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Pentagon Climate Change Author Interviewed
cynical writes "Just in time for the opening of The Day After Tomorrow, the futurism/technology/environment blog WorldChanging has an interview with futurist Doug Randall, co-author of the "Abrupt Climate Change" scenario [PDF] commissioned by the Pentagon earlier this year. The report generated a storm of controversy a couple of months ago, and drew attention to the possibility that global warming could disrupt things enough to trigger a rapid-onset ice age. Now that the furor has died down, Randall can talk about climate change, how the report came to be, and just what he thinks about the new disaster movie."
will this increase the ratings for hockey on ESPN?
I was listening to BBC Radio 4 (Today program) and they sent a group of climateologists/ meteoroligists/ etc to a preview of the film.
the great quote was "the film makers left the laws of science on the cutting room floor"
However, it just goes to show; make a movie about a meteor hitting earth and we spend billions on searching for NEO's (near earth objects), make a movie about climate change and all of a sudden we are at risk from "Abrupt Climate Change". The planets lasted this long already, I personally am not too concerned.
However, I do think they should make a movie about how all geeks get laid daily!
People in audiences have apparently found it incredibly funny... too bad it isn't a comedy. It's based on a book by Art Bell, the Coming Global Superstorm. I hear the only thing that would've made the movie worse is if they ended up defeating nature by uploading a virus they wrote on a Mac.
Cue the "Anthropogenic Climate Change is a liberal conspiracy to stop libertarians driving SUVs posts in 5.4.3.2.1..."
Lets throw in a few "Bjorn Lomborg (a statistician with no environmental science training, let alone numerical modelling or fluid dynamics) is right and everyone else was wrong" too. That'll be fun.
And some recycling of the "Wasn't everyone warning about Global Cooling 30 years ago?" posts (erm, no, frankly, though there were one or two apocalyptic popular science books on the subject).
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
While I'm sure it's hard studying something that by definition you can never experience, measure or predict, I'd rather get my climate scares from a meteor-, climat- or oceanologist, thanks very much.
The Slashdot Paradox: "100% Overrated"
What I think is hilarious about that Day After Tomorrow movie is how the studio advertises it as "from the director of Independence Day." That's not a big recommendation in my book. That's like a breakfast cereal manufacturer advertising a new product as "brought to you by the makers of pus, earwax, boogers, chewed bubblegum and cat vomit! Yum!"
I think it's a mistake to advertise that a movie was directed by a guy who directed a really awful previous movie! On that basis alone, I am absolutely not ever going to allow any of this movie to come into view of my eyes, other than what I've already suffered through by seeing the ludicrous trailer about a billion times.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
I'll start by saying I did not RTFA.
Can someone tell me how a warming can start an ice age. I thought warming melted ice.
Evolution or ID?
I can confirm that the much of the data behind this pentagon report is false and has been provided by a penguin double agent acting for the Pentagon but mainly for a secret penguin organisation, The Brotherhood of Guin. Apprently it is a suble plan to induce the pentagon to eliminate polar bears, arch enemy and a major threat to the Brotherhood of Guin by tricking the pentagon into believing that polar bears were behind global warming.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
The aliens will come and fix all our climate problems. Thier arrival is more plausable than the global storms in this movie.
Mother nature has bossed us around for too long. It is our rihgt, no, it is our destiny as Americans to destory this scourge called Mother Nature and bring peace and stability to the world. Without acting we only invite the onslaught of a new ice age and an armada of penguins with laser guns and jet packs. Strike now before it is too late! Vote for me in 2004 and I will end this threat once and for all.
-Dipster
To quote Isaac Asimov: "It is not so much that I have confidence in scientists being right, but that I have so much in nonscientists being wrong."
I see alot of people bashing the movie soley on this line.....I have the opposite feeling, by stating that up front you know EXACTLY what you are in for, which is a special effects romp with a thinner than air story line. It's like a two hour movie ride. I think everyone needs to see a silly camp movie once in a while and stop being so damn critical...
Ubuntu- Linux for human beings.
As far as a massive global storm, it isn't unrealistic. Just look at Mars. There is a storm going on there that is so big you can see it from earth and it has been going on for years.
