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Old School Data Mining, Maritime Style?
jason0000042 writes "The BBC is reporting on Cliwoc, the Climatological Database for the World's Oceans, which pulls data about climate change from 18th and 19th Century sailing ships' logbooks. It's like a window in time that could help us better understand global climate change, if they can decipher the olde timey language of the 1750's. Personally, I can't wait to know if we're going to melt down, or alternatively, have an ice age."
Nowe we canne fynde oute about the Dragons and mighty Sea-Serpents alsoe. I, for Onne, can't Waite to fynde oute if they melted down, or what.
for great justice
No doubt this data will be used to support the trendy global warming fad. The same data will be used to support the global cooling fad when the cycle runs its course and global cooling becomes vogue before 2010.
What we need is not mining per se, but just a set of best-practices for improving REPORTING and OBSERVING of weather conditions and communicating these findings ACCURATELY to the public
I worked on a grant for the NWS (National Weather Service) and as such have logged thousands of hours doing computer science-based research into weather prediction formulas and the general practices for consumer/weather relations.
The weather IS getting warmer, and this is based on fact. December to February is much warmer, and overnight temperatures are much hotter as well, but that may simply be due to the flock from suburbs into city communities. I read online somewhere that "by 2025, 65% of the world's population will be living in urban centers."
But there is no FINAL SOLUTION to whether this is global warming or just standard run-of-the-mill temperature variations.
You know what the weather is going to be? Look for some extreme shit, like flooding and more earthquakes, huge temperature swings and drought, coastline erosion, and crazy shit like that. Watch out for thunderstorms and hurricanes in future decades. Things are getting VERY interesting.
My time with the NWS was well-spent and I got paid well and did some interesting research that you can see on your local news/weather station (AccuWeather technologies, etc.). I can plot weather in real-time 3D using 24-bit color, and do it smoothly.
Weather is VERY important, and I support this new research as much as anything else out there. And I KNOW what I'm talking about, though I do mostly database research these days and not math-based geometric modeling of weather patterns.
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
Did anyone read that as "Old School Data Mining, MARTIAN Style?"
I pictured rovers being smashed into a database.
welcomm our new antique spelling overlords. I have muche to learne.
Infuriate left and right
Ye landlubbers will never find me gold, no matter how hard ye search me logs!
I'll keel-haul ye varmits!
-Blackbeard
Free your ecomony and enact the FairTax
Personally, I can't wait to know if we're going to melt down, or alternatively, have an ice age.
Unfortunatelly the data sample being studied is insufficient to give you an answer for two main reasons:
1. The data is more complete for the Atlantic Ocean. A big chunk of the Pacific Ocean is left out simply because the most interesting travel routes were concentrated on the South Pacific.
2. 100 years of weather records are insufficient to make accurate predictions of global climate patterns.
I, for once, would be grateful if /. editors and contributors refrained of making comments like these in the stories.
R.if they can decipher the olde timey language of the 1750's.
I'll help bridge the language gap in words all slashdotters can understand
Yar! Shiver me timbers matey, there be a seaman on the poop deck = first post, nautical style!
Avast me scurvys = why the hell didn't we bring any women on this 12 week voyage? My nuts feel like cannonballs!
Could just be a normal cycle in the earth long term weather. We are still technically in an ice age after all. The world has been much hotter than it is today and warming over the past couple of centuries does not necessarily mean the end of the world.
I previously read that old ships logs were being used to gain a picture of how the earths magnetic fields are changing.
The web site indicates that they are now looking at wind speed. Anyone have any idea of the acuracy of these measurements that were taken between 1750 and 1850?
Where law ends, tyranny begins -- William Pitt
Let's do both!
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
Expedition to Tanzania seeks clues about ancient climate
http://www.smu.edu/newsinfo/releases/99355a.html
Hunt is on for ancient 'global warming' documents
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_787743.html
Actually, current models look like we're going to get both.
The basic gyst is that the warming melts Greenland. This diverts the gulf stream; plunging Europe into an Ice Age. [It also cools the NE of North America, but Europe really gets it.]
The average temperature is rising, that doesn't mean it's getting warmer everywhere.
