Slashdot Mirror
Baked Alaska
mithras the prophet writes "Global warming stories usually focus on the hotbutton politics, scientific debate, or latest disturbing anecdote of receding ice. A very interesting New York Times story takes a different tack, highlighting the reality of climate change for small-town Alaskans. Whatever the cause, temperatures in Alaska have risen by seven degrees in the last 30 years. This has very real consequences for ordinary citizens; the rest of us would do well to consider their stories. Lucy Eningowuk and her 600 fellow citizens of Shishmaref will vote next week whether to move their town to the mainland. Despite community efforts, thawing of permafrost and wave action from melting ice has eroded away most of the land the village is built on. Residents of Barrow (warning: MIDI-enabled page), on the North Shore, are swatting mosquitos for the first time in their lives. In an ironic twist, managers of the Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline are putting in supports to keep the pipeline from breaking as permafrost thaws."
Our Premiere is currently very anti Kyoto, and yet we see every day the effects that global warming is having on this province and in Canada. It is the people that focus on capitalism that will lead to the downfall of our species, for they are too short sighted to look into alternatives for the fossil fuels that we use in our daily lives.
Good god. Global Warming, if observed, will be an average change of a few degrees across the globe. It will be impossible to pinpoint local effects until it really gets out of hand. (It will have local effects, we just won't be able to say which are and are not natural.) Not every instance of local climate change is a symptom of global climate change. Local climate fluctuates wildly. Ever wonder why Greenland is called Greenland? Hint: it used to be a greener when they named it a few centuries back.
This is just like El Nino. Because it was causing some unusual weather patterns, every little rainstorm was blamed on it.
Something is definitely happening to the climate on this planet, but what precisely, and what the cause(s) for this process are, not to mention the endresult (if there is one), are still unknown.
Something is happening, we only don't know what or why.
Site & blog: http://www.mayaposch.com
so does this mean its warm enough to grow pot in Alaska finally?
every one of the improvements you cited is a result of government mandated pollution controls. So you give examples of the successes of government mandated pollution controls as a proof that we dont need government mandated pollution controls. hmm ok.
The weather here in Michigan is still too cold. I for one support global warming. Bring it on, the warmer the better. I can't believe that global warming is only bad. I heard that they can grow crops further North now than they could before and there are longer growing seasons providing more crops. And soon people may be able to live in Canada.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
Ok, let's get all the extreme left-wingers out and have them parade around proclaiming that the rise in temps in Alaska are caused definitely by global warming.
:) (you socialistic, gov't-loving cowards ;) )
Except..... it's not always global warming.... I recall reading somewhere that temps over the last 400 hundred years (or so) have, at times, fluctuated wildly and the Industrial Revolution was only the last 200 years of it.
Maybe I'm too cynical, but I'm sick of EVERYONE blaming every odd day on "global warming" and the "evil" that it is.... We are having an effect on the climate, but its not quite as bad as you freak extreme-left alarmists would have us believe. (If you voted for Al Gore, you are a freak, end of story)
The weather *IS* unpredictable and *CAN* and *WILL* fluctuate over time. Our concept of time is sooooo narrow....... a fluctuation that lasts 500 years or so is nothing to the planet, but to us, thats an eternity..
Ok. I'm ready for the flames
i don't mean to be all self-righteous and pontificate on good taste, but i am surprised that so many posts express such a light hearted attitude to the situation. Imagine your way of life literally melting away, imagine being forced to move from a place where your ancestors have lived for hundreds of years. I really feel sorry for those alaskans. i can only hope that they'll be compensated by the government.
It's amazing how much our leaders don't get it. Bush is saying that there is no such thing as the greenhouse effect, yet it's been proven time and again! Alaskian Temps up, Canadians remarking about how hot it is. Yet we're still withdrawn from the Kyoto protocol and Our leaders are saying "There is no such thing as global warming, please buy more gasoline"
It's hard not to ignore the fact that Exxon-Mobile and the other oil companies are the ones who are REALLY in charge.
I'm saying this and I'm a Texan, even.
"Oh no, 3 horny women and only 2 condoms...Thank god I read slashdot"
It's time for the town's all purpose contingincy plan...Plan B. Move the whole town 5 miles down the road.
It seems to me that anti-global warming advocates are made up of the same kind of people who are anti-evolution. Their main reason for doubt is that it conflicts with their biases (in the case of global warming, that's largely commercial or ideological, with evolution it's religious).
Of course both groups have lots of 'scientific' evidence that mostly amounts a few anecdotes in comparison to the huge reams of evidence that the supporters have, but are yelled very loudly.
Also, both groups demand from their adversaries 'irrefutable proof' that evolution/global warming is true, even though a 'logical proof' of an empirical phenomena is impossible. You can't prove evolution and global warming the same way you can prove that 1+1=2. You can't even prove gravity to that extent.
Finally, if this report is true, and these weather changes are happening all over Alaska, it really should be enough evidence that something is happening. Alaska is pretty big, and the effect can't really be called 'local'. It's at least regional.
Finally, it comes to the question of cyclical vs. artificial warming. Is the earth getting warmer just because it is, or is it getting warmer because of something we're doing? Certainly, humanity is producing lots of CO2, but the amount isn't really that much compared the naturally occurring water vapor. Honestly I'm not sure if science really has the answer. But I do really think we need to be cautious about it. The effects of global warming could be pretty dire.
A while ago I read a slashdot post about global warming, and the poster said he opposed any kind of change in regulation unless we could be 100% sure. If you ask me, that's pretty stupid. It's like driving towards a cliff and being opposed to a change in direction unless you were 100% sure there was a cliff there, the argument being the trip would be longer assuming there was no cliff (or something equally stupid).
Perhaps there would be some economic constraints caused by greenhouse gas controls, but they would probably be a lot better then the economic problems caused by global warming.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
"It's hard not to ignore the fact that Exxon-Mobile and the other oil companies are the ones who are REALLY in charge."
If they were really in charge, there would be no regulations, and they would pay no taxes. Since both are not true, they are not in charge.
Not that they have anything to do with this: there is absolutely no evidence of burning of gas causing "global warming".
Even if there was, Kyoto won't do a thing about it: it allows China to get away with it. The prudent thing for Bush to do is ignore it, as the only effect of it is to harm US economy while benefiting that of a totalitarian dictatorship.
"But I do really think we need to be cautious about it. The effects of global warming could be pretty dire."
Since there is zero evidence of human activity having an effect, there is no point in being "cautious" in regards to global warming.
"It seems to me that anti-global warming advocates are made up of the same kind of people who are anti-evolution."
True, only if by "anti global warming advocate" you mean the whackos who fight against "global warming".... which is like fighting against a mountain with a wet noodle: human activity does not effect it.
"A while ago I read a slashdot post about global warming, and the poster said he opposed any kind of change in regulation unless we could be 100% sure. If you ask me, that's pretty stupid"
No, what is stupid is changing regulation while having NO evidence at all that regulation will change anything. That is real stupid: the un-informed change of public policy based on nonscience.
"What I don't understand is why most right-wingers in the USA like to classify issues such as global warming as a left-wing political issue"
Because the issue is put forth by left-wing extremists who want the government to control and limit all economic activity. What better way that to fabricate "human-caused global warming" and make another fascist power grab to prevent people from causing it?
Recognizing this is not a "right-wing" thing. It is a scientist thing (to recognize the bad science of the global warming claims) and a libertarian thing (to recognize the danger of fascism, whether or not it is left-wing or right-wing)
Bush realizes that it has nothing to do with human activity. Bush has a problem here of wanting to stick to the truth while ignorant people who are even dumber than him insist on greenhouse fairytales.
The best thing for him to do is sign Kyoto. This would placate the lunatics. Then he should immediately turn around and undermine it with the effect of ignoring it. I'm sure there are loopholes to go through.
The success of Kyoto will be measured in the damage of free-world economies. It won't have anything to do with global warming, since Kyoto changes do not affect it at all.
I apologize for the OT post, and that I need to post as an AC.
/path/to/RPMS/rpmfind.ver.rpm
I caught this article to late to comment, and I don't have time to make an account.
However, I hope this helps all those having problems with rpm on rpm-based distros:
1. Install rpmfind:
$ rpm -Uvh
2. Upgrade entire system, handling all dependencies:
$ rpmfind --autoupgrade # Yes, really that easy.
3. Upgrade specific package handling dependencies:
$ rpmfind --upgrade package
4. Install specific package handling dependencies:
$ rpmfind package
Also, if you are using the RPM based distro KRUD (Kevin's RedHat Uber Distrobution), you all ready have an rpmfind equivilant:
Upgrade/install package handling all dependencies:
$ krudfind package
Upgrade entire system handling all dependencies:
$ krud2date
For more info:
RPMFind:
http://www.rpmfind.net
KRUD:
http://www.tummy.com/krud/index.html
Remember the Leonard Nimoy series In Search Of? Well, they were predicting the coming ice age in the 70s. I love how in 30 years we're now looking at global warming instead of global cooling. If you have never seen the episode they looked at evidence that included Alaska was getting colder and the Eastern seaboard was socked by snow five years in a row.
You say global warming is nonsense, but you fail to follow up with the standard non-sequitur about how evolution is "stupid". Maybe you forgot to use the "Preview" button. Please spend more time on Free Republic until you learn how to write posts that fall in lock-step properly.
