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Abrupt Climatic Change Coming Soon?
rRaAnNiI writes "Just read an extremely interesting article about the possibility of having a 'little ice age' quite soon - within a decade.
The frightening thing is that it makes a lot of sense to me. Does anyone know how to build an igloo?"
Yes, they work great. Being a Canadian, we live throu all extreems of weather, it gets above 40 C and below -40 C where i live, so a little colder just means we have to cuddle up with the women some more.
On Arrakis: early worm gets the bird. Magister mundi sum!
The mini ice age is expected to arrive within the next 3 months. But, don't panic. It's a mini ice age and is only expected to last for, perhaps, 4 months.
When there's Planet X coming next year.
Sounds like yet another "There's an asteroid heading right at us!" scare to me.
Good for overclockers, bad to cooler makers =)
I've always been good at writing my name in the snow!
Abrubt climate changes aren't new. In 1816, there was no summer. Volcanic side effects from the year before blotted out enough light to cause a winterry year.
"Valley Forge might not have been so cold, and Washington's crossing of the ice-bound Delaware River wouldn't have been so dramatic, if he had done it a century later--because our climate conditions have shifted since then, and today, the Delaware River rarely freezes."
I would attribute that to the amount of chemicals being dumped into that system as well, I pity the idiots who put their bodies into that water.
Quoth the article: When I say "dramatic," I mean: Average winter temperatures could drop by 5 degrees Fahrenheit over much of the United States, and by 10 degrees in the northeastern United States and in Europe. That's enough to send mountain glaciers advancing down from the Alps. To freeze rivers and harbors and bind North Atlantic shipping lanes in ice.
While this could/perhaps will affect quite a bit, changing the weather by 5-10 degrees lower won't put us into what we think of as an 'ice age'. It could screw up quite a bit, but it won't be too bad. To me it seems that it would be more winterlike for a month or two as the general affect (which most plants and animals could tolerate I think).
Don't start thinking that it's gonna be like the Pixar movie 'Ice Age' in New Mexico...
Tibbon
tibbon.com
Oh.. sorry, bad FOR cooler makers.
Here are instructions on how to build an igloo, if anyone is interested.
But if you ask me, I think global warming is the trend.
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
Does anyone know how to build an igloo?
I'm still living in my igloo, is Y2K over yet?
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
Yeah, at the staff meeting on Thursday. They say we're looking at fire, brimstone, and a 60% chance of efficiency experts. Didn't you get that memo?
Bush likes to talk about accepting responsibility for one's actions. Since the US is a huge greenhouse case emitter and currently derives enormous financial and economic benefits from cheap energy, if greenhouse gasses cause a massive shift in climate, the US will be willing to accept responsibility for its share and pay trillions of dollars annually to other nations who are frozen, parched, or flooded, right? (If nothing is going to happen, as the Bush administration contends, there is nothing to worry about...)
It seems that these mini ice ages happen once every 1/2 cycle around the sun, switching hemispheres... They have been suspecting that the cause is a fat man with a red suit for the northern hemisphere, but are still unclear as to the cause of the southern yearly iceage...
Tibbon
tibbon.com
Where are those global warming nutcases now? Methinks they'll be very quit until the ice age ends, then get all worked up about the ice sheet over Calgary thinning.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
If the Ice Age was this long:i iiiiiii iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii(x400)
iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
The period from the end of the Ice Age till now is this long:
i
As you can tell, the non-Ice Age time is an aberration, not the norm.
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Apparently you haven't read the "Act of God" clause in the contract.
I saw something on the discovery channel the other night that mentioned the same thing, it was called ocean mysteries or something similar...
Showed how if the planet got just a wee bit warmer, it would frell with the ocean's thermal regulation system and frell it up for a while...
And yes, just a drop of a few degrees will really frell things up! Look at the florida citrus farmers - they are teetering on the edge now. they can't exactly move further south when they want - even a slight freeze, and their fruit is worthless...
if rivers freeze at the wrong time, it could interfere with salmon spanning and the like, causing small cascades in the food web. Oh nature as whole will handle it, though we will suffer during the adaptation...
After all, even one degree is the difference between freezing and melting point, no?
This ain't Joe Blow, grad student and paranoid geek extraordinare...
....in the end, it'll probably resort more in the deaths of millions, but fuck em...as long as the SUV on the heater works, right? It'll just kill off the poor and infirm and save us having to pay so many taxes for social programs..
This is the head of the Woods Hole Oceanagraphic Institute...and he's basing his model on what he sees taking place in the oceans...this is fairly reliable scientific analysis...it can't be duplicated thru experimentation, but it's an interesting hypothesis nevertheless.
If he's right, we are seriously fucking this planet up,
yes...that was sarcasm...you dig? not pretty...
----------
ah honey, we're all resplendent - Bill Mallonee
I'm interested to see how this will interact with global warming itself. I.e, if there is an "expected ice age" but global warming prevents it...maybe they will counter-act eachother in such a way where we dont even feel the change. Just food for thought, since we all know I have a P.h.D in Meterology
(to the forgiving moderators: i'm aware that my posts may digress from...yeah, basically anything, so fuck off)
I HAVE THE MEMO.
This is actually good news, at least now we can hold another "Elfstedentocht" again here in the Netherlands. Then again, having -20 degrees celcius all year round might not be as fun as it seems, though it would rock for once to have said "Elfstedentocht" in July... ^_^
Then again, I was expecting global warming which would place my town right next to the sea. I already had a burger stall planned out to make money on the German tourists... :(
Hate me!
You would think that if we had a sudden cooling, other nations would pay us to be pumping out those greenhouse gases to warm everything up.
You can buy a bunch of them here.
I dunno, the article is full of 'what if' and 'could be' and 'possibly'. The theory itself seems to be an alternate consequence of the Global Warming theory, which in itself hasn't been conclusively proven or disproven.
These scientists always seem to oversimplify the complex system that is the earths weather pattern.
They talk as if its fact, but the best anyone can do is an educated guess. We don't understand the earth. If we could you wouldn't hear "60% chance of rain" on the nightly weather report.
I wonder why they do it.
From the about WHOI page:
Funding
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is supported by a mix of grants from federal agencies including the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research, private contributions, and endowment income.
Oh, I guess people are less likely to contribute to the "Everything is A-OK" foundation.
Not that I'm against them, they're better than other eco-groups which do nothing but spout speculative doom-and-gloom prophecies. At least these guys are scientists, not activists. The article warned of possible climate changes, not an end to all life as we know it.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Kyoto bans red suits. News at 11.
Yeah, right. These guys can't even forecast the weather a month from now! Heck, they can't even figure out where a hurricane is going to end up.
Hold on... we are responsible for global cooling because of our greenouse gas emissions??? I wish the environmental scare artists would get real jobs and fund actual scientists to do research instead of trying to blame every possible environmental fluctiation on mankind specifically the U.S.
Windows.... still awaiting a rational reason to use it that doesn't revolve around $$$...
China, Russia, Bangladesh and a host of other countries put out more pollution than the U.S. Thank you for playing the Bleeding Heart Enviro-whacko Blame Game. Please try again.
I thought I was supposed to be telling my grandchildren that I had to walk to school uphill both ways in a snowstorm... not the other way around!
Good for overclockers, bad to cooler makers =)
Actually, your OCed Athlon will reverse the ice age and induce horrendous global warming.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
If you want to prepare for the ice age, come to canada. We need lots more unix geeks anyway. (with the exception of ottawa)
There was a PBS program --Nova, I believe-- which did a one hour treatment of this subject. I saw it in the last 6 months on KQED.
Damn, now I'm confused. I thought we were to blame for global warming? How am I supposed to feel guilty, if I can't keep track what I'm guily of? Oh, that's right, it doesn't really matter does it?
All we're seeing here is our planet's self-correction mechanisms at work. There is likely nothing that we mere humans can do to permanently change the planet. It's design contains a complex system of checks and balances that we might actually be able to understand a fraction of in another 1000 years or so. We argue on the basis of the understanding of a few variables in a system with nearly infinite variables and it laughs at us.
But why fright? I would love a 10 degree drop in St. Louis. Enough to cut the oppressive humid heat out of the summers and get the snow cold enough to stay snow instead of becoming mucky slush in the winter. It would be a refreshing break. And the glaciers of North America need another boost. They've been disappearing in places.
The problem with us is that our cities are now too large and our roots too deep. We build expecting the rivers and coasts to stay where they are, not realizing that where they are is not where they were 50 years ago. Then we try to hold nature back. We confine rivers to courses that bottleneck their flood waters, we build dikes to keep the ocean at bay, we water to keep the deserts at bay... STOP!!! If nature wants to move a river or change a coast, let it! If people have the money to build there, let them! But don't get upset when their homes are swept away. They should know and accept the risk. We need to learn to build with the expectation of change... even welcoming it. Build so that change enhances.
And all you environmentalists out there, stop whining. 150 years ago this nation was so smoggy the buildings had to be scrubbed of soot every year. We were in a little ice age just 200 years ago. Its the cycle of life. You think way more of us then nature does if you think we can actually put any real dent in it. Things will change. And over the long term, they'll get better (my dream is a society with enough clean energy that we can all afford to move to massive underground complexes and restore the surface to be one big park)(oh, that means NO SOLAR PANELS MUCKING UP THE HORIZON TOO). This planet can afford for us to make our mistakes and learn from them.
Since according to all the other scientists the greenhouse affect is totaly caused by humans, and nothing else is causing enough of a change to create the greenhouse effects.
Since this article indicates that this freezing is caused by the greenhouse effects, and this has happen multiple times in the past.
This all leads to the most simply solution:
The Atlantians drove SVUs. And I plan to sue them.
pumping more greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere then....
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Well, at least I won't have to worry about my Athlon overheating..
slashdot!=valid HTML
I find this hard to believe, considering the global warming proof being presented by fairly reputable atmospheric scientists. There's an article to the contrary located here (nature.com) that I found interesting. Regardless, isn't it a little absurd to assume that changes to the world are going to happen within a decade or two of us realizing the consequences of our actions? If we've really been doing this since the 1800s, it's obviously been a gradual build-up and not something that's going to happen in ten years. Enviromental alarmism or not, maybe we have ample time to fix our mistakes?
Ah, survival is an excellent teacher ...
Infuriate left and right
Earths mag field periodically reverses too, which could cause all sorts of mischief such as affecting climate.
Nature reported that the magnetic field off the southern tip of Africa has already flipped. Anomalies like these have already reduced the strength of the planet's magnetic field by about 10 percent.
You're causing global warming AND the ice age. It's no wonder everyone hates you.
But what about the southern hemisphere? The (very interesting!) article only says about the consequences for the northern hemisphere, which will get much more cooler. So I guess the southern hemisphere is getting much more warmer?
This story has an interesting echo with Larry Niven's story "Fallen Angels," available from the Baen Free Library. It's the story of what happens when the anti-scientist green-earthers get their way and ban greenhouse gasses. Ironic that WHOI seems to think greenhouse gasses may cause an ice age.
-- Brian T. Sniffen
... that it is us causing this?
Almost everyone knows that the Earth's climate shifts over time, sometimes dramatically. What is still unclear (despite best efforts of people to firmly convince you one way or the other) is how much impact human activity has on the climate. Volcanic emissions dwarf global emissions due to human activities, for some gases and chemicals. The past has seen dramatic climate changes without humans having anything to do with it
The question is not if we are bringing about an ice age or a warmer period (depending which scare of the day is going around). The question is if we are accelerating the change and by how much. If we bring an ice age about 100 years sooner than it would have occurred naturally, it hardly matters in the long run (but this generation might think otherwise). I believe in cutting back emissions and energy usage, cleaner factories and recycling and all that. But I am tired of the "we are killing the Earth" line.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I have no doubt that drastic climate flucuations have occured consistently in the past and will in the future if left on its own. But there is one distinct difference today than in all the Billions of years of climat history - we have the technology. Right now is the first time in Earth's History where we have the capability (but do we have the will?) to change the weather.
There has been tons of research into technologically induced climate change. Keep in mind these climate changes are happening as a result of gas changes in the atmosphere. Changing the mixture of gases is not a big technological hurdle now. Simply adding iron to the oceans could decrease the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Now, coming soon, nanotechnology will enable us to effect the mixture of atmospheric gases substantially. If we do start to get some dramatic cooling effects, procedures could be set into motion to change the gas mixtures to compensate for said cooling. And as the decades go on, our capability in this are will only accelerate. If not, its probably because the humans blew themselves up.
www.enthea.org
Mod me down if you want...
ALL of you need to read Daniel Quinn's Ishmael.
You'd understand how we've gotten to this point of f'in things up so badly. It's regrettable that we won't be here in 200 years to see this mini-ice age.
