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Study: Jet Exhaust Affects Weather
An anonymous submitter writes: "Warp 10 speeds may affect... Ooops, wrong story.. Apparently, jets are affecting the weather and contributing to about a 3 degree daily temperature variation. Even a single degree variation in overall temperature (climate) is significant, but I'm not certain how significant is 3 degrees in local temperatures." We mentioned this before - there was a Wired story - but now their work has been published in Nature and the AP has picked up the story.
All the concrete in the airports have been doing this for years. Ever hear of urban heat islands?
"Even a single degree variation in overall temperature (climate) is significant, but I'm not certain how significant is 3 degrees in local temperatures."
I read once (can't find it now) about how many more gallons of water are used depending on temperature. It was amazing how the amount used went up per degree increase.
This will only encourage the weird science crowd who are looking at the contrails as "chemtrails" and look at the whole thing as an effort to control global warming, or do other mean and nasty things.
Google reveals about 18,000 hits on the word "chemtrails" alone. Have a party.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
It actually has. Methane gas is one of the main factors in the greenhouse effect, though the trouble here comes more from bovines than humans.
How can you derive significant results from 4 days of data? Silly...
PoI: I believe Nature was the first to publish the journal results of the study (i.e., the story did not orginate @ Wired).
As the Road to Tycho is for intellectual property reform advocates, so should this be for those interested in the environment.
Commondreams.org has written a fictional address; conservatives and non-believers will call it propaganda, but then, as the weather patterns continue to change and the news stories about environmental catastrophes keep coming, they may have some trouble making the charge stick...
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
Ok, let me see if I understand this....
.000000057% of the total data? I suspect that any competent statistician would laugh you out of his office if you asked him to attempt to calculate a trend with a sample that small.
According to most theories the earth is 3.5 billion years old. We (humans) have been measuring the temperature for less than 200 years. 200/3.5X10^12=5.7X19^-8. We are attempting to calculat trends in global warming with
"Like fire and fusion, government is a dangerous servant and a terrible master."~RAH
The "researchers" compared the weather of the 4 days following september 11th when most (non millitary) air traffic was suspended to the 'average' temperature, for those 4 days, of the past 30 years.
Anyone with even the smallest knowledge of statistics can tell you that this 'experiment' is absolutely non-scientific and the researchers admit it that global warming is likely responsible for most of the increase.
And anyone with even the smallest knowledge of scientific research can tell you that those results will never get published in any acientific journal since the basic requirement of all research today was not met. The "control group". There was no control group. No, the days before and after don't count as control group.
Apart from that, air traffic might have effect on weather. But my point is that we can't conclude from this "experiment" what that effect is. More (real) research is required.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
More worriesome is that jet exhaust probably contributes proportionally more to the greenhouse effect than the amount of pollutants realeased would indicate, as it tends to be dumped high up, resulting in more greenhous gases ending up in the ozone layer than it would have had it been burned close to the ground.
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Cell phones don't cause brain cancer. Does this mean researching the effect of high voltage power lines is a waste of time?
Lunatics believe that aliens visit earth on a regular basis to indulge their twisted ass fetish. When we look for evidence of martian microbes, are we just encouraging them (lunatics, not martians)?
This contrail weather effect is good science - the deviation they've identified in temperatures is statistically significant. Now, that isn't proof; statistically significant variations do arise by chance, and you can certainly get a stistically significant result that confuses the real causality (Less people Drove around Sep 11th, did that cause a significant local drop in CO2? Is this an incidental effect of overall climate change? So on and so forth.) However, just because it isn't proven, we can't dismiss it either (personally, I think contrails probably do effect the weather,) just because there are loonies who believe something similar.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Ho my... We made how many measure on Electrons-positron anihilation ? How many measure on some weird galaxy outside ? How many skeleton do we have on prehistoric being ?
The amount of measure don't say anything about a model being wrong or correct. The problem is first to determine if the measure we did amount to correctly represent the whole "populaztion" we are measuring or not, second whether those are following the known modell or not.