We are having an effect on the climate, but its not quite as bad as you freak extreme-left alarmists would have us believe. (If you voted for Al Gore, you are a freak, end of story)
Leaving aside where you're getting your inside information on climate change, this is a pretty broad definition of "freak"- it includes the majority of the U.S. voting population.
Albert W Gore Jr was too busy inventing the Internet back in the 1970s, so someone was able to get away with these ice-age theories. If he had been on the ball, things would have been different.
I wonder if the RIAA is behind all this...
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Anyone else seen Eric the viking (not especially good) has some of Monty python characters in it.
One part that is apt:
As the island was sinking the 'king' and his followers are happily singing ignoring the sinking fact, They are urged to leave (or die) and they happily say no, its not sinking.... sing song sing song....
We don't know for SURE about temp rise etc or if it is caused by industrial activity, but it seems wise to assume that we should be cautious to ensure future liberties.
It is difficault thou', as it seems that many events are taken advantage of to press too far for power grabs rather than actually helping the situation (eg terrorism) and thus destroying current hard won liberties.
...these towns/villages are not built on land...as it states....permafrost, which will eventually prove to be not so 'perma'.
And for the record, I agree that this is an alarmist/agenda based article.
The Earth changes, and this is not new.
Shouldn't the concern be concentrated on Ozone Depletion instead of Global Warming? Global Warming can't really be proven without 100s of years of data, but any scientist can tell you that ozone is getting thinner and in some places, non-existent.
Which of you who are so sure that the warming is due to the use of burning fossil fuels and the release of carbon in the atmosphere, will be the first to quit using your car? Quit using lights and AC? Turn off the heat? Got an SUV because you like to see nature so much? Double shame on you!
Get some balls! Show your conviction and be the leader in solving the problem!
-joe
-- Many men would appreciate a woman's mind more if they could fondle it
"We don't know for SURE about temp rise etc or if it is caused by industrial activity, but it seems wise to assume that we should be cautious to ensure future liberties."
How is it wise to take actions that from what we know would have no effect on the situation at all?
To use your Viking island analogy, it is like ordering the Vikings to polish their shields in order to prevent the island from sinking.
It is foolish, not wise, to take actions to solve a problem when the actions have no effect on the problem.
...then think about it and realize that your denial initially prevented you from even trying to consider what the poster was saying.
Bad Religion
Kyoto Now!
It's a matter of prescience
No, not the science fiction kind
It's all about ignorance,
and greed, and miracles for the blind
the media parading, disjointed politics
founded on petrochemical plunder
and we're its hostages
If you stand to reason
you're in the game
the rules might be elusive
but our pieces are the same
and you know if one goes down we all go down as well
the balance is precarious as anyone can tell
this world's going to hell
Don't allow
this mythologic hopeful monster to exact its price
Kyoto now!
We can't do nothing and I think someone else will make it right
You might not think it matters now
But what if you are wrong
You might not think there's any wisdom in a fucked up punk rock song
But the way it is
cannot persist for long
a brutal sun is rising on a sick horizon
It's in the way
we live our lives
exactly like the double-edge of a cold familiar knife
and supremacy weighs heavy on the day
it's never really what you own but what you threw away
and how much did you pay?
In your dreams
You saw a steady state a bounty for eternity
Silent screams
but now the wisdom that sustains us is in full retreat
Don't allow
this mythologic hopeful monster isn't worth the risk
Kyoto now!
We can't have vision for the future if it can't be fixed
Alien
We need a fresh and new religion to run our lives
Hand in hand
the arid torpor of inaction will be our demise
Oh, Kyoto now!
Why, isn't it obvious?
Don't you idiots pay attention to those well-informed Slashdot posters? They have all the answers as to why I don't need to worry about changing my lifestyle. Hey, a badly-reasoned ill-informed load of Ayn Rand bullshit posted on Slashdot by a complete nobody in Butt-Phuck, Nebraska, is good enough to get moderated up to +5, Informative -- so it must be true!!
Or I could pay attention to real scientists who, like, know what they're talking about. But that would just be falling into the trap prepared by ${evil_people}!
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
When the pot gets too hot, the culprit is usually the fire. In my opinion, the sun, the main source of heat for earth's atmosphere, should be the primary suspect. Maybe the sun is going through a warming cycle.
News for enviromentalist wackos that think people are the most powerful force in the solar system that can change temperatures. Enviromentalists are egotistical cunts.
bush is an idiot ... .
why one word kyoto
we got a war on every
thing but what what
matters
drugs, terror but not on
polution, poverty and nuclear
poliferation (e.g. isarel,
india, pakistan)
but god is blessing america
by giving it a short regin
on the world
'play-pretend smart' is redundant. For such a smart person, you tend to repeat yourself often.
Let the guy hang himself with his own hubris...one more message ought to do it.
I think that quote says exactly why this is an interesting story that has little implication for the larger debate about our environment. I am the first to declare that all the industrial toxins and whatnot we're pumping into our atmosphere are having negative effects. However, one of the main arguments that's always made in global warming discussions is that climate change has been a constant over the history of the Earth. We simply don't know how much human actions are responsible for what we're experiencing now. So while I'm sure increased rates in asthma, cancers, and birth defects in some places are probably industry related, I'm not convinced about a bunch of wackos who live on an ice shelf losing their "land".
Couldn't have put it better myself - please mod the parent up!
We do know that CO2 causes a greenhouse effect. So should we just keep things as they are till we know or should we modify our behavior on the outside chance that we are affecting things? Continue as normal and 30 years down the road and go "oh shit we are affecting it". Capitalism will find a way to make money off of limiting greenhouse gas emissions, of course this might mean a power shift from the oil and gas companies to whatever emerges and this is who is in power and who keeps this from being explored.
Good ol' Sen. Stevens...priming the pork-pump, count on it.
"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand". -Milton F.
There is a difference between the two. The cost of the correlation between masturbation/eyesight is a pair of glasses. The cost of global warming is conceivably a lot higher, and so deserves more attention and effort.
I think a better example would be the Challenger disaster, which killed the crew, and stopped NASA in its tracks for years. All because they asked the engineers to "Put their management hats on".
At the end of the day, we have three things to decide:
Now, we can argue about what the causes of global warming are, but that shouldn't stop us from finding a solution. There are only a few variables that we can conceivably control to bring the warming back down. One of those is CO2 emissions. It doesn't matter if the warming is a result of human activity, all that does matter is that it is happening and that we need to do something about it.
Jason PollockNo need for "me too" posts, is there?
The article reads like a pamphlet of hippy Greenpeace agitprop. Et tu, comrade?
I wouldn't be surprised if this press release was orchestrated by a vast left-wing conspiracy designed to discredit President Bush. Anyone who questions President Bush's authority is a traitor. Last week, a Chicago street gang member was arrested after he planned to build an H-Bomb and blow up Washington, DC! It's obvious that we must now sacrifice all of our Constitutional rights to combat this overwhelming threat to the price of gas.
Don't believe the hype! Keep driving your SUV's!
Environment & Climate News: Global tempereture changes throughout history (June 2001)
o ry . tm
http://www.heartland.org/environment/jun01/hist
Global temperature changes throughout history
by Dr. William Grierson
Nearly a century ago, Svante Arrhemis showed CO2 is a "greenhouse gas" that transmits short-wave radiation from the sun but impedes long-wave (heat) radiation from the Earth's surface.
Any possibly deleterious effects on global temperatures from mankind's generation of CO2 are very minor, however, in comparison with the sun's dominant effects--short-term, through sunspots, and longer-term due to irregularities in its axis. Add to those natural effects a gradual, but inexorable, change in the tilt of the Earth's own axis, and the precession of the equinoxes that so puzzled ancient astronomers.
Moreover, the climatic influence of the sun involves other variables: some as obvious as solar flares, and others as arcane as very minor irregularities in its orbit that mathematical astronomers are only now beginning to explain.
Long before modern instrumentation, sunspots could be studied with no more equipment than a piece of smoked glass, isinglass (a gelatin prepared from fish bladders), or other animal membrane. The ancient Chinese left written records of their sunspot observations. Sunspots come and go, but they persist for long periods. Galileo used them to time the rotation of the sun.
Mean Earth temperatures vary directly with the number of sunspots. In 1922, an English lady, Annie Maunder, correlated sunspot frequency with climatic records. When sunspots almost disappeared, a period known as the Maunder Minimum, the Northern Hemisphere suffered the "Little Ice Age."
From about 1500 to 1900 AD sunspots were few, with intermittent minima--during one of which England's Thames River froze, and another when George Washington's army had the misfortune to be encamped at Valley Forge. Evidence of the "Little Ice Age," and also of the "Little Climatic Optimum" 500 years before, still lingers in deep rock temperatures.
Within the larger sunspot cycle is a minor, rather consistent, approximately 11-year, cycle. Curious evidence of this is afforded by the trading records of Canada's Hudson Bay fur company. Rhythmic fluctuations in the populations of prey animals, primarily arctic hares and lemmings, are echoed one year later in increases in pelts taken from carnivores, particularly the valuable white fox.
Geological evidence indicates wide variations in mean temperatures and CO2 levels in past interglacial and even postglacial, Holocene, periods. Some have been correlated with volcanic activity or meteor showers. Archeology now indicates the collapse of some major Bronze Age civilizations was due to droughts associated with volcanic eruptions.
When Mount Krakatoa blew up in 1883, it lowered mean global temperature 0.27C (0.5F). The amounts of industrially released CO2 are minor compared with those from such natural forces.
