Earth Growing Due to Melting Glaciers

Dr. Shim writes "Some interesting (and rather frightening) news over at Space.com tells that the Earth is growing around the equator due to the fact that ice in the Antarctic (and other areas) is melting at an alarming rate."

Comments

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

I just had like three nightmares in a row, so now its 6 am and I'm freaked out and I'm reading slashdot.

sigh, so this is what it's like.

*sigh*

[greenhide]

Well, I, for one, am so glad that finally the Bush administration is doing something about this.

...You mean they're not?!?

Re:*sigh*

[MindStalker]

Wow, people complain when the US thinks its responsible for the entire world. And complain when it doesn't.

Re:*sigh*

[Drakin]

Actually that post probably refers to the United States not agreeing to the Koyto protocal, which is all about reducing greenhouse gass emissions.

Re:*sigh*

[MindStalker]

Koyto protocal
seriously, the Kyoto protocol was a joke. By most calculations it would have made less than a 1% decrease in total global warming (Assuming any warming was to be done at all)

Re:*sigh*

[Oddly_Drac]

"seriously, the Kyoto protocol was a joke."

That may be, but it was a step in a direction.

"By most calculations it would have made less than a 1% decrease in total global warming"

'Most' calculations? How about the others?

The thing that's most annoying is the refusal to consider something because of calculations or 'hypotheses' without a willingness to experiment or test the bloody hypothesis, which is kinda essential is 'most' calculations give one result and a lesser number don't.

The actual reason for not signing up to Kyoto was the f**ing expense, not the science.

Re:*sigh*

[greenhide]

Wow, people complain when the US thinks its responsible for the entire world. And complain when it doesn't.

Actually, what I complain about, really, is *what* the US thinks it's responsible for, and for what it doesn't think it's responsible for.

That is, right now the Bush administration is spending billions of dollars of tax dollars, some of which came out of my pocket, in order to fund these wars which supposedly are for my security and protection. But how many future American deaths are being prevented by this growth in military might? Isn't it possible that there's a greater threat coming from possible future environmental catastrophes?

I've heard that one possible result of global warming might be that the alps, which are made mostly of permafrost, might actually melt, causing landslides all over Europe. If water levels keep rising, island nations or low-lying areas will become covered with water. I'd say this is a greater threat to our overall well being. And yet the Bush administration seems hell-bent on increasing the use of fossil fuels, promoting fake forms of alternative energy (particularly so-called "clean" hydrogen powered cars; sure the cars are clean -- it's just that using fossil fuels to make the hydrogen fuel cells is somewhat counterproductive), and undermining environmental regulations left and right.

In fact, the EPA actually removed references to global warming in a report issued last year in response to pressure from the Bush administration. Their reason? Global warming does not present a national threat.

If you do a Google search on bush and global warmiing, you'll see scores and scores of articles detailing how Bush has repeatedly ignored the real threat that global warming poses.

For a long time I was saving money by purchasing US Savings Bonds. I'd still like to do it; from a financial perspective it's very appealing: it offers a higher rate of return than banks' savings accounts, it's very liquid, and requires no minimum investment.

HOWEVER, the money that I put into those bonds is essentially lending money to the US government to cover its defecit that comes from reckless spending in directions that I disagree with: increased national "security" in the form of increased police presence and the use of the Patriot Act; military spending; and to faith-based charities.

If possible, I'm going to look into purchasing bonds elsewhere. If not, I'll probably just save in a CD or Savings Account.

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

well said...

Re:*sigh*

[b-baggins]

Well, since Kyoto failed to address the largest producer of the most powerful greenhouse gas there is, it was smart not to ratify it.

Until the Kyoto treaty requires the oceans to immediately limit their levels of evaporation, it will never be effective at reducing the most dangerous of greenhouse gases.

Re:*sigh*

[Atzanteol]

I've heard that one possible result of global warming might be that the alps, which are made mostly of permafrost, might actually melt, causing landslides all over Europe.

*gasp!*

So somebody may nearly almost possibly be hurt and maybe killed! Or, so I heard from a friend of my cousin...

Re:*sigh*

[greenhide]

Or, so I heard from a friend of my cousin...

Okay, here's an article from the Guardian. In the article cited, seems like quite a few people could have been hurt by these avalanches.

The "friend" that I heard this from was someone not even really an aquaintance: one of the Green Party Candidates for President, Lorna Salzman, who has made global warming one of her key campaign issues. I don't agree with all of her issues, but I share much of her sentiment that drastic work to preserve the environment may be necessary.

I fear, however, that Americans will not be willing to make sacrifices until it is too late. The rise of popularity of the SUV, especially with some owners taking a "I won't take any crap from you holier-than-thou environmental wackos" stance, , and with environmental activists pasting demeaning bumper stickers on other people's SUVs, means that real growth on the issue just won't happen.

Re:*sigh*

[duffbeer703]

Woah... take a pill dude.

If you had any idea what you are talking about, you'd know that temperature variations in the Pacific are creating alot of the cascading climatic changes that we are witnessing today.

Industrialization in China and the rest of the Pacific Rim is driving these changes, just as industrialization in North America altered weather patterns in the US and Europe in the 19th century.

Oh and btw the US spending breakdown is:
15% military
15% debt service
7% government operations
63% social services

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

That may be, but it was a step in a direction.

It was a step in the WRONG direction. On the one hand, we have industrialization. On the other, we have the negative effects thereof. How do we reduce the negative effects without having to abolish industrialization and go back to living on hand-worked farms? Through technology. That's the only way out.

What's the big deal about technological advancement? It's really expensive. You have to put a lot of money into it. Take the catalytic converter, for instance. It costs a few bucks to manufacture the second one. The first one ever built cost four hundred million dollars.

The Kyoto protocol would have put such a burden on industry that the term "chilling effect" doesn't begin to cover it. It would have been an economic disaster.

The thing that's most annoying is the refusal to consider something because of calculations or 'hypotheses' without a willingness to experiment or test the bloody hypothesis

What's the hypothesis? How do you test it? You do realize that there is absolutely no science behind the Kyoto protocol, right? Merely observation, extrapolation, and salesmanship.

The actual reason for not signing up to Kyoto was the f**ing expense, not the science.

No, it was both. The science failed to justify the expense. So no deal.

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

But how many future American deaths are being prevented by this growth in military might?

How many is enough? One? A hundred? Two thousand, seven hundred and forty nine?

Look, there are basically two ways of looking at it. There are those who think that American lives have a dollar value attached to them and those who don't.

Isn't it possible that there's a greater threat coming from possible future environmental catastrophes?

Sure it's possible. The difference is that we have hard data on military threats. We don't have hard data on environmental threats. In fact, we have a forty-year history now of dire predictions about environmental threats that turned out to be false. Ehrlich's "Population Bomb," for instance. Even without Borlaug's work with dwarf wheat, the predictions of global famine by the end of the 1900's turned out to be way off base.

What makes today's doom and gloom suddenly more reliable than yesterday's doom and gloom?

Re:*sigh*

Re:*sigh* (Score:1, Offtopic)
by greenhide (597777) on Thu February 05, 09:10 AM (#8189314)

Wow, people complain when the US thinks its responsible for the entire world. And complain when it doesn't.

Actually, what I complain about, really, is *what* the US thinks it's responsible for, and for what it doesn't think it's responsible for.

That is, right now the Bush administration is spending billions of dollars of tax dollars, some of which came out of my pocket, in order to fund these wars which supposedly are for my security and protection. But how many future American deaths are being prevented by this growth in military might? Isn't it possible that there's a greater threat coming from possible future environmental catastrophes?

I've heard that one possible result of global warming might be that the alps, which are made mostly of permafrost, might actually melt, causing landslides all over Europe.

I've heard that pig farts smell like crispy bacon. Where's the evidence? Where's the solid science?

More importantly, assuming that the trend does indicate rising sea levels, where's the evidence that the trend is upward-leading and not cyclical? Where are we getting our long-term historical data from, and is it reliable? Are there different interpretations of the historical data that lead us to question our ideas about trends?

And most importantly of all, even if we are on an upward-bending curve... where's the evidence that it's related to human activity? Correlation does not indicate causation, remember? Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

Before we get our panties all in a collective twist, let's get a clue about what we're talking about.

If you do a Google search on bush and global warmiing, you'll see scores and scores of articles detailing how Bush has repeatedly ignored the real threat that global warming poses.

See, that sentence right there sums up the problem with your position. You're taking the idea of global warming as a given. You're making it into an axiom, and damning the president for failing to respond to it.

Except global warming is not a given, not an axiom. It's a rumor.

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

63% social services

Which in turn is comprised of 33% Social Security and about 30% everything else, from public schools to highways to the Library of Congress.

In other words, yes, Virginia, we spend more than twice as much money giving checks to retirees than we do defending our country.

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

You have 'hard data' on military threats? Then why exactly are there more than 10,000 people killed in Iraq for no reason at all? I thought Saddam was going to nuke all of North America, followed by God only knows what sort of chmical and biological attacks... what happened there?

Re:*sigh*

[greenhide]

Oh and btw the US spending breakdown is:

I'd be interested in the source for this, because I looked for impartial data on this (i.e. not presented in the context of a special interest group rant).

I'm pretty sure that the percentages you cited include spending on Social Security and Medicare. Since the funding for these is taken by large part from payroll taxes and not income taxes, they don't really count (federal spending of payroll taxes isn't -- or at least, shouldn't be -- discretionary).

From what I've gathered, once you discount Social Security and Medicare, defense spending becomes a little over 50% of the national budget.

One thing I am sure of: aside from a few exceptions, the Bush administration has been consistently cutting funds from programs I would want my tax dollars to go towards and has increased military spending.

Re:*sigh*

[Mr. Piddle]

Since the funding for these is taken by large part from payroll taxes and not income taxes, they don't really count...

This is the biggest load of BS I've read in a while. Fact: a tax is a tax is a tax. It doesn't matter what it's called. Social security withholdig is a TAX, Medicare withholding is a TAX. They all go to the Federal Government, who then goes on to abuse its new-found piggy bank for every feel-good and back-scratching political endeavor it can find. If I'd take the time to go around and add up all the taxes I have to pay in a year, I'd probably have a stroke from a blood pressure of 1000/990 after realizing just how much money I throw at crap like pork-barrel government contracts and polishing every turd of a social program they conjur up.

