire things will happen ~40 years from now unless you do what we say now, without wasting time on study or debate." This has biased me against them. The people I have personally met who have felt most strongly about global warming seem to 1) fear and resent "technology", and 2) have a burning desire to believe that what they do makes a difference in the big picture. This is pretty easy to test if you bait them with "I heard about an article that may have claimed..." and see which silly statements they will accept & which ones they reject. It's my conclusion that the reason the "people are changing the Earth's climate" story sells so well (along with nonsense like "cut the plastic tabs on your six packs to save the dolphins") has much more to do with a fear of insignificance and a need for "redemtion" than with anything rational. And yes, I do see the analogy with my quick acceptence of the pettition, despite the fact that I don't trust "Discovery" and I don't trust "Science-by-pettition"--I suspect I am swayed by my pro-technology/on-the-galactic-scale-humans-are-in significant bias.

Better?

-- MarkusQ

Re:My bad

[MarkusQ]

Rather than typing in material from my old text books, I did a quick search for similar text on the web (risky, I know, since some of the sites I cite might turn out to be funded by Republicans (*smile*)):

Most of our conventional crops, including rice and wheat, assimilate atmospheric CO2 by the C3 pathway of photosynthesis, which takes place in the mesophyll cells of leaves. Photosynthetically, these plants are underachievers because, on the one hand, they assimilate atmospheric CO2 into sugars but, on the other hand, part of the potential for sugar production is lost by respiration in daylight, releasing CO2 into the atmosphere, a wasteful process termed photorespiration. This is due to the dual function of the key photosynthetic enzyme, ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (Rubisco). High CO2 favors the carboxylase reaction and thus net photosynthesis; whereas high O2 promotes the oxygenase reaction leading to photorespiration. When plants first evolved, photorespiration was not a problem because the atmosphere then was high in CO2 and low in O2. As a byproduct of photosynthesis, O2 accumulated in the atmosphere and reached the present level a million years ago. Current atmospheric CO2 levels limit photosynthesis in C3 plants. Furthermore, photorespiration reduces net carbon gain and productivity of C3 plants by as much as 40%. This renders C3 plants less competitive in certain environments. In contrast, with some modifications in leaf anatomy, some tropical species (e.g., maize and sugarcane) have evolved a biochemical "CO2 pump," the C4 pathway of photosynthesis, to concentrate atmospheric CO2 in the leaf and thus overcome photorespiration. Therefore, C4 plants exhibit many desirable agronomic traits: high rate of photosynthesis, fast growth, and high efficiency in water and mineral use.

...and:

CO2 enrichment can also affect plant communities directly. For many plant species, increased CO2 concentrations lead to increased rates of net photosynthesis and improved water-use efficiency, resulting in larger plants. This effect is greatest in C3 plants and is typically small or negligible in C4 plants. Where plant communities consist of both C3 and C4 species, the different responses of these two groups can lead to changes in plant community composition over time.

Finally, IIRC, most of the biomass is C3 plants.

-- MarkusQ

Re:My bad

[GlenRaphael]

The Oregon Institute's "petition" is a hoax. The names are largely made-up. I recall Captain Kangeroo being among their number.

The names weren't "largely made up". Rather, once the petition started collecting enough names of real scientists that it was worth taking notice of, environmental activists trying to discredit the petition deliberately submitted a few phony names which have since been removed. According to this source:

When the Oregon Petition first circulated, in fact, environmental activists successfully added the names of several fictional characters and celebrities to the list, including John Grisham, Michael J. Fox, Drs. Frank Burns, B. J. Honeycutt, and Benjamin Pierce (from the TV show M*A*S*H), an individual by the name of "Dr. Red Wine," and Geraldine Halliwell, formerly known as pop singer Ginger Spice of the Spice Girls. Halliwell's field of scientific specialization was listed as "biology." (emphasis added)

It is pretty unlikely that the funny names were put there by people who favored the petition.

I thought it was the moon?

[linuxrunner]

I watched a big report on the slowing of the earth and the moon...
Sorry no links to back this up, but hear me out...

The moon is what causes our rise and fall (wax and wain) of the tides. This same effect is acting as a big break on the earths spinning.
In a sense, the earth is slowing down at a miniscule faction of a second a day.
In recongnizable terms, it said that the earth will be 26 hours a day in 20 million years and 28 in 40 or 50 million years.

The scientists would disagree

[CausticPuppy]

But the truth of the matter is, the vast, VAST majority of the world's scientists overwhelmingly agree that Global Warming is very real and poses a significant threat to our ecosystem and our way of life.

The "vast, VAST majority" of the world's scientists apparently were pretty upset that somebody was speaking for them, which is probably a reason that a rather large number of them signed this petition. I suppose the thousands of PhD's listed there all work for oil companies?

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[account_deleted]

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Re:What news have you been watching???

[whjwhj]

I don't troll. Never have.

You make a good point. Scary stuff does sell. I stand corrected.

Now that I think about it more, I think news about global warming makes people ... uncomfortable. Probably because deep down they realize that they are partly to blame. It's sort of a guilt thing or something. Not sure.

But I sure as hell know from my own experiences that people sure don't like hearing about it, regardless of the reason. So it's no wonder the major news networks avoid talking about it.