Evolution or ID?
it's funny.. laugh!
Hmmm.
In other news, Satan has declared if this global ice-age spills over, into hell, he will sue those responsible for loss of what he calls
"When Hell freezes over bonds".
Hell stocks were down two points on the news.
--
The last digit of pi is four.
I just don't seem to understand why people just can't go watch a movie to watch a movie these days. Why do people have make movies into something that could happen in the real world? I just wish more people could take a movie for face value and leave it at that. Sure... It's about a topic that is obscured in the minds of many people in the World, but just go and enjoy the freeking movie!
Hmmm.
The title of the movie (The Day After Tomorrow) struck me as strangely similar to that of The Day After, a TV movie released in 1983 which highlighted the Doomsday consequences of nuclear war. Both movies appear to be highly politicized, anti-GOP movies timed (more or less) to coincide with the election cycle. Naming the new movie "The Day After Tomorrow" struck me as an obvious play on the original "The Day After". It just seemed too close to it to be an accident.
FWIW, The Day After had a realistic representation of the effects of nuclear war. Too bad the current The Day After Tomorrow seems to be according to many accounts just a modified, updated Poseidon Adventure or Towering Inferno. To some extent that undercuts my theory that there may be political motivation behind this, but the less realistic it is, the less effective it is, and it becomes just a fantasy type movie. Unfortunately, people often take fantasy (i.e. "JFK") and turn it into their reality because they are too intellectually lazy to find out whether something on the big screen has any basis in reality. Too many people just guzzle the shit that the media pumps out to them without questioning any of it. That goes for for left, right, and plain old profit-seeking media alike.
I'm feeling cynical this morning for some reason. Please excuse my negativity and have yourself a really nice day. Maybe it'll offset the negative karma I'm giving off this morning.
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
While there may be disagreement on:
- whether things will get hot or cold
- or whether we are causing the changes
We are very sure that change of some sort is absolutely unequivocal.
Change is generally bad, usually costing money. On that all parties agree.
So it is economically wise to proact rather than react.
When economics begin to look at the whole timescale - 10 years or 100 years things will change. That's the real challange.
A blog I run for the wealth
The enviornment will change anyway. History, Arechology and other sciences have shown us that. Even before mans time of rule here the climate was in constant flux. We've had ice ages, tropical times and the inbetween.
What is there to be concerned with. It will change wether we want it to or not. We have to learn to live with it, try not to kill ourselves off, make sure we don't do too much damage (climate change is not damage. although damage can cause climate change), and enjoy our short time on this earth.
Evolution or ID?
For a great intro to chaos theory try this book by James Gleick.
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
Typical Hollywood drama to scare people. It's a movie, fiction. Coo-Coo!!!!
-------- Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most. --Ozzy
Please insert head in tinfoil hat now.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Having just gotten back from watching this movie, I hope I can explain (at least based on the science used in the movie). Apparently, due to global warming, and melting ice sheets, the delicate balance of the salinity of the north atlantic current-somethingorother is upset, leading it to shut down.
This current is responsible for most of the northern hemisphere's weather systems, and as such results in the catastrophic effects demonstrated in the movie.
One interesting part of the movie is when the Jake Gyllehnadslkal character and his friends are walking through the Natural History Museum, and his friend stops at a wooly mammoth display and reads the description. "This Mammoth was discovered in perfect condition, still with food in its mouth and stomach, and must have been frozen in an instant to have been preserved the way it was" (or something similar).
Not a bad movie in my opinion (was a fan of the Poseidon Adventure as a kid). Leaving the cinema here in Sydney, Australia (and it being very chilly), kind of brings the discussion of global warming and the potential side effects to the front of your thoughts.
Man watching 6 MSCE's around a sun box, looks alot like the opening scene's of 2001:space odyssey...
OK, I'm impressed. I was ready to read another misguided rant filed with half-baked theories and unsubstantiated jumps to conclusions, but the guy is actually displaying the exact right mindset.
He is humble.
In any debate on this subject, many people get into a religious frenzy and froth at the mouth when you present evidence that reality might be more complex than what they believe. It's refreshing to see a guy who actually explains that we mostly don't have enough data to make even educated guesses.
