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Pentagon Climate Change Author Interviewed

Posted by simoniker on from the it's-getting-cold-in-here dept.

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."

40 of 385 comments (clear)

  1. And cue... by gowen · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:And cue... by henrygb · · Score: 4, Insightful
      How about a quote from the interview: "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, and how hard it is to make these links with with anything close to the level of certainty policy makers and funders would like. The planet is so complex, and so fragile in many ways, that it becomes very hard to understand how everything will interact as the weather changes. More to the point, we don't really know how climate change will play out in specific regions, and that's actually the data we most need to make decisions about what to do."

      So at least he is realistic about the quality of the science.

    2. Re:And cue... by gowen · · Score: 3, Insightful
      how little it knows about the future of climate change, and how hard it is to make these links with with anything close to the level of certainty policy makers and funders would like.
      Thats a nice point. Sadly, the present policy makers' response to this is "Lets do nothing."
      --
      Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
    3. Re:And cue... by gowen · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Well, we know that whichever of those is likely, the initial trigger will be greater atmospheric temperatures due to the greenhouse effect. So, how about a ratifying the global environmental protocol concerned with the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions?

      For a start...

      --
      Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
    4. Re:And cue... by toupsie · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I will accept the word of any climatic scientist that predict the weather two weeks from today with as much as confidence as they appear to be able to predict the state of weather a couple of years from now. If my local AMS certified local weatherman with Doppler 5000 radar and every other weather doohikie can't predict the weather accurately in their 5 day forecast, what confidence should I have in a scientist telling me that the Statue of Liberty will have snow up to her armpits if I drive a SUV? I have been hearing for decades that we would have mass famine, mass droughts, dead oceans, etc. but they never come about in the apocalyptic scale promoted by environmentalists. After a while, we are going to stop listening to Chicken Little.

      --
      Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
    5. Re:And cue... by sql*kitten · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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

      A statistician with no training in numerical modelling, eh?

      Seriously, tho', Lomborg's background is an advantage. If you want to be a serious academic, you need tenure. Who grants tenure? People who already have it. So, it's pretty much impossible to become an academic without adhering to the orthodoxy of the established academics.

      Throughout history, science is never done by consensus. Someone comes along with an idea, the bulk of the scientific community laughs in derision, 50 years later all those tenured professors are forgotten and that lone voice is elevated to the status of Einstein.

      We don't know for sure yet whether Lomborg is such a person, but I'd be willing to place money on it.

    6. Re:And cue... by provolt · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well, we know that whichever of those is likely, the initial trigger will be greater atmospheric temperatures due to the greenhouse effect. So, how about a ratifying the global environmental protocol concerned with the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions?

      I don't think you understand. Our knowledge isn't good enough to understand what triggers what. It's plausible (but not proven) that increased carbon dioxide emissions could be the the "trigger" for huge changes in the climate. However, out knowledge of prediction is so poor that we cannot be sure that reducing emission will not be a "trigger".

      The correct course of action is to do nothing. Action or in-action could cause the same effects. We don't have enough knowledge to say for certain. However, we can say for certain that adopting treaties like Kyoto would seriously happer our economy. (Which was the true intention of the treaty and why the the US senate unanimously passed a resolution against it.)

      So we can choose from the following
      1) Unknown chances of global climate change
      2) Uknownn chances of global climate change and large, negative impacts on the economy.

      It's not a hard choice.
    7. Re:And cue... by gowen · · Score: 5, Insightful
      I don't think you understand.
      I rather think I do. I attend 6-8 environmental conferences a year, and speak, in my own small capacity, at most of them.
      Our knowledge isn't good enough to understand what triggers what.
      Only if you close your eyes and ears to years of research, and an overwhelming scientific consensus. Go read the Kyoto report, or the opinion of the US Academy of Science, or the Royal Society of London. (I could go on). In fact, its very hard to find a contrary view from a source unfunded by vested interest.
      adopting treaties like Kyoto would seriously hamper our economy.
      And yet, almost every other country in the world has ratified it, and yet the recent performance of the US economy is no better than that of Australia, or the EU.

      Do you often state opinions that are wholly contrary to the facts?
      --
      Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
    8. Re:And cue... by gowen · · Score: 2, Insightful
      50 years later all those tenured professors are forgotten and that lone voice is elevated to the status of Einstein.
      Errant nonsense. Nearly all the breakthrough ideas of modern science have been made by scientists working within the fields. Sure, Einstein was a patent clerk.

