Slashdot Mirror
Good News on Global Warming
TheSync writes "OK, CO2 levels are rising, but iAfrica has a report that atmospheric methane concentrations are leveling off. Methane is the second most important greenhouse gas, accounting for one fifth of total warming. Researchers don't know why this is."
'nuff said.
dry diet make cow constipated? me no-know!
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
Time Capsule From the Future Appears
WASHINGTON - A time capsule appeared today in an astonishing moment directly on the front steps of a federal court house here in the D.C. area. When authorities opened the capsule, a three items were neatly bundled together: a printout of an article from iAfrica.com published in late 2003, a paper describing a scientific study performed an astonishing 50 years from now, and a memo addressed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The memo requests that the Supreme Court re-open environmental laws that attempt to reduce greenhouse emissions around the world. The memo goes on to cite the attached scientific paper which says that eliminating the greenhouse effect caused the earth's atmosphere to thinned out so much that space debris now [50 years from now] reigns down around the planet almost constantly. The memo states that the thinning out of the atmosphere was due to a connection between greenhouse gases and the density of the atmosphere at its highest levels.
A brief review of the scientific paper shows that scientists knew of the connection early on, but environmentallist groups penetrated the scientific study panels and had the notion dismissed as a feeble attempt to thwart progress. Later history showed environmentallist groups stating that they did not knowingly hide such connections, but that were aware that some individual may have done so, and in any case, such action should not place the blame for the failures on their organizations.
Similar capsules appeared in other locations around the world, but mass riots suddenly appeared and the capsules were destroyed before their contents could be examined.
Researchers don't know why this is.
Seems to me they don't understand much about the whole thing, really. We keep hering about global warming, yet the winters here have been colder and colder. And that's not counting the surge of floods lately in Europe.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
The problem with all this is that scientists are NOT united in accepting that man is responsible for the temperature going up. Small things like volanic emissions and the variability of the sun have MAJOR affect on our environment.
Things just aren't THAT simple!
Have you compiled your kernel today??
...stocks in Beano have jumped 225% on reports of record sales last quarter...
(no, not really)
The problem with all this is that scientists are NOT united in accepting that man is responsible for the temperature going up.
Yes, but if we reduce our greenhouse gas emissions anyway, we certainly can't be blamed if it does turn out that we are responsible. Think of it as somewhat-overzealous prevention. It can't hurt the environment.
But it can severely harm economies.. Even Russia announced it wouldn't sign up to the Koyoto protocols this week for that very reason.
Before we know what we're doing - know why we're taking the action.
Have you compiled your kernel today??
I thought the first/second (depends on who you ask) most important gas for greenhouse purposes was good old H2O water vapour.
Pathman, Free (as in GPL) 3D Pac Man
Researchers don't know why this is.
Right. And until they have a solid, convincing theory to account for this 'why', then we've only got (at best) a correlation between the two events - this does not necessarily mean there is a causal relationship between them.
Trouble is, this is such a politicized issue that I doubt we'll ever see any scientific evidence that everyone will consider convincing (for one side or the other).
I'm not so concerned with the global warming/cooling. I think that all sane people will agree that it is now cooler than when the dinosaurs roamed the earth, warmer than the mini-ice age.
What I am concerned about, however, are things like mercury in fish, which acts as a neurotoxin in humans that eat it.
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy!
As for why researchers don't understand why the atmospheric level of methane has stopped rising it's probably because they haven't been able to keep track of all the leaky pipelines, outgassing landfills, decaying swamps, farting cattle, and other sources of methane which constitute the sum total of all methane emissions. Then again, nobody has toted up the money for this to be done.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Lots of the ways we use fuel are simply idiotic. A dollar spent on insulation can save much more than that in natural gas over as little as ten years, and there are many other examples of savings which come free or even pay you back after you consider the reduction in expenditures for fuel. Hybrid cars pay off after 60,000 miles or so (4-5 years) at current pump prices; if you consider the cost of protecting Middle East supplies as part of the full cost of auto fuel it would be less than 2 years. Notice that I haven't mentioned "environmental externalities" yet.
The "energy intensity" of industrialized economies has been falling steadily for decades, and continues to fall. Every year we need less and less fuel to make a dollar's worth of economic output. What's wrong with trying to accelerate this trend, if we have worthwhile things to gain from it?
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
I would but I don't have points today.
Less methane around to heat things up....this is A Good Thing for sure. Is Global Warming a real problem? The evidence that it is a problem is becoming undeniable. Even though the scientific evidence is not 100% certain, there is a great deal of evidence that global warming is happening, and the scientific community has made this clear many times over. See here and here for references. Much of the so-called uncertainty in this area (so far as the public and public policy is concerned) originates from the work of "scientists" such as S. Fred Singer, who are funded in large measure by oil companies and the PACs that represent them in Washington. A close look reveals that thier work has not stood up under intensive peer review, and is thus not taken seriously by the scientific community as a whole; Singer's work is useful only in that it gives industry and thier pet politicians a way to keep the wool pulled over the public's eyes.
A more pressing problem that receives far too little attention is the issue of overpopulation. The ecological, economic, and social problems that will be caused by the uncontrolled growth of the human population have the potential to make global warming look like a walk in the park.
.....just my $0.02
Don't Panic!
Historic volcanic eruptions can't even compete with human emissions of sulfur dioxide. That's how important we are. (If you don't believe me, look at DOE and EPA figures for sulfur emissions vs. recent volcanic eruptions like Pinatubo or El Chicon. If you actually think rather than hold blindly to an ideology, you will find it sobering.)
And you use this as a reason to continue a vast, uncontrolled experiment with possibly dire consequences. Why?An analogy is to claim that you ought to glue yourself into a winter coat because it was cold last month. If it turns out to be hot tomorrow (solar activity continues to increase), the coat (extra greenhouse gases) could kill you from heatstroke. This is the kind of risk we're taking.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
First, Kyoto did not require dramatic decreases in anything. A small reduction like 10% could be easily accomplished just by moving all new motor vehicles to hybrid technology, no other changes required. If you added some common-sense measures such as best-practice insulation standards in all building codes, you could take an even bigger whack out of emissions related to space heating and cooling (50% is fairly easy).
Second, some large improvements are easily accessible. If you combined an acid-rain abatement program with efficiency improvements and mandated that all old coal-fired powerplants be either retired or repowered with integrated-gasification combined-cycle plants, you'd boost efficiency from 30-33% to around 40%. This would give you a reduction in CO2 emissions between 20 and 25% per unit of electricity. It's been done; check this.
My beef with Bush is that he's obviously a pawn of the industrial interests. We created a regulatory regime for reducing pollution, but existing plants were grandfathered in and not required to do anything until they were replaced or upgraded. Industry's response was to game the system, failing to build new plants and claiming that their changes to old ones never met the requirements for having to clean them up. If you want to look at negative effects on the economy, think of all the employment that would have been generated in construction if those mandates had instead been on a timetable with no exceptions and those plants had been scrubbed, replaced or re-powered.
Bush's slimy acquiescence to the polluters is particularly galling to me, as I live in a state where the game fish are so loaded with mercury (mostly from coal-fired powerplants) that eating them steadily can cause acute mercury poisoning even in an adult. I don't even want to think what is happening to children (who are far more sensitive to heavy-metal poisoning), and when I see Bush touting his efforts on their behalf all I can think is "what a fucking liar".
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
My question is, what fuel do we go to?
Solar?
Not quite effiecent enough yet for mass use, nor is it available in high enough quantities on demand. Here in Southern California, we could probably start switching, but we do still get cloudy days and night. And batteries are not going to work unless they are massive, and wonderfully toxic.
Hydrogen?
