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Mountain Moisture Melting
felis_panthera writes "Yahoo! News has a Full Coverage story on how global warming is causing the ice cap atop Mt. Kilimanjaro to melt. It goes on to say that it has shrunk by 80% in the last century, and will probably be completely gone in another two decades. The ice cap is believed to have formed some eleven millenia ago. Some African rivers have already seen a decrease in volume, and it is feared that the loss of the ice cap will also cause a drop off in tourism."
Nothing to see here, move along!
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Thanks Guy!
Why is Triangle Man so MEAN?
...in the submission last week (that was squelched). The Sun is getting hotter...you know, like these things do right before they blow?
Nothing to do with humans munging global warming. BTW, that article on the Sun getting ready to heave said we have 6 years left.
Interesting that they seem more worried about the percieved loss in tourism as opposed the potential for climatic devestation in the region if the rivers begin to run low/dry...
Still #1 -- Lonely Gay Geek
So there is ice melting at the top of a mountain in Africa... proof of global warming? Uhmm...
Could there be other factors to account for such a profound localized decrease (80%??). The polar icecaps certainly don't look 80% smaller to me...
Could it have something to do with more local climatalogical factors? Increased industrialization in Africa? Loss of vegetation on that continent?
Seems like an awfully high decline, that hasn't to my knowledge been demonstrated in other places in the world.
Sorry... too skeptical to buy this one.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
And, I suppose that excessive greenhouse emissions from highly-industrialized East Africa are to blame this time.
in danger of being killed by its own excretion, of dying from an illness closely analogous to uraemia. Humanity will be forced to invent some sort of planetary kidney - or it will die from its own waste products."
The statement he made looks strikingly true today...Today Kilimanjaro. Tomorrow???
"Do something man. Right now."
Mod grandparent up!
Then mod parent up!
Then give Michael a sleeping pill.
Actually, it was the lava scene out of Ice Age which they shot on location which wiped out most of the ice-cap. - end sarcasm.
Even if the world is 'warming up', the fact is that it's done this in the past and it will do it again in the future. I'm personally more concerned about a switch in the earth's magnetic poles, that's really going to upset my monitors!
However, this also is no reason to be complacent about pumping CO2 (and other such byproducts) into the atmosphere without care. We should still continue to make efforts to reduce our consumption of the resources on this planet.
Michael modded the great-grand-parent of this as flamebait.
You know, michael, someone would have to DISAGREE with it for it to be flamebait.
Ice is dying
Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Ice community when last month Yahoo News confirmed that Ice accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all states of water. Coming on the heels of the latest Yahoo News story which plainly states that Ice has lost more mountains, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Ice is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent "will it live through fire" test.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
Mod entire thread up! Sugessted moderation: +3, informative
... or you might forever miss the chance to go to africa to see real snow.
After damage is done (or not done) we can evaluate what was supposed to be done. That has happened with PCB, DDT, CRC and other fine chemichals in past. Why not with CO2.
Beleive in global warming or not, I still think it would be better to reduce usage of something that is widely suspected to be the cause of global warming. Once this theory is proven wrong feel free to drive with SUVs as much as you like.
Thank you.
I think the global warming effect is still underestimated. Tourism will be our (or our children) least problem.
There is no question of "if" this will be happening but only "when". We may still affect duration and intensity, but I have only little hope.
Yours, Martin
At the end of the ice age did people worry about global warming? And, before the ice age, did people worry about global cooling? In any event, were these events catestophic... could we exist today without these events?
:)
The reason I ask is because i found out two days ago that I have gained 4 pounds since the beginning of the semester -- thanks to a core requirment/class... now, my weight is generally a fairly stable thing in my mind, and i wouldn't have even noticed... back on the farm at home, i'm sure that i will probabbly loose those pounds...
now, if you can see the relation, good, if not, too bad
seems to me that if ice wants to melt after a few million years of being frozen, all the more power to it. I wish the ice in my fridge would stay frozen for that long when i'm sipping my frosted mug of root beer......
Point of View is Everything, and Period Three Equals Chaos -- now, on to the real question, how to control the uncontrollable.
A drop of tourism? Should we be worried about that?
i don't like style guides
Who cares about the ice melting when there may be dangerous levels of DHMO on the top of that mountain! Maybe we would be safer if it did melt.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
We should get some good specials on Discovery channel about frozen mammoths and cavemen!
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the Earth just emerging from an ice age? If so, that would explain the raise in the global temperatures.
Even if people are to blame, gasoline engines will be gone in roughly 40- 50 years (oil supplies), and that's roughly responsible for about 40% of the pollution in the US ( world may be different %).
The Sahara is expanding as well, but that is more to bad farming, etc. Based on that example , I think that that there may be other factors involved besides global warming, but i don't think there is anything good that comes from making so much pollution.
In case you are wondering why the tourism loss is bad, just think that you will have a lot of desperate people with guns.
to say that Global Warming has nothing to do with the Icecap on Kilamanjaro melting. Then again, it's also a little hasty to say that a localized 80% reduction in the Icecap of a mountain in Africa is caused ONLY by global warming, when there are no other examples globally of warming on this scale.
Although it's tempting to point a finger and yell about global warming, I would opt for some actual scientific study of the situation. For example, Mt. Kilamanjaro is in Tanzania... not exactly your most industrialized country... and is surrounded by nations like Mozambique, DR of Congo, Zambia, Uganda, and Kenya. Only one of those nations has any significant industry to speak of (Kenya). So where are all of these greenhouse gases coming from to melt Mt. Kilimanjaro's ice cap? The greenhouse gases certaintly aren't more concentrated there than in the more industrialized areas of the world.
I'm not saying this problem is not due to global warming, however... I'm merely saying that there needs to be more serious scientific study on the issue.
- Proofs of Sturgeon's Law Delivered Daily -
This is not to say that I don't think global warming is real. I've seen enough other proof to believe that it's real. It's just that this specific data on Kilmanjaro (at least, what I've seen so far) doesn't seem to say anything more than that the Killmanjaro glaciers are shrinking. I don't have enough data to tell if this shrinkage pattern is a good bad or neutral indicator.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
Sorry... too skeptical to buy this one.
... what aren't you buying? There was no 'we're all going to die!!!' angle in the article - it was simply reporting a change in a single ecosystem.
Umm
Remember that the glaciers on Kilimanjaro are pretty unique - it's slap on the equator (so there's no winter/summer to allow the glaciers to grow and shrink), it's peak is 6km above sea level, where the atmospheric pressure is ~50% of sea level (how does that effect the melting point?), and the glaciers are a side effect of what happened about 10000 years ago.
Because it's a single (well, ok, actually a triple) peak, not in a mountain range, there aren't going to be any particular wierd weather patterns around it, so it's probably quite a good gauge of what's happening 6000m above us. How changes in the atmosphere up there effect us down here is, of course, the subject of heated (sorry) debate.
I actually climbed up in 1996 and was quite surprised that i didn't come across any snow at all - but you could walk right up to the base of bits of the glaciers. Still bloody cold though - especially as everyone climbs up the last bit in the night (to see dawn break from the top).
If only.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
If the ice-caps were melting, wouldn't the river volume be *increasing*?
it is feared that the loss of the ice cap will also cause a drop off in tourism
They'll come running back to high ground when the polar ice caps start melting.
No sig to see here. Move along.
If we just need to turn the heat down a little, a couple of nukes ought to do the trick. Carl Sagan's nuclear winter fears (which I'm pretty sure predate the global warming hysteria) were also talking about a few degrees of temperature change, but the other direction.
I'm sure once things get a little bit hotter our world leaders will start to get testy and things will work themselves out like always.
If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal -- Jello Biafra
However, this article makes it clear the author blames a good portion of the recent loss on global warming.
It also tells a dramatic story of environmental disaster not caused by people, both fairly recently:
- The core data showed that in 1790, the cycle changed, the rains lessened and drought took hold in the region, a condition that continued for seven years until 1796 when the monsoons returned.
as well as 4,000 years ago:"That event was major," Thompson said. "It killed more than 600,000 people in one region of India alone. And that was at a time when global populations were much less than they are today." (Estimates place the world population in 1800 at 980 million.) "If a similar event occurred today, the social and economic disruptions would be horrendous," he said. Current world population is just over 6 billion people.
- That wet period ended and the ice corings show that Africa slid into a deep drought about 4,000 years ago.
This dry period, said Thompson, is also found in other records, including some written history.
So, yeah, global warming is pretty important. But compared to Mother Nature, we look like rank amateurs. But that's ok... we appear to be rapidly catching up."This dry period appears in the historic record in Egypt," he said. "Writings on tombs talk about sand dunes moving across the Nile and people migrating. Some have called this the Earth's first dark age."
Africa was not alone in the global drought. Thompson said other records show that civilizations during this period collapsed in India, the Middle East and South America.
Hell of a lot of things boil down to money, in the end (don't need to tell this to a /. crowd who are predominantly in favour of USA style economies, and ahem, let's not mention which evil dictators we're at war with, and which are our 'best friends'). If it saves us from ecological disaster, then heck, I am happy. Wrong motives maybe but at least then there will be a half-habitable planet left for our kids.
For everybody who's head is spinning over the loss of tourist revenue bit... This is related more to the decrease in river runoff than the loss of the icecap.