Think about it: our population has doubled in 35 years. If we keep it up at this rate, by the year 5000 we would have enough humans to populate one planet per star in the known universe.
Somethin's gonna give, and it's probably gonna be our egos.
I reiterate, read Ishmael.
Dismantle globally, renew locally.
Florida? Florida? Yeh, sure pack 'em all off to Florida! I'll just stay here.
At least with snow, you get to do stuff, such as sledding, skiing, and snowball fights!
With Rain, what can you do? Throw water at people?
You need a long saw / chainsaw and it helps to have an ice auger.
Drill a hole in the ice (at least 8" deep) with your auger - this is your starting point.
Use your long saw (they have speciality ice saws for this used by ice fishermen) to cut away from the hole. Make your cuts parallel from each other. Cut longways before crossways. Make your blocks about 8 inches cubed.
Once you have your first row cut, remove the ice with special tongs made for the purpose. Do not try to remove these by hand as you'll throw out your back and likely end up in your now open hole in the ice.
Work parallel from your hole towards shore, do not work towards the center of the water, and the ice can thin dramatically and quickly (especially over rivers with strong currents).
As a good safety guide, have someone else with you and a large ladder nearby if available.
Once you have enough ice blocks, you will want to choose a place to put them. As heavy as the ice blocks are, it may be tempting to build the igloo right next to where you removed them. This is a bad idea as the finished igloo will be quite heavy and could easily crash through the ice. Be careful to build this over stable flat terrain.
Arrange your first row of largest ice blocks in a circle. It doesn't need to big. The smaller it is inside, the better it will preserve warmth. Once you have the first row done, pack the crevices with snow. Put snow on top of the first row as a sort of mortar. Remember to put a hole for getting in and out!
Add one layer at a time, adding in a small opening for crawling in and out of. The opening needs to in the form of an arch, and no taller or wider than about 1 1/2 feet at most. Just barely big enough to crawl through is good.
As you build up, you can start to discover that you are bring the ice blocks towards the middle. This is the tricky part to get right. Have one person on the outside, and one in. The snow that you have been using a mortar can help or hinder here, depending on where you got it. Try to find stick snow
Cap the igloo. For your first igloo, this can be pretty tricky. If you have built it tightly, it will lean in on itself and support itself. The top piece needs to be a pressure fit piece. For this, you'll want to start with a bigger piece and cut it down to size.
You can also build an igloo out of snow, the process is much the same, but not all snow can be used for this.
Finally, pack all the crevices with snow. This will help preserve warmth and keep the wind out. All things considered these things are actually pretty comfortable for winter camping.
Remember, your just building a big Roman arch, get help, and you'll be fine. It helps to bring ice fishing gear to go ice fishing when your done:)
If I recall correctly, most of the time they live in houses made of dirt and/or driftwood.
(To be fair, all the ekimos I've known lived in houses much like the house I lived in. But then again, I only lived in Anchorage and never really got to know anybody who was living way out in the styx.)
(ObPC: The Eskimos are only one of several types of natives living in Alaska, but they're the ones known for making igloos ...)
So now we have two ways to prove that CO2 is affecting the climate of the Earth:
The Earth's climate is getting warmer.
The Earth's climate is getting cooler.
Whichever we see, we know it was the fault of CO2, right?
I felt it was a little too warm last summer. Lower temperatures would feel pretty good.
If only Compaq hadn't EOL'd the Vax, we might have easily laughed off a puny 10 degree drop in avg winter temperatures. Is it any wonder southern California is a desert? You youngin's might not be aware of it, but 50 years ago it was a tropical paradise. About that time, California universities and colleges started ordering various DEC computers, and the damage was soon irreversible.
I kid you not, last year NASA published an article claiming that from the years 1976-1984, that side of the planet actually heated the sun, not the other way around.
Our only chance, is to pull as many MicroVaxen as we can out of retirement/storage, and strategically place them throughout the North Atlantic. If we start soon, maybe we can end this ice age before it even begins!
You mean like the human race? *cough*
But if you ask me, I think global warming is the trend.
Hey Sherlock, how about you take your foot out of your mouth and read the article? The issue is that global warming *is* melting the polar ice caps, which in turn could cause a local cooling effect in northern Europe -- to the point of ice age.
That global warming doesn't make it hotter everywhere is old news, too. The BBC wrote about about this exact scenario (temps up --> ice melts --> atlantic currents change --> temps down...) years ago. It plays out with a rapid & general failure of agriculture across the British isles and western Scandanavia, due to massive increases in snowcover.
(There is some debate about how the Gulf Stream moving south from the British Isles to Iberia would affect the weather in Spain, and Portugal. One camp thinks it would bring traditionally British rains; another argues the local heating effect of the Gulf Stream would rapidly create more arid/desert conditions. Either change devastates local agricultures however, destroying traditional grape & olive industries of the region.)
Yesterday I woke up to an oddly cool morning. I live in the east county of San Diego, a place notorious for its warm weather. Mornings had been very warm for months, however this rapid change got me thinking that we will most likely have a very cold winter. So when you say we might have a mini ice age in a few years, I can believe it. Maybe its a good thing, with the fear of the sea level rising. Maybe it will prevent a far more damaging weather change in the future.
No, the US is responsible for Global Warming, remember. If we have an ice age the rest of the world is responsible because they clearly are not emitting enough greenhouse gases. And yes, I read the article, and I realize that the author believes that the "trigger" to this catastrophe is melting polar cap ice.
The problem with this whole deal is this. Climate changes have happened throughout recorded history. In fact, no matter what we do the climate is going to change. There is no question that humans play a significant role in these changes, but no scientist worthy of the name actually pretends that they understand completely what is going on. They can't even tell you what caused the historical climate shifts (chances are it wasn't the internal combustion engine).
There are plenty of reasons to research means of energy that produce less polution than our current mix of energy sources. Adding "global warming" to the mix is nothing but pure unadulterated crap. The environmentalists felt that they needed some sort of a scare tactic, and global warming is what they came up with. With this new wrinkle environmentalists can say that the problem is increased industrialization whether temperatures raise or fall. No matter what happens the Yankee industrialists are too blame; never mind that climate is constantly in flux and always has been.
Not that people are likely to change the way they live because Dr. Gagosian says they should. The fact of the matter is that there are already too many of us on this planet to go back to hunter/gatherer lifestyles. Our only real hope is to industrialize the rest of the world and hope that their birth rates level out on their own like it has in the rest of the industrial world. Or, I suppose that the Western countries could use their military might to force people to stop having babies, but I can't imagine that going over very well.
This is a farce and I can't believe slashdot posted it. In The next 50 years, given NASA's computer modeling. We will be experiencing a 3-5 temperature rise resulting in massive amounts of rainfall and erratic weather patterns. This will create a large amount of moisture in the atmosphere that will continue to make it hard to breathe due to such high humidity levels.
The only potential for a spike type of ice age in the next ten years is some sort of natural or man-made disaster such as war.
This guy is very self opinionated and should not be posting his own subjects to his own news site for his own satisfaction. This leads to incorrect assumptions as to what the situation is with our evaporating atmosphere.
I debunk this theory and call him out.
See, now you don't want those CPUs running so cool, do you? Gonna use my box as a foot warmer.
C8H10N4O2 | Developer > Code
The thing that gets me about such stories, especially from scientists is the simple conclusion: What they are saying is either true, or false. We have no idea if he is right or wrong. But it is a fact that it is true or false.
Given the news in the headlines about such massively important earth changing risks that is reported in the press I believe we all tend to dismiss any doomsayers. We have become oversaturated by the news that comes almost monthly. I don't know if this is a fault of the media or of people's inability to accept the possibility of danger. In either case, the I believe the observation is true. People just don't care because they don't know what to believe anymore.
So is this the Boy who cried wolf or are have we been warned warned of impending danger? Personally, I just don't know, but the implications are sure as hell worth some serious, multi-national investigation.
--
Enter Sarcasm:
No, really! When the date goes from 99 to 00, the nuclear missles will all launch, and your bank account will be emptied... Really... Now did I mention that our $500,000 patch will fix the problem?
_______________________________
No, really! By polluting the atmosphere, the globe will warm up, which will then cause a severe drop in temperature. Businesses will fail, and people will die.... Really... Did I mention that I'm a die-hard supported of Green Peace?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I think that the author of this article is probably going to end up being correct. Throughout history, earth has warmed and cooled in what looks like a sinusodial pattern. An right now we are in for a big cooling. The more disturbing fact is, that I believe that there is not much that we can do to stop it. This phemomina has been happing as far back as we can tell, so what would make us think that we could stop it now?
SIGFAULT
I found a story about this in a Discover magazine, in a friend's bathroom (of all places) a couple of weeks ago. A very interesting read.
I remember thinking about how I always say in the winter time up here: it's sure not global *warming* us up any here.
All I know is, if the winters here get worse than they already are, I will be heading for the equator.
"the next cooling trend could drop average temperatures 5 degrees Fahrenheit over much of the United States and 10 degrees in the Northeast, northern Europe, and northern Asia"
5 degrees fahrenheit is 15 degrees celcius to us canooks.. and an average temperature drop of 15 degrees celcius will definately have me packing my bags. An Average January temperature of -25 degrees is bad, but you learn to deal with it. (plug the car in!) -40 are particularily bad days (maybe I won't go to work today) but -40 as a new average is a serious concern (to me at least).
I know, I know, the folks up in Tuktayuktuk are saying, "what a candy ass"
You have paid for a total of 0 pages and so far 0 have been used up (0 today).
Note that from 1965-1990 (a period of a general mild warming trend globally, depending on whose graphs you look at), the North Atlantic went through a period of exceptional salinity, especially on the eastern seaboard. The article makes no attempt to comment on this.
What it raises alarms based on are the last 10 years of data, in which the North Atlantic appears to be abnormally fresh. Unfortnately, we have no centuries-long data series for seawater salinity at depth, so what the article really means is "fresher than we've seen in the last 40 years," not "fresh is a manner that is historically significant."
But we've been dumping carbon in the atmosphere all century long. If human activity is to blame for the recent freshness, how can we explain the previous salinity when the human activity in question has more or less continued unchecked throughout the whole time period?
Personally, I think the truth is scarier than any environmental alarmism can paint. Articles like this would have you believe that
The climate is a delicate balance that can change suddenly.
Human activity can cause such changes.
Such a change appears imminent.
Therefore we should stop certain human activities to avoid the disaster.
All fine and good, but the truth is more like
The climate is a delicate balance that can change suddenly.
Human activity can cause such changes.
So can a whole lot of other stuff.
Supercomputers and all, we still have minimal understanding of how the climate actually works.
It's possible that major climatic change could happen within the decade as a result of human activity.
But ceasing that activity might not make a difference.
In fact, for all we know, ceasing that activity might at this point cause a climatic change that otherwise would have been avoided.
Chaotic dynamics can make you want to go run to mommy sometimes.
Now may be such a time.
Building an igloo isn't too difficult if you have a good ice saw. Snow caves are easy to make also if you have a shovel. I did both in Boy Scouts as a kid in Lassen National Park.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
If you could just go ahead and remember to let us know when that's all done, that would be greeeeeat. Until then, no one cares about your stupid USA-is-to-blame-for-everything nonsense.
How to build igloo? Why don't you ask Linus about it? He's from Finland. Maybe they should start "Igloo Developers mailing list".
Right On! More terrain for me to ski...maybe some year I WILL be able ski to work in LA, screw rush hour!
and then you turn on your local news and see that the weatherman can't even predict what's going to happen.
And what effect does dumping iron in the ocean have on that biosphere, and by extension, the climate? Killing off the Great Barrier Reef doesn't seem like the answer.
Finally, there will be salvation for the Canadian National Igloo!! I have been so worried about it melting due to global warming!
Yeah, but wouldn't it be great to brag to your grandchildren that you witnessed birds fly north for the winter?
Table-ized A.I.
Well, yes, the west coast natives build luxurious wooden houses. But then, as if Alaska wasn't bad enough, the British complicity in you guys getting the panhandle is just depressing. That's B.C. coastline, dammit.
people are willing to pay money so others can write newsletters telling them how smart they are. I would not be surprised if many people pay money to be told that their contributions are making things A-OK...
i mean -- look at all the charities out there: MS foundation; AIDS societies; make a wish foundation etc etc etc. not saying they are not worth donating to -- but they do operate on a principle of "your money makes things A-OK".
on the other hand -- I bet if i contribute $$ to WHOI -- the money will be comming back to me in a way of "Well we are still fucked, but at least now we know how fucked and what we did to get ourselves there"...
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Bullshit. The majority of oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere comes from plankton in the oceans.