Where do you plan to get that hydrogen from? The best idea I've heard so far is cracking sea water, so where do we get the enegry to crack sea water? This is the one place solar could step up, but there still may be a problem with supply versus demand. And yes, we could try and reduce demand. And I could try and get my alarm clock replaced with Angelina Joline giving me a blow job every morning to wake me up; some things in this world just aren't going to happen. The US people are just too used to being able to consume at current levels, getting them to go back, en mass, is about as likely as me getting my alarm clock replacement.
Nuclear?
This is my favorite, but its been so vilified by the same people calling for a change in energy production, that it can't even get off the ground. Not to mention that, in the US, the use of reactors to re-use the spent fuel rods from normal fission reactors has been outlawed, due to plutonium production fears. So we get left with some really toxic end products, that have to be stored. As for radiation, nuclear is no worse than the crap left over from a coal fire plant.
I would love to see us get off forgien oil, we could then tell the entire middle east to go screw itself, let them kill each other, and enjoy the nice glow once Isreal gets backed into a corner and nukes the place. It would solve so many of the world's current problems.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
Everything has a cost.
Our current sci-tech industries rely on decent financial backing to do research and development. If we do not have money for R&D, we will never find a more efficient energy source.
Where does the money come from if economies are destroyed because of greens?
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
If you are sitting around waiting for 100% consensus that global warming is purely anthropogenic, make sure that you've got the Library of Congress handy to read while you wait. It'll never happen. The sun, volcanoes, and other natural sources have an effect, for sure, just the same as man's machines do.
My point is that a huge number of the best scientific minds on the planet have clearly stated that the planet is getting hotter due to anthopogenic influence on the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Read the evidence for yourself--there are hundreds of scientific papers on this subject available on line, at no cost. A few Google searches will turn up tons of raw data and information, as well as analysis, both pro and con.
On the other hand, for those that would to prefer to stick thier heads in the sand, go right ahead.
Don't Panic!
That said, there are a lot of places where other sources of energy could fit in if we designed our systems flexibly enough to accomodate them. For instance, cheap concentrating solar could supply energy to hybrid cars on an as-available basis, cutting emissions of CO2 and all related pollutants in the bargain. You don't need to get fancy when simple will do; doubling efficiency and substituting for half of the remaining demand yields a 75% reduction, and those figures are definitely within reach with stuff we could make today. That's just one of many things that are feasible right now.
Why can't we buy this stuff off the shelf? Inertia and politics, I guess.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Where does your life come from if economies are destroyed because of conservatives?
Or:
Where does the money come from if economies are destroyed because of conservatives letting companies ship jobs overseas?
This is America, damnit. Speak Spanish!
>yet the winters here
You must be an American.
That's not (intentionally) an insult - allow me to explain. You have to think globally not "where I live". People in America also wonder why most people in the world do not speak English, or why countries fight border wars. It's a result of culture that's used to dominating others, exporting their culture, and simply not having the inter-state history that Europe, Asia and even Africa has had over thousands of years.
Some places will get colder, and some places will get warmer. What's important is the AVERAGE worldwide temperature.
Try this:
Fill a metal pot with cold water. Let it settle so there is no kinetic energy in the water that is due to your pouring motion.
Then put a few drops of warm food coloring in the water. What happens?
Does the coloring immediately mix, or does it travel in currents? Will some places be more "colored" than others?
This analogy falls down a bit when you consider the fact that color simply accumulates... keep adding coloring, and eventually the color contrast is so weak you cannot distinguish the patterns (where on Earth some of that heat energy will dissipate, either by animal/plant life , space radiation or simply soaking into our massive oceans and the earth's crust. This is an obvious difference... but this is Slashdot so one must point it out).
Global warming means greater ocean currents, although desalination of the ocean will throw a monkey wrench in that.
Moisture will carry massive snow accumulation to places where little snow normally falls... while in other places glacier will melt.
What *usually* gets Americans motivated is the threat of TAXES. Convince them that "global warming" leads to higher taxes, and they'll kick out the politicians (who are really puppets of OPEC anyways).
How does global warming lead to US taxes? Well, how high above sea level is Washington DC, St. Louis, Boston, Manhattan, and all of Florida?
Not much higher.
How much would Netherlands-style "land reclaiming" efforts cost the US taxpayers? Trillions. And it wouldn't be effective.
Most of the US population lives within storm flood range of a good hurricane. That's a lot of work for FEMA!
When you let the same corporations that CAUSE this damage, in turn advertise on the news (or OUTRIGHT BUY networks!) I guess you can't blame the American voter public. How could they ever see through the corporate news propoganda?
Interesting, I've read several reports (here and here) discussing that there will be too little oil for global warming. According to the stories all of the petroleum reserves will run out before the atmosphere heats up enough to have any effect. I guess this just goes to show that atmospheric chemistry isn't always an exact science.
Depends upon what you consider hurt. Wildlife starving in a harsh winter seems hurtful to me.
I support global warming and I'd like to see a lot more of it.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Good news on global warming? Sorry, good news is strictly forbidden. Even if there was bona fide good news with 100% scientific accuracy, such reports should still be repressed or discredited, in order to further our agenda. This is a media war we're fighting folks, and even though Russia just made the decision a few days ago not to cripple its economy in order to comply with Kyoto, we still have to try hard, everywhere.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Hybrid cars pay off after 60,000 miles or so (4-5 years) at current pump prices
Will I be able to tow a loaded cattle trailer with that hybrid car? Will it even be powerful enough to pull a small (loaded) U-Haul trailer away from college?
It's good that experiments are being done in finding alternatives to fossil fuels, but for now all these cars are are experiments. They aren't a solution yet (they'll never become a solution without people buying them to fund more R&D to make them better, but I can't afford to waste money on an underpowered undersized golf cart of a car).
Lastly, I don't want to buy a hybrid car because of all the electronics on it that I'm unable to repair because there aren't proper manuals for them. If the car I drive tears up, I can fix it. Once it's fixed, it'll run until something else breaks, and this process can be repeated forever. All types of new vehicles are more akin to fashion trends than investments. They really don't make them like they used to.
OK, here's the basic rundown:
The term "Global warming" is a stalking horse that the pro-pollution crowd uses to manipulate the media, and thus public perception.
When I last heard the man who coined the term speak, about a decade ago, he bemoaned that he'd ever said it. He wishes he'd said "global climate destabilization" instead - but too late now, as witness this thread.
He says (roughly quoted from memory) "the issue is not temperature per se, it's the decreased albedo of the planet resultant from increased carbon in the atmosphere causing more energy to be absorbed by the planet and its atmosphere. This does not mean that your house gets warmer, it means that weather patterns (which are chaotic) become more energetic, and thus less predictable. Your house may in fact get dramatically colder, or a tornado may destroy it and make the point moot."
Instead of getting your knickers in a twist over mean ocean temperature rises, and what rivers are or are not freezing, look at the problem simply and rationally.
We, that is, human beings and the other denizens of this planet, evolved to survive in an ecosystem that cycled a certain amount of unbreathable crap through the atmosphere. That amount being variable within a certain range, not fixed.
We, that is, human beings and our industry, have vastly increased the amount of unbreathable crap being pumped into our air. (Of course, the Clean Air Act drastically altered this trend, and since these things take time we can theorise that the current stabilisation might have something to do with that. Or maybe not.)
So, we are shitting where we eat, to misuse a folksy metaphor - how can that possibly be a good idea?
People need to stop arguing about stupid pseudo-scientific buzzphrases, put down the olean chips, and try walking their lardy asses somewhere instead of driving. And buy electric lawnmowers, or better yet give up that whole 1950s yard ideal.
...Gaia farted.
It lasted 150 years before it finished coming out (good arse!) but now it's finally over. It probably belongs in the "Silent But Violent" class since nobody heard anything, apparently.
CO2 levels are rising
She held her breath, duh. Who doesn't, when they let loose a big one?
The important thing about global warming isn't an average increase in average temperatures and the melting of the ice caps. Rather, it's the increased availability of energy in the atmosphere causing so-called Super Storms, widespread disruption of historical weather patterns, and eventually a collapse of the large scale convection that been keeping the climate so temperate for the past several thousand years.
As for your colder winters... as energy is pumped into the jet stream it takes a higher amplitude curve, carrying colder polar air further towards the equator than it normally does. So, yeah, colder winters are not unexpected
Anyway, until some money gets thrown at studies doing something besides trying to link human activities to global warming, we're never going to know to what extent these changes are just part of the normal ice age cycle... and totally beyond our control, or even ability to effect.
Simple Machines in Higher Dimensions
Oh, well, when you put it that way obviously it's our patriotic duty to pump as much toxic shit into the atmosphere as possible!
I mean, if all scientists everywhere united in accepting that man is responsible, why, we'd have to do something about it! That makes perfect sense!
And equally obviously if even one hydrocephalic dwarf funded by William Morris says there is the tiniest bit of doubt, we all must buy Humvees and go mud-boggin'!!
So, clearly, it IS that simple, as you yourself have demonstrated.
Or, just maybe... YOU are simple?
"Although we can't be certain why methane concentrations have levelled out, we think it is in response to emissions declining due to better management of the exploration and use of fossil fuels and the increasing recovery of landfill methane.
"If this global decline in methane emissions continues, global atmospheric methane concentrations will start to fall."
The stabilizing of methane concentrations is great news! However, I think that it is overly optimistic to assume they will stay stable.
First, the authors of the article admit they don't understand why concentrations have leveled off. We are not very good at determining methane emission inventories, because they aren't nearly as easy to track as carbon based fuels. Cows emit different amounts of methane if they are grass or corn fed, rice paddies are hard to monitor, there are many poorly understood natural sources like wetlands and warming tundra, etc. And the methane sink is hard to calculate, since it is a chemical reaction depending on temperature and hydroxyl radical concentrations, and we cannot directly measure OH radicals so those are very uncertain. So our estimates of emissions are uncertain by a factor of 2 or more.
So when we see a pause in concentration increase, it is possible that it is due to long term structural changes in our economies (optimistic view).
But I actually think it is due to the collapse of the Russian economy, since leaking Russian pipelines were a major source of methane, and with their disuse of course methane emissions dropped. But this is a one-time drop, I would expect other sources to continue to increase in the absence of major policy actions... (Pessimistic view)
Or it could be some other complicated interaction. So I say, good news but hold on before assuming that the good news will continue...
Scientists might not be united that humans are the cause of global warming, but the U.S. government head atmospheric scientists are.
What's interesting with the idea that the increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere come from volcanoes is that it's pretty hard to get past Ockham's razor with the idea that volcanic emissions of carbon dioxide were flat over the last 10,000 years and then suddenly demonstrated exponential growth in the last century, in direct proportion to human use of fossil fuels. It's possible, but it strains the general mode of scientific inference.
Similarly, it's hard to explain the cycle of Pleistocene ice ages if you don't include modulation of greenhouse warming caused by changing CO2 and CH4 levels as an amplifier of Milankovich forcing. It would be possible to invoke volcanoes and solar fluctuations, but there is hard data that demonstrates the variation of atmospheric CO2 and CH4 in synch with the Milankovich cycles and there's no evidence that volcanoes and solar brightness were similarly synchronized, nor any plausible reason why they should have been.
So, milder winters will be good for heating bills and deaths from excess cold in places like the northern US, Siberia, etc.
On the other hand, hotter summers will be bad anywhere that isn't prepared for it: cf France, India this year.
Melting glaciers have killed thousands in Peru. Change in precipitation patterns will cause problems for farmers (while making some land that wasn't arable before arable). Changes in sea level will cause the loss of homes for millions.
As far as wildlife is concerned: they were adapted to whatever the "baseline" climate in their region was. They can adapt/migrate to new climates, given time, but projections show that the difference between the temperature at the end of this century and today will be more than half the temperature difference between the last Ice Age and today (and I'm talking the real Ice Age, not the little one in the 1800s). That's a lot of temperature change, very fast.
To sum up: the costs and benefits of a 4 degree warming might, in the equilibrium case, come close to balancing out. But the process of warming is going to cause a heck of a lot of pain for a lot of people, until they adapt/migrate, and that is going to cost a heck of a lot to the economy. So it makes sense to put in some greenhouse gas emissions constraints that will cause some harm to the economy, hopefully at the right level such that the marginal benefit of emitting an additional ton of greenhouse gas will be equal to the damage prevented from the warming that ton would cause... (ie, halting all production: bad. Burning fossil fuels like mad: also bad. We want something in between!)
Half the biological methane emissions come from termites. Fewer trees == fewer termite farts. Any questions?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Does anyone remember a little article posted on slashdot a few weeks ago? Some scientists re-examined the data used in the study that forms the basis of the UN's climate policy. They found that the original authors of that study pretty much made up data and massaged the rest to come up with their conclusions. These scientists used the same methods on the same data, WITHOUT all of the data manipulation and found that while the 20th century was indeed slightly warmer than the 19th century, it is far from the warmest in the past 500 years. I see numerous studies showing that global warming is a farce. For instance, it was much warmer 1000 years ago, which was what allowed the Vikings to colonize Greenland. Hell, just look at the name. There isn't much green in Greenland these days. I saw another study that shows a direct correlation between solar influx and global temperatures.
The problem with this global warming theory is that it is rapidly becoming dogma and any "heretics" are figuratively burned at the stake for having dissenting views. It is preached as truth when in fact it is mostly based on flawed data and computer simulations. Creation theory practically has more hard data behind it than global warming.
Now, that's not to say I wouldn't like to see some reduction of emissions from fossil fuels. The way it is now seems wasteful to me. But if we blindly follow the environmentalists, we'll be reduced to squatting in ditches, poking berries up our noses. I'd personally like to see a move to nuclear energy and a hydrogen-based economy, but if and when that happens, the environmentalists will probably find a way to bitch about that too.
[from Science 302, 1719-1723 (2003)]
Modern Global Climate Change
Thomas R. Karl1 and Kevin E. Trenberth2
Modern climate change is dominated by human influences, which are now large enough to exceed the bounds of natural variability. The main source of global climate change is human-induced changes in atmospheric composition. These perturbations primarily result from emissions associated with energy use, but on local and regional scales, urbanization and land use changes are also important. Although there has been progress in monitoring and understanding climate change, there remain many scientific, technical, and institutional impediments to precisely planning for, adapting to, and mitigating the effects of climate change. There is still considerable uncertainty about the rates of change that can be expected, but it is clear that these changes will be increasingly manifested in important and tangible ways, such as changes in extremes of temperature and precipitation, decreases in seasonal and perennial snow and ice extent, and sea level rise. Anthropogenic climate change is now likely to continue for many centuries. We are venturing into the unknown with climate, and its associated impacts could be quite disruptive.
1 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Climatic Data Center, Satellite and Information Services, 151 Patton Avenue, Asheville, NC, 28801-5001, USA.
2 National Center for Atmospheric Research, Post Office Box 3000, Boulder, CO 80307, USA.
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: Thomas.R.Karl@noaa.gov
The atmosphere is a global commons that responds to many types of emissions into it, as well as to changes in the surface beneath it. As human balloon flights around the world illustrate, the air over a specific location is typically halfway around the world a week later, making climate change a truly global issue.