      But how about Dirac (University of Copenhagen)? Or Planck (University of Kiel). Schrodinger -- University of Stuttgart. Gell-Mann? Fermi? Feynmann? All career academics, and all their revolutionary breakthroughs accepted rapidly in the community, because they knew what they were talking about. Maybe we need someone with no knowledge of particle physics to tell them where they're going wrong.

      Hell, can you name 5 Nobel Laureates in physics who weren't career academics?

      What you attempt to paint as how things are done, is very much the exception. Lomborg is a kook.
      --
      Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
    9. Re:And cue... by KanSer · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It is as Dennis Miller said. To be a true Patriotic American you MUST drive as inefficient a car as you can afford. The market, and innovation, is fueled by demand. As long as there is oil there will be no Hydrogen fuel cells. Too much invested in the infrastructure.

      Now, if we all drive big honkin fuckin cars and burn off all the oil that's out there, we will no longer be dependent on foreign oil. Had we hurried up and burnt the oil 5 years ago, we wouldn't be in Iraq, instead Bush would be harassing Ballard Power to get their fuel cells going.

      It's these Europeans with their hate for anything American, a hate spawned entirely by what they see in the media. Do not tell me that individual Americans have influenced your opinion of us, because that would be making an ignorant person's mistake. Our mistake. I don't speak for American's, but I am one.

      Your stupid efficient cars are killling Iraqis! Get rid of the oil POST HASTE.

      The sooner everyone smart realizes that 98% of the world is RETARDED, the sooner the 2% will be happy.(This includes America. Britain. Germany. Holland. Whatever. 98% of your population is too stupid for me to befriend.) I would assume most of SlashDot agrees(because you're intelligent), so here's my proposal. Let's take the world from these nincompoops. Let the smart and rich rule the world, not an idiot who couldn't do his own taxes if he tried.

      (Half of America hates Bush too, I'm one of them.)

      --
      • MOD PARENT UP by Anonymous Coward Wednesday April 20, @4:20
    10. Re:And cue... by Daniel+Dvorkin · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Throughout history, science is never done by consensus. Someone comes along with an idea, the bulk of the scientific community laughs in derision, 50 years later all those tenured professors are forgotten and that lone voice is elevated to the status of Einstein.

      God, I hate this myth, especially the "laughs in derision" part. Einstein's work was immediately recognized by "all those tenured professors" as having immense value, being a unified explanation of some serious problems with classical physics that had been bothering physicists since the mid-19th c.; there may have been those who disagreed with some aspects of his work (as, indeed, they were right to do; note that we still haven't unified relativity with quantum theory) but controversy is not the same as derision. Einstein's major papers were published in respected, established journals managed by those old fuddy-duddy academics you decry.

      Newton, Darwin, Watson and Crick -- pretty much all of them worked their way through the scientific establishments of their day. Every once in a great while a major breakthrough is greeted with open derision (e.g., Mendeleev's periodic table) but the vast majority of those dismissed as crackpots are, in fact, crackpots; and the vast majority of scientific advances come from scientists working within the established system.

      --
      The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
    11. Re:And cue... by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 4, Insightful
      However, we can say for certain that adopting treaties like Kyoto would seriously happer our economy.

      We can't say that for certian. The "science" of economics involves an order of magnitude more BS than even climatology. For all we know, it might be good for the economy, just like the counterintuitive notion of nationalizing most industrial production and then blowing up most of the output was excellent for the economy during WWII.

      People who practice hand wringing over how every human action could destroy the economy are just as stupid as the worst tree huggers. Maybe they should be called economentalist whackos.

    12. Re:And cue... by JWW · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The only problem is that countries like France and Japan can abide by Kyoto with their power plants because they actually build and use nuclear power plants there.

      In the US we don't have any new nuclear plants and they never can build any because the environmentalists block new nuclear power plants at every turn.

      So the economic impacts of Kyoto in the US would be quite large. We would have coal and gas power plants that would have to be shut down because they would never meet emmissions standards, but we would be unable to build nuclear (no emmisions) plants to replace them.

      I do not like the environmentalists claiming that the US should do something about carbon dioxide emmissions and then saying that one of the best solutions to no emmissions power generation can't be used.

    13. Re:And cue... by gowen · · Score: 2, Insightful
      The statements made in the Summary for Policymakers (which is as far as you've read) are not supported by the science provided in the papers by the Working Groups.
      Thats an absolute fabrication. Consider there you go. Find me where the policy maker summary diverges from science in WG1's report. Show me where there WG's members are up in arms about the difference.
      when more than $4 billion was poured into the laps of climate scientists to keep this particular gravy train going.
      By whom? Who is so interested in perpetuating this that they'll throw billions of dollars into junk science? Why would they do that? Are you suggesting people are writing deliberately erroneous models to keep their funding? That respected journals, with a lengthy and honorable past, knowingly print rubbish because it pays the bills? Wheres your evidence for this idiotic slander?

      Remember, the only guys with deep pockets and a need for PR are the energy multinationals. If a climate researcher was really after a fast buck, they'd be the people to suck up to.
      --
      Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
    14. Re:And cue... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Thats an absolute fabrication. Consider there you go. Find me where the policy maker summary diverges from science in WG1's report. Show me where there WG's members are up in arms about the difference.

      Certainly. Try this:

      "There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities."
      Summary for Policy Makers 2001.

      Compared with this

      "The fact that the global mean temperature has increased since the late 19th century and that other trends have been observed does not necessarily mean that an anthropogenic effect on the climate has been identified. Climate has always varied on all time-scales, so the observed change may be natural."
      - Chapter 1 of Climate Change 2001, page 97

      Oh crap! Can the observed fluctuation be entirely natural? "Yes it can" says the scientists. "No it can't" says the highly politicized summary (the bit you read)

      There are lots of fun things like that, but unfortunately you're on the fossil fueled plane to the next environmental conference and don't have time to read them

      By whom? Who is so interested in perpetuating this that they'll throw billions of dollars into junk science?

      Yeppers. The climate science gravy train is fully loaded with billions of dollars of taxpayers money and already leaving for a station near you. That they do throw money at junk science is beyond doubt, since the Mann Hockey Stick showed the way to go: Produce a big enough lie and a false consensus and spread propaganda that whoever criticizes it must be secretly paid by evil fossil fuel corporations.

      Why would they do that? Are you suggesting people are writing deliberately erroneous models to keep their funding?

      Whether they are deliberately writing them knowing them to be erroneous is debateable, but swallowing their doubts and going for the funding? You bet.

      Stephen Schneider let the cat out of the bag years ago on how this is done:

      "To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have. Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective, and being honest."
      Stephen Schneider, Discovery Magazine, 1989

      That respected journals, with a lengthy and honorable past, knowingly print rubbish because it pays the bills? Wheres your evidence for this idiotic slander?

      They have and they do. A recent example is Fu, Q., C.M. Johanson, S.G. Warren, and D.J. Seidel, 2004: Contribution of stratospheric cooling to satellite-inferred tropospheric temperature trends. Nature, 429, 55-58. ....which was peer-reviewed, blah blah blah and purported to show that the satellite record really showed that the troposphere was warming as the climate models consistently predicted, but that real measurements failed to show. Trouble is that Roy Spencer, Principal Research Scientist, University of Alabama, and the person most familiar with the satellite record, demolished the entire paper as fatally flawed.

      See http://www.techcentralstation.com/050504H.html

      Do "respected journals" print junk science? Yep. All the time.

      Remember, the only guys with deep pockets and a need for PR are the energy multinationals. If a climate researcher was really after a fast buck, they'd be the people to suck up to.

      Funnily the energy multinationals are not funding such PR. Perhaps they're just content to make large amounts of money from hypocrites to climb on planes and travel the globe to support a climate treaty to crash the world economy based on junk science and appalling economics to treat a problem which even the IPCC's scientists may not even exist.

      But then I'd just be a fossil fool, wouldn't I?

  2. That movie looks so awful by The+I+Shing · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:That movie looks so awful by qwerty75 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Hit the nail on the head. Anytime anybody makes reference to Independance Day or ID4 I have the immediate response "Worst Movie Ever" Amazing that Will Smith's carrer survived that movie. However, alot of people seemed to like it. To me the first rule of Sci Fi movie making is: If you include anything in your movie that currently exits today (Caugh F/A-18) only show it doing things that it is actually capeable of doing!

  3. Re:Total Bunkum by Space+cowboy · · Score: 3, Insightful
    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.

    Whereas I share your view (to an extent, it wasn't billions!) on the knee-jerk reactions to disaster films, it's not the planet that really has anything to care about - the moon was formed when the planet was hit by a rock, and the planet is still here. It could happen again. Anything living would be from a time after that event, of course. Anything. The planet itself is fairly resilient, even when it came close to being completely destroyed.

    Simon
    --
    Physicists get Hadrons!
  4. Science vs. Slashdot by dachshund · · Score: 5, Insightful
    These days I only tune into these arguments to see how stridently unconcerned Slashdotters are with the possibility of environmental change. I am, of course, open to arguments about the validity of the threat. What never fails to amaze me is how many Slashdotters-- ostensibly a group of relatively intelligent people-- are moved to approach this issue from emotional, rather than scientific point of view.

    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."

  5. Re:Total Bunkum by fenix+down · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The planets lasted this long already...

    Yeah, and guess how much of that time was comfortable for current homo sapiens.

  6. Why can't people just watch a movie? by Mz6 · · Score: 1, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Why can't people just watch a movie? by The+Only+Druid · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The reason is simple, and its the very same reason people dont watch movies in foreign languages without subtitles:

      We want to connect to the storyline, and through it the characters.

      If a movie has too much of a break with reality - either because of it being too 'fantasy' for a person (i.e. how some people reacted to LotR, though not too many of course) or because it asks for too intense a suspension of disbelief (i.e. how many of us react to The Day After Tomorrow) - then people cant relate to it. Sure, its touching that Quaid's character wants to reach his son, but the setup is simply too absurd.

      Another post aluded to aliens visiting; given the absurdity of the environmental effects visible in the movie, it actually is no less absurd to show an alien ship arriving, causing this damage and then leaving, than to have these environmental effects.

      Think of it this way: suppose you were watching a sci-fi movie, and in the middle of it the writers changed the internal rules (i.e. a given cause had a new and different effect, unpredictably so). You'd be angry, because you can no longer connect to the story, because you cant predict results. Its the same thing: we're angry because this significant a suspension of disbelief calls for an absurd break from reality (think those crazy maneuvers they depicted in ID4 for existing aircraft).

      --
      "Stumble before you crawl"
  7. The Day After....Tomorrow by guacamolefoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
  8. Long scale economics by jago25_98 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:Long scale economics by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No. The thing to do is adapt.

      Climate change will come with humans, or without. It's been going on since long before humans arrived on the scene, and there is no reason to believe it'll stop just because we ask it nicely.

      There is also no reason to believe we know enough, or have power enough, to hold the planet's climate in long-term stasis. So let's forget that option.

      Concentrate on what we CAN do.

      If we are shifting the CO2 balance in the atmosphere, then work on fixing our contributions. But don't expect that because we stop adding CO2 to the atmosphere, that the CO2 balance will stabilize. There's no reason to believe it will, and even less reason to believe that the "historical" level is some magical stable point.

      Another thing we can work on is becoming less dependent on environmental fresh water. Rain is all well and good, but if we don't start making our own fresh water soon, we'll be in deep before too much longer.

      Same with food supplies - too dependent on weather. We've been able to grow things hydroponically and aeroponically for a long time, so it's time to start looking at them in the large scale. It'll help in all sorts of interesting ways, not least will be reduction of our (current) need to dump fertilizer into the Gulf of Mexico.

      --

      "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
  9. It'll happen anyway by millahtime · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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?
    1. Re:It'll happen anyway by Pxtl · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Umm, yeah, by that logic I can kill you now. Oh, wait, you don't want to die today? When would you rather die? When it occurs naturally? Ohhh.

      Its the same with climactic shift. Yes, all we're really doing is accelerating the process. Of course, the faster shift happens, the less time we, and natural systems, have available to adjust. What do you want to tell all the farmers who suddenly have had the rain patterns shift so badly that most of the North American rain ends up in the Arizona desert overnight? Sure, its still there, but fat lot of good it will do in Arizona. What I'm describing isn't a literally plausible scenario, but is the basic concept of the worry people have. Yes, its just shift, its just things readjusting and moving around - but a lot of peoples lives are depending on things staying the same, or changing slowly enough that they can adjust (like telling your kids to go into computers instead of farming, rather then having to give up farming yourself because your region is now too dry for it).

  10. Re:Day After Tomorrow said to be terrible by fenix+down · · Score: 1, Insightful

    It's only as bad as Godzilla and Independence Day, and I really doubt it's not a comedy, considering those two. You're like one of those people who goes on about how the Matix was too pretentious. Who the fuck cares? This ain't fucking art, people, if you had fun, it's good, and if you didn't have fun at Godzilla, then you're one humorless fucker.