History shows warming to be a good thing
Moderate global warming is not necessarily harmful. During the eleventh century sunspot maximum (the "Little Climatic Optimum"), Greenland supported a thriving farming community, as did the Orkney Islands. During the "Little Ice Age" the Greenlanders died and the Orkney Islanders struggled to survive. With today's sunspot plenitude, the Orkneys have become Scotland's major beef-producing county, though green pastures have yet to return to Greenland.
Supposed scientific calculations and much popular alarmism predict that a few degrees of global warming will cause disastrous flooding of many coastal areas and the complete disappearance of low-lying Pacific Islands, due to melting of the polar icecaps. History shows otherwise.
During the 1,000 year cycle that included the "Little Climatic Optimum" and the "Little Ice Age," sea levels did not change materially. Some ice-freed coasts rose, some coastlines eroded and others accreted, and occasionally coastal subsidence became threatening. London is an example of the latter phenomenon. The considerable engineering feat of the Thames Barrier has been necessitated by slight, but inexorable, land subsidence and occasional coincidence of an abnormally high spring tide with a very strong northeast wind. Apparently even minor temperature changes can have drastic effects, due to their influence on the winds.
The El Niño phenomenon has had much publicity of late, though it is nothing new: El Niño evidence appears in coral growth records going back over 100,000 years, and by ocean and lake sediments for shorter periods. The apparent warming of hundreds of cubic miles of Pacific Ocean water is not due to enormous amounts of added heat, but to the failure of the trade winds that normally push the sun-warmed water toward the Philippines and Indonesia, without which they suffer devastating droughts.
Ground-penetrating radar shows great mountain-fed rivers once transversed the Sahara Desert. Cave paintings and rock carvings prove that 8,000 years ago the Sahara was verdant and teeming with tropical wildlife. Such a scenario is now impossible with today's wind patterns.
Weigh costs, benefits
We humans should curtail, of course, any practices deleterious to the environment . . . wherever it is possible to do so without incurring unacceptable human and economic consequences. However, any climatic effects we might cause by our consumption of fossil fuels, and the resultant emissions of CO2, are trivial by comparison with Nature's inexorable forces.
The phenomenon of global temperature change has become an international concern of quite extraordinary magnitude.
Despite objections from many reputable scientists, both individually and collectively, this has generated a popular media-driven controversy . . . with consequent proposals for economically disastrous measures to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), in order to maintain the status quo for worldwide temperatures.
Apart from the notable disregard for scientific findings in many fields of endeavor, this is hubris in the classical Greek sense of arrogance that would challenge the gods.
Think about your own statement.
Global warming will be an average change of a few degrees across the globe.
That average will be affected by changes in local weather patterns. But that average is made up of sample readings from individual locales.
Weather is a complex system that is currently best modeled using mathematics. While current models are far from perfect, there are strong indicationss that this is an appropriate approach.
When you add energy to a chaotic system, rather than seeing an immediate uniform increase in overall energy, you instead first see an increase in randomness and relative volatilivity within the system that over a period of time eventually develops a new stable higher-energy-level pattern of realtive randomness.
In the case of weather, energy is in the form of thermal units. Increases in randomness could be expressed as localized abnormal effects [changes in temperature (ranges or extremes), rainfall patterns, ozone density, changes in animal migratory and reproductive patterns, et cetera]. Increased volatilivity may be expressed as changes in storm frequency and/or intensity, or in sea level, for example.
Such a pattern of effects has been observable for some years now, and at this point (contrary to what American industry and the current administration want people to believe) there is no real debate over whether global warming is occuring [only the vocal objections of a few industry funded individuals or special interests]. It is occuring.
The actual current debates are 1) whether or not the change in overall global warming we are seeing is primarily due to human influences, or if it is part of a longer-term pattern that we do not yet fully understand; 2) the relative proporation of human-induced versus natural change in average global temperature; and 3) the projected size of the overall increase before the system reaches another point of relative stability.
It will be impossible to pinpoint local effects until it really gets out of hand. (It will have local effects, we just won't be able to say which are and are not natural.)
I agree with the second part of your statement. Localized effects will occur. I also agree that it may be impossible to reach a concensus among the majority of parties debating specific local effects until things are as you say 'out of hand'. (I'd say until the evidence is overwhelming. But given that the overall evidence that global warming is occuring is currently overwhelming, parties trying to defend their own specific interests will still deny the effect until no one will listen, and probably beyond.)
Furthermore, I think you are correct that we will have a great difficulty determining which may be natural and which may be human-induced.
It does not follow from that however, that specific local events cannot be examples of a larger pattern, or that the specific example brought up by the article may not be a real instance of a specific local effect. Only that it can't be conclusively determined at this time whether or not it is such an effect.
Not every instance of local climate change is a symptom of global climate change. Local climate fluctuates wildly.
I think the first of these observations is only functionally accurate. I say 'functionally' because, being a chaotic system, all climatic changes are interlinked. In that way, all weather phenomena are actually symptomatic of global climate change. We just can't interpret all of them.
As for the second, I don't agree. While local weather does flucuate to varying extremes, it does not do so wildly, but in a pattern. We understand some of these patterns better than others (5-, 10-, 25-, 50-, 100-, 200-year flood patterns for different areas, and so on), but whether we fully understand them or not, the patterns are present. Part of climatological science is finding and studying these patterns and learning how to interpret them.
Ever wonder why Greenland is called Greenland? Hint: it used to be a greener when they named it a few centuries back.
Actually, no. As several others have already pointed out, this may be one of the first documented instances of marketing spin. It was called Greenland to encourage settlers. Iceland, another example of spin, was called Iceland because the settlers wanted to discourage too many people from migrating to the beautiful island they wanted for their own.
This is just like El Nino. Because it was causing some unusual weather patterns, every little rainstorm was blamed on it.
Well. While global warming and El Nino are both weather patterns, and are both still only partly understood (not well at all yet), I think it's too easy an out to write off every unusual weather pattern just because it's convenient.
The dramatic changes in the Antarctic ice shelves, changes in seal level in the Pacific Islands, notable changes in local temperatures and weather patterns are indications of the overall global changes that are taking place. But it will be many years before an overall global temperature change results in a general rise in overall temperature.
Global warming is happening, not just on earth, but on Mars and Europa too... So explain how "greenhouse gases" on earth are warming Mars. It's a sun cycle, and killing the economy ain't gonna fix it. Remember, we're still coming out of a very recent ice age too. If one would bother to research these things, one would know the world has usually been much warmer than it is now. But digging for facts would dash all the hysterical hype the control-freaks love to spew.
Some things for you to ponder...
Big Business is policing itself and the quality of our environment is improving constantly.
I want what it is you're smoking. Perhaps you've been sniffing car exhaust a bit too much. Hey, come to think of it, is that what it takes to get into mensa?
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
And I have not found a single pro-warming post that does not either a) dismiss its opponents as simpletons or b) provide any non-anecdotal evidence. It may just be a Slashdot-related phenomenon, but is there anyone who can provide any good reason we should "act to stop global warming" other than "people who say we shouldn't are hicks" or "well, we might be right, so let's do it anyway"?
If it ain't broke, you need more software.
I say we have to take the gender of anyone making pronouncements about global warming into account, and statements made by women should be viewed skeptically.
Stromatolites must have also caused a climate change as they removed C02 from the atmosphere. Has anyone studied this change in relationship to what is happening now?
See this page for a timeline of atmosphere activity including the introduction of oxygen. Was there a climate change during that period?
Why is it inherent that the most trolls come out when a story about supercomputers shows up on /.?
"2001 was the warmest year since 1653 (or thereabouts) which begs the question, exactly who or what was emitting CO2 at present day levels back then?"
(dates may be off)
They that quote Benjamin Franklin on liberty and safety deserve neither.
WOO! Almost summer holidays :)
Alaska, here we come!
sigme
yes. global warming is a reality.
Yes, it's been going on for years.
Yes, perhaps humans do contribute.
However:
No, I do not believe it wouldn't happen if we didn't have cars.
No, I don't believe in Terra Firma like so many people who live on such unstable land.
No, I don't believe that global warming is a disaster.
all in all, I believe that global warming was going to happen anyway. History has shown that yes, land masses do wear away and form as the earth changes, and as time goes on, that the oceans have risen and dropped over the millenia. It's nothing but narrow-minded, self-centered eco-bullshit to say that humans alone are to blame. I will grant that if the oceans rose, say, fifty feet, there would be a lot less land mass for us to work with. However, there's nothing we can do as a planet to stop nature from taking it's course. So basically, IMHO global warming is nothing more than a disgusting human-interest story that I really don't care about unless it's directly affecting me, in which case i'll do what any reasonable human will do and move to higher ground instead of bitching about it.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
"In an ironic twist, managers of the Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline are putting in supports to keep the pipeline from breaking as permafrost thaws."
so, let me guess? now Bush is going to sign off on the Kyoto treaty because global warming has been proven. the only reason he would sign off on it now, rather than earlier, would be to save his oil-buddies asses up there. all that oil splashing on the ground is lost profits, doncha know!
I'm good with numbers -
Nor the definition of "sex".
But he does know "perjury", now doesn't he?
Today, it's 82 outside as I speak, and the sun didn't set last night. I love it!
I've driven to Deadhorse (~100 mi from Barrow). There are more mosquitos on the North Slope than Antrax sprores in the postal system.