Measure on 4 days are enough to establish a modell of temperature on variation of monthes or year. WE DO NOT care on temperature variation on geological scale for that study ("does jet have influence on local temperature or not")
Same pr9oblem with your reasonement on global warning. it doesn't matetr if we have a popualtion measurement on 0.000001% of the history of earth. We are effectively measuring something on the historicalö size (last 200 years) and that is what matters for our modell and sampling. We are trying to see if we influence temperature enough so that it becoems dangerous for US ("now"). Not that wetheter such warming occurs at slow geological scale. Who cares if temperature change by 10 grad celsius in 10 power 7 years, we are seing if we are generating the same change in 100 years...
Everything is a matter of sampling and scales. The aforementionned Competent statistician would mention it to you. Take a representative number of the population and you will have a good enough snapshot of the population (within error).
Now i am waiting for somebody with the infamous proverb "there are 3 types of lie : Big lie, DAmned lie and statistics".
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I suspect that any competent statistician would laugh you out of his office if you asked him to attempt to calculate a trend with a sample that small. No sir, ever scientist working on that topic would simply refuse to talk to you other than in a low and calming voice.
There a hundreds of good sites on the internet, try http://www.climate.org/ for an easy starter. Don't forget the Scientific American article. And do some googeling.
Excellence: Moderate (mostly affected by comments on your karma)
I love the "3 days isn't statistically significant" crowd. They had 3 days with no civilian air traffic. They observed military cargo flights leaving contrails that over a few hours turned into very large cloud formations.
Weather satellites observing six separate instances of these contrail to cloud formation growths is significant. There were more, but they spotted six instances where one plane flew through a clear area and made a cloud formation. Thet's pretty clear. Take 3 days without vast airplane formed cloud cover and, using all the other days with the manmade clouds as a control group, you can spot a 3 day blip with temperature variations of 3 degrees celcius more than all the days before and all the days after.
We had a 3 day window with wider variation in temperature extremes. We had a 3 day window with negligible air traffic. We have documented how well one airplane can make cloud cover. I'm not a global warming person or anything, but if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then you've got an agenda of your own if you won't admit that we've got a duck.
Saying that air travel affects our weather isn't panic or tree hugging, it's observation. We're not going to stop flying. We are affecting things, for good or bad we don't even know. I don't know how we'll be able to tell- that's where this information is insignificant. The effects are obvious, but whether these effects are actually bad is not something we can determine yet, if ever. Who knows, maybe more research on jet propulsion can end up stopping this. different insulation, directed airflow, who knows? Just because we don't fully understand something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. We may not have to, or even want to change anything. We just don't know enough about it yet.
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
So heating my home during the winter so I don't freeze has an environmental impact too. This is all so much alarmist bullshit. It's time people get used to the fact that as humans, anything we do has an impact on the environment and to get on with their freakin' lives. So are we going to forsake air travel now? Move to blimps? What impact do you think all the worlds ocean going shipping has? About the only people than can claim near total environmental unity are the various tribal segments of the world. The day you're willing to take a step backwards and live like that is the day I might start listening to this crap.
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At least somebody can admit the possibility. Humans causing global warming might be a plausible theory, but it won't be because any evidence presented so far, because any evidence presented so far is so damn thin it's pathetic.
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A more interesting study would be to stop all petroleum based engines for a month (including jets), and measure the impact on the climate...Alas, this will never happen, because people are addicted to their lifestyles.
Are you kidding? You're asking every single person in the world to roll back their technology over 100 years. How would ANYONE get around? It has nothing to do with addiction to lifestyle, it has to do with that technology being necessary for most people's LIVES, since so few people have any alternate means of transportation. Since the advent of the supermarket, corner markets no longer exist (sure, convenience stores exist, but have you ever tried to actually eat a meal from a convenience store that consists of more than chips and beer?). The majority of the population would have a hard time getting to and from a grocery store, typically located several miles from their home. For most people, walking that far would be an all-day proposition, or out of the question entirely. Not many people have a horse and buggy anymore, and a bike that isn't set up to carry a load is woefully inadequate to the task of hauling large quantities of groceries. Not to mention the fact that farmers wouldn't be able to harvest their crops without their petroleum-burning tractors, combines, etc, so even after your little experiment was over, people STILL couldn't eat. Few people would be able to get to work, since few people live within a short distance of their jobs (the car made suburbs possible). Do you consider natural gas- or oil-fired power plants to be petroleum based engines? If so, we wouldn't have much electricity either. In short, the economy would completely shut down, thousands of people would die, and your "interesting study" would have a disastrous effect on the world.