Re:*sigh*

[greenhide]

I'm not denying that it's a tax, only that 100% of payroll taxes are earmarked to be spent, and 100% of them should (and hopefully, usually are) spent on Social Security and Medicare. You can't ever get a refund on your payroll taxes, as far as I know payroll taxes aren't modified in any "tax cuts" that occur, etc. Plus, they're only levied on the first 65k of income.

Even if income tax were eliminated entirely, you would still pay payroll taxes. In a sense, payroll taxes act as an involuntary combination pension plan and health insurance plan.

Again, unless my understanding of this is skewed, the only social programs covered by payroll taxes are Social Security payments and Medicare/Medicaid payments.

It's revenues from income taxes, not payroll taxes, that go toward the pork barrel projects and social programs you don't like. And again, from the statistics I've looked at, most *income* tax goes towards military spending, not social programs, and not even those pork barrel projects. All of those occupy only a small part of budget spending.

Actually, the most unfair tax of all is sales tax, which puts an unusually high burden of tax on the poor. In Virginia, for example, the lowest 20% of income earners pay 6% of their income in sales and excise taxes, while the top 1% pay less than 1% of their income in sales tax. Even with a graduated income tax, the poorest residents in Virginia end up paying over 10% of their income on all state taxes, while the richest 1% spends only 5% of their total income on all state taxes.

Re:*sigh*

[duffbeer703]

Taxes are taxes. If you want to argue that FICA and Medicare spending, which consists of something like 35% of the budget, are actual not part of the Federal budget, all the more power too you. Try pulling that with your landlord or cable company.

Here's a link to the citizens guide to the budget:

http://w3.access.gpo.gov/usbudget/fy2001/guide02 .h tml

This is a very high level overview. You'll get more specific data & projections by googling for the "Congressional Budget Office" and the "Office of Management and Budget". If you want to read the actual bills, head to www.thomas.gov.

(You'll notice that the numbers that I quoted off the top of my head were somewhat inprecise.)

By statute, most federal spending is non-discretionary. In the last 60 or so years, the Federal government has expanded its role and taken a good deal of power from the states with things like highways, education and health care.

Are some very valuable discretionary programs being cut right now in favor of paying for the war? Certainly.

The current climate change isn't caused by high levels of pollution generated by the United States -- pollution levels are likely signifigantly lower than they were 50 or 100 years ago in the era of heavy industry and poisoned rivers.

The climate *change* is due to the literal industrial revolution that is taking place right now in East Asia. Increased emissions from automobiles (relatively rare in Asia until recently) and heavy industry are affecting Pacific weather patterns, which has a cascading effect on US weather and the Gulf Stream.

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

If your neighbor chucked his rubbish into your back garden, you'd be pretty pissed. Pollution doesn't just hang around the US, it goes round the whole world.

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

Then why exactly are there more than 10,000 people killed in Iraq for no reason at all?

For no reason? Sorry, Charlie.

I thought Saddam was going to nuke all of North America, followed by God only knows what sort of chmical and biological attacks... what happened there?

That was your being an idiot.

The case for war was crystal-clear.

Before September the 11th, many in the world believed that Saddam Hussein could be contained. But chemical agents, lethal viruses and shadowy terrorist networks are not easily contained. Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans -- this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known. We will do everything in our power to make sure that that day never comes.

Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.

If you thought the case for war revolved around an imminent threat, then you just weren't paying attention. The case was, in fact, just the opposite: we can't wait for an imminent threat. We can't wait for a smoking gun. Because the defining characteristic of a smoking gun is that it has gone off.

The news cycle is asking the question, "Why were we wrong about Iraqi weapons?" The fact is, though, that we weren't wrong. Everything we've said has been borne out by the facts on the ground. The people who got it wrong were the analysts, the critics, and, yeah, the segment of the American public who misinterpreted the administration's policy and expected to see something nobody ever said would be there.

Re:*sigh*

[Mr. Piddle]

I'm not denying that it's a tax, only that 100% of payroll taxes are earmarked to be spent...

This distinction between income tax and payroll tax is flawed. Income and payroll are the same thing, both taxes get taken out of my one paycheck. Not only is 100% of all my taxes payed earmarked to get spent in some fashion, but continuous deficit spending by an out-of-control Congress means 100+% of all my taxes are earmarked to be spent.

Conveniently splitting out the taxes and eliminating some as a justification for an argument about military spending just doesn't follow. What if we added a "payroll" tax for the military...suddenly no "income" tax goes towards the military. Is that situation really any different?

Actually, the most unfair tax of all is sales tax, which puts an unusually high burden of tax on the poor.

This is untrue, if sales tax were properly structured to exempt essential goods like staple foods and clothing. Housing costs hurt the poor more than taxes, anyway.

The reason the income tax is the most unfair tax ever conceived is that it is the government legally extorting excessive amounts of money from the citizens. What if I refuse to pay my income tax, because I believe it to be excessive and used for things that the government has little business doing? I go to jail. Income taxes are neither anonymous, optional, nor of any reasonable amount, and they violate Constitutional rights to privacy and freedom from unfair search and seizure. Why is it that people cry foul when a corporation collects and tracks personal and financial information about people, but everyone just cozys right up to big nice government who is doing the same thing? The USA was founded after similar transgressions by the British monarchy; why has everyone become so blind to history?

Or...

[jetsfandb]

Maybe its just eating too many carbs.

Re:Or...

[McAddress]

all right!!!. this makes the five inches i put on around my waste last year look like nothing.

Re:Or...

[flewp]

So all that spam that's been filling my inbox actually works?!

Oh.... AROUND your waist.... nevermind.

not growing, changing shape

[real_smiff]

there's a difference, ya know! :)

(i read TFA)

Re:not growing, changing shape

[Mr. Piddle]

there's a difference, ya know! :)

Yes, but a shift in mass alters the moment of inertia, so, for a given amount of rotational kinetic energy, the length of our day can change. The effect is probably small, but I'm sure there would be a handful of scientists out there who really care about such things (studying whether a 0.01% change in the day/night cycle affects plants or whatever).

Re:not growing, changing shape

[DoraLives]

The most salient question regarding any redistribution of water to areas near the equator would involve low lying land (coral atolls) in that area. Folks living in places like that could be very concerned indeed, since a small rise in the water translates directly into a large decrease in the land area upon which they're living.

Re:not growing, changing shape

[Chmcginn]

Perhaps that's the cause of the lost leap second. Although if that's the case, it's such a small shift it wouldn't matter in any case...

Alarmists...

[stjobe]

Is it just me, or does anyone else get the feeling that this is a sensationalistic, alarmist write-up of a marginally interesting phenomena?

So, the earth has gained 0.3 percent around the equator, and the glaciers are still retreating. This is in my eyes neither "rather frightening" nor "an alarming rate".

Something to keep an eye on, certainly, and something to look into the reasons why, of course, but let's not press the big red panic button just yet, ok?

Scientists -- or as the case may be, reporters -- out for a quick 15 minutes of fame is my take on this "rather frightening" story.

Re:Alarmists...

[smoondog]

I totally agree. I'm not sure why every time a scientist reports an observed change whether it be climate, ecological, etc., the sensationalist media immediately raises the alarm that it is a cause for concern. There is no law of nature that says change is going to be detrimental.

-Sean

Re:Alarmists...

[4of12]

Sensational and alarmist, quite possibly.

Something to keep an eye on, absolutely.

The problem has been that we're caught between chicken little alarmists on the one hand and monied interests on the other (Carbon emission problem? I don't think so! Here, fill up your tank and get a free cup of coffee with Janet Jackson's picture on it!)

Re:Alarmists...

[kinnell]

0.3% of 6378km is ~20km. But I think that what's really alarming is that the trend has suddenly reversed and has shown such a big change since 1997.

Re:Alarmists...

[Oddly_Drac]

"Is it just me, or does anyone else get the feeling that this is a sensationalistic, alarmist write-up of a marginally interesting phenomena?"

It's you.

"the earth has gained 0.3 percent around the equator"

Which means that the sea level is rising. You don't consider this interesting?

"This is in my eyes neither "rather frightening" nor "an alarming rate"."

Of course by the time you consider it alarming or frightening, it's probably going to be too late to do something. I'd consider for the moment the change in albedo produced by the sea level rising, or the fact that this is going to destabilise land structures to the point where erosion can cause tsunamai from land slippage, not to mention the effect on active volcanos, or the increase in tides.

Then there's the quasi-stable structure of things like the ice-tongue that channels the gulfstream around the UK, and which have an impact on sea life, both shallow and deep. Not evolutionary scale, but within a couple of decades.

While I'm not suggesting that reporters get it wrong, I _really_ hate the implication that we should just sit on the information until we're sure, simply because it's hard to prove.

We've gone to war on less evidence.

Re:Alarmists...

[Oddly_Drac]

"There is no law of nature that says change is going to be detrimental."

You occupy a niche that is admittedly quite wide-ranging, but don't make the mistake of assuming that the planet might become uninhabitable by members of your niche within short order at some point. The natural history museums are full of species whose niche disappeared.

Oh, and any change away from the conditions that are viable for life can be considered detrimental.

Re:Alarmists...

[Scarblac]

Of course by the time you consider it alarming or frightening, it's probably going to be too late to do something.

Where are mod points when I need them... I want that sentence on a plaque on my wall.

Re:Alarmists...

[GeckoX]

We've gone to war on less evidence.

Oh, well in that case what are we waiting for!

Re:Alarmists...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm actually concerned that so much fresh water is getting dumped into the ocean, though what matters much more is, is how much is getting dumped around greenland. The problem being that this leads to the possibility of the gulf stream getting blocked up by fresh water, because the fresh water thins the salt water and hinders the sinking of gulfstream water so it can transport in the deepsea back to the gulf. Once it stops it could be centuries or more before it restarts, and lead to many degree's drop in temperature. In europe and I belive the US east coast area.
Consequence of all this would be, that you could live much less far north, meaning many people will have to move to the south, as well as leading to less food productiction, making agriculture much more energy intensive to make up for the difference.

Quickshot

Re:Alarmists...

[MindStalker]

No where in the article does it say 0.3% btw thats just the previous summiters calculations. The article say the change is in the order if millimeters. Though in total circumference it may total around 20km increase.

Re:Alarmists...

[ktanmay]

Ok, given, a little towards the alarmist reaction, but then one thought strikes me, what effect will this increase in equatorial size have on the ocean tides?

Tides are something we experience everyday, and an increase or decrease in volume will be felt. I don't know, I'm probably missing the fundamental concept here, but to me, the port authorities may just start taking note of it soon.

Re:Alarmists...

[FlyingOrca]

Yeah, it's definitely you. And a whole bunch of other people who have bought the "it's too early to tell" line.