FYI: We have several large glaciers that are *advancing*, not receding.
I grew up mostly on the coast in a town called Cordova. When I was a young child(1970-80's), winter was winter, it snowed in the winter and that was winter. As I grew older in to my early teen years, the winters became shorter and shorter with more rain than snow. It has been this way ever since. I noticed this change in the winters in the early 80's. Its not suprising what was mentioned in the article regarding the climate change. Particularly the melting permafrost in the interior.
You lay claim to being "right": we might be right, so let's do it anyway
What gives you the expertise to declare that the position you support is "right"? Because it's the "right thing to do"?
At best, that's circular reasoning, at worst you're just a blind follower regurgitating the propaganda you've been spoon fed.
gotta love crack - pipe moderation
"Michio Kaku is right, probably less than 1% of intergalactic civilizations make it past the industrial age, from pollution and war."
There is no evidence of any kind about tendencies of civilizations. Even the great Carl Sagan wasted time figuring out the number of alien civilizations in the galaxy.
The reality is, we only know about one so-called advanced civilization: our own. The sample set is at this point way way way to small to guess about anything: pretty dumb to generalize about others based on one sample!. Michio Kaku's wild guessing is good enough for Star Trek (where almost all aliens are just skin-bumpy humans with human emotions, brains, and thinking), but not much else.
Yeah that's when I'll start to think there's problem that needs to be address, REGARDLESS of the reason. When the salmon come come out of the water already poached. When the birds drop out of the sky already deep fried.
Or when Mr. Cheney tells me, whichever comes first.
Reality has no place in this world for you, at least not when compared to rhetoric and hypocritical attacks. You will believe only what you want to believe, it matters not what facts are.
O.K. I click the link to the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline to find the reference to "are putting in supports" and all I find are pretty pictures. Where does it say they are putting in supports?
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
"In an ironic twist, managers of the Trans-Alaska Oil Pipeline are putting in supports to keep the pipeline from breaking as permafrost thaws."
-yah.. it's eerie how irony can be so ironic sometimes.
1. Afghan pipeline will be built now that the Taliban is rotting in hell.
2. Now we can rape the arctic for cheap gazz. Everybody buy yourselves a Ford Expedition. (These limited resources will never get cheaper, so use all you can while it's still there.)
Many science fiction books have been written on terraforming another planet, such as Mars, making it possible for humans to live there. I think the solution to global warming is so obvious, I don't know why the scientists haven't thought of this one:
Terraform the world's deserts! Seriously. Transport large amounts of dirt mixed with clay, horse shit, compost and seeds of various plants in large dump trucks with a mechanism to evenly release this material from the back of the truck, onto the ground. The truck would pull behind it a piece of military-strength farm equipment that digs into the ground and mixes this dirt with the existing sand. These truckloads would only cover an area about 10 feet wide and maybe 200 feet long. I'd say you'd need about 100 of these trucks to build a small oasis in the desert. In this oasis, dig a deep hole every 20 feet or so and plant pre-grown trees of various types in it, filling the hole entirely with the horse shit mixture I described above. Install a huge water tower next to the oasis, and constantly spray water mixed with nutrients onto the oasis.
Next step: Once the first oasis starts to grow and turn into a small habitat, use the experience gained to install similar oases every few miles in every direction. Once this grid of oases covers the entire desert, start installing new ones between existing oases.
Within ten years, with constant work and lots of funding, a desert can be turned into a forest. When this forest gets mature enough, it will automatically start to rain there because of vapors being released into the air. This should take place in as many parts of the world as possible, leaving a few deserts here and there, because there's a reason they're a part of the landscape.
Build a bunch of space stations where the whole ecology is engineered to be a proper cycle. All trash would be turned back into food inside the space station; food for people, animals and plants. With the experience gained in space, cities on Earth would be engineered and "retrofitted" to perform similar cycles. All products and manufacturing facilities would be engineered to act as a proper member of the cycle. As such, all garbage will be prevented entirely, as it would actually be a product for further growth. At the same time, the use of fossil fuels would stop, and other, more environmentally friendly methods would be used. All of this would take place over the next hundred years or so. (Hey, if technology and the human ability to accomplish huge things has developed so rapidly over the past 200 years, surely all of this can become reality in the next 100.)
The point is that by the time global temperatures would have melted the ice caps and caused the next Noah's flood, it would be prevented because the temperatures--and indeed the whole Earth system--would have been balanced once again. At that point, it would be time to put snow machines all over Alaska and the surrounding islands to rebuild the permafrost.
Since there is zero evidence of human activity having an effect, there is no point in being "cautious" in regards to global warming.
I admit that we don't know all there is to know about global warming, but how can you honestly say there is *zero* evidence? We know for a fact that Co2 is a greenhouse gas, and we know for a fact that we produce shitloads of it. What else is there to know?
Serously, what kind of evidence would convince you that humans could have an impact on global temprature?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
We've been in a global warming cycle since the ICE AGE!
and in the 1970s they said we were heading for another ice age...
the scientists say "we cant look at localized warming or cooling, we must look at the whole picture" yet here they are pumping localized warming... why dodnt they come to OKLAHOMA? its cooler than it has been for a while AND there are LESS tornadoes...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
it's not just localized warming. It's a global effect where the temperatures even out. So the coldest areas (like the arctic, antarctic, and deep ocean waters) warm up.
"why dodnt they come to OKLAHOMA? its cooler than it has been for a while " -- this could be the local effect you're talking about.
The most recent issue of Science journal has an article reporting the melting condition of Antarchtic ice sheet. Even though the report from NYT is suspecious, the global warming issue is not to be desserted and disparaged.
From an climatologist's point of view, it is still an uncertain issue at this moment wheather anthropogenic activity will lead to global warming, but we have to be cautious about the possibility in any event.
Together, we are strong; Apart, we are stronger.
That's a nice example, and it works well because we know for a fact that masturbation doesn't cause eyesight loss. But lets examine another one, one from the real world.
A few years ago, some doctors noticed that there was a certain kind of bacteria that lived in stomach ulcers, a high correlation just like the rise in temperature and greenhouse gasses. Anyway, some people suggested that perhaps the bacteria caused the ulcers, but people were skeptical. Perhaps it was just an opportunistic infection, you know, it was easy for them to live there due to the damage cells.
So, either the bacteria caused the ulcers or the ulcers caused the bacteria. Which one was it? Medical researches didn't believe the bacteria caused the ulcers, and traditional remedies were continued (you know, lots of bland food, stress free lives, etc). I would say that there was some evidence, you would say there was none. Apparently a correlation isn't evidence in your eyes, right?
Eventually, one of the people who believed the bacteria caused the ulcer simply ate a large quantity of it, and came down with all kinds of gastro-intestinal problems. Including ulcers. Now we know that ulcers are caused by the bacteria, and that they can for the most part be cured by antibiotics.
If you had ulcers, would you have waited until the final study, the one where the scientist infected himself before trying antibiotics to cure an ulcer?
By the way, those same researchers have discovered a bacteria that is often found in people with heart disease. I don't think there are going to be many scientists willing to inject themselves with this. Should we change treatments now? Or should we go on and say it's just a bunch of BS?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
THis is getting so old. Alaska probably wrote up this article itself, and paid the NY Times to run the story.
This post is protected under the DMTA (Digital Millemium Trolling Act). It is illegal to moderate it as a troll.
can't prove those things don't have an effect. This isn't about proof in the mathematical sense; this is about the real world. You can never 'prove' anything in the real world 100%, you can only come up with evidence until the evidence is overwhelming.
If someone presents some evidence for something, and other people believe it, you need to explain why it's not true, not pretend it doesn't exist.
If you want anyone to believe you explain why the theories are wrong. If you don't, no one will take you seriously.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
People who are angry are always wrong.
I don't know if you realize it or not, but nothing you said discredits anything he said. It's just and ad-homonym attack.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Well, it appears that humankind is screwing up the earth's weather. (Well, I suppose that "screwing up" is relative, as some species will thrive and others will die.)
Now the important fundmental existential question is, how does one go about profiting off of this?
Can I buy Alaskan real estate off of the likes of etrade.com? People tend to flock to where the weather is nice. Thus, boomtown Alaska. Are there REIT's for Alaska? Are REIT's any good? Is it REIT or RIET?
Table-ized A.I.
Atoms can neither be created nor destroyed in any chemical reaction.
That, plus the 5 billion year supply of nuclear power, means that we've got NO problems.
The earth has been much warmer than it is now for most of its existence. Ice Ages are a relatively recent phenomenon. Perhaps this planet is not so much 'warming' as it is 'becoming less cold'.
Dinosaur
natural cfc's that are blown 10s of miles in the air, way above the cloudtops, sink and are dissolved in the water, and fall harmlessly in rain. but the same compunds, when manmade and dispersed at ground level, rise through the clouds to the ozone layer. yep, that's some good science.
remember back in the 60s when the top climatologists were convinced we were heading for a new ice age? they had all the proof and everything, the big freeze was gonna start by 2050 for sure. the fact is, they have no fucking clue - all the best climate models are trying to predict long term trends from a very limited dataset. it's like investing in stocks for a long-term pension fund, and picking them based on how they performed in the last 2 minutes of trading the day before.
and one big chunk of rock from space will ruin your whole day.
ok, you may (still) not believe global warming is caused by humans (and, you probably never will)
but this article is *not* "alarmist" or any other buzz word you picked up watching the oreily factor.
these are real people, dealing with real consequences of global warming. period. dont like it? put your head back in the sand
We have excellent records of CO2 concentrations over thousands of years from inclusions of gas in ice cores, as well as other sources. CO2 concentrations have unquestionably increased significantly since the 1800's. And increased CO2 concentrations invariably will lead to higher temperatures. The only scientific debate is whether the temperature increase from our current levels of CO2 will be modest or dramatic.