This is very different from the movie, of course, which is about as scientific as your average Star Trek show.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
I was actually surprised about how much the scientific community knows about the history of climate change, and how little it knows about the future of climate change...
sounds like we need a whole bunch of Earth Simulators asap!
Do you need a website upgrade?
Its a movie.Don't take it so seriously.watch it.forget it. ;-)
Not that its Lord of the Rings to take seriously.
Lord of the Binges.
Seems to me that consequences of global warming are not dire enough for the greenies (more rainfall, higher crop yields) so they came up with the idea that warming will somehow lead to catastrophic cooling. Amusing!
an ill wind that blows no good
Oooh, so Mother Nature needs a favor?! Well maybe she should have thought of that when she was besetting us with droughts and floods and poison monkeys! Nature started the fight for survival, and now she wants to quit because she's losing. Well I say, hard cheese
You made my day by not writing, ice hockey. Back to watching the Cup!
can't really do it in a small post, but here's a generic scenario. This is VERY simplistic. Say it's getting warmer. The reasons are a totality, not one or the other. Greenhouse gases accumulating, not allowing heat to escape, etc. That's why they are called greenhouse gasses, they mimic what happens inside a greenhouse. The gasses come from both man made (various civilisation *things* that cause heat) and natural sources, like volcanoes, big forest fires, etc,etc. Part of the gasses are also just water vapor. Partly it also the particulate matter suspeneded in the atmosphere, blocking sunlight/heat, a disruption that effects plants in general, they won't grow as well, and therefore can't help mitigate the climate like they do now.
.... !!??1!!"
As it gets warmer, ice that is non floating, the ice that's on land in the arctic and antaractic melts, dumping huge quantities of cold fresh water into slightly warmer salt water. And the more that melts the faster it melts, because the white ice reflected heat, now it's bare rock and dirt, which is darker and absorbs heat, accelerating the melting. This also adds to the overall depth of the oceans, it rises. Floating ice is neutral, but land locked ice adds to the depth after it melts. OK, this new free flowing water up in the arctic (and off antarctica, but we'll just look at the arctic) sinks, causing changes in the global sea currents. One of the important ones is the gulf stream, which cycles around the atlantic as it gets heated in the tropics, flows north up the east coast of north america, dumps heat across northern europe, etc, then sinks back down, flows back across down to the gulf again. If the newly melting arctic ice is injected into this current from melting, it slows this gulf stream down, tremendously. You can see pics now, BTW, that shows this is happening to a large degree in the arctic. Without that warm gulf stream water constantly hitting the northern latitudes, well, it gets a LOT colder there. And the more the gulf stream slows down, the colder it gets up in the northern latitutdes, until such a time as a near- stasis is re established, where the conflicting events cancel each other, then it just hangs as an "ice age" for quite a long time as the smaller events start to accumulate and it reverses. Back and forth and forth and back it goes.. You get your localised "ice age". Hundreds of millions of people live up there, but it's become a lot more un-liveable,all the way to near-impossible, plus the water has risen to the point that coastal communities become flooded, and coastal communites have a huyge % of the populations, because mankind has accumulated itself to a great degree near oceans, and near where rivers enter oceans.
Basically hilarity and chaos ensue. "social unrest*" and "economic re adjustments**" and so on.
The only real debate is how fast and how much it can happen. That it DOES happen is just historical record. We do have evidence now that it can happen in a time span much less than millenia. Beyond that, "they" are only guessing.
I hope this is close enough, it is the cliff notes version as far as I understand it.
*social unrest = buncha them canuckians all move down here to georgia after they get theyselves all frozen out, where they drink up all the beer and get to eyeballin all our big hair gals-well, we gonna have a faht then, surely
**economic re-adjustments = "whatchoo mean a loaf of bread is now 19.89$, and a gallon 0 gas is 142.999$
and stuff like that there. It would be the sucks.
I'm going to have to look up more of the information about this. Thanks for posting!
-jls
Techno-pagan
On whether the environmentalists should focus on issues in this country, where their funding comes from or the third world and developing countries.
He bravely answered the latter.
Every movie anymore is promoted on my breakfast cereal, fast food, magazine covers... I deal with it because movies have always been pimped this way.
Then the evening news started including gratuitous clips from movies in many of it's stories. But the news has become more tabloid over time, so I guess I'm not shocked.
But now we have political debate as movie promotion. Am I supposed to endure public policy being set to promote a movie? Especially one that has been blasted for being far-fetched as this? George Bush and Dick Cheney are not going to set off the freezing of the Hudson, even if you believe they own frikin' sharks with frikin' lasers on their heads!
It's a movie! It gives good trailer and sucks when you watch the whole thing! It's the guy who made the american Godzilla movie! What more proof do you need?
The Ice Age is not going to start with the flick of a switch, just like Gozilla cannot die from three sidewinder missiles.
just another disaster flick. Same old worn out premis. With bad science included (the atmosphere can turn over, riiight). Almost a political statement.
I won't waste my money. I have to save it to take my daughters to something more meaningful, Harry Potter next week.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
On Wisconsin Public Radio.
He was there to respond to the "day after tomorrow" myths, and spent 20 minutes picking apart this Pentagon report.
He basically said that the one event they base this entire article on, was actually caused by huge freshwater reserves that dumped into the ocean. These reserves came from pools left from the ice age.
I recommend tracking down the audio on wpr.org.
7am - 8am hour this morning.
Let's see you're saying that we don't know if things will get hot or cold and we don't know what is causing these changes...
So what do we do to stop the changes that we don't know are happening or what they're doing?
That's the real debate that's raging right now. What if the sun's overall output has decreased of late and we're actually overdue for an iceage? Wouldn't stopping the creation of green house gases ensure an ice age then?
What if our production of green house gases isn't sufficient to effect the global climate? We could make large-scale expansive changes to the global economy and get no benefit from them.
Action for the sake of action isn't a wise policy.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
We'll run out of oil before global warming freezes us to death. Or so say the Swedes.
Off to shop for my new SUV.
Sounds like a James Bond film. The super villan will dump saline water into the ocean to cause climate change. ..and 007 has to stop him.
While I love Carlin and have read several of his books, he's (probably intentionally) making a subtle error: most people understand that the planet will survive. It's the survival of the human race that is a matter of deep concern for those who care about such survival.
Perhaps, but that is only one of four primary theories on how Luna was formed. An event catastrophic to human civilization need not be catastrophic to Earth and all life on it.
The villain would have to dump *fresh* water, to inhibit polar sinking and bottom water formation.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
> implications might be. We weren't saying this is what will happen, only that it plausibly could happen." >
> Pentagon scenario hmmm?...
No, it makes sense now!
Pentagon think tanks begin to realize the implications of global warming - an ice age. So they begin to look for areas which would be favorable to live in during an Ice Age - and they realize that the area around the Euphrates and the Tigris has been documented as being very fertile before the climate changed. So if the climate changed *back*, that would be the place to go. The area is sparsely populated now, but there is that pesky goverment in place headed by that Saddam guy (who we don't really like anyway) So as a contigency plan in the event of an Ice Age, America takes Saddam out, and then<NO CARRIER>
I'm not a natural-scientist, just a CS/mathematician. One thing that I've never understood about the global warming debate is this:
We know that over the last 100 years that the world-wide temp has gone up by roughly 1 degree. But before that time period, there is no climate data at all. So, how can we conclude that this is unnatural or not?
Or, more importantly, how can we use a ~100 year data set to make forecasts on a planet that is millions of years old. I mean hell, we know that the magnetic field inverts every couple 100,000 years and that we're over due for that... maybe the world gets a little hotter ever couple of 100,000 years too???
Isn't this possible?
This reminds me of when the liberal left crucified Dan Quayle for his views on certain social science issues. IIRC the liberal comeback at the time was It's just a TV show. It's not real Dan.
Funny how fast they are jumping on The Day After Tomorrow to further their agenda. I guess they have forgotten that It's just a movie. It isn't real.
I was dissapointed in Godzilla, because I thought it was too svelt. I like the lovable plush rubber nuke-o-saur with the beer belly of olde.