Planet Earth is habitable because of its location relative to the sun and because of the natural greenhouse effect of its atmosphere. Various atmospheric gases contribute to the greenhouse effect, whose impact in clear skies is 60% from water vapor, 25% from carbon dioxide, 8% from ozone, and the rest from trace gases including methane and nitrous oxide (1). Clouds also have a greenhouse effect. On average, the energy from the sun received at the top of the Earth's atmosphere amounts to 175 petawatts (PW) (or 175 quadrillion watts), of which 31% is reflected by clouds and from the surface. The rest (120 PW) is absorbed by the atmosphere, land, or ocean and ultimately emitted back to space as infrared radiation (1). Over the past century, infrequent volcanic eruptions of gases and debris into the atmosphere have significantly perturbed these energy flows; however, the resulting cooling has lasted for only a few years (2). Inferred changes in total solar irradiance appear to have increased global mean temperatures by perhaps as much as 0.2C in the first half of the 20th century, but measured changes in the past 25 years are small (2). Over the past 50 years, human influences have been the dominant detectable influence on climate change (2). The following briefly describes the human influences on climate, the resulting temperature and precipitation changes, the time scale of responses, some important processes involved, the use of climate models for assessing the past and making projections into the future, and the need for better observational and information systems.
The main way in which humans alter global climate is by interference with the natural flows of energy through changes in atmospheric composition, not by the actual generation of heat in energy usage. On a global scale, even a 1% change in the energy flows, which is the order of the estimated change to date (2), dominates all other direct influences humans have on climate. For example, an energy output of just one PW is equivalent to that of a million power stations of 1000-MW capacity, among the largest in the world. Total human energy use is abo
Gee the last time I commented on this I was modded troll. I'll have to do better, perhaps this time double troll.
Before I even read down to the part where people are claiming it's warming, it's cooling, it's your fault, no it's yours...
Fsck all of you.
If the evidence shows that things are changing I don't give a rat's ass who was responsible. I do want to know what the most reasonable estimates are on the results and it would even be nice if they started thinking on how to correct things.
As an added bonus, yes toss in the various disaster scenario's and just for giggles, perhaps an off the cuff estimate on the odd's of things going that badly. Even though I know the odds are very very low it's interesting and I might need interesting if I can't go out because it's to hot and humid or to cold and dry.
Excuse me while I convince the keepers I need much more thorazine...
Ward
. Silence! Be thankful thy species is unpalatable! .
The reason is there's something called the carbon cycle and it describes how carbon moves from plants to animals to the atmosphere and oceans and back into plants. Any methane in the atmosphere got there because an animal ate plants. Those plants got that carbon from the atmosphere. All that has happened is that carbon which was originally in the atmosphere got back there where it will eventually be degraded back into carbon dioxide and water by completely natural processes -- processes which speed up when methane concentrations increase.
Methane is a big smoke screen for the REAL problem -- we are digging up HUGE amounts of carbon out of the earth and burning it as fossil fuels. Methane dosn't hold a candle to the REAL problem, it just distracts attention from it.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
Global warming is good science. People who work with this stuff as a career (and who don't have ulterior motives because they are funded by the oil and gas companies) find that there really is a lot of good, real evidence for it.
The case of the temperatures in the 1600s isn't as cut and dried as you think. The critics misunderstood the data.
It's really quite well established scientifically that human activity has affected recent global temperatures. Just because we don't have reliable satellite data going back sevral hundred years dosn't mean we shouldn't us what information w do have.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
But don't take my word for it, this is according to a paper published in Science today.
Next, take a look at a globe, if you know what that is; where you come from, maps of US may be all you have
Sorry. There are globes & world maps in classrooms all over the US, and even in stores that the leftists think only knuckle-dragging Neanderthals visit (Wal-Mart, dollar stores, etc.). Sure, they might not beable to identify the country you're from (it's probably smaller than all but the New England states, so it's probably not an easy pick), but I would certainly say that anyone that's made it to even 5th or 6th grade in the shitty inner city schools know what a fucking globe is.
Earth isn't the only planet in this solar system that shows a warming trend. Mars is also warming. Did humans sneak over to mars and pollute that planet too? :-)
I play Nerd-Folk!
The half life of methane in the atmosphere is seven years; it has never been a serious problem as far as global warming is concerned because if we produce too much of it, we can stop whatever is causing it and things will return to normal fairly quickly. The same is true for particulates.
The problem with atmospheric CO2 is that its half life is nearly 200 years. Whatever we emit now, we are going to be stuck with for a long time. Once the concentration of atmospheric CO2 causes dangerous increases in global temperature (and we will reach that point sooner or later), there is absolutely nothing we can do: we will have to live with increased temperatures for decades.
