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A New Ice Age?
barakn writes "Scientists have savaged the new movie The Day After Tomorrow, which depicts global warming causing a new ice age and freezing New York solid. The movie follows on the heels of a report to the Department of Defense in February, written by two guys who are not climatologists, about the implications of global warming triggering the growth of ice sheets in the northern hemisphere. There is a plausible theory which suggests that melting ice may release enough fresh water to halt circulation of warm water from the Gulf Stream, thus significantly cooling Europe and the east coast of North America. Note that this theory depends on melting ice, not growing ice, which may be one reason scientists find the ice age scenario so hard to swallow. New satellite evidence suggests a part of this circulation may already be slowing down. Those on the North American west coast will not have to worry about ice sheets, but changes in Arctic ice could mean the western drought will be permanent. For those of you who would rather do something before it's too late, iron seems to work, but the long-term ecological implications are still unknown."
Wait... so you're telling me that a movie writer is being loose with the truth?
What is the world coming to!?
That every global warming prediction scientists have made in the last 30 years has fallen flat on its face.
According to them, we should be all dead by now.
Personally, I'm not sweating anything. There is plenty of evidence that our toxic output is not the largets or the deadliest on this planet, and thankfully things pretty much clean themselves.
I refuse to forget how many times popular science has been wrong.
clifgriffin > blog
I personally believe that all this supposed changes may eventually occur, but they are a normal cycle of the earth and be very gradual. If the human race mangaes to survive long enough, we will slowly change how we do things to meet these problems.
Regardless though, what is gonna happen will happen, and there is nothing we can do to change it. Worrying about such things seems pointless to me. The whole planet is going to be destroyed by the sun dying in about 5 billion years, why don't we worry about that as well?
i might be wrong, but arnt people saying were in the middle of an ice age right now and the only thing keeping it check is the amount of CO2 being produced. anyone?
Jack the sound barrier. Bring the noise.
There's shitload of movie's that has plots that are a slap in the face to science. I mean, look at star trek for chrsit's sake. Or the laughable new release, hellboy.
Movie's do this with a lot of things. They don't bother to consult consultants.
Oh shit!...time to move to another planet...
A major part of climate change is the amount of CO2 in the air (CO2, carbon dioxide, is the major greenhouse gas) In figuring out how CO2 levels will change, a major term is the exchange between gas and water over the oceans; this is a key parameter in all the super complicated computer models from places like NOAA a few years ago, in SCIENCE magazine, turns out this term was wrong by an order of magnitude CONCLUSION: the models are crap why ? u r an administrator, testifying before congress on why u need 200 large. YOu could say, well we made major progress in FFT algorythmns usefull in modeling, and our understanding of image recognition to model cloud patterns...(congress falling asleep) OR u cd say GLOBAL WARMING !!! NYC underwater !!!! it is not that it is bad science, it is just that the quality of the models is not that high - noone has the lsightest idea of how our climate will change in response to any significant perturbation - sort a like MS stuff, no ?
There will be no need for the upcoming 2Kg heatsinks.
Did they touch God or did they touch the Sun?
Next you'll be telling me that Jurrasic Park, Armageddon, etc. are based on junk science!
So climate's changing. So what? It has always changed. The big news would be if it wasn't changing. - Dr. Philip Stone
Today, it's like 59 degreees F.
If that recollection is true, then we're still in an "Ice Age" and should expect the world to be getting warmer if the "Ice Age" is in fact coming to an end.
Sorry if this doesn't fit into the "human == BAD, all_natural == GOOD" paradigm, but getting struck by lightning or eaten by a lion does fall into the "all_natural" category too...
Although accurate software models of the earth's climate and weather conditions don't exist. There is certainly the hardware to run it. The worlds most powerful supercomputer the Earth Simulator is designed to be able to accurately model the earth. Hopefully advances in software modelling will enable us to actually make good use of all that raw processing power.
Why is it that people here* are so dismissive of climate change on Earth, but if it's terraforming on Mars, nary a criticism (of the scientific theory) is heard...
* a generalisation, yes, but just look at some of the comments so far!
I was hoping for global warming! I already had ordered a few 100.000s tonnes of pearly white sand to make some lovely beaches in soon-to-be-sunny Greenland... Damn it!
Hate me!
There is a plausible theory which suggests that melting ice may release enough fresh water to halt circulation of warm water from the Gulf Stream, thus significantly cooling Europe and the east coast of North America.
okay, I couldn't begin to tell you where I heard this (let alone provide a URL) but I recall hearing/reading the "global warming=new ice age" theory kinda like this:
So the earth's temperatures rise a certain level, really only a few degrees, maybe half a dozen. This means the atmosphere can hold more moisture and precipitation increases.
But - with the earth's overall temps slightly higher the temperatures over the poles would still be hella cold (just not as hella cold as before) and the moisture-laden air passing over the cold regions would dump a lot of snow, sleet and ice, which would mean expanding polar ice caps, glaciers, etc., etc., albeit this would be a cumulative effect taking place over many thousands of years.
So, like, I ain't no climatol... clima... uh, scientist or nuthin' - that's just what I read in some fancy magazine somewhere.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
Sure global warming may be happening... BUT and this is probably why the slashdot people are laisse faire, maybe it is part of the overall scheme of things by none other than mother nature.
When that little warming period and ice age hit, which was not caused by humanity, would the arguments not be the same? EG would the green people would be saying to stop burning all of those fires to heat homes?
Frankly I think the only real way of stopping global warming is to kill off about 2/3 of our planet. There are just too many of us.
Let me give you an example. Germany, which is trying to be green installed a huge number of wind powered generators in the North Sea. They have just found out that because of all those generators the coast is getting 10% more sunshine and 10% less rain. I then ask the question, are we not dammed if we do and dammed if we do not?
So unless you are ready to volenteer your life in the name of "humanity" nothing much is going to change.
BTW I do not agree with your quote as planet Earth has withstood worse things than humans and continued. What might not survive are the humans!
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Could the warnings of global warming armageddon be true? Yeah, but so could the warnings of global cooling armageddon from the 1970s.
And even if either guess is true, there's no way to be sure that the problem was caused by man.
Now, all that doesn't mean we shouldn't be reasonable about reducing pollution and greenhouse gas generation. (Well, except if the older "global cooling" predictions were really true, then we should be cranking out the greenhouse gases, right?)
It would seem that the Earth's climate is normal, and we're not going to suffer a slow broil (so put away the onions, and get that apple out of your mouth).
As for the ice age theory, one of the last ice ages was caused by a lot of fresh water pouring into the North Atlantic. The difference in salinity caused the warm Gulf Stream waters to submerge, reducing the overall temperature in Europe and North America enough to cause an Ice Age. The effect took only 70 years.
It would indeed be ironic, though, if the only way to save civilization as we know is would be to increase greenhouse gasses, not reduce them.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
Isn't that the title for a documentary about nostradamus?
Hmm, if MARS IS EXPERIENCING GLOBAL WARMING RIGHT NOW AS WELL then perhaps it's that giant yellow ball in the sky that's causing global warming here as well??
Even God can't hit a 1-iron. :-)
Note that this theory depends on melting ice, not growing ice, which may be one reason scientists find the ice age scenario so hard to swallow.
Because our climate is probably not bound by a purely linear occurrence of events. It is full of rebounds, snap-backs, and whatever else you want to call it... like oscillations.
Just because the melting of the caps is the result of global warming doesn't mean that doing so will not trigger a rebound, causing more of the northern hemisphere to freeze. Just like freezing the caps and lowering the sea level will (theoretically) uncover methane deposits in the soil, releasing greenhouse gasses and thus warming the planet again. So stopping the nice current bring warm water up to northern Europe will cool it down, allowing more ice caps to form. Sure, one they're formed the currents might start up again and warm up Europe, but like I said, it works in oscillations.
What really surprises me is why so many people have a hard time swallowing this. Even looking back at the history of Earth's climate shows numerous ice ages and warm periods. CO2 levels have done the same as well.
Some people just need to think a little bit longer down the line. Or maybe they disregard the claims so they don't loose grant money? Not flaming, just a warranted curiosity...
Could the person who modded parent informative please translate it into English? (Spanish or French will do, I'm not too fussy).
...bad example. I couldn't care less for the movie, but Micheal Crighton's novels are usually one of the best "pseudo nowadays science" novels one can read.
The guy goes deep enough in his research to hide most of his own speculations between enough facts to make the story "believable". Jurassic park was definately one of the rather entertaining books of my childhood and I don't see any reason to use the word "junk" when you discuss a Sci-Fi novel.
1. No sig. 2. ???? 3. Profit!!!
The last big disaster flop, "THE CORE" was promoted the same way.
The very fact that this movie was made by the same fools who made Independence Day and the Matthew Broderick is Godzilla travesty should clue people in that the movie has no credible science.