The notion that rain forests (or "ancient forests" or whatever the environmentalist cause du jour is at the moment) are being "destroyed" and it's going to affect Earth's oxygen balance is an outdated environmentalist myth.
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
Actually if you look at the last issue of Science:
EUROPEAN CLIMATE: Mild Winters Mostly Hot Air, Not Gulf Stream Richard A. Kerr Science 2002 September 27; 297: 2202 (in News Focus)
(sorry but you need to be subscribed), you will see that most meterologists believe that Europe's mild climate is due to absorption in the North Atlantic rather than the Gulf Stream.
Jack
A sudden change in crop growing patterns would be very, very destabilising to international security. It's bothered me for some time that the WTO and free-trade politicians in general believe that food is just another commodity. And yet they are elected (one of the fundamental underpinnings of democracy) to provide security. That doesn't just mean hi-tech armed forces in my book, it means ensuring consistency of supply of the basics needed for survival - amongst those are the crucial elements of water, food, shelter and fuel.
:)
The politicos seem to 'get' the argument about physical security, but where is the discussion of security of food supply? Living in the UK - as I do - it alarms me to see that the only argument about agricultural subsidy is one based on trade. So before long we could easily be in a position where to feed the population there is total dependency on shipping the staple part of the diet over thousands of miles. What happens if there is a huge oil price shock? Or some similar catastrophe that disrupts the supply and which can't easily be fixed.
Seems to me that there is a fundamental duty of care amongst the elected elite that famine should be guarded *very* carefully against. It's not that long since significant starvation occurred in Europe, but I don't hear voices clamouring to ensure it doesn't again.
And before flaming me about ignoring the poor souls in the rest of the world who are starving already, or telling me it doesn't matter 'cos you live somewhere else, that's not what my post was about
OK, then how about all the pollution they add to the air by burning vast tracts of it?
I'd also like to see some proof that the Amazon rainforest does not contribute significantly to the oxygen content of the air.
I am working on a master's degree in Oceanography...and I have studied the subject a little bit.
n ode8.ht ml (American Geophysical Union)/ sem-abs95/ASc hiller.html (Aussie coupled ocean-atmosphere-ice model)
The global thermohaline circulation, better known as the great oceanic conveyor belt, transports warm, salty water from the equitorial pacific ocean to the far North Atlantic via the Agulhas Current (south Africa), North Brazil Current, and the Gulf Stream. In the southern hemisphere, water temperature at the surface is essentially 0 C at 60 S latitude. In the north pacific, the same is true at 60 N latitude. In the north Atlantic, at 60 N latitude, the water temperature west of Greenland is 0, and the water temperature east of Greenland is +10. This warm water is the reason that Norwegian fjords are ice free in winter, despite the fact that they are located far north of the arctic circle. It is also why Labrador, Canada and Iceland have wildly different climates, despite their being near the same latitude.
During the boreal spring through fall, the (relatively) warm, salty water enters the Norwegian, Greenland, and Labrador seas. When winter sets in, winter storms cause the surface waters to cool (through mixing and heat flux into the atmosphere) until the water is of constant density to depths of 1000m or more. Further winter storms cool the surface waters even further, making the surface waters more dense than the deeper waters. Under these conditions, oceanic deep convection occurs. Deep convection is a rare thing--it only occurs in 6 places worldwide. Most of those are in the northern North Atlantic (Labrador Sea, Greenland Sea, Irminger Sea, Norwegian Sea). One is in the Mediterranean (Gulf of Lyons) and one is in Antarctica (Weddell Sea).
Oceanic deep convection is a fragile thing. There are three conditions that must be met before it can occur: A closed, bounded circulation; weakly stratified or unstratified water to depth; and sudden density change (e.g. rapid cooling at the surface). If any of these conditions is absent, deep convection cannot occur. This is why global warming presents a problem to the conveyor belt--fresher water from melting glaciers, melting multi-year sea ice, and increased rain and snow sits on the surface, but even though it might be strongly cooled, the density will not change enough for this cooled water to sink to depth. If the surface mixed layer is only 50m deep, and the layer below the surface mixed layer is cooler saltier than the surface layer, then even if the surface layer is cooled to the same temperature as the next layer, *it will only sink to that same level*. That is, 50 m. Here, deep convection is not possible.
If the conveyor belt stops, then we have a thermohaline catastrophe. In thermohaline catastrophe, then certainly the climate of western Europe would change dramatically. A lot of models are being run on this. They are trying to couple the atmosphere, ocean, and sea ice, and are running simulations such that 2x, 4x, and 8x the present level of CO2 is in the atmosphere. Thermohaline catastrophe occurs in a few of them, and doesn't occur in others. In some, the conveyor belt fails for a few years, but then starts up again as the a salinity gradient develops between the tropical oceans (where evaporation is high) and the subpolar oceans.
There is one other weak link in the conveyor belt--the Agulhas current. The Agulhas winds down the east coast of South Africa before leaving the coast, heading south, and then bending back east again. Occasionally the current sheds warm, salty Indian Ocean eddies into the south Atlantic before bending back on itself. These eddies, called Agulhas rings, transport heat and salt from the tropical pacific into the Atlantic basin. A Dutch-South African experiment (MARES) tracked a few of these rings for a while. The Dutch team came to the conclusion that if the Agulhas ring-shedding breaks down, that there is a risk of thermohaline catastrophe.
Here are some websites with a bit more info:
*http://earth.agu.org/revgeophys/schmit01/
*http://kellia.nioz.nl/mare (MARES experiment)
*http://www.marine.csiro.au/seminars
----yellowcat >- ??
yellowcat ^_^ ??
eeeeeewwwwww!
A change of 5 degrees F is a change of 2.78 degrees Celsius, not 15 degrees C.
:P
So if your average temperature in the winter is -15F and it went down to -20F your temperature would be 2.78 degrees less than it was before.
A good place for this is http://www.convert-me.com since, apparently, Canadian schools aren't any better than American schools for science.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
(ObPC: Inuit is now the proper term for referring to alaskan natives.)
What?
nobody have touched on this: but my understanding is that the extremeties of the earth will cool off big time -- but the Earth is still recieving the same amount of heat every day / month / year -- and considering that there are more and more greenhouse gas accumulating -- the earth as a whole should be getting hotter, not colder. It would simply have much more varied climates between near the equator and the poles.
not that this is a good thing. the northern parts cooling 5-10 degrees means that the heat that would be warming it up is now heating up the equatorial section (mexico, egypt, mid. east, india, indo-china, S. china, and some others, of course) by 5-10 degrees. Africa would be fscked with even WORSE famine, and weather in the aforementioned regions will probabbly become quite unbearable. hence even though right now we are pretty much able to inhabit almost all of the earth -- if the weather changes occur we will only be able to live in some band of reasonable weather maybe between 30-60 degrees from equator...
but if humans actually leave the equator alone, we might get some rainforests back... hmm... and the poll (which city you want to live in) will recieve a TON of (city in) ohio / kansas votes)
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Does anybody know the energy ratio for heating and cooling?
For example, does it take more energy to cool a house from 95 to 75 F than go up from 50 to 70?
Also, I have read that more people die of cold than of heat. Thus, if the average tempurature of the Earth is going up, then less people should die it would seem.
(However, it seems that *change* from what people/countries are used to may be the biggest drawback of global warming. People not used to surviving extremes may never get a chance to learn.)
And, what will this do to my plan to sit on Alaskan real estate waiting for it to get warm and populated?
Table-ized A.I.
You can always put on more clothing, but you can only take off so much. Given a choice, I'll take colder over hotter anyday.
The article suggest massive social distruption but I disagree. We will adapt through technological means just as we have adapted to live in very cold climates elsewhere on the planet it would open new economic opportunities.
Frozen shipping lanes? Huge boon in ice breaking services. Increased heating costs? Alternative energy becomes affordable. Farming? We have the ability to farm and ship produce around the world. This is not the 1800s.
It would certainly be a disruptive change but the idea that millions of famine striken populace will suddenly be on the march searching for more hospitable land seems rediculous in the context of a scientific article.
There have been many rapid climate changes over the history of the earth, some minor ones even in the last thousand years. It could happen at any time.
The point is that we must, as a species, grow our economy and technology globally to be ready to meet whatever climatic changes we encounter (regardless of cause, natural or because of us).
In sub-saharan Africa, nearly 300,000 people will die this year because of famine, partially due to a drought. Depite a major drought in the US this year, no one will die, since the US has an advanced economy that can effectively move food from place to place.
It is also far easier for an advanced economy to handle the sacrifices of environmentalism. The US has been able to do a lot to clean up rivers and ozone/sulphur in the air. But even the West is only slowly nearing the technological capacity to truly deal with CO2 pollution, and the rest of the world will lag.
Economic and technological growth of developing countries are most hindered by their governments. Corruption, dictatorship, red tape, inflation, civil war, trade controls, and price controls are the big killers of economies. Appropriate economic policies are highly linked with economic growth and poverty reduction. Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan were very poor countries during the first half of the 20th Century, but have grown into nearly Westernized countries.
BTW, IMF and World Bank loans are mechanisms for countries to funnel money to corrupt politicians and their friends, as well as provide incentives for countries to run high budget deficits which often leads to inflation. So yes, capitalists should dislike the IMF and WB. They may be a major reason why developing country growth has actually slowed down to near zero over the last two decades.
I've honestly been getting pissed at the fact that snow levels have been getting worse and worse every year in Tahoe. But if global warming decided to give us an 'about face', I'm not going to complain ;)
:)
Perhaps Squaw Valley will offer some sort of special Ice Ace season pass
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
...if you look at the Vostok ice core and greenland ice cores, even allowing for confidance intervals in the atmospheric CO2 indicated in the ice cores, there is more CO2 in the atmosphere than in the last several million years. And the rate of change of CO2 is higher than it has ever been, again allowing for confidence intervals.
Would this change happen in a decade? Probably not. Within the next century? That is what those supercomputers are testing, assuming that the rate of change of CO2 into the atmosphere is the same. And they're only looking at CO2, not methane or some of the other baddies out there (SF6 and CFC's, for example).
yellowcat ^_^ ??
With responsibilities come rights, if the US gets paid by all the countries that benefit from the change, I think we might just come out ahead. But then again, what you're proposing would lead to the US essentially taking over the world. Is that what you're really advocating or are you just an anti-american taking cheap shots?
Some countries will lose, others will win *whenever* the climate changes. If the losers have to get paid, the winners should pay.
Those countries put out less in absolute numbers, more in greenhouse gas/dollar of GNP. In other words, the solution given by most rad-enviros is to make the world significantly poorer by devasting the leading efficient producer.
The Ice Age will balance out Global Warming and we'll wind up with normal temperatures on the planet once again! [/sarcasm]
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
"The best argument against democracy is a five minute chat with the average voter."
--Winston Churchill
... Yes, seriously.
Provided we're not looking at severe glaciation, just a mini-ice-age like we had a few centuries ago, Europe can probably take it. Most of us live in artificial urban environments anyway, and there's plenty of room to improve our insulation. A colder climate could devastate our agriculture, but Brussels already pays out billions of euros to people just for them _not_ to farm!
And, to be honest, we're fantastically rich by global standards. Look for English and Germans to go buying places in Spain, Italy and north Africa if things start getting a little chilly at home...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
"I COULD have had a user number less than 1000 but I was too lazy to sign up. Damnit! Why didn't I get an early account? Fuck, fuck, fuck!"
I believe that the general beliefs is that surface organic matter is a closed system (presuming you don't totally destroy it) : You burn a tree and it releases carbon that is absorbed by other trees to..well..make a tree. Of course trees do much more than just releasing and absorbing carbon: They nicely filter the air of lots of other toxins, so there is no doubt that lots of trees is better than no trees (excluding surface erosion, barriers against high winds, etc).
We are supposed to be heading into global warming, aren't we? That's what all the "experts" say....
Burke then goes on to say that we are currently having the same drastic effect on the environment today with our polution and pumping out greenhouse gasses way too fast for the environement to cope. His prediction, is that global warming is going to come upon us hard here soon. Unfortunately, he leaves this same scenario out to off-set global warming. This makes his presentation somewhat lacking. However, I found his video-essay very enjoyable anyways. And yes, this is the same James Burke that did the 'Connections' series you may have seen on the Learning Channel.
When was the last time that happened literally?
a republican fascist that doesn't want to have to conserve our Mother Earth's natural resources.
It said 12,800 years ago Earth cooled down, and that lasted for 1,300 years.
:)). As such does our "food" (crops & lifestock) too [or it won't grow].