This is not a political statement. This is not legal advice. It's a frick'n Slasdot post. However: I'm Running For
...the current data being collected by Volunteer Observing Ships today. See: http://www.etl.noaa.gov/programs/oceanobs/ for details. Basically the program combines physical data with old fashioned observation.
Can someone explain to me how this works? I understand the part about fresh water from melting glaciers disrupting the gulf stream current and lowering temperatures in Europe, but wouldn't it be self-regulating? After all, once the northern climes cool down, the glaciers stop melting and start advancing again, the water becomes saltier and the gulf stream comes back. Or is there some mechanism that might block the return of the gulf stream?
Januarye 17, 1787
Anchored at Shanghai bye night, traded opium for much filver, failing for Hong Kong on the tide. Temperature 65.
Januarye 21, 1787
Anchored at Hong Kong, but were vifited by cuftomef officialf. Snuck up a river by night to fell more opium to chinefe for silver. Got very nice candelabra for the wife. Temperature 61.
January 24, 1787
Macau not welcoming our bufineff, but fnuck up a river by night and fold laft of opium for more filver. Blimey, what racket, time to head back to Tonkin. Temperature 62.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
http://www.smh.com.au/text/articles/2003/12/10/107 0732281706.html
There is no such thing as "geo-cycles" or solar "seasons".
We need to accept the blame for this, and take drastic measures NOW!
If they are worried about the Great Ocean Conveyor giving out in the Labrador Seas due to an increase in freshwater runnoff, (there is evidence to suppor that this happened during one of the last ice ages, when a ice dam broke and billions of gallons of fresh water dumped into the North Atlantic, shutting down the Gulf Stream, and turinng a gradual thaw into a deep freeze,) there is a simple solution, should this be found to be the problem.
Dump lots of dense, salty crud in the North Atlantic!
This will help keep the water sinking, drawing more warm water up from the Gulf, and incedentally keep Europe warm. Where to get this water densification material? Why good old fashion pollution, of course.
Heavy metal salts, and any industrial ionic or polar goop that readily disolves in water can be spread by the tanker load accross the Labrador and Greenland Seas, increasing the density of water, and compensating for the freshwater runnoff that is occuring as a result of global warming.
The normal quote in industry is "The solution to pollution is dilution" Well, in this case, "The solution to dilution is pollution!"
Is a couple of centuries sufficient to spot trends in climate change? Given that the ice age was over a period of thousands of years, it seems difficult to imagine that the climate fluctuations of a few hundred years is of sufficient length to form an accurate view of long term change. My confidence still lies in the drilled cores of Antartica (and i readily admit i have limited knowledge about the subject to make any reasonable judgement, and was too lazy to google enough information to pretend i do).
There must be some trick to reading logs that I haven't figured out yet. For example, I just read my log and it said that the climate is going to be long, brown, smelly, squishy, and somewhat moist. Followed by a localized cyclonic oceanic disturbance, and a short trip down a narrow pipe.
Get your stinking paws off me you damn dirty ape
So what you are asking are what effect human activities (air/sea pollution, cutting down rain forests) have on current climate, and on the climate in the next few decades. Most scientists, except Bush croonies paid by the oil industry, agrees that pollution has increased temperature.
Most likely, it'll be your grandchildren that will see the worst of the effect. Except, of course, countries that is very flat on just above sea level, like Bangladesh, are already hit. But then again, poor people in the third world does not matter, eh?
What did the pirate see when he looked in the Blackbeard's chamber pot?
The Captain's log. ahhhh ha ha ha ha.
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
The world will do fine regardless of whether it warms up or cools down.
It is humanity that will suffer as our coastal cities get flooded or our fertile plains become desert or our valleys become lakes.
Science is helps us understand, predict, prevent, and change in our favor our environment. The whole brouhaha is whether we are making things worse *for ourselves* or whether we can somehow make it better.
Yes, it is nice to protect the Earth; I believe in that, but a lot of people seem to need the additional anthropomorphic justification that global warming or global cooling will hurt us, and we need to at least *prepare* for it if we cannot do anything else.
GPL Deconstructed
People have this "The Sky is Falling" mentality of current weather, what with the ozone and pollution, my God, all the ice caps will melt! But did you know that there is a natural cycle with global warming, and every now and then the ice caps DO melt? Did you know that in fact we are in that part of the natural cycle? The next thing you know, German cockroaches will be declared an endangered species!
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
The weather has been demonstrated conclusively to be a chaotic system. One feature common in chaotic systems, easily seen in the Lorenz simulation (e.g. in your screen saver) is that when the system's oscillations get increasingly large (a little moreso each cycle), this is prelude to a change in mode to a different attractor, where all recent history has no predictive value at all.
Imagine what would happen if the Gulf Stream decided to flow on a different path, e.g. because of the massive salinity decrease around the north pole. The end of agriculture in northwestern Europe is just a beginning. Anybody who thinks that ocean currents can only flow the way they do now is very silly indeed.
Funny, lots of shipping company executives are excited about the prospect of driving across the north pole.
"Most scientists, except Bush croonies paid by the oil industry, agrees that pollution has increased temperature
Most scientists who know that the "man-made global warming" idea has no evidence to support it are not on the Bush or industry payroll.
Man-made Global warming is a sham, a fad: nothing but junk science. The same so-called "Scientists" who advance the idea today will be advancing "global cooling" theories 10 years from now, and they will still be blaming Republicans for it.
How about just once nobody leaves a single comment?
You've probably noticed that people's noses get bigger as they get older. That's because old people are huge liars.
if they can decipher the olde timey language of the 1750's
;)
Isnt the fact we cant even decipher 1750's English a testament to our inferiority at predicting the weather.... not to speak of the fact Ive never known a single weather reporter to give a accurate forcast of the weather.. well now thats where I slip up
Gotta love this weather thing.
moo
Watch out for thunderstorms and hurricanes in future decades.
I noticed nowadays that we now get several thunderstorms every year now.
"Personally, I can't wait to know if we're going to melt down, or alternatively, have an ice age."
I reather have an ice age. since i live in a tropical place is unlikelly that ice will cover here, in a worst case scenario we'll have a climate resembling that of southern chile or argentina (snow in winter, warm in summer). plus, my sister lives in a litoranean city. if the ice caps melt (specially the southern one) her city will drown.
What ? Me, worry ?
I read somewere that the average temperature in the last 100 year raised 1 degree. I think it too cold anyway. Big deal :-)
Actually, they kept very complete records, as was required to establish best times of year to sail and what to expect. 100+ years of that information can help indicate if there's a trend or we are simply seeing spikes.
El Nino has been considered as evidence of global warming, however, there are records of extreme rainfalls along the west coast of California back in the late 1800's over a period of years. Examine what was known about volcanic activity or anything else which might alter the general global climate and you get a better picture.
Interesting reading this morning was a study of the 1811-1812 New Madrid earthquakes. Based upon newspaper accounts the character of the three great quakes could be assumed to a fairly accurate degree.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
German Cockroaches are an Endangered Species!
Germans ARE cockroaches. And there are millions of them!
Seriously... this is the title of the Caltech Michelen Lecture, 1/17/2003 by Michael Crichton.
...and...
Since this discussion will lead to the inevitable global warming flap, this paper offers a good viewpoint on the issue (although I disagree with his assertion that SETI is a religion - it isn't - it's an experiment).
A few quotes:
Regarding Sagan's claims of nuclear winter:
Although Richard Feynman was characteristically blunt, saying, "I really don't think these guys know what they're talking about,"
In my book, if Feynam said it, it was almost certianly true. I used to go to his lectures at Hughes Malibu Research Center and it was an amazing experience.
I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.
The only good weather is bad weather.
The atmosphere burned like my bladder during times of urination.
If a couple of 90 degree days can kill off 15,000 Frenchmen, I say ramp up the global warming to "MAX".
Let's see 100 degrees 365 days per year!
on the history channel had a special kinda relating to this. The episode What sank the armada? had a scientist researching why the spanish were not prepared for a naval battle (defeat of the spanish armada). The scientist was researching the log books and trying to recalculate areas of low and high pressure. pretty interesting.
Watch out for thunderstorms and hurricanes in future decades
I think this is a weather forecast we can't go wrong with! Would it be safe to say that there is a 100% chance of hail at some time during these future decades as well?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
It's Richard Feynman, the scientist. He was speaking in general science terms, which show that the "concensus" of global warming hysteria means nothing.
"....There's a reason for that -- since our industries have stopped emitting CFCs in such incredible quantities, the hole has slowly begun to close itself up again. It's going to take a while before the ozone layer is 100% "healthy," but it's a good example of how the correct steps taken can begin to correct a problem...."
Yet, the reduction in the U.S. has more than been made up for by an increase from places like China. In other words, the CFC emissions have increased... and yet the ozone hole shrunk anyway. They had no idea what they were talking about.
I have been watching Star Trek Since I was a kid, starting with the Original Series through the latest "Enterprise".
It seems that Star Trek inventions become real inventions 20 to 30 years after the original broadcast date. This is not hard-tested theory, but something I am researching.
By my reconning, the weather control systems mentioned in TNG (circa 1995) will be implimented sometime between 2015 and 2025. So as long as we can keep global warming from getting out of hand until them, we should be cool. I mean cool as in "rad" or "ok", not temperature-wise.
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
you can bet your .asp on that won?
creators/humankind converge to repel unprecedented evile? (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29, @02:51PM (#7829610)
& why not? what other options are there for us?
eyecon0meter: survival most sought after feature? (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29, @02:48PM (#7829586)
creators' badtoll over corepirate nazi execrable (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29, @02:46PM (#7829567)
disposal?
newclear power dissed/cussed? (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29, @02:41PM (#7829536)
newclear powered blips explore corepirate nazi (Score:-1, Offtopic)
by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 29, @07:53AM (#7826913)
cesspool?
pheWWW.
lookout bullow. the daze of the phonIE payper liesense ?pr? ?firm? hypenosys stock markup FraUD softwar gangster execrable, is WANing into coolapps/the abyss, at the increasing speed of right.
consult with/trust in yOUR creators.... get ready to brighten up?
mynuts won: solar(is) power included?
According to the guy this causes one of the biggest uncertainties in todays climate models! They try to compensate this by fudging with the so called bucket correction factor.
karma police: arrest this man, he talks in maths; he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio. [radiohead]
"Under a democratical government the citizens exercise the powers of sovereignty; and those powers will be first abused, and afterwards lost, if they are committed to an unwieldy multitude."
Yeah, I see what you mean. Most people wouldn't understand a word of it.
KFG
In the other hand, the changes in climate will be disastrous only in regards to how it affects human population. I mean, there will be floodings and coastline erosion, but nothing really prevents from cities to be created in less affected places. It's just a very long term change, but those who can, surely will.
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
-- Robert Frost
Seems like Frost knew a thing or two about global warming...
While many have tried, and to a degree (funny!), they have succeeded in showing that humans now produce more greenhouse gas than ever before (This takes science? It's common sense!), it is still only theory that there is a connection between the "ozone hole" and global warming. I believe that ozone hole or not, warming is happening by nature. Clearly there are natural benefits to reduced pollution, but to say that if we where "really good people" who didn't pollute, that our environment would stay in a comfortable stasis , is just silly. As to the people in Florida who live two feet above sea level, well, that's the breaks! I lived in Miami for a few years, and you learn that weather is what it is and hurricane insurance is expensive for a reason.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I remember learning in elementary school that the Earth is in roughly a 10k year ice age cycle. 400 years of data against a 10,000 year cycle is fairly insignificant. Human caused global warming is a political topic, not a scientific one.
This isn't the sig you are looking for... Carry on...
Including interesting graphs.. cause everyone understand graphs..
:)
www.iceagenow.com
There are some pretty interesting theories.. including the ocean conveyer.. stopping.. due to increased fresh water entering from the artic.. causing an iceage.
Not to mention iceages occur every oh.. 11,500 years.. and the last one was about oh.. 11,500 years ago..
I think it's time to get stock in snowmobile companies and goretex
I bet there are some really interesting logs sunken in the Bermuda Triangle
Any even passing knowledge of history, just little old human history, will show you the sorts of catastrophic social changes that occur as a result of serious climate change. The Mfecane in SE Africa was a massive migration caused by climate change there: Shaka Zulu was the end result. Krakatoa erupting around 535 A.D., affecting the global climate for a handful of years, may have indirectly caused "plague, famine, death, great migration, the fall of the great Mexican city of Teotihuacan, the Anglo-Saxon victory over the Celts, and may even have played a role in the rise of Islam."
Global climate change will make the world a much more volatile place, and that doesn't just mean floods and tornados. Would we like to have a nuclear power like Russia, or the United States, go through catastrophic climate change? No, that would be a bad thing. It doesn't take any imagination at all to see what the potential effects might be -- it just takes the barest respect for history.
This ain't something we can hide our heads in the sand over. But as long as a facile argument will soothe us back to sleep, we'll try to ignore it, best we can.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
This ain't something we can hide our heads in the sand over. But as long as a facile argument will soothe us back to sleep, we'll try to ignore it, best we can
Since there is absolutely no evidence that human activity is affecting it one way or another, going to sleep is as good an action as any. Zzzzz. Sure beats playing Chicken Little.
They were a 'National Weather Service researcher', their sig says 'Associate Professor of Computer Science', the following post says they were a full-time consultant for the Israelis.
Check out the history, base karma at -1, little more than boring trolls and flamebait (though kudos for getting 41 replies to one!).
Even their webpage (slaughter.edu) doesn't work!
Mods, sort it out!
B.S. The largest ozone hole on record was in 2000. The second largest was this year. There's too much inter-year variability to make such a claim. Perhaps the Earth's weakening magnetic field will allow in more electrons, which have been shown to destroy ozone.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
I've never heard anyone (besides idiots) clain any kind of direct connection linking the ozone hole and global warming. They are two seperate environmental issues.
The only connection is that many believe both can be affected by human polution.
I don't think there are any intelligent people who beleave the climate would be static if we left it alone.
At the same time, just because your house will eventually rot and fall apart, doesn't mean that a termite farm in you living room is a good idea.
"F = ma is a consensus opinion, for instance."
And what do you know... it is wrong. But for everyday use it might as well be right. Even then, F=ma wasn't always the consensus opinion; was it a bad model then, or was the consensus just wrong? It looks like you're back to having to make up your own mind about what is correct again.
"We already know with negligible remaining room for doubt that there is a human-caused warming and we expect larger human-caused changes in the future." Who is this "we" you are talking about, and how small is your negligible room? By human-caused warming are you just talking about the heat island effect, or do you and your friends have some secret evidence that pins down the human-caused portions of recent climate trends? Perhaps you'd care to share this with the rest of us.
"Global warming skeptics seem to think the political pressures are in the direction of exagerrating the problem. This may be true in some countries, but is hardly true in the present configuration of the United States." So are you just speculating based on there being a Republican POTUS in office, or do you happen to know of radical changes in the choice of peer reviewers for climate change research grants? Or are you implying that administration officials are now reviewing weather research RFP responses in their spare time?
Oh great, now global warming is the cause for earthquakes too!!!
Is there no end to this madness!?!
...but not rooted in any realistic expectation. There are a number of things that could actually destroy the planet (well, make it much less spheroid and put it into a great many more number of pieces) such as catastrophic impact from a foreign body (large asteroid, rogue planet with a huge orbit that we haven't seen yet, etc), our sun going supernova, some unpredictable cosmic chain reaction which consumes all known matter, and what have you.
What can we do to stop those? Not a whole heck of a lot.
Short of something on that level, the planet has very little to fear from us. We could simultaneously detonate every nuclear weapon on earth, and the planet would continue serenely falling around the sun. I suppose one could argue we could *try* to alter its orbit, but that's just silly. The amount of energy required simply isn't controllable (if even available).
Now, if you're talking about saving the planet *as it is today*, then that's just silly as well. Complex climatic and biological systems simply aren't static. Stasis is death.
Humans are integrally intertwined with the earth's massive climatic and biological systems, and therfore will always contribute to changes (regardless of how minor or major). But these chagnes are, in fact, natural. To paraphrase George Carlin, "Save the earth? Gimme a fuckin break. The earth will be fine. Maybe we'll all get wiped out, but the earth ain't goin no where. Maybe we're all part of earth's master plan to acquire a little more plastic."
Responding to your troll on an offtopic thread, but...
by the time DDT was banned in industrialized countries, it was already fairly ineffective against mosqutoes, due largly to over use. In fact most pesticides are only effective for a few years before the pests they are designed to kill evolve effective defenses against them. DDT just also killed birds so it was banned before it no longer killed any insects.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
This topic reminds me of a story (submitted, but rejected, I'm not bitter) from the BBC on ancient humans starting the trend to global warming.
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
Human-induced atmospheric change is a scientific topic. People want to keep debating the effects of the changes we're making to the atmosphere. Why are the changes themselves not debated? Wouldn't it be prudent to avoid changing something that our lives depend on -- especially if the effects are uncertain?
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
www.facebook.com/DareDefendOurRights
www.fairtax.org
Gee, you know what you are talking about, NEWSFLASH earthquakes are not weather. Your credibility went down the tubes at that point.
Namaste
Termites are living things. Don't you know they feel pain? Everytime you set out that arsnic trap, millions of souls scream out in pain.
It was my understanding that China was an avid importer of silver, that came from Mexico via the Manila Galleon.
Actually, by then China was so developed and so self-sufficient that the only noteworthy imports were silver and opium. It was the European countries who wanted to trade all the fine Chinoiseries.
So, did the Chinese really trade back silver?
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
- the Environment Agency doesn't hold enough
- the MET office charge PER KILOBYTE of data!
I need data from 1960 to the present day so this could cost me thousands.
I can investigate local sources but has anyone else got any suggestions as to how I can see what historical data the MET office has.
If I can't get this data at student prices this scientific project just won't be able to take place.
A blog I run for the wealth
China had pretty much everything it wanted, short of arms (sound familiar?)
I don't understand the parentheses. What are you referring to?
What europe offered in return was opium. So you see, the west were dope pushers
I'd make those "India, an English colony" and the "the English empire". Other European powers were doing their own mischief but opium was an English (British?) specialty.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Here's why: Solar activity will be doing a number on the ozone holes over the polar caps, allowing things to warm up a bit. Solar winds, gravity, and geo-magnetics, anyone? Lets add in some volcanic activity just to put things in perspective.
Personally I think its a bit presumptuous for people to think that we can really change things much on a global scale, maybe we can on a state or national scale. Nature has far more energy available than anything we can do, its just hard to see because its *very* distributed, even within the same system or front.
C|N>K
- The land is too hot to grow food crops.
- The land is too cold, ditto.
- The land is too steep or too dry to support agriculture (China includes the Gobi desert and a fair number of mountains).
- The land was developed once, but it became saline due to poor drainage and had to be abandoned (like the former Fertile Crescent).
- The land has lost its nutrients or topsoil and now has little fertility (like most of Australia, a sparsely-populated expanse you don't mention).
The per-capita arable land in China is very small, and getting smaller as it disappears beneath cities and factories. (The failure to locate new cities and such in the non-arable land has to be counted as one of the great failures of the Communist party and its central planners.) This is one reason why China is becoming a bigger and bigger importer of food. They'll be okay as long as other people have something to export, but if climate change should dry up those surpluses.... they're screwed.Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
People have this "The Sky is Falling" mentality of drinking and driving, what with the increased reaction time and impaired judgement, my God, you'll run over some kids! But did you know that car accidents happen all the time to sober people, and every now and then kids DO get hit? Did you know that in fact drunk drivers are part of normal traffic? The next thing you know, they'll make drunk driving illegal!
You read Lomborg and decided you're an expert, eh?
:-) Irrigation is an old problem, but there are ways of turning desert into farmland.
:-)
:-)
Who?
This is the kind of statement I expect from people who've read one book on the subject in their lives.
Actually, my wife is from Russia. Nearly all of her family are biologists, and her aunt and uncle work with the farmers across the "far east" (the area from the edge of Asia to China) to preserve cranes.