Low Probability, High Impact. I once attended a presentation by Stefan Rahmstorf, a well known professor of physics of the oceans, in which he talked about these events.
On his website, you'll find a simulation of the worst case szenario. There is also an animation!
Global Warming is one of many reasons why governments world wide are spraying chemicals from white, unmarked astro-tanker jets. See http://www.carnicom.com/contrails.htm, or search Google for "Chemtrails".
Here's another.
Or you could just Google for paleotemperature among other things.
Or perhaps our probes are polluting the Martian atmosphere? ;-)
Are you implying that these scientists' predictions of doom are wrong? That would mean that they're just "stretching the truth" to get more grant money and don't care about being credible!... oh, wait.
For those who are curious:
(Quicktime)
The Day After Tomorrow (Trailer)
Nature probably thinks we are spyware or something, and figures the only way to fix the problem is to do a "cold boot"...
Human impact on the environment is going to drop significantly in any case as the oil runs out and the population drops/stabalises over the next 50-100 years.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
YOU just try to explain that to Joe Average in 100 minutes!
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Cold, salty water from the North Atlantic sinks far below and runs south. Far enough south that it brings back warmer waters north. This flow includes the Gulf Stream.
Climate research has shown that climate shifts have occurred over history in as little as a few years.
If enough ice melts and flows into the North Atlantic, it disrupts the cold saline flow, which disrupts the concomittent return warm flow. Which makes the Northern Hemisphere colder. Which brings on the Ice.
That's as simple as it gets and the ice record in Greenland bears this out.
Way to go off-topic, fucktard.
Much of climatology is a victim of groupthink and academic bias.
My explanation for this opinion is as follows:
Approximately 9/10ths of the energy stored in the atmosphere and oceans exists in the oceans. The ratio of scientific research done on the atmosphere and oceans is just about exactly inverse to that.
Wondering why? We all live in the atmosphere, but few of us, relatively speaking, own beachfront property. We are largely ignorant about our oceans because they are not studied or funded. Academia has unwittingly co-opted this ignorance by exerting their efforts in understanding on what can be easily explained to the simple-minded (i.e. they want their importance to be justified to their dumb friends and politicians). It ignores studying the complex and mysterious deep waters of oceans in favor of having their work understood by people who want to know whether they'll need to bring a raincoat to work that day.
Just like George Carlin said, "Santtity of life? Who says? We do. You know why? We made the whole fucking thing up! You know why? Self interest. It's a man-made self-serving bullshit story."
The same man-made self-serving way of thinking plays into this much more than meets the eye.
"OK. What? What? What? Yayyaa! OK."
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
You might also like to read more about the science of climate change, you should check out the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) reports. Various aspects of the IPCC reports are accessible to readers with various technical backgrounds. This link might be a good starting point.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I remember some time ago seeing a documentary by James Burke written as a retrospective (in 2050) on global warming. A pretty good (and very critical) synopsis of the show is here.
I recall him mentioning something about how the polar ice would melt, diluting some kind of salt/mineral/whatever transport stream in the atlantic, and effectively killing off the ability of the oceans to simultaneously absorb CO2 and somehow effect some atmospheric flow (the jet stream, perhaps?)
As the above critique points out, though, even that was perceived to be approximately a 70 year cycle and couldn't explain global ice ages or anything really apocalyptic.
Perhaps we should start digging tunnels now to prevent any mine shaft gap.
The real problem these movies point out is the shocking rise in bad acting. Apparently something in the future (possibly estrogen-like toxins?) is destroying humanity's ability to emote properly. This is what scientists should be studying. At the rate it is occurring, bad acting could sweep the planet in just a few decades. This could have a profound impact on Broadway, Shakespeare festivals, and even school plays.
and are so conditioned to reject whatever "proof" scientists throw at them, after all they are the planets biggest CO2 producers so have the most to lose financially (an abstract concept called money no less)
fuck the cost to humanity, greed is whats celebrated in that country, god help us all
Generally, in any case by no means every theory/prediction made about climate has been wrong. Case in point James Lovelock (who happens to be one of the two founders of what's generally known as the Gaia hypothesis) and co-researchers *accurately* predicted the medium-long term results of CFC release on the ozone layer.
Science is inherently wrong, because it's the art of better explaining what we don't know. Another related case in point. Up until a dozen years ago physical oceanography uniformly concluded (based on theoretical models and very limited data sets) an understanding that the deep ocean flow was uniform and slow.
A friend of mine at WHOI put some cameras on the floor of the northern Atlantic, one day they were thinking their hardware had flaked 'cause they couldn't see anything. What was happening was silt was being stirred up by a high velocity current. What they discovered was that oceans have 'weather patterns' which operate much as atmospheric weather, fronts, low&high pressure areas etc.
This completely blew away established theories of physical oceanogrpahy (and happens to be directly related research to the abrupt climate change and ocean conveyor research article referenced in this post).
I'm glad you feel safe, however concluding that you're safe because prior research has been wrong is not a great recipe for the long term. The CFC / ozone problem is one of the first instances of scientific results materially impacting environmental policy at the global/international level. If rapid-onset ice-age is a possiblity (this has been pretty well established). And if a 'lens' of low-density fresh water over the northern oceans can trigger this abrupt change we would be foolish to conclude there's no risk worth further understanding.
Linux is Linux, if One need clarify their dist: <Dist>/GNU Linux
bsds are of course just BSD
I'm not sure how bunk the notion of Global Warming causing an ice age is (esp. since the article seems to be slashdotted so I can't read it) nor have I watched the movie. I remember when we were studying planetary science, one of the chief questions was what caused ice ages, esp. connections with the Earth's orbit and rotation. Mind you this was some years back, but if I recall correctly, one of the things we focused heavily on was the fact that the geological evidence shows that just before Ice Ages, the Artic regions have record peaks in their temperatures. It seemed that no-one was too sure about why this was the case but what seemed to be popular was how very high Artic temperatures affected the percentage of the ocean covered by ice and the different amounts of heat that land and water absorb (and also how the Southern Hemisphere was different because of its different ratio of land to water). This seemed to be pretty established physics at the time and no-one mentioned anything about global warming. Though the question of just exactly how this all worked was still up in the air. It just seems that people are applying what is known about past Ice Ages and theorising that if record high temperatures in the Artic Circle which preceded previous Ice Ages played a direct role in the Ice Ages (and you have to admit, it's pretty reasonable to assume this), global warming may eventually result in an Ice Age as well due to the same conditions that caused previous Ice Ages.
Dude, can I try whatever you're smoking
It can't be "accurate science" or "proper science" or "real science" because there is no control, nor is there any way to run any experiments to actually measure any cause-and-effect relationships.
Wrong. While it is not possible to run experiments as such, it certainly is possible to make certain predictions based on the underlying physics and look how the predictions turn out based on empirical data. Then the theory is either validated or not - in which case you modify the theory trying to account for the difference. Or, in briefer terms, you apply the basic scientific process.
And of course it is still absolutely possible to run many experiments on a smaller-than-global scale - the outcome of which help the understanding of the global climate and help predict it's future development.
And even if either guess is true, there's no way to be sure that the problem was caused by man.
That's true. There's no way to be sure of anything per se. There are ways to be reasonably sure of it based on a given set of information, though.
Well, except if the older "global cooling" predictions were really true, then we should be cranking out the greenhouse gases, right?
No. I haven't been around to read about the older predictions, so I might be wrong. However, I imagine a global warming can well induce a severe global cooling, and the other way round. And furthermore, it might well be that the previous claims were just wrong - and the underlying assumptions corrected since then in the process I described above. Of course, now you're saying "Well, what if they're wrong again?!" - that's just the problem with any scientific claim, it can always be wrong. Unless you've got some indications that the current theories are failing, though, it'd be probably be wise to assume they are correct. If on the other hand you do have such indications, you probably should do some research into the matter and find out if either you're wrong, or they are.
And as for the original poster saying: "I refuse to forget how many times popular science has been wrong."
I'm not sure what exactly "popular science" is supposed to refer to, but science is one of the few fields were being wrong is not that bad. Newton's laws on gravity have also been proven wrong, but they were still an incredibly important discovery. And while you refuse to forget how often science was wrong, you do seem to forget how often it has learned from those errors and corrected them, and how often science is right. Also: Try reading a book some day.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
I saw a documentary a few years ago where geologists where saying the next big Ice Age was supposed to happen now.
15000 years ago 1 km of ice covered Scandinavia and half of Germany..I dunno about the U.S., but it isn't cool.
P.S. I live in Sweden and "now" means "within 500 years".
Will code a sig generator for food
For those of you who would rather do something before it's too late, iron seems to work, but the long-term ecological implications are still unknown.