Just a thought, but what happened after the cold period? Population started to grow (right?!). If we would/could compare populations figures "then" with "now" we would probably see a big diffrence (in growth). Theoretically Earth can't produce enough food for how big of a population [in detail: there aren't enough atoms to go around for everyboy, after a certain amount of people, to sustain (our) life].
Now, we've seen bacteria/micro-organisms/etc etc flurish in "warm contitions", and vise versa in "colder contionions". And frankley we (humans) as orgonisms are somewhat dependent on warmth (I know I am
So if we enter a long period of coldness our "food" supplies we start to minimize. Either population starts to decline to compensate, or we either (1)have to find some new food source(s) or (2)turn ourself into "Duracell bunnys" that run much longer on the same amount of energy *the matrix déjà vu* [I mean, start being more "energy aware", eg. Why use a regular 60W lamp that produces ~710 Lumens when a lowenergy 15W lamp produces ~900 Lumens (where Watt is energy and Lumens is light). Same applies to us humans...].
[End]
[Personaly I see us humans as a virus-like organism that instead of improving itself improves by occuping a new teritorium. Where do we go if earth's full? Haven't you been following? Mars - here we come to suck the life out of you too - and move onto the next planet... but that's just me picture of humanity...]
*hum, all those alien movies where they try to invadade us, wasn't about us at all, but of them - ooohboy, we gonna get killed in this process* well well, you try stopping a bull rampage towards you....ol'e said the matador *hehe*
I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.
The atmosphere might be getting warmer. It's the ocean they're talking about here. And yes, having the atmosphere get warmer can make the *subpolar north east atlantic ocean* get colder. Go to Google and type in "thermohaline circulation."
yellowcat ^_^ ??
be around for 4 maybe 8 years. The earth's geological time scale is measured in BILLIONS.
http://www.discover.com/sept_02/featice.html
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
When will people realize that "begs the question" means asking a question that has already been answered. It does not mean "presents the next logical question!" Think circular reasoning, not linear reasoning.
Mouhahahahaha!
Our time is coming!
Soon the weak will be crushed by the ski-doo riding hordes from the north!
Step 1: Ice age
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Canadian world domination!
You can't take the sky from me...
blamed the dinosaurs for the global warming back then.
Yes, I believe it is called Winter.
Sheesh, the things that mkae headlines nowadays.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I've heard that the first "Earth Day" was intended to raise awareness of the issue of global cooling. Can anyone confirm or debunk this?
.
I tried writing the Earth Day Network (http://www.earthday.net/) about this about a year ago, but they never replied . .
-Peter
Personally, I always found it ironic that many conservatives are against conservation. Of course, they're for a conservation of a different kind. They would rather preserve the past of burning coal and gas and chopping down every tree in site, instead of researching and pursuing other options.
I don't know why I just bothered replying to a troll.
What?
Another month of colder winter eh ... hehe ... keeps the Ca. wimps away from Alpine Meadows --- let them BLEAT & drool at BigBear. What's not good about that ?
Just one word:
Chapsticks.
You youngin's might not be aware of it, but 50 years ago it was a tropical paradise
If southern california was a tropical paradise 50 years ago, then why was it necessary to pass massive bond issues in the 60s to fund an equally masive irrigation project, so that LA, San Juaqine valley, et all, could have access to Northern California's water? SoCal was desert when LA was founded, make no mistake.
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
I'd better crank up the greenhouse gas generator...
First of all. The CO2 levels created by recent industrialisation have taken the world into a different pattern of weather already. CO2 levels are already much higher than any of the four warm periods between the ice ages of the last 400,000 years see this graph .
There are also other graphs which show a strong relationship between temperature and CO2 from the from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center.
Temperature data and graphs are here
CO2 data and graphs are here
There is possible disagreement as to the direction of causality - does temperature drive CO2 or does CO2 drive temperature? But if CO2 drives temperature we are in unknown territory and moving fast.
Dr. Gagosian says the possible change in Ocean Circulation is like heading towards a cliff of unknown size. But there are other ways the world's climate might change dramatically now it is rolling.
For example, there are enormous amounts of methane as methane hydrate under the oceans (probably much larger than all the reserves of oil and gas). As one leading researcher put it to me.
This, of course, is just one of several possibilities. The truth is we've started changes we cannot control - we are travelling too fast and we are in the dark. I don't know if we are going to fall of a cliff or hit a tree but I am more than happy to pay for some headlights.
there is a church of scientology near you. They will be able to handle all of your fears.
He claims to be Canadian, but he is in fact a mexican living in Quebec !
Now go take that bad mood and your dumb joke and shove it somewhere else.
Bleh!
I dunno, the article is full of 'what if' and 'could be' and 'possibly'. The theory itself seems to be an alternate consequence of the Global Warming theory, which in itself hasn't been conclusively proven or disproven.
Somthing that's always bothered me about people's understanding of science and the way it works. Statements like, "it's not proven" or "It's just a theory" demonstrate ones lack of knowledge in the ways of science. This isn't necessarily your fault, this stuff isn't taught in the sub university educational system nor in many of the lower level science classes. It should be, but it isn't. Personally, I learned the most about the ways of science from being a research assistant for a professor and from my elementary stats class. I've picked up bits from Carl Sagans "Demon Haunted World" and the skeptic column in Scientific American. Anyhow, theories are not proven true, only proven false, and a theory must be falsifiable to be a scientifically valid theory. For instance, the theory of gravity by Newton stood for several hundred years before Einstein turned it over. His theory of gravity may someday be proven not quite right. Theories, in science are a lot different than theories for a layman. A theory for a layman is more like a hypothesis. A scientific theory is a well tested idea about somthing.
Nice Marmot
I whole hartedly agree. Which brings to light an intresting observation: If it is chaotic and unpredictable how can we assume that we know the effects of an increased amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
C02 is a greenhouse gas, but a green house gas with very small impact when compared to water vapor. Water vapor by far the most effective green house gas, is 50 times more effective than CO2 based on abundance and how much of the IR band it absorbs.
Global warming theory assumes that a change in a realitivly insignificant greenhouse gas will effect the temperature enough to increase the amount of water vapor in the air. The water vapor is then assumped to cause a runaway chain reaction by increasing the temperature and allowing more water vapor to be adsorbed by the air. While it is a fact that the CO2 concentration has gone up significantly in the past 100 years; from 290 ppm (parts per million) in 1900 to 366 ppm in 1998, if a change of that magnitude can set off a chain reaction then we would have been gone a long time ago. There are obviously mechanisms that prevent this from happening.
I think its foolish to believe that we can predict the future of an extremely chaotic system when there are so many factors included. Geography, photosynthasis, ocean currents, weather patterns, ocean absorption, sun spot cycles, seismic and volcanic activity, photoplankton dynamics etc.: all things that are chaotic in them selves and on top of that, hard to measure effectively.
Beyond all of that, I find this particularly funny:
If you can read that without laughing, I think you need to read it again.
Im not here now... Im out KILLING pepperoni
That's it. There wasn't any money left in the educational system to teach you people sarcasm and comedy. Oh well, at least you got an irrigation system.
After all, he's only the President and Director of the Wood's Hole Oceanographic Institute, probably the most prestigious in the world. Remember, all scientists are crackpots. Rush Limbaugh said so, and that's good enough for me!
Great. I'll just go ahead and make sure you get another copy of that memo. Thanks a bunch.
I wouldn't exactly say this is new though. My high school science teacher told us about this several years ago. And for those of you wondering, he's not denying global warming. Global warming is the increase of the earth's average termperature, which could cause average temperatures in certain areas to rise or fall more dramatically.
---
Open Source Shirts
The grain reserves of the United States and Europe are only about 6 to 7 weeks. Grain production has become a fairly "just in time" process. The crops that are grown are extremely efficient for the growing conditions for which they are optimized.
When this happens (not if - when) you aren't going to freeze to death. The worry is that you will starve to death. Or, you will die in the fight for food or to preserve food supply. Europe will get hit the hardest.
Japan recently deployed the most powerful non-DoD supercomputer in the world. What for? For studying ocean currents and the impact on world climate.
The good news is that the press is finally picking up on this story. I've been reading about it for 10 months and initially was extremely skeptical that this was an issue. The more I read, the more I worry that it is a very real risk that has been ignored.
As for being "very self opinionated" you're obviously a better judge of that!
Alas, I live in Grand Forks, North Dakota. The Mini Ice age is scheduled to start in about 2 weeks or so and scheduled to end some time around mid-april...
Why?
to several million years??? How can they look themselves in the mirror?
Nova warnings from the ice.
On that same page there are examples of how over the past 100,000 years the earth has gone through climactic flips. I will mention that that period seems to lack ANY FUC$ING human intervention whatsoever.
Global warming is a farce.
I'm sorry that you are going to have to find a new religion but that is just how it is going to have to be.
Try 'Save the Penguins'.
The Zoolanders
Longer skiing season! Woohoooo!
people will become all the rage. While all of you tall hairless alien looking humans will be too cold to get out of bed and thus will die off.
Equilibrium achieved.
Finally I get some justice.
If you remember high school physics, there's something called the heat of liquification. It takes heat to convert ice into liquid and it takes heat to convert water at 212 F into steam at 212 F. Actually, water is at it's densist at about 4 C, and solid water (ice) is less dense then liquid water (otherwise ice would sink). You cn obeseve this by looking at the water in a glass of ice water...there's a definite layer of denser water at the bottom of the glass that can be seen.
The above is of course very controversial if not offensive to some in the scientific community - however, I recall being taught at school that the past ice age - which also arrived very quickly - was also triggered by a rise in the Earth's ambient temperature. Global weather patterns are hard to predict, so only time will tell. The best solution is to assume the worst and try and switch to alternative transport mediums (such as http://www.onumber.net/gmautonomy ) that help us move away from reliance on the resources that contribute to global warming. Simple really.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
As they say about the stock market, past performance is no guarantee of future success.
It's a helluva lot easier to think "OMIGODTHEWOLRDISGETTINGWARMERBECAUSEALLTHOSE SELFISHFOLKSDRIVESUVS!!!!" and make ourselves feel better by driving a little car that uses a whole 30-40% less resources.
But if you haven't gotten rid of your blow drier, don't congregate in crowds (ever think of the impact a group of 100,000 people and all the infrastructure required to support them have on the environment?), and never, ever ride on a motorized vehicle or eat food prepared using motorized vehicles, you're a hypocrite. You're criticizing what you call the excesses of man while those very same "excesses" allow you the leisure time to peck away at your computer and whine about "resource depletion", "global warming", or whatever cause-of-the-day your excessive free time allows you to attack.
The South Atlantic (Central and South America) and Africa will either be unaffeted, or actually experience warmer temperatures.
And there doesn't seem to be an equivalent system for the Pacific Ocean. Judging from their diagram, the much larger Pacific doesn't depend on salinity for it's circulation.
Out here on the West Coast it's global warming as far as the eye can see, with disasterous effects for the California economy, and our water. (California is expected to lose something like 80% of it's water in the next 100 years.) An ice age in europe does nothing to aleviate that. Just thought I'd point this tid bit out.
most of the water pollution is not in the form of chemicals, but rather, temperature pollution. water used for cooling is warmed and then dumped back in in large quanities, raising water temperatures a few degrees and cause havoc in water ecosystems.
The climate is a chaotic nonlinear system.
well it's definitely a nonlinear system, but chaotic is a pretty exact term...
The weather is chaotic, but the climate (different time scale) might simply be bistable.
The reason why we can't predict what'll happen doesn't have to be because the system is chaotic. Most likely it's just because we don't understand the system. There's a huge difference.
(BTW, I think he was joking)
"I don't know that Atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." -George H.W. Bush
Heh, great essay man. You are an excellent writer.
The real reason GLOBAL WARMING nutcases spread the manure on thicker and deeper.
'If there is an ice age, people will just start polluting as they always do.'
So as I understand it, you threaten the world with apocalypse for the sole purpose of getting countries to stop polluting.
-
The earth, which is BILLIONS of years old, has undergone HUNDREDS of climatic shifts. 99.9% of these climate shifts took place before the first SUV spouted out a cubic foot of CO2 or the first cow farted.
=
Until you and the Earth Liberation Front can come up with answers that don't involve shutting down the 1st world economies and having all of us live in communes I would suggest that you find something else to do.
Point 3 is definitely true. The sun's solar cycles affect the earth a hell of a lot more than anything we do here on earth. We can't control the weather here, so there's no way we're going to be able to control the weather on the sun any time soon.
Comparing a 24 hour period to one that may last 10s of thousands of years. I guess it makes a good joke.
Down here in Texas we'd actually welcome several months in a row of winter termperatures.
this article promises rapid warming http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0301-02.htm are they all just guessing
Calm down, everybody.
