New Satellite Data Confirms Global Warming

starannihilator writes "Researchers at the University of Washington have analyzed satellite data using a new and more accurate method (using channel 4 on the Microwave Sounding Unit satellite) to show that the troposphere has been warming faster than the Earth's surface for more than two decades. Nature reports that previous interpretations (using MSU channel 2) did not indicate such dramatic tropospheric warming because the data were compromised by stratospheric conditions. For years, the debate over global warming raged largely as a result of an incongruency between trends in surface and tropospheric temperatures. The new data gained by MSU channel 4 are consistent with the surface temperature's rising trends and indicate that global warming is, in fact, occuring in the troposphere. Read the full article in Nature, or similar stories in the Seattle Times and Newswise."

Comments

Global warming or global cooling

[jgardn]

I've changed my view on global warming. I used to think the whole earth couldn't warm or cool, but it would stay the same over time. Now I believe that the earth does warm and cool over significant variations. So we are in a global warming phase, if the toposphere is absolute proof (which we can't be sure about.)

The question is: What can we do about it?
The answer is: Unfortunately, not much. If we cut all the world's emissions of greenhouse gasses drastically in half, that wouldn't account for the other variations responsible for global warming like a more active sun or just the phase of the weather patterns on earth or the temperature of the sea. I have to think about it this way: If humanity did all it could to cool or warm the earth, what would we accomplish? The answer is that the earth is so huge and so complicated that we can't predict whether our actions would cause havoc or remedy. I mean, we could spend trillions of dollars on a system to cool the troposphere only to find out that by doing so we are causing more hurricanes and such.

The earth is a chaotic system, and chaotic systems for the most part are unpredictable. A variation of a few hundredths of a degree in one place in the world can be responsible for a hurricane in another.

Re:Global warming or global cooling

[hak1du]

The earth is a chaotic system, and chaotic systems for the most part are unpredictable. A variation of a few hundredths of a degree in one place in the world can be responsible for a hurricane in another.

Just because some aspects of weather are chaotic doesn't mean nothing can be predicted. Global average temperatures don't go up or down independent of any contributing factors: ice coverage, atmospheric composition, humidity and other factors all have well-defined effects. There are some relationships we don't understand yet, but that doesn't make those relationships chaotic.

We can be certain that if we continue on our current path, growing emissions of greenhouse gases, we will change the climate dramatically some time this century. That's simple physics: changing the earth's energy balance significantly must lead to changes in something on earth. What we don't know yet is whether it will kick in a new ice age (which would be negative feedback), lead to gradual warming (no feedback), or runaway greenhouse effects (positive feedback). Even if negative feedback would magically keep the temperature constant, something (vegetation, ice cover, etc.) would have to make up for change in energy balance. But no matter what the change, it will end up being costly.

Re:Global warming or global cooling

[SpaceLifeForm]

You're either young or you don't get outside much. Believe me, I noticed changes in the 1970's.

To quote a semi-famous philosopher,

'You can observe a lot just by watching'.

Re:Global warming or global cooling

[Mad Quacker]

The question is: What can we do about it?
The answer is: Unfortunately, not much.
...

The earth is a chaotic system, and chaotic systems for the most part are unpredictable. A variation of a few hundredths of a degree in one place in the world can be responsible for a hurricane in another.

First you say we are powerless over it because we have so little effect, and then you say a variation of a few hundreths of a degree can cause a hurricane. Of course it's so complex it also requires 'more study', and by the tone of you comments you seem to suggest that it will be impossible to predict nature.

Which is it? People: don't mistake this for anything other than it is, a bad ostrich immitation and an excuse to continue current habits because it is profitable - to the body and to the wallet.

Re:Global warming or global cooling

[Anonymous Coward]

Believe me, I noticed changes in the 1970's.

This article isn't about your acid trips.

Re:Global warming or global cooling

[Jerf]

We can be certain that if we continue on our current path, growing emissions of greenhouse gases, we will change the climate dramatically some time this century.

The thing is, we can also be certain that even if every last human keels over dead, taking all technology with them, that the climate will change significantly over the next century.

Already I've noticed a climate shift starting in my area (Michigan)... we're returning to the type of winters we had 30 or 40 years ago, which had a lot more snow and cold weather then the winters we saw in the 90's, which typically had one hell of a snow-storm... but only that one, with temperatures reaching into the 50s sometimes in mid-December.

Human influence? Natural processes? The only answer is yes. Worth panicking over? I'm inclined to wait until something actually bad happens before panicking. (Note that "panicking" isn't isomorphic to "doing something"; I'm in favor of pre-emptive environmentalism, where on general principles we try to reduce our impact to the environment as much as possible. I don't see panicking as a valid reason to do anything, though.)

Re:Global warming or global cooling

[efflux]

I don't see panicking as a valid reason to do anything, though.

The only thing I am panicking over is will we be able to get the US administration to give a shit about the environment. We have seen enough evidence to the contrary that I believe this to be sufficient reasoning for a *panic*.

Re:Global warming or global cooling

[WhiteBandit]

The only thing I am panicking over is will we be able to get the US administration to give a shit about the environment. We have seen enough evidence to the contrary that I believe this to be sufficient reasoning for a *panic*.

While I agree that we should try to be as environmentally friendly as possible (face it, breathing in all that smoggy air in the Inland Empire sucks), we simply don't know what is causing it. There is almost no doubt the Earth is warming, but the question still remains, why?

The last glacial maximum ended roughly 10,000 years ago. What happens when you come out of an ice age? You warm up! However, it is also known that CO2 is a green house gas and that since they started taking measurements in the 1950s of how many ppm's of CO2 there is in the atmosphere from a lab on top Mauna Loa, scientists have noticed the buildup of CO2 is accelerating, no doubt due to human factors.

Now, how much of that CO2 is contributing to the natural warming of the planet? We're not sure. Is it accelerating the warming process? Perhaps.

Last year at our school, we had Dr. Alan Mix present a research topic entitled "Icy Poles or the Muggy Equator: What Drives Natural Climate Change?" During the question session at the end, he brought up an interesting point that the Earth is pretty much setup to deal with certain levels of CO2, and given enough time, it will try to reach equilibrium, where there isn't that much CO2 in the atmosphere. The problem with our CO2 emissions is that it might be more than Earth can naturally clean out, pushing us over some threshold where the Earth *won't* be able to eventually get rid of it, leading to run away global warming.

Re:Global warming or global cooling

[DynaSoar]

jgardn (539054) sez: "The earth is a chaotic system, and chaotic systems for the most part are unpredictable. A variation of a few hundredths of a degree in one place in the world can be responsible for a hurricane in another."

You have an extremely warped view of nonlinear system dynamics. Chaotic systems can be characterized and the state at a given time in the future stated with a degree of certaintly. Decreasing, yes, but still based on probability.

Just because the butterfly exists does not mean the butterfly controls all the weather. "Can" does not equal "will", nor even "probably".

As for what we can do about it, we can look at what we've done so far to affect things, even though it was by accident. We can do at least an equal amount by undoing what was done. We can also learn new things and effect mechanisms to make things better. All of science and technology exist for this purpose.

Will we? Hell no. Some people are making a lot of money providing us with things we like which happen to ruin the planet. They're not about to let us stop.

Re:Global warming or global cooling

[hak1du]

The thing is, we can also be certain that even if every last human keels over dead, taking all technology with them, that the climate will change significantly over the next century.

That's a bad argument. If you have two factors, they may cancel out, but they may also combine. Altogether adding the manmade factors to the natural ones makes bigger climate change more likely, and that is bad.

Maybe we are doomed as a species to be killed off by climate change anyway. But emitting large amounts of greenhouse gases into the air greatly increases the probability of that.

Worth panicking over? I'm inclined to wait until something actually bad happens before panicking.

Yes, you are obviously so inclined. And like other people who panic, it's a sign of poor preparation. Furthermore, by the time you panic, it is often too late.

And that's the case with climate change induced by greenhouse gases: by the time any serious consequences are observable, it is far too late to do anything about it even if we had the will to stop burning fossil fuels completely at that point--it just takes far too long to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

And, in fact, even if we were willing to tough it out for a couple of centuries, there is no guarantee the CO2 would get removed again from the atmosphere, or that even if it were, the climate would return to anything suitable for human survival.

People who are concerned about this thing now aren't panicking, they are just telling you the cold, hard facts. People like you prefer procrastinating followed by panicking. I think you know which of the two behaviors is the better one.

Re:Global warming or global cooling

[Jerf]

No, people are insisting that I panic now on only slightly more then hearsay and conjecture. People like you who lecture are on the wrong side of rationality, whether you like it or not. I make no apologies for refusing to be manipulated by the current "in" trend, to the exclusion of using my sense.

Re:Global warming or global cooling

[hak1du]

No, people are insisting that I panic now on only slightly more then hearsay and conjecture.

Nobody insists that you "panic". Frankly, I don't care what you think or do as long as you reduce your use of fossil fuel.

People like you who lecture are on the wrong side of rationality, whether you like it or not.

You seem to be under the misconception that the right way to act is to act rationally. Of course, taking precautions to prevent climate change isn't rational. The rational thing for each individual to do is to screw future generations. But many rational actions aren't ethical (or legal, for that matter).

I make no apologies for refusing to be manipulated by the current "in" trend, to the exclusion of using my sense.

You are being manipulated like a puppet by people who want to deny that current levels of fossil fuel use are dangerous because admitting that would cut into their bottom line. The danger requires very little scientific sophistication to recognize, but obviously, you lack even that much.

Re:Global warming or global cooling

[MuValas]

Already I've noticed a climate shift starting in my area (Michigan)... we're returning to the type of winters we had 30 or 40 years ago, which had a lot more snow and cold weather then the winters we saw in the 90's, which typically had one hell of a snow-storm... but only that one, with temperatures reaching into the 50s sometimes in mid-December.

Um...No? I've heard several people talk about how harsh this winter (and last) was and it wasn't. Take a look at the historical data and it wasn't anything out of the ordinary, really. Just ebbs and flows in the mins and maxes. Take a look at this:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/res40.pl?page=c li mvisghcnv2.html

I should qualify that with a "however". I'm talking about the 20th century, so we could have global warming due to humans that is bad that was started with the industrial age, and looking at the past 50 years for strange trends won't help since the trends started long before that.

Say what you will.....

[Giant Ape Skeleton]

I blame the sun!

:-P

Re:Say what you will.....

[Tumbleweed]

Well, either the Sun or Canada.

I have to support Mr. Burns on this one. Since the dawn of time, Man has yearned to destroy the Sun. I say go for it!

insert trendy anti-scientific comment here...

[Anonymous Coward]

since all storys about environmental degredation get plugged up with rediculously weakly argued and unsubstantiated anti-global warming comments modded +5, why not just waste your mod points here instead?

Re:insert trendy anti-scientific comment here...

[Oriumpor]

Now, the hypothosis of global warming has not been irrefutably proven and certain discrepencies have not been accounted for.