Eat at Joe's.
actually it can be measured.
several years ago I was watching a documentary on some Antarctic geologists or something and they made a tunnel under the surface to "x" depth so they could look at the layers of ice and what they contained and over how many years the span was. I don't know why they didn't just use core samples, maybe they did the tunnel for the documentary so they could bring the camera in?
I don't know, anyways- The guy with the goggle and frozen beard was explaining what all the various strata meant in the ice wall we were looking at. It was fairly mundane until he pointed out one section that, based on the information he had provided earlier, showed rather obviously that SOMETHING had happened to cause a dramatic climate shift to another "ice age" in a period of JUST 50 years.
He didn't speculate on what caused it, but noted that it was possible as it had happened in the past and we were now staring at the evidence.
That's all I got for my science, some some documentary on the Discovery Channel.
I like microcars
I think a lot of the problems with the environmental wacko crowd is that they've not bothered to factor in the ultimate determining factor of the Earth's climate, namely that thermonuclear fireball about 93,000,000 miles away called the Sun.
Because the radiation from the Sun does directly affect the Earth's atmosphere, when you have periods of strong sunspot activity it tends to heat up the atmosphere, and when you have periods of low sunspot activity the atmosphere stays relatively cool. That's why that period from the middle 17th to the middle 18th Centuries when scientists noted NO sunspot activity corresponded almost perfectly with a period very cool temperatures in Europe, cool enough that the Thames River regularly froze in winter!
As human beings we are short-term creatures and rely on elected government (or unelected-gooberment in the case of the US) to look after the interests of future generations.
However, the US goobers have refused to be any part of the Kyoto Accord to reduce global warming, even though most reasonable people would feel that it is a step in the right direction.
They have also stirred up the hornets' nest in Iraq, the effects of which may last for decades until some kind of stability can be achieved between Christian and Muslim religions.
Against this background, if the climate does change radically over a span of a decade or so, our children are probably stuck relying on the tenacious ability that our species has to survive in the face of almost any adversity.
As mentioned in the article, the poor and weak will more than likely fare worst.
-- "It's not stalking if you're married!" My Wife.
I would like the scientist that predict global warming to do my local weather report. I mean the weather guys can barely get the next 3 days of weather correct but I'm supposed to believe that some scientist can predict the next hundred years...come on...thats funny.
In this movie, millions of worlds poorest and most vulnerable die horribly when the economic systems that keep them alive are disrupted by Ivory tower plans of the world's frivileged elite.
The ironic twist at the end of the movie comes when it is reveled decades latter that massive economic dislocations that killed all those people where made in response to exaggerated dangers based on flimsy scientific evidence. All those people died for nothing.
We could call it "The Energy Crises part II: This time it's personal"
It's like sitting down with an expert on nuclear energy to discuss the latest advances in reactor designs and the movie The Hulk.
Pentagon has contingency plan for every possible scenerio, upto and including alien invasion and divine intervention. It is their job to be ready for everything.
The report generated a storm of controversy a couple of months ago
Can you say... D'OH!
---- scrm
That's what I say.
2) Kyoto was anti-American and we had every right not to bow to the demands of America-haters.
3) The only Muslims that are pissed off are the terrorist extremist Muslims. That's ok, because we'll just kill them if they don't stop killing us.
Way to fail at painting the US as something that only causes adversity.
Worldwatch Institute has a Climate Change Online Feature targeting The Day After Tomorrow, and trying to use this movie as a chance to educate people about more reasonable climate change realities.
In other news . . . Scientists predict hugh THC shortage, millions of puffers depressed.
Yeah, they are different. Weather is much easier to predict than climate. Our atmosphere is a highly chaotic system that we have very little understanding of. We can use computer simulations to make a hypothesis of how climate will change over time, but any claim that scientists can predict climate change is just plain dumb.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
I was referring to the 'futurist' in the article, and his job. Nice write-up though.