If you studied English in college you'd know that there was a "little ice age" in Europe from around the time Elizabeth I came to the throne (think Shakespeare) to about the time that George I came to the throne (think Defoe). (Disclaimer: both "thrones" are that of England -- I'm not that up on the history of other European countries. Sorry)
It wasn't that big of a deal. People lived. Massive migrations didn't happen. Life adjusted -- in fact, you barely hear about it in writings of the period -- the most knowledge we have is from paintings, like this one.
Besides, they're getting these conclusions from only 40 years of oceanic data? I'm not even an engineer or scientist and I understand that in massively complex natural systems fluctuations happen.
with green groups has proven that they go WAY overboard due to the fact that so many people are oblivious to any environmental damage humans might cause. Many things have been cleaned up in the last 40 years all for the better. Unfortunately as you state there is no common sense being used in the green movements arguments concerning global warming. In my opinion it has become like a religion aka Earth Liberation Front.
You asked, "how to build an igloo..."
If you're a real penguin, you don't need no stinkin igloo.
this is not a sig
It's ridiculous to draw conclusions from a sample of 2 data points.
Especially when the second data point, has a beginning, but no fixed end yet. You really don't know anything about the length of the second time period.
So in reality you're taking a single observable fact, the length of the historic ice age, and extrapolating wildly from that single point of data.
Completely meaningless conclusions are all you can draw from a single point of data.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
Of course a 10% drop looks a lot less impressive when you realize that 2000 years ago was the strongest field intensity that the Earth has seen in the last 70,000 years. We still have to lose another 75% before we are in the regime that is generally associated with magnetic reversals.
Sooner or later the field will reverse again, but I don't expect to see it in my lifetime.
For those who are interested in other dramatic changes that could happen to the Earth, check out this website: http://www.habtheory.com/
Why I know about this, in a nutshell: several years ago, I read a book my Dad had called The HAB Theory. It was about how the changing mass of the polar ice caps could introduce a "wobble" to the Earth's rotation, causing it to suddenly flip over and create a new axis of rotation about 80 degrees from the old one. Pretty far-fetched stuff, but the scientific conferences in the book presented all this interesting information, such as why many ancient civilizations seem to have almost started out advanced technologically, but then inexplicably declined (Egyptians, Mayans), reasons behind the myths of Atlantis and Bible flooding, and even other geological phenomena that could be described in this way as well. The book also was kind of held together by a poorly written love story, sort of to make it more palateable to female readers, but which failed pretty miserably. The science was pretty well done, but not so that you would actually believe it.
But imagine my surprise that the book was based off of the research of one Hugh Auchincloss Brown, who did publish a book on it. I actually found the book in my college library, and sat down to read it (I was a Physics major, so it wasn't too hard to follow). What he said made sense, until he came to the crux of his argument: that "cosmic rays" have mass, and they contribute to the rotation of the Earth. Hmmm, that's one thing that wasn't mentioned in The HAB Theory!
In any case, the website I mentioned above collects together most of the better pieces of "evidence" for this theory, some of which are pretty intriguing. Personally, while I find the theories interesting, there are enough loopholes and jumped conclusions that I can't really believe it, but I thought I should let others know. Enjoy!
Neil
The current interglacial period has already lasted longer than any of the three others seen in the last 400,000 years.
The same cannot be said for the current day.
The last glacial was about 100,000 years. The Holocene (current interglacial) has lasted 10,800 years.
You are probably comparing the Holocene with the period (which we are still in) over which we have routinely had ice ages.
this page shows that this has been predicted as far back as 1993. It is nice to see climate theory match up with experimental evidence. Actually "nice" is the wrong word, I would certainly prefer if the whole global warming thing turned out to be a hoax. So far I am having very little luck on that wish.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Global warming? Panic, panic, panic!
Ice age? Panic, panic, panic!
*sighs* The only constant in climate science is the overblown claims to predict the unpredictable, intended to suck up to / interestingly challenge the ecopolitical orthodoxy and stir up panic for the purpose of getting grants.
Shesh.
The REAL weather forecast, by moi: weather will happen, the climate will shift to and fro, people will adapt just like they always do and get on with their lives.
This is NOT worth abandoning your SUVs for, people!
comedy when I see it, and that post wasn't comedy!
You people scare the living crap out of me. You would honestly look at the idea of imposing a CLIMATE CHANGE LEVY on the people of this planet? Its people like you that will turn me into a political activist from hell that will railroad each and every goddamned Green Bill right into the mud. A climate change levy? That is so fu&King rich. You people must dream up taxes in your sleep. How about I come up with some good taxes for you to save you some of that precious brain power you like to use on slashdot.T imes-Lev y= In the winter or the summer a child that likes to play outside will sometimes go in and out of the house several times. This activity leads to a WASTING of resources. 10 pounds a month. OR one month in the stockade for that little resource wasting weasel.g -Levy= My Aunt Clara tends to leave the refrigerator door open for several minutes when she is fixing dinner. Suggestions?
-
-Flushed-Your-Toilet-Twice-Levy= For any of you resource wasting lard asses that would even THINK of wasting GOOD water flushing your excess crap down the toilet. 5 pounds a month.
-Drank-One-Too-Many-CocaCola-Levy= Coca-Cola contains caffeine which in turn causes a humans to urinate more than they would if they just drank water. This excess urination leads said human to use the toilet and thus waste more GOOD water flushing BAD water down the drain. 3 pounds a month.
-Child-That-Opened-The-Door-One-Too-Many-
-Held-The-Refrigerator-Door-Open-Too-Lon
I am sure that you, obviously a greater mind, can come up with hundreds of wonderful new taxes that we will all be happy to pay in the name of protecting this wonderful earth of ours.
For your information I am sitting in an air-conditioned room 23 degrees, AND I am running a fan on high. Just to spite you. Just so that I can speed up this climatic shift.
When I was growing up in Canada, we built quinchies.
Much easier than an igloo and very warm!
So another brain wants to write a book. Maybe, possbily, it's within reason and and we may just see it on the bookshelves in six months
M
This has already been passed and it only affects businesses. Well not exactly because when you add 10 to 20% to the price of power that a company uses those costs are distributed to the customers.
Sad.
A cow farted in dublin. Europe entered a new Ice Age. The Sicilians now run the planet.
Happiness is a warm wife!
-- Many men would appreciate a woman's mind more if they could fondle it
I'm sick of these woosy winters in New Jersey. It's not winter if there is no snow and last year sucked.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
They can't accurately predict the weather 2 days in advance. Like I'm really going to worry about an Ice Age prediction within the next 10 yeras.
It's called Winter and it happens every year. Be alert for the abnormally wet season that follows that (called Spring) and an abnormally hot season following that (called ... you guessed it : Summer!)
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Sylver Dragon:
You prattling on about how I sneakily left out the important resolution: (...temps down --> Water Re-freezes --> atlantic currents shift back) reveals the truth: you are an idiot. That on a larger level, you may also be a reactionary ostrich, is a point I shall not contest.
It suffices to explain:
Just because it's going to be snowing in Lancashire, doesn't mean that it's getting colder at the pole, or in the north Atlantic. There's no water "re-freezing" involved here. Regardless of whether's there's an ice age in Britain, there's STILL A FUCKING systemic increase in temperature. It's getting hotter where the ice is, sport. Thus, more polar ice melts, not less.
Or were you thinking that all this metling ice would drop the temperature of the ocean would drop low enough that a new ice cap would suddenly appear, floating around in the middle of the atlantic? Where's your re-freezing concept happening, again? Did you leave out a detail, in your ridiculous adventures on the soapbox?
Regardless, it's clear: you may be able to spell 'logically', but you do not think logically. How about you leave the science to the professionals? Because after your display above, you accusing anyone from WHOI (do you even know what WHOI is, sport?) of "scarist propaganda" is utterly ridiculous.
You make me sick to my ass.
yourself that pop antibiotics by the case will generate so many new killer bugs that more than half the population will be killed off in the next 20 years.
Besides humans are not the problem. Cows are. If only we could stop them from farting.
I am a formerly trained Marine Biologist and a Macromedia Director programmer by trade.
We studied the ocean in my 4+ years of college and climate systems and what I got out of it is "don't fuck with it because you don't know what will happen."
Yikes. This stuff scares me.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
I hope repetition isn't too boring or disallowed. But do look at this graph.
It does suggest that further ice ages are unlikely.
I hope repitition isn't too boring or disallowed. But do look at this graph.
It does suggest that further ice ages are unlikely.
One way of generating heat in the earth is through tidal forces. The earth is slowly being kneaded like a big doughball by the sun and the moon. This converts rotational energy into thermal energy, slowing the earth's spin down. A violent illustration of this effect is the Jovian moon IO (ok, this whole post was just to use the term Jovian). Io's volcanic activity is almost all generated heat in the core by tidal effects from Jupiter. Since the core is mostly thermally isolated the Earth really doesn't dissipate this energy well. Of course, the tidal forces for Earth are really weak and I have no idea what effect they have on core temperature, if any. But, take a look at Io in a decent astrophysics text.
Another possibility which has happened in the Earth's history is deposits of fissile material moving past one another due to geological plate movement and reaching critical mass. It takes millions if not billions of years, so it doesn't act like a nuke, but fission does occur and heat is created. One such occurance has been discovered on the African continent. I think there was an article in Nature about 4 years ago about it.
Anyway, two mechanisms for the Earth generating heat with no obvious external source (tidal forces come from the sun and the moon, but nothing as noticable as the sun going nova). So no, you aren't showing ignorance (both of these scenarios are less than impressive on the Earth), but there are possibilities (and they do obey Thermodynamics).
Cheers,
Chris
Network Security: It always comes down to a big guy with a gun.
I can't remember the name of the event now ("Lesser something," from the name of a plant that became widespread over the period. It's probably even mentioned in that article :-), but a similar thing happened at the end of the last ice age (and there's evidence it happened before). Europe was getting warmer, then suddenly got very cold again for close to a thousand years. Then gradual warming resumed and we entered the current pattern.
The cause is believed to be the melting of the continential ice caps. This dumped a lot of cold water into the Atlantic and turned off the Gulf Stream, and it took a long time for it to turn back on.
In this case, the only question is how quickly polar ice and melt and how much is required to turn off the Gulf Stream. For a long time it was assumed that it wouldn't be enough to cause problems, but now geologists aren't so sure.
Europe may be in for a rough time, but overall temperatures will continue to rise. At least the ships from the American west coast and Asia will be able to sail directly to Europe through the NW passage. (Seriously, I was just reading about how the US and Canada are starting to think about what will be required to support maritime traffic as the polar ice melts.)
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
parent post was extremely informative - thankyou
here's a little word gloss for a couple of the more uncommon words in the article
thermohaline :
thermo meaning temperature
haline meaning salty
boreal
of, or relating to the north
in this context, the northern hemisphere
from the greek god of the north wind, boreas
finally there was a typo on equitorial
(no, i am not being a spelling nazi),
which is correctly typed equatorial
What makes me think, "Now I Believe I Really Understand?" Everything. Such a shame, that this can't be disclosed by the powers that be.
I think it was in 1993, that there was no real summer in Japan. They had to import rice and they had to import a lot of it. It was one wierd summer. The rainy season never ended. It just went on and on and it wasn't until the very end of august that there was the slightest sign of summer but by then it was too late.
...on abrupt and extensive climate change say, August of 2012????
Of course, that's just a rough estimate based on made-up evidence with a full support of studies that were conducted entirely within my head.
| - | - |
The Earth goes through periods where ice ages happen, and other periods where they don't. For the last 4 million years we have had regular ice ages. Before that the last previous period with ice ages was 350-250 million years ago. (The dinosaurs lived from 225-65 million years ago.) According to this there are 2 more such periods known in the last billion years. The first of which ended before the Cambrian explosion differentiated most of the major phyla that we still see today.
There is evidence of ice ages that are even older than those. For instance look at this one when the Earth was less than half its current age!
but are still unclear as to the cause of the southern yearly iceage
Thousands upon thousands of penguins living in the southern polar cap. They constantly inhale and exhale the cold air there. Every time they exhale, the air move a little bit north (as everyone of them is always facing north). After some months the whole polar air mass is above the southern continents and it takes another three months for the tropical heath to disperse it. At the same time the penguins are hibernating. Then the penguins wake up and start moving the air again.
An international consortium formed by Autralian, Brazilian and South African tourist industry representatives have a project to kill all penguins (bringing an ethernal summer to the region), but they are being prevented from implementing it by the Greenpeace and a bunch of Linux zealots.