I used to live on the shores of Hudson Bay, and the ice used to break up at the end of June/early July. It's happening a lot earlier now. The result? Polar bears are losing weight and dying more often because they can't hunt as long. Things don't look good for the Hudson Bay bear population.

Or let's look at another species - murres. Twenty years ago, they mostly fed on arctic cod they found under the sea ice. Now they are feeding more on capelin because the cod, apparently, are getting harder to find.

A few years back, my folks were some of the biologists on an expedition to chart the surface heat budget of the Arctic Ocean. The idea was to drive a Canadian icebreaker into the ice pack and freeze it in for over a year, then use it as a research platform. They expected no trouble finding thick ice.

Much to the surprise and alarm of pretty much all of those involved, they couldn't find ice thicker than about 2 metres. This is a hugely significant change.

Climate change is not a theory, it's a reality, and more evidence is showing up every day. And it's not going to be pretty for a lot of species, and a lot of fragile ecosystems, and ultimately - I suspect - for ourselves.

Re:Alarmists...

[Mr. Slippery]

Something to keep an eye on, certainly, and something to look into the reasons why, of course, but let's not press the big red panic button just yet, ok?

If I lived on a low-lying island or costal region, I'd be jumping up an down on that button. Small rises in sea level can lead to large areas going from beachfront property to shallow water, displacing millions of people.

Re:Alarmists...

[stjobe]

Which means that the sea level is rising. You don't consider this interesting?

Marginally, as I said. I do, however, concede the fact that others find it more interesting than I do. For some, it might even be very interesting (the Dutch, for example).

Of course by the time you consider it alarming or frightening, it's probably going to be too late to do something.

Well, thanks for telling me what I think ;) The earth changes constantly, and has done so through the aeons. As I said: Something to keep an eye on, certainly, and something to look into the reasons why, of course.

Before some more research is done into the whys and hows of this phenomenon I personally think that we should stay off the Big Red Button.

Please note that I never said, and did not mean to imply, that no research should be done about this. I just found the article (not to mention the /. writeup) to be a bit on the alarmist side of reporting.

We've gone to war on less evidence.

Well, that in and of itself is not a very good precedent if you want to avoid going off half-cocked.

Re:Alarmists...

[punee]

No. A one millimeter increase in radius would give you a pi millimeters increase in circumference.

Re:Alarmists...

[b-baggins]

Oh, please. None of those species were intelligent, technological and industrialized. Good grief.

Human beings live successfully in EVERY climate on the globe. Our environmental niche is the entire planet, for crying out loud.

Re:Alarmists...

[b-baggins]

Carbon emission problem? I don't think so! Here, fill up your tank and get a free cup of coffee with Janet Jackson's picture on it!

Spoken like a true Chicken Little Alarmist.

Re:Alarmists...

[Viking Coder]

...and now Deep Thoughts By Jack Handy:

I think that whether or not we find life there, we should declare Mars an enemy planet.

Re:Alarmists...

[aminorex]

This was covered over at Carnicom last year
in beautiful detail. Clifford first noticed
it because of the slowdown in the earth's
rotation. He's got a rack of quartz clocks
that he uses to approximate an atomic clock.
The redistribution of angular momentum is
truly awesome, and the implications for the
behaviour of the liquid core of the earth
are yet to play out. You can read about
Clifford's best work here: http://www.carnicom.com/time6.htm

Re:Alarmists...

[Jerf]

Oh, and any change away from the conditions that are viable for life can be considered detrimental.

Are you so sure that the conditions we are experiencing right now are the precisely optimal conditions for life?

Are you so sure that a couple of degrees warmer might not be a good thing? Or that a couple of degrees colder might not be a good thing?

How are you so sure?

If the global temperature drops a degree, it's a catastrophe. If the global temperature rises a degree, it's a catastrophe. If the global CO2 levels wiggle by a percent, it's a catastrophe. If the global aldebo level wiggles byt a fraction of a percent, it's a catastrophe. If the ice at some local lake averages thinner then 50 years ago, it's a catastrophe. If some lake freezes a month sooner then 50 years ago, it's a catastrophe. If the glaciers melt, it's a catastrophe. If the glaciers grow, it's a catastrophe. If the sea levels rise, it's a catastrophe. If the sea levels sink, it's a catastrophe. If the acidity in the rain rises, it's a catastrophe. If the acidity in the rain falls, it's a catastrophe. If the suns output increases, it's a catastrophe. If the suns output decreases, it's a catastrophe. If some species goes extinct, it's a catastrophe. (Remarkably, nobody seems to get too uptight about new species, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time.)

If some natural climatic process occurs, it's a catastrophe. If some natural climatic process doesn't occur, it's a catastrophe.

Climates change. It's what they do. The conditions right now aren't the only viable ones for life, as exemplified by the vast array of conditions life has thrived in throughout Earth's history.

This kind of panicking every time an indicator wiggles is tiring and pointless. The indicators will wiggle. Global warming will occur, and it will be followed by a period of global cooling. The sea level will rise, and it will subsequently fall. The CO2 levels will rise, and they will subsequently fall. The sun's output will rise, and it will subsequently fall. All of these things have occured several times, even within humanity's life time and even within yours, for some of these indicators.

There is some merit in debating how these things will affect us, but acting as if a statement like "don't make the mistake of assuming that the planet might become uninhabitable by members of your niche within short order at some point" is worth panicking over is unjustified. Debating the impact of long terms trends is interesting; twitching, having a fit, and screaming at everyone else who refuses to have a fit every time an indicator goes somewhere is not.

Chill out. Pun intended.

(Personally, I'm still thinking a couple of degrees warmer will be a net benefit; one should not analyse merely the costs without considering the benefits, and surprise surprise, that's exactly what twitchy, panicky, screamy environmentalists do. Sure, we lose a couple of inches of coastline, but we get a lot more arable land and perhaps more rain will help roll some deserts back. Who knows? Nobody, that's who. But I can tell you it's been warmer before and life seemed to be quite prolific. Fortunately nothing at those times was smart enough to panic at unstoppable changes.)

Re:Alarmists...

[IPFreely]

There is no law of nature that says change is going to be detrimental.

It's not a natural law, it's a political, financial and resource law.

Right now, we have a fairly complex structure of food production needed to keep 6+ billion humans alive. This includes a lot of land in specific places set aside for crops and livestock. If the weather patterns change, earth as a whole will likely still be habitable for humans in general, but any given piece of land may not be suitable for food production. If the current crop lands go bad, and some other land, a thousand miles away suddenly becomes much better for that same crop, then you have to move the whole production machine over to the new location.

This doesn't even account for fights over property rights, cost liabilities, and what to eat during the time it takes to move. A lot of current companies/countries will lose power/influence, and a lot of other landowners, and other countries, suddenly find themselves in control of valuable resources that weren't valuable before. It will, for a while at least, be even more politically and economically destabalizing than the constant bickering over oil is now.

THAT is what the alarmist are talking about, and that is what all the anti-alarmist seem to not understand.

Re:Alarmists...

[Mr. Piddle]

Climate change is not a theory, it's a reality...

and we will know when it is a real unstoppable problem when insurance companies stop selling policies for coastal areas.

Re:Alarmists...

[mugnyte]

Until this evil dictator releases control of the innocent ice, we will continue to convert the ice to water for safe harbor

Re:Alarmists...

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical attitude of an american. "Global Warming is not a Problem" .. i guess it doesn't really matter u selfish bastard .. in 50 years the planet will be destroyed anyways.

Re:Alarmists...

[TykeClone]

Actually 2*pi. And they are talking about a LOT of millimeters

Re:Alarmists...

[Anonymous Coward]

Since we're still coming out of an ice-age (this is the predominent reason for everything melting right now, by the way), doesn't it make sense to believe that BEFORE we went into the last ice-age, the earth was "bigger" then, too?

Jesus... this isn't the first time shit has melted or frozen on earth.

Re:Alarmists...

[fm6]

Yes indeed! They don't call it the Red Planet for nothing!

Oops. Cold War over. Never mind!

Re:Alarmists...

[haruchai]

If the changes happen quickly, I think we'll see a lot of fights over "Lebensraum" . I don't think that
these disputes will be settled peaceably. Catastrophic climate changes that affect the major powers may well precipitate another World War

Re:Alarmists...

[squiggleslash]

Human beings live successfully in EVERY climate on the globe.

With most of the planet under water, devoid of human life at any level except temporarily floating on the top, and with the poles pretty much uninhabited, and with the deserts barely inhabited, I'm not entirely sure that's accurate.

Even that said, assuming we'd not have a problem with an Earth covered in ice or sand, would you want to live like that?

Re:Alarmists...

[deman1985]

I won't argue about whether it's too early to tell or not; the simple fact of the matter is that the climate is changing and there's not a damn thing anyone can do about it. Will it cause some species of animals to go extinct? Quite possibly. Is it going to force us to change food production and abandon areas that are no longer inhabitable? Almost certainly.

But what has been stated over and over and everyone seems to ignore is that the Earth is BOUND TO CHANGE. There is nobody who can question that. The climate goes through cycles which are not necessarily related at all to any pollutants we have introduced during the period of human civilization. Even if this does turn out to be the case, then guess what? We just make equipment run as efficiently as we can and when the time comes that the climate has shifted usable land, then we start shifting food production and residental areas accordingly.

Yes, it is a shame that certain species will die off and may never see the face of the Earth again, but people have to keep in mind that it's all part of nature. Climactic changes are one of many factors that contribute to the evolution of our planet. If the world hadn't gone through such changes in the past to force older species to extinction, the human race may have never become the dominant species it is now. The major difference that sets us apart from other species is that we are intelligent and can adapt to our environment. Short of the sun burning out (which will also happen eventually), the human race will always find ways of surviving on this planet-- even if that means living in man-made greenhouses to isolate us from the outside environment.

Re:Alarmists...

[Anonymous Coward]

This cannot be true because the Cato institute says Global Warming doesn't exist. I mean, who are you going to believe? Rational libertarian economists, or those stupid scientists with their "measurements" and "theories"?

Re:Alarmists...

[Lars T.]

You reminds me of Frank Drebin in The Naked Gun.

(After an army tank has just crashed into a Chinese fireworks factory) Frank-Alright. Nothing to see here. Please disperse! Nothing...nothing to see here! Please!

Re:Alarmists...

[Keith McClary]

0.3% of 6378km is ~20km. But I think that what's really alarming is that the trend has suddenly reversed and has shown such a big change since 1997.

