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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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but global warming is the only thing holding off another ice ice. I want an ice ice. Woolly mammoths are cool!
...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.
Woolly mammoths are cool!
Yes, woolly mamoths are the shiznutz, but, as we all know, it would require more than a little bit of cold weather for them to re-evolve.
Maybe we could just take some elephants, throw them up in northern canada, and cover them in shag carpeting
Casual Games/Downloads
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 how is that ice 11,000 years old when the earth is only ~6000?
Another pagan for my enemies list.
Why is Triangle Man so MEAN?
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."
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.
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
... 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.
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
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).
Could some rabid conservative please post the party line that global warming is the only thing holding off another ice age?
Okay, I'll bite. Not really a hard line conservative, but certainly far enough over on the right to take this one on.
First off, anyone claiming that global warming is going to hold off an ice age couldn't possibly be bright enough to hold any kind of political position. Furthermore, if we're just talking about straight party line, that is NOT the position conservatives take on the matter.
The argument from the right is that humans just aren't capable of causing the massive changes being claimed. If warming is happening, the causes are most likely due to cyclical changes our environment goes through. Burn what ya like, it won't make a lick of difference.
Of course, over on the left we're all doomed unless nobody ever burns anything ever again. Every match that's struck or deoderant sprayed is going to lift the average temperature to the 100's of degrees.
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.
The view on the left is just as harmful though. First, the non-stop claims about so many different dangers goes a long way to desensitizing the populace, as well as policy makers. The enviromentalists are a political movement, not a scientific body. Need to do something about the problem NOW, regardless if we really understand the problem or not.
When it comes right down to it, I don't believe we have conclusively proven two very key points. Is the global temperature really increasing? That seems to depend on which group of scientists looking at which data, then filtered through a LOT of political interests.
The second point; if it is warming, what exactly is causing it? The right claims not us humans, the left claims they've got it all figured out. In truth, we really don't know what in the heck is going on. It may very well be a combination of cyclical changes along with human factors. Meterology is a damn complex science, and one we're still trying to figure out.
Okay, so I probably wouldn't get invited to too many conservative parties with this post. I suppose calling for "rabid conservatives" gets a pass to the "kneejerk liberal" get togethers though.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
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.
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.
Shucks. I just do the kneejerk liberal thing to pick up chicks.
:)
If ever there were a noble reason to be a kneejerk liberal, that'd do it.
You have regained my respect sir
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
The story on CNN:
n jaro.thaw.ap/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/10/17/kilima
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.
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
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.
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May we live long and die out
Global Warming
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*all names in this posting are to be considered fictitious*
where's all that Karma?
Oh, the earth will most certainly survive. At least some cockroaches, for sure. But certainly a lot more.
>Having studied the bio sciences...
Then you most certainly came across differential equations? (Hunter/Gatherer comes to mind)
> (which the ocean should buffer quite nicely, considering it covers 75% of the earth's surface)
The problem is, that blue algea and corals are highly suspectible to changes in temperature.
(Hint: they don't thrive on rising temperature)
> I'm not certain global warming has been proven to the bulk of the scientific community's satisfaction.
The majority of climatologists consider human induced global warming a fact (that's a Saddam Hussein election-like majority, not a more than 50% majority)
The amount of increase and influence is debated about.
>[...] you cannot extrapolate from a single mountain [...] though I'm sure global warming proponents will try.
Every time, I've heard a climatologist speaking about such a phenomenom (polar glaciers, Alpen glaciers, El Niño, large storms, floodings and droughts) , he says almost the same, something along the line: "It's a single incident, and, standing alone, it proves nothing. And saying, this is a prove for global warming is nonesense. But as a part of a larger statistic, it leads us to the consequence, that there is a global warming.
> [...] !EARTHFIRST!" communique about the plant's imminent demise... feh. Earth is tougher than we are [...]
Those people aren't as altruistic as you may think. They are fearing the planet's demise, but it's a demise from our perspective.
How will the planet react towards a sudden climatic change? Well, like it ever reacted, a "reboot". Will this make life extinct, most certainly not. But what about us humans?
The more complicated a system, the more likey it will fail. And human society is fairly complicated.
How many people you know are actually working for the survival of the human-kind? Not directly or indirectly for an advancement of society, but only for actual survival?
Certainly, fairly few.
We've achieved and rely on a highly efficient system, which provides us with all the neccessities for survival and allows us to maintain us a lot of "unnecessary" things, in other words a culture.