I am Canadian. :)
followed of course by a few months global warming.in which our women don bikinis and butt floss.we also cuddle up.LOL
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
mini ice age stories are cooked up by clothing manufacturers to sell warm, winter clothes. Everybody's been roasting all summer long, and we are sick and tired of it. Air conditioning only in a few small spots here and there, mostly not where we are at the moment. These stories date back to "almanac" predictions of colder weather in a few years, which are based on junk science, or no science at all. How can all this be true? OK, lets see a "mini ice age" prediction surface at the BEGINNING of summer, when everyone is sick and tired of freezing to death all winter long.
You can fool some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time.
The great thing about climate change is there is no way for ANYONE to be proven right within the next few hundred or so years - we have a sample size of 1 (planet), and there's too much noise in the signal to say that anything observable is significant. People "notice" that the last 10 years of data is a general upward trend; had we had this technology in the 1780's (I think that was the rough time period) the opposite would have been noticed - ie, cooling.
Within climate modeling, the story is even tougher. It is logical to assume that greenhouse gases = warming, but the climate model is SO much more complicated than that. We don't know to what extent that more CO2 will stimulate plant growth, lessening the effect (same for plankton in the oceans). We also don't know what the effect of more air pollution will have on cloud/aerosol formation - as they tend to produce a shielding/cooling effect. And, as the story says, possibly cooling as a result of melting.
True, the general consensus is to generate numbers that indicate a general heating, but it's partly political - the funding agencies that support climatology don't want to support models that generate negative numbers, and so predicted cooling=no funding. Also, modeling in general is more of a Rorshach of the researcher, in that what you choose to weight, in terms of variables, affects the ultimate outcome. There are many ways to build a model that predicts the current climate, and subtle differences in models will cause divergence - and climate researchers aren't likely to go with an "illogical" conclusion - ie, cooling. Even this story uses global warming to get to the ultimate global cooling.
Bottom line is that climatology ain't easy - it's hard to test a hypothesis because there's no new data. Hard to check for overtraining. So I would take climatology research with a grain of salt. So I would say that the poster you went off on was fair in saying that this isn't a clear-cut BECAUSE situation.
That said, driving big freaking SUV's isn't the best idea - best to hedge on the side of caution.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Civic Arena
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Me either, but it confirms a suspicion. sorry for being a jerk but it has to be said.
They would rather have a system that works rather than chasing every pipe dream that comes down the road. Most conservatives believe in conserving natural resources. Consuming natural resources wisely. Alternative fuels will have their time but it would be foolish to throw away a system that works and replace it with one that may or may not work. The ironic thing is that even once alternate fuels are popular it will be the same big companies running the show and I guess you can complain about that too.
As for the trees. They grow back. Really. They do. If that is not good enough, then when would it be ok for humans to chop down a tree?
As for recycling, some of the biggest cheapskates I have ever met were Republicans and they recycled everything they could.
Eat fewer animals? Where does it end with you?
We have to live in cities, use trains or drive small electric cars, be vegetarians, go to bed at sundown??
Sad thing is I used to be as green as you till I realized that many democrats were taking me for a ride on the back of the environmental movement.
seeya
We'll all have free CPU overclocking like the Finnish.
I won't respond to all of the nonesense you've written as quite a few people have already. Anyway - here's a few they missed : > It's design contains a complex ...
"design" ? Is this Tom Cruise speaking ? The inroads that the Creationist movement have made in North America are as disturbing as they are impressive.
> I would love a 10 degree drop in St. Louis ...
"love a 10 degree drop in St. Louis" ? And what about the millions of displaced people coming to St Louis becasue of ice sheets hundreds of feet thick covering vast areas of the northern hemisphere. Would you love that ?
> If nature wants to move a river ...
Nature doesn't "want" to do anything. Is this Tom Cruise again ?
Do yourself a favour and read Carl Sagan's "The Demon Haunted World".
First there was an ice age. And then came global warming and the ice melted. And then came another ice age. Followed by another ice age. Repeat process a thousand times.
At some point in the 20th century some bright scientists dig up some ice in Vostok, not Vladivostok, but Vostok. This sample of ice is over 11,000 feet long and gives us an idea of what the climate has been like for the past 160,000 years give or take a decade or two.
+How many ice ages and periods of global warming were there in the last 160,000 years. More than one and less than 5. I don't know.
So these scientists start looking at this great big sample of ice that has 160,000 layers. And they try to piece together when an ice age may have occurred and when there was a period of global warming.
How did they determine that one section of the ice sample represented an ice age and another represented a period of global warming? Apparently by chemically analyzing the ice in the layers they were able to determine EXACTLY the temperature at which this ice formed. EXACTLY !!!! And there seemed to be a correlation between a rise in the levels of CO2 and a rise in the temperature that they were able to pinpoint EXACTLY from this ice sample from a long long long time ago.
So the idea pops into their head that maybe an increase in CO2 causes an increase in the temperature of the planet. And this correlation proves true with many other geological epochs that are represented by this HUGE sample of ice.
It seems that unfortunately for us over the past 100 years(out of the last 160,000) humans have increased the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere to levels that have never been seen before.
Thus we come to our conclusion that WE ARE SCREWED.
If this little mini "ice age" did happen....
Bush, "In examining the recent drastic temperature increases in much of the climate in the North America, we have sufficient evidence to believe this has been the work of individually functioning Al-Qaeda terrorists cells. These elaborate cells have structured 'weather devices' which can cause large shifts in global temperatures.
We must strike now, and wipe out these cells, and take action against countries who harbor these terrorists. We must strike now, and eliminate those countries with people in them. This will prevent all future terrorist attacks. First, Britain!"
"Sir, no, they're an ally."
Bush: "Oh, yes, yes, right. We must strike, France!"
"Sir, why France? We have no quarrel with them either."
Bush: "Yes, right. Well, who else can we attack. Throw me a freakin' bone here.."
Never should have removed those SCSI hdds...
This article reminded me of something I read in S. Junger's "The Perfect Storm", which told the tale of a N Atlantic storm and its effects. Keeping in mind this is an undocumented, nonscientific source, and the fact I'm neither oceanographer nor marine biologist, the passage reads (p. 121):
There is some evidence that average wave heights are slowly rising, and that freak waves of eighty or ninety feet are becoming more common. Wave heights off the coast of England have risen an average of 25% over the last couple of decades. One cause may be [less oil pollution, since oil] inhibits the generation of capillary waves, which in turn prevent the wind from getting a 'grip' on the sea. Plankton releases a chemical that has the same effect, and plankton levels in the North Atlantic have dropped dramatically...
Presuming the author got his facts straight, I wonder whether the ostensible plankton disappearance is related to changes in the salinity levels discussed in this article.
Every rule has an exception (except this one).
They are terraforming the earth to their liking - preparing to move in!
(Or perhaps alienforming is more like it
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
When we were told to expect global warming, that was going to be bad. Crops would fail, diseases would spread, people would suffer. Now we are told to expect at least localized cooling, and that is going to be bad too. More crop failures, more suffering.
The lesson, clearly, is that "change is bad". Any change, either warmer or colder, will make things worse. If the sea level rises or falls, that will be disaster. Whether winter or summer becomes longer or shorter, it is harmful.
Apparently most analysts believe that we live in the best of all possible worlds! The only situation which would be acceptable to them is perfect stasis: no change, no novelty, nothing different from what it has been for centuries in the past.
Isn't this an awfully limiting philosophy? Should we always judge the future against the present, with the assumption that any change is automatically something to be avoided?
I wish that we could adopt a more dynamic perspective. It is guaranteed that the future will bring new changes and new challenges. Climate changes are going to be only the smallest part of what we are going to see in the next century. "Creative destruction" is an inherent part of the scientific and technological progress which has led to a world where people are living longer, healthier and more productive lives than ever before.
Let's try to think a little more flexibly and creatively as we look towards the future. Change is not necessarily bad. Any way you look at it, change is going to happen. We need to be prepared to accept and handle change, and not fear it as something which is always threatening and harmful.
Igloo? Why? We can just turn off the air condition in the machine room....
I'm tired of that line as well. When the earth decides it has had enough of us, we'll be put back in line.
Imagine a giant clam feeling remorse about eating too much plankton...we seem to think we're somehow different from other life forms on the planet.
An excerpt:
Got Wisdom?
This is all about salt water ceasing to flow like it does now when fresh water comes in and disrupts it, right? So what would happen if suddenly all the salt in the ocean dissapeared? If we could somehow assume that the deaths of all the animals in the ocean that need salinity won't have an effect (which I know we can't). Would the conveyor work the same with all fresh water?
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
Almost. If you want an excuse to attack France, just ask Britain. Almost anyone there will make one up on the spot. Attacking France is the national pastime.
More a micro ice age, I would have thought.
What a long, strange trip it's been.
This is a classic "Let's make this a crisis so we can get more funding" article. Hrmm - global warming is _so_ overdone, let's make it about global cooling. That will get us some headlines and funding - maybe even a post on Slashdot!
Evidence:
"In the past decades, we have made great strides in understanding Earth's atmospheric circulation system because we established a global network of thousands of meteorological stations to monitor changing atmospheric conditions."
Those atmosphere guys get all the funding (and headlines)!
"No observational network exists to continuously monitor the oceans."
Wah - we don't get enough funding.
"If we just had a few more strategically placed modern instruments in the oceans for an extended time, we could understand so much more about how the oceans can cause abrupt climate changes. At present, there is no national plan for improving our understanding of the issue,"
Where's my national plan featuring Woods Hole prominently? We struggle along looking for $2 million here and $3 million there in research grants. We just need congress to pass one big $300 million plan!
"The best way to improve the effectiveness of our response is to have more knowledge of what can happen--and how and when. Research into the causes, patterns, likelihood, and effects of abrupt climate change can help reduce our vulnerabilities and increase our ability to adapt."
Translation: "WHERE'S MY FUNDING?!"
Of course this is being painted as a crisis. Crises get funding. A paper saying that there might be minor changes in atmosphere in various parts of the world that causes some minor disruption and easily handled complications doesn't get any headlines or funding. Oh no, London may have slightly shittier winters than they already do (hey - maybe the fog caused by the gulf stream will clear up!)
While more research may not be a bad thing - just wait until the anti-development crowd gets the results, interprets them in the worst possible way and starts proposing cures. I'm betting they cost far more than the problem.
That is the best part of it. Whenever I wonder how stupid people can get, I just look at that and shake my head.
Someone mod parent up as funny, just based on the link.
Omg, and check out young-earth's posts too. Thanks, now I can test out the new /. system for modding down foes.
It seems like just yesterday that people were running around like chicken little complaining about global warming and how its getting too hot.
Is it just me, or now are people running back in the opposite direction?
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
In Australia we had a problem with a couple of types of insect eating our sugar cane crops. So we imported 60 non-native cane toads from the Americas to eat the bug... they quickly multiplied, but failed to impact on the cane destroying insects.
Now there are millions of poisonous cane toads slowly spreading throughout northern Australia. The have become a pest and compete with native species.
The moral? Be wary of quick fixes, no matter how scientific (i.e. GM!). Mother Nature is complex and can react in unforseen ways and the possiblity of unintended negative impacts is very real!
* * Always question "the National Interest" - 9 times out of 10 it is a cover for evil
which sucks up fresh water back into the glaciers, which build up causing warming, which then makes them melt again, causing another Ice Age. Sounds a bit like a two-cycle engine on the old John Deere tractor. In any case, farmers will adjust crops, and my $175 per month for 6 months airconditioning bill and $5 per month for heating 3 months here in Florida may switch and leave me with some mighty profitable acerage when all the snowbirdies flock south on I75 and I95. All I need is an "All the orange juice you can drink for a quarter" sign. That'll be pay back for the Yankees blaming all of Florida for 2 pissant counties run by Damnocrats for screwed up elections.
I feel vindicated. In '88 I wrote a paper for an advanced meteorology
class at UND where I used some snippets of previous research to suggest
that this very thing could occur.
The prof I had at the time graded the paper C- because, as his notes
in the margin indicated, it was "speculative". I argued with him about
it, stressing the point that the Earth's climate is a chaotically balanced
system that could change extremely quickly, and brought up many of the
points in the article, particularly the freshwater balance.
Finally. Thank you Dr.Gagosian. I wish I could go back and shove
this in my prof's face, but unfortunately he retired and moved to
California......
Just goes to show how entrenched in "traditional" science many of
our universities are, and how resistant to new data/ideas way too many
scientists are.
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Only 4 months? WTH do you live, Florida?
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Dude! :) [ Dakotaspeak ]
:)
Lived there for 3 years and attended UND back in the early
'90s.
Did they have to completely gut the downtown after '97?
(now residing in NE Minnesota)
Mid-April? Bah humbug....we have worse weather here near
Ely....occasionally have had ice storms in June
Wheee!
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
I'd also like to see some proof that the Amazon rainforest does not contribute significantly to the oxygen content of the air.