But that question doesn't really get to the core of things. CO2 emissions aren't standing still, they are growing exponentially. If we don't curb CO2 emissions, atmospheric CO2 won't just double, it will double over and over again. At some point, even the most conservative climate models predict catastrophic consequences, whether that be 2x, 4x, 8x, or 16x current levels.
Sooner or later, we have to put a limit on the growth of CO2 emissions because, while we may debate how much CO2 is too much, there exists some level that is going to be too much. So, we might as well impose the limits now, since there is no economic reason to keep belching out CO2 at current rates. Besides, with a reduction in CO2 come a lot of other benefits, like reduction in particulate emissions, sulfur, and other pollutants.
There's no way to summarize decades of detailed research in a short Slashdot post. Read the The summary of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Third Assessment report. It should provide you with plenty of non-anecdotal evidence.
Yep, articles written by control-freak know-it-alls are real credible. Go find out about the Antarctic volcano, what it spews, and *then* try your silly eco-whacko arguments.
You're trying to confuse the dude with facts.
Funny how he ducks the global warming issue and zeroes in on the mythical ozone hole.
What does it matter if the earth is warming up? If the world becomes less habitable, human population levels will recede to the correct levels. If you don't want to die, too bad you're going to die anyways. And so what about extinction. The dinosaurs are extinct and you don't hear people crying. And who knows what kind of grand lifeform would take over if humans were to extinct ourselves. The fact is, global nuclear war would not even destroy the bacteria living miles below the surface of the earth.
The fact is, while human beings are doing all the right things to ensure survival, the earth has gotten along fine for many eons, and will get along fine for many eons further despite
doomsayers.
Humans did not put life on this planet and they aren't able to take it away. If we kill the baby seals they will be replaced with something else, like head crabs.
First off, let me point out what Mr. Heinlein has always said to be true. (I realize that citing a body of fiction is a bad idea in general) Science = theology.
Now, I'll be first to admit that the planet's warming up. There's plenty of evidence of the fact. In fact, starting almost 15,000 years ago, without cars and factories and shit, the earth BY ITSELF CAME OUT OF AN ICE AGE.
There is further evidence that this wasn't the first ice age.
There is further evidence that the dinosaurs themselves lived in a tropical world. North to south, totally tropical. Warm and stuff. What were there greenhouse gases? Farts?
We can't deny this is happening. What we need to accept is that WE CAN'T CHANGE IT.
Our biggest strength is the ability to ADAPT TO CHANGE. Maybe we should spend our energy figuring out how to live in a warm world?
Now, I'll be the first to jump out and say "quit polluting". Let's not destroy this planet, we've got to live on it awhile longer. Let's clean up our mess. I'm all over it. But it's not gonna make a damn bit of difference in this "global warming" phenonemon. Like El Nino, it JUST FUCKING HAPPENS.
If we can't adapt to our changing environment now, after we've done so (as a race) for a million years or more, then we deserve to die. We've stepped BACK in the evolutionary chain. We've regressed, rather than progressed.
We can spend our time trying to fight this change and die like dogs in a puddle of our own piss, or we can adapt and live on.
I thought it was to trick people from iceland to move there a few hundred years ago.
Well, the largest CO2-producing nation is China.
This is because they're also the largest with the human population.
Kill all chinese, and how would THAT cut CO2 emissions?
Point-of-fact: Humans breath O2 and exhale CO2.
Environmental science is pretty damn complex. We don't have the statistical models and processing power to even predict tomorrows weather accurately. The scientists are basically throwing guesses around. Maybe global warming is caused by an increase of carbon-dioxide in the athmosphere. Maybe a sufficiently large amount of carbon-dioxide will have the exact opposite effect. What we do know is that Earth currently is in equilibrium. If the balance is disturbed, a new equilibrium will be found. Some scientists will say that this new balance just means malaria in Quebec and some new places to spend your vacation. The truth is, this is just a guess. It is also equally possible that the new balance means ice-covered landmasses and an athmosphere with 2% oxygen. Maybe I can sit alone on my ass in my Chevrolet Impala and drive to work every day, and keep the engine running when I stop at the McDonald's drive-in, and we'll all be alright anyway. Who knows? I for one though, am not willing to gamble with Mother Nature.
However, one has to be a zealous Bushist, in order to consider industrialization and increase in temperature happening at the same time to be a coincidence.
And how many billions of dollars is going to be wasted to deal with the consequences of a rising temperature on a global scale? Just ask Trans-Alaska Oil how much money they have wasted on dealing with disappearing perma-frost and then add it to the other expenses.
Why should we resist legislation (from democrats, communist or terrorists or from whining republicans) to make sure that Big Business does their part of the job to keep energy consumption and pollution production down? No legislation is just good for slackers in Big Business who don't want to "waste" their precious money on our common future. The only problem is that the extra money dirty companies saves, the rest of the community will have to pay back with rents. But I am sure that Bush has our common future in mind and not his crony friends when he wants to cut down on all that "restrictive legislation" connected with air pollution, strip mining, alska oil, Kyoto...
--- guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people ---
I don't know about you guys, but I don't find people who make fun of this amusing whatsoever. I lived in nome for 5 years (which is on the mainland, by shishmaref). I never saw any real global warming stuff going on, but I do know that having to move a whole town off the island is going to be *EXTREMELY* detrimental. I loved alaska, but hated it at the same time. For fuck's sake, they're voting on moving EVERYONE off the island, and onto the mainland, giving up their homes, their jobs, everything. Fucking quit making it out to be a joke, it's not funny. What if everyone in your neighborhood had to move because some corporation bought the entire block, and you didn't get a cent of it. Would you appreciate it if everyone fucking laughed at you? didn't think so. Show some respect for christ's sake.
Back off, seriously.
Methinks it's the Cray SX-6 that's heating up the state. But if it isn't, they will have more problems keeping it cool as the ambient temperature rises - we really need to take this problem seriously!
Money for nothing, pix for free
CFCs are chlorofluorocarbons - chlorine and fluorine bonded to organic compounds. Not every chlorine- or fluorine- based compound is a CFC! CFCs are a very specific family of compounds that it's actually quite hard to make - requires bombardment with EM radiation (UV light I think) in rather controlled conditions if I remember correctly.
Have you read the Book by Art Bell & Whitney Stieber call "The Coming Global Superstorm"?m
Looks like it's starting.
www.artbell.com
www.unknowncountry.co
Geek Hillbilly
Whitley Striber writes some great stuff (WarDay for example is one of the best books I've ever read). He also wrote "Breakthrough", which is described as:
With the same curiosity, awe, and undeniable credibility, the author of the million-copy bestsellers Communion and Transformation again crosses barriers into the unknown and recounts his experiences with extraterrestrials, providing very compelling proof of their presence here on Earth.
Ya, this is THE person we need to listen to about Global Warming all right . . .
> Cars burn less fuel, and the fuel they do burn is burned much more efficiently, than older cars. Sure, but there are also much more cars today on the road that there where in the past. >Factories have installed pollution scrubbers on There are also much more factories today. We can say that the whole system as today still makes too much damage to the environment. This means that it sooner or later the biosphere will collapse. >but the Capitalist system WORKS Huh? This is not a discussion about Capitalism x Communism. We are talking about protecting the environment(including the human race). As all people that think only in economic terms you fail to recognize one thing: once the biosystem is devastated the industrie and our whole economic/political system will collapse. And believe me, that will be orders of magnitude worse than than any self-imposed restrictions. Best regards,...
Damn, what am I going to do now?
I know, I'll run off to the next WTO meeting and torch some cars or something like that.
What were the people living there experiencing in 1200AD? 400AD? 400BC? 3000BC? In all of these times the temperature was WARMER than it is now!
Most scientists do not question that there is a warming trend presently active. Most do question that the cause is (predominently) man-made. The problem with the "global warming debate" is that this distiction is not made. This is extremely unfortunate because it has direct and immediate consequences as to what our options are and what our long-term strategies should be.
Does anyone here whine this much when a hurricane waxes a bunch of beach houses?
We realy have no idea what will happen. The convection currents in the atlantic might reverse making Europe into a figid waistland, the U.S. and norther Africa) into a tropical rain forest, and making Canada into a weather paradise (Europe style). No one knows. Regardless, there will be a lot of people displaced and a lot of people will die.
As a side note, the last 11,000 years have been an abnormally long period of stable climates. Destabaization was comming soon anyway, but we just moved it up a few hundred years. Anyway, its worth pointing out that archiologists have found no significant agriculture before 11,000 years ago (and pretty quickly afterwards). Perhaps humans are just too stupid to plant crops unless its really painfully obvious that its a good diea, but we could also be in some serious shit if the climate changes make agriculture excedingly difficult.
Wasn't there once something called the Ice Age? Didn't it go away without human intervention? Maybe the dinosaurs farted C02.
I certainly think that we should be kind to the environment. I am against throwing more legislation at it when the current policies aren't being effectively enforced! Typical liberalism! "Well, the problem hasn't gone away, so lets make more rules! Throw more money at it! Yeah! That'll work!"