For instance, A volcanic erruption can cause so much more so called "greenhouse" gasses to be released into the atmosphere than all the polutants man has expelled since the first machine of industry.

Secondly, there are periodic climate changes throughout earth's history that have still yet to be explained. Also, the depletion of the green house gasses has not been proven to be solely the cause of the BAD human made CO/CO2 and not the GOOD naturally occuring CO2 (See eruptions)

Since there is no explanation for the past trend nor the fact that looking even further back the entire planet had a higher median temperature. as is evident by the many hypothosis that the thunder lizards may have died due to an ice age... I don't really have to point out there weren't humans then to contribute to that natural disaster that caused a dramatic shift in the planet's climate.

We need to continue to regulate our usage of all natural resources, since not doing so would be insane, but saying that greenhouses gasses are the sole influence that causes this affect. Believing so would discount all other evidence available. That humans contribute, is surely true. But how much, and is it even measurable compared to a massive volcanic eruption?

Re:insert trendy anti-scientific comment here...

[Anonymous Coward]

ugh... sorry "Also, the depletion of the green house gasses" should read: "Also, the depletion of the ozone"

Re:insert trendy anti-scientific comment here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, the hypothosis of global warming has not been irrefutably proven and certain discrepencies have not been accounted for.

first off, very rarely does science abolutely proove anything, but you can draw very good conclusions in the face of overwealming evidence, which is what we have in this case.

For instance, A volcanic erruption can cause so much more so called "greenhouse" gasses to be released into the atmosphere than all the polutants man has expelled since the first machine of industry.

people love to throw out this crap with no citation... where are the numbers? in fact, since we started buring coal and oil and massively deforesting the world, and hence eliminating those massive carbon sinks we have increased the co2 in the atmosphere greatly:

Since the Industrial Revolution, the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil has put about twice as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than is naturally removed by the oceans and forests. This has resulted in carbon dioxide levels building up in the atmosphere. Today, carbon dioxide levels are 30% higher than pre-industrial levels, higher than they have been in the last 420,000 years and are probably at the highest levels in the past 20 million years. Studies of the Earth's climate history have shown that even small, natural changes in carbon dioxide levels were generally accompanied by significant shifts in the global average temperature. We have already experienced a 1F increase in global temperature in the past century, and we can expect significant warming in the next century if we fail to act to decrease greenhouse gas emissions.

[IPCC, 2001. Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis, p. 39.]

Secondly, there are periodic climate changes throughout earth's history that have still yet to be explained.

yes, but none on record as dramatic as now in terms of co2 build up.

Also, the depletion of the green house gasses has not been proven to be solely the cause of the BAD human made CO/CO2 and not the GOOD naturally occuring CO2 (See eruptions)

thanks for that eruptions link as it pretty much disproves your earlier assertion that volcanos throw up more co2 than humans ever could: even that were so this study shows that the volcanic eruption will cause plants on earth to remove MORE co2 that was put up by the volcano and hence has a net negative effect on the ammountn of co2 in the atmosphere.

Since there is no explanation for the past trend nor the fact that looking even further back the entire planet had a higher median temperature. as is evident by the many hypothosis that the thunder lizards may have died due to an ice age... I don't really have to point out there weren't humans then to contribute to that natural disaster that caused a dramatic shift in the planet's climate.

well of course, there happen to be other perfectly decent explanations for previous extreme climate changes in the past, but that says nothing about the viability of the explanation of hte current climate change.

Re:insert trendy anti-scientific comment here...

[DShard]

even that were so this study shows that the volcanic eruption will cause plants on earth to remove MORE co2 that was put up by the volcano and hence has a net negative effect on the ammountn of co2 in the atmosphere.

So I am to believe that "manmade" CO2 is different than Volcanic "natural" CO2. Interesting... incomprehensible but interesting.

Re:insert trendy anti-scientific comment here...

[Yokaze]

For your article from late 2001, I'll give you an article from the very same agency.

Then, how about looking at the various timescales?
Yes, earth has been warmer in the past, and over the 2-4billion years of its existance, there are longer periods warmer. Imagine the universe is only 3K warm. Great. What does that mean for our situation at hand?

Now have a look at the very same link you provided, which is probably more of our concern, the time of human civilisation. As you can see,
the climate has been actually colder in average (Hence the often cited "fear of the Ice Age" in the 70s). But not only that, judging from the previous curves, 2000 AD should be the peak of its curve.

But, a time-scale which has ticks every 10 millenia is also a bit out of scale. Strangely enough, most people are more concerned about the next decades up to a century, not millenia.

Have a look at the curve, which is probably more of our concern. Should that not be recent enough, here some more, including one from 2003.

> But how much, and is it even measurable compared to a massive volcanic eruption?

Let's start with the fact that vulcans contribute their CO2 regardless whether humans contribute or not. So anthrophogenic CO2 is added to their exhaust.

Now to the data. According to these geologists, anthropogenic CO2 emissions are roughly 150 times the estimated emissions of volcanos.

Re:insert trendy anti-scientific comment here...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's ridiculous how poorly some people spell...

Re:insert trendy anti-scientific comment here...

[CryBaby]

Now, the hypothosis of global warming has not been irrefutably proven and certain discrepencies have not been accounted for.

What, in your view, constitutes irrefutable proof? Worldwide famine, skyrocketing cancer rates (oh wait, we already have that problem)? Waiting for "irrefutable proof", in this case, basically means waiting until it's too late. Also, I don't understand why the prospect of cleaner air, water and soil is so terrible that we need to put it off until the last possible moment - but that's just me and maybe I haven't listened to enough Rush Limbaugh.

For instance, A volcanic erruption can cause so much more so called "greenhouse" gasses to be released into the atmosphere than all the polutants man has expelled since the first machine of industry.

Not surprisingly, NASA disagrees with you and claims that, over the next 50 years, all naturally occurring greenhouse gasses combined (that includes volcanic eruptions) will account for a 0.5C temperature increase compared to a 1.0-2.0C increase if man-made emissions continue unchecked. This article provides more detail on the Mt. Pinatubo eruption (often cited by anti-environmentalists as proof that natural phenomena dwarf human activity in relation to global warming) and, like the NASA research, concludes that volcanic eruptions acually serve to *decrease* global warming.

If any actual research backs up your claim in any way, please share it with the rest of us.

Since there is no explanation for the past trend nor the fact that looking even further back the entire planet had a higher median temperature. as is evident by the many hypothosis that the thunder lizards may have died due to an ice age... I don't really have to point out there weren't humans then to contribute to that natural disaster that caused a dramatic shift in the planet's climate.

What "dramatic shift" are you talking about? The dinosaur article mentions a temperature change of 10C over a period of 7 million years. That's a shift of a little over one millionth of a degree per year - not very dramatic if you ask me. Current climate research predicts the same amount of change over a period of several hundred to a few thousand years. Taking the more mild predictions, that means our climate is changing about 2000 times faster than the "dramatic shift" you refer to.

Here is an article about a National Academy of Sciences' report provided at the request of the Bush administration. It states plainly that "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in the earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise."

Here is a paper from the American Geophysical Union stating that "human activities are increasingly altering the Earth's climate... scientific evidence strongly indicates that natural influences cannot explain the rapid increase in global near-surface temperatures observed during the second half of the 20th century."

Anyway, I could go on with pages of links from universities and scientific organizations who are increasingly making unqualified statements that, yes, the tons of pollution we pump into the air, water, and soil on a daily basis are having negative effects - including global warming. Most of the opposition to these views can be found on the websites of right-wing political think tanks, individual right wing politicians, and in "opinion" pieces with no links to actual scientific research.

Re:insert trendy anti-scientific comment here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, thats the same argument nuclear people use: radiation from a nuclear reactor is somehow different than the type that is emitted naturally.

Re:insert trendy anti-scientific comment here...

[radtea]

What, in your view, constitutes irrefutable proof? Worldwide famine, skyrocketing cancer rates (oh wait, we already have that problem)?

From the article cited as evidence for "skyrocketing cancer rates":

The predicted sharp increase in new cases - from 10 million new cases globally in 2000, to 15 million in 2020 - will mainly be due to steadily ageing populations in both developed and developing countries

That is, cancer rates are predicted to go up primarily due to the fact that people are living longer than ever before. Cancer is a disease of age, and if you don't die of any of the things that kept the pre-industrial, pre-democratic world relatively cancer-free, you will eventually die of it (or heart-disease or stroke.)

The rest of the article focuses on the 1/3 or so of preventable cancers due to smoking, diet and other unhealthy activities that people engage in.

So much for the dire threat of "a problem we already have."

Anthropogenic global warming may (or may not) be a real phenomenon. Personally, when GCMs can deal correctly with the "early cool sun problem" I'll take them a lot more seriously.

Regardless, there are good reasons to begin moving away from fosil fuels so that over the next few generations we can become entirely dependent on renewable energy without giving up our extravagant lifestyles. But gratuitous citation of irrelevant articles does not aid the case for doing so one little bit.

--Tom

Re:insert trendy anti-scientific comment here...

[Anonymous Coward]

you are a worthless cunt if your only contribution to the world is to critique peoples spelling on web forums. save us the trouble of enduring your existance, pull the trigger.

as stated in a previous article on slashdot today

[Anonymous Coward]

.... The Good, The Bad, The Hyperbole...

.... (sigh)

[Oz0ne]

yeah, look out... here come melting ice caps.. ahhhhg! run for your lives.

Seriously though, there's millions of years of evidence of earth going in cycles of warming and cooling. I've never understood why this is even a debate. Yes global warming exists, yes global cooling exists. What are the causes? There's thousands of factors. Are we causing our demise by driving around? No. Factories killing us? No. Do those things contribute? Sure!

Now stop the panic and go do more research.

Re:.... (sigh)

[Anonymous Coward]

Are we causing our demise by driving around? No. Factories killing us? No.

So, those smog warnings when they warn people with respiratory conditions not to go outside were all in my head.

Just because someone thinks that we aren't causing the warming doesn't mean we shouldn't be trying to cut down on emissions.

Re:.... (sigh)

[I_Love_Pocky!]

Are we causing our demise by driving around? No. Factories killing us? No. Do those things contribute? Sure!

So you admit that they contribute, but you don't think they are a problem? If you have enough "contributions" they eventually add up to some nasty effects.

Now stop the panic and go do more research.

Hey great idea! Maybe we can finish the research just in time to show conclusive evidence that we did indeed mess up our planet beyond repair. Or maybe we could just try to cut down on those "contributions" now, until we can convince you crack pots that we are a danger to our environment.

Re:.... (sigh)

[Oz0ne]

Please refrain from personal attacks.

I fail to see how I'm crackpot. We have no proof that our emissions are affecting the climate in a substantial manner. As I said, yes they are affecting it, to what degree we have yet to find out, and I definitely agree that lower emissions is not a bad idea.

However it is not the CAUSE of the problem. Do some digging on your own, the earth has been far hotter than it is now even before we were industrialized.