  11. its a movie!! by xot · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.
  12. Warming or cooling, which is it? by amightywind · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:Warming or cooling, which is it? by praedor · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Sorry non-scientist, it wasn't the "greenies" that came up with ANY of this. SCIENTISTS doing SCIENCE are the ones who started the global warming debate and, there is no disjoint, by the way, the discussion on how warming could actually start an ice age.


      I suggest you put your money politics aside and actually look into the SCIENTIFIC literature on this. Global warming increases the average global temperature. This does NOT mean that every place on earth experiences a climb in temp, and certainly not of the same magnitude. This increased average temp leads to rapid melt of glaciers (and large percentages of polar ice). This causes an increasing flood of fresh water into the oceans. A flood of fresh water into the North Atlantic screws up the Gulf Stream conveyor belt, which is responsible for moderating the temperature and weather of New England and, indeed, the entire East Coast. It also has a major impact on the weather of Europe. The flood of fresh water can shut down the Gulf Stream, which leads to the loss of the moderating influence. The Northeast US and Canada becomes rapidly MUCH cooler. Europe becomes MUCH cooler. Weather patterns are screwed (the Gulf Stream plays a major role in Atlantic weather patterns).


      No "greenie" made this stuff up, SCIENTISTS came up with these scenarios based on physics and climate research. It is inarguable that a flood of fresh water would screw up the Gulf Stream and it is inarguable that a shut-down Gulf Stream would have a catastrophic effect on the Northeast US/Canada and Western Europe.


      Drop the Party Line and actually do something that Bush NEVER does...READ. Read the primary sources.

      --
      In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
  13. Re:Can someone calrify by Phreakiture · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yes.

    First off, the cooling is regional, not global. Average tempurature globally will rise, with equatorial climates rising more than average while temperate climates drop.

    That said, the effect is caused by the melting of ice. As the ice melts, the salinity of the ocean drops. This has an adverse effect on the thermohalide conveyor, which is a north-south water current. This current rises at the equator, cycles both north and south from there at the surface of the ocean, cools (warming the regions it passes through), sinks to the ocean floor, and returns to the equator.

    This conveyor requires that the water be of a certain density or higher. As the ice melts and dilutes the water to lower salt concentrations, the density drops. Theoretically, if this drops below a certain level, the conveyor will stop, and this will cause cooling of the temperate zones and warming of the equatorial zones above and beyond the average warming.

    That's the theory, anyway, as I understand it. I reserve the right to be wrong.

    --
    www.wavefront-av.com
  14. Interview with Patrick Michaels this morning. by mobiux · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  15. Re:Total Bunkum by Megane · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think Letterman summed it all up last night when he asked a "scientist" what he thought of that movie. The answer? "It's hor*****t." (that includes the broadcast bleep)

    --
    #naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
  16. Re:Weather by wes33 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Your analogy is not cogent ... I can predict with fair certainty that people will lose money on average at Las Vegas. But I have to admit I am weak on predicting the next 6 numbers to come up on the roulette wheel. Climate is like the odds; weather is like the particular results.

  17. Re:The Real Disaster Movie by sql*kitten · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    That's pretty much what happened in China. The Communist government of Mao needed to increase crop yields, so it ordered every farmer to plant seeds only a third of the distance apart that they normally did. What happened of course is that none of the plants could get enough nutrients from the soil to mature, and tens of millions starved. However, no Communist party officials starved, and were free to try a new plan the following season.

  18. Re:The Real Disaster Movie by gclef · · Score: 3, Insightful

    or you could replace the hysteria over weather with hysteria about war, call it "1984", and buy it at your local bookstore/rent it at your local BlockBuster.

  19. Re:The Real Disaster Movie by Qrlx · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I think the movie you're describing is called "the twentieth century."

    Exaggerated danger of Communism (aka Domino Theory) -- See Southeast Asia. Millions dead. For nothing.

    The sequel, starring George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden, isn't looking much better.

  20. Re:The Real Disaster Movie by Shannon+Love · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I am not sure how "exaggerated" the danger of communism was. Communist murder more people than all other political movements combined, including the Fascist. In the case of Southeast Asia, more people died in the two years following the fall of Saigon and the triumph of Communism than died in the previous 15 years of anti-communist warfare.

  21. Re:Total Bunkum by wcrowe · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I like what P.J. O'Rourke said along the same lines: "Everyone wants to save the Earth; nobody wants to help Mom clean up the kitchen."

    --
    Proverbs 21:19