Kili is in Africa and in Africa NOTHING is as simple as it seems. Aside from global climate change, there is some local climate change going on at the foot of the mountain. Specifically, a large rainforest is being clear-cut for timber. Loss of this forest is changing local rainfall patterns--i.e. the forest isn't "catching" the airborne moisture anymore, and so either the rain isn't falling or it's falling but not being absorbed by the forest and running off. Less rain, less water in the river, and also increased sedimentation of the riverbanks. After this, obviously the tourists don't want to see a clear-cut mountain, and the reduced rain and increased silting irritates the farmers who live at the base of the mountain.
So there's a fight going on between the loggers, farmers, and tourism people. Some of the farmers actually double as tour guides on the mountain; when I was in Tanzania a couple of years ago I took a guided tour from a farmer who earned some extra income (1 US$=750 Tanzanian shillings at the time) by hauling white folk around the mountain. And loss of tourism revenue in that area is a big deal. For a town where the richest man in town is the richest because he owns a truck and carries the farmers' bananas 6 hours by road to the capital Dar es Salaam, tourism and farming interests really, really, really want to keep their income flowing. At the same time the loggers want to keep their jobs. No easy answer here.
yellowcat ^_^ ??
"The other bad thing about tourists on Kilimanjaro is all the trash they leave behind. People are simply not capable of cleaning up after themselves. People should not be allowed to climb such a wonderful mountain if they are not going to use it responsibly. Read the rest here."
It is really disgusting to see these "3xtr3m3" travellers go to exiting Kilimanjaro trips - in colonnial spirit, latest hightech equipment, a few slaves carrying everything and enjoying gourmet dinners while on the way to top. I mean there is nothing wrong if you respect the environment and don't throw trash around. But the latest megatrend that every IT manager has to climb Kilimanjaro to be something is rather amusing in it's sickness.
The story on CNN:
n jaro.thaw.ap/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/10/17/kilima
That's just taking it to far. Yes, Michael is odd, but you can't speak for the rest of his familly.
There is a difference between being a skeptic and burying your head in the sand. I notice you didn't actually refute any of the information presented, you just asked a lot of rhetorical questions and threw out an anecdotal observation or two.
Rejecting evidence that doesn't fit with your beliefs is not smart (like Bayes is smart). What do you do for an encore? Argue for creationism?
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
But global warming has been shown to be a bit of an exaggeration... studies are now finding that humans aren't contributing as much to it as we'd like to think... Ken Wilbur mentions this, I believe, in "Boomeritis", and it's covered in other texts as well... these things come and go in cycles, and we're in the middle of a warming cycle... that's not to say that I don't think that dumping ten tons of refridgerant-12 is a good idea... but global warming is largely another media exaggeration, like the dangers of travelling abroad (discussed in this /. thread - first post in thread is a bit of a troll, but there's some insightful commentary further down), or the CIA / FBI's monthly warnings of "yes sir, there's a-gonna be another o' dem terry-rist attacks soon, y'all best be prepared, jus' in case!".
My opinions may be a bit strong... but I'm open to people with insightful commentaries both for and against my viewpoints on this... I don't profess to be an ecologist... but the commentaries I've read that attribute this to a healthy, natural Earth cycle have, thus far, been far more convincing.
The other bad thing about tourists on Kilimanjaro is all the trash they leave behind.
Total bollocks. Kilimanjaro is one of the most well protected national parks in Africa. The Tanzanian government controls the number of passes that it gives out each year to avoid too many people going up, and when I climbed it I can't remember seeing a single piece of litter. As the article you reference mentioned, wood is carried up the mountain to be used in fires - in other words, not a single branch on the whole mountain is ever used as firewood.
The fact that the Tanzanian economy is heavily dependent on tourism, and that the tips the porters get for 5 days work are equivalent to a months wages there are all good things.
Now, if you want to complain about litter and garbage on Everest, go ahead, I'd support you - but Kilimanjaro (along with all the main Tanzanian tourist spots) is an example of eco-tourism at it's best.
Why should we make efforts to reduce our consumption of currently utilized resources? CO2 is a valuable by-product of combustion that's useful in many applications. If CO2 levels in the atmosphere become high enough, some enterprising individual could potentially make a fat chunk of change stripping it out of the atmosphere, along with the waste heat and excess solar heat being trapped by all the greenhouse gasses. Or they could just harvest the CO2(and water) as it's being pumped into the atmosphere.
The most common, 5-day route up the hill is called the "Coca Cola" route since it's gotten so trashed out.
:-) When I went up (6 years ago), it was very well organised and run. We were given the eco-friendly lecture before going up, and eveyone seemed fairly concious of trash. The only really horrible bits were the toilets (long-drop ... big-smell). Very commercialised, but pretty well run was my impression.
Is this recent? Having just posted a reply saying there is no garbage, i'm a bit surprised
Nice to hear from someone who's actually been to the location in question. Sounds like quite the adventurer vacation... must have been a blast.
Perhaps I was not specific enough in my previous post.
My skepticism comes from watching what anecdotal evidence like this is spun into; typically an indictment of our entire culture/evil capitalists/earth-destroying SUVs, etc, etc. Having studied the bio sciences, one of the things I've been most impressed with is their complexity and resilience.
