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Big Arctic Perils Seen in Warming
gollum123 wrote in with news of a new study of warming in the Arctic, showing that warming from greenhouse gases is causing vast changes in the region. If your lifestyle depends on cold and frozen rather than mild and damp, you're in deep trouble.
You're confusing scientists with political officials...
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
I'm not trolling I just have an honest question...
When that big lump of ice out there in the North Pole melts, will we *notice* it at all?
My reasoning is that most of the ice is underwater, and ice takes up more cm than water, so there would be a smaller volume of water than there is ice. Sure some of the ice is above sealevel but surely the difference in volume compensates for this?
Where am I wrong?
I am a viral sig. Please help me spread.
If you read the article, rather than the blurb on Slashdot, it doesn't unequivocally state that greenhouse gases are responsible
Hasn't the artic been warming for the last 10,000 years since the last Ice Age? I'm sure mankind is contributing somehow to this process but why is what seems to be a natural cycle of the earth an inherrently bad thing? Its just another natural phenomenon we must learn to deal with with like earthquakes, volcanoes, storms etc.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
...and we should accept it. Is it fault of humans? Maybe, maybe not. But remember there were times where glacier covered half the Europe, there were times when Sahara was a green country, when what today is mediterran sea was a valley of a huge river... It just happens. Now just be wise and prepare to face it instead of looking who is to blame.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Let me guess: you are an American. Let me answer at least a couple of the questions you just brought up: 3) Scientists are scientists (unless owned by a politician like the ones working for Bush that say global warming is OK..) and they are people who stay true to facts. If scientists are continuously telling you something bad's coming, it means they reviewed quite a few facts before reaching this conclusion. And finally, the above being said, I'd listen to what they have to say. On a side note, you may want to look up the IPCC (www.ipcc.ch). Those guys are from all over the place and they have been working on global warming for a while now. They are saying the same thing. 4) I'm sorry, this is just a stupid question. Global warming (or massive amounts of ice melting) doesn't just make the climate a bit warmer. It actually starts a chain reaction of events which take place in a land slide and end with a signifant portion of the earth's biosphere dead or extinct. Yes, this coming from the same guys that can tell you what your weather will be like tomorrow correctly 90% of the time.
...people will soon start to realize the potential harm these issues can do to our society as a whole. I cannot understand how any sane person is able to ignore the simple fact of environmental problems getting worse over time.
The US government still manages to deny cooperation on the Kyoto Protocol with most stupid arguments, a treaty already ratified by 125 countries all over the world.
"The world's second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases is China. Yet, China was entirely exempted from the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol. This is a challenge that requires a 100 percent effort; ours, and the rest of the world's. America's unwillingness to embrace a flawed treaty should not be read by our friends and allies as any abdication of responsibility. To the contrary, my administration is committed to a leadership role on the issue of climate change. Our approach must be consistent with the long-term goal of stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere." -- George W. Bush
???
The greenhouse gas problem will grow at a steady level for decades after we have started countermeasures, I hope then there's enough time left afterwards.
Hint: If you take 1 cubic centemeter of water, and freeze it, you get *gasp* more than one cubic centemeter of ice!!!
This means that if the ice melted, we'd have more water, but since the ice that was floating in the water was displacing a lot more water than it actually contained, the sea level would probably drop.
Nice troll, btw.
---I'll start with the last comment first:
---Do you assume that global warming means that temperatures will rise uniformly across the globe?
Course not. Look at the midwest here during 1850's. MUCH more desertlike and much less water. And the earth took that area FROM less livable to more livable.
---Do you assume that global warming would cause no shift in weather patterns?
The natural forces are more destructive than most things we can make. Tornadoes, earthquakes, VOLCANOES (1 spew=100 years of 'pollutants), hurricanes/tsunamis..
The only thing more destructive than most of those are nuclear warheads.. And even 50 years cures most of those problems. Look at Bikini atoll.
---Do you assume that any shifts in weather patterns would not be disruptive to agriculture?
The sahara was a wonderful wilderness. Now its sand. And LOTS of it. The "americans" sure as hell didnt do it. Nature CHANGES weather patters naturally. Whether it be good or bad for us, I dont know.
---Do you assume that disruptions in agriculture can be easily accomodated, say by rapidly shifting agricultural production to different parts of the globe (assuming, of course, that there would be vast new tracks of arable farmland as a result of changed weather patterns)?
Easy as in 1 year, or 100 years? The human race wont die out, but most will. Darn.
---If the answer to any of these questions is "no", then global warming should make you nervous.