Thanks for the reply!

Re:.... (sigh)

[Oz0ne]

I agree with you completely. Cutting down emissions is a good idea as long as it's done rationally.

Smog warnings and global warming are not directly related though. There's plenty of pollution that needs to be cleaned up down here at our level before we worry about the upper atmosphere.

Re:.... (sigh)

[itwerx]

Do some digging on your own, the earth has been far hotter than it is now even before we were industrialized.
Not agreeing or disagreeing, but can you cite some references to back that statement up?

Re:.... (sigh)

[DShard]

Ice cores

Any discussion of global warming as a climatic cycle needs to extend in a timespan of tens of thousands of years to look at a single cycle. The problem with the "global warming" as being a man-made effect is the localization of the time period were talking about. Most of the data being used to "prove" the theory are on the order of a decades and at best centuries. From a historical perspective we are in a regular warming trend that is situated inside of the end of an ice age. To this end it is highly likely that it will continue to get hotter regardless of human activity. This is factual based on data from hundreds of thousands of years. As the gp has said, while human efforts do have an effect on this pattern, to what degree is unknown. Anything contrary to this has to date has not modeled the climate to any appreciable margin of error. The problem lies in the complex interaction of a very large system. The simplifications assumed to actually compute projections cause unacceptable margins of error in a short future window.

Re:.... (sigh)

[I_Love_Pocky!]

I'm sorry, I was just a little put off by your suggestion that we just go do some more research. There has been lots of research that suggests that we are having an impact on gloabl climate change, but plenty of people just flat out reject it. Why go do some more research to try to prove we are affecting our climate? When instead we can accept the research which has already been done that suggests CO2 emissions and other green house gases contribute to global warming, and refocus our research on something productive, like say reducing said emissions.

How much more time do we have to spend convincing the public that we mere humans actually have the power to affect our environment?

Here's the thing:

1. We have research that suggests a trend towards global warming
2. Global warming is bad for us (rising sea levels, eratic weather patterns, etc.).
3. We have research that suggests that we contribute to global warming.

Conclusion: Even if we are not the direct cause of the trend, perhaps we should be finding ways to slow/stop it rather than encourage it?

I definitely agree that lower emissions is not a bad idea.

Which is all I am trying to say.

Re:.... (sigh)

[Anonymous Coward]

Burning up our forests is rather like burning up all the furniture with the chimney closed up.

Next... a new ice age!

[Anonymous Coward]

By the end of the decade, the same satellite will predict a new ice age. These pie-in-the-sky baseless climate trend predictions go in cycles. Global cooling was all the rage in the 1970s, and it is due to come "in vogue" again.

Re:Next... a new ice age!

[squiggleslash]

I'm squiggleslash, and I approve this message.

Damn it, not this myth again:

Global cooling was all the rage in the 1970s,

No, it wasn't. "Global cooling" was a minor, six month, fad in the media that lasted as long as it took for a book to be sold on the subject. No serious scientists were pushing it.

Global Warming, on the other hand, has been a widely talked about issue since the late eighties, with considerable scientific backing. It's as absurd to dismiss fears of warming on the basis of the 1970s "Cooling" joke as it is to dismiss the existance of Africa on the basis of "In Search Of..."'s prediction of the existance of Atlantis.

Re:Next... a new ice age!

[Anonymous Coward]

"No, it wasn't. "Global cooling" was a minor, six month, fad in the media that lasted as long as it took for a book to be sold on the subject. No serious scientists were pushing it"

They were considered serious back then. Now they are known to be dumb hacks, just like today's supposedly revered "scientists" backing silly fake "man-made-global warming" theories will be known as fakes in the near future.

Re:Next... a new ice age!

[slubberdegullion]

All they do to obtain global warming is find a line of best fit for various temperature data. Greenhouse theory has some complexity to it, but the trend it explains - global warming - is as simple as noticing that it's getting hotter, on average.

I'm sure it will become "in vogue" for the equation for a linear regression to spit out a negative slope any day now.

Mod 'em high!

[Anonymous Coward]

"weakly argued and unsubstantiated anti-global warming comments modded +5"

They've always been pretty strong, since there is no evidence yet for man-made global warming. It's easy to mount a strong argument against the bad science of the Chicken Little Kyoto-dodo's.

Re:Mod 'em high!

[fmaxwell]

there is no evidence yet for man-made global warming.

Yes there is and stating otherwise won't change it any more and throwing a temper tantrum will. There is a tremendous amount of evidence of man-made global warming. Your political bias may make you unwilling to read the evidence, but man-made global warming is a fact accepted by the vast majority of respected scientists.

Re:Mod 'em high!

[b-baggins]

is a fact accepted by the vast majority of respected scientists.

This is a classic fallacy of appealing to authority.

History is littered with majorities of respected scientists being embarassingly wrong.

Re:Mod 'em high!

[fmaxwell]

This is a classic fallacy of appealing to authority.

No, it is not an appealy to authority. It's based on the knowledge of the scientists, not their authority. That's like saying that the peer review process is flawed because it appeals to authority.

Re:Mod 'em high!

[b-baggins]

Nope. It's an appeal to authority. The poster didn't reference the research. He referenced the scientists. Furthermore, he used the adjective "respected" to describe the specific type of scientist.

This is clearly an appeal to authority.

Not news

[hopemafia]

By this point everybody (except some stubborn idiots) admits that the earth is getting warmer. The real question is: Why?

I'm fairly sick of new studies coming out every couple weeks proving once and for all that the earth is getting warmer. Maybe some more of those research dollars should be devoted to understanding why the warming is occuring and developing ways to cope with a warmer earth, rather than redundantly measuring the temperature via every possible method and then shouting: "GLOBAL WARMING!!!! GLOBAL WARMING!!!!"

Re:Not news

[fmaxwell]

Maybe some more of those research dollars should be devoted to understanding why the warming is occuring and developing ways to cope with a warmer earth, rather than redundantly measuring the temperature via every possible method and then shouting: "GLOBAL WARMING!!!! GLOBAL WARMING!!!!"

Similar in concept to women learning to cope with rape rather than shouting about it, right? Rather than trying to "cope" with global warming, why not try to exert some control over man-made atmospheric changes that have a strong likelihood of contributing to it? What's the worst thing that happens? We reduce pollution and it doesn't solve the global warming problem? That seems a lot more desirable than assuming that pollution is not the cause of global warming, in which case being wrong could mean an ecological disaster.

Who the hell cares if we have to pay a few cents more for a banana or stack of CD-ROMs due to costs associated with reducing the emission of greenhouse gases (in manufacturing and/or transportation)? It beats the hell out of mass extinctions and ecological disaster.

Re:Not news

[Anonymous Coward]

"Rather than trying to "cope" with global warming, why not try to exert some control over man-made atmospheric changes that have a strong likelihood of contributing to it?"

Because there is no evidence of man-made atmospheric changes contributing to anything. So what you end up with is 100% political efforts like Kyoto which requires that "bad" countries decrease CO2 emissions and requires that "good" countries increase them. If these efforts were in tune with the phony environmental theories instead of vengeance politics, you would think that they would demand that all countries decrease emmissions.

"Who the hell cares if we have to pay a few cents more for a banana or stack of CD-ROMs due to costs associated with reducing the emission of greenhouse gases (in manufacturing and/or transportation)? It beats the hell out of mass extinctions and ecological disaster."

I'd rather pay more for banana's and CDs to stop Martian invasion, Godzilla attacks, and hangnails. As long as you are paying to affect something that has nothing to do with anything....

Re:Not news

[Anonymous Coward]

Similar in concept to women learning to cope with rape rather than shouting about it, right?

That's got to be one of the most obnoxious and gratuitous analogies I've seen here in a while.

Re:Not news

[fmaxwell]

That's got to be one of the most obnoxious and gratuitous analogies I've seen here in a while.

No, it's a damned good analogy and if you don't see that, then you don't understand the magnitude of the problem with global warming.

Re:Not news

[Anonymous Coward]

I confirm what the other AC says, you're trivialising one of the worst attacks a human can inflict on another. What is it with Slashbots, that you chose to compare everything from global warming to SCO lawsuits with rape?

Even if it worked as an analogy, it would be entirely inappropriate.

Re:Not news

[fmaxwell]

I confirm what the other AC says, you're trivialising one of the worst attacks a human can inflict on another.

You can't "confirm" anything. You can just share the same twisted opinion that raping someone is worse than making the Earth uninhabitable.

What is it with Slashbots, that you chose to compare everything from global warming to SCO lawsuits with rape?

I am not a "Slashbot." Unlike you, I am an intelligent human being.

Re:Not news

[hopemafia]

Your rape analogy is flawed.

If people simply did studies of how many women are being raped and then posted headlines: "RAPE RATE INCREASING!!!!" without doing anything else, that would be comparable to these global warming studies. But in the case of rape, people actually are doing something substantive about the problem. This is not so with global warming, where people insist on being alarmists.

I never stated that we shouldn't try to alleviate global warming. In fact I'm all for reducing whatever emmissions we can, but there is no way we can have a zero impact society. Thus we have to cope with the changes we cause or become extinct, as do all other organisms on the planet (as unfortunateas that may be).

In the end reckoning, despite our technology and global influence we still are at the whim of natural global climate (iceage and hothouse cycles), not to mention the periodic catastophic events that are common to our planet (asteroids, comets, supervolcanoes). The mass extinctions in the past were far more complete than anything we could cause even if we were trying to wipe out all other life on the planet (the Permian extinction event, for example, wiped out >75% of all prexisting species).

Contrails?

[BigZaphod]

Perhaps the biggest source of the problem is contrails. The study they did in the near airplane-less skies after 9/11 seems to indicate that they have quite a massive impact on weather patterns.

Re:Contrails?

[the real manta]

I don't believe that article said anything about contrails causing warming.

The contrail effect is likely to be greatest over the US anyway as you are all so busy flying around (and emitting voluminous quantities of greenhouse gases in the process, I might add). I don't think it's as pronounced in the rest of the world - certainly not in the Southern Hemisphere.

Rush Limbaugh's take on this

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Rush said that global warming was a communist plot of the liberal hegemony, backed by anti-NRA and pro-ACLU supporters, in an attempt to get a feminist abortion doctor elected to the presidency thereby preventing the birth of the Anti-christ, thwarting Jimmy Swaggart's and Jerry Falwell's predictions of the second coming of Christ and the fall of Israel.

I think he's exagerrating.

Re:Rush Limbaugh's take on this

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he's exagerrating.

Sounds reasonable to me.

Do we need ...

[be951]

an article about this every week? As another poster pointed out, most people realize there is a change going on. So is this really newsworthy?

Yet there isn't

[Anonymous Coward]

"Yes there is and stating otherwise won't change it any more and throwing a temper tantrum will"

Actually, there is not. Stating there is does not make it any more true than saying that the sun revolves around the Earth. Bad science uttered over and over is still bad science.