Here it is:
http://www.nature.com/nsu/020408/020408-7.htmlNote that this is NOT from an anti-global-warming site. It's a site that promotes the notion that human activity is warming the planet.
Proof enough?
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
you guys freak out at 5 degrees!! How are you gonna cope with -20 (-40 with windchill). But anyway, the way you dudes down south play the environment, you're probably gonna have some snow anyway. (When will Georgy understand) *Sigh
Maybe if you actually read the article, you'd see that both global warming and this possible mini ice-age would be due to greenhouse gas emissions. We don't know which is going to happen, but if either happens, the US would carry a large share of the responsibility.
1. Make sure the snow is really hard on top, and at least 4' deep. Make sure you're wearing your snow-shoes or you'll fall through!
2. Use a long, thin, "snow-cutting" saw to cut the snow into curved-rectangular blocks.
3. Starting at the base, line the outside of the igloo with the blocks, being sure to leave room for a doorway. You'd be surprised how many hosers forget this!
4. After each layer, have a beer. This only works if you drink Canadian beer. That's MOLSON Canadian, not that "Canadian budweiser" crap. You can rest your beer on the ice blocks to keep it cold.
5. As you get to the top and can no longer reach high enough to put any more blocks up, just give up. Who needs an entire igloo anyway? That can be your "breathing hole".
6. It'll still be freezing, because this is Canada, after all. Build a fire inside your igloo.
7. If your hole isn't big enough, some of the ice on top will melt. This is normal. If your entire igloo melts, it's too warm for igloos right now. Wait until igloo season.
8. Since there's no power outlet, you won't be able to watch Hockey Night in Canada in your igloo. Go back to your house and watch it there.
9. ???
10. Profit!
Howard Dean for president
Exactly my sentiments.
You're quite right. Everything is modelled on JIT delivery these days, because stock languishing on shelves is wasted money
And you're not even factoring in the effects of Panic Buying. Last year when we had the petrol strikes in the UK, and the public suddenly realised that no petrol (and diesel) meant no product deliveries to the local supermarkets, a wave of panic buying swept the country. Warnings on TV not to panic buy had exactly the opposite effect, and within days supermarkets had all but run out of the essentials. If the situation had lasted for more than a week, people would have found themselves with empty larders and no way to re-stock. Hunger driven chaos and anarchy would have followed soon after.
It was quite an eye opening experience and unpleasant experience.
The question is what are we going to do about it? You just like to stick your head in the sand and find childish excuses. Bush says there is no problem at all. I think it makes sense to reduce our emissions voluntarily. Even if we can sleaze our way out of the responsibility by waving our revolvers, it is still our moral responsibility to avoid these outcomes or pay up for them.
Have you - and a lot of the other idiots perpetuating this myth -
ever considered that the entire ecological system of the planet depends
on both of these factors (and more)?
Sheeeeezusss......obviously they're not teaching much in schools
nowadays about closed environmental systems....
pissed off SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Climate is not like a thermostat. Over thousands of years, maybe Siberia will become a tropical paradise, but in the short term everybody loses when the climate changes: flooding, ecological devastation, etc.
what you're really advocating or are you just an anti-american taking cheap shots?
I didn't take any "anti american cheap shots". As I pointed out, if Bush is right, there is nothing to worry about. But if Bush is wrong and greenhouse gas emissions are responsible for climate change, the it's a simple legal principle that the US, being the largest contributor, ends up with a huge net liability for the damage (other nations also will have net liabilities, of course).
"Global warming happened, but nuclear winter canceled it out"
The US is the largest emitter of green house gases in the world, which is what matters here.
if every single inhabitant of China (PRoC, that is) wanted to eat one more fried chicken per year
"have a drumstick and your brain starts clickin'"
--Tai Mai Shu
Just as soon as the USA and other first world countries stop dumping them in China's lap in the first place.
Citizens living in poverty outside the USA refrain from constant sexual intercourse when they know perfectly well they can't even feed themselves
Citizens living in poverty outside the USA have constant sexual intercourse in order to make enough children to help them eke a bare minimum life out of whatever miserable piece of land they happen to live on.
They don't do it for sheer amusement unlike most citizens in USA.
- "These people, they speak what they do not know" -
quoting:
"It is reasonable to assume that greenhouse warming can exacerbate the possibility of precipitating large, abrupt, and regional or global climatic changes. We even have strong evidence that we may be approaching a dangerous threshold--that we are squeezing a trigger in the North Atlantic."
Today Mr. Bush refuses to sign the Kyoto Protocol and other international pacts to reduce global warming.
Tomorrow, Mr. Bush IV can sign a trillionaire contract with tropical countries (like mine) to sell america warm coats and family boats.
At least global dominance will change like the weather.
Cheers.
nuclear power emits no greenhouse gases.
I watch Brit Hume on Fox News
Didn't you guys ever play Civilization?? Global warming causes all kinds of nasty disasters! All the coastlines become swamp and all but the equatorial regions become those stupid ice squares... Then some of your people die and you have to turn some of your Elvis's back into Farmers, and then it takes forever to build anymore cool toys to fight with. It's really inconvenient all the way around, so please! Clean up that nuclear polution ASAP!
How am I supposed to accept data from a source that also says that the energy fields (and earth, because they coincide) was created 6,000 years ago?
Unless the remains that my father dug out of the ground at Madeira (sp?) Beach, Florida are from very large reptilian creatures that are carbon dated incorrectly and actually co-existed with mankind within that time. I highly doubt that, considering the basic law of decomposition.
Go away.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Some ski bums and snowboarders are jumping for joy. (Obligatory on topic adjustment: Linux ski bums)
In less than fifty years, nanotech will begin changing human nature beyond recognition.
Climate change is irrelevant to Transhumans...
Of course, the monkeys will probably complain...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
home.no.net/gedra/igloo_bg.htm
The crux of the article is that the earth's climate system is complicated and multivariate. Global warming is not as simple as "the world will get warmer and we'll all live in a tropical paradise." Messing with the relevant factors won't necessarily bring about the 'obvious' consequence.
Now if only we could get Slashdotters to understand this the next time they make one of those quasi-informed pronouncement about economics (e.g. give away software to sell your hardware, music sharing increases sales).
-a
How to rationalize theft.
Why on earth are you so convinced that this system behaves chaotically?
the WEATHER (different time scale) is chaotic... the climate doesn't have to be.
Systems that we don't fully understand are unpredicatable because... well because we don't understand them.
I've seen no indication that the climate is an inherantly chaotic system.
I looks like a simple bistable system, perhaps exhibiting some kind of relaxation oscillation. I might be quite possible to understand the system and predict it if we just get the model right.
And what's this about chaotic systems being unpredictable... the weather is chaotic but we're able to predict it 5 days into the future (and the lyapunov coefficient indicates that it should be possible to get good 10-11 day predictions, WITH BETTER MODELS!).
Getting a 100 year prediction of the climate corresponds to what (in the weather time scale)? 3-4 hours... and the climate even looks more predictable than he weather.
While it is a fact that the CO2 concentration has gone up significantly in the past 100 years; from 290 ppm (parts per million) in 1900 to 366 ppm in 1998, if a change of that magnitude can set off a chain reaction then we would have been gone a long time ago. There are obviously mechanisms that prevent this from happening.
I've already had 5 beers... if a pertubation of that magnitude isn't able to push me over the edge, there has to be mechanism preventing me from becoming pissed...
BARTENDER!!! another round!
"I don't know that Atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." -George H.W. Bush
The ocean, on the other hand, is a turtle. It may take years or decades or even millennia for similar "disturbances" to circulate through the ocean. But the ocean is a big turtle
So we live on a giant turtle after all!
Anyway, he discussed the same possibility but starting with a different premise: why do the smaller countries in europe, such as Holland, Belgium and Denmark have armies ? In case of warfare they are most probably going to be whiped away anyway. Via a long and amusing road he came across the possibility of another ice age. This ice age would mean the end of our economy. Where would we have to go ?
Well, his answer was South, africa, which should be somewhat of a paradise due to the climate changes. Africa probably won't be very happy to receive several million immigrants. The problem is that these immigrants will bring along their highly advanced armies ...
I was just wondering if you could point me towards the peer reviewed scientific journal which Humphries published his work in?
Oh wait, did the great scientist conspiracy stop him from publishing?
Warning: Some ideologies on the Net are smaller than they appear.
While a native can certainly build an igloo by themselves, slashdot's readership is overwhelmingly not native or trained in winter survival skills - a partner is a safety measure for those who haven't made one before. In other words, my post still stands on it's facts and merits. Whilst I am certainly not an Intuit native, I can assure you that the art of igloo building is hardly limited to the Arctic circle. I learned my skills in a Boy Scout winter survival training camp, as many others have.
Incidentally the camp was a joint facility used by the US Army for their winter survival training when there were no Boy Scouts around. They supplied the cold weather survival gear, Boy Scouts provided the facilities - camp Ootpik if that name rings a bell with any readers.
1. Self correction mechanisms, (and I'm not going to argue about whether or not they really exist), can very easily kill off 99% of human life. There were periods of Earth's history where there was virtually no oxygen in the atmosphere, and different kinds of living things thrived. --Keep in mind as well that there have been something like 35 planet-wide die-outs of pretty much every complex organism over the last few million years. Simply moving to another part of the planet is an unrealistic option for about 5.9 billion people. Mass death is a good possibility, I think.
2. 150 years ago, this nation was so smoggy the buildings had to be scrubbed. Sure. But 150 years ago, the planet population was a great deal less than it is today, and heavy industry was also in its infancy. --Sure, things are going to get dirty in places where dirty fuels are burned, (coal), but back then, those zones were very small as compared to the pollution centers today. Also, keep in mind, that India and much of China is going whole-hog with starting up heavy industry in the dirtiest of ways. These are BIG population centers producing BIG pollution which make St. Louis from 150 years ago look like a bug fart.
Essentially, I think you're more or less on the right track with some of your ideas, but I would caution you about leaning towards wishful thinking in other areas. There are better, more respectable ways to come to terms with the world condition today. Why frightened? Why indeed? If the human race dies out, it won't be too soon! Talk about self-correction!
-Fantastic Lad
So this one time, at band camp, we saw this exact same article on the Discovery Channel years ago.
But thanks for discovering it now, ya schmuck.
Oh check it out, I'm going to write an article on, say, Giant Squid, and hope that nobody with DC ever reads it. It's going to be called ant hills are retarded and you should burn up cactuses.
It's a good comparison, because we could say that we are now living in the "daylight" age which doesn't last very long.
yes.... the better strategy is to wait for your enemy to destroy you completely, and *then* strike back....
First, the theory isn't new. Here's a good article from The Atlantic.
Second, as the article explains, this has apparently happened before with drastic results. (How does a 13 degree Farenheit change in 50 years sound?)
Obviously it can happen due to natural processes. There's also a chance that human-caused warming could kick it off. Either way, the results wouldn't be good.
If you want evidence of the anti-creationist actions (note I do not claim a conspiracy) of prominent journals, google for "Forrest Mims" and read the story about how he was treated by SciAm. Quite shameful.
Got Wisdom?
"it's a simple legal principle" under which law system? Farting in a crowded elevator is not legally actionable even though there might be real emotional and aesthetic damage. You're talking about a huge application of ex post facto law, a no no in a lot of legal systems.
The fact is that if the PRC or Russia or most any other country were a larger share of global production and the US were a smaller one, the net global emission of pollutants and greenhouse gases would go up as the US is a very clean producer. Going after the cleanest producer is a good secondary marker for somebody with a hidden agenda.
Anyone have an extra pair of snow shoes I can borrow? Remember, I asked first. :-)
The thing people like you don't understand about environmentalists is that they're not arguing about the grand purity of the natural world as much as they're saying "Wake up, we're killing ourselves." This debate is about our survival, not about the world's ability to shrug and adjust. No doubt, the world will make do -- the question is whether human beings will be able to live in it.
Stephen Jay Gould wrote an essay in one of his collections in which he tried to make that point like this (paraphrasing):
It isn't that environmentalists think we can destroy the world. It's that they think we can make it unliveable for ourselves. Your glib "I'd like to have six more degrees, what the heck?" is completely ignorant about the potential effects of mean temperature changes on that scale. Take a look into how the Sahara desert came about, will you?
You're playing with your own future, and you dismiss anyone who wants you to think about the consequences as a "whiner." Pretty rash attitude to throw back in the face of the overwhelming weight of the world's scientific opinion. Gee, I hope you're way the hell brighter than the climate scientists who look at ice cores from Greenland...
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
At least in alpha centauri you can build a solar shade and keep the polar ice caps from melting, which in turn causes the oceans to rise, flooding your coastal cities.