No, 0.3% or ~20 km. is the permanent bulge due to the Earth's rotation. The changes they are talking about are much smaller, probably millimeters.

Re:Alarmists...

[MindStalker]

Thats strange, seems like it would be more (if you think about it visually, but I guess you are right)
damn :)

Re:Alarmists...

[duffbeer703]

Northern Africa was once a fertile plain that was the breadbasket of Rome. Now it is part of the world's largest desert. (And you cannot blame that on Bush either, greenies)

Climates change. If you own property that turns into a desert, you are screwed financially.

Re:Alarmists...

[duffbeer703]

Good point.

Science is now mostly government funded, so the more alarmist the predictions of global destruction are, the more funding you'll get in FY2005.

Re:Alarmists...

[Vellmont]

So, the earth has gained 0.3 percent around the equator, and the glaciers are still retreating. This is in my eyes neither "rather frightening" nor "an alarming rate".


Good god, if sea level had risen to anywhere _near_ .3 of a percent near the equator it would be a natural disaster like no one has ever seen. .3 of a percent of the diameter of the earth is 24 miles. That's 12 miles on each side. Do you realize how much seacoast would be underwater?

Where you got your imaginary number I don't know, nowhere in the article does the numer 3 or the word percent appear. The point being that you quite obviously have no means of determining what's "rather frightening" or "an alarming rate", since .3 of a percent change would be _very_ frightening. The real amount of change is on the order of millimeters. Is that frightening or an alarming rate? I have no idea, but more to the point you certainly have no idea.

The stupidest thing about this article, however is that it's from December 5, 2002. While the rising sea level is new to me, it seems rather silly to be argueing about a more than year old article when we've no idea if there's been more information released since.

Re:Alarmists...

[yosemite]

using conservation of angular momentum...
I*(omega)initial=I*(omega)final
I=(b eta)MR^2 (for earth)

(beta)MR^2*(omega)initial=(beta+.3)MR^2*(omega)f in al

omega=V/R , thats tangential velocity over radius

so solving for V tangential final

[(beta)MR^2*V]/[(beta+0.3)*MR^2]=V final

canceling

[(beta)/(beta + 0.3)] * V(initial)=V(final)
Can somebody check my algebra here? Maybe somebody
who is good at physics?
Is it right?
slow down by a factor of .3?
Seems a little drastic, but I guess I wouldn't be suprised...

Re:Alarmists...

[yosemite]

whoops, previous post responded that the .3 was the already present bulge...

Re:Alarmists...

[Alrescha]

"Climate change is not a theory, it's a reality, and more evidence is showing up every day."

True, climate change is demontrable fact. That humans have any significant impact on climate change (or even could if they tried) is 100% theory, unsupported by experimental evidence.

A.

Re:Alarmists...

[stjobe]

Vellmont wrote:
[You're out to lunch]

You're right, of course. The change discussed in the article was on the order of millimeters. The .3 percent came from this link off the article, and talks about how earth is .3 percent fatter round the equator than a sphere.

A 24 mile increase in diameter would indeed be both frightening and alarming, were we not drowned at that point :)

As it is, I stand corrected as to the numbers, but still maintain that a few millimeters increase in diameter is not very frightening or alarming. Yet. As you say, we have no idea if there's been any more research on this since the article was posted in 2002.

Thank you for the sanity-check.

Re:Alarmists...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, given, a little towards the alarmist reaction, but then one thought strikes me, what effect will this increase in equatorial size have on the ocean tides?

Well, given that the change happened years ago, the question would be, "What effect did this increase have on tides?"

The answer, of course is, "None that we measured."

Next?

Re:Alarmists...

[Anonymous Coward]

> With most of the planet under water, devoid of human life at any level except temporarily floating on the top

That's what they WANT you to believe.

Re:Alarmists...

[b-baggins]

Fallacy of overprecision. Of course we don't live under the water because we are air breathers, but we COULD if we had to.

We don't live on the poles because we don't have to. But we COULD if we had to.

Deserts barely inhabited? Have you looked at the middle east lately? The American southwest? The Mongolian Steppes? Please.

Let's see. Earth covered in ice. Creative, technological humans build nice, domed hot houses to live.

Earth covered in sand. Creative, technological humans create massive irrigation projects, water pipelines and desalination plants and turn said desertes into gardens (take some before and after looks at the Salt Lake valley).

Since I won't have to live like that, whether or not I want to is irrelevant.

Re:Alarmists...

[einTier]

And you've been screaming about it being right around the corner for the past thirty years. Probably more than that, but that's all I can remember. I remember being absolutely terrified as a kid that the Earth was cooling, and we weren't doing a damn thing about it. Now, I hear we're warming, but I really don't see the conclusive evidence. I especially don't see conclusive evidence that humans are causing it, or even that we could stop it from happening, regardless of cause.

Right now, I feel like we're a five year old kid looking at the thermostat on the wall, and thinking if we could just fiddle with it a little bit, then we wouldn't be hot anymore. There's a reason we don't let five year old kids fool with the thermostat -- they don't know how it works. In their ignorance, they are more likely to cause more problems than they are likely to solve. Right now, we really don't understand the global climate, and in our quest to do something, anything, it's very possible to screw things up worse than they were to begin with. Imagine if we'd made a deliberate effort to heat up the Earth in 1970.

Alarmists want to see action, but they don't stop to think about the problems that action can cause.

Re:Alarmists...

[squiggleslash]

Fallacy of overprecision. Of course we don't live under the water because we are air breathers, but we COULD if we had to.

As a scuba diver, I can tell you there are some wonderful things about being underwater, but I wouldn't describe it as an area large numbers of humans could live for an extended period of time using the technologies available today. Earth's crushing gravity, to begin with, makes the proposition of being more than a few hundred feet under water less technically easy than being in space.

We don't live on the poles because we don't have to. But we COULD if we had to.

Well, we'd have enormous problems with food supply. People who currently visit the poles do so with fairly substantial off-site support. Suppose Earth becomes ice-covered, where would be this off-site support? How would we get it?

Look, I'll state the obvious: We have several billion people on Earth at the moment. It's one thing to put a few thousand people in submarines across the planet underwater, able to surface in the event of an emergency or every year or so to get supplies, it's quite another to put everyone under water, permanently. Likewise, supporting four billion people on an ice-covered planet isn't going to work either.

Deserts barely inhabited? Have you looked at the middle east lately? The American southwest? The Mongolian Steppes? Please.

All of the desert areas you mention are barely inhabited - there's occasional outposts and one or two cities (some of dramatic size, such as Las Vegas) that have substantial external help. Las Vegas, as an obvious example, is not self-supporting. It relies for funding upon millions of visitors pumping enormous sums of money into it - money which is used to get water, food, and power from resource generators many hundreds of miles away.

Trade provides a perversion of logistics that hides local efficiencies and allows things to be supported by external resources; without those external resources, no amount of money is going to make those locations practical. Your final suggestion that we could irrigate a planet covered in sand assumes there's somewhere to irrigate from.

Re:Alarmists...

[iggymanz]

Many major civilizations in the past 10,000 years (yup, gotta include those south african ones your history teacher never told you about) have fallen just because of draught...and we already know the average temperature of the earth has been MUCH HOTTER and MUCH COLDER in the past. 12,000 years ago we ended an ice age. Radical climate change has happened before, it'll happen again. Civilizations will collapse. Big deal. Insolation is the key to climate, not man's activities.

Re:Alarmists...

[Carnildo]

(Personally, I'm still thinking a couple of degrees warmer will be a net benefit; one should not analyse merely the costs without considering the benefits, and surprise surprise, that's exactly what twitchy, panicky, screamy environmentalists do. Sure, we lose a couple of inches of coastline, but we get a lot more arable land and perhaps more rain will help roll some deserts back.

I'm sure there are some people in Niue who would disagree with you. A rise of only 2 degrees will raise the sea level enough from simple thermal expansion to wipe out Niue and a number of other island nations in the Pacific. Not to mention low-lying coastal areas (five degrees, and we lose Florida).

Re:Alarmists...

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, so your calculation is for the difference between the current Earth and a round earth. But somewhere along the line you went from 0.3% to a factor of 0.3. Not the same thing. I didn't try to check you physics.

Re:Alarmists...

[IPFreely]

I wouldn't say "Do Nothing" was an appropriate response, but maybe alter the type of action to take. Rather than attack the problem in terms of prevention (like the Tokyo accord), we could act in terms of preparedness.

By making lots of good measurements of yearly changes of averages in lots of areas, we could make realistic estimates of how regions are likely to change over time. With that, we could make preparations to add food production in new promising areas before the old ones completely dry up. It's planning ahead.

Of course, that means measuring lots of little things like average tempratures, rainfall, glacial melt, sea level, and other things. And then we try to combine it all together in a global model to understant overall effect, and local variation better. In the end, we'd be better able to predict new usefull land for farming, and warn of old land becomming less usefull.

But somehow, that sounds a lot like what the original article was doing, doesn't it. It was indicating climate changes, and estimating global and local effects. Wouldn't you know it, but they are already doing it, planning ahead. Maybe it's not all useless scare tactics after all.

Re:Alarmists...

[marcello_dl]

the simple fact of the matter is that the climate is changing and there's not a damn thing anyone can do about it.

You underestimate the human impact on the environment. Emission of CO2 and other gases, deforestation, disrupting habitats.
It may account only for a small percentage of climate change, but we are risking our future in the assumption that this percentage doesn't matter.

Good luck.

Re:Alarmists...

[Evil Pete]

When such a large change occurs then there are going to be consequences ... which probably wont be good for human beings. What kind of consequences ? OK here is an article describing fears based on a possible slowing / shutdown of the Gulf Stream and perhaps even of the whole conveyor, and here is the article that probably inspired it, and finally here is the Pentagon take on the real world dire consequences.

By the way, I think this change is so large that there is no way it can be stopped. It is just plain too late.

Enjoy.

Re:Alarmists...

[Transcendent]

I _really_ hate the implication that we should just sit on the information until we're sure, simply because it's hard to prove.


Yea... let's start making guesses as to how we should "fix" the problem (because we're so sure it needs to be fixed because it IS an actual problem, right?). Let's try terraforming out planet as to how we *think* it should be.

Real smart. Start shootin in the dark when trying to "fix" our own habitat.

I'm sorry, but it's just not something you want to screw with until you're 100% sure. Or can't you realize that our atmosphere is too important to us to start making wild guesses?

Re:Alarmists...

[phxhawke]

(And you cannot blame that on Bush either, greenies)

Damn it! I could have sworn he was responsible for
it too!!! Now I'll have to find something else to
blame him for!