---If your answer to any of these is "yes", then it's you, not the environmental scientists, who have some explaining to do. They seem like pretty shaky assumptions.
Im just looking at previous happenings in general. Though, you gotta love that false dichotomy at the end.
Humans are adaptable, yes-within a particular set or limitations. It is our duty as a species to modify whatever is necessary to perpetuate our survival, whether it is artificially regulating the climate by any means necessary or limiting particular actions that contribute to health problems or in a minor way to the trends that we must abate for survival. Environmentalism has nothing to do with this apart from the aspects it derives from scientific study on trends that are common with the prompts for necessary actions for our species survival on the extended scale. Whether this is a "natural" trend or not does not matter, that it will produce inconvenient situations for humans does matter though and makes it a thing to seek control over.
Humans don't have to be solely responsible for us to do something. That there are other factors in climate change does not mean we should not change those which we have control over.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
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Actually, that's not necessarily the case. During the last ice age the effect of all the additional water being locked up in the arctic ice cap caused the sea levels to fall. As a result land that is currently underwater was exposed by the declining sea level, forming amongst other things the land bridge from the European mainland to the British Isles. As the ice age came to an end and the ice sheets melted, those areas of land were again submerged, opening up the Irish Sea and, sometime later, the English channel. This is why there are fewer species of mammals in Ireland than there are in the UK mainland; they never got the chance to cross the land bridges before they were submerged by the melting ice.
Of course, saying there is going to be more or less land kind of misses the point. What's the use of having an extra few million square km of land, if it's under an icesheet a few km thick? Or if we go the other way, having a nice warm, but somewhat smaller, Eurasia/North America if all the lands around the equator get to become an infertile desert like the Sahara? Those are two extreme examples of course, the reality is likely to fall somewhere in between; but gains in one area of the globe will still be off set by losses in another.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
ELF has less organization than your average local Linux User's Club. They don't give grants you moron.
As far as question four, Refer to the end of my second sentence.
I fail to see how this is so insightful.
It's easy to say "I don't care" about some environmental issue, because natural processes also cause cataclysmic effects. The fact is that humans CAN alter the environment and humans DO breathe the air the environment produces, drink the water, and eat the fruit of the land.
The planet will survive no matter what we do, I'll grant you that. On the other hand, it need not support mamillian life. Though the course of history many classes of living organisms have become extinct though natural proccesses. It's quite possible that given a critical mass of people, all producing some minor atmospheric effect, we could alter the environment on the order of those natural processes, such that mamilian life were no longer sustainable. Natural selection would weed out the mammals and a new form of life would emerge.
If you're OK with that, go ahead and ignore the research about global warming. I for one would like to preserve the human race. I'm not saying all the science about global warmning is good. It isn't. However, to say that 6 billion people on the planet cold never affect the environment in a negative way is quite silly. We do need to take environmental research seriously, debunk the bad research, and heed the good research.
Why is this assertion repeated every time this topic comes up? It's patently false. We annually burn up couple of km^3 pure carbon and turn it all into CO2. A very major volcano spews only a few km^3 of material, most of which is just rocks that fall to the ground next to the volcano. Do you have any valid links to back up your claim?
Doesnt anybody know about the 'little ice age' that lasted until the 18th century ?
I KNOW principals involved in this research. You think politicians are crooked? Some of these guys will write anything to get their next round of funding. Some will FORGE RESULTS! Others are trying to do honest science. All of you who claim BUSH is employing the hysteria of insecurity to garner votes need to realize that the same mentality exists in the scientific community. You see it in business too. Even the honest execs don't want to 'rock the boat' when the money is flowing in. Reading a scientific report on a hot, highly fundable subject is an exercise in weedoing out the real science from the money grubbing science.
IMO, while there is some correlation between projections of the effects of 'greenhouse gasses' and observation, it's still a stretch to infer causality.
Furthermore, the associated hysteria is unwarranted. There have been rapid warming periods in the past. There have also been rapid cooling periods. Through it all, life goes on.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What do 'conservatives' seek to conserve exactly?
Seems to me they're mostly intent on destroying stuff (environment, foreign people, wildlife, dissenters etc.).
If all of the icecaps melt, the result is to raise the global ocean level about 200 feet. IIRC, over 80% of the world's population lives in places that are less than 200 feet above sea level. At current rates it will take a few hundred years for this to occur, but the implication is that a large part of the human race and much of its wealth (in the form of cities and associated means of production) will have to be relocated.
That there are other factors in climate change does not mean we should not change those which we have control over.
It can, if our changes are expensive (which they are, and "expensive" automatically translates into human lives), and we can't have a significant effect anyhow, which is an open question.