- 2230 dealy)
Of course you have to vote on it, and stupid ai factions always vote no if it is a good idea... so you have to use planetbusters, or other long levers of persuasion.
(This is assuming you don't do the lame tech-farm-on-every-ocean-square-transcend-rush-in
I'd love to have snow in Florida! It's too damn hot here!
Actually I do and I have. ;)
Igloos are actually quite warm and I ended up having to sleep on top of my sleeping bag because I got so warm.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Lived there for 3 years and attended UND back in the early
'90s.
Did they have to completely gut the downtown after '97?
Yeah, pretty much although I'm not that sure about what it looked like before (I'm also a UND Student from the cities. Started here in fall of 99). Mid April is really only an estimate...We got snowed on twice during finals week last year. (The one in May...)
Why?
as long as we have this
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
First off, that page seemed very much like a "please give us money or else we're doomed" kind of research proposal. They themselves indicated that they didn't have much data to base things on, and that they needed more money to study it.
Second, the proposal seems to leave out one important fact: What about the massive heating of the tropics due to the fact that the heat isn't radiating to the north any longer? They seem to only focus on what will happen in the Northen Hemisphere. What about the South pole as well?
Third, this kind of change seems logical. If ice is indeed melting due to warmer temperatures then it makes sense that the Earth's systems will rebalance in the other direction. If not, we either wouldn't have any ice or the Earth would be frozen. The only reason we have balance now is that the climate takes care of itself regardless of what we do.
Lastly, I think the claim by the submitter that is "could happen in a decade" is a misread of the article.
The frightening thing is that it makes a lot of sense to me. Does anyone know how to build an igloo? That would be a toilet for an ig wouldn't it :-)
in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that
Francis Smit
When a tree dies, its carbon ("biomass") is often consumed by other processes than simple decay. In reasonably mature rainforests, for example, they get sucked up by lichen and moss. I've been in old growth forests where the moss was many feet thick.
(The moss also functions as a very effective HEPA filter to keep most of the organic and particulate matter from flowing into forest streams)
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
If you studied paleloclimatology at all, you wouls see a constant cycle for millions of years, very regular. HEs right, we are just coming out of the last MAJOR ice age.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Under the US system of laws.
The fact is that if the PRC or Russia or most any other country were a larger share of global production and the US were a smaller one, the net global emission of pollutants and greenhouse gases would go up as the US is a very clean producer.
But they aren't because they are producing and consuming less. Overproduction and overconsumption are just as much of a problem as inefficient manufacturing and energy use when it comes to pollution and greenhouse gasses.
And, as most people already learn in kindergarden, "Johnny does it too" is not a good excuse for behaving badly yourself.
The real problem is that the US tax system does not properly account for the externalities associated with energy consumption: if fossil fuels were several times as expensive as they are, the US would become more efficient.
Going after the cleanest producer
Who is going after anybody? I'm not saying that anybody should "go after" the US preemptively to stop greenhouse gas emissions.
All I'm saying is that if destructive climate change due to greenhouse gasses occurs, then the US will have the largest share of responsibility because the US has emitted the largest amount of those pollutants.
People need to keep that in mind when deciding whether to vote for people who proclaim that greenhouse gasses are not a problem. Are the benefits we derive from cheap energy worth even a small chance of causing the deaths of billions and facing trillions of dollars in liability?
I also think that the right's rhetoric of "responsibility" is smoke and mirrors. They talk about "responsibility" when it comes to welfare mothers, but don't often apply the principle to their political constituencies, or the US as a whole relative to the international community.
Female Prison Rape in NY
The problem with such an idea is that, in all likelyhood, we, being the fallable species that we are, would screw it up. And in this case it wouldn't be a minor catastrophe like most of our other screwups. Messing with the very air we breath could cause any number of unforseen consequences or accidental problems.
No thanks, I'd rather we STOPPED tampering with it rather than tamper with it more
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
China and other countries stop the open-air burning of toxic stuff like computer motherboards
Just as soon as the USA and other first world countries stop dumping them in China's lap in the first place
How exactly are we doing this? Are we flying over and tossing them from airplanes? How exactly are we "dumping them in China's lap" without them wanting the things?
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You've apparently never been to Florida. :)
When will people realize that language evolves? Language is only defined as how people use it. Some words or phrases change meaning over time, or even reverse completely. Is the dictionary some rulebook we are eternal slaves to? No. Shakespeare invented over 1600 words. Did you know that "awful" used to mean "deserving of awe"? Or that "sophisticated" used to mean "corrupted"?
Did you ever consider that "Begs the question"'s contemporary meaning is changing for a DAMN GOOD REASON? It's just 3 simple words people. Now, ignoring antiquated idioms, apply language comprehension skills. Is this closer in meaning to "requests the question" or closer to "repeating the question". I think "begs" is WAY closer to "requests" than "repeats", don't you? So why not just accept it, instead of nitpicking a dead horse?
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Ok, so you've got the rush hour beat, now how to stop the snowboard hotdoggers who keep running the lights?!
"I am Heisenborg. You will probably be assimilated"
So in the longterm battle between the GNU and the penguin, he's saying conditions will favour the penguin? I bet the BSD Imp will be pissed as well!
"I am Heisenborg. You will probably be assimilated"
The fact is that greenhouse gases are considered pollutants for their non-greenhouse effects, not because they are greenhouse gases. The biggest one, CO2 is not considered pollutant at all. Industry also issues albedoizing emissions. Do they get credit for that? No, they don't since a lot of those are categorized as pollutants as well.
The US legal system has specific laws and schedules for which emissions are controlled and anything that's not on the schedules is just not controlled, including CO2. Sorry, any greenhouse effect in other countries is just not covered at all unless there's a treaty specifically delineating the relationship.
Making stuff up is just not an answer.
Well Mims was badly treated by a popular science mag (hardly in the same category as peer reviewed science journals), it is interesting to note that several organisations which have attacked creationism in the past did come to his defense, and Mims work is hardly not being published in mainstream science.
This is more a illustration that creationists can get published if they present science not propaganda. Sadly this appears to be a barrier that the majority of them cannot overcome.
Warning: Some ideologies on the Net are smaller than they appear.
Point was, Mims was denied employment because of his beliefs, not because of his work. In many other situations, were the shoe on the other foot, there would have been lawsuits flying.
And the point was to show that the in-place orthodoxy (Neo-darwinism) has tried to block anything that challenges it seriously. Gould was okay since he stayed sufficiently inside the fence (and was after all only expounding on Goldschmidt's work of decades before).
The bottom line to me is that I accept supernatural explanations for some things; but the orthodoxy is pure naturalism, rejecting all supernatural causes. That however takes at least as much faith, since how can you explain the laws of physics, origin of matter, origin of energy, etc. arising from naturalism?
Got Wisdom?
And the point was to show that the in-place orthodoxy (Neo-darwinism) has tried to block anything that challenges it seriously.
Get a sense of perspective. The orthodoxy that you speak of, is a small group of people who run a popular science mag. Mims was defended by scientific organisations which have zero respect for creationism.
It's this constant propaganda barrage that pervades young earth creationism, which kills any hope that it has of being even remotely close to science.
Also, well we are on perspective, nothing comes close to challenging the theory of evolution. Sorry but wishful thinking doesn't count.
The bottom line to me is that I accept supernatural explanations for some things; but the orthodoxy is pure naturalism, rejecting all supernatural causes.
Science deals with what it can see and measure. Rather than accepting supernatural explanations, it's far better to keep on looking for answers to things that you don't understand.
That however takes at least as much faith, since how can you explain the laws of physics, origin of matter, origin of energy, etc. arising from naturalism?
I don't know.
And that's what I see as sciences greatest asset. It doesn't provide a set of truths about the world, but rather provides a method for approximating them.
Given the success rate of science vs. religon in showing us what the physical world is like, I know what horse I'd bet on.
Warning: Some ideologies on the Net are smaller than they appear.
However to your point, the Bible has had scientific truths in it that scientists over millennia have ignored. For centuries, it was thought that you needed to drain blood in order to cure disease. But in the Bible it clearly states "the life is in the blood". And for years scientists taught that the earth was flat, whereas the Bible clearly indicates it's a sphere. For years it was taught that the stars did not move, whereas the Bible says God "stretches out the heavens" - stars in motion did not gain acceptance until relatively recently. There are many other things in the same vein. No other sacred book has anything like that record.
Got Wisdom?
However to your point, the Bible has had scientific truths in it that scientists over millennia have ignored. For centuries, it was thought that you needed to drain blood in order to cure disease. But in the Bible it clearly states "the life is in the blood". And for years scientists taught that the earth was flat, whereas the Bible clearly indicates it's a sphere. For years it was taught that the stars did not move, whereas the Bible says God "stretches out the heavens" - stars in motion did not gain acceptance until relatively recently.
The problem with these "scientific truths" is that they are terribly vauge. To take one of your examples, that the earth is a sphere, if it was suddenly found that the earth is in fact flat, then one could just as easily say that the Bible predicted it. For example, the devil takes Jesus up a high mountain to show him all of the kingdoms in the world. Something which is clearly impossible if the world is spherical. There are more passages which can be intrepeted as promoting a flat earth (I'm not suggesting that they do say this, but rather that they can be intrepeted this way).
Also, I take exception to your suggestion that many of these "truths" where ignored by scientists. The Greeks even had a go at calculated the diameter of earth, can the Bible even come close to telling us what the earths diameter is?
If Christians had been shouting out for years that the earth is a sphere, that the stars move etc then you would have a better arguement. But it only seems that these "scientific truths" only come out after everybody knows about them.
There are many other things in the same vein. No other sacred book has anything like that record.
And yet many Muslims feel that there are scientific truths in the Koran (click here for an example of this). What makes your claims better than theirs?
Warning: Some ideologies on the Net are smaller than they appear.
"God" means three things.
;) )
Either it's the Allmighty Supreme Being, or its a non-infinite creature of far-beyond-human power, or it's "a thing deserving of worship."
God, used as a name and always capitalized, always means the first thing. The grammatical usage of the second two meanings are identical.
'course, there's a heck of a lot of argument as to what God / the gods are like (/what is and is not a god), so it's not good to use in an argument with people who might disagree with you.
(So you're right, just not for the reason you said.
The Koran (or Qu'ran, transliteration makes it tough to be exact) clearly states both that to disbelieve anything in it is heresy, and that the earth is flat.
Yes the phrase "Stretches out the heavens" was not understood in relation to redshift, there was no such thing as redshift known until pretty recently. But regardless of the failings of human understanding, it is an accurate fact.
Got Wisdom?
I believe that one of the Koran's passages reads "and the Earth, after that, He made it like a deheya", where deheya apparently means "egg". The Islamic-science website which I pulled this off, claims that this is evidence for a spherical earth with a bulge, which is pretty good in itself.
The Bible is a very large book. Write any book of that size, with enough mystical statements, and it's not that surprising, that with the benefit of hindsight, a few will seem accurate. It's no different to Nostradamus.
Warning: Some ideologies on the Net are smaller than they appear.
Check out this site for details about how out of touch the Koran is.
And check out "Many Infallible Proofs" by Henry Morris, PhD for very strong evidence for the Bible.
Got Wisdom?
I have no doubt that the Koran is out of touch. My arguement is that the Bible is just as out of touch.
This isn't meant to be a slur against either, it's just that works by humans aren't perfect. And this especially applies to ancient works, as there were many more misconceptions about the world floating around then.
Morris's work with creationism is enough to put me off (I'm a chemist, so the one area relevant to creationism that I know lots about is thermodyamics - HM is either ignorant or a lier). However, I would apprieciate it if you could summarise HM's strongest, most "infallible" proof.
Warning: Some ideologies on the Net are smaller than they appear.
I would pick Dr. Morris's point about the hydrologic cycle (oceans, evaporation, condensation, precipation, aggregation, flow to oceans) which is made repeatedly in the Bible. Of course I can't pick what would be most impressive to you.
Just curious, what (I gather about 2nd law of thermo) bothers you about Dr. Morris's work?
Got Wisdom?
I know you should never respond to a troll, but what a glaring mistake: Ouzo and Ricard could, I guess, be mistaken for each other and are aniseed flavoured, clear and strong. And they do turn milky white when water is added.
But Absinthe is green and doesn't taste like any other drink!!!
You can get it in most specialist alcohol shops in the UK and it is an interesting addition to a night out as various bars stock it too.
Although it is gaining popularity in cocktails, the classic way to drink it is this:
dip a spoonful of sugar in the Absinthe
set fire to the Absinthe soaked sugar
once it has melted, stir into the glass of Absinthe
Allow the mix to burn a little longer
Enjoy!