Even if you survive the direct effects of a nuclear exchange, you still have to worry about radioactive fallout. The government used to print sample maps showing the radiation levels in different areas of the fallout plume of a single blast. It's hard to predict, being dependent on weather patterns and how the nuclear device is fused. The problem is that a major nuclear war is not going to be limited to a few weapons, it would be thousands of weapons. When you start plotting the fallout plumes of dozens of weapons hitting a single region, the results are scary. Large areas are covered with lethal amounts of radioactive fallout. Radiation levels decay rapidly, but that is academic to anyone who can't find an adequate fallout shelter.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
See also other alternate reality movies, where our laws of space and time simply do not apply.
Yeah, right.
[nt]
Am I the only one who thinks this is a good thing? A reduction in global tempature will lead to a reduction in food supply. Which will lead to a reduction in excess populations in places where it is needed the most. Mainly Africa and lower Asia. The resulting wars in these areas as the remain populations fight for what airable land is left will lead to futher reductions.
With such reductions in population this will also lead to reductions in the needs of fossil fuels to support these upcoming areas. This in turn will reduce the strain on the envronment from polutants that would otherwise be released. This would also server to conserve the remaining supply of fossil fuels for those that need it. Granted, as the tempature drops the remaining population would use more heating oil to keep warm but I feel this would more than be offset by what would otherwise be used by the excess populatioin.
I fail to see a down side to this. I call it a win-win situation.
Now that doesn't mean we should buy gas guzzling SUVs and fill the air will polluting gases, there are many good reasons to keep the air clean (many of which have nothing to do with the global warming hypothesis). But good intentions do not justify disingenuous claims that mislead the public about what science does and does not know.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
at http://herbix.mwatt.com/
Check your mail and mail me back if I've not done it correctly.
Uh-oh! Your sig expired!
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Are you sure Daily is often enough?
wake up and hold your nose
and look at a cost/benefit analysis.
Why do you work hard? So you can enjoy life? Well, you'll be dead if the enviromentalists are right and you ignore them. If they are wrong and you do listen to them, you'll enjoy life less.
So your kids have a good upbringing? Well, they'll be dead if you didn't listen to the environmentalists and they were right. If you do listen ot them and they were wrong, they'll not have a luxurious upbringing as you had hoped.
So you can enjoy the best things in life when you retire? Well, you'll be dead....
See where its going?
Wait until the gulf stream is shut down? Then what? Put people in snorkes where the Gulf stream was and have them paddle a lot?
Y'know, not *everyone* dies from AIDS, cancer or even fallin 2 miles onto the ground. So, if you get AIDS/cancer/severe-falling-down, don't panic. You COULD be OK.
Try "Inuk" (EE-nook) for singular, "Inuit" (INN-you-it with the Is elongated almost into Es) for plural. The language (not that anyone here besides me likely cares) is Inuktitut (ee-NOOK-tee-toot).
"Eskimo" is a derogatory term originally applied by Francophones ("Esquimaux") and meaning "eaters of raw meat".
Cheers!
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
I don't know how much energy it would take to crack the Earth in half. But it's interesting to calculate how much it would take to "blow it out of existence", which could be loosely defined as a big enough explosion that all the bits can acquire escape velocity, and so can never recoalesce back into a planet.
The gravitational binding energy of the Earth is U = GM^2/R, where G is Newton's gravitational constant, M is the mass of the Earth, and R is its radius. Plugging in the appropriate numbers (see Wikipedia), you get 2.24x10^32 joules. For reference, if a ton of TNT is 1 billion calories (4.184 billion joules), then that works out to be 5.35x10^22 tons of TNT, or about 50 trillion gigatons. By way of comparison, I think I read that the world's nuclear arsenal at the height of the Cold War was somewhere between 20 and 50 gigatons.
Why is this modded flamebait?
You can't seriously like you current president.
Or maybe you people are more sick than I thought?
There has to be some limit..
I mean, would I be modded flamebait if I started flaming paedophiles?
So no, most reasonable people would not feel that it is a step in the right direction.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
"ostensibly a group of relatively intelligent people"
where the hell did you get THAT idea??
[Insert Standard Disclaimers]
Dendroecology:
Bore holes in trees.
Put together sample datasets for analyis.
Compare growth rings in and out-of region.
Gets you back a few thousand years (or more in certain cases).
Ice Bore Analysis:
Collect thick ice core samples - deeper = older.
Analyze the suspended particulates and gases.