Yeah, there's a good idea. I read that article and while on the surface it seems like a grand idea, it's the second part of your statement that concerns me. We don't know the long-term ecological implications and frankly, I think we'd be more likely to do long-term damage than long-term good. I just don't trust our knowledge of global warming and cooling
I think for now we're much better off sticking with reduction of greenhouse gas creation until we better understand our environment.
Here's the problem. Scientists say, "we've got global warming," and hey, maybe we do, but the Earth also goes through cycles of warming and cooling that are natural, and we don't entirely understand these yet. So now scientists aren't sure if we've got global warming or if we're simply in a natural warming stage. Yes, we do have manmade greenhouse gases. There's no question, but how much this is actually affecting global warming is up for debate.
There are many unknowns. And as we like to quote from the White House, some of those unknowns are known. Some of them are unknown. Until we really understand how global climate operates (maybe in 50 years, maybe longer), I don't think we should do anything to cause any intentional major changes because the damage we could wreak may be well beyond our ability to control, before it's too late.
But that's just my opinion.
But _The Day After Tomorrow_ is by the director of Independence Day -- how could it be anything but a quality picture?
I object to that article, and to the next reply.
Because, for example, the eruption of Mount St Helens put 1 Million tonnes of sulfur aerosols into the stratosphere - these are the things that have the most effect on the worldwide climate, the ash from volcanos is local effect only.
Now, a million tonnes sounds absolutely huge. But it is still only just over five times what, say, the State of Louisiana emits as sulfur dioxide every year.
So in other words - the US easily produces as much sulfur dioxide, and more, every year than the explosion of Mount St Helens.
Or put it this way - you get sulfur dioxide from burning fossil fuels. We mine, worldwide, billions of tonnes of coal every year (the US alone produces just under a billion). How much sulfur dioxide do you think all that lot produces? The answer is that a typical small coal-fired power station (100 MW) may produce from 20 000 up to 30 000 tons of sulphur dioxide a year. In other words, Mt St Helens is worth a measly 40 small coal-fired power stations. How many of them are there in the US alone?
This suggests that American and European balls are going to freeze. Any threat to this part of the world is answered by america with a war on some country or other. So, which one is it going to be this time?
But people, even otherwise intelligent people, just simply don't want to know the truth. They attack the messenger, they bury their heads in the sand. After a while I just decided that we might as well let Nature takes its course. If we're too stupid to clean our own nest we deserve extinction.
Now I know how the Easter Islanders could let themselves get into the position they did...
IIRC, /. covered that article a few months back that detailed one research project that suggested the Gulf Stream was not the major factor in European climatic moderation, but the Rocky Mtns were - the project ran a simulation without the Gulf Stream, and found Europe remained warmer than expected.
Wrong. While it is not possible to run experiments as such, it certainly is possible to make certain predictions based on the underlying physics and look how the predictions turn out based on empirical data. Then the theory is either validated or not - in which case you modify the theory trying to account for the difference. Or, in briefer terms, you apply the basic scientific process.
:)
"Wrong!" Think of your proccess above as unit-testing. It's great because it tests your system in many ways that you expect. Just because you've unit tested though, doesn't mean it will work in the the big picture. There may be many unknowns, misunderstandings, and even outwrite errors (you control all your input data). Now pretend that the system you're writing code for is extreamly large and only partialy documented
Bottom line, I'm not adverse to spending some efforts increasing efficency and looking for solutions to percieved problems. I am adverse to taking drastic economically cripelling action when I'm not sure we've a real understanding of the problem.
--
I think this is similar with this stuff some scientist have been saying. The theory is something like when the earth starts to reflect less sunlight. (lesser global warming effect) it will make things colder. thereby increase the amount of icy regions. In effect, increasing the amount of light reflected. You can read the details here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth very interesting :)
Regardless of whether the film is completely accurate regarding the growth of ice sheets, it will be the first time that its possible that melting ice will shot down the thermo-haline circulation belt. Most of Europe would be a frozen wasteland without it operating.
There's ice-core evidence showing that the circulation belt does shut down periodically - and that it correlates with cold temperatures in Europe.
What I'm wondering is whether or not this film will freak the public out, and make them demand action on climate change. I've seen reports that after Deep Impact and Armageddon public perception of the risk of an asteroid strike went through the roof.
We all know that its hard to convey uncertain and complex scientific issues to the general public. Maybe it will take a Hollywood blockbuster to do what 1000 UN reports never could.
TripInvite.com: Group Travel Made Simple Evit
Just raise the taxes on crack.
Scientists found too stupid to understand
that movie != reality.
This was the period of time when Vikings settled in Greenland for a while, before it became too cold again (more or less)
So, as it's been pointed out before - climate does cycle. What kid doesn't have a dinosaur book showing steamy swamps all over? And cave men running around with Glaciers in the background?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Aluminum is what their using, to bad they didn't make a big mirror because alot of people are going to die. atleast it will be 10 years before the dumbass public realizes this when they could just start watching the chem trails today, they never go way they hang for hours over our heads. Just look Up!
We could reduce our population by undertaking a massive space program and colonizing the galaxy. It's about time people started to go to other stars.
A good start would be building space stations and bases on the moon and on Mars. Even a program of robot explorers would start the momentum.
One great bottleneck of robots is control - we still have very primitive self-driving cars. In outer space we would need a large array of robots to be able to operate for a long time. The Mars rovers work by themselves, but this limits their lifespan. However if they worked in groups they could maintain each other for a longer time. Periodically we can send supplies and more robots to boost the abilities of the robot farm.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
google cache of new scientist is here.
When I was a kid (some 35 years ago), I read a book that discussed the next ice age. It went on to discuss the cyclic nature of the ice fronts and how it will happen again. A long time from now (then)...
So, is this sort of plagiarism or just two people who haven't read the required reading?
...should clue people in that the movie has no credible science
Dude, it's a MOVIE. You know, like all the others that are worshipped here: Star Wars, LotR, etc.
Where are all the posts about the lack of "credible science" in those films?
You guys need to get a life...
Note that this theory depends on melting ice, not growing ice, which may be one reason scientists find the ice age scenario so hard to swallow.
Maybe George Bush would have trouble with the notion that melting ice caps can cause an ice age, but would would "scientists" find that "hard to swallow"?
A scientist shouldn't have a priori biases about such an assertion, and their attitudes towards this theory should be based on specific data and reasoning, not on a general discomfort with the notion that warming in a small part of the world can lead to cooling in the rest of the world.
(And to the Bushes, and all their fans, think of it this way: "When you take ice cubes out of your freezer and put them in your drink, your drink gets cold, too. So, it shouldn't surprise you that when ice comes out of the polar regions the rest of the world gets cold." As a scientific explanation for why melting polar ice caps can cause ice ages, that is, of course, completely bogus, but so are all the other theories Bush and his fossil fuel fan club have, so that shouldn't matter to them.)
All iron seeding studies as of 2003, confirmed the consumption of CO2 but
Fast forward to 2004.
There is an article in nature, published on March 17 2004, whose abstract says iron is not a panacea
Audio interview, (8:36 ogg, 3.3Mb) with one of the authors. Source story.Apparently the study linked to in the original post has two studies who's results will be published in April 2004
So what do we know for sure? Adding iron does cause a bloom, and does drawdown CO2 but other nutrients are used up and the CO2's ultimate fate is debatable.
The conflicting results could be regional variation in ocean conditions, but IANAO.
Either way global warming is real, and the film may bring to light the severity of future changes.
"The DoD's doomsday scenario, which is very similar to that in the film, was drawn up by Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall of the San Francisco-based Global Business Network. Neither is a climate scientist.
The scenario suggests that as global warming melts Arctic ice packs, the North Atlantic will become less salty. This would shut down a global ocean circulation system that is driven by dense, salty water falling to the bottom of the north Atlantic and that ultimately produces the Gulf Stream.
This much is respectable scientific theory, and some researchers believe it could happen for real in 100 years or so. But the film-makers and DoD authors go further."
The article goes on quote scientists who say 'yeah, this could happen, but not so quickly' or 'yeah, this could happen, but not as severly.' So let's not jump to the conclusion that the movie is just making stuff up. Nobody really knows, and even the expert climate scientists are suggesting that this sort of thing may actually happen, but perhaps not for 100 years, and maybe not at all if actions are taken now. But it's not nonsense, and it is a potential threat, at least at some point in the future.
"Scientists" may well be debunking the claim that warming can cause an increase in ice sheets, but "scientists" were also the first to put that theory forth, as a quick Google search will attest. The existence and history of the Atlantic Conveyor was not something that came from the imaginations of movie makers. It was established by good, hard science. While the theory was savaged by many scientists (that's just how science works - you put out a theory and defend it against savage attacks from your peers), it's my understanding that it is now pretty well accepted by most in the community.
Information is not Knowledge
Although the film takes the most extreme view and amps it up by the usual 3 or 4 orders of magnitude there is some very real science behind it.