First, they're not actually talking about exhaust here, they're talking about contrails, i.e. condensed water (clouds).
Second, the contrails, don't contribute to a temperature variation, they prevent it: "the clear skies boosted the temperature swing between daytime highs and nighttime lows by about 3 degrees nationwide."
Third, to all those who say this is laughable statistical analysis, it is not. They studied the weather, not long-term climate changes. And in fact it is well known that on days with a clear sky, it gets hotter during the day and colder during the night. I'm sure everyone of you already noticed that. The clouds prevent the sun from heating up the earth during the day, and during the night, they prevent the heat from radiating into space. The only thing that had not been researched so far was the effect of the (small) amount of clouds that are artificially created by jets every day. Surprisingly, it turns out that these clouds have the same effect that other clouds have.
Relating this to global warming is just speculation. Contrails are basically just clouds, and I don't think reducing variation in temperature between day and night will contribute to or reduce global warming. That just doesn't make sense, it's like saying rainy days contribute to global warming because there are so many clouds. Now I'm pretty sure that jets do contribute to global warming, but that's due to burning fuel, not due to creating contrails -- they could just as well burn the fuel on the ground, causing no contrails at all, and it would contribute to pollution of the air.
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
The jet exhaust is _reducing_ daily temperature variations. Contrails --> Clouds. Clouds keep heat in at night, out during day. Reducing variation.
When North American air traffic was grounded after Sept. 11, daily temperature variation INCREASED (hotter during day, colder during night) by around 3 degrees Celsius. That's a big difference, globally speaking.
It is pitch dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
The problem is that global warming doesn't take into acount the previous warming and cooling cycles presented via geology. And since you're waiting for it, I'll take the bullet and say that global warming is a case of "figures lie and liars figure". And since you're mentioning proper scale, .000000057% (or close enough) is a pretty damn small slice of history to be working with. Fact is we aren't going to have an accurate snapshot either way until you can find similar planets in various stages of their lifecycle, go back in time, or vastly improve geological research. And until one of those three criteria is met, global warming is not even an educated guess.
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Not to mention that air inside most restaurants and other commercial buildings is exhausted and replaced with outside air several times a day (probably a few times every hour). Can the same thing be said about the pool? This is an HVAC issue.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Ok, picture this...
You have a plane flying around with a nuclear reactor on board. First, you have to keep it cool and dump the excess heat. Whether that'd be the equivolent to a coventional jet engine or more, I'm not sure, but you're basically coming around to the same problem. Second, you have a nuclear reactor flying around above peoples heads. Nevermind that you can make it damn near fool-proof and crash resistant (like nuclear warheads that'll withstand impacts the rest of the airframe won't), environmentalist propaganda would paint pictures of meltdowns in the sky and the scattering of nuclear material everywhere. The last reason alone will guarantee you won't see em in unclassified aircraft anytime soon. That, and about the only real advantage nuclear will gain you (after the signifigant increase in weight) will be endurance to stay aloft as long as the reactor provides power. An intresting point to be made would be that in a crash you wouldn't have to worry about a fiery impact scortching miles on end. Even if the reactor somehow "cracks", a 747 won't have as large a pile to draw power from. Sure, radiation would be a problem, but more than a fiery ball of death?
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ok i probably can't spell Dendracronology but
There have been studies of tree rings (Dendracronology) thousands of years old, the width of the tree ring tells you about the climate at the time it was growing.
So we have measured global tempretures back a few thousand years at least.
Then there's the ICE cores that can also tell you about global climate, they too go back thousands of years.
So you can say that in the past 50-100 years the climate has changed a stastically signifacant amount when compaired to the past 3-4 thousand years
failing that....
Rock strata can tell you somthing about climate going back 10's or hundreds of thousands of years.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
It's you're call who to believe, and as to Bush, it turned out that those were elements of his cabinent who weren't authorized to make the statment, but that part of the story didn't see even half as much press. But don't believe me :p
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I guess I should cancel my upstart, Burrito Airlines.
Table-ized A.I.