Biological systems and their denizens adapt in myriad ways to environmental changes, including increased CO2 and other greenhouse gases (which the ocean should buffer quite nicely, considering it covers 75% of the earth's surface) I'm not certain global warming has been proven to the bulk of the scientific community's satisfaction.
You see the occasional shrill "!EARTHFIRST!" communique about the plant's imminent demise... feh. Earth is tougher than we are, and will probably dispose of us in some gruesome fashion as our population steadily increases.
One thing I'm sure of, you cannot extrapolate from a single mountain in central africa to the destruction of our plant, though I'm sure global warming proponents will try...
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Perhaps as the ice caps on the peaks of Mount Kilimanjaros melt, some traces of last years' expeditions to build a bridge between the two peaks will be found.
(There isn't a BoMP on Slashdots, is there?)
If African rivers are seeing a decrease in volume then the ice must be melting at a reduced rate. Perhaps there is less snow being deposited atop the mountain but at least question the claims with a critical eye.
how do i write links and italics and so on?
Normal HTML tags. The ones you may use are listed below the submit/preview buttons when you're writing your post. Most are on the format <XX> where XX is a combination of letters describing what you want. E.g. <b>bold</b> makes the text bold.
Have a look at some HTML Tutorial or check out w3's HTML pages.
May we live long and die out
Global Warming
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with support from
*all names in this posting are to be considered fictitious*
where's all that Karma?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
What is wrong with asking questions, rhetorical or otherwise? Do you work for Saddam Hussein's Board of Elections?
I question improbable conclusions based on a single data point as a matter of routine. With global warming, it's not the hypothesis that's the problem, it's the remedies that you must implement if the hypothesis is accepted as valid.
The global-warming crowd could potentially impact the livelihood of millions of people by restricting or shutting down the industries that employ them. The effect that could be created on the economy of many first-world nations is not to be taken lightly. And how will we get third-world nations to abide by our strict pollution controls? We can't even make them stop having civil wars, halt ethnic cleansing, or prevent them from using bio weapons on one another. Cleaner emissions for their "technicals?" I'm not going to hold my breath.
I think when the stakes are as high as they are in the global warming debate, the burden of proof should be equally hefty.
Feel free to disagree, but I think a lot of steel workers, UAW guys, and Coal miners wouldn't appreciate being in the unemployment because of an unexamined/unquestioned hypothesis.
Also, not to be argumentative, but it sounds to me like you are also rejecting evidence that doesn't fit with your beliefs; Creationism could be true, after all...
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Ice Ages, CO2 and Temperature are very strongly connected. See the graphs here. These suggest that the sun is not the main cause and human activity has prevented futher ice-ages. We wait to see what the other consequences are.
Ice Ages, CO2 and Temperature are very strongly connected. See the graphs here. These suggest that the sun is not the main cause and human activity has prevented futher ice-ages. We wait to see what the other consequences are.
In a far reaching manuever, the UN has voted to ban CO2 emmisions from all sources. Scientists have been given 5 years to find a replacement gas for exhalation by humans and other living creatures.
Dr. Ivan Onlyinhale says this should not be to much of a problem. "If nothing else, the sanctions that will be imposed if we don't find a replacement gas for exhalation will solve our population explosion".
-- Many men would appreciate a woman's mind more if they could fondle it
And buy some long airline flights. Turn up the heat. Forget the future.
That claims this is a normal cycle. That ice coring in the Antarctic have shown that these global temperature changes are cycling every few hundred years.
Get a free ipod.
The ice cap is disappearing steadily since 1900. How can we blame global warming if the process didn't show any acceleration in the last half of the 20th Century?
Did I say asking questions was wrong? No. Don't put words in my mouth, or start throwing around references to everyone's favourite Hitler-of-the-Month.
Maybe you honestly misinterpreted my rejection of your rejection. Let me spell it out for you: asking questions you assume you know the answer to is not an argument and does not illuminate the topic. It just makes you sound like an overly-dramatic lawyer. You ask what are supposed to be important questions, but can't be bothered to come out and answer them yourself. If you know something your reader should know, tell them. Unless, of course, you are speaking only to people who already share your point of view.
Also, I don't reject Creationism because of my beliefs, spiritual or otherwise. I reject Creationism because it is untestable and often falls into emotional arguments and character assassination rather than putting forward ideas that stand for themselves.
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
We as humans give ourselves far too much credit for how much damage we think we can do.
Did you ever see a giant clam show remorse over eating too much plankton? Right....
We're far from being a major force in the Universe. We're too new....
We had an ice age here in North America. What was the climate like in the Kiliminjaro vicinity back then? I firmly believe that global warming has had a profound effect on life in North America over the past 10,000 years, and it's been pretty damn good so far. Get used to it people, it's a freaking cycle - temp goes up, temp goes down, species populate the earth, species go extinct for random unpredictable reasons.