"Your political bias may make you unwilling to read the evidence"

I have a scientific bias (toward actual facts). Thanks for bringing up politics (foremost on your mind, not mine). The camp making up the "man-made global warming" myth is politically motivated.

"but man-made global warming is a fact accepted by the vast majority of respected scientists."

Since there is no evidence for it, they certainly aren't respectible in thie regard. These "political hacks first, scientists second" will be singing a different tune when the phony-baloney cycle turns around to global cooling. They'll scapegoat the same people for global cooling when that happens.

Grammar nazi

[Anonymous Coward]

Is data singular or plural? The news item uses it both ways.

Making it more Rush-like

[Anonymous Coward]

Limbaugh's not a "Christian Conservative", so replace the parts about the Anti-christ, Falwell and the 2nd Coming with some rant about Hillary and Terry McAuliffe.

Re:Making it more Rush-like

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course. That's why they killed Vince Foster.

The coming ice age: facts

[Anonymous Coward]

"Global Warming, on the other hand, has been a widely talked about issue since the late eighties"

This was after the global cooling fad. The chicken littles were adopting their new global warming fad. Now, the new ice age fad is starting:

Thaw in Greenland Threatens New Ice Age" (this one is kind of funny, it combines global warming with global cooling).

Are We on the Brink of a New Little Ice Age?. From the Woods Hole institute. You will probably dismiss this as a right-wing think tank.

Ice Age Now!. Kind of nutty. Just like the global-warming kooks.

Here's one of the old ones The Cooling World (1975). The scientists quoted are from NOAA. True to the fad cycle, there are no NOAA scientists on the global warming bandwagon.

Re:The coming ice age: facts

[squiggleslash]

I'm squiggleslash, and I approve this message.

Thaw in Greenland Threatens New Ice Age" (this one is kind of funny, it combines global warming with global cooling)

Really. Does it now.

Because you just said that a "new ice age fad" is starting, and you're claiming it has something to do with global cooling. And now you're refering to a story about a thaw in Greenland threatens a new ice age, and you're saying this is about global cooling. Whereas the story is actually only about Global Warming. "Global Cooling" isn't mentioned - probably because no serious scientist believes it exists.

"Global cooling", in the sense of the temperature of the Earth lowering on average across the planet, is distinct from the idea of an "ice" age, at least in terms of the one you quoted. The Guardian is reporting, correctly, that one effect of a global shift in climate, even one that warms the Earth on average, can be that ice forms in areas where currently it doesn't. That's because warming can effect sea currents and other weather patterns, changing systems that usually bring warmth to areas of the planet that would normally freeze.

Try, for example, comparing London with Moscow. Compare how far North either one is, then ask yourself why London is usually temperate and Moscow is usually covered in snow. A brief look at other areas of the world level with London will tell you that there's something wierd about the weather in Britain (I mean, other than the rain, five year hurricane-strength storm cycle, etc): it's far warmer than it should be. That's because there's a weather system that actively moves heat from the Gulf of Mexico up to the British Isles (and thereabouts.)

Now, the evidence that global warming may cause Britain to turn into some icy wasteland isn't exactly scientific (not because it's impossible, but because right now they're trying to predict a chaotic system and simply assuming a change in the weather system will almost certainly have the worst result - nobody however really knows what the results will be), but it's being talked about as a possibility. It's a possibility because if you shove a huge amount of water into the ocean, it's not likely to act the same way as it did previously. The media, not the scientists, are raging about ice coming to currently unusually temperate parts of the world as some kind of inevitability. Do yourself a favour and don't pretend the rash harping of the media and the current scientific consensus are the same.

# Here's one of the old ones The Cooling World (1975). The scientists quoted are from NOAA. True to the fad cycle, there are no NOAA scientists on the global warming bandwagon.

Utterly meaningless. This was a fad, a real fad, that lasted a few months. No serious scientists hung their hat on it. Scientists investigated it, but the ultimate conclusion was that the phenomena was bunk, and the reverse was, if anything, more likely.

The scientific community has been concerned about global warming since the mid eighties, if not earlier. They've been largely consistant. They've investigated trend after trend, and everything found has pointed in one direction.

The latest evidence is right at the top of this article. You see the headline "New Satellite Data Confirms Global Warming"? It's because, well, basically, there's this satellite data, it's just come out, and, erm, it also shows the globe has warmed.

The underlying concerns have a firm foundation. There's a lot of money being poured into discrediting it because, well, there's a lot of money to be lost if, say, we switch from oil to something more sane; because there are a lot of businesses that stand to see their costs skyrocket if their CO2 emissions are regulated; because there are ideologically swivel-eyed psuedo-libertarians who find it hard to comprehend that we might, as a group, need to do something. We rarely if ever see credible reports that GW isn't an issue. We regularly see well researched

what's your problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

you clearly havnt done the most basic reasearch into the subject or you would realise we have a broad range of evidence, from historical records, to polar ice core samples going back hundreds of thousands of years, to more recent data collected by statlite and other earth based sampling techniques. the evidence is so strong that there is indeed a worldwide consensus amonst reasearch scientists, not politicians, that there is a great chanc that we are indeed causing massive global climate change and hence we should attempt to progress with caution.

What's my problem? Bad science

[Anonymous Coward]

"to polar ice core samples going back hundreds of thousands of years"

What did you find there? Warming caused by factory smokestacks in the year 120,000 B.C.E.?

"evidence is so strong that there is indeed a worldwide consensus amonst reasearch scientists"

Correction: there is a concensus among scientists who happen to believe this trendy view.

"that there is a great chanc that we are indeed causing massive global climate change and hence we should attempt to progress with caution."

Correction: we don't have any idea that we are, and if we did, we don't know how actions one way or another would change things (IF AT ALL). We know so little about these matters. , to more recent data collected by statlite and other earth

Re:What's my problem? Bad science

[Anonymous Coward]

Correction: there is a concensus among scientists who happen to believe this trendy view.

Which is a very negatively worded way of saying that most scientists believe that climate change is happening. Because if they didn't, it wouldn't be "trendy" now would it?

Ultimately you agree with the poster, but you don't want to admit to yourself that it's happening. WAKE UP!

Re:What's my problem? Bad science

[Anonymous Coward]

" Because if they didn't, it wouldn't be "trendy" now would it?"

"Trendy" refers to the faddishness.... global cooling in the 1970s, global warming in 1980s-1990s, global cooling again by 2010...
It is like how cars go from being boxy to round to boxy to round in 22 yr cycles.

By the way, it is pretty clear that climate change is happening. It has always been happening. What is not clear at all is that "we" have anything to do with it. WAKE UP? Might as well go back to sleep; nothing we can do about it.

Now confermed?

[pretzelsofwar]

I though I confirmed it last year when I got a killer sunburn in 110 deg F heat in Iowa.

English Wine Industry

[Bob_Robertson]

Gee, England had a wine industry for thousands of years. It's been too cold for wine grapes for several centuries, maybe things are returning to normal.

It seems the earth continues to change temperatures well within its historical range.

Anyone who wants me to punish people for doing far less "harm" than a single volcanic eruption, just demonstrate that this change in temperature is anything other than natural. Go ahead, I dare you.

Until you can, keep your ego-stroking self-centered "if it's not exactly like I remember then it's YOUR FAULT" attitude to yourself.

Bob-

Re:English Wine Industry

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee, England had a wine industry for thousands of years. It's been too cold for wine grapes for several centuries, maybe things are returning to normal.

If true, that could mean the Earth, as a whole, used to be colder. Around a third of the heat supplied to England comes via the Gulf Stream, and it doesn't hit it directly. Trust me, if England's temperature was what it should be for the lattitude, you wouldn't merely have problems growing grapes there, it'd be short on strawberries, apples, and pretty much everything else.

Re:English Wine Industry

[Bob_Robertson]

Huh? Used to be colder? It would have to be WARMER for England to grow grapes.

Go ahead and look it up. Locally produced wine in England throughout the middle ages.

I'd love to say that to all the doom-and-gloom GlobalWarming fruitcakes. "Go Look It Up." Stop depending on Time magazine to tell you what to think.

Bob-

Re:English Wine Industry

[einTier]

Bob, don't you understand that global warming can also cause cooling in certain parts of the world? Oh yessir. Regardless of what climate conditions change between now and the next hundred years, you can rest assured that it will be because of global warming and the product of human beings.

Re:English Wine Industry

[squiggleslash]

Huh? Used to be colder? It would have to be WARMER for England to grow grapes.

No. England would have to be warmer. And England's temperature isn't affected that much by the overall temperature of the Earth. England's temperature is mostly affected by the Gulf Stream.

If you want to prove that the Earth was warmer in the middle ages, you're going to have to find a part of the Earth that isn't affected by weather patterns. Good luck ;-)

Re:English Wine Industry

[Silburn_Luke]

The English Wine Industry being non-existent? Hmmm... that's news to these folks then.

Certainly I got a nice little crop of grapes off the vine growing up my wall last year, but then it was the fifth warmest year in the Central England Temperature series.

Regards Luke

Don't forget the rest of the world

[Spamalamadingdong]

The only thing I am panicking over is will we be able to get the US administration to give a shit about the environment.

The rest of the world has ~20 times the population of the USA, and is trying to get what the USA has got. China is already using more coal every year than the USA (which burned about 22 quadrillion BTU worth in 2002) and has just passed Japan as the world's second-largest consumer of oil. It's not enough to give a shit about the environment; we have to make sure they give a shit too, or at least give a shit about what the industrialized world will do if they don't act like it.

This means China needs to radically boost its efficiency (not hard even with current technology), Indonesia has to prevent the drainage and burning of peat bogs, and all that. If things there continue as they have been going, the USA could cut emissions to zero and still not make things better.

This also means that the Kyoto system of quotas is fundamentally broken. It will not do to give each nation a quota; each emitter of CO2 and other climate-changing gases has to have an incentive to prevent those emissions, and the competitive advantage should go to those producers and nations which are doing it the best. This means something like a unified system of carbon taxes.

Re:Don't forget the rest of the world

[slittle]

the USA could cut emissions to zero and still not make things better

If an economic powerhouse (heh) like the USA goes zero-emissions, it's likely the technology would be cheap enough for use in developing countries as well. Deals like Kyoto push the task of developing this technology onto wealthy countries that can afford it; without them such technology won't be developed until economics force it to be, by which time <tinfoil hat=on> you have large, poor, but nuclear armed countries fighting over resources they're heavily dependant on.

Re:Don't forget the rest of the world

[Pentagram]

China is already using more coal every year than the USA

Handwaving. You have to look at total emissions:

CO2 emissions per year (tons)

China
2,893,000,000 (2.3 / capita)
USA
5,410,000,000 (20.1 / capita)

source: wikipedia

To say that China needs to boost their efficiency rather than the US is ridiculous looking at those figures.

It's not enough to give a shit about the environment; we have to make sure they give a shit too, or at least give a shit about what the industrialized world will do if they don't act like it.

The rest of the world does give a shit about it. Most of the rest of the countries that matter have ratified Kyoto, which, whilst not perfect, will at least go some way towards controlling emissions. It is the US that is doing absolutely nothing.

Re:Don't forget the rest of the world

[sfjoe]

To say that China needs to boost their efficiency rather than the US is Republican looking at those figures.

You used the wrong word. I made the edit for you. You're welcome.

Re:Don't forget the rest of the world

[Anonymous Coward]

Its a sad thing that every asshole thinks he can be a statitician. Sometimes you have to look beyond the numbers. With a country like China growing massively in their output and becomeing fully industrialized, it won't take long before they have 10 times our output if they keep their current efficiency. They've got their foot on the accelerator and will soon surpass the US.

Re:Don't forget the rest of the world

[calidoscope]

Blaming the AIDS epidemic on Reagan??

IIRC, the infections started when Carter was still president, albeit the nature of the illness didn't make itself clear until the Reagan years. Perhaps the most effective thing that Reagan could have done would have been to restrict the behaviors that lead to the spread of the disease - prevention is way easier than a cure.

If you're really serious about putting the blame for an epidemic on a US President - then focus your wrath on Woodrow Wilson for the influenza epidemic of 1918-20 - which killed a lot more people than AIDS. I would highly recommend reading John M. Barry's book on the Great Influenza.

Re:Don't forget the rest of the world

[Eivind]

What he probably means is that though the average American release 9 times as much CO2 as the average Chinese, that's ok, because they're 20 times as rich, so they're "entitled".

The arrogance of that statement you can evaluate yourself.

Re:Don't forget the rest of the world

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you always look "beyond the numbers", or only when they don't agree with you?

Re:Don't forget the rest of the world

[cluckshot]

The previous post is absolutely correct about Kyoto system of quotas being broken. This is for the fundamental reason that there are no quotas for most nations on the earth.

The flaws in Kyoto are deeper than this though. Kyoto refused to consider CO2 "Sinks." This is because the USA is a big CO2 Sink because of its vast agriculture and vast forrests, something that for all practical purposes other nations don't even have.

Another failing of Kyoto is the failure to consider "Final Product" efficiencies. A vast majority of US Consumption of Carbon Fuels is for the production of Agricultural Products which for the most part are consumed outside of the USA. In addition the USA buys massive amounts of Oil but it also sells the refined products of that oil in some considerable quantities. The list of these issues goes on and on.

The purpose of Kyoto is not environmental correction. Had it been so, measures to correct the environment of most of the world would not have been over looked or exempted. The Purpose of Kyoto is to HOBBLE the USA in the global Market. It is fundamentally a "Anti-American" document. The US Senate saw this and 100% of all voting members voted against the treaty on this account. Rest assured that there are plenty of Senators who, had it been over the Environment as is presented by some, they would have voted for the treaty even if all other features were questionable.

This treaty is so screwed up that NORWAY can produce most of the Natural Gas and much of the Oil for Europe, but It cannot burn it and sell the Electricity! They are denied the "Value Added" money from their product and in the end, the resulting emissions are actually up due to the freight to deliver the goods. Other nations can burn Norway product gas but Norway cannot burn it!

Re:Don't forget the rest of the world

[sfjoe]

IIRC, the infections started when Carter was still president, albeit the nature of the illness didn't make itself clear until the Reagan years. Perhaps the most effective thing that Reagan could have done would have been to restrict the behaviors that lead to the spread of the disease - prevention is way easier than a cure.

You right-wingers spew some idiot propaganda, but that really takes the cake. The most effective thing Reagan could have done was to treat it as a serious public health matter instead of totally ignoring it until things had gotten out of hand. You think it was handled well? Look at how Legionaire's Disease was handled when it infected a handful of white, heterosexual people.

Re:Don't forget the rest of the world

[calidoscope]

Look at how Legionaire's Disease was handled when it infected a handful of white, heterosexual people.

A Google search indicated the first known outbreak was 221 infected, and IIRC 43 deaths. The same search indicates that over 10,000 cases of Legionnaire's disease occur every year in the US. The main reason for concern was the sudden outbreak - prompting fears that this was a very communicable disease (it wasn't).

One other thing to keep in mind is that Legionnaire's is caused by bacteria - which is a whole lot easier to determine the cause than a viral infection and a whole lot easier to treat.

The most effective thing Reagan could have done was to treat it as a serious public health matter

Standard operating practice for a serious public health matter is to prevent the spread of disease. Food poisoning traced to a meat packing plant? - shut down the plant. Disease outbreak traced to a carrier? - quarantine the carrier.

The AIDS epidemic was not too far along when it became apparent that people contracting AIDS were in the same groups as people at high risk of hepatitus B. On that basis, one of the first things the public health agencies should have done would have been close down the bathhouses and other venues of extreme promiscuity. Another step would be to ask those in high risk groups not to donate blood - something that did not go over well with some of the more outspoken members of the SF gay community.

Re:Don't forget the rest of the world

[sfjoe]

You're rewriting history to suit your own needs. The first outbreak of Legionnaires was an isolated event amongst some convention-goers. Conversely, AIDS (or GRID as it was originally known) showed up in multiple places at once - always a very bad sign.
It doesn't change the fact that the government response to Legionnaires was swift and capable. The government response to AIDS was ... nothing.
The Reagan administration, like the current administration, was heavily influenced by the radical right and had no interest in an issue that affected gays.
You really don't know what you're talking about.

Re:Don't forget the rest of the world

[Guppy06]

"If an economic powerhouse (heh) like the USA goes zero-emissions, it's likely the technology would be cheap enough for use in developing countries as well."

You know what would be even cheaper, though? Doing nothing and not paying anything at all, in which case you could undercut American production costs (probably even without accounting for cheaper labor).

Order out of chaos

[Spamalamadingdong]

Let me reverse the order of these two sentences to make my point:

A variation of a few hundredths of a degree in one place in the world can be responsible for a hurricane in another.... The earth is a chaotic system, and chaotic systems for the most part are unpredictable.

You confuse chaos with randomness. They are not the same; a chaotic system is contrained by a chaotic attractor, a multi-dimensional surface in the N-space of physically possible states on which the current state is found. You cannot predict whether it will rain or shine two weeks from today, but you can predict with very high reliability how much rain you'll get because we know the characteristics which are due to the attractor.

Which brings me to my next point: if you change the characteristics of the attractor, the behavior of the system can change radicaly in a very sudden fashion. I fear that this is what we are doing with climate change, and we may suffer huge damages from the results.

i love it...

[Anonymous Coward]

you can't argue with the facts, so just dismiss it as trendy... classic "saving face when loosing a debate" technique there...

Re:i love it...

[Anonymous Coward]

"you can't argue with the facts, so just dismiss it as trendy"

I'm not arguing against the facts. I'm arguing against bogus bad science.

Re:i love it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just out of curiousity, what are your scientific credentials?

Re:i love it...

[fmaxwell]

I have a BSc in Theological Determinism from Bob Jone's University.

You don't even know the name of the University! What a bozo! Do you think it is owned by "Bob Jone"? HAHAHA

Oh, and BTW, Mars has a climate entirely made up of CO2.

And you don't even know the difference between climate and atmosphere. Yeah, you're a real scientific genius.

Re:i love it...

[Anonymous Coward]

Angstrom winner Richard Hoagland

I have always loved that statement. Especially when it is connected to "greats." What other "greats" have you worked with on atmospheric systems? The leaders in the field of atmospherics and planetary atmospheres seem to be missing the Hoagland fellow. I wonder why...

To the unaware, there is a medal given out by Uppsala University in Sweden under the auspices of the Royal Swedish Academy called the Angstrom Medal. Pretty impressive stuff. Now there's this private group, the AFAB, who decided to give out an Angstrom Medal to Hoagland. Here is a nice quote from the department of Physics at Uppsala:

The Angstrom foundation is a private foundation without connections to Uppsala or any other university. The department of Physics in Uppsala, where two professors Angstrom have been active, has no links with the activities of Richard Hoagland. The department considers the Hoagland project as speculative and unscientific and rejects it entirely.

Also, it turns out after all that the people in AFAB have admitted that giving their version of the Angstrom Medal was "a mistake." This is like Taco and Cowboy getting together and deciding that I should recieve the "Nobel Prize," and then me running around adding to my name "winner of the Nobel Prize."

BTW interplanetary climate specialist (what, are you talking solar wind here? What is this interplanetary climate you are speaking of?), you might think you know a lot about the subject, but your analysis of the Mars climate shows you are very ignorant (hint: you need to consider extinction values and optical depth, to name just two items). Please provide even a back-of-the-envelope calculation to show that Mars should be hotter than Mercury. While we wait, you can also tell us all about "the face," the "geometry of Cydonia," and you might as well weigh in with your scientific expertise and explain why the Martian atmosphere is as blue as a Texas sky. These are, after all, all topics widely promoted and lectured upon by the "great" Hoagland.

For the rest of you, if you want to see what a huge pile of horseshit people like this peddle, start with pages like this.

Yeah, yeah, I know, "fight the system," "the man is keeping you down," etc., etc. I apologize for my ramblings, but I am just part of the scientific intelligentsia who will not rest until we bury the "truth" and protect our positions, and we can't help but attack the few honest men like you.

Re:i love it...

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't even know the name of the University! What a bozo! Do you think it is owned by "Bob Jone"? HAHAHA

The degree was issued by BJU, therefore it's possessive.

And you don't even know the difference between climate and atmosphere. Yeah, you're a real scientific genius.

Subset, superset. Thanks for playing though

Re:i love it...

[fmaxwell]

The degree was issued by BJU, therefore it's possessive.

If you have a degree from there, then they give degrees to illiterates! Here's what you wrote:

I have a BSc in Theological Determinism from Bob Jone's University.

What the hell is posssessive in that sentence? Tell me! The way that you've written that sentence, the University is owned by someone named "Bob Jone". If you wanted to say that the University was owned by "Bob Jones", then you should have written "Bob Jones' University", but that's not the name of the school is it? Your sentence says that the degree is "from" the university, not that it belongs to the university.

Are you saying that the university owns your degree? That Bob Jones owns the university? That Bob Jone owns the university? Just what's possessive in your mind?

Subset, superset. Thanks for playing though

Atmosphere is not a "subset" or "superset" of climate. Atmosphere is the collection of gases surrounding a planet while climate describes conditions like temperature, wind, and precipitation (no, I don't care that wind involves air -- it doesn't make one a subset or superset of the other). Temperature is a subset of climate. Rain is a subset of climate. Atmosphere is not.

Re:i love it...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to have to own up. As the OP was being an AC, and just posting somewhat illogical slurs without backing them up, I posted the reply implying "he" was from BJU.

So I guess YHBT. I'm surprised nobody questioned the absurdity of the post. I'm even more surprised the OP never responded to say I wasn't him...

Re:i love it...