A UC Davis researcher was on KDVS (the University free-form radio station - gotta LOVE that) this week about how they are looking at ocean-bottom sediment core samples. His research was only for the last 100,000 years but they are able to see changes in salinity by looking at the mix of tiny critters which make up the ocean bottom sediment, and that there is a definite "ON" and "OFF" state to these deep ocean currents.
Although he panned the book behind all of this as "over-wrought", the researcher said the theory behind the "ocean conveyor" was sound.
If you're interested you might contact KDVS through the ucdavis.edu web site and see if there is a recording of the program available. It was actually a good interview -- vastly better than PBS's miserable "Science Friday". They asked smart questions and elicited interesting answers.
I believe the program played early this week about 0900 PDT.
When I first got into this business in the early 90s I spent a lot of time discussing these topics on sci.environment.
It may be worth pointing out that climate change over the past decade has panned out pretty much as was expected ten years ago. It's interesting that this hasn't affected the cerdibility of the field very much.
I've dabbled a bit in sci.environment again in the last few months, but it's been a lot less satisfying. Ten years ago I had the privilege of getting into flame wars with no less than John McCarthy, as well as many other less famous but comparably intelligent, very well-informed conservatively inclined people.
To be sure, there were also many throughly propagandized folks, mostly aligned in two opposing camps, but it was possible to have a serious debate and even, once in a while, score a point.
The conversation on Slashdot is only marginally better than the decaying thrashings on sci.environment. It's better because most people here are grinding different axes, and so their ill-informed commentary is less shrill and confrontational.
There's a hell of a lot of misinformation going around here, though. It's pretty discouraging to see what gets moderated to 5, insightful or informative.
Even the hacker community, chastened though it should be by the ways in which writing code makes you face your mistakes, is sadly overconfident about its opinions. People make broad and confident statements on matters where, (obviously to those few of us here who are serious students of the matter) they know very little. Moderators sharing the politics of the poster mod these up to "insightful" ore even worse "informative".
Let me review the settled science. There's a lot that's unsettled, but when I see these points debated I despair for democracy:
mt
Bah, it's probably redundant but I'm too lazy to check.
I talk about stuff.
Once upon time Greenland was a Paradise covered with fruit threes such as orange trees. But now Greenland is one big junk of ice. (I have seen the masses of stoned orange trees in Greenland with my own eyes) Was it pollution that causes the nature to change this once paradise into a bit land of ice?
Once upon time the North and South Pole was in a different place, was it pollution that causes the Poles to change location?
The ice age that we know about, was it caused of humans or could humans stop that ice age to be reality? And can we as humans make the Nature to change its mind, if the Nature is determent to have a new ice age somewhere on planet Earth?
Or is it just Nature it self that is being natural and changing the surface on planet Earth, as it has been doing all the time the Nature has existed?
I agree that we as a part of planet Earth shall not pollute and mishandle Mother Earth. But some times it seams to me that many scientists invent problems, so they can suck funding from the taxpayers, because they don't want to do real science. And bigger the problem is more money they get to play with. Sounds like a modern gold mine for some few. And if the answer is that our so-called pollutions are not a threat to the self-regulating climate, will they tell the taxpayers the real truth? I don't think so because then many scientists would be out of a job and therefore have to do some real work as the rest of us.
= 9J =
The Gulf of Mexico is a large tropical sea with very warm water. A major ocean current, called the Gulf Stream, carries warm water from the Gulf up the east coast of the United States, starts to curve to the east as it passes Virginia, makes a sharper turn east near Cape Cod, heads straight for Ireland and Britain, turns south and heads down the French coast to Spain. The heat from the Gulf Stream warms northwestern Europe, and is the reason why London is as far north as Quebec and Moscow, but doesn't get 4 meters of snow every winter.
The mechanism that causes the Gulf Stream to flow is that cold water is denser than warm water. The arctic water up near Greenland and Iceland sinks and the warmer, less dense water from the Gulf of Mexico flows up to take its place.
However, salinity also affects water density. If enough fresh water from the ice cap melts and flows into the area around Newfoundland-Greenland-Iceland-Scotland, the water won't be dense enough to sink. Therefore the warm water will stop flowing north from the Gulf of Mexico.
Now London gets 4 meters of snow. Scandanavians laugh at them.
Of course, this will also cause the ice cap to stop melting in this area, but it will take quite a long time to "prime the pump", perhaps several thousand years. In the meantime, the northeastern United States and Northwestern Europe experience an "Ice Age" where their climate more closely resembles the climate of Russia at similar lattitudes.
Cultivating the ocean deserts with iron has to be, food calorie for food calorie, far less destructive than what is going on in the name of agriculture in the rainforests -- and most probably far less destructive than any agricultural practice going on now in the name of civilization. Moreover, the sort of cultural and social changes resulting from an oceanic desert frontier are far more conducive to moving agriculture off-planet entirely, which is where technological civilization belongs. Indeed, if one wants to have a real and sustainable impact on global climate change, the best thing to do is just that: leave Earth to the hunter-gatherers.
Seastead this.
More than anything, I just want a movie where the focus is the human race getting wiped out simply because abstract thought/sentience is not the survivability characteristic we think it is. I studied with some other MIT ultra smart biologist types that give us 100 years simply as they feel that self awareness might not be a trait that is survivable.
Sorta like that sick pun in that disney movie "Dinosaur" where there is a happy ending and they make it to that -little- sheltered eden... annd the next scene you see is a "year later" shot... and all the dinosaurs have had -all- the offspring they could possibly have... the -little- eden is just teeming with children. Something like that that the general population just won't understand.
I happened to catch the Art Bell show for the first time recently, and between the paranormal sex talk he mentioned that he hadn't even been allowed to read the script yet. He had a guest on that somehow had read it, but couldn't discuss it due to NDA issues.
There's an unfortunate side effect of fertilizing the ocean with iron: the increased microbial activity will cause more N2O (nitrous oxide) to be released from the oceans. N2O is a much more effective greenhouse gas than CO2, and it stays in the atmosphere for centuries.
What this prediction does is to make Global Warming completely unfalsifiable. If things get a little warmer, it proves that Global Warming is imminent. If things get a little colder, it's because Global Warming is imminent. If things stay the same (which they generally never do) then that just proves that we are at an unstable tipping point. Goodbye science, hello politics.
Whoa! Too many big words there.
Cannot mod this one further up!
Another service by the Office of the Republican Moderators.
Say, Mikey, why didn't you mention that the DOD report was just a compilation of "worst case" scenarios from the various theorizing and (bogus) computer models the enviro-left likes to toss around as fact (i.e., your post)?
/., so my bad...
Gee, I guess giving all the facts might mess up your continual efforts at spreading Leftist FUD on
Let me give you an example. Germany, which is trying to be green installed a huge number of wind powered generators in the North Sea. They have just found out that because of all those generators the coast is getting 10% more sunshine and 10% less rain. I then ask the question, are we not dammed if we do and dammed if we do not?
If you're gonna make outlandish claims, at least provide a reference. I'm personally really skeptical that any measurable changes has occurred and even more skeptical that causation has been proven. Until I see a real link, your little theory goes into
...their servers froze
Table-ized A.I.
The obvious solution to this is to have 10% of the population of Germany go to the coast and blow in the direction of the prevailing winds to compensate for the extracted wind energy :)
When I first saw the trailer for Day After Tomorrow, every single person in the movie theater laughed. the 'frozen' New York looked no worse than your average Canadian winter.
I have a question about the nature of climate. You say:
What about 1/f noise? Are we studying a stationary random process? Is it even legitimate from a mathematical-modeling viewpoint to talk about long-term average behavior? The prediction you make about 2304 is reasonable, but hardly long-term by geological standards.
Warming Climate Disrupts Alaska Natives' Lives
7 2&e=20&u=/nm/environment_warming_dc
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=5
I used to smoke cigarettes. When someone would ask me if I worried about cancer and such, I would reply that this cigarette that I am smoking right now is not going to kill me. What will seriously impact my health is the 25 cigarettes a day over 30 years that would seriously damage my health. It wasn't until my wife was pregnant with our first child that I was forced to be serious about quiting. Now back to the subject... this tank of gas will not cause global warming.
I love listening to armchair environmentalists that sit behind thier keyboards and preach that "we are all doomed if you don't change your ways. What?! really?! I am so glad you told me because 30 years of being aware of what is going on in science and the popular press didn't alert me that very fact. Can you tell me more about how to live my life? Its apparent by the fact that you are consuming huge amounts of fossil and nuclear fuels by using the Internet (routers need power too, lots of it!) that you are setting a fantastic example.
As far as I am concerned there are probably only a couple of groups in North America that can say that they contribute more than they take from the earth. The first being the Amish who live close to the earth and those who are off grid and manage thier own resources. Those of not in those groups are not much more than vampires commited to global stewartship through force every time we fill up our tank or buy goods made with slave labour in a communist country. Consuming vast amounts of resources with a change in the trend. BTW I am not picking on Americans or American foreign policy.