-- Craig "Kowboy" McDaniel
Changes in global temperature couldn't possibly be due to things like ongoing cyclical climate fluctuations.
Obviously, environmentalists are always right.
Awww c'mon.
Nobody really buys this global warming horseshit anymore anyway.Temps go up and down.Averages change.Research makes findings to support both sides and discredit the other.meanwhile it still snows in the winter and burns my nose red in the summer.Time to move on to SOMETHING IMPORTANT.
So go put on your leathers,fire up the SUV.Go
fell some redwoods for the fireplace and nuke a whale for supper.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
You can look at the response of the climate in the past to relatively small pertubations. As has happened many times in the past. This does have the advantage of effectively running a full scale real time experiment, the only difference being the nature of the forcing factor.
People who argue against global warming invariably fail to discuss paleoclimate. Or fail to have any knowledge of the subject.
Carbon dioxide does warm the earth. If this were not the case, you would currently be sitting under several hundred meters of ice. Adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will warm the earth; the question is how much and how quickly.
Recent numerical simulations of Arctic climate suggest that the recent Arctic ice melt (and generally warmer temperatures) may be caused by decadal variability, instead of (or, more likely, in addition to) a general warming trend. This cycle is about to switch, so that in the next ten years, the ice may reform and temperatures could drop. That is, until the cycle switches again, when ice melt and warming could come back with a vengance.
What does this mean for long term climate variability? It means it is much harder to detect permanent changes in climate when there is so much noise in the signal and so little data. It is important not to put too much stock on short term changes -- i.e., an unusually hot summer is not evidence of global warming, and global warming will not have stopped even if it gets cooler for ten years in a row.
We need to move all power production to nuclear power. All autos should be electric. No combustion of fossil fuels should be allowed anywhere on the planet. This is the only solution.
The only reason it doesn't occur is because of capitalism, profits, and greed. Nuclear power can be risky but the risk is localized, not globalized. The environmental effects of nuclear power are far lower than any other type. Until alternative sources are widely available and effective, we have no choice.
Eventually, we will turn Earth into Venus, and the only survivors will be buried miles underground.
For those of you who take a lighthearted, skeptical view of global warming, consider the following.
Higher temperatures actually cause more greenhouse gases to be released from rocks such as limestone. The warming becomes a chain reaction. The hotter the temperature, the higher the greenhouse levels, the hotter the temperature, etc...
This has the potential to become a runaway chain reaction. The planet Venus retains extremely high amounts of solar energy (heat) directly because of the massive amounts of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.
Presumably Venus was a cool planet like Earth or Mars at one point. Now however, the surface temperature is hot enough to melt many metals.
Coloring the Data
.; volatile organic compounds . . . by 42 percent; carbon monoxide emissions . . . have dropped by 28 percent; and large particulate-matter emissions . . . by 75 percent." Not much of an environmental crisis in these data.
Greens get caught red-handed committing scientific fraud.
BY PETE DU PONT
Wednesday, March 27, 2002 12:01 a.m. EST So many federal agencies have been exposed falsifying environmental data that you have to wonder how many other frauds remain undetected. First came the December revelation that employees of the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Forest Service had planted fake wild lynx hair in states where there were no lynx, so that the areas could be labeled critical habitat, and thus off limits to human use.
Then came the National Academy of Sciences' findings that shut off water to 1,000 farms in the Klamath Lake Basin in Oregon and California--all to save the suckerfish. That turned out to be based on faulty science too. Farms disappeared and people suffered because the Endangered Species Act had been invoked based on junk--or maybe political--science.
In February the Forest Service admitted that it had erroneously reported 920 million national-forest visitors in 2000. The correct figure was 209 million, not exactly a rounding error.
By March it had to confess to another misrepresentation. Court documents showed the Forest Service had knowingly used false data on spotted-owl habitats to prevent logging in a California forest. "Arbitrary, capricious and without rational basis" was how the judge characterized the service's actions.
So why the lying? It seems deceit is the only way the greens can advance their Luddite agenda. They are ideologically inspired to try to limit, slow and if possible stop economic growth, for they believe that prosperity is harmful to the environment. But our nation's and the world's environments are getting better all the time, in fact so much better so much faster that it is hard to wave the green shirt based on honest data. Subterfuge and misrepresentation are thus left to energize the greens' antiprosperity cause.
Consider fossil fuel consumption and its resulting pollution. The Cato Institute recently reported that since the first Earth Day, in 1970, "energy consumption has risen 41 percent, most of it from fossil fuels. But during that same period sulfur-dioxide emissions . . . have dropped by 39 percent . .
And if the environmental alarmists are right, how come we're not running out of food, minerals or oil? Leading environmental groups preach that the globe's natural resources are being so depleted that the human race's very existence will soon become impossible, both economically and environmentally. The truth is just the opposite. Bjorn Lomborg's seminal book, "The Skeptical Environmentalist," details the facts: Since 1960 world grain production has increased to 680 pounds per capita from 560, and grain prices have fallen. Per capita daily calorie intake in the developing world has grown to nearly 2,700 from 1,900, and we work fewer hours to buy the food we eat. Poverty is declining and life expectancy is increasing. Proven global oil reserves have increased by a factor of 20. Production of copper, to take one nonenergy resource, has increased to over 12 million tons in 2000 from two million tons in 1950. Not much to worry about here either.
As for global warming, several things are agreed: The temperature on the surface of the earth rose in the 20th century, and man burned more fossil fuels during that time. And that's about it, for it is not at all clear that the two are linked. Most of the warming occurred early in the century, before the surge in man-made gasses, and as Canada's Fraser Institute's 2001 study concluded, "There is no clear evidence of the effect of CO2 on global climate, either in surface temperature records of the past 100 years, or . . . balloon radio-sondes over the last 40 years, or [from] satellite experiments over the last 20 years." In fact, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies now reports that global warming has slowed so much that temperature increases predicted for 2050 won't happen until 2100.
And the population explosion? Well, the threat is not of escalating birthrates but that in many countries--Italy, Russia and Germany, to name a few--they have fallen so far below the replacement rate that there soon won't be enough workers to support their economies and welfare programs. The U.N. reports that as of 2000, "44 percent of the world's population now lives in countries where the birth rate was below the death rate." It is below the replacement rate in others, so within a few decades the world's population will be in decline. In any case, the entire population of the world could fit in Texas, with each person enjoying 1,200 square feet of individual space.
So the rhetoric and proposals of the green organizations that make their living and raise their money through predictions of cataclysmic catastrophe are far divorced from reality.
The world is a different place than the environmentalists would have us believe. Prosperity is increasing and so pollution is decreasing, because it is prosperity, not increased regulation, that enables a society to support sound environmental policies. Poverty has been reduced more in the last 50 years than in the previous 500, according to the U.N. Yet with all the industrialization, energy generation, economic expansion and uncontrolled growth that made poverty reduction possible, the environment is still improving. Fewer cries of environmental catastrophe and more advocacy of growth and prosperity would encourage a cleaner world.
Meanwhile over at the Fish and Wildlife offices, it's ethics that's facing extinction.
Mr. du Pont, a former governor of Delaware, is policy chairman of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis. His column appears Wednesdays.
More interesting reading/listening:
http://www.cdfe.org/archive.htm
They will have to change the name to not-so-perm-afrost.
Look at all the people who believe that Global Warming exists, may have a human component, and is a concern for our future as a species.
Fair-weather supporters, the lot of you. Sure you're all opinionated when Slashdot gives you a big piece of data to defend yourselves with. But on average, none of you got the balls to do your own research and analysis. For every hundred slashdotters with an opinion, only half of one of you is informed.
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20020611-69247 208.htm
Take out the space from the address that Slashdot is automatically inserting, then copy and paste into browser address bar.
...of /. posting: +5 (Troll). Enjoy it while you got it.
I think it was the "card-carrying Mensa" sig, coupled with the misspelling of "tolerance." Or maybe the juxtaposition of the comment on stupidity with the parroting of the latest Rush Limbaugh lies being used to dupe the really stupid who want to believe so badly.
Since others have pointed out the obvious flaw in the "Big Business is policing itself" lie, I will concentrate on the "Kyoto is a restrictive and impractical way to cut pollution" lie. The Kyoto Treaty is nothing of the kind. It is an agreement among nations as to who has what responsibility for cleaning up how much. It says nothing about the way in which the emission of greenhouse gases might be accomplished (well, it says some things, but only to preclude bogus schemes by the unscrupulous).
Government-mandated pollution reduction is not required. Each country is left to its own devices: economic incentives, tax breaks, or legislated restrictions. The fact that this lie is being promulgated is an excellent measure of the desperation of the anti-Kyoto forces. All their other arguments are falling one by one, so they are reduced to pathetic trolling such as this:
Most Democrats, of course, believe that the "the Capitalist system works." Part of the reason it works so well in the United States is that James Madison realized the key to its success would be government regulation (particularly enforcement of contracts). Since that time, we have found a number ways in which it works better with regulation.
An excellent example of this is pollution control. Imagine, if you will, a community of manufacturers who compete with each other. Imagine further that they are moral people all of whom want to do the right thing. (This is not as surprising as Ralph Nader seems to think. Businessmen are people, too, and they don't want to poison their kids any more than they want to poison yours.)