Reflexive knee-jerking is not the right solution, no matter what emotional terms people like you wrap it in.
You are absolutely right!
So, I reccomend that we go along with your way of thinking and go on raping and pillaging the earth, destroying everything we touch!
Since we know nothing, there is no danger whatsoever that we could actually be hurting our own chances at survival.
Our Ignorance will protect us!
ohh, sorry, that last line was stolen from Bush's election campaign.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
The latest cycle of global warming began with the end of the ice age! You can't claim that humans are responsible for all of that since industrial production only began in the last 150 years. You are tying two unrelated things together. No one disputes global warming. No one disputes that humans are introducing CO2 into the atmosphere in larger quanties than previously. But the correlation is not evidence of causation. This latest cycle of global warming is but one of many. The US used to be covered in glaciers. The Sahara was green. Tropical plants grew in Antarctica. SUVs were not the causitive agent then and may not be the causitive agent now when there are bigger factors in play.
Global warming is serious and it is happening now. Rather than decreasing industrial production to reduce greenhouse emissions because you think it might help -- would not a better course of action be in devising ways to cope with a warmer climate (which will surely happen even if we decrease greenhouse gasses)?
Sure. And those types of huge natural events have been among the prime suspects to explain some of the mass extinctions that have occurred over the eons. Maybe that should tell us something.
You're talking about events that scale to where they kill nearly every human within 200 miles of the eruption by parboiling them in a cloud of superheated steam. The amount of ash dumped in such a case would create a year without a summer, and such erruptions probably kill 20% to half the living creatures on the planet every time one happens.
So what's your point? Everyone disagreeing with you on the amount hunams contribute to the greenhouse effect right now is a fool that isn't more concerned about the 0.0005% chance of another Thera scale erruption instead? Nature could hit us with something that would dwarf all our efforts, so we should just lie down and wait for the ash to bury us all?
I have some bad news for you that you evidently haven't heard. You're going to die someday. Better quit striving now and avoid the rush. Let's not stop at your big picture - the really big one is the Sun is going to blow up in a few billion years. The even bigger one is the fine structure constant isn't constant, and the universe will eventually fly apart as even individual elementary partuicles push each other away at ever increasing speeds.
Who is John Cabal?
Look at the midwest here during 1850's. MUCH more desertlike and much less water. And the earth took that area FROM less livable to more livable.
Sure it was. (I guess the Great Lakes don't qualify as "water.") Do you have any evidence to back up this assertion? Besides, didn't you say in another post that we only have 80 years of temperature data?
The natural forces are more destructive than most things we can make.
This is precisely why we need to be careful what we do to the climate.
VOLCANOES (1 spew=100 years of 'pollutants)
Wrong. Volcanoes contribute an insignificant amount of carbon dioxide compared to human activities.
The only thing more destructive than most of those are nuclear warheads.. And even 50 years cures most of those problems. Look at Bikini atoll.
The Bikinians are still trying to get the money to clean up their atoll. Like the carbon we're spewing into the atmosphere, the radioactive contamination didn't just go away.
The sahara was a wonderful wilderness. Now its sand. And LOTS of it. The "americans" sure as hell didnt do it. Nature CHANGES weather patters naturally. Whether it be good or bad for us, I dont know.
Nice logical fallacy. Past changes occurred independently of human activities; therefore nothing we do now will affect the climate.
The human race wont die out, but most will. Darn.
The extent of your compassion is quite touching. I'd rather avoid fighting an endless global war over dwindling resources if possible.
"The point is, the big picture (1 billion years of earth history) doesn't matter for us."
Surely this disinterest only applies if you don't intend to reproduce?
Actually, one of the things that amazes me about modern humans, is that they do seem remarkably disinterested in their own survival into the future.
Its as if they think that the species ends with them or something. Very wierd. Very... counter-Nietzscheian, counter-survivalist. Self destructive.
My point was that someone else played down natural sources of climactic change and I don't believe that this is justified given the scaling of disaster levels involved.
Its like someone says 'oh we are producing *far* more noxious gasses than mere volcanos' which needs to be moderated by noting how *huge* 'mere' vulcanism can get.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Sure we do ... it's just that some people would rather pretend it didn't happen.
The water held in the air is not available to flood anything.
Do you have any credible reason to think that the amount of increased atmospheric H2O will counteract rising sea level temperatures?
There are TROPICAL fossils and fossil fuels in the arctic. How did they get there?
