Slashdot Mirror
Global Warming To Leave North Pole Ice-Free
cwolfsheep writes "Tonight, Yahoo & AFP news are
reporting on a study, further backing up a
previous report, that suggests the North Pole will be ice-free in the summer by the next century. Oddly enough, they say the melting will not
add to the sea-level of the ocean (since the ice is already in the ocean) and that the extra water will help absorb more greenhouse gases. Maybe we need to start using more
aerosols."
The thing is, is that once all the cold surfaces (read: ice and water) get too hot, the heat will not stop there, but will start to get exponentially hotter, by then, it we have not used nanotech to slow down the solar radidation reaching earth and developed solar panels to collect energy (no oil use anymore) and build a more efficient future for ourselves, if we fail to heed the current warnings, our fragile civilization will collapse into a bunch of canibals eating each other...if the enviromental life-support system doesn't fail first and we virtually roast in the heat...like, who cares about stupid things like money and posessions if you'r dead!!!! We only have a few years before all hell breaks loose, right now, europe is roasting, what about 5 years from now???, will all the fish, wheat, and cows be dead??? Time to break out the soilent green...
Melting Glaciers everywhere Maybe when George goes back to the Texas ranch and finds it is too hot to spend time outside and then has a big drought and has to hand feed and water all his lifestock (does he have any?), that he might feel the effects of environmental abuse.
It isn't so much that climate change is new, it is just that every time it happens quickly, weather disasters and species extinctions go with it.
Eg the el nino, el nina current cycles didn't used to swap over so quickly. Things coped and survived. Now whole species are under threat along the whole west coast of South America, not to mention icons like the Great Barrier Reef
Couple quick climate change with a "mini-nuke" winter that the pentagon seem so keen on and our way of life could go the way of previous big resource hungry civilizations. Eg Egypt then Rome.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
... and the treehuggers:
Half the N-Polar icecap melting will have an effect and that effect is to decrease the salinity of the N-Atlantic. Precisely what happens when the salinity is reduced is not clear but there are strong indications it could cause shifting of the gulfstream or even cause it to stop flowing, which would cause a major cold period. Which in turn would cause the collapse of western civilization which in turn means we would be left sitting on a block of ice freezing our joysticks off.
Of course it is also possible that the followers of this teory are wrong and the evil Conservatives are right:
In that case the only effect will be the rise of sealevels, due to melting not of the N-Icecap but the Antarctica, the Greenland glacier etc. and of course it will be a great boon to the economy due to new traderoutes opening, huge untouched fish stocks to eradicate by overfishing and last but not least, lots of oil to drill. That last bit should make Dubya smile as he invades Canada to liberate its people (aka. oil) from oligarchic opression. This will in turn marginalize the southern hemesphere causing a huge global war that would cause the end of western civilization and we would be left sitting in the ruins pondering what our unborn kids will look like because our joysticks have been irradiated by nuclear weapons.
Take your pick, of course I exaggerated hugely in both cases but that is just because sarcastic ranting is one of my numerous human weaknesses. In the end nobody knows exactly what global warming will lead to because the mechanisms involved are so increadibly complex. Of course that stops nether the Scientists from pretending that their little theory explains everyting nor does it stop the Conservatives and capitalists from gleefully expecting global warming to free up new resources for them to exploit. Myself? I expect them both to be disappointed.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
And I have hard time believing that if northern ice cap melts, also southern ice cap won't get smaller (and that will rise sea level)...
well the planet does a funny thing... when it's summer in the northern hemi... it's... get this... WINTER in the southern hemisphere!
can you believe it!
What else will these liberals come up with!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Maybe we need to start using more aerosols. Maybe we best stop trying to pass off unproven theories such a global warming as proven fact.
Dawn of the Dead
Why are we not freaking out about this??
... their own mortality, if nothing else).
Because it happens natually no matter what we do. It's happened many times in the past, and will happen again and again until our solar system itself dies...
Perhaps, but I think it has far more to do with our capacity for living in denial. It really isn't just a river in Egypt, it is something we all do, almost all of the time.
Whether it is Republicans denying they stole an election, Democrats denying their political incompetence and lack of backbone in recent years, Arabs denying their own complicity and causation of the vast majority of their own probems despite unprecedented wealth flowing into their pockets, Israelis denying their cruelty to Palastinians, Palistinians denying their cruelty to Israelis, Europeans denying their incompetence at handling world affairs (remember their less-than-impressive track record in stopping the Genocide of Yugoslavia), Black Americans denying their own responsibility for many of their problems, white Americans denying the very real, continued existence of racism amongst the fringes of their own kind (all too often finding those fringes in positions of significant power and influence), or Americans in general denying their incompetence in handling world affairs (Somalia, Liberia, Ruwanda, Iran, Iraq, N. Korea, Libya, etc), or all of us in the developed world denying the very real and negative impact of our conspicuous consumption upon the environment which sustains us, we are all, each of us, engaged in any of several acts of denial practically every waking moment of our lives. (If I haven't hit on one of your pet denials and thereby both offended you and illustrated my point, then perhaps you can think of something else someone once said to you that made you react in a very knee-jerk, defensive, and probably highly emotional manner. I doubt there is anyone alive who isn't living in denial of something
Denial seems to be one human trait that transcends cultural, political, ethnic, religious, and philisophical differences, and it should come as no surprise to anyone that those who do not wish, for whatever reason, to believe we could be altering our environment to our own great detriment will happilly deny it is happening, or spin it as either "this isn't such a bad thing" or "it would have happened anyway."
Historically, those who point out things we don't want to accept tend to be killed, imprisoned, or at the very least ignored. Rejecting unpleasant facts is, at the end of the day, a very human thing to do, reality notwithstanding. To our credit, we do as a species tend to accept and confront unpleasantness at some point. When we do it in time, we tend to address the problems and our civilizations tend to flourish. When we do it too late, our problems tend to address us and our civilisations fall into ruin. It will be interesting to see which is the case here, whether it is Global Warming, or any of a host of other issues which confront us, and which we studiously try to avoid, ignore, or deny.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy