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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."
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.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.
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).
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?
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
There was a paper in October of '02 outlining it. British meterological journal of some kind, I don't recall the name. There's a synopsis (probably with reference, just skimmed it) here.
There is a reason for everything. Sometimes that reason just sucks.
r stop to think that maybe we shouldn't play god everytime. We screwed it up and you think we can fix it just as easily. The real problem is that we humans seem to be good at only one thing... breeding like rabbits. There are over 6 Billion people and in many parts of the world we can't adiquately feed ourselves.
*cough*bullshit*cough*
You do realize that the overpopulation fears of the 1970's never materialized? The population was supposed to grow to over 7 billion during the 80's. It didn't. In fact, many countries are depopulating due to the modern attitudes toward having children.
Most of the people out there who are starving are in countries where no economy has been imposed to foster the supply of goods. We have more than enough food here in the U.S. to feed most of Africa, but there's no economic incentive to do so. Throwing monetary "aid" at the problem only makes those people dependent on our kindness instead of improving their life-style.
I should probably also point out the tremendous amount of undeveloped land in Russia and China. Russia has two major cities: Moscow and St. Petersburg. Most people living outside of those areas are poor farmers that perform their duties with the equivalent of 1850's technology. Many of the tractors and combines they do have, are built to double as war vehicles! (Gotta love the thinking the Communists had.) Thus, everyone wants to live in Moscow. They only go to St. Petersburg if they can't get to Moscow.
China isn't much better. Everyone is crowded into the cities while hundreds of thousands of acres of land are left to be tended by townsfolk who haven't seen much technological progress in 400+ years.
If you look at U.S. history (as a comparison), land development has been fostered by capitalism. The government's grant of homesteads encouraged individuals to develop land for profit. Thus very little usable land has been allowed to sit like it has elsewhere.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Your comparisions overlook a lot of critical details. For example:
You define deforestation as cutting of old trees and encouraging growth of new ones, then imply this is little different than the whole area being wiped out by a forest fire. There are many misconceptions in that opinion.
1) This is the US model of "deforestation", whereas most deforestation happens in rainforests where the forest is clear cut and burned to ash, and the ash then provides nutrients for crops to grow. If this is just a small patch in the middle of a thriving rainforest, no problem -- when the ash is exhausted and the nutrient poor soil won't grow crops, it is abandoned and the rainforest regrows quickly. But most of the time it is massive deforestation instead.
2) Forest fires in nature don't "wipe out a whole area" because they naturally happen frequently enough that you don't get the enormous quantities of brush and dead matter that you find in out managed forests. This is the stuff that burns much more quickly and easily than an old growth tree. Mature trees typically survive forest fires, whereas saplings and brush are consumed. So cutting down the old trees to encourage growth of young ones is just the opposite of what you need to prevent unnaturally intense forest fires.
3) In most cases, when a national or old-growth forest is logged, the variety of species that grow there are replaced by a much smaller number, so the genetic diversity of that forest is reduced, increasing the likelihood that a parasite or pest can inflict irreversable damage on that forest.
Next, you also argue that extinction of species has been happening for a long time and that makes it normal, natural and okay. This overlooks the key issues of rates of extinction. Until the 1900s, extinction happened at a very low rate. A lot of extinction even before then is blamed on human activity (fosil evidence suggests the Polynesians caused extinction of about 50 of the 98 species of birds in Hawaii in the 1200 years before European contact in 1778, for example). Nevertheless, the rates of extinction today are far greater. 34 species went extinct in the US alone over the past decade, for example.
Finally, there's your delightful argument that [waste] "came out of the Earth in the first place. There's no reason why it can't just go back". This completely ignores the fact that one of the major results of industrialization is the concentration of wastes and the creation of entirely new forms of waste. Examples:
1) Mercury is a neurotoxin that has been known to cause damage through skin contact and inhalation of fumes (the phrase "mad as a hatter" refers to the effects of long term use of mercury for producing felt. Mercury is not found in concentrated liquid form ever in nature, it is extracted from cinnabar, a red rock.
2) Petroleum products. Plastic is made from oil extracted from far underground, yet much of it ends up in shallow landfills. Gasoline doesn't occur in nature and it's combustion produces things such as ozone that are otherwise found in much lower concentrations in the lower atmosphere.
3) Fusion by-products. Enriched uranium and it's ilk are not found in nature.
This are just obvious examples of things that aren't just "put back", and can't be.
I do agree though that we are learning more about dealing with our wastes. Unfortunately, we aren't applying that learning in most cases. And of course, we shout down as "eco-freaks" those who have the temerity to suggest that technologies that produce less wastes are better than technologies to clean up waste.