We cannot maintain such efficiency under a fast changing climate. (The marches of Sibiria won't become fertile, just because it becomes warmer. Still the deserts become larger)
Even in the current situation the global society isn't as stable as one liked it to be.
The G7 are building walls to protect their wealth from the poorer nations. In case of the US, you can even take it literally (Mexican border).
Will those walls previal in case of an even increased discrepancy between the wealthy and the poor?
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
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
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.
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.
> 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."
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
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!
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.
The majority of climatologists consider human induced global warming a fact (that's a Saddam Hussein election-like majority, not a more than 50% majority)
The amount of increase and influence is debated about.
And for a long time, the majority of geologists considered contental drift to be a crackpot theory. And the majority of physicists considered Newtonian physics to be the final answer.
Science is not a matter of votes. Neither is it well served by naive analyses of short term data in what is a very long term process.
Actually, the majority of climatologists consider global warming a fact. They do not agree on whether it is human induced. They do agree that CO2 has increased, and that the most simplistic physics would predict warming as a result. They have models that predict warming, and yet they have almost no decent models of ocean behavior, which is far more important than the atmosphere in determining climate.
Also keep in mind that the majority of reporters (including the moderators of Slashdot) are predisposed towards stories that favor man-caused global warming. And that the majority of funding in the climatological area goes to those who investigate global warming - with bias towards those whose papers favor the hypothesis. I know researchers in the field who, under the Clinton administration in the US, were afraid to have their actual anti-anthropogenic views attributed to them because they would lose funding!
The earth started warming in the 17th century, long before any significant CO2 increase. The current warming may be anthropogenic. It also may not. It is just as likely that anthropogenic warming is preventing a damaging cooling.
I get really tired of almost every story published about nature mentioning a possible connection to global warming!
Where are the stories about glacial growth? Some glaciers are increasing, not decreasing, but that doesn't seem to ever make the press, or Slashdot.
The only good weather is bad weather.
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!!
The disappearance of wolly mammoths and most other large animals in the northern temperate zones is most likely the result of predation by humans. Those nature loving "Native Americans" in the US killed of the mammoths, the giant sloth, and a number of other ice age critters.
A recent paper theorizes (with some significant evidence) that the buffalo survived because the tribes were so warlike that buffalo had connected, large zones of no hunting - no man's lands where hunters would be killed by rival tribes.
But wooly mammoths are indeed cool. And their meat apparently tastes good. A field biologist acquaintance of mine enjoyed mammoths steaks in Alaska one time when a flood uncovered a frozen mammoth.
The only good weather is bad weather.
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
You seriously mischaractize both arguments.
The argument on the right (although not constrained to those holding right-wing views) is composed of several parts:
1) The science and evidence is far from conclusive. In fact, it is riddled with uncertainties, systematic errors, and bias.
2) Even if it is true, the best thing to do is to learn to adapt to it. The reason is that the steps required to prevent it (given the IPCC estimates) are so dramatic that they will not be implementable by real political systems. Furthermore they are so drastic that they will result in massive economic distruption. Kyoto, for example, would have such a small climate effect as to me not measurable over 100 years (see the IPCC data if you don't believe me!) Even most of its proponents accept that it would cost a lot of money (which would not go towards investment and thus would be a net loss to the world economy).
3) Attempting to predict the course of human technology and political behavior over the next 100 years is sheer folly - even harder than predicting the climate! Imagine if global warming was a big deal in 1902. I suspect little events like WW-I, WW-II, the rise of communism and the numerous unforseen technological changes would have derailed both all predictions and all international accords to prevent it.
There are, of course, some on the right whose viewpoints are as stated. The most visible example is Rush Limbaugh, whose knowledge of science is stubbornly zero, and who thus has indeed stated that mankind is too insignificant to cause such changes. But those views shouldn't be taken seriously.
The only good weather is bad weather.
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
OK: so we've proven, conclusively that we can make massive changes in the local ecology. The fact that we can undeniably do it on a local scale adds credence to the idea that we can do the same on a global scale, rather than taking away.
The view on the left is just as harmful though. First, the non-stop claims about so many different dangers goes a long way to desensitizing the populace, as well as policy makers. The enviromentalists are a political movement, not a scientific body. Need to do something about the problem NOW, regardless if we really understand the problem or not.