Yeah the Sun is getting hotter. Cor - page 3 last week, red hot baby!
> Some African rivers have already seen a decrease
> in volume...
Uhm. If the ice cap is in the process of melting, those rivers should be seeing an INCREASE in volume. The fact that the volume is going down indicates either:
(1) That ice cap has been melting for a LONG time, and is only now running out, putting a crack in the theory that global warming has recently become significant, or
(2) The rivers are decreasing in volume for some other reason, most likely drought; that drought might also be responsible for the decrease in the size of the ice cap, since melt would not be replenished as quickly. The drought is definitely a change in climate, but blaming it on "global warming" is about as unscientific as the argument, "ice melts because things get hotter. Must be global warming."
"it is feared that the loss of the ice cap will also cause a drop off in tourism."
Ice melts = More water
Why no go from tourist ski trips to waterskiing?
True ravers don't need drugs
How will all this melting ice affect the bridge between the twin peaks?
That surely couldn't have anything to do with it now could it??? I love the part in the story about how some villages are already suffering, so let me get this strait, the ice is melting faster and the villages are getting less water, ummm, where is the water from the increased melting ice going? Stupid journalists.
No, they mean that Africa was a lot wetter 11,000 years ago compared to NOW
I am a fellow conservative, let me throw out a story...
My dad used to warn me about the dangers of equating an effect with a cause, as evidenced by...
"Major League Baseball causes snow to melt"
Because:
1. I notice that snow melts in the spring
2. I notice that baseball starts in the spring.
"The Earth is getting warmer, due to a variety of pollutants."
Because:
1. The Earth has been getting warmer for more than 100+ years
2. Pollutants have been used in force for 100+ years
The Earth naturally warms and cools, though it would be irresponsible to completely ignore the issue. We also need environmentalists to treat this as a science and not a religion.
The EPA actually considered (albeit breifly) making backyard barbeques illegal because of the pollution associated with it.
--Joey
Please we need to stop this natural process of global warming.....what are e going to do!!!!
realy, the evidence about what is causeing global warming is inconclusive. the greenhouse gas people want to think they have a sound argument, but all they have is a bunch of non-climatologists who think global warming is caused by greenhouse gas.
hell, the climatic modles that are used so often as evidence can not even give correct answers when data from 20 years ago is entered into them to predict todays climate....infact, it is skewed way off into the high end.
I am all for reducing Polution, carbon and otherwise, but it is for a much more practical reason. Health. asthma has increased dramaticly and one cause that has been sugjested was the air polution.
besides....do we realy NEED air polution....it can only be good if we get rid of it through cleaner technology, well, the carbon credit traders might get hurt if we no longer polute but oh well.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
One misty moisty morning,
when cloudy was the weather,
I met with an old man clothed all in leather.
He was clothed all in leather with a cap beneath his chin, singing "How do you do" and "How do you do" and "How do you do" again.
I told him he looked like a member of the Village People and to go fuck off.
(3) Africa is really screwed, because even the increased volume of melting ice isn't making up for other losses in river volume. Soon Africa will become a wasteland like Ireland, where I found it impossible to get ice.
Personally, I'm strongly of the opinion that both of these viewpoints are harmful. Over on the right there seems to be a lack of consideration for other very localized harm burning nasty stuff can cause. As a lifelong inhabitant of Los Angeles I've seen this first hand.
As someone married to an American Indian, who grew up on a west-coast reservation (of a different tribe - her mom was a teacher) with degree in history among her collection (and her dad was a history professor), let me tell you something about Los Angeles (that she brings up whenever it an air pollution are mentioned together B-) ).
Seems the local Indian name for the area translates to "Valley of the Smokes". The shape of the land and the wind patterns over much of the year trap airborne pollution - so badly that a single campfire would smoke it up for a day or more.
It's a testimony to US automobile technology (even if driven by legislation) that so many cars can now operate in that valley without photochemical smog being so thick that the light is blocked.
By the way: DON'T call them "Native Americans". It annoys them. (If you're born here YOU are a "Native American".) "American Indians", however, is a running "ignorant/stupid/crazy European invaders" joke: They were so dumb they thought they were in India - half a world away, Ho Ho! B-) (A poll of members of a large number of tribes showed the preference for "A. I." over "N. A." runs in the 80s-90s% range.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
At that altitude, the ice and snow don't melt, they evaporate into the air, and thus don't feed the rivers.
There's only a small "sweatband" of snow left on Kilimanjaro, the rest is (steep) scree and rock slopes.
So much for the pleasure of glissading back down after you summit!
Banning backyard barbeque is an excellent idea:
Small particulate concentrations in the air are correlated with the death rate on a day-to-day basis.