Also quite a few of my friends are chinese. It's quite interesting how different regions contrast one another. Some chinese are quite adept with modern technology and customs. Others have had very little exposure, and don't consider the "dead meat" in the supermarket to be fresh.
Most of the chinese I know are excellent learners, but they often have trouble with the idea that something is a "trade secret". (Chinese culture has long used appreticeships to pass skills, while keeping the concepts behind those skills secret.) Seeing a grown man trying to spy on a deck builder to learn his secrets is really a funny sight!
The land is too hot to grow food crops.
That's why we have crops bred for extreme temperatures.
The land is too cold, ditto.
Did you know that some of the largest produce in the world is grown in Alaska? Apparently, some Alaskan regions have soil so rich, that you can literrly watch the plants grow. Damnest thing.
In any case, we have cold weather stock too.
The land has lost its nutrients or topsoil and now has little fertility (like most of Australia, a sparsely-populated expanse you don't mention).
I didn't mention Austrailia, because they don't consider themselves overpopulated.
The land is too steep or too dry to support agriculture
Mountain ranges. Fair enough.
The land was developed once, but it became saline due to poor drainage and had to be abandoned
Drainage is at the opposite end of irrigation. Again, there are ways to correct this.
The failure to locate new cities and such in the non-arable land has to be counted as one of the great failures of the Communist party and its central planners.
Which is again their fault. Back to my original point.
Dollars to doughnuts says that a good farmer could grow corn in many of those "infertile" areas with a little bit of work. The trick is that Asian's don't want corn. They want rice. Ergo the problem. Rice is very much a wetlands plant and won't grow anywhere else.
Corn on the other hand, is what finally ended world hunger around the 1500's. It grows just about anywhere, can be adapted to just about any climate, and doesn't run away like a weed. Had it not been for corn, it's believed that Africa would not be as populated as it is today.
Corn is generally seen by historians as an Indian invention. Sadly, many of the Indian farmers died from disease when Europeans started showing up. Most of the remaining Indians were the more nomadic tribes. It's too bad, because they were excellent farmers.
Putting that aside though, that land could be used to farm livestock such as cattle. Chinese generally don't eat their cattle as they're too valuable as farming equipment. If they were able to farm with machinary and spend time developing their livestock pool, they could potentially feed quite a few more people.
Basically, land is land. There are tons of ways it could be developed. If we became really desperate, we could even find ways to use the oceans to grow food or provide useful topsoil. And seeing as how the ice caps are melting, we should have even more usable land appearing.
Never argue with someone who grew up in the Midwest. If there's one thing we know, it's farming.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
and you are wrong about it being ineffective against mosquitos. Even against mosquitos that had developed resistance to DDT, it still functioned as an effective irritant (and is part of the reason why it is still used to spray the inside of dwellings).
It's effectiveness has never really been in question, nor it's adverse effect on the environment (it IS significant). However, the same environmentalists (see parent of my original post) that like to claim that they are in favor of saving the little brown people were instrumental in banning a chemical that went far in reducing the number of children killed per year because of malaria (currently about a million die children from it each year).
These are the same people that helped persuade Zimbabwe from accepting GM-modified corn last year even though they were in the midst of a famine. Gosh, better for the poor brown indigenous people to starve to death than be exposed to franken food.
So, sorry, I have to call fraud every time I hear environmentalists crying about poor people in the southern hemisphere. Their actions certainly haven't followed their rhetorical concern.
Didn't some American publish lunar tables in 1805 as an accurate way to obtain longitude without having to know the time?
This is my sig.
Just because you can grow the odd monster vegetable there does not mean that Alaska is an agricultural-powerhouse-in-waiting. Ditto large parts of the rest of the world which look good on the surface but aren't, which you don't seem to comprehend.
You have it backwards. The money can flow to the Imperial Valley because of the surplus productivity of the rest of the farms in the USA. If we had the kind of cash crunch that we'd have if we were butting up against the limits of agricultural production in Iowa and Texas, paying for unsustainable water projects in California, Arizona and Nevada would have gone by the wayside long since. Of course you can do that. The problem is twofold:- Due to lack of water, the productivity of the land is low and it doesn't grow crops directly edible by humans.