When slashdot selected the same story just three short days ago, they also linked to an NPR story and a blurb on the nature website.
I'll one more, very important, link to the mix. You can read the abstract for free. Reading the paper itself is not free, unless you count going to your local university library for the dead tree copy as free. Before anyone else comments on the science behind this, please at least read the abstract, and hopefully have the knowledge to pass at least one introductory statistics course.
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
The depletion of the ozone layer is caused by the release of Chlorofluorocarbons (CFC's) used as refrigerants and aerosol container propellants, rather than the release of carbon dioxide through the combustion of fossil fuels, which causes the greenhouse effect. There is little connection between the two problems.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
... don't breathe.
Software Wars
If you are wanting to forsee temperature change on geological age, I would agree with you. But the fact is that we are trying to analyze and forsee temperature and climate change on Historical size (for the enxt 50 years). So I don't think the utility of analyzing temperature change for 200 millions of years. They may be temperature change as big on geological size, but not with the speed we are trying to recognize now. Granted I am no climatologist, so maybe I am totally wrong on the case, but that is how it was presented to me.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Yeah of course there would be problems with modern technology... I mean who was the bright person in Scotland who put the water pipes on the *outside* of the buildings? When it got to -25 celcius they encountered a few problems.
This has been scaring the crap out of me for years! I've lost many a nights sleep fretting about the ocean rising, as it is. I don't know what to do but, its obvious that we've got to do something. And do it fast, we only have 1200 years before Miami sinks.
Oh bother.
Not weather, climate. And silly as it may sound, they're close to be the main contributors to the excess greenhouse effect that is supposed to lead towards global warming.
http://www.carnicom.com/abq.htm
Yep, looks to me like the extra cloud cover from contrails could easily case a change in temperature. (pictures from a hokey site)
On more reason to get off the fossil fuel habit.
Except that you're assuming this effect is negative, which is by no means clear. If global warming turns out to be a significant problem, increasing the impact of airplane contrails is one of the more interesting technical hacks that has been proposed to fix the problem.
The relevant patent can be found here: Stratospheric Welsbach seeding for reduction of global warming.
I play Nerd-Folk!
Read the article people! That 3-degree variation ended up LOWERING the temperature by 3 degress on account of air traffic, not raising it. So, if we're all worried about global warming, fly more!
If a butterfly flapping its wings affects our whether, of course jet engines will!
Sheesh, what are we paying these people for?
I thought this was already well known. Perhaps these new measurements confirm it or show that the effect is bigger, but wasn't this already known?
Aeroplanes definitely cause a lot of pollution and affect the atmosphere quite badly.
I am amazed that a crowd as supposedly smart as slashdot is making such wildly off the mark conclusions. The premise had to do with high level clouds created by contrails, not chemicals or ozone or whatever. Clouds are created and dissipate over short periods of time so four days is enough data. The fact that contrails created clouds and that clouds hold in heat and lessen night/day temperature swings is all well known. This was just taking measurements of the degree of the effect. It was larger than expected. Interesting. Does that mean we have to immediately cease all jet flights? No, but it is better that we know what is happening in nature than not. Would it have been better if they could have taken more than four days' measurements? Sure. If they could shut down all air travel for a week several times a year to take their measurements I am sure that they would prefer it. When studying nature you sometimes have to take the data that chance and circumstances give you and make the best of it. Control groups and huge sample sizes that are standard in laboratory science are rare. Circumstances gave them four days of greatly reduced air travel. They took it. My son is participating in a field study of a particular game bird in a wilderness area. One day one of the radio transmitters of the birds they were tracking led them to a Goshawk nest. Now the Goshawk had long been suspected to be a predator of this bird, but no recorded instance had ever been documented. So they regarded this as first proof that a Goshawk was capable of catching and killing this bird in the wild. When I pointed out that they hadn't really seen it occur either he said "Sometimes that is about as close to proof as nature lets you have."
You know, you might laugh about it, but if you lived somewhere where even a slight variation in sea level is of major concern, say Venice or Bangladesh, then I doubt you'd be so flippant about the issue.
/. stories that have an environmental slant to them have nothing positive to add to the debate and prefer joking about the subject rather than even admit that there might be a serious problem that needs to be addressed.