During winter in Silicon Valley (and many other places), 50% of such particulates are due to fireplaces. During summer, 50% are due to barbeques.
Your BBQ kills people, just like your fireplace.
This is not a mindless 'liberal' (seriously mis-used word) position, there is some excellent science behind it.
There is very little such evidence for 'global warming'.
Lew
To hear ecowackjobs tell it you'd assume there were humans around polluting 12,000 years ago and they all suddenly died off so that the ice cap could form. Jesus, people, the Earth changes all the time, sometimes wetter and sometimes drier, sometimes warmer and sometimes cooler, and sometimes in different ways in different places at the same time.
I am not a Republican. I do not drive a SUV. I am, however, a thinking man not prone to wild-eyed fanaticism over things I cannot claim to understand.
On the other hand, we could refuse to consider opposing view points until we're all dead. that's be a good plan.
Time for an expedition to the other peak.
(putting a hand over one eye)
Well, that'll save a bit of time.
'SBEMAIL!' is better than a goat!!
This is what Nobel laureate Konrad Lorenz had to say about this way back in 1973-"Human culture, after enveloping and filling the whole globe, is in danger of being killed by its own excretion, of dying from an illness closely analogous to uraemia.
"Human Culture"? Yes, some of them will change. Some will die off or mutate, some will grow or shrink, some new ones will from. They do that from time to time - often on a scale of hundreds of years or less.
Human Beings, and extinction? Hardly. (Though the current enormous population is supported by farm, transport, and food preservation technologies - so a loss of this tech or an increase in its price, through economic collapse or regulation, means a significant die-off.)
Humans started out as a handfull of hunter-gatherers, before or during the last ice age. They expanded to inhabit essentially every bit of land area and floating ice except Antarctica BEFORE they developed industrial civilization and the scientific method. (Name another animal - other than human parasites - that managed that.)
Plains, deserts, steppes, mountains, ice caps... I doubt humanity could be wiped out by any climatic change that didn't boil or freeze ALL the water or eliminate all oxygen from the air.
The planet finally coming the rest of the way out of the last Ice Age - with the temperate zones shifting a couple hundred miles further from the equator and steaming jungles expanding beyond Brazil and central Africa - doesn't even qualify. (Heck: For raw biomass, suitably modified crops, or even CURRENT crops, it's probably a significant improvement.) And some of us would count the loss of the outer edge of certain seacoast cities to be a bonus. B-) Going back into a full Ice Age is more of a problem - though the greening of the equatorial deserts might make up for the loss of some more poleward land to glaciers.
Of course, if temperature shifts actually become a problem we can fix them directly, without screwing around with the CO2 level of the atmosphere. Just orbit a few hundred square miles of aluminized mylar, suitably located and oriented to provide a bit of shade if things are getting too hot, a bit of extra sunlight if they're getting too cold. Or whatever hack the rocket scientists come up with that's cheaper.
You want a robust space program anyhow - so you have something to spot and deflect the next incoming asteroid or comet fragment. Such an impact turning the whole planet into a broiler-oven for a day or so is the REAL threat of "global warming". THAT would once again reduce the ecosystem to plants with very robust seeds and resistance to PH variatioins and mouse-sized animals that happened to be underground at the time. (And maybe a few humans who had hung out in underground sites that didn't collapse and squirreled away a few years of supplies to last until they could grow something to eat.)
But I doubt temperature shifts (let alone the handfull of degrees that has the lefties drooling for more power and the media paniced) will be a problem for food production at all. Most of the food production of the world is now essentially an industrial operation, while the rest benefits from the tech. A few degrees of temperature change just means you change which crops - or which strains of a particular crop - you grow in a particular field. Shifts in weather patterns ditto, maybe with a change in irrigation or include the crops' water usage in the selection criteria, a few marginal plots going out of production, and new land becoming able to support crops.
Humanity will be forced to invent some sort of planetary kidney - or it will die from its own waste products."
Now that's true. But we've been doing EXACTLY THAT for quite a while now. When any given type of pollution becomes enough of a problem to bother with, we FIX it. Baby Boomers are old enough to remember Los Angeles smog before auto industry folk (including me) fixed up the engines. But that's NOTHING compared to, say, the killer fogs of London (driven by high-sulfur heating coal). Or just the indoor air of any human habitation in a cold climate before gas heat. And just think a moment about the streets of a city served only by horse- and ox-drawn vehicles. Talk about pollution...
Tech sometimes creates a new sort, or new amount, of pollution - "excretion" in Lorenz's vocabulary. But once it becomes a problem, more tech generally solves it (sometimes after quite a few years of griping by the people for whom it is a problem.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
How then do you explain the graphs. They show four ice-ages in the past 400k years. Taken from ice core studies, for each dip of the CO2 graph there is a similar dip in the temperature graph. The extended CO2 graph shows CO2 is well outside the range of the past 400k years. The rise is almost a vertical jump.
I have seen some speculation that the Sun has helped flip the Earth from ice-age to interglacial, driven to the extremes by CO2 feedback. But now we have changed CO2 seriously we are well out of that cycle.
Personally I am hoping that the weakening Gulf Stream (a consequence of Global Warming) will not cease in my lifetime. Then we will see some nasty localised cooling in Europe.
Probably a more noticeable effect than Global Warming is Global Wetting, due to increase evaporation. We are certainly noticing that.
A few weeks ago, there was an article from the Director of the Wood's Hole Oceanographic Institute here that explained it all: (http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/09/ 29/0035213&tid=134)
BUT..you know what our President "Clueless George" Bush said about global warming: It doesn't exist.
And remember...C.G. got HIS data from a true expert in the field: Rush Limbaugh!
Nature's report on Lonnie Thompson's work (Ohio State University) says
Seems convincing to me. Especially since it's the Andes as well
BUT are we talking decreased flow all year round or just the dry season months, when melting ice feeds the rivers?
100,000 melting ice cubes can fill a bath. 10 fill a glass
I suppose over the eons it pulses somewhat, but not quickly, during our "lifetimes". As for the Icecap, that too may have formed and melted many times during the life of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Time is so vast, that surely many impressive mountains such as that have come and gone, each with various climates, icecaps, etc. over their life history. Sure, eventually the Sun will come to it's end, and it is predicted to grow to a size to overtake the Earth's orbit before the end. I wouldn't image that the human population of the earth will be around in anything like it's present form in say,
g eo rge/burnsgeorgeIMAGE/burnsgeorge.jpg
half a million years. When all is said and done, the dinosaurs will have had the longest reign on the earth, over 100 million years, and will perhaps easily top the human stay on the planet.
If you're willing to wait another 20 or 30 thousand years, then Mt. Kilimanjaro will have another nice icecap to enjoy. Strange thing is, you'll be gone, and everyone that knew you will be long gone and forgotten in that time span.(Your enemies, too) That's pretty much the way it is, like it or not.
(here's a picture of the author of this item):
http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/B/htmlB/burns
You car-borne polluters just don't want to pay for the damage you cause. OK there are other things that affect global warming.
But you car drivers have other costs you don't pay. The cost to the US taxpayer of keeping the Military guarding the oil routes. And cars use most of the oil. Uk Minister Peter Hain quoted a figure of $15 a barrel.
glaciers around the worled have been receeding for over a hundred years. And, in many cases, they can be documented as receeding for much longer than that.
The cost to the US taxpayer of keeping the Military guarding the oil routes...
Not to mention the side-effects of having pissed Arabs who don't want us trouncing around there because they want to be left alone. They would rather screw up their society by themselves rather than have foriengers do it.
Table-ized A.I.
I wish I could have said that so well. (But it's more like 600 million at the top and 6 billion at the bottom when it comes to screwing the Earth.)
But where to start?
Transparency and accurate information without the snails pace and obfuscation of the academics would help us rescue politicians from the lies they are forced to tell.
I wish some of the good pieces from /. could be more easily presented elsewhere to non-nerds.
I do pass some on to politicians which is based on ./ discussions but its often hard work.
Btw. If anybody were to summarise /. on certain topics what's the position? Is /. GPL?
NetNexus did something along those lines that did affect UK Government policies - possibly. I think a better job could be done with the /. archives.
hmmm... Thanks for "spelling it out" for me.
I'm asking the questions because I don't know the answers, and I remain unconvinced. How's that? If you have the answers, please expound upon them and enlighten me and the other readers. I'm not convinced that a single mountain in Africa is proof of global warming, but I am willing to let the climatologists prove their case. Can you say the same? Your "head in the sand" comment seems to indicate that you come from the global warming side of the house. If that's the case, I can understand your defense of the article, but I cannot understand your attack on my reluctance to accept it at face value. Attacking a statement of skepticism with "head in the sand" comments makes you sound like an activist, not a scientist.
Also, on the topic of character assassination, maybe you honestly missed the attempt at levity in my Saddam Hussein reference, but to say I sound like a lawyer?
Hmph... a low blow.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Or at least not to the point. See my earlier posting and ice core temperatures.
The important variations are every 100,000 years.
And we have certainly broken out of the ice-age/interglacial CO2 cycle.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
I was enjoying your post, right up until you brought the G7-conspiring-to-keep-the-poor-nations-under-their -boot into it.
Several points:
First, climatologists are correct in being cautious about inappropriately generalizing their conclusions, as you stated. Any time you take a number of studies and pool their data in an attempt to draw a conclusion, you should be careful; meta analysis are often seen as suspect.
Second, I don't think the !EARTHFIRST! and ALF folks are altruistic... I think many of them are waaaay out there (and some of them are frankly terrorists, particularly the ALF). Bench research on animals models is extremely valuable... living systems are mind-bogglingly complex, and computer models only react as they are programmed (sorry, animal lovers).