Re:Alarmists...

[fluffy666]

Only on slashdot could such a comment be called 'insightful'.

Are you so sure that the conditions we are experiencing right now are the precisely optimal conditions for life?

Human life - or more precisely current human civilisation - yes. The placement of cities, agricultural techniques, population distribution, and all of our infrastructure is set up for the current climate. How could it be otherwise?

Are you so sure that a couple of degrees warmer might not be a good thing? Or that a couple of degrees colder might not be a good thing?

If it were not for the above, it would not matter.

Global warming will occur, and it will be followed by a period of global cooling.

Sure of that? Or just making up whatever fits your prior beliefs best? Or just totally ignorant of paleoclimatology? Sorry, but your vague handwaving in this paragraph does reveal your total lack of knowledge of the subject.

Debating the impact of long terms trends is interesting;

Here's a debate question, then. Using your apparently definitive knowledge of the earth's climate history and future, when the earth's climate changes, does it do so:

a) Slowly and smoothly, or

b) Rapidly with fairly extreme local noise levels.

Answers with scientific references, please.

Re:Alarmists...

[kd4evr]

You may have a point regarding this specific article - but I have long stopped comforting myself with thoughts like:
- last year's extremes are well within long-term records
- climate changes on Earth are frequent
- human action is too small to have any damaging impact on a global scale.

The last few years have been more than enough for me to change my opinion. I now consider the situation very serious, for example:

1. The snow - the skiing
- the average height of the snow cover in the mountains during the winter has risen for some, say 2000 feet. The country simply looks diferent. A photo of the mountains once taken in June is now similar to the one taken in March or April.
- the quality of snow while skiing deteriorated - there is no such thing as "powder" here in our part of the Alps - you either ski on frozen or soft, depending on the time of the day (where you even have any natural snow, that is). Furthermore, there is no such thing as "spring-skiing" in the spring nowdays. Once the high temperatures kick in, it's time to switch from skiing to watching spring flowers grow...
- we used to have the lowest lying glacier at 1900 m altitude near where I live that I could still ski on in the summer of 1994. Now it is GONE.

2. Wine vintages
We've had more than a dozen of excellent vintages in last thirty years when only, say, four to seven should be expected - and it's not due to heavy marketing exaggeration - the climate change seems to be doing some good to most of our wines for the time being.

3. Seasonal changes and temperature fluctuation
I do not wish to use weather extremes as my case,
since they happen too randomly and don't provide a solid set of data. Storms have happened and will happen. The fact is that seasons no longer change the ordinary way - Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn but there is a very vicious oscilating temperature cycle that makes a year look something like this: Au-Wi-(Au/Sp?)-Wi-Sp-Su-Sp-Su-(Au/Sp?)-Su-Au-Su-Au -Wi; as something would try to rush the weather with the next seasonal change in and something else would then try to delay the change and even contradict to the warming - with little success, though.

4. Air conditioning in my town went from a nifty luxurious gadget to a neccessity. Heating bills are lower and appartments, as they were designed, are too warm most of the time.

The fact is that the planet is warming nastily and that such changes will have a major impact on the global economy and everyones life. Therefore, governements should not only try to slow down or stop the warming by eliminating human causes for it (since we do not fully understand the climate machine and have only clues on WTH=going on), but should most of all try to provide for their citizens by preparing measures for each of the different scenarios of global climate changes that can be anticipated.

I have long adapted my vacation plans: I try to get a hold of any skiing I can since I may never have a chance to do so later in my lifetime (It would be too much to hope for that this warming is only a prelude to a new ice-age kicking in; not to mention the economically disastrous impact if that kind of theory would be true). I have hade a couple of very short skiing seasons in lousy conditions since I was not paying enough attention. As for summer and warm destinations, I've tried to limit that and moved my beach activites to spring and autumn since summers have been so hot lately that a typical vacation is no longer bearable.

My life has changed so dramatically due to the weather in last 15 years that I no longer dare call anyone alarmits. We have to make climate an issue, make the best of the changes and minimize the damages.

Re:Alarmists...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you so sure that the conditions we are experiencing right now are the precisely optimal conditions for life?

Are you so sure that a couple of degrees warmer might not be a good thing? Or that a couple of degrees colder might not be a good thing?

How are you so sure?

I liked Dawkins' thought experiment, explaining why small mutations are more likely to be preserved than large ones. Consider a microscope, nearly in focus but slightly off the ideal. A small change has a 50-50 chance of improving the focus - either towards the ideal, or away. A large change is certain to be detrimental, because even if it's in the right direction it overshoots the ideal and goes way out the other side.

I'd say that our climate is pretty near the ideal, if not right on it. After all, it's the climate our whole civilisation is built around. Maybe a _very_ small temperature increase would be beneficial, but a large one's bad, bad, bad. And it's looking like it'll be large.

Re:Alarmists...

[Jerf]

Or just totally ignorant of paleoclimatology?

You question my claim that warming will occur, followed by cooling, and you question my knowlege of paleoclimatology?!?! I suppose that it is faintly possible that starting from this moment, cooling will occur followed by warming, but that is the only other possibility. Period. Stasis is not in the cards.

when the earth's climate changes, does it do so:

a) Slowly and smoothly, or

b) Rapidly with fairly extreme local noise levels.

Yes.

Answers with scientific references, please.

Do your own damned research; you're so ignorant of history that "specific scientific references" seem likely to fly over your head. This is Slashdot, not a peer-reviewed journal.

Warming and cooling will occur; climates will shift. The question is not whether climate change will happen, but whether the final configuration of "civilization" will be better or worse then the initial. The cost of changing is a given.

Re:Alarmists...

[b-baggins]

The original chicken little argument was that we will become extinct. Being able to support millions of people on a world locked in ice, or a total desert or on shallow seabeds in a totally water covered world (ridiculously extreme scenarios) hardly constitutes extinction. Nice attempt at shifting the original premise.

You are right. External resources CAN be used to overcome local dependencies. And with a technological society of intelligent, creative humans, these external resources can be hundred of miles away or thousands of feet beneath.

In your ridiculous extreme examples:

Ice covered world: We grow food in greeenhouses using the soil dredged up from under the ice (the soil doesn't disappear, you know.) or in hydroponics facilities that don't require soil at all.

In a desert world: We irrigate crops from water pumped through the oceans, or from deep subsurface aquifers (the water doesn't disappear, you know). We fertilize the soil with man-made fertilizers, or again, use hydroponics.

The idea that humanity will become extinct from climate change is nothing more than fear-mongering. The idea that human civilization is at risk from MILD climate change is even more irresponsible fear mongering.

Case in point. Everyone rants about the massive coast line flooding throughout the world from rising ocean levels and how it will spell disaster for civilization and millions of people, without acknowledging that TODAY there are millions of people ALREADY living on land below sea level (the netherlands) using this really radical idea of dikes and pumps to keep out the water.

Re:Alarmists...

[Jerf]

Yup. Bummer. Shit happens. But you're still arguing in nothing but negatives. Like I said, cooling is a disaster, warming is a disaster, everything is a disaster. That's not rational thinking, that's twitchy panicking.

If the globe cools, we'll lose more land to ice. If the globe warms, we lose land to rising sea levels.

Don't you see the problem with this logic? If this were true, we'd have long since lost all land on Earth to ice and sea. If the globe warms, we may lose islands, but we get more of Siberia. If the globe cools, we lose the poles but we get more coastline. This sort of one-dimensional arguing is what I'm speaking out against... bad things are going to happen. The question is, will the balance turn out in our favor or not, and that's not a question with an answer so easy one can build a semi-religious cause around it.

And I personally guarentee you that both of these outcomes will occur, sometime in the future, even if humanity keels over dead right now. Holding up the disasters that are a given is much less interesting then talking about the ones that aren't, like pollution with various exotic, totally unnatural chemicals.

Re:Alarmists...

[Anonymous Coward]

> Oh, please. None of those species were intelligent, technological and industrialized. Good grief.

>Human beings live successfully in EVERY climate on the globe. Our environmental niche is the entire planet, for crying out loud.

Right. Plus those stoopid exoseketon thingys didn't have a god!!!

Hell, the world could go like the Sahara, or it could go lie Antartica... and we'd STILL survive!!

At least some of us would. BONUS: I wouldn't be paying taxes to feed deadbeat slut mommies so they can not work, and watch Oprah all day.

Re:Alarmists...

[Wavicle]

Only on slashdot could such a comment be called 'insightful'.

That's a bold statement considering this one that you made:

Human life - or more precisely current human civilisation - yes. The placement of cities, agricultural techniques, population distribution, and all of our infrastructure is set up for the current climate. How could it be otherwise?

The question was "Are you so sure that the conditions we are experiencing right now are the precisely optimal conditions for life?" and tossed a red herring. Humans made optimal use of the conditions they were given. This makes no implication that conditions are optimal.

If the climate changes, the layout of our cities now may become non-optimal. But, if the net change allows for more productive use of the world's land then the new configuration is more optimal.

Sure of that? Or just making up whatever fits your prior beliefs best? Or just totally ignorant of paleoclimatology? Sorry, but your vague handwaving in this paragraph does reveal your total lack of knowledge of the subject.

Here's a conjecture: The average temperature of the planet was once cooler than it is now and we had an ice age as a result. You can either use common sense, or the mean value theorem if you wish, to show that there must have been a period of global warming between then and now.

You can extrapolate this to imply that if multiple ice ages in the past have occurred, then multiple periods of warming or cooling of the worldwide mean temperature have occurred.

So you believe that paleoclimatology says that the mean world temperature is static and has been for thousands of years?

Re:Alarmists...

[mopomi]

So, the earth has gained 0.3 percent around the equator, and the glaciers are still retreating. This is in my eyes neither "rather frightening" nor "an alarming rate".

Do the math. Earth's radius: 6378 km (3963 miles).

0.003*6378km=19.13km. 19 km! I didn't read the science article, but if what you read indicated a 0.3 percent growth in the radius of the Earth, then we have some major problems.
Mount Everest, the tallest mountain on Earth, is only 8.9 km above sea level. We're all dead.

Re:Alarmists...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, it's pretty easy.

Re:Alarmists...

[hackus]

Well, not so fast.

The Dinosaurs survived quite well, with no brains, or very little brains for a time scale that makes our existence fairly insignificant by comparison.

I would also like to point out, that the estimated age of the Universe is 14 Billion years.

For about 10 billion of those years we assume, the earth wasn't formed.