This isn't a left problem. It's a press problem and a math problem. People don't understand mathematics and statistics. The press plays on this in their sensationalism. Both the right and the left play off of this. As an example: Smoking kills 7000 people a week. This is more than twice what was killed on Sept. 11. Unfortunately someone dieing of cancer or in a smoking related fire is very hard to get sensational film on...
The problem with global warning -- like with smoking -- is that the obvious response time is not instantaneous. A kid who starts smoking in 2000 isn't likely to die of cancer for at least 20 years -- the smoking/cancer ratio also isn't 1-1. This has allowed the Tobacco companies to hide behind plausable deniablility for decades. (that and the fact that some publishers are scared of losing the very substantial and consistent income that they get from those companies, which can leave them careful about pushing the issue)
Similarly, with global warming, Driving your car 2 blocks to the corner store doesn't suddenly cause a drought. This is rather like a slow stream of water cutting through a rock. The results aren't obvious on the first day -- or even the first decade -- but we're no longer questioning whether it happens.
When it comes right down to it, I don't believe we have conclusively proven two very key points. Is the global temperature really increasing? That seems to depend on which group of scientists looking at which data, then filtered through a LOT of political interests.
GLobal warming was considered an interesting and plausable -- but unproven -- theory in the early '70s. It had, however, passed the first scientific milestone of scientific plausability. It had proven consistent with past observations and generally accepted rules. The second step was to predict certain results that hadn't been observed so far. and wouldn't happen if the theory was wrong.
This is where we run into the long response cycle of Global warming: It took years and decades to collect evidence for/against the theory of global warming, but the proponderance of evidence so far has been strongly for that global warming is really happaning. The question is no longer 'if'. It is now a question of what will be the effects and what can/should we do about it.
Like water on the stone where there is no 'the' droplet which you can not drop on the stone to prevent the wearing, Driving to the store or using hairspray does make a difference. There is that final droplet the dropping of which will cause the two halves of the rock to split apart -- but by that time it's too late to save the rock. Similarly, with global warning, by the time the results are catastrophic, it will be too late for us to reverse the process.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
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.
The most visible example is Rush Limbaugh, whose knowledge of science is stubbornly zero, and who thus has indeed stated that mankind is too insignificant to cause such changes.
The thing that Rush often mentions are the various large volcano erruptions that have occurred within written history. Comparing and contrasting these natural events to what industry spews out into the sky.
One thing that's kind of curious here is that I don't believe your views on this would be all that much different than what Rush has presented on his show. He's made comments concerning Kyoto that sound quite a bit like what you're saying.
He sort of becomes this 2 dimensional caricature of the right wing to critics who don't listen to what he's actually saying. Personally, I have my disagreements with where he stands on certain issues, but the show is worth the listen as he rarely shows up without facts to back up his arguments. He really isn't a propoganda mouth piece as is often claimed.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
Fact is, weather will do what it wants. At the beginning of this year's hurricane season they were predicting a large number of named storms and hurricanes. So far, it's been a dud of a season. And the only reason there are as many named storms as there are is because they started naming storms that were previously just numbered.
Perhaps they should try a binary numbering system and see if that fixes the weather.
Table-ized A.I.
Similarly, with global warning, by the time the results are catastrophic, it will be too late for us to reverse the process.
If we could reverse the process, would we want to? Here's where running off with incomplete data bites you. What if some clever fella came up with a way to drop the average global temperature by 2 degrees over the next 10 years. Should he do so?
It could be that by interfering with what very well may be a normal, natural process a larger aspect of the Earth's cycles may be disrupted, thus causing more harm. That's the real problem we face here. We really don't know!
Applying solutions to problems you don't understand can be suicidal.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
All your examples are local or regional.
For the last 420,000 years, atmospheric CO2 concentration has remained in a semistable equilibrium, between 180 and 280 ppm. Since 1750 the atmospheric concentration of CO2 has risen to 367 ppm. That's a global change.
If we wanted to raise or lower sea level by a meter, could we do it? Can we stop a hurricane from destroying Lousiana, or cause some flooding to occur in northwestern Mexico that needs it? No.
I guess you're saying the planet can't be getting hotter because we can't steer hurricanes around? Our lack of fine grained control over weather events doesn't somehow imply that we have no influence over climate in general.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
I believe that man is quite capable of changing the environment. Rush does not.