/. if not elsewhere, it's fashionable to be worried about the chances of the human race being wiped out by a giant asteroid collision but it's laughable to suggest that we (and countless other species) may be at danger because of our own reckless behaviour.
(Fact: Venice is sinking and many of its famous piazzas are frequently flooded. Fact: Bangladesh is under constant threat from flooding, which affects millions and kills thousands practically every year in recent history.)
I find it curious that a great number of people who comment on
If there was a small chance that toxic chemicals were seeping into your drinking water then you'd be mad to dismiss it so nonchalantly. If there was a small chance that your car's tyres were defective and could kill you then you'd be mad to ignore that too.
Similarly, if there's a small risk that your actions (together with that of the rest of the civilisation that you live in) was causing major damage to the ecosystem then you'd have to be a complete idiot to ignore the possibility.
Somehow, on
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I just happen to live 3 miles from Mpls-Stp international airport, which is itself adjacent to Fort Snelling National Park - it not only freezes here, the Mississippi itself 9it runs through the park along with the Minesota River) completely freezes over - there has been no loss of aquatic life, none. In fact, when Cousteau's Mississippi expedition came here some 18 years ago - they were publically surprised at how clean the river and it's bottom were even then - it has only gotten cleaner since then.See- SEWER systems are in place to prevent run-off, but we do use tons of salt here every year for clearing the ice from freeways and other roads, they apparently have had no ill effect either.
I'd love to know where you came up with that crock of baloney.
Nevermind that you can make it damn near fool-proof and crash resistant (like nuclear warheads that'll withstand impacts the rest of the airframe won't), environmentalist propaganda would paint pictures of meltdowns in the sky and the scattering of nuclear material everywhere.
Oh please. Even if the reactor is made 100% safe so that a skyscraper impact spreads no radiation, how do you prevent the plane from being hijacked and flown to an "axis of evil" nation that wants to get its hands on the plutonium? A nuclear plane could fly around the world many times without refueling, so this is an issue even for domestic flights. A nuclear-powered commuter flight from Boston to New York would easily be in range of North Korea. How are you going to guarantee that this won't be a problem? With computer-enforcement of no-fly zones? Or by arming pilots?
The tight export controls on a nuclear plane would be just one of the many headaches that an aerospace manufacturer would face, and while those caused by "tree-hugger" sensibilities are among them, there are many others. Ideology aside, safety and nonproliferation are serious problems that need to be addressed in any project of this nature. Nuclear planes are not cost-effective to manufacture. And unlike nuclear submarines, they do not solve any compelling problem that is left unaddressed by their conventional counterpart. Even the military, which comissioned the manufacture of nuclear submarines during the Cold War and was not as affected by "environmental propaganda", never did the same for the nuclear airplane.
Yes but cars are on the ground and some pollutions is absorbed by foliage etc whereas aircraft emit is directly into the sky
Air travel promotes global cooling. It is your duty to counteract all the other consumer evil you've done. Get on that plane and go!
The US was at a stand still thoes three days. Auto trafic was much lower as was industrial output (as well as industrial pollution) was down for those three days.
Maybe they didn't measures what they thought they were.
So do Butterflies
Big deal.
> It has nothing to do with addiction to lifestyle, it has to
> do with that technology being necessary for most people's
> LIVES, since so few people have any alternate means of
> transportation.
Malarke. The previous poster was being stupid, yes, but
your argument is just as lame. Lots of people get by
without a car all the time, with no discernible ill
effects.
> The majority of the population would have a hard time
> getting to and from a grocery store, typically located
> several miles from their home.
This is nonsense. Nearly half of the population of
North America live in communities not more than a couple
of miles from one end of town to the other, usually with
not one but _several_ groceries. Most of the _rest_ of
the population live in cities, where things are even
closer. Only the most extreme rural populations would be
unable, on pain of starvation, to walk to the grocery,
and most of those are near (or on) a farm. Quite aside
from that, location of domicile is part of lifestyle,
and if we're altering our transportation habits we would
presumably alter that as well in many cases, to say
nothing of most people needing to change jobs...
It's not life and death; it _is_ lifestyle. That said,
it's preposterous to suggest that it might ever be in
any way appropriate to ask every person in the world to
alter his lifestyle so you can conduct an experiment in
climatology.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Oh, fsck me! Yet again, same story, three days later.