Geology:
Mostly stratigraphy and process extrapolation oriented. Processes occur under 'typical' conditions, stratigraphy places those conditions in a relative timeline.
You can get great material out of geologic lake sediments as well.
There are many other methods to put together a general picture. It's not that climate data doesn't exist from before we had TWC: It's that it becomes harder to tease out the farther back in time we look.
peace
Oh, and for all of you out there complaining about Jeff Goldbloom hacking the alien computer net with his trust Apply Powerbook, the "scientists" in the movie had been hacking the alien systems since the "late 1940's", so do you suppose it is semi-plausible that they could come up with the computer virus? The Brent Spiner character says that they know an awful lot about the alien systems, it is just that they never had a power source until the Mother Ship showed up.
This presupposes that "reasonable people" can't ever be wrong and are idiot proof!
Not so tough. According to Dave Barry, the aliens were using Windows. That's why they invaded us.
The movie is a perfect vehicle for the usual crowd of hysterics prone hand-wringers since it's nothing more than a special effects showcase propped up by weak and uninmaginative dialogue, delivered by overpaid actors who, more often than not, think their stage grants them a license to preach to the rest of us.
This movie _is_ Hollywood's attempt at selling the Kyoto treaty to the public.
At least Al Gore seems to think so...
check out the vostok ice core data.
That's what they claim, but the story and plot seems to be a direct rip-off of "ICE!" by Arnold Federbush, written in 1978. Even the book cover (painted by Lou Feck) is nearly identical with the movie trailer scene of a bird's-eye view of New York buried in snow, and tiny people tracking through the dunes (the book's cover still has the twin towers).
= 9J =
That's what they claim, but the story and plot seems to be a direct rip-off of "ICE!" by Arnold Federbush, written in 1978. Even the book cover (painted by Lou Feck) is nearly identical with the movie trailer scene of a bird's-eye view of New York buried in snow, and tiny people tracking through the dunes (the book's cover still has the twin towers).
= 9J =
Newsday reports on "Global Brightening". Doesn't this represent a negative feedback process that counteracts so called "Global Warming" in that the increased cloud cover reflects more solar energy back into space?
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Also not to pick nits, but the big industrial powers of the EU who have signed said treaty, haven't been able to come close to meeting their obligations. Also, the 9/11 attacks and their repercussions through the U.S. economy, the Dot Bomb, and the fall of the dollar because of historic low interest rates have more to do with economic growth parity.
As of now, the U.S. economy is second in growth to China, and first in overall size. The EU admission of ten new states and enacting of the Kyoto treaty would most certainly change this as China as a signatory is exempt because of it's "third world" status. No, the Kyoto protocol was squarely designed to be a kick in the groin to the U.S. by many smaller states that wish they were the U.S.
-- Len
RTFA damnit!
Chris
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
Where is the Earth shattering Ka Boom?
There was supposed to be an Earth shattering Kaboom!
We have good records of past CO2 levels only for the past 420,000 years. Over this time CO2 changed cyclically until about 200 years ago. Starting then, it began to grow exponentially at a rate never seen before (about a thousand times faster than the cycles seen in the previous half-million years). CO2 levels, which had never gone above about 300 parts per million during any past cycles suddenly rose from about 290 parts per million in 1900 to over 370 parts per million today at almost exactly the rate you would expect if human deforestation (19th century) and use of fossil fuels (20th century) had been responsible for all the growth. Isotopic analysis of atmospheric carbon is also consistent with the hypothesis that the additional carbon dioxide came from fossil sources.
heat flows to cold, why would the currents stop just because its slightly less salty? and given the surface area of earth versus how much is already salt water right now... I thinks its all nonsense, im sorry.
IIRC, the spelling "Esquimaux" was the original European transliteration of a term used by non-Inuit aboriginal people in contact with French fur traders. The term itself doesn't originate with the French language, but with one of the original language groups from the boreal forest (my guess would be Ojibwa/Cree).
;-)
No slur upon our Francophone neighbours and compatriots intended.
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
Oh yeah, forgot to add: I don't have a link on this. I'm old-school - I read it somewhere in a book. Kind of common knowledge among my family, though; we lived among the Inuit for many years when I was younger. Cheers!