Why do you keep asking this question? Nobody's disputing that the greenhouse effect was more pronounced a few million years ago. But just because champsosaurs didn't have a problem with the climate, don't assume that we won't. If you haven't noticed, we're not semi-aquatic alligators. But you know, you're just proving my point: climate change can mean extinction. And I really don't want to be extinct.
These changes take a long time and living things are very adaptable. We will also adapt over the many generations that such changes happen.
a) it could happen faster than that, and b) "adapting" requires a lot of organisms in a species dying.
FACTSHEET: Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, Center for the Study of CO2 and Climate Change
? id=24
DETAILS
P.O Box 25697 Tempe, AZ 85285-5697
Phone: 480-966-3719
Fax: 480-966-0758
The Center's current mission is to "disseminate factual reports and sound commentary on new developments in the world-wide scientific quest to determine the climatic and biological consequences of the ongoing rise in the air's CO2 content."
When the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change's web site debuted September 23,1998, The Western Fuels Association-funded Greening Earth Society issued the press release announcing The Center's new site. Fred Palmer, head of Western Fuels, stated in the release, "The Center's viewpoint is a needed antidote to the misleading and usually erroneous scientific claims emanating from the Federal scientific establishment and adopted by leading politicians, such as Vice President Al Gore." The Center has since tried to distance itself from the Western Fuels Association, but still regularly publishes articles on the Greening Earth Society website. The Center is run by Keith and Craig Idso, along with their father, Sherwood. Both Idso brothers have been on the Western Fuels payroll at one time or another. Keith Idso, then a doctoral candidate at the University of Arizona, was a paid expert witness for Western Fuels Association at a 1995 Minnesota Public Utilities commission hearing in St. Paul, MN, along with MIT's Richard Lindzen, Patrick Michaels, and Robert Balling. (The Heat is On). According to news from Basin Electric, a Western Fuels Association member, Craig Idso produced a report, "The Greening of Planet Earth." Its Progression from Hypothesis to Theory," in January 1998 for the Western Fuels Association. (The Center also came into being in January 1998, according to information provided by the Center). (Basin Electric Latest News no date given)
FUNDING
Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change has received $65,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998.
1998
$10,000 ExxonMobil Corporate Giving
Source: ExxonMobil 1998 grants list
2000
$15,000 ExxonMobil Foundation
project support
Source: ExxonMobil Foundation 2000 IRS 990
2003
$40,000 ExxonMobil Foundation
Climate Change Activities
Source: ExxonMobil 2003 Corporate Giving Report
---
http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php
and you expect us to believe that this site is the "truth" ?
haha you people are more stupid that you act
>>>Correction: the ice replaces exactly the amount of water it occupies when floating (=law of Archimedes). Proof: take a glass of water, put in ice cube, fill up glass to the edge (but not overflowing!). Ice melts, and water is still exactly up to the edge. actually wrong. if you do it that way the ice will melt to form less volume of water than ice (i.e. under the edge). This is because ice is less dense than water. This is why icebergs and icecubes float. the fact that water expands when it freezes is why your water pipes can burst in winter.
I for one would like to preserve the human race.
Ok; enough with the humans and mammals dealie.
Barring extreme global catasrophe of the world-ending variety, e.g. comet, asteroid impact of a huge magnitude, possibly a huge thermonuclear exhange (maybe), Sun going Nova - nothing, repeat nada, is going to eliminate every human from the face of the planet. It's not going to happen.
What will happen is civilization -as we know it- would end. Billions of people might die, maybe. Countries as we know them may end. But homo sapiens is not going anywhere.
There is enough energy on this planet from nuclear and non-nuclear sources (coal) to sustain humans for a very, very, very long time. A limited population centrally managed, a long damn time. It is quite easy to generate shelter, food, oxygen and clean water on earth provided you have a reasonable technological infrastructure and most importantly an abundant energy source and knowledge. Unlike prior times, engineering and scientific knowledge is extremely widespread in the world.
Would it suck to live in such a world? Likely.
It is quiet possible the natural course of events on this planet is the destruction of the ecosystem. Man is a part of nature; we are not aliens thrust upon the planet. There are many very serious challenges facing mankind in the near future and all of them have to do with one thing, and one thing only: ENERGY.
One thing I can guarantee you though, until that comet from the sky comes - and maybe even after - there will be a bunch of naked apes - somewhere - living nearby available energy.
Worry more about funding research into real clean sources of energy - highly efficient solar panels, fusion reactions, even the potential to extract energy directly from the vaccum of space itself. Once you have enough clean energy, we can make every other problem go away. If you do not believe such a source of energy is possible, then we are headed for global catastrophe of another kind anyway.
Period.
..don't panic