Misc. responses

[MarkusQ]

(continued)

I find it hard to believe that you studied botany.

The fact that you disagree with me isn't a very good basis on which to doubt my statement that I studied botany. I may, for example, have had rotten teachers, or it may have been a long time ago, or I may have been an awful student. Or, for that matter you might be wrong. As it turns out, I was a botany major for three years, it was a long time ago, and I'm probably not an impartial judge on the other questions.

If CO2 were a limiting factor, it would be in short demand, but it's in great excess...is very readily available at the elevations in the atmosphere where it's required.

I suspect you mean "great demand" or "short supply" (instead of "short demand"). CO2 is not abundant. It makes up less than 0.04 percent of the atmosphere (Argon, for comparison, is 25 times as common, but you don't hear people talking about Argon as particularly abundant).

N and P on the other hand, are in demand, and usually not in great surplus.

IIRC, this is quite true in areas with exceptionally high water flow (e.g. rain forests, the open sea), since fixed Nitrogen & Phosphorous are generally very soluble, and thus wash away. But most plant growth occurs outside these areas (this is why people are so concerned about the rain forests; they grow very slowly and will take a long time to recover).

Plant matter (dried) is about 45-50% carbon & 40% oxygen by mass. Less than 0.5% is nitrogen & phosphorous (combined). Plants are mostly starch / sugar / cellulose--in short, carbohydrates--and very little protein (which is where the N & P go). So the C/(N+P)ratio in plants is on the order of 100 to 1.

If you look at the volume of space surrounding a plant (say, half air, half soil) you will see fixed nitrogen in the soil between 10 & 50 ppm. Given dirt's specific gravity is around 2.5, and air's is around 0.00127, and therefore dirt is pretty close to 2000 times as dense as air, and carbon is just a little lighter than oxygen, we find an environmental ratio of about: (0.03%/3) to (2000*50/1000000) or 10^-5 to 1.

Thus, from a plants point of view (comparing abundance inside the plant to outside the plant) nitrogen and phosphorous are about 10^7 times as abundant as carbon.

The idea that CO2 is a limiting factor for most ecosystems is laughable.

*smile* You say that, but I'll bet you wouldn't cough up a "+1 Funny" if you had mod points, would you?

-- MarkusQ

Re:It doesn't matter if Global Warming is real

[-Harlequin-]

Structures require what is known as maintenance. Sometimes they are even scrapped due to age. The "global warming", if it is in fact happening, is happening so slowly that normal maintenance and abandonment will take care of it.

Was it New York that had to spend billions a year of very real $$$ on aerial spraying when a disease-spreading mosquito was able to establish itself there?
Whatever, if the climate changed, the reach of maleria for example would also change, and (most likely) enlarge. Possibly greatly. While the reverse (decrease maleria) is a far more remote possibility. Maintenance just isn't relevant. The costs in money and human life and misery would be very real. Sure, we're dealing in probabilies, but that's no excuse for ignoring well-established successful methods of risk management.

If it turns out that global warming is happening but that the major causes are natural, then we're still better off if we've done everything we can to stop making things worse.

No, we aren't. In that case it's been a monumental waste of effort

?!?!? That sounds insane. Judging from what might be expected to result from artifical greenhouse gases, our contribution might be the difference between mostly inconvenient climate change and something only a whisker short of complete disaster.
You don't add fuel to the fire unless you want it to burn hotter/brighter/longer, and, well, we don't really want that :)

more efficient transportation, better insulated houses, and a cleaner planet with greater fossil fuel reserves to pass on to our children.

Is that all there is to giving them a quality life?

Absolutely. Fewer resources wasted making a product means more reasources left over to make a luxary product. More efficient processes mean less labour involved. Thus more people employed making the really good things in life rather than the mundane necessities.
Or, alternative, allowing less time to be spent working in the first place, meaning more quality time with your loved ones.
The entire technologically progress of humanity has been about finding more efficient ways to do stuff, thus leaving more for the Good Stuff.
There is a reason that people don't light fires with flint and rocks any more - we've found more efficient methods. Why would you want to stop the technological clock now? (Other than having a large financial stake in an outdated technology :)

Re:Rotation is not relative

[Dwonis]

*Cough* Centrifugal force doesn't exist.

Where did I mention Limbagh?

[Bob_Robertson]

How limited a mind you must have, to think there is only one place to get information that disagrees with your opinions.

I caught one Rush show, a long time ago, and realized he was no different than any other person who believes in big powerful government. Just like you.

Oh, his ends are different, but his means of using force to make others act as he sees fit is no less reprehensible.

I am not liberal or conservative. It is you who cannot imagine a world beyond your own views.

Bob-

Re:Newton's gravity is more usefull.

[ahde]

don't always get change, but I was just being pedantic

Edmond, read before you post.

[Bob_Robertson]

Edmond, if you had actually read my post, you would have noticed that I do not listen to Limbagh. Thus your repeated protestations about my having learned of this from him are falicious on their face.

If you had spend the time providing any actual data to demonstrate the foundation of your knowledge, rather than merely making a fool of yourself, you wouldn't have to be concerned with being modded down.

Bob-