[another_henry]

I've also worked with the greats on issues like interplanetary climate (my speciality), working with Angstrom winner Richard Hoagland on Europan climate systems.

This is pretty laughable. Ad homoneim it may be, but Richard Hoagland is pretty much the worst offender in pseudoscience.

um... no.

[Anonymous Coward]

people love to toss out that old volcano meme, too bad its total bullsh*t. where are your numbers? in fact, co2 levels are possibibly the highest we can find on record:

Since the Industrial Revolution, the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil has put about twice as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than is naturally removed by the oceans and forests. This has resulted in carbon dioxide levels building up in the atmosphere. Today, carbon dioxide levels are 30% higher than pre-industrial levels, higher than they have been in the last 420,000 years and are probably at the highest levels in the past 20 million years. Studies of the Earth's climate history have shown that even small, natural changes in carbon dioxide levels were generally accompanied by significant shifts in the global average temperature. We have already experienced a 1F increase in global temperature in the past century, and we can expect significant warming in the next century if we fail to act to decrease greenhouse gas emissions.

[IPCC, 2001. Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis, p. 39.]

so, you want to control a chaotic system?

[sevinkey]

Although I always agree that everything requires "more study", I do agree with this poster's assessment of the situation. It is by no means contradictory to say that we can't change what is happening and that the Earth is a chaotic system. Worse yet, the Earth is a chaotic system for which we don't know all the variables, let alone how to change them.

This doesn't mean that conservation of the environment isn't a noble cause, because it is, I strongly dislike the smog here in Phoenix driving to work in the mornings. I just don't see exactly how anyone expects to "fix" the problems without breaking the system first.

Imagine trying to fix the bugs in a system the size of Windows with a disassembler, and then you're about halfway to the level of complexity you're talking about.

Re:so, you want to control a chaotic system?

[NateTech]

You ever give any thought about the fact that that same "system" if left alone would make the place you live a barren wasteland known as a desert?

Pump in a few million gallons of water a year and it becomes habitable land. And now you're worried about the air pollution?

Phoenix is a REALLY bad example of trying to get back to some sort of natural ecosystem; if you did that, you definitely wouldn't be there in the first place.

Re:so, you want to control a chaotic system?

[sevinkey]

Ah, you didn't read the post. Phoenix was an example of a place that has air polution and the cause of environmentallism -- nothing to do with the choatic system mention above. People are talking about what would essentially be terraforming on our planet, which I believe would be a terrible idea.

Bob Jones HAHAHA!

[Anonymous Coward]

" have a BSc in Theological Determinism from Bob Jone's University"

So what is the punishment there these days for interracial dating? Do you guys still think that Catholics aren't Christian?

CO2 makes things cold. You are correct

[Anonymous Coward]

"Mars has a climate entirely made up of CO2. If CO2 causes "global warming", it ought to be hotter than Mercury."

You are entirely correct. Dry ice is made of CO2. That stuff is damn cold. The surface temperature of dry ice isf -109.3 degrees F (-78.5 degrees C). No way that this cold stuff can cause global warming.

Oh, the low-down

[scorp1us]

1) We are STILL exiting an ice age. Of course things are going to get warmer.
2) #1 aside, the average surface temperature of earth over a year and over the entire earth is not static. See, we are not in a perfect circle of an orbit. As the planets tug at us, we vary our position from the sun year to year. Charting this for the last nexeral million years and looking at the trend for the past few thousand, we see that we are in the middle of a period of being pulled to the sun.
3) It is mearly impossible to understand how much of the raise in temperature is attributible to nature and to us.

I think it would be good to minmize our destructive emitions. What woried me more than global warming is:
1) the whole in the Ozone layer
2) Light diminishing (from deseils)
3) Chemical imbalances (acid rain)

Temperature is a rather futile thing to control because it is so wild. Ice ages are normal. They come to an end, and they come back.

Few people know that Earth was an iceball for a long time. Then the water melted. They don't know if life formed before, after or during this period. But there was a period where we were all ice.

So to sum it up, forget temperatire, worry about Sulphur, Ozone and Carbon.

Re:Oh, the low-down

[Mycroft_VIII]

Well I ease your mind somewhat on item 1. Seem the hole in the ozone layer has been there a long time, and it's size varies over time. growing for a while then shrinking for a while.
This is just another datum that got turned into 'sky is falling' mantra for a few years untill scientific analysis showed it to be perfectly normal.

Mycroft

Re:Oh, the low-down

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it would be good to minmize our destructive emitions. What woried me more than global warming is:
1) the whole in the Ozone layer

Funny, what worries me most about society in general is that our school system produces people who believe in spelling the word hole as whole, and who consistently mix up homonyms. No wonder India has taken all of our jobs!

Average response

[Safety Cap]

I'm inclined to wait until something actually bad happens ~.

And that, my friend, is why we're all screwed. By the time something "bad" happens, it will be a little too late---much like hearing the ambulance a few blocks away, but not pulling over until he's right on your arse.

Re:Average response

[Jerf]

TO PANIC.

Don't cut off my quotes and distort the meaning and then try to lecture me.

Re:Average response

[Safety Cap]

You might up that Diazepam dosage to 10mg, Bub. I mean, before you blow a gasket panicking.

OK, I'll bite

[nonameisgood]

Exactly how long has it been since we first took an accurate reading of temperature, much less CO/CO2 levels in the atmosphere? OMG, 0.2 degrees! GMAFB!

I understand that we use other indicators, but you have not convinced me that we even know that global warming, beyond any "normal", cyclic variation, IS occurring - yes it seems to be so, but science is about proof, not postulate.

As an engineer and a scientist, I am trained discern fact from fiction, but let's face it, if I'm trying to get research money, I know that the political-types are going to have to be motivated. The average voter/consumer is willing to relinquish control out of fear (think PATRIOT Act) or mystery (think religion).

It's kinda like Venkman in Ghostbusters says "you'll save the lives of millions of registered voters".

And moral, boys and girls...

[b-baggins]

...is just keep chaning how you measure until you get the results you want.

i knew that...

[compro01]

everyone know that global warming is going on. the only question being aruged over is "are we to blame?" and i say no.

this is almost exactly like what happened to the climate 1000 years back. it got warm enough that Greenland was usable for farming. that just seems like to much similarity to be a coinsiance.

but still, what is causing it??

did you read the link?

[Anonymous Coward]

"When Mount Pinatubo erupted, scientists noticed the rate at which carbon dioxide (CO2) filled the atmosphere slowed down for the next two years. Also during 1992 and 1993, ash and other particles from the volcano created a haze around the planet and slightly reduced the sunlight reaching Earth's surface and made the sun's radiation less direct and more diffuse." its the more diffuse light which causes a slowdown in the plant respiration, which causes a drop of co2 going into the air, and the measured result is less overall co2 in the air.

Re:did you read the link?

[DShard]

ts the more diffuse light which causes a slowdown in the plant respiration, which causes a drop of co2 going into the air, and the measured result is less overall co2 in the air.

Please explain to me how that works. maybe I am dim, but your sentence seems to contradict itself. plants do _not_ produce carbon dioxide as a by product of photosynthesis, in fact it is used as a resource. How can a reduction in this rate of the production cause less of the input material.

wow... it gets better...

[Anonymous Coward]

hey, when you get a degree from a univertisty let us know. you do realise that bob jones utterly lack accreditation dont you? i hope they put that in their informational welcome package.

too bad you arent a very good scientist.

[Anonymous Coward]

since science can in fact never proove anything definitively. its about using evidecne to back up a hypothesis. all creditable evidnece points in one clear direction: global warming. please do a little reading, there is no substantial argument that holds water against the overwealming evidence

Not so fast...

[The Quiet Man]

Read Roy Spencer's article about how and why Qiang and his team short-circuited the peer-review process to publish their results. From the article:

"This kind of mistake would not get published with adequate peer review of manuscripts submitted for publication. But in recent years, a curious thing has happened. The popular science magazines, Science and Nature, have seemingly stopped sending John Christy and me papers whose conclusions differ from our satellite data analysis. This is in spite of the fact that we are (arguably) the most qualified people in the field to review them. This is the second time in nine months that these journals have let papers be published in the satellite temperature monitoring field that had easily identifiable errors in their methodology."

Spencer and Christy published the original paper on microwave sounding and atmospheric temperatures.

well thats easy, im an idot... :)

[Anonymous Coward]

teaches me to reply on my way out the door. below is the article text since you dont seem to want to click the link, the sentance i meant to clip was: "Many scientists previously thought the reduction in sunlight lowered the Earth's temperature and slowed plant and soil respiration, a process where plants and soil emit CO2. But this new research shows that when faced with diffuse sunlight, plants actually become more efficient, drawing more carbon dioxide out of the air." ---- Large volcanic eruptions help plants absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere New NASA-funded research shows that when the atmosphere gets hazy, like it did after the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines in June 1991, plants photosynthesize more efficiently, thereby absorbing more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. When Mount Pinatubo erupted, scientists noticed the rate at which carbon dioxide (CO2) filled the atmosphere slowed down for the next two years. Also during 1992 and 1993, ash and other particles from the volcano created a haze around the planet and slightly reduced the sunlight reaching Earth's surface and made the sun's radiation less direct and more diffuse. Many scientists previously thought the reduction in sunlight lowered the Earth's temperature and slowed plant and soil respiration, a process where plants and soil emit CO2. But this new research shows that when faced with diffuse sunlight, plants actually become more efficient, drawing more carbon dioxide out of the air. "There is evidence indicating that the drop in the atmospheric CO2 growth rate was probably too big to be explained by a reduction in respiration alone," said the study's lead author, Lianhong Gu, a researcher at the University of California Berkeley's Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management. Gu added that the respiration rates of plants and soil are sensitive to temperature changes. But "in order to explain the drop in atmospheric growth rate of CO2, we would need an average drop in global temperatures of about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 C), but the temperatures only dropped by about one degree (0.9) Fahrenheit (0.5C) globally." Plants take in carbon dioxide during photosynthesis in the day, and release it during respiration at night. But they don't necessarily photosynthesize and respire at the same rates. Since decreased plant and soil respiration could not explain the drop in carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere in 1992 and 1993, Gu and his colleagues deduced that enhanced photosynthesis by plants must be involved. After Mount Pinatubo erupted, while overall solar radiation was reduced by less than five percent, data showed a reduction of direct radiation by as much as 30 percent. So, instead of direct light, the sun's rays were reaching leaves after colliding with particles in the air. "Diffuse radiation has advantages for plants," Gu said. That's because when plants receive too much direct light, they become saturated by radiation and their ability to photosynthesize levels off. In the layers of leaves from top to bottom, called the plant canopy, only a small percentage of the leaves at the top actually get hit by direct light. In the presence of diffuse light, plants photosynthesize more efficiently and can draw more than twice as much carbon from the air than when radiated by direct light. Gu and his colleagues tested the CO2 uptake in various plant ecosystems around the world-including Aspen forests, mixed deciduous forests, Scots pine forests, tallgrass prairies, and a winter wheat field-based on the amount of solar radiation striking the leaves. From these analyses, they generated parameters necessary for evaluating impacts of the Pinatubo eruption. On clear days following the eruption, they found that in all of the ecosystems, photosynthesis increased under the diffuse light. While large volcanic eruptions are rare, this research has big implications for more regular phenomena such as the effects of aerosols and clouds on an ecosystem's ability to pull carbon from the atmosphere. Aerosols, or microscopic

oops... formatting fix...