Well, when the Earth did form, many billions of years went by, about 3 billion, before we had any complex life forms.

After they arrived we had one very sophisticated life form/species called the Dinosaurs.

What makes the interesting:

1) Longest lived of the complex forms, that we know of. They were phenominally successful.

2) They occupied just about every niche, on land, in the sea and in the air.

3) They did so for I think about 250 Million years.

4) Intelligent, no, probably not and dumb as your average house cat some of the smartest ones.

Point is, that they survived for quite a while with no brains.

I also point out that like Stephan J Gould once said, "Intelligence has yet to be proven as an advantage to a species."

I actually think, given the number of species over the time scales we are talking about, that intelligence is fairly rare.

If we are to believe the latest theories regarding the evolution of life, natural selection tends to select species that can survive and flourish.

If this is true, it doesn't bode well for intelligence. For if we truly believe in the scientific principles of Darwinism, then intelligence must be a trait that is detrimental, and tends to kill off species.

Our planet has had billions of years, many billions of species, and only one we know of is intelligent.

If we truly believe that our planet is not special, and that once a Universe forms, scientific principles that govern that Universe are true whereever and whenever.

I think it is safe to say given our planet as a quite ordinary planet around a quite ordinary star, that life is probably common, complex life is also too, common.

But Intelligent life that is self aware borders on the impossible or quirk and probably is very short lived.

(i.e. It develops technology that exstinguishes its existence within 250,000 years after it becomes self aware.)

Mathematically this makes sense because we should be visited by now if there are any other civilizations in this Galaxy.

So I think as a Niche, we compared to other species are very extinguishable, and I do not believe technology offers us any advantages.

That has yet to be seen.

Like I said, the Dino's had no technology and they were far more succesful than we have ever been.

-Hack

Re:Alarmists...

[fluffy666]

You question my claim that warming will occur, followed by cooling, and you question my knowlege of paleoclimatology?!?! I suppose that it is faintly possible that starting from this moment, cooling will occur followed by warming, but that is the only other possibility. Period. Stasis is not in the cards.

No, you were just wining on about 'it'll warm up, cool down, whatever'. With no consideration of rates, causes, effects or, quite frankly, anything. Stasis, in historical terms, has been exactly what has happened for the last 6000 or so years.

you're so ignorant of history that "specific scientific references" seem likely to fly over your head.

I doubt that.

Warming and cooling will occur; climates will shift. The question is not whether climate change will happen, but whether the final configuration of "civilization" will be better or worse then the initial. The cost of changing is a given.

To me, this seems like a complete reversal of the 'don't worry' tone of your original post. Rapid climate change is, in my book, something to avoid.

Re:Alarmists...

[fluffy666]

But, if the net change allows for more productive use of the world's land then the new configuration is more optimal.

Indeed this may be the case after the change. If climate changes rapidly, agricultural producivity, amongst other things, will be near impossable to maintain.

You can either use common sense, or the mean value theorem if you wish, to show that there must have been a period of global warming between then and now.

You could even put dates on it, find causes, evaluate them, look at rates and effects, and do a lot of other stuff. Simply waving your hand and saying 'It's been colder, it's been warmer, so what' isn't even an argument.

So you believe that paleoclimatology says that the mean world temperature is static and has been for thousands of years?

Errm, yes, it's been extremely stable for the last 8-10,000 years. Indeed, this period of stability has been extremely unusual for the past few million years; this has been very, very lucky for the development of complex civilisation. Even minor excursions like the little ice age and MWP have had the effect of collapsing major civilisations. (c.f. Egypt, Maya )

Re:Alarmists...

[marcello_dl]

Human beings live successfully in EVERY climate on the globe...

And by doing that they are consuming difficult to renew resources like forests, oil, carbon... That's NO SUCCESS. We are just selling the family jewels to afford our lifestyle. Unless some clean energy source comes to the rescue, something like a mini ice age would increase our energy requirements to unsustainable levels.

Re:Alarmists...

[Oddly_Drac]

"Before some more research is done into the whys and hows of this phenomenon I personally think that we should stay off the Big Red Button."

Dude, there is no 'big red button' for this. The closest we got was getting everyone around the table for Kyoto, and you know how that story ended.

At no point will there ever be someone who says, 'right, we have enough evidence, shutdown the sawmills...'

It took _years_ for anyone to convince people that the hole in the ozone layer was bad, and that was after clusters of skin cancer in _Glasgow_.

It's probably going to take a good couple of decades before anything happens, and so far the entire argument has been based on 'oh well, it's happened before'. Not with this many people alive. Not with this much hazardous material around.

"bit on the alarmist side of reporting"

You have my apologies for going into 'attack dog', but I thought that it was fairly balanced, and I want people to avoid the assumption that there is a binary go-nogo decision in the offing about whether something is done about this, simply because nature could make the decision for us by wiping out a major city through a mega-tsunami (tsunamai caused by land slippage through erosion rather than fault slippage), or the steady encroachment of rising seas. As land mammals we sorta need the land to do something about it and keep ourselves fed and spread out from each other.

Re:Alarmists...

[Oddly_Drac]

"I'm sorry, but it's just not something you want to screw with until you're 100% sure. Or can't you realize that our atmosphere is too important to us to start making wild guesses?"

Let me give you a clue:

Carbon Dioxide bad



Get back to me when you feel you've grasped that one and feel able to parse more complicated arguments.

"Start shootin in the dark"

That's never stopped America in the past. Sorry, still a bit sore about Kyoto. How did that go again?

Hmm.

[noselasd]

Ok, We've had Europe and lots of other land covered by glaciers only 10.000 years ago. The ice at the poles have melted quiet a few times in earths history. It's likely earth won't be doomed this time either.

Re:Hmm.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're right as far as you go, but, y'know, it's not as if your continent getting covered with glaciers is convenient or anything.

Re:Hmm.

[richie2000]

It's likely earth won't be doomed this time either.

I'm not worried about Earth. She's a big girl now and can take care of herself. I'm worried about us...

Re:Hmm.

[noselasd]

Oh well, we're already to many.

Re:Hmm.

[Mr. Slippery]

The ice at the poles have melted quiet a few times in earths history.

True. But it has not made for fun time for the various animals crawling on the planet's face.

It's likely earth won't be doomed this time either.

Yes, the rock will still be here, and there will be life on it, no matter what we do. That doesn't mean that civilized humans will be part of that life. We can't destroy the Earth, but we sure can destroy civilization. We could even wipe out our own species (along with all the others we're already destroying) if we're studpidly clever enough and work real hard.

Re:Hmm.

[SeXy_Red]

Actually 11,500 years ago to be exact, which strangly enough, is the time frame between each of the previous ice ages, hmmm....

Re:Hmm.

[fluffy666]

This is true. Indeed the more normal (geologically speaking) sea level is around 50-100 meters higher than at present.

Re:Hmm.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather live on top of ice than underwater... but that's just my personal preference.

Re:Hmm.

[Lars T.]

Says one planet to the other: "Shit, I've got Humans!" Says the other: "Don't worry, it'll go away on it's own."

Re:Hmm.

[mute47]

No, but us humans might :D

Slower?

[digitect]

Will this make days longer?

Just as figure ice skater retract their arms closer to their axis of rotation to go faster, and spread them out to slow down, won't this have the same effect on the earth's rotation? If so, it should then be measurable, proving or disproving the claim.

Re:Slower?

[Infinite93]

If you combine this with the lack of need to add the leap second for the last few years, it would imply we are holding speed instead of slowing down. Almost counter-intuitive. That or our assumptions are wrong.

Re:Slower?

[ktanmay]

Nice connection infinite93, things just keep getting more interesting.

Re:Slower?

[Mr. Piddle]

I'm more worried about all the fat people in the western hemisphere throwing the Earth off balance causing it to break up suddenly and violently.

Re:Slower?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm more worried about all the fat people in the western hemisphere throwing the Earth off balance causing it to break up suddenly and violently.

And if you make fun of us, we will do the same to you.

Re:Slower?

[Theaetetus]

I'm more worried about all the fat people in the western hemisphere throwing the Earth off balance causing it to break up suddenly and violently.

... break up laughing? ;)

-T

Re:Slower?

[woohoodonuts]

As found in this basic article here,

Stars and planets form as a result of the gravitational collapse of accreting material. Any net translational motion of that initial material is accelerated as its radius of rotation decreases....

I'm no physicist... but i can assume that if this radius increases, yes, the days will be longer...
Another more detailed explanation of the planet's rotation can be found here... This second article more fully explains the earth's slowing rotation.

however, measuring this would not necessarily prove or disprove the claim, as the data needed would be immensly larger than the data available...
as an example, this text can be found in the second article... It should be very clear from Appendix A that the rate of Earth's rotation both increases and decreases across rather lengthy stretches of time. For example, observations are tabled for some 374 years (from 1623 CE to 1997 CE). Throughout the many years covered in this table, it is apparent that the length of the solar-day was a fraction of a second faster than 86,400 seconds about 41 percent of the time. It is equally apparent that the length of the solar-day was a fraction of a second slower than 86,400 seconds about 59 percent of the time.

as you can see... this type of fluctutation would happen, but it would be nearly immeasurable with any accuracy for quite a while...

The earth is fat !

[gnarlin]

The earth is not fat, it's just big boned !

Time for the Atkins Diet

[BurritoJ]

All right Gaia, time to lay off the carbs.

Must be that time of the month.

[Blackknight]

Sounds like earth needs to take some Midol.

They never blaim the *real reason*!

[Spoing]

1. "Some interesting (and rather frightening) news over at Space.com tells that the Earth is growing around the equator due to the fact that ice in the Antarctic (and other areas) is melting at an alarming rate."

Me to Earth: Hey pudgy! Getting a little wide around the middle, eh? Too much fat? Too many carbs? Either way, too many calories. Maybe a no-sun diet? Ever think of that? Do us both a favor and don't have a coronary!

i guess that answers that question

[scrytch]

... when a planet stops being a young planet. It starts getting thick around the middle.

Re:i guess that answers that question

[AtlanticGiraffe]

Yeah... then fluids start leaking from the top and bottom, spreading all over it.

Bad Reporting

[penguiniator]

The article you cite (which was published over a year ago) starts by saying, "Accelerated melting of Earth's glaciers in recent years has forced the planet to let a notch out of its belt as its midsection gains girth, according to a study released today."

The only source linked by the author of that article says, "They considered that ice melting at the poles and raising the overall sea level could be the culprit. Calculations showed, however, that 'you would have to drop a 10x10x5 kilometer cube of it into the ocean every year for the past five years.' Separate measurements of sea surface height from NASA's TOPEX/Poseidon mission don't support this scenario."