I expect that environmental terrorists will follow the Muslim. To show the infidels the errors of thier ways.
Q. What is Calvin's monster snowman called? A. The Torment Of Existence Weighed Against The Horror of Non Being
Looks like you don't entirely deserve your bad karma.
There is just as much reason to believe that we are simply coming out of an ice age as there is to believe that we are causing serious harm to the ozone layer. However, the risk is so serious and it is so obvious that releasing mass amounts of pollutants is not a good thing that we should try to reduce emmissions.
It greatly distrurbs me however that the same people who supposedly want to protect the planet are often for extremely risky measures such as dumping iron into the ocean to increase uptake of CO2 by plankton or dumping liquid CO2 into the deep ocean. How could anyone even entertain the thought of playing god like this? We don't know enough about the planet to be manipulating large scale processes!
We have some idea of how the climate works but we don't have the exact formulas. In fact, one of the formulas currently in use might be off by a factor of 10. The problem is, when someone's looking for more funding, they will choose the formulae that generate the most shocking predictions, and that's what makes the news.
Basically, we don't know enough to make decent predictions. Oh and BTW, I hate Microsoft.
No CO2 emissions. No 10% more sunshine/10% less rain.
Solar?
Americans used 3,720 billion kWh (kilowatt hours) in 2001 according to the Energy Information Administration [doe.gov], a branch of the U.S. Department of Energy [doe.gov]. Yes, that's billion with a 'b'.
From the Wikipedia: "Sunlight provides about 1.36 kilowatts per square meter, and most solar cells are between 8 and 12 percent efficient." There are 9,158,918 square kilometers in the U.S. Each square kilometer is equal to one million square meters (remember 1km = 1,000m; so a square of 1km by 1km is 1,000m by 1,000m).
A kilowatt hour (kWh) is 1 kilowatt of output sustained over one hour.
So, 9,158,918 (number of square kilometers in the U.S.) times 1,000,000 (square meters in a square kilometer) times 0.68 (number of kilowatts with 50% efficiency) to get kilowatt hours. Multiply that by 8 (average number of hours in the day with usable sunlight) times 365 (days in a year).
18,185,947,580,800 kWh. That's more than 3,720,000,000,000 kWh by a factor of five, right? Solved!
Oh...ummm... This assumes that all of the cells are at that 50% laboratory record-setting level as opposed to the ones in use today. If we go off the 8%-12& mark, we're already at the bare minimum for energy requirements with no margin for error.
And this assumes that all of the panels are kept clean; Remember, less power if there's dust and grime on the solar cells.
And this assumes that it's never cloudy/rainy/snowy.
And this assumes that U.S. never increases their power usage from 2001 levels. (Note, I'm not getting into a discussion of the value of energy conservation. It's immaterial here. If you can get all ~300 million Americans to halt the growth of their usage let alone lower it, I will kiss the ground you walk upon.)
And this assumes that materials are sufficiently abundant and practical to build all of those panels.
And leaving things out in the sun for extended periods of time tends to do bad things to most items: sun-bleached hair, ruined paintings, less efficient solar cells, etc. Solar cells drop in efficiency by 2%-5% every year of their operating life; Best case scenario, your solar cell is working at 90% after five years; 80% after twelve years. (Remember, that's 90% of 12%.)
And, most important, this assumes that all the land area in the continental U.S. including Alaska is covered in solar panels! This means no food grown, no basking in the sunlight, an epidemic of Rickets Disease, etc.
Solar is only good for supplementary power generation: lowering the drain on the grid.
It's not about nuclear being warm and fuzzy. It's not about going with the solution with no risks. No technology available to us today can provide even close to all of the power used with 100% safety. Large scale energy is not and will never be 100% safe. However the use of fossil fuels is worse. Fossil fuels emit too many pollutants that get into our air and water.
It's time to bite the bullet and go for the IFRs. Why it is called an "Integral" Fast Reactor? Once the initial fuel is loaded no fuel goes in and no waste comes out for the entire 70 year life cycle. This will greatly reduce the current 90,000 nuclear shipments a year on trains and trucks. At the end of the 70 years, the nuclear "ash" of the IFR needs to be stored for only 300 years as opposed to 30,000. The actinides are used and recycled over and over until they are depleted. Current nuclear waste and the material for nuclear warheads can be reused as fuel for an IFR instead of being dumped in Yucca Mountain. The purity of that fuel once used in an IFR cannot again be easily transformed into weapons-grade material. It is as hard as converting the original uranium ore. If IFRs are implemented, uranium need not be mined for 500 years; Existing stock piles of uranium ore, nuclear waste, and obsolete weapons will be more than adequ
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
But i love independence day...don't forget they also made Star Gate. (the movie not the TV show which i like also)
Sooo, when the earth was warm and dinos roamed the Canadian and Russian arctic, they were troubled by ice and their wallowing swamps were dry... Exactly what kind of ice do you get at plus 40 degrees Celsius?
Oh well, what the hell...
Mt Pinatubo was significant but only temporary.
The aerosols had a noticable effect, but it does not last long since over a few years they get washed out.
And in fact, the Mt Pinatubo helped verify the actual models of climate used by scientists which in the long run predict global warming and significant climate changes.
In fact a few years ago the temperatures weren't going up as much as the (old) models said they were and the right-wing know-nothings harped on this and said "see you nerds are wrong". Turns out that when the Pinatubo effects were included the models quite precisely matched the observations and now that the effects have washed out the climate has resumed its previous, warming trajectory.
The problem is that the lifetimes for the greenhouse gases are hundreds to thousands of years. The lifetimes of the aerosols from eruptions are much shorter. So in the short run one volcano can make a difference, but in the long run it will not----unless there is some deep internal process in the earth which will greatly alter the rate of volcanism. There is NO scientific evidence for this.
Also, w.r.t. ozone, the depletion of ozone by CFC's in the southern polar regions is now completely verified by in-situ EXPERIMENTAL science and observations.
"ozone depleting" chemicals can mean lots of different things. CFC's and related chemicals are pretty much ONLY the result of human chemistry. They use funky reactions not really found much in nature.
But again most importantly, the CFC's are very LONG LIVED and catalyze the ozone depletion when on the ice crystals in the South Pole weather patterns.
A volcano can emit more chemicals which may be more damaging---in the short run---but because ozone is constantly being created by solar radiation what only matters is the long term chemical balance.
And once again, it really is the exceptional human-produced chemicals that matter.
I agree that there are idiot greens who pay no attention to scientific facts, but it is important to listen to the serious scientists.
It is NOT always the case that real, honest science will always "debunk" the left-wing positions, contrary to what some think.
Nowadays it is much more likely for the right to ignore good science in favor of their own personal wishes.
Bring on the Ice Age! The idea of living in a cave, with a bearskin enconsed Darryl Hannah or Barbara Bach is right up my alley. Zug-Zug anyone?No more shaving, no more coding, and no more traffic. I have the knowledge to make charcoal and iron. I learned how to hunt with bow and arrow at the age of 12. I intend to adopt the Mayan tradition of human sacrifice in my religion. In the land of blind men, the one-eyed man is king!
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
...the spinoff from the x files, had aircraft being hijacked in a conspiracy for despotic takeover in the US by connected "insiders".
hmmm The aircraft get flown into buildings in NYC, and to accomplish the task they used remote control..
hmmm just like global hawk, which had it's first "official" successful flight very close to 9-11. If anyone remembers the details better, feel free to correct me.
Rather a nice coincidence there and "prophetic" sort of event. Oh ya, too bad the whitewash commission didn't ask condi rice why she warned willie brown not to fly that day. wonder how she knew... Hmm, funny, they didn't ask why the joint chiefs of staff cancelled their meetings there either. And come to think of it, ashcroft stopped flying commercial right before 9-11.
side issues.
As to the weather, hell ya it's weird. anyone who cvan't see that needs to go outside, the weather AIN'T been normal the past several years. And I don't have a URL handy, but I've seen pictures taken of the arctic showing massive melting in areas that were frozen solid for umpteen lotsa years. And it don't matter to me which side wins the arguments, because BOTH sides are correct, we have cyclical weather changes, and man sure does effect the weather from our industrialization. All one needs to do there is NOT live in any big city, then drive in, see the air take on colors, then watch weather maps as fronts approach big cities, see them change. Now extrapolate that around the planet,add in the amazon fires and the forest fires in the US every summer now, add in the huge coal burning facilities going online in asia, etc, etc yep, we cause climate change. IMO, it's more than the tame "skeptic" scientists claim,the ones with their political agendas, and it's less than the more extreme enviros with a political agenda claim, but it's for sure happening.
Remember that he also made _Godzilla_. Now *that* was a terrible movie.
Maybe we should set up knee-jerk based power plants!
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
In other words, the answers from the simulations were shown to not be right, so the simulation was changed so it again resembled reality and still produced the desired temperature increase. Because climate science doesn't know how climate works so the models don't either. Oh, and note the above link is about improvements since the SAR -- the Kyoto Protocol is based on SAR science, so is based upon those uncertainties mentioned. The above link does not refer to areas where there has been no improvement.
Now, these climate models... How well are they handling the major greenhouse gas, water vapor? How is it known the water vapor feedback model is correct? Are the models handling clouds yet? Do you think not being able to model hurricanes implies anything about the results?
And about the aerosols, well... "the direct aerosol effect may previously have been overestimated." IPCC TAR - note the list of "evolving" (we don't know enough) and "speculative" (we don't know what it means) issues. And in "well established" items, note the problems and "significant uncertainty". Note that the definition of "well established" states that "nearly all models" or "many models" agree -- because there is not yet a good model, they are producing different results.
From The Energy Information Awareness division of the U.S. Department of Energy: "France's commitment to the use of nuclear power has allowed the country to keep a lid on its carbon emissions, since nuclear power emits no carbon or other greenhouse gases. Since 1980, when France emitted approximately 136 million metric tons of carbon, the country has cut its energy-related carbon emissions by just over 20%, to 108 million metric tons in 2001. By contrast, carbon emissions by the United States over that same time period have grown by almost 22%, from 1.29 billion metric tons of carbon in 1980 to 1.57 billion metric tons in 2001."
That sounds more correct to me sice automobiles are a (the?) major contributor to air pollution in most industrialized nations.
"France's move towards nuclear energy and away from fossil fuels such as coal is clearly evident in its reduced level of carbon intensity. In 2001, France's carbon intensity was 0.06 metric tons of carbon per thousand 1995$--exactly half the country's carbon intensity level in 1980. France's level of carbon intensity in 2001 compares favorably with its neighbors in western Europe, as the UK (0.12 metric tons of carbon per thousand 1995$), Spain (0.11), and Italy (0.10), and Germany (0.08) all posted higher levels of carbon intensity than France in 2001."
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
... "Sorry to bring politics into this but it is strange to me that the party of Teddy Roosevelt - who practically invented conservation politics - is being so thick headed about this problem)... I TOTALLY agree, way back when I was an activist in conservation, and I was amazed that the R party was so..against it, that they preferred short term maximised profits as a business model over long term stability and wise use of resources and maintaining a "clean-er" environment. That made me stop and think, even though I worked volunteer for them for some other reasons..(I didn't trust LBJ and I DID trust goldwater) and then the corruption and lies and war profiteering run by the eastern establishment feudalistic wing of the R party got to me finally and made me stop supporting the R party. I flip flopped for decades, R to D back to R and finally I said heck with it, neither party is a functional party anymore beyond an organized crime cartel, they are grown too fat, corrupt and moribund. They cause the problems, they certainly don't solve any...
I support third party candidates or Independents now. Lately I have been looking at Aaron Russo of the L party as whom I might vote for this upcoming election. Not sure yet, but so far he's sounding good to me the last few times I have heard him interviewed.
I don't think TDAT is nearly as laughable as Kevin Costner's global warming epic, waterworld, which assumed that all the polar ice melts and water levels rise some *thousands* of meters !! At the time you could fool a lot of people with the trick question: if the arctic cap (not Greenland) melted how much would sea level rise? O meters of course.
Is it even legitimate from a mathematical-modeling viewpoint to talk about long-term average behavior?
Indeed, in a formal sense it is not easy to make a distinction between climate and weather. The casual statement "climate is the statistics of weather" becomes formally unsatisfactory when one starts to talk about climate change .
Nevertheless, I hope you will admit that I am saying something both meaningful and true when I say that the climate of Kansas City Missouri is more variable than that of Portland Oregon. How to cast this into a formal mathematical statement is not obvious, but probably not relevant for the current discussion. Whether it ought to be a practical issue for the field is something I've wondered about, but I don't think it's a current topic.
Interestingly, "climate" is conceptually better defined in our complex models than in the real world, because our models have finite sets of forcings and of free variables, and thus a clearer distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic variability than the real world does.
The prediction you make about 2304 is reasonable, but hardly long-term by geological standards.
Actually, the prediction is robust for any location at 40 degrees north latitude, at any date, on physical grounds, as long as the atmosphere is not almost totally opaque to incoming shortwave radiation (a.k.a. "sunshine") as on Venus.
I simply use it to illustrate that the predictability horizon of weather (defined as preturbations about the climatological mean) does not amount to a predictability constraint on the climate itself. I will make the same assertion for 30,000 years in the future, if you assure me that "Chicago" will be meaningful that far into the future (which I very much hope will be the case!)
I understand this doesn't go directly to your question, which is mathematical rather than physical. Climate is definitely not stationary, and quite possibly not even ergodic.
Climate is easy to define formally in our models though, much more so than in the real world. Our models can do multiple realizations of a particular year, based on specific boundary conditions and forcings. We capture enough of the variability in these models that the realizations differ. We treat the variations among these realizations as stochastic weather and the commonalities as deterministic climate.
In the real world, as opposed to in models, there is only one realization, and in fact, no clear distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic processes. So our meta-model, our model of the model, is difficult to justify formally.
In practice we don't dwell on this much. We just treat the real world as a superposition of chaotic dynamic variability (an unpredictable part) and deterministic climate change which sets up the statistical properties of the chaos.
In the simple chaotic dynamics view, weather is the state of the system (the wandering dot), and climate is the shape of the set of permissible trajectories (the whole phase diagram). Things aren't necessarily that simple in fact, but we don't have a better way of addressing the issue. Ultimately, we aren't trying to prove theorems, we're trying to elucidate complex physics, and this view appears to be both necessary and sufficient for most of our purposes.
mt
Possibilities are not probabilities are not certainties.
Back before the so-called Global Warming craze
;^)
took effect, the left tried pushing the theory
of a new ice age. Nimoy's In Search Of TV show
had an episode saying a new ice age was coming.
I also have a book from Reader's Digest called
Strange Stories and Amazing Facts from the early
70's has a story about the coming ice age. This,
of course, never happened (just like every other
doomsday scenario they try, ie population,
meteor, running out of oil, ozone "hole" etc.)
What is new is that they now claim that "global
warming" will CAUSE a new ice age. Nice twist.
Weather patterns are cyclical. Watch your local
news for proof. Look at the record high and low
temps for a week and note the years. If the
earth was heating up, or cooling off, the gaps
would not be so wide. Rather, you would see a
steady pattern in ONE direction! Instead we get
the same bunk based on junk science. We keep
finding new, less invasive ways to get to oil
previously unreachable. Any holes in the ozone
just so happen to be over volcanoes, which
generate ENORMOUS amounts of CO2. We keep
finding ways to produce more food despite the
population rising. And the meteor ain't hit
yet; but they still have hopes that it will.
It was also said that the toxic output of this blast contained nearly a thousand times the ozone depleting chemicals that humans have created since the Industrial Revolution."
I've heard this claim before, investigated it, and found it to be ridiculous.
From this reference: "...[T]he large explosive eruption of Mount Pinatubo on 15 June 1991 ... injected about 17 million tonnes of SO2 into the stratosphere. ."
The fossil-fuel derived output of SO2 was roughly equivalent to 68 Tg/yr of S (68 million tonnes/yr) in the late 80's (source: Global Environment: Water, Air, and Geochemical Cycles, by Berner and Berner, 1996). Since this number is only for the sulfur component, the total mass of SO2 is even larger, 136 million tonnes/yr.. A year's worth of human sulfur dioxide production far outweighs Pinatubo's production. The sulfate aerosols resulting from SO2 act as surfaces for ozone-destroying chlorine. The lifetime for these sulfate aerosols is 3 years, as compared to 45-100 years for common manmade (and ozone destroying) CFCs (ref).
Also from the 1st ref."...[V]olcanoes emit between about 130-230 million tonnes (145-255 million tons) of CO2 into the atmosphere every year (Gerlach, 1999, 1992). This estimate includes both subaerial and submarine volcanoes, about in equal amounts. Emissions of CO2 by human activities, including fossil fuel burning, cement production, and gas flaring, amount to about 22 billion tonnes per year (24 billion tons). Human activities release more than 150 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes...."
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
..the sun is fusion power. Capable of transforming a piece of dirt into a never ending supply of cellulose,a remarkable good fuel and source of raw materials for manufacturing, and in the water, the sun is capable of making vast quantitites of clean burning hydrogen from blue green algae. And the sun's fusion power is the main impetus for our winds, which asre harnessable now, current technology is almost break even with coal burning there.