[Anonymous Coward]

teaches me to reply on my way out the door. below is the article text since you dont seem to want to click the link, the sentance i meant to clip was:

"Many scientists previously thought the reduction in sunlight lowered the Earth's temperature and slowed plant and soil respiration, a process where plants and soil emit CO2. But this new research shows that when faced with diffuse sunlight, plants actually become more efficient, drawing more carbon dioxide out of the air."

----

Large volcanic eruptions help plants absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
New NASA-funded research shows that when the atmosphere gets hazy, like it did after the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines in June 1991, plants photosynthesize more efficiently, thereby absorbing more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

When Mount Pinatubo erupted, scientists noticed the rate at which carbon dioxide (CO2) filled the atmosphere slowed down for the next two years. Also during 1992 and 1993, ash and other particles from the volcano created a haze around the planet and slightly reduced the sunlight reaching Earth's surface and made the sun's radiation less direct and more diffuse.

Many scientists previously thought the reduction in sunlight lowered the Earth's temperature and slowed plant and soil respiration, a process where plants and soil emit CO2. But this new research shows that when faced with diffuse sunlight, plants actually become more efficient, drawing more carbon dioxide out of the air.

"There is evidence indicating that the drop in the atmospheric CO2 growth rate was probably too big to be explained by a reduction in respiration alone," said the study's lead author, Lianhong Gu, a researcher at the University of California Berkeley's Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management.

Gu added that the respiration rates of plants and soil are sensitive to temperature changes. But "in order to explain the drop in atmospheric growth rate of CO2, we would need an average drop in global temperatures of about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 C), but the temperatures only dropped by about one degree (0.9) Fahrenheit (0.5C) globally."

Plants take in carbon dioxide during photosynthesis in the day, and release it during respiration at night. But they don't necessarily photosynthesize and respire at the same rates. Since decreased plant and soil respiration could not explain the drop in carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere in 1992 and 1993, Gu and his colleagues deduced that enhanced photosynthesis by plants must be involved.

After Mount Pinatubo erupted, while overall solar radiation was reduced by less than five percent, data showed a reduction of direct radiation by as much as 30 percent. So, instead of direct light, the sun's rays were reaching leaves after colliding with particles in the air.

"Diffuse radiation has advantages for plants," Gu said. That's because when plants receive too much direct light, they become saturated by radiation and their ability to photosynthesize levels off. In the layers of leaves from top to bottom, called the plant canopy, only a small percentage of the leaves at the top actually get hit by direct light. In the presence of diffuse light, plants photosynthesize more efficiently and can draw more than twice as much carbon from the air than when radiated by direct light.

Gu and his colleagues tested the CO2 uptake in various plant ecosystems around the world-including Aspen forests, mixed deciduous forests, Scots pine forests, tallgrass prairies, and a winter wheat field-based on the amount of solar radiation striking the leaves. From these analyses, they generated parameters necessary for evaluating impacts of the Pinatubo eruption. On clear days following the eruption, they found that in all of the ecosystems, photosynthesis increased under the diffuse light.

While large volcanic eruptions are rare, this research has big implications for more regular phenomena such as the effects of aerosols and clouds

bullsh*t

[Anonymous Coward]

you can't just disregard the consensus because its popular and popular consensus has often been wrong in the past. you must either invalidate their evidence and reasoning, or come up with another competing, supported theory.

Ignorance or lies?

[fmaxwell]

Because there is no evidence of man-made atmospheric changes contributing to anything.

Here is an article from the BBC News about a scientific study that gives strong evidence of man-made greenhouse gases contributing to global warming. So you can stop with your bullshit claims about there being "no evidence." That link proves that you are either ignorant or a liar.

So what you end up with is 100% political efforts like Kyoto which requires that "bad" countries decrease CO2 emissions and requires that "good" countries increase them.

More bullshit. The Kyoto treaty did not require any country to increase CO2 emissions. That's just complete and utter fabrication.

I'd rather pay more for banana's and CDs to stop Martian invasion, Godzilla attacks, and hangnails. As long as you are paying to affect something that has nothing to do with anything....

Since you've already proven yourself woefully ignorant about the entire subject, your opinion about the topic is worthless. Do us all a favor: Stay home on election day and study rather than going out to vote. We'll all be better off if you do.

Re:Ignorance or lies?

[Anonymous Coward]

"More bullshit. The Kyoto treaty did not require any country to increase CO2 emissions. That's just complete and utter fabrication."

Yes it does. China is one of those countries that increases emissions. Basically, Kyoto is designed to damage the US economy while boosting the Chinese economy.

"opinion about the topic is worthless. Do us all a favor"

No, I'm showing up on time and making sure the chad is punched through, only once, and not for Pat Buchanan. I'm the lunatic left's worst nightmare: an informed voter.

Re:Ignorance or lies?

[fmaxwell]

Yes it does. China is one of those countries that increases emissions.

More right-wing lies. Kyoto would have allowed China to increase emissions. It would not have, as you claimed, required it. When a country is largely agrarian and becoming industrialized, of course the emissions will increase -- or industrialization will grind to a halt. It's like demanding that everyone, including infants, never be allowed to have larger shoes and then claiming it's fair to everyone.

I'm the lunatic left's worst nightmare: an informed voter.

You're just another illogical, lie-spewing, distorting, right-wing, corporate schill.

bullsh*t

[Anonymous Coward]

It's pretty clear that he is disregarding it not because it is popular, but because it is not valid at all.

He understands it all right

[Anonymous Coward]

He is just aghast that you are comparing something that does not exist to violence against another human being. You are really trivializing rape by doing this.

Re:He understands it all right

[fmaxwell]

He is just aghast that you are comparing something that does not exist to violence against another human being.

Global warming exists. Reputable scientists know it. If you disagree, then you're a fucking idiot. And killing off the human race is worse than raping someone.

Re:He understands it all right

[Anonymous Coward]

Global warming exists. Reputable scientists know it. If you disagree, then you're a fucking idiot.

He might be misinformed, he might be wrong, he might be a lot of things, but there is no call to perpetrate a personal attack by calling him a "fucking idiot" - it doesn't make your position any stronger or your argument any more convincing.

Re:He understands it all right

[fmaxwell]

but there is no call to perpetrate a personal attack by calling him a "fucking idiot" - it doesn't make your position any stronger or your argument any more convincing.

He wasn't interested in an intelligent debate. He simply said that global warming is "something that does not exist." No sources. No links. No rationale. I'm frustrated by people who won't even read the news stories on major scientific studies and simply pretend that global warming doesn't exist.

Re:He understands it all right

[Anonymous Coward]

So since he's not interested in intelligent debate, it's ok to resort to juvenile name calling? I don't think that position is going to do much to elevate the level of debate here on Slashdot. Why not spend some time on Google and come up with your own links supporting your position? Better yet, why not abandon the debate before getting to the point of personal attacks? Are you afraid that other readers might think that you have "lost" the argument in some way?

Re:He understands it all right

[fmaxwell]

Why not spend some time on Google and come up with your own links supporting your position?

I already did that earlier in the thread.

But that's an ugly trap that I've fallen into before. Someone posts an ill-informed opinion with no substantiating links and I reply with links. Rather than finding links to counter those that I posted, they attack the links I provided with claims that the authors were biased, that their opinion did not represent the mainstream thinking of scientists, etc. Suddenly, their position is the de-facto "correct" position and it's my job to disprove it.

Better yet, why not abandon the debate before getting to the point of personal attacks? Are you afraid that other readers might think that you have "lost" the argument in some way?

Maybe that's part of it. Sadly, "the last word" means far too much to many readers.

Re:He understands it all right

[Anonymous Coward]

You posted one link that I can find... to a BBC news article. It's touching that you feel compelled to disprove any false positions put up by other readers, but calling someone "a fucking idiot" didn't work when I was eight years old and arguing with my little sister - I don't think it has improved as a tactic since then. Maybe you need to wonder why "the last word" seems to mean so much to you?

Mod parent down

[Pentagram]

For instance, A volcanic erruption can cause so much more so called "greenhouse" gasses to be released into the atmosphere than all the polutants man has expelled since the first machine of industry.

That is, quite simply, crap. You're wrong and embarassingly so.

"There is no doubt that volcanic eruptions add CO2 to the atmosphere, but compared to the quantity produced by human activities, their impact is virtually trivial: volcanic eruptions produce about 110 million tons of CO2 each year, whereas human activities contribute almost 10,000 times that quantity." - Scientific American

Moderators, please don't mod up silly statements like these where sources aren't cited.

Reagan vs Aids

[Anonymous Coward]

"Why not The Ronald Reagan Memorial Epidemic [aids.org]"

During his presidency, Reagan increased funding for AIDS research much more than anyone after him did.

Re:Reagan vs Aids

[Anonymous Coward]

Not exactly difficult when you're starting at zero.

Honestly, I think the OP is being seriously off-base but your response is pretty assinine.

Re:Reagan vs Aids

[Anonymous Coward]

Partisan nuts blame Reagan for AIDS, when the reality is that he willingly authoriziation signed huge amounts of dollars for research.

Re:Reagan vs Aids

[Lars T.]

Yes, after even he couldn't help notice that it wasn't limited to a handfull of "fags".

Worldwide famine?

[Anonymous Coward]

"What, in your view, constitutes irrefutable proof? Worldwide famine, skyrocketing cancer rates (oh wait, we already have that problem [who.int])?"

You certainly are not coming up with any examples. Famine is a result of bad governments, not warming. Raising the heat a few degrees (assuming it is happening) has nothing to do with cancer.

"Mt. Pinatubo eruption (often cited by anti-environmentalists as proof"

Mt. Pinatubo is never cited by anti-environmentalists. Just because people oppose utterly invalid theories does not make them anti-environment.

Chaotic? Exactly!

[Ying Hu]

Chaos now has a relatively precise meaning in science - that very small, perhaps nearly invisible, initial conditions can produce, under some conditions, disproportionately large divergences in outcomes. But, if understood, this can make a system more, not less, predictable, for there are patterns to the kinds of changes that happen. The weather pattern over the earth is not well-understood, by any means, but we know at least two things - mankind is doing things that, theoretically, could produce a warmer earth, AND, the earth is getting warmer. Causality, or, more to the point, the importance of other factors affecting said causality, is not irrefutably established, but caution definitely would advise some courses of action over others. Those who say we don't understand so should do nothing are worse than B.F. Skinner, who in his time said, essentially, we don't understand the brain's workings, so we won't even try to investigate it. They have their heads in the sand, and are not doing any thinking worthy of the name. (And they may be pushing some sort of other agenda, and are hoping you are too stupid to think for yourself.) You don't light a fire in your house, and then notice the temperature rising, and claim "the proof isn't in yet, so I'll just keep burning!"