The article concludes by tempering its opening assertion. "Dickey cautioned that the study is not entirely conclusive, as the changes in sea level are measured in millimeters and represent a "daunting task" that requires numerous corrections to account for various known factors, such as natural short-term fluctuations."

So it is conceded that glacial melting cannot account for the few millimeter changes in sea level observed, and that they don't know enough to conclude that it is anything more than a natural short-term fluctuation. Once again, "journalists" are inflating the conclusions of scientists and alarming the public with no more justification than a desire to sell a weekly rag.

So tell us. Why are you bothering to bring up an article published more than a year ago as though it were breaking news?

Re:Bad Reporting

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should the cause just be glacial melting? What about thermal expansion of the oceans?

Re:Bad Reporting

[Anonymous Coward]

Please note that a a 10x10x5 kilometer cube is not really a cube...

Nice Troll, but....

[DesScorp]

It's not "just him", either. Nice way to try to marginalize his viewpoint, which is, by the way, shared by more than just a "niche". There are a lot of scientists (and not just ordinary citizens) that are going "ok, slow down, it's not neccessarily a catastrophe". As many people have pointed out in the past, the Earth frequently goes through changes like this for reasons that are unknown, and that predate the industrial revolution. And lets face it, this whole piece was about pointing a finger at mankind's evil technological ways and saying "see what we're doing to the Earth?"

The Earth's sea level has risen and fallen over the centuries many times, without any input from man. The previous poster was just pointing out that this happens, and that the article might be just a tad sensationlistic in order to promote an agenda (and we know THAT nevers happens in science or anywhere else, right?).

If you agree with that agenda, fine, say so. But when you try to make opposing views look like fringe nuts because it suits your purposes, you just end up looking like an ass.

Re:Nice Troll, but....

[Ignis Flatus]

Most of our "scientists" are brown-nosing yes men that jump on whatever bandwagon is convenient to get government funding. And once married to a certain point of view, it can be very painful to accept defeat and throw away ones "life's work". Earth's climate is primarily governed by changes in solar activity, and there's buggerall we can do about it. It's time we redirected funding to more fruitful endeavors, like recovering methane hydrates.

Re:Nice Troll, but....

[Anonymous Coward]

ok, slow down, it's not neccessarily a catastrophe

"slow down" what exactly?

Re:Nice Troll, but....

[Oddly_Drac]

"There are a lot of scientists (and not just ordinary citizens) that are going "ok, slow down, it's not neccessarily a catastrophe"."

First of all, I'm not troll. Go look up the definition before chucking around the ad homenims, I'm just a tad tired that people think that a closed system can't possibly be effected by man and that all this has happened before.

For one thing we generate heat from chemical energy stored in the planet. We have changed the content of the atmosphere. I could mention background radiation, but that's not that much of a threat at the moment. That's also cyclical on geologic timescales.

"And lets face it, this whole piece was about pointing a finger at mankind's evil technological ways and saying "see what we're doing to the Earth?""

You consider pollution, land erosion and short term planning to be better than actually stopping and taking a moment to go 'umm...hang on'?

Quite frankly, I personally don't care if I leave a smoking ruin for someone else's children to look after because I don't really plan on kids, but I'll be buggered sideways if I let _politicians_ ignore evidence that there is a change in this _closed_ system because they don't feel comfy with hitting pollutors, or have a problem with taxing industries to cleanup. I also detest people that tend to claim that Contemporary Earth is the same as it was in the late Triassic with more digital watches. Catch a clue.

"The Earth's sea level has risen and fallen over the centuries many times, without any input from man."

And Florida used to be swamp. It isn't now. And you can't bomb the tide. Think about it for five seconds. If the glimmering of a hint of an idea doesn't start to emerge, then go get a decent geographic map and plot the ten foot line around the coast. Consider what happens to aquifiers. Faultlines.

My personal feelings are not an 'agenda', they're an opinion. Strive for some accuracy, even if you're engaging in debating tricks. Makes the intended target feel a little less insulted by your posting.

What do you propose we do?

[kippy]

This is for all the people who are crying for action against this rise in sea level.

Without a better understanding of the full dynamics of the geology, climatology and biology involved in this thing, any attempts to reverse it might have unintended and unpredictable side effects.

Cut CO2 output? Sounds good but even though CO2 is the most common greenhouse gas, it's also one of the weakest. Lower levels of CO2 could also be problems for the plant biosphere being the CO2 breathing, carbon fixers that they are.

Cut CFC and PFC output? Also sounds nice since they are thousands of times more efficient at trapping heat. Is there any well agreed upon data that says that this melting is a result of man made greenhouse gasses and not something completely out of our control?

Rapid and drastic environmental changes can be caused by natural phenomena. Without a better understanding of the root cause of climate change, regulating our activity is at best a shot in the dark. At worst it could cause bigger problems.

Re: What do you propose we do?

[Black Parrot]

• drink more water
• move to higher ground
• build an ark
• learn to tread water

Re:What do you propose we do?

[Karem Lore]

No, your right. CFC and PFC are naturally high in the global scheme of things (not). Don't fool yourself, we are at fault. I agree that a quick change back would not be good, but nature won't just suddenly erase levels of CFC and PFC cause we stop producing it. It will take time...a long time...

Re:What do you propose we do?

[kippy]

At fault for what? This particular event? What do you have to back that up? Can you say with any certainty that human activity is responsible for this?

Re:What do you propose we do?

[benj_e]

That's the big question in climatology - what is Man's impact (if any) on climate. There are several things that are usually not mentioned on /. when these types of stories come up:

• We don't have a lot of data on climate parameters past 200 years ago
• What data we do have show a pretty large fluctuation in CO2 levels (between 175 and 280 ppm)
• Solar output has increased over time

For those reasons and others it's just not possible with what we know right now to know what impact Man has had.

Re:What do you propose we do?

[Lars T.]

Cut CO2 output? Sounds good but even though CO2 is the most common greenhouse gas, it's also one of the weakest. Lower levels of CO2 could also be problems for the plant biosphere being the CO2 breathing, carbon fixers that they are.

The plants got by just fine without us raising CO2 levels -that is before we cut down or burned a seizable amount of it.

Re:What do you propose we do?

[jellisky]

I'm trying to remember where I heard or read this, but, supposedly, when asked about what they would do about the rise in ocean levels by as much as a meter in 50 years, one of the guys who is in charge of the dykes that keep the Netherlands dry replied, "We'll build the wall higher."

Let's not forget that humans are where we are in the planetary scale of things because of our incredible ability to adapt to our environments. It's not as if these changes will be immediate... you won't go to bed on the oceanfront and find your house flooded by a new meter of water. In fact, most people won't even notice anything, even over the course of a year.

You make a good point, though. There's lots of people who are running around, crying that the sky is falling... and doing nothing about it or not proposing solutions to the problems. It's truly annoying. I'm not advocating that we do nothing; there have been some "solutions" presented. Whether or not they'll "work" is another problem altogether (e.g. humans may or may not be doing ANYTHING to the climate system), but it's still a start. We have to ultimately accept that change, in many ways and forms, is inevitable and get over the whole "why can't things be the same as before?" attitude that's so prevalent in the western philosophy.

Okay, end of rant. *laughs.*

-Jellisky

Re:What do you propose we do?

[haruchai]

Trouble is, can we wait for to be completely certain? Those who are trying to show that mankind's activity does have an impact on global climate face an uphill battle.
Their detractors continually shout them down with cries of "Where is the proof?" and "It's been like this before!!"
That latter part is patently false: Most of the major impact that man has had on Mother Earth has been in the last few centuries.
While I'm sure that the global ecosystem can tolerate a number of gross insults, can it simply absorb the impact, in a relatively short period, of mass clear-cutting and burning of forests, acid rain, ocean and groundwater pollution, CFCs in the atmosphere, etc. As a system administrator, one of the rules that I live by in my career is, when making changes to a working system, MAKE only ONE or, at worst, a FEW changes at a time and OBSERVE the result.
I feel that it's long past the time we adopted a similar stance on activities that would impact, not just climate change, but our air, water, and soil.

getting fatter around the middle?

[kommakazi]

Isn't that called "middle age"?

Re:getting fatter around the middle?

[ogre57]

Well .. seems Mama Earth is also a little "late". Got me wondering about the next "New Moon".

I would like to be the first...

[Anonymous Coward]

... to suggest the world call up Weight Watchers.

There, I did it. I'm done now.

What do they mean by pumpkin shaped?

[milgr]

According to the article,

Earth has never been exactly spherical; it has always been somewhat pumpkin-shaped.

As one who searches for just the right pumpkin each year to carve, I have seen different pumpkin shapes: some are squat, others are elongated. And there is everything in between.

Does a stem come out of the north pole. Is the South pole in a valley?

Re:What do they mean by pumpkin shaped?

[fredmosby]

I know you're probably joking. But what they mean is that the Earth is an ellipsoid, which is sort of like a sphere that has been squished at the top and bottom.

Is that a global warming...

[Anonymous Coward]

...in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me.

History?

[sabrex15]

Again lets think about how history repeats itself, has the earth not been heating and cooling water for millenia?... Its going to happen folks, so lets not get up in arms about it, now if the earth were to start losing water (because we know the amount of water in/on/around the earth stays constant) then we would need to worry, but the icecaps are going to melt, but you know they're going to refreeze at some point (YEARS after we are forgotton)

Re:History?

[fluffy666]

Actually, there's an entire scientific subject based around this; it's called 'Geology'. Try learning some.

Re:History?

[Dr. Shim]

I live in a small country named Slovenija (Slovenia). Usually, every year we are subjected to tons of snow so that we are wadding knee-deep in it. For the last few years, there has hardly been any snow. It snowed a wee bit, and the tempertures are warm and sunny.

This is unusual, and combined with the news that the ice on both polar ice-caps is indeed melting very quickly, and these discoveries posted in the Space.com article, I find quite alarming. Even if it's still theoretical, I still find it frightening.

Visualize!

[fm6]

We're talking a whole planet, not a tennis ball. .3% is a lot. Look at it this way. The planetary diameter is about 7K miles. 0.3% of that is more than 20 miles! No wait, that can't be right. If the sea level had risen by that much somebody probably would have noticed. Time to RTFA...