/. who's made some sort of move to try and do my part, I'm a geek, I use and dig "no powah", I understand that, and I also understand that if I don't do something personally I'm a hypocrite at this point, so, several years back I got solar PV, windgenny, use renewable fuel -wood- , am gradually switiching over my appliances to much more efficient, and will do more as I can, but it's gonna take everyone on the planet doing it, not waiting for this "they" guy to do it, because "they" aren't doing it, they are talking about it and burning oil for the most part, and we can't do that much past the current younger generation's (kids in grade/junior high school now) entry into productive adulthood, based on every figure I have seen from a variety of sources. This is a short time period we are staring at. We have pretty snazzy geological exploration tools now, we basically know where the oil is and how much is left, and it's a relatively low amount if you figure the human race is gonna want and need a lot more of controllable and useable energy for the next..forever.
We can do a lot more, it's just not being done, because primarily the alternatives lend themselves to being a cost that can be paid off, and it's also a major DE-centralising effort, and those two factors interfere severely with the status quo of the current business model of over-centralization and a never ending check to bigenergycorp.
Man made fusion isn't here yet, when it happens, swell, let'scheck it out, see if it works and can be made safe and reliable, in the meantime I think we should start really working on a transitional model away from rapidly declining oil fields, many of which have already passed peak production and are in decline, in roughly a 70 year time frame of useage and exploitation. We simply cannopt ignore hard numbers. Just this week royal dutch shell had to admit they were fudging their figures dramatically by 1/5th of their proven reserves. Umm, that's a lot... I would *wager* the other guys have done similar, just not caught yet.
We can't wait until we run out is the bottom line, when it gets to the point that it takes x-amount BTUs of energy in to get the same amount of BTUs out with oil extraction, refining and delivery, then it won't matter how much oil is left underground, you could through all the printed up money in the world at it and you still wouldn't get anything from it.
And then we'll be up a severe ^&^*& creek with NO paddles, a leaky canoe and crocodiles staring at us from the bank.
And china and india and south america and africa and south east asia with their billions of people are *just now* really entering an oil consumption/demand period of their existence that we in the already completely industrialised world have been in the past century almost. Demand in the next decade is going to tripe at least, if not quadruple. Where's the oil going to come from? think tanks? Politicians mouths?
Bottom line, there ain't enough oil for this whole deal to go along how it is now, just ain't there, not happening. We need to stop talking about it and do it, even if the alternatives aren't "perfect" yet, neither is the possibility of running out and fighting major global wars over dwindling supplies of oil a "perfect" solution either, and wishing for back yard fusion reactors is just that..wishing. We have to use the alternatives we have thought up already, all of them, or we are gonna be STUCK.
I'm one of the few people on
We can use the oil to help us transition NOW, or we can "eat our seed corn" now, and forget about the future, that's the only two options we have realistically.
Please. I squandered mine.
You're right. It's a scarcity of materials and land area issue more than a power issue. Well...the power issue is lessened greatly. You still have weather, cleanliness of cells, and degredation issues. But you're right, the overall power output was a major fubar.
I stand corrected.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
Those who want to stay snuggled up in a comfortable lie will shun knowledge, and ironically, will be among the first to suffer. Frustratingly, they are also among the greatest causes of the various problems.
In either case, you are a coward.
Congratulations.
-FL
...but it won't be the end of life as we know it. That was the poster's intent. Civilization was still essentially civilization as we know it 1000 years ago. If the global temperature was higher then than it is now, then it stands to reason that our civilization will survive climatalogical changes in the near future.
This is not to say that there will be upheaval and strife, but we will adapt.
Damnit. Are you sure about Christmas in Chicago in 2304? I was planning on going swimming that day, but now you're ruined everything...
-Trillian
doesn't like the idea of someone other than the scientific elite having a plausable theory? Just a thought. So much of the "global warming" issue is such conjecture and/or fuel for paranoia. "Some bad stuff going down, according to my calculations! Somebody better start payin' me to get to work on a remedy! Did you hear me? I said SOMEBODY..." That sums up a lot of what passes for "science" today.
say the polar ice melts and now there is more water to evaporate so there are more clouds in the sky, more rain, less sunshine hits the surface thus cooling the earth, rain turns into snow, ice age, ..., profit? i don't know about these things but it seems like a it could happen.
lose != loose
We should be trying to maintain global warming.
temps for last 150,000 yrs (you need flash and ie)
This temperature record for the last 160,000 years is very informative. What most "environmentalists" do not realize is that the earth is normally cold as hell. It is only throught "unnatural" affects caused by life (a.k.a man etc.) that the earth is not a frozen hell. It is true that it is possible that through industrialization we could throw the world back into an "ice age", but it is equally possible that we could delay the inevitable descent into the next ice age through these processes. I believe the latter is more likely. I work for an environmental company. If man-made things are not natural, exacly what are they? Supernatural? ughhh!! you guys hit my pet peeve today...I think it will be many years before anything worthwhile comes from the IPCC and their models. I you check out chapter 7 you will find they advise why they have not included water vapour in the atmosphere in their modeles.
The issue is that water vapour is by FAR the most important greenhouse gas. CO2 is about 365 ppm these days - or 0.0356% while water vapour is in the range of 2-4% and this makes water vapour 100 TIMES more important.
Next, we need to consider irrigation. The CIA factbook does have land under irrigation on a country by country basis. It is clear these irrigation projects collectively are very significant and they have the effect of turning vast areas of arid land into moist land. All that water ends up transpired or evaporated into the atmosphere.
If we consider fossil fuels we find another large source of water vapour.
If we add it all together, which the IPCC has not done, what we find is that there has been a change in the amount of water vaopur released into the atmosphere from mankind's activites and then we must note that the UNCERTANTY in the measuremens of the water vapour are much greater than the total amount of trace gases.
Water vapour is 2 orders of magnitude more significant in concentration and it is a stronger absorber of Ultraviolet light in ALL wavelengths.
---------------
That being said, our climatologist look at an extremely short time frame. The earth has been around for about 4.5 billion years. By 570 million years ago, it had warmed and then it stayed warm for close to 90% of the time since then. There really only were 4 cold snaps and we have been in one for the last two million years. And during this last 2 million years it appears we have enjoyed about 20 ice ages, the last of which ended only 18,000 years ago.
To contrast the duration of time, suppose we were to stack up the volumes of the encyclopeadia Brittanica. If we count the number of pages we might find the thickness of each page would correspond to say about 100,000 years of the earths history.
This means that our climate modelers basically collect there data from usually less than 1/1000th of the thickness of the last page and meanwhile they ignore everything else.
IMHO this does not bode very well for their ability to make valid predictions.
Really, the weather is changing? What a concept.
Global warming, global cooling, a new ice age? Sounds like no one knows what the hell is happening.
The climate has been changing long before man had an impact on it. The ice age 40,000 years ago nearly off'ed the human race and even in fairly recent times such as 5000 to 1000 years ago the earth was still undergoing drastic changes. People were there to watch the lush Nile valley in Egypt become a desert wasteland. When Eric the Red was in Greenland much of it was lush and forested.
These were times when man could not even hope to make a dent in the worlds weather and the Earth was the primary force, which by the way, it still is. As far as anyone can tell mans interference could be saving us from a world that could be our worst enemy and kill off a significant part of the human race. A major eruption of a super volcano such as the Yellowstone Caldera or an eruption of krakatoa on the scale of the one that happened around 500 A.D. could do more than man has ever done.
Of course those theories don't sell books & movies like the fear mongers do. They are not politically correct either. I guess a movie based on mans meddling with the earths climate making it nice, happy place to live would be pretty boring.
If this means we won't have days like today anymore, then I'm buying all the aerosol cans I can and just spraying them out when I leave the store.
I live in Pennsylvania and it was 81 here today. 81. It is April out. I do not wish to see 81 again until June. Nor anything else over 70.
Ice Age II can't arrive soon enough.
The attitude of a lot of people here on Slashdot with regards to global warming amazes me.
Which attitude, the one of "I don't buy it"? Outrage is the typical reaction to those who don't buy into your superstitious beliefs.
This is something that could possibly devastate society as we know it, perhaps not for us, but for our children or our children's children, but there's a great many people who either dismiss it as never going to happen or something that can be easily controlled without any major shifts in lifestyle or attitude.
Allow me to be direct: I do not believe that the actions of humans are effecting "global climate change" in a measurable degree. I am skeptical of what you claim. You made the claim, so you have to prove it. I am not required to disprove your claims, and my failure to do so does not make them "true by default."
Someone once said "This is a fragile ball we're living on. It's a miracle and we're destroying it."
"Humans are inherently evil. We destroy everything we touch. We should all feel ashamed of how selfish we are."
Guilt is the most powerful motivator in bringing new converts to your religion. Christians and Leftists (typically, Leftists of the environmentalist and vegetarian sects) both effectively employ this tactic.
That's a hell of a lot closer to the truth than any politician, especially any politician who's made a killing from exploiting fossil fuels, will ever admit to.