How can global warming have stopped when McBride is still spouting so much hot air?
--
I'll go back to sleep now, or maybe work someone choose for me
Thanks for bringing up volcanoes!
Hehe...(I love this one) in regard to volcanoes:
This has got to be the dumbest idea in regard to global warming that talk radio ever latched on to (although there is plenty of worthy competition). It's a great idea, in so much as it sounds plausible to the uninformed, but now if only it were true!
So even aside from the strong theoretical link between volcanoes and global cooling, and aside from the actual data from recent volcanic eruptions that actually show measurably diminished temperatures afterwards, let's put all that aside and reason through this a bit...
Since we know temperatures are rising rapidly, and since for the sake of this exercise we're assuming it's caused by volcanoes, then there must have been more volcanic eruptions since 1850 than in the last few hundred thousand years. Since we have historical accounts of volcanic eruptions from all over the globe, usually back to long before 1850, and since recent volcanic eruptions typically leave pretty clear marks on the geologic record, we can compare recent volcanic activity (which me assume must be very high), and volcanic activity in the past.
If you sit down and do such an analysis it will show that over the long term volcanic activity has been fairly steady state, with the last hundred years being a bit lower than the previous hundred years. In other words, there is absolutely no longer term correlation between climate and volcanic activity, and the transient effect on climate is to slightly decrease temperature.
It's remotely possible that somehow we're missing all the volcanic activity, such as their being a recent huge increase in the number of small volcanoes that science hasn't noticed, or that some sort of new type of volcano -- previously unknown to science despite a century of careful observations and exceptionally sensitive equipment -- is by some novel mechanism causing all the CO2 flux, but such an idea is unlikely to get much sympathy as a) there's zero evidence for it, and b) it's a hypothesis artificially constructed solely to protect an idealogical viewpoint and thus isn't science.
So much for the volcano hypothesis. Next...
Now I know I scored a direct hit. The parent post was obviously forwarded to one of the right-wing slashdotter clearing houses where you pool your mod points. Now I see that you've posted a mod shadow on me.
Excellent.
You could pay me no higher compliment. It means I'm effective against your abusive and misleading rhetoric. I knew my skill at seeing directly through bullshit would come to some use. I love the taste of right-winger mod points. If you're using them against me then there are that many fewer of your points to go around. Keep 'em coming. You make my heart swell with pride.
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
...as they didn't take into account this small piece of VERY important data.
Recently published, definitive research shows that human workweek activity causes significant temperature variations, so there's no denying that we're an immediate factor in our climate. The 1990s were the hottest decade in history, featuring the majority of history's top 10 hottest years, despite the many cold winters. Other symptoms are droughts, floods, high winds, more/stronger tornadoes, etc. It's obvious that the climate is becoming more chaotic, twistier and less predictable, even if "warming" is only one component of the dynamic environment. We're not looking for culprits blame, or we'd be going after the devil that sends us volcanoes with their greenhouse plumes. No, we're looking for the factors that we *can* control, like emissions. Because if we don't exercise self control, the deadly emerging climate will control *us* into extinction. Unless you're getting checks from a coal plant you're protecting, get with the program and help stop them from killing the sky first, and then you a bit later.
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make install -not war
I remember the extreme clarity of the skys in the days immediatly following 9/11/2001. I live in Columbus Ohio near a medium size airport. I was amazed at how clear the skys were after the stoppage of all air travel.
If clear skys relate to energy/heat loss into space and clear skys were noticed after airline stoppage, what would you guess a major component of global warming could be?
dzimmerm
Jumping to correct solutions slowly is better than jumping to incorrect solutions quickly.
Well, I could point out the end-proterozoic super-glaciation, where Ice cover seems to have reached >90% of the planet several times, or the Late Cretaceous greenhouse, with sea levels ~200m higher than today's. Ice caps are quite unusual for the planet over geological time.