I like Rush. I think he is a good political analyst and an outstanding entertainer. But on areas related to science and technology, he is clueless, and unfortunately stubbornly so (according to George Gilder in private communication with me - George is one of Rush's heroes and an adviser to him).
One of his entertaining activities is in fact to parody himself. Many of his pronouncements about his omniscience, etc, are made fully with tongue in cheek. But one science, he just doesn't get it.
An example outside of global warming is his attitude towards the use of Ritalin in the treadment of ADD. He believes it is a plot by school systems to quiet annoying kids. No doubt there is some truth to the idea that schools overdiagnose ADD and may be predisposed to do so. But what Rush denies, in strong contradiction to the facts, is that ritalin is strongly proven to help people with genuine ADD.
The only good weather is bad weather.
I have been doing some research on this topic and what is causing or changing global warming is humidity. From a previous posted Slashdot article about the global water conveyor belt I found out the reason why the earth is not as extreme as it is is because of the tempering effects of the global water conveyor. (The global water conveyor moves waters all around the world). Otherwise our climates would be more localized and extreme.
There was a stat if the humidity dropped by 30% our globe would cool down by about 5Deg C. And recently in another report I heard the same thing about the effects of humidity.
Now about a global climate change, we are due for one. One report from looking at the ice in Greenland says temperature flips every 10,000 years and we have not yet flipped in about 13,000 years. In other words we are DUE. What will happen when the global climate changes? An ice age will start that will last for a couple of thousand years.
The only folks who will really have problems are the Europeans because their climate is kept artificially warm. The rest of the world might not change much, other than get more extreme changes.
End result... Outside of removing a couple of billion people an ice age is coming...
To get some really interesting viewpoints goto google and do a search for "Great Ocean Conveyor" and a second one "Great Ocean Conveyor Ice Age". Interesting reads if you are into this stuff.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
It could be that by interfering with what very well may be a normal, natural process a larger aspect of the Earth's cycles may be disrupted, thus causing more harm. That's the real problem we face here. We really don't know!
(final emphasis mine)
You're equating two very differnt proposals here. Artificially dropping the global temperature by 2 degrees might ameliorate our own (accidental) intervention in the natural process, or it might set up a nasty backlash situation. I would agree that such an additional artificial (and probably simplistic) intervention should be looked at with extreme criticality.
Things like the Kyoto agreement are intended to get us out of the way of the natural processes. The proposition here is that (as you've pointed out) we really don't understand precisely which pandora box we've opened, but it could quite possibly be very nasty. Given that we don't understand the processes that we're accidently messing with, doesn't it make sense to work to minimize the extent to which we're messing with them?
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
> G7-conspiring-to-keep-the-poor-nations-under-their -boot
I've to admit that mentioning the G7 as an abritrary group of wealthy nations does make me sound like some conspiracy theory freak.
It's not like their conspiring. It's in the news.
The EU and the US (and other wealthy nations) are employing high-tech to close their borders. Not to "keep the poor nations under their boot", but to prevent the increasing uncontrolled imigration of poor people.
I never mention poor nations, only poor people.
> animals models is extremely valuable.
Now your touching a different area as they will have no effect on a global scale and is merely a ethical problem.
We don't have the reproduce the pros and cons on that matter.
Just a sidenote: I consider the value for a new hair shampoo or a new cosmetica somehow limited.
It's not like the majority of animal experiments are used to cure HIV.
> [...] human systems [...] have the potential to act intelligently
Well, in my opinion, this is actually the current situation. Do we act intelligently and work against the current development. Even ignoring the discussion whether it is human induced or not.
Not to mention that we're waging wars even they aren't about such elementary things like water and food.
In theory, we all could live together in peace and harmony. And as kitschy as it sounds, as inprobable it is.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
We start with working on the ideas. We start with building bridges between groups that are ready to work. We say what we think, we learn from our mistakes, and we try to include people in the process. Bootstrapping... you know.
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
Why don't you forget the sterotyped right and left viewpoints and check out the science behind global warming? The full text of various IPCC reports can be found here, and it is quite interesting. If there is such thing as scientific position, this is it.
Warning: Some ideologies on the Net are smaller than they appear.
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.
Of course, it's still there and as big as ever... it's just not newsworthy anymore.
It's the liberal's dilemma; once the scare they create has forced politicians into making policy changes, things begin to stabalize. Then five years later the conservatives point and hold it up as an example of liberal fallability.
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.