And now you employ another tactic that the Christians so frequently use: "Poclaiming the Truth with a captial T." "Fuck evidence and reasoning, for We have The Truth!"
I also notice that you pulled out the old Leftist standbys of "greed" ("make a killing") and "exploitation". Both of these are emotional, not rational, arguments.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Although I agree with you that we don't know if global warming is suppose to happen right now anyway, the rate of change is what's alarming the scientists.
Which scientists? You act as if all scientists are alarmed by evidence that they all have observed and agree upon, when that could not be farther from the truth.
Records going back hundreds of years give us a pretty good image of the weather pattern we're suppose to receive.
Whose records? Again, you act as if the data that has been collected has been agreed upon as genuine and bias-free, and it doesn't appear to be that way at all.
The amount of extreme weather occurances and unprecedented warming of land inside the arctic circle is why scientists are concerned. The rate of change is simply beyond anything nature alone could do.
Boy, that sure sounds scary! We all know that fear is more powerful than boring old evidence and reasoning in trying to get people to do what you want them to do.
So yes I do agree with you that globam warming and ice ages are normal. Maybe we're suppose to have global warming anyway.
But I thought that this was "simply beyond anything nature alone could do"?
I'll add here that your choice to use the word "simply" is suspicious in itself. If it really was so simple, then why did you feel compelled to label it as such? Its "simplicity" should be self-evident, shouldn't it?
But the rate that this is happening is alarming. And it leaves us little time to prepare ourselves to find ways to adapt to the new climate.
Yes, we should all be alarmed rather than rational and make fear-based choices rather than reason-based choices. Time is running out, right?
"We Have to Do Something!" (TM)
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Well-reasoned and insightful! Welcome to my friend list. :)
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Accepting the theorie that global warming just *might* be human induced is not the same as making it your new religion and personally I have never been attacked by animals because of it :)
Since you accept the theory that global warming *might* be human-induced, then will you accept the theory that global warming *might* be alien-induced?
It *might* also be ghost-induced for that matter, and it *might* be demon-induced.
You will probably attempt to counter this by stating that "we know that humans exist, while we don't know about the other ones." That's beside the point. They all *might* exist, right?
This is why I reject all "might-based" arguments. I will accept your argument if the evidence is sufficient and the reasoning is sound. Otherwise, it *might* be true that our brains are all controlled by robots from another dimension. Why not believe that, if we're going to accept what *might* be true?
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
While the movie has been savaged by many scientists, we should not be so quick to savage those who disagree. These theories of nature's savagery, in which some climate disruption savagely savages the denizens (or as we are sometimes called, "savages") of the word have significant research behind them. Indeed, the savage manner with which many peers and lowly idiots like yourselves savage them is no better than the conduct of other savages. Due to your behavior, the only issue appears quite savage to most and is rarely given much attention. The savageness of it all could be nothing other than "savage," if you will.
Are CowboyNeal's stretching of word meanings setting the vocabulary trends here on slashdot or something? Too much savageness in this story.
How savage. Savage. Savage. Savage. You savage.
Well duh! Portland has two kinds of weather, raining and about to rain. Anywhere has more complex weather! When in Portland you pretty much have to carry an umbrella all the time. Or you can just shave your head and use a squeegee like I do, I suppose.
Portland is a good city though, it's relatively geek friendly. I can't wait to get back up there permanently.
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
Wow. Fabulous posts. For a little while there I thought I was back in my Climatology classes :) (long time ago, and I've not kept up; I feel enlightened! Thanks!)
:( we're seeing the effects of that; and they're not good...
Just one comment (ok, couple):
In the simple chaotic dynamics view, weather is the state of the system (the wandering dot), and climate is the shape of the set of permissible trajectories (the whole phase diagram). Things aren't necessarily that simple in fact, but we don't have a better way of addressing the issue. Ultimately, we aren't trying to prove theorems, we're trying to elucidate complex physics, and this view appears to be both necessary and sufficient for most of our purposes.
When I read that, I was reminded of quantum uncertainty as it pertains to electrons; one can observe either the position or velocity vector, but not both simultaneously, and hence you have a mathematical range of uncertaintity for either, and a wider range of possibility when extrapolating past and future. Is that a legit way of visualizing it?
The global-warming-causes-an-ice-age-in-Eurpose scenario is basewd on this particular, not fully understood instability, recurring. This would be a brief and short cold perturbation in geophysical terms (a few hundred years) but it could still be a big deal on the ground. This is pretty speculative, and is probably better thought of as an example of the sort of risks we are taking than as a prediction.
I thought that Atlantic conveyer shutdown as a cooling mechanism was pretty well understood and had evidence to back it up. So essentially what you're saying is that we don't know how long term the effects - or the shutdown - could last. Am I missing something here? (probably)
WRT to sci.environment: It's just a side effect of the continuing destruction of Usenet as a viable forum. Scoring and killfiles simply can't keep up anymore. Sad, but I suspect a lot of serious people have left for the same reasons. Usenet was once (80s) a good forum for discussion; not anymore. Private forums are taking over, but they are harder to find if you're not directly invited. Sigh.
It's pretty discouraging to see what gets moderated to 5, insightful or informative.
Such was my thought also...
I've been watching the online discussion of climate change over the past decade. The evidence has gotten stronger and the public discourse has gotten more confused. This is not good.
and given that public discourse, media opinion, and polls have a large effects on political opinion and decision....well
I think the blame falls largely on us baby boomers, with our motto of Question Authority. This particular idea has infected all sides of debate, and it's a very bad idea unless it is qualified. I suggest Question Authority, but Listen to the Answer.
Maybe. I'm not so sure. I think that the massive increase in the ease of public discourse and input into the media provided by better communications - particularly the internet - has had a much larger effect. Not that I'm dismissing what you've said, it's certainly a factor. The tumult of the 60s and early 70s certainly left it's mark on this country. Perhaps it's both; the earlier magnified by the later.
Cheers!!!
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Hehe, another ice age would keep you at a constant 0 degrees C because you'd be under 2 miles of ice :)
can you provide anymore links links in one sentence?
I remember reading a National Geographic article nothing that CO2 concentrations have been their highest in 400,000 years thanks to ice core samples in the arctic. This was through several ice ages and the most recent dramatic spike being the start of our industrial age. Whether or not this causes global warming or climate change or it's outcome no one is really sure of. However considering earth is our life support, can you risk messing around with it? I think it's something to be concerned about rather than completely ignoring. The solution however is a difficult one. Knowing how we do things thou, we'll likely do something when it's too late sadly.
Martha.. bring the darn blankets from th'attic hun.
but I would have thought that we would LIKE to be an ever greater net absorber of CO2. Anything that we could use to justify lowering duties in other countries in exchange for such credits. And to reduce the overall CO2 in the environment.
(For anyone who has doubts that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and doubts whether it can, in the long run, contribute to climatic change, please direct your eyes towards Venus on a clear morning. Can you see it? That's CO2.)
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
That is an insufficient comment.
Forests per say are CO2 neutral.
CO2 is consumed in any NEW growth, released again when that growth decomposes. There is very little net plant matter accumulation in any forest over hundred years old > little CO2 removed from the atmosphere.
Existing plantation forests are replanted at the SAME rate they are harvested; old growth [native stuff] forests tend to be NEGATIVE as bit by bit these estates are reduced in size by harvest.
That leaves newly planted forest estates where there previously were none [minus any existing forested areas that are not replanted after harvest]. Now my experience has been restricted to the New Zealand forest industry, but I was under the impression the total US forest estate was still, abet very slowly now, still decreasing in acreage.
Could you please enlarge apon your comment.
No. You can't look at my Sig; it's mine, and I'm not showing you.
Only forming/melting ice (i.e. a water-ice mixture) is at 0C. Once ice is completely formed/melted, the temperature will fall/rise further. Maybe you were thinking about snow, which can act like an insulating blanket, because it traps air.
Poor guys, fighting increasing CPU temperatures AND global warming too...
Stuck down a hole! In the middle of the night! With an owl!
As a Cassandra, and posting much too late in the discussion, I'd just like to say that in the seventies proven oil reserves went about twenty years out. Since then, proven reserves have increased so that that horizon kept its distance. However, now news is coming in that some companies are overstating their proven reserves since this helps stock prices and thus benefits executive compensation. Thus, the horizon may be shrinking as Chicken Little once said.
You sir no nothing about science
You, sir, know nothing about English...
if the earths weather pattern
If the Earth's weather pattern
for all intensive purposes
*chuckle* (my favorite) For all intents and purposes
chemistry reactions preformed
chemistry reactions performed
the Earths weather patterns
the Earth's weather patterns
I think you get my point.
I think you get my point here, mrcanttypeforcrap. No offense.
Yeah, but none of those directors had cache in hollywood. And nobody watched those movies either. FYI, I'm not a kid, I'm twelve going on thirteen.