China? maybe someday

[Anonymous Coward]

China is still communist. the sleeping giant is still bashing itself over the head with the club of socialism as it tries to wake up. Take this away, and you would have an entire with the economic power of a Singapore or a Taiwan multiplied over a much larger area.

Woodrow Wilson - in retrospect, a bad president

[Anonymous Coward]

"focus your wrath on Woodrow Wilson for the influenza epidemic of 1918-20 - which killed a lot more people than AIDS"

Wilson is also to blame for the ongoing crisis that is Yugoslavia. This "country" was patched together by Wilson despite strong opposition from subject peoples which included the Kosovars.

If you stick a couple of alley cats in a paper scak, they will fight.

Re:Woodrow Wilson - in retrospect, a bad president

[calidoscope]

Wilson is also to blame for the ongoing crisis that is Yugoslavia. This "country" was patched together by Wilson despite strong opposition from subject peoples which included the Kosovars.

The more I learn about Wilson the more I despise him.

Wilson also deserves quite a bit of the blame for the demise of the mass transit industry in the US - mainly due to prices doubling from 1916 to 1920 - while transit fares typically were held constant. Transit systems were typically profitable before 1916, rarely so after 1920.

Similarly, the railroad's were really hurt by the Wilson administration in particular by the USRA (United States Railway Administration).

Weakened transit systems and railroads lead to increased use of cars and trucks along with increased CO2 emissions.

Interesting tactic you've got there

[Tau Zero]

I see you'd rather put words in somebody's mouth than ask them what they meant.

If it takes the Chinese twice as much CO2 to produce a dollar's worth of goods as it takes the USA, is it better for the world to have goods produced in China? China uses antiquated technology in many of its primary industries, but makes up for the inefficiencies with cheap labor. Many Chinese cities are terribly polluted from the byproducts of coal combustion without pollution controls (reminiscent of the Soviet bloc); many homes are heated by coal stoves rather than natural gas or even "town gas", and the environmental and human costs are high. The savings appear to be plowed into an increasingly aggressive military, with which the dictatorship is threatening democratic Taiwan and oppressing Tibet.

It would be well worth it to force China to divert some of its resources into cleaning up its mess and preventing it from getting worse. If China was only as efficient as the current US average, it would make a huge difference both for China and for the world.

Re:Interesting tactic you've got there

[Eivind]

We're both rigth I think.

You are offcourse rigth that much of the industry in China is very inefficient, in the sense that it produces a lot of pollution for every dollar-worth of product. Improving this would have benefits both for China and the rest of the world.

On the other hand, there is something that stinks a little when you over and over and over get to hear people from USA state that the "real" problem is the inefficient industries in China, while at the same time having the highest CO2-pro-capita of the entire world, 9 times that of China, for example.

You are a racist

[Anonymous Coward]

" You think it was handled well? Look at how Legionaire's Disease was handled when it infected a handful of white, heterosexual people."

Why are you making racist comments about Legionnaires that are probably not true? Also, there is no reason to believe that the Legionnaires did not have the same 3% rate of homosexuality as the general population.

Re:You are a racist

[sfjoe]

You don't know what you're talking about. The original outbreak of Legionairres in Philadelphia was confined to around a dozen old, white men. The government response was a stark contrast to the response (Reagan's response) to the AIDS epidemic.

Clarify something for me

[Tau Zero]

On the other hand, there is something that stinks a little when you over and over and over get to hear people from USA state that the "real" problem is the inefficient industries in China, while at the same time having the highest CO2-pro-capita of the entire world, 9 times that of China, for example.

Note that those figures prove that the USA produces 2.2 times the GNP per unit of CO2 than China does. So exactly what is the problem as you see it:

1. That some people in the USA refuse to allow a double standard and actually hold others to blame for their contributions to the problem, or
2. That the USA's standard of living is so much higher than e.g. China's?

I see a lot of USA-bashing in the world press, and enormous hypocrisy on the the part of many people and nations doing it. I'm not about to give anyone carte blanche.

Re:Clarify something for me

[Eivind]

Ok. I'll try to clarify.

Assume that our atmosphere has a finite capacity for absorbing various pollutants, such as for example CO2.

Now, I don't know how you see it, but to me it seems sensible that the atmosphere of our planet belongs equally to all people of the planet.

Thus, I don't see it as fair, or logical, that an American gets to "spend" 10 times as much of this, our shared, finite resource, as someone born in a poorer country.

A more fair way of doing it would be, for example:

• Decide what the acceptable levels of global CO2-release is. (that's probably the hardest part, since noone knows for sure it'd have to be a "best guess")
• Divide this amount equally between all countries according to population. (ok, I'm willing to consider the possibility that there should be sligth changes to this basic idea, for example somewhat higher quotas to people in colder climates to compensate for needed heating.)
• Make the quotas freely tradeable on an open market.

This system would have numerous benefits:

• It wouldn't force Americans (or anyone else, you're not unique in polluting a lot) to live in poverty.
• If an American factory can produce $1000 in value if allowed to pollute 10 tonnes extra CO2, while a chinese powerplant produces only $100 in value for the same pollution, then it'd be better for the chinese to sell that quota to USA for for example $200.
• It'd be more *fair* there's no ethical reasons, other than essentially "because we're the bosses" why we western people have the rigth to claim the large majority of the atmospheres potential for absorbing pollution as "ours".

Game theory....

[Spamalamadingdong]

If an economic powerhouse (heh) like the USA goes zero-emissions, it's likely the technology would be cheap enough for use in developing countries as well.

But they won't do it until they have to. In the mean time, the industrial countries (or their industries) have to pay for the new technology while being undercut in price (WTO) by industries based in countries which don't have to.

This could actually increase emissions, as producers shut down operations in industrial nations in order to move them to countries with unregulated emissions. You'd have to be an idiot, or a politician, to write a regime which allows such outcomes and call it an improvement.

Doesn't ANYONE think things through?

[Spamalamadingdong]

This guy already covered a lot of the territory I'm about to go through, so read his post first for background.

Divide this amount equally between all countries according to population. (ok, I'm willing to consider the possibility that there should be sligth changes to this basic idea, for example somewhat higher quotas to people in colder climates to compensate for needed heating.)

Your proposal would have all kinds of undesirable (and even evil) consequences.

• It encourages third-world governments to increase their populations so they can get more carbon-tax money.
• Kleptocrats and other oppressive governments would have a strong incentive to make fuels expensive and collect a double bonus: tax money from their own populations, and emissions-credit money from the industrial countries. This becomes just one more avenue for rent-seeking rather than productive enterprise. Would you really want your money going to Fidel Castro, Robert Mugabe, Kim Jong Il or the erstwhile dictators of South Africa?
• It frustrates the solution of the problem by creating false distinctions regarding the place where greenhouse gases are emitted. This creates an incentive to move production to places with the best balance rather than to where emissions can be controlled the best.

Fortunately, this proposal is what we call a "non-starter".

If an American factory can produce $1000 in value if allowed to pollute 10 tonnes extra CO2, while a chinese powerplant produces only $100 in value for the same pollution, then it'd be better for the chinese to sell that quota to USA for for example $200.

You're casting this in moral terms. What is the moral case for paying the oppressive government of China (or Zimbabwe) for not doing something that they shouldn't be doing anyway because they're less efficient than someone else? What is the moral case for paying a government to engineer a depression that "just happens to" depress greenhouse-gas emissions?

It'd be more *fair* there's no ethical reasons, other than essentially "because we're the bosses" why we western people have the rigth to claim the large majority of the atmospheres potential for absorbing pollution as "ours".

The problem is one of your own creation; you made a sellable "property right" ex nihilo, and then complained because its use wasn't distributed "fairly". This problem disappears if you stop thinking of the issue as common property, and just treat it as a global tax regime with all monies managed on a national basis but the tax rate set by agreement. You would still need some global management (for instance, to insure that the sellers of carbon-sinking services account for their "production" and don't sell more goods than they've actually created), but all of the incentives for rent-seeking and national impovershment disappear.

That is probably why proposals for tradeable credits and payments to less-emitting nations are being favored in the debates with the chattering classes. People whose lives are based on rent-seeking and other unproductive behaviors will jump at the chance to improve their business opportunities, even if it does nothing (or less than nothing) for the welfare of most of people in the world.

Re:Doesn't ANYONE think things through?

[Eivind]

You can jump and scream all you want.

It does not change the fact that when certain countries pollute much more than what is sustainable, it degrades a shared resource.

I see your point about population-changes though, it is true that it is probably not a good idea to encourage poor countries to have as large a population as possible.

What do you think ? When an island-nation in the pacific which pollutes very little still disappears under the waves because other, far richer nations pollute enormously much more, are they then "unproductive rent-seekers" when they consider it fair that those responsible for the damage also cough up to cover it ? That's a fairly common principle in law...

You knew (or had very very strong indications) that acting in a certain way would a) give yourself increased profits and b) cause damage to the property of others. You do it anyway, collect the profits, and see the damage happen. Is it fair that the hurt ones claim *anything* from you ?

Enough with the non-sequiturs already

[Spamalamadingdong]

What do you think ? When an island-nation in the pacific which pollutes very little still disappears under the waves because other, far richer nations pollute enormously much more, are they then "unproductive rent-seekers" when they consider it fair that those responsible for the damage also cough up to cover it ? That's a fairly common principle in law...

Nope, they're victims of a tort. The common-law concept of torts is sufficient to give the victims grounds to sue for damages, such as money to buy land somewhere else. Or precipitate limestone from the ocean to build up their atolls faster than the water is rising. Or whatever they feel like doing.

What it does not entitle them to is a global taxation regime devoted to international transfers of wealth under an unelected, unaccountable and all but certainly corrupt controlling bureaucracy. You know, like Oil-For-Food?

It does not change the fact that when certain countries pollute much more than what is sustainable, it degrades a shared resource.

Morally, this requires everyone to take similar measures to either avoid or ameliorate the harm. It does not imply that international welfare payments are even remotely justifiable as a response.

You knew (or had very very strong indications) that acting in a certain way would a) give yourself increased profits and b) cause damage to the property of others. You do it anyway, collect the profits, and see the damage happen. Is it fair that the hurt ones claim *anything* from you ?

That's not the situation. The situation is that we've been basing a growing world economy on fossil fuels since the 19th century, and on petroleum since the 1920's. We've put huge amounts of investment into infrastructure based on this, but it wasn't until the 80's or so that we became aware of the possibility of climate change as a consequence and not until a few years ago that we actually had unambiguous data to back up the theory.

I certainly think we ought to do something about it, but it's not an excuse to indulge the global welfare state / global bureacracy wet dreams of the eurosocialists and America's academic left.