- Because the crops require conversion by animals before being edible, there are further losses which make the human-usable productivity of the land several times lower.
There is only so much you can do without postulating something like nanotech. Because growing up in the Midwest doesn't confer good understanding of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Even before transport was good enough to allow importing crops from elsewhere, people did not grow food crops in Alaska. They hunted and fished (and still do to some extent).
Because it's easier than farming. If there's no overriding need for food, why farm? Some farming does happen in Alaska (lots of cabbage and rubarb), but they already have most of the food they need. High fat, high protien food sources are especially desirable up there due to the colder climate.
Just because you can grow the odd monster vegetable there does not mean that Alaska is an agricultural-powerhouse-in-waiting.
Bah. You can grow a hell of a lot more than "the occasional monster vegetable". A good chunk of Alaska is very rich land that hosts teeming plant life in the warmer seasons.
You have it backwards. The money can flow to the Imperial Valley because of the surplus productivity of the rest of the farms in the USA. If we had the kind of cash crunch that we'd have if we were butting up against the limits of agricultural production in Iowa and Texas, paying for unsustainable water projects in California, Arizona and Nevada would have gone by the wayside long since.
That's the exact opposite of Econmics 101, supply and demand. If it has been working out that way, it's because of the next major econmic factor: goverment interference.
The economics of the situation are: if there is a high demand for food, but a short supply, then the price will rise and new competitors will invest money to expand into the new profitable market. This will continue to happen until the supply outweighs the demand (our current situation with produce). And if water/irrigation becomes a profitable market (not currently happening due to government/monopoly control) new technologies and fresh water producers will enter the market to meet the demand.
Due to lack of water, the productivity of the land is low and it doesn't grow crops directly edible by humans
Which is where adding irrigation to a region makes sense. The ground itself may have lousy topsoil (another thing that can be corrected) or steep inclines (that can be corrected too) and you can still grow some plants. Which, as I said, is useful for feeding livestock.
Because the crops require conversion by animals before being edible, there are further losses which make the human-usable productivity of the land several times lower.
If it makes poor land for human food, then it doesn't matter much. While I make the point that close to any land can be farmed, I also realize that the easier areas are going to be farmed first. Who wants to spend a million dollars per 100 acres terraforming when some other area can be done for $500,000 per thousand acres?
There is only so much you can do without postulating something like nanotech.
Nano-tech is a cureall that's "not quite here yet" and probably won't be (at least in a usable form) for a long time yet. In the meantime, my bet is on human inginuity, especially that of farmers.
Because growing up in the Midwest doesn't confer good understanding of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Now this is just a downright pathetic argument. The second law does not preclude the addition of energy into a system, which is very much what farming today is about. If you want to be corrected on thermodynamics, I suggest you visit sci.energy where they will helpfully bash your brains in for incorrect use of the law, then bemoan the loss of nuclear energy while at the same time complaining of the dangers of a few grams of radioisotope encased in lead. (Don't ask.)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
So far we haven't done much in the way of making more fresh water on the kind of scale required. Unless and until this is done, the problem does not have a solution.
Modern farming has achieved most of its miracles by moving small amounts of material to where they are required: nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, pest-control substances at the rate of a few pounds per acre per year. When you start talking about regenerating topsoil or importing water, you are talking about several orders of magnitude more material to move (one acre-foot of water is about 2.6 million pounds). There are also problems that you can create, such as the use of tube wells in India leading to chronic arsenic poisoning (the water is free of the pathogens that used to kill people quickly, but now it contains poisons which cause neurological problems and cancers which kill people slowly).Southern deserts have energy in abundance from the sun, yet plant life has not found a way to make these areas highly productive despite hundreds of millions of years of time to adapt and evolve. This means that it's just not going to be simple or easy to feed lots of people from a desert, no matter how much wishful thinking you do. The only way to solve this is to find a way of capturing that energy that does not require as much of the limiting resource (usually water), and that is a problem that is not going to fall to simple economics.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
We need to accept the blame for this, and take drastic measures NOW!
Start by burying your computer. Then go to the library and read until you know something.