2002-08-08 12:51:44 Jet Contrails Alter Diurnal Temperature Cycle (science,news) (rejected)
Oh well. It happens.
Again. And again. And again.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Now if life were to change such that cars were no longer economical or possible for some reason, i would look into moving or changing jobs. However for the sake of a one month experiment, no way.
And while i've heard that it's different in some other countries, in America at least without gasoline everyone who lives in a city or major suburbs would have to move. With out current infrastructure we don't have the means to deliver the food we produce to the people who eat it without petroleum products. Most people in cities or suburbs may be within walking distance of a supermarket, but it doesn't do much good if the supermarket doesn't have any food.
Sure we could fix all those issues, between alternate fuel supplys and alternate methods of transporation, but it's a bit too entrenched to be refered to as just a lifestyle. Whether or not i can go down to the mall and buy a cd or some new clothes is a lifestyle, the method by which the food necessary to my life is delievered isn't so much.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Christ, I get a troll mod, *and* get called stupid. You all *think* you need cars, and grocery stores, but you do NOT. - that is a period.
Are you kidding? You're asking every single person in the world to roll back their technology over 100 years.
No, actually, it was a thought experiment. I'm not asking anyone to do that.
How would ANYONE get around?
1. Why does anyone need to 'get around'? Until the last 100 years, everyone basically remained in an area of a few square miles for most of their lives. To believe that you cannot survive without a petroleum burning device is incredibly absurd. Look at monkeys, and tell me I'm wrong.
2. Walk
The majority of the population would have a hard time getting to and from a grocery store, typically located several miles from their home. For most people, walking that far would be an all-day proposition, or out of the question entirely.
I don't know about you, but walking a few miles to a store doesn't take all day. The issue of walking to a grocery store in the first place is a moot point, since if there were no distribution channels for mass produced food, you'd be forced to produce your OWN.
Those who can't care for themselves are already cared for by others, so the disabled and elderly have their bases covered for the most part. Our society is not so unethical that in such an experiment, we would just abandon those in need.
In short, the economy would completely shut down, thousands of people would die, and your "interesting study" would have a disastrous effect on the world.
First, I didn't mention the world. Second, if my experiment came about from an uncontrollable event, you would probably be the first to die. The fact is, is that not only I could survive, but so could you, and all of the underprivileged people who cannot help themselves.
It is inconceivable that people think that we NEED mass produced foods and trains, trucks, cars, or even a horse and buggy to survive.
Have a good one.
Why does anyone need to 'get around'? Until the last 100 years, everyone basically remained in an area of a few square miles for most of their lives.
And before (nearly) everyone had a car, everything everyone needed to survive was within walking distance. Work, the grocery store, the drug store, the doctor, EVERYTHING. I live 12 miles from where I work. I live 4 miles from the nearest grocery store. I'm guessing here, but I probably live about 5 miles from my doctor.
Look at monkeys, and tell me I'm wrong.
You're wrong. Last I knew, monkeys lived within inches of their food. Humans did too, when we were all subsistence farmers or hunters. Now a lot of us live in cities. How much food do you see being grown within most metropolitan regions of the US?
I don't know about you, but walking a few miles to a store doesn't take all day.
No, it doesn't, for me and (presumably) you. But ask the average American (whose idea of exercise is to lift the remote off the table and walk to the bathroom a couple times a day) to walk 3 miles to a grocery store, then 3 miles back while carrying 30 pounds of groceries, and it could take a while.
you'd be forced to produce your OWN [food].
Now that's a funny thought. I live in a city. Where do you propose I grow this food? Where do you propose I get the seeds? Etc.
Those who can't care for themselves are already cared for by others, so the disabled and elderly have their bases covered for the most part.
Both my grandmothers are in their 80s, neither are cared for by others, and neither would be able to walk to the grocery store, let alone back with an armful of groceries.
Our society is not so unethical that in such an experiment, we would just abandon those in need.
No, but when I'm spending 8 hours a day at work, 6 hours a day walking back and forth to work, and a few hours walking back and forth to the grocery store, I have little time to walk 150 miles to bring my grandma groceries.