Third, I'm very interested in seeing how complex systems adapt. You are absolutely correct that complex systems have more potential points of failure (I think that's what you were getting at). And it's certainly true for human systems, but I think the difference is that human systems have the potential to act intelligently (at least in theory). Humans take their environment with them, and can also influence their local environment, for better or worse. That having been said, for an extrememly radical climate shift, you're probably right.
With regard to global society being unstable... no argument from me on that one.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Michael is on another Noam Choamsky binge, ignore as usual.
Looks like the moderators don't get humor even when they see it. :)
A scientific study was conducted to document the political affiliation of those that believe in Global Warming. It was determined that if you were a Democrat you were 80% more likely to believe in Global Warming than if you were a Republican.
Since scientific truth is, of course, determined by majority vote and the Democrats have stolen 18 more voting machines in Broward County, FL, to "fix" them for the November election (got to give them credit for trying again), it is obvious that the Democrats are causing Global Warming.
Sorry, but I'm so conservative that Rush and Hanitty are my men. The fact that you pull up SPQR is just totally offensive- they put their shit on the line, where you just spout shit. Your shit may be right, but don't ever call yourself SPQR, you are just a text spouter, they were blood spouters. Rhyme all the crap you want, you never did shit to help anyone.
You are the type of person the armed forces really, really hate. Fucking asshole.
Lost in the noise here is the fact that anyone who knows anything about glaciology knows that there are lots of ongoing examples of glacier shrinkage that are most certainly not caused by industrial CO2, and there are good reasons to believe that Kilimanjaro is one of those examples (read the study). Human induced global warming is indeed an important problem, but it seems that little rational discussion takes place because BOTH sides seem willing to only "understand" the science in a manner that promotes their cause.
Fortunally, the link between a warming earth and pollutants is a lot more complex than your little strawman.
Perhaps had you added "3. We know that certain pollutants cause warming", then you would have had a more informative post.
Your comment about environmentalists treating global warming as religion and not science, is very ironic given that the vast majority of climatic scientists support the theory behind human induced global warming.
Warning: Some ideologies on the Net are smaller than they appear.
So, whatever happened to the ozone hole scare? Could it be that once it stopped expanding and started to naturally reconstitute itself, it lost its political scare value? Just because we have satellites and we're able to see something we haven't seen before, doesn't mean that what we're seeing isn't a natural LONG TERM phenomenom.
BTW, that guy who fell out of the tree hit Earth First.
You gotta mod that one down since I'm obviously against "enviromentalists"
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
It is by no means certain that mass unemployment would result from anti-global warming measures on a large scale.
The first thing you should notice is the connection between oil prices and economic performance (oil price spike=recession). How much exactly does this cost? In our post-fossil-fuel economy, at least in theory such price spikes would be a thing of the past, and most countries should have energy independance. The price of energy will be determined by ever-improving technology and not politics (last 30 years) or resource depletion.
All those car makers stand to benefit hugely; re-equipping the world with fuel cell cars means making a lot of cars. Ditto for the steelworkers!. And building the wind turbines, nuclear power plants, new infrastructure, etc.. that will take people. Indeed - if we are headed into a depression like the 1930s, then a 'war on global warming/energy dependance' might make a similar boost in economic terms as WWII did, without the mass slaughter.
I would like to see every person on earth have a better standard of living than the average American has now. That cannot be done with fossil fuels; there is not enough in the ground.
There was an interview on NPR the other day about this very thing, and the man they were talking to was a scientist who studies mountain glaciers (I believe; I don't remember his name or precisely what he did).
First of all, he did say that this is something that has happened before, and, taking only this as evidence, it would seem to be simply a natural cyclical process.
However, he also said that this is not the only place this is happening. No, that doesn't mean the polar icecaps are melting, but other mountain glaciers all over the world are, little by little, getting smaller. This, to him (a scientist who studies exactly the things that are the best indicators of global warming), says incontrovertibly that global warming is real and is beginning to have serious effects.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
I know this is late and nobody will probably read this, but I can't believe nobody mentioned this:
It has shrunk by 80% in the last century, overall. But several years ago, the dormant volcano (Mount Kilimanjaro) erupted. I'd say that did more of the ice-melting than a slow increase in heat due to natural waxing and waning of polar regions in the long term, wouldn't you?
"Pledge of Allegiance: One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all..."
Nothing I hate more than a signature troll.
Liberty and justice for all... unless you don't believe in G-d and want to omit that portion from the 'Pledge'. Should be more like: "One nation, under the President, with liberty and justice for all believers"
Get your Unix fortune now!
An article at Cato.org tells that yes, the ice cap has been shrinking during periods of global warming. But surprise, surprise -- it has also been shrinking during periods of global COOLING. Therefore, any cause/effect relationship has been disproved.