Ah, I got it. The articles doesn't say that the bulge has risen by .3%. The equatorial bulge has always been about 0.3% How much has the bulge increased recently? They don't give figures. But they do say that gravitational field changes usually attributed to the "post-glacial rebound" (the geological adjustment to their being less weight at the poles since the end of the last ice age) is twice what it was in 1998.

That's scary. Why? Well, sea level has been rising for the last 10,000 years, since the end of the last ice age. That rise isn't notice during a human lifetime, of course. But now it appears that the rate of melting has doubled in just the last five years. Still not a lot, but we're pouring greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere faster than ever. Even if we could slow our rate of increase (and Dubya doesn't even want to do that), we'd still be looking at a big change in the ocean configuration.

Which could lead, ironically enough, to another ice age. If that happens the "junk science" pundits will doubtless insist that the whole greenhouse effect was just a myth. Oh well, I think I'll go fix a cold drink.

Re:Visualize!

[duffbeer703]

Try to remove politics from your thinking regarding this issue.

Temperature changes in the pacific (remember el nino?) are driving the climatic change and is threatening the gulf stream.

Let's think about what may have screwed up weather patterns in the Pacific... hmmm... maybe the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the 90's... maybe the burgeoning industrialization along the Pacific rim...

The climate has changed alot in the last 200 years. The East River in NYC (salt water) used to freeze solid between Brooklyn & Manhattan. One of the problems that legitimate scientists have is that weather data is spotty or nonexistant if you go back more than fifty years or so.

Trying to pin this stuff on Bush is nothing more than a display of ignorance.

Re:Visualize!

[fm6]

Oh of course, all my logic is an illusion! I've been seduced by those evil Liberals! Thanks for straightening that out.

Re:Visualize!

[duffbeer703]

On second thought, you are absolutely right.

Bush is responsible for global warming, a decade of SUV popularity has devastated the Earth, and destroying the global economy via the Kyoto protocol would have saved us all.

Thank you

Re:Visualize!

[fm6]

Actually, it's all that beer you've been drinking. Lots of greenhouse gases in belches.

I'll make a deal with you. If you'll assume that my opinions are honestly held, and not "political thinking", I'll do the same for you.

Re:Visualize!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh my god, someone just threw a kid out the 5th story window of that building. If I run I might beable to catch it, but probably not, plus I'd get tired, so I'll just watch. You dumbass.

That's why I'm buying beachfront property...

[dnahelix]

In NEVADA!

WHY IS THIS BAD?????

[falcon5768]

I for one would be very happy to have waterfront property finally!!!

So I wasn't imagining it...

[Radical Rad]

My days really are getting longer!

hmmm

[maskey]

The Earth isn't exactly bulging, but rather the oceans near the equator. The oceans bulge because of the tidal force exerted by the Moon and, to a lesser extent, the Sun. Hence if there is an increase in water volume to the oceans due to melting glaciers, then the bulge near the equator will grow.

Equatorial bulge

[GerritHoll]

This means the equatorial bulge gets larger as well. This bulge causes the precession of the Earth, and this in turn the period in which the magnetic poles turn around the geographic poles. In the history of the Earth, ice caps have grown and shrank many times. Have geologists taken this into account when they calculated the place of the magnetic poles in the past, relevant for many geologic phenomona? Or have they always applied actualism, e.g. assumed the precession of the earth is static?

Or another way of putting it

[devphil]

From the most excellent Manifold trilogy by Steven Baxter:

Say you have some algae growing on the surface of your pond. It doubles in size every day. It will take 30 days to cover the pond.

When the pond is half covered, you decide to start to do something about it...

...but, when the pond is half covered, it's the 29th day, and you're out of time.

Re:Or another way of putting it

[stjobe]

when the pond is half covered, it's the 29th day, and you're out of time.

Not if it takes less than a day to clear the pond.

Re:Or another way of putting it

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, chlorine works wonders.

Re:Or another way of putting it

[devphil]

Not to be rude, but: so what? Anything that can be solved that quickly isn't worth worrying about, and isn't an interesting problem.

More to the point, there will be problems that cannot be solved that quickly. There will be ponds that we cannot clear in a day. There will be crises that we out off too long. Saying that some problems can be taken care of in a short time is great, yeah, fine, but it doesn't help the other problems, and doesn't really mean anything.

Re:Or another way of putting it

[stjobe]

so what?

So, your silly little analogy presupposes that clearing the pond takes more than one day. This might not be the case.

Nobody knows one way or the other how the climatic changes we've seen the last few years are going to affect us, there's just too many variables to take into account. To state that there is an emergency and that we're all going to die is... well, premature.

There needs to be more research done before we can say if the pond takes more or less than a day to clear, or even if it needs clearing in the first place, ok?

Re:Or another way of putting it

[devphil]

So, your silly little analogy presupposes that clearing the pond takes more than one day. This might not be the case.

You're missing the point. We know the pond in question takes a long time to clean. Or, for a given climatic/environmental issue, we know it's not an easily solvable problem. There's no "might not be the case" weaseling out of it.

(P.S.- Attacking the analogy instead of the reasoning is a common failure of critical thought. Take a look at, say, http://www.fallacyfiles.org/ for some tips.)

To state that there is an emergency and that we're all going to die is... well, premature.

Well, no shit. I never stated that, and I don't believe anybody else has either. So I think we're in violent agreement.

Of course not all changes are emergencies. Duh. They're not even all "bad" for that matter. My point is that, as far as climate changes go, we've never started responding early enough to negative changes that we could do something about. We always put off environmental solutions, because we are a short-sighted spieces and there's no immediate benefit.

Re:Or another way of putting it

[stjobe]

You're missing the point.

No, you are missing the point. The point -- and it's a sharp point indeed -- is that we have no idea. You're saying it takes longer than a day to clear the pond, I say it might take less than a day. None of us knows, since we don't know the size of the pond, the effectiveness of the cleaning method, the availability of alternative cleaning methods, or even if we really should clean it. We just don't know.

That is why your analogy was silly.

for a[ny?] given climatic/environmental issue, we know it's not an easily solvable problem.

No, we do not know that. This is what I have been trying to tell several people in this thread and in other threads. The heart of the matter is, we do not even know that the issue at hand is a problem. There's just too little research done.

I'm all for doing more research on the climate, I've stated as much on several occasions in this thread alone. I am not, however, willing to accept that every hiccup on the charts mean that we're doomed.

You, according to your last paragraph, seem to be willing to do just that.

Re:Or another way of putting it

[devphil]

No, I'm not... but as you seem unwilling to accept that I'm not a dumbass, I guess there's no point to continuing the thread. Have a nice day.

Re:Or another way of putting it

[stjobe]

you seem unwilling to accept that I'm not a dumbass

You're not giving me much evidence to the contrary.
Anyone who states as a certainty that "for a[ny?] given climatic/environmental issue, we know it's not an easily solvable problem" needs to rethink the basic tenets of scientific method.
Oh, and your helpful advice on critical thought didn't especially endear you to me either.

I guess there's no point to continuing the thread.

As you wish.

Have a nice day.

You too :)

A translation of the climate change problem

[hopemafia]

Think of the earth as a computer.

On this computer, there are many files (matter) which are used by programs (natural processes) which all work under the operating system (natural "laws"). We (humans) were clueless newbies who started putzing around on this computer. In the process we have edited files (built things). Now when one of the programs reads a file we have edited it does something different than it did before. Quite often we don't like the results.

Now that we have become fairly good computer users, we have realized that we have messed up our computer. Although we know what most of the programs do, we still don't know HOW most of the programs work (we're not programmers yet). Since we didn't make a backup before we started messing around (we were newbies then, remember?) we have very little knowledge of what our computer was like before we started changing things.

Sadly, we don't know any computer geeks who can come fix our computer, so we have to deal with the problem ourselves. We could try to fix the files we've edited, but since we don't understand the programs we don't know exactly what our changes will do. They might even make things worse. We could try not to mess things up any more while we study programming, but our computer might stop working before we learn enough. So we have to do what we can to keep our computer running by making only small changes to files while we study. In the process we'll probably make some mistakes, but hopefully we won't cause a BSOD.

If I may quote "Tool",

[Anonymous Coward]

Learn to swim
Learn to swim
Learn to swim...

Re:If I may quote "Tool",

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent quote my friend.

Despair?

[phorm]

Yes, sounds like a good addition for Despair.com. Perhaps if you find a picture to go with it (a meteorite, maybe with dinosaurs perhaps) you could have it posted to the demotivators

Its been done...

[Cyno01]

Didn't Lex do that in one of the Superman movies?

Re:Its been done...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dibs on Otisville!

here comes the poleshift

[Anonymous Coward]

this is the first thing that happens before catastrophic crustal displacement

Re: Gone to war.....?

[Ying Hu]

Say, last March?

you've been inside waaay too long

[Ying Hu]

Sorry, but it doesn't matter here if the sea has gone up and down many times. And which scientists have you (actually) been talking to? If the sea goes up enough now it's a catastrophe - for man. We have a lot of very expensive coastal real estate a lot of people are going to be bent on keeping dry, if possible. And we are taxing the environment as a whole pretty heavily to feed 6 billion people. Large climate changes will mean a) that we probably won't be able to do all 6 billion for a bit, or b) we will have to make very large (and thus given the scale, very 'quick') and therefore very expensive adjustments on getting the food from somewhere new on the globe as arable land areas shift around. Whole civilizations have come into being (China) in order to deal with the flooding of one river (Yellow River). Whole civilizations, and much smaller ones than ours, have collapsed when their food production did. And you think having the ocean flood is not the most important news you've recently heard? Exactly how are you defining "fringe"?

This is a major problem

[Teddy Caddy]

We should not joke or laugh at this. The rate of change is what is alarming, not the change. 3/4 of the world's population lives w/in 100 miles of the ocean. All this land will be reclaimed by the ocean. A 0.3 degree change in temperature is HUGE, HUGE, HUGE. In one century, we can change the temp 30 degrees. The Athabasca glacier in Canada has retreated 1/4-1/2 of a mile since the 1860's. There is a visitor center standing where the glacier was. You won't laugh once this affects you.

In habitants of low lying equatorial islands

[j_w_d]

... probably think its just you. If they have to move in with their mother in law on higher ground, they probably consider the situation worse than frightening. Also anyone who wonders whether the mass and energy transfers involved might affect the seismic stability around the Pacific rim might also suspect its just you. If you depend on an accurate geoid for your work and the darn thing keeps changing, well it might not be frightening, but it could be irritating.

Anyone else here think...

[Trolling4Dollars]

...that this might have something to do with not needing the leap second for the past few years? The increase in size around the equator would definitely affect the earth's motion.