First, I didn't mention the world.
From your original post: A more interesting study would be to stop all petroleum based engines for a month. Since the US does not have a monopoly on petroleum based engines, I merely assumed you meant the world. I apologize.
Second, if my experiment came about from an uncontrollable event, you would probably be the first to die.
Ha. Not likely. I'm a backpacker, so I know my edible plants, and I'm in excellent shape. It's the fat ignorant slobs that mostly populate the country that I think would die.
Christ, I get a troll mod, *and* get called stupid.
In fairness, you could only be one or the other. I know where my money is.
Since the posting to which I replied has since dropped to a 0 rating, perhaps it was below your reading threshold and you assumed I was responding to something else? Anyway, I stand by my original statement. If perhaps the same guy said "for good or bad we don't even know" in some other posting, I have no way to connect the two - that's the trouble with his (or her) being an anonymous poster.
I play Nerd-Folk!
Bathhouses and restaurants are both generally open to the public and often not govt. owned. I fail to see how you think a restaurant is more similar to a private dwelling than to a commercial establishment.
There are myriads of laws that commercial establishments have to follow that private dwellings don't (hence some people try tricks like not selling alcohol, but giving it away and selling memberships, to get around rules regarding fire escapes etc.)
The rings from the oak may not be that good on there own, but when you take rings from different types of trees you can tell a lot about the weather for that year.
Some trees grow better when it's hot
Some when it's cold
Some when it's dry
etc.....
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I can't seem to find it now, but I've seen a NASA picture (super high res color) of the Eastern Seaboard that was just COVERED with contrails.
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Here's everything that I can find in 5 minutes, it comes close to showing what I saw once. (I swear it was from the Terra satelite, but I can't find it right now)
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/Flagstaff/science/contrai
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/viewrecord?2
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/Flagstaff/science/contrai
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/viewrecord?5
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/viewrecord?4
Ships put out an amazing amount of water vapour, and photos of the Western Seaboard have shown huge numbers of ship generated cloud banks off of San Francisco. Here's one example:
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/viewrecord?1
Ok, this post has beem modded up 4 or 5 times, and metamoderated down (Overrated -1) all but one of those. I suspect that my opening statement does not sit well with the politics of some on this board. Where is the famed objectivity of computer geeks? Where is the study of the facts and application of reason that you apply to administering your networks and systems, and to writing your code? Did I post something controversial? Undoubtedly! Unpopular? Maybe. Insightful? Well, you don't find my argument on every site on the Web, nor do you commonly see it in newspaper columns. So why were the Insightful mods given Overrated? I could understand if they were given Off Topic, because it is, slightly. Although I see that many other posters had no problem making the connection.
/. community on this. I expected alot more.
For your moderation to be other than mental masterbation you MUST be objective about it. My comments may not agree with your politics In fact, I can almost guarantee that they won't most ofthe time. I am dissapointed by the response from the
PS This is not about karma, I could really care less. I've been on this board for over 5 years and only started posting recently. This is about my expectations from the community. You have a different opinion? Great! Please share it in a civil fashion. We all grow. But don't mod something down, or call it a troll, just because you don't agree with it.
Thank you,
David
"Like fire and fusion, government is a dangerous servant and a terrible master."~RAH
Sorry to dissapoint you, but this is no troll, it's my opinion
OK, I think I might have overreacted reg the "troll". Sorry for this!
However, I think you make a mistake by assuming that you need all the earlier data in order to deliver a clear trend.
IMHO your argument would be more valid (but not 100%, let me come to this later on)... when they would attempt to extrapolate the climate for the next 3.5X10^12 years. But nobody wants to do this, we are talking about the next 100 years or so! Surely, than the temperatures of the last 4000 years should be enough?? You try to extrapolate 100% to 102.5% -- statistically totally valid.
Second point (reg why not 100% after all): The Humans and the process of inductrialisation have influenced the ecosphere quite much, so the data of 100000 years ago (even if available) wouldn't be relevant anymore and just distort the trend.
Well, but IANAS - "I am not a statistician"... lol
Excellence: Moderate (mostly affected by comments on your karma)
It's the fat ignorant slobs that mostly populate the country that I think would die.
and probably good eatin' too.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.