Sooner or later, one of these companies will find itself at a competitive disadvantage. They cannot produce their product at a price which will allow them to make money selling it for what they can get. If they are paying money to reduce their pollution, they will be in a position where they can stay competitive by cutting controls or they can lose everything by going out of business. They may start polluting with full intention to clean it up later, when they get competitive again.
But they may never get the chance. Because now another business is in the least-competitive position, their existence threatened if they don't cut pollution controls. Eventually you can see an entire industry polluting at a maximum, EVEN THOUGH NONE OF THEM WANT TO. Regulations prohibiting pollution can be seen as a contract (sort of like a treaty) between them with the government as a guarantor. And it also protects them against a competitor who actually is nefarious and really doesn't care what is right.
The Kyoto Treaty can be viewed as just such a contract between nations. Any industrial nation could achieve an unfair competitive advantage over the others by ignoring global warming. If one country is losing out in the global marketplace because its business is overtaxed, the government could allow greenhouse gas emissions as a way to become competitive again without giving up its beloved taxes. (We saw this in Eastern Europe and Russia and China during the Cold War.)
Mensa-morons can whine and moan all they want, but the Kyoto Treaty will WORK. Just like the pollution and fuel-efficiency regulations they probably opposed during the '70s (and now celebrate the results of).
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
I don't know how many of you remember the post a few weeks ago on regulating the g'forces on roller coasters...and the comments that it wasn't pulling g's that hurt, it was the rate at which the acceleration changed. Same thing here. EXACT same thing--the rate of increase in the atmosphere of CO2, CH4, and other greenhouse gasses is the highest that it has ever been, and the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere is the highest that it has ever been, including the uncertainity factor, in the last 150,000 years. This is data from the Vostok and Greenland ice cores. Add to that news that all major polar and montane glaciers are in retreat, and winter temperatures particularly in the northern hemisphere have been increasing for the last several decades. Yes, global warming is happening.
What does it mean? Nobody really knows. Nobody at all. We know that we can't take back the gas already in the atmosphere. That wasn't the point of Kyoto. The point of Kyoto was to slow that ever-increasing rate to a point where increase will level out in about 70 years or so. Unfortunately I don't see that happening. And there are cleaner technologies out there, more expensive yes, but they are there. We are just so used to cheap petroleum and fossil fuel that we refuse to pay more for a cleaner planet. Nuclear? Sure. Wind? Yep. Geothermal and variations thereof? Absolutely. Sign me up.
Correlation is not causation, but there's a mechanism, a prediction, a verification of the prediction, and a complete lack of any alternative plausible hypotheses at this point.
Just because we understand the physiology of hangovers, and you drank like a fish last night, and you have a terrible headache just like the last six times you overdid it doesn't mean that your headache is a hangover. After all, correlation is not causation. Still, it might be a good idea to ease up on your drinking anyway.
Anyone who claims the evidence is weak at this point is willfully ignoring the evidence, or selecting *very* carefully from it, or listening to someone else who is doing so.
Things are pretty much on track with the earliest greenhouse predictions from 15 years ago. (Biggest and earliest changes were expected at high northern latitudes. What do you know...)
And it gets dramatically worse from here on. Fossil fuels, in addition to being responsible for a lot of otherwise dangerous global entanglements, are doing damage to the world not only increasingly but acceleratingly. Nothing but ideology and special interests prevent us from escaping our headlong dive toward widespread environmental disruption combined with getting messed up in medieval throwback geopolitics. Losing fossil fuel dependency fast is a big double win, but it's a little inconvenient to some corporations. Hmm.
It's really time people with any brain cells started to look at the evidence.
mt
Since there is zero evidence of human activity having an effect, there is no point in being "cautious" in regards to global warming.
... The predicted warming of 3C (5.4F) by the end of the 21st century ..."
"Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise. Temperatures are, in fact, rising. The changes observed over the last several decades are likely mostly due to human acitivities, but we cannot rule out that some significant part of these changes are also a reflection of natural variablility.
National Academy of Sciences Climate Change Report
First the conservatives said that global warming wasn't happening. Then they said that, sure, it's happening, but you stupid environmentalists don't realize that it's a totally natural process. I think it's simple. If the environmentalists are wrong, then we all pay a few bucks more for cars that are more efficient, or run on hydrogen, or behave in a way that makes us less dependent on foreign oil. If the conservatives are wrong, all life on earth dies a slow heat death with the total breakdown of the ecosphere, and the only interesting planet we're currently aware of goes down the tubes.
Conservatives better feel pretty fucking confident they're right, in my opinion.
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20020617-87905 899.htm
2 23 36.htm
e wi s041202.asp
Copy and paste into address bar of browser, then delete the space that Slashdot is placing in the address, then hit enter or go!
Here's another link (take out the space or link won't work):
Flips, flops and facts on warming
http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20020610-98
And another:
Trap door to Kyoto
Patrick J. Michaels May 28, 2002
While there's been much carping about the pork-laden, recently enacted farm bill, it turns out to be small fry compared to current energy legislation. If passed intact, HR 4, the "Energy Policy Act of 2002," will begin the stealth enactment of the infamous Kyoto Protocol on global warming, wisely canned by President Bush a year ago.
Of particular concern is Title X, which requires industry to "voluntarily" report its total emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. "Require" and "voluntary" can only coexist in the goofy world of Washington, as the reporting of carbon dioxide becomes mandatory for all industry under this bill if 60 percent of the nation's total emissions aren't "voluntarily" reported.
Who's kidding whom? The purpose of Title X is to establish some type of baseline for carbon dioxide emissions so some type of arbitrary "cap" can be legislated. Think of this as a Corporate Average Fuel Economy program for me, thee and everything we own.
This is the deceptive atmosphere that pervades HR 4, which is based upon misleading "findings." If these "facts" are incorrect or incomplete, what does that say about the subsequent regulations? Let's examine just two of the many "findings" in HR 4, and propose some modest, more factual revisions.
Current "Finding No. 1": "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that most of the warming of the last 50 years is 'attributable to human activities' and that the Earth's average temperature can be expected to rise between 2.5 and 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit this century."
Missing Facts: The Earth's surface temperature has warmed a little more than 1 degree in the last 100 years. Half of that warming took place before humans could have caused it, and an additional 10 percent or so of the more recent warming has been caused by changes in the sun. Most of that recent warming is in the coldest air of winter, as predicted by greenhouse theory. In other words, the total warming caused by people is a shade less than a mere half of a degree.
The U.N. made 245 separate forecasts for the next 100 years, based on different assumptions about energy use. The one that warms more than 10 degrees predicts unprecedented changes in both per-capita emissions of carbon dioxide and the number of people on the planet. Both fly in the face of reality: Carbon dioxide per capita has been basically constant since we started measuring it nearly 50 years ago, and population projections are being scaled down rapidly as the world's economies develop.
Most of the U.N.'s other 244 forecasts are in the lower half of the predicted range. An extension of current emission trends produces a warming that is slightly beneath their lowest estimate.
Revised "Finding No. 1": "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that human beings have contributed to a slight warming of planetary mean temperatures in the past 50 years, largely in the coldest air of the winter. Based upon extrapolation of current carbon dioxide emission trends and latest population projections, the warming of the next 100 years is likely to be around 2.5 degrees. Other, less likely assumptions could produce more warming."
Current "Finding No. 4": "The IPCC has stated that global average sea level has risen, oceanic heat content has increased, and snow and ice extent have decreased, which threatens to inundate low-lying island nations and coastal regions throughout the world."
Missing Facts: Recent studies of satellite data and submarine records reveal that the rise in sea level due to human-induced climate change is at best about 2½ inches, approximately half what the U.N. has estimated. This forces a halving of the IPCC's previous 100-year average projection, down to 9 inches. Much of the U.S. Atlantic Coast has seen much larger sea-level rises in the last 100 years because of geological activity. Pretty much no one but a few scientists have even noticed it as we happily adapted, building increasingly expensive beach houses.
Melting of sea ice does not change sea level: Pour yourself a drink and prove it. Melting of land ice does. The "ice balance" in Greenland, the largest ice mass in our hemisphere, is neutral. In Antarctica, the continental sheets are growing, not shrinking.
Revised "Finding No. 4": "Most recent findings reveal a slight rise in sea level as a result of human activities, but there is no evidence for an increasing trend. Observations indicate that sea level will continue to rise, at a rate that most developed economies have easily adapted to."
Space doesn't permit an expanded criticism of other findings, but one of them deserves a Dishonorable Mention: HR 4 cites a government report, which turns out to be the "U.S. National Assessment" of climate change. It is based upon two climate models that perform worse than a table of random numbers applied to U.S. temperatures.
For this, and for all the other half-truths in HR 4, we're supposed to start down the economically disastrous road to Kyoto?
Patrick J. Michaels is a senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute.
Son of Kyoto Returns -- Again
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-l
Warming up to the truth
Edwin Feulner
For a long time now -- indeed, since the first Earth Day in 1970 -- self-styled environmentalists have been warning the rest of us that our planet is spinning its way toward ecological Armageddon.
It's a depressing litany: Melting glaciers, rising temperatures, violent weather, crop failures and nearly all of it, we're told, the fault of human beings engaged in such unforgivable activities as creating businesses, driving cars and, well, breathing.
"We humans are about as subtle as the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs," New Scientist magazine says. "The damage we do is increasing. We are heading for cataclysm." The Washington-based Worldwatch Institute finds "the key environmental indicators are increasingly negative." And Greenpeace predicts that "half the Earth's species are likely to disappear in the next 75 years."
It sounds pretty frightening until you look beyond the headlines. Then you discover such claims rest mostly on hype, rather than on science.
Take forests. They're shrinking, right? That's what the Worldwatch Institute says -- "fact" dutifully parroted in classrooms and newsrooms nationwide. But as Danish professor Bjorn Lomborg points out in his book, "The Skeptical Environmentalist," Worldwatch makes this sweeping claim without sources. Data available from the United Nations show that "forest cover has remained remarkably stable over the second half of the 20th century," Mr. Lomborg writes, and actually appears to have increased slightly.
Mr. Lomborg, by the way, is a former Greenpeace member who originally set out to prove that Julian Simon, the late economist who had spent years debunking environmental doomsayers, was wrong. But, time after time, he found the facts supported Mr. Simon.
How about air pollution? We're told that's on the rise. And it is -- in the developing world. In industrialized countries such as the United States, where the total number of car miles traveled has more than doubled in the past 30 years, emissions have decreased by a third and the amount of pollutants such as lead by 80 percent and more. Why? Because, Mr. Lomborg says, only nations with growing economies can afford clean-air technology.
Then there's global warming. The conventional wisdom is that climate change can be explained as simple cause-and-effect: As greenhouse gases (such as carbon dioxide) rise, so do average temperatures. Industrial activities belch these gases into the air, trigger warming and invite environmental calamities.
But is it really that simple? The fact is, many scientists admit that we can't be sure how much of an impact human activity has on global temperatures.
One study, for example, conducted by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, suggests carbon dioxide may not be the biggest contributor to greenhouse gases. Even a report from the National Academy of Sciences (a global-warming advocate) says there is "considerable uncertainty in current understanding of how the climate system varies naturally and reacts to emissions of greenhouse gases." It says warnings about the "magnitude of future warming should be regarded as tentative and subject to future adjustments (either upward or downward)."
But why be surprised? As Kenneth Green of the Reason Public Policy Institute notes, we've been taking temperature readings for a relatively short portion of the Earth's total life-span (about the last 150 years).
As technology improves, we're gaining a better understanding of other variables that affect climate, from cloud changes and "carbon sinks" (forests that soak up carbon dioxide) to solar radiation and volcanic aerosols.
I'm not suggesting that all environmental warnings are groundless, only that we shouldn't swallow every doomsday scenario whole. Factory smokestacks aren't the only source of hot air.
Edwin Feulner is president of the Heritage Foundation.
If I remember correctly, the Kyoto protocol called for the United States to lower its emissions by eight percent, Europe to lower its emissions by seven percent, and Japan to lower its emissions by six percent (or something like that), and for the developing world to keep on pouring pollutants into the atmosphere.
Now, call me crazy, but having lived in America, Europe, and Japan, I don't think that the US is the most polluting country on Earth. Urban Japan (Osaka and Tokyo in particular) is a hell of a lot worse than any American city I've ever been to, with the possible exception of Los Angeles. And thanks to a government monopoly on leaded gas, the smog in Mexico is even more outrageous... and from what I've heard, breathing the air in Shanghai or Beijing is the equivalent of smoking two packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day.
So what's up with Kyoto? I believe that, like many other United Nations initiatives, it's an attempt to be an economic equalizer, to boost industrial development in Asia, Africa, and Latin America while hampering economic growth in the developed nations. Science and common sense both tell us that if implemented, it will do very little, if anything, to stop or even slow global warming.
A global ban on certain chemical emissions would do a much better job, but who's going to go with that idea? Certainly no state that emits those chemicals--i.e. every country in the world.
Wow, this is like chum to shark infested waters ^__^
"There are two major parts to science. Observation/experiment and theory as to why"
Global warming has only been a science of serious observation for - let's be generous - a century. I guess you can even say the experiment is still in progress since the only real world one that I know of is the Earth itself. Using an inconclusive "experiment" and a very, very, very small slice of history has created the theory of "Global Warming".
"The research is usually done right. Why? Because science strives to ensure all experiments/observations are Reproducible and most are reproduced."
Oh, like cold fusion? Or data over AC? etc.. etc... History is rife with as many research failures as success. To say that "science" strives for anything is also inaccurate. People make up science and as we all know people have their own dreams, motivations and aspirations, some wholesome, some not some. And yes, these people even study under the broad label of science. Science is not nessisarily a well meaning entity that looks out for the good of humanity as you portray it to be. And since you mentioned that "good" science strives to ensure accuracy how can they even claim accuracy in a several million year old experiment that we've only seen and participated in one century of? tell me HOW they have even remotely REPRODUCED a fraction of this grand experiment? the most ambitious efforts that I know of have has been Biosphere 2 (a muddled failure) and another being built in England. If you have others that even remotely scratch the surface, then by all means...
"The theory on the other hand is rarely right, at least 100% right. But it is usually close."
No, let ME illustrate. being able to produce a result and actually knowing how it works are two entirely seperate things. Like Electrical Theory. Nobody can accurately explain quite a few aspects of what makes it work, but they can construct devices to use it. The same thing with your Relativity example, but even that's beside the point. You have far too few observable facts on a system that has been operating for far to long in which we are influencing to some degree. It's like popping your head into an hour long labratory experiment for one minute and forming your own conclusion based on that one minute. And you would still be ignoring the fact that this isn't the first time that the Earth has gone though warming and cooling trends. There's an observable result for you. Fossil record and sediment bountries support those numerous cycles of change, THEREFORE why can't it happen again?
You are right... Global warming because I said so or because it's a conspiracy ISN'T an argument, but neither are the "facts" supporting global warming given the conditions under which they have been obtained. None of the opponents of Global Warming are under the obligation to have to prove anything since it's "those other people" looking to bring about a massive change in economic, political and environental policy. It's like saying a meteor will hit the Earth tommorow and telling everybody else to prove you wrong. Sorry, it doesn't work that way. You want to change the status quo? YOU CONVINCE US. You're obviously not doing a very good job.
Why is it wrong? See above.
Is there flaws in the data gathering? Plainly.
Do the theories not match the data? Pretty much.
If so, what is a better theory? Natural cycles, supported by sediment and fossile record.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
I forgot to list geothermal, since you asked.
Until one of those elaborate, non-Soviet plants survives a destructive earthquake, attack, or other disaster, I don't think we will be able to quantify that at all.
I prefer fission to coal, but just barely.
This is the type of Anecdotal evidence that clinches my opinion that Global warming is a substitute religion of politicians and anti capitalists. Smart politicians love an issue that they uuuuse to instill fear. Machiavelli taught that fear was a better motivator of loyalty than love. Anti capitalists are naive people who have seen certain evil doings of powerful capitalists. Thus they think big government needs to come in and disarm them, allocate property, and quash individual freedom, liberty, and conflicting religion. There is no proof or strong scientific argument for Human caused global warming. The original computer model has already been revised downward several times in predictions of the amount of expected warming. There are natural sources of CO2 on Earth, much more powerful than Man. CO2 has increased, but remains at only around 2% of our atmoshpere. Increased CO2 causes more rapid growth of plant life on land and in oceans. This in turn helps rebalance CO2 becaus plants consume it. I am only an Engineer, not a scientist, but I think I know politics and junk science when I see them. I think that if there were ever an honest debate between some qualified individauls who also respond to questions, we would be able to move on to some real issues.
You've been duped by Rush. There are a few Rush fact checking websites that can provide some insight into this mistake.
Play Command HQ online
The economics of libertarianism is like high school physics. Everything is a sphere, and there is no friction.
Ergo, humanity, by increasing the net CO2 in the atmosphere are increasing the mean temperature of the planet.
Your conclusion does not follow from your hypotheses. The fact that CO_2 has spectral properties making it a greenhouse gas does not necessarily imply that an increase in CO_2 concentration will yield increased mean temperature. This is because the global climate is a non-trivial dynamical system, and there are possibilities for secondary effects of increased IR absorption. For example, a higher temperature over the ocean may lead to increased evaporation and cloud formation, leading to higher albedo and lower effective insolation at another location. Our understanding of climate is so scant, and our historical data is so sparse, that making bold claims of causation is simply unscientific intellectual hubris.
Given our nearly complete uncertainty regarding the future climate, it is difficult to produce any kind of risk-reward analysis of potential policy. In the face of insufficient data, the environmentalists take a "regret-minimization" strategy, choosing the certain economic penalty of CO_2 emission controls over the potential disaster of melting ice caps. This seems sound on the surface, but thanks to the complexity of our climate, there isn't any rigorous confidence that such a policy will actually lower the chances of catastrophe. The regret that is being minimized here seems largely psychological and political, as our leaders can claim that their measures prevented disaster if flooding fails to happen, or that it would have been worse without their policies if flooding does happen. People seem to feel better when they are actively engaged in something they think is good, even if it is in truth completely ineffective.
Since climate may relate to any and all events in the past through chaos theory... Isn't the main problem that in order to proof any global climate theory in a (natural) scientific way, we would need to reproduce all events? Ie.: to proof that earth temparature rose over the last century due to human behaviour, we would need to:
1) Recreate all circumstances as thay were in 1902 - which we obviously can't do,
2) Reprocuce all events that happened since 1902 (including two world wars) - which we obviously don't want to do.
Now does that mean that climate research isn't science?