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
How can anyone find a flaw with a movie where Los Angeles is wiped out by a tornado? The ONLY entertainment that could top that is to see the same thing on CNN weather.
People are wierd.
There was an article about exactly this subject in Discover magazine about a year ago with Woods Hole oceanographers determining an ice age could be produced by global warming. It's really not a joke.
TFA oesn't say anything about how NA is heating up, just postulates what would happen if it suddenly cooled down.
TFADAMFQ
Amen to that. I got it out on video years ago and it still haunts me, whereas Day After was just entertaining, in a twisted way. Coincidentally, I was digging through some books last night and came across a copy of "The Fate of the Earth", so I sat down and read my favourite part which is from about page 50 to 90. To summarise, in even a limited nuclear war 80% of the American population would die in the first few hours. If a full 10,000 megaton war was conducted (leaving 1,000 megatons for the USSR in reserve) then almost no-one in the US would survive, especially if there were some ground bursts on nuclear reactors. The only things to survive after the event would be grass and insects.
Cheery reading. Pick it up some day. Just reading the effects of a 1 megaton air burst is bad then realise that for a city like New York maybe a dozen or so weapons would be used to carpet nuke the city.
Enough to give you the willies.
Bitter and proud of it.
Penguins @ Antarctica
vs
Polar Bears @ Arctic
Man, they bear grudges over looooong distances!!
Important info:
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net
http://dieoff.org/synopsis.htm
http://www.peakoil.net
Ice takes up more space than water. So, if the polar ice caps melted, the ocean levels would go down, not up. Geniuses, these "save the earth" people are. *rolls eyes*
-cp-
The planet is a complex inter-dependent set of systems. There are always checks and balances naturally in place. Global warming is not a problem to any thing but human society. Global warming is not a planet wide phenomenon, it only changes the current climate map. Global Warming/Cooling are just buzzwords that the media use to hype the actions of natural processes and to scare the public.
,yet we allow the Amazon rainforest to be burned down, which both reduces natural CO2 uptake and creates more CO2, while reducing the output of oxygen !
Sure there will be another ice age, but the last ice age hasn't finished yet, so that's no surprise.
It is extremely arrogant of us to expect that we can somehow influence the climate of something as massive and well established as a planet, in a little over 200 years.
As mentioned in other posts, the area around the Tigris / Euphrates used to be very fertile, in fact it was the birthplace of civilisation.
I see no problem with trying to understand the processes going on with climate change, but take issue with the disaster scenario being promulgated. We are not radically changing the climate and we can not stop climate change.
As an aside, which method of energy production is more environmentally sound ?
a)Burning natural remains that were formed from natural processes, or
b)Creating energy from atoms using a process that is not even found naturally in stars ?
If nuclear fission was the natural way of energy production, then why aren't there natural processes using it. Fire is used in nature in lots of ways. Something the Australians have learned over the years, and now they understand that to prevent a natural process from occurring, only leads to problems when there is a huge shift back towards the norm later. (natural outback fires clear undergrowth on a regular basis, meaning there are regular small fires. Preventing those fires from happening leads to a build up of undergrowth then huge fires later to restore the balance)
Its about time we started researching in terms of how nature intends to do things instead of how we expect nature to do things our way, then call it a disaster when we realise its not playing to our gameplan.
I am constantly amazed that we are more concerned with reducing CO2 emmisions from cars / industry
The governments are making stupid decisions everywhere you look. I had first hand experience of the British environment agency, while involved in the "capping" of a full rubbish tip. Great amounts of time and expense were involved in covering the thing over with plastic sheeting and clay liners in order to ensure that nothing could escape to the surface. Err, excuse me, what about the stuff going through the subsoil and into water supplies. The site concerned was an old quarry, that was filled with rubbish in approx 20 years. There are far older rubbish disposal sites that burn the trash and are only a few inches deep in ash. I realise that we can't go burning all refuse, like plastics etc, but that is mainly due to the effect on the breathable atmosphere. The burning in and of itself is not the problem.
I could go on but IANAC.
Oops, the fraction didn't come through. It should be